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<strong>Bardian</strong><br />
Bard College Spring <strong>2006</strong><br />
Writing Africa<br />
Food Webs as Predictive Tools<br />
Clerking for Chief Justice Ginsburg:<br />
Anna-Rose Mathieson ’99<br />
Confucian Enlightenment
Professor Maria Simpson discussing the human skeleton with a parent after a Family Weekend lecture<br />
Board of Governors of the Bard–St. Stephen’s Alumni/ae Association<br />
Dr. Ingrid Spatt ’69, President<br />
Michael DeWitt ’65, Executive Vice President<br />
Walter Swett ’96, Vice President<br />
Maggie Hopp ’67, Secretary<br />
Olivier teBoekhorst ’93, Treasurer<br />
David B. Ames ’93<br />
Robert Amsterdam ’53<br />
Claire Angelozzi ’74<br />
Judi Arner ’68<br />
David Avallone ’87<br />
Dr. Penny Axelrod ’63<br />
Cathy Thiele Baker ’68, Nominations and Awards<br />
Committee Cochairperson<br />
Belinha Rowley Beatty ’69<br />
Eva Thal Belefant ’49<br />
Dr. Miriam Roskin Berger ’56<br />
Jack Blum ’62<br />
Carla Bolte ’71<br />
Erin Boyer ’00<br />
Randy Buckingham ’73, Events Committee<br />
Cochairperson<br />
Jamie Callan ’75<br />
Cathaline Cantalupo ’67<br />
Charles Clancy ’69, Development Committee<br />
Cochairperson<br />
Peter Criswell ’89, Career Connections Committee<br />
Cochairperson<br />
Arnold Davis ’44, Nominations and Awards<br />
Committee Cochairperson<br />
Kit Kauders Ellenbogen ’52<br />
Joan Elliott ’67<br />
Naomi Bellinson Feldman ’53<br />
Barbara Grossman Flanagan ’60<br />
Connie Bard Fowle ’80, Career Connections Committee<br />
Cochairperson<br />
Diana Hirsch Friedman ’68<br />
R. Michael Glass ’75<br />
Eric Warren Goldman ’98, Alumni/ae House
Construction of The Gabrielle H. Reem and Herbert J. Kayden Center for Science and Computation<br />
Committee Cochairperson<br />
Rebecca Granato ’99, Young Alumni/ae Committee<br />
Cochairperson<br />
Charles Hollander ’65<br />
Dr. John C. Honey ’39<br />
Rev. Canon Clinton R. Jones ’38<br />
Deborah Davidson Kaas ’71, Oral History Committee<br />
Chairperson<br />
Chad Kleitsch ’91, Career Connections Committee<br />
Cochairperson<br />
Richard Koch ’40<br />
Erin Law ’93, Development Committee Cochairperson<br />
Cynthia Hirsch Levy ’65<br />
Dr. William V. Lewit ’52<br />
Peter F. McCabe ’70, Nominations and Awards<br />
Committee Cochairperson<br />
Steven Miller ’70, Development Committee Cochairperson<br />
Abigail Morgan ’96<br />
Molly Northrup Bloom ’94<br />
Jennifer Novik ’98, Young Alumni/ae Committee<br />
Cochairperson<br />
Karen Olah ’65, Alumni/ae House Committee<br />
Cochairperson<br />
Susan Playfair ’62, Bard Associated Research<br />
Donation (BARD) Committee Chairperson<br />
Arthur “Scott” Porter Jr. ’79<br />
Allison Radzin ’88, Events Committee Cochairperson<br />
Penelope Rowlands ’73<br />
Reva Minkin Sanders ’56<br />
Roger Scotland ’93<br />
Benedict S. Seidman ’40<br />
Donna Shepper ’73<br />
George Smith ’82<br />
Andrea J. Stein ’92<br />
Dr. Toni-Michelle Travis ’69<br />
Jill Vasileff MFA ’93, MFA Liaison<br />
Marjorie Vecchio MFA ’01, MFA Liaison<br />
Samir B. Vural ’98<br />
Barbara Wigren ’68<br />
Ron Wilson ’75, Men and Women of Color Network<br />
Liaison
Dear Alumni/ae and Friends,<br />
This letter is about connecting.<br />
Perhaps it was a brilliant red leaf fluttering at your feet and a sudden whiff of<br />
crisp fall air; or the first few instantly recognizable measures of “Walk on By” drifting<br />
out of the radio; or the sound of a waterfall that made you close your eyes to capture<br />
the vision of that waterfall . . . and there you were, for a few brief moments in your<br />
busy, rushing-on-by life, back at Bard.<br />
For the past two years I have had the opportunity to attend the Life After Bard<br />
dinners on campus, where alumni/ae return to talk with current students about their<br />
career paths, choices they made along the way, and, essentially, how they got from here<br />
to there. Consistently, a theme has emerged from these conversations: that of linkages<br />
and the importance of maintaining Bard connections, be it for personal or professional<br />
reasons. It is clear that the Bard community is important to these alumni/ae and they<br />
cherish the friends they still hold close after many years.<br />
The years go by and we do lose touch. It is quite possible that your only connections<br />
with Bard at this time are issues of the <strong>Bardian</strong>, or an annual contribution (thank<br />
you!) to the Bard alumni/ae fund. However, I am delighted to tell you that you do not<br />
have to lose the academic and supportive community of Bard. There are many ways<br />
you can maintain and strengthen your associations.<br />
There is an active website at www.bard.edu that offers you the opportunity to<br />
connect with classmates and other <strong>Bardian</strong>s. Click on “Alumni/ae” and go to Online<br />
Community. Once there, you can register and log on to find an alumni/ae directory,<br />
websites of fellow <strong>Bardian</strong>s, and a message board. Want to send a unique message? Click<br />
on “Send a Postcard” and get an array of Bard landscapes and buildings to accompany<br />
your message. Want to send news for publication in the <strong>Bardian</strong>? Click on “Class Notes.”<br />
Looking for your first job or considering a career change? Click on “Services” and access<br />
the college’s Career Development Office.This office also supports the collegecentral.com/<br />
bard site, on which you can post job or internship offerings or sign up to be a mentor to<br />
a current student. As a mentor you can choose a wide range of personally fulfilling<br />
opportunities, ranging from being a listening ear to assisting with a job placement.<br />
The alumni/ae website offers you details of upcoming events. There is also information<br />
on ways to give to Bard—including the alumni/ae fund, gifts of appreciated<br />
securities, and planned giving—to support current and future students, and thus future<br />
members of the Bard alumni/ae community.<br />
Take a moment. Sit back. Is there a particularly poignant memory you have cherished?<br />
Is there a little stirring of desire to take the “then” and make it the “now”? Then<br />
reconnect and come back to Bard! Learn about all the new and exciting programs and<br />
initiatives that have made Bard a major force in liberal arts education in the 21st century.<br />
Be a part of it.<br />
Ingrid Spatt ’69, Ed.D., President, Board of Governors, Bard–St. Stephen’s Alumni/ae Association
<strong>Bardian</strong><br />
8 24 18<br />
<strong>SPRING</strong> <strong>2006</strong><br />
Features<br />
4 Roger Scotland ’93 Inspires City Kids<br />
6 Supreme Clerkship:<br />
Anna-Rose Mathieson ’99<br />
8 Writing Africa:<br />
In Search of “A Balance of Stories”<br />
14 MAT Program Graduates Make Marks<br />
in the Inner City<br />
16 Looking Homeward:<br />
An Internship of Consequence<br />
18 The Golden Rule’s Contemporary Relevance<br />
20 Food Webs of the Past, Present, and Future<br />
24 Dissonant Issues about World Music<br />
26 Science, Technology, and Society:<br />
Furthering Cross-pollination<br />
among Academic Fields<br />
28 To Bear Witness:<br />
Medical Relief in Kashmir<br />
32 Holiday Party<br />
Departments<br />
34 Books by <strong>Bardian</strong>s<br />
38 On and Off Campus<br />
52 Class Notes<br />
68 Faculty Notes
A MOTIVATIONAL<br />
SLAM DUNK<br />
Roger Scotland ’93 Inspires City Kids<br />
When people talk about Roger Scotland ’93, they speak of<br />
his willingness—indeed, his determination—to go out of his<br />
way to help others.<br />
“In basketball camp, he was one of the counselors, and to<br />
my amazement, he was friendly,” recalls David McClure, who<br />
was an overwhelmed fourth-grader when he met Scotland a<br />
decade ago. Now 19 and a sophomore at Duke University,<br />
McClure still sees Scotland as a mentor. He remembers being<br />
15 years old and taking part in a 3-on-3 game with men in<br />
their 20s. Scotland was playing too. “I was real intimidated,<br />
and Roger just pulled me aside and told me, ‘Don’t be afraid;<br />
you’re better than they are.’ He made me realize I could instill<br />
confidence in myself.”<br />
Fittingly, Scotland works with youth. He is deputy director<br />
for citywide education and youth services in New York<br />
City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s office; before that, he ran<br />
one of the city’s summer youth employment programs.<br />
Thanks in part to Scotland, young employees now can receive<br />
their pay through a debit-card system. He also has worked for<br />
the Madison Square Boys & Girls Club and directed fund<br />
development and special projects for Harlem Congregations<br />
for Community Improvement (HCCI).<br />
He was himself mentored by many. “I grew up in East<br />
New York, Brooklyn, and never had consistent access to afterschool<br />
programs,” says Scotland, reached at his office in lower<br />
Manhattan. “When I was looking to go to college, I didn’t get<br />
sound counseling in school. It was through a basketball coach
that I heard about Bard. . . . My models have been people who<br />
didn’t have to be involved with young adults, but were—the<br />
late Reverend Dr. Preston R. Washington, Charles McDuffie,<br />
Kurt James, Lawrence Smith, and Archdeacon and Mrs.<br />
Bernard O. D. Young. ”<br />
One coach, Neil Woodard, involved him in Operation<br />
Athlete, a program run by the not-for-profit Henry Street<br />
Settlement, which tried to form college careers for teenagers<br />
interested in improving themselves. When Scotland heard<br />
about Bard, he recalls “griping” that he couldn’t afford<br />
carfare for the visit. Operation Athlete’s director, James<br />
Robinson, gave him and his mother $100 for the trip.<br />
“When I got back, he died,” Scotland recalls. “I knew I had<br />
to go to Bard,” which he did through the Higher Education<br />
Opportunity Program (HEOP).<br />
As an undergraduate, Scotland helped out with the<br />
Special Olympics, while playing varsity basketball (he was<br />
captain from 1991 to 1993). “I’ve always acted through the<br />
examples others have set,” he says. “My grandfather, a deacon<br />
in the church, was a maintenance worker in a Coney<br />
Island housing development; no matter what his situation,<br />
he always helped others.”<br />
Woodard remembers Scotland, who was 16 at the time<br />
the two met, as both organized and smart: “He was my assistant<br />
coach in Operation Athlete after he graduated from Bard,<br />
and he taught the kids how to think. He made the game<br />
as cerebral as it is physical.” Woodard adds, “He was motivational<br />
and inspirational for those kids. He would tear you<br />
down, then pull you back up, which is necessary because<br />
there is a lot of cockiness on the basketball court.”<br />
Scotland grew up with his mother and two siblings; his<br />
parents divorced when he was young. His mother, a manager<br />
at Citibank, worked an additional part-time job to support her<br />
three children while attending community college. Scotland<br />
himself is divorced with no children, and has what he calls two<br />
“vices”: his two Alaskan Malamute dogs and the antique cars<br />
that he restores. He strongly believes that, nowadays, adults<br />
increasingly ignore or allow themselves to be intimidated by<br />
young people. “If you see children doing something they<br />
shouldn’t, go out and talk with them,” he says. “Many adults<br />
don’t take the time to engage our kids; many people are scared<br />
of children, who try to take advantage. As Leon Botstein wrote<br />
in Jefferson’s Children, teenagers have a great deal of perspective,<br />
intellect, and curiosity.”<br />
At HCCI, Scotland’s first job after Bard, “I was extended<br />
a tremendous opportunity to be involved in the holistic rehabilitation<br />
of Harlem,” he recalls. “But I realized no one would<br />
listen to me with only a B.A.” So he enrolled in a Ph.D. program<br />
in history at Columbia. Still at HCCI, he met a consultant,<br />
Herb Lowe, who later recruited him for the Madison<br />
Square Boys & Girls Club, where Scotland ultimately became<br />
director of marketing and community relations and where he<br />
learned valuable lessons about life, business, and stewardship.<br />
He began working for New York City in June 2002.<br />
“I saw him in action in the not-for-profit world and in<br />
government,” says Ernie Hart, former chief of staff to the<br />
deputy mayor for policy and now assistant vice president for<br />
employee and labor relations at Columbia University. “At the<br />
Department of Youth and Community Development, he<br />
helped to start up and maintain day-to-day relationships in a<br />
program that involved banks, contractors, parents, and youth.<br />
He made certain the debit card program was successful. The<br />
purpose was to make it easier for the city’s bookkeeping, but<br />
it also gave kids experience in financial management.”<br />
Scotland is involved with promoting a uniform and<br />
responsive policy toward youth and families. His focus is on<br />
“disconnected youth”—ages 16 to 24, who are neither in school<br />
nor work—and young adults negotiating the criminal justice<br />
system. “We are trying to better coordinate services so those<br />
who fall through the cracks early in life find . . . access to workforce<br />
development programs, life-skills training, and supportive<br />
interventions,” he says.<br />
In the midst of this busy life, Scotland found himself diagnosed<br />
in 2001 with Guillaume-Barre Syndrome, an immobilizing<br />
disorder that later often afflicts sufferers with chronic<br />
fatigue. (He conducted negotiations on a tentative property<br />
closing from his bed in an intensive care unit.) He says the<br />
experience, like so many others in his life, affected him deeply:<br />
“It gives you a better appreciation for the things you take for<br />
granted. I’d been an athlete all my life and I couldn’t even do a<br />
toe raise. Now I always look at programs with an eye toward<br />
people with special needs.”<br />
Another example of his concern for youth is his continuing<br />
connection with the Bard campus through his participation<br />
on the Board of Governors of the Bard–St. Stephen’s<br />
Alumni/ae Association. “Since my childhood and my time at<br />
Bard, I have always had in me the examples others have set,”<br />
Scotland says. “Today’s youth could learn much from intergenerational<br />
contact and greater focus—both by them and by<br />
the adults who are supposed to prepare them for successful<br />
adulthood.”<br />
—Cynthia Werthamer<br />
5
SUPREME CLERKSHIP<br />
Anna-Rose Mathieson ’99 Serves the Highest Court<br />
They are the highest clerks in the land. Young, bright, diligent,<br />
and highly motivated law school graduates, they are<br />
handpicked by the nine Justices of the United States Supreme<br />
Court for one-year terms characterized by “long hours wading<br />
through eye-glazing paperwork,” as Charles Lane put it in the<br />
Washington Post. Working well behind the scenes, and outside<br />
the hot glare of media scrutiny, they help the Justices pore<br />
through certiorari applications (applications requesting the<br />
Supreme Court to review lower-court decisions) and assist in<br />
researching and writing judicial opinions.<br />
In July 2005, a Bard graduate was welcomed into the elite<br />
corps of Supreme Court clerks. Anna-Rose Mathieson ’99, a<br />
native Oregonian who earned her bachelor’s degree in philosophy<br />
in Annandale and then went on to graduate first in her<br />
class at the University of Michigan Law School, was selected<br />
by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to serve as one of four clerks<br />
on her staff. For Mathieson, it was—as it no doubt must be for<br />
any clerk selected—a case without any experiential precedent.<br />
“Nothing can really prepare you for the substance of a<br />
Supreme Court clerkship—all you can do is jump in and<br />
hang on as the almost vertical learning curve goes up and<br />
up,” she says. “But it helped that I’d been in several other situations<br />
that were also intense from the outset. For the eight<br />
months before my clerkship, for instance, I worked at the<br />
6
[Washington, D.C.] law firm of Williams & Connolly. I<br />
started in November, and was immediately put on a big<br />
criminal case that was going to trial in February. It was an<br />
amazing learning experience: for all of February, our trial<br />
team camped out in a Manhattan hotel and threw every<br />
waking hour into defending our client.”<br />
While clerking for the nation’s highest court may present<br />
an unparalleled learning opportunity, Mathieson cannot<br />
divulge the details: she and her fellow clerks are bound by the<br />
strictest of confidentiality agreements. The Supreme Court,<br />
as an institution, places a premium on discretion; while<br />
details about the size of Mathieson’s workload, say,<br />
or the amount of hours she logs might appear to be trivial,<br />
even such humdrum minutiae about the Court’s inner workings<br />
are not generally made public. Nothing prohibits her,<br />
though, from discussing how her many and varied interests<br />
dovetail with her legal career.<br />
“Right after my clerkship interview with Justice<br />
Ginsburg, I went to India for a couple of months,” she relates.<br />
“Not to see the tourist sights—I’d already spent several<br />
months doing that, being awed by India’s beauty and history,<br />
and trying not to be overwhelmed by the sensory overload of<br />
sights, smells, and sounds. Instead, this trip was to learn<br />
about India’s legal system. I wasn’t planning to have the<br />
experience contribute to my professional development in any<br />
specific way; nor did I have any contacts there, or even a plan<br />
about how I was going to proceed. I just hopped on a flight,<br />
showed up at one of the law schools in Bombay, and started<br />
talking to professors and students.”<br />
The adventure proved to be as enlightening as it was<br />
enjoyable. “I sat in on several law school classes and even<br />
taught a contracts class; watched wig-bedecked lawyers argue<br />
in several types of courts; talked to law clerks, prosecutors,<br />
defense attorneys, and law firm partners; and read the Indian<br />
penal code while sitting on a roof overlooking the chaos of<br />
Bombay,” she says.<br />
Her Indian sojourn helped Mathieson gain an appreciation<br />
for the evolution of criminal law. “Both Indian and<br />
American criminal law grew out of the same British common<br />
law roots, and both changed and adapted in response to different<br />
histories, cultures, and governmental structures,” she<br />
says. “It was just fun to learn about something interesting and<br />
get to design my own curriculum. [It’s] the sort of thing I<br />
would never have done had I not gone to Bard.”<br />
The above account makes abundantly manifest those<br />
personal qualities—confidence, resourcefulness, amiability,<br />
and a keen intelligence wedded to a boundless curiosity—<br />
that have stood Mathieson in such good stead and make<br />
such a lasting impression on those who encounter her.<br />
“Do I remember her? We all do—she is unforgettable,”<br />
says William Griffith, professor and director of the<br />
Philosophy Program at the College. “She was absolutely an<br />
exceptional student—one of the very best we have ever had in<br />
the department. We all thought she might do spectacular<br />
things. Now, it looks as though she has.”<br />
Garry Hagberg, James H. Ottaway Jr. Professor of<br />
Aesthetics and Philosophy, was Mathieson’s adviser on her<br />
Senior Project. “What emerged from a flurry of highly<br />
focused work was an award-winning, truly exceptional piece<br />
of writing on philosophical issues in legal theory,” he says.<br />
“We in the Philosophy Program are very pleased by, and very<br />
proud of, her remarkable achievements.”<br />
In case your image of a law clerk is that of a vaguely<br />
Dickensian character, haggard and twitchy from squinching<br />
over intimidating piles of papers and rarely seeing daylight,<br />
let it be noted that Mathieson does have a life outside of law.<br />
She has, at one time or another, been an avid runner, fencer,<br />
rower, and white-water rafter; she has a passion for art history<br />
and theater; and she is an insatiable traveler, having visited,<br />
to date, more than 30 countries and all 50 states.<br />
Mathieson has swum with piranhas in the Amazon, trekked<br />
the Inca trail, waded through two kilometers of mud to cross<br />
the Laotian-Chinese border on foot, and put the finishing<br />
touches on her law school admissions essay in an Internet<br />
café in Bangkok.<br />
In July, Mathieson will complete her service with Justice<br />
Ginsburg and move on. She will be in an enviable position;<br />
according to Legal Times, former Supreme Court clerks are<br />
highly prized and aggressively recruited by law firms. For her<br />
part, Mathieson has no immediate plans.<br />
“I’m not quite sure what I’ll be doing 10 years from now,<br />
or even one year from now,” she says. “I’d love to end up<br />
teaching criminal law, but I want to practice first and experience<br />
the gritty realities of litigation.”<br />
—Mikhail Horowitz<br />
7
Clockwise, from left to right: Helon Habila, Emmanuel Dongala, Kofi Anyidoho, Caryl Phillips, and Chinua Achebe<br />
8
WRITING AFRICA<br />
In Search of “A Balance of Stories”<br />
In Home and Exile, Chinua Achebe, the Charles P. Stevenson Jr.<br />
Professor of Literature and Languages at Bard, reflects on the 20th<br />
century as the beginning of “‘re-storying’ peoples who had been<br />
knocked silent by the trauma of all kinds of dispossession,” and<br />
expresses his hope that the 21st century will see a “balance of stories.”<br />
Achebe played a seminal role in creating a tradition for “writing<br />
Africa,” and Kofi Anyidoho, Emmanuel Dongala, Helon Habila,<br />
and Caryl Phillips are building on that tradition. The five distinguished<br />
writers and educators came together at the College last<br />
October to discuss the history of fellowship and conflict between<br />
African and African diaspora writers and to address the impact<br />
of such issues as pan-Africanism, colonialism, and postcolonialism<br />
on their work. Jesse Shipley, director of the Africana Studies<br />
Program, moderated the event, which inaugurated the Chinua<br />
Achebe Fellowship in Global African Studies at Bard College and<br />
was cosponsored by Barnard College’s Literature of the Middle<br />
Passage course.<br />
Chinua Achebe has taught at Bard since 1990. Originally from<br />
Nigeria, the poet, novelist, cultural critic, and essayist is perhaps best<br />
known for his 1958 novel Things Fall Apart, considered by many<br />
the premier work of African literature. In September 2005, he was<br />
named one of the world’s top 100 public intellectuals by Foreign<br />
Policy magazine. Helon Habila, also from Nigeria, is the first<br />
Chinua Achebe Fellow at Bard. His debut novel, Waiting for an<br />
Angel, was published in 2003 and received a Commonwealth<br />
Writers Prize. Kofi Anyidoho is a poet, critic, and professor of literature<br />
at the University of Ghana, his alma mater. His most recent collection<br />
of poetry is PraiseSong for the Land. Emmanuel Dongala,<br />
a novelist originally from the Congo Republic, teaches Francophone<br />
African literature at the College and is the Richard B. Fisher Chair<br />
in Natural Sciences and professor of chemistry at Simon’s Rock<br />
College of Bard. Caryl Phillips, a native of St. Kitts who was<br />
brought up in Leeds, England, is the author of three books of nonfiction<br />
and eight novels, including Dancing in the Dark (2005)<br />
and Crossing the River, which was shortlisted for the 1993 Booker<br />
Prize for Fiction. He is a professor of English at Yale University and<br />
last fall was a visiting professor at Barnard College.<br />
Excerpts of the panelists’ remarks follow.<br />
CARYL PHILLIPS In the 1930s, in Paris, two remarkable men<br />
sat down for a series of conversations. One was Léopold<br />
Sédar Senghor, a student from Senegal, and the other Aimé<br />
Césaire, from Martinique. The young men saw themselves as<br />
artists, but they also felt that they had a responsibility to<br />
shape the political direction of their respective countries once<br />
they had completed their studies. Senghor would eventually<br />
return to Senegal and become its president, and Césaire<br />
returned to Martinique and became mayor of its capital city.<br />
Beyond their obvious like and trust for each other, what<br />
bound these men together was their conviction that colonialism<br />
was most vigorous and corrosive when it sought, as it<br />
inevitably did, to destroy something they understood to be<br />
black culture. Neither man could conceive a future for himself<br />
in which his efforts achieved validation only when reflected<br />
through European eyes. Their philosophy—for after all they<br />
were French—came to be known as “Negritude.” It was a<br />
9
mode of thinking that suggested that a common black culture<br />
existed, a culture whose strengths were such that if one could<br />
only recognize and promote them, it would no longer be necessary<br />
to continually negotiate Europe’s assumption of black<br />
inferiority, artistic or otherwise.<br />
In September 1956, both men once again found themselves<br />
in Paris for the Conference of Negro African Writers<br />
and Artists. It soon became clear that those in attendance were<br />
continuing the same conversation that Senghor and Césaire<br />
had begun two decades earlier. In the intervening years, the<br />
conversation had become a movement, and most of those at<br />
the conference took it for granted that all black people possessed<br />
a common heritage that existed in opposition to Europe.<br />
James Baldwin, who wrote about the conference, felt<br />
that there were three clearly expressed aims: to define or<br />
assign responsibility for the state of black culture, to assess<br />
the state of black culture at the present time, and to open a<br />
new dialogue with Europe. But Baldwin detected something<br />
else: a discomfort between what he termed the American<br />
Negro and other men of color. Potentially, an African man<br />
and a Caribbean man have much in common, largely because<br />
they were forged in the same crucible of colonial exploitation.<br />
But the African American has an altogether different<br />
history. He has not been shaped by colonialism, but by<br />
American expansionism. In fact, he’s been a central participant<br />
in it. Remember, the buffalo soldiers had rifles.<br />
Along with Baldwin, Richard Wright was in the audience.<br />
Although these two writers hardly agreed on anything else, they<br />
were agreed on the central divide between American Negroes<br />
and these colonials. Both Baldwin and Wright felt that, despite<br />
their checkered relationship with the United States, they had<br />
been born into, as Baldwin put it, “a world with a great number<br />
of possibilities.” Baldwin felt strongly that it was part of<br />
his struggle as a writer to encourage Negro Americans to see<br />
themselves as Americans, and until they could do that, they<br />
had no place at all thinking of themselves as Africans.<br />
Today, 50 years after the conference, we still have major<br />
migration from Africa and the Caribbean to Paris and London<br />
and the United States, now clearly the first choice of most<br />
migrants. There’s an economic pull that draws people to the<br />
United States, but there is also the hope of being able to function<br />
in a society that does not view people of African origin<br />
through a reductive colonial lens. In this sense, Negritude has<br />
been replaced by “migratude.”<br />
But let me conclude by returning to the problem that<br />
daunted the conference in 1956 and continues to cloud the<br />
conversation today. How does one have a conversation between<br />
African writers and writers of the African diaspora and productively<br />
include African Americans? And if we do speak, what<br />
should we talk about beyond banalities of pigmentation? The<br />
question, perhaps, will not be so much about finding a common<br />
black culture; it will be a question that brings us back to colonialism:<br />
the quest for power. How does power operate on the<br />
social, political, and artistic expression of a people? A consensus<br />
on the word “power” might be a good place to begin. Baldwin,<br />
always intuitive, already knew this: he entitled his essay on the<br />
conference “Princes and Power.”<br />
EMMANUEL DONGALA I would like to talk briefly about<br />
the problem of identity confronted by Francophone African<br />
writers. It seems that this problem of identity, the so-called<br />
authentic African identity, has been more of an issue in that<br />
part of Africa writing in French. The reason may be that<br />
Francophone African literature began not in Africa, but in<br />
Paris. In Anglophone countries it started on the continent.<br />
Amos Tutuola’s The Palm-Wine Drinkard and Chinua Achebe’s<br />
Things Fall Apart, for example, were written in Africa, in<br />
Nigeria. Read Things Fall Apart, and there’s no doubt in your<br />
mind that the writer knows intimately the culture he’s talking<br />
about—it is his culture.<br />
Francophone African literature started from the banks<br />
of the Seine. It tried to include all of the diaspora, le monde<br />
negre, from Africa to America to the Caribbean. When you<br />
have such an inclusive movement, you refer more to imagined<br />
entities than to real ones; you deal more with generalities<br />
and, inevitably, ideologies. And when you try to deal<br />
with a specific culture, it’s a culture remembered, re-created.<br />
In his book L’Enfant Noire, Camara Laye deals with the<br />
Malinke culture in Guinea. It’s a culture remembered from<br />
Paris, a celebration of a mythical and paradisiacal Africa.<br />
I don’t know whether this quote is true, but Chinua was<br />
10
quoted as saying that he found that book “too sweet” for<br />
his tastes.<br />
Negritude, this sort of celebration of Africa, was in part<br />
a reaction to the belief that colonialism had destroyed and<br />
offended African culture and identity. The remedy was<br />
thought to be simple. It was through anticolonial struggle. It<br />
was as if African identity lay somewhere in the path, and to<br />
fetch it, to redeem it, all one had to do was remove the cultural<br />
and political obstacles preventing you from reaching it. Well,<br />
it turned out that was not true. After independence, not only<br />
was the so-called authentic African identity nowhere to be<br />
found, but the problem was more complex: writers were confronted<br />
with a moving identity.<br />
In any case, has there ever been such a thing as an authentic<br />
African identity in a continent with so many ethnicities, each<br />
with their own individual culture? You read Things Fall Apart<br />
and learn that in Ebo traditional society, twins are evil and have<br />
to be abandoned to the forest to die. Read my own Little Boys<br />
Come from the Stars and you will learn that twins are to be celebrated<br />
and that their mother is given a special status. How can<br />
a writer in postcolonial Africa talk about a supposedly authentic<br />
African identity when it can be, at the same time, Christian<br />
and Muslim, animist and Marxist? And what is his or her<br />
identity when he or she is a son or daughter of immigration?<br />
Are you still an African writer when you have not lived on the<br />
continent at all and do not speak any African languages?<br />
What is happening now is that the Francophone writer<br />
does not pretend to speak for the people anymore. He has<br />
learned modesty. Like most writers, he or she is now more<br />
concerned about his own vision of the world than anything.<br />
Many of them do not want to be called écrivain engagé, the<br />
committed writer, anymore. They do not even want to be<br />
called an African writer. Just writer. So the problem of identity<br />
faced by the first generation of Negritude writers has not<br />
been resolved by the younger generation; it is just reappearing<br />
under a new guise.<br />
young Africans who do not see their future in Africa. My students<br />
are busy spending the time they should be spending on<br />
reading their books, preparing for their exams, or thinking of<br />
a future for themselves where they are, in planning an exit. At<br />
my university, most in the last class of medical doctors were<br />
not at the graduation ceremony to receive diplomas; they had<br />
already left, most on their way to America.<br />
What would it take for us to reinvent a future for our<br />
young people at home? It is important to keep reminding<br />
ourselves of stories like those Neto has left us, stories about<br />
how once upon a time we had our world in our hands and<br />
stories about how we lost that world. And above all, stories<br />
about how we can get back our own world.<br />
Some tell us that our salvation lies in the refutation of<br />
our history of pain, our history of shame, our history of endless<br />
fragmentation. But we must wander through history into<br />
myth and memory seeking lost landmarks in a geography of<br />
scars and fermented remembrances. It must not be that the<br />
rest of the world came upon us, picked us up, used us to clean<br />
up their mess, then dropped us off into trash, hoping that we<br />
remain forever lost among the shadows of our own doubt.<br />
Ours is a quest for a future aligned with the energy of recovered<br />
vision. With so much left undone, to keep calling our<br />
situation a dilemma is just an excuse for inaction. We must<br />
recall that we are the people who once wrote it down with<br />
civilization’s life still blowing through our minds.<br />
For 500 years and more we have journeyed from Africa<br />
through the Virgin Islands into Santo Domingo, from Havana<br />
in Cuba to Savannah in Georgia, from Ghana to Guyana, from<br />
the shantytowns of Johannesburg to the favelas in Rio de<br />
Janeiro. And all we find are a dispossessed and battered people<br />
still kneeling in a sea of blood, lying in the path of hurricanes.<br />
But no matter how far away we try to hide away from ourselves,<br />
we will have to come back home and find out where and<br />
how and why we lost the light in our eyes, how and why we<br />
KOFI ANYIDOHO “My hands lay stones upon the foundations<br />
of the world. I deserve my piece of bread.”These are the words<br />
of the late Agostinho Neto, poet, freedom fighter, president of<br />
Angola. In a world in which Africa has taken on the image of<br />
poverty, of the professional beggar, we have to come back to<br />
the understanding that it has not always been like that. In<br />
