2010 Spring Bardian by Bard College Bardian

Bardian Bard College Spring 2010

cover Ilyas Washington ’96 above Susan Deason, a math and science teacher, helps a sixth-grader at Paramount Bard Academy, a public school that is also a campus of Bard’s Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) Program in Delano, California facing page Ric Campbell, director of Bard’s MAT Program, with students at Paramount Bard Academy

Dear Bardians, Welcome back to the tactile pleasure of a Bardian you can hold in your hands. I hope you had a chance to read the “green” issue online in February, but if you didn’t, you can always find it in the archives at annandaleonline.org, the alumni/ae online community. I was proud to learn of everything that Bard alumni/ae, students, faculty, and staff are doing to respond to the problems of climate change. If you prefer the online format, you can save paper, reduce mailing costs, and get your Bardian sooner by signing up to receive it online all the time, instead of in the mail. These magazines are so chock full you can’t read them in one gulp, and it’s great to be able to refer back to them online. This issue is no exception. I am delighted to see my classmate Dr. Ilyas Washington ’96 on the front cover. His research in ophthalmology, at Columbia University Medical Center, is fascinating, and his story is a great example of how one class at Bard can influence the direction of your life. Ilyas was also a fixture on the Bard basketball court, and last fall he was back on campus to play in the annual alumni vs. seniors game. Right now, Commencement—and the kick-off of Bard’s 150th Anniversary Celebration—is just around the corner, on May 21–23. It is a special honor to congratulate Professor Aileen Passloff, the 2010 recipient of the Bardian Award. I hope the article inside, chronicling her life as a dancer and a teacher at Bard, will inspire the many of you who knew her to return to see her receive her award at the President’s Dinner. This special dinner, on the Friday night before Commencement, is one of reunion weekend’s littleknown gems—a great value for the money and a perfect way to start the festivities. My favorite part is hearing from those who receive awards from the College; they’re always a fascinating group, and this is their opportunity to speak. Reunion Weekend is a wonderful chance to enjoy the beauty of Bard’s most spectacular time of year and be inspired by the achievements of the Class of 2010 even as you stay in the semi-luxury of campus housing. Bard is a great place, but it wouldn’t be what it is without you. Whether you make a gift, help a member of the Class of 2010 land a first job, organize a Bard gathering, or nominate a peer for one of the alumni/ae awards, your participation is a huge part of what makes Bard so special. We have a terrific staff in the alumni/ae office, ready to help you get involved. Step up! And thank you! Walter Swett ’96 President, Board of Governors, Bard–St. Stephen’s Alumni/ae Association P.S. July and August bring Bard SummerScape, the internationally known festival of opera, theater, dance, music, film, and cabaret. Be sure to take advantage of the alumni/ae discount described on the SummerScape page in this issue.

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 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 Randy Buckingham ’73, Events Committee Cochairperson Cathaline Cantalupo ’67 Pia Carusone ’03 Charles Clancy ’69, Stewardship Committee Cochairperson Peter Criswell ’89 Arnold Davis ’44, Nominations and Awards Committee Cochairperson

Elizabeth Dempsey BHSEC ’03, ’05, Young Alumni/ae Committee Chairperson 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 Ann Ho ’62, Career Connections Committee Chairperson 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 Larry Levine ’74 Cynthia Hirsch Levy ’65 Isaac Liberman ’04 Michelle Dunn Marsh ’95 Peter F. McCabe ’70, Nominations and Awards Committee Cochairperson Mollie Meikle ’03

Steven Miller ’70, Stewardship Committee Cochairperson Anne Morris-Stockton ’68 Jennifer Novik ’98 Karen Olah ’65, Alumni/ae House Committee Cochairperson Susan Playfair ’62 Arthur “Scott” Porter Jr. ’79, Alumni/ae House Committee Cochairperson Allison Radzin ’88 Emilie Richardson ’05 Reva Minkin Sanders ’56 Joan Schaffer ’75 Barry Silkowitz ’71 George A. Smith ’82, Events Committee Cochairperson Dr. Ingrid Spatt ’69 Paul Thompson ’93 Erin Toliver ’00 Dr. Toni-Michelle Travis ’69 Brandon Weber ’97 Barbara Crane Wigren ’68 Dr. Dumaine Williams ’03, Diversity Committee Chairperson Ron Wilson ’75 Matt Wing ’06 Sung Jee Yoo ’01

Bardian SPRING 2010

FEATURES 4 STUDY ABROAD Exploration Beyond Words 10 LIGHT, OXYGEN, EYE Ilyas Washington ’96

HIGH-QUALITY TEACHERS FOR HIGH-NEEDS SCHOOLS Bard’s MAT Program Lands Grant for Teacher Training in California

14 “THE VERY SPIRIT OF DANCE” Dancing Down the Decades with Aileen Passloff 16 THE CLIMATE AFTER COPENHAGEN 18 PHOTOGRAPHERS WHO FLY Walead Beshty ’99 and Daniel Gordon ’04

DEPARTMENTS 24 ON AND OFF CAMPUS 16

25 BOOKS BY BARDIANS 32 CLASS NOTES 46 FACULTY NOTES 49 JOHN BARD SOCIETY NEWS Wayne Horvitz ’42 shares his love of Bard

AT LEFT, TOP TO BOTTOM Aileen Passloff and Arthur Aviles ’87; sixth-graders at Paramount Bard Academy; Eban Goodstein attends COP15; Daniel Gordon ’04 in his studio; Graduate Vocal Arts Program students sing a Ravel opera at the Fisher Center

STUDY ABROAD

Exploration Beyond Words

An established leader in global education, Bard College matriculates students from more than 50 nations around the world. And in reverse flow, almost half of Bard’s students will spend time abroad—studying, working, teaching, volunteering, or doing internships—during their tenure at the College. Following are reports from four students who chose to travel far from Bard’s Annandale-on-Hudson campus in order to pursue more deeply their various courses of study.

“There is a huge expectation that study abroad will change you and open up your mind. That it will drive you to discover what you want to do and how you want to live.” —Jaya Spier ’10, a visiting student at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa

When Jaya Spier decided to study in South Africa during her junior year at Bard, she had great expectations. “I knew that I wouldn’t have an opportunity like this later on, at least not in the same capacity,” she says. Spier, who grew up in Port Townsend on the coast of Washington, majors in human rights with a focus on creative writing. She was drawn to the International Human Rights Exchange (IHRE) in South Africa because it is the only human rights study abroad program in the world. Each year, IHRE sends approximately 20 students from Bard and other colleges and universities in the United States to the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg (“Wits”). They live in International House, a large dormitory on campus, along with IHRE students from Wits and African nations such as Zimbabwe and Ghana, and with other international students. At Wits, Spier took a literature course and read novels by African authors who write about human rights. “This class opened up my mind to the political novel,” she says. Her Senior Project was influenced by this course; it explores literary interpretations of the Partition between India and Pakistan. She also studied “Islamic Law and Human Rights,” “Culture and Human Rights,” and “Philosophy and Human Rights” while abroad. “The educational system in South Africa is quite different,” Spier observes. “It is based heavily on exams, and the South African students do better in that kind of learning environment

than some of us from Bard. The grading is also different—a 75 is considered an ‘A.’ Students rarely get into the 90s.” While living in Johannesburg, Spier interned with Lawyers for Human Rights. She helped refugees figure out what their next step would be, whether it was filling out paperwork for asylum, finding work, or securing housing. “I was there right after the 2008 riots in Alexandra [where locals attacked migrants from Mozambique, Malawi, and Zimbabwe]. The situation was extremely tense for refugees in Johannesburg and South Africa. I learned a lot about human nature and the extent of the horrors that people can live through and survive. My experience confirmed my interest in human rights and pushed me to realize that I wanted to continue working in this area of study after graduation.” Spier’s year abroad reaffirmed her convictions rather than transforming them, as she had expected. “In retrospect, I may not have changed as much as I had hoped, but I know I am a better person for it. I gained a measure of confidence and independence with travel. I walked across the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe in the sweltering heat; I stood by helplessly as my friends got mugged at gunpoint in Durban; on a safari, I almost got charged by an elephant; I met a medicine woman who claimed to have a cure for AIDS; I slept in a hut in a village and realized that what the West may see as poverty can also be comfortable in its simplicity. I watched, I experienced, I learned. And I do believe I fell a bit in love with Johannesburg—good and bad included.”

Jaya Spier ’10

“Many people ask me, why China? I don’t have an answer. Every time I go there, I experience another layer of love for China. I am confronted with a complexity that I don’t understand and am compelled to explore.” —Zoe Elizabeth Noyes ’11, a visiting student at Qingdao University of Science and Technology, China

Zoe Elizabeth Noyes, a graduate of Bard High School Early College Manhattan (BHSEC) and an Asian studies major, began studying Chinese in the ninth grade. At 16, she visited China for the first time. The BHSEC science exchange program, which studied the Huangpu and Hudson Rivers, took a select group of six BHSEC students to Shanghai and brought six students from the Affiliated High School of Fudan University and No. 2 High School of East Normal University to Manhattan for three weeks in 2007. Each student lived with a host family. Noyes met her first Chinese student, and he “made a deep impression on me,” she says. “He was still in high school, yet so diligent and focused.” After high school graduation, Noyes returned to Shanghai for July and August 2008 and taught English to kindergarteners. The next summer, she went to Qingdao with Bard in China on the Fulbright-Hays Group Projects Abroad Program. Along with eight other Bard students, Noyes studied at Qingdao University of Science and Technology in Shandong Province and pursued an independent research project under the guidance of a Qingdao adviser. Students took Chinese classes every morning and spent the afternoons doing research, interviews, and field study, which culminated in a four-page paper (roughly equivalent to seven pages in English)—the longest essay Noyes had ever written in Chinese.

Noyes wrote about Sino–Latin American relations. She had previously studied with Bard’s intensive Spanish program in Oaxaca, Mexico, and lived with a Mexican family there. Her host father was fascinated by China—the language, politics, and culture—but knew very little about the country. As Noyes used her Spanish to tell him about China, she became aware of the American filter through which she was connecting these two cultures, and she wanted to explore further the independent relationship between Mexico and China. Her research was based on a 12-question survey about Sino–Latin American relations from the Chinese perspective that she gave to 50 Chinese university students. “The results were inconclusive,” she says. “No real opinion emerged from the responses.” In addition to discussing current Sino–Latin American issues, Noyes’ final paper explored how the Confucian ideal of zhong yong (Doctrine of the Mean), especially with the Marxism that was introduced to China during the Maoist era, has shaped the social and political ideology of Chinese students. The result is a balanced viewpoint of all sides of an issue, without the inclination to choose among them . Noyes finds the Chinese language most compelling. She now knows about 3,500 Chinese characters; she can read a newspaper with some effort, and converse about any subject. “Even with a limited vocabulary, I can describe the concepts I want to communicate,” she says. “As students in professor LiHua Ying’s advanced Chinese class, we have very complicated philosophical conversations.” After graduation from Bard, she plans to live in China for several years.

Zoe Elizabeth Noyes ’11

Shawn Moore ’11

“A lot of my ideas about China were ill-informed. It is far vaster and more diverse than I ever imagined. Everyone seems filled with hope about the future—they all have big plans. I definitely want to come back and see how it develops.” —Shawn Moore ’11, a visiting student at Capital University of Economics and Business, China

Shawn Moore, a student in the five-year dual degree program of The Bard College Conservatory of Music, majors in violin and Asian studies with a focus on contemporary Chinese literature. During his second year at Bard, he began to study Chinese language, which piqued his curiosity and offered a new communication. “Many of my Conservatory classmates are Chinese, so I wanted to learn their language and more about them,” says Moore, who grew up in Elgin, Illinois. Moore decided to spend the fall 2009 semester in China. In June 2009, he went to Qingdao on the same program as Zoe Noyes, and stayed on there through August to teach English. In September, he moved to Beijing. On a Fulbright-funded scholarship, he attended the Associated Colleges in China Intensive Language and Culture Program in Beijing, a curriculum recommended to him by Bard professor Li-Hua Ying that is administered by Hamilton College and hosted by the Capital University of Economics and Business. He studied classical Chinese (reading Confucius and other ancient texts), modern Chinese literature, and current issues. He also continued his music studies, taking private violin lessons. In a master class, he played

for the classical violinist Pinchas Zukerman. He tried erhu, a classical Chinese string instrument similar to the violin. “Coming into contact with musical styles native to China broadened my approach stylistically and from a music theory point of view,” he says. When he wasn’t studying, Moore spent time with friends from Beijing. “I was lucky to already have a number of friends in Beijing,” he says, “but I also met a lot of people randomly, especially other artists. I would walk around the art district ‘798’ and strike up conversations.” Moore represented his host university in Beijing at a New Year’s event that was broadcast on national television. He played from The Butterfly Lovers Violin Concerto and performed xiangsheng (cross talk)—a traditional comedic art form consisting of repartee—with several other students and Ding Guangquan, a well-known xiangsheng performer and teacher. Moore plans to do a translation of Chinese contemporary literature or to write about xiangsheng for his Senior Project, and he hopes to return to China as a graduate student.

