Presenters

Rebecca Cypess

Rebecca Cypess is Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at Mason Gross and Associate Professor of Music at Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University. Her work on Ignatius Sancho includes “Notation, Performance and the Significance of Print in the Music of Ignatius Sancho” (Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies) and “The Poetics of the Wise Fool in the Music and Letters of Ignatius Sancho” (Music & Letters, forthcoming). She is the author of Women and Musical Salons in the Enlightenment (University of Chicago Press, 2022); Curious and Modern Inventions: Instrumental Music as Discovery in Galileo’s Italy (University of Chicago Press, 2016); and over 40 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters. A performer on historical keyboard instruments, Cypess directs the Raritan Players, which is devoted to the exploration of little-known compositions and performance practices of the eighteenth century. The group’s recordings have been called “simply mesmerizing” (Early Music America), “enchanting” (Classics Today), and an “unexpected treasure . . . This album could be better only if they could find a way to scent it with freshly-baked cookies” (American Record Guide).

 

Catherine Naeve

Catherine Naeve is the Graduate Assistant for “The Arts as Black Resistance in Eighteenth-Century London” working group and a PhD Candidate in the History Department at Rutgers. Her research primarily focuses on the late seventeenth century in Britain and Ireland with an interest in immigration, religion, and political culture. She is currently completing her dissertation on a 1675 scandal involving a French priest in London. 

 

Alex Solomon

Alex Solomon is assistant teaching professor in the English Department at Rutgers University, where he received his PhD in 2017. Previously he has been assistant professor of English at Ashoka University. His work on Laurence Sterne has appeared in Philological Quarterly, and the research he is presenting today is part of a project on literary constructions of racial difference over the course of the long eighteenth century.

 

Caroline Copeland

Caroline Copeland is a dancer and associate director with the New York Baroque Dance Company. She is a featured performer and choreographer for the Grammy-award winning Boston Early Music Festival. Her choreographic credits include: Campra’s Le Carnaval de Venise, Monteverdi’s Il Ritorno d’Ulisse in Patria, Handel’s Almira, and Steffani’s Niobe, Regina di Thebes. Her collaborations in opera and concert dance include projects with Musica Angelica, Merz Trio, Juilliard415, Cantata Profana, Brooklyn Baroque, The New Dutch Academy, and Bourbon Baroque and her choreography has been presented at Alice Tully Hall, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Public Theater, and the Philipzaal Den Haag. Ms. Copeland received her MFA at Sarah Lawrence College and currently teaches ballet, contemporary dance and world dance histories at Hofstra University and the Joffrey Ballet School Trainee Program in NYC.

 

Jennifer Tamas

Jennifer Tamas is an Associate Professor of French at Rutgers and currently the Acting Graduate Director for the department. Her work explores the boundaries between passions and politics. Her new book Au NON des femmes. Libérer nos classiques du regard masculin (Paris, Seuil, 2023) investigates how the “male gaze” prevailed in establishing the French classics and their reception. In addition to her previous monograph Le Silence trahi. Racine ou la déclaration tragique (Droz, 2018), Tamas has co-authored or co-eduted two volumes and published many articles and books chapters on theater and performance, feminist theory, and politics. She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses and in 2021 won the Humanities Plus Award  for envisioning a podcast series on Women’s Empowerment for a new course called ‘‘How the French Invented The Female Gaze: Early Modern Fairy Tales and Their Legacy”.

 

Julia Hamilton

Julia Hamilton is a Lecturer in Music at Columbia University, where she received her PhD in 2021. Her dissertation explored connections between popular abolitionism and British musical culture in the late eighteenth century, with a particular focus on the ways female amateur musicians used their everyday musical activities to enact political change. She has published an article on British women’s abolitionism and domestic music-making in Studies in Eighteenth Century Culture, and is currently working on a book project that traces the shifting musical approaches to British antislavery activism from the 1760s to the 1840s.

 

Brandon Williams

Brandon Williams is an Associate Professor of Music at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. He conducts the Rutgers Voorhees Choir (Carnegie Hall 2019, Eastern ACDA 2020) and teaches a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses related to choral music education. Dr. Williams also appears internationally as a guest conductor, clinician, and presenter. Dr. Williams has won numerous awards, including an Outstanding Teacher Award from the University of Missouri-Columbia Honors College, the 2020-21 Rutgers Provost’s Award for Excellence in Teaching Innovations, and the 2021-22 Rutgers Presidential Fellowship for Teaching Excellence Award. He was also a 2020-21 Rutgers Early Career Faculty Fellow in the Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice. Dr. Williams is the editor of Choral Reflections: Insights from American Choral Conductor-Teachers. Additionally, he has numerous choral compositions and arrangements published with Hal Leonard, G. Schirmer, Mark Foster, and Colla Voce.