fact, once upon a time, the world came to Africa to learn.<br />
Today we in Africa ourselves are finding it very difficult<br />
to believe that’s true. We are faced with a generation of<br />
11
have become eternal orphans. We must remind ourselves that<br />
just to survive, barely to survive, and merely to survive can<br />
never be enough.<br />
HELON HABILA It has occurred to me that most of the novels<br />
by the new generation of African writers seem to be concerned<br />
with coming-of-age themes. This emerging generation<br />
of writers has been described as witnesses to the challenges<br />
of living in a society in transition, as both the victims and<br />
chroniclers of a prolonged season of pain.<br />
In Moses Isegawa’s Abyssinian Chronicles we come face to<br />
face with the civil wars in Uganda. In Chris Abani’s GraceLand<br />
we see the chaos that was Nigeria under the long stretch of<br />
military dictatorships. Diane Awerbuck’s Gardening at Night<br />
tells of a young lady’s coming-of-age confusions and desires<br />
for South Africa. From the same country we have the late<br />
Phaswane Mpe’s Welcome to Our Hillbrow, with its treatment<br />
of black-on-black xenophobia and the ravages of AIDS on<br />
the people of Johannesburg. Despite the diversity of subjects<br />
treated, these young writers are all trying to make sense of the<br />
world around them. In choosing the bildungsroman form, it<br />
is as if they are crying out, “We are just beginning. We know<br />
you look to us for answers and interpretations, but we are as<br />
helpless as you are.”<br />
I cannot help but compare this generation to the first<br />
generation of African writers whose reign began with the<br />
publication of such landmarks as Things Fall Apart, A Grain of<br />
Wheat, and The African Child in the 1950s and 1960s. This was<br />
a time when Africa was reeling under the shackles of colonialism,<br />
when books like Joyce Cary’s Mister Johnson, Conrad’s<br />
Heart of Darkness, and even the adventures of Tarzan were the<br />
standards by which Africans were judged. The pan-African<br />
politicians and poets tried to correct this astigmatic perception<br />
of the African, but without much success. After them, the<br />
Negritude poets tried the same thing. Critic Simon Gikandi<br />
suggests that these writers were so focused on countering<br />
Western imaginings, that they forgot the essential point at<br />
stake: the invention of an African culture independent of<br />
Europe. So it was the first generation of writers, and Chinua<br />
Achebe in particular, who were able, at that moment of transition,<br />
to supply African and even non-African people with an<br />
African culture they could read about, discuss in class, and<br />
write papers on.<br />
The kind of society that the new African writers, the<br />
third generation writers, must make sense of is a society that<br />
still struggles between democracy and dictatorship, a society<br />
where most of the graduates are unemployed because of the<br />
collusion between the unfair global economic system and corrupt<br />
politicians, a society where most of the women are still<br />
exploited and voiceless. And I see in the works of these young<br />
writers a feeling of exhaustion, a lack of conviction about the<br />
ability of the societies represented to triumph over the obstacles<br />
in their path.<br />
I think my generation seems to lack conviction not<br />
because it has forgotten its history, but because it’s not sure of<br />
the efficacy of literature to repeat the kind of feat that Professor<br />
Achebe achieved. Notice that I’m taking it for granted that one<br />
of the most important duties of a writer is to act as his community’s<br />
conscience. But we are talking about a society where all<br />
accepted avenues for protest and dissent have crumbled. In<br />
Africa, we now have more newspapers than we had before,<br />
more writers, but because of the desensitization of the societies<br />
no one pays attention to the written word. It seems that to<br />
protest, to express dissent, one must resort to extraliterary<br />
channels. And so recently, to make himself quite clear to the<br />
Nigerian government, Professor Achebe had to turn down an<br />
award. And two weeks ago, the 71-year-old Nobel laureate<br />
Wole Soyinka had to take to the streets to demonstrate against<br />
the government’s economic policies.This desensitization to literature<br />
is not is unique to Africa. Writers now are in competition<br />
with the fact-churning industries—the search engines, live<br />
television broadcasts, DVDs. And when people do talk about<br />
books it is not about whether they are good or bad, but about<br />
what prizes they have won or how photogenic the author is.<br />
I hate to conclude on this pessimistic note, so I will borrow<br />
a few hopeful words from a recent essay by Salman<br />
Rushdie: “Not even the author of a book can know exactly<br />
what effect his book will have, but good books do have effects,<br />
and some of these effects are powerful, and all of them, thank<br />
goodness, are impossible to predict in advance.”<br />
12
CHINUA ACHEBE Not long ago, I watched a program in which<br />
a group of upper-middle-class white women were discussing<br />
the flood in Louisiana. In particular, they were discussing the<br />
fact that a disproportionate number of black people were those<br />
who appeared in the pictures, who were having the worst of it.<br />
And one of the women asked why it was that, whether in<br />
Louisiana, or in Haiti, or in Africa itself, poverty seems somehow<br />
to attach to blackness.<br />
Somebody said it was not a question of race, but a question<br />
of class, which is the best position we have invented to save<br />
us from the awkwardness of this question. But it’s a question<br />
that has occurred to many of us. It’s occurred, for instance, to<br />
the African American historian Chancellor Williams. I once<br />
was in his audience, and he was asking the same question. As a<br />
child growing up, he said, he wondered why black people were<br />
always at the end of the queue. He knew he wasn’t more dumb<br />
than other people; in fact, he beat everyone in his class. So why<br />
was it that at the end of the day he was at the end of the queue?<br />
Now this question has a very simple answer. The answer<br />
is that these black people, whether you see them in Louisiana<br />
or in Haiti or in Africa itself, have the same story: the story<br />
of the slave trade. What happened, happened first in Africa.<br />
The consequences then spread throughout the world. We<br />
writers have to do the homework to find out the history of<br />
what happened to us.<br />
In my third novel, Arrow of God, I wrote in a character<br />
from real life. My parents were Christian evangelists and<br />
they knew the early missionaries who brought the gospel to<br />
my part of the world. And they spoke about a Mr. Blackett,<br />
who was so learned, they said, that he was more learned than<br />
white people. Blackett came from the West Indies with an<br />
Anglican mission. He was the director of education and he<br />
became a legend, a man everybody was talking about. This<br />
went on under the British, who owned the colony of Nigeria<br />
and who, for reasons of their own, decided that they didn’t<br />
need the word of God anymore and sent Blackett home. So<br />
I put this man in my novel as a legend. He didn’t do very<br />
much, but he lived in my mind and was part of it, so I put<br />
him in. Now, 10 years later, I get a letter from a headmaster<br />
in the Caribbean. He says, “I just read your novel, Arrow of<br />
God. Thank you very much for the tribute you paid my late<br />
father.” The letter went on to explain that this was Blackett’s<br />
son, who, as it happened, was born in Nigeria. My mother,<br />
who was 80, remembered this little boy.<br />
The Caribbean missionaries clearly understood that there<br />
was something binding them to the Ebo people in Nigeria.<br />
The experience of black people in the United States is different<br />
from the experience of black people in the Caribbean. It is<br />
different from the experience of black people in Africa. But<br />
that doesn’t cancel the fact that this is basically the same story.<br />
The first and only time I met James Baldwin was in<br />
Gainsville, Florida. The African Literature Association had<br />
invited him and me to hold a conversation. I was very<br />
excited. Six years before I had come to this country for the<br />
first time on a fellowship given by UNESCO. I’d discovered<br />
Baldwin, and he was one of the reasons for choosing to come<br />
here. I came in ’62, I believe, and I was told that Baldwin was<br />
in France and wasn’t likely to be back. So I didn’t see him.<br />
Then this opportunity came at the conference. I was so<br />
excited that when I met him I wanted to say, “Mr. Baldwin,<br />
I presume.” Well, I didn’t, but later I talked to him about it,<br />
and Baldwin laughed so much, you could see his eyes jumping.<br />
When he had the opportunity to speak, he turned to me<br />
and said, “This is a brother I have not seen in 400 years.” The<br />
audience exploded. They were so loud they nearly missed the<br />
next thing he said, which was, “It was never intended that he<br />
and I should ever meet.”<br />
Baldwin had his difficulties with Africa, and he said so<br />
quite openly. But he was wrestling with it, because having difficulties<br />
with Africa doesn’t mean saying “I didn’t come from<br />
there” or “I came from there and I didn’t like it.” It is important<br />
for us to understand that when we see black people at<br />
the end of the queue in Haiti, in Louisiana, in Nigeria, it’s<br />
because they have the same story. And it is the business of the<br />
writer to deal with this story and all its ramifications. It’s<br />
extremely complex, but we must never surrender to despair. I<br />
don’t think that will do at all. We’ve got this task, this job, to<br />
write Africa. And it’s extremely important to understand and<br />
appreciate that it’s going to take a long, long time.<br />
13
NOT BY ROTE<br />
Carole Ann Moench and Kate Belin, Members of the MAT Program’s First<br />
Graduating Class, Make Marks in the Inner City<br />
Words are scattered across a seventh-grade classroom board:<br />
“sound”; “ groaned”; “fawn.” At tables around the room, students<br />
sort through envelopes stuffed with words that their<br />
teacher has asked them to arrange into a poem. Outside, an<br />
autumn sun shines on high-rises covered with graffiti, interrupted<br />
by rows of new, single-family row houses, many with<br />
cars parked on tiny concrete aprons in front.<br />
Barely 10 years ago, the East Tremont section of the<br />
South Bronx still looked as it did in the famous photograph<br />
of President Jimmy Carter touring the rubble-strewn neighborhood.<br />
Today, the row houses are gaining ground, but the<br />
area remains one of the nation’s poorest. Many students at<br />
Fannie Lou Hamer Middle School and High School come<br />
from East Tremont or other parts of the South Bronx. “The<br />
parents come in and say, ‘I teach my kids to fight because<br />
that’s what they have to do to survive,’” says Carole Ann<br />
Moench, the teacher giving the poetry lesson.<br />
Moench, who teaches humanities at Fannie Lou Hamer<br />
Middle School, and Kate Belin, who teaches math at Fannie<br />
Lou Hamer High School around the corner, both graduated<br />
last year from Bard’s new Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT)<br />
program. The MAT degree blends advanced work in a graduate<br />
student’s chosen discipline—for Moench, literature; for<br />
Belin, math—with teacher training, including practice teaching<br />
in public school classrooms, and certification over the<br />
course of a full year.<br />
“We believe good teaching should grow out of the practice<br />
of the academic discipline being taught,” says MAT program<br />
director Ric Campbell. “One error in public schools is<br />
that we tend to infantilize learners, to see sixth graders and<br />
ninth graders as capable of far less than they are. Typically in<br />
schools, we march kids through a fixed curriculum dictated<br />
from above, rather than letting a teacher’s deep interest in his<br />
or her field determine the course of study.”<br />
In an inner city school, it might seem quixotic to try to<br />
turn humanities students with reading problems into poets,<br />
or 11th graders struggling with division into mathematicians,<br />
but both MAT teachers feel their Bard training has<br />
been a plus. “It’s hard to learn if you’re just told to memorize<br />
facts,” says Belin. “These kids haven’t been able to explore on<br />
the way; it’s not that they’re not capable of it.”<br />
In that spirit, Belin asked a recent class of 11th graders to<br />
prove that the same rules apply to polynomials as numerals.<br />
While the students traded insults, magic markers, and iPods,<br />
14
Belin went from table to table, answering questions and<br />
pulling out blocks to help visualize principles of length and<br />
height, multiplication and subtraction. When it came time for<br />
each table to explain what they had discovered, each group<br />
demonstrated their proofs, punctuating explanations with<br />
expletives. Belin answered some students’ protests calmly<br />
with, “We’re also working on our presentation skills.”<br />
Surface static rarely throws Belin. “The students care a<br />
lot about what they’re doing,” she says. “They take it very<br />
seriously, even when I think that they’re not. I didn’t like<br />
some of the schools in really privileged upstate New York<br />
where I student-taught. That’s what brought me to the South<br />
Bronx. Fannie Lou Hamer makes sense to me.” Now 23, she<br />
grew up in Youngstown, New York, and dreamed for years of<br />
being a public school teacher like her aunt. Belin does not<br />
gloss over the challenges of teaching a troubled population,<br />
but draws a distinction between her learning curve and theirs.<br />
“Making students do things is just hard,” she says. “I can’t tell<br />
if I don’t like it or I’m just not good at it yet. I’ll be making<br />
people do things for the rest of my teaching career.”<br />
For Moench, 29, who taught for several years in a New<br />
York City preschool, handling a classroom isn’t new, but getting<br />
the students to focus can be a battle. “I should be able to<br />
have a thick skin, but when the kids don’t respond to the lesson<br />
plan it upsets me,” she says. A Houston native, Moench<br />
found her way to Bard through a college fair. She graduated<br />
in 2000, returned for the MAT program, and ended up with<br />
a Petrie Fellowship, a cash award to a graduate who commits<br />
to teaching five years in New York City schools. “When I<br />
came to Fannie Lou Hamer, I wasn’t thinking I was going to<br />
save the world,” she says. “These kids are delicate; it’s a tough<br />
classroom environment. I knew it was going to be a daily<br />
fight to get them to like what I was teaching.”<br />
Carole Ann Moench (center)<br />
Fannie Lou Hamer Middle School principal Lorraine<br />
Chanon believes that the schools’ size—the high school has<br />
450 students; the middle school 175— and staff-run structure<br />
make a Bard partnership particularly fruitful. “Bard is<br />
clearly an institution that believes in the empowerment of<br />
students,” she says. “Carole Ann is socializing kids to what it<br />
means to be a student, as well as teaching thinking skills they<br />
can carry through life. Kate’s classes are prepping students to<br />
life beyond high school, to college, to the world of work.”<br />
Campbell believes that the MAT Program, with its<br />
emphasis on teaching the discipline of a field, offers particularly<br />
good training for schools like Fannie Lou Hamer. “Carole<br />
Ann and Kate are poised to move on in their graduate work,<br />
but they’ve chosen to go into public schools with a deep commitment<br />
to their disciplines and how they look at the world,”<br />
he says. “Students often don’t have a grasp of how or why what<br />
they’ve been taught works. They just have enough practice to<br />
answer test questions correctly. It’s the teach-to-the-test phenomenon.<br />
What’s important is for them to achieve an authentic<br />
understanding.”<br />
While the MAT philosophy shapes both teachers’<br />
approaches, they have set realistic goals for their students, and<br />
themselves. Belin finds her optimism growing. “I find myself<br />
looking forward to next year,” she says. “I think every new<br />
teacher quits four times a week their first year. I would not<br />
want to give up on anything until I knew how to do it well.”<br />
For her part, Moench is learning the limits—and possibilities—of<br />
what she can help her students achieve. “There are a<br />
lot of things that I have no control over,” she says, “but I do<br />
have control over my classroom and what goes on there. I can’t<br />
follow every kid home at night. I have little say in legislation<br />
that passes or doesn’t. But I have a classroom of 20 kids for an<br />
hour and a half each day and I can try to make that as positive<br />
a learning experience as I can, both for them and for me.”<br />
—Hanna Rubin<br />
Kate Belin<br />
15
LOOKING HOMEWARD<br />
An Internship of Consequence<br />
In 2004, Reporters Without Borders ranked the Philippines<br />
second only to Iraq as the most dangerous place for a journalist<br />
to work. They reported that more than 50 Filipino<br />
journalists have been assassinated since 1986, the year that<br />
nation ousted Ferdinand Marcos and returned to democratic<br />
government. Jomar Giner ’07 knows these facts well. The<br />
political persecution of journalists, human rights advocates,<br />
and political opposition leaders in the Philippines was the<br />
focus of her internship at Human Rights Watch (HRW) in<br />
fall of 2005.<br />
When she opted to intern at Human Rights Watch, as<br />
a student in the Bard Globalization and International Affairs<br />
(BGIA) Program in New York City, Giner had little idea<br />
how vital her work would be. She was initially attracted to<br />
HRW because of the group’s film festival, as she’d worked<br />
for two summers at Amnesty International’s similar festival.<br />
16<br />
“I thought that would make an interesting comparison,” she<br />
says. “Then I saw that HRW was looking for an intern in its<br />
Asia division and that the associate overseeing the internship<br />
was Bard alumna Jo-Anne Prud’homme ’04, who also went to<br />
BGIA and interned at Human Rights Watch.” Prud’homme<br />
ultimately became Giner’s on-site mentor.<br />
“When I was preparing for the interview, I learned<br />
that HRW’s Asia division was not actively covering the<br />
Philippines,” Giner says. “I was born in the Philippines, lived<br />
there for 11 years, and am a native speaker of Tagalog, so I<br />
was naturally interested in issues there. I also knew that there<br />
were a lot of human rights violations, and I was surprised that<br />
they weren’t mentioned on the HRW website. I found out<br />
that HRW didn’t have the resources to cover the Philippines<br />
at that time, and they wanted an intern who could document<br />
the situation there.”<br />
ABOVE Filipino detainees are hosed down after police storm their cells inside the<br />
prison camp in Manila’s Police Camp Bagong Diwa. RIGHT Jomar Giner ’07
Giner’s language skills, academic goals, and growing personal<br />
interest in the research made the internship a perfect fit.<br />
It also met her desire to do work that would matter. “Because<br />
she’d worked in a similar position, Jo-Anne understood that<br />
I wanted my work to make a difference,” Giner says, “and she<br />
continually assured me that the research would be used.”<br />
As soon as she arrived at HRW, Giner began gathering<br />
reports and data on specific instances of politically motivated<br />
murders, abductions, and torture. The process involved<br />
online research, reading Philippine media, and talking with<br />
human rights advocates working there. “One good thing is<br />
that many of these instances are documented in the media,<br />
because Philippine civil society is very strong, even though the<br />
press is facing a lot of repression,” Giner says. “I decided to<br />
research beginning in 2001 when the current president, Gloria<br />
Macapagal Arroyo, started her term. At first I recorded violations<br />
across the board, against women, children, indigenous<br />
people, and political activists, but soon I decided to concentrate<br />
on political assassinations, which I felt were the most<br />
pressing.”<br />
One of Giner’s first realizations was that, although the<br />
United States’ “War on Terror” provides support intended to<br />
crack down on Islamic terrorists based in the Philippines, the<br />
resulting practice is overall repression of not just the Islamic<br />
separatist movement, known to use terrorist tactics, but of all<br />
Philippine Muslim populations, communists and former communist<br />
associates, and members of any leftist political groups.<br />
Giner’s research began to hit closer to home. “There were<br />
points when I became very emotionally involved,” she says.<br />
“I really loved my life there, and I still have friends there<br />
and family members. Also, my parents have ties to these victimized<br />
groups. My mother used to be a journalist in the<br />
Philippines, and her former editor now serves in the Congress<br />
for a minority party-list group.” Party-list groups are the political<br />
voice of marginalized sectors and are guaranteed 20 percent<br />
of Lower House (House of Representative) seats, a percentage<br />
that suffers under corrupt election processes. They are<br />
often accused of having ties to the communist insurgents.<br />
Giner says that while that may have been true in the past,<br />
these political minorities are trying to address their concerns<br />
through legal means using the political process.<br />
“Many of the victims are people my age doing what I’m<br />
doing,” says Giner. “They’re activists doing legal things to voice<br />
their concerns, but they’re being targeted. I could easily have<br />
been among them if I hadn’t come to the United States. At the<br />
end of my research, I had documented over 140 incidents of<br />
serious violations since 2001. Many are murders and abductions<br />
that took place in broad daylight, committed by masked<br />
gunmen on motorcycles. The assailants are often military personnel<br />
in civilian clothing, and people know that openly.”<br />
By October 2005, Giner had completed a major research<br />
report that, she has been told, will be used as the basis for a<br />
fact-finding mission to Mindanao, perhaps in summer of<br />
<strong>2006</strong>. Following that initial report, Giner began to look into<br />
abuses of political detainees. She also continued research on<br />
the approximately 140 political assassination she’d recorded,<br />
assured that future efforts by HRW would put her work<br />
directly to use.<br />
As a BGIA student, Giner combined her internship<br />
with academic work at BGIA, spending approximately 25<br />
hours a week at Human Rights Watch and participating in<br />
seminars and study at BGIA in New York City. Giner’s<br />
internship work led to her successful application for a $2,500<br />
grant through Bard’s Freeman Undergraduate Asian Studies<br />
Initiative, supported by the Freeman Foundation. Giner will<br />
use the grant to travel to the Philippines in summer of <strong>2006</strong><br />
to research the “people power” movement and the role it has<br />
played in Philippine national elections since 1986.<br />
“The people power movement began in 1986, and the<br />
current president, Arroyo, got her seat with the movement’s<br />
support, which took out the previous president,” Giner says.<br />
“Arroyo is now under criticism for election fraud and related<br />
corruption charges, so the process hasn’t worked out the way<br />
many thought it would. Some would say it’s even worse<br />
now.” She is planning to look at how different segments of<br />
the population have participated in the movement.<br />
Giner is looking forward to her return, albeit brief, to<br />
the Philippines, to renew contacts with friends and family,<br />
meet face-to-face those whose work informed her research,<br />
and investigate firsthand the flawed, complex political system<br />
she’s been studying at Bard.<br />
—Lucy Hayden<br />
17
The Golden Rule’s Contemporary Relevance<br />
Scholar Introduces First-Year Students to Confucius<br />
If a man withdraws his mind from the love of beauty, and applies it as sincerely to the love of the virtuous;<br />
if, in serving his parents, he can exert his utmost strength; if, in his intercourse with his friends,<br />
his words are sincere—although men say that he has not learned, I will certainly say that he has.<br />
—Confucius (551–479 B.C.E.), The Confucian Analects, Book 1:7<br />
18
The ethical tradition known as Confucianism began 2,500<br />
years ago with the teachings of a man called K’ung-fu-tzu, a<br />
native of what is now China’s eastern Shandong Province.<br />
K’ung-fu-tzu (also called Kongfuzi and Kongzi) spent much<br />
of the early 500s and late 400s BCE as a traveling scholar and<br />
adviser to political leaders throughout China. The philosophical<br />
system he developed and preached became a pillar<br />
of traditional Chinese culture and eventually spread across<br />
the world.<br />
In the west K’ung-fu-tzu is known as Confucius, a popularization<br />
of his Chinese name adopted by Jesuit missionaries<br />
in the 16th century, and his teachings are collectively<br />
known as Confucianism. Adherents of Confucianism believe<br />
that the individual is the key element of all human relations—families,<br />
societies, and states. If the individual concentrates<br />
on cultivating personal virtues such as honesty,<br />
love, and devotion to family, the resulting harmony benefits<br />
everyone. The keynote of Confucianism is best expressed by<br />
the Confucian “Golden Rule”: “Do not do to others what<br />
you do not want done to yourself.”<br />
Chinese philosophy scholar Stephen C. Angle opened<br />
this year’s series of First-Year Seminar public lectures at the<br />
Sosnoff Theater of the Richard B. Fisher Center for the<br />
Performing Arts with a talk titled “Confucian Enlightenment.”<br />
At Wesleyan University, where he is an associate professor of<br />
philosophy, Angle chairs the East Asian Studies Program and<br />
directs the Mansfield Freedom Center for East Asian Studies.<br />
He holds a B.A. from Yale University and a Ph.D. from the<br />
University of Michigan.<br />
As he explained to his audience at the Fisher Center,<br />
Angle’s view is that “Confucianism is a live, ongoing source of<br />
creative reflection. One of the fundamental ways one learns to<br />
look at others compassionately—to look with just and loving<br />
attention, if you like—is to think about oneself. The key is<br />
to realize other people are like you in most respects, even<br />
though the details are different. I think it’s very natural that<br />
Confucius’s initial followers hit upon the notion of ‘sympathetic<br />
understanding’ as one way of articulating the good in<br />
ourselves, this process of just and loving attention. When you<br />
love another person, you identify with them.”<br />
With his current project, a book titled Sagehood: The<br />
Contemporary Ethical Significance of Neo-Confucianism, Angle’s<br />
goal is to articulate a contemporary philosophy that is informed<br />
and influenced by Confucian ethics. In a follow-up conversation<br />
after his lecture at the Fisher Center, he said he believes<br />
that “rich rewards await us if we look at Confucianism as a<br />
live philosophical tradition rather than only as an object of<br />
historical study.”<br />
The title of Angle’s book requires some explanation for<br />
Confucian neophytes. “Sagehood” refers to adherents’ ultimate<br />
goal: moral perfection. Neo-Confucianism came about<br />
during the 11th century when a group of Confucian scholars,<br />
reacting to the spiritual challenges posed by the rise of<br />
Daoism and Buddhism, came together to create an updated<br />
version of Confucianism that was popular until the end of<br />
the imperial era.<br />
In response to a student’s question about the differences<br />
between neo- and classical Confucians, Angle explained, “Texts<br />
from the classical era [pre–221 BCE] remained touchstones for<br />
the neo-Confucians. But they interpreted the canon creatively,<br />
so it spoke to the concerns of their age. This open-minded<br />
approach to traditional Confucianism has been continued by<br />
Chinese philosophers in the 20th century, and I seek to carry<br />
on this legacy.<br />
“Topics of philosophical ethics can seem remote from<br />
our everyday lives,” he continued. “They seem to have relevance<br />
only for major decisions about right and wrong, without<br />
attending either to what might motivate us to act well, or<br />
what it means to be a good person. Many philosophers have<br />
looked back to the Greek and Christian traditions for inspiration<br />
in their critique of mainstream approaches to ethics,<br />
given the paucity of these discussions elsewhere. But, in fact,<br />
there are rich resources in the Confucian tradition as well.”<br />
In his book Angle hopes to demonstrate that the tenets<br />
of Confucianism—virtue, family, and sincerity—have a great<br />
deal to offer to the contemporary philosophical conversation<br />
about how we should live our lives. The result could be a 21st<br />
century in which we pay more attention to good behavior<br />
and less to vanity; choose to spend more time with our families<br />
and less at work; and value altruism over celebrity and<br />
power. On the surface, the Golden Rule might seem trite<br />
and simplistic. Applied to everyday situations, however, its<br />
broader applications become clearer. Give to those who are<br />
less fortunate. Respect and value all members of your family.<br />
Listen and respond to others with the same care and thought<br />
you’d expect from them. The result could be happier families<br />
and neighborhoods, political campaigns that focus on<br />
important civic matters rather than scandals, and a global<br />
conversation about cultural differences rather than fear, terrorism,<br />
and warmongering.<br />
—Kelly Spencer<br />
19
FOOD WEBS OF THE PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE<br />
From Static Community Description to Predictive Tool<br />
by Daniel Reuman
From Darwin’s observations about simple food chains to today’s<br />
more complex predation matrices, the study of food webs is evolving<br />
to the point where scientists may soon be able to predict and manipulate<br />
the effects of ecological disturbances such as global warming<br />
and species extinction. Daniel Reuman, a research associate in the<br />
Population Laboratory at The Rockefeller University, visited the<br />
College in October to talk about the history and potential of food web<br />
research as part of the Frontiers in Science Lecture Series.<br />
The concept of food webs goes back to Charles Darwin and<br />
his voyage on the Beagle. One of the first places he stopped<br />
was St. Paul’s Rocks, off the coast of Brazil. In narrative<br />
form, Darwin noted the species he found there and what<br />
“Corresponding to average external conditions” means that<br />
you’re not going to find polar bears in Brazil. “Subject to<br />
reciprocal influences” says that each of these species interacts<br />
with each other, which is illustrated by the arrows in the<br />
directed graph. The fourth part says that you can’t take any<br />
old collection of species, toss them into a tank, and call it an<br />
ecological community—unless they persist.<br />
The directed graph is one type of mathematical encapsulation<br />
of a food web. Another is the predation matrix, which<br />
was introduced in the late 1800s. In a predation matrix, you<br />
first list all of the species in your system. Let’s say you have<br />
salmon, anchovies, zooplankton (floating or weakly swimming<br />
animals), and phytoplankton (microscopic plants). You then<br />
make a four-by-four table, put the name of each species on<br />
“Ecological research will become increasingly driven by the desire<br />
to predict outcomes and manipulate systems. The reason is that humans<br />
are taking over more and more of the Earth, and they’re placing greater<br />
demands on ecosystems. It will have to happen so that we can<br />
learn how to protect our resources.”<br />
each species ate. His account is descriptive, but it can be<br />
reformatted and mathematically analyzed using a directed<br />
graph. In this graph, nodes represent each species and arrows<br />
indicate the flow from prey to predator. For example, one<br />
arrow might indicate that the spider eats the fly. This is an<br />
object you can analyze. If you had several of these objects<br />
from different ecosystems, you could compare them using<br />
math and statistics.<br />
Darwin recognized that his system was reasonably isolated,<br />
but he didn’t note the importance of that fact. That<br />
took another 30 years or so. In 1887, German ecologist Karl<br />
Mobius first defined the concept of an ecological community<br />
as “a group of living beings of which the numbers and types<br />
of species and individuals correspond to the average external<br />
conditions, which are subject to reciprocal influences and<br />
which maintain themselves permanently in a specified area<br />
by reproduction.” Let’s break that down. The “number and<br />
types of species” is the same as the nodes in a food web.<br />
each column and row, and put a “1” wherever one organism<br />
eats another. So a 1 might indicate that salmon eat anchovies<br />
and another 1 indicates that salmon eat salmon.<br />
In a quantitative predation matrix, you also list the<br />
amount that gets eaten. For instance, in my fictitious system,<br />
you note that salmon eat .01 kilograms per day of salmon and<br />
5 kilograms of anchovies; anchovies eat a lot of zooplankton<br />
and very little of their own kind, and zooplankton eat lots of<br />
phytoplankton. As a rule of thumb, when an organism eats, it<br />
converts one-tenth of the mass that it eats into its own body<br />
mass or its own reproduction. So, if zooplankton eat 660 kilograms<br />
per day of phytoplankton, roughly 10 percent of that is<br />
eaten by anchovies, and so on.<br />
To this point, the food webs described have been static<br />
snapshots. Darwin didn’t stick around St. Paul’s Rocks to find<br />
out whether one bird species is more abundant at a certain<br />
time of year. And that brings us to the dynamics of food webs,<br />
how species populations fluctuate over time in an interrelated<br />
21
Daniel Reuman<br />
