The Arts Archives - News Center

Noted photographer and art educator Carl Chiarenza remembered

Sheila Rayam — Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:11:12 +0000

A distinguished scholar, the former ��Թ� faculty member lectured and taught workshops at more than 100 institutions in 33 states.

Carl Chiarenza (Photo by Heidi Katz)

Carl Chiarenza, an artist-in-residence and a professor emeritus in the at the ��Թ�, is being remembered as a notable American photographer and an erudite scholar.

Chiarenza, who died in May at the age of 90, was the Fanny Knapp Allen Professor of Art and Art History from 1986 until he retired in 1998. After retirement, he was named artist-in-residence and remained available for critiques and classroom visits.

Internationally known as a photographer specializing in abstract imagery, Chiarenza created photographs featured in more than 90 one-person and more than 280 group exhibitions since 1957. He authored numerous monographs and essays, as well as a seminal biography of American photographer Aaron Siskind called Aaron Siskind: Pleasures and Terrors (Little, Brown and Company, 1982).

Beyond his contributions to photography and scholarship, Chiarenza was widely admired for his generosity and warmth.

“The multitude of things that distinguish Carl as a scholar and as an artist are all secondary to the fact that he was a fine human and a generous citizen,” says , a professor of art and the chair of the Department of Art and Art History. “I don’t remember many of the countless topics we covered over breakfast at the Frog Pond or Highland Diner in Rochester, but the warmth and wholly uncommon generosity of spirit is something I still embrace from every one of those times—they live with me.”

A trailblazer in photographic scholarship

Chiarenza earned an AAS in 1955 and a BFA in 1957 from Rochester Institute of Technology. He went on to earn an MS in 1959 and an AM in 1964 from Boston University.

In 1973, he became the first person to earn an art history PhD in photography from Harvard University.

“Carl ruffled feathers there by intending to write a dissertation not only on a living artist, but on a photographer—two categories that had never before been found worthy in that department,” recalls , a professor emerita of art history at ��Թ�. “It is a tribute to his talent, and the force of his will, that he was allowed to proceed.”

Chiarenza lectured and conducted workshops at more than 100 institutions in 33 states during his academic career.

Before his tenure at ��Թ�, Chiarenza was a professor of art history at Boston University, where he served in the roles of chairman and director of graduate studies. He also taught at Smith College and Cornell University.

“He enjoyed teaching his lectures on the history of photography by starting with a cave painting,” says artist and landscape designer Heidi Katz, Chiarenza’s wife of 48 years. “He loved his smaller engaging seminars, some co-taught with colleagues from other disciplines. But finally, he loved being artist-in-residence with his own studio space on the University campus for several years after he retired.”

Finding mystery in the ordinary

Described by colleagues as a prolific and tenacious artist, Chiarenza worked predominantly in black and white, producing photography of collages made from materials such as torn paper and various foils.

His creative process often included the other art form about which he was passionate: music. “He never worked in the darkroom or studio without music being a part of it,” says Katz, adding that Chiarenza was a singer and musician who played the saxophone and clarinet.

Chiarenza’s works—from collages to single and multiple large format prints—are collected on , and catalogues include Journey into the Unknown, which accompanied a at the Eastman House in 2021.

An Eastman House description of the retrospective noted, “Rather than create straightforward records of the cast-off materials that appear before his camera, Chiarenza photographically transforms them into new and provocative images. […] His photographs often bear little resemblance to their actual subjects and instead suggest mysterious worlds that viewers are invited to explore.”

A legacy in art and education

Chiarenza’s academic and artistic contributions leave a legacy in the worlds of art, photography, and research. The archive of his artwork is housed at the in Richmond, Virginia, and his papers are at Harvard University.

Along with his artistry. Chiarenza’s legacy includes the artists, students, and scholars he mentored throughout his career.

“When I turn the key to my studio, I bring with me an audience of three,” says Topolski, adding that Chiarenza was a friend and mentor for 30 years. “Along with my father, who gives me confidence and checks the standard of my craft, and my mentor from grad school who taught me how to embed meaning into process, Carl is there to remind me that what I do is wholly important as long as it is wholly genuine. And being genuine in my studio is respecting it relative to what envelops it—kinship and family.”

Chiarenza is survived by his wife and three adult children, Jonah, Gabriella, and Suzanne.

The art of what’s next

Melissa Pheterson — Sun, 24 May 2026 18:36:27 +0000

At the Memorial Art Gallery, Timothy Peterson is building a collection that reflects today’s complexity while helping shape the canon that endures.

Timothy Peterson spends much of his time in places most people never see: under freeway overpasses, inside warehouse studios, in half-finished spaces where artists are still working out ideas and responding in real time to the zeitgeist. He is looking for what isn’t settled yet, for concepts still taking shape.

