2007 Fall Bardian by Bard College Bardian

Bardian Bard College Fall 2007

above Windows in the curved faĂ§ade of The Gabrielle H. Reem and Herbert J. Kayden Center for Science and Computation reflect the venerable trees of the Annandale campus. cover A scene from The Dwarf, a one-act opera by Alexander von Zemlinsky (based on a short story by Oscar Wilde), part of this yearâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Bard SummerScape

Dear Bardians, I am tremendously excited about my opportunity to serve Bard College as president of the Board of Governors of the Bard–St. Stephen’s Alumni/ae Association. Together with Vice President Roger Scotland ’93 and the other members of the board, I look forward to engaging and strengthening the alumni/ae community and supporting the College. I became involved because I know that my investment of money and time in Bard is leveraged, by the College, for good in ways that I cannot imagine. Through programs such as the public Bard High School Early College in New York City and the master of arts in teaching, or the myriad contributions made by graduates who have been inspired by the Bard faculty, the College is making a vital difference. Like your Bard undergraduate experience, your alumnus/a experience depends on what you put into it. You can get involved in countless ways, from helping to create the most popular part of this magazine by gathering class notes from your friends and classmates, to making yourself available to assist graduates interested in your field, to helping determine which alumni/ae should be recognized at Commencement for their work, to supporting the College financially. Your annual gift, which you can now break into automatic monthly payments—by completing the online form at www.bard.edu/giving or by using the envelope enclosed in the middle of the Bardian—is extremely important, not only for the dollars, but also because it shows funding sources that the people who know Bard best believe it is a good investment. The most important thing you can do for Bard right now is to check your e-mail in-box. If you’re not receiving the monthly e-newsletter updates from the alumni/ae office, please send a message to alumni@bard.edu so we can include you in our mailings. You won’t get spam, but you will receive a heads-up when a program like the Bard Prison Initiative is featured in national media or when there is an alumni/ae event happening near you. If you have ideas about how you would like to be involved or how you would like to see the relationship between the College and the alumni/ae change, please e-mail alumni@bard.edu and let us know what you think. Thanks for reading this. Enjoy this superb issue of the Bardian and stay in touch. Walter Swett ’96 President, Board of Governors, Bard–St. Stephen’s Alumni/ae Association

Board of Governors of the Bard–St. Stephen’s Alumni/ae Association Walter Swett ’96, President Michael DeWitt ’65, Executive Vice President Roger Scotland ’93, Vice President Maggie Hopp ’67, Secretary Olivier te Boekhorst ’93, Treasurer Jonathan Ames ’05 Robert Amsterdam ’53 Claire Angelozzi ’74, Regional Events Liaison David Avallone ’87, Oral History Committee Chairperson Dr. Penny Axelrod ’63 Belinha Rowley Beatty ’69 Eva Thal Belefant ’49 Joshua Bell ’98, Communications and New Technologies Committee Chairperson Dr. Miriam Roskin Berger ’56 Jack Blum ’62 Carla Bolte ’71 Erin Boyer ’00 Randy Buckingham ’73, Events Committee Cochairperson Jamie Callan ’75 Cathaline Cantalupo ’67 Charles Clancy ’69, Stewardship Committee Cochairperson Peter Criswell ’89 Arnold Davis ’44, Nominations and Awards Committee Cochairperson

Elizabeth Dempsey BHSEC ’03, Bard ’05 Kirsten Dunlaevy ’06 Kit Kauders Ellenbogen ’52 Joan Elliott ’67 Naomi Bellinson Feldman ’53 Barbara Grossman Flanagan ’60 Diana Hirsch Friedman ’68 R. Michael Glass ’75 Eric Warren Goldman ’98, Alumni/ae House Committee Cochairperson Rebecca Granato ’99, Young Alumni/ae Committee Chairperson Ann Ho ’62, Career Connections Committee Cochairperson Charles Hollander ’65 Dr. John C. Honey ’39 Elaine Marcotte Hyams ’69 Deborah Davidson Kaas ’71 Richard Koch ’40 Erin Law ’93, Fund-raising Committee Chairperson Cynthia Hirsch Levy ’65 Michelle Dunn Marsh ’95 Peter F. McCabe ’70, Nominations and Awards Committee Cochairperson Steven Miller ’70, Stewardship Committee Cochairperson Jennifer Novik ’98

Karen Olah ’65, Alumni/ae House Committee Cochairperson Matt Phillips ’91 Susan Playfair ’62, Bard Associated Research Development (B.A.R.D.) Chairperson Arthur “Scott” Porter Jr. ’79 Allison Radzin ’88, Career Connections Committee Cochairperson Reva Minkin Sanders ’56 Joan Schaffer ’75 Benedict S. Seidman ’40 Donna Shepper ’73 Barry Silkowitz ’71 George A. Smith ’82, Events Committee Cochairperson Dr. Ingrid Spatt ’69 Andrea J. Stein ’92 Paul Thompson ’93, Diversity Committee Chairperson Dr. Toni-Michelle Travis ’69 Jill Vasileff MFA ’93, MFA Liaison Marjorie Vecchio MFA ’01, MFA Liaison Samir B. Vural ’98 Brandon Weber ’97 Barbara Crane Wigren ’68 Ron Wilson ’75 Sung Jee Yoo ’01

Bardian

FALL 2007 FEATURES 4 CONCLUSIVE EVIDENCE Bard Professor Contributes to Climate Change Report by Nobel Prize–Winning Panel 10 FAVORABLE JUNCTURES Dimitri B. Papadimitriou’s Three Decades at Bard 14 TEACHERS OF DISTINCTION 18 THINGS COME TOGETHER Chinua Achebe Honored 20 SURGICAL STRIDES Stephen Wertheimer ’59, Orthopedic Surgeon and Marathoner 22 THE GOTHIC TRADITION IN ROMANTIC LITERATURE The Bardian Takes a Course

26 A LONELY LENS Joshua Lutz ’97, ’05 Captures the Meadowlands 30 POMP, CIRCUMSTANCE, AND SORCERY Summer Festivals Embraced Elgar and His World 42 BARD–ST. STEPHEN’S ALUMNI/AE ASSOCIATION Resource Guide

DEPARTMENTS 32 BOOKS BY BARDIANS 34 ON AND OFF CAMPUS 44 CLASS NOTES 64 FACULTY NOTES

CONCLUSIVE EVIDENCE Bard Professor Contributes to Climate Change Report by Nobel Prize–Winning Panel Catherine O’Reilly, assistant professor of biology at Bard, started studying biology because she was interested in “what lives in water and lakes, and how they all live together,” she says. “I had no idea—none at all—that I was going to get into climaterelated issues.” But when she went to Africa in the late 1990s to conduct research on declining fish populations in Lake Tanganyika, her findings were surprising enough to lead her in a new direction, one that ultimately changed the course of her intellectual and academic life and brought her to serve as a contributor to a United Nations (UN) report on climate change. O’Reilly, now a freshwater-biology specialist, first became alert to issues of climate when she was a child living in South Africa, where her father was a mathematics professor at Rhodes University. “I was in fifth grade, and we were in the middle of a very long drought—seven years of reduced precipitation—when I first became aware of the importance of water,” she recalls. “We had a certain number of gallons we could use every day in the kitchen for washing and cooking, and we were limited to one bath a week. That’s when I began to realize the value of understanding what conThe functioning of Lake Tanganyika trols climate, and being able to predict it, and being able to prewas changing because of climate warming, pare for it as much as possible.” Years later, as a graduate student at the University of which has implications for the human Arizona, O’Reilly and a group of colleagues went to Tanzania populations that depend on the lake as to try to understand why Lake Tanganyika, one of the world’s largest lakes, had been producing fewer sardines and other a natural resource. fish (the lake is home to several hundred species) since the late 1950s. Environmentalists assumed that overfishing was the culprit. But when O’Reilly and her colleagues reviewed many years of data about atmospheric and water temperatures and wind speed on the lake, they saw that the local temperature had risen by 0.9 to 1.25 degrees Fahrenheit over the last 50 years, and that the lake’s winds had lessened during the same period. Typically, strong south-to-north breezes blow over the lake from May to September and stir up the water layers, pulling algae and other nutrients from the lower, colder layers of water toward the warmer surface of the lake, thereby providing food for the sardines and other fish. Although O’Reilly and her colleagues have not been able to confirm that the reduced winds are linked to increases in air temperature, they do know that the combination of increases in temperature along with reduced wind speeds has changed how the water in the lake mixes. Sediment samples that O’Reilly and her team drew from holes drilled into the lake confirmed what

Catherine O’Reilly

they suspected—levels of carbon isotopes indicated that the supply of algae (organisms at the bottom of the lake’s food chain) began to plummet in approximately 1950. Less algae means less food for the fish, which, of course, translates into fewer fish. The fishermen of Lake Tanganyika weren’t to blame—the climate was. It was a watershed moment. “The results of that study, which suggested that climate change was affecting Lake Tanganyika so strongly, were very surprising,” says O’Reilly. “It wasn’t at all what we had originally expected to find. This was one of the first studies that showed that not just the fish temperatures were changing, but the functioning of the entire lake was changing because of climate warming, and this has implications for the human populations that depend on the lake as a natural resource.” O’Reilly’s subsequent report was published in the scientific

journal Nature in 2003, and the weekly Public Radio International program Living on Earth featured her in a story in the series “Early Signs: Reports from a Warming Planet.” O’Reilly was now permanently linked to—and hooked on—the subject of climate change. A colleague suggested to O’Reilly that she send a copy of her Lake Tanganyika report to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), an international consortium that was formed in 1988 under the auspices of the UN and the World Meteorological Organization to provide an up-to-date, comprehensive assessment of current knowledge on human-induced climate change, its potential impacts, and options for adaptation and mitigation. The IPCC does not carry out research or monitor climaterelated data; it bases its assessments on peer-reviewed and published scientific and technical literature. These assessments take the form of periodic reports, written by “working groups” of scientists, to brief decision makers in all UN member countries on aspects of climate change. Working Group I reviewed scientific and technical data about climaterelated change; Working Group II, of which O’Reilly was a member, reported on the worldwide impact of climate change; and Working Group III focused on ways to stabilize carbon-emissions levels and explained the risks involved in delaying such measures. Not long after she submitted her Lake Tanganyika paper to the IPCC, a representative of the body contacted O’Reilly and asked if she’d be willing to write the freshwater section for the Working Group II report. O’Reilly agreed, and a few months later, as papers began arriving in her mailbox, O’Reilly began the monumental task of reading all the peer-reviewed and published work on how global warming has affected freshwater ecosystems. Describing what was involved in fulfilling her role as a contributing author to the IPCC Working Group II report, “Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability,” O’Reilly says, “I reviewed hundreds of papers, literally, on the topic—essentially we’re talking about all the rivers, streams, and lakes in the entire world. It took months to sift through the papers, sort and organize them, evaluate them, and determine whether the changes they were talking about were fully attributed to climate change, or if other factors could have been involved. I’d never done a review paper on a global scale before. It was definitely challenging.” She did it on her own, and, she says, “ I really enjoyed it. It was fascinating to see the diversity of work that had been published related to the effects of global warming on lakes and rivers.”

“Altogether, when we look at all the different ways we can measure temperature and atmospheric carbon dioxide, we can go very far back in time—about 500 million years.”

It’s important to keep in mind that the earth’s climate has never been static. The naturally occurring form of climate change is caused by five main phenomena: Reflective material The earth’s climate is affected by the amount of ice and snow that reflects energy back toward the sun and keeps the earth cool; conversely, anything dark—such as bodies of water, rocks, and land— absorbs light and stores it. Earth’s position relative to the sun The tilt of the earth, and how elliptical or circular our orbit is around the sun, all of which shift over time, affect the amount of solar radiance. Simple calculations can tell us where the earth will be at any time in the future or where it was at any time in the past. Says O’Reilly, “When we look back at the geological record of what happened during glacial periods in the earth’s history, we know that the position of the sun and the earth, relative to each other, played a key role in initiating ice ages. About every 100 thousand years we seem to be in a cooler phase. These regular glacial periods have been occurring for about the past half-million years.” Volcanic activity Very large volcanic eruptions push sulfates and ashes high into the atmosphere, reflecting more light back at the sun and causing a cooling effect on the earth’s temperature. For example, after the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in 1991, in the Philippines, a worldwide cooling of approximately 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit lasted for several years. Variations in solar activity Evidence indicates that solar activity varies on an 11-year cycle. As O’Reilly explains it, “During minimum solar activity, we don’t get as much energy from the sun as we get during periods of maximum solar activity, when we expect to see a slight increase in the average temperature on the earth.” Greenhouse effect Four gases—water vapor, carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, and methane—form a blanket over the planet, helping to keep the earth’s surface at a livable temperature. Overall, the greenhouse effect is a positive one for our planet: if these gases didn’t form a screen, we probably wouldn’t have water on the earth. With the recent dramatic changes in the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, however, the greenhouse “roof” has

thickened in some areas, forming dangerous insulation that traps energy and heat. Setting the context of known natural climate fluctuation is the best way to lay the groundwork for the story of human-induced climate change. “Altogether, when we look at all the different ways we can measure temperature and atmospheric carbon dioxide, we can go very far back in time—about 500 million years,” O’Reilly says. “Temperature is really variable; this is not anything that’s particularly new for the earth. The thing that is different right now, according to the geological record, is the rate of temperature change. It’s very, very fast. This is a very dramatic change—there is nothing like it anywhere in the geological record. And it’s mostly due to fossil-fuel combustion.” Carbon dioxide is the most important greenhouse gas. In a world without humans, who have come to rely

Past (black line) and future predicted temperature change relative to temperatures in 2000. Under different scenarios, temperatures could change only a little if there is an immediate halt to increased carbon dioxide emissions (yellow line) or could change dramatically if nations continue “business as usual” (red line). ©IPCC 2007: WG1-AR4

If nothing is done to stabilize, let alone reduce, worldwide carbon dioxide emissions, the “doubling level”—double the concentration of carbon dioxide that was in the atmosphere before the Industrial Revolution—will be exceeded by the middle of this century.

upon systems that emit carbon dioxide (automobiles, airplanes, and coal-fired power plants, for example), the carbon cycle would be fairly balanced. The imbalance in the mix of greenhouse gases is directly attributable to the longterm historic emissions of carbon dioxide by developed countries. Currently the world’s two largest carbon dioxide– emitting nations are China and the United States. If nothing is done to stabilize, let alone reduce, worldwide carbon dioxide emissions, the “doubling level”—double the concentration of carbon dioxide that was in the atmosphere before the Industrial Revolution—will be exceeded by the middle of this century. The summary of the report that O’Reilly contributed to (available at www.ipcc-wg2.org/index.html) gives the

following sentence as its conclusion: “Observational evidence from all continents and most oceans shows that many natural systems are being affected by regional climate changes, particularly temperature increases.” When she began working on the project, O’Reilly looked at the previous freshwater section of the Working Group I report, written five years earlier. “The difference between what that person had written and what I was about to write for this new report clearly illustrated how far science has come, and how far financial support for global-warming research has come, over this five-year period,” she says. “Five years ago, the report that was issued had very little data associated with it. The report that I ended up writing is quite conclusive. It says ‘this has happened’ rather than ‘this is what might happen.’”

Changes in physical and biological systems and surface temperature 1970–2004

The new Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report contains extensive documentation showing where climate change has affected physical systems (snow, ice, hydrology; blue circles) and biological systems (plants, animals; green circles). The paucity of data available for tropical regions means that much less is known about how these environments are responding to global climate change. Source: IPCC Working Group II Fourth Assessment Report

O’Reilly has not seen any credible research that could disprove the evidence that human activity is causing the earth’s climate to change. “When my paper was published in Nature I received several letters that said ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about. Global warming doesn’t exist.’ The truth is that all the counterarguments have all been disproved at this point. The most common argument I’ve heard is that global warming is related to solar activity. Sure, this is true—but we can calculate solar activity very accurately. We know exactly how much the sun contributes to our current warming. And it’s just not that much.” As a species, how much time do we have to respond to the climate-change problem before it’s too late? “Well, it is too late,” O’Reilly responds. “There are different ways of looking at how bad the situation is. We can see the trajectory—even if we were to stop all emissions, or even the increase, right now, we’d still see warming over the next 50 to 100 years. There’s a lag time associated with how the earth handles changes in atmospheric conditions. A good analogy is the flood that follows a heavy rain. Once the rain stops, the rivers don’t instantly return to their normal levels. It takes a few days to get all the water out of the landscape. It’s the same sort of thing with climate. We’re putting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and it takes a while for the earth to respond.” As a scientist, what does she think of Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth? “Although there’s some low-level disagreement among scientists as to the way Gore used some of the data in the movie, I think that all scientists would say that the movie was basically fair and not substantially biased,” she says. “I think his film has been powerful in that it’s made global warming and climate change an accessible topic. I’ve heard many people talking about global climate change who wouldn’t have otherwise.” In an article in the April 15 New York Times Magazine, columnist Thomas Friedman urged Americans to support a “Green New Deal” that would stimulate the worldwide economy with new, carbon-neutral energy sources and products. O’Reilly agrees with the spirit of Friedman’s message and says she is heartened to see the recent popular interest in what has become her life’s work. “It’s wonderful to see American society getting back in touch with nature, in a sense. While I’m thrilled to see Americans thinking about what’s going on outside their windows, I also hope that they actually make choices that will make a difference—vote for people and legislation that will protect our environment.” O’Reilly and other experts worked on the climate change report for five years. The 2007 Nobel Peace Prize

underscores the value of that work. “This is the first place that decision makers in many countries will go to for information about climate, globally, because it compiles and summarizes all the scientific peer-reviewed papers in a way that anyone can understand,” says O’Reilly. “These are not only predictions—these changes have already happened, and there are strong implications for human populations. The worst effects are likely to be in Africa and Asia, where people rely heavily on natural resources and have few alternatives.” However, the scientific consensus is that no one will escape the effects of human-induced climate change.

Glaciers will continue to melt and disappear. River ice will break up earlier. Spring leaves will arrive earlier, as will egg-laying birds, altering the competitive balance between animals and the plants and insects they feed upon.

For example, Category 4 and 5 hurricanes will become more common.With increased air temperatures, ocean waters will continue to heat up, creating warm eddies of water that add energy, water vapor, and moisture to tropical storms. This is what happened with Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Glaciers will continue to melt and disappear. River ice will break up earlier. Spring leaves will arrive earlier, as will egg-laying birds, altering the competitive balance between animals and the plants and insects they feed upon. Warmer springs and longer autumns will be accompanied by swarms of insects that have few natural predators and carry West Nile virus (or worse). Climate change is here to stay. Humans created the situation. Now they must mitigate and adapt to it. —Kelly Spencer Calculate your ecological carbon footprint www.carbonfootprint.com Editor’s note: Catherine O’Reilly and her IPCC colleagues were honored on October 12, 2007, with the announcement by the Nobel Committee that IPCC would share the Nobel Peace Prize for 2007 with Al Gore Jr., “for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change.”

FAVORABLE JUNCTURES DIMITRI B. PAPADIMITRIOU’S THREE DECADES AT BARD Dimitri B. Papadimitriou has been executive vice president of Bard since 1977. But, while he is willing to contemplate the significance of those three decades in terms of the College’s life, he resists discussing them as a personal milestone. “One could say that 30 years is a long time, but it doesn’t appear so to me,” says Papadimitriou. “Thirty years at Bard, generally, has been full of surprises—a good share of them being pleasant. I did my job within the framework of the College’s needs and with [President] Leon [Botstein] as a partner. However, what Bard, as an institution, has accomplished in 30 years deserves celebration: the increase in enrollment and distinguished faculty, the Institute for Writing and Thinking, Bard Music Festival, Smolny [College at Saint Petersburg State University], CCS [Center for Curatorial Studies and Art in Contemporary Culture], Bard Graduate Center, the transformation of the physical campus. I feel good about being here these particular 30 years because the changes and progress have been spectacular.” Spectacular indeed, especially when considering that, in 1977, Bard was on financially shaky ground. “Thirty years ago, the College’s future was not well assured,” recalls Papadimitriou. “It was certainly in need of some kind of creative blueprint of what was possible.” The team of Botstein and Papadimitriou was crucial to the drafting of that blueprint, which required a combination of mental agility, vision, and persistence. “In 1977,” says Papadimitriou, “there were a number of challenges. But there was ambition, and an entrepreneurial dimension had to be employed. The margin of error was small. In the early years, we had to convince people that the College was important, that its tradition could propel it onward, that its curriculum was sound. The problems were financial, not academic. It was a matter of building on the College’s tradition—distinguished faculty and academic programs—and, at the same time, enriching the academic program in order to deliver the ideal of the liberal arts. To approach that ideal as closely as possible while, simultaneously, valuing Bard’s ‘rebellious’ spirit—those academic offerings that went beyond teaching just the canon.” For the chance to play a role in the development of Bard, Papadimitriou says, “I’m grateful to Leon Botstein. I have found, in Leon, an individual who—despite the high demands on his time—is caring and sympathetic to risks that individuals wish to take.” Having successfully traversed the precarious territory of 1977 and having built an increasingly successful institution, Botstein and Papadimitriou continue to look ahead. One of the current tasks, according to Papadimitriou, is to foster the sciences, which, he points out, “provide an opportunity where questioning can lead to better understanding of the world we live in today.”

Here, it is worth pausing at the word opportunity—a word that Papadimitriou calls upon frequently. It is defined, in Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, as “a favorable juncture of circumstances.” But, in Papadimitriou’s usage, this juncture is not found by chance, it is created. The very word not only harkens back to 1977—when a handful of individuals who believed in Bard created the blueprint, cohesive yet responsive to change, that has brought the College so far— it implies a continuation of the strengths that vitalize Bard. That vitality is made possible by committed individuals, according to Papadimitriou. “Managerially, the institution remains a challenge,” he says. “We’re now in a different league. The College is larger and, therefore, requires collective skills. It requires a lot of people who have the ability to work as a team.” Botstein and Papadimitriou remain the model for that teamwork. “He’s the ideal colleague,” Botstein says of Papadimitriou. “He’s honest and direct; his candor is a huge

learning environment rich for collaboration. Bard undergraduates enjoy this collaboration through a five-year B.S./B.A. in economics and finance. They may soon be joined by graduate students, as Bard proceeds with plans for the creation of a Ph.D. program in economics—again in fortuitous tandem with the Levy Institute, which will continue to provide a source for serious research and (in keeping with the College’s institutional personality) an environment in which students can receive nontraditional training, as well as a solid foundation in the economics canon. “We need to supplement the standard textbooks,” says Papadimitriou. “This process can be elevated by Levy scholars. Everybody talks about economics ‘delivering the goods,’ on the assumption that the real world can be modeled without factoring in uncertainty. But uncertainty plays an important role. Leon Levy [founder of the Levy Institute] understood this role of uncertainty, this heterodox paradigm that not everything is predictable. Leon Levy’s peerless

For students in Bard’s Economics Program, the presence of the Levy Economics Institute provides a learning environment rich for collaboration.

asset. He has excellent judgment and managerial toughness—prudent, but not conservative. We’re very complementary; he has been my partner in guiding the College through the difficult process of development. His leadership at The Levy Economics Institute of Bard College has created an important institution. And he has a profound loyalty to the College and its well-being.” Papadimitriou came to Bard from the private sector, leaving a job as executive vice president, secretary, and treasurer of the William Penn Life Insurance Company of New York. In explaining the transition, he says, “Teaching was one of the things that attracted me—being a part of the development of students. There was a small economics program, but it has grown.” Papadimitriou, in conjunction with the Economics Program, within which he is Jerome Levy Professor of Economics, holds another significant oncampus post: president of the Levy Institute, which identifies itself as “a nonprofit, nonpartisan, public-policy research organization . . . independent of any political or other affiliations.” As such, it “encourages a diversity of opinion in the examination of economic issues.” For students in Bard’s Economics Program, the presence (in Blithewood) of the Levy Economics Institute provides a

insight into the world of economics and finance contributed immeasurably to the Institute’s development, and had it not been for his guidance, leadership, and support, the Institute would not exist in its present form. I’m grateful to him for that.” Papadimitriou expresses similar gratitude to the Board of Trustees of Bard College, for being “willing to undertake the experiment” and endorsing the creation of the Levy Institute in 1986. Alternative paradigms have long been of interest to Papadimitriou. Having received a B.A. in economics from Columbia University, he went on (while holding his fulltime private sector job) to earn M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in economics from the New School for Social Research. “I sought out the New School program because it pushed the envelope of conventional thinking,” says Papadimitriou. That pushing of the envelope applies equally to the Levy Institute, which gives alternative approaches and visions the “think tank” they deserve, he says. The Levy Institute—drawing inspiration from its founders—has been recognized by the U.S. government, academia, and the press as providing what Papadimitriou terms “viable policy options that affect the human condition.” The Institute addresses three major economic areas.