way. This kind of analysis requires additional data. We’ve<br />
talked about whether a species is present or not in a food web,<br />
but not about its abundance. And unless you have that data,<br />
you can’t talk about how abundance changes over time.<br />
In the 1920s, Alfred Lotka and Vito Volterra wrote equations<br />
for the dynamics of food webs. The best way to illustrate<br />
The hare population crashes. And then the lynx population<br />
starts to crash, because the hare are becoming less abundant.<br />
Once the lynx population crashes, the predation pressure on<br />
the hare clears up and the hare thrive. This cycle repeats every<br />
nine to 10 years. The Lotka-Volterra equations model this;<br />
they predict how it works.<br />
There are some problems with the equations, primarily<br />
because things are rarely as simple as this example. But Darwin<br />
said mathematics endows one with something like a sixth<br />
sense, and now that we have a mathematical formalism for<br />
talking about food webs, maybe we can make use of that sixth<br />
sense. We want to look for structural features that are common<br />
to all or many food webs.<br />
It turns out that the proportions of top species (no predators),<br />
intermediate species (predators and prey), and basal<br />
species (no prey) in a food web are, on average, independent<br />
of the number of species. If you look at a food web with many<br />
species, it has some proportion of top predators. And if you<br />
look at a food web with a few species, it has about the same<br />
proportion. This is important. Consider that the world’s<br />
oceans are being fished at an alarming rate. Typically, the<br />
species of fish captured for human consumption are top predators<br />
such as salmon and tuna. If we reduce the number of<br />
organisms—and potentially even the number of species—at<br />
“Darwin said mathematics endows one with something like a sixth sense.<br />
Now that we have a mathmatical formalism for talking about food webs,<br />
we need to make use of that sixth sense.”<br />
these equations is with the famous example of the Canadian<br />
lynx and the snowshoe hare. In this simple real food web, the<br />
hare eat the plants and the lynx eat the hare. The Hudson Bay<br />
Company, which sold the furs of these animals, kept track of<br />
how many of each were trapped over a 100-year period. If you<br />
make a graph with the years on the X-axis and the abundance<br />
of hare and lynx on the Y-axis, you learn a number of interesting<br />
things. About 1862, the populations of both lynx and hare<br />
are low. Then the hare population goes high really fast. Soon<br />
the lynx population starts to rise. Then, once the lynx population<br />
gets pretty high, the hare population starts to drop. It’s<br />
because the burgeoning lynx population is eating them all.<br />
the top of the ocean food web, it might lead to consequences<br />
where the whole web is modified to bring the proportion<br />
back into play. One way might be through the extinctions<br />
of smaller organisms.<br />
It also turns out that the number of trophic links (links<br />
away from the base food producer) is proportional to the<br />
number of species. A big food web has a certain number<br />
of predator-predator relationships. A smaller web has a<br />
smaller number, and the relationship is linear. You can predict,<br />
based on the number of species, approximately how<br />
many predator-prey interactions there are going to be in a<br />
community.<br />
22
Scientists want to understand how interacting populations<br />
in a food web change over time in order to understand<br />
the effects of such ecological disturbances as species invasion<br />
or global warming. If you add a new species to the system,<br />
what’s going to happen? If you’ve got a lake where a fish dies<br />
off for some reason, what are the cascading effects? There are<br />
about 50,000 non-native species in the United States, and<br />
the cost of managing these invasive species is estimated at<br />
$137 billion per year. How do we predict what will invade<br />
successfully? How do we control invaders more easily?<br />
To date, much of the work done with food web dynamics<br />
has been theoretical. However, several recent improvements<br />
are going to help bring dynamics closer to reality, in my<br />
opinion. The abundance web is one. There is also a food web<br />
that includes average population density and average body<br />
mass of each species. If you know the distribution of body<br />
masses for each species, then you have a chance of modeling<br />
that a particular species will switch prey as it gets bigger.<br />
The addition of stoichiometric data might also make<br />
food web dynamics more plausible. Every organism has a<br />
characteristic ratio of carbon to nitrogen to phosphorus. It<br />
turns out that vertebrates have more phosphorus than invertebrates.<br />
I’m a vertebrate, so it may be that I seek out items<br />
with more phosphorus, in order to build my skeleton.<br />
I also think qualitative prediction will become possible<br />
in more complex cases than the lynx and hare, and that we<br />
will soon be able to say, “the population of this species will<br />
go down” or “this ecosystem will become more fragile if we<br />
do x, y, and z to it.” As humans take over more and more of<br />
the Earth, they’re placing greater demands on ecosystems,<br />
and I think research will become increasingly driven by the<br />
desire to predict outcomes and manipulate systems. We need<br />
to protect our resources.<br />
Daniel Reuman holds Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in mathematics<br />
from the University of Chicago and a B.A. from Harvard<br />
University. His research interests include applications of mathematics<br />
to ecology, epidemiology, and social policy analysis. He has<br />
taught at the University of Chicago and Harvard.<br />
23
NOT “EASY LISTENING”<br />
Mercedes Dujunco<br />
Raises Dissonant Issues<br />
About World Music<br />
“These are the days of miracle and wonder,” sang Paul Simon<br />
on Graceland, a 1986 album that introduced Western listeners<br />
to Ladysmith Black Mambazo, an ensemble of Zulu singers.<br />
Not least of those miracles and wonders is the fact that, for<br />
better or worse, the increased accessibility of sophisticated<br />
recording technology and the ineluctable pull of the global<br />
market have resulted in “world music,” the widespread dissemination<br />
of formerly localized or restricted musical fare.<br />
Even a quick skim of the listings for concert halls and clubs<br />
in any cosmopolitan city will reveal performances of Tuvan<br />
throat singing, Balinese gamelan, Cuban son, and Japanese<br />
Kodo drumming, as well as curious hybrids of every imaginable<br />
stripe—Celtic klezmer, Native American jazz, Russian<br />
reggae, and even, perhaps, Hawaiian oompah.<br />
So one could assume that students taking Mercedes<br />
Dujunco’s Introduction to World Music already have a fairly<br />
good grasp of the subject, yes?<br />
“They think they do,” says Dujunco, an ethnomusicologist<br />
and an associate professor of music at Bard. “A lot of<br />
things are passed off as ‘world music’; it’s essentially a marketing<br />
term. Much of what falls under its rubric is very<br />
diluted, or exoticized, or put on stage out of context, so that<br />
it can cross over to the mainstream and be made more palatable<br />
for Western audiences.<br />
“We cannot stop this commodification and appropriation<br />
of non-Western music,” she continues. “My job is to<br />
inform students of where the music came from, in what context<br />
it was played—so that, for instance, when they get their<br />
24
hands on sampling equipment, they’ll know what is ethical<br />
or not ethical to take and manipulate.”<br />
On a clear, crisp, September afternoon outside of Blum<br />
Hall, as the sweetly entwined voices of chamber singers further<br />
mingle with the raspier voices of late summer cicadas,<br />
Dujunco discusses myriad issues addressed by her introductory<br />
course, and by ethnomusicology in general.<br />
“Ethnomusicology is basically the study of music and<br />
its relationship to different aspects of culture,” she says,<br />
adding that the field can accommodate all forms of musical<br />
expression—everything from the warrior songs of the Maori<br />
to the sonatas of Mozart. “If I were to study Mozart from an<br />
ethnomusicological perspective, I would look at him in the<br />
social imagination, the perception of him and his music by a<br />
cross section of society. This would include an examination<br />
of which of his works are played, how often, in what way,<br />
and as part of what kind of events—a Mostly Mozart series,<br />
concerts in the park, or piped-in music in planes.” Such a<br />
study would proceed from the assumption that “Mozart’s<br />
music is not handed down wholesale through the ages, but<br />
selected and reinterpreted in order to resonate with presentday<br />
sensibilities.”<br />
In her world music class, however, Dujunco places the<br />
emphasis on non-Western musical styles, “because they get<br />
short-shrifted.”<br />
Born in the Philippines and trained as a classical pianist,<br />
Dujunco had her first revelation of cultural short-shrifting as<br />
an undergraduate. She took a class at the University of the<br />
Philippines with the pioneering ethnomusicologist José<br />
Maceda, and it opened her eyes, she says. “I thought, here we<br />
are, an Asian country, but we’re Americanized; I know nothing<br />
of my own traditions. It made me question the whole history<br />
of how I got to be playing Western music. . . . I began to<br />
realize that music doesn’t exist in a vacuum; it has a social and<br />
political context.”<br />
Her postgraduate studies at the Shanghai Conservatory<br />
of Music served to deepen her appreciation of non-Western<br />
musical traditions, particularly those of China, Vietnam, and<br />
the Chinese diaspora communities of Thailand. Eventually,<br />
she immersed herself in a form of Chinese string ensemble<br />
music called xian shi yue and became proficient on the zheng,<br />
a plucked board zither whose modern incarnation has 21 to 25<br />
silk strings. Bard students have had the chance to hear and<br />
play the zheng in Dujunco’s Chinese music ensemble workshop,<br />
along with other venerable instruments such as the di (a<br />
bamboo transverse flute), erhu (a two-stringed fiddle), and the<br />
pipa (a short-necked, pear-shaped plucked lute.<br />
Although most of these folk instruments can be traced<br />
back to antiquity—the zheng, for instance, dates to the Qin<br />
Dynasty, circa 221 B.C.E.—how they have been played, and even<br />
whether they may be played, has often been influenced by extramusical<br />
considerations and circumstances. As Dujunco noted<br />
in her Ph.D. dissertation, the Chinese government banned the<br />
playing of xian shi yue from 1949 through most of the 1970s,<br />
deeming it to be “feudal” or “counter-revolutionary.” It’s precisely<br />
this sort of context that students acquire in Dujunco’s<br />
classes, along with an increased awareness of the thorny questions<br />
involving music and identity politics, music and cultural<br />
difference, and music and its commercial exploitation.<br />
A particularly ticklish area is the secular use, by outsiders,<br />
of sacred music. Examples of such misrepresentation<br />
are depressingly plentiful. “I remember a student of mine<br />
who wanted to sample Qur’anic chant and incorporate it in<br />
her remix CD,” says Dujunco, with a wry smile. “There’s also<br />
the case of Sister Drum, an album by the Chinese composer<br />
He Xuntian, the tracks of which include a sampling of<br />
Tibetan chant. This is a particularly egregious act of cultural<br />
appropriation, given the larger context of the lopsided nature<br />
of Chinese-Tibetan ethnic relations.”<br />
The only effective way to countervail such tendencies<br />
is to educate listeners—and not merely in the classroom.<br />
“Performances should always be accompanied by symposia,”<br />
she says. “Recordings should contain detailed liner notes,<br />
such as those provided by the Smithsonian reissues. Even<br />
with museums, there’s this tendency to pick the most exotic<br />
elements of a culture and package them, so you don’t get to<br />
see the broad spectrum of what goes on.” One thing that<br />
would help, she says, would be for cultural venues to present<br />
a variety of little-known performers in addition to the same<br />
two or three “superstars” who have been designated, whether<br />
they like it or not, to represent a whole culture.<br />
Ultimately, what Dujunco seeks to impart to her students<br />
is that there’s a whole world of musical expression out there that<br />
is distinct from our own, and if we approach it respectfully, with<br />
open ears and an open mind, it will enrich us.<br />
“Music is a gateway to understanding other cultures,” she<br />
says. “I want students to be able to talk about a musical culture<br />
other than their own intelligently, on its own terms—to take<br />
into consideration how people in that culture think about their<br />
own music, rather than imposing our own values on it, and to<br />
be able to share that with the people they know. I want them<br />
to develop a very cosmopolitan tolerance for music that they<br />
may not even like, but can appreciate for its own merits.”<br />
—Mikhail Horowitz<br />
25
SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, AND SOCIETY<br />
Furthering Cross-pollination among Academic Fields<br />
What are the possible social consequences of genetic<br />
research? How do emerging technologies shape the way elections<br />
are run? How have technological advances changed the<br />
definition of human rights? These and other questions reflect<br />
our increasing concern about the interrelation of scientific<br />
and technological systems with social and political life.<br />
Addressing the conversation from an academic perspective is<br />
Bard’s new Science, Technology, and Society (STS) Program.<br />
STS provides a foundation in the fields needed to study<br />
this interdisciplinary subject in conjunction with a primary<br />
divisional program. The program allows for study in a number<br />
of areas that span the academic divisions—such as nonfiction<br />
science writing, film and electronic arts, or developmental economics<br />
and technology—and promotes scholarship that confronts<br />
the key issues raised by contemporary science and<br />
technology.<br />
Students in STS follow, in conjunction with their primary<br />
program requirements, a challenging curriculum that includes<br />
one two-course sequence in a basic science (biology, chemistry,<br />
computer science, or physics) and two additional courses in the<br />
Division of Science, Mathematics, and Computing; two STS<br />
core courses, along with two more STS cross-listed courses;<br />
and one methodology course, usually in policy analysis or statistics.<br />
Starting this spring, STS offers paired science and technology<br />
courses that are linked by a common theme and<br />
anchored by an introductory science class: for example, an<br />
introductory course in epidemiology paired with a course in the<br />
history or anthropology of disease.<br />
The idea behind the paired courses, according to Gregory<br />
Moynahan, assistant professor of history and codirector of the<br />
STS Program, is “to create an immediate logic of why science<br />
is in society and society is in science. Our vision is not to<br />
reduce a subject to a very specific subfield, but rather to show<br />
all the ways in which a topic like epidemiology or biology<br />
opens out into these other issues. For example, a Biology<br />
Program course in epidemiology might pair with a course in<br />
26
the history and anthropology of disease. Science students start<br />
thinking about public health, for example, and history students<br />
start thinking about how we have come to understand<br />
the biology of disease.”<br />
Another goal of STS is to create a bridge between those<br />
who have not studied or taught science at Bard and those who<br />
have. An unexpected outcome of the success of the College’s<br />
Science Initiative is that this gap has become clearer. “I don’t<br />
want to say ‘Balkanized,’ necessarily, but it’s been hard for students<br />
in the other divisions to find a point of entry,” says<br />
Jacqueline Goss, assistant professor of film and electronic arts.<br />
“In some ways the science division has been the last frontier.<br />
We’d like the STS Program to be a bridge that helps students<br />
from the sciences come to our divisions, and vice versa.”<br />
Both Moynahan and Goss feel that Bard’s relatively small<br />
population makes STS more viable than it might be at a larger<br />
school. “At a small place like Bard we can work to create connections<br />
between the sciences and the social sciences in a way<br />
that our society as a whole hasn’t,” says Moynahan. “That<br />
becomes a productive aspect of the program; a small community<br />
can become a model that can’t be developed at a larger<br />
place.” Adds Goss, “At engineering schools, and at places like<br />
M.I.T. and R.P.I., the STS programs are like little cells inside<br />
much larger organisms. At Bard, STS can take on a much bigger<br />
role and have a larger function.”<br />
In the <strong>2006</strong>–07 academic year, Noga Arikha, a visiting<br />
assistant professor in First-Year Seminar, will teach an STS<br />
course titled History of Medicine and Psychiatry in the<br />
West. “Liberal arts colleges are places where the humanities<br />
need to be practiced rather than just preached,” says Arikha.<br />
“Because we’re living in a world where science rules a lot of<br />
our lives, it’s the responsibility of a liberal arts college to<br />
actually try to under- stand where we are in regard to science.<br />
We need to take stock of where we are; we need to find<br />
the tools and concepts to understand how to ask the right<br />
questions regarding the relationship between humanity,<br />
ethics, and the sciences. A lot of people talk about interdisciplinary<br />
curricula, but few practice it. A liberal arts college<br />
like Bard, where there’s also a lot of free spirit, is the kind of<br />
place where good things like STS happen.”<br />
Moynahan echoes Arikha’s description of Bard’s curriculum—his<br />
term is “classic”—when he differentiates the STS<br />
Program from those at other schools. “What’s different about<br />
our program, and our curriculum, is that it’s more rigorous in<br />
terms of requirements,” he says. “This is in keeping with the<br />
classic curriculum that Bard emphasizes: students need to<br />
Left to right: Noga Arikha, Gregory Moynahan, and Jacqueline Goss<br />
learn a field, and a methodology, well. Precisely because Bard<br />
is so tightly knit, it’s a new way of creating a dynamism on<br />
campus around thinking about science.”<br />
STS students came to the program from various disciplines<br />
and backgrounds, as is the case with their peers in other<br />
programs. Some had considered double majors; others became<br />
interested in a new subject and conveniently learned of STS<br />
at the same time. “STS attracted me because it allows me to<br />
formally extend my study of the social and political consequences<br />
of scientific knowledge and practice that the traditional<br />
Biology Program doesn’t officially promote,” says Parris<br />
Humphrey ’06, who is concentrating in STS and biology.<br />
Humphrey’s post-Bard plans include pursuing a degree in<br />
medicine as well as a master’s degree in public health. Tenzin<br />
Lama ’07, who is studying history along with STS, came to<br />
the program from another direction. “During a year away from<br />
Bard, I took a class at the New School in New York City entitled<br />
Science and Empire,” she explains. “The class was very<br />
enlightening, an interesting synthesis of science, history, and<br />
politics. Looking through the Fall ’05 course list when I came<br />
back to Bard, I saw that similar classes were on offer. STS is a<br />
very useful addition to Bard’s academic programs. Now students<br />
can take classes that combine technical and theoretical<br />
knowledge in a meaningful way.”<br />
Possible future STS offerings include a chemistry<br />
course linked with a history course on the second industrial<br />
revolution in Germany; a course on the social science issues<br />
involved in simulation and modeling in computer science;<br />
and a course that studies how mechanism in the 18th century<br />
can be studied to help us understand our own problems<br />
with technology. Moynahan seems to be confident that STS<br />
has a long future ahead of it; he cites several on-campus projects<br />
as evidence that applied science is alive and well at Bard.<br />
“Students are putting biodiesel into buses, for example, and<br />
they’re making their own radio transmitters,” she says. “Bard<br />
students are singular in that, when they’re interested in the<br />
material, they’re willing to do the extra work—even outside<br />
of their regular course work. At other colleges where I’ve<br />
taught, students were just focused on whatever got them<br />
good grades. What’s exciting about Bard is the community<br />
aspect and the freedom that students have to become energized<br />
about projects like these. I feel that the STS Program<br />
has enormous potential here.”<br />
—Kelly Spencer<br />
27
TO BEAR WITNESS<br />
MEDICAL RELIEF IN KASHMIR<br />
by Charles Berkowitz ’02<br />
Who knows but that hereafter some traveler like myself will sit down upon the banks of the Seine, the Thames, or the Zuyder Zee, where<br />
now, in the tumult of enjoyment, the heart and the eyes are too slow to take in the multitude of sensations? Who knows but he will sit<br />
down solitary amid silent ruins, and weep for a people inurned and their greatness changed into an empty name?<br />
—from Ruins, by Constantin François de Chassebeouf de Volney<br />
28
Walking through the village of Chinari is one of the saddest<br />
things I have ever witnessed. The faces who look upon us are<br />
of those of a people desolate of any splendor, eyes hollowed and<br />
darkened like the shadows cast from some ancient ruin. They<br />
surround us, these dark eyes, as our mule train halts, unable to<br />
traverse the monumental collapse of cars, buildings, and people.<br />
Reputed to have been a delicate jewel of the Jhelum Valley,<br />
infused by emerald orchards of chinar, almond, walnut, and saffron,<br />
Chinari is now a sepulcher for several hundred inhabitants<br />
who perished in the 7.6 magnitude earthquake that<br />
rocked Northern Pakistan on the morning of October 8, 2005.<br />
Located approximately 35 miles southeast of Muzaffarabad,<br />
Chinari is an incruent necrotic wound, representative of so<br />
many other nameless Kashmiri villages and towns demolished<br />
by pancaked concrete roofs and rebar. The damage and<br />
destruction are unimaginable and the smell of death lingers<br />
in every breath. Perhaps you have heard of Chinari or seen<br />
photos in news reports. It has risen to world recognition not<br />
from the sheer devastation it has endured, but from the fact<br />
that 200 of the several hundred casualties amassed in this<br />
tiny village are children, many whom remained trapped<br />
under the debris of fallen school buildings. As our medical<br />
team walks across the large slabs of fallen concrete, I notice<br />
an elbow and a small hand jutting from the wreckage, speckled<br />
white with dust. It is a gaunt angular visage, indicative of<br />
the passing of several generations of Kashmiris and<br />
Pakistanis in just 30 seconds. This is the last place I’d ever<br />
expect myself to be: in the middle of what has been called<br />
“the most dangerous place on earth.”<br />
Our work here is not with the dead. Scattered reports tell<br />
of hundreds of thousands of people severely injured by the<br />
quake and many more in need of immediate medical care. Our<br />
group is an unlikely one in this region of the world—a volunteer<br />
outfit of 10 New York City paramedics and a medical<br />
doctor. Combined we have more than 150 years of emergency<br />
medical experience between us, earned on the streets and hospitals<br />
of Seattle, California, Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the<br />
Bronx. As paramedics we are the products of the nation’s<br />
fledgling third service—EMS (Emergency Medical Services),<br />
mobile nurses trained to encounter any emergency life or God<br />
or whatever you want to call it can throw at us. Our specialty<br />
is triage; recognition and immediate treatment of the sick and<br />
dying. Yet, for the most part, the job remains unseen, save by<br />
the few souls involved, and it repeats itself often into some distant<br />
obscurity. Over time it becomes difficult to remember the<br />
people you treat, and only once in a while do you recall with<br />
clarity the blurry faces you pass by like those from some faded<br />
sepia photograph.<br />
Over the past few weeks, prior to our departure, we had<br />
read situation reports of the earthquake, watching it slowly<br />
fade from the front page news of the New York Times and<br />
subsequently from the American consciousness. Casualties<br />
mounted—first 1,500, then 3,000, 20,000, and then exponentially<br />
upwards. World Health Organization e-mails began<br />
circulating within our circle of friends, citing an immediate<br />
need for doctors and paramedical personnel to Pakistan. Aid<br />
trickled into Islamabad from several countries, but even two<br />
weeks after the initial quake, few organizations were on the<br />
ground and even fewer resources were available to ferry<br />
essential supplies to villages scattered throughout the mountains.<br />
Kashmir was an active war zone marred by isolated<br />
conflicts along the Line of Control for the past half century,<br />
despite the India/Pakistan cease-fire several years before. In<br />
our usual fashion we persisted. The decision to go took me<br />
about four seconds to make.<br />
As we sit outside, listening to a Pakistani colonel give<br />
us a situation report, my eyes follow the occasional invalids<br />
being carried in makeshift stretchers down the dusty road.<br />
The rotors of an American MH-53E Sea Dragon solemnly<br />
Encountering the injured on the path to Noor Dijhia (above) and<br />
Survivors in Chikoti, Kashmir (left)<br />
29
echo in the distance, the helicopter having cast its cargo of<br />
China Aid tents and us onto a concrete pad. “We have little<br />
or no supplies with us apart from what the Afghans have<br />
brought,” the colonel continues. “This area has begun to clear<br />
out and as it is almost two weeks after this quake has hit,<br />
most people who are severely injured are dead. The Afghans<br />
are leaving tomorrow and it is likely you will have to take over<br />
for them. We still are receiving many patients a day and many<br />
more are descending from the mountains.”<br />
The colonel brings us to meet the Afghan team, which<br />
has been here in Sewan since the beginning. Their field hospital,<br />
which emits an ashen glow from a free-hanging fluorescent<br />
light, is one of complete dissonance. It is constructed<br />
around the rubble of a fallen hospital with an operating theater<br />
of several benches, various packets of gauze, rusting<br />
instruments, and a improvised curtain made from a patient<br />
gown stained brown—streaks of iodine from violent procedures.<br />
The pharmacy is absolutely chaotic, with medications<br />
from all over the world strewn about along collapsing beds<br />
and concrete slabs. Yet the Afghans operate with precision<br />
and brutal capability.<br />
A patient enters, her upper leg a festering aggregation of<br />
smashed muscle and flesh, the anterior shaft of the femur<br />
plainly exposed. Several of the men hold the down the girl as a<br />
physician clears the bilateral cavities around the bone of debris<br />
with his two index fingers.Tears stream from the patient’s face,<br />
her body winces in spasms from the pain, but she makes no<br />
sound. The wound is packed with gauze and bandaged in less<br />
than five minutes. Dispatched several days after the quake, the<br />
team has been operating out of war-torn Kabul for more than<br />
35 years. Over dinner, Ahmad, a medic wearing a jacket bearing<br />
a “Kabul Ambulance Corps” patch, briefs me on the first<br />
days of the recovery. “We saw hundreds and hundreds of people,”<br />
he relates. “They sat along the road, lined up as far as we<br />
could see. Many people died. Many people lost limbs. I have<br />
not witnessed such suffering in many years.” I look down at the<br />
ground of the hospital and cannot imagine the sheer trauma<br />
endured here during the first few days after the quake. The<br />
thoughts of it are simply overwhelming.<br />
We are in the depths of Azad Kashmir, four miles from<br />
the Line of Control. Travel through this area reveals our<br />
worst fears—absolute destruction of every building with<br />
nearly half of the population dead.<br />
Walking farther up the Jhelum Valley, I cannot help but<br />
remember a passage from Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness”—<br />
“as if Nature herself had tried to ward off intruders; in and<br />
30<br />
out of rivers, streams of death in life, whose banks were rotting<br />
into mud . . . writhe at us in the extremity of an impotent<br />
despair.” The road is plagued by continuous landslides of<br />
boulders the size of buses and the miasma of decomposition<br />
looms around every corner in thick veils of stagnancy.<br />
Five of us have moved on from our initial clinic to the village<br />
of Kathai, a Pakistani army forward artillery base. Our<br />
treatment area is flanked by two 130mm artillery guns pointed<br />
across the Line of Control into India. The Pakistani army has<br />
been nothing short of remarkable in its efforts to recover what<br />
has been left of this region. They are beside usat every<br />
moment, integral to our efforts by helping with Urdu translation,<br />
supplies, water, and food. Our relationships with them<br />
have taken on a fascinating candor, tinged with childhood<br />
innocence and inquisitiveness. We know them by name—<br />
Salat, Arfan, Boota, Major Zubair, Arshad, Farooq—and they<br />
tell us of their families and their lives here in Kashmir. We<br />
watch them pray five times a day during this time of<br />
Ramadan, bowing in the direction of Mecca and obeying the<br />
daily fast until the sun sets quietly behind the mountains.<br />
The wounded begin to gather again. Silent throngs of<br />
destitute villagers gather along the periphery of our hospital to<br />
bear witness to the sick and injured. They stand fixated,<br />
watching like the chorus of some ancient Greek tragedy.<br />
Together our team begins to see 200 patients a day, from 6<br />
a.m. until sunset. Forty percent of our patients are children.<br />
Two areas are set up, one for medial ailments and the other for<br />
trauma. The vast amount of injuries seen here are traumatic—<br />
fractures, gangrene, deep lacerations, ulcerations, abscesses,<br />
soft tissue, and penetrating trauma—wounds left uncared for<br />
nearly two and a half weeks. To make matters worse, nearly all<br />
the wounds are rife with severe infection. The result is that<br />
without proper medical attention, many people will end up<br />
dying from complications brought on by minor injuries.<br />
A woman is brought to me on a bed, carried by five men<br />
over six miles of nearly impassable terrain. Her legs have<br />
been crushed by falling concrete and now the wounds on her<br />
lower legs have become thick with necrosis. She looks to be<br />
in her mid 20s and we exchange a smile. She blushes, hiding<br />
her face in a saffron scarf. I take a quick history from her<br />
through an interpreter, make sure her vital signs (pulse, respiration,<br />
blood pressure) are stable, and insert an IV into her<br />
vein. After exploring the wounds, I consult with our medical<br />
doctor and we decide her treatment. The legs are thoroughly<br />
cleansed with an antiseptic solution of iodine, sterile water,<br />
and hydrogen peroxide. I administer pain medication into<br />
New York City medics with an Afghan medical team, Sawanj, Kashmir.<br />
Charles Berkowitz is seated in the foreground (second from right), with<br />
photographer Phil Suarez to his left.
the IV and begin the injection of local anesthetic around the<br />
wound borders.<br />
When the woman looks adequately sedated I begin the<br />
process of debridement, surgical removal of debris and devitalized<br />
tissue. The pale white mucilage of infection seeps<br />
with the slightest pressure as the scalpel scrapes away at the<br />
white layers of fibrinous exudate and dead material. Layers<br />
of granulated tissue slowly appear and the wound takes on a<br />
healthy pink tone, raw and bleeding. The area is then soaked<br />
in Bacitracin antibiotic, covered with sterile petroleum gauze,<br />
wrapped with a dressing, and the patient is prescribed Cipro<br />
antibiotic. I can tell the procedure has been extremely painful<br />
to the young woman and I try to help her move back to the<br />
bed. But then a remarkable thing happens. Aided by another<br />
man, she stands up and proceeds to walk back to her village.<br />
Days later, as I am suturing up the foot of a little girl, she<br />
taps me on my shoulder. Through an interpreter she tells me,<br />
“You have given my legs back to me.” I undress the wound.<br />
Still raw, it is free from infection.<br />
As we fly over the village of Chinari for the last time, the<br />
blades of the Huey whipping the air violently above, I see the<br />
white canvas of a large International Red Cross Hospital in the<br />
distance. Huge tent cities have since sprung up, some made out<br />
of billboards advertising Nestlé and shampoo into the cosmos.<br />
My mind drifts to the events of the past 10 days and to the<br />
people we have met. I remember small things: wiping tears off<br />
a face, holding a child’s hand, playing walnut soccer with the<br />
soldiers. Neither Kashmir nor Islam are unknowns anymore—<br />
they are imbued with beauty, heartfelt relationships, faces,<br />
and names. What remains of this experience is a deeply profound<br />
realization that, as human beings, we are remarkably<br />
alike despite our differing cultures and geography. Perhaps it<br />
is the reason we came to this land in the first place, and perhaps<br />
it is the reason for my plans to return in the spring to see<br />
my friends once again. Back to Pakistan, the country of the<br />
pure—back to my beloved Kashmir.<br />
Editor’s Note: For more information about Charles Berkowitz and<br />
his volunteer group of paramedics, visit www.nycmedic.org.