Andrew Buchanan ’11

“What I am most excited about is the same as what I’m most nervous about: the idea of going away for such a long time to a new place where I know no one. I won’t have a crutch to work with. I will have to grow as a human being, to adapt, and I’m looking forward to seeing how the process works.” —Andrew Buchanan ’11, a visiting student at The American University in Cairo, Egypt

Andrew Buchanan, an anthropology major with a focus on Middle Eastern studies, embarked on his journey to Egypt in January and doesn’t plan to return until August. Growing up in Kalamazoo, Michigan, he was introduced to the ancient culture of Egypt through books, and he became fascinated by Egyptology. Today, he is more interested in the modern sociopolitical developments of this Arab nation. His current academic focus is the political anthropology of the Levant area, which 8

includes Egypt, Syria, Israel, Palestine, and Jordan. “I refer to an Arab nation in the Benedict Anderson sense of the word—a group of people who identify with a shared sense of heritage, a common history and culture that transcends state lines. It’s not the ‘Islamic World,’ ‘Middle East,’ or ‘North Africa,’” he says, “but rather people who trace their heritage to the Arabic diaspora.” Bard’s exchange program with the American University in Cairo (AUC) presented an unparalleled opportunity for

Buchanan to pursue his academic interests, to immerse himself in the Arabic language, and to study Arab music. Buchanan has already taken five semesters of Arabic at Bard. “I love languages,” he says. “In the beginning, reading and writing Arabic script was the biggest hurdle; however, it’s become second nature now.” He spent a summer in Morocco through Bard’s intensive Arabic program, studying at the Arabic Language Institute in Fez and living in the medina, the ancient non-European quarter of the city, immersed in an environment that has remained unchanged for centuries. In addition to Arabic language study at AUC, Buchanan is taking anthropology courses—“Arab Society” and “Anthropologies of the Modern Middle East and North Africa”—and a music theory course, “Arab Music.” As a musician who plays clarinet, bass clarinet, saxophone, and guitar, he is excited about the music class: “I

love studying music from an ethnomusicology standpoint. We will learn how to play the sitar and lute, and will study the music theory that informs the Arab music tradition.” Buchanan is applying for summer internships in Tunisia, at the American Embassy and the educational nonprofit organization AMIDEAST. “There is a mixture of excitement and terror in anticipation of my time abroad,” he said in December. “I’m confident that I will adjust and learn Arabic in a way I haven’t yet—which is why I want to go—but I know it will be daunting and overwhelming at first. As much as it frightens me, I’m happy I don’t know anyone there. If I can stand on my own in the Middle East and North Africa, it’s a pretty good indicator I’ll be able to do it here too.” —Jennifer Wai-Lan Huang

SOME OF BARD’S STUDY ABROAD OPPORTUNITIES

Intensive and Immersion Foreign Language Study Accelerated foreign language study with a one- or two-month summer or winter program in a country of the language under study Locations: Qingdao, China; Tours, France; Heidelberg, Germany; Haifa, Israel; Florence, Italy; Kyoto, Japan; Oaxaca, Mexico; Fez, Morocco; St. Petersburg, Russia

American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Greece Archaeology and the study of Greek culture and civilization American University in Cairo, Egypt Arabic language study and an English-language curriculum rooted in liberal education Bard in China (also Japan, South Korea, Sri Lanka, and other parts of Asia) Asian language study and facilitating the exchange of guest speakers, lecturers, and performers between Bard and Asia Central European University in Budapest, Hungary International postgraduate education in the social sciences and humanities that contributes to the development of open societies in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany German language and literature studies Institute for International Liberal Education (IILE) Dual-degree and dual-credit programs in international liberal arts education with interests in human rights theory and practice, and translation IILE partner institutes include Saint Petersburg State University, University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa, Al-Quds University in East Jerusalem, and American University of Central Asia in Kyrgyzstan.

International Human Rights Exchange, University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa Critical study of human rights in the context of a broad intellectual and social movement Lingnan University, Hong Kong English-language liberal arts curriculum at a small university with a focus on close faculty-student relationships Smolny College at Saint Petersburg State University, Russia Dual B.A. degree program in liberal arts and sciences from Bard and Smolny Staatliche Hochschule für Gestaltung Karlsruhe (Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design), Germany Study (in German) of art and design, emphasizing new media and access to the contemporary German art world In addition to the offerings mentioned above, IILE and the Office of the Dean of International Studies manage Direct Tuition Exchanges between Bard College and universities around the globe, such as the Kyoto-Seika University in Japan and Kyung Hee University in Seoul, Korea.

Ilyas Washington ’96

“Although light is a big influence that we’re always exposed to,” says Ilyas Washington ’96, “we have a poor understanding of it.” As assistant professor of ophthalmic science at Columbia University Medical Center, Michael Jaharis Scholar, and head of the Washington Laboratory for Scientific Exploration, Washington conducts research into light and oxygen and examines how “the human body interacts with and responds to the environment on a molecular level.” In terms of light, for example, Washington’s lab is committed to studying “. . . the effects of light on living organisms and biological processes. The eye, as our light-sensing organ, is a natural target for such investigations; however, light also penetrates nearly all other organs. On a clear day the amount of light that penetrates your skull would allow you to read a book comfortably.” Washington’s rejection of the usual tendency to overlook environmental surroundings excuses him from a maxim—attributed, in various forms, to ancient China or Marshall McLuhan—that goes something like, “We don’t know who discovered water, but we’re pretty sure it wasn’t the fish.”

Washington arrived at Bard eager to explore a number of interests (religion among them); he ultimately graduated with a B.A. in chemistry, under the encouraging tutelage of Hilton Weiss, now professor emeritus of chemistry. Weiss recalls Washington’s determination and tenacious work ethic. “He did what he had to do to succeed,” he says. “He worked very independently. Every student needs to develop the ability to work independently. Ilyas developed it earlier than most.” After Bard, Washington’s next stop was at UCLA, for a Ph.D. in organic chemistry, with Ken Houk serving as his adviser. Washington then returned to New York, his home city, for postdoctoral work at Columbia University, under the guidance of Nicholas J. Turro and Koji Nakanishi, estimable researchers and pedagogues with overlapping interests in vision. At this point Washington’s training as a chemist pivoted toward ophthalmologic research. Of Turro and Nakanishi, Washington says, “I’ve admired how they think, their work. I picked them because they were good scientists and had many different projects going on.” But Washington’s way of reaching out to Nakanishi, for example, was atypical. He visited Nakanishi’s lab, without the usual introductory letter, and requested permission to participate. Nakanishi, although momentarily taken aback, agreed. “He [Nakanishi] believes in giving everyone an opportunity,” says Washington. “I want someone not in the box. That was my way of picking them [Turro and Nakanishi]. I attribute that to Bard.” Washington’s laboratory similarly functions outside the box. “If you’re doing it already, I don’t want to do it,” says Washington of his approach to scientific sleuthing. And, like Bard, he values interdisciplinary approaches. His lab’s ethos, described on its website, is, “Rather than being constrained by any particular scientific discipline, we approach scientific discovery by allowing the research question to define our approach.” Washington considers divisions between scientific disciplines to be artificial and, in today’s world of digital sharing of information, outmoded. The resultant research has breadth, as the following examples show. The lab conducts research on “constructing a solar nanocell that will convert light energy into chemical energy for the synthesis of adenosine triphosphate (ATP).” ATP, a biomolecule found in all cells, stores the energy used to fuel many cellular activities. Furthermore, ATP levels decline with age, begging the question of possible effects on everything from Alzheimer’s to strokes. In oxygen research, Washington is interested in what he calls “controlled destruction.” For example, can regulated release of singlet oxygen (a relatively unstable form of the oxygen molecule) be used to kill cancer cells selectively, leaving healthy cells unharmed? “Targeting is a chemical problem,” is Washington’s succinct comment.

The lab also pursues research directly related to vision, such as methods of slowing the “progression of Age-related Macular Degeneration (AMD) and other macular dystrophies.” AMD, the leading cause of vision loss in people over 50—think of the sheer number of baby boomers—cannot be effectively treated or prevented, yet. In AMD, byproducts (such as lipofuscin) of cellular metabolism accumulate in the macula (a central area of the retina that is rich in light-sensitive cells). Although peripheral vision is retained, a large splotchy blind spot in central vision makes reading, recognizing faces, ambulation, and independent living difficult for those affected. Washington’s research would also be applicable to Stargardt’s, an inherited form of macular degeneration that affects the young. Washington’s research question is, “Can we arrest the accumulation of lipofuscin” by modifying vitamin A and replacing “dietary vitamin A with our own form.” He is pleased with the progress, saying, “We’re moving pretty fast with this vitamin A.” And, Washington is delving into use of chlorophyll, or a derivative (in eyedrop or pill form), to improve night vision. His research in this area is fast approaching clinical stages. To that end, as part of preparation for requesting FDA approval for research on humans, he made his first foray into the long tradition of scientific self-experimentation. In research, which human goes first? Usually the researcher. The day of his Bardian interview, Washington injected himself with chlorophyll and later used electroretinography to determine if his eye’s response to light had improved. Although Washington’s self-research did not constitute scientific bungee jumping—there’s no indication that introducing chlorophyll into the bloodstream is dangerous—the Bardian checked in with him the following day. His report: “I am still going over the data, but preliminary results are promising and warrant further testing.” Washington’s lab has existed for approximately three years—a brief time in research—but he has already established his projects, recruited research associates, raised money— through the U.S. Department of Defense (night vision) and private funders (such as Jaharis, who made billions in pharmaceuticals)—and is forging collaborations with physicians who will monitor patients who participate in research. Through it all, Washington maintains a sense of his professional origins and scientific genealogy. He returns to Annandale to speak with Bard undergraduates and offer counsel regarding graduate school. And, as a Bard undergraduate and in subsequent settings, he has spent time in chemical stockrooms, fascinated, he says, “by the bottles, names, colors, labels—old and new. You know all the sacrifice by scientists, the molecules mixed together to form medicines. The history is there in front of you.” Washington is taking his place in that genealogy. He is peering into light, oxygen, and the eye. To see what he can see. —René Houtrides MFA ’97

HIGH-QUALITY TEACHERS FOR HIGH-NEEDS SCHOOLS Bard’s MAT Program, led by Ric Campbell, Lands Grant for Teacher Training in California

The nation is taking notice. Just a few months after President Barack Obama, in an address to the NAACP, cited Bard High School Early College as a shining example of educational reform, Bard was awarded an $8.1 million Teacher Quality Partnership grant from the U.S. Department of Education. The grant—one of only 28 bestowed, from a total of 172 applications—supports the newly established Bard College Rural Teacher Residency Program, a partnership developed through Bard’s Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) Program that will recreate MAT’s New York program in the Central Valley region of California. The teacher residency program, which begins on June 10, is based in Delano, California, at Paramount Bard Academy (PBA), a new charter public school designed and administered by the MAT Program. The school currently enrolls 180 children in grades 6 and 9, and will eventually serve 1,300 students in grades K through 12. The residency program will allow MAT students to begin their apprenticeship at PBA and then continue in rural schools, many of which serve communities with families living below the poverty line, for the second half of the academic year. The student residents will receive an annual living stipend and tuition assistance to earn both a master of arts in teaching degree from Bard College and the certification to teach in California secondary schools. The new program seeks participants who have completed an undergraduate degree in the field that they will be teaching, with academic records, cover letters, and recommendations that indicate a high degree of accomplishment, commitment, and passion for their field. But that is merely the starting point, says Ric Campbell, director of the MAT Program and dean of teacher education at Bard. “We are looking for candidates who demonstrate less easily measured capacities,” he says. “For instance, an enthusiasm for learning, the ability to empathize, a belief that education is a critical pathway to thoughtful citizenship, and a respect for school as a formative environment that builds both knowledge and the aptitude for reflection. In addition to covering living expenses and tuition for the graduate student residents, the grant money—to be phased in over five years—will provide for training and continued professional development for teachers who mentor the MAT students during their one-year residencies. “Virtually all the teachers at Paramount Bard Academy will be engaged in workshops and course work that advance their teaching and knowledge in their respective academic fields,” says Campbell. “What is more significant—because it is more broadly influential—is that all the teachers from other schools in the region who work as mentors will receive the same opportunities for continued study and professional advancement. This means that the Bard MAT Program and Paramount Bard Academy will be a center for educational improvement, and that a large cadre of teachers, serv-

