Several of the most powerful and beloved voices in the history of American popular music got their start singing gospel. Aretha Franklin, Donna Summer, Little Richard, Diana Ross, Mavis Staples, and many more.

Gospel is a major American art form, with scholars and musicians generally pointing to the 1940s to the 1970s as its golden age. That period coincided with the peak decades of the Great Migration of African Americans from the South to the North, with the civil rights movement, and with the growth of the recording industry.

But the music has evolved as its top artists have sought to grow their audiences beyond the Black church-going communities who have traditionally been the primary consumers of gospel music.

That evolution is the subject of research by scholar, minister, and gospel musician Cory Hunter ’06E. Hunter holds a joint appointment as an assistant professor of musicology at the Eastman School of Music as well as in the Arthur Satz Department of Music in the School of Arts & Sciences. Professor Hunter is also Reverend Hunter, affiliated with Aenon Missionary Baptist Church in Rochester, and an Eastman-trained vocalist and gospel choir director.

“African American gospel music has traditionally articulated the existential concerns of the African American community,” Hunter writes in an article published earlier this year in The Musical Quarterly. “A theology of racial oneness” has come to pervade the music of some of gospel’s most visible and commercially successful Black artists. That theology holds that racial inclusion is God’s mandate even within the Black church—a call, in fact, to do away with racial associations or divisions within any Christian house of worship. Learn more.

According to a survey conducted by Medical Center researchers, a 2020 FDA ban on flavored e-cigarettes did not result in adults quitting e-cig use and may have driven some back to smoking regular cigarettes. The researchers point to policy loopholes as the main reasons the policy failed to push people to quit.

Survey results, published in Tobacco Control, show that less than five percent of the 3,500 adult e-cig users who responded to the survey quit using e-cigs in response to the flavored e-cig ban. The rest of the respondents switched to other forms or flavors of e-cigs not covered by the ban or other types of tobacco products.

A large part of the problem, according to lead study author Dongmei Li, associate professor of clinical and translational research, obstetrics and gynecology and public health sciences, is that the ban didn’t cover newer products, like disposable e-cigs and e-cigs that use tanks rather than cartridges or pods. Learn more.

University faculty regularly earn regional, national, and international awards and honors for their professional contributions to research, scholarship, education, and community engagement.

As part of an ongoing series, we’re spotlighting their accomplishments.

• Matt BaileyShea, a professor of music and chair of the Arthur Satz Department of Music and a professor of music theory at the Eastman School of Music, was awarded the 2022 Wallace Berry Award from the Society of Music Theory for his book Lines and Lyrics: An Introduction to Poetry and Song.
• Susan Blaakman, a professor of clinical nursing and the director of the Family Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner Program, was inducted into the American Academy of Nursing’s 2022 Class of Fellows.
• Krystel Huxlin, the James V. Aquavella, MD Professor and director of research for the Department of Ophthalmology, was selected as a 2023 Optica fellow.
• Jennifer Kyker, an associate professor of ethnomusicology at the Eastman School of Music and an associate professor in the Arthur Satz Department of Music, has won the Society for Ethnomusicology’s Klaus P. Wachsmann Prize for Advanced and Critical Essays in Organology.
• Ann Leonhardt-Caprio, the program coordinator of Strong Memorial Hospital’s Comprehensive Stroke Center, an assistant professor in the School of Nursing, and an alumna of the Doctor of Nursing Practice program, received the American Heart Association Council on Cardiovascular and Stroke Nursing’s 2022 Stroke Article of the Year Award.
• Alec O’Connor, the William L. Morgan, Jr. Professor in Medicine and the associate director of the internal medicine residency program, earned the Parker J. Palmer Courage to Teach Award from the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education.
• Kathy Rideout, dean emerita of the School of Nursing, is a recipient of Nursing Outlook’s 2022 Excellence in Education Award.
• Bruce Smoller, a professor of pathology and laboratory medicine, received a lifetime achievement award from the College of American Pathologists.
• Several members of the University community were recognized by the Rochester Academy of Medicine, a community-based organization of health care experts seeking to advance learning, encourage service, and initiate collaboration. They include Nancy (Nana) Bennett, Susan McDaniel, Sukardi Suba, Mehmed Emre Aktas, Janice Schriefe, Silvia Sörensen, Rachel Missell, Alexander Eustice-Corwin, Dorine Otieno, Michael Privitera, Kate MacNamee, and Ericka Scott.

Learn more about their accomplishments here.

Ian Krout, toxicology, 9 a.m. today, December 9, 2022, Class of ’62 Auditorium (G-9425/Medical Center).
The Role of Methylmercury Demethylation in Modulating Human Toxicokinetic Outcomes.
Host: Matthew Rand.

The J. Lowell Orbison Endowed Chair of Biochemistry & Biophysics and founding director of the UR Center for RNA Biology will present “Nonsense-mediated mRNA Decay and Human Disease” from 4–5 p.m., Monday, December 12 in the Ryan Case Method Room (1-9576).

The Dean’s Lecture Series showcases high caliber research and high impact topics in clinical medicine and related biomedical fields.

Denise Caldwell, the Physics Division director at the National Science Foundation, will provide a brief review of the types of research funded by her division from 11:15 a.m. to noon, Tuesday, December 13 at the Hawkins-Carlson Room in Rush Rhees Library.

A coffee and meet and greet begins at 11 a.m. The division provides funding in all major areas of physics except condensed matter physics. Those areas include:

• Physics of living systems,
• Gravitational physics,
• Elementary particle physics,
• Particle astrophysics,
• Nuclear physics,
• Plasma physics,
• Atomic, molecular, and optical physics,
• Quantum information science.

The division awards approximately $300 million in research funding each year, divided into support for individual research groups, centers, and facilities.

Included among the last are the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO), the IceCube neutrino observatory, and the ATLAS and CMS detectors at the CERN laboratory in Switzerland.

The University’s Clinical and Translational Science Institute (UR CTSI) is accepting applications for departments to sponsor a human subject coordinator trainee.

The UR CTSI training program provides an avenue for people with associate degrees from diverse backgrounds to enter the field of research coordination and begin a new career at the University. Beginning June 1, 2023, trainees will complete an 8-week intensive training before working full-time in your department. Email JoAnne Van Buskirk if you are interested in sponsoring one of the four available slots. Apply by January 1.

The Association of Clinical Research Professionals (ACRP), a non-profit organization leading collaborative initiatives to develop a diverse and research-ready workforce, is now accepting applications for the newly founded ACRP Clinical Research Leadership Scholarship. Three $2,500 scholarships will be awarded. Apply by Thursday, January 5.  Learn more.