HOLIDAY PARTY 2005<br />
32
Neither an ice storm nor a threatened transit strike<br />
deterred revelers from the Bard–St. Stephen’s Alumni/ae<br />
Association’s annual Holiday Party, which took place on<br />
December 16 at the National Arts Club on Grammercy<br />
Park in Manhattan. Six decades of <strong>Bardian</strong>s—from the<br />
Class of 1940’s Richard Koch and Benedict Seidman on<br />
through Third Millennium graduates—were present and<br />
accounted for in the club’s Grand Gallery, along with<br />
President Leon Botstein, Justus Rosenberg, Burton Brody,<br />
Peter Sourian, and other faculty and staff members. The<br />
jubilance continued at an excellent “after party” at Link,<br />
organized by the Young Alumni/ae Committee.<br />
3333
B O O K S B Y B A R D I A N S<br />
God’s Whisper<br />
by Dennis Barone ’77<br />
SPUYTEN DUYVIL<br />
The narrator of this small book is Heather, a journalist writing about an almost-famous Italian<br />
runner named Renzi and about what long-distance running means to him: it is “how he praises<br />
God.”The novel includes a bizarre scene involving out-of-shape tag-sale shoppers in a melee with<br />
runners during a race. Dennis Barone teaches English at St. Joseph College in West Hartford,<br />
Connecticut.<br />
Fig<br />
by Caroline Bergvall<br />
SALT PUBLISHING<br />
Many of the pieces in this eclectic volume were written by invitation or in response to an occasion:<br />
“16 Flowers” is a group of one-liners to accompany a CD-ROM about flower motifs in<br />
Proust and Genet; “More Pets,” written for an arts journal, consists of repetitive but changing<br />
lines as “a game of domino . . . developed using visual elements, small connecting signs.” The sections<br />
are visually challenging and mentally invigorating. Caroline Bergvall cochairs the writing<br />
faculty at the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts.<br />
The Young Widow<br />
by Cassandra Chan ’78<br />
ST. MARTIN’S MINOTAUR<br />
Jack Gibbons, a Scotland Yard detective sergeant, tracks down cases with the help of his best<br />
friend, the rich and charismatic Phillip Bethancourt. Jack’s latest case, on which Phillip tags<br />
along, involves the poisoning death of Geoffrey Berowne, a biscuit magnate, at his Surrey<br />
estate. Berowne’s young wife is the prime suspect; Phillip is afraid Jack’s judgment could be<br />
clouded by the widow’s charms. This book, Cassandra Chan’s first novel, is a contemporary<br />
homage to classic English mystery writers. Chan lives in Port St. Lucie, Florida.<br />
Mary Magdalene: A Biography<br />
by Bruce Chilton ’71<br />
DOUBLEDAY<br />
Mary Magdalene, Bruce Chilton argues, should be on the list of the creators of Christianity.<br />
Though references to women in the New Testament and other ancient Christian writings are<br />
fleeting, Chilton examines biblical and historical texts to shape his biography of the woman he<br />
says had “mastery of Jesus’ wisdom.” Chilton is Bernard Iddings Bell Professor of Philosophy<br />
and Religion and chaplain of the College.<br />
The Theory of Oz: Rediscovering the Aims of Education<br />
by Howard Good ’73<br />
ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD EDUCATION<br />
Howard Good starts his book by asking, “What defines someone as educated?” and proceeds to<br />
answer himself with the metaphor of the four companions who skip down the Yellow Brick Road<br />
in the famous Wizard of Oz movie and book. An educated person, contends this former school<br />
board president, needs what the Scarecrow, Tin Man, Lion, and Dorothy want: a brain, a heart,<br />
courage, and home. Mandatory testing, and even the structure of the classroom itself, does little<br />
to create a well-rounded student, argues Good, who suggests smaller schools and more individualized<br />
attention, among other solutions. Good is professor of journalism at SUNY New Paltz.<br />
34
The Bhopal Reader: Remembering Twenty Years of the World’s Worst<br />
Industrial Disaster<br />
edited by Bridget Hanna ’03, Ward Morehouse, and Satinath Sarangi<br />
THE APEX PRESS<br />
Shortly after midnight on December 3, 1984, a storage tank at a neglected Union Carbide pesticide<br />
factory in Bhopal, India, began leaking a toxic substance that instantly killed an estimated<br />
2,000 to 10,000 people. Up to 500,000 others were exposed to the cloud of poison gas. This<br />
collection, described as “a textbook for prevention and activism,” brings together first-person<br />
accounts of the catastrophe, reports of its aftermath, and examinations of how the disaster continues<br />
to shape the world.<br />
Adam Ferguson: His Social and Political Thought<br />
by David Kettler<br />
TRANSACTION PUBLISHERS<br />
First published in 1965, this comprehensive study of Adam Ferguson, the Scottish Enlightenment<br />
historian and philosopher, has been reissued with a new introduction and afterword. A contemporary<br />
of David Hume and Adam Smith, Ferguson is best known for An Essay on the History of<br />
Civil Society, which David Kettler, research professor of social studies, revisits, through his comments,<br />
in the context of present-day debates over the concept of civil society.<br />
Small Wars<br />
by An-My Lê<br />
APERTURE<br />
In this elegant volume, An-My Lê presents delicate yet bold black-and-white photographs of<br />
Vietnam and the Iraqi conflict—but not for real. She captures the worlds of reenactors, those<br />
often obsessed individuals who play out past conflicts (in this case, Vietnam, her native country,<br />
replayed in Virginia). She goes on to document training for the Iraqi war, which takes place<br />
in a California desert. The book includes an essay by Richard B. Woodward, former editor at<br />
large for DoubleTake magazine, and an interview of Lê by New Yorker staff writer Hilton Als.<br />
Lê is an assistant professor of photography.<br />
America’s Uncivil Wars: The Sixties Era from Elvis to the Fall of Richard Nixon<br />
by Mark Hamilton Lytle<br />
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS<br />
Bracketed between the birth of rock and roll and the resignation of a president, the period now<br />
known loosely as “the sixties” was one of profound changes and turmoil. Professor of history<br />
Mark Lytle begins his examination of the era with the mid 1950s: the fight against communism<br />
and the seeds of teen culture. He chooses a chronological, rather than a topical, approach<br />
to the cultural and political sights, sounds, and clashes of the period.<br />
Performing Israel’s Faith: Narrative and Law in Rabbinic Theology<br />
by Jacob Neusner<br />
BAYLOR UNIVERSITY PRESS<br />
The laws of conduct set forth in the Torah are an integral part of the religion of Judaism. In his<br />
latest book, Jacob Neusner shows, in practical terms, how Jewish theology expresses itself in law,<br />
and how law embodies theology in everyday conduct. He examines the doctrine of sin and<br />
atonement, and the doctrine of treatment of other nations, through theological definition of<br />
“right belief ” and details of the applicable law. Neusner is Research Professor of Religion and<br />
Theology and a Bard Center Fellow.<br />
35
The Program<br />
by Hal Niedzviecki MFA ’97<br />
RANDOM HOUSE CANADA<br />
The mores of a troubled Jewish American family are at the center of Hal Niedzviecki’s third<br />
novel, which begins when Maury Stern takes his young son Danny on a camping trip that ends<br />
in near disaster. Memories erupt: of Zionist summer camp, Maury’s brother Cal, and Cal’s disturbing<br />
relationship with Danny. As a young man, Danny escapes from reality by locking himself<br />
into a computer lab to write “The Program,” a computer code designed to meld irreconcilable past<br />
and present. Niedzviecki lives in Toronto.<br />
Alexander the Great: Selections from Arrian, Diodorus, Plutarch, and Quintus Curtius<br />
edited by James Romm<br />
HACKETT PUBLISHING COMPANY<br />
In recent years, Alexander has been portrayed as both an enlightened humanitarian and a<br />
bloodthirsty tyrant. Which is closer to the truth? What really motivated the man whose actions<br />
irrevocably changed a large part of the world? James Romm, James H. Ottaway Jr. Professor of<br />
Classics, uses selections from four ancient writers—Arrian, Diodorus, Plutarch, and Quintus<br />
Curtius—to provide a narrative of the highlights in Alexander’s life as well as those events in<br />
which his character is most at issue. Romm’s introduction and chapter notes provide historical<br />
context.<br />
Garbage Land: On the Secret Trail of Trash<br />
by Elizabeth Royte ’81<br />
LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY<br />
A recent study estimates that every American generates 1.3 tons of garbage a year, and Elizabeth<br />
Royte decided to find out where it goes. She started by measuring her own trash output—7<br />
pounds, 9 ounces in one day—and following the trash down the street in her Brooklyn neighborhood.<br />
The entertaining and educational volume goes on to discover the paths taken by “thrown<br />
out,” recycled, and composted garbage and suggests ways that the process will have to change.<br />
Flesh<br />
by Hollis Seamon (Rowan) ’83<br />
MEMENTO MORI MYSTERIES<br />
Graduate student Suzanne Brown, a.k.a. Suzanne LaFleshe, is the heroine of this tongue-incheek<br />
murder mystery about cannibalism, evil spirits, and academia (she imagines “All But<br />
Dissertation” written on her tombstone). As her name implies, LaFleshe is preoccupied with<br />
bodily pleasures. Several of her ex- and present lovers are among those who help her investigate<br />
the death of Sam Tindell, also her lover, who plummets to his death from the humanities building<br />
at the university where they both work. Seamon lives in Albany, New York.<br />
A Painter’s Path through the Catskill Mountains<br />
by Robert Selkowitz MFA ’84<br />
CATSKILL PRESS<br />
In his foreword to this book of Robert Selkowitz’s pastel landscapes, John Kleinhans, a photographer<br />
and chairman of the Woodstock Artists Association, says, “Selkowitz’s choice of pastel<br />
as the medium of these works is crucial to their vitality and vibrancy.” Selkowitz and art historian<br />
Wayne Lempka also add forewords to the book, which includes maps of the Catskill areas<br />
where the landscapes were painted. A member of Bard’s first MFA graduating class, Selkowitz<br />
lives in Ashokan, New York.<br />
36
Truth and the Heretic: Crises of Knowledge in Medieval French Literature<br />
by Karen Sullivan<br />
UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS<br />
In the European Middle Ages, Karen Sullivan points out, a heretic was an entirely imaginary<br />
concept: everyone knew heretics existed, but no member of the Christian majority admitted to<br />
being outside the fold. In any case, it was not easy to distinguish between those who believed<br />
ecclesiastical dictates and those who believed what they chose (“heresy” derives from the Greek<br />
for “choice”). Sullivan, associate professor of literature, examines the paradox of why literatures<br />
of the period celebrated the very characters who were denigrated by society at large.<br />
The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Plays: Inspired by Edgar Allan Poe<br />
by Lance Tait ’78<br />
ENFIELD PUBLISHING<br />
Though Edgar Allan Poe wrote only one play, which remained unfinished, theater was in his<br />
blood: his mother was a popular actress. His stories, with their dramatic tension and exquisite<br />
eye for detail, have been famously adapted to stage and screen. Lance Tait wrote these one-act<br />
plays, performed in Paris in 2002–03, based on well-known and lesser-known Poe classics. The<br />
volume concludes with an afterword by the author.<br />
Upcity Service(s)<br />
by Dominic Taylor<br />
BROADWAY PLAY PUBLISHING<br />
Dominic Taylor’s latest play involves intersections—of both the human and street variety—in<br />
Harlem, where Jacqueeda is trying to find money to attend the funeral of her mother’s<br />
boyfriend. She enlists the aid of her friend Poppy, who reads in the paper that Deacon<br />
Derricott, a local preacher whose Lincoln Continental sits onstage, has won millions in the lottery.<br />
The play’s action is supplemented by a Greek chorus of eight television sets. Taylor is visiting<br />
assistant professor of theater.<br />
Say “Saah”: A Bathtub Yoga Book<br />
by Kim Canazzi and Frolic Taylor ’70<br />
CONARI PRESS<br />
What could be more relaxing than combining the practice of yoga, that ancient physical and<br />
spiritual form of exercise, with a soak in a warm bath? Practicing simple yoga poses in the tub,<br />
along with breathing and visualization techniques, brings relaxation from stress and releases<br />
aches, the authors contend. Frolic Taylor is a yoga teacher, writer, and horse-farm owner in<br />
Cazenovia, New York.<br />
SEND US YOUR CDs!<br />
Beginning with the Fall <strong>2006</strong> <strong>Bardian</strong>, Books by <strong>Bardian</strong>s will be expanded to<br />
include CDs. Alumni/ae and faculty are invited to send their recent recordings to<br />
CDs by <strong>Bardian</strong>s, c/o Cynthia Werthamer, Publications Office, Bard College, PO<br />
Box 5000, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY 12504.<br />
37
O N A N D O F F C A M P U S<br />
Seminars Share Early College Techniques<br />
Time-tested methods for educating younger scholars were<br />
shared last summer as Simon’s Rock College of Bard inaugurated<br />
its Early College High School Teaching Seminar.<br />
Twenty-nine participants traveled from across the country to<br />
the Simon’s Rock campus in Great Barrington, Massachusetts,<br />
for an intensive four-day workshop in a new series of programs<br />
funded by a $156,000 grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates<br />
Foundation.<br />
The core of the seminar was observation of Writing and<br />
Thinking workshops (an approach to learning created by the<br />
Institute for Writing and Thinking at Bard College), followed<br />
by group discussions. Among the Simon’s Rock faculty leading<br />
the seminar was Joan DelPlato, who directs the Simon’s<br />
Rock Writing and Thinking Workshop for incoming students<br />
and teaches art history and women’s studies. Participants<br />
ranged from teachers of literacy to science educators, and from<br />
principals of inner city high schools to university administrators.<br />
They came from institutions as diverse as an early college<br />
high school on a tribal reservation in Washington State, a<br />
charter school in Salt Lake City, a college in Maryland, and<br />
traditional high schools in Philadelphia and Chicago.<br />
The program took advantage of having 145 first-year<br />
Simon’s Rock students on campus, along with a student<br />
group from Bard High School Early College (BHSEC)<br />
attending a workshop to prepare them to serve as mentors<br />
and tutors at their school.<br />
BHSEC faculty offered a panel on their experience in<br />
launching an early college high school in New York City,<br />
which demonstrated that the Simon’s Rock model could succeed<br />
in an urban setting. “This was the turning point in<br />
helping participants see the relevance of the Writing and<br />
Thinking work in their home schools,” says DelPlato, noting<br />
that several had set up new schools or were in the process of<br />
doing so.<br />
In addition to Simon’s Rock and BHSEC, program<br />
partners are Jobs for the Future in Boston and the University<br />
Park Campus School associated with Clark University in<br />
Worcester, Massachusetts.<br />
Some of the teachers from across the country who took part in the Early College High School Training Seminar at Simon’s Rock College of Bard last summer<br />
38
SEEN & HEARD<br />
SEPTEMBER<br />
Bruce Chilton, executive director of the Institute of<br />
Advanced Theology, and Bard’s Rabbi Lawrence Troster<br />
discussed religion and the environment during a luncheon<br />
lecture on September 14 at Bertelsmann Campus Center.<br />
Pianist Jeremy Denk, faculty member of The Bard College<br />
Conservatory of Music, performed Bach partitas at Olin<br />
Hall on September 14.<br />
The eminent American playwright Romulus Linney participated in a staged reading<br />
of Aristophanes’ The Clouds in the Sosnoff Theater in September. Part of the<br />
First-Year Seminar lecture series, the reading was directed by Peter J. Criswell ’89<br />
and featured three Bard professors—Daniel Berthold, William Mullen, and Kristin<br />
Scheible—and many students.<br />
Drucilla Cornell of Rutgers University gave the inaugural<br />
lecture in the “Constitutional Ideal” series on September 20<br />
at the Franklin W. Olin Humanities Building. The talk,<br />
titled “Dignity Jurisprudence in South Africa,” was sponsored<br />
by the Bard Prison Initiative, Human Rights Project,<br />
and Science, Technology, and Society Program.<br />
German artist Thomas Struth, known for bringing largescale<br />
color photography to the forefront of contemporary<br />
art, spoke at Olin Hall on September 21, in an event sponsored<br />
by the Photography Program.<br />
On September 21, the Middle East Studies Program presented<br />
a talk by Bradley Clough of American University in<br />
Cairo on “Teaching Comparative Religion in the<br />
Contemporary Middle East.”<br />
The Center for Curatorial Studies presented a conversation<br />
with Laura Hoptman, curator of the 2004 Carnegie<br />
International Exhibition, at the Avery Center theater on<br />
September 21.<br />
Radio station WXBC and Student Activities presented a<br />
concert by the Texas indie rock band Hundred Year Storm<br />
at Bertelsmann Campus Center on September 22.<br />
Bard celebrated the culture of the former Soviet republic<br />
of Georgia on September 24 with a dance performance by<br />
the Dancing Crane ensemble, a food and wine reception,<br />
and a panel discussion, “Georgia at a Crossroads.”<br />
John Barth, introduced by Bard professor Bradford Morrow as “the greatest postmodernist<br />
we have,” spoke on the art of fiction and gave a reading from his recent work in<br />
Olin Hall on October 4.The author of The Sot-Weed Factor, Giles Goat-Boy, and<br />
the National Book Award–winning Chimera joked that he was reading at “Barth<br />
College,” and treated a large audience to hefty sections of a novella, I’ve Been Told,<br />
and a work in progress about a “mediocre writer teaching at Stratford College in<br />
Pennsylvania,” where an annual literary prize known as “The Bard’s Petard” results<br />
only in misfortune for those who win it. “If language were poker, you wouldn’t want<br />
to play this guy,” said Morrow, whose course on contemporary fiction brought Barth<br />
to campus.<br />
Documentary filmmaker Avi Mograbi was on campus for<br />
a September 26 screening of Avenge But One of My Two<br />
Eyes, his provocative examination of the Israeli-Palestinian<br />
conflict that was shown at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.<br />
Jonathan Rosen, former arts editor of the Forward and<br />
author of the forthcoming novel Joy Comes in the Morning,<br />
gave a talk on “Writing, Without Shame, about Jews” on<br />
September 27 at Bertelsmann Campus Center.<br />
39
Miss Barich Retires after Six Decades at Bard<br />
On Monday, June 25, 1945, the day that Susan Barich began<br />
her tenure in Bard’s business office, Imperial General<br />
Headquarters in Tokyo announced the fall of Okinawa to<br />
the U.S. Marines. Harry Truman was in the White House,<br />
and it cost three cents to mail a letter, nine cents to purchase<br />
a loaf of bread, and less than a quarter for a gallon of gas.<br />
On November 17, 2005, the College held a retirement<br />
party for the woman fondly referred to as Miss Barich by<br />
three generation of <strong>Bardian</strong>s. For the record, it now costs 37<br />
cents to mail a letter, more than two bucks for a loaf of bread,<br />
and something approaching the GNP of Venezuela to fill up<br />
the car.<br />
Over that 60-year span, Miss Barich—who reportedly<br />
never took a vacation—was a rock of constancy at Bard, serving<br />
the College as assistant controller, controller, and business<br />
manager. And it was an “extraordinary” term of service, as<br />
Professor Peter Sourian recalled in a letter that was read at<br />
her retirement party: “Her civility, her intelligence, her<br />
implicit sympathy for us as individuals with individual needs,<br />
have represented the particular sense of community that we<br />
have always had at this place. I remember when she and Bill<br />
Asip virtually ran Bard with nothing but the help of a couple<br />
of secretaries. And then, she by herself. . . . She is a real factor<br />
in [Bard’s] survival and in [its] subsequent renaissance.”<br />
With her oversized sunglasses, chocolate-colored<br />
Cadillac, and tradition of stepping up to the plate in high<br />
heels at Bard’s annual Fourth of July softball game, Miss<br />
Barich cut a colorful figure on campus. But it will be her<br />
devotion to the College, and the standard of excellence that<br />
she upheld for six decades on the job, for which she will be<br />
remembered in years to come.<br />
Persi Diaconis, a mathematician, magician, and former MacArthur Fellow,<br />
gave the keynote address to the Northeast regional meeting of the American<br />
Mathematical Society in October. The two-day event was hosted by Bard and<br />
took place in Olin Hall.<br />
Students of The Bard College Conservatory of Music rehearse prior to a performance<br />
on November 16 at the Renee Weiler Concert Hall at Greenwich<br />
House Music School in Manhattan. The concert took place five days after a<br />
panel discussion at the school in which several key administrators and faculty<br />
of the Conservatory participated, including director Robert Martin, associate<br />
director Melvin Chen, and violinist and teacher Weigang Li, along with<br />
Conservatory student Wui Ming Gan. The student musicians pictured are<br />
(from left) Anja Boenicke, violin; Tian Zhou, violin; Emanuel Evans, cello;<br />
and Liyuan Liu, viola.<br />
Susan Barich speaking at her retirement party; Alice Stroup listens.<br />
40
The Center for Curatorial Studies’ Conversation Series<br />
continued on September 28 with curator Cuauhtémoc<br />
Medina, who discussed “When Faith Moves Mountains,”<br />
a project by artist Francis Alÿs.<br />
Printmaker Yuri Shtapakov (left) with two Smolny College students and Lisa<br />
Duva, Emily Kaufman, and Richard Gray, U.S. exchange students participating<br />
in the Bard-Smolny study abroad program<br />
Smolny Strengthens Art Curriculum<br />
Smolny College, a collaboration between Bard College and Saint<br />
Petersburg State University, is unique in Russia not only as a liberal<br />
arts institution, but also as the only study-abroad program that<br />
allows North American students to matriculate fully into general<br />
academic courses taught in Russian and English. Now in its eighth<br />
year, Smolny College enrolls more than 100 new students each year<br />
and hosts a growing number of international exchange students.<br />
Developments in Smolny’s art history and studio art courses<br />
offer a snapshot of the ways in which Russian and North American<br />
students learn side by side as the College establishes itself as an<br />
international liberal arts institution. Ivan Czeczot, a distinguished<br />
art historian, chairs the Art History and Architecture Program. He<br />
taught a course last semester on the German painter Philipp Otto<br />
Runge, using German-language texts as source material. Other art<br />
history faculty include Yekatirina Andreevna, a Russian art critic<br />
of international distinction, and Olesya Turkina, a curator of the<br />
Russian Museum, who is teaching The History and Theory of<br />
Video Art this spring.<br />
A new studio art course in printmaking is taught by Peter<br />
Bely and Yuri Shtapokov, St. Petersburg’s leading art printmakers.<br />
Two U.S. fine-art majors are among those taking the course,<br />
which is taught in Russian.<br />
Late Soviet Unofficial Art is taught in English by Stanislav<br />
Savitski, a renowned writer and critic. Seeking to construct a new<br />
understanding of Soviet culture while its art forms are still recent<br />
enough to be visible and tangible, Savitski draws a connection<br />
between early Soviet attempts to create a cultural perception of new<br />
ideology and developments in the arts of the late- and post-Soviet<br />
culture. Course materials include a variety of genres, such as conceptual<br />
and performance art pieces, film, memoirs, poetry, and critical<br />
works. By teaching in English, Savitski makes difficult concepts<br />
more accessible to international students still learning Russian,<br />
while he creates an additional challenge for the Russian students.<br />
Thanks to Nina Chesakov, an exchange student from Youngstown<br />
State University, for her contribution to this article.<br />
Wesleyan University classics professor Andrew Szegedy-<br />
Maszak gave a talk titled “Clear Light and Shining Ruins:<br />
19th-Century Travelers and Photographers in Athens” on<br />
September 29 at Preston Theater.<br />
OCTOBER<br />
Architectural historian Matthew A. Postal led a walking<br />
tour of Manhattan titled “More Than Tall: Ornament and<br />
Line in Midtown.” The October 1 event was presented by<br />
The Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative<br />
Arts, Design, and Culture (BGC).<br />
On October 3, Hossein Kamaly of Columbia University<br />
gave a talk, “From Island to Mainland: Varieties of<br />
Rationality,” as part of the First-Year Seminar lecture series.<br />
In conjunction with its exhibition Georg Jensen Jewelry,<br />
the BGC offered a series of lectures (October 5, 7, and 11)<br />
by leading experts in Scandinavian art and design at a variety<br />
of New York City locations. Topics included “Viking<br />
Silversmiths,” “Georg Jensen in America,” and “New<br />
Classicism and Danish Design in the 1920s: The<br />
Transition to Modernism.”<br />
The first lecture in the Technology, Technocracy, and<br />
Human Rights series, “Constructing Race, Defining<br />
Citizens: Racializing and Deracializing Immigrants in<br />
U.S. Federal Statistics, 1898–1913,” featured Levy<br />
Institute Research Professor Joel Perlmann and was held<br />
on October 6.<br />
Siddartha, an activist for cultural renewal in his native<br />
India, visited the College on October 12 to discuss<br />
“Culture and Sustainable Development in India.”<br />
Bard in China presented a lecture by art historian Midori<br />
Yoshimoto on October 14 at the Olin Language Center.<br />
The talk was titled “Into Performance: Japanese Women<br />
Artists in New York, 1955–75.”<br />
Folk music legend Richie Havens appeared at the Richard<br />
B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts on October 16<br />
in support of the second annual Walk for Opportunity, an<br />
event cosponsored by Bard to benefit the Hudson Valley<br />
Cerebral Palsy Association.<br />
41
Roots Rockers Raise Funds for<br />
Hurricane Relief<br />
The grizzled New Orleans roots rocker Dr. John and<br />
the celebrated vocalist and lyricist Natalie Merchant<br />
combined their considerable talents on December 3,<br />
when they performed a benefit concert to raise funds<br />
for the victims of hurricanes Katrina and Rita at the<br />
Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts.<br />
The audience, which packed the Sosnoff<br />
Theater, was treated to full sets by each of the pop<br />
luminaries (including a collaboration on two songs),<br />
as well as performances by such special guests as<br />
Fergus Bordewich, Michael Doucet, John Sebastian,<br />
Artie Traum, Roswell Rudd, and the River Road<br />
Ramblers, among other supporting players.<br />
The concert, titled “Build a Levee,” was the<br />
inspiration of the Hudson Valley Levee Board, an<br />
organization of area residents committed to keeping<br />
the Gulf Coast assistance effort on track. The board<br />
consists of Michael Pillot, a fourth-generation resident<br />
of New Orleans, and Paul Antonell, who were<br />
the concert’s coproducers; Terence Boylan ’70; and<br />
Kenneth Cooke, Georgia Dent, Kristine Hanson,<br />
and Deborah Macaluso.<br />
Dr. John and Natalie Merchant performing together at the Sosnoff Theater.<br />
Bard’s team emerged victorious in the 2005<br />
North Eastern Atlantic Conference Women’s<br />
Tennis Championship, which took place over<br />
two days in October at SUNY Purchase. Team<br />
members are (from left) Sarah Elia ’06, Ayesha<br />
Bari ’07, Kate Myers ’07, head coach Fred<br />
Feldman, Genya Shimkin ’08, Chelsea Herman<br />
’09, and Mary Magellan ’06, voted NEAC<br />
Player of the Year. The conference also honored<br />
Feldman (Coach of the Year) and named the<br />
Bard women its Team of the Year.<br />
42
Levy Institute Receives Grant from Smith<br />
Richardson Foundation<br />
The Levy Economics Institute of Bard College, a nonprofit, nonpartisan<br />
public policy research organization, has received a $50,000<br />
grant from the Smith Richardson Foundation in support of a project<br />
titled Government Spending on the Elderly.<br />
The project’s mission is first to explore the implications of an<br />
aging society for the economy and public policy. Policy makers,<br />
professional associations, and advocacy organizations will then be<br />
provided with new, crucial information as they explore options for<br />
the future financing of health and economic support programs for<br />
the aging.<br />
To this end, the Levy Institute is commissioning a series of<br />
papers that examine various aspects of the economics of aging,<br />
including prospects for aging and government spending, retirement<br />
security overall and for women in particular, progressivity of<br />
Social Security and Medicare, retirement behavior, the interaction<br />
between private and public provisioning of retiree benefits, and<br />
government expenditures and the well-being of the elderly.<br />
The papers will be reviewed at a workshop for feedback from<br />
others in the field and will then be presented at a conference and<br />
issued as working papers by the Levy Institute. A summary of the<br />
conference proceedings will be disseminated to members and<br />
staff of Congressional committees, federal and state officials, the<br />
academic community, and the media.<br />
The First-Year Seminar presented the lecture “Science<br />
and Religion in the Age of Galileo and Descartes” by Alice<br />
Stroup, professor of history at Bard, at the Richard B.<br />
Fisher Center for the Performing Arts on October 17.<br />
A panel discussion on the sacred landscapes of Tibet was<br />
held on October 19 at the Olin Language Center. Hosted<br />
by Bard in China, the panel featured Li-Hua Ying, associate<br />
professor of Chinese at Bard, and Christopher Reed<br />
Coggins, associate professor of geography and Asian studies<br />
at Simon’s Rock College of Bard.<br />
The Bard Orchestra and the Erica Lindsay/Sumi<br />
Tonooka Quartet performed a program of classical music<br />
and jazz at Olin Hall on October 19.<br />
The Bard Center for Environmental Policy presented an<br />
open forum, “The Origins of Amnesty International and<br />
the Human Rights Movement in the United States: A<br />
Dialogue with the Founders,” on October 20 at Bertelsmann<br />
Campus Center.<br />
Folk festival headliner Tracy Grammer, called “a brilliant<br />
artist” by Joan Baez, performed at Down the Road Café on<br />
October 20.<br />
Also on October 20, Jessica Feldman, professor at the<br />
University of Virginia, delivered a lecture on John Ruskin<br />
and the rise of modernism.<br />
The Human Rights Project, Bard chaplaincy, and Christian<br />
Student Fellowship presented a talk by G. Simon Harak,<br />
cofounder of Voices in the Wilderness, on October 20.<br />
Harak’s organization has brought medicine and toys into<br />
Iraq in defiance of U.S. sanctions.<br />
A panel of journalists who covered the Yugoslav wars—<br />
Roger Cohen of the New York Times; Emma Daly, then of<br />
the Independent of London; Newsday’s Roy Gutman; David<br />
Rieff, author of Slaughterhouse: Bosnia and the Failure of the<br />
West; Stacy Sullivan, then of Newsweek, and Ed Vulliamy,<br />
of the Guardian—gathered at Bard Hall in New York City<br />
on October 21, the 10th anniversary of the Dayton Peace<br />
Accords, to discuss the lessons of Bosnia.<br />
Elizabeth Larison ’06 (left) and Alexandra Tatarsky, a Bard High School Early College<br />
student, were named the winners of the Institute for International Liberal Education’s<br />
essay contest, which was organized to promote understanding of the links between<br />
HIV/AIDS infection and human rights needs. Both Larison, a senior concentrating in<br />
human rights, and Tatarsky, who is in her third year at BHSEC, won trips to Russia<br />
to attend that country’s first international conference on HIV/AIDS and human rights,<br />
which was hosted by Smolny College and took place in October.<br />
Evelyn Fox-Keller of MIT gave a talk titled “Innate<br />
Confusions: Nature, Nurture, and All of That,” at Weis<br />
Cinema on October 21.<br />
Rock historian Barry Drake presented “60s Rock: When the<br />
Music Mattered,” a show featuring hundreds of slides, videos,<br />
and musical clips, on October 21 at the Campus Center.<br />
43
Bard Cavaliers<br />
When Sarah Perkins ’07 from Branford, Connecticut, and<br />
Susannah Bradley ’07 from Dallas arrived at Bard, they were<br />
surprised to find that the College, set in rural Annandale, did<br />
not have an equestrian club. Perkins and Bradley, who lived in<br />