First, macroeconomic theory is examined, with emphasis on creating economic models that can be implemented in beneficial public policy on a national and global scale. Second, the Levy Institute engages in long-term and indepth study of the distribution of economic well-being. In doing so, it incorporates more than the usual formulaic measurements of money income by including frequently overlooked factors, such as income from wealth, government expenditures, and household production. Third, in exploring issues related to employment, the Levy Institute mines questions such as: What is the importance of providing employment or employment skills? How does unemployment lead to an environment of despair that, in turn, creates individuals who are unable to become useful members of their society? If the private sector cannot rectify this environment of despair, what then is the role of the public sector? Papadimitriou’s interest in issues of well-being, employment, and public policy arise partly from his background. A native of Greece, a country whose economy has struggled in modern times, Papadimitriou’s early familiarity with poverty defined some of his interests. “Poverty was a real issue for me,” he says. “Conventional economics, because it is dependent upon the function of the market, cannot solve the problem of poverty. A lot of people are left behind. Therefore, there is always a need for government intervention—which has a checkered history. The New Deal, for example, lost its luster to laissez-faire.” These concerns led Papadimitriou to an interest in Keynesianism, in which government intervention is advocated as a means of boosting employment, increasing output, and thereby improving the standard of living. “Under what conditions,” asks Papadimitriou, “could government intervention work, without hindering the private sector? What partnership is possible between the private and public sectors? How can this partnership work within the tenets of the capitalist system? How can economics be used to provide opportunities for all? All this requires looking at the economy in a different way.” The same vision of mutually beneficial partnership informs Papadimitriou’s teaching. “To what extent can a faculty member generate excitement in a student, in regard to the economy as it relates to society?” he asks. “I want to instill that interest. It’s possible to do so in a place like Bard, where classes are small and there is, therefore, an opportunity for students to participate and dissent. As a teacher, I have been able to think about the questions students raise in my class every year. Clearly, as a teacher, you

need to keep up to date. Information technology, for example, has had a huge impact on vocational market skills and training. Programming jobs are being outsourced to India, where labor costs are much lower. What is the U.S. government’s role toward the American workers who have been displaced by this? The world is changing; we are all global citizens in a global market economy. “Also, there are many jobs that are needed, but are not done, because there are no private sector incentives to do them. What is the responsibility of a society to all of its members? What about discrimination? If we’re afraid to deal with these issues, we can, at least, raise the questions. That will bring us closer to understanding. I’m not afraid to say to students that economics, as a discipline, hasn’t been able to answer these questions. If we can instill this questioning, we can create a better citizen. I want to maintain a perspective of an interdisciplinary approach— sociology, psychology, anthropology. Parochialism is a way of defining our own turf. What if the explanation lies in another discipline? At Bard, students are prepared to look at things in interdisciplinary mode.” Papadimitriou has taken on economic conundrums not only within the groves of academe, but outside it. He has provided testimony (before the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate) on issues such as community development banks’ role in supporting the disenfranchised, the government as an “employer of last resort,” and performance-based pay. He was also vice chairman of a bipartisan congressional commission reviewing options for resolving the ballooning trade deficit that now plagues the United States. Papadimitriou has also brought his expertise to bear on his country of birth, working as an adviser to Greece’s department of education. His goal: to establish and/or modernize postgraduate programs in economics, thereby framing those programs in line with real-world economics more appropriate to a country that is now part of the European Union. He is similarly involved in the creation of a liberal arts college model—a new pattern for Greece, which has hitherto used a European model. In sum, Papadimitriou’s compact with Bard has been positive for all involved. Looking back, Papadimitriou says, “I never thought I would be here for 30 years, but the College has provided me with the opportunity [that word again] to develop my own skills as an administrator, and to practice my craft as an economist.” —René Houtrides and Cynthia Werthamer

TEACHERS OF DISTINCTION This fall, a number of new scholars and professors are gracing Bard’s faculty. Two of them—Orhan Pamuk and Antonio Tabucchi—are no strangers to the College, each having taught and lectured here on a previous occasion as part of Professor Norman Manea’s “Contemporary Masters” seminar. Six other distinguished new faculty members are also profiled here.

Orhan Pamuk

Antonio Tabucchi

Much has changed for Orhan Pamuk since he last visited Bard nearly four years ago. He returns to campus as winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature for 2006, and as an international cause célèbre after condemning the Ottoman Empire’s killing of more than a million Armenians from 1915 to 1917. In such novels as My Name Is Red (2000) and Snow (2002) and his memoir Istanbul: Memories and the City, Pamuk has done for Istanbul what Joyce did for Dublin, Durrell for Alexandria, and Borges for Buenos Aires—he has reestablished his city on the world map of the imagination. As he put it in his Nobel lecture: “For me the centre of the world is Istanbul. This is not just because I have lived there all my life, but because, for the last 33 years, I have been narrating its streets, its bridges, its people, its dogs, its houses, its mosques, its fountains, its strange heroes, its shops, its famous characters, its dark spots, its days and its nights, making them part of me, embracing them all. A point arrived when this world I had made with my own hands, this world that existed only in my head, was more real to me than the city in which I actually lived.” Antonio Tabucchi, a native of Tuscany who writes in Italian and Portuguese, has received many prestigious prizes for his fiction. “I’ve always been drawn to tormented people full of contradictions,” Tabucchi stated in a 1999 interview with UNESCO Courier. “People with lots of doubts sometimes find life more oppressive and exhausting than others, but they’re more energetic—they aren’t robots. I prefer insomnia to anaesthesia. . . . I’m with those who’ve suffered.” For Tabucchi, personal suffering is almost always the effect of a political cause. Yet according to cultural critic Robert Gray, “even [Tabucchi’s] politically charged fiction, like Pereira Declares, has a touch of nightmarish fantasy about it.” His writing patrols the boundaries, in Gray’s words, “between political engagement and creative solitude, life and death, dreaming and waking, observation and imagination.” Norman Manea, Francis Flournoy Professor in European Studies and Culture, describes Pamuk and Tabucchi, both of whom are returning to teach in his Contemporary Masters class, as “vivid, appealing, knowledgeable, challenging, and much appreciated presences” in the classroom. “They will certainly address,” he says, “the moral stand and the political commitment of an artist in our confusing and dangerous time.”

Philip Johns, assistant professor of biology, is teaching courses in animal behavior, biostatistics, and his special love, entomology. When the discussion turns to bugs—in this case, a “group of really cool flies”—he waxes positively lyrical. “A lot of times, people say, ‘Ugh, flies.’ But flies do a lot of extraordinary things, and these flies have their eyes at the ends of long eye stalks—think hammerhead shark,” he explains. “They have an unusual genetic system that locks together the genes for the eye stalks to some other traits, at least in some species. I’m looking at the suites of traits that are locked together. That sounds arcane, but the whole evolutionary story is a lot of fun.” Johns, whose previous posting was the University of Maryland, notes that “one of the two American species of these stalk-eyed flies may live around Bard,” and he is eager to study them. He’s also excited about engaging with larger game—coyotes, for example. “Coyotes in New York tend to be larger than their western counterparts, and there is some evidence that they interbreed with wolves or dogs,” he says. “That’s remarkable. Dogs and wolves are the same species and interbreed easily, but I think the wolf-coyote evolutionary split is very old. The jury is still out [on interbreeding], though; there are other reasons coyotes might be bigger near Bard.” Johns has taught at several universities and colleges, but Bard strikes him as special. “One thing that impressed me is that the College seems to do more than just pay lip service to the ideals of a liberal arts education,” he says. “A lot of schools talk about how a liberal arts education gives students the intellectual tools to parse arguments and write well. But Bard is one of the few schools I know that has requirements in things like rhetoric, statistics, and logic. In light of that, teaching biostatistics is going to be fun.” The ideas of John Cage—composer, writer, gadfly, and dean of the American avant-garde in the latter half of the 20th century—have by now thoroughly permeated the arts. Their influence has been manifested by artists working in an array of disciplines—dance, theater, music, painting, poetry, video, and multimedia. As director and cofounder of the John Cage Trust (JCT), now ensconced at Bard, Laura Kuhn helps ensure that Cage’s legacy remains a living source of inspiration to artists around the world, and not something merely venerated and placed inside a vitrine. “The JCT is entrepreneurial in its approach to the legacy of Cage: how might his thought and works continue to have resonance in the world, as that world has changed so drastically since his death, now over a decade ago?” says Kuhn, recently appointed Bard’s first John Cage Professor of Performance Art. To enhance that resonance, she says, “we are constantly looking for collaborative partners with whom we might engage on whatever may seem appropriately ‘next.’ Bard seems particularly receptive to that kind of proactive work.” Kuhn met Cage in 1986, when she was completing a residency in New York City, on a grant from the University of California, Los Angeles. Her UCLA guidance counselor asked Kuhn if she would be willing to assist Cage in the composition of his full-scale opera, Europeras 1 & 2. “I readily agreed, he called 10 minutes later, we met the next morning, and the rest is, as they say, history,” she laughs. “We were very good for each other: he needed an assistant who didn’t need or want to be told precisely what to do, and I needed a ‘mentor’

Philip Johns

Laura Kuhn

Gregory Landweber

Kristin Lane

who would give me room to work with creative independence.” Over the next six years, Kuhn worked on several projects with Cage, culminating in a European tour with him and in the completion of her doctoral dissertation (on Europeras 1 & 2), both shortly before Cage’s death in 1992. Having kicked off with two celebratory concerts at the Fisher Center in September, the symbiotic relationship between Bard and the JCT promises to bear beautiful and unusual fruits, among them an international John Cage Symposium planned for the spring. “I look forward to developing Cage-related courses that complement those already offered by Bard faculty, making use of our considerable archives,” says Kuhn. “I’d like to see Cage’s centenary, which is fast approaching (2012), celebrated at Bard College with just as much John Cage as we can all stand!” With a mathematician for a father, Gregory Landweber has been intrigued by integers, captivated by quotients, and stirred by supermultiplets for as long as he can remember. “I recently unearthed some of my first writing from kindergarten,” he says, “and in my unsteady hand I had written ‘When I grow up I want to be a mathmtishun.’ Over the years, my spelling has improved, but my career path has not wavered.” That path has seen Landweber earn degrees from Princeton, Cambridge, Oxford, and Harvard Universities, and hold teaching and research positions at Harvard, and the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute, University of Oregon, and University of Toronto’s Fields Institute. He comes to Bard as an assistant professor of mathematics whose current area of interest, supersymmetry, lies at the heart of string theory, the new frontier of physics. “Supersymmetry is the fundamental relationship between the two classes of elementary particles found in nature: bosons, such as the photons that transmit light and electromagnetic force, and fermions, such as electrons and quarks that make up the bulk of matter,” says Landweber. He and his colleagues, he adds, are “tackling questions that have persisted since the dawn of supersymmetry over 30 years ago.” An erstwhile bassoonist, Landweber hopes that Bard’s musical milieu will spur him to take up again with his instrument. He also plays piano, and composes pieces based on mathematical formulae. “Mathematically inclined people often enjoy logic puzzles and games. . . . For such people, unraveling the mathematical structure of a Bach two-part invention or the Schoenberg woodwind quintet is particularly satisfying,” he says. “But most of all, music is the best application of fractions I have ever seen.” Mark Twain’s observation that there are “lies, damn lies, and statistics” reflects the popular assumption that statistics can be tweaked to validate almost any point of view. But Kristin Lane, assistant professor of psychology, is countering that perception by presenting her students with a more sophisticated view of statistics, at least as employed in the study of psychology. “In psychology and the behavioral sciences, statistics is only partially about numbers—it’s really a tool for understanding people, and as critical to the study of the mind and behavior as the microscope is to the study of the cell,” says Lane, who comes to Bard from Harvard University. “If presented well, the material can be understood conceptually and graphically, as well as mathematically. I hope students leave the course with an appreciation for how

elegant statistics can be, and what power they can hold, whether they are being used well, or—as is often the case—misused.” This spring, Lane’s students will conduct laboratory work. “I hope that the lab can generate a sense of fun on at least two levels,” she says. “First, the questions of psychology are just plain old interesting: think about all the things people do that don’t seem to make sense. Second, the science of psychology lets us understand those nonsensical behaviors in a systematic and controlled way; often, the data suggest that behavior that appears nonsensical is at least explicable (if not rational) when viewed some other way.” The lab, she says, will introduce students to the “excitement that comes from generating ideas with peers and colleagues and testing them in rigorous settings.” After a stimulating sojourn in one of the world’s most multifarious cities, Hoyt Long, assistant professor of Japanese literature, now finds himself in the rustic purlieus of Bard. Long, who is teaching language classes and a seminar on modern Japanese fiction and poetry, recently completed four years in Tokyo as a doctoral research student and university lecturer. “It was wonderful; I had the chance to get to know how some of the more intimate aspects of Tokyo’s expansive and labyrinthine metropolis work,” he says. “It was challenging in some regards, too, particularly as a researcher in a foreign university system trying to adjust to the style and methods of Japanese pedagogy and scholarship. My way of approaching a subject could be radically different from those of my colleagues and advisers, with each of us bringing different assumptions to bear on the interpretation of a literary work.” Such misunderstandings, he adds, often turned out to be mutually beneficial, with each party catching sight of things that had previously been hidden. The meandering process by which Long was drawn to Japanese culture and literature began with his decision to study Japanese in high school and slowly ripened during his repeated visits to Japan. Living with a Japanese family during a year in Tokyo helped Long gain “an increasing ability to communicate and think outside the bounds of my own native tongue,” which confirmed for him the “importance of continuing this process of self-discovery and crosscultural learning.” Like his new colleague Hoyt Long, Chongke Zhu is sensitive to the ways in which cultural and linguistic differences can result in intellectual entanglements. A visiting fellow in Chinese, Zhu comes to Bard from Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, and is teaching in the United States for the first time. He is looking forward, he says, to integrating the “three roles—being a good teacher, a studious learner, and a sensitive observer.” Zhu, who received his doctorate in Chinese studies from the National University of Singapore in 2005, specializes in Chinese literature of the 20th century. “Chinese language and literature are complex, and often untranslatable, especially when we consider different dialects and cultural distinctions,” says Zhu. “Misunderstandings can be interesting at times, but a good student must decrease the possibility for mistakes,” he says, adding that by establishing the proper context for ideas expressed and events related in the texts, he will help students to “grasp the charming complexity, step by step.” —Mikhail Horowitz

Hoyt Long

Chongke Zhu

THINGS COME TOGETHER Chinua Achebe was 27 years old when he began writing his first and most famous literary work, Things Fall Apart. Since the book’s publication in 1958, the Nigerian-born writer, teacher, and political activist has become known as the progenitor and patriarch of modern African literature. In June, Achebe, who is Charles P. Stevenson Jr. Professor of Languages and Literature, received the Man Booker International Prize for fiction, in recognition of his life’s work. The prize is awarded biennially to a living author

whose body of work, in English or translated into English, “has contributed significantly to world literature.” In 2007 the short list included Carlos Fuentes, Doris Lessing, Alice Munro, and Philip Roth. “In Things Fall Apart and his other fiction set in Nigeria, Chinua Achebe inaugurated the modern African novel,” said Elaine Showalter, chairperson of the judging committee. “He also illuminated the path for writers around the world seeking new words and forms for new realities and societies.”

When the prize was announced, Achebe told the BBC, “What African literature set about to do was to broaden the conception of literature in the world—to include Africa, which wasn’t there.” Africa is now “there” due in no small part to Achebe’s five decades of telling Nigeria’s story— before and after European colonization—from the point of view and in the voice of Africans themselves. Accepting the prize on behalf of his father, Dr. Chidi Achebe ’92 noted the fruitful relationaship between Chinua Achebe and the British publishing industry. “A giant publisher, Alan Hill, who is deceased, and James Currey . . . are two individuals who come to mind, who essentially opened the door for African writers to have a voice.” The effort to establish a home at Bard for Achebe’s work and ongoing projects began in 2003 with what is now the Chinua Achebe Institute for Cultural Preservation. Among the Institute’s first initiatives was the Chinua Achebe Fellowship in Global Africana Studies, whose 2005 fellow was the Nigerian novelist Helon Habila. The Institute has also brought to campus influential writers, journalists, and scholars—including South African poet Gabeba Baderoon; Kenyan writer Binyavanga Wainaina; and Ghanaian poet, scholar, and educator Kofi Anyidoho. “Chinua Achebe has been an inspiring teacher, shaping Bard students’ notions of Africa as part of global history and global artistic movements,” says Jesse Weaver Shipley, assistant professor of anthropology and Africana studies. Achebe has received numerous honors, including a nomination for the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2000. For the 50th anniversary of Things Fall Apart, events are planned throughout the world—opening at Bard with a regional gathering and public radio broadcast taping in the spring of 2008 and concluding in the fall with a conference

that will bring to Bard a roster of notables to celebrate Achebe and his seminal work. Achebe’s presence at Bard has broadened and deepened the College’s involvement in Africa, African scholarship, and the unique aspects of Igbo culture and language, according to historian Dr. Ike Achebe, his eldest son. “My father often speaks about the dialogue between Igbo and English that is so much a part of his craft and of the Igbo worldview,” says Ike Achebe. “‘One thing stands and another thing stands beside it,’ my father often says. The idea of the singular, the sole, the only, is not something the Igbo people subscribe to, and this sense of equality is reflected in all of my father’s work.” As Achebe approaches the age of 80, his words at the time of his 70th birthday remain apt. In his society, where age is revered, he told the UNESCO Courier, “The oldest man is the one who knows most about the past. He is the reference book of the village. That kind of responsibility keeps a man’s mind active.” —Jan Weber

On behalf of his father, Dr. Chidi Achebe ’92 (left) accepts Man Booker International Prize

Saving a Language The Chinua Achebe Institute for Global Africana Arts at Bard is at the center of a global initiative connecting Africa’s culture and literature to the world through the Igbo language. Under the direction of Dr. Ike Achebe, the creation of the first comprehensive bilingual online dictionary of the Igbo language is under wayits technological infrastructure built and administrated at Bard. With more than 20 million speakers worldwide, Igbo is one of Africa’s great indigenous languages. Yet, Things Fall Apart has been published in more than 50 other languages, but not in Achebe’s own Igbo. “My father inspired

me to start this [project] in 2001. He highlighted the crisis of the loss and extinction of the Igbo language, and we set about trying to do something about it,” says Ike Achebe. “The more a society evolves and becomes part of this socalled global entity, the greater the attraction is away from tradition and culture, and the greater the danger to languages without a long literary tradition. There is a strong need to begin that process of documentation, to set down the various vocabularies, the languages, and the literatures. Through the work of students, faculty, and staff, Bard is making this happen.”

SURGICAL STRIDES Stephen Wertheimer ’59, Orthopedic Surgeon and Marathoner Dr. Stephen Wertheimer ’59, an orthopedic surgeon, holds an unusual perspective on his job. As he puts it, “Being a runner has helped me understand athletes, who treat sickness as though it doesn’t exist. It helps me treat my patients, because I know from personal experience what they should be trying. And they respect my opinion more, because they know I’m one of them.” Wertheimer has run 42 marathons, starting with the New York City Marathon in 1978, and, at 69, has no plans to stop. Speaking from his office in Los Alamitos, California, he says he runs for two reasons: “to keep in shape, and to finish.” He adds with a chuckle, “I used to run as fast as I could. Now I know better.” His most difficult race was the eponymous one in Greece—from Marathon to Athens—because, he says, “the first 16 miles are uphill and the last eight are downhill.” He also has participated in the London, San Francisco, San Diego, Portland (Oregon), and Vancouver marathons. Perhaps Wertheimer’s unflagging perseverance in pursuit of his grueling sport is connected to the determination he has shown throughout his life. He graduated from Stuyvesant High School, a rigorous New York City public school specializing in mathematics, science, and technology, at the age of 15. He began medical school at 19; he was drafted during his residency and served two tours in Vietnam as a Navy flight surgeon, stationed on an aircraft carrier.

As a teenager in Queens, he never thought of applying to a small college, but a friend of his older sister suggested he look at Bard. When he visited the College in the mid1950s, he was impressed. “It was different from anything I’d ever seen,” he recalls. “There was a class—of six students—sitting on a lawn. How could you not fall in love with that?” He had been thinking of attending military school and becoming

truck and went to return them in Poughkeepsie. How could someone charge volunteers who were fighting a fire? The man just said, ‘Don’t come back.’” Wertheimer, who has retained his sense of community responsibility, served on the Bard–St. Stephen’s Alumni/ae Association Board of Governors from 1984 to 1988 and from 1991 to 1995. Wertheimer discovered that his post-Bard success at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx owed

Wertheimer’s Bard years also piqued his interest in orthopedic medicine, when he conducted DNA research for his Senior Project.

an engineer, but instead he decided to concentrate on science at Bard “because the classes were so small, and I thought it would be great to have a conversation with such smart people.” He was valedictorian of his Bard class of 36 graduates. “Bard exceeded my expectations,” Wertheimer says. “I was a protégé of C. T. Sottery, and we really hit it off.” Sottery, a mainstay of the Chemistry Program, was with the College from 1929 until 1963. Wertheimer also had praise for Charles Tremblay, who taught mathematics for 20 years beginning in 1948: “He was, literally, a genius.” But science was not the be-all and end-all for the young man: “You get to Bard and you get into a little acting, a little of everything. It’s terrific at broadening you.” He remembers Tremblay asking, after one summer break, how Wertheimer had spent his vacation back home in New York City. Had his student gone to plays, museums, concerts? Wertheimer recalls, “I said I couldn’t afford them, and Tremblay said, ‘Yes, you can.’ I made sure I never missed those things again. That kind of influence changed my life.” At that time, Bard had a volunteer fire squad, which Wertheimer joined. He says being a volunteer firefighter was “a great experience” that mostly involved battling fires off campus. (The only blaze he recalls on campus was in Orient Hall, the art building, which burned to the ground his senior year.) On the night of a “formal,” as dances were then known, he and his fellow volunteers were called to help fight a blaze at a camp some forty miles away. They dashed off in their rented tuxedoes. “We were away all night long—I was in one of the burning buildings and our outfits were all covered in soot. We got back and all dove into the pool [which was beside the Saw Kill waterfall], still wearing our tuxes. We threw them into the back of a

much to his time in Annandale. He recalls, “Bard was a very mature place; the professors were preparing you for the world. It prepared me very well for medical school.” Wertheimer’s Bard years also piqued his interest in orthopedic medicine; he conducted DNA research, during a grant-funded internship at Yale, for his Senior Project. Then, just before leaving medical school, he attended an American Society of Transplantation lecture on bone and skin grafts. In light of his Senior Project, Wertheimer was drawn in immediately. But his Vietnam experience shifted his goals from research to clinical medicine. He perforce treated patients while on the aircraft carrier, and found he loved it. The most exciting part of his practice, he says, is performing an operation he has pioneered to treat certain cases of sciatica and “failed back syndrome.” The procedure has proven to be effective in 80 percent of these cases, in which patients suffer from chronic pain. “I’m in the process of consolidating my data for publication, and I predict that it has the potential of revolutionizing the care of these unfortunate cases,” he says. Then there’s the running. When Wertheimer returned from Vietnam, he says, “I was very out of shape; there were no gyms on aircraft carriers in those days.” He began riding a bicycle; soon, “being an obsessive-compulsive,” he was taking 100-mile rides. That led to marathon training. Before his first marathon, he’d read an article about an 80year-old marathoner who was planning to run, and thought, “If he can do it, I can do it.” And in that first New York City Marathon, the only person he passed was—you guessed it—the 80-year-old. It may have been a modest beginning for a marathoner, but, as with all else in his life, the experience urged Wertheimer to excel. —Cynthia Werthamer

The Nightmare, c. 1781 (oil on canvas) by Henry Fuseli

THE GOTHIC TRADITION IN ROMANTIC LITERATURE “Yea, when the cold blood shoots through every vein; When every pore upon my shrunken skin A knotted knoll becomes, and to mine ears Strange inward sounds awake, and to mine eyes Rush stranger tears, there is a joy in fear. —Joanna Baillie (1762–1851), Orra, A Tragedy

Dark, lurid, and pulpy on the surface, the gothic tale has drawn readers to literature for more than 200 years. But the genre is also an “incredibly complicated critique of Western philosophy, gender roles, and social order,” says Rebecca Cole Heinowitz, assistant professor of literature at Bard. Think about your associations with the word gothic. Even if your only exposure to the genre is Frankenstein, your list will likely resemble the one compiled by the students in Heinowitz’s course, The Gothic Tradition in Romantic Literature, on the first day of the spring semester: flying buttresses, crumbling castles, family secrets, concealed passageways, dark arts, doppelgangers, damsels in distress, devils in disguise. Each student’s contribution was met with a “yes!” by Heinowitz, who then discussed the social, political, and literary environments that gave rise to these tropes of the genre, most dating to the first gothic novel, Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto. Otranto was published anonymously in 1764, at the height of the Age of Reason, when science, progress, and civilized society were prized. But it was also a time of unease. Industrialization, democratization, and colonial expansion were changing the old agrarian way of life. In the London of Walpole’s time, there was an obvious disparity between actual living conditions and the economic and political advances promised by the Enlightenment. Although Walpole set his novel in Medieval Italy—which he associated with barbarism, superstition, corruption, and chaotic passions—Heinowtiz’s class explored the text as a veiled indictment of the Enlightenment. Otranto begins with the son of a villainous noble being killed on his wedding day by a giant helmet falling from the sky. The tale goes on to Rebecca Cole Heinowitz

Illustration from Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (1797–1851)

include other mysterious deaths, pious maidens, and a moaning ancestral portrait. It ends with the virtuous hero, hitherto disguised, revealed as the castle’s rightful owner. With its over-the-top style, emphasis on violent emotions, and clear intent to frighten, Otranto was a radical departure from the morally instructive novels that preceded it. It seemed to suggest that pleasure, even terrifying pleasure, was justification enough for the novel. Otranto was so popular that Walpole came clean about his authorship in the second edition (a comparison of the two prefaces was a suggested topic for one of the course’s two required papers). Follow-up readings included William Godwin’s Caleb Williams (1794), Matthew Lewis’s The Monk (1796), and Ann Radcliffe’s The Italian (1797). Like Otranto, most of these feature characters in disguise or supernatural blendings of personalities—a confusion of identity that reflected Europe’s post–French Revolution instability. In-class presentations encouraged investigation of what these works revealed about evolving social roles, the nature of tyranny, and the clash of good versus evil. “I changed my opinion of the gothic during the class,” said Meghan Hunt, who graduated in May with a concentration in literature. “Nothing seemed genuine, not even the

characters’ reactions to situations. But that was the point. You could say the gothic functions as a satire, presenting a skewed view of society that caricatures the real while exposing its true self.” The class also helped Hunt—now studying for a master’s degree in the humanities at the University of Chicago—better grasp the “movement of ideas and literature from era to era.” Whether read as allegory or political commentary, or simply for the pleasure of its thrills, the gothic novel is critical to the bifurcation in fiction that took place in the early 19th century between “legitimate” and popular art. Unlike authors such as Jane Austen, early gothic writers “consciously went the way of the market,” said Heinowitz, who holds a Ph.D. in comparative literature from Brown University. Despite their gruesome plots, many gothic novels pandered to conventional tastes by offering happy endings. The Monk began to change that story arc. Lewis created a spectacularly vile villain as his main character, a man who strangles his own (though unbeknownst to him at the time) mother, rapes and stabs his sister, and is ultimately flung by the devil into the deepest abyss. Lewis also employed multiple plots, inserted poems and fables, and otherwise experimented with the still evolving literary form. For all its depravity and innovation, The Monk was wildly successful and included among its fans the Marquis de Sade and Lord Byron. Heinowitz, currently on sabbatical to complete her book, Rewriting Conquest: Spanish America and the Making of British Romanticism, 1770–1830, pointed out another way that Lewis changed the novel. Prior to The Monk, clothes generally made the man. But for Lewis, nothing is as it appears. The monk is viewed by everyone, including himself, as pious. Yet, over the course of the book, readers watch him commit ever more heinous sins. The gray areas between good and evil are further muddied in later gothic works. For example, in examining Byron’s Manfred (1817)—whose title character is both victim and victimizer—Heinowitz’s students debated the nature of Manfred’s crime and where their sympathies should lie. But they had no doubt that Manfred’s torment was internal, requiring no divine intervention (falling helmet) to resolve it. Manfred was born of one of the most famous summer vacations in literary history. In 1816, Byron; Percy Bysshe Shelley; Shelley’s wife, Mary; and Byron’s doctor, John Polidori, spent a rainy season at Lake Geneva. They filled time by reading ghost stories—and later responded to Byron’s challenge that they each write one. Mary Shelley’s

Frankenstein was also conceived that summer, as was the first fictional vampire (in Polidori’s “The Vampyre”). At the time of this Swiss gathering, the gothic novel had been popular for more than 20 years but was losing its dominance among the novel-reading public. However, the gothic tale, like the vampire, never really died. Witness its Victorian revival (Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Dracula) or the Depression-era heyday of Hollywood movie monsters. Today, in a new age of terror, the popularity of gothic literature among Bard students may speak to their affinity with the underlying angst of the genre, and with its search for identity in an era of great anxiety. —Ellen Liebowitz Editor’s note: This article is the first in an occassional series, “The Bardian Takes a Course.”