For the ��Թ�’s (MAG), those instincts carry remarkable weight. As the inaugural , Peterson isn’t just selecting artworks to acquire; he’s helping shape how the future will understand the present—building a collection that reflects today’s bracing complexity while engaging with MAG’s 5,000 years of holdings.

Upstairs, one finds Egyptian mummies, a Baroque organ, and Monet’s soft washes of color. Descend into the Modern and Contemporary Art Gallery, though, and the aesthetic shift hits immediately. “I give a great deal of attention to sightlines,” Peterson says. Dominating one wall is Erin Shirreff’s Paper Sculpture, a large-scale shadow box composed of magnified scans from vintage photography. From afar, its dots and rosettes coalesce into what appears to be plaster, stone, wood, and metal; up close, the illusion dissolves into curving planes and fragments of printed matter.

“When a museum as important as MAG selects what enters its contemporary collection, it is helping determine what artists and artworks enter what we call ‘the canon.’ Think of how important that is.” —Sarah Jesse

“I love that after the long walk to Paper Sculpture, its shadow box format still provides further depth to consider up close,” Peterson says. That layering lets the viewer observe both “three-dimensional forms in a culture mediated by still and moving images” and aspects of collage, sculpture, and dye-sublimation printing—all processes that figure in modern and contemporary art.

Peterson’s other important sightline, leading from an entrance used by local school groups to Wayne Thiebaud’s River Pond, shows how an artist famous for cakes and pies renders landscape with similar pastels and precision. Both works speak to Peterson’s curatorial vision: conversation sparked and sustained through encounters with artists, materials, and ideas still cohering.

It is a vision that extends far beyond Rochester, notes , the Mary W. and Donald R. Clark Director of MAG.

Curating the canon

“Contemporary art is different from all the other categories of art in an encyclopedic museum because every artwork—baroque, impressionist, modernist—was once contemporary,” Jesse says. “When a museum as important as MAG selects what enters its contemporary collection, it is helping determine what artists and artworks enter what we call ‘the canon.’ Think of how important that is.”

Those high stakes animated the search that brought Peterson to Rochester in September 2024 as the museum’s first contemporary art curator, a position endowed by local gallerist Deborah Ronnen in honor of her parents. “Timothy’s position isn’t just important to MAG, or to the arts in Rochester,” Jesse says. “It will have an impact on the art world.”

WHAT A BEAUTIFUL WORLD: Peterson is committed to acquiring more works by women, artists of color, and LGBTQ+ artists—ensuring, as he puts it, that “a wider world” exists within the gallery’s walls. (��Թ� photo / J. Adam Fenster)

Peterson—who grew up in Minnesota and earned a bachelor’s in art history at St. Olaf College followed by a master’s in art history at Williams College—has curated more than 150 exhibitions and worked with artists ranging from emerging voices to internationally recognized figures. Over nearly four decades, he has held leadership roles at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art, the SCAD Museum of Art in Savannah, and Franklin Art Works in Minneapolis.

Yet what distinguishes Peterson is not only experience—it is orientation. Over an orange-flavored Celsius in the museum’s pavilion, he speaks in a rhythm that mirrors his approach: connective, passionate, attentive. Even when discussing acquisitions or installations, he returns to the artists and their processes. “You’re not just studying objects,” he says. “You’re trying to understand how something comes into being, and why it matters.”

That inquiry often begins in the studio—many of which are in locations Peterson likens to “no man’s land”—or at gallery openings, where he tracks emerging directions in contemporary practice. It requires a particular kind of judgment: the ability to recognize significance before it is widely acknowledged. On a trip to New York City, for example, he was eager to view the work of Carmen de Monteflores, the mother of artist Andrea Fraser, who has exhibited works in the Whitney Biennial. Though de Monteflores never received widespread recognition, she exemplifies the often-hidden talent Peterson seeks out.

“He’s able to separate the signal from the noise,” Jesse says, “which is arguably one of the most important skills a curator of contemporary art can have.”

Dialogue on display

OUT OF THE BLUE: Underscoring the evolving nature of materials used in contemporary art, Hugo McCloud’s Blue Zone is constructed from hand-cut and ironed single-use plastic bags. (��Թ� photo / J. Adam Fenster)

The sensibility Jesse describes is immediately visible in Peterson’s reimagining of MAG’s contemporary gallery. One of his first acts upon arriving was to remove 13 interior walls, opening the space to natural light and continuous sightlines. Sculpture, photography, and painting now coexist in an environment that encourages visual and conceptual connections.

“We’re leaning into openness,” Peterson says. “The goal is to create an environment where works can speak to each other, and to visitors, without being confined by strict categories.”