the same first-year residence hall, rode together a few times a<br />
week at a local barn off campus. Before long, they decided to<br />
try getting others involved.<br />
In the spring of 2004, Perkins and Bradley cofounded the<br />
Bard Equestrian Club, which is a recognized student club with<br />
some funding through the Convocation/Student Activities<br />
Fund. Fifty students signed up for their mailing list, and 12<br />
began taking lessons with the club. A small show team—<br />
Perkins, Bradley, and Elizabeth Ford ’08—started competing<br />
in the Intercollegiate Horse Show Association (IHSA) against<br />
15 other colleges in the region including Marist, Vassar,<br />
Columbia, and New York University. In November 2004, Ford<br />
won champion in her division at the Vassar show.<br />
This year, Bard’s equestrian club—now called the Bard<br />
Cavaliers—has 21 Bard students, with varying levels of experience,<br />
taking riding lessons. The show team now has at least<br />
Bard Cavaliers<br />
seven equestrians competing in IHSA shows. Bard alumna<br />
Andrea Nussinow ’84 coaches the intercollegiate team at her<br />
new equestrian facility, Blue Star Farms.<br />
“It’s the perfect blend of what we were looking for,” says<br />
Bradley. “The gorgeous facility is just minutes from campus<br />
and the training is excellent.”<br />
Andrea Conner<br />
New Director of Student Activities<br />
Bard has more than 100 student clubs, half a dozen student<br />
publications, an active student government, and a campus<br />
center that hosts films, readings, exhibitions, concerts, and a<br />
variety of additional student activities. Overseeing it all is<br />
Iowa native Andrea Conner, the director of Bertelsmann<br />
Campus Center and student activities.<br />
Conner received a master’s degree in higher education/<br />
student affairs administration from Iowa State University. It<br />
was a career direction she chose as an undergraduate at Coe<br />
College, when she realized she “loved ‘college’ and the idea of<br />
the liberal arts education even more than music and theater.”<br />
Conner has since worked as a residence counselor at<br />
Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, and as assistant<br />
director of campus life at Illinois’s Knox College, where last<br />
spring the commencement activities she helped plan included<br />
an address by Senator Barack Obama.<br />
At Bard, Conner quickly learned about the high level of<br />
student activism from the community’s response to Hurricane<br />
Katrina. She helped advise students on their relief efforts,<br />
including an all-night concert by Bard bands at Bertelsmann.<br />
Just weeks into the fall semester, she was helping 15 new clubs<br />
get off the ground, advising them on how to generate interest,<br />
write budgets, and secure funding. While Conner hopes to<br />
support the academic mission of the College with the level<br />
and types of programming offered, it’s also her mission, she<br />
says, “to find ways to help the students relax and have fun.” So,<br />
along with students, she is working to expand the Thursday<br />
night coffee house concerts at Down the Road Café and planning<br />
a few big campuswide events for spring, including Super<br />
Bowl and Oscar parties and Spring Fling.<br />
44
American Streamlined Design on View at the BGC<br />
A chrome-plated iron, a bullet-shaped soda siphon, and a boldly<br />
angled lounge chair of leather and tubular steel are among the<br />
180 objects on display in American Streamlined Design: The World of<br />
Tomorrow, an exhibition at The Bard Graduate Center for Studies<br />
in the Decorative Arts, Design, and Culture (BGC), which will<br />
open on March 15 and run through June 25, <strong>2006</strong>.<br />
The streamlined idiom evolved in the 1930s and 1940s, in<br />
defiance of art deco and functionalist modernism. “It was based on<br />
an admiration for industry and speed,” says cocurator David A.<br />
Hanks, who has gathered a selection of ceramics, metalworks, furniture,<br />
and graphic designs by such notable practitioners of the<br />
movement as Norman Bel Geddes (the Futurama exhibit at the<br />
1939 World’s Fair), Henry Dreyfuss (20th Century Limited train),<br />
Raymond Loewy (Lucky Strike packaging), and Walter Dorwin<br />
Teague (Texaco gas station), among others.<br />
Many of the objects in American Streamlined Design were culled<br />
from the Eric Brill Collection and speak to the birth of American<br />
consumerism, when time-saving products such as mixers, blenders,<br />
and power drills spurred spending and promised a better world for<br />
everyone. In addition to offering a fresh appraisal of these classic<br />
industrial designs, the exhibition looks at the revival of streamlining<br />
in design today. Lectures, tours, and other public programs will be<br />
offered in conjunction with the exhibition. For additional information,<br />
see www.bgc.bard.edu or call 212-501-3011. The BGC is<br />
located at 18 West 86th Street in New York City.<br />
On October 23, Bard president Leon Botstein and a distinguished<br />
panel of speakers, including Alan Sussman,<br />
Jack Blum ’62, Daniel Karpowitz, and CNN correspondent<br />
Kitty Pilgrim, discussed the future of the Supreme<br />
Court.The Campus Center program concluded the College’s<br />
Family Weekend events.<br />
Director Todd Solondz, known for indie favorites Welcome<br />
to the Dollhouse and Happiness, and producer Michael Ryan<br />
screened their 2004 film Palindromes on October 23. The<br />
film was shot on and around the Bard campus.<br />
Susan Merriam, assistant professor of art history at Bard,<br />
was the featured speaker at the First-Year Seminar on<br />
October 24, discussing “Producing Knowledge in the Early<br />
Modern Curiosity Collection.”<br />
Heinrich Dohna of The Rockefeller University lectured on<br />
“Spatial Population Dynamics of Chagas Disease Vectors”<br />
on October 24, as part of Bard’s Frontiers in Science Lecture<br />
Series.<br />
Novelist and translator Sergio Waisman, of George<br />
Washington University, talked about Argentine literature<br />
and Jorge Luis Borges’s theories of translation on October<br />
24. On the same day, Fred Lazin of Ben Gurion<br />
University of the Negev lectured on “Israel versus the<br />
American Jewish Establishment.”<br />
In a conversation at the Center for Curatorial Studies on<br />
October 25, executive director Tom Eccles provided a<br />
behind-the-scenes look at several of his installation and curatorial<br />
projects, which have featured work by Nam June Paik,<br />
Jeff Koons, Willem de Kooning, Keith Haring, and others.<br />
On October 27, Bard’s Globalization and International<br />
Affairs Program presented a talk by Thomas M. Nichols,<br />
former chairman of the Department of Strategy and Policy<br />
at the U.S. Naval College, and Scott Silverstone, assistant<br />
professor of international relations at West Point, titled<br />
“Does Preventive War Have a Future?” The event was held<br />
at Bard Hall in New York City.<br />
Skippy-Racer Scooter, c. 1933. Harold L. Van Doren and John Gordon Rideout.<br />
The Eric Brill Collection.<br />
“Rethinking Tourette Syndrome,” a screening of the<br />
Emmy-nominated documentary Twitch and Shout and a<br />
discussion of the syndrome with the film’s narrator and<br />
coauthor, Lowell Handler, was held on October 27 as the<br />
first event in the College’s “Rethinking Difference beyond<br />
the Classroom” series.<br />
45
La Voz staffers (from left) Elisa Ureña ’06, Mariel Fiori ’05, and Nevena<br />
Gadjeva ’06<br />
La Voz Makes Itself Heard<br />
Now entering its third year, La Voz (The Voice) is a magazine<br />
that aims to shake, stir, inform, and delight its audience of<br />
Spanish—and would-be Spanish—readers. “The idea was<br />
always to be a bridge between the English and Spanish communities,”<br />
says Mariel Fiori ’05, managing editor. “It’s for the<br />
Hispanic community, but it’s also for people studying Spanish<br />
who want to practice.”<br />
La Voz publishes articles about immigrants’ and students’<br />
experiences, current events, and life in the Hudson Valley, as<br />
well as short stories, opinions, and legal and health advice<br />
from area experts. An educational supplement offers dialogue<br />
phrases in both English and Spanish, to aid readers of both<br />
languages.<br />
La Voz’s popularity is such that, as of January, the<br />
magazine went from quarterly to monthly publication and<br />
expanded from 12 to 16 pages. It is distributed free on the<br />
Bard campus and in supermarkets, post offices, and “any<br />
place else people can see it in Dutchess and Ulster counties,”<br />
Fiori says.<br />
The magazine began as a Trustee Leader Scholar (TLS)<br />
project of Fiori and Emily Schmall ’05, who approached her<br />
classmate about starting the publication after Fiori had written<br />
a Spanish-language column for The Citizen, a regional<br />
magazine published by Elaine Fernandez ’01. The first issue’s<br />
print run was 1,000 copies; now it is up to 4,000. The current<br />
editor is TLS student Nevena Gadjeva ’06.<br />
Though still supported by Bard, the goal now is to find<br />
funding from other sources as well so that La Voz can continue<br />
to reach out to the community. “You don’t get all these<br />
perspectives in other publications,” says Fiori. “Perhaps it<br />
should be called Las Voces.”<br />
Digging Up More than Dirt<br />
More than 100 pieces of ceramic, intact bottles, two toothbrushes, and even a tortoise<br />
shell comb, all from the mid to late 1800s, have been carefully removed from<br />
a deep shaft behind the construction site of The Gabrielle H. Reem and Herbert<br />
J. Kayden Center for Science and Computation. The artifacts within the stonelined<br />
shaft are prime archaeological finds from a 6,000-square-foot site that has<br />
been cordoned off between the future science building and the Sands House student<br />
residence.<br />
Christopher Lindner, archaeologist in residence and visiting assistant professor<br />
of anthropology, discovered through shovel tests the remains of two buried stone<br />
walls, one a possible barn or shed foundation and the other “almost certainly” a privy<br />
shaft, which Sands House inhabitants began filling with broken pottery and other<br />
debris in the 1880s. “We knew from several shovel tests we were into something<br />
rich,” Lindner said. As a result of the dig, the utility pad and transformer for the science<br />
building have been moved from the locations sited in original plans.<br />
“It’s very exciting to know about the history of the land on which this college<br />
is constructed,” said Diana Brown, associate professor of anthropology. She toured<br />
the site with Mario Bick, professor of anthropology, who added, “History is literally<br />
embedded in the ground as well as the texts. To have such archaeological programs<br />
right on campus is a rare opportunity for students to gain visceral insights into local<br />
history.”<br />
William Ruiz '03 takes measurements of a stone<br />
shaft that is part of a 6,000-square-foot archeological<br />
site between the Sands House and The<br />
Gabrielle H. Reem and Herbert J. Kayden Center<br />
for Science and Computation.<br />
46
A Bard Forum on Science and Society showcased a panel<br />
discussion on genetics and race with faculty members<br />
Michael Tibbetts, biology; Gregory Moynahan, history;<br />
and Amy Ansell, sociology. Mark Halsey moderated the<br />
October 27 event at the Campus Center.<br />
The Levy Economics Institute hosted the conference<br />
“Time Use and Economic Well-Being” on October 28 and<br />
29 at Blithewood.<br />
The Colorado Quartet performed works by Beethoven,<br />
Rochberg, and Haydn at an afternoon concert at Olin Hall<br />
on October 30.<br />
Jesse D. Cain ’05 won a Princess Grace Award for excellence in film. The prestigious<br />
scholarship will fund the production of his Senior Project—a film based on footage<br />
of his journeys on the Trans-Siberian Railway. “I’m interested in doing work that<br />
is concerned with narrative informed by real experience,” says Cain, whose script is<br />
derived from his experiences aboard the epic train ride from St. Petersburg to<br />
Beijing. Established in 1984, the Princess Grace Awards recognize and nurture a<br />
new generation of young artists studying at institutions nationwide.<br />
NOVEMBER<br />
Investigative journalist Ana Arana discussed the rise of<br />
transnational crime in Latin America on November 1 as<br />
part of Bard’s Technology, Technocracy, and Human<br />
Rights lecture series.<br />
The Da Capo Chamber Players celebrated the works of<br />
Bard faculty, alumni/ae, and student composers during a<br />
Bard Center concert at Olin Hall on November 2.<br />
The Woodstock Chamber Orchestra performed works<br />
by Barber, Copland, Gershwin, and Woodstock composer<br />
Alan Shulman during An American Thanksgiving, a concert<br />
at Olin Hall on November 4.<br />
Michael Almereyda presented his recent documentary on<br />
world-renowned photographer William Eggleston on<br />
November 4 at the Avery Center theater.<br />
The Institute of Advanced Theology sponsored a luncheon<br />
lecture and book signing with Bruce Chilton, executive<br />
director of the Institute, and Jacob Neusner, Research<br />
Professor of Religion and Theology, on November 7 at the<br />
Campus Center. Their recent books include Chilton’s Mary<br />
Magdalene: A Biography and Altruism in World Religions,<br />
edited by Chilton and Neusner.<br />
David Hinkley, a veteran member and officer of Amnesty International (AI), was<br />
one of the panelists in an open forum at the College on October 20, on the origins of<br />
the group and its growth in the United States. Hinkley, a founding member of several<br />
West Coast AI chapters who now serves as executive director of Survivors<br />
International, joined other AI pioneers in the dialogue, which was presented by the<br />
Bard Center for Environmental Policy and moderated by BCEP director Joanne<br />
Fox-Przeworski.<br />
Christopher Gibbs, James H. Ottaway Jr. Professor of<br />
Music, addressed the First-Year Seminar on November 7<br />
on the topic “Mozart’s Final Reconciliation: The Magic<br />
Flute and the Enlightenment.”<br />
On November 8, Bard in China presented a lecture by historian<br />
Dan Shao of the University of Illinois, Urbana-<br />
Champaign, titled “Chinese by Definition: The Making<br />
and Practice of Nationality Law, 1909–1980.”<br />
47
Zachary Hamacker ’08, Dylan Cummins ’07, and Colin Safranek ’08<br />
Men’s Volleyball Roster Includes Star Players<br />
The men’s volleyball team has stepped up its game. Last<br />
year, Dylan Cummins ’07, Colin Safranek ’08, and Zachary<br />
Hamaker ’08—all nationally ranked players from northern<br />
California—joined the roster. “These guys are phenomenal<br />
athletes, extremely intelligent people, and great students,”<br />
says head coach Owen Roberts, who is from Berkeley,<br />
California, and works in Bard’s Admission Office.<br />
Recruiting these players to Bard—two outside hitters<br />
and one setter—wasn’t a hard sell. Safranek, who ranked first<br />
nationally in kills per game last season, was accepted at Bard<br />
on a full-tuition scholarship as a Distinguished Scientist<br />
Scholar. Hamaker, whose father is a professor at Saint Mary’s<br />
College, received a tuition exchange scholarship and came to<br />
study math at Bard. Cummins, looking for an academically<br />
challenging liberal arts college, transferred to Bard from<br />
Sonoma State University as a sophomore. “This team’s chemistry<br />
is one of the best I have ever experienced in 14 seasons,”<br />
says Cummins, who cocaptains the team alongside Safranek<br />
and Hamaker. “Although the level of competition on the East<br />
Coast does not rival that of Sonoma State [a Division II<br />
team], Bard’s superior attitude and coaching make it more<br />
rewarding.”<br />
Last season’s turnaround success—ranking second nationally<br />
in team hitting percentages—won Bard an invitation to<br />
join the North Eastern Collegiate Volleyball Association<br />
(NECVA), a top Division III conference. “The competition<br />
will be much stiffer and the season more rigorous,” says<br />
Cummins, who played in high school on the same championship<br />
team as Safranek in Santa Cruz. Roberts continues to<br />
recruit other positions, especially defenders, as his team’s<br />
intensity and competitive spirit heightens.<br />
Edie Meidav Wins Bard Fiction Prize<br />
Edie Meidav, whose second novel, Crawl Space, paints a chilling portrait of a French collaborator<br />
with the Nazis, has been named the recipient of the annual Bard Fiction Prize. Meidav,<br />
a native of Toronto who lives in San Francisco, won the 2001 Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize for<br />
Fiction by an American Woman for The Far Field: A Novel of Ceylon.<br />
In Crawl Space, Meidav dares to inhabit the mind and soul of a 20th-century monster,<br />
Emile Poulquet, “a morbid opportunist who artfully isolates his guilt with the lie that men<br />
are mere cogs in the wheel of history” (Thomas Meaney, Los Angeles Times). The novel, published<br />
by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, has been widely praised for its unflinching delineation<br />
of its protagonist, the power and scope of its narrative, and the originality of its treatment of<br />
the Holocaust.<br />
The Bard Fiction Prize, which consists of a $30,000 cash award and a one-semester residency<br />
at the College, is bestowed annually to a writer of promise who is 39 years or younger<br />
and an American citizen at the time of application. The selection committee consists of three<br />
professors in the Division of Languages and Literature, Mary Caponegro, Robert Kelly, and<br />
Bradford Morrow. Previous recipients have been Nathan Englander (2001), Emily Barton<br />
(2002), Monique Truong (2003), and Paul LaFarge (2004).<br />
Edie Meidav<br />
48
Family Weekend<br />
Each fall Bard hosts parents of current students during Family<br />
Weekend. While together on campus, families are invited to attend<br />
classes, panel discussions, performances, sporting events and more.<br />
This year’s program highlighted the Science, Technology, and<br />
Society Program offering such classes as Matthew Deady’s First-<br />
Year Seminar Galileo and Catherine O’Reilly’s Global Change.<br />
The Life after Bard Dinner, held November 9 at the<br />
Manor House Café, featured talks by Lukas Alpert ’99, a<br />
reporter at the New York Post; graphic designer Anne<br />
Finkelstein ’80; dancer Abby Bender Lauren ’95; John<br />
Rolfe ’79, a journalist with Sports Illustrated for Kids; and<br />
attorney Ken Stern ’79.<br />
“The Rise of Chinese Power” was the topic of a November<br />
10 lecture by Elizabeth C. Economy, director of Asia<br />
studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, and Dan<br />
Blumenthal, American Enterprise Institute fellow, at Bard<br />
Hall in New York City. The talk was part of the Bard<br />
Globalization and International Affairs Program’s James<br />
Clarke Chace Memorial Speaker Series.<br />
On November 10, the Bard Center for Environmental<br />
Policy presented a talk by Dick White, professor emeritus<br />
at Smith College, about Las Gaviotas, a self-sustaining<br />
community and reforestation center in Colombia.<br />
Mark Halsey, associate dean of the college and mathematics professor, addresses<br />
Family Weekend participants.<br />
President Leon Botstein presents Stefano Ferrari with a soccer shirt at the dedication<br />
of the Lorenzo Ferrari Soccer Complex, named after Stefano’s father.<br />
The Bard College Conservatory of Music concert and<br />
lecture series offered four fall programs, beginning with<br />
a November 13 concert by renowned pianist Simone<br />
Dinnerstein, who performed Bach’s Goldberg Variations.<br />
Other programs included a performance by the Conservatory<br />
orchestra, guest-conducted by Fabio Mechetti; a concert by<br />
pianist Melvin Chen and violinist Arnold Steinhardt; and a<br />
recital of chamber music by Conservatory students and faculty.<br />
Jonathan Lethem, author of Motherless Brooklyn, The<br />
Fortress of Solitude, and The Disappointment Artist, read<br />
from his works on November 14 as part of the Innovative<br />
Contemporary Fiction Reading Series. Bradford Morrow,<br />
professor of literature at Bard and founding editor of<br />
Conjunctions, introduced the award-winning writer.<br />
Dean of the College Michèle D. Dominy lectured on<br />
“Captain Cook’s Endeavor: Science and Exploration in the<br />
Pacific” on November 14. The talk, part of the First-Year<br />
Seminar, took place at the Sosnoff Theater.<br />
The November 15 lecture in Bard’s Technology,Technocracy,<br />
and Human Rights series featured Michael Menser,<br />
Brooklyn College, who discussed “Infrastructure Is a Political<br />
Act: Obligation, Place, and the Borders of the Polis.”<br />
Michèle D. Dominy engages parents in a question-and-answer session.<br />
Bard in China presented a lecture by Joshua Muldavin,<br />
Henry R. Luce Professor of Asian Studies and Human<br />
Geography at Sarah Lawrence College, on the environmental<br />
and social implications of China’s recent economic<br />
success on November 17 at the Olin Humanities Building.<br />
49
Robert Epstein<br />
New Trustee Appointed<br />
Robert Epstein ’63, a principal of The Abbey Group and a co-owner<br />
and comanaging partner of the Boston Celtics, was elected to the<br />
Board of Trustees of Bard College in October 2005.<br />
Epstein, who earned his bachelor’s degree in political studies, is<br />
a real estate developer in the Boston area. The Abbey Group, of<br />
which he is chief executive officer, has developed many key properties<br />
in that city, notably Lafayette Corporate Center and the awardwinning<br />
Landmark Center near Fenway Park. A lifelong Celtics<br />
fan—as a young boy, he attended a summer camp run by Celtics<br />
Hall of Famer Bob Cousy—he became an executive of the fabled<br />
basketball franchise in 2002. The New England Sports Lodge chose<br />
him as its 2005 Sportsman of the Year.<br />
Epstein also serves on the boards of numerous organizations,<br />
including Team Harmony, the Anti-Defamation League, Rose Art<br />
Museum, Wang Center, and Boston Celtics Shamrock Foundation.<br />
ABOVE<br />
A rendering of The Gabrielle H. Reem and Herbert J. Kayden<br />
Center for Science and Computation by Rafael Viñoly Architects<br />
PC. The view is from the northeast, along the extension of Campus<br />
Walk, which now ends at the plaza in front of the science building.<br />
The rendering shows, on the east side, the mezzanine level<br />
of faculty offices and the lobby with classrooms and an auditorium.<br />
On the west side, one sees the north end of the laboratories.<br />
RIGHT<br />
Construction of the Reem and Kayden Center is well under way.<br />
The two foundation walls that will support the main laboratories<br />
and support areas have been completed. The building is scheduled<br />
to be enclosed sometime this spring, with an expected completion<br />
date of February 2007.<br />
50
Five-time Emmy winner David Javerbaum, head writer<br />
for the Daily Show with Jon Stewart and one of the primary<br />
authors of the bestselling America (The Book), talked to the<br />
Bard community on November 18 at Olin Hall.<br />
The exhibition Wearing Propaganda: Textiles on the Home<br />
Front in Japan, Britain, and the United States, 1931–1945<br />
opened at The Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the<br />
Decorative Arts, Design, and Culture on November 18<br />
and ran through February 5.<br />
Language and Thinking Workshop teachers for 2005 included alumni/ae (from<br />
left) Delia Mellis ’86, Stephanie Hopkins ’94, Colleen Murphy Alexander ’00,<br />
Andrew McCarron ’98, and Rebecca Granato ’99<br />
BHSEC Outreach Bolstered<br />
Last summer Bard High School Early College (BHSEC) offered<br />
a five-week academy to selected students from three middle<br />
schools in its Lower East Side neighborhood. These are “Title I”<br />
schools, with an economically disadvantaged student body.<br />
Despite previous BHSEC tutoring, most of the students’ reading<br />
and math skills remained too low to allow them entry into<br />
BHSEC, a public high school in which students can progress in<br />
four years from ninth grade through the first two years of college.<br />
When promised funding for the summer academy did not<br />
materialize, BHSEC students and staff volunteered their time to<br />
make the program happen. A pilot class of 28 students, rising<br />
sixth and seventh graders, had their first Bard experience. They<br />
wore lab coats and protective goggles in science labs. They read<br />
and wrote about authors they had never met and revisited familiar<br />
ideas from a different angle. Field trips were modest, ranging from<br />
work in a neighborhood garden to a tour of Columbia University.<br />
The Columbia tour, at an institution the academy students had not<br />
heard of before, proved to be one of the most successful outings.<br />
While there, the group met, quite by chance, two BHSEC graduates<br />
who had gone on to Columbia.<br />
The academy’s ending was bittersweet; without funding, a<br />
Saturday program could not continue during the academic year.<br />
That changed in September when District I of the New York City<br />
Department of Education—of which the three middle schools are<br />
a part—received a grant from the Jacob K. Javits Gifted and<br />
Talented Students Education Program of the U.S. Department of<br />
Education. Among other programming, the three-year grant will<br />
allow the expansion of BHSEC’s summer academy. Ultimately,<br />
the students will be better prepared for the rigors and opportunities<br />
of the best public high schools in New York City. “If all goes<br />
well,” says Ray Peterson, BHSEC principal, “we feel confident<br />
that many of these students will be with us for the Bard High<br />
School Early College experience.”<br />
Robert Coover, former Bard professor and prize-winning<br />
author of The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., Henry J.<br />
Waugh, Prop.; The Public Burning; Pricksongs & Descants;<br />
and many other works of fiction, read from his new short<br />
story collection, A Child Again, on November 28 at the<br />
Bertelsmann Campus Center.<br />
The First-Year Seminar presented a November 28 lecture<br />
by Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze of DePaul University, titled<br />
“Philosophy, Science, and Cultural Principles of Reason.”<br />
DECEMBER<br />
The James Clarke Chace Memorial Speaker Series concluded<br />
its fall schedule on December 1 with a lecture on<br />
“Coming Challenges to the United Nations” by Barbara<br />
Crossette, former UN bureau chief of the New York Times,<br />
and Edward Luck, professor at Columbia University’s<br />
School of International and Public Affairs. The talk took<br />
place at Bard Hall in New York City and was sponsored by<br />
Bard’s Globalization and International Affairs Program.<br />
The First-Year Seminar Series presented “Gender Trouble in<br />
the Age of Reason: Mansfield Park and the Enlightenment<br />
Project,” a lecture by Eileen Gilloooly of Columbia<br />
University, on December 5 at the Sosnoff Theater.<br />
The Bard College Community Chorus, directed by James<br />
Bagwell, performed Haydn’s Mass in the Time of War at the<br />
Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts on<br />
December 7. The performance was dedicated to the late<br />
John Dalton ’74.<br />
The Winter Dance, featuring Senior Project and faculty choreography,<br />
was held at the Fisher Center on December 10.<br />
FEBRUARY<br />
The American Symphony Orchestra, with Leon Botstein,<br />
music director, performed Don Quixote and Ein Helenleben<br />
by Richard Strauss on February 3 and 4 at the Richard B.<br />
Fisher Center for the Performing Arts.<br />
51
C L A S S N O T E S<br />
Editor’s Note: Alumni/ae wishing to submit a class note can do so by filling<br />
out the envelope enclosed in the <strong>Bardian</strong> or going to www.bard.edu/alumni<br />
and clicking on the link for Class Notes.<br />
’36<br />
70th Reunion: May 19–21, <strong>2006</strong><br />
Staff contact: Jessica Kemm ’74, 845-758-7406 or kemm@bard.edu<br />
’39<br />
Who, besides George Rosenberg, remembers that diner in Red<br />
Hook and its remarkable proprietor? As often as possible, George<br />
went to watch in awe as, with one hand, the man toasted and buttered<br />
bread while with the other he broke eggs, stirred in diced<br />
onion, peppers, and who knows what else to make George a western<br />
sandwich. George read in the Escapes section of the 8/19/05 New<br />
York Times that if he were to return to Red Hook today, he might<br />
dine at J & J’s Gourmet Deli and have an ice cream dessert at Holy<br />
Cow. Holy Cow, indeed! Tempus fugit—and quickly, too!<br />
’41<br />
65th Reunion: May 19–21, <strong>2006</strong><br />
Staff contact: Jessica Kemm ’74, 845-758-7406 or kemm@bard.edu<br />
’46<br />
60th Reunion: May 19–21, <strong>2006</strong><br />
Staff contact: Jessica Kemm ’74, 845-758-7406 or kemm@bard.edu<br />
’50<br />
Mary Gelb Park had a successful exhibition of brightly colored<br />
abstract oils at the OTWAU gallery in Portland, Oregon. She sends<br />
a cheery hello to all the “Old Wrinklies” from her era. Her daughter,<br />
Lucy, also graduated from Bard, and was Elaine de Kooning’s studio<br />
assistant. There are actually granddaughters waiting in the wings!<br />
John Rice has sold his Queen Palm Nurseries in Sarasota, Florida,<br />
after 45 good years. He says retirement is great. He now enjoys spending<br />
more time around his young grandchildren.<br />
’51<br />
55th Reunion: May 19–21, <strong>2006</strong><br />
Staff contact: Jessica Kemm ’74, 845-758-7406 or kemm@bard.edu<br />
’52<br />
Class Correspondent:<br />
Kit Ellenbogen ’52, max4794@netzero.net<br />
William Walker has been living happily in California since 1960.<br />
He reports that his success as a writer and teacher was the result of<br />
his years at Bard. He attributes his awakenings to Ted Weiss, James<br />
Merrill, Bill Humphrey, and other faculty members who encouraged<br />
and inspired him. A Stegner Fellow (and sometime teacher) at<br />
Stanford University, as well as a teacher at Colorado State University<br />
and Foothill Community College, Bill retired in 1989. He spends his<br />
time reading, writing, and gardening.<br />
’56<br />
50th Reunion: May 19–21, <strong>2006</strong><br />
Contacts: Miriam Roskin Berger, mb33@nyu.edu; Steve Portman,<br />
steveportmandesign.co.ule.uk. Staff contact: Jessica Kemm ’74, 845-<br />
758-7406 or kemm@bard.edu<br />
’60<br />
Amy Green, M.D., was included in the 2004–05 edition of the<br />
Consumers’ Research Council of America’s Guide to America’s Top<br />
Psychiatrists. Her husband, Dr. Jack M. Clemente, died in 2002. Her<br />
daughter, Laura, is engaged, and plans to marry next year.<br />
’61<br />
At 75, Barbara Hanes Morse, a.k.a. “Hafner,” is still teaching yoga<br />
at the Palomar Community College in San Marcos, California.<br />
’63<br />
Phyllis Chesler was one of 75 Jewish women featured in an online<br />
exhibition titled Jewish Women and the Feminist Revolution. Organized<br />
by the Jewish Women’s Archive, the virtual exhibition featured art,<br />
writing, radio and TV clips, and other work by the participants, each of<br />
whom wrote a short essay about the importance of her contribution to<br />
feminism. Chesler, an active participant in the National Organization<br />
of Women, supported one of the country’s first women’s crisis centers<br />
in Brooklyn and cofounded both the Association for Women in<br />
Psychology (1969) and the National Women’s Health Network. She is<br />
also a charter member of the Women’s Forum. The Jewish Women’s<br />
Archive exhibition can be visited at www.jwa.org/ feminism.<br />
Untitled, by Judith Trepp ’63<br />
52
Morris Museum<br />
Sunday, March 19<br />
A tour of the exhibition Musical Machines and Living Dolls:<br />
Mechanical Musical Instruments and Automata from the<br />
Murgoth D. Guinness Collection, hosted by Steve Miller ’70<br />
and Charlie Clancy ’69. This important collection features 60<br />
mechanical musical instruments and automata, dating from the<br />
early 18th to the early 19th century. Reception to follow.<br />
Time: 1:30 p.m. Place: Morris Museum, 6 Normandy<br />
Heights Road, Morristown, New Jersey. Reservations required.<br />
11th Annual Young Alumni/ae<br />
Cities Party<br />
Friday, April 7, and Sunday, April 9<br />
Information: Rebecca Granato ’99 and Jennifer Novik ’98<br />
Young Alumni/ae Committee Cochairs<br />
E-mail: rebecca.granato@gmail.com or jnovik@gmail.com<br />
Tour of Chelsea art galleries<br />
led by Professor Tom Wolf<br />
Saturday, May 6<br />
Information: Taryn McGray ’05, e-mail: mcgray@bard.edu<br />
Reservations required.<br />
Commencement/Reunion<br />
Weekend <strong>2006</strong><br />
May 19–21<br />
Reunion Classes: 1936, 1941, 1946, 1951, 1956, 1966,<br />
1971, 1976, 1981, 1986, 1991, 1996, 2001<br />
For more information, call Jessica Kemm ’74<br />
at 845-758-7406 or e-mail kemm@bard.edu.<br />
Bard Fiction Reading<br />
Tuesday, June 13<br />
The new alumni/ae reading series, hosted by Jamie<br />
Callan ’75, continues with <strong>Bardian</strong> authors reading from<br />
recent works of fiction.Time: 6:00 p.m. Place: Bowery<br />
Poetry Club, 308 Bowery, New York City. Fee: $5 cover at<br />
the door, and one drink minimum. Reservations required.