ing thousands of students throughout the region, will be part of a community with unique commitments to public schooling and forms of support that have been previously unavailable.” The grant will also ensure that MAT graduates enjoy ongoing support in their first years of teaching; that the best possible students are recruited for the residency program; and that data is collected and analyzed as part of a continuing process of program evaluation. “We will build the evaluation process as a design-based research model, so that ongoing analysis allows us to revise what we are doing from year to year based on the data,” says Campbell. “We want to move outside the standard measures of student achievement as indicated by state tests, and include performance assessments that allow us to evaluate other forms of learning.” The goal, he adds, is to create a model of classroom teaching and learning that will consistently enable the Central Valley students, many of whom speak English as a second language, to graduate from high school and attend and complete college. While the federal grant will get the Bard College Rural Teacher Residency Program up and running, the project would not be possible without the cooperation and generosity of many partners. In particular, it has been made a reality by the support of the Resnick Foundation and Paramount Agricultural Companies (PAC). Stewart Resnick, a Bard College trustee, and his wife, Lynda, the owners of PAC, along with Bill Phillimore, the executive vice president of PAC’s Paramount Farming Company, have been investing in educational reform through various incentives for the past decade; the new residency program is an outgrowth of their previous efforts. Other agencies and organizations taking part in this bold experiment are the Institute for Writing and Thinking at Bard College, California Teacher Recruitment Program at Tulare County Office of Education, and 25 high-needs rural California Local Educational Agencies, representing 86 schools. “This is the right challenge for any teacher education program—to educate teachers in the real context of a high-needs school and to put teacher education faculty into the daily mix of public classroom issues,” says Campbell. The model—which he compares to a medical residency program—has the potential to pose a serious challenge and create a viable alternative to the institutionalized culture of education programs, which typically holds younger students to a lower degree of intellectual capability and seldom demands that teachers have anything more than a modicum of basic education in the subjects they teach. “If all schools of education used this model, and brought regular academic faculty into the mix, we would have centers for teacher training and educational renewal that would turn over the entire education system within 10 to 20 years,” says Campbell. “After more than a hundred years of very little substantive change, that is not a bad timeline.”

“The Very Spirit of Dance” Dancing Down the Decades with Aileen Passloff In retrospect, perhaps it was all predestined. “The first dream I had as a child was about being in a theater,” says Aileen Passloff. “I had never been in a theater before, but I could hear the orchestra warming up . . . I always knew I was going to be a dancer.” Since then, Passloff, who has taught at Bard since 1969 and is the College’s L. May Hawver and Wallace Benjamin Flint Professor of Dance, has enjoyed a remarkable career on stage, in the studio, and in the classroom. She has choreographed hundreds of dances, performed for Gypsies in dark cafés and for overflow crowds in Manhattan theaters, and moved purposefully through space alongside many of the greatest dance artists of the age, including such peers as Paul Taylor, Trisha Brown, and James Waring from the glory days of the Judson Dance Theater. 14

“It was a time of looking at things freshly; it was heaven on wheels,” she says of those days at the Judson Memorial Church in Greenwich Village, which offered sanctuary to the avant-garde artists of the early 1960s. Among those artists were some who were breaking with the modern dance tradition by addressing the differences between ordinary life and theater, and questioning whether those differences needed to be there. At the Judson Dance Theater, Passloff recalls, “we were exploring the boundaries between the audience and the performer,” asking questions such as “Why can’t round people, tall people, short people be dancers?” and “Why do we have to put on makeup?” and “Where is the theater—is it in a storefront, or on the street, or in vestibules and lobbies, or even in your lap?”

Passloff and her fellow artists ate, slept, and showered at the church, fixed the chairs and sewed the costumes, and avidly supported one another in every way. “We were all part of a community,” says Passloff. “Nobody had any money, everybody just did what had to be done. None of us passed a garbage can without looking into it to see if there was something that could be made into a costume.” Hard-pressed as they were, the works they made together have acquired a luminous patina over the passing years, and their influence has been deeply felt not only in dance, but in all of the arts. On May 1 and 2, the Bard Dance Program will sponsor a salute to Aileen Passloff and her fellow pioneers of the Judson Dance Theater with concerts in Theater Two of the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts. The event, which will explore the connection of this seminal group of postmodern artists to one another and, equally important, to the next generation of dancers, will be repeated on June 4 at the Judson Memorial Church. In between those concerts, Passloff will receive the Bardian Award, presented annually at the President’s Dinner to a member of the Bard community who has long served the College with distinction. Passloff came to Annandale straight from a directing job at the Berkshire Theatre Festival, and she was immediately smitten. “The reason I’ve stayed at Bard is that wonderful diversity of kids—they’re bright, they’re funny, they’re cheeky,” she says. “And I’m grateful to have been part of their learning process.” For Passloff, teaching is as “mysterious and challenging as choreography. I try to get out of their way—I try to make a place where they can take chances, where they can feel free to grow into whoever they are, where they can teach themselves.” One measure of her success is the extraordinary number of her students who have not only gone on to distinguished professional careers, but also “given back” creative energy to programs and projects in their local communities—students such as Marya Warshaw ’73, Joanna Haigood ’79, Arthur Aviles ’87, Dušan Týnek ’97, Victoria Jacobs ’06, and scores of others. “Aileen Passloff took me from a very superficial understanding of dance to an understanding of its deeper meanings,” says Lisa Gross ’80, who earned her B.A. in choreography and then danced professionally with Passloff’s company in New York. “To this day I don’t know how she did this, but she taught me the creative process—how to dig deep, how to find movement that was organic and meaningful. She taught me what it is to be an artist. She was that person who changed my life.” On a Sunday afternoon in January, I have the opportunity to see Passloff the teacher in action, putting Arthur Aviles, her student and friend of long standing, through rigorous paces on the floor of her studio apartment on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Rehearsing a dance set to Erik Satie’s Gymnopédies that Passloff choreographed many years ago, Aviles crouches, rises,

and advances with arms outstretched, his shaved head pearling with beads of sweat. “There ought to be a feeling of release when your hands touch—yes! It’s there,” Passloff cajoles the dancer, as both expel breath. “Oh, that’s nifty-nifty-eighteen-fifty—superswell!” But Aviles’s moment of triumph is short-lived. “Still lumpy, you know?” says the teacher, and the dancer sighs, “Yeah, I hear ya.” He prepares to do it yet again as Luna, Passloff’s prima Chihuahua, rushes at him, yipping to join the dance. Following the rehearsal, Passloff displays items from her collection of “old things that are beautifully made”—including antique shawls and other mementos from her beloved Spain, where she studied flamenco with the legendary teachers Mercedes and Albano, and to which she returns twice a year. She tells of her initial exposure to modern dance as a student at Bennington College —“I thought it was the ugliest thing I’d ever seen, but I was lucky [to be at Bennington]—it really rocked my boat.” As she talks, she moves continually in her chair, swaying from side to side, raising and dropping a shoulder, wiggling around in her seat. Without a trace of self-consciousness, she seems to embody, as a reviewer for New York magazine once put it, “the very spirit of dance.” At the Bard and Judson events, a wide-ranging selection of Passloff dances will be featured, including a duet for two women that she choreographed to a “beautiful Chopin nocturne,” and “Paseo,” a dance she set to music by Villa-Lobos. The surprise, however, will be a dance by Toby Armour, “To Be Continued,” to be performed by the event’s honoree. “When was the last time I danced? A very long time ago,” laughs Passloff. “But I love that title—‘To Be Continued.’” —Mikhail Horowitz

Aileen Passloff teaches a dance class this spring in the Resnick Studio at the Fisher Center.

THE CLIMATE, AFTER COPENHAGEN By Eban Goodstein At an extraordinary confluence in human history, I was in Copenhagen, at COP15 [the 15th United Nations Climate Change Conference]. Amid gray skies, wet snow, bureaucratic chaos, street protests, and warm Danish hospitality, delegates and observers shared an understanding: The outcome of these meetings would profoundly impact every human being who would ever walk the face of the planet from now until the end of time. Each of us knew that we had only a few years to initiate sharp pollution cuts, before the window for climate stabilization shut on our future, forever. Early on, the heavy cloud of failure hung over COP15. The tired conference poster sessions, booth displays, and trade shows carried little interest. The certain outcome of these meetings would be—another meeting. No matter how strong the final agreement that emerged, COP15 would not be enough. Indeed, California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s main pledge to the conference, as he pushed for subnational, California-style action, reprised his Terminator catchphrase: “I’ll be back.”   16

Eban Goodstein is director of the Bard Center for Environmental Policy. A version of this article first appeared on Triple-Pundit.org.

As it turned out, progress was made in Copenhagen. The negotiators built a new framework. The Copenhagen “deal” was really a deal between the United States, China, and Brazil, with the Europeans signing on. Copenhagen began to supplant the UNFCC [United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change]—with its developing/developed country dichotomy, its demand for 100 percent international consensus, and its unrealistic faith in international targets and timetables—with a new structure: a “coalition of the willing” among the big polluting economies. If the coalition works, then over the next few years international agreements can ratchet up a rapid race to the top: an upward spiral of emission reduction commitments and farreaching technology investments. President Barack Obama came to Copenhagen—as did 45,000 other committed global citizens— to endorse and accelerate this critical international process. But the immediate goal for Obama, and for the millions of other U.S. citizens who understand the depth of the climate crisis, has to be an all-out effort to gain Senate passage, this year, of as strong a climate bill as politically possible. The Danes have shown the world what a few decades of sensible laws can do. My Copenhagen host family, in their comfortable suburban townhouse, enjoys the 21st-century Good Life. This includes not only the family car, Internet, cell connections, shiny appliances of all sorts, and the Christmas holiday spent at a country home, but also universal health care, a year’s paid maternity leave, six weeks of paid vacation, great public transportation, and other benefits and services for working people that have been driven outside the imagination of the American dream. The amazing news: this Danish family generates half the carbon footprint of a typical U.S. household. The foundation of today’s Danish economy was a political decision made three decades ago. Following the energy crises of the 1970s, Denmark passed a set of laws that dramatically decreased the country’s dependence on fossil fuels. High taxes on oil created a super-efficient, technologically sophisticated energy system, while government support nurtured a worldclass wind power industry. In recent years, Danish industry has produced close to half of the turbines built globally. The Danes pursued a green jobs strategy long before it was cool, and the result has been a prosperous, low-carbon economic system, well down the road to sustainability. The challenge, of course, is that as Danes, and Americans, and Chinese, we have four decades to reduce our global footprint not by half, but by 80 percent. The international process and the subnational processes are, in fact, quite far along. The critical missing piece undermining progress at all levels is the absence of national legislation in the United States—a set of laws supporting the U.S. clean energy revolution that can transform our country and the world.

We are in the final hours of a two-decade struggle to pass U.S. legislation. Last fall, the House did pass H.R. 2454, the Waxman-Markey bill, which would commit the United States to 80 percent reductions by 2050. And in the Senate, at least three prominent Republicans are supporting action, most notably, Senator Lindsay Graham from South Carolina. But some in the media are claiming that the Senate is too exhausted by the health-care struggle to follow up and pass its own version of the bill. At the same time, support for action to cap carbon is likely to be weaker after the midterm elections. Should the Senate fail to act now, then for the next few years there will be no final last chance to set the country on a clean energy course. And the climate will not wait on our denial. What can be done? Double and triple our efforts to engage with the U.S. Senate, and seek solutions leadership. At the Bard Center for Environmental Policy (CEP), we are organizing a series of statewide conference calls connecting campus to congress. Our project involves creating conversations between top climate and energy staff from the U.S. Senate, and student and faculty audiences across the country. In Michigan, for example, staff from the offices of Senators Levin and Stabenow were on the line in mid-February, talking to students from Michigan State, the University of Michigan, Albion College, Wayne State, Oakland Community College, many other colleges, and high schools. We have calls set up for later in the spring with senate staffers from Alaska, Indiana, and Florida, and we’re working to organize similar events in dozens of states, engaging hundreds of students, faculty, and staff directly with U.S. Senate offices. Our goal is to focus the senators on their profound moral responsibility to life on earth, and to hold them accountable as stewards of the future. Graduate students at the Bard Center for Environmental Policy are doing the organizing work for those calls, including outreach, publicity, and management of the actual call. To learn more, or to help a call in your state, e-mail climate@bard.edu, or call me at 845-758-7067. Working with Bard CEP, you can help dozens of institutions and hundreds of students in your state get involved with D.C. senate offices in a direct, critical dialogue about the future. In Copenhagen, after Schwarzenegger finished his press conference at the Bella Center, a Danish journalist turned to me and declared: “We—all of us—have to be the Climanators.” The COP15 meeting ended, inevitably, in heartbreaking disappointment. The final package was not close to what science and justice demand. And I am seeing now a strange relevance in the decades of Hollywood action films I have watched—as if in our lives, we have suddenly become protagonists in one final great battle for the earth. After Copenhagen, this year and beyond, we face difficult odds. We’re on a mission. But we won’t be beaten. We’ll be back.

