Dr. Ioannis Tsekouiras, School of Music, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, presents "Pastures of Love and Mountains of Sacrifice. Pontic Parakathi singing and the memory of violence." Tsekouras' research and teaching interests include issues of ethnicity, nationalism, and collective memory, musical affect and emotionality, the cultural objectification of the singing voice, issues of timbre, the relation between sound and natural environment, musical negotiations of community, music and politics, and in general the musical realities of Balkan, Southeastern Europe, Turkey, and the middle East
