Arts, Architecture and Humanities

Musical talent, hard work and networking take Stephen Leisring around the world — recently to Madrid, where he played first trumpet on a piece for Radio Television Española's upcoming coverage of the Paris Olympics.

Alyssa Cole, assistant professor of African American studies at the University of Florida, and Brooke Thomas, African American history postdoctoral scholar at Pennsylvania State University, are the recipients of the 2024 Alyce Hunley Whayne Visiting Researchers Travel Award from KU Libraries. They will visit KU from June 24 to 27 with a joint public presentation at 3 p.m. June 26 in the Johnson Room.

For his next project, Academy Award winner Kevin Willmott, KU professor of film & media studies, turns his camera on a Kansas City civil rights icon, Alvin Brooks, in a documentary about one of the city's first Black police officers and its first Black department head.

Liz Langdon joined the faculty of KU's Department of Visual Art when she was 65 after an extensive career in art education. She writes of the "long hill" she has climbed and vistas yet to conquer for a chapter in a new book titled "Art Education and Creative Aging: Older Adults as Learners, Makers, and Teachers of Art."

Brad Osborn, KU professor of music theory, channels his inner black-metal musician into one-man band D’Archipelago, which has now released its fifth recording. “EVILSIZOR” continues the trend of pop music that ignores the old verse-chorus structure.