Detroit’s Perpetual Renaissance

Susan Badger Booth has an extensive background as an artist, manager and educator. As an artist, Susan spent a decade working at regional theatres and opera companies such as the Public Theatre, the Old Globe Theatre and the Santa Fe Opera Company. After graduate school, Susan moved on to fundraising and was the first development director of the Arden Theatre Company, before managing the Toledo Cultural Arts Center, where she designed a campaign that would raise $19.7 million to renovate the historic Valentine Theatre. In 1997, Susan began sharing her management experience in the classroom at Bowling Green State University where she taught for nine years. Since joining Eastern Michigan University in 2006, Susan has worked to connect university resources to local artists and cultural organizations with her research on the Washtenaw County Master Cultural Plan (2008) and as the Director of the Nonprofit Leadership Alliance (2015-18).  Booth has authored reports on enhancing arts education and collaborated on a creative assessment report for Washtenaw County. Susan Badger Booth became the Director of the Arts Management and Administration Programs at Eastern Michigan University in 2014. In March of 2020, Professor Booth traveled to South Korea as a Fulbright Scholar and is currently an International Visiting Professor at Hongik University in Seoul.

Mark Clague researches all forms of music-making in the United States, with recent projects focusing on the United States national anthem (“The Star-Spangled Banner”); American orchestras as institutions (especially in early Chicago and San Francisco); the Atlanta School of composers; Sacred Harp music and performance; critical editing; and the music of George and Ira Gershwin. His interests center on questions of how music forges and shapes social relationships: the art of sound as simultaneously a transcendent emotional expression and an everyday tool for living.