Selected Reading List from the Course The Castle of Otranto Horace Walpole Things as They Are: The Adventures of Caleb Williams William Godwin The Italian Ann Radcliffe The Monk Matthew Lewis De Montfort Joanna Baillie Zafloya; or The Moor Charlotte Dacre Manfred Lord Byron “The Vampyre” John Polidori The Cenci Percy Bysshe Shelley Confessions of an English Opium-Eater Thomas De Quincey The Private Memories and Confessions of a Justified Sinner James Hogg

Secondary Texts Susan Sontag, “Notes on ‘Camp’” John Locke, “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding” Immanuel Kant, “What Is Enlightenment?” Edmund Burke, “Reflections on the Revolution in France” Note: Several of the novels and secondary materials are available as free downloads from Internet sites such as Project Gutenberg and Bartleby.com.

Boris Karloff (as the Frankenstein Monster) Frankenstein (1931); directed by James Whale

A LONELY LENS Joshua Lutz ’97, ’05 Captures the Meadowlands In the Hackensack Meadowlands, an “urban wilderness” in Hudson and Bergen Counties, New Jersey, it is not uncommon to be looking simultaneously at waving marsh grasses and reeds; at a tall, crook-necked, gleaming white, motionless snowy egret; at the gaunt, rusting black triangular girders of an early 20th-century railroad bridge lifting slowly above the Hackensack River; and at the Empire State Building shimmering on the horizon, five miles to the east—while listening to cars and trucks grinding past on the New Jersey Turnpike. —Tony Hiss, H20: Highlands to Ocean Like the Meadowlands itself, the photographs of Joshua Lutz ’97 (ICP–Bard ’05) are oddly paradoxical: they manage to be simultaneously gritty and dreamlike, fragile and abiding, suspended in time and yet poised on the cusp of violent change. They depict a 32-square-mile radius of wetlands that lies a mere two miles west of midtown Manhattan, a small but eerily beautiful part of what has recently come to be known as the H20, or “Highlands to Ocean,” bioregion. Lutz, who has a master’s degree from the ICP–Bard Program in Advanced Photographic Studies (a joint program between the College and the International Center of Photography), has been trekking this “urban wilderness” for more than a decade. “Two thirds of these wetlands have already been filled in and turned into an industrial wasteland commingling with motels and gas stations,” he says, adding that the landscape, which has been “dumped in, paved over, deforested, and mined,” still retains its alluring beauty, and is still capable of recovery. Although the Meadowlands Conservation Trust, established by the State of New Jersey, will soon be responsible for the permanent protection of more than 8,400 acres of the area, threats remain to its waterways and wetlands—most imminently from the completion, slated for 2008, of the Xanadu Project, a multibilliondollar, 4.8-million-square-foot entertainment complex. (For more information on the Meadowlands, visit www.regionbuilder.org.) “The Meadowlands can serve as a metaphor for other issues that I am struggling with,” says Lutz. “For me, it is a place of loneliness and solitude; a place [that] people pass through on their way to someplace else, and occasionally a place where people convene, stopping at motels to spend the night, to fill up on cheap gas and cheap sex. These somewhat disparate images tell different stories. I think of them as songs on an album that build upon each other. The songs may be about something specific, but more often than not the specifics become less important than the feelings conveyed.” In the spring of 2008, Lutz’s photographs of these embattled and yet somehow enduring marshes will be assembled in Meadowlands, a large-format publication from Powerhouse Books. Also in the spring, Lutz will have a solo exhibition of his work at Sarah Lawrence College. —Mikhail Horowitz

POMP, CIRCUMSTANCE, AND SORCERY Summer Festivals Embraced Elgar and His World

A Florentine Tragedy

According to the New York Times, Bard president and American Symphony Orchestra conductor Leon Botstein “led lively, detailed performances of Zemlinsky’s richly orchestrated, sensual and tension-filled scores.” Throughout July and August, the fifth annual Bard SummerScape and the eighteenth annual Bard Music Festival paid vigorous homage to that quintessential British composer, Edward Elgar, with concerts, lectures, operas, plays, films, and dance performances. Two one-act operas by Alexander von Zemlinsky—A Florentine Tragedy and The Dwarf, each based on a work by Oscar Wilde—were produced in tandem for the first time on a North American stage. According to the New York Times, Bard president and American Symphony Orchestra (ASO) conductor Leon Botstein “led lively, detailed performances of Zemlinsky’s richly orchestrated, sensual and tension-filled scores. . . .” Among the festival’s many other memorable moments were dances commis-

sioned by the Fisher Center from Doug Varone and Dancers and Susan Marshall & Company; a spirited production of The Sorcerer, Gilbert and Sullivan’s first substantial collaboration; and a triumphant realization of George Bernard Shaw’s Saint Joan. The Bard Music Festival, under the continuing artistic direction of Botstein, Robert Martin, and Christopher H. Gibbs, with Byron Adams as this year’s scholar in residence, presented two weekends of orchestral and chamber concerts, performances with commentary, and panel discussions that delved into myriad facets of Elgar’s life and times. A third weekend of programs, which concentrated on fin-de-siècle English music and the generation of composers who followed Elgar, took place in late October.

The Dwarf

Susan Marshall & Company, Sawdust Palace

Speigeltent

Saint Joan

Blackamoor Angel

The Sorcerer

BOOKSBYBARDIANS

Passions and Tempers: A History of the Humours by Noga Arikha ECCO

The four humors—blood, phlegm, yellow bile (choler), and black bile (melancholy)—made up “the nature of the body,” the ancients of the West believed. Though they were not visible, the humors were seen as the basis for both physiology and psychology. Noga Arikha, visiting assistant professor in First-Year Seminar, examines the history of the humors, from antiquity to the “mind over matter” phenomena of the 21st century. Surréalisme & Athéisme by Guy Ducornet ’60 GINKGO

This French anthology contains texts against the religiosity of French culture by the founders of surrealism, one of the most influential avant-garde movements of the 20th century. It includes an analysis of the 1948 tract issued by the movement’s prime spokesman, André Breton, and signed by 50 others, attacking those who sought to undermine surrealism and its antireligious stance. Guy Ducornet works as a translator in Paris. Gists Orts Shards: A Commonplace Book by Jonathan Greene ’65 BROADSTONE BOOKS

According to the dictionary, a commonplace book is one in which memorabilia are collected. Jonathan Greene has compiled his own version of the time-honored tome, juxtaposing sayings and pithy thoughts from the likes of Confucius, Art Blakey, Agatha Christie, and myriad other writers, thinkers, and artists. Greene, who also designed this book, lives and works in Franklin County, Kentucky. Overcoming Zionism: Creating a Single Democratic State in Israel/Palestine by Joel Kovel PLUTO PRESS

Distinguished Professor of Social Studies Joel Kovel here examines the history and politics that hinder pathways to peace in the Middle East. He argues for the creation of “Palesreal,” one country in which Israelis and Palestinians coexist in a “binational” state. The state he envisions would acknowledge individual national identity but emphasize transcendence of nationalism, in what Kovel calls a “secular-universal democracy.” Listening by Jean-Luc Nancy, translated by Charlotte Mandell ’90 FORDHAM UNIVERSITY PRESS

At the start of this slender volume of musings about such concepts as meaning and music, Jean-Luc Nancy poses this question: “Is listening something of which philosophy is capable?” He examines listening as “an approach to the self” and as a relationship between sound and listener. The last two of the book’s three essays further explore the philosophy and politics of music. The book is translated from the French by Charlotte Mandell, who lives in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York.

The Big Book of Pop Culture: A How-to Guide for Young Artists by Hal Niedzviecki MFA ’97 ANNICK PRESS

Hal Niedzviecki taps into a societal catch-22 when he notes that pop culture urges us to be original and “be ourselves,” but “no one is interested unless we’re doing the same stuff as everyone else.” He distinguishes “corporate” pop culture from “independent” pop culture, and urges young people to use modern media to create their own artistic statements. Niedzviecki is a writer who lives in Toronto. Split Decision by Carolee Schneemann ’59 CEPA/MOCCA

Split Decision, a catalogue of two shows of Carolee Schneemann’s work—Breaking Borders and Remains To Be Seen—also explores Schneemann’s varied career as a multimedia and performance artist. It highlights her video installations, photographs, and works on canvas, all of which challenge the status quo of politics, sexuality, and social mores. The volume’s essays are by art scholar Thomas McEvilley, Canadian art critic Jim Drobnick, and Buffalobased media artist Caroline Koebel. Schneemann lives in New Paltz, New York. The Transformation by Juliana Spahr ’88 ATELOS

Unnamed people in a ménage à trois are at the center of this loosely knit story about moving to Hawaii (also unnamed, though recognizable by language and description). The three become involved in island politics, and the narrative touches upon colonization, the war in Iraq, sexuality, 9/11 (after which “language itself became impossible”), and risks to the environment. Juliana Spahr is an associate professor of English at Mills College in Oakland, California. Through Chinese Eyes: Tradition, Revolution, and Transformation by Edward Vernoff and Peter J. Seybolt CITE

The course of the Chinese revolution, which installed the Communist Party as China’s government, has been radically altered since the death of leader Mao Zedong. How has the society changed, what does the change mean to the Chinese population, and how does the passage affect the student of Chinese history and culture? This text for high school students is coauthored by Edward Vernoff, history faculty at Bard High School Early College in New York City. Curious Footprints: Professor Hitchcock’s Dinosaur Tracks & Other Natural History Treasures at Amherst College by Nancy Pick, photographs by Frank Ward MFA ’89 AMHERST COLLEGE PRESS

This book contains striking photographs of the natural history collections at Amherst College and a reminiscence of Edward Hitchcock, a 19th-century president of the college and evangelical minister who assembled the world’s largest collection of fossilized dinosaur footprints—while denying they were made by dinosaurs. Frank Ward, assistant professor of photography at Holyoke Community College, includes an open letter to Hitchcock as well as pictures of stark skeletal artifacts and other haunting figures from Amherst College’s dismantled Pratt Museum.

BOOKS BY BARDIANS | 33

ONANDOFFCAMPUS

and Yohan Yi, baritone, both students at The Bard College Conservatory of Music, joined the orchestra for Saint-Saëns’s

Leon Botstein

©Steve J. Sherman

A First-Rate Fall Season at the Fisher Center With a diverse program of works by four composers, the American Symphony Orchestra (ASO) kicked off its 2007–08 concert series at the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts on September 14 and 15. The program included Brahms’s lighthearted Academic Festival Overture, Op. 80, and Dvorˇák’s “New World” Symphony No. 9 in F Minor, Op. 95. Soloists Shun-Yang Lee, piano,

Piano Concerto No. 5 in F Major, Op. 103, and Ibert’s Quatre Chansons de Don Quichotte, respectively. Upcoming in the ASO series, whose concerts take place in the acoustically superb Sosnoff Theater, are programs of works by Copland, Debussy, Dukas, and Scriabin on February 1 and 2, and by Barber, Sibelius, and Strauss on April 25 and 26. On September 27 and 28, the Sosnoff played host to a stirring tribute to John Cage, celebrating the permanent placement of the John Cage Trust at the College. The weekend featured performances by the Merce Cunningham Dance Company and the percussion quintet Nexus, and a staging of Lecture on the Weather, a major multimedia work composed by Cage in collaboration with Maryanne Amacher and Luis Frangella and based on writings by Henry David Thoreau. Among the many performers who took part in Lecture on the Weather were Bard president Leon Botstein and musicians from The Bard College Conservatory of Music and the College’s Music Program. Crowning the autumn’s performing arts season at the Fisher Center was Weekend Three of the 18th annual Bard Music Festival, which this year focused on Edward Elgar and his world. Chamber and symphonic works by Elgar and others were played, and a panel of scholars discussed “Anglophilia and Imperialism,” moderated by Ian Buruma, Henry R. Luce Professor of Human Rights and Journalism.

New CCS Director Appointed Maria Lind takes her new position as director of the graduate program for the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College (CCS) on January 1, 2008. One of the most accomplished curators of her generation, Lind will be responsible for all aspects of the two-year master of arts program in curatorial studies, including curriculum, development of CCS faculty and student body, and research programs. Lind replaces Norton Batkin, who had served as director of the CCS graduate program since 1991 and is now dean of graduate studies at Bard. With the completion of a major renovation and the opening of the Hessel Museum of Art in November 2006, Lind’s appointment comes at a time of growth for CCS. Lind will work closely with executive director Tom Eccles to further the center’s reputation for innovation in the exhibition of contemporary art and the study of curatorial practice. “Maria is the perfect match for Bard and is certain to bring her dynamic approach to exhibition making to the CCS,” says Eccles. “For more than a decade, her projects have been consistently challenging and unorthodox. In particular, Maria has been a champion of dialogue and critical discourse as part of her exhibitions and programs—a mix of intellect and experience that we aim to teach at the CCS.” Currently the director of IASPIS (International Artists Studio Program in Sweden) in Stockholm, Lind took her master’s degree in art history and Russian at the University of Stockholm

and was in the critical-studies track of the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program. She was previously the director at the Kunstverein München (2002–2004) and a curator at Moderna Museet in Stockholm (1997–2001). She cofounded Salon 3, the independent art platform (an exhibition venue not limited to one architectural space) in London, and has curated or cocurated exhibitions in Luxembourg, Slovenia, Macedonia, Liechtenstein, Norway, Brazil, the Netherlands, France, Germany, Scotland, and the United States. Her publications include numerous exhibition catalogue essays and critical reviews.

Three New Trustees A businesswoman, an attorney who’s an alumnus, and a partner in a private equity firm have joined the Board of Trustees. They hold in common an admiration for the wide range of opportunities that Bard offers its students and the public. Fiona Angelini, who was vice president of marketing and strategic development at Revlon from 1993 to 2000, says she has been “greatly impressed by Bard’s cutting-edge approach to education and by the way it both utilizes and contributes to the local landscape and culture.” Angelini is also an accomplished designer, most recently as a consultant and project manager in fashion and interior design with FA Designs. She graduated from Parsons School of Design with honors and from Queensland University of Technology, one of Australia’s top business schools. She lives in New York City and Tivoli. Charles S. Johnson III ’70 majored in government at Bard and went on to earn a J.D. degree in 1973 from Boston College Law School. An experienced trial lawyer, he practices in the areas of public policy and complex litigation in the Atlanta office of Holland & Knight. Among his numerous professional distinctions, he has several firsts as an African American: first professor at the University of Georgia Law School, first partner in an Atlanta-based AmLaw 200 firm, first member of the Georgia State Board of Bar Examiners, and first chairman of that board. Johnson served on the Bard board from 1979 to 1984 and is pleased to return, he says, as a representative of his generation of Bard alumni/ae and because “the College has gone through a period of tremendous growth, in numerous directions, and now is a time of consolidation. Being part of that is an exciting opportunity.” Since he was last on the board, he adds, he has furthered his experience in institutional development. For example, he has advised Morehouse College on the acquisition of the Martin Luther King Collection and on education finance policy. “If I have developed skills that could be of use to Bard, I’m delighted to make those available,” he says. Marc S. Lipschultz is a partner at Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., working in the New York office as a head of the firm’s energy and natural resources industry team. He is a graduate of Stanford University and Harvard Business School. He and his wife, Jennifer Smith Lipschultz, collect contemporary art, which led him to join the Advisory Council of the Center for Curatorial Studies (CCS) in 2003. Last fall he became chairman of what is now the CCS Board of Governors. As Lipschultz began his first term as a Bard trustee, he considered himself “a voice for CCS. But CCS is just one of Bard’s many exceptional programs,” he noted, “and my association with it has opened my eyes to the breadth and depth of Bard’s offerings.”

(Top to bottom) Fiona Angelini, Charles S. Johnson, Marc S. Lipschultz

Edmier and Higgs at CCS

Jonathan Borofsky: Green Space Painting with Chattering Man at 2,814,787. 1983

Two exhibitions at the Center for Curatorial Studies (CCS) this fall focus on memory, perception, and the act of viewing. Keith Edmier: 1991–2007 is mounted in the CCS Galleries, and Matthew Higgs Curates the Hessel Collection, or 17 Exhibitions in One is housed in the CCS Bard Hessel Museum. Both exhibitions are on view from October 20 until February 3, 2008. Curated by Tom Eccles, CCS executive director, the Edmier retrospective involves the artist’s pursuit of his memories through his sculpture, which is by turns melancholic and sentimental. He is dedicated to figurative work that embodies literal details of his past and transforms them through reconstruction (such as his 2000–01 work commemorating his grandfathers, Emil Dobbelstein and Henry J. Drope, 1944). His work with celebrities, such as Farrah Fawcett and Evel Knievel, makes use of fictional memory to create real and imaginary relationships. Matthew Higgs, director and chief curator of White Columns in New York, has organized, as the title suggests, 17 separate exhibitions, rather than one show unified around a particular theme or artist. His “exhibition of exhibitions,” taken from the Marieluise Hessel Collection at CCS, allows viewers to inhabit consecutive artistic worlds as they cross each threshold from one gallery to the next. Higgs’s curating takes into account the relationship between the Hessel Museum and the CCS graduate program in curatorial studies, which centers upon the myriad approaches to creating exhibitions.

ON AND OFF CAMPUS | 35

From the Bard Archives On June 13, 1789, Dr. Samuel Bard was summoned to the New York City home of the first president of the American Republic, George Washington. Seized by high fever and violent pain in his left thigh, Washington, only a month and a half into office, had called for Dr. Bard, New York City’s most eminent physician. Although a Loyalist, Bard was proud to serve his fellow man without partisan distinction. He made a dire diagnosis—an “acute local inflammation of Washington’s subcutaneous tissue.” The infection was so severe that it needed to be operated on immediately. Yet even the painful surgery—done prior to Portrait, Artists Anonymous

Kazakhstan: A New Audience for Contemporary Art Eric Erdle ’06 and his business partner, Christina Steinbrecher, are bringing contemporary video art to a new public: the citizens of Almaty, Kazakhstan. The idea for the exhibition began when Erdle and Steinbrecher, who run Action Arts Management LLP (an arts consultancy in London), worked with Kazakhstani art collectors. Erdle, who concentrated in art history at Bard, found that the Kazakhstanis he met were keen about contemporary art but had limited access to cutting-edge international work in their own country. The resulting exhibition, Inter-Faces: Almaty, Kazakhstan, ran from September 4 to September 30, 2007, at the Soros Center for Contemporary Art-Almaty. Fifteen artists from Europe, the Americas, and Asia were represented in the educational not-for-profit show, which comprised 20 pieces of video art and one sound piece. “We wanted to present an overview because it’s the first exhibition of contemporary international video art in Kazakhstan,” says Erdle, who is finishing his thesis, on the marketability of western contemporary art in Kazakhstan, for a master’s degree in art business from Sotheby’s Institute of Art-London. “I wanted to show different approaches and draw on the idea of cross-cultural identity, touching upon cultural themes that will be identifiable to both a western and local audience. A few works are easy to understand. Some are very provocative or conceptual.”

the existence of anesthesia—was not certain to save the president’s life. Washington took Bard’s prognosis in stride, replying: “Whether tonight, or twenty-years hence, makes no difference; I know that I am in the hands of a good Providence.” Bard performed the delicate operation. A rope was extended across the street of Washington’s official residence, and city traffic was diverted during the critical surgery and recovery period. To further muffle noise, straw was spread on the sidewalks near the house. For 40 days, Bard personally tended to Washington, developing a great friendship with him. “As he is my patron as well as my patient, I should choose to hear you sing his praises; and more particularly as his virtue and merit set flattery at defiance,” Bard wrote to his daughter in August 1789. Regaining his full health under Portrait of Samuel Bard Bard’s care, Washington served his Unknown artist 1889 country for 10 more years.

Burns Previews Documentary Filmmaker Ken Burns visited Bard College at Simon’s Rock: The Early College in April. He led a workshop and previewed clips from The War, his latest PBS documentary series. The series, which examines the events of World War II, employs Burns’s signature style—alternating historical footage, personal accounts, letters, and photographs. It examines the triumphs, fears, and daily lives of American soldiers on the front lines and citizens back home. Since Burns’s first documentary, The Brooklyn Bridge, aired on PBS in 1981, he has gone on to explore other aspects of American life and history, such as baseball, jazz, the Civil War, Jack Johnson, the suffrage movement, Thomas Jefferson, and the Statue of Liberty.

Exhibition of 18th-Century Porcelain Gifts on View at BGC

SEEN & HEARD

A unique exhibition of 18th-century porcelain objects opens on November 15 at The Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design, and Culture (BGC). Fragile Diplomacy: Meissen Porcelain for European Courts, which features nearly 300 objects loaned by public and private institutions in the United States and Europe, remains on view through February 11 at the BGC’s exhibition gallery in New York City. Porcelain was first introduced in Asia in the eighth century. The manufacturing process remained a closely guarded secret until 1710, when the recipe was finally discovered by ceramists

MAY

working at the court of August II, elector of Saxony and king of Poland. The prestige associated with being the owner of the first European porcelain manufactory quickly distinguished August and his court, and Meissen porcelain soon achieved the status of “white gold.” Meissen porcelain began to function as a diplomatic gift sometime during the 1720s, when August sent a number of pieces to the king of Sardinia (several pieces from that gift are included in the exhibition). A standardized repertoire of porcelain gifts became common—table services, vase and altar garnitures, and the ever-popular tea, coffee, and chocolate services, as well as toilette sets. A fine example of the latter, sent to Maria Amalia, the queen of Naples, in 1747, has been partially reassembled for this exhibition. Meissen porcelain is as much a collector’s item today as it was when it was first introduced three centuries ago. For more information about the BGC exhibitions, visit www.bgc.bard.edu.

