The Sally McDonnell Barksdale Honors College held its spring convocation Tuesday night. The ceremony recognized the senior students of the honors college and rewarded two students with the Barksdale Award.
Honors college Dean Douglass Sullivan-González said the award allows students to grow academically.
“Our Barksdale Award is all about dreaming,” Sullivan-González said.
Kate Lindsay, senior accountancy major and Joe Bell, senior international studies major were both recipients of the Barksdale award.
Sullivan-González said Lindsay will study the design and rehearsal process of deaf theater productions on her travels to Los Angeles, Washington and New York City. She intends to work on bridging the cultural divide between the deaf and hearing worlds.
Sullivan-González said Bell will travel to Colorado to perform an ethnographic study.He will record cultures all along the margins and talk to men whose lifestyles are becoming threatened by a changing globalized world.
As a part of the Barksdale Award, Lindsay and Bell will each receive $5,000 to put toward their studies.
The event was led by the Chancellor’s Artist-In-Residence Bruce Levingston. Levingston is a world-renowned concert pianist as well as the founder and director of the music foundation, Premiere Commission, Inc.
Levingston opened the evening with a live performance. After the piece, he revealed what he was going to do for the remainder of the night.
“What I can do is take you through some of the history of music and how it’s been used in film,” Levingston said.
Levingston performed Philip Glass’ “Dracula Suite” while the audience watched the Universal film “Dracula.”
Daniel Nuxoll, director of Rooftop Films, helped in assisting Levingston in discussing the film scoring process, while explaining the important relationship between music and film.
Benh Zeitlin showed several clips of his film, “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” which he directed. Zeitlin’s film was awarded the Caméra d’Or, or Golden Camera, at the Cannes Film Festival and received four Academy Award nominations at the 85th Academy Awards in 2013.
The evening concluded with a short question-and-answer session with a student in the audience asking Levingston what motivates him in music.
“It’s just fun,” Levingston said. “It’s a lot of work, but it is so much fun.”
