Lecture Series

The Comics Speaker Series has brought comics artists and professionals to RIT for public events and student workshops. The series features visiting comics artists and professionals from a wide spectrum of comics culture, from independent comics artists like Carol Tyler to cutting-edge creators working in mainstream comics, shoe design, and toy design like Ed Piskor. Also, RIT alumni Adam Kubert and Caitlin Yarsky have returned to campus to discuss their work in the comics industry. And, Rochester-based comics artists such as Dave Chisholm and Jackie Davis have also visited RIT to share their perspectives on their careers and the comics industry. 

Past topics have included:

• Adam Kubert: The Narrative Art of Comics
• Caitlin Cass: Great Moments in Western Civilization
• Comics Studies Lecture
• Advocacy Through Comics

Like our nation itself, American music comes from a mixture of cultures, opportunities, technologies, and environments. It also impacts people in the United States and around the world. Crossroads: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on American Music is a speaker series that presents a variety of views on American music, from musical scores for a Star Trek internet series and the impact of YouTube music videos, to Bob Dylan going electric and the series’ namesake (the mythological “crossroads” in Clarksdale, Mississippi). Scholars, researchers, authors, musicians, and actors share their unique insights and lead discussions on the impact, influence, and direction of American music.

Past topics have included:

• “Pepper Adams in Rochester, 1935-1982”
• “Dylan Goes Electric: Music, Myth, and History”
• Star Trek Continues: Music Composition and Scoring for an Internet TV Series
• Anabolism: New Music for Saxophone and Live Biofeedback Electronics
• “Keep Dat Ass Jumpin’…On the Backs of Marginal Girls’ Mobility: Music, Capitol, and Technological Oppression on YouTube”

The CoDRoi series focuses on team-based scholarship and inquiry, and the organizational methods that fuel interdisciplinary insights.

Past topics have included:

• “Combating Growing Water Scarcity: The Potential and Need for Desalinization and Water Reuse” by author/inventor David Warsinger from MIT
• “Considering Cognition in Collaborative Contexts” by Stephen M. Fiore, director of the Cognitive Sciences Laboratory and a faculty member in the University of Central Florida's Cognitive Sciences Program
• “Collaborative Worldbuilding” by Trent Hergenrader, assistant professor at Rochester Institute of Technology’s Department of English
• “Unflattening: Reimagining Interdisciplinary Scholarship Through Comics” by Nick Sousanis, a postdoctoral fellow in comics studies at the University of Calgary