To the Williams Community,
I am pleased to report that Amy Holzapfel, Professor of Theater, has agreed to serve as the college’s next Gaudino Scholar. Her three-year appointment to this post will begin July 1, 2023.
Amy will be the 18th faculty member to hold this title. The position has been active since 1982 and is named for former political science professor Robert Gaudino. The Gaudino Scholar works with the Gaudino Trustees, a dedicated group of Williams alumni and current students, to promote opportunities for experiential education and uncomfortable learning.
Amy has been at Williams since 2007. She received her M.F.A. (2001) and D.F.A. (2006) in Dramaturgy & Dramatic Criticism from the Yale School of Drama. She is the author of Art, Vision & Nineteenth-Century Realist Drama: Acts of Seeing (Routledge 2014), which explores how modern theories of vision in art and science impacted the rise of realism in theater, as well as many articles in leading journals. Her current book-in-progress, Choral Turns: Performing the Chorus in the Ruins of Democracy (under contract with U. Michigan), traces receptions and revitalizations of the collective form of the dramatic chorus in twenty-first century performance and demonstration. She teaches a wide range of courses, including ones on feminist theater, theater and environment, and dramaturgy. She has served as chair of the Theatre department, and as a coordinator of First3.
Amy’s Gaudino project is a three-year long curricular and experiential-driven exploration of how knowledge is acquired, processed, and stored in and through “embodied practices.” By supporting and cultivating embodied practices and embodied ways of knowing across discreet fields and divisions, Amy hopes to find commonalities and synergies in creative approaches to both subject matter and teaching. The hope of this project is that exploring engagement with embodied practices in the classroom and beyond, practices which often involve acts of empathy, reflection, or contemplation, will help us gain a deeper appreciation of our humanity.
Amy will succeed Jason Josephson Storm, Professor of Religion, who has served in this role since July 2020. My thanks go to Amy and Jason for their willingness to serve the college in this capacity.
Maud