October 2025: Faculty and Staff Accomplishments

This year, Professor, Adj. Giovanni Aloi released the book Botanical Revolutions: How Plants Changed the Course of Art and the book I'm Not an Artist: Reclaiming Creativity in the Age of Infinite Content. In October, he gave the keynote presentation “The Deadly Grip of Vegetal Desire” at University of Chicago’s Green Heresies Conference. He presented on his book Botanical Revolutions at Ragdale in Lake Forest, Illinois. He was part of the discussion “Plants as Allies” alongside Concordia University botanist Emma Despland, and he published the essay “25 Years of Animal Revolutions: What's Next?” with Bordercrossings Magazine.

Lecturer Rob Croll’s solo exhibition Waymark will be on view at The Comfort Station during the month of November.

Professor, Adj. William Harper won the Best Animation Award at the Chicago Indie Film Awards. He also won the Best Music Video Award and the Best Experimental Short Award at the Hamburg Indie Film Festival.

Lecturer Jake Hinkson released his seventh novel, You Will Never See Me. He was interviewed about the book at the Chicago Review of Books.

Professor Sara Levine’s novel The Hitch received a starred review in Kirkus Reviews, with the headline "A novel that seems destined to become a cult classic."

Lecturer Odette Stout received a 2025 3Arts Award. Every year, 10 artists who live and work in the six-county metropolitan area receive unrestricted $30,000 awards in dance, music, teaching arts, theater, and visual arts.

Professor, Adj. Sonja Thomsen sat on a panel at the Fast Forward: Women in Photography Conference. She and Meg Jackson Fox presented "Between Archive and Inheritance: Collaborative Approaches to Recovering Hazel Larsen Archer’s Photographic Legacy."

Assistant Professor Pei-Hsuan Wang was featured in the exhibition Shapeshifters: On Wounds, Wonders and Transformation and the accompanying symposium at Framer Framed in Amsterdam. The event reimagines how museums and archives confront colonial legacies through new, provocative works.