Within that environment, materials become a starting point for conversation. Hugo McCloud’s Blue Zone, constructed from hand-cut and ironed single-use plastic bags, transforms a ubiquitous byproduct of global commerce into a monumental depiction of physical labor on a street in India. The work underscores both environmental degradation and the invisibility of manual work while posing a practical question for the museum: How will such materials endure?

“No material is off-limits now,” Peterson says. “The question is how it survives.” That tension between experimentation and preservation reflects a broader shift in contemporary art, where artists increasingly work with unconventional materials that challenge traditional museum practices.

In Paul Mpagi Sepuya’s Darkroom Mirror, two partially unclothed men share a camera, their faces obscured. “In many ways, photography offers visitors the most immediate opportunity to see themselves reflected in an artwork,” Peterson says. “In this case, the artist and his friend offer queer visibility, and animate Sepuya’s notion of the artist’s studio as a social and cultural space for interaction and artmaking.” MAG’s collection of more than 12,000 objects includes over 250 works in photography, the majority dating from 1950 and later.

Expanding the frame

“My goal is to expand the conversation,” Peterson says. “To create new ways of thinking, new points of entry.” That means, in part, acquiring more works by women, artists of color, and LGBTQ+ artists—ensuring, as he puts it, that “a wider world” exists within the gallery’s walls.

In Caroline Kent’s Timely movements match hidden motivations, abstract shapes and patterns glide across layered black backgrounds. Using cut-paper techniques, Kent treats abstraction as a form of visual language that resists fixed meaning while inviting viewers into the interpretive process. To extend Kent’s sensibility beyond the canvas, Peterson will work with her to create a large-scale wall drawing in MAG’s pavilion that he hopes will generate an immersive, chromatic energy.

OFF THE WALL: Caroline Kent, whose Timely movements match hidden motivations is part of the MAG’s permanent collection, will work with Peterson to design a large-scale wall drawing for the museum’s pavilion. (��Թ� photo / J. Adam Fenster)

Hanging across from Kent’s piece and next to McCloud’s Blue Zone, Euphemism (Knot Stories) gives sculptural form to tension and resilience. The black-glazed ceramic box by Paul S. Briggs is densely threaded with coiled, knotted tubes that push against and pierce its structure. Drawing on Black poetry and the realities of mass incarceration, the work transforms traditional ceramic techniques into a meditation on constraint and endurance—historical form pressed into urgent contemporary service.

A pink marble statue on a cedar plinth, Sanford Biggers’s The Cantor similarly layers histories and visual traditions. By combining a female ancestor mask from the African Chokwe people with a classical Greek maiden, Biggers connects three of MAG’s collection areas—classical sculpture, African art, and contemporary art—while prompting new conversations about identity, materiality, and cultural inheritance.

Louis Fratino’s The young father, meanwhile, offers “an exceptionally rare image of fatherhood in the museum’s collection, as well as a rare male nude sculpture—which were key points in acquiring it,” Peterson says. The bronze figure expands the emotional and representational range of the collection, foregrounding intimacy, vulnerability, and care in ways that feel both timeless and newly visible.

Collecting contemporary art means making decisions before consensus has formed and before an artist’s place in history is secure. “You’re making a judgment about what will last,” Peterson says. “And history shows us how unpredictable that can be—Vincent van Gogh only sold one painting in his lifetime.”

An anchor for regional culture

Peterson’s endowed position places him within a longer institutional history shaped by visionary women.

“Uniquely among American museums, strong women have been instrumental at every point in MAG’s history,” Jesse says. “Emily Sibley Watson founded the institution; Hannah Durand Gould created the first acquisition fund; the Herdle sisters built MAG into a nationally important encyclopedic museum. And now Deborah Ronnen has given us our largest gift and established an endowment that will make us a significant player in contemporary art.”

“Our challenge is to show up not only for artists who have already proven themselves, but for those whose work will resonate when we look back.” —Timothy Peterson

That foundation frees Peterson to do the work he considers essential: learning about the community, supporting other creative people, and nurturing vital relationships. Since his arrival, he has connected with institutions such as the George Eastman Museum and Visual Studies Workshop, a nonprofit organization dedicated to arts education. And he is conducting studio visits throughout the region, from Buffalo to the Finger Lakes, to build coalitions of regional artists.

Because the endowment exists in perpetuity, so does the mandate. “Our challenge is to show up not only for artists who have already proven themselves,” Peterson says, “but for those whose work will resonate when we look back.”

Eastman School launches new major in music creation and technology

Lauren Sageer — Fri, 08 May 2026 23:38:06 +0000

The program builds on ��Թ�’s growing leadership at the intersection of music, engineering, sound, and digital innovation.