From May 29 through June 16, Bard hosted Dance Across Borders, a series of free performances and panel discussions, as well as an international dance symposium for student and professional dancers. Noted choreographers on campus included Pat Cremins, Sondra Loring, Dean Moss, and alumni/ae Arthur Aviles ’87, Layla Childs ’95, and Sonya Robbins ’96. The Levy Economics Institute hosted a three-day conference, “War and Poverty, Peace and Prosperity,” from May 30 through June 1. The roster of 40-plus participants at the event, sponsored by Economists for Peace and Security, included Linda Bilmes, Harvard University; William Hartung, World Policy Institute; Winslow Wheeler, Center for Defense Administration Information; and James K. Galbraith, University of Texas at Austin and Senior Scholar at the Levy Institute. The Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design, and Culture (BGC) hosted a forum, “Women’s Tales: Four Leading Israeli Jewelers,” on May 30 in New York City. The event included presentations, discussion, and a book signing.

JUNE In partnership with the Friends of Clermont and New York State, Bard hosted a symposium on the bicentennial of the steamboat on June 1–2. The first commercially viable steamboat made its maiden voyage in August 1807, traveling up the Hudson from New York City to Albany, with a stop in Clermont, just north of the Annandale campus. On June 2, the Hudson Valley Chamber Music Circle presented the first of its spring concert series at Olin Hall. The program by the Pacifica Quartet—violinists Simin Ganatra and Sibbi Bernhardsson, violist Masumi Per Rostad, and cellist Brandon Vamos—featured the works of Mendelssohn, Elliott Carter, and Smetana. A four-day seminar on today’s flute repertoire kicked off on June 16 with “Flute, Wind, and Water,” a Bard Hall recital by Patricia Spencer, visiting associate professor of music at Bard and director of the seminar; pianist Linda Hall; flutist Don Hulbert; and harpsichordist Frederick Hammond. The Claremont Trio, hailed by the Cincinnati Enquirer for “the kind of fresh approach that keeps chamber music alive,” performed works by Beethhoven, Dvorˇák, and Mason Bates on June 16 at Olin Hall, as part of the Hudson Valley Chamber Music Circle concert series.

Tea, coffee, and chocolate service in its original fitted box Gift from August III to the King of Sweden in 1734 Meissen porcelain, 1733–34 Nationalmuseum, Stockholm

ON AND OFF CAMPUS | 37

Fulbright Supports Recent Alumna

BHSEC Turkish Exchange Continues

Jane Wong ’07 has received a fellowship from the Fulbright Program for U.S. Students for her work in creative writing. She is spending 10 months in Hong Kong, using the time provided by the fellowship to work on a new manuscript consisting primarily of a novella and short stories. Wong was eager to work in Hong Kong, she said, because of its multilin-

For the second consecutive year, Bard High School Early College (BHSEC) hosted a Turkish exchange with Kabatas¸ Erkek Lisesi School in Istanbul. The most recent exchange was framed around a new theme, “Coming of Age at the World’s Crossroads: Growing Up in New York and Istanbul in the 21st Century.” Three Turkish students, accompanied by their teacher, attended classes at BHSEC and joined in the Manhattan-based school’s extracurricular life, including special discussions, debates, and a “coffeehouse” sharing of talents. Two months later, three BHSEC students and their teacher went to Istanbul. Each exchange lasted three weeks.

gualism and evolving relationship with China. Cantonese and English are the official languages of Hong Kong. Large communities of residents also speak Mandarin, French, or Japanese, while smaller groups speak Tagalog, Indonesian, and Thai, among other languages. “Language has always been an important element in my life,” said Wong, “including the spaces between which people can or cannot communicate, due to language barriers.” She also wants to write about the creation of a national identity in Hong Kong, a process that is “exciting to me as a Chinese American, which is, itself, a fluid identity in the United States,” she said. Wong came to Bard from Tinton Falls, New Jersey. She concentrated in literature and the Writing Program in Fiction and Poetry. Her Senior Project was a short-story collection titled “In an Empty House: Stories.” The Fulbright Program, as it is widely known, is the flagship international educational exchange program sponsored by the U.S. government, designed to “increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries.”

Turkish student Seçil Sözüer was struck by New York’s cultural diversity. “People from around the world get on well and are tolerant to different ideas and cultures. I liked the environment of BHSEC. They give you lots of opportunities to express yourself and share your ideas,” she says. While youths in New York and Istanbul are very much alike, explains Turkish teacher Gözde Yilmaz, teenagers in Istanbul must focus exclusively on the university entrance exam and are given little academic or extracurricular freedom—in contrast to BHSEC students’ ability to choose their own curriculums and maintain dynamic schedules. Beatrice Birch, a BHSEC teacher who accompanied the students to Turkey, says, “Despite very formal procedures, there is a pleasant, friendly feeling at Kabatas¸.” She was impressed by the school’s remarkable setting, once a secondary palace of the Ottomans. “There is a real campus, comprising several buildings, a garden, an esplanade on the water, and a truly breathtaking view.”

When Art Music Meets Pop Monroe Ellenbogen ’08 won a competitive Bard Junior Fellowship to intern with New York City–based composer, Dave Longstreth, leader of the indie rock band Dirty Projectors. The Junior Fellowship Program offers seven Bardians a stipend of up to $2,000 to explore potential career fields. “In summers past, I’ve had to work carpentry or landscaping and, as a result, found myself with little time to make music,” says Ellenbogen. “I’m very grateful to Bard for the opportunity to work full-time for the new-music cause this year.” According to Ellenbogen, Longstreth’s music straddles the division between art and pop. His most ambitious album, The Getty Address (2005), is a miniopera about Don Henley, drummer, singer, and songwriter for the Eagles. Recorded over almost two years and in three different states, the compositions—largely written while Longstreth was a student at Yale—are digital rearrangements of recorded material ranging from chamber music performed on wind instruments to deep hip-hop beats. Ellenbogen first met Longstreth when he interviewed the musician for a paper for a Bard class, Populism and Progress in 20th Century Music. In his paper, Ellenbogen posited that pop music like Longstreth’s, in which odd forms of complexity are found, bridges the schism between academic and mainstream music. Ellenbogen—nephew of Anthony Ellenbogen ’82 and Kristina Ellenbogen ’83, and grandson of Kit Kauders Ellenbogen ’52 (Board of Governors of the Bard–St. Stephen’s Alumni/ae Association)—plans to pursue a music career. He currently performs with the Same Colors, a “downtempo-pop-visual” project; and the Easy Tease, a “banjo-led indie-pop” band.

Monroe Ellenbogen ’08

The Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio, with guest violist Michael Tree and clarinetist Ricardo Morales, concluded the Hudson Valley Chamber Music Circle on June 23 at Olin Hall, with a performance of Mozart’s Piano Quartet in E-flat Major, K. 495; Danielpour’s piano quartet, “The Book of Hours”; and Brahms’s Clarinet Trio in A Minor, Op. 114. Veteran singer/songwriter Rickie Lee Jones, a two-time Grammy Award winner, gave a concert at the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts on June 29. Aston Magna opened its 35th anniversary season with a concert at Olin Hall on June 29. Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons was featured in the first program, which marked the return of violinist and charter member Stanley Ritchie, along with two works by Bach.

JULY

Introducing the Class of 2011 With more applicants than ever, the Class of 2011 was Bard’s most select. Another increasing trend: more students suggested they intend to study in fields within the Division of Science, Mathematics, and Computing. Since 1989, Bard has offered scholarships through the Distinguished Scientist Scholars Program; 19 were awarded this year to students from Bangladesh, the Czech Republic, Greece, Lithuania, Mongolia, Pakistan, the People’s Republic of China, Romania, and the United States. “Bard strives to select students who have preparation to major in any field,” says Mary Backlund, director of admission. “This is not easily determined by standardized measures like GPAs or test scores. We look at factors suggesting disciplined work habits and personal ambition. Recognizing that family influence can play a part, we’re delighted to see that a large number come from parents who work in education.” Of this year’s multitalented pool of accepted students, 500 are expected to join the Class of 2011. Representing all of the United States, 25 percent come from the Tri-State area, 19 percent from New England, 14 percent from the Mid Atlantic, 15 percent from the West, 8 percent from the Midwest, and 8 percent from the South. As for global representation, more than 11 percent are international students and 20 percent have multinational backgrounds, such as dual citizenship or time spent abroad. Bard’s tradition of commitment to geographic, ethnic, and economic diversity continues with the College’s emphasis on fairness and transparency in admissions and the administration of student loans and scholarships.

On July 6, Aston Magna at Bard featured a performance of 18th-century Italian virtuoso music by director and violinist Daniel Stepner and guitarist Richard Savino. The program also included works by Paganini, Filippo Gragnani, and Mauro Giuliani. The Center for Curatorial Studies in Art and Contemporary Culture presented Feelings, a comprehensive survey of work by British artist Martin Creed, at the Hessel Museum of Art and CCS Galleries from July 7 through September 16. “Bach at the Court of Frederick the Great” was the title of Aston Magna’s July 13 concert program at Olin Hall. Soloists included fortepianist John Gibbons and baroque flutist Christopher Krueger. The Aston Magna festival at Bard continued on July 20 with a program, “The Wit and Wisdom of the French Baroque,” that featured soprano Dominique Labelle. The July 27 concert, “Mostly Monteverdi,” presented tenors Frank Kelley and William Hite in a selection of madrigals and sonatas. Bard and the Voice & Vision Theater hosted a series of workshop presentations and site-specific performances on July 27 and 28, as part of the Envision 2007 Retreat for Women Theater Artists. The Conductors Institute presented a concert celebrating the thesis work of its master’s degree candidates on July 29. Excerpts of works by Beethoven, Mahler, Ravel, Tchaikovsky, and others were performed at the Olin Hall gala.

AUGUST “The Passion of Purcell,” featuring a performance of Henry Purcell’s opera Dido and Aeneas, closed the Aston Magna concert series on August 3.

ON AND OFF CAMPUS | 39

SummerScape Opening Shimmers at Spiegeltent

The 2007 SummerScape opening night gala took place in the Spiegeltent garden. Among those attending were (l-r) Ann Marie Gardner, Charles Wessler, Martina Arfwidson, Jon Morris of the Orphean Circus, and Lars Hedstrom.

Among the 170 guests on hand to celebrate opening night were (l-r) Barbara Ettinger, Fisher Center Advisory Board member Carolyn Marks Blackwood, and Margaret Baker.

Also at the party: David E. Schwab II, ’52, Fisher Center Advisory Board member, and Tambra Dillon, Fisher Center director.

Jeanne Donovan Fisher, chair of the Fisher Center Advisory Board, and Britton Fisher at the opening night gala.

Bard Athletics: Upward and Onward Last May, the women’s tennis team competed in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division III Championships. It was the first time in Bard’s history that a team had qualified for an NCAA championship. Although the Bard team was eliminated early in the competition, the NCAA milestone reflects a string of successes achieved under the guidance of Fred Feldman, the head coach who has led the team for 14 years and has made it a top-tier program in its league. At Bard’s annual athletics awards dinner, Leon Botstein presented women’s tennis the coveted Presidential Team Achievement Award. In fact, all of Bard’s varsity teams have hit a new milestone in competition. Fall 2007 marks Bard’s first season in the Skyline Conference, an 11-member Division III conference made up of schools in New York and New Jersey. The transition is an exciting one. Participation in Skyline—whose schools maintain a higher competitive, athletic, and academic profile than those in Bard’s

Women's tennis team at the NCAA Division III Championships

previous conference—is more challenging, decreases travel time for varsity team members, and is expected to attract more scholarathletes to the College.

SEPTEMBER Farideh Koohi-Kamali, executive editor at Palgrave Macmillan, presented a talk, “Iran, Myths, and Realities,” on September 4 at the Campus Center. The Bard College Conservatory of Music sponsored a recital by cellist Hai-Ye Ni and the Shanghai Quartet on September 4 at Olin Hall. Bard celebrated the work of John Ashbery, Charles P. Stevenson Jr. Professor of Languages and Literature, in a special series of readings and talks over the weekend of September 14–16. On September 18, the Levy Economics Institute presented “The Dynamics of the Racial Earnings Gap in the United States, 1960–2000,” a talk by Moshe Semyonov of Tel Aviv University. Colonel Cindy Jebb of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point gave a lecture, “Human and Environmental Security in the Sahel: A ‘Small Ball’ Strategy for Success,” on September 18 at the Franklin W. Olin Humanities Building. The talk, sponsored by the Global and International Studies Program, was part of the Academy-Bard Exchange.

MacArthur Fellowship to Upshaw Dawn Upshaw, celebrated soprano and artistic director of the Graduate Program in Vocal Arts at The Bard College Conservatory of Music, has been named a MacArthur Fellow for 2007. The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation announced Upshaw as one of 24 new fellows, noting that she is “breaking down stylistic barriers and forging a new model of a performer who is directly involved in the creation of contemporary music.” Upshaw, who is Charles Franklin Kellogg and Grace E. Ramsey Kellogg Professor of the Arts and Humanities, is the 10th Bard faculty member to be honored with a MacArthur fellowship.

Getty Foundation Funds Campus Preservation Plan Bard College has received a $160,000 grant from the Getty Foundation to create a master plan to preserve the College’s historic buildings and landscape. The grant, part of the foundation’s Campus Heritage initiative, will enable a consultant—John Milner Associates of West Chester, Pennsylvania—to create guidelines for conservation and for integration of future building and planting into the master plan. “This grant will help shape the future of Bard’s physical growth and make sure preservation issues are included,” notes Elizabeth Ely ’65, secretary of the College Board of Trustees, who has been active in the formation of the arboretum and other conservation efforts on campus.

In celebration of the opening of The Gabrielle H. Reem and Herbert J. Kayden Center for Science and Computation on September 23, several eminent scientists, including Nobel laureate Leon Lederman, participated in the panel discussion, “Educating Future Scientists.” The daylong event also featured a concert by The Bard College Conservatory of Music Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Guillermo Figueroa.

OCTOBER In association with the Bard Program on Globalization and International Affairs, the Bard Graduate Center presented a lecture on October 1, “Ethical Metalsmiths: Connecting People with Responsibly Sourced Materials.” Christina Miller, cofounder of Ethical Metalsmiths, a group dedicated to raising awareness of issues related to irresponsible mining practices, was the featured speaker. The Institute of Advanced Theology presented the first lecture in its fall luncheon series, “Religion and Politics,” at the Bertelsmann Campus Center on October 5. The weekly talks continued through November 2. The Hungarian Brass Quintet performed at Olin Hall on October 11. Photo of the Day, an exhibition of photographs by the late James Livingston ’79, was on view at the Bertelsmann Campus Center, October 13 through October 28. “Arias & Bacarolles,” a concert by the students of The Bard College Conservatory of Music’s graduate program in vocal arts, was held at Olin Hall on October 17.

ON AND OFF CAMPUS | 41

BARD–ST. STEPHEN’S ALUMNI/AE ASSOCIATION RESOURCE GUIDE The Bard–St. Stephen’s Alumni/ae Association includes all alumni/ae of Bard College and St. Stephen’s College (the College’s original name, 1860–1934). Individuals who attended the College for at least one year are considered members. No dues are charged, but the support of alumni/ae is critical to ensuring the future of the College and providing the Bard educational experience to today’s students. This support is both financial and volunteer, through the committees of the Alumni/ae Association. The Bard–St. Stephen’s Alumni/ae Association is led by a Board of Governors, which has 62 members. The officers for 2007–2009 are: Walter Swett ’96, President Roger Scotland ’93, Vice President Michael DeWitt ’65, Executive Vice President Maggie Hopp ’67, Secretary Olivier te Boekhort ’93, Treasurer

Reunions are held each year on Commencement Weekend for classes celebrating their five-year anniversaries. In 2008 those classes will include 2003, 1998, 1993, 1988, 1983, 1978, 1973, 1968, 1963, 1953, 1948–49, 1943, and 1938. Alumni/ae from all classes are welcome for the weekend, and classmates from surrounding years are especially invited to join friends celebrating their reunions. Alumni/ae committees organize the reunions by helping to plan events, contacting classmates, and soliciting gifts for special anniversary contributions to the College. In May 2007, 400 alumni/ae and their families came back to Bard for their reunions.

Staying Connected The Alumni/ae Association offers numerous ways to stay in touch with the College and other alumni/ae—and to reconnect with old friends.

All of this activity depends on alumni/ae staying in touch! To update your contact information, please write to the Office of Alumni/ae Affairs, Bard College, PO Box 5000, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY 12504; call 1-800-BARDCOL or 845-758-7089; e-mail alumni@bard.edu; or visit www.bard.edu/alumni/.

The Online Directory at www.bard.edu/alumni includes alumni/ae e-mail addresses and other contact information that alumni/ae choose to share. Alumni/ae can register for the password-protected directory by going to www.bard.edu/alumni and following the simple instructions. Once registered, you can search for alumni/ae by year, location, major, and profession. Events offer an opportunity for Bardians to catch up with one another and network in their communities. Recent events have included readings at the Bowery Poetry Club, softball games, and gallery tours in New York City; gatherings in alumni/ae homes in Seattle, Houston, and Fort Lauderdale; the annual Holiday Party in New York City; and receptions in Los Angeles and San Francisco at which alumni/ae and future students and their parents had the opportunity to talk with Bard president Leon Botstein. Watch your mail and e-mail, and check www.bard.edu/ alumni/events for updates and details. If you have suggestions for an event, please e-mail alumni@bard.edu.

Class Notes in the Bardian are uniquely Bardian. Class correspondents contact classmates, usually by e-mail, and write and submit notes for publication three times a year. Correspondents report that this is a wonderful way to stay in touch with classmates and share news with the entire Bard community.

Resources Life After Bard / Career Connections Thinking about changing careers? Looking for a new job? Alumni/ae may register at collegecentral.com/bard, the online jobs and mentoring board of the Bard College Career Development Office. All the job listings are active and, typically, 150 to 200 openings are listed in a wide range of fields. The site also includes a list of alumni/ae mentors available to current students and other alumni/ae. For more information, call the Career Development Office at 845-758-7539 or e-mail cdo@bard.edu. Stevenson Gymnasium Alumni/ae are eligible for a 25-percent discount on membership. Bard varsity athletic events are free and open to the public. Bard Bookstore Bertelsmann Campus Center 845-758-7005, bard.bkstore.com

Performing Arts, Lectures, and Exhibitions Throughout the year, the campus is alive with music, theater, dance, lectures, and exhibitions, all available to the public. pr@bard.edu, www.bard.edu/news

Stewardship Develops and implements programs to acknowledge alumni/ae giving. Charlie Clancy ’69, cbclancy@aol.com, Steve Miller ’70, smiller@morrismuseum.org

Transcripts Office of the Registrar, Bard College, PO Box 5000, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY 12504; 845-758-7458 (phone); 845-758-7036 (fax); registrar@bard.edu

Nominations and Awards Recommends individuals for membership on the Alumni/ae Association Board of Governors and for Bard College Alumni/ae Awards. Arnold Davis ’44, 914-472-3256, Peter McCabe ’70, pfredmac@aol.com

Getting Involved and Giving Back The work of the Bard–St. Stephen’s Association is accomplished with the active participation of alumni/ae on committees of the Board of Governors. Contact the chairs of the committees listed below or Jessica Kemm ’74, director of alumni/ae affairs. Communications and New Technologies Assists the Office of Alumni/ae Affairs in enhancing communications with alumni/ae. Joshua Bell ’98, joshuabell@thecolbertreport.org Class Notes Correspondents Gather and write class notes for the Bardian. Andrea Stein ’93, stein@bard.edu Diversity Encourages and assists the College in the recruitment and admission of historically underrepresented candidates and serves as a resource for their successful matriculation, retention, and graduation. Paul Thompson ’93, brass@sprintmail.com Events New York and the Hudson Valley: Randy Buckingham ’73, 212-744-8769, George Smith ’82, gsmith2273@yahoo.com Los Angeles: Jonathan Ames ’05, jonames1@gmail.com, Michelle Dunn Marsh ’95, chelledunn@aol.com Other areas: Claire Angelozzi ’74, cangel152@hotmail.com Fund-raising Active alumni/ae donors help secure gifts and pledges from fellow alumni/ae and other funding sources. Erin Law ’93, erinjlaw@hotmail.com Life After Bard / Career Connections Promotes career development programs for alumni/ae and students. Ann Ho ’62, annho@rockefeller.edu, Allison Radzin ’88, afradzin@yahoo.com Oral History Ensures that the College’s history is recorded. David Avallone ’87, ednoon@aol.com

Young Alumni/ae Engages young alumni/ae in the Alumni/ae Association. Rebecca Granato ’99, rebecca.granato@gmail.com Support Bard The founding and growth of Bard College can be attributed to the generosity of the College’s many supporters. This group began with John Bard, who established St. Stephen’s College on his property, and continues with trustees, friends, parents, and alumni/ae. During fiscal year 2006–07, 1,600 alumni/ae (24 percent of all alumni/ae) made gifts to the College, and the senior gift of the Class of 2007 established a new speakers program on campus and an endowment focused solely on investments considered socially responsible. Nevertheless, Bard’s endowment is small compared to that of similar colleges, and the College must raise over $10 million each year to attract faculty, keep the student-teacher ratio low, provide financial aid, and maintain the buildings and grounds. All gifts are important and speak to the significance that the institution holds for alumni/ae. Consider making a gift. Open your mail from Bard and read the latest news from campus. Share tales of campus life with the student who calls you during the phonathon. Check out the Alumni/ae Association website to see what other Bardians are doing and to make a gift online. Your financial support is needed and greatly appreciated. Office of Development and Alumni/ae Affairs Debra Pemstein, Vice President for Development and Alumni/ae Affairs, pemstein@bard.edu, 845-758-7405 Jessica Kemm ’74, Director of Alumni/ae Affairs; kemm@bard.edu, 845-758-7406 Sasha Boak-Kelly, Associate Director of Alumni/ae Affairs; boak@bard.edu, 845-758-7407 Tricia Fleming, Assistant to the Office of Alumni/ae Affairs; fleming@bard.edu, 845-758-7089

CLASSNOTES

BARD–ST. STEPHEN’S ALUMNI/AE ASSOCIATION ANNUAL HOLIDAY PARTY | FRIDAY, DECEMBER 7 TIME 6:00–9:00 p.m. PLACE Union Bar, 204 Park Avenue South, between 17th and 18th Streets, New York City ADMISSION Complimentary for the Classes of 2006 and 2007

$15 per person for Classes of 2001–2005 $25 per person for Classes 1996–2000 $35 per person for all other alumni/ae and all guests NATIONAL MUSEUM OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN | SATURDAY, JANUARY 26 Scott Merritt ’87 gives alumni/ae and their guests a tour and special presentation on the evolution of the Museum and the move of its extensive collection to the U.S. Custom House in Lower Manhattan. LUNCHEON AT THE CULINARY INSTITUTE OF AMERICA | SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 2 Join fellow alumni/ae for lunch at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York. Hosted by Michael DeWitt ’65. ELDRIDGE STREET SYNAGOGUE | SUNDAY, MARCH 16 Alumni/ae and their guests are invited to join a private tour of the Eldridge Street Synagogue, the first great house of worship built on Manhattan’s Lower East Side by Eastern European Jews. Hosted by Randy Buckingham ’73. WALKING TOUR OF HARLEM | SATURDAY, APRIL 5 Join fellow Bardians on a walking tour of Harlem with renowned Manhattan historian Joyce Gold (named “the doyenne of city walking tour guides” by the New York Times). Hosted by George Smith ’82 and Diana Hirsch Friedman ’68. BARD ALUMNI/AE READING AT KGB BAR | WEDNESDAY, APRIL 9 Alumni/ae read from work inspired by their Bard experience. If you are interested in reading at the KGB Bar in Manhattan, please contact the Alumni/ae Office. For information on all alumni/ae events: Tricia Fleming, alumni@bard.edu or 845-758-7089

CHICAGO CITIES PARTY | APRIL 2007

Helen-Maurene Cooper ’03 and Steve Gilpin ’03

Gabrielle Kammerer ’04 and Isaac Liberman ’04

Amalea Tshilds ’90 (sitting) and Cori Nyland-Southern ’00

’38 70th Reunion: May 23–25, 2008 Staff contact: Jessica Kemm ’74, 845-758-7406 or kemm@bard.edu

’39 Dr. John (Jack) C. Honey is still closely connected to Bard. He is a trustee of the College, a member of the Alumni/ae Association Board of Governors, and an overseer of Simon’s Rock. He and his wife, Mary, live on Sandalwood Lane in Rhinebeck, New York.

Overcast, rain, rain./It rains, stops, then starts again./Tall redwoods sway slightly. United States, states Bush,/Provides freedom throughout world./ Rejoice Detainees! Good poems travel./Slipping person to person,/Like paper money.

’48 60th Reunion: May 23–25, 2008 Staff contact: Jessica Kemm ’74, 845-758-7406 or kemm@bard.edu

Dalton H. McBee lives in Newburyport, Massachusetts. He is retired after many years of teaching English at Philips Academy in Andover.

Nancy Edelstein is an active board member of the Broward Art Guild in southern Florida.

Dr. Dominick (Pap) A. Papandrea is retired from the practice of urology. He has five sons and four daughters, and lives in Albany, New York.