PHOTOGRAPHERS WHO FLY Walead Beshty ’99 and Daniel Gordon ’04 Only six artists were chosen for the New Photography 2009 exhibition at New York City’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). The prestigious annual event, first presented in 1985, shows the work of photographers who “expand the conventional definitions” of the art form. Of this season’s selected artists, two—Walead Beshty and Daniel Gordon—are Bard alumni, who also went on to receive M.F.A degrees from the Yale University School of Art.

Beshty’s four photographs at MoMA are nonfigurative explorations of color. They were created without a camera, by repeatedly exposing color photographic paper to cyan, magenta, and yellow light. The resulting works, which consist of candycolored strips and slashes, realize Beshty’s interest in the “tension between the material and the image.” He says, of the MoMA photographs, “Those works are based on what is already ingrained within the material and the apparatus.”

Although the casual viewer might consider the photographs to be abstract, Beshty would demur. Because the prints acknowledge the material as “a starting point,” Beshty considers them to be “more concrete” than traditional photographic work. “Pictorial photographs are abstract,” says Beshty, noting that most photographs adhere to a “perspectival model” generated during the Renaissance. Beshty used a “working blind” process to create the MoMA prints. The work took place in the darkroom without interference on his part. The outcome was determined by chance operations and Beshty’s willingness to fly blind within the capabilities of the photographic material. It was essentially a leap into, as Beshty says, “the aesthetic unconscious of the material.” About the MoMA series, Beshty says, “There is no possibility for a hierarchy of taste here. There is no possibility for composition. I can’t [for example] put a blue square in the middle. It’s more like a game. A game is not important because of the outcome. The focus is on the parameters.” The impetus behind Beshty’s explorations into excising typical artistic deliberations may lie in his comment, “I think intuitive choices are conventional choices. I’m not interested in those kinds of choices.” Born in London, Beshty now lives and works in Los Angeles. He has taught at numerous colleges and universities, including Bard’s Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts, and is currently associate professor at Art Center College of Design’s Graduate Art Program in Pasadena. In addition, he is a writer whose work has appeared in ArtForum, Aperture, ArtReview, Art on Paper, and Parkett, among other publications. Gordon, the other Bardian in the MoMA exhibition, is a native of San Francisco; he now lives in Brooklyn. His four MoMA photographs are also the result of an unusual process. Gordon harvests images from the Internet, turning them into life-size paper sculptures that he constructs, dismantles, and refashions until he is satisfied with the three-dimensional product. He then photographs the sculptures, using a largeformat camera. The seeds of this process are clear to Gordon. His father, a surgeon, kept a light table in the family home. As a boy, Gordon was drawn, in curiosity rather than fear, to the light table and its surgical slides (such as limbs slit to reveal the connective tissue, blood vessels, and muscles within). Gordon’s MoMA photographs harken back to the impact of those medical images. In discussing the MoMA series, he cites Doctor Frankenstein and the notion of assembling jumbles of flesh and bringing them to life. Nude Portrait, in particular, combines a mature temperament and a child’s memory. The figure in this photograph

resembles a postmodernist doll wherein collage functions as a visual counterpart to deconstructionism and recalls a younger mind’s processing of adult images. Red-Headed Woman is a conglomerate of feminine hair and a face that invites reference to Picasso’s multiangled muses. A disembodied hand touches the figure’s hairy chest, further interrupting the image. In Rainbow Portrait, one of the eyes is blood-rimmed from injury or illness, alluding to the medical world. And the figure in Reclining Nude is composed of mummy-like paper bandages. The images can be disturbing, and Gordon, who reads unease as a signpost that he has entered rich artistic territory, does not shy from that disquiet. “When I started making these pictures, it made me uncomfortable, which is why I continued doing it,” he says. “When I get slightly uncomfortable and confused, I know I’m in the right spot”—a place where he mines his fascination with opposites: humor and terror, innocence and corruption, misogyny and romance, fragmentation and unity, beauty and the grotesque. Gordon’s work revels in those conflicts. A photo of his studio—a space littered with dissonant images—shows Gordon’s ability to frolic in what he refers to as “the wildness” of the Internet. Gordon was interested in combining liberal arts and photography from the time of his arrival at Bard. He did take one year off, during which he returned to California to complete a project begun in Annandale. That project, a portion of which was included in his Moderation, consists of photos of Gordon “flying.” The images—a number of them contained in Flying Pictures (powerHouse Books, 2009)—document Gordon’s playful defiance of gravity, during which he “flies” for a tiny amount of time, when viewed at a certain angle; the camera doesn’t record the inevitable falls. For now, Gordon is engaged in a different kind of flying. He continues delving into combining Internet images. “I can create whatever subject matter I want with this process. I’m definitely still excited. . . . And in terms of appropriating things from the Internet, I don’t have a problem with that.” The appropriation is part and parcel of the audacity of his work. Audacity is evident in the work of Gordon and Beshty. They stand out not only as individuals who “blur the lines between photography and other artistic disciplines”—to use MoMA’s description—but also as photographers whose different subject matter, process selection, and working methods reflect well on the creative ambience of Bard’s undergraduate Photography Program. That ambience is carefully nurtured. As Stephen Shore, director of the program and Susan Weber Professor in the Arts, notes, “We don’t want to produce people in exactly the same mold. It’s one of the things we pay attention to in the program. The result is what you see in the MoMA show.” —René Houtrides MFA ’97

page 18 No Title (2003) from Flying Pictures by Daniel Gordon above Production Stills, by Walead Beshty (installation view, Thomas Dane, London, UK) facing page Popular Mechanics, by Walead Beshty (installation view, Wallspace, New York)

above Nude Portrait (2008), by Daniel Gordon facing page Red Headed Woman (2008), by Daniel Gordon

ONANDOFFCAMPUS PARTNERSHIPS The Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, New York, has joined forces with Bard to provide additional instruction in environmental science and ecology at the undergraduate and graduate levels; research and internship opportunities for students at the Cary laboratories; and access to the Institute’s databases and facilities for Bard faculty. The collaboration began last year with lectures by Institute scientists and will continue with new courses in areas such as conservation biology, disease ecology, environmental chemistry, wetland ecology, and urban conservation ecology. Beginning this fall, the Bard Center for Environmental Policy, in cooperation with the Cary Institute, will offer a master of science degree in climate science and policy, in addition to its existing master’s degree in environmental policy. The mission of the new two-year program, which will provide rigorous training in both climate science and policy, is to help train the workforce critical to meeting the increasing challenges of climate change. The program focus is on the interactions between climate change, ecosystems, and agriculture—an expertise that addresses the need for policy makers in the areas of offset markets; biofuels; ecosystem services; forest and soil sequestration; and crop, livestock, and forest management, among others. The Bard College Conservatory of Music will offer a two-year master’s degree program in conducting, beginning this fall. The graduate curriculum has been designed by Harold Farberman, founder and artistic director of the Conductors Institute at Bard; James Bagwell, director of Bard’s undergraduate Music Program; and President Leon Botstein. The program, which will accept approximately 12 students per year in order to insure individual attention, has two tracks—orchestral conducting and choral conducting—and features instruction in conducting, music history, voice and diction lessons for choral conductors, instrument lessons for orchestral conductors, foreign language study, ear training, and composition. The Conductors Institute continues as a summer program offering two- and four-week sessions on topics such as visual score study and baton placement, and conducting basics for composers. The Conservatory also announced the establishment of the Hungarian Visiting Fellowship for 2010–11, thanks to the support of an anonymous donor. Preference will be given to junior faculty or postgraduate students who are associated with music institutions in Hungary. The Fellowship covers the costs of round-trip airfare to Bard and a stipend. Details can be found at the Conservatory website.

advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq and adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, on Israel’s economic miracle; Archie Brown, emeritus professor of politics at Oxford University, on the rise and fall of communism; Stephen Roach, chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia, on the opportunities and challenges for a new globalization; Peter G. Peterson, cofounder of the Blackstone Group, a private investment firm, and former chairman and CEO of Lehman Brothers, on “The Education of an American Dreamer”; Nicholas Thompson, editor at Wired and author of The Hawk and the Dove: Paul Nitze, George Kennan, and the History of the Cold War; and Matthew Alexander, Open Society Institute fellow and former U.S. Air Force interrogator in Iraq, and Brigadier General Patrick Finnegan, dean of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, on interrogation tactics. The lectures, held in New York City, are free and open to the public; for details, visit www.bard.edu/bgia.

KUDOS Taliesin Gilkes-Bower is one of 40 college seniors nationwide to be awarded a $25,000 Thomas J. Watson Fellowship for a year of independent travel and exploration outside the United States. A history major from Seattle, he has studied new media and eschatology at Bard, with a focus on digital networks and the overlap between physical and digital space. For his 2010–11 Watson project, Gilkes-Bower plans to travel to Jamaica, South Africa, Ghana, Mexico, and possibly Brazil to study the music being created by marginalized young people on inexpensive computers and to share his own music through collaborative performances and studio production. In addition to his studies at Bard, Gilkes-Bower, who hopes to pursue an advanced degree in theoretical architecture upon completion of his Watson project, is a DJ and manages a record label in New York named Dutty Artz. Elysia Petras ’10 and Chelsea Whealdon ’11 won a Davis Projects for Peace award for a three-part effort to increase access to education in Chacraseca, a rural village in western Nicaragua. In an extended visit this summer, Petras and Whealdon will provide school supplies and

The Bard Globalization and International Affairs Program’s James Chace Speaker Series this spring features experts on such timely topics as North Korea, terrorist interrogation, and the economies of Israel and Asia, as well as revealing looks back at the rise and fall of communism and the Cold War. Guest speakers include New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, on turning oppression into opportunity for women worldwide; B. R. Myers, author of The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves and Why It Matters; Dan Senor, one-time senior

Eban Goodstein, director of the Bard Center for Environmental Policy, prepares for dogsledding in Iqaluit, Nunavit, site of a February meeting of G7 finance ministers. Goodstein was in the Baffin Island community to issue a report he had coauthored on the cost to the United States of melting Arctic sea ice, which he estimates will be, at minimum, $2.4 trillion by 2050.

Books by Bardians Beyond Counter-Insurgency: Breaking the Impasse in Northeast India edited by Sanjib Baruah, professor of political studies

oxford university press

Decades of conflict in Northeast India come under the scrutiny of contributors from the social sciences, journalism, and other fields. The authors argue that only establishing the rule of law can break the cycle of violence.

Lauren Dorsey-Spitz ’13

Free Cell

by Anselm Berrigan, writing faculty, Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts

assist with Internet access, and will produce a resource book after visiting neighboring villages with Chacrasecan associates to discuss regional solutions to problems in educational access. The two will also discuss with the community ideas for the future that would use Bard’s institutional resources. Petras, of Newburyport, Massachusetts, majored in Spanish and Latin American and Iberian studies. Whealdon, whose hometown is Bainbridge Island, Washington, is majoring in human rights. The Nicaragua Exchange, a Trustee Leader Scholar project at Bard, has a longstanding relationship with Chacraseca, in which both students, who are fluent in Spanish, have participated for several years. The Davis Projects for Peace program supports motivated youth in creating and implementing ideas for building peace throughout the world; it annually awards $10,000 each to 100 projects.

city lights

Soprano Mary Bonhag, a student in the Graduate Vocal Arts Program; Chi-Hui Yen, a pianist from Taiwan; and Tamás Palfalvi, a trumpeter from Hungary, are the 2009 winners of The Bard College Conservatory of Music’s fifth annual Concerto Competition. Flutist Adrienn Kantor, also from Hungary and a Bitó Scholar, was named alternate. The three winners, who were selected from a field of more than 20 musicians in the Conservatory and Vocal Arts programs, will perform as soloists with the American Symphony Orchestra during its 2010–11 season.