The ��Թ�’s Eastman School of Music has announced a new bachelor of music (BM) in music creation and technology, a degree program designed for students whose musical practice is grounded in electronic and digital technologies.

Led by ’05E (DMA), associate professor of music and technology and former head of music learning at music software company Ableton, the new major will emphasize electronic music production and performance, sound design, recording and editing, DJing, and the development of software and hardware. The inaugural class will begin study in fall 2027.

The program is part of ��Թ�’s newly established , an interdisciplinary academic collaboration between two leading ��Թ� schools: Eastman and the Hajim School of Engineering & Applied Sciences. The department also serves as the academic home for faculty engaged in SoundSpace, a transdisciplinary research center advancing ��Թ�’s leadership in music and technology.

Together, the new major, department, and research center reflect the inspiring combinations possible at ��Թ�—where artistry, engineering, creativity, and emerging technologies come together to shape how music is made, studied, and experienced.

Read more about Eastman’s .

��Թ� musicologist helps bring medieval mystic to life at Venice Biennale

David Andreatta — Fri, 08 May 2026 15:14:47 +0000

Professor Honey Meconi’s scholarship on Saint Hildegard of Bingen advised the Vatican’s exhibit featuring FKA Twigs, Brian Eno, Patti Smith, and others.

When the international art extravaganza opens on May 9, visitors to the pavilion sponsored by the Vatican will find a fusion of past and present in the music of the 12th-century German Saint Hildegard of Bingen being interpreted by some of today’s most innovative artists.

Helping bring the exhibit to life is , a professor of musicology at the ��Թ�, whose extensive research into Hildegard has shaped how the world understands and performs her music.

St. Hildegard of Bingen contemplates a flower while writing with a quill. Attributed to Wilhelm Fassbinder, 1898. ()

Meconi was among the consultants to the creative team behind the Holy See’s pavilion, titled which as one of “eight pavilions that have the Venice Biennale buzzing.” The life and work of Hildegard inspired the exhibition and, according to the Holy See, centers on themes of “slowing down, listening, contemplating, and caring” and features performances by 24 artists, including stars like FKA Twigs, Brian Eno, Dev Hynes, and Patti Smith.

“One of the things I’ve always loved about Hildegard is how inspiring her music is to artists of all kinds,” says Meconi, whose book (University of Illinois Press, 2018) remains the first and only English-language text devoted to Hildegard’s work as a composer.

“Her music consists of a single melodic line that modern musicians use as a tabula rasa, bringing their own ideas and interpretations to it while still engaging with something authentically medieval,” Meconi says.

The Venice Biennale was founded in 1895 and is held every two years. Often described as the “Olympics of the art world” for its pavilions hosted by countries, the festival brings together artists, architects, and musicians and is a major stage for new ideas and cultural exchanges.

Part of the Vatican’s pavilion is located in The Mystical Garden in Venice, where visitors can listen to commissioned re-compositions of Hildegard’s music through headphones as they wander the secluded garden’s plots of vegetables and flowers.

The pieces were curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist and Ben Vickers in collaboration with Soundwalk Collective, an experimental sound art organization based in Berlin and New York City.

��Թ� scholarship shapes a global stage

Meconi’s involvement began last fall when Soundwalk Collective contacted her seeking guidance on Hildegard’s music.

“They knew they wanted modern performers to interpret her work, so I provided editions and translations and answered questions about pronunciation, tuning, and so on,” Meconi says. “I was also able to suggest pieces that might be appropriate for specific artists.”

As part of her role, she was recorded singing Hildegard’s music at Electric Lady Studios, the legendary space founded by Jimi Hendrix in New York City.

“That was surreal,” Meconi says. “But it is also surreal for someone who specializes in music before 1600 to see Brian Eno’s name in an email subject heading and to do a translation specifically for him.”

Another highlight for Meconi, as she tells it, was learning that Pope Leo XIV had translated one of Hildegard’s song texts into Portuguese for the famous fado singer Carminho. The song was one for which Meconi had provided the edition.

“Technically speaking,” she says, “the pope and I are now collaborators.”

Who is Hildegard, and why is her work so hot right now?

“She was the Boss Lady of the 12th century.”

Hildegard of Bingen was a German Benedictine nun and polymath of epic proportions. In addition to founding a convent, writing theological treatises on her heavenly visions, inventing a new language and alphabet, corresponding with everyone who was anyone in the 12th century, and authoring books on the natural world and healing, she was a prolific musician. She penned 77 songs and a musical drama before her death at 81 in 1179.

“She was the Boss Lady of the 12th century,” Meconi says.