60th Reunion: May 23–25, 2008

’40 Class correspondent

’49 Staff contact: Jessica Kemm ’74, 845-758-7406 or kemm@bard.edu

’50 Lee Gray is retired and lives in Palm Coast, Florida, near his grandchildren.

Dick Koch, 516-599-3489 Richard (Dick) F. Koch still lives in Lynbrook, New York (in the same house for 56 years), but spends a great deal of time in Berkeley, California. He is widowed and writes, “cherchez la femme!” He has a married son in San Francisco, and another married son with his own son in Madison, Wisconsin.

’43

’51 George Coulter retired in 1998 and does much traveling in Europe and Canada. Renee Weiss is preparing a libretto for the Opera Company of Philadelphia from The Always Present Present, the book she wrote with her late husband, Ted.

65th Reunion: May 23–25, 2008

’52

Staff contact: Jessica Kemm ’74, 845-758-7406 or kemm@bard.edu

Class correspondent

’44 Arnold Davis reports that a rare painting from the Seena and Arnold Davis Old Master Collection, Holy Family by Italian painter Barbara Longhi, was included in the exhibition Italian Women Artists from Renaissance to Baroque at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C., March–July 2007.

’46 Richard Loving has been a professor of painting at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago for over 35 years. Early in 2007, a critically acclaimed retrospective, Richard Loving Paintings: Thirty Year Review, was exhibited in two Chicago museums: the Art Center in Highland Park for the earlier work, and the Evanston Art Center for work from the past decade. James Pines greeted Stan Falk ’45 on his 80th birthday in March 2007.

’47 In 2006 Walter Liggett published Distilled, Aged In Life, a collection of his own poetry, prose, and art, together with selected works by a number of friends. The following is a sampling of Walter’s haiku from this collection:

Kit Ellenbogen, max4794@netzero.net Judy Dolinger is an actress and singer. She has acted in community theater productions and a variety of commercials and industrial films, and sings with the 21-piece swing band, the St. Thomcats. On February 1, 2007, Kit Ellenbogen entered her 12th year of working as a staff attorney at the Association for the Children of New Jersey (ACNJ) in Newark. Kit specializes in special education law and assists parents who cannot afford private counsel. Additionally, since having had a true sense of community at Bard she decided she wanted that same sense of belonging in her last years of life. She chose to move to Medford Leas, a continuing care retirement community founded by Quakers in 1971. She now has that same feeling of acceptance and membership that she had at Bard. She continues to work in Newark as staff attorney at ACNJ two to three days a week. Barbara S. Herst is almost completely retired as an interior designer. She traveled in 2006 with her husband and spent New Year’s in London with a local theater group. This past winter she spent two months on Kauai, Hawaii. Mona Monroe continues to work as a volunteer at the River East School in New York City.

CLASS NOTES | 45

In 2007 Jonathan and Iris Oseas celebrated their 47th year in the antique business and their 57th wedding anniversary. They have a granddaughter at Bard. Jim Richey teaches skiing at Perfect North Slopes ( just west of Cincinnati) in the winter and builds houses for Habitat For Humanity each summer. Frances Sandiford is officially retired but keeps busy as head of the Mid-Hudson Branch of New Yorkers Against the Death Penalty. Ellie Schmidt is a writer and tutors young children in English— some young enough to still be losing their baby teeth. She writes: “One’s personal, cranky pains diminish swiftly in the face of a trusting child’s gappy-toothed smile.” Deborah Sussman continues to work on large-scale environmental projects with her firm, Sussman/Prejza & Company, Inc. On February 2, 2007, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa honored her for her contribution to the Los Angeles graphics community. In the summer of 2007, Deborah presented her work to several thousand designers in Atlanta, at the HOW Design Conference. She was included in Summer in the City, an exhibition at the George Billis Gallery in Culver City California, featuring “the works of six women who changed the course of art history in Southern California.” In addition, her work was featured in Women Artists of Southern California Then & Now at the Track 16 Gallery at the Bergamot Station Arts Center in Santa Monica, an exhibit showcasing early and current work by women artists. Paul Vietz, M.D., and his wife, Sigrid, have had a gynecological practice for over 45 years. Paul was disappointed to miss his 55th reunion, but he was taking part in a medical conference in Germany that same weekend. He planned to meet up with Horst Herke in Germany for a small-scale Bard reunion.

’53 55th Reunion: May 23–25, 2008 Staff contact: Jessica Kemm ’74, 845-758-7406 or kemm@bard.edu

Class correspondent Naomi Feldman, nada1500@comcast.net Rhoda Levine directed the world premiere of Wakonda’s Dream (score by Anthony Davis, libretto by Yusef Komunyakaa) in Omaha in March 2007. In May she taught at the Duffy Institute at the Virginia Arts Festival. She continues to be on the faculties of the Manhattan School of Music and the Mannes College of Music, and is the director of Play It By Ear, an improvisational opera company based in Manhattan. Pat Solotaire lives in Portland, Maine, retired from a number of semi-professions. She enjoys reading—mostly history, fiction, and true crime. She was married to another ’53 alum, Robert Solotaire, for many years. Divorced, Patricia now lives with a French Canadian economist.

’54 Cynthia Maris Dantzic’s book 100 New York Painters is in Barnes & Noble. It is also at many museum shops and has been featured at the Museum of Modern Art’s bookstore.

’56 Dr. Miriam Roskin Berger’s observations on dance therapy were featured in the article “Dance Therapy: Spin Control” in the March–April 2007 issue of Psychology Today. Dr. Berger led a workshop on movement pathology diagnosis in May in Berlin, and presented on the same topic at Moving from Within, an international meeting on movement analysis in July in Freising, Germany. In August, she trained dance therapists in Prague and, in September, chaired the International Panel at the annual conference of the American Dance Therapy Association in Brooklyn. She has been inducted into the Dance Library of Israel Hall of Fame, and continues her teaching at New York University and the Harkness Dance Center of the 92nd Street Y in New York City.

’57 Leonora (Katz) Feeney is semiretired and finds herself too busy to work. She travels, goes to classes at the Brandeis Adult Learning Institute at Brandeis University, and takes care of two houses, two dogs, and various local organizations. Elaine Leicht Goldberg is now retired after first teaching and then directing early childhood education centers for 25 years. She lives near Albany, New York.

’60 Guy Ducornet studied at Bard on a Fulbright scholarship in 1959–60. He came back in 1962 to marry Erica (Rikki) DeGre and teach French from 1962 to 1968, when they regretfully left Annandale to move to Canada (and McMaster University) for political reasons. Later, they moved back to France where they published children’s books and operated a painting and pottery studio. After Rikki returned to the United States in 1988, Guy stayed in France and became the translator of her fiction, as well as some of Noam Chomsky’s essays. His most recent book is Surréalisme & Athéisme (see Books by Bardians).

’61 Robert Lemon recently retired after 32 years of teaching and administration at Rollins College, Marshall University, and Ohio University.

’62 Lee Hammond is serving a third term in the House of Representatives of the New Hampshire Legislature, focusing on reform of the prison system and battling the “sex offender witchhunt currently in vogue.” His daughter Mo is a sophomore at Connecticut College.

Where The Heart Listens, Eve Odiorne Sullivan’s handbook for the Parents Forum, which she founded in 1992, will be published

New York University’s School of Continuing and Professional Studies, working toward a certificate in East Asian languages. He

online with a grant from Reed Elsevier. She works at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as the senior editorial assistant for Annals of Physics. Her sons Rich, Luke, and Michael are all married. She writes: “Retirement is a pleasant mirage, receding as I approach.”

grieves the death of his dear friend Bob Walker.

’63 Class correspondent Penny Axelrod, axelrodp@earthlink.net Michael Miller is living a quiet life in semiretirement as he “fumes at the current mess George W. Bush has gotten us into.” Joan Rich has retired after teaching art in high schools in New York City and Maryland. She keeps busy with art projects, grandchildren, and planning the wedding of her last son to marry. She would love to hear from old friends. Heywood Zeidman’s group, Psychiatric Centers at San Diego, has grown to include 33 M.D.s, 75 Ph.D.s, and numerous other therapists. He believes that they are the largest psychiatric group west of the Mississippi. He is also a faculty member at the University of California, San Diego, and on the board of directors of the San Diego County Medical Society. He represents his area at the California Medical Association and his hospital at the American Medical Association.

’64 Rikki Ducornet’s seventh novel, Gazelle, was published by Knopf in 2004 and by Gallimard in French translation in 2007. A new collection of her short fiction will be published next year by the Dalkey Archive. In the spring of 2007 she exhibited recent paintings at the Pierre Menard Gallery in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Rikki is writer in residence at the University of Louisiana, Lafayette, but spends the lion’s part of her time in Port Townsend, Washington. In 2004 she received the Lannan Literary Award in Fiction.

’65 Reverend Russell H. Allen retired on July 1, 2006, after 38 years in the active ministry of the Episcopal Church. He and his wife, Louisa, have relocated to Cape Cod, which had been their longtime plan and dream. They live in Harwich, and he assists at Saint Peter’s Episcopal Church in Osterville. They are also three-time grandparents. Rick Baker and Cathy Thiele Baker ’68 became grandparents of a beautiful baby girl, Michaela, on July 20th, 2006. David Jacobowitz plans to retire in May 2008 and then do “some serious bicycle touring.” Andrew Marum is a social worker in New York City. Although a real neophyte, he likes to create illustrations using crayons. He has completed three courses in Mandarin and one in Korean from

Richard Smith plays and writes original material with the Mescal Sheiks. For reviews, performances, and news, visit: www.mescalsheiks.com. Robert Weissberg lives in lower Manhattan overlooking the harbor and keeps intellectually busy. He teaches a course or so per year at New York University and has completed his latest book, Pernicious Tolerance: How Teaching to ‘Accept Differences’ Undermines Civil Society (Transaction Press, 2007). He has also published shorter essays, including a humorous one, plus a book review, all while attending “seemingly endless luncheon engagements held at fancy clubs that probably would never admit him as a member.” He has traveled to Europe, Russia, Mexico, and elsewhere, and is working on a collection of very heretical education-related essays.

’66 Jimmy Camicia’s new CD, Play Genet, with New York City’s Hot Peaches, is now available at www.cdbaby.com. Barbara Smolian Gerber moved to Juneau, Alaska, in October 2006. Her husband, Larry Gerber, is the editor of the daily Juneau Empire. During their first winter they had over 200 inches of snow. Joe Hampel retired from high school/middle school science teaching after 35 years. He now tutors homebound chemistry students and puts on “Mr. Wizard”-type science shows in elementary schools with three other retirees. Karin Hampel performs piano regularly—solo, chamber music, and accompaniment—and has recorded her first CD of original music. In the fall of 2006 she started a new CD, recording Aram Khachaturian’s tocatta. After 39 years, Karin and Joe have moved from Swarthmore to West Chester, Pennsylvania. Life is full and very busy with their five grandchildren (11 years and younger). Stanton Marlan, Ph.D., ABPP, LP, is a Jungian psychoanalyst and clinical psychologist in private practice in Pittsburgh, and an adjunct clinical professor of psychology at Duquesne University. He is a training and supervising analyst with the Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts, and president of the Pittsburgh Society of Jungian Analysts. He is also a member of the C. G. Jung Institute of New York. He holds diplomates in clinical psychology and psychoanalysis from the American Board of Professional Psychology. He is one of three coeditors for the Encyclopedia of Psychology and Religion, and has published numerous books and articles on Jungian psychology and alchemy, the most recent of which is The Black Sun: The Alchemy and Art of Darkness (Texas A&M Press, 2005). Louise Sarezky has written and published two new books, cocreated with Kuthumi Lal Singh: How to be Kind of Good Looking in an Otherwise Ugly World and Silly Silly Humans—A Guidebook for Dummies Who Want to Remain Dummies. For more information on the books, visit: www.customgrfxpub.com.

CLASS NOTES | 47

’67 Class correspondent Pamela Dendy Knap, pdknap@optonline.net The past few years have been measured in extraordinary highs and lows for Jeff Levy and his family. Jeff and Della’s oldest son, Ben, won a position in the bass section of the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 2003, and he and Jenn Turner were married last September. Jeff and Della’s daughter Sarah teaches in Denver and son Mark is a senior in jazz percussion studies at the New England Conservatory. In 2003 Jeff was diagnosed with lymphoma. Treatment was successful, but side effects of chemotherapy forced an unwelcome early retirement. He looks at his career in medicine as exceeding his expectations for opportunities to serve both the patients and institutions with which he was associated for the past 30 years. Mack McCune had a full house for a few months after Hurricane Katrina. He and his ex own a house in New Orleans that was temporarily uninhabitable, so she and three of her children came to stay with him in Maryland. Mack is “appalled at the lack of support the federal government has provided the citizens of the Gulf Coast to this day.” Kevin Fitz Patrick coordinates photography for the All Taxa Biodiversity Inventory (ATBI) in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and its newly developed National Alliance, which encompasses numerous national parks and recreation areas, including Acadia National Park and the Boston Harbor Islands. He is a member of the board of directors of Discover Life in America, which oversees the ATBI Project. He moved from Concord, Massachusetts, to Asheville, North Carolina, on May 1.

’68 40th Reunion: May 23–25, 2008 Staff contact: Jessica Kemm ’74, 845-758-7406 or kemm@bard.edu

Class correspondent Barbara Crane Wigren, bcwigren@aol.com Frank Davenport writes that he had a rock band in 1964 with Peter Lee ’60, Charlie Messing, and other “musical genies.” They played in the gym several times and the Magdal Inn on occasion. He would love to hear from any old friends at ancientcityentertainment@yahoo.com. Vickisa Feinberg is an artist exhibiting at Gallery Route One in Point Reyes Station, California, and in other venues. She is an art teacher, volunteer firefighter, and emergency medical technician in West Marin and a radio host on KWMR, the West Marin community radio station. Andrew Frank retired after 35 years as a member of the Music Department at the University of California, Davis. In January 2007 the department honored his service to the University with a concert of two recent pieces plus works by his former teachers, Jacob

As the baby boomers hit their sixties, many of them are celebrating with former classmates. Bardians gathered in New York City for the birthday of William Sherman ’68 are (left to right) David Perry ’69, Cynthia Hirsch Levy ’65, William (wearing his birthday crown and holding a picture of himself at Bard), Barbara Crane Wigren ’68, Blake Fleetwood ’68, Diana Hirsch Friedman ’68, Michael Dewitt ’65, and Marylyn Donahue ’68. Barbara writes that they all are “grateful for the friendships that have lasted decades.”

Druckman from Bard and George Crumb from the University of Pennsylvania. Guy Frank lives in Richmond, Virginia, “that hotbed of social rest” (Will Rogers). He enjoys writing and performing his songs, playing guitar and piano, and reading and writing poetry. He works resettling refugees in Richmond. Sandy Hubert has done soul healings and readings for over 20 years, and works at the Healing Zone in Montclair, New Jersey. Her book, Soul Encounters: Love Letters from the Soul is available on line. Her next book, Food Obsession No More, about how she cured herself of food obsession, will be printed soon. Susan Morse lives with her husband, Frank Ludovina, near Monterey, California. They both teach part-time at California State University, Monterey Bay, after retiring from many wonderful years with the Migrant Education Program.

’69 Class correspondent Elaine Marcotte Hyams, eshyams@yahoo.com Although Lilja Finzel did not graduate from Bard, she still considers it the “school of her heart.” After a serendipitous career in bank information systems, audit, and security and 10 years of independent consulting in the same field, Lilja is now, happily, a “professional volunteer” in Vernonia, Oregon, in the heavily forested northwest corner of the state. She is involved with the county cultural association, local arts group, and historical museum.

She and her husband live on one of their two timber farms and are growing firs, cedars, and alders for future generations.

Martin Schenker was named top editor for Bloomberg News in May 2006.

Linda Sitnick’s daughter, Elizabeth, is an attorney for a firm in San Diego, and son Sam is finishing high school. Linda volunteers for the American Ballet Theatre and never misses her three-timesa-week aqua-aerobics classes at the “Y.”

’73

Jeff Wohkittel published a new book of poems, Requium, through the University Press of the South, Inc./Presses Universitaires du Nouveau Monde of New Orleans. He urges Bardians to buy the book in support of this “brave publisher” and its recovery from Hurricane Katrina. In 2005 he also published a book of poetry entitled Once Empires.

’70 Gary M. Haber is now the proud grandfather of four: Ella, Esther, Eli, and Grace. Robert Melnick has been appointed interim executive director of the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at the University of Oregon. Since 2005, he has been a visiting senior program officer at the Getty Foundation in Los Angeles.

’71 Carla Bolte celebrated the first anniversary of her kidney transplant, which was necessary because of a genetic kidney disease. She was the recipient of an exceptional gift; a friend gave Carla her kidney! They are both doing fine. Carla is back at work as a senior designer at Viking. Her most interesting recent project was designing Jack Kerouac’s On the Road: The Original Scroll. She is looking forward to working on William T. Vollman’s next work of fiction.

35th Reunion: May 23–25, 2008 Staff contact: Jessica Kemm ’74, 845-758-7406 or kemm@bard.edu Howard Good’s book Mis-Education in Schools: Beyond the Slogans and Double-Talk was published by Rowman & Littlefield Education. Richard Goodman’s son is graduating from Philadelphia University with a degree in interior architecture. His daughter is a junior at the Frisch School in Paramus, New Jersey. Jodi Noble Greenberg, a theater major at Bard, appeared in the final season of the HBO hit The Sopranos. Gail Grossman, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist. She lives in Evanston, Illinois, with her husband and 12-year-old twins. She enjoys a private practice working with children and families and is the founder of the Illinois Parent Resource Center in Evanston. Natalie Kaye is working toward certification as a life coach. She would be happy to hear from old friends and classmates. Roger Sessions lives in “a tiny little droplet of a town” called Chappell Hill, just outside of Houston, Texas. He writes books and articles, and consults in the area of enterprise architecture. His next (seventh) book is tentatively titled Simple Architectures for Complex Organizations, and should be out by the end of the year. On a personal note, his daughter was married in July. “It seems like only yesterday. . . .”

In recent years, Jim Chevallier has been collected in image and text. Big Jim, a satirical portrait of him by French artist Sandy Amerio, won the French Prix Altadis in 2005 and is now in the Altadis collection. Gerald Lee Ratliff included one of Jim’s monologues for actors in the collection Young Women’s Monologs From Contemporary Plays (Meriwether Publishing, 2004). His essay, “The Queen’s Coffee and Casanova’s Chocolate: The Early Modern Breakfast,” is included in Consuming Culture in the Long Nineteenth Century: Narratives of Consumption, 1700–1900 (Lexington Books, 2007). Christopher Shaw is the associate director of the Middlebury Fellowships in Environmental Journalism. For more information, visit: www.middlebury.edu/administration/enviro/fellowship. Wendy Weldon has a new website: www.WendyWeldon.com. The last exhibition of her paintings was in July 2007 at Shaw Cramer Gallery in Vineyard Haven, Massachusetts.

’72 Bruce Holvenstot has many fond memories of the people he played music with at Bard in ’68 and beyond. He may be contacted at holvenstot2006@yahoo.com.

Susan Bodine ’72, director John Sayles, and producer Maggie Renzi hosted a gathering at Susan’s home before the opening of the 2007 SummerScape film festival, “British Postwar Classics.” Attendees included (left to right) John Kisch ’76; Sheila Moloney ’84; Robert Goldwitz ’75, behind Renzi; John Pruitt, associate professor of film; Elizabeth Cornell Goldwitz ’90; Susan; Sayles; Penelope Rowlands ’73; George Smith ’82; Randy Buckingham ’73; Jessica Kemm ’74; and Erik Cuthell ’85.

CLASS NOTES | 49

’74

’81

Lisa Harris’s short stories have appeared this past year in Phoebe, the MacGuffin, Cantaraville One, Ginosko Literary Journal, and the Distillery. She completed her novel Stars Fell at a two-week residency at the Hambidge Center for the Arts and Sciences in Rabun Gap, Georgia. In July she presented a paper at the Oxford Round Table on poverty and deprivation and their effects on children in public schools. She continues her work for literacy as director of academic intervention in the Ithaca City Schools. Her granddaughter, Aniah Sarina Razzaaq, was born on December 24, 2006.

In early 2007 Bob Fagan performed at the Austin, Texas, music festival South by Southwest, playing guitar, bass, and banjo for psychedelic legends Powell St. John (Bye Bye Baby) and the Aliens (of Roky Erickson renown). He writes: “I have loved Powell’s songs and the Aliens’ music since my punk-rock days at Bard, and I am thrilled to be working with them.”

’76 Hilarie Johnston has spent the last five years building her house, along with having her daughter, Roxanna, and working at Haverford College. She has done most of the work on the house herself. The grand opening party will be in the summer of 2008. Carolyn Rabiner and Andrew Zack ’75 were married in 1997 and plan to move to the Bard area this year.

’77 Raymond Benkoczy works as a legal consultant on an independent contractor’s basis. A student of Tibetan Buddhism, he spends as much of his time as possible in Rhinebeck, gardening, writing poetry, sculpting and creating artwork in mixed media, and teaching himself to play guitar. He has several music and film projects in development. In 2006 Alison Dale published several articles in Inside MS, the magazine of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. One of the articles won an APEX Award for Publication Excellence for the magazine.

’82 Bill Abelson is busy marketing his first screenplay, Chocolate Fudge Darts, written with Mark Kirby. He writes: “It’s a wacky college comedy, set, I’m sad to say, at Oberlin College, my first and vastly inferior school!” Alice Knapp’s solo law practice in Richmond, Maine, turned five on May 1, 2007. The practice is located in an almost 200-year-old historic building that Alice and her Bangor-based partner Matt Tilley purchased, saved, and renovated. When not looking out the window at the Kennebec River, Alice is hard at work for her clients or working on political issues, such as the Maine single-payer healthcare system referendum. She shares her home with a Newfoundland and an English bull terrier. Karen Saxe received the 2006 Teaching Award from the North Central Section of the Mathematical Association of America for excellence in college or university teaching. She chairs the Math Department at Macalester College in St. Paul. Her active family— husband, Peter, and children Julian (13), Alexander (11), and Zoe (11)—is great.

’83 25th Reunion: May 23–25, 2008 Staff contact: Matt Soper, 845-758-7505 or soper@bard.edu

’78 30th Reunion: May 23–25, 2008 Staff contact: Sasha Boak-Kelly, 845-758-7407 or boak@bard.edu

Class correspondent Valerie Shaff, valshaff@valstar.net Vladimir Cubano says hello to his fellow classmates and hopes to see some of the class of ’78 at the reunion in 2008.

’79 After more than 25 years in the corporate world, Grace Judson started her own business doing what she really loves—using her skills to help people grow, develop, and become more than they thought they could be. She now works with professionals who feel trapped and want a sense of direction. Through workshops, classes, and one-on-one work, she guides groups and individuals in discovering what they really want, and taking the practical action they need to get there. She loves seeing her clients revitalize their careers and regain their passion and enthusiasm for life. Ruth West took her first sabbatical and went to Egypt to develop a new art piece.

Stephen Barnwell specializes in the relatively obscure genre of art called Moneyart, which uses the visual language of currency. In early 2007 his work was part of the group show STATES, Grow Your Own at the Palais de Tokyo Contemporary Art Museum in Paris. The show’s theme was micronations, model states, and fictional states. His fictional state of Nadiria was represented in the show by an assortment of his Antarctica Dream-Dollars. To see more information about Dream-Dollars and this exhibition, visit www.DreamDollars.com. To see all of his Moneyart work, visit www.moneyart.biz. David M. Korn’s second play, This Won’t Take Long, a police interrogation drama, had a successful debut at the 2006 New York International Fringe Festival. David is currently looking for an agent for his prehistoric adventure novel, Man and Dog. In January 2007 Karen Miller began serving as a circuit court judge in the Criminal Division of the 15th Judicial Circuit Court in Palm Beach County, Florida. After a full performing and teaching career in dance, Leslie Partridge continues to move, but spends most of her time with her husband and two daughters (ages 3 and 6) in Manhattan.

Emily Silverman presented papers at the national meeting of the American Academy of Religion and Society of Biblical Literature

New York City public high school and also teaches acting at the Stella Adler Conservatory of Acting. In addition, Cristina directs

in Washington, D.C., in November 2006, and the national meeting of the Association of Jewish Studies in San Diego in December. She is the section chair for Jewish studies for the Western Commission for the Study of Religion, which just had its first joint session of queer and Jewish studies. She and her husband, Keith, have three children, Ariella (14), Zeke (10), and Raphie (3). When not working in the role of “taxi driver/chauffer for the kids,” she is finishing a dissertation in religious studies entitled “Crossing Over Gender and Religion: The Queering of the Religious Identities of Edith Stein, a Jewish Nun, and Regina Jonas, a Woman Rabbi, in Nazi Germany.”

and acts; you can sometimes catch her on one of the soaps or as a regular supporting player on Saturday Night Live. In the last two years she has been learning horseback riding and the art of dressage. Peter Holland lives near Annapolis, Maryland with his two children, Delia, 10, and Jimmy, 8. He would love to hear from Bard alums in the area, and can be reached at phollandlaw@msn.com. Andrew McDonald has gotten back into photography, with work published in Northwest Home and Garden magazine.