Judith Trepp-Sklar has lived and worked in Thalwil-Zurich,<br />
Switzerland, since 1970. For the past 15 years she has spent the<br />
summer months at her studio in Provincetown, Massachusetts.<br />
Trepp, a painter and art critic, is represented by Art Forum Ute<br />
Barth in Zurich. Her work was shown in 2005 at the Pentimenti<br />
Gallery in Philadelphia. A one-person show is planned for Zurich<br />
in November <strong>2006</strong>.<br />
’66<br />
40th Reunion: May 19–21, <strong>2006</strong><br />
Contacts: Peter Kenner, peter@tivolipartner.com; Kathryn Stein,<br />
kestein@erols.com. Staff contact: Jessica Kemm ’74, 845-758-7406<br />
or kemm@bard.edu<br />
’68<br />
Gail Grisetti received the Provost Award for Leadership in<br />
International Education from Old Dominion University.<br />
Marjorie Mann married Don Baier ’66 in 2002 and works as a psychiatric<br />
nurse at Sheppard Pratt in Baltimore. Don is retired; the<br />
couple tries to spend a lot of time traveling, and visited Italy in fall<br />
2005. They recently acquired paintings by Michael DeWitt ’65 and<br />
Wendy Weldon ’71.<br />
’70<br />
Photographer Jane Evelyn Atwood’s sixth book, Sentinelles de<br />
l’ombre, Editions Le Seuil, was published in France, where she has<br />
lived for 33 years. Visit her website: www.JaneEvelynAtwood.com.<br />
’71<br />
35th Reunion: May 19–21, <strong>2006</strong><br />
Contacts: Carla Bolte, carla.bolte@us.penguingroup.com; Rhonda<br />
Harrow Engel, harrowengel@yahoo.com; Debby Davidson Kaas,<br />
dkass@rcn.com. Staff contact: Jessica Kemm ’74, 845-758-7406 or<br />
kemm@bard.edu<br />
Mark Barnett has expanded his company both in Vietnam and<br />
Cambodia, and his family is growing as well.<br />
’76<br />
30th Reunion: May 19–21, <strong>2006</strong><br />
Contacts: Richard Caliban, caliban421@aol.com; Angelo DePalma,<br />
adp@tellurian.net; Jerry Drucker, jerrydsurf@cox.net; James<br />
Fishman, jamesr626@aol.com; Deborah Bornstein Gichan, debgichan<br />
photography@mac.com; Michelle Petruzelli, mapny13@yahoo.com;<br />
Janice Storozum, janicederosa@mac.com; Shelley Weinstock, sbw2<br />
@aol.com. Staff contact: Jessica Kemm ’74, 845-758-7406 or kemm<br />
@bard.edu<br />
’78<br />
Doreen Clark and Lewis Copulsky ’79 are pleased to announce the<br />
academic progress of their two sons Ben Copulsky and Dan Copulsky.<br />
Ben is a first-year student at Bard, and Dan has begun his first year<br />
at Simon’s Rock.<br />
Emily Hay, flutist and vocalist, was featured on KXLU in Los<br />
Angeles (and at www.kxlu.com), and music from her CD Like Minds,<br />
released on pfMentum Records, was highlighted on BBC Radio.<br />
She has also appeared in numerous concerts with such musicians as<br />
cellist Michael Intriere, bassist Anthony Shadduck, percussionist<br />
Brad Dutz, trombonist/vocalist Kurt Heyl, violinist Ronit<br />
Kirchman, and keyboardist Wayne Peet. Additional performances<br />
in 2005 included the Thingamajigs Festival, Electric Lodge, and<br />
South California Sonic Festival of New Music. Visit her website for<br />
updated events and record releases: www.emilyhay.com.<br />
After a minireunion/alumni/ae get-together in the land of not one, but<br />
two hurricanes (a.k.a. Stuart, Florida), Karen Varbalow again came to<br />
realize just how important her years at Bard were, and still are. She<br />
invites any “Bardie” to look her up, say hello, and stop by sunny Florida<br />
as long as there are no hurricanes blowing through. Her daughter<br />
graduated from high school this year and has chosen a college as diametrically<br />
different from Bard as possible: one with more than 30,000<br />
students and a Division I sports program, where she will be on the dive<br />
team and study international business and Chinese. She hopes her<br />
daughter’s college experience is as fulfilling as her own was.<br />
’73<br />
Together with their son, Salim Haruka, Stephen Goto Gerald and<br />
Yoshiko Goto Gerald ’83 returned from Tokyo, where they taught<br />
an acting workshop together at Nihon Daigaku ( Japan University).<br />
Stephen was honored to receive a Presidential Medal for Distinguished<br />
Service to Japan University’s College of Fine Art. They look forward<br />
to teaching and traveling to Japan and Korea in the summer.<br />
’74<br />
Margaret Sleeper has joined the faculty of the University of<br />
Wisconsin–Madison School of Social Work as a full-time clinical<br />
assistant professor.<br />
Emily Hay ’78<br />
54
’79<br />
Dr. Michael Gold is the founder of Jazz Impact. More information is<br />
available at www.jazz-impact.com. His wife, Deborah Dachis Gold ’81,<br />
is a creative director in digital marketing communications.<br />
’81<br />
25th Reunion: May 19–21, <strong>2006</strong><br />
Contacts: Janet Stetson, stetson@bard.edu. Staff contact: Matt Soper,<br />
845-758-7505 or soper@bard.edu<br />
Kathie diStefano still lives in Rotterdam with her Dutch husband. In<br />
1984 she founded Avalanche Theater. It has toured and played for elementary<br />
and high school audiences for the past seven years, winning<br />
prizes in support of its “learning through laughter” projects. She plans<br />
to take a break from performance and financial director duties to focus<br />
full-time on education. Her high school job will include teaching<br />
drama and directing theatrical projects at a Dalton-style public high<br />
school in Rotterdam. In addition, she will teach drama workshops to<br />
elementary school pupils. Both of these teaching activities will be conducted<br />
in English. Although Kathie speaks fluent Dutch, bilingual<br />
education is gaining popularity at many Dutch schools, which creates<br />
the opportunity for her to work in her native language.<br />
’83<br />
Sharon Spector (Gellman) was married on June 19, 2004, to Harv<br />
Spector. In 2005 she received the Nexus Award from the Association<br />
of American Medical Publications for her work on the journal<br />
Current Psychiatry.<br />
Press coverage and photos for the May 1, 2005, world premiere of<br />
Dirck Toll’s one-man stunt show Irregular Opposition appeared in<br />
the Albany Times Union, Glens Falls Post-Star, and Saratoga Springs<br />
Saratogian. The Times Union selected Irregular Opposition as a “Pick<br />
of the Week.” In October, Dirck performed his show Relax—I Brought<br />
Enough Ego for Everybody at Simon’s Rock College of Bard.<br />
’85<br />
Mimi Czajka Graminski is a sculptor and artist whose work was<br />
exhibited at a number of shows in the Hudson Valley and Long<br />
Island areas this past fall. Mimi had work in the Kingston Sculpture<br />
Biennial, Mohawk-Hudson Regional at the Albany Institute of<br />
History and Art, and group shows at the Arts Society of Kingston,<br />
Islip Art Museum, Sanjula Exhibitions Space in Tivoli, and<br />
Pocketbook Factory in Hudson. She lives in Red Hook with her husband,<br />
Mark, and 6-year-old son, Thomas.<br />
Liz Korabek is editor of The Physical Actor, a new journal inspired by<br />
the “poetry of the body.” The Physical Actor covers the history and current<br />
developments in physical theater performances and training.<br />
Jim Toia’s exhibition Spore was shown in San Francisco in 2005.<br />
The show consisted of mushroom spore drawings made during a<br />
winter 2004–05 trip to northern California.<br />
Allison Radzin ’88, with daughters Caleigh (left) and Wyatt<br />
’86<br />
20th Reunion: May 19–21, <strong>2006</strong><br />
Contacts: Michael Maresca, mjmaresca@earthlink.net; Chris LeGoff<br />
Kauffman, cak64@comcast.net. Staff contact: Sasha Boak Kelly,<br />
845-758-7406 or boak@bard.edu<br />
’87<br />
Michael Burgi moved to New Jersey with his wife, Christine, in the<br />
fall of 2002, after the birth of their daughter, Caelin. A second<br />
daughter, Sara, was born in June 2003. Two months later, Michael<br />
was promoted to editor of Mediaweek, where he has worked for 13<br />
years. “Life is great!”<br />
Eva Lee’s New Drawings and Digital Animations ran from June 11<br />
to September 11, 2005, at the Real Art Ways Gallery in Hartford,<br />
Connecticut. This solo exhibition featured new large-scale drawings<br />
and the continuation of The Liminal Series, an ongoing project of<br />
short, abstract, digitally generated animation.<br />
’89<br />
Jane Andromache Brien and Rhinebeck local Stewart Emil Verrilli,<br />
Pratt, ’87, were married in Milan in August. Their son, Burt (see<br />
page 56), attended, along with friend Wendelin Scott ’96, who also<br />
recently married, in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Jane, Stewart, and Burt<br />
live in the Hudson Valley, where they host many kitchen parties.<br />
’91<br />
15th Reunion: May 19–21, <strong>2006</strong><br />
Contacts: J. J. Austrian, johnjaustrian@hotmail.com; Carrie (Eudaly)<br />
Benevento, cbene@optonline.net; Benjamin Goldberg, benjamin<br />
goldberg.email@gmail.com; Chad Kleitsch, chadkleitsch@hotmail.<br />
com; Mark Nichols, marknichols@mindstream.com; Matt Phillips,<br />
mphillips@wingedkeel.com; Stacy Pilson, staceynyc@yahoo.com.<br />
Staff contact: Sasha Boak Kelly, 845-758-7406 or boak@bard.edu<br />
55
Christiane Cullens continues to teach high school on an island off<br />
the coast of Downeast, Maine. She just bought a big old farmhouse<br />
and has discovered a strange affinity for power tools. She is glad to<br />
report that Ariel, her oldest cat, is still spry and kicking, and has<br />
done fair justice to the stamina and cheek that are indigenous to the<br />
rare breed of Tivoli cat that she is.<br />
After 15 years of talk and no walk, Julian De Marchi finally moved<br />
to Amsterdam. He’s still working as an engineer, but is now rounding<br />
off his 10th year of fantasizing about becoming an artist, so who<br />
knows what will happen in another five?<br />
Jane Andromache Brien ’89 with son Burt<br />
After graduation, Kamran Anwar worked in a bank in New York for<br />
five years before moving back to Karachi, his hometown, in Pakistan.<br />
Returning to Pakistan was a challenge at first, as he was 18 when he<br />
left and 27 when he went back. When the harsh reality of what it<br />
would mean to thrive in a developing country hit him, it was his<br />
Bard zest and vision that carried him through. After some time in<br />
Karachi, he moved to Dubai. While there, he visited Amman,<br />
Beirut, Bahrain, and Qatar. Now he is in London—with the same<br />
bank. Still single, his family continues to exert tremendous pressure<br />
on him to “settle down.”<br />
Ty Donaldson lives in Los Angeles and produces films through his<br />
company, Buddha-Cowboy Productions. He coproduced/line produced<br />
Soldier of God (www.soldierofgod.net), a historical epic set<br />
during the Crusades, which was accepted for the 2005 Stratfordupon-Avon<br />
International Film Festival. His short film RewinD,<br />
directed by Jonah Salander, was accepted for the same festival, and<br />
was chosen for the Los Angeles International Short Film Festival.<br />
He is in postproduction with the film Love, Fear and Rabbits and in<br />
development for a number of feature films, most notably The Hootch<br />
(www.thehootchmovie.com) and another film with David Avallone<br />
’87. He enjoys watching movies and scuba diving. His son, Ross, 14,<br />
is starting high school, and boy does that make Ty feel old.<br />
After completing a five-year doctoral program at Bastyr University,<br />
Dr. Laura Eastman has earned her degree as a naturopathic doctor<br />
(ND). NDs are trained as primary care physicians who use natural<br />
medicine to aid the body in healing itself. Laura will serve as a resident<br />
for two years at Emerald City Clinic in Seattle, where she has<br />
lived since she graduated from Bard. She is overjoyed to be practicing<br />
naturopathic medicine, and welcomes all communication from fellow<br />
<strong>Bardian</strong>s at laura.eastman@bastyr.edu.<br />
’92<br />
Class Correspondent:<br />
Andrea Stein ’92, AJS630@aol.com<br />
Throughout May and June 2005, Mallory Catlett directed the company<br />
Banana Bag and Bodice in a production titled Panel. Animal,<br />
presented at The Collapsable Hole in Brooklyn and Ontological-<br />
Hysteric Theatre in Manhattan. For information about Banana Bag<br />
and Bodice, contact www.bananabagand bodice.org. For information<br />
about Mallory Catlett, visit http://homepage.mac.com/mallory<br />
catlett/ home.html.<br />
Morgan Cleveland is still living in Oakland (“the best city on<br />
Earth”) with her husband and two children (a son and a daughter,<br />
ages 7 and 4, respectively). She works as an independent consultant<br />
in the field of education. Last summer, she and her family rediscovered<br />
the joys of baseball (“Go A’s!”), skimboarding, and sea kayaking.<br />
She would love to hear from any Bard friends. Her e-mail address is<br />
nnebe4@yahoo.com.<br />
This sculpture by Linda Ganjian ’92 is titled Ode to Disappearing<br />
Smokestacks (2005; mixed media)<br />
56
with Christina acting as the general contractor. She still writes haiku<br />
and participated in several writing workshops in the spring of 2005.<br />
Allison Parker serves as a contributing editor for Other Voices, an<br />
all-fiction literary magazine, as well as its imprint, OV Books.<br />
Allison is finishing a novel that began as her Y2K M.F.A. thesis and<br />
is working on a collection of critical essays. She lives without regret<br />
in the no-man’s-land between Hell’s Kitchen and the Upper West<br />
Side of Manhattan with her husband, André Compeyre, and their<br />
Franco-American toddler, Quentin. She writes, “I have to thank<br />
Odile Chilton for all my years of French!” She welcomes contact<br />
from fellow <strong>Bardian</strong>s.<br />
Daniel Sonenberg is assistant professor and resident composer at<br />
the University of Southern Maine. He lives with his wife, Alexandra,<br />
in Portland.<br />
Flyway, by Grace Markman ’92<br />
Linda Ganjian is enjoying life—and many ethnic culinary delights —<br />
in Jackson Heights, Queens, with her partner, Jesse Lambert. She<br />
is still making art; her sculpture was displayed at the Brooklyn<br />
Museum last year as part of the Open House: Working in Brooklyn<br />
show. She is currently preparing for a solo exhibition at Gallery<br />
Boreas in Williamsburg, Virginia, in March. Visit www. lindagan<br />
jian.net for details.<br />
Christine Gobbo Petrella lives happily in Katonah, New York,<br />
with her husband, Larry, and two beautiful boys: Christopher, 5,<br />
and Nicholas, 3. She would be thrilled to hear from any of her old<br />
Bard friends.<br />
Sian Jacobwitz and Todd Defren ’91 are still happily together after<br />
17-plus years, and have two great kids—Luke, 13, and Branwen, 10.<br />
Sian is in nursing school and Todd is a principal at SHIFT<br />
Communications, a public relations firm. They split their time<br />
between homes in the San Francisco and Boston areas. Most of<br />
their free time is spent coddling their 200-pound English mastiff,<br />
Owen the Wonderdog.<br />
Karyn Kloumann was married to Lucas Cushanick in August<br />
2004, after meeting him online in 2001. They live in Brooklyn<br />
Heights with two cats, Philo and Porphyrio. Karyn has worked in<br />
production at Lucky magazine for the past five years, and maintains<br />
an art studio in her neighborhood, where she experiments with<br />
resin-based paintings.<br />
Katya McElfresh is a social worker in Brooklyn, working as a therapist<br />
with families who are at risk of having children placed in foster<br />
care.<br />
Christina O’Connor still lives in Branford, Connecticut, on the Farm<br />
River Estuary, but now she’s married! She and her husband, Michael<br />
Mahoney, eloped on April 29, 2005, after a 12-year courtship. They’ve<br />
been renovating their 1928 stone house for the past year and a half,<br />
The American Composers Orchestra presented Stefan Weisman’s<br />
work in May 2005, as part of its Underwood New Music Readings.<br />
On March 1, <strong>2006</strong>, male soprano Anthony Costanzo and the Ensemble<br />
Newspeak will perform Weisman’s piece “From Frankenstein” at Merkin<br />
Concert Hall in New York City, as part of the “Ear Department<br />
Emerging Composers” series. Stefan’s 90-minute opera Darkling was<br />
commissioned by American Opera Projects and was included in<br />
the Guggenheim Museum’s “Works & Process” series in November<br />
2005. For more information, visit www.stefanweisman.com.<br />
Ellen Wickersham and her husband, Pascal Vincent, are thrilled to<br />
announce the arrival of their daughter, Uma Lee Vincent, born at<br />
home in San Diego on July 25, 2005. Assuming that domestic<br />
duties allow her the time, Ellen will graduate from acupuncture<br />
school this spring. The couple is dying to move back to Philadelphia<br />
soon, where Ellen will start her practice. She would love to hear<br />
from anyone who might have moved or lost touch. Contact her at<br />
ellengvincent@yahoo.com.<br />
Susanne Williams is back to freelancing as a lighting technician in<br />
TV and Broadway after an exhausting four-year stint at Good<br />
Morning America in New York City. She is still living in Park Slope,<br />
Brooklyn, where many other Bard alumni/ae have chosen to settle.<br />
She’s currently searching for a mentor in gymnastics choreography,<br />
a field she would like to enter. P.S.: Has anyone seen Carlos Luna?<br />
’93<br />
In 2005, Joseph O. Iannacone received a study and travel fellowship<br />
from the Goethe-Institut. He toured Germany’s historic sites,<br />
museums, attended lectures, and met German Chancellor Gerhard<br />
Schroeder.<br />
Danielle Woerner lives in Shokan, New York, with her husband,<br />
Claude Johnson. She is working as a singer, voice teacher, and writer. In<br />
June 2005, she sang Heitor Villa-Lobos’s Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5<br />
for one soprano and eight cellos at the Maverick Concert Hall in<br />
Woodstock. Danielle is also a faculty adjunct voice teacher at Vassar,<br />
57
Bard, and Dutchess Community Colleges. She is writing her first<br />
novel, for which she recently made a research trip to France.<br />
Danielle’s first-person essay, “Struggling to Make Peace with the<br />
Atom,” which appeared in the July 11, 2005, issue of Newsweek,<br />
dealt with her father’s work on the Manhattan Project and her own<br />
work as a peace activist.<br />
’94<br />
Renee Cramer’s book Cash, Color and Colonialism: The Politics of<br />
Tribal Acknowledgment was published in June 2005 by the<br />
University of Oklahoma Press. In December 2004, she gave birth to<br />
an amazing baby boy, Wyatt Saille. She, Wyatt, and Wyatt’s dad,<br />
Aaron, are still in Long Beach, California, but are hoping to move<br />
somewhere more rural soon.<br />
Mark L. Feinsod’s short film, Virginal Young Blondes, was screened as<br />
part of the NewFilmmakers series at the Anthology Film Archives in<br />
New York City in June 2005. The Pioneer Theater in New York<br />
hosted a retrospective of Mark’s short movies on January 9, 2005.<br />
Gary Green is a visiting assistant professor of art at Bowdoin College<br />
in Brunswick, Maine. His photographs were purchased for the permanent<br />
collections of the Portland Museum of Art in Portland,<br />
Maine, and Bates College Museum of Art in Lewiston, Maine, where<br />
his work was shown in Off the Coast: A Landscape Chronology in<br />
August 2005.<br />
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation awarded Alex John London a<br />
New Directions Fellowship, to develop rigorous standards for the<br />
ethical evaluation of how medical research is conducted. Alex is an<br />
associate professor of philosophy at Carnegie Mellon University.<br />
’96<br />
10th Reunion: May 19–21, <strong>2006</strong><br />
Contacts: Jennifer Abrahms Thompson, jennifer@abramstechnology.<br />
com. Aaron Shottenfeld, aaronperi23@hotmail.com;Walter Swett,<br />
walter@charlieangel.org. Staff contact: Jessica Kemm ’74, 845-758-<br />
7406 or kemm@bard.edu<br />
Krista David is a staff psychiatrist at A.W.A.R.E. in Helena,<br />
Montana. She and her husband, Len Lantz, are thrilled to announce<br />
the birth of their daughter, Lucy Coral Lantz, in April 2005. They<br />
enjoy living in Helena.<br />
Staci Schwartz is the photo editor for the Village Voice. As a photographer,<br />
she has been shooting various New York social events over the<br />
past 10 years that feature parties, personalities, and pop culture. She<br />
writes, “No matter what full-time photo-editing positions I have<br />
undertaken, I have never ceased to stop shooting my documentary<br />
projects. It is this personal work that gives me the drive and fulfillment<br />
of being an artist.” Staci has lectured at the School of Visual<br />
Arts and Empire State College. She is a portfolio consultant for the<br />
International Center of Photography, and her work has been featured<br />
in American Photo, Trace, and Photo District News. She will have a<br />
solo exhibition of photographs documenting Long Island proms at<br />
San Bernardino University Museum in California. To see some of<br />
her photography, visit www.stacipop.com.<br />
Works by William Lamson MFA ’07 (above), Matthew Porter ’98 (opposite<br />
page, top left), Matthew Spiegelman ’97(left), and Ben Ruggiero MFA ’05<br />
(opposite page, bottom) were all represented in the Art and Commerce<br />
2005 Festival of Emerging Photographers, which took place at the Tobacco<br />
Warehouse in Brooklyn in October. Selections from their photographs and<br />
accompanying texts were published in the exhibition’s catalogue, Peek.<br />
58
’97<br />
Class Correspondent:<br />
Julia Munemo ’97, juliamunemo@yahoo.com<br />
Marina Prager-Kranz and her husband, Jim, climbed Mount<br />
Kilimanjaro (19,240 feet) in Tanzania, Africa. This adventure was<br />
followed by an extraordinary safari experience, including visiting a<br />
Masai village.<br />
Imteaz Mannan is finishing a two-and-a-half-year stint at a Save<br />
the Children initiative called Saving Newborn Lives, a project to<br />
improve maternal and neonatal health in rural Bangladesh. In<br />
September 2005, he presented results of a research project on ensuring<br />
health-service equity at a meeting of the Global Forum for<br />
Health Research in Mumbai, India.<br />
Andrew McIntosh works as caretaker of the River Valley Waldorf<br />
elementary school during the day and teaches a hip-hop history<br />
Marina Prager-Kranz ’97 at Uhuru Peak, Tanzania<br />
class by night at Lehigh University. He is living happily in<br />
Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, with his wife, Elleyn. Their 10-year-old<br />
daughter, Anna, is in fifth grade; their son, Philip, is 6, and the<br />
newest member of the family, Margaret, is a wild 1-year-old.<br />
Andrew would like to thank the Tewks 208 crew for surprising him<br />
on his 30th birthday in July 2005.<br />
Julia Wolk Munemo and her husband, Ngonidzashe Munemo ’00,<br />
have returned from another six-month trip to southern Africa.<br />
Their son, Julius, is almost three.<br />
Matthew Spiegelman was represented by nine works in Art and<br />
Commerce’s Festival of Emerging Photographers, which took place in<br />
October 2005 in New York City (see photo, page 58). He also had a<br />
portfolio of images published in Big magazine’s “Broadway” issue in<br />
October/November, and a photograph included in Looking at Los<br />
Angeles, a coffee-table book published by Metropolis Books.<br />
’98<br />
Kristina Olson gave birth to a son, Liam Timothy Malouf, on<br />
April 8, 2005. She is finishing her Ph.D. in Italian literature at<br />
Columbia University.<br />
Paul Rich married Holly Andres in July 2005 in a nontraditional<br />
double wedding. In attendance were jugglers, stilt walkers, and fire<br />
dancers. Paul and Holly have three Siamese kittens and can be seen<br />
driving around in two matching Saabs. Holly teaches at Portland<br />
State University and at the Art Institute of Portland, Oregon, and<br />
Paul has been photographing weddings. To view Paul’s work, visit<br />
www.paulrichstudio.com.<br />
’99<br />
Susan Murtha Bandrowsky and her husband of five years, Todd<br />
Bandrowsky, celebrated the birth of their son, Garrett Sheridan<br />
59
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Bandrowsky, on May 8, 2005. Susan works as a full-time mom, freelance<br />
photographer, and moderator of a popular mental health website,<br />
and also plays mom to three 85-pound lapdogs and two killer<br />
tabby cats. In her spare time, she sleeps.<br />
’01<br />
5th Reunion: May 19–21, <strong>2006</strong><br />
Contacts: Max Kenner, kenner@bard.edu; Sung Jee Yoo, sujeyo@<br />
gmail.com; Lori Fromowitz, lfromowitz@yahoo.com. Staff contact:<br />
Heather Deichler, 845-758-7663 or deichler@bard.edu<br />
Tyrone Santana Copeland collaborated this year with the Harlem<br />
YMCA Arts Collective in New York City to present his latest short<br />
film, Pioneers Lost, which centers on a retired DJ who relives his<br />
youth through hip-hop music.<br />
Bernard Geoghegan was awarded a 2005 Jacob K. Javits Fellowship,<br />
one of the nation’s most competitive awards in the social sciences,<br />
arts, and humanities. Geoghegan received a master’s degree in media,<br />
technology, and society from Northwestern University in 2004, and is<br />
remaining at Northwestern to earn a doctorate. His research focuses<br />
on the history of computing and its influence upon philosophy, aesthetics,<br />
and representation; he is especially interested in how changing<br />
technologies affect the form and content of communications.<br />
’02<br />
James Curcio’s first novel, Join My Cult!, has been published by New<br />
Falcon Press, the Arizona-based publisher of Timothy Leary, Robert<br />
Anton Wilson, and Aleister Crowley. According to Peter Carrol, “Join<br />
My Cult! reads like a stroboscopic MTV docudrama of Ulysses and<br />
Illuminatus.” To find out more, visit www.jamescurcio.net.<br />
’03<br />
Bianca D’Allesandro is teaching English language arts to seventhand<br />
eighth-graders at KIPP Bridge College Prep, a middle school<br />
located in West Oakland, California. The school follows the KIPP<br />
(Knowledge is Power Program) model, which is known for its high<br />
expectations and focus on academic results. Most of the students are<br />
African American or Hispanic, and all of them plan to attend private<br />
schools when they graduate. Each homeroom is given the name of a<br />
college. Bianca has chosen Bard as hers!<br />
Sarah Schendel works as a paralegal with Prisoners Legal Services<br />
in Ithaca, New York.<br />
’04<br />
Yishay Garbasz had an exhibition of Holocaust photography, titled<br />
In My Mother’s Footsteps, as part of Noorderlicht Photofestival 2005<br />
in the Netherlands. The exhibition, which traced his mother’s “journey<br />
into hell” through a series of concentration camps, was on display<br />
in a synagogue from September 4 through October 2. It was<br />
the result of his yearlong Watson Fellowship project.<br />
Connor Gaudet spent time this past year videotaping life at Nativity<br />
Preparatory School in New Bedford, Massachusetts.<br />
’05<br />
Emily Schmall was selected from more than 1,000 applicants to be a<br />
National Public Radio (NPR) summer intern. As executive producer<br />
of the intern-produced program, Intern Edition, her duties included<br />
managing staff activities and production of the audio program. She<br />
led all staff meetings; oversaw the story assignment process with<br />
interns; assisted with reporting, writing, editing, and music selections<br />
for the program; and ensured a finished product. She was also instrumental<br />
in facilitating communication between interns and NPR’s<br />
60
professional staff, especially for Intern Edition. A native of Chicago,<br />
Emily has written and produced stories for NPR, the London<br />
Financial Times, Salon.com, and the Miami Herald.<br />
Taun N. Toay, who earned a bachelor’s degree in economics in<br />
spring 2005, received a Fulbright Award to study economics in<br />
Greece. He will concentrate on isolating and studying the euro’s<br />
inflationary effects on the Greek economic system.<br />
Milton Avery Graduate School<br />
of the Arts<br />
MFA correspondent:<br />
Marjorie Vecchio MFA ’01, ABTOK@aol.com<br />
’84<br />
David Abel moved to Portland, Oregon, in 1997, after success with<br />
the Bridge Bookshop in New York City and Passages Bookshop &<br />
Gallery in Albuquerque. He recently sang the role of Dr. Knox in the<br />
Liminal Performance Group’s The Resurrectory, and performed in the<br />
third annual Richard Foreman mini-festival at Performance Works<br />
NW. He is an organizer of the monthly Spare Room reading series<br />
(www.flim.com/spareroom). He also organized a reading tour of the<br />
Southwest in the fall of 2004, and did a residency at THE LAND/an<br />
art site (near Albuquerque).<br />
’87<br />
Maddy Rosenberg had several paintings in two group exhibitions<br />
during the DUMBO Art Under the Bridge Festival in Brooklyn in<br />
October 2005. Maddy’s work was shown at Safe-T-Gallery and at<br />
the Brooklyn Arts Council, where she also had a solo show in April.<br />
’90<br />
Together with artist Lisa Kaftori, Joan Giroux founded Compassionate<br />
Action Enterprises, a collaborative promoting art geared toward<br />
ecofeminism as well as social, political, and cultural activism. Using<br />
art and art strategies to raise awareness and cultivate understanding,<br />
CAE has performed actions and exhibited in Japan, Korea, Israel,<br />
and the United States since 2000.<br />
’92<br />
