University Times

Deane Root, professor of music and director and Fletcher Hodges Jr. Curator of the Center for American Music, has been appointed as editor in chief of the Oxford University Press (OUP) Grove music program. Root was selected by an advisory panel consisting of representatives from eight societies devoted to music scholarship and librarianship.

Root worked as both a copy editor and advisory editor on the 1980 “New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians” and was an integral part of the creation of “Resources of American Music: A Directory of Source Materials.”

He is past president of the Sonneck Society for American Music. His book, “The Music of Stephen C. Foster: A Critical Edition,” with Stephen Saunders, received a Choice Outstanding Academic Book Award from the American Library Association.

As Grove program editor in chief, Root will assemble an editorial board to provide a broad range of representation within the field of music. He also will oversee the review process for content developed over the last several months, as well as work with the staff at OUP to set the course for the next phase of Grove’s development as a scholarly resource.

Terry Smith, the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Contemporary Art History and Theory in the Department of History of Art and Architecture, is the inaugural winner of the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum Research Center Book Prize for his book “Making the Modern: Industry, Art, and Design in America.”

The prize will be awarded every three years to the author of an outstanding book published within the last 25 years on some aspect of American modernism. Smith’s book was selected from more than 60 titles. The prize carries a cash award of $5,000.

Smith’s book, which addresses the period 1910-40, examines the impact of mass production and mass consumption on the range of American visual culture, from factory architecture through photography and art to industrial design. It includes chapters on the Ford plants in Detroit, the Farm Security Administration photographers during the Depression, Life magazine, Mexican visitors Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo and the New York World’s Fair of 1939-40.

Jurors said they chose Smith’s book because of its “excellence of writing and scholarship, its originality and its outstanding and multi-faceted exploration of the emergence and flourishing of modernism as a phenomenon in American art and culture.”

Pitt-Bradford will honor Helene Lawson with the Pitt-Bradford Alumni Association Teaching Excellence Award as part of the Oct. 3 and 4 alumni and family weekend.

The PBAA teaching award recognizes a faculty member who has exemplified established educational principles, shown dedication in teaching his or her students and excelled in his or her area of specialty.

Lawson, professor of sociology, teaches Introduction to Sociology; Gender, Race and Ethnicity; Images of Men and Women in Media; Sociology of Work and Society; Global Society, and Inequality.

In February, Lawson and her colleague Michael Klausner were named Beyond Brand Champions, an honor given each year to members of the academic department that most closely fulfills Pitt-Bradford’s promise of creating a personalized, safe and friendly environment for students.

In 2007, Lawson received the Chairs’ Faculty Teaching Award, which is determined by the chairs of Pitt-Bradford’s five academic divisions.

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