’87 ’84

Class correspondent

Anne (Jennings) Canzonetti and Matthew Canzonetti live in Woodstock, New York, after 20 years in Washington, D.C. They are enjoying the simple life, with lots of hiking, traveling, and developing connections with their community.

David Avallone, ednoon@aol.com

Leonard Schwartz’s most recent book is Language As Responsibility (Tinfish Press, 2007). He is professor of literary arts at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. Alison Watkins has taught courses in poetry, literature, and comparative arts at the Ringling School of Art and Design for the last 15 years. After Bard she received a doctorate in literature from Florida State University, writing a dissertation using primary material from Yeats’s visionary papers. She continues to write and publish poetry and academic essays, and to sail whenever the winds allow; she has also taken up videography with a passion.

’85 Joy Rabinowitsch-Veron lives in Cranford, New Jersey, with her husband, Michael Veron, and their 8-year-old daughter, Amy. Amy and Joy look forward to attending the Bard reunion each year. Joy writes, “Please come join us and bring your kids!” She would love to hear from classmates via e-mail: joyv999@yahoo.com.

’86 Class correspondent Chris LeGoff, cak64@comcast.net Andrew Bauer is the musical director of the New York Archdiocesan Children’s Choir. He is also a conductor and musical director of the Blackfriars Repertory Theatre Company. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and two little boys. With Dr. Kathy Reilly Fallon, he produced a CD of lullabies called Heavenly Lullabies (available at www.cdbaby.com); they subsequently released a book called Heavenly Skies and Lullabies. Proceeds from sales are donated to the 9/11 Children’s Fund and Hurricane Katrina victims. Cristina Duarte and her husband, Tim, divide their time between Manhattan and Chatham, New York. She teaches English at a

Pamela Foelsch continues in private practice with offices in Westchester and Manhattan, but is launching a company this year specializing in differentiated diagnosis and treatment. She is continuing her research at Weill Cornell Medical College, studying a treatment for adolescent interpersonal difficulties. Tracy Hatch was hired as a firefighter in Oakland in 2004. Raissa St. Pierre is the host of the eclectic program Radio Archaeology, Saturdays from 5 to 7 p.m. on 98.1fm WKZE in Red Hook, New York, and online at www.wkze.com. Dorinda Sutton went to South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, and Zimbabwe for three weeks in November 2006. She is applying for certification in animal behavioral consulting, specializing in cats. Currently there are no certified “cat whisperers” in New Jersey. Julie Fischer Thorpe’s baby girl, Aden Rebecca Thorpe, was born on February 8, 2006. Julie’s quilts can be seen at http://jftquilts.tripod.com/. Alison Fennell Vaccarino lives in Rhinecliff, New York, with her husband and two youngsters. She teaches GED preparation to incarcerated adults and directs the local school district’s continuing education program. She does not take nearly enough photographs these days, but still takes long walks with Naomi Lasher and is in training for a triathalon.

’88 20th Reunion: May 23–25, 2008 Staff contact: Sasha Boak-Kelly, 845-758-7407 or boak@bard.edu Peter Maguire’s wife, Annabelle Lee, gave birth to Joe William Dynamite Maguire on April 31, 2007, in Wahiawa, Hawaii. Peter is completing two books, one on smuggling and the other on war crimes. Rapid Response Rescue, his rescue boat company, will be available to the public in 2008. He is teaching history at Bard this fall.

CLASS NOTES | 51

’89 Class correspondent

ex-husband, who just got a job at the Univeristy of Alabama, Birmingham. She plans to find a job with one of the many health

Lisa DeTora, detoral@lafayette.edu

care providers in the area.

Denise M. Glover is a visiting assistant professor of anthropology at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma.

Holly Sharp is completing her master’s in social work at the University of Maryland, Baltimore. She began her graduate work at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C. She plans to specialize in medical social work, probably working in a hospital. While living in Washington, she worked with Burgundy Crescent Volunteers, a volunteer group for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals. Her volunteer work in Baltimore includes working with deaf-blind individuals, and with an organization that provides meals and groceries to homebound people suffering from AIDS, cancer, and other illnesses.

’90 Together with her sister, Rebecca Amis created the MUSE Elementary School, a progressive, independent school in Malibu, California. Some elements of the school include an on-site organic garden, instruction in French and Spanish, project-based learning, emergent curricula, and a commitment to green living. When not working in Malibu, Rebecca lives in Newton, Kansas, with her husband, Jeff King, a therapist and life coach, and her children, Maggie, 10, and Harper, 8, and Jeff’s son, Derrien, 10. Life in Newton often reminds her of the simple life she lived in Tivoli while attending Bard.

’91 Christina Wilson Bowers lives in the Texas hill country with Ric Bowers (Rice ’92), her husband of 11 years, and their three sons, two of whom have exposed them to the challenges of living with autism. She continues to pursue her interests in bioethics, other socially relevant scientific issues, and microbiology. The venues of her presentations have changed, though. Her most recent talk on microbial “senses” was delivered to a group of first graders. Edward (Miles) Hutton lives in Boston and works as a jury/trial consultant. He and his wife, Alicia, are busy enjoying their first child, Elise Rose Hutton, born on March 26, 2007. Dugan Kern ’91.5 lives with his wife, Jennifer, and new son Charlie in Stillwater, Minnesota. After spending many years in high-tech, Dugan is working in Minneapolis for a small, global human resources consulting firm. Jennifer is a school psychologist. Family, reading and music, the outdoors, taming the garden, and baby steps define the short hours of their days. Jocelyn Krebs received tenure at the University of Alaska, Anchorage, in 2006, and is “completely addicted to Alaska!” Since graduating from Bard, Jubilith Moore has made San Francisco her home and, since 1993, Theatre of Yugen her priority. For more information, visit www.theatreofyugen.org. She feels grateful and knows how lucky she is to still be making theatre; she credits her study of Japanese Nohgaku and her students at the San Francisco High School of the Arts. Danielle Quigley’s career as a social worker, working with eating disorders, addictions, teenagers, depression, anxiety, etc., has been very fulfilling. In her spare time she enjoys making jewelry and watching her children grow and learn. Amy Rogers is getting married and moving from Baltimore to Birmingham, Alabama, to move her new family closer to her

Melissa Wood ’91, MAT ’06 (Alex Greene), teaches English language arts at Poughkeepsie High School and enjoys playing music with the May Belles.

’92 Class correspondent Andrea J. Stein, stein@bard.edu Cate Pegram Blanquet and her husband, Pascal, are happy to announce the birth of Quentin on March 22, 2007. Their daughter, Julia, is adjusting well to the arrival of “le petit bonhomme.” Morgan Cleveland enjoys her work as school administrator at the East Bay Waldorf School in El Sobrante, California, although she admits that since she and her husband are both engaged in demanding full-time careers and pursuing master’s degrees (as well as being parents to their two children, 6 and 9), the pace of their life can get a bit frenzied. She recently began playing volleyball again, and shares a passion for baseball with her 9-year-old son. They are planning a pilgrimage to Oakland A’s spring training and Cooperstown, New York. Her regular trips to New York have enabled her to catch up with a old Bard pals, including Danielle Gostanian ’91 and Ilana Navaro ’93. She would love to hear from any and all old friends, at nnebe4@yahoo.com. Mary Carol De Zutter lives with her partner in Cornwall in Southwest England, is finishing her first novel, and learning how to go green. Ty Donaldson is a graphic designer for theater and independent films, and produces films and shorts in Los Angeles with his company Buddha-Cowboy Productions. He has two movies out on DVD, Soldier of God and Bunny Whipped. His film Little Wings was in the Short Film Corner at the Cannes Film Festival. His son Ross, 15, runs track and loves computer games. Marc Madenwald lives in Seattle with his wife, Tawny, and daughter, Clara, born in October 2001. He works at Adobe as group manager in Worldwide Partner Program Operations, and serves on the board of the Northwest School in Seattle. He and his family travel extensively, including trips to South Africa, Zambia, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan.

Caitlin Groom Maranville lives in Chicago with her three sons— Robert Cole, 6, James Sebastian, 4, and Alexander Sage, 2, and hus-

admired so much at Bard. She misses her classmates and friends and hopes to see some of them at their reunion next year.

band Paul. She is an associate director in the technology group at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, working on technology strategy and new business initiatives. Caitlin still wakes up in a cold sweat from dreams that she has to return to Bard to repeat classes and cannot find an apartment.

Lisa Miller lives with her husband, 1-year-old son, and golden retriever in a suburb of Washington, D.C. Lisa works for the corporation SAIC as a senior analyst and project manager in information system development.

Brian Kim Stefans has been hired as tenure-track assistant professor of new media studies at the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey. Two new books of poetry have appeared recently, What Is Said to the Poet Concerning Flowers (Factory School, 2006) and Kluge: A Meditation (Roof Books, 2007). He also wrote a book of criticism and interviews, Before Starting Over (Salt Books, 2006). His 2006 Brown master’s in fine arts thesis in electronic writing can be found at www.arras.net/kluge. In 2007 Stefan Weisman’s opera Darkling was performed at New York City Opera’s VOX Showcase, and then toured Germany and Poland. A new piece, commissioned by Bang on a Can, was featured on WNYC’s program New Sounds Live. His music was performed at the Crane Arts Center in Philadelphia, the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, and many other venues. Additionally, he produced CDs included in the Yale Press book Composers’ Voices from Ives to Ellington, which won a 2006 ASCAP Deems Taylor Award. For more information, visit www.stefanweisman.com.

’93 15th Reunion: May 23–25, 2008 Staff contact: Sasha Boak-Kelly, 845-758-7407 or boak@bard.edu

Benjamin Schneider is an attorney who lives and works in Manhattan. Gabriel Wardell lives in Atlanta with his wife, Tina Intra, and their three cats. He is executive director of IMAGE Film & Video Center, a nonprofit media arts center that produces the Atlanta Film Festival and Out on Film.

’94 After a dozen years in the labor movement, Sasha Gorman is now working for a small technology company. Her family has grown by leaps and bounds in their small home in Madison, Wisconsin. Kids of all shapes and sizes buzz around. They have a castle and a tree house in the yard and bikes in every size. She would love to hear from fellow Bardians at swgorman@hotmail.com.

’95 Akire Bubar is happily singing, teaching, knitting, spinning, and rebuilding the house she shares with her husband, a cat, one very rambunctious angora rabbit, and an assortment of straggly geraniums. She writes, “Life is simple and sweet.” Kiyomi Taguchi is a videojournalist for a television station in Seattle. She and her husband had their first child, Jonah, in 2006.

Joseph Iannacone was awarded a National Parks Service fellowship in July 2007. The focus of the weeklong institute was the influences and stories of the women, children, African Americans, Native Americans, and others who participated in the events that shaped the American Revolution. In August 2007, Joe and his partner moved from Dallas (where Joe had been teaching at the Highland Park Middle School) to New York City.

’96

Videos and short films by Sarah Jacobson, whose obituary appeared here in the Fall 2004 issue, have been posted on www.youtube.com and www.googlevideo.com by her mother, Ruth Jacobson. This includes Sarah’s student film Road Trip: What I Learned in a Buick Station Wagon, which features Bard professors and students, and a cameo by Adolfas Mekas. Ruth plans to post more of Sarah’s work in the future. Fourteen boxes of Sarah’s work (films, books, zines, interviews) are in the the Fales Archive of 90’s pop culture at the NYU Library, and will eventually be available on the Internet. If you would like to contact Ruth, her e-mail address is ruthe22@verizon.net.

Tracy Bulkeley and Mark Groner ’97 live in Los Angeles. Their daughter, Veronica, turned one in March.

Mary Mattis is having her first experience teaching a college-level course in psychology at the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale, where she works as a counselor in the Student Affairs Department. It has given her a whole new level of respect for the professors she

Galen Joseph-Hunter and her husband, Tom Roe, codirect free103point9, a nonprofit transmission arts organization that broke ground on the Wave Farm Study Center, located 30 miles northwest of Bard in the northern foothills of Catskill Mountain

Class correspondents Abigail Morgan, abigailmorgan@earthlink.net Gavin Kleespies, gwkleespies@hotmail.com Melanie Schlosser Brockert is moving back to Connecticut with her husband and 1-year-old twins.

Gavin Kleespies’ latest book, Lost Mount Prospect, received a Certificate of Excellence from the Illinois State Historical Society. Gregg and Rosanna ’97 DeMammos’s son Demetrius turned two on May 5. They recommend that classmates join them in celebrating “Cinco DeMammos” annually. Gregg has started his own music management and licensing company in Tribeca, DeMammos Entertainment, and has begun studying to become a certified life coach working with creative artists.

CLASS NOTES | 53

Park. The facility will eventually be 4,000 square feet and house the organization’s artist residency program, a research library ded-

After moving twice in three months, Anna Watkins, her husband, and their young daughter are settling into their new town, Los

icated to media art, a gallery, and a “summer stage” for the organization’s outdoor performance series. For more information, see www.free103point9.org. Galen is also the proud mother of a daughter, Echo, who was born in November 2006.

Gatos, California.

’98 10th Reunion: May 23–25, 2008

’97

Staff contact: Brad Whitmore, 845-758-7663 or whitmore@bard.edu

Class correspondent

Julia Wolk Munemo, jmunemo@roadrunner.com

Jennifer Novik, jnovik@gmail.com

Jamie Blackman will graduate with a master’s degree in library and information science in December and is actively creating and submitting genre fiction for publication.

Having cast off her philosophy hat, Jeanette Estima now works in the development department of Lambda Legal, a lesbian/gay/ bisexual/transgender civil rights organization. She lives in Brooklyn, and invites random Bardians to stop by for tea and crumpets.

Theresa Daleo-Stock and Andrew Stock welcomed their first child, Rachel Grace, on March 11, 2007. Benjamin Gooley and Nora Kobos were married in Berkeley, California, in 2004. They have been together since the end of freshman year in 1994 and now live in Santa Clara, California. A monograph of Joshua Lutz’s work will be published by Powerhouse Books this fall, corresponding with a show at the Gitterman Gallery in New York City. (See page 26.) Trilby MacDonald has wrapped up a four-year stint in Amazonia in the Brazilian state of Pará. She won a grant from the Ford Foundation to make a documentary film about the women’s movement in Pará; the film, Daughters of the Canopy, was completed in 2004. She spent the next three years working at the Center for International Forestry Research. She returns to the United States this fall to start a master’s degree program. Julia Munemo continues to work as a freelance writer, sometimes finding enough time to work on her own book. Ngoni Munemo ’00 completed his doctorate at Columbia and will join the faculty of Williams College in the fall, where he will teach comparative politics. Their boys, Julius and George, will turn five and two in December. Tim Oakes lives in his hometown of Manhattan and remains in touch with many classmates. Since graduation Tim has taught public junior high school, started a catering business with Zubeida Ullah, produced aerial photo shoots, worked for an independent film production company and, most recently, accepted a job with Cadence Cycling & Multisport Centers. In his spare time, Tim is an amateur competitive bicycle racer and triathlete, and enjoys traveling. Eve Stahlberger teaches regularly at Jivamukti Yoga School in New York City (www.jivamuktiyoga.com). She has also completed an improv class at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in New York. When asked about the reunion of the Smashing Pumpkins, Eve replied, “We will have to wait and see. . . .”

’99 Nicole DiSalvo Billa and Mike welcomed their second son, Kai Peter, in June 2005. His brother, Julian, is almost 7. They are very busy with family, work, and creative projects. In November 2006 Nicole published her first book on yoga, Off the Mat: Thoughts from a Yoga Practice. Laura Chipley married Pierre Gendron in 2002, and moved to Kunming, China, in 2004 to teach English and cinema studies. She is now pursuing a master’s degree in integrated media arts at Hunter College, and finishing work on her first feature-length documentary film about Pentecostal Holiness serpent handlers in West Virginia. Amy Foster helped initiate the Bard Arboretum, which became a reality in 2007.

’00 Mazarine Treyz (Melissa Tremblay) is “living the dream” in Portland, Oregon, and single-handedly organized an auction that raised $72,000 for a local domestic violence organization in the spring of 2007. She continues to plan fund-raising events for other nonprofits, and also makes art, writes poetry, and is studying to be a sorcerer. Her web site is www.melisander.org.

’01 David Homan was commissioned by Randy James Dance Works to compose a piano quartet for the company in 2007. To hear samples of the piece, visit www.homanmusic.com. Angela Ross and her partner bought a house in Seattle in December; it keeps them quite busy. Angela celebrated her five-year anniversary with USIS in February. She is working through her prerequisites, one at a time, to eventually apply to medical school. Noah Sheola, who lives in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, has written several plays, which have been produced in Portsmouth and Chicago. He is a founding member of Stranger Than Fiction, an improvisational theater troupe.

Erin Weeks-Earp has worked and studied at Teachers College, Columbia University, since the summer of 2006.

employees and janitors. In order to assimilate into the South, she has learned how to two-step and talk with a drawl.

’02

Brian Yanity is working on alternative energy projects for rural Alaska. After getting an electrical engineering degree at Columbia, he is now in graduate school at the University of Alaska.

Amy Clark is an adjunct professor of college composition at Pine Manor College in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, and has taught fiction, revision, and personal essay classes at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education for several years. Her fiction has been published in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency and Quick Fiction and Fringe, and the anthology Brevity and Echo. Her collection Wanting, which was a finalist for the Rose Metal Press annual chapbook contest judged by Ron Carlson, will be published as part of a series in 2008. Amy is looking for a publisher for her collection of creative nonfiction, What I Was Thinking While You Were Talking. She is also working on a novel entitled Palais Royale. Elizabeth Clingerman has returned to the Pasadena area of Los Angeles and lives with her long-lost best friend, two cats, and a crazy dog. She works at the Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens—“a piece of paradise in suburban sprawl!”

’03 5th Reunion: May 23–25, 2008 Staff contact: Brad Whitmore, 845-758-7663 or whitmore@bard.edu Ben Dangl went on a reading tour with his book The Price of Fire: Resource Wars and Social Movements in Bolivia in March 2007. Along the way, he met up with a lot of his Bard friends. For more information, visit www.boliviabook.com. He spent this past summer writing and riding his bike in Vermont with April Howard ’04. The next stop is Paraguay. Emma Ferguson has returned from Spain and teaches upperlevel Spanish at the Solebury School in New Hope, Pennsylvania. She lives with her husband, Ben, and Haley, the cat, in a 300year-old cottage in the woods somewhere between New York City and Philadelphia. She still studies and performs flamenco, usually accompanied by Ben on the guitar.

’05 Anna Mojallali lives in Eugene, Oregon, and teaches at a Montessori preschool. Emily Schmall works as a reporter at Forbes magazine in New York. In the spring of 2007 she was accepted into the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. She began her studies there with magazine editor Victor Navasky this fall.

’06 Cassio de Oliveira is beginning her doctorate in Slavic languages and literature at Yale. Parris Humphrey is at the University of Pennsylvania, conducting research in the laboratory of Dustin Brisson on the evolutionary ecology of Lyme disease. His research explores the molecular mechanisms that underlie the structure of bacterial populations in nature, as well as novel strategies for zoonotic disease control. He plans to begin formal graduate work in the fall of 2008. When not in Philadelphia, he can be found rummaging in the woods of the Mid-Hudson Valley. Gordon Stevenson had his first show, Poured In Ketchum, at the Ochi Gallery in Sun Valley, Idaho. The show included his paintings and a light sculpture made with Owen Schmit. In addition to his artwork, he owns and operates a small clothing company based out of New York City. For more information on his artwork and clothing, visit: www.baronvonfancy.com.

Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts Correspondent Marjorie Vecchio MFA ’01, ABTOK@aol.com

Renata Rutman is completing her master’s in public policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, after serving as a Peace Corps member in Botswana. She hopes to return to southern Africa in the near future, and encourages Bardians living in that region to contact her at Renata_Rutman@ksg08.harvard.edu.

Marylin Quint-Rose recently taught at the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture in Karachi, Pakistan, and the National College of Arts in Lahore, Pakistan.

’04

’91

Christian Kiley performed the role of Beethoven in the Boston premiere of Bert V. Royal’s Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead at the Boston Center for the Arts in May 2007. Caroline Muglia works in Houston, Texas, for the Service Employees International Union, where she organizes city

’85

Lily Prince was included in a faculty exhibition at William Paterson University in Wayne, New Jersey, in the fall of 2006, and the group exhibition Pillow Talk at the Ruth Bachofner Gallery in Santa Monica, California, in April 2007. In early 2007 she received a painting commission from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs; the two large works Lily painted were installed in

CLASS NOTES | 55

a medical examiner’s office and forensic laboratory in Manhattan. Lily also had Stella Ruby Prince, born June 2004, with husband

Bard Center for Environmental Policy

Richard Klin.

’04

’98 Arpine Konyalian Grenier moved to Tucson, Arizona.

Katie Krause married Stephen Kirk on October 7, 2006, in Westport, Massachusetts. Katie is an educator at Save the Bay in Narragansett, Rhode Island.

’00

’06

Meredith Holch’s short animated film Picture Perfect was screened at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City in May 2007 as part of the exhibition Filmmakers at MacDowell: The Studio System Reconsidered. Additional screenings included the Vermont International Film Festival, Green Mountain Film Festival, and a number of other traditional and nontraditional venues in New York City, Vermont, Alaska, and Mexico. As a guest of a Mexican nongovernmental organization, Meredith also gave an eight-day animation workshop to young indigenous people in the northern mountains of Mexico in April 2007.

Matthew Collins and Pavithra Pooviah were married in April in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin. Matthew recently launched CarbonTracker.com, a website dealing with greenhouse gas offsets and the voluntary retail offset market.

’01 Michelle Handelman was selected for the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Workspace artist residency program for 20062007. George Emilio Sanchez presented the Architecture of SeeingREMIX at New York’s La MaMa ETC in December 2006. He can also be heard on Latino USA, a subsidiary of NPR, with his radio commentaries. He is the chairperson of the Department of Performing and Creative Arts at the City University of New York’s College of Staten Island.

Ben Hoen continues his work with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, for which he presented the interim results of his study on wind-development impacts on aesthetic values to the American Wind Energy Association in June. He also works as a consultant on issues surrounding wind energy and other industry-related land-use impacts. He lives with his wife, Tricia, and two children (4 and 1) in Rhinebeck. Todd Paul is a technical writer for NYSERDA’s EMEP program, under a contract with the Pace Energy Project. He continues to write investor newsletters for Miller/Howard, a socially responsible investment firm. Todd, his wife Ronda, and 3-year-old daughter Ruby welcomed a boy, Maxwell Sage Olinsky-Paul, to the family in March.

Will Lavender’s debut novel, Obedience, will be published in February 2008 by Shaye Areheart Books. He and his wife are celebrating the May birth of their second child, Jenna Marie. Will’s e-mail address is eng102@mail.com.

Suzi Zukowski has moved to Denver and is program director for Colorado Citizens Campaign. She is responsible for facilitating good corporate neighbor campaigns pertaining to industry in Colorado. This year, Suzi completed building a “watershed team” through the Department of the Interior; Colorado Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy; and the Corporation for National Service. She presented this project at the Bureau of Land Management’s Western Abandoned Mined Lands conference in April 2007 and has successfully raised funds to support the team leader.

’03

’07

Paul Chan had two major exhibitions in Europe in the first part of 2007: Lights and Drawings at the Stedelijk Museum CS in Amsterdam and The 7 Lights at the Serpentine Gallery in London. He also presented his video Untitled Video on Lynn Stewart and Her Conviction, the Law and Poetry at the Sundance Film Festival.

Rachel Bowen works for SunDog Solar in Chatham, New York, educating residential and commercial customers about the costs and benefits of solar power. During her final semester at BCEP, Rachel was awarded a $20,000 grant from NYSERDA to conduct a solar thermal space-heating demonstration, comparing two different technologies, for Solaqua Power and Art in Chatham.

’02

’04 In early 2007 Laurel Sparks had work included in Affinities: Painting in Abstraction at the CCS Bard Hessel Museum and Big Bang: Abstract Painting for the 21st Century at the Decordova Museum in Lincoln, Massachusetts. She also had a solo show at the Howard Yezerski Gallery in Boston. She received an Alumni Traveling Scholarship from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and was nominated for a 2007 Tiffany grant.

Amy Faust is a project screener with the Safeguards Advisory Team of the World Bank, Latin America and Caribbean Region. The position is located in Washington, D.C., as part of the Bank’s two-year junior professional associate program. Part of Amy’s job is to screen proposed development project packages for compliance with environmental and social safeguards. Amy will also work on-site in Latin America.