Honey Meconi (right) conducts members of the Christ Church Schola Cantorum at the “O virga ac diadema: Hildegard and the Living Light” concert at Christ Church in Rochester, New York, in April 2026. (l to r) Jessie Miller, graduate student in musicology at Eastman School of Music; Amy Steinberg ’86, ’90 (PhD); and Hanna Richardson Miller. (Photo courtesy of Meconi)

The Holy See says its pavilion responds to the broad theme of the Biennale, titled “In Minor Keys.” The festival’s curator, Koyo Kough, died last year, but wrote of the exhibition in her original curatorial statement: “In refusing the spectacle of horror, the time has come to listen to the minor keys, to tune in sotto voce to the whispers, to the lower frequencies; to find the oases, the islands, where the dignity of all living beings is safeguarded.”

The Biennale runs from May 9 to November 22.

Is AI the next Mozart—or just a mashup machine?

Melissa Pheterson — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 16:59:36 +0000

What happens when an opera singer gets a cold?

Sandra Knispel — Fri, 14 Nov 2025 19:38:30 +0000

On Nobelist László Krasznahorkai, the apocalypse, and the art of literary translation

Sandra Knispel — Fri, 10 Oct 2025 19:19:26 +0000

Alumnus Declan Spring ’87 and Open Letter’s Chad Post reflect on the vision and voice of the newly minted Nobel laureate.

Hungarian novelist, essayist, and screenwriter László Krasznahorkai has won the for “his compelling and visionary oeuvre that, in the midst of apocalyptic terror, reaffirms the power of art,” according to the Nobel committee. Calling him “a great epic writer in the Central European tradition that extends through Kafka to Thomas Bernhard,” the Swedish Academy, which awards the prize, describes his writings as marked by “absurdism and grotesque excess.”

HIT PRINT: Declan Spring ’87, executive vice president and senior editor at New Directions, the publisher of László Krasznahorkai’s US English-language translations. (Provided photo)

For ��Թ� alumnus Declan Spring ’87, the award was both thrilling and personal. Spring, executive vice president and senior editor at the legendary literary press New Directions, has edited Krasznahorkai in English for decades. “I knew he deserved it, but waking up this morning was just unbelievable,” says Spring. “I’ve gotten quite close to László and have worked on so many of his books. It was a very emotional experience.”

Spring first became aware of Krasznahorkai when the late American critic Susan Sontag recommended the Hungarian author to his press after having read the British edition of . (Plus, it didn’t hurt that the New Directions team is close with the author’s German editor). From there, he and his colleagues recognized a voice that struck “a powerful chord with all of us,” recalls Spring.

Today, he says, the Nobel not only validates that vision but also provides crucial support for a lean publisher like New Directions that doesn’t publish commercial bestsellers: “We spent all morning frantically figuring out with our printers and distributor how quickly we could get the reprints out. Most of all, we’re happy for László.”

��Թ�’s literary translation ties

Spring isn’t the only ��Թ� connection. Chad Post—who heads up , the University’s nonprofit, literary translation press—has long admired Krasznahorkai’s work and has met the author. “It was only a matter of time until he won,” Post says.

Post helped award Krasznahorkai’s translated novels back-to-back Best Translated Book Awards in 2013 () and again in 2014 ( The honor is administered by , the online literary magazine of Open Letter that publishes essays and reviews, and hosts podcasts.

Chad Post, director of ��Թ�’s Open Letter press. (Photo provided)

Although Open Letter hasn’t published Krasznahorkai’s work directly, its translators have connections to ��Թ�. After all, it’s the work of translators, many of whom are authors themselves, that make books accessible to international audiences. (a pseudonym), who translated Seiobo There Below, spoke to Post’s graduate seminar on world literature and translation shortly after she won the Best Translated Book Award. The British poet and translator George Szirtes, another Krasznahorkai translator, had won the same award a year earlier.

Spring, who sits on Open Letter’s advisory board, has also returned to the University of Rochester campus to speak to Post’s students about the art and craft of editing and publishing literary translations, and about his own formative experience at the University.

“I had the most brilliant and supportive professors,” among them English faculty members Bruce Johnson and Russ McDonald, says Spring. “They gave me so much confidence and got me even more excited about literature than I already was.”

Krasznahorkai’s singular style

Known for his dark and difficult novels, short stories, and essays, Krasznahorkai’s writing style is unmistakable.

Long, desultory sentences capture “the state of being for regular people, usually living with a sense that the apocalypse is just around the corner,” says Post.

