Brandeis Magazine

In April, assistant professor of fine arts Sheida Soleimani was one of three photographers The New York Times asked to create images that showed how they had fun during the COVID-19 lockdown. Soleimani’s collage-like photos focused on her immersion in the natural world: tending to rescued chickens, making dandelion wine, and growing and canning vegetables.

Ben Feingold ’78, CEO of Samuel Goldwyn Films, had something to toast in April when the Danish film “Another Round” won the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film. Finegold’s company released the film theatrically in the U.S. as well as on video on demand.

Poet Jackson Holbert ’17 has been named a Wallace Stegner Fellow by Stanford University. Each year, 10 writers — five in poetry and five in fiction — are chosen for the two-year fellowship, which provides them with a living stipend and the opportunity to work together on their writing in a workshop setting. Former Stegner Fellows include Donald Hall, Tillie Olsen and Raymond Carver. Holbert’s poems have appeared in Field, The Iowa Review and The Nation.

More than 70 Brandeis contributors have created a lexicon that helps scholars translate letters written in China during the late imperial and early republic eras. The free-access electronic resource — compiled over five years by undergraduates; graduate students; and faculty members in the German, Russian and Asian languages and literature department, including project supervisors Yu Feng and Jian Wei — is the first extended lexicon to focus on words and phrases frequently used by Chinese letter writers during these periods.

The American Academy of Arts and Letters has awarded professor of composition emeritus Yehudi Wyner a Gold Medal, its highest honor for excellence in the arts. Wyner, who served as the academy’s president from 2015-18 and whose piano concerto “Chiavi in Mano” earned a 2006 Pulitzer Prize, received the award for his many achievements in music composition.

Jonathan Glazer ’93 has been named co-chair of the board of advisers of the American Repertory Theater at Harvard University, internationally known for its productions of new American plays and innovative re-imagining of classic texts. Glazer is the U.S. partnership operations leader and tax matters partner at EY in Boston.

Undeterred by a global pandemic, this spring’s weeklong Leonard Bernstein Festival of the Creative Arts celebrated Brandeisian creativity by exploring the theme “Art Finds a Way.” Online events included dozens of short performances and films; a production of “The Lathe of Heaven,” a play adapted from the Ursula K. Le Guin novel of the same name; the Brandeis Folk Festival, which showcased singer-songwriters from around New England; and the world premiere of four works written by Brandeis composers for the Lydian String Quartet. The festival was founded by composer/conductor Leonard Bernstein in 1952 in honor of the university’s first Commencement.