Michael Foster has been hired by the Center for Conservation Biology at the American Museum of Natural History to continue his research on factors that influence minority students’ decisions to pursue careers in conservation biology. In conjunction with his new career at the museum, he presented his research at the 21st Annual Meeting of the Society for Conservation Biology in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. Michael also attended the Ecological Society of America’s conference in San Jose, California. Tamara Mitrofanenko, a native of Pyatigorsk, Russia, has been invited to continue work begun during her internship with Grid–Arendal, a Norwegian not-for-profit organization that operates under the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), in Geneva. Tamara worked with UNEP on the Environment and Security Initiative to foster transboundary regional cooperation on environmental issues in the South Caucasus. Jackson Morris joined Environmental Advocates of New York (EANY) in May as a government affairs associate. Jackson will be tracking state legislation and organizing EANY’s memo process with the state legislature. As a policy intern at Environmental Advocates in the fall of 2006, he researched potential abuses of the state’s drinking water revolving fund and worked on the Campaign for Community Preservation. Jennifer Peters spent the summer working for the New York City Parks and Recreation Department, where she assisted in mapping wetlands on Staten Island. The project calls upon extensive use of geospatial technologies used by scientists and planners. Tanya Rosen is the author of “The Endangered Species Act and the distinct population segment policy,” to be published in the peer-reviewed journal Ursus. Her research focuses on policy related to the Yellowstone grizzly bear. Tanya will continue her work at the National Research Defense Council on international policy related to marine biodiversity in the high seas. Jessica Steinberg, the first graduate of BCEP’s dual-degree program with Pace University School of Law, has accepted an associate position with Sive, Paget & Riesel, one of the nation’s top environmental law firms. Timothy Treadwell is the environmental director at Juice Energy, where he is examining the evolving landscape of climate regulation and corporate greenhouse gas–reduction strategies. Timothy plays a major role in the design of carbon and environmental risk management products and the development of corporate environmental policy frameworks. As the interim environmental educator at Cornell Cooperative Extension, Dutchess County, Kristen Wilson works with local watershed groups and youth. Prior to graduation, Kristen married Miguel Angel Alvarado Juarez in Rhinebeck; as this issue went to press, they planned to have a wedding fiesta in Oaxaca, Mexico.

The Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design, and Culture

’99 Judith Gura’s book, Scandinavian Furniture: Design for the 21st Century, was published this fall by W. W. Norton and Thames & Hudson. Another book—this one focused on interior design in New York, 1935–85—is slated for publication by Acanthus Press in June 2008.

’02 Ronald Labaco is the decorative arts curator at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta.

’04 Katherine Danalakis works in the Collections and Exhibitions Department of the Jewish Museum in New York City.

’05 Jen Larson works as a freelance corporate archivist at Gap Inc. She also has been involved with the New-York Historical Society’s ongoing project of cataloguing artifacts relating to the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. She continues to teach courses on the subjects of antique furniture connoisseurship and conservation at New York University’s Appraisal Studies Program. On March 17, Jen was a musical guest on the nationally broadcast radio program, A Prairie Home Companion. She will perform at Carnegie Hall on May 12, 2008, with her traditional bluegrass ensemble Straight Drive, as part of the Neighborhood Concert Series.

’06 Yasmine Mohseni moved back to Los Angeles, where she is the curator at the Virginia Robinson Gardens in Beverly Hills. Lisa Skogh is employed as a researcher and project leader at the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm, Sweden. She is in charge of publishing the museum’s vast collections of decorative arts, consisting of more than 30,000 objects, in a new series of complete catalogues. After completing her thesis on postwar California lifestyles, as seen through the lens of the publication The Californian, Tricia Wimmer spent 2006 growing ever more pregnant while running the Jonathan Adler showroom in New York’s SoHo neighborhood. She gave birth to Berit Aubrey in early December, and left the showroom to focus her energies on her daughter and her budding gallery, Pink Elephant Projects (PEP). PEP had its inaugural show on May 4 in the Brooklyn Navy Yard and was present at the Affordable Art Fair in Manhattan in June. For more information, see www.pepgallery.com.

CLASS NOTES | 57

’07

’98

Nurit Einik is curatorial assistant for product design and decorative arts at Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum.

Sarah Cook, curatorial resource for new media, University of Sunderland, was interviewed for we-make-money-not-art.com’s life online feature, in which she discussed issues relating to curating new media. Sarah cocurated the exhibition My Own Private Reality: Growing Up Online in the 90s and 00s at the Edith Russ Site for Media Art in Oldenburg, Germany.

In March, Adrienne Sharpe attended the forum “Tradition and Innovation in Fine Printing,” cosponsored by the Bard Graduate Center and the William Morris Society. She is a governing board member of the William Morris Society in the U.S. In fall 2006, she contributed a short review of the Victorian Society in America’s Newport Summer School to the VSA’s annual newsletter. She is an alumna of the 2005 VSA Newport Summer Session. This past spring, Adrienne published a few articles excerpted from her master’s thesis on Morris and Company’s contributions to Vinland, the former Newport estate of Catharine Lorillard Wolfe. She lives and works in New Haven, Connecticut, doing freelance editing and editing for the Yale College Publications Office.

Center for Curatorial Studies

’96 Dowoti Desir is the executive director of the Malcolm X & Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial and Educational Center, located at the Audubon Ballroom, where Malcom X was assassinated. Dowoti curates exhibitions and hosts conferences and panels that relate to the Center’s concerns, which focus on the history and culture of the African diaspora, human rights, and other cultural and political issues. Dowoti continues to write on Afro-Atlantic religion. Sydney O. Jenkins, director of the Art Galleries, Ramapo College, Mahwah, New Jersey, curated An Apparently Unimportant Event: Self-Taught from the Centre d’Art in the 1940s and 50s, which ran in the college’s Kresge and Pascal Galleries from January 31 to March 7. This historic exhibition of work by Haitian artists expanded upon the research Sydney did at CCS for his thesis exhibition, in which he brought work from the outsider/folk art arena into a contemporary context. Goran Tomcic, independent curator, writer, and artist, was awarded a yearlong Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant. Goran’s artwork has been exhibited at Whitebox in New York City and Haifa Museum of Art in Israel. His poetry was included in an anthology titled Broken Land: Poems of Brooklyn, published by NYU Press.

’97 New York Times art critic Holland Cotter reviewed Ceci N’est Pas . . . (this is not), the “cleverly conceived group show” organized by Rachel Gugelberger and Jeffrey Walkowiak ’00, codirectors of Sara Meltzer Gallery, New York. The exhibition included work by artist Alejandro Díaz ’99. Tomas Pospiszyl is director of the Center of Audiovisual Studies at the Film and TV School of the Performing Arts in Prague. His department is responsible for theoretical and historical courses, as well as research.

After nine years as curatorial director at the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, Connecticut, Jessica Hough accepted a new position as director of Mills College Art Museum in Oakland.

’99 As managing curator of the Brooklyn Museum’s new exhibition division, Judy Kim oversees all of the museum’s exhibitions and reinstallations of the permanent collection. Judy was previously curator at the American Federation of the Arts, a New York nonprofit organization. Denise Markonish, former director and curator of Artspace in New Haven, became curator at Mass MoCA, the largest center for contemporary visual and performing arts in the country, in August. She will program approximately six exhibitions per year, which will fill the institution’s 120,000 square feet of gallery space. In 2006, the New Haven Register lauded Markonish, saying, “The prize for the most innovative gallery curator undoubtedly goes to Denise Markonish of Artspace in New Haven, whose consistently curious mind appears to keep coming up with one after another provocative, edgy and original theme-based exhibits.”

’00 Lisa Hatchadoorian, former director of Westby Gallery at Rowan University in New Jersey, has relocated to the “big sky country,” where she is a curator with the Nicolaysen Museum in Casper, Wyoming.

’01 Inez Katzenstein, curator, Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires, curated the Argentine Pavilion exhibition in Venice. Carina Plath, director of the Westfälischer Kunstverein, Münster, was one of three organizers of Skulptur Projekte Münster, which brings together a diverse array of arts practitioners to create projects throughout the city, and serves as a think tank for considering the relationship between art and the public sphere. Gabriela Rangel’s essay, “How to Become a Good Revolutionary (Within the Museum),” was published in Parkett. Gabriela, director of visual arts at The Americas Society, is a curator and critic of contemporary art. Kim Simon has been active with independent curatorial projects and writing. She received a research grant that allows her to take time off from her position as director of programming at Gallery TPW in Toronto to develop other projects.

’02 Sandra Firmin has an essay included in Mudman: The Odyssey of Kim Jones, which she also coedited. Sandra is curator at the University at Buffalo Art Gallery. Jill Winder is still happily living and working in Berlin, where she is an editor and director of publications at BAK (basis voor actuele kunst), expanding her work with BAK curator Maria Hlavajova in the Netherlands.

’03 Ingrid Chu is director of development and special projects at Moti Hasson Gallery, where she curated Greener Pastures, Permanent Midnight. Ingrid is also a director/curator of RED-I projects, an organization that assists artists in the creation of new work in the public realm. One RED-I project is The One Liner #6: Alejandro Díaz—in the Future. Jimena Acosta Romero curated Iscrizioni (Inscriptions) at the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Italy, while participating in the Fondazione’s Young Curator’s Residency Project, Jimena has since returned to Mexico, where she is an independent curator. Ana Vejzovic Sharp, director, Kantor Feuer Gallery, Los Angeles, and Cecilia Alemani ’05, independent curator, Italy, took part in Qui. Enter Atlas—International Symposium of Young Curators, at the fourth Premio Lorenzo Bonaldi per l’Arte—EnterPrize in Bergamo, Italy. Along with 13 other international curators aged 35 or younger, they addressed the theme of “Art in the Landscape of the Media.” Stacey Allan ’04; Tom Eccles, executive director of CCS; and Maria Lind, the new director of the CCS graduate program, were among the symposium’s advisers.

’04 Stacey Allan left her position at The Kitchen in New York City and moved to California, where she is associate editor of Afterall journal at the California Institute of the Arts. Tairone Bastien, former director of Moti Hasson Gallery, is cocurating (with RoseLee Goldberg) Performa 07, a biennial for visual art performance to take place in November in New York City. Yasmil Ramond cocurated Brave New Worlds at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, where she is assistant curator. Ryan Rice guest edited/curated Seeing RED, a special issue of BlackFlash: Lens Site Scene. Seeing RED presented a wide range of art practices by indigenous Canadian peoples, both past and present, through an arrangement of feature articles, reviews, profiles, and artists’ projects. Ryan is aboriginal curator in residence at the Carleton University Art Gallery, Ottawa, where he curated Anthem: Perspectives on Home and Native Land.

’05 Erin Riley-Lopez curated the exhibition Here and Elsewhere at the Bronx Museum, where she is assistant curator. She also

Christel Tsilibari CCS ’03 (pedaling) and Marketa Uhlirova, founders of the biennial Fashion in Film Festival, take a break in Arnhem, the Netherlands, where they opened the Mode Biennale in June with “Stigma and Enigma,” the 2006–07 Fashion in Film Festival.

moderated a panel, “Emancipatory Action: Paula Trope and the Meninos,” at the museum. Simon Subal curated Stubborn Materials, which featured eight New York–based artists, at Peter Blum–Chelsea, where she is director. Pelin Uran, an independent curator from Turkey, contributed to a project of Fluent-Collaborative. Pelin conducted a 10-day studio visit with a group of artists called A Constructed World, during which they discussed their collaborative projects. Pelin also curated A Forest and a Tree at Kunsthalle Exnergasse, Vienna, an exhibition that was a reconfiguration of her CCS thesis exhibition.

’06 Erica Fisher has been working in the modern and contemporary art department at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Montserrat Albores Gleason curated DoppelGänger—Reality’s Double at the Contemporary Art Museum in Vigo, Spain. Anna Gray curated Dennis Oppenheim: “Alternative Land Art” at the Savannah College of Art and Design in Atlanta. Anna is curatorial assistant at MoMA in New York City. Geir Haraldseth was awarded additional funding for his publication from the Freedom of Expression Foundation in Norway. In September, he began a curatorial residency at Kunstwerke in Berlin. Zeljka Himbele is a curatorial fellow at Art in General in New York, where she curated Written in Light at the Bloomberg LP headquarters. The exhibition was part of Beyond Art in General, a new series of art projects that take place outside Art in General’s facilities and are designed to engage new audiences.

CLASS NOTES | 59

Amy Mackie works with Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy ’00, curator and programs manager at Art in General, as the exhibition

NASA, and being awarded three patents related to ultrapure crystals used in laser-powered communications. After retiring in 1991, he

coordinator of Art in General’s 25th anniversary exhibition.

started his second career, as the advertising director of the Senior Beacon newspaper in Washington, D.C., where he worked until his death. For many years, he blew the shofar (ram’s horn) at the Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur services at Kesher Israel synagogue, using a shofar that had belonged to his grandfather. Some in his synagogue considered him the “Dizzy Gillespie of shofar blowing.” He is survived by his wife, Charlotte; three sons; and four grandchildren.

’07 Ruba Katrib has moved to Miami, where she is associate curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art. Kate McNamara is a curatorial assistant at P.S.1 in New York. Rebeca Noriega-Costas works full time in the Curatorial Department at El Museo del Barrio in New York City. She is the coordinator of the multiyear, multivenue collaborative project Caribbean: Crossroads of the World, an exhibition examining the arts of the Caribbean and its diaspora that is scheduled to open in New York in 2009.

In Memoriam

’34 Carleton Mathes died at the age of 92 on May 25, 2006. A native of Connecticut, he went from Bard to Harvard Law School, then to work as an agent and supervisor for the FBI during World War II. He later became senior partner of the Sturges and Mathes law firm in Woodbury, Connecticut. He is survived by a daughter, three grandchildren, and one great-granddaughter.

’41 Ray Schnitzer died on January 29, 2006, in New York City. He was a longtime radio announcer on WNYC, anchoring news broadcasts and hosting classical music programs and a long-running popular afternoon news and information series. He was known for his beautiful speaking voice, impeccable diction, and remarkable ability to ad lib in any situation. He is survived by his wife, Shirley, and son, Michael.

’42 Alfred Roe died on October 5, 2006, at his home in Bellport, New York. A descendant of the man who developed the retractable tape measure, he inherited the family business, Roe International Tape Measures, and traveled the world representing the enterprise. He was a founding member of Brookhaven Memorial Hospital and a 60-year member of Rotary Club International. He is survived by his wife, Edith; their four sons, Philippe, Alfred, Nathaniel, and Eric; and nine grandchildren.

’46 Philipp H. Klein died on August 23, 2006, at the age of 79. A native of New York City, he attended Bard and Columbia University, then completed his bachelor’s degree at Syracuse University, where he also earned master’s and doctoral degrees. He had a long and varied career as a physical chemist, helping to design the power plant for a nuclear-powered submarine, conducting electronic research for

’48 Philip K. Isaacs died on September 19, 2006. A research chemist, he worked for many years for Dewey & Almy Chemical Company in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and its parent firm W.R. Grace & Company in Maryland, amassing 33 patents in his name. In 1966, he emigrated to Israel with his wife, Sarah, and their three children, hopeful that his scientific expertise would benefit Israeli industry. He worked for many years at the Israel Fibre Institute in Jerusalem, was a senior lecturer at the Hebrew University School of Applied Science, and was, for a time, the chief technologist in the Office of the Chief Scientist of the Ministry of Commerce and Industry. In his retirement in Jerusalem, which began in 1992, he enjoyed doing historical research at the National Library and attending the Leon Botstein–conducted Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra concerts. He is survived by his wife, their three children, 16 grandchildren, and six great-grandchildren, all of whom live in Israel. Jane Rosengard died on June 25, 2006. She was a founding member of Congregation M’Kor Shalom in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, and taught in the Cherry Hill Public Schools for over 25 years. Her husband, Robert Rosengard, predeceased her. She is survived by her sister, her three sons, and eight grandchildren.

’53 Muriel (Mickey) Goldstein died at the age of 75 on October 18, 2006, in Ithaca, New York. Born Muriel Shapiro, she graduated from Bard and went on to earn her master’s degree in social work from New York University, specializing in group therapy. In 1955 she married Mel Goldstein, a chemist, and together they raised three children. Mickey had a long and fulfilling career in mental health, working with and volunteering for numerous programs in suicide prevention, family and children’s therapy, breast cancer support, and support for survivors of incest. She is survived by three children and five grandchildren.

’60 Bruce Victor Houk died on January 11, 2007, in Queens, New York. A writer and traveler, Bruce spent the last 10 years of his life as an office assistant at Fountain House, a nonprofit organization in Manhattan that supports the recovery of men and women with mental illness. He is survived by his former wife, Lilly; a son, Jesse; his brother; and nieces and nephews.

’66 Judith Bryden Waner died on May 11, 2006. After her time at Bard, she graduated from Antioch University and became a psychotherapist. Originally from New Jersey, she lived and worked for over 40 years in California. For the last several years of her life she was a special education teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School District. She is survived by her brother, David Bryden, a niece, and a nephew.

’73 Frank Montafia died at his home on April 30, 2006. He was born in Peekskill, New York, and graduated from Kingston High School before earning his degree at Bard. He was a combat-wounded veteran of the Vietnam War, where he was awarded the Bronze Star and Purple Heart. In the late 1970s, he was a licensed saturation deep-sea diver working in the North Sea for companies based in Scotland and Norway. He later developed property in Belize. He spent his last years in Gainesville, Florida, managing the Swamp Restaurant and enjoying sport diving in the springs of North Florida. He is survived by his two sisters, Caroline and Roberta; his brother, Charles; and nieces and nephews.

’78 Mary Ellen Russell died on January 5, 2007. She majored in dance at Bard, and lived most of her life in Lexington, Massachusetts. She moved to Woburn and then to Haverhill. In addition to her father, Joseph F. Russell, she is survived by her brother, Henry; a nephew; an uncle; two aunts; and many cousins.

’98 Leah Zanoni died on April 3, 2007, in New York City. After graduating from Bard, she settled in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where she did freelance editing and writing, performed music with her band, Capote, which she had started with friends while at Bard, and spent a good deal of time on her artwork, mainly collaging. She also wrote two novels, Memories of a Medicated Girlhood and Darling Nikki. She had recently finished editing the first novel and was in search of an agent. For a time, she managed a band of fellow Bardians called Daddy, and also did performance art with her roommate, Asdis Gunnarsdottir, an Icelandic student at the School of Visual Arts. She also did some research work for filmmaker Al Maysles. At the time of her death, she was employed by an art dealer and designer in Manhattan with an extensive collection of contemporary art, which Zanoni found enthralling. She leaves behind her parents, Ceile and Carl Zanoni, of Middlefield, Connecticut; her two younger sisters, Mollie and Sallie; and her dear friend and fellow Bardian, Rebekah Maysles of Manhattan. Her mother writes that “the years Leah spent at Bard were among the happiest of her life.”

Faculty Jerome B. Brooks, who was a visiting professor of literature at Bard from 1993 to 1995, died on January 21, 2007. He was the former chair of the English Department at City College of New York, where he spent most of his 30-year teaching career. Born in 1932 in Houston, he was the first African American to be ordained a Roman Catholic priest in the Congregation of the Passionists. He held an M.A. in English literature from the University of Notre Dame and a Ph.D. in English and theology from the University of Chicago. He served as acting dean of academic affairs at City University of New York (CUNY) and was deputy to the president at CUNY before retiring in 1995. His honors included a Fulbright Fellowship in 1976 for his expertise in English and African American literature and a 1979 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Elizabeth Murray, 66, a major contemporary American painter, a visiting professor of studio art at Bard College from 1997 to 2004, and visiting instructor in arts, 1973–77, died on August 12, 2007, at her home in Granville, New York. She was a graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, in her hometown, and earned an M.F.A. from Mills College, California. In the late 1970s and early ’80s, Murray was one of a small cadre of painters, along with Philip Guston, Brice Marden, Frank Stella, and her lifelong friend Jennifer Bartlett, who, by eliding the distinctions between abstraction and representation and reinvesting painting with a sense of narrative and personal identity, helped to breathe new life into the medium. Her work was characterized by the use of idiosyncratically shaped canvases, vivid colors, and myriad layers of paint, and populated by protean images of cups, chairs, tables, and other domestic objects that often had a riotously cartoonish quality. Such work, wrote the critic Marlena Doktorczyk-Donohue, “serves as an analogue for our own out-of-joint cartoony world, where the simple things explode and implode, are pathetic and illogical, but also exuberant and redemptive. If the art world can get headheavy, Murray, like an insouciant child not noticing anyone else on the playground, creates beauty from someplace in her wild and wacky heart.” Cezanne, Dali, Disney, Willem de Kooning, Ron Gorchov, and subway grafitti—Murray’s influences were many, and never unacknowledged. In his obituary in Time magazine, Richard Lacayo wrote, “Murray’s work was a very sophisticated synthesis of multiple inspirations. They brought her to a place where she could reconcile the fractured planes of Cubism with the biomorphic swells of Surrealism, which opened the way to paintings that were both dreamlike and wildly energetic. Though it’s a game we all love to play, it’s hard to know which painters the future will think highly of. But I’m putting a big bet on her.” Murray herself once noted, “Everything has been done a million times. Sometimes you use it and it’s yours; another time you do it and it’s still theirs.” Murray, who received a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation “genius grant” in 1999, was the subject of a 40-year retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in 2006. The Whitney

CLASS NOTES | 61

Museum of American Art mounted a survey of her paintings and drawings in 1988, and her work is included in the permanent col-

to The Nation and other publications. In addition to his wife of 66 years, he is survived by three sons and a daughter. A memorial

lections of the Walker Art Center, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Art Institute of Chicago, and Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, among others. She first attracted major attention at the 1972 Whitney Biennial, and later gave “Dakota Red,” the painting that represented her in that show, to her dentist, in exchange for dental work. In addition to her years at Bard, Murray also taught at Rosary Hill College, Buffalo; Yale University; California Institute of the Arts; and Brooklyn College. She is survived by her second husband, performance poet Bob Holman, a former visiting professor of writing and integrated arts at Bard; a son, Dakota Sunseri; two daughters, Sophie and Daisy Murray Holman; a sister, Susan Murray Resnick; a brother, Thomas Murray; and two grandchildren.

service took place on September 8 at St. John the Evangelist Church, Barrytown.

Staff Robert C. “Bob” Daugherty, 84, died on June 21, 2007, in Livingston, New York. He had worked for many years as a security guard at Bard College, retiring in 2000. He had previously been a supervisor at Orchard Hills in Red Hook, and, in his youth, a semiprofessional baseball player and a rodeo bull rider. He was a veteran of World War II, having seen combat in the Aleutian Islands as a turret gunner in the 11th and 15th Divisions of the U.S. Army Air Corps. His wife, Beverly A. Stickle, who also had been employed by Bard, died in 1996. His survivors include two daughters, a stepson, two stepdaughters, three sisters, and many grandchildren, great-grandchildren, nieces, and nephews. Richard “Buzz” Gummere Jr., 94, an administrator at Bard for 13 years, died on May 13, 2007. A graduate of Harvard University, Class of 1934, he was appointed director of admissions at Bard in 1950, a position he retained until 1962, when he decided to pursue a doctorate at Columbia University. A fall 2002 article in Dutchess County’s About Town described a visit to Gummere, then aged 90, and his wife, Peg, at their Barrytown home, an octagonal cottage built by A. J. Davis and listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The article, which dubbed Gummere “The Sage of Barrytown,” remarked upon his “quickness of mind, spryness of body, and connectedness to the world that bespeaks a man in the prime of life.” It also mentioned that he would occasionally “break into song to underscore a point,” a mischievous display that his wife would wryly note was out of character with his Quaker upbringing. Gummere was an early student and exponent of the Alexander Technique, a method for improving ease and freedom of movement, and studied with both its founder, F. M. Alexander, and his brother, A. R. Alexander. He was devoted to classical music (his wife, a violist, had a long association with the Hudson Valley Philharmonic), the Marx Brothers, the history of Bard College, the philosophy of Lancelot Law Whyte, and the Harvard-Radcliffe Club of the Hudson Valley, and he contributed occasional articles

Friends Minnie “Min” Koblitz, 83, died on April 9, 2007, at her home in Eastham, Cape Cod, Massachusetts. She met her husband, Robert Koblitz, professor emeritus of political studies at Bard, when they were both students at Ohio State University. She taught at the elementary school in Scarsdale, New York, for 30 years, before moving with her husband to Eastham in 1986. In her new home, she served on many town committees and was an elected member of the Eastham Charter Commission. She is survived by her husband; a daughter, Judge Ellen Koblitz of Teaneck, New Jersey; two sons, Don of Beijing and Neal of Seattle; and five grandchildren and a great-grandchild. Richard H. Turrell Sr., 82, a retired bank executive and a member of the Board of Overseers of Simon’s Rock College of Bard, died at his home in Tequesta, Florida, on August 22, 2007. Born on April 9, 1925, in Kingston, Pennsylvania, he entered Cornell University in 1943, interrupting his education to serve with the U.S. Army Signal Corps in the Pacific from 1943 until 1946. He later received a bachelor of science degree in commerce from Washington and Lee University. He began a distinguished career in finance in 1958, when he joined Auchincloss, Parker & Redpath, a New York brokerage firm, as a registered representative. Later, with the Fiduciary Trust Company International of New York, he rose from portfolio manager to senior vice president and secretary, retiring from the company in 1994. In addition to serving on the board of Simon’s Rock from 1968 through 1993, Turrell held various positions on the board of Monmouth College, which awarded him an honorary doctor of laws degree in 1995. He was also active in community and civic affairs, serving as a trustee of the Children’s Specialized Hospital Foundation in Mountainside, New Jersey, from 1989 to 1995, and on the board of directors of Advocates for the Rights of the Challenged (ARC) in Martin County, Florida. Turrell was married for 52 years to Sally Wolfe, who died in February 2007. A son, Douglas, died in 1993; two sons, Richard and David, survive, as do two brothers and two grandchildren.