No Such Thing as Silence: John Cage’s 4’33”

Lauren Dorsey-Spitz ’13, a striker who led the women’s soccer team in goals, assists, and points, was named Eastern College Athletic Conference Division III Metro Rookie of the Year and First Team AllStar. Dorsey-Spitz, who also earned Skyline Conference Rookie of the Year honors, was joined on the ECAC First Team by Kim Larie ’12, a sophomore defender and Skyline Player of the Year. Cosie Andujar ’13 was named to the ECAC Second Team All-Stars. The men’s soccer team placed two players—Erik Badger ’10 and Jacob Hartog ’12—on the ECAC Division III Metro Men’s Second Team All-Stars. . . . In basketball, point guard Justin White ’10, a sociology major from New York City, broke all-time Raptor records for assists, three-point goals, and free throws in his final season, and became only the second Bard basketball player to score 1,500 points, finishing with 1,775, just 10 shy of the career mark set by his coach, Adam Turner ’06. White, a peer counselor and member of the Senior Committee, also owns Bard’s singlegame scoring record with 46 points and was named to the First Team All-Skyline Conference for the second year in a row. The team earned conference sportsmanship honors.

“Should I/ invent an identity and/ abuse its privileges?” This and other questions are printed in verbal patterns in this “spiritual autobiography” and exploration of form.

A Priest’s Guide for the Great Festival: Aghorasiva’s Mahotsavavidhi

translated, with introduction and notes, by Richard H. Davis, professor of religion

oxford university press Davis’s examination of a central South Indian temple festival provides the first English translation of a 12th-century Sanskrit work about the practices a priest performs in the nine-day Hindu ritual.

by Kyle Gann, associate professor of music

yale university press

Gann’s meticulous revisiting of this famous 1952 “silent” work, which is full of accidental sounds, examines influences on Cage from medieval to modern, and the meanings of music, performance, and composition.

Ghosts of Breath

by Howard Good ’73

bedouin books

These prose poems are vignettes into a daily life that includes love, hilarity, insanity, and philosophical insight.

Spanish America and British Romanticism, 1777–1826: Rewriting Conquest

by Rebecca Cole Heinowitz, assistant professor of literature

edinburgh university press

Through critical reconsiderations of Romantic texts, Heinowitz explores the untold story of Britain’s obsession with, and ruling strategies in, Spanish America.

Tombeau of Ibn Arabi and White Traverses

by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Charlotte Mandell ’90

fordham university press

Sufi mystic poet Ibn Arabi and Dante are the inspirations for the Tombeau, which are prose poems to the idealized feminine. White Traverses constitutes a detailed memoir of growing up in Tunisia.

Helen Epstein, AIDS expert

Stuart Findlay, aquatic ecologist

Lynne Tillman, novelist

Curator, critic, performer, and activist Lucy R. Lippard received the Center for Curatorial Studies’ 2010 Award for Curatorial Excellence at an April 7 gala at Gotham Hall in New York City. British artist Liam Gillick and gallery owner Paula Cooper presented the award to Lippard, who has authored 20 books on contemporary art, feminism, and cultural criticism, and curated more than 50 exhibitions in the United States, Europe, and Latin America. She has also worked with artists’ groups such as Ad Hoc Women Artists, Art Workers’ Coalition, and Artists Meeting for Cultural Change, and written art criticism for Art in America and the Village Voice, among other publications. CCS founding chairman Marieluise Hessel and Roland J. Augustine, treasurer of the Bard College Board of Trustees, cochaired the event.

to finish his or her degree at Bard. The Senior Class Committee, led by president Michael Burgevin and fund-raising chair Andrew Simon, held a variety of events, including a phonathon, student-faculty basketball game, and wine-tasting party, to raise the money necessary for endowing a scholarship. Simon said his classmates “decided to create this scholarship because we have friends who, because of the recent financial crisis, will not be graduating with us in May. We believe that members of the Bard community should help one another in times of need, and we consider our gift to be one way of helping future generations of Bard students.” Those who want to help the class achieve its goal of continuing the scholarship for many years to come can make a donation online at www.annandaleonline.org/giving.

Recipients of the Bard Graduate Center’s 2010 Iris Foundation Awards, which honor patrons and scholars who have made outstanding contributions to the study and appreciation of the decorative arts, were Patricia Phelps de Cisneros (patron), founding chairman of the Fundación Cisneros, an organization that supports innovative educational and cultural programs in Latin America; Neil Harris (lifetime scholar), Preston and Sterling Morton Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Chicago, whose areas of expertise include the history of museums and libraries and the social history of art and design; and John Styles (mid-career scholar), research professor in history at the University of Hertfordshire, who has published books on British design, fashion, and decorative arts.

After a rigorous interview process, two Bard seniors, David Landau and Vladimir Pick, have been offered jobs in the career development program of Morningstar, Inc. Only 39 seniors across the country were offered these competitive positions, which start in July in Chicago. Landau, a literature and creative writing major, and Pick, a B.A. candidate in computer science and a B.S. candidate in economics and finance, met with staff of Morningstar last fall, after the Career Development Office worked with the investment research company to sponsor its first on-campus recruiting visit.

James D. Wolfensohn will be honored at the Bard Music Festival gala on April 21 at New York’s Central Park Boathouse. Wolfensohn, an investment banker who was president of the World Bank until he stepped down in 2005, has served on the boards of numerous policy and cultural institutions, including Carnegie Hall, where he is chairman emeritus; Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts; and Rockefeller Foundation. The Australia native is, himself, a musician who has studied with cellist Jacqueline du Pré and a former Olympian who competed in the 1956 Melbourne Games as a member of the Australian fencing team. He will receive the Charles Flint Kellogg Award in Arts and Letters, which is given in recognition of significant contributions to the American artistic or literary heritage. The Class of 2010 raised $25,000 as a Senior Class Gift to establish an endowed scholarship, to be awarded to an incoming senior who faces unexpected financial difficulties and who might otherwise not be able 26

Bard was named one of the hottest 15 colleges of the decade by the Daily Beast, an online news, blog, and information website edited by Tina Brown. According to the December 13 feature, Bard “has created a niche of cool and intellectually curious kids who can still get into the city with some regularity. . . . Throw in a bucolic campus and a faculty of intellectual leaders, and you’ve got a school whose admit rate has dropped by almost half” in the last decade.

WELCOME Helen Epstein, an expert on the AIDS epidemic in Africa, and Stuart Findlay, an aquatic ecologist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, are teaching courses this spring as visiting faculty. Epstein is the author of The Invisible Cure: Africa, the West, and the Fight Against AIDS, about which the New York Times said: “As a scientist morphed into a journalist, Dr. Epstein combines an understanding of the biology of AIDS with a coolly impartial view of the political and social landscape of Africa. She has now assembled more than a decade’s worth of reporting into

an enlightening and troubling book.” She is teaching “Child Survial,” a course in the Human Rights Program. Findlay, who has conducted research on the Hudson River ecosystem for more than 18 years, teaches a weekly biology seminar that brings national leaders in the field to Bard to speak about current topics in ecology. Jacqueline Stevens, a political theorist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, was on campus in February to give a lecture, “The U.S. Government Is Illegally Deporting U.S. Citizens,” which was sponsored by the Human Rights Project and the Hannah Arendt Center for Ethical and Political Thinking. Stevens’s articles on secret deportation camps and other aspects of this issue have been published in the Nation, San Francisco Chronicle, and Mother Jones, among others. Stephanie Saldaña, a poet and prose writer based in Jerusalem, discussed her new book, The Bread of Angels, a love story and spiritual memoir about a year spent in Syria, in an event sponsored by the John Ashbery Poetry Series in collaboration with the Human Rights Program and the Dean of International Studies. Saldaña, a faculty member of the Honors College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Al-Quds University, a partnership with Bard, also read from recent poems. Other participants in the series included Ben Lerner, whose third collection of poetry, Mean Free Path, will be published this spring, and Paul La Farge, 2005 recipient of the Bard Fiction Prize. . . . German poet, novelist, and publisher Michael Kruger also visited campus in February to read from his poems. In addition to authoring more than a dozen works of poetry and fiction, Kruger is head of the publishing house Carl Hanser Verlag and editor of the literary journal Akzente. Distinguished scholars Bernard Wasserstein, Harriet and Ulrich E. Meyer Professor of Modern European Jewish History at the University of Chicago; Ian Lustick, Bess W. Heyman Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania; and Avishai Margalit, George F. Kennan Professsor at The Institute for Advanced Studies and Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Hebrew University, participated in a threepart lecture series sponsored by the Middle Eastern Studies Program, “Israel/Palestine: War Without End?” Miklós Haraszti, a Hungarian journalist and author who is one of the world’s foremost experts on the state of media freedom, gave a talk and answered questions in an informal session in the President’s Room at Kline Commons on February 19. Haraszti first came to Bard more than 20 years ago as the first dissident intellectual from the Soviet sphere offered a year’s respite at the campus, under a program established in 1988; Norman Manea, Francis Flournoy Professor in European Studies and Culture, was the second. Lynne Tillman read from new work at Weis Cinema on March 1, as part of the Innovative Contemporary Fiction Reading Series. A novelist, short story writer, essayist, and professor at the University of Albany, Tillman has also collaborated with Stephen Shore, Susan Weber Professor in the Arts, on The Velvet Years: Warhol’s Factory 1965–1967, and other publications. Tillman’s fiction includes No Lease on Life, Motion Sickness, and American Genius, a Comedy. . . . Joseph O’Neill, 2009 PEN/Faulkner Award winner, also read as part of the spring series. His novel Netherland was named one of the New York Times’s 10 Best Books of 2008.

The Baseball Talmud: The Definitive Position-by-Position Ranking of Baseball’s Chosen Players by Howard Megdal ’07

collins

Those wondering who were (and are) the best Jewish players in baseball need look no further than this compilation of statistics and anecdotes, which ranks each pro alongside others of the Tribe (not Cleveland) who played the same position.

Anne Frank: The Book, the Life, the Afterlife

by Francine Prose, Distinguished Writer in Residence

harpercollins

Anne Frank’s diary, Prose maintains, is not so much a girl’s adolescent musings as a deliberate work of art that the Jewish teenager feverishly revised and edited while she was in hiding with her family during World War II.

Middlefield and the Settling of the New York Frontier: A Case Study of Development in Central New York, 1790–1865 by Dominick J. Reisen ’89

square circle press

Primary sources drawn from businesses, social groups, and more are key to Reisen’s history of this Otsego County community, which creates a prototype of the central New York small town from the dawn of the republic through the Civil War.

Folk Photography: The American Real-Photo Postcard, 1905–1930

by Luc Sante, visiting professor of writing and photography

yeti

Sante examines the postcard craze that hit rural America in the early 20th century. The cards, featuring photographs by amateurs and professionals alike, documented their time and place and created a medium of communication for the residents of small towns.

The Blue Shoe: A Tale of Thievery, Villainy, Sorcery, and Shoes by Roderick Townley ’65

knopf

Why would a tall stranger, with an unusual accent, ask Grel the cobbler to make only one blue shoe, covered with blue gems? Illustrated by Harry Potter artist Mary GrandPré, the first edition of this novel for young readers is even printed in blue ink.

Bad Students, Not Bad Schools by Robert Weissberg ’65

transaction

As Weissberg’s title suggests, students, not institutions, are responsible for educational woes in the United States; if troublesome pupils were allowed to leave school, eager students would replace them, argues the author, who is professor of political science emeritus at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Mukhles Sowwan, director of the Nanotechnology Research Laboratory at Al-Quds University in East Jerusalem, visited the College in February to talk about science and politics, and the challenges of international collaboration in the Middle East. Biologist Scott Gilbert and climate expert Mark A. Cane are the most recent speakers in Bard’s Distinguished Scientist Lecture Series. Gilbert, Howard A. Schneiderman Professor of Biology at Swarthmore College, visited the campus in March to give a talk, “Ecological Developmental Biology: Developmental Biology Meets the Real World.” The recipient of numerous academic prizes for his writing on and work in developmental genetics, embryology, and the history and philosophy of biology, Gilbert has recently been doing research into how the turtle forms its shell. Cane, a meteorologist who has worked extensively on the impact of El Niño on human activity, is the G. Unger Vetlesen Professor of Earth and Climate Sciences and Professor of Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics at Columbia University, where he holds a joint appointment at the International Research Institute for Climate and Society. His lecture, “Climate in the Currents of History,” will be held in late April.