Grace Markman had her second solo painting show, titled Rainbow<br />
Twist, at Holland Tunnel, Williamsburg, Brooklyn.<br />
Marilyn Wenker continues to teach creative writing in the English<br />
Department at Brooklyn College. Her play, Meet, was performed at<br />
the Neighborhood Playhouse in Manhattan.<br />
’93<br />
Leslie Fry completed a public art commission from the Broward<br />
County Public Art and Design in May 2005, which included four<br />
large sculptural wall-reliefs for branch libraries in Fort Lauderdale,<br />
Florida.<br />
’94<br />
Brian Patton composed and designed the sound for several plays<br />
around the country and has a busy schedule for the coming year. He<br />
will open a new play by James Lapine, starring Mia Farrow and Julia<br />
Stiles, at Playwrights Horizons, and also contribute to productions<br />
of Charles Fuller’s A Soldier’s Play at Second Stage (with Jo<br />
Bonney); Cat on a Hot Tin Roof at ACT San Francisco, directed by<br />
Israel Hicks; Manic Flight Reaction with Trip Cullman (also at<br />
Playwrights Horizons); and The Trip to Bountiful at Signature<br />
Theater, as well as several other productions in New York City and<br />
elsewhere in the United States. He gives his best to all his friends<br />
from the Avery School. If anyone would like to attend a production,<br />
please write him at fitzpatton@mac.com and he will be happy to<br />
arrange for tickets.<br />
’96<br />
Tara Conant received an Artist Fellowship Award in photography<br />
from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. She also received a 2005<br />
Artist Grant Recognition from the Massachusetts State Senate for<br />
Photographic Excellence. Her work was included in Photography<br />
Now: Selections from the Massachusetts Cultural Council Artists Grants<br />
Awards (hosted by the Art Space Gallery, Maynard); a members exhibit<br />
at the Provincetown Art Association & Museum in Provincetown,<br />
Massachusetts; and a solo exhibit of Sites at Westfield State College<br />
in Westfield, Massachusetts.<br />
’97<br />
Jasmina Danowski was awarded a 2005 Pollock-Krasner Foundation<br />
grant.<br />
Nick Tobier collaborated with the site-specific theater group, Red<br />
Dive, on Peripheral City, a walking tour and performance staged<br />
along the banks of Brooklyn’s Gowanus Canal.<br />
’98<br />
Anna Moschovakis continues her work with the Brooklyn-based<br />
collaborative Ugly Duckling Presse (uglyducklingpresse.org). Her<br />
first book of poems, I Have Not Been Able to Get Through to Everyone,<br />
will be published next year by Turtle Point Press.<br />
’99<br />
Geoff Bouvier received the 2005 American Poetry Review/<br />
Honickman First Book Prize in Poetry. The prize, made possible by<br />
a partnership between American Poetry Review and The Honickman<br />
Foundation, includes a monetary award and publication of a volume<br />
of poetry. Bouvier’s Living Room, with an introduction by Heather<br />
McHugh, will be published in the fall of 2005, with distribution by<br />
Copper Canyon Press through Consortium.<br />
61
Stephen Clair’s latest album, Under the Bed, was released on October<br />
25, 2005, by Valley Entertainment. His first child, Esther Rose, was<br />
born June 12, 2005.<br />
Becky Howland’s work was shown in an exhibition titled Downtown<br />
New York, curated by Carlo McCormick, at the Grey Art Gallery at<br />
New York University. At Jeffrey Deitch’s Wooster Street space, she<br />
participated in a benefit for the artist-run alternative space ABC No<br />
Rio, which she cofounded.<br />
’00<br />
Mary Pinto participated again in a three-week summer residency at<br />
the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.<br />
’01<br />
Michelle Handelman had a solo show at Rx Gallery, San Francisco.<br />
A selection of her video work was shown at the International Art<br />
Connection, vols. 1 and 2, which took place at 00130 Gallery in<br />
Helsinki, Finland.<br />
Holly Lynton’s work titled then I woke up, and it was still there was<br />
included in the fall 2005 exhibition at Ambrosino Gallery in North<br />
Miami, Florida.<br />
exhibition at Samson Projects, a new gallery in Boston, in February.<br />
David Levi Strauss will be featuring her work in the third installment<br />
of his public conversation with Daniel Martinez in the forthcoming<br />
CAA Art Journal.<br />
Alexandra Newmark was a 2005 recipient of a Pollock-Krasner<br />
Foundation grant. She has an upcoming exhibition at the Carl Berg<br />
Gallery in Los Angeles. She lives in Brooklyn.<br />
’03<br />
In July 2005, April Gertler was in Voices Off, a group show presented<br />
during the Arles Photography Festival, in Arles, France. She<br />
participated in an artist residency with 12 other international artists<br />
in Verneusses, Normandy, and the work produced there was exhibited<br />
in a group show in Le Havre in November 2005. In fall 2005,<br />
April’s series Still Lives was presented in the Greek photo magazine,<br />
Photo Book.<br />
Joel Griffith was awarded a Peter S. Reed Foundation grant in June<br />
2005. The Dutchess County Arts Council included his work in an<br />
exhibition in Poughkeepsie that was part of the 2005 Empire State<br />
Games. Joel is working on a second suite of paintings commissioned<br />
by the Village of Tivoli, which will be unveiled in September <strong>2006</strong>.<br />
Judy Radul had two new multiscreen installation works exhibited at<br />
Presentation House Gallery in Vancouver, British Columbia, from<br />
September 17 to October 30, 2005. Downes Point, filmed in a grove<br />
on Hornby Island, featured two panoramic projections spatially<br />
configured to interpose the viewer in middle of the scene. And So<br />
Departed (Again), a DVD installation presented on three screens,<br />
documented five directors rehearsing an actress in a death scene<br />
over a period of 12 hours.<br />
’02<br />
Jen DeNike’s wrestling and dunking videos have been acquisitioned<br />
for the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art.<br />
Selections of her video work were included in the Greater New York<br />
2005 exhibition at P.S.1 MoMA. A portfolio of her video stills was<br />
published in the fall 2005 issue of Topic magazine. She has forthcoming<br />
solo exhibitions at the Oliver Kamm Gallery in New York<br />
City and 404 Contemporari in Naples, Italy.<br />
In May 2005, Kelly Kaczynski had her New York solo debut in an<br />
exhibition titled air is air and thing is thing at Triple Candie. A member<br />
of the visiting faculty at Northwestern University in Chicago, she<br />
will also be a visiting lecturer at the University of Chicago.<br />
Carrie Moyer had a painting installation included in the Next Next<br />
Wave Festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in October 2005.<br />
She also participated in Around About Abstraction (curated by Ron<br />
Platt at the Weatherspoon Museum); a queer sandwich-board project<br />
at the University of California at Davis; a group exhibition called<br />
Young American Artists at the Galeria Marlborough in Madrid; and an<br />
5 North Road by Joel Griffith, MFA ’03<br />
The first suite is on permanent display in the Watts dePeyster Hall<br />
in the village.<br />
In August 2005, Litmus press published Jennifer Hayashida’s translation<br />
of Inner China—a Tale, a book-length prose poem by Swedish<br />
author Eva Sjödin. In 2005 she was a visiting lecturer at the University<br />
of California at Davis.<br />
Sunsook Roh was busy in 2005. She participated in a stage production<br />
of traditional Korean music and dance in Seoul in April, and<br />
appeared in collaborative shows at two venues in Japan—in Tokyo’s<br />
62
Ginza in July and in Kawasaki in August. She also had a solo show<br />
in Ono Gallery, Tokyo, in September.<br />
Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the<br />
Decorative Arts, Design, and Culture<br />
’99<br />
Judith Gura recently published The Abrams Guide to Period Styles for<br />
Interiors (Abrams, 2005). Her Sourcebook of Scandinavian Furniture<br />
will be published by W. W. Norton in 2007.<br />
’00<br />
Joanna Pessa has returned to The Stradlings Antiquarians in New<br />
York City, where she is the firm’s research director.<br />
Jennifer Pitman married Bobby Hager on May 14, 2005, in New<br />
York City.<br />
’02<br />
Ron Labaco curated the first exhibition in the United States on<br />
Ettore Sottsass, the Italian architect-designer. Ettore Sottsass:<br />
Designer covers its subject’s designs in furniture, ceramics, glass, metalwork,<br />
and product design. The show opened at the Los Angeles<br />
County Museum of Art on March 12 and runs through June 11.<br />
Ron edited and contributed to the accompanying catalogue, Ettore<br />
Sottsass: Architect and Designer, which reviews Sottsass’s contribution<br />
to architecture and design.<br />
’03<br />
After more than five years, Melissa Cohn Lindbeck has left the<br />
Merchant’s House Museum, where she had been a volunteer, cocurator,<br />
and most recently, the museum’s education coordinator. Her<br />
husband’s company has transferred them to the Durham/Raleigh<br />
area. Melissa would love to get in touch with BGC alums in North<br />
Carolina!<br />
Alexa Griffith Winton received grants from the Graham Foundation,<br />
Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation, and New York State Council<br />
on the Arts in support of her book project on Dorothy Liebes. She<br />
teaches design history at Pratt.<br />
’04<br />
Emily Wheat Maynard has started her own jewelry business in<br />
Louisville, Kentucky. The business is called Elva Fields, in honor of<br />
Emily’s great-grandmother. Some of the collection can be viewed<br />
online at www.elvafields.com.<br />
Han Vu completed a yearlong documentary project on a 9/11<br />
memorial sculpture by Sassona Norton. As writer and director, Han<br />
followed the memorial from its initial conception to its dedication<br />
at the Norristown Courthouse in Pennsylvania.<br />
Manhattan. She plans to translate her background as a freelancer<br />
into a specialty in financial planning for the self-employed.<br />
Catherine Youngman and her husband, Cameron, welcomed a<br />
baby girl, Kelly Forbes Youngman, on July 22, 2005.<br />
’05<br />
Marcella Ruble Harris’s law firm, Harris & Ruble, filed a case to<br />
recover La Belle Ferronière, a painting attributed to Leonardo da<br />
Vinci. The painting achieved fame in the 1920s when the art dealer,<br />
Lord Joseph Duveen of Millbank, disputed its authenticity. The<br />
current case is of particular interest to Marcella, who wrote her master’s<br />
thesis on Lord Duveen.<br />
Center for Curatorial Studies<br />
’96<br />
Regine Basha, adjunct curator, Arthouse, Jones Center of<br />
Contemporary Art, Austin; Gilbert Vicario, assistant curator of<br />
Latin American Art and coordinator, International Center for the<br />
Arts of the Americas, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and Sofia<br />
Hernandez ’00, curator and program manager, Art in General, New<br />
York City, were among a group of international curators who<br />
selected the film and video works for e-flux video rental (EVR), a<br />
project comprising a free video rental store, public screening room,<br />
and film and video archive.<br />
Goran Tomcic, director of Moti Hasson Gallery in New York City,<br />
has temporarily moved to Berlin to help facilitate the Gallery’s<br />
expanding vision for a European audience.<br />
’97<br />
Rachel Gugelberger resigned as associate director of the Galleries<br />
at the School of Visual Arts in order to focus on independent curatorial<br />
projects.<br />
’98<br />
Jessica Hough was promoted from associate curator to curatorial<br />
director at the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield,<br />
Connecticut.<br />
Victoria Noorthoorn has been very active as an independent curator<br />
in Buenos Aires, curating exhibitions in various museum, galleries,<br />
and other public spaces. She is also associate curator of the<br />
permanent collection of the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes<br />
Neuquén, a new branch of the national Fine Arts Museum in<br />
Argentina.<br />
Zhang Zhaohui, Ph.D. candidate at the Central Academy of Art,<br />
Beijing, has been working as a researcher of Chinese art at the Asia Art<br />
Katherine Wahlberg recently joined Ameriprise Financial, formerly<br />
American Express Financial Advisors, as a financial adviser in<br />
63
Archive in Hong Kong. He also works as a consultant to curators,<br />
critics, and gallery owners interested in contemporary Chinese art.<br />
’99<br />
Alejandro Diaz is an artist and independent curator living in New<br />
York. Public Art Fund presented his A Can for All Seasons—a series<br />
of sculptural renditions of brand-name canned goods enlarged to<br />
the size of planters—on the Grand Concourse in the Bronx, across<br />
the street from the Bronx Museum of the Arts.<br />
Xandra Eden left her position as assistant curator at The Power Plant<br />
Contemporary Art Gallery in Toronto to become curator of exhibitions<br />
at Weatherspoon Art Museum at the University of North<br />
Carolina at Greensboro, where she is an adjunct faculty member.<br />
Judy Kim, curator of exhibitions at the American Federation of<br />
Arts, and Allison Peters ’01 curated INterACTION at the Hyde<br />
Park Art Center, Chicago, where Allison is exhibition coordinator.<br />
’01<br />
Cecilia Brunson left her position as assistant curator of Latin<br />
American Art at the Jack S. Banton Museum of Art in Austin to<br />
pursue curatorial projects in Chile, her native country.<br />
Gabriela Rangel, visual arts director of the Americas Society,<br />
curated Beyond Geography, the Society’s archival exhibition celebrating<br />
40 years at the vanguard of visual arts in the Americas.<br />
Formerly, Gabriela was assistant curator for Latin American Art at<br />
the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, where she helped establish the<br />
museum’s Department of Latin American Art.<br />
’02<br />
Gillian Cuthill works at the National Portrait Gallery in Scotland.<br />
Jill Winder lives in Berlin, where she is an ICWA Donors’ Fellow<br />
studying Germany through the work, ideas, and viewpoints of its<br />
contemporary artists. Prior to six months of intensive study of<br />
German in Berlin, she was a Thomas J. Watson Fellow, studying<br />
postcommunist art practice and the cultural politics of transition in<br />
the former Soviet bloc.<br />
’03<br />
Rob Blackson and Candice Hopkins were among many CCS<br />
alumni/ae in attendance at the Venice Biennale in June. Also on<br />
hand were Goran Tomcic ’96, Anne Ellegood ’98, Mercedes<br />
Vicente ’00, Lizzie Fisher ’02, Tairone Bastien ’04, Camilla<br />
Pignatti Morano ’05, and Pelin Uran ’05.<br />
Kate Green, assistant curator of education and exhibitions at<br />
ArtPace in San Antonio, curated Mental Maps at the Dorsky<br />
Gallery in Long Island City.<br />
Christel Tsilibari works as a researcher at Saint Martins College in<br />
London and interns at Spruth Magers Lee gallery. Christel and<br />
Marketa Uhlirova are curating a film festival that focuses on fashion<br />
in the moving image for two London venues.<br />
’04<br />
Mayumi Hirano has returned to Japan, where she is working for the<br />
Yokohama Triennial.<br />
Steven Matijcio left his job as curatorial assistant at the Agnes<br />
Etherington Art Centre in Kingston, Ontario. He is now curator at<br />
Plug In ICA, a laboratory for the research and presentation of contemporary<br />
ideas manifested as works of art, in Winnipeg,<br />
Manitoba.<br />
Yasmil Raymond accepted a permanent position as assistant curator<br />
at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. She was previously a<br />
curatorial fellow in the Visual Arts Department at the Walker.<br />
Ryan Rice finished up a contract for a newly formed organization<br />
for Aboriginal curators and has begun a one-year curatorial residency<br />
at the Carleton University Art Gallery in Ottawa, Ontario,<br />
where he will work on two of his own exhibitions.<br />
’05<br />
Nicole Caruth is the interpretive materials manager at the<br />
Brooklyn Museum.<br />
Judy Ditner began work in August as collection assistant of the<br />
Historical Black and White Photography Collection at Ryerson<br />
University in Toronto. Gifted to the school in June 2005, the collection<br />
includes nearly 3 million photographs that document photojournalism<br />
as we know it, including iconic images that were published in<br />
popular media such as Life, Look, and the Saturday Evening Post.<br />
Erin Salazar is a curatorial assistant at the Bronx Museum of the Arts.<br />
Ramona Piagentini writes that she is settling into her new position<br />
as exhibition assistant at Independent Curators International in New<br />
York City.<br />
Camilla Pignatti Morano returned to her native Italy, where she<br />
accepted the position of assistant curator at Castello di Rivoli<br />
Museo d’Arte Contemporanea in Rivoli.<br />
Yasmeen Siddiqui is assistant curator/programs coordinator at<br />
Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York City, a nonprofit<br />
organization committed to advancing innovative positions in art,<br />
architecture, and design.<br />
The Conductors Institute at Bard<br />
’04<br />
Richard A. Haglund is the assistant conductor of the Illinois<br />
Symphony Orchestra and music director of the Sangamon Valley<br />
Youth Symphony. He has also served as the pops conductor for the<br />
64
Newburgh Symphony, and will be a guest conductor in Bulgaria<br />
this year.<br />
Takyua Nishiwaki entered the doctor of musical arts program at<br />
the University of Maryland in the fall of 2005.<br />
’05<br />
Elizabeth Askren-Brie was chosen as assistant conductor for the<br />
Centre de la Voix of Royaumont’s opera project involving two versions<br />
of Finta Giardiniera: the one created by Mozart in 1775, and<br />
the one presented the previous year in Rome by Pasquale Anfossi.<br />
The production will tour Europe this year. Askren-Brie is the cultural<br />
attaché for the Fondation des Etats-Unis in Paris, where she<br />
lives with her husband and musical partner, violinist Paul Brie, and<br />
is in her fifth season as music director of the chorus and orchestra<br />
of Sciences Po (Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris). This spring,<br />
the ensemble will perform the European premiere of Bard faculty<br />
member Kyle Gann’s “Transcendental Sonnets” in an all-American<br />
contemporary program.<br />
In Memoriam<br />
’28<br />
Edward Gustave Colin Lodter died on January 4, 2005. Born in<br />
Newport, Rhode Island, on November 8, 1907, Professor Lodter<br />
majored in French at St. Stephen’s College, now Bard. He received<br />
his master’s degree from Northwestern University in Evanston,<br />
Illinois, with a major in foreign languages, in 1929. He did a year of<br />
further graduate study at Columbia University, New York City, before<br />
taking a faculty position at Milligan College in 1931, where he taught<br />
French and German. In 1949 he became chairman of the<br />
Department of Foreign Languages and professor of French and<br />
German at East Tennessee State College (now University). During<br />
this time he initiated a program of elementary French at what is now<br />
University School. His survivors include his wife of 64 years, Carsie<br />
Hyder Lodter; a daughter and a son; and eight grandchildren.<br />
’35<br />
William H. Meyer Jr., 92, died on July 6, 2005. He worked in his<br />
family’s grocery business for many years, and put that background<br />
to use in World War II, when he worked for the food-rationing program<br />
in Washington, D.C. Born in Haverstraw, New York, he was<br />
designated his hometown’s village historian a few years ago, and<br />
wrote a history column for the Rockland County Times. His daughter,<br />
Sandra Jean, died in 1946, and his wife, Helen, died in 1986. He<br />
is survived by his two sons, Richard and William III, and by numerous<br />
grandchildren and great-grandchildren.<br />
’36<br />
The Hon. Jack Wilson Lydman died on September 17, 2005, in<br />
Washington, D.C. In his long career with the U.S. Department of<br />
State’s Foreign Service, he served as deputy chief of mission to the U.S.<br />
Embassy in Indonesia (1960–69) and political consul to the U.S.<br />
Embassy in Malaysia (1969–74). Among his other assignments were<br />
deputy chief of mission in Australia, economic counselor in Indonesia,<br />
principal officer in Surabaya, and deputy director for research,<br />
SEATO-Bangkok. Prior to his career in the Foreign Service, he<br />
worked for the Department of State in Washington, D.C., and served<br />
as an operations analyst in the Pentagon and in the Pacific Theater<br />
during World War II.<br />
Lydman was an instructor in German at Bard from 1937 to<br />
1940, and an instructor in German and drama from 1940 to 1943.The<br />
College awarded him an honorary Doctor of Laws degree in 1973. He<br />
was a Bard trustee from 1976 to 1981, and then served as a trustee<br />
associate. He also served on the boards of the Humane Society of the<br />
United States, the Asia Society Washington Center, and DACOR<br />
(Diplomatic and Consular Officers, Retired). He and his wife, Janine<br />
Cabirol Bowie, had an extensive and highly regarded collection of<br />
miniature Chinese ceramics. In addition to his wife, his survivors<br />
include three stepchildren, a nephew and a niece, and several stepgrandchildren,<br />
grandnephews, and grandnieces.<br />
’57<br />
Eugene Mittelman died on May 19, 2005. Born in 1935 in New<br />
York, he earned his law degree from Columbia University. He<br />
served as minority counsel to the U.S. Senate Labor and Public<br />
Welfare Committee, where he helped to shape progressive labor<br />
legislation. Subsequently, he practiced privately and specialized in<br />
litigation and labor issues. He is survived by his wife, Frances; two<br />
daughters; his mother; and a grandson.<br />
’83<br />
John Cardello died at 43. Born in Everett, Massachusetts, he had<br />
lived in Saugus, Massachusetts, for the past 36 years. In addition<br />
to being a Bard alumnus, he was a graduate of the University of<br />
Southern Florida and the University of Massachusetts Amherst,<br />
earning degrees in math, computer science, and teaching. He<br />
taught for several years at Matignon High School in Cambridge,<br />
Massachusetts, and Chelsea High School in Chelsea, Massachusetts.<br />
Prior to teaching, he worked in the computer software department<br />
at Raytheon in Burlington, Massachusetts. His survivors include his<br />
mother, a sister, two nieces, and a large extended family.<br />
’87<br />
Avery Lincoln Chappell-Smith died on May 14, 2005. She worked<br />
as a broker for Stribbling and Associates. Survivors include her husband,<br />
J. Kevin Smith; her children; her parents; and her brother.<br />
65
Faculty<br />
Artine Artinian, 97, Professor Emeritus of French and a member<br />
of Bard’s faculty for nearly 30 years, died on November 19, 2005, at<br />
his home in Lantana, Florida. In addition to teaching, his multifaceted<br />
career embraced the rigors of scholarship, the joys of collecting,<br />
and literary immortality—the last as a thinly disguised version of<br />
himself in novels by his Bard colleague Mary McCarthy and his<br />
friend Gore Vidal.<br />
Born on December 8, 1907, in Pazardzhik, Bulgaria, to<br />
Armenian parents, Artinian came to the United States with his family<br />
in 1920. As a bootblack working in Attleboro, Massachusetts, he<br />
had his tuition to Bowdoin College paid for by a group of prominent<br />
citizens whose shoes he had shined. He subsequently earned a B.A.<br />
from Bowdoin, an M.A. from Harvard University, a doctorate from<br />
Columbia University, and honorary degrees from Bowdoin and<br />
Appalachian State University. He also earned a diploma from the<br />
University of Paris, and was eventually named Officier d’Academie<br />
de la Legion d’Honneur by the French government. While in Paris,<br />
he began his lifelong exploration of French literature—in particular<br />
the works of Guy de Maupassant, whose short stories he translated<br />
in what is deemed to be the definitive English-language edition.<br />
Artinian’s active teaching career at Bard lasted from 1936 until<br />
1964. Esteemed by his colleagues for his convivial, expansive nature as<br />
well as his considerable scholarship, he nevertheless was at the center<br />
of a controversy involving Paul de Man, the Belgian deconstructionist<br />
who served the College as an instructor of French from 1949 to 1951.<br />
Professor Artinian helped de Man to obtain his job at Bard; two years<br />
later, after allegations of thievery and dishonesty were levied against de<br />
Man, Artinian helped to get him fired. Almost 40 years later,<br />
Artinian’s account of de Man’s stormy tenure at Bard formed part of<br />
the afterword to the paperback edition of David Lehman’s book, Signs<br />
of the Times: Deconstruction and the Fall of Paul de Man.<br />
Over the years, Artinian assembled a collection of original letters<br />
and manuscripts that included an unpublished text by Marcel<br />
Proust as well as rare works by de Maupassant, Flaubert, Zola, and<br />
other French writers. He sold a large part of his collection to the<br />
University of Texas shortly before retiring from Bard. In later years,<br />
he also collected portraits of artists and writers such as Jules Verne,<br />
Marcel Marceau, and the poet Rabindranath Tagore.<br />
His wife, the former Margaret Willard Woodbridge, who died<br />
earlier in 2005, also taught at the College, from 1948 to 1949 and<br />
from 1958 to 1961. They were married in 1936, having met as graduate<br />
students at Columbia. He is survived by a son, Robert; two<br />
daughters, Ellen Artinian Strickland and Margaret Artinian Laske;<br />
two grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.<br />
Justine Augusta Salton, 33, a visiting assistant professor of biology,<br />
died on October 28, 2005. She came to Bard in the fall of 2004 after<br />
earning a master’s degree from Hampshire College and a doctorate in<br />
ecology and evolutionary biology from The Graduate School and<br />
University Center, City University of New York. Prior to Bard, she<br />
had taught at New York University Medical Center, Hunter College,<br />
and Baruch College, and had done fieldwork in Madagascar and<br />
Bolivia. A great lover of animals, she spent much of her free time volunteering<br />
at shelters; over the years, she adopted many of their inhabitants.<br />
She is survived by her husband, Raphael Allison, a member of<br />
the faculty of Bard’s Master of Arts in Teaching Program; her mother,<br />
Edith Salton; a sister, Gillian, and a brother, William; and her beloved<br />
dogs: Bert, Monday, Oscar, and Shaba.<br />
Mary Lee Settle, 87, a preeminent American novelist and a professor<br />
at the College from 1965 to 1978, died on September 27, 2005,<br />
in Charlottesville, Virginia. One of the most acclaimed contemporary<br />
writers of historical fiction, her “Beulah Quintet” novels, written<br />
between 1956 (O Beulah Land) and 1982 (The Killing Ground),<br />
were praised by critics for their “seamless, flowing narratives” that<br />
combined impeccable research, strong characterizations, dialogue<br />
true to time and place, and an exacting eye for detail. She also wrote<br />
and published other novels, works of nonfiction, memoirs, short<br />
stories, essays, plays, and screenplays.<br />
During her tenure at Bard, Settle won a National Book Award<br />
for Blood Tie (1977), a novel about American expatriates in Turkey,<br />
and wrote the fourth novel in the Beulah series, The Scapegoat. She<br />
returned to the Annandale campus on several occasions in the early<br />
1980s to give readings, and was granted the honorary degree of<br />
Doctor of Letters at the College’s 125th anniversary academic con-<br />
Mary Lee Settle speaks at the President’s Dinner in 1979 as part of Bard’s<br />
119th Commencement.<br />
66
vocation in September 1985. In bestowing the honorary degree, the<br />
presenters praised Settle’s “generous capacity for friendship, for<br />
human love across all boundaries, and for true independence of<br />
mind and imagination,” adding, “She restores our faith in eloquent<br />
writing, and in so doing, she bears witness to our possibilities for<br />
decent survival.”<br />
In addition to teaching at Bard, she taught at the University of<br />
Virginia in Charlottesville, where she lived, at one time or another,<br />
throughout her life. Before becoming a writer, she worked as a fashion<br />
model and later as a magazine editor. During World War II, she<br />
served in the women’s branch of England’s Royal Air Force, an<br />
experience she described in All the Brave Promises: Memories of Aircraft<br />
Woman 2nd Class 2146391. She was the recipient of Guggenheim fellowships<br />
in 1958 and 1960, a Merrill Foundation Award in 1975, and<br />
an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of<br />
Arts and Letters in 1984, among other honors. She founded the<br />
PEN/Faulkner Award—the first major award to be given to writers<br />
by writers, independent of the publishing industry—in 1980.<br />
In an address given at a Bard faculty seminar in the fall of 1976,<br />
she had this to say about the discipline of writing: “The will and the<br />
rigor are in the sitting down, the closing of a door, the day after day<br />
