PaceDocs’s For the Love of Food:
An Education in Culinary Ethos
On May 8, 2023, Pace’s award-winning documentary film team—PaceDocs—premiered For the Love of Food: Pour l’amour de la cuisine, which focuses on the slow food movement that began in Europe during the 1980s to preserve the culture of eating locally and combating the popularization of fast food. As part of the making of this film, Co-producers Professor Maria Luskay, EdD, and Clinical Assistant Professor Lou Guarneri, MFA, as well as Pace University’s student documentary team, traveled across France and New York to converse with farmers, chefs, and restaurateurs who have dedicated their lives to making slow food a reality in a fast-paced world.
For the Love of Food continues PaceDocs’s notable legacy of producing documentaries that highlight crucial environmental issues, this time exploring the guiding principles of good, clean, and fair—and why that is a healthy recipe for a sustainable future. The locations visited spanned from family-owned farms and markets in the Laon and Lorraine countryside of France, to beautiful restaurants in the heart of Paris, all the way back to a farm-to-fork eatery in Westchester, New York.
The film also continues a proud tradition of producing high-quality, meaningful, and award-winning films and is a prime example of experiential learning at Pace. A mix of undergraduate and graduate-level students with varying academic focuses, experiences, and skillsets who are enrolled in the Producing the Documentary class collaborate to complete a full-length environmentally themed film within 14 weeks. During the process, they also learn teamwork, problem solving, research, and organization along with technical skills such as lighting, sound, camera work, interviewing, and other real-life proficiencies.
Criminal Justice Professor Launches Crime Podcast
Professor of Criminal Justice and Security Cathryn Lavery, PhD, launched a new podcast, Crimes, Coffee, and Consequences. The podcast addresses current issues in criminal justice, including community policing, how crime is portrayed in the media, and victim blaming. The first season is centered around the Moscow, Idaho, killings. Tune in on Spotify.
📚 Three Must-Reads by Dyson Faculty
📖 The History of Western Art
Janetta Rebold Benton, PhD, distinguished professor, Art
Focusing on the history in art history, this illustrated survey of Western art and architecture from prehistory to the present day acknowledges how architecture, painting, sculpture, and the decorative arts reflect the culture and society of their time. A secondary focus explores constantly evolving aesthetic preferences that swing between naturalism and abstraction, with each era and style either rebelling against the previous or seeking to improve it.
📖 Women Corrections Executives: The Keys to Reaching the Top
Kimberly Collica-Cox, PhD, professor, Criminal Justice and Security
Based on qualitative and quantitative data, this book aims to fill the gaps in research on the impacts women have made in corrections leadership. Interviews with members of the Association of Women Executives in Corrections (AWEC) reveal how women climb the ladder to leadership and achieve success while facing the challenges of working in a demanding, male-dominated environment.
📖Navigating White News: Asian American Journalists at Work
Seong Jae Min, PhD, associate professor, Communication and Media Studies
(co-authored by David C. Oh, PhD)
An exploration of how racial identities matter in reporters’ news work, this book argues that racial activation shapes Asian American reporters’ understanding of what counts as news, questioning the truthfulness of the journalistic norm of objectivity and changing their approach to news work. It also discusses how Asian American reporters’ shared understanding that newsrooms are normatively racialized as white matters in the navigation of their work and relationships.
Student Film Festival Continues to Celebrate Cinema
In May, the 2022–23 Film and Screen Studies Student Film Festival showcased nearly 100 film projects created by Pace students this year at the Schimmel Center, which were produced in classes including Introduction to Filmmaking, Directing for Film and Television, Filmmaking: Image and Sound, Digital Television Field Production, Aesthetics and Technology of Motion Picture Production, and Production Practicum. The festival started in 2010 and moved to the Schimmel Center in 2014. This year was the third live festival since several virtual ones during the pandemic, and Film and Screen Studies students, faculty, and staff gathered to share and celebrate Pace student filmmaking and to continue the essential tradition of the experience of public cinema.
Podcasting, Filming, Editing:
Students Are in on All the Action
The philosophy of “learning by doing” is undoubtedly at the heart of Pace University’s Media, Communications, and Visual Arts (MCVA) department on the Pleasantville campus. Each semester, MCVA faculty members find new and creative ways to immerse students in real-life situations—in the podcasting booth, behind the camera, and in the editing studio. Here’s a snapshot of MCVA’s exciting courses and initiatives and how hands-on learning is impacting students and alumni as they embark on dynamic careers.
Booth Review
Launched during the 2021–22 school year by Associate Professors Michelle Pulaski Behling, PhD, and Kate Fink, PhD, Booth Review is MCVA’s own sports broadcasting initiative through which junior and senior MCVA students can intern for credit. Booth Review puts interns in the action, producing podcasts, conducting interviews, and writing articles about Pace athletics, as well as about contemporary issues in the sports world at large. “Booth Review has impacted my career aspirations because it is everything that I want to do,” said Jack Cunningham ’23, Communications.
BoomBox: A Short Film
Students from the Cinematography 1 and Lighting: The Craft of Cinematic Artists courses, both taught by Clinical Assistant Professor Lou Guarneri, MFA, teamed up on a superhero action/comedy short film called BoomBox, a follow-up to fall 2021’s Super Like. The production of BoomBox focused on utilizing different lighting techniques to create “dark yet vividly colorful tones.” Students in both classes hosted a premiere of the film for the Pace community on January 26 on the Pleasantville campus.
New State-of-the-Art Audio Equipment
The audio studio in the Communications Lab recently got an upgrade, with a new professional-grade mixer and microphones. Access to this state-of-the-art equipment allows audio production to be more user-friendly in courses such as Audio Storytelling and has facilitated the production of more podcasts, including Booth Review and What’s Pleasant?, a podcast developed and managed by Fink that discusses happenings on campus.
Partnership with Pleasantville Community TV
The MCVA department has partnered with Pleasantville Community TV (PCTV), a local television station, for “PCTV Presents the Young Directors.” Under Guarneri’s direction, the partnership provides an opportunity for current students and alumni to showcase their filmmaking to a local television audience. Beginning January 2023, PCTV aired films once a month, including vignettes of interviews with the filmmakers.
Video Project with Berkshire Theatre Group
In Luskay’s Communications and Digital Media online graduate course, students were broken into two groups to develop video content for the Berkshire Theatre Group (BTG), using footage from the group’s production of Godspell. Said Caroline O’Kane ’22, MA Communications and Digital Media, “We gained hands-on experience working with a real client who had real opinions, recommendations, and requests. We wanted to deliver something that would not only serve a purpose but serve the purpose that was right for them.”