ON VIEW /ON STAGE Violinist and violist Helena Baillie and Israeli pianist Roman Rabinovich gave a recital at Olin Hall in January that featured works by Vitali, Takemitsu, Schubert, Paganini, and Mozart. The Londonborn Baillie has performed with Pinchas Zukerman, and her New York recital debut was hailed for its “brilliance and poignance.” Rabinovich, the 2008 winner of the Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Master Competition, made his Israel Philharmonic debut at age 10, under the baton of Zubin Mehta, and has been praised for his “impeccable clarity of execution.”

and Herbert J. Kayden Center for Science and Computation. Coco 144 (Robert Gualtieri) recently painted a commissioned mural at The Rockefeller University, an affiliate of the College. The Bard College Conservatory of Music presented a concert of new works and classics of the 20th-century repertoire on March 12 at Olin Hall. Music Alive! was curated by Joan Tower, Asher B. Edelman Professor in the Arts, and Blair McMillen, visiting assistant professor of music. The Bard College Conservatory Orchestra, conducted by Leon Botstein, made its New York City debut at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall on April 10. The concert featured special guest performers Melvin Chen, associate director of the Conservatory, and soprano Dawn Upshaw, artistic director of Bard’s Graduate Vocal Arts Program. The program included Haydn’s Symphony No. 103; Perle’s Piano Concerto No. 1; and Mahler’s Symphony No. 4. The same program was performed April 4 at the Fisher Center as part of the Conservatory Sunday spring series. The concert series, which benefits the Scholarship Fund of The Bard College Conservatory of Music, kicked off with a chamber program featuring Saint-Säens’s Carnival of the Animals, performed by the faculty of the Conservatory’s Preparatory Division; Schubert’s Piano Quintet in A Major; and Beethoven’s String Trio, Op. 9, No. 1. The series concludes with a program of contemporary music performed by the New York City–based So Percussion Ensemble and presented in collaboration with the John Cage Trust at Bard College. Philippe Parreno, an exhibition of works by the eponymous French video artist, opens at the CCS Bard Galleries on May 1 and will run through December 19. Curated by Maria Lind, director of the Center for Curatorial Studies graduate program, the exhibition focuses on

David Greenspan, an Obie Award–winning actor, playwright, and director, appeared in a production of his play The Argument at the Fisher Center on February 22. In its review of the play, which is based on Aristotle’s Poetics and the writings of Greek scholar Gerald F. Else, the New York Times said Greenspan’s voice “dances up and down, incantatory and rhythmic, now rising to a lyric croon, now tumbling to deliver a sly wisecrack.” The Bard Graduate Vocal Arts Program presented world premieres of two one-act operas, commissioned works by composers Missy Mazzoli (Song from the Uproar, based on the journals of explorer Isabelle Eberhardt) and David Little (Vinkensport, or The Finch Opera), and a staging of Ravel’s L’enfant et les sortilege during two weekend programs in February. The performances benefited the program’s scholarship fund. Coco 144, a founding member of United Graffiti Artists, which helped bring New York City street art to the galleries in the early 1970s, was on hand for the February 24 opening of Scientifically Correct: Molecular Structures, Arrows, and Pathways, an exhibition of his recent paintings. Curated by Fernando Ruíz Lorenzo and Tom Wolf, professor of art history at Bard, the exhibition was on view at The Gabrielle H. Reem

Students from the Graduate Vocal Arts Program in Ravel’s L’Enfant et les sortilèges, part of a triple bill of one-act operas presented at the Fisher Center

the former players who have expressed enthusiasm for the program, which will build one-on-one relationships through e-mails, telephone calls, and personal visits.

A scene from Zidane: A XXIst Century Portrait, a documentary on French soccer legend Zinedine Zidane, which is among the works to be presented in CCS Bard’s upcoming exhibition Philippe Parreno.

three later pieces by Parreno: Zidane: A XXIst Century Portrait, a feature-length profile of the World Cup–winning soccer player; the short film The Invisible Boy; and 1968, which looks back at the funeral train of Robert F. Kennedy. A conversation between Parreno and Darius Khondji, his collaborator on The Invisible Boy and 1968, is planned for the opening festivities. Also coming to CCS this summer is At Home—Not at Home: The Martin and Rebecca Eisenberg Collection. The exhibition, which opens at the Hessel Museum of Art on June 26, features major works by artists such as Kai Althoff, Jeremy Deller, David Hammons, Mary Heilmann, and Rirkrit Tiravanija, among others, and represents the first opportunity for the public to view one of New York’s most extraordinary private collections. At Home—Not at Home was curated by Matthew Higgs, director of White Columns in New York and member of the CCS faculty.

ALUMNI/AE More than 300 alumni/ae and parents have agreed to mentor Bardians professionally. Among them are Dumaine Williams ’03, chairperson of the Diversity Committee of the alumni/ae association’s Board of Governors, who organized a panel of alumni/ae mentors as part of the Career Development Office Future Fair held in March. The mentors represented a wide spectrum of professions, from oncologist to teacher to financial consultant to musician. The panel offering their experience and advice to graduating seniors included Michael Maresca ’86, Bradford Reed ’93, Imran Ahmed ’02, Jill Sunderland ’03, Mollie Meikle ’03, K.C. Serota ’04, and Joe Lovoi ’04. Bard basketball coach Adam Turner ’06 is working with former players to start the Raptor Mentor Program, which pairs current team members with alumni who have been in their shoes. The mentors offer support on multiple levels, from the rigors of being a student-athlete at Bard to the graduate school process, career paths, and life after college. “In our own alumni base we have a group of men with a wealth of knowledge to share, including doctors, businessmen, career counselors, lawyers, journalists, and masters and doctoral candidates,” says Turner. “We are going to use that resource to its fullest.” The response from Raptor alumni is encouraging. Price Mason ’91, Isak Mendes ’05, Collin Orcutt ’06, and Bard Trustee Roger N. Scotland ’93 are among

Myra Armstead, professor of history at Bard, spoke to a group of alumni/ae at the Lincoln and New York exhibition at the New-York Historical Society. Reva Sanders ’56, a docent at N-YHS, then led a private tour of the show, which the New York Times called “compellingly informative.” . . . . Also in March, alumnus and Bard parent Martin Schenker ’72 led a behind-the-scenes tour of Bloomberg News’s New York City headquarters to a small group of Bardians. . . . Brooklyn alumni/ae and their kids enjoyed a winter get-together at Bell House, a lounge and performance space in Park Slope. Chris Claremont ’72, legendary X-Men writer, was the keynote speaker at the fifth annual Bard College Comic Book Symposium, held on campus in April. Organizers of the conference were Clare Nolan ’12 and Josh Kopin ’12.

COLLOQUY The Levy Economics Institute of Bard College is holding its 19th annual Hyman P. Minsky Conference on the State of the U.S. and World Economies at the Ford Foundation in New York City. “After the Crisis: Planning a New Financial Structure” focuses on postrecession exit strategies and the new financial architecture. Participants in the April 14–16 conference include noted economists and scholars from around the world, among them Levy scholars James K. Galbraith, Jan Kregel, and L. Randall Wray; the presidents of several Federal Reserve Banks and Fed Board of Governors member Kevin Warsh; New York Times columnists Paul Krugman and Gretchen Morgenson; Nelson Barbosa, Brazil’s secretary of economic policy; and Elizabeth Warren, Leo Gottlieb Professor at Harvard Law School. On June 22 and 23, the Levy will convene an international conference, “Employment Guarantee Policies: Responding to the Current Economic Crisis and Contributing to Long-Term Development,” presented in collaboration with the United Nations Development Programme, Regional Bureau for Latin America and the Caribbean, and Bureau for Development Policy. The Levy Institute is also hosting, for the first time, the Hyman P. Minsky Summer Seminar. The Seminar consists of a summer school session from June 19 to June 26, and an international conference (June 27–29) in which papers and work in progress dealing with Minskyan themes will be presented. For details, see the Levy website at www.levy.org. Bard High School Early College presented the First Annual BHSEC Inter-Borough Philosophy Conference last January at the offices of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, one of the top law firms in New York City. Nine panels, moderated by BHSEC alumni/ae, addressed themes such as logic and intuition, alienation and the human condition, the reality of freedom in the contemporary world, god and existentialism, morality and absolutes, and the hierarchies of pleasure. The event was the culmination of the “Freedom and Human Nature” philosophy seminars held at both BHSEC Manhattan and BHSEC Queens.

Jacob Neusner and his wife, Suzanne, meet with Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican. Neusner, Distinguished Service Professor of the History and Theology of Judaism, presented the pontiff with a copy of his most recent book, The Talmud: What Is it? What Does It Say?

The Institute of Advanced Theology (IAT) is sponsoring a conference, “Visions of the Social Order: How Religions Occur,” over three days in late April. The event, hosted by IAT director Bruce Chilton and Jacob Neusner, Distinguished Service Professor of the History and Theology of Judaism (see story below), will feature panels and presentations that analyze and compare Judaic and Christian systems of the formative age.

“Beyond Silence: Meaning and Memory in the Noise of Haiti’s Present,” a multidisciplinary conference organized by Winter Schneider ’10, drew scholars, artists, and activists from around the world to the College to address such topics as “Haiti in History, the Atlantic, the Archives”; “Self-Representation and Ownership of Practice”; and “Narratives of Representation and Humanitarian Response.” The March 12 conference was designed to “inspire a dialogue between those who are working to push beyond the silences that surround Haiti in the historical records,” says Schneider, who was in Port-au-Prince doing research for her Senior Project in history and human rights when the earthquake struck. “When the space of several seconds witnessed the leveling of almost an entire city, the question of where history is located in the absence of artifact, monument, and archive becomes even more important.” The panels featured speakers from Harvard, Wesleyan, Vanderbilt, Columbia, Duke, and New York Universities, among others. The event, which concluded with a fundraising dinner and performance by the Haitian band Bwa Kayiman, was sponsored by the President’s Office, Human Rights Project, Historical Studies and French Studies Programs, Chinua Achebe Center for African Writers and Artists, Caribbean Students Organization, and Black Students Organization.

The Historical Studies Program presented a panel discussion and traveling exhibition related to “The Great Textbook War,” an audio documentary by journalist Trey Kay about a 1974 battle over school textbooks in Kanawha County, West Virginia. Panelists at the January 29 event included Kay, exhibit creator Stan Bumgardner, and Levy Institute Research Professor Ellen Condliffe Lagemann. The textbook controversy, an early skirmish in the culture wars, pitted supporters of multicultural education against community members who felt that traditional family values were under attack. Professor Jacob Neusner and his wife, Suzanne, were granted an audience with Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican on January 18, one day after the pontiff’s visit to Rome’s main synogogue. Neusner, who holds a named chair in the history and theology of Judaism, said that he and the pope, a longtime academic who taught theology at several German universities, talked about their next books and the current generation of college students. “I asked him how he was progressing with volume two of Jesus of Nazareth,” Neusner said, “and he asked me whether I’m still publishing a book a month. I told him that I adore the students at Bard College, the best I’ve known in 50 years of teaching; he told me that the second volume of Jesus of Nazareth would come out in about six months—and would be the last book he would write.” After the 25-minute session, said Neusner, “I left with a vivid picture of a humble and good-natured man wholly devoted to the service of God. With his bright blue eyes he looks you square in the eye. He is generous in his appreciation of others and does not take for granted the appreciation of others. I leave it to others to speak for the Jewish people in the coming negotiations that will engage us over issues of common concern between Judaism and Catholic Christianity. I cherish the memory of the man I met in Rome.”

Sofia Pia Belenky ’11 (right) and friends try out her spinning swing sculpture, a project that began in the course “Public Art: Provocations and Possibilities,” taught by Ken Landauer (left), assistant professor of studio arts. Students in the class voted on Belenky’s idea, and Jake Magee ’10 (center left) and Jed Wolf ’12 (center right) became part of the construction crew. The swing, located outside the Bertelsmann Campus Center, is the first permanent sculpture on campus designed and built by undergraduate students.

BARDSUMMERSCAPE 2010

JULY 8 – AUGUST 22

The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College presents dance

film festival

New and canonic works by a pioneer of modern dance July 8–11

German expressionism and American film noir Thursdays and Sundays July 15 – August 19

Trisha Brown Dance Company theater

Judgment Day

By Ödön von Horváth Directed by Caitriona McLaughlin This gripping 1937 drama perfectly captures the callous and petty nature of daily life under fascism July 14–24 opera first u.s. stage production

The Distant Sound

Music and libretto by Franz Schreker American Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Leon Botstein Directed by Thaddeus Strassberger First U.S. staging of this masterful drama about a composer and the woman he forsakes for a vision July 30 – August 6

The Best of G. W. Pabst

spiegeltent

Cabaret, Family Fare, SpiegelClub, and more The perfect venue for afternoon family entertainment and rollicking late-night performances, dancing, and intimate dining July 9 – August 22 and

bard music festival twenty-first season

Berg and His World

Two weekends of concerts, panels, and other events bring the musical world of Alban Berg vividly to life August 13–15 and 20–22

chamber opera

The Chocolate Soldier

An operetta by Oscar Straus Conducted by James Bagwell Directed by Will Pomerantz A charming light opera that parodies George Bernard Shaw’s Arms and the Man August 5–15 Special SummerScape discount for Bard alumni/ae: order by phone and save 20% on most Bard SummerScape programs. Offer limited to 2 tickets per buyer and cannot be combined with other discounts. The 2010 SummerScape season is made possible in part through the generous support of the Board of The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at

Bard College, the Board of the Bard Music Festival, and the Friends of the Fisher Center, as well as grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, and the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation.

