BU College of Fine Arts Expands Faculty with Professor and Visiting Appointment
An accomplished ethnomusicologist and an interdisciplinary theatre artist join CFA
BU College of Fine Arts Expands Faculty with Professor and Visiting Appointment
An accomplished ethnomusicologist and an interdisciplinary theatre artist join Boston University College of Fine Arts this fall
Boston University College of Fine Arts (CFA) is thrilled to introduce two new distinguished full-time professors who joined the BU arts faculty this fall.
BU School of Music welcomes Dr. Vicky Mogollón Montagne as Assistant Professor of Music, Musicology. Mogollón Montagne (she/ella) is an ethnomusicologist exploring spirituality, violence, and affect in Latin America and the Caribbean, with a particular focus on Venezuela and its diaspora.
CFA also appointed one visiting faculty member in BU School of Theatre. Arshan Gailus (they/them), Visiting Assistant Professor of Sound Design, is an interdisciplinary artist who has worked extensively as a sound designer and composer for the theater industry, including theater companies like Shakespeare & Company, ArtsEmerson, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, among others.
BRINGING FRESH PERSPECTIVES AND EXPERTISE
Vicky Mogollón Montagne
Assistant Professor of Music, Ethnomusicology
Vicky Mogollón Montagne’s recent work focuses on notions of (in)humanity and intensity in contemporary religious contexts, and popular digital music scenes in Caracas, Venezuela (raptor house, música urbana, and electro-tambor). Her current book project, Fuerza: Sonic Intensities in Venezuelan Espiritismo Marialioncero, investigates the role of sound in spirit possession and religious experience within Venezuela’s largest spiritual tradition. Fuerza, a key religious principle of vitality and strength, allows practitioners to reappraise legacies of endurance and healing that permeate Venezuela’s current crisis.
Committed to both academic and public-facing scholarship, Mogollón Montagne has collaborated extensively with museums, archives, and cultural organizations, including the Venezuelan National Museum of Science and the Smithsonian (Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage and National Museum of American History), where she contributed to research, public programming, and bilingual communications. She is also an active participant of the growing Afro-Venezuelan tambor music network in the U.S., and has organized workshops, symposia, and community-based musical initiatives that connect scholarship with artistic practice.
Arshan Gailus
Visiting Assistant Professor of Sound Design
An interdisciplinary artist, Arshan Gailus has worked with theater companies including Shakespeare & Company, ArtsEmerson, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, California Shakespeare Theater, The Huntington Theatre Company, Capital Repertory Theatre, Contemporary American Theater Festival, Boston Playwrights’ Theatre, Commonwealth Shakespeare Company, Plays in Place, A.R.T Institute, The Lyric Stage Company, Company One, and many more.
In addition to their theater design work, Arshan creates and performs multi-modal works of storytelling, interactive and immersive performance, music, video, writing, and web-based forms exploring identity, belonging, culture, community, co-creation, and our relationship to the people and places around us. Arshan is a passionate believer in the power of experiential education and co-learning, previously having taught at Emerson College and having worked alongside students as a guest designer at schools including Harvard University, Brandeis University, Suffolk University, and Ohio University. Arshan is a member of USA local 829.
Arts faculty at BU
Here at CFA, our faculty are thought leaders, award-winning scholars and researchers, and working artists dedicated to the academic success and well-being of the next generation of musicians, visual artists, and theatre-makers.
Creatives in Practice
CFA faculty members are gaining real-world experience and bringing that back into the classroom through their curriculum, lessons, and talks. In CFA’s Creatives in Practice series, your favorite CFA faculty and staff members share the work they’re doing off campus, locally, nationally, and globally.