To honor the achievements and contributions of our Humanities Alliance Fellows, this year we are featuring each fellow on our website, introducing them to our CUNY community and the public, and showcasing their accomplishments as fellows. 

Greg Hartman (he/him) was a 2021-2023 fellow based at the Guttman Community College while pursuing his Ph.D. in Music at the CUNY Graduate Center.

Greg’s HA fellowship at Guttman Community College (GCC) has focused on developing and leading a program called Deep Listening: Composers of the New York Scene, in partnership with a nearby branch of the New York Public Library. Greg’s experience as an accomplished musician, performer, and scholar of music theory shaped this series. Each session featured a presentation by an award-winning composer, including Bradley Harris, Cheng Jin Koh, Haralabos Stafylakis, and Itzá Garcia. For each session, participants were invited to meet the composers, hear their work, and listen to other musical examples and influences. By helping the audience to understand each composer’s unique background, as well as by putting new works in a historical and social context, Greg’s series has made classical music more accessible to a wide range of listeners. Greg also led in-class activities centered on hearing songs, poems, and other texts aloud and engaging in small-group discussions. As a part of Guttman’s Big Read Series organized by the GCC library director, Greg led some of the discussion sessions. He also created an academic skills workshop focusing on “study hacks” and participated in a poetry panel.

Reflecting on the fellowship, Greg says, “I strove to incorporate music into as many different aspects of the fellowship that I could. In the Philosophy 103 class, I led a variety of discussion activities that incorporated songs or instrumental music. Additionally, I founded the Deep Listening series at the New York Public Library to introduce the general public to emerging classical composers…I am so happy with how the Deep Listening series has gone.” 

We celebrate his brilliance and creativity, his tenacity and compassion, and the many ways he has been there for his colleagues during a pandemic and its aftermath. He showed both a willingness to learn and understand the systems and cultures that define these academic spaces and a generosity to contribute his own experiences and interests. 

Thank you, Greg!