For tickets and information:

Box Office 845-758-7900 fishercenter.bard.edu

CLASSNOTES

COMMENCEMENT AND ALUMNI/AE WEEKEND May 21, 22, 23 Join Billy Steinberg ’72 (Kellogg Award), Aileen Passloff (Bardian Award), Brandon Grove ’50 (Doctor of Humane Letters) and Margaret Atwood (McCarthy Award) Hang out at the

ANNANDALE ROADHOUSE BERTELSMANN CAMPUS CENTER I Friday night only, 9 p.m. to 1 a.m.

Toast Tewksbury at 50 Years Join the Jazzfest, parade with the graduates, feast on barbecue, be wowed by the fireworks, and dance the night away at Bard’s biggest and best annual party

Details at annandaleonline.org

’09

Rebecca Goldberg moved to Washington, D.C., in August 2009 to complete a policy fellowship at the American Academy of HIV Medicine. She applied for a full-time position at the end of the fellowship, and is thrilled to be working there now as an assistant program manager. She’d love to connect with other Bardians in the D.C. area by e-mail: goldbergrebeccal@gmail.com. Since graduation Safi Harriott has been living in Kingston, Jamaica, teaching dance. She also co-coordinated the Jamaica Dance Umbrella in early March and will work with the Rukumbine dance festival in June. She continues to pursue collaborative performance projects locally and abroad, and explore the intersections between the arts, academics, and social work. Anna Henschel, Brian Dorsam, Veronica Hunsinger-Loe, Nat Kusinitz, and Evan Spigelman all moved to New Orleans after graduation to live together and establish Skin Horse Theater, an ensemble theater company they founded at Bard in 2007. They performed Curiouser: An Historical Inaccuracy in the New Orleans Fringe Festival in November 2009, and returned to Bard in early 2010 to perform it again in the Old Gym. Anna writes of their life in New Orleans: “We’re networking, meeting amazing people, seeing lots of performances of all sorts, and even planning on introducing the 24-Hour Theater Festival—a much-loved Bard tradition—down here sometime in the spring.” For more information (or to get in touch), visit www.skinhorsetheater.org.

’08

Class correspondent Patricia Pforte, patricia.pforte@gmail.com In 2009 Dani Bogenhagen’s photographs were featured online in Visura Magazine’s weekly spotlight. For her first year after graduation, Francesca Carendi worked for Mitchell Madison Group, a business management consulting firm in New York. She then switched tracks to pursue her love of images through the International Center of Photography’s One Year Certificate Program in General Studies in Photography. She lives in Manhattan. John Koten is working on an open source film about the origins of Mozilla Firefox. Details can be found at his website: clickmovement.org. Ashleigh McCord is spending her second postgraduate year doing community service, and has taken a position as a supervisor with AmeriCorps Cape Cod. The program serves the environmental and disaster preparedness needs of the Cape through projects in natural resource management, community education, and volunteer engagement. Since graduating, Mischa Nachtigal has been working in the technology industry (with occasional creative projects on the side when time allows). He worked for the TED Conference in New York and now works for Twitter in San Francisco. Ruth Shannon is a social media account executive at Ruder Finn, an independent public relations company in New York. Her work involves conceptualizing websites and digital applications, and researching behavior in online spaces as diverse as health care, travel, activism, and food. She lives with fellow ’08 alum Jay Gillespie.

Genya Shimkin works for a nonprofit wing of the Baltimore City Health Department, serving the uninsured and underinsured. She is preparing to take the GRE, and is always looking for Bardians with whom to share a bowl of mussels or a bushel of crabs.

’06

Class correspondent Kirsten Dunlaevy, kdunlaevy@gmail.com Doug O’Connor has a piece of short fiction in the Spring 2010 issue of Quarter After Eight.

’05

5th Reunion: May 21–23, 2010 Staff contact: Brad Whitmore, 845-758-7663 or whitmore@bard.edu Caitlin Adkins, Liz Dempsey, Samira Desai, Meghan Dockendorf, Meghan-Michelle German, Penny Hope, and Lily Stockdale are all planning to celebrate their fifth reunion at Bard in May. Emily Richardson and Taun Toay have been heading up the 5th Reunion Committee, and urge all ’05 grads to make the trip.

’04

Lucas Carter, Keen South resident 2000–01, has started teaching airbrush portraiture, based on several elective classes he took while at Bard. If you’re on Canal Street in New York City or in Ballston Spa in upstate New York, keep an eye out for his cart. Additionally, he and Jacob Mitchell formed a sound- and light-based group, Textual Harassment, and play regular shows bimonthly at Dos Caminos in midtown Manhattan. The music is based on cell phone text messaging. Connor Gaudet is the assistant director of New York City Rock Camp, a nonprofit summer music camp in Brooklyn that gives kids ages 9 to 17 an unparalleled opportunity to rock. For more information or to sponsor a camper, visit www.nycrockcamp.org. Amelia Overbay-Day celebrated her geeky, gaming radio debut on the October 18, 2009, show of WoW Radio’s Casually Hardcore. For more information, visit www.wcradio.com. Derek Rodenhausen worked for four years at Random House, where he specialized in licensing book rights to international publishers. In 2009 he left publishing to begin work on a master’s degree in business administration at Columbia Business School. He is engaged to Sarah Mandel ’03, who is working on her doctorate in clinical psychology at Rutgers University.

’03

Last summer Emma Ferguson was awarded a full scholarship by the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese and the Spanish Embassy to attend the University of Salamanca for the month of July. She returned after the program for her fourth year of teaching at Solebury School in New Hope, Pennsylvania. She also continues to teach flamenco dance as an after-school activity at Solebury and at Ballet Arts of Bucks County in Doylestown.

’02

Class correspondent Toni Fortini Josey, toni.josey@gmail.com

In late 2009, Dorothy Albertini MFA ’08’s short story “Winter” won the first annual Nano Prize and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize by the journal Nano Fiction. For the past five years, she’s been working with the Bard Prison Initiative, and for the past two, cocurating a reincarnation of Bard’s Roving Reading series. In 2009, two mixed media works by Carla Aspenberg were featured in the exhibition Borderline at Rush Arts Gallery in New York City. Her work can be seen at www.carlaaspenberg.com. Sara Cinquemani and Michael Marlin ’03 were married on September 19, 2009, in Rhinebeck. The couple purchased their first home in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania, where they’ve lived since 2008. Rayna Matthews completed a master of fine arts degree in performance as public practice at The University of Texas at Austin in May 2009. She wrote her thesis “CampCamp! Performing DIY Camp Aesthetics” after producing and hosting a monthly queer performance event titled “CampCamp!” for three years. Since graduating from The University of Texas at Austin with a master’s degree in journalism in December 2009, Mike Melanson has been a news writer for ReadWriteWeb.com.

’01

Class correspondent Sung Jee Yoo, sujeyo@gmail.com

’00

10th Reunion: May 21–23, 2010 Staff contact: Brad Whitmore, 845-758-7663 or whitmore@bard.edu Coleen Murphy Alexander and Michael Ginsberg have been hard at work on the 10th Reunion Committee, and hope to see a record number of ’00 alumni/ae in Annandale in May. Arlo Haskell lives in Key West, Florida, with Ashley Kamen ’01 and is the media director for Key West Literary Seminar. Arlo and Ashley receive a lot of Bard visitors, most recently Stuart Krimko, who lives in Los Angeles with Brigid McCaffrey and Jane Parrot ’99, and Shawn Vandor ’99, who lives in Portland, Oregon. The three men were in the island city this winter to celebrate publication of their new books by Sand Paper Press. Stuart’s The Sweetness of Herbert, Shawn’s Fire

at the End of the Rainbow, and Arlo’s Joker were all designed by Los Angeles–based David Janik. The gang was together again for a series of readings and batting-cage sessions on the West Coast in February and March 2010.

’98

Patricia Moussatche is an associate fellow at the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution. She is working on membrane progesterone receptors.

’97

Class correspondent Julia Wolk Munemo, juliamunemo@mac.com

’96

Class correspondents Gavin Kleespies, gwkleespies@hotmail.com Christina Amato has been trying to convince the Bardian to print that she “disappeared whilst circumnavigating the globe in a hot air balloon,” but has been “thwarted time and time again.” Brent Armendinger published his second chapbook, Undetectable (Diagram/New Michigan Press, 2009). He won first prize in poetry in the 2009 Chroma International Queer Writing Competition. With help from the Frankenart Mart in San Francisco, his students at Pitzer College in Claremont, California, and the dA Center for the Arts (also in Claremont), he operates the Poem-Booth Project; for information, call 1-877-eat-poem. Tracy Bulkeley and Mark Groner ’97 added Zoe Temperance to the family in late October 2009. Veronica, their first daughter, is very excited, and Tracy and Mark are “tired, but still functioning.” Matthew DeGennaro and Christian Larsen were married in Provincetown in August 2009. Matthew is a postdoctorate student at The Rockefeller University, studying the genetics of mosquito hostseeking behavior. Jeff Erwin and his wife, Katrina, adopted a baby girl, Zorah JensenErwin, who was born on December 22, 2009. Sutton Stokes and his wife, Amy, had a baby boy, Coen Royal Stokes, in September 2009. Sutton and Amy live in Missoula, Montana, where Sutton works as a freelance business writer and journalist. Marta Topferova’s fifth album has been released on the World Village/ Harmonia Mundi label. Recorded in Prague with her New York ensemble, Trova (The Troubadour Tradition) highlights her love of styles such as the Cuban son and Puerto Rican bomba. You can listen to clips on her website: www.martatopferova.com. Katy Wells (Gustafson) and her husband, Frank, had their first child, Owen McDermott Wells, on February 23, 2009.

’95

15th Reunion: May 21–23, 2010 Staff contact: Anne Canzonetti ’84, 845-758-7187 or canzonet@bard.edu The wedding of Sara Cinquemani ’02 and Michael Marlin ’03 in Rhinebeck, New York

Goldie Gider now lives in San Francisco, but is looking forward to returning to Bard in May for her reunion.

Michele is also a writer and creativity coach, and blogs on “The Practice of Creativity” at www.micheleberger.wordpress.com. She would love to connect with other alums through Facebook.

’90

20th Reunion: May 21–23, 2010 Staff contact: Jane Brien ’89, 845-758-7406 or brien@bard.edu

’89

Class correspondent Lisa DeTora, detoral@lafayette.edu

’88

Tena Cohen began teaching Spanish at Brooklyn Technical High School in Fort Greene in the fall of 2009 and is “happy as a clam!”

Fun ’n’ Games, Seaside Heights, New Jersey, 2005, by Lisa Kereszi ’95

’87

Class correspondent David Avallone, ednoon@aol.com

Lisa Kereszi’s third photography book, Fun and Games, has been published by Nazraeli Press. She writes that it’s “titled after the name of a Jersey Shore arcade and the ancient Roman wrestling phrase, ‘It’s all fun and games, until someone loses an eye.’” The book documents her “self-described obsession with what is hidden behind the facades of strip clubs, haunted houses, nightclubs, and other places of fantasy and entertainment.” For more information and to see more work, visit www. lisakereszi.com.

’86

Class correspondent Chris LeGoff, cak64@comcast.net

’85

25th Reunion: May 21–23, 2010 Staff contact: Jane Brien ’89, 845-758-7406 or brien@bard.edu

’92

Class correspondent Andrea J. Stein, stein@bard.edu Since 2008, Chidi Achebe—M.D. (Dartmouth Medical School ’96), M.P.H. (Harvard School of Public Health ’04), and M.B.A. (Yale School of Management ’07)—has been the president and CEO of Harvard Street Health Center, a community health center serving the Boston neighborhoods of Roxbury, Dorchester, and Matapan. He reports that it is a rewarding but exceptionally challenging job. Two mixed-media pieces by Heather Klinkhamer, Mommom and Poppop, were included in Family Album, an exhibition that ran from November 20 to December 23, 2009, at Woman Made Gallery in Chicago. Stefan Weisman was a winner of the soundON Festival of Modern Music’s 2009 International Call for Scores. His opera Fade was performed in New York City in July 2009, and his opera Darkling had three performances in September 2009 by the Center City Opera Theater of Philadelphia. For more information, visit stefanweisman.com.

