Arts Alive San Antonio

By JASMINA WELLINGHOFF, Editor

Last year was hard for everyone and that included the students and faculty at UTSA. Classes were put on hold, meeting cancelled, and individuals found themselves isolated and uncertain about the course of their studies. To help students and themselves, a group of faculty members launched a new project to create connections between people and help them cope with the strange and challenging time.

“As a historian, I was concerned about students understanding the moment and capturing their experiences as a way to preserve it for the future,” said assistant history professor Jodi Peterson, the initiator of the project which ultimately led to an interdepartmental collaboration and a theatrical production, Defining Moments, which will be presented at the Buena Vista Theater on UTSA’s downtown campus this Friday at 7 p.m. “It was amazing how quickly it came together and how excited everyone was about it. It gave students an opportunity to connect and listen to each-others’ voices and share ideas” she added.

The project engaged students from six departments – history, English, art, music, dance and architecture – and helped them express their feelings, thoughts and observations in a creative way. It started with history students writing journal entries recording and reflecting about the historic period they were living through. That was followed by English students reading those entries and writing poems in response, and then the project continued “in a cascading manner”: The poets were followed by art students who created art based on what they had read, and music and dance students who reinterpreted it all through original music and choreography. For the last touch, architecture students designed and built the backdrop for the showcase.

To get her students on the right track, Peterson said they talked a lot about history “being a series of defining moments for people” and how this was a defining moment for them, that needed to be captured in writing, as a primary source of information that future generations can use to understand what was going on. “2020 was very impactful and something that will be studied for years to come,” she noted.

The entire process took a year-and-a-half, but it allowed students not only an opportunity to expose how they were feeling but also a chance to listen to each other,” explained the professor.

On stage, the evening will start with an introduction about the genesis of the project, which will be followed by the various presentations by the poets, the artists, the musicians and the dancers. As the show goes on, the audience will be able to see and appreciate how the students built upon each other. The finale will showcase several disciplines – poetry, video art, music and dance.

Other involved faculty members were Mark McCoin and Humberto Saenz, from the art department, David Vance, associate professor of English; Ethan Wickman from the music department, dance program founder Megan Rulewicz, and John Bagarozy, from architecture.

Throughout their work, the students and faculty were supported by the UTSA libraries and staff from Academic Innovation that assisted the mostly virtual collaboration effort.

The entire work on Defining Moments has been archived in the university’s Runner Research Press, a repository of scholarly and creative work, destined to become an open educational resource for the entire community.
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(Nov.19, 7 p.m. Buena Vista Theater, UTSA downtown campus; free but reservations recommended,  Qualtrics Survey | Defining Moments Showcase RSVP. Also, UTSA is partnering with UT Health San Antonio to offer onsite COVID vaccination for those who are interested.