JOHN BARD SOCIETY NEWS For some, September, or the “back-to-school” season, marks the beginning of a new year. For others, it’s January 1, when the calendar begins anew and the nagging feeling of “I have to start work on my taxes” commences. Whether your new year starts in September or January—or in the case of Bard, July 1, when the fiscal year begins—today is a good time to review your financial affairs and make sure everything is in order. Where to begin? Start by making a list. Write down the following information: • Bank account names, numbers, contact person, telephone numbers, address (including e-mail). Don’t forget to list pension and IRA accounts. • Bankers’ and/or brokers’ names, with telephone number and address (including e-mail) • Attorney’s name, address, telephone number • Accountant’s name, address, telephone number • Insurance broker’s name, address, telephone number. List the number of each policy, and include home, health, car, life, and any other insurance. • Safe deposit box number and address, with the location of both the box and the key • Location of will, health care proxy, and power of attorney If you don’t have any of the documents listed in number 7, now is an excellent time to create them. By writing a will and having a health care proxy and power of attorney, you ensure that your preferences will be known and adhered to. A will distributes your assets according to your wishes—not those of Uncle Sam or someone else—and lets you take care of family and any charitable organizations you care about. Once you have completed the above list, give a copy to your advisers and to your children or a close friend. Keep another copy with your important papers as a reference. If you have included Bard College or any charitable organization in your will, consider notifying the institution. Bard would like to thank you and offer you membership in the John Bard Society. As a member, you would receive invitations to special events throughout the year, including a luncheon with the College president. Most important, you would have the satisfaction of knowing that your wishes would be followed and you would help future students receive a Bard education. For more information on how you can make a bequest or join the John Bard Society, please contact Debra Pemstein, vice president for development and alumni/ae affairs, at 845-758-7405 or pemstein@bard.edu. All inquiries will be kept confidential.

F A C U LT Y N O T E S

Chinua Achebe, Charles P. Stevenson Jr. Professor of Languages and Literature, was honored by the National Arts Club with its Medal of Honor for Literature. Speakers at the November 16 award ceremony included South African poet Breyten Breytenbach, Global Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing at New York University; Ruth Simmons, president of Brown University (and Bard honorary degree recipient in 2005); and Ekwueme Michael Thelwell, professor of literature and writing and founding chairman of the Afro-American Studies Department at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Bard president Leon Botstein was master of ceremonies. (For Achebe’s additional honors, see page 18.) JoAnne Akalaitis, Wallace Benjamin Flint and L. May Hawver Flint Professor of Drama, is directing three productions this fall: Caryl Churchill’s translation of Seneca’s Thyestes at the Court Theatre in Chicago; short plays by Samuel Beckett, with Mikhail Barishnykov and others, at the New York Theatre Workshop; and a Stanford University production of Euripides’ The Bacchae for the Public Theater in New York City. New translations of the work of John Ashbery, Charles P. Stevenson Jr. Professor of Languages and Literature, were published in Bengali (a special section of the journal Kaurab); German (an art edition, with prints by Claudia Berg); and Swedish (his collection Where Shall I Wander was issued by Natur & Kultur). In England, Carcanet published a new edition of Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror to celebrate the 30th anniversary of that collection’s publication in the United Kingdom. In addition, Ashbery gave numerous readings from his work, including two in New York City: at The Drawing Center in the Academy of American Poets series for National Poetry Month, and at the Harvard Club, marking the 10th anniversary of its poetry reading series, which Ashbery inaugurated. James Bagwell, associate professor of music, conducted the Tulsa Symphony Orchestra in a subscription concert last March. In May, he prepared the chorus for the Tristan Project at New York’s Lincoln Center, conducted the Dessoff Choirs at Miller Theatre in a concert of little-known music of Paul Hindemith and Kurt Weill, and conducted Handel’s Israel in Egypt with the Berkshire Bach Society Chorus and Orchestra in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.

Laura Battle, professor of studio arts, had work included in an exhibition at the Galerie Essaadi in Carthage, Tunisia, as part of Jazz à Carthage last April. In August, her work was part of a show at the Chautauqua (New York) Institution. Leon Botstein, president of the college and Leon Levy Professor in the Arts and Humanities, was featured on “Maximum Security Education,” the CBS 60 Minutes segment that aired in April and focused on the rationale and results of the Bard Prison Initiative. In June Botstein was quizzed about his views on education by host Stephen Colbert on Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report. Botstein also contributed the essay “Transcending the Enigmas of Biography” to Edward Elgar and His World, 18th in the series of scholarly volumes published annually by Princeton University Press to accompany the Bard Music Festival. For The Musical Quarterly, he wrote the following essays: “History and Performance Practices,” “On the Power of Music,” “Anonymous Deceit,” and “Art and the State: The Case of Music.” He also contributed a short piece to the Chronicle of Higher Education describing his life and work in the 1960s, and he was a guest blogger on “Rosner’s Domain,” a feature of the online edition of Haaretz, the Israeli daily newspaper. Robert Epstein’s interview with Botstein was published in the May issue of the Phi Delta Kappan as “Why High School Must Go: An Interview with Leon Botstein.” Botstein delivered the commencement address at Stuyvesant High School, a public high school in New York City that specializes in science, mathematics, and technology; participated in a WAMC Radio roundtable discussion with the presidents of Vassar College, Marist College, and SUNY New Paltz; spoke about the demise of Antioch College on an Inside Higher Ed podcast; and moderated a Bard Center Evening discussion on the topic of stem cell research. For Bard High School Early College in New York City, he lectured on Mozart’s Don Giovanni, and for Bard’s First-Year Seminar, he spoke about Debussy’s La Mer before performing the work with the American Symphony Orchestra (ASO). He served as a judge for the Bard Conservatory Concerto Competition and for the 2008 Vilcek Prize in music, which is awarded to a foreign-born artist living in the United States. Botstein’s recording with the BBC Symphony Orchestra of Dukas’s opera Ariane et Barbe-Bleue, a retelling of the Bluebeard tale, was released by Telarc in July. In November, he led the BBC Symphony

Orchestra in a concert marking Armistice Day in London. In addition, he fulfilled regular conducting duties with the ASO and the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, the radio orchestra of Israel. Burton Brody, professor of physics, gave a talk to the Red Hook Historical Society, “What Church Saw,” on atmospheric effects in the paintings of Hudson River School artist Frederic Church. Nina Cannizzaro, assistant professor of Italian, gave a talk, “Literature, Nihilism and Power in 17th-Century Venice,” at Yale University in January. She attended two annual conferences in March: SHARP (Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing), which took place in Venice, with the topic of “Il libro veneziano,” and for which she chaired the panel on the Venetian book trade in the late 16th and early 17th century; and the Renaissance Society of America meeting in Miami, Florida, at which she gave a talk, “Academic and Political Transformations in Venice between 1500 and 1600.” Richard Davis, professor of religion, went to Madurai, South India, for a month last summer to study and photograph the Avani Festival at the Minakshi Temple. This is part of his project titled “The Art of the Procession.” The Asian Cultural Council and the National Endowment for the Humanities supported this research. Photographs of the festival were posted on the Image Database to Enhance Asian Studies (IDEAS) website, http://ideas.nitle.org. Nicole Eisenman, assistant professor of studio arts, presented solo exhibitions in Kunsthalle, Zurich (May); Le Plateau/Frac Ilede-France, Paris (June); and the Susanne Vielmetter Gallery, Los Angeles (October). In December Eisenman will have a solo booth at Art Basel Miami Beach. She curated Thank God It’s Not Abstract: A Night of Performance at The Kitchen in New York City in June and will curate Nor’f *ckeneasters Take Pluto, at the Pluto Gallery in Brooklyn in December. Two books on her work were published this year: Nicole Eisenman: Selected Works 1994–2004 (Walther Konig) and Nicole Eisenman Works (The Kunsthalle Zurich). Omar Encarnación, associate professor of political studies, presented a paper, “Democratizing Spain: Lessons for International Democratic Promotion,” at a conference held at King’s College London in May, in observation of the 30-year anniversary of Spain’s transition to democracy.

Kyle Gann, associate professor of music, had five of his Disklavier studies performed in Boston in May as part of the world premiere of Looky, by choreographer Mark Morris. Gann’s new piano concerto, which he composed for the Orkest de Volharding, premiered in Amsterdam on October 31. Susan Gillespie, vice president for global initiatives, had her translation of the correspondence between Johannes Brahms and Eusebius Mandyczewski (composer and head of the Society of the Friends of Music in Vienna) published in On Brahms and His Circle: Essays and Documentary Studies by Karl Geiringer (Harmonie Park Press). Richard Gordon, professor of psychology, chairs the Transcultural Special Interest Group of the Academy for Eating Disorders. In that capacity, he organized and led one symposium, and chaired another, at the International Conference on Eating Disorders, held in Baltimore in May. In June, Gordon continued his project on a modern history of eating disorders by conducting interviews with key figures in the field in Munich, Germany, and Lund, Sweden. Jacqueline Goss, associate professor of film and electronic arts, received an Alpert Award in the Arts in film/video. She was one of only five artists in the United States to receive the prize, which carries an unrestricted grant. Recipients hold a weeklong teaching residency at California Institute of the Arts, a creator of the award with musician Herb Alpert. Peter Hutton, professor of film, is the recipient of a 2007 New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship in film. In July he presented a retrospective of his films at Curtas Vila do Conde, an international film festival held in Portugal. Felicia Keesing, associate professor of biology, published (with Rick Ostfeld) “Pulsed resources and community responses,” a chapter in Temporal Dimensions of Landscape Ecology: Wildlife Responses to Variable Resources (Springer); (with Rick Ostfeld and others) “Abundance and Borrelia burgdorferi-infection prevalence of nymphal Ixodes scapularis ticks along forest-field edges” in EcoHealth; and (with several colleagues) “Consequences of herbivory by native ungulates for the reproduction of a savanna tree” in Journal of Ecology 95. Keesing was a recipient, with Alan

FACULTY NOTES | 65

Berkowitz and colleagues, of a five-year National Science Foundation grant to support a project titled “Research

Norman Manea, Francis Flournoy Professor in European Studies and Culture and writer in residence, received the Romanian Order

Experiences for Undergraduates: Ecology in Context at the Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, New York.”

of Cultural Merit last spring. The occasion was marked with a festive dinner at the New York residence of the Romanian ambassador to the United Nations, at which Philip Roth, Orhan Pamuk, and Robert Silvers (editor of the New York Review of Books) spoke about Manea’s life and work. Spring also saw the publication of Compulsory Happiness in Spain by Tusquets Editores. Manea helped launch the book with two talks: “Populism,” at the International Center of Contemporary Art in Barcelona, and “Exiled Language,” at the Instituto Cervantes in Madrid. Last summer two collections of Manea’s short fiction were published in translation: October, Eight O’Clock in Germany and The Exact Hour in France. This fall The Hooligan’s Return is being published in China by New Star Publishers (together with On Clowns and The Black Envelope), and The Nomadic Language, a collection of essays, appears in Catalan.

David Kettler, Research Professor in Social Studies, presented “The Contested Legacy of Antifascism: An Introduction” at the Symposium of the Society for German-American Studies at the University of Kansas in April, and four programs during a May visit to Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany: “The Vicissitudes of Anti-Fascism,” a public lecture; a workshop on Weimar sociology and a seminar on Karl Mannheim, for the social sciences faculty; and “Negotiations: Learning from Three Schools in Frankfurt,” a transdisciplinary talk for the protosociology group. He published “Review of Dominic Boyer, Spirit and System: Media, Intellectuals, and the Dialectic in Modern German Culture” in Canadian Journal of Sociology Online, March–April 2007. Joel Kovel, Distinguished Professor of Social Studies, spent April and much of May lecturing in Canada, the midwestern United States, England, Scotland, Ireland, and Denmark, about his book Overcoming Zionism (see “Books By Bardians,” this issue) and about his work on ecosocialism. Regarding the latter, Kovel delivered lectures at the London School of Economics and Strathclyde University in Glasgow. 29 Palms, a film by An-My Lê, assistant professor of photography, was shown at the Hammer Museum in April, during an evening program of films by photographers that was curated by Jim Welling. At Dia:Beacon in June, Luc Sante, visiting professor of writing and photography, lectured about Trap Rock, Lê’s series of photographs on exhibition there. Mary Ellen Lennon, faculty in history, Bard High School Early College, traveled to South Korea in June and July on a Korean Studies Fellowship with 20 other educators from across the county. Lennon is the recipient of a 2007–08 Department of State J. William Fulbright Award to Burkina Faso, West Africa, where she will teach American literature and American studies at the University of Ouagadougou. Sarah Lopez-Duran, assistant professor of psychology, presented a paper, “The Self Through Time: Autobiographical Memory and Self-Recognition in Typical Development and Autism,” at the annual meeting of the Jean Piaget Society, held in Amsterdam in May. Barbara Luka, assistant professor of psychology, and Heidi Choi ’09 presented a poster, “Is structural facilitation in language comprehension long lasting?” at the 19th annual convention of the Association for Psychological Science, held in Washington, D.C. Their work examined the representation of sentence structure in memory, especially for types of learning that do not require conscious effort. The study was supported by the Bard Research Fund, which, among other activities, assists exceptional students in gaining research experience in the social sciences.

Steven Mazie, faculty in political science at Bard High School Early College, presented his paper “Educational Equality for Gifted Students: An Egalitarian Critique of Admission to New York City’s Specialized High Schools” at the annual meeting of the Western Political Science Association, held in Las Vegas, Nevada, in March. Jacob Neusner, Distinguished Service Professor of the History and Theology of Judaism, published Judaism in Contemporary Contexts (Vallentine Mitchell Publishers) this year. With Bruce Chilton ’71, Bernard Iddings Bell Professor of Philosophy and Religion, Neusner edited Historical Knowledge in Biblical Antiquity (Deo Publishing) and In Quest of the Historical Pharisees (Baylor University Press), both published this year. Susan Osberg, visiting associate professor of dance, has been directing Dance Across Borders, a traveling international dance festival and symposium. She performed a site-specific Dance Across Borders project in Bordeaux, Normandy, and Paris, France. Lothar Osterburg, visiting assistant professor of studio arts, taught at the Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Snowmass Village, Colorado, in July. The Printshop at the University of Nebraska, Omaha, published two of his prints this past summer. “The Set Up,” a group exhibition at the Nicole Fiacco Gallery in Hudson, New York (September–October), included his work, and the Fitchburg (Massachusetts) Museum of Art has an exhibition of his photogravure and sculpture on display through January 2008. Dimitri B. Papadimitriou, executive vice president of the college and president of the Levy Economics Institute, was interviewed in March by Patrice Hill at the Washington Times regarding the alternative minimum tax and in April by Nicholas Rummell at Financial Week regarding Basel II and its impact. He was a participant at the Eighth International Conference on Engendering Macroeconomics and International Economics at Bosphorus University in Istanbul, Turkey, July 20–22; a participant at the Eleventh Research Network Macroeconomic Policies Conference, “Finance-Led Capitalism? Macroeconomic Effects of Changes in

the Financial Sector,” held in Berlin, Germany, October 26–27. His chapter, “Economic Perspectives on Aging: An Overview,” pub-

Joan Tower, Asher B. Edelman Professor in the Arts, hosted a “Notable Women’s Festival” in New York City and at Dia:Beacon

lished in Government Spending on the Elderly, was listed on the Social Science Research Network’s Top Ten download list.

with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s. The festival consisted of three weekends of concerts of music written by women. Tower was a featured composer at the American Symphony Orchestra League Conference, held in Nashville, with her work Made in America, which was performed during the 2005–2007 concert seasons by 65 orchestras in 50 states. She was also composer in residence at Summerfest La Jolla, where four of her pieces were performed; at Tanglewood, where her percussion concerto “Strike Zones” was performed; and at the Deer Valley Festival, where she performed in the premiere of her new piano quintet. Tower is the featured composer at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center for the 2007–08 season, with the performance of six works that include three premieres. Scarecrow Press has published a biographybibliography of Tower, written and compiled by Ellen Grolman. A yearlong celebration of Tower’s 70th birthday, with concerts presented throughout the United States, begins in 2008.

Jennifer Phillips, faculty, Bard Center for Environmental Policy, held a workshop, “Climate Risk for Hudson Valley Farmers,” in Greenwich, New York, in January as part of the grant “Decision Making under Risk of Extreme Climate Events: Applying Lessons from Seasonal Forecasting,” funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Office of Global Programs. In February she gave a talk, “Farmer Management of Risk Associated with Climate Extremes as Indicators of Adaptation to Climate Change,” at the fourth U.S. Department of Agriculture Conference on Greenhouse Gases and Agriculture, held in Baltimore. She also gave a presentation, “Climate Risk Management by Hudson Valley Farmers: Applications to Climate Change Adaptation,” for the Hunter College Department of Geography. Matt Phillips, Asher B. Edelman Professor Emeritus of Art, had seven works in a historical print exhibition of monotypes presented in October by Frederick Baker, Inc., a Chicago gallery devoted to works on paper. An illustrated catalogue, with text by Phillips, accompanied the show. John Pilson, visiting assistant professor of photography, presented work in a solo exhibtion at Galerie Praz-Delavallade in Paris that opened in June. This past summer he was part of two group shows in New York City: The Shapes of Space at the Guggenheim Museum and Automatic Update at the Museum of Modern Art; and one in Ridgefield, Connecticut: 50,000 Beds at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum. Susan Fox Rogers, visiting assistant professor of writing and First-Year Seminar, had an essay, “The Solace of a Wide, Dark River,” in volume 12 (summer) of Under the Sun. Luc Sante, visiting professor of writing and photography, organized an exhibition, The Museum of Crime and the Museum of God, shown at apexart in New York City in May and June. It consisted of 200 found items by dead or anonymous artists, along with excerpts from relevant authors hand-printed on the walls. Benjamin Stevens, assistant professor of classics, gave a talk, “U. R. Bandit: Language and Identity in Morrison’s and Quitely’s WE3” at the New York College English Association spring conference, held at SUNY New Paltz in April. Stuart Stritzler-Levine, dean of studies, Bard High School Early College, lectured and showed photographs from his current documentary and urban research project, “What Has Replaced the Former Synagogues Located within the Lower East Side of Manhattan,” at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum. A series of his color photos of the Mission San Juan Capistrano was on display in the window of Ritz Camera in New York City during the month of June. Four of the Capistrano prints were included in the member amateur-art show at the Century Association.

Eric Trudel, assistant professor of French, presented a paper, “Effect and Excess: Paulhan, Bataille, Blanchot and the Figuration of the Real” at “Real Things: Matter, Materiality, Representation, 1880 to the Present,” a conference hosted by the University of York in England in July. Marina van Zuylen, professor of French and comparative literature, recipient of one of Princeton University’s yearly Visiting Professorships for Distinguished Teaching, is the Stanley Kelley Jr. Visiting Professor in Princeton’s Department of French and Italian through June 30, 2008. She received the Julia Kristeva 2007 Stipendium to teach at the University of Paris VII, Jussieu, in June 2007. She wrote an essay, “Mutations into the Fantastic: Dustin Yellin’s Art in Science,” for an exhibition of Yellin’s work at the Robert Miller Gallery, New York, May–June 2007. Suzanne Vromen, professor emeritus of sociology, has three new publications: an entry on the French sociologist Maurice Halbwachs for the Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology; an entry on the sociologist Rose Coser in Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia; and an article on the politics of commemoration in the anthology Sociology Confronts the Holocaust: Memories and Identities in Jewish Diasporas. In October she presented a paper on her research in Belgium at an international conference, “Childhood and Youth under the Third Reich: A Gender Perspective,” held in Israel. Stephen Westfall, faculty in painting a the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts, received a Nancy Graves Fellowship, which is given to three artists each year to work in a medium that is new to them. Westfall is exploring architectural glass, and is collaborating with the architectural firm Stan Allen Associates on a chapel for the children of Hope Village in the Philippines. Shelley Wyant, visiting assistant professor of theater, is part of the Fulbright Senior Specialists Program, which provides shortterm academic opportunities for U.S. faculty and professionals.

FACULTY NOTES | 67

Inside The Gabrielle H. Reem and Herbert J. Kayden Center for Science and Computation, the curved wall of windows brings nature into the biology laboratory.

Photography Cover: ©Cory Weaver 1: Bilyana Dimitrova 2: Don Hamerman 3: (left) View of Strawberry Hill, Middlesex, from the gardens (w/c) by Gustave Ellinthorpe Sintzenich (fl.1840–66) Private Collection/ Mallett Gallery, London, UK/The Bridgeman Art Library; (middle) courtesy of Man Booker International Prize; (right) Joshua Lutz ’97 4: Destroyed Earth, ©John Lund/Corbis 6: Noah Sheldon 10: Toby Sanford 14: (top) ©2007 Elena Seibert; (bottom) ©Julian Martin/epa/Corbis 15: (top) Courtesy of Philip Johns; (bottom) Pete Mauney ’93, MFA ’99 16: (top) Courtesy of Gregory Landweber; (bottom) Pete Mauney ’93, MFA ’99 17: (top) Courtesy of Hoyt Long; (bottom) courtesy of Chongke Zhu 18: Brigitte Lacombe 19: Courtesy of Man Booker International Prize 20: Keith Skelton 22: The Nightmare, c. 1781 (oil on canvas) by Henry Fuseli (Johann Heinrich Fussli, 1741–1825); Goethe Museum, Frankfurt, Germany/Peter Willi/The Bridgeman Art Library 23: Israeli Reichman 24: Illustration from Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (1797–1851) (b/w photo of engraving by Theodor M. von Holst, 1810–44) Private Collection/The Bridgeman Art Library 25: Jack Freulich, Sherman Clark, Universal Pictures/Photofest ©Universal Pictures 27–29: Joshua Lutz ’97 30: ©Stephanie Berger 31: (top left) ©Cory Weaver; (all others) ©Stephanie Berger 34: (top) ©Steve J. Sherman; (bottom) ©2007 Tomas Södergren/Black Star 35: (top right) Don Hamerman; (top middle) ©2007 Robin Nelson/Black Star; (top bottom) courtesy of Marc S. Lipschultz; (bottom) Geoffrey Clements 36: (top left) Eric Erdle; (top right) courtesy of CCS Bard Hessel Museum; (bottom) courtesy of Bard College at Simon’s Rock: The Early College 37: Courtesy of the Bard Graduate Center 38: (top) Courtesy of Jane Wong ’07; (bottom) courtesy of Monroe Ellenbogen ’08 39: Scott Barrow 40: (top) Sasha Boak-Kelly; (bottom) Jennifer Hodge ’ 10 41: Dario Acosta 48: Courtesy of Barbara Crane Wigren ’68 49: Sasha Boak-Kelly 59: Courtesy of Christel Tsilbari CCS ’03 63: Len Jenshel 64: (left and middle) Pete Mauney ’93, MFA ’99; (right) ©Alex Webb/Magnum Photos 65: (left and middle) Pete Mauney ’93, MFA ’99; (right) Noah Sheldon 68: Bilyana Dimitrova Back cover: Don Hamerman

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Board of Trustees of Bard College David E. Schwab II ’52, Chair Emeritus Charles P. Stevenson Jr., Chair Emily H. Fisher, Second Vice Chair Elizabeth Ely ’65, Secretary Roland J. Augustine, Treasurer Fiona Angelini + Leon Botstein, President of the College David C. Clapp * Marcelle Clements ’69 The Rt. Rev. Herbert A. Donovan Jr., Honorary Trustee Asher B. Edelman ’61 Robert S. Epstein ’63 * Philip H. Gordon ’43 * Barbara S. Grossman ’73 Sally Hambrecht Ernest F. Henderson III Marieluise Hessel John C. Honey ’39, Life Trustee Charles S. Johnson III ’70 Mark N. Kaplan George A. Kellner Cynthia Hirsch Levy ’65 Murray Liebowitz Marc S. Lipschultz Peter H. Maguire ’88 James H. Ottaway Jr. Martin Peretz Stanley A. Reichel ’65 Stewart Resnick Susan Weber Soros Martin T. Sosnoff Patricia Ross Weis ’52 * alumni/ae trustee + ex officio

Office of Development and Alumni/ae Affairs Debra Pemstein Vice President for Development and Alumni/ae Affairs 845-758-7405 or pemstein @bard.edu; Jessica Kemm ’74 Director of Alumni/ae Affairs, 845-758-7406 or kemm@bard.edu; Sasha Boak-Kelly, Associate Director of Alumni/ae Affairs, 845-758-7407, boak@bard.edu; Tricia Fleming, Administrative Assistant, 845-758-7089, fleming@bard.edu Published by the Bard Publications Office Ginger Shore, Director; Mary Smith, Art Director; Debby Mayer, Editorial Director; Mikhail Horowitz, René Houtrides MFA ’97, Ellen Liebowitz, Cynthia Werthamer, Editors; Diane Rosasco, Production Manager; Mary Maguire, Kevin Trabucco, Ken Treadway, Ann Marie Weber, Designers ©2007 Bard College. All rights reserved.

SAVE THE DATE REUNIONS 2008 May 23–25 Reunion classes: 1938, 1943, 1948–1949, 1953, 1968, 1973, 1978, 1983, 1988, 1993, 1998, 2003 Would you like to help contact classmates? Please call Jessica Kemm ’74 at 845-758-7406 or e-mail kemm@bard.edu.

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