Said apocalypse might come in the form of a Satan-like figure in his 1985 breakout debut novel , a strange circus in , or the rise of neo-Nazis in . His writing is driven by people rather than plot. As an example of his “looping, incredibly detailed sentences, which dazzle and overwhelm,” yet eschew a single period for more than 2,000 words, Post points to the opening of Herscht:

Angela Merkel, Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, Willy-Brandt-Straße 1, 10557 Berlin—that was the address he wrote down; then, in the upper left-hand corner, he wrote only Herscht 07769 and nothing else, signaling, as it were, the confidential nature of this matter; no point, he thought, in wasting words by adding any more precise indicators of his own self, as the post office would send the reply back to Kana based on the postcode, and here, in Kana, the post office could get the letter to him based on his name; most essentially, everything was contained on the piece of paper which he had just now folded twice, nicely and accurately, slipping it into the envelope, everything formulated in his own words that began by noting that the Chancellor, a learned natural scientist, would clearly and immediately understand what was on his mind here in Kana, Thuringia…

The challenge of his prose, however, offers abundant rewards to the patient reader. “His voice,” says Post, “is unique and instantly identifiable, rendered beautifully by his translators.”

Adds Spring, “He writes with such pathos about the human condition, his characters are so human and vulnerable. His writing style is poetic and elegant and he’s lucky to have a truly brilliant translator, Ottilie Mulzet.”

Krasznahorkai’s work has not only been translated on the page, but also to the big screen: Several of his novels have been adapted for film, most notably through his long collaboration with Hungarian director Béla Tarr.

For both Post and Spring, Krasznahorkai’s Nobel Prize shines an international light on the work of an author whose uncompromising vision has shaped their professional lives—and deepened ��Թ�’s place in the global literary conversation.

Film, music, and technology converge at inaugural Soundtrax Festival

Lauren Sageer — Fri, 03 Oct 2025 13:19:21 +0000

The ��Թ� debuts the first North American festival dedicated to the art and science of film music.

The ��Թ� is hosting the inaugural from October 16 to 18. Jointly organized by the University’s and its , the festival is the first of its kind in North America, exploring the intersection of music, sound technology, and visual media.

Located in Rochester, New York, the birthplace of film and mediated imagery, Soundtrax underscores ��Թ�’s transdisciplinary strengths in acoustics, optics, engineering, and music while building on Eastman’s legacy as a leader in film-music education and performance.

Master of suspense: Thomas Perry ’74 (PhD) on the thrill of writing thrillers

Jim Mandelaro — Tue, 23 Sep 2025 20:31:41 +0000

The acclaimed author has penned more than two dozen suspense novels.

MYSTERY MAN: Thomas Perry received his PhD in English from Rochester in 1974. His latest thriller, The Burglar, is his 26th suspense novel.

Editor’s note: This story was originally published on January 14, 2019. It has been updated and republished with the .

Thomas Perry ’74 (PhD) is the acclaimed author of 26 suspense novels. His latest, The Burglar (Grove Atlantic, 2019), follows The Bomb Maker, cited by New York Times crime fiction reviewer Marilyn Stasio as one of 2018’s best thrillers.

Praise for Perry extends from critics to masters of the genre. According to Stephen King, “there are probably only a half dozen suspense writers alive who can be depended upon to deliver high voltage shocks, vivid, sympathetic characters, and compelling narratives each time they publish. Thomas Perry is one of them.”

During a book tour, Perry took time out to talk about his latest book and his long career as a writer.

Q&A with award-winning author Thomas Perry

**Tell us about Elle Stowell, the new protagonist you introduce in The Burglar.**

Perry: Elle is a young woman who jogs through the richest neighborhoods of Los Angeles, looking like one of the daughters of the residents. Just a small, blond woman wearing a college T-shirt and a pair of running shoes that cost several hundred dollars. But she’s a fake. She cases the area to find houses where the owners are out of town so she can break in and rob them. Early one morning, she breaks into a house, reaches the master suite on the second floor, and finds three naked people on the bed with bullet holes in their foreheads. She also finds a video camera running. Did it record the murders, or her arrival? Very soon, she’ll be trying to find the killer before he finds her.

Where do you get your ideas?

Perry: Ideas for novels are still mysterious to me. They come from looking, listening, and remembering. There’s a blank page, and then the next minute there’s an image in your mind, and you begin to write about that image and tell its story.

You have a pretty scholarly background—an undergraduate degree from Cornell and a doctorate in English from Rochester. How did you get involved in the world of suspense novels?

Perry: I’ve written from the time I was in junior high. My parents were both teachers, my brother became a professor of anthropology, and my sister taught. I always assumed that’s how I would make a living. After a year as a commercial fisherman off Santa Barbara, I began working in universities and kept writing. In 1980, I finished a book called The Butcher’s Boy, about a professional killer. When the book won an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America [for best first novel], I thought, “Oh, so I guess that must be what I am.”