’91

Michele Tracy Berger, women’s studies professor at the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill, coedited The Intersectional Approach: Transforming the Academy through Race, Class, and Gender (UNC Press, 2010). The book examines how the critical thinking about race, class, and gender that began with second-wave feminism has become a signature contribution to contemporary scholarly research and theory.

Mommom, by Heather Klinkhamer ’92

’80

30th Reunion: May 21–23, 2010 Staff contact: Anne Canzonetti ’84, 845-758-7187 or canzonet@bard.edu

’78

Ellen Adams graduated with honors in 2004 from James Madison University with a master’s degree in counseling. Now a licensed professional counselor, she has been with a community agency for five years in Culpeper, Virginia, providing outpatient addiction and mental health counseling and bringing innovative and holistic practices, such as mindfulness practice and auricular acupuncture, to her clients. She was married for 18 years; has been divorced for eight; and has raised “two wonderful children”—Lindsay, 23, and Alexander, 20—in Rappahannock County, Virginia, near the Shenandoah National Park. She’d love to hear from classmates at adamsell@gmail.com.

’75

35th Reunion: May 21–23, 2010 Staff contact: Sasha Boak-Kelly, 845-758-7407 or boak@bard.edu

’73 Detail of “Triops longicaudatus” or tadpole shrimp, from the book Triops—a very unusual creature for ages 7–11 by Lori Adams ’84. Triops (plural or singular) are one of the oldest animal species still in existence.

In 2009 Philip Pucci completed his work as picture editor and in conceiving the main title design for The Ministers, a feature film starring Harvey Keitel and John Leguizamo. The Ministers, which premiered at the New York International Latino Film Festival, is currently in distribution through Maya Entertainment.

’84

In 2009 Lori Adams cofounded Little Science Books and published Triops—a very unusual creature, a book for children. In addition to macrophotography, Lori photographs artwork, people, and more in Hopewell Junction, New York. She is also in her 10th year of teaching photography at Dutchess Community College. Jonathan Fine published a short novel, A Refugee in Sudan. The story explores the chain of events that unfold when an American man attempts to redeem his own life by traveling to Africa to help a Sudanese village defend itself from the Murahaleen “death riders” who have been waging a genocidal campaign against them. A portion of the proceeds from book sales will be donated to the Valentino Achak Deng Foundation, an organization devoted to seeking peaceful solutions to poverty, health, and education problems in southern Sudan. For more information, visit the author’s blog, refugeeinsudan.blogspot.com.

’81

Susie Roth Beerman, Tal Yarden, and Liz Prince ’83 collaborated this spring with ZviDance, which presented ZOOM (April 7–10) at Dance Theater Workshop in New York City. Tal created the lighting, Liz designed the costumes, and Susie kept everything going as chair of the event’s Planning Committee.

Fred Simmons and Leslie Vogel ’75 have been married for 31 years. They have raised three children, one of whom went to Bard (Rebecca Simmons ’05). They write, “We’re living in southern New Hampshire in a house we built on six acres and are still playing music together and performing around our region.” Their website is www.folksoul.com.

’70

40th Reunion: May 21–23, 2010 Staff contact: Jane Brien ’89, 845-758-7406 or brien@bard.edu

’69

Class correspondent Elaine Marcotte Hyams, eshyams@yahoo.com Ellen Cartledge is the marketing and events director at the Kent Memorial Library in Kent, Connecticut. She writes, “It is a very creative and liberating job, and I enjoy it tremendously.” Ellen would be pleased to get together with any Bard graduates in the area. Karen Franco (New) is enjoying her two-year-old granddaughter, Ada, who is already bilingual in Turkish and English. In September 2009, Karen took a trip to France, where she stayed at a friend’s stone cottage in rural Brittany. Anne Peyton Phillips and Don Franz ’70 are “still happily living on the Christmas tree farm” in Maryland. In the summer of 2009, Anne retired from teaching in public school. They enjoy spending their spare time playing with their first grandchild, Gavin, who’s two. Tom Phillips lives on Cape Cod and now owns two bookstores called Books by the Sea. After a 30-year marriage, he was widowed three years ago. He welcomes contact from classmates via phillips@cape.com.

’68

Class correspondents Diana Hirsch Friedman, wowdiana1@gmail.com Barbara Crane Wigren, bcwigren@aol.com

’67

Class correspondent Pamela Dendy Knap, pdknap@earthlink.net Kevin Fitz Patrick was named a NANPA Fellow by the North American Nature Photography Association. He is one of three recipients of this honor in 2010, which is given to individuals who have made significant contributions to the professional nature photography industry over a period of at least 20 years.

In 2009 Harvey Sterns received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Area Agency on Aging, Ohio. He is, in fact, the first recipient of this honor, which is to be an annual award named for him: the Harvey L. Sterns Lifetime Achievement Award, acknowledging his achievement and innovation in gerontological research. Rod Townley’s sixth novel for young readers, The Blue Shoe: A Tale of Thievery, Villainy, Sorcery, and Shoes, came out in October 2009 from Knopf (see Books by Bardians in this issue).

’65

45th Reunion: May 21–23, 2010 (combined celebration with the Class of ’64) Staff contact: Anne Canzonetti ’84, 845-758-7187 or canzonet@bard.edu

Bob Weissberg is busy as ever, writing for various web magazines, including Family Security Matters, The American Thinker, Minding the Campus, and Takimag. He is teaching a graduate seminar on elections this spring at New York University. For information on his latest book, Bad Students, Not Bad Schools, see Books by Bardians in this issue.

Class correspondent Charlie Hollander, chas956@rcn.com

’61, ’60, ’59, and ’58

Herb Alter is in his eighth year at IBM after many years of consulting. His wife, Ann (Carliner) ’66, teaches in the writing program at Rutgers University. Their son, Mio, is working on a doctorate in topology at The University of Texas at Austin.

Staff contact: Tricia Fleming, 845-758-7089 or fleming@bard.edu

Katya Bock visited her family in Ecuador in early 2010, with stops in Florida and the Bahamas on the way. She plans to retire this year, after many years of teaching, and hopes to attend her class reunion in May. Betsey Ely remains committed to Bard and her family. With her help, Bard has started an Arboretum, which encompasses the whole campus. Its purpose is to help maintain the venerables (ancient trees) and plant new ones. Anyone who wants to hear more (or give more) can contact her or Amy Parrella (Foster) ’99, Bard’s horticultural supervisor. The web address is http://inside.bard.edu/arboretum. Carole Fabricant’s Penguin Classics edition of Swift, A Modest Proposal and Other Writings, is now out. Her other edition of Swift (focused on his Irish writings) is scheduled to be published in May by Palgrave (the academic imprint of Macmillan). She expects to be retiring from the University of California, Riverside, at the end of this year and looks forward to more trips east. Charlie Hollander is still doing choral singing, genealogy volunteering, and research in folklore and other topics that interest him. His daughter, Amelia, is married and lives nearby; she teaches and plays and organizes free chamber music concerts. David Jacobowitz has been working on his genealogy, which has led to his discovering some previously unknown relatives, one of whom lives in the next town. He has also been volunteering with local bicycle advocacy organizations, teaching bicycle safety, and doing database work with Bike Recycle, as well as analysis of traffic surveys. He serves as chair of the Recreation Path Committee in South Burlington, Vermont. His wife, Linda Rodd, is still teaching but plans to retire after another year. Cynthia Hirsch Levy has nothing too exciting to report to the world. Neither of her sons is married or has kids. She writes that “they continue with their international lifestyle and are happy and healthy, living with women they seem to love. What more can one ask for?”

50th Reunion: May 21–23, 2010 (combined celebration of all four classes)

Marilyn Fish-Glynn ’61, Barbara Grossman Flanagan ’60, and Judy Scher Donner ’59 have been hard at work on their 50th Reunion Committee, and hope to see a record number of their classmates in Annandale in May.

’55 and ’54

55th Reunion: May 21–23, 2010 (combined celebration) Staff contact: Tricia Fleming, 845-758-7089 or fleming@bard.edu Steven Barbash and his wife, Judith, are planning to attend reunion weekend in May. Ron Jacoby is looking forward to reunion weekend, and he urges his fellow Bardians to return to Annandale.

’50

60th Reunion: May 21–23, 2010 Staff contact: Jane Brien ’89, 845-758-7406 or brien@bard.edu Brandon Grove, retired from the State Department and living in Washington, D.C., has been lecturing on diplomacy at university seminars and spoke at the Cosmopolitan Club in New York in early 2010. For his life’s work, he will receive an honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters from Bard at Commencement ceremonies in May. Brandon hopes that many of his classmates will be able to return to the campus to celebrate the 60th reunion of the Class of 1950.

’45 and earlier classes

Reunion: May 21–23, 2010 Staff contact: Sasha Boak-Kelly, 845-758-7407 or boak@bard.edu Class correspondent Dick Koch ‘40, dickkoch88@gmail.com or 510-526-3731 Dick Koch ’40 and his wife, Gladys, plan to travel to Annandale in May from their home in Berkeley, California. Dick looks forward to celebrating 60 years as an alumnus of Bard.

Richard Sahn gave a presentation at the Association for Humanist Sociology in New Orleans in November 2009. His subject was the Greensboro Massacre, on its 30th anniversary. 37

Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts ’10

A. K. Burns, a Brooklyn-based artist, was featured in the performance and exhibition Rope-a-Dope on January 29 at Cabinet in Brooklyn. Burns presented a performance with video and sculpture that investigated her relationship to her body, to fitness, and to aggression; it drew on her eight years of training as a boxer and acted as a response to Johanna Russ’s 1975 feminist sci-fi novel, The Female Man. Burns grounds her work in feminist and queer discourse, addressing issues of power, sites of control, and knowledge of production. She is a founding member of the activist artist group W.A.G.E. (Working Artists and the Greater Economy), which draws attention to economic inequalities in the arts. Lauren Luloff’s second solo exhibition, Woven, was on view from January 30 to February 20 at Secret Project Robot: Art Experiment in New York City. Luloff transformed the gallery into a cavelike dreamscape, with paintings and sculpture spanning the walls from floor to ceiling. Using her unique style of painting on remnants of sheets, curtains, and other household objects, she drew viewers into an elaborate grid that played with color, texture, and traditional roles of femininity/masculinity in the social and historical context of artistic creation.

’08

Debra Baxter and Margot Quan Knight ’09 were both featured in Moonlight Requisition, as part of “The Gift Shop” series of exhibitions at The Henry Art Gallery in Seattle from January 22 to February 14. This was the fourth in a series of six projects, initiated and developed by Seattle artist Matthew Offenbacher, which have turned the abandoned Henry Art Gallery gift shop into an autonomous, artist-powered, alternative exhibition space.

’04

Adriana Farmiga, Sue Havens, Laura Napier ’07, and Kate Parnell ’10 were part of the group exhibition Rites of Passage, which ran from January 21 to February 11 at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. Organized by guest curator Thomas Micchelli, the show considered the multiple paths taken by new forms of expression at the turn of the 21st century, specifically those found in the work of Cooper Union alumni/ae who graduated between the years 1995 and 2009 from The School of Art, The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture, and The Albert Nerken School of Engineering.

’03

Jennifer Hayashida participated in an exhibition titled “. . . in a most dangerous manner,” which ran from January 29 to March 26 at SPACES in Cleveland. The exhibition served as a working research archive that demonstrated how “economic crises” have often been used to restructure and restore class divisions. It presented work that named and located the various physical and material sites that have been invested, degraded, and subsequently contaminated by a culture of market-driven speculation.

’02

Carrie Moyer was awarded a Joan Mitchell Foundation 2009 Painters and Sculptors grant and a 2009 Anonymous Was a Woman award. She had a solo exhibition, Arcana, from May 7 to June 7, 2009, at CANADA in New York City.

’97

Jasmina Danowski had her third solo exhibition, Quite a Little Bit, at Spanierman Modern in November 2009. Earlier shows were Surf on By (2007) and Tales (2008). In 2009 the Episcopal Church of the Heavenly Rest in New York City installed her Transfiguration Altar Triptych for Easter.

’93

Leslie Fry had a solo exhibition titled ReCreation, which featured a new video and sculpture installation, at Barton College Art Galleries in Wilson, North Carolina, from February 28 to April 4. She gave an artist’s talk in the gallery on March 1. Her visions of re-creation and resurrection continued a body of work that brings together themes of creation and destruction, past and present, creating wholeness out of fragments, and making connections large and small.

’87

Maddy Rosenberg curated Natural Histories, the inaugural exhibition in Gallery II at Central Booking, in the fall of 2009. She also curated Anthropology: Revisited, Reinvented, Reinterpreted, on view at the gallery from November 19, 2009, to January 17, 2010, and Narrative Sequences, which closed on April 3