after day. There is often here the accusation of self-indulgence. I will<br />
surprise you. There is none. You have been misled. That retiring is<br />
its opposite. To face the blank and yet unformed for so much time<br />
with so much necessary patience is a rigor in itself that must be<br />
demanded of the apprentice, and the one who tries it should be<br />
JOHN BARD SOCIETY NEWS<br />
On December 16, 2005, the members of the John Bard<br />
Society gathered for their annual luncheon in New York<br />
City. Justus Rosenberg, Bard Professor Emeritus of<br />
Languages and Literature and a member of the Society,<br />
spoke to the group about his 40 years of teaching at Bard<br />
and the impact that the College has had on his life. Leon<br />
Botstein followed with a discussion on the state of the<br />
College and its future plans.<br />
Justus Rosenberg<br />
Bob Edmonds ’68 and Herbert “Jimmy” Schwarz Jr. ’49<br />
Eric Goldman’ 98 and Karen Olah ’65 David Schwab ’52, Charles P. Stevenson Jr., and Robert Amsterdam ’53<br />
For information on how to join the John Bard Society, please contact Debra Pemstein at 845-758-7405 or<br />
pemstein@bard.edu. All inquiries will be kept confidential.<br />
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F A C U LT Y N O T E S<br />
Peggy Ahwesh, associate professor of film and electronic arts, was<br />
featured in Brides of Frankenstein at the San Jose Museum of Art,<br />
an exhibition of work by women artists about virtuality, hybrid<br />
bodies, and synthetic intelligence. She was interviewed about her<br />
videos on This Spartan Life, a Web-based talk show. Ahwesh and<br />
Barbara Ess, associate professor of photography, performed last<br />
summer at Tune (Out)))side, an audio microcasting event. They are<br />
featured on the CD Tune (In))) The Kitchen (audio dispatches<br />
026), sponsored by free103point9, which curates works in radio<br />
and other transmission arts.<br />
Raphael Allison, faculty, the Master of Arts in Teaching Program,<br />
published an essay, “David Antin’s Pragmatist Technophobia” in the<br />
Journal of Modern Literature last November. His essay “Muriel<br />
Rukeyser Goes to War: Pragmatism, Pluralism, and the Politics of<br />
Ekphrasis” is forthcoming this April in College Literature. With<br />
MAT faculty member Derek Furr he organized a panel presentation,<br />
“Sounding Modernism: Tapping the Oral Archive,” at the 2005<br />
conference of the Modernist Studies Association, held in November<br />
in Chicago. The panel subject was poets and recording technologies;<br />
Furr and Allison presented “Reading the Poetry Reading,” a cowritten<br />
paper about the uses of recorded poetry.<br />
Myra Young Armstead, professor of history and faculty, The Master<br />
of Arts in Teaching Program, published “Revisiting Hotels and<br />
Other Lodgings: American Tourist Spaces through the Lens of<br />
Black Pleasure-Travelers, 1880–1950” in a special issue (No. 25) of<br />
The Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts on the American hotel.<br />
Where Shall I Wander, by John Ashbery, Charles P. Stevenson Professor<br />
of Languages and Literature, was nominated for a National Book<br />
Award in poetry. Ashbery was a subject of Invisible Listeners: Lyric<br />
Intimacy in Herbert, Whitman, and Ashbery, a new critical study by<br />
Helen Vendler, who received an Honorary Doctor of Letters degree<br />
from Bard at Commencement 2005. Ashbery was also the subject<br />
of a profile in The New Yorker. He participated in several benefit<br />
readings: in Philadelphia for the American Poetry Review; and in<br />
New York City on the 25th anniversary of the National Poetry Series,<br />
at the City University of New York Graduate Center’s benefit for the<br />
victims of Hurricane Katrina, and for the Walt Whitman Hom(m)age,<br />
an anthology and reading celebrating the 150th anniversary of the<br />
publication of Leaves of Grass.<br />
James Bagwell, director of orchestra and choral music and associate<br />
professor of music, was appointed music director of the Dessoff<br />
Choirs in New York City. He conducted the choirs in three concerts<br />
this season, in addition to collaborating with Michael Tilson Thomas<br />
on a concert with the San Francisco Symphony at Carnegie Hall.<br />
Ethan Bloch, professor of mathematics, has a paper, “The angle<br />
defect for odd-dimensional simplicial manifolds,” forthcoming in<br />
Discrete and Computational Geometry. The paper defines and studies<br />
a new type of curvature function for simplicial polyhedra; “this curvature,”<br />
says Bloch, “which somewhat surprisingly uses the<br />
Bernoulli numbers, behaves particularly nicely on odd-dimensional<br />
simplicial manifolds.”<br />
Roddy Bogowa, faculty in film at the Milton Avery Graduate<br />
School of the Arts, had two films screened: I Was Born, But . . ., his<br />
latest work, at the American Film Institute Silver Springs Theater<br />
in Washington, D.C., as part of the Asian Pacific American Film<br />
Festival; and an early short, Four or Five Accidents, One June, at the<br />
Museum of Modern Art in New York City. His essay “If Films<br />
Could Smell” is forthcoming in Yard magazine.<br />
Leon Botstein, president of the college and Leon Levy Professor in<br />
the Arts and Humanities, spoke about the necessity of reforming<br />
public secondary education to superintendents attending the fall<br />
meeting of the Tri-State Consortium, an organization dedicated to<br />
improving the curricula of public school districts in New York, New<br />
Jersey, and Connecticut. He led a seminar for the faculty and<br />
administration of the Scarsdale (New York) Public Schools in which<br />
he discussed the early college movement and described the successes<br />
of Bard High School Early College in New York City. At Brown<br />
University, he participated in a symposium, “Reinvigorating the<br />
Humanities,” that focused on recent recommendations of the<br />
Association of American Universities to improve the status of the<br />
humanities in liberal arts education. The lecture he delivered last fall<br />
at the United Nations, “Why Music Matters,” was published in The<br />
Musical Quarterly. He spoke about Paul Dukas’s opera Ariane et<br />
Barbe-Bleue for a New Visions at the Guggenheim evening, which<br />
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accompanied his premiere at the New York City Opera, for which<br />
he conducted six performances of the work. As guest conductor, he<br />
led the Düsseldorf Symphony Orchestra in a performance of<br />
Brahms’s German Requiem. He conducted the Jerusalem Symphony<br />
Orchestra ( JSO), for which he is music director, on a tour of eastern<br />
and southern United States. After engagements in Connecticut,<br />
Delaware, Florida, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York,<br />
and Virginia, the orchestra finished its tour with performances at<br />
Carnegie Hall and the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing<br />
Arts. In Israel, he conducted the JSO in a memorial concert for<br />
Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin on the 10th anniversary of his assassination.<br />
In addition, he fulfilled regular conducting responsibilities<br />
with the American Symphony Orchestra.<br />
Richard Davis, professor of religion, gave several invited talks last<br />
fall: “The Art of the Procession” at St. Lawrence University in<br />
September; “Chittrai Revisited: Continuity and Change in an<br />
Urban Temple Festival” at the Columbia University South Asia<br />
Seminar (October); and “Ritual Inside and Outside the Text” at the<br />
University of Chicago South Asia Seminar (November). In April,<br />
he will present “What’s that British Couple doing in Jagannatha’s<br />
Procession” at the annual conference of the American Society for<br />
Eighteenth-Century Studies, held in Montreal, and “The Art of the<br />
Procession” as the Lehman Lecture at Bowdoin College.<br />
Laurie Dahlberg, associate professor of art history and photography,<br />
presented papers at Smolny College (“Vulgar Success: The Conflicts<br />
and Conquests of Early Photography”) and the State Hermitage<br />
Museum (“Of Nudity and Nationality: Photography and the Nude<br />
in 19th-Century Europe”) in St. Petersburg in October.<br />
Tim Davis ’91, visiting assistant professor of photography, spoke at<br />
the Whitney Museum of American Art in connection with The<br />
New City: Sub/Urbia in Recent Photography, in which his work was<br />
included. He presented a solo exhibition at Galerie Rodolphe<br />
Janssen in Brussels. He lectured at Mills College in Oakland and<br />
the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and published<br />
articles in ArtForum and Foam magazine.<br />
Jennifer Day, assistant professor of Russian, published “Strange<br />
Spaces: Balabanov and the Petersburg Text” in the Winter 2005<br />
Slavic and East European Journal.<br />
Linh Dinh, faculty in writing, Milton Avery Graduate School of<br />
the Arts, published two collections of new poems last year: American<br />
Tatts (Chax Press) and Borderless Bodies (Factory School). He is the<br />
recipient of a David K. Wong Fellowship, to be spent at the<br />
University of East Anglia in Norwich, England.<br />
Mark Alice Durant, faculty in photography, Milton Avery Graduate<br />
School of the Arts, curated Blur of the Otherworldly: Contemporary<br />
Art, Technology and the Paranormal, which opened last October at the<br />
Center for Art and Visual Culture at the University of Maryland,<br />
Baltimore County. He is also editor of the accompanying catalogue,<br />
which features essays by Lynne Tillman, Marina Warner, Jane D.<br />
Marsching, and himself.<br />
“Coming to Terms with Iraq,” by Omar Encarnación, associate<br />
professor of political studies, was published in the winter issue of<br />
Ethics & International Affairs. The essay reviews recent books about<br />
the U.S. occupation of Iraq and reflects on the history of U.S.<br />
attempts to export democracy abroad.<br />
Joanne Fox-Przeworski, director of the Bard Center for Environmental<br />
Policy, gave an invited talk on BCEP’s innovative modular<br />
graduate program to educators at “Integrated Education for<br />
Sustainable Development,” held in Tokyo last September. From<br />
Japan she went to Szenzhen, China, to speak to mayors at the<br />
Sustainable Communities Conference about a model partnership,<br />
the New York City Watershed Agreement.<br />
Derek Furr, faculty, the Master of Arts in Teaching Program, has a<br />
short story, “Feed My Sheep,” forthcoming in Potomac Review, and<br />
an article, “Listening to Millay,” forthcoming in the Journal of<br />
Modern Literature.<br />
Christopher H. Gibbs, James H. Ottaway Jr. Professor of Music, gave<br />
lectures over the summer at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center,<br />
Sembrich Opera Museum, and New York City Opera. His article<br />
“From Haus to Konzerthaus: Orchestrations of Schubert’s Erlkönig<br />
and other Lieder” appeared in Liberamicorum Isabelle Cazeaux:<br />
69
Symbols, Parallels and Discoveries in Her Honor. His book The Life of<br />
Schubert has been issued in a Greek translation.<br />
Richard Gordon, professor of psychology, contributed an article,<br />
“Towards a Clinical Ethnography,” to a special issue of the journal<br />
Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry. The issue, edited by the psychiatrist<br />
and anthropologist Anne Becker, addressed the spread of eating<br />
disorders across the globe. It contained articles from Fiji, Japan,<br />
Curacao, and South Africa, in a unique approach in which cultural<br />
issues are studied in depth in order to understand clinical problems.<br />
Teresa Hubbard and Alexander Birchler, photography faculty,<br />
Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts, were commissioned to<br />
create four new video works, one for each program in the third season<br />
of the PBS television series, Art in the 21st Century, which aired<br />
last fall. The two received a 2005–06 Landis & Gyr Foundation grant<br />
for a studio residency in London. Their fall exhibitions included<br />
Museum Sammlung Goetz, Münich; Galerie Bob van Orsouw,<br />
Zürich; Les Abbatoirs Museum, Toulouse; and Württembergischer<br />
Kunstverein, Stuttgart.<br />
Last fall, Peter Hutton, professor of film, presented a program of<br />
his recent work from Bangladesh and South Korea at Harvard<br />
University, Massachusetts College of Art, and The Museum School<br />
in Boston. In January Hutton traveled on a Russian freighter from<br />
the Gulf of Mexico to St. Petersburg, Russia, to shoot the final section<br />
of his film trilogy on the sea.<br />
Paul Ramírez Jonas, assistant professor of studio arts, presented work<br />
last fall in two exhibitions: The Plain of Heaven, an international show<br />
organized by Creative Time and inspired by the impending redevelopment<br />
of the High Line, the unused elevated rail structure that runs<br />
up the west side of Manhattan; and Dreaming of a More Better Future<br />
in the Reinberger Galleries at the Cleveland Institute of Art.<br />
Felicia Keesing, associate professor of biology, was one of the featured<br />
scientists in the “Profiles of Ecologists” series at the 90th<br />
meeting of the Ecological Society of America, held in Montreal last<br />
August. She coauthored three papers presented at that meeting:<br />
“Effects of large mammalian herbivores on snakes in an African<br />
savanna” (coauthored by Jennifer Peters ’06); “Linearities, nonlinearities,<br />
and thresholds in the ecology of Lyme disease”; and<br />
“Effects of guinea fowl on blacklegged ticks in eastern New York.”<br />
She also organized a symposium on the ecology of infectious disease<br />
as part of the meeting. A paper Keesing cowrote with Lindsay<br />
O’Reilly ’05 was accepted for publication in the Journal of African<br />
Ecology. The paper describes O’Reilly’s study of the effects of fire on<br />
savanna bird communities in Kenya, based on work she did in<br />
Keesing’s “Ecology of African Savannas” class.<br />
David Kettler, research professor in social studies, is the author of<br />
several essays published or forthcoming this year: “Political Theory<br />
and Political Science: The Heart of the Matter” in Making Political<br />
Science Matter: The Flyvbjerg Debate and Beyond (NYU Press);<br />
“Negotiating Exile: Franz L. Neumann as Political Scientist” in Fruits<br />
of Exile; and “Women and the State: Käthe Truhel and the Idea of a<br />
Social Bureaucracy” in Festschrift für Claudia Honegger. He is editor of<br />
“The Limits of Exile,” a special issue of Journal of the Interdisciplinary<br />
Crossroads published in April. Last September he organized a workshop<br />
and gave the opening presentation on “Limits of Exile: Exile<br />
Studies and Comparative Historiography” in St. Petersburg, Russia,<br />
under the joint auspices of Bard and Smolny Colleges. Last spring he<br />
published “Robert Cumming, 1916–2004” in Political Theory.<br />
Ann Lauterbach, David and Ruth Schwab Professor of Languages<br />
and Literature, was a visiting art critic last September at the<br />
Anderson Ranch in Aspen, Colorado, where she also gave a reading<br />
from her two recent books, The Night Sky (prose) and Hum (poems).<br />
Nancy Leonard, professor of English, chaired a session of film<br />
scholars and musicologists at “Beyond the Soundtrack: Representing<br />
Music and Cinema,” a conference at the University of Minnesota.<br />
This spring she will read from her recent poetry at the National Arts<br />
Club in New York City.<br />
Steven Mazie, faculty in politics at Bard High School Early<br />
College, published “Consenting Adults? Amish ‘Rumspringa’ and<br />
the Quandary of Exit in Liberalism” in the December 2005 issue of<br />
Perspectives on Politics. His first book, Israel’s Higher Law: Religion and<br />
Liberal Democracy in the Jewish State, will be published this spring by<br />
Lexington Books, an imprint of Rowman & Littlefield.<br />
Altruism in World Religions was edited by Jacob Neusner, Research<br />
Professor of Religion and Theology, and Bruce Chilton ’71, chaplain<br />
and Bernard Iddings Bell Professor of Philosophy and Religion.<br />
Published last fall by Georgetown University Press, the book is<br />
based upon a conference of the same name that was presented in<br />
2004 by the Institute of Advanced Theology, of which Chilton is<br />
the executive director.<br />
Amy Ogata, associate professor at The Bard Graduate Center for<br />
Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design, and Culture, was the recipient<br />
last year of a senior fellowship at the Lemelson Center for the<br />
Study of Invention and Innovation, at the Smithsonian Institution.<br />
Her article on the design of educational toys and postwar American<br />
culture appeared in the summer 2005 issue of Winterthur Portfolio.<br />
Over the summer and fall, she presented her research on the material<br />
culture of postwar American childhood at the National<br />
Museum of American History and at the Society for the History of<br />
Children and Youth conference in Milwaukee. She spoke on<br />
World’s Fairs at the Art Institute of Chicago, and this spring she is<br />
presenting papers at the College Art Association Annual Meeting<br />
in Boston and the European Social Science History Conference in<br />
Amsterdam.<br />
Dimitri B. Papadimitriou, executive vice president of the college,<br />
Jerome Levy Professor of Economics, and president of the Levy<br />
Economics Institute, was interviewed on June 28 by Cheryl Glaser<br />
70
on American Public Radio’s Marketplace regarding the structure of<br />
the Federal Reserve; on September 29 by Richard Freeman at<br />
Executive Intelligence Review regarding the financial system, speculative<br />
funds, and the energy crisis; and on October 25 during Ben<br />
Merens’s Ideas Network program on Wisconsin Public Radio, regarding<br />
the nomination of Ben Bernanke to replace Alan Greenspan as<br />
chair of the Federal Reserve. Papadimitriou was a participant and discussant<br />
of “Keynesian Money Endogeneity” at an international conference<br />
in Cassino, Italy, in September; keynote speaker (“The United<br />
States and Her Creditors”) at the Centre for Full Employment and<br />
Equity, University of Newcastle, Australia, in December; and guest<br />
speaker (“The Outlook for the U.S. Economy”) at a conference,<br />
“International Monetary Policy: The Role of Aspect Prices in Central<br />
Banking,” on St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands, this past January.<br />
Julia Rosenbaum, visiting assistant professor of art history, presented<br />
a talk, “The Power of Nomenclature and the Contradictions<br />
of American Impressionism,” at the College Art Association meetings<br />
held in Boston in February. The talk was part of the Association<br />
of Historians of American Art session.<br />
Justus Rosenberg, professor emeritus of languages and literature<br />
(1962–2003), gave a lecture at the Dahesh Museum in New York<br />
City on the activities of the International Rescue Committee and<br />
read from his translation (No Trojan War) of Jean Giraudoux’ play<br />
La Guerre de Troie N’aura Pas Lieu.<br />
Michael Sadowski, faculty, the Master of Arts in Teaching<br />
Program, was a presenter at the second annual “Youth and Race”<br />
conference, sponsored by the Institute of African American<br />
Research and held in October at the University of North Carolina<br />
at Chapel Hill and Duke University. His topic was “The ‘Acting<br />
White’ Hypothesis and Teacher Education: What Educators Need<br />
to Know.” He discussed the classroom implications of the debate<br />
over the “acting white” theory, which holds that some peer groups<br />
of color reject academic achievement, and reviewed recent research<br />
that has called this theory into question.<br />
Stephen Shore, Susan Weber Soros Professor in the Arts, is beginning<br />
a collaboration with Pietro Perona, director of the Computational<br />
Vision Group at California Institute of Technology. The group is<br />
studying the bases of visual perception with the aim of applying this<br />
understanding to computational vision. Shore presented his work in<br />
four recent solo exhibitions: at the Hammer Museum in Los<br />
Angeles, Galerie Sprüth Magers in Cologne, P.S. 1 MoMA in New<br />
York City, and Presentation House Gallery in Vancouver. Last<br />
October he gave public lectures at the University of Las Vegas,<br />
Hammer Museum (with Michael Fried), and Tokion Magazine<br />
Creativity Now Conference (with William Eggleston), and conducted<br />
a workshop at the Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon.<br />
Cut at Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects last fall. Sillman’s<br />
work is included in Part 4 of The Triumph of Painting, on view at the<br />
Saatchi Gallery in London until May 7, and she will have a solo<br />
exhibition in April at Sikkema Jenkins & Co. in New York City. A<br />
book about her drawings, with an essay by Wayne Koestenbaum, is<br />
forthcoming this spring from Gregory R. Miller & Co.<br />
Benjamin Stevens, visiting assistant professor of classics, received<br />
his Ph.D. last August from the University of Chicago’s Committee<br />
on the Ancient Mediterranean World. In January he presented a<br />
paper, “Lingua olet: The Scent of Language and Social Synaesthesia<br />
at Rome,” at the 137th annual meeting of the American<br />
Philological Association, held in Montreal.<br />
Elaine Thomas, assistant professor of political studies, will publish<br />
“Keeping Identity at a Distance: France’s Renewed Reaction to the<br />
Islamic Headscarf ” in the March <strong>2006</strong> issue of Ethnic and Racial<br />
Studies. Last September she presented a paper on a panel titled<br />
“Immigration and Political Theory” at the American Political<br />
Science Association annual meeting in Washington, D.C.<br />
Hap Tivey, artist in residence, presented work in Leucos Transit at<br />
the Elizabeth Leach Gallery in Portland, Oregon, last November<br />
and December.<br />
Eric Trudel, assistant professor of French, published “The Power of<br />
Rhetoric, the Rhetoric of Power: Jean Paulhan’s Fiction, Criticism and<br />
Editorial Activity” in Yale French Studies No.106, a special issue<br />
devoted to Jean Paulhan.Trudel is guest editor of the Etudes Françaises,<br />
Vol. 42, No. 2, “Figures artistiques du littéraire,” forthcoming this<br />
spring, which includes his introduction and an article, “Spectres de<br />
la peinture. Paulhan (et Ponge) face à Braque et Fautrier.”<br />
Marina van Zuylen, associate professor of French and comparative<br />
literature, published an essay, “The Secret Life of Monsters,” in<br />
Beyond the Visible: The Art of Odilon Redon, the catalogue accompanying<br />
the Odilon Redon retrospective at the Museum of Modern<br />
Art in New York City. She presented a paper, “Spiderman’s Strategy:<br />
Odilon Redon and the Science of Monsters” at the Nineteenth-<br />
Century French Studies Colloquium in Austin, Texas, last October.<br />
Suzanne Vromen, professor emeritus of sociology (1978–2000),<br />
participated in the Social Memory Studies International Workshop<br />
at the University of Virginia last October and was keynote speaker at<br />
“Resistance and Memory in Belgium,” organized in New York City<br />
by The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. In<br />
December she presented a paper, “The Rescue of Jewish Children by<br />
Belgian Convents during the Holocaust and the Politics of<br />
Commemoration” at the annual conference of the Association for<br />
Jewish Studies, held in Washington, D.C.<br />
Amy Sillman, MFA ’95 and faculty in painting at the Milton Avery<br />
Graduate School of the Arts, presented work in the group exhibition<br />
71
Edward McKeever ’05, Tiger, mixed media on wood. The piece was part of McKeever's Senior Project, titled “Liminal Space: An Eastern Boy in a<br />
Western Body.” To see more of his work, visit edwardmckeever@hotmail.com.<br />
Corrections<br />
In the Fall 2005 <strong>Bardian</strong>, an item about Mark Lytle in the Faculty Notes section<br />
incorrectly identified Ireland as part of the United Kingdom. The <strong>Bardian</strong> regrets<br />
the error.<br />
72
Photography<br />
Cover: (foreground) Don Hamerman;<br />
(background) ©Pete Leonard/zefa/Corbis<br />
Inside front cover: Pete Mauney ’93, MFA ’99<br />
Page 1: Julia Jordan<br />
Page 2: Pete Mauney ’93, MFA ’99<br />
Page 3, (left) Don Hamerman;<br />
(center) Noah Sheldon;<br />
(right) Pete Mauney ’93, MFA ’99<br />
Page 4: Don Hamerman<br />
Page 6: Dennis Brack<br />
Page 8: Don Hamerman<br />
Page 9: Don Hamerman<br />
Page 10: Don Hamerman<br />
Page 11: Don Hamerman<br />
Page 12: Don Hamerman<br />
Page 13: Don Hamerman<br />
Page 14: Bridget Hurlihy<br />
Page 15: (all) Don Hamerman<br />
Page 16: ©Cheryl Ravelo/Reuters/Corbis<br />
Page 17: Lisa Kereszi ’95<br />
Page 18: Keren Su/Getty<br />
Page 20: ©Tom Brakefield/Corbis<br />
Page 22: Pete Mauney ’93, MFA ’99<br />
Page 23: www.broadwaters.fsnet.co.uk/images/<br />
six.gif, manipulated by Kevin Trabucco<br />
Page 24: Noah Sheldon<br />
Page 26: (all) Pete Mauney ’93, MFA ’99<br />
Page 28: Phil Suarez<br />
Page 29: Phil Suarez<br />
Page 31: Phil Suarez<br />
Page 32: (all) Noah Sheldon<br />
Page 33: (all) Noah Sheldon<br />
Page 38: Julie McCarthy<br />
Page 39: (all) Pete Mauney ’93, MFA ’99<br />
Page 40 (top right) Pete Mauney ’93, MFA ’99;<br />
(bottom left) Tania Barricklo;<br />
(bottom right) Karl Rabe<br />
Page 41: Nina Chefakov<br />
Page 42: (top) Pete Mauney ’93, MFA ’99;<br />
(bottom) photographer unknown<br />
Page 43: Noah Sheldon<br />
Page 44: (top) Courtesy of Susannah Bradley;<br />
(bottom) Tanio Barricklo<br />
Page 45: Skippy-Racer Scooter, c. 1933,<br />
The Eric Brill Collection<br />
Page 46: (top) Pete Mauney ’93, MFA ’99;<br />
(bottom) Christopher Lindner<br />
Page 47: (top) Molly Page<br />
(bottom) Pete Mauney ’93, MFA ’99;<br />
Page 48: (top) Scott Swere<br />
(bottom) Deborah Durant<br />
Page 49: (all) Pete Mauney ’93, MFA ’99;<br />
Page 50: (top) Brian Babineau<br />
(middle) Courtesy of Rafael Vinoly Architects;<br />
(bottom) Pete Mauney ’93, MFA ’99<br />
Page 51: Pete Mauney ’93, MFA ’99<br />
Page 52: Courtesy of Judith Trepp ’63<br />
Page 53: ©Buddy Mays/Corbis<br />
Page 54: Courtesy of Emily Hay ’78<br />
Page 55: Stewart Verrilli<br />
Page 56: (top) Courtesy of Allison Radzin ’88<br />
(bottom) Courtesy of Linda Ganjian ’92<br />
Page 57: Courtesy of Grace Markman ’92<br />
Page 58: (left) Matthew Spiegelman ’97;<br />
(right) William Lamson MFA ’97<br />
Page 59: (top) Courtesy of Marina Prager-Kranz ’97;<br />
(middle) Matthew Porter ’98;<br />
(bottom) Ben Ruggiero MFA ’05<br />
Page 62: Pete Mauney ’93, MFA ’99<br />
Page 66: Bard College Archive<br />
Page 67: (all) Noah Sheldon<br />
Page 68: (left) Pete Mauney ’93, MFA ’99;<br />
(middle) Don Hamerman;<br />
(right) Noah Sheldon<br />
Page 69: (all) Pete Mauney ’93, MFA ’99<br />
Page 72: Pete Mauney ’93, MFA ’99<br />
Back cover: Pete Mauney ’93, MFA ’99<br />
Board of Trustees of Bard College<br />
David E. Schwab II ’52, Chair Emeritus<br />
Charles P. Stevenson Jr., Chair<br />
Emily H. Fisher, Second Vice Chair<br />
Mark Schwartz, Treasurer<br />
Elizabeth Ely ’65, Secretary<br />
Roland J. Augustine<br />
+Leon Botstein, President of the College<br />
David C. Clapp<br />
* Marcelle Clements ’69<br />
Rt. Rev. Herbert A. Donovan Jr., Honorary<br />
Trustee<br />
Asher B. Edelman ’61<br />
Robert S. Epstein ’63<br />
* Philip H. Gordon ’43<br />
* Barbara S. Grossman ’73<br />
Sally Hambrecht<br />
Ernest F. Henderson III<br />
Marieluise Hessel<br />
John C. Honey ’39, Life Trustee<br />
Mark N. Kaplan<br />
George A. Kellner<br />
Cynthia Hirsch Levy ’65<br />
Murray Liebowitz<br />
Peter H. Maguire ’88<br />
James H. Ottaway Jr.<br />
Martin Peretz<br />
Stanley A. Reichel ’65<br />
Stewart Resnick<br />
Susan Weber Soros<br />
Martin T. Sosnoff<br />
Patricia Ross Weis ’52<br />
William Julius Wilson<br />
* alumni/ae trustee<br />
+ex officio<br />
Office of Development and Alumni/ae Affairs<br />
Debra Pemstein Vice President for Development<br />
and Alumni/ae Affairs 845-758-7405 or pemstein<br />
@bard.edu; Jessica Kemm ’74 Director of Alumni/ae<br />
Affairs, 845-758-7406 or kemm@bard.edu; Sasha<br />
Boak Kelly, Associate Director of Alumni/ae Affairs,<br />
845-758-7407, boak@bard.edu; Taryn Hart<br />
McGray '05, Administrative Assistant, Alumni/ae<br />
Affairs, 845-758-7089 or mcgray@bard.edu<br />
1-800-BARDCOL<br />
www.bard.edu/alumni<br />
Published by the Bard Publications Office<br />
Mikhail Horowitz, Editor of the <strong>Bardian</strong>;<br />
Ginger Shore, Director; Julia Jordan, Assistant<br />
Director; Mary Smith, Art Director; Debby Mayer,<br />
Editorial Director; René Houtrides MFA’ 97,<br />
Ellen Liebowitz, Cynthia Werthamer, Editors;<br />
Diane Rosasco, Production Manager; Jamie Ficker,<br />
Bridget Murphy, Francie Soosman ’90, Kevin<br />
Trabucco, Designers<br />
©<strong>2006</strong> Bard College. All rights reserved. i
SAVE THE DATE<br />
REUNIONS <strong>2006</strong><br />
May 19–21<br />
Reunion classes: 1936, 1941, 1946, 1951,<br />
1956, 1966, 1971, 1976, 1981, 1986, 1991, 1996, 2001<br />
Would you like to help contact classmates?<br />
Please call Jessica Kemm ’74 at 845-758-7406<br />
or e-mail kemm@bard.edu.<br />
Bard College<br />
PO Box 5000<br />
Annandale-on-Hudson, NY 12504-5000<br />
NONPROFIT ORGANIZATION<br />
U.S. POSTAGE PAID<br />
BARD COLLEGE<br />
Address Service Requested<br />
www.bard.edu