**How did The Butcher Boy get published?**

Perry: I wrote it in two chunks during 1979 and 1980. I got a list of literary agents from an article I read in Atlantic and began sending my synopsis to them in alphabetical order. One of the Bs, Lurton Blassingame, replied, “Send the manuscript. I’ll read it.” A couple of weeks later, he said, “I like it. I’ll try to sell it.” And he did, to Suzanne Kirk at Scribner’s.

Do you have any literary idols?

Perry: I’d have to say William Faulkner. He was the subject of my doctoral dissertation at Rochester, and I continue to admire him for all the usual literary reasons.

One of your leading protagonists, Jane Whitefield, is a Native American woman. That seems pretty groundbreaking.

Perry: Good! Every writer hopes to be groundbreaking. Jane came out of a big failure of mine. I spent over a year working on my version of the great California earthquake novel and planted about 10 characters whose lives would be changed by the parts they played in the disaster. When I had 465 pages and wasn’t nearly finished, even my wife found it impossible to get through it. I decided instead to write about the area where I had been born and raised—Tonawanda, New York. I needed a character who could see the region in several ways at once, and Jane Whitefield began to develop. She’s a Seneca with ties to the Tonawanda reservation. I wanted her to be a woman, because I had not yet written a book with a female protagonist.

You’ve held a lot of jobs—as a park maintenance man, a factory laborer, and a commercial fisherman. Were any of your characters or plots inspired by these experiences?

Perry: I’m sure they were. Being a writer is like being a thief who steals lots of tiny items every day and brings them home in his pockets to a huge store room, where he hopes to reassemble them into a new new world of his own. Any real experience has an advantage, because a writer doesn’t just want to describe what exists. He wants to tell readers how it feels.

Thomas Perry’s picks for top literary crime-stoppers

Perry knows a lot about compelling characters. He picks his five most important crime novel protagonists in history:

Sherlock Holmes, the often-imitated model of deduction created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in 1887. “Holmes is a step forward, because in him the thinker becomes heroic.”

Hercule Poirot is Agatha Christie’s most famous character, appearing in 33 novels and more than 50 short stories between 1920 and 1975. “He’s Christie’s variation on earlier detectives, a foreigner with charming quirks.”

C. Auguste Dupin made his first appearance in Edgar Allan Poe’s The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841), widely considered the first detective novel. “Dupin is important because he’s the original professional puzzle-solver.”

Philip Marlowe is a hard-drinking private eye created by Raymond Chandler in the novel The Big Sleep (1939). “Marlowe is the American tough guy and inspired thousands of imitators.”

George Smiley is a career British intelligence officer created by John le Carré for his first novel, Call for the Dead (1961). “Smiley has inspired almost everyone who writes suspense today.”

A version of this story appears in the winter 2019 issue of Rochester Review, the magazine of the ��Թ�.

Rochester project democratizes access to medieval English literature

Kathleen McGarvey — Mon, 22 Sep 2025 17:42:39 +0000

A pioneering initiative to make texts from the Middle Ages available to scholars and students “puts the literature out there for everybody.”

This story was originally published on September 16, 2020. It has been republished with the news that METS was awarded the from the American Web Marketing Association. The award recognizes the success of the METS website rebuild both in terms of its coherence and innovation, and its accessibility and versatility for users.

Teachers and students of medieval literature long faced a problem that people studying other literary periods did not: the scant availability of texts.

That’s not because there wasn’t plenty of literature produced in the Middle Ages or because not much survived. The problem was access.

METS print and digital editions offer the original Middle English text and a facing-column modern English translation, as seen in its edition of the Harley Manuscript. (Courtesy of Robbins Library)

Publishing medieval texts isn’t like offering editions of literary works created after the advent of the printing press. “Everything was copied by hand in the Middle Ages, and so every medieval copy is different. And we almost never have the copy that was written by the author. We just have copies of copies of copies,” says , director of the ��Թ�’s and .

Each copy introduces difference. The scribes made mistakes or repeated words as they carried out the grueling work of copying. When working in languages they did not know, they sometimes introduced misspellings or substituted one word for another. Words, sentences, and even paragraphs might be omitted from a particular copy.

Scholars of medieval literature have traditionally had to travel to different archives to compare copies—and, if publishing an edition, decide which of the copies is most authoritative and create the notes and context that explain the differences between the various manuscript copies. German scholars took on a lot of this work 200 years ago.

“The German editions, they were made for experts by experts. They’re often from the 19th century. They’re hard to use and hard to find,” says Siebach-Larsen. As a result, undergraduates studying medieval literature were largely confined to the texts—frequently, just excerpts—available in anthologies. The narrow slice of medieval literature that achieved canonical status shut out “many of the widely circulated texts and authors that medieval people actually read and shared,” she says.

It left students—and anyone else interested in medieval literature but outside the scholarly community or without access to a world-class library—high and dry.

‘Changing the study of Middle English literature’

, for more than 50 years a Rochester faculty member and now a professor emeritus of English, knew there had to be a better way. In 1990, working with the Teaching Association for Medieval Studies (TEAMS, of which he is a founding member), he established the . It offers free digital and affordable print editions of a wide range of medieval writing.

“It completely changed the study of Middle English literature,” says Peck, the general editor for the series, as he looks back over 30 years of work.

Long history of leadership in medieval studies

The University is home to several other digital projects on medieval life and literature: the , the , the , and .

The Early Worlds Initiative, established in 2017, builds on Rochester’s long-standing strength in the study of medieval and early modern cultures. It’s an interdisciplinary research project at Rochester that extends from the 5th to 18th centuries and strives to move beyond the limitations and biases of research conducted in the US and the UK to achieve a truly global perspective.

A comprehensive collection of materials

The personal collection of Rossell Hope Robbins provided the nucleus for the Robbins Library, which contains comprehensive holdings across medieval history, literature, art, and culture. The library continues to be funded by Rossell Hope and Helen Ann Mins Robbins’s endowed gift.

An internationally regarded expert on medieval author John Gower—a friend and contemporary of Geoffrey Chaucer’s—Russell Peck, a professor emeritus of English, was instrumental in establishing the collection at Rochester, where he has helped propel the University to a place of prominence in the world of medieval studies.

Siebach-Larsen, who holds a PhD in medieval studies from Notre Dame, used METS texts herself as a student. “METS democratizes access,” she says. “It puts the literature out there for everybody.” And by offering a more complete view of the literary period, the series has helped “transform our understanding and study of medieval culture,” she adds.

The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) recently awarded the project a three-year grant to support its mission of offering the broadest possible readership—from specialists to undergraduates and high school students to people simply curious about the Middle Ages—access to the full range of literary output from medieval England. The latest award extends a long history of support for the project from the NEH.

“METS takes as its mission the creation of affordable editions that would pass scrutiny from the most demanding expert, yet would prove comprehensible, and even enticing, to someone who had never read Middle English before,” the team wrote in its application for support from the NEH.

Tools of the trade

Each volume in the series offers both the scholarly apparatus demanded by researchers and the tools that help a novice understand the text: glosses and facing-page translations, textual and explanatory notes, contexts and background.

—a professor of English, the consulting editor to METS, and the principal investigator for the NEH grant—says the series “offers the richest portal into the Middle Ages to the largest number of people with the widest range of interests and expertise of anything that exists out there.”

Among the many titles METS has published are William Caxton’s The Game and Playe of the Chesse, a chessboard-inspired allegory about contributions to the common good; Prik of Conscience, among the most popular medieval English poems; and the Complete Harley 2235 Manuscript—one of the most important literary books to survive from the Middle Ages, it’s a rich collection, in three languages, of lyric poetry, satire, comedies, collected sayings, and more.

METS is a partnership between TEAMS, scholars in the field, Rochester’s , and the River Campus Libraries, in particular, the Robbins Library—the University’s medieval studies library—and the Information Discovery Team, along with the Digital Scholarship Lab and other library metadata and IT experts.

Individual volume editors are scholars from around the world, supported by METS’s own editorial team, which includes Rochester graduate students and undergraduates. The students hone their skills in paleography—the study of handwriting—and copy-editing, and acquire a wide range of digital humanities skills. The project is a “source for both intellectual rigor and growth and marketable, career-driven skills,” says Hahn.

A ‘lifeline’ for scholarship and teaching

Ninety-five volumes have been published online and in print, offering today’s readers more than a thousand texts. The series includes prose, poetry, drama, travel writing, devotional literature, autobiography, and other forms—all from the British Isles between the 12th and 16th centuries. The online texts, hosted on the River Campus Libraries’ website, generate about half a million hits per year. Online readers are predominantly from the US and the UK but also come from about 135 countries and a wide variety of language groups around the world.

The multilingual dimension of METS is now central. The series has broadened its focus to include many of the languages in use in medieval Britain, including all the dialects of English, Older Scots, Welsh, Anglo-Irish, Anglo-Norman, and Continental French.

Among the tasks ahead for the creators of the series is an overhaul of its digital editions—an effort already well underway—to improve sustainability as well as access and possibilities for future users. The age of COVID-19 has demonstrated how critical such multimodal, user-friendly interfaces are.

“This pandemic has only made more clear how important METS’s dedication to open access is,” says Siebach-Larsen. “We have heard from researchers and instructors around the world that METS’s digital editions have been a lifeline for their scholarship and teaching.”