Local Professor Chosen for NEA Fellowship

Professor of Arts and Communications Kathy Osenlund, PhD is one of 21 journalists nationwide picked to participate as a fellow in the seventh annual National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Arts Journalism Institute in Theater and Musical Theater.

Held at the University of Southern California’s (USC), Annenberg School of Journalism in Los Angeles, the fellowship is a rigorous 10-day program for professional critics and reviewers of art, theater, and music.

The fellowship runs June 13 through 22 and coincides with four other arts festivals taking place in LA at that time, including the Hollywood Fringe Festival.

NEA Institute Fellows will review theatrical, film, and musical productions. Their reviews will be edited by the institute’s guest faculty of editors from major publications across the nation and published on a pop-up website called Engine 28 (URL currently unavailable).

“It was a delightful surprise to have been selected for a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, which offers me the opportunity to work at USC this summer with NEA fellows from across the country,” Osenlund, A Bensalem resident, said. Participation in this leading-edge Arts Journalism Institute is not only a valuable asset for my work as a theater critic, but it promises to enrich my teaching as an Arts and Communications professor at Holy Family.”

Osenlund has served as a Philadelphia theatre critic since 2000 for CurtainUp (www.curtainup.com), a Web-based theater magazine that provides reviews and listings.

Her prior honors include a fellowship at The Eugene O’Neill Memorial Theater Center in Waterford, Connecticut. She taught a course on American gangster films at Oxford University in 2009.

The Theater and Musical Theater Institute at USC Annenberg is one of three NEA Arts Journalism Institutes funded by a multi-million dollar initiative. These institutes offer intensive training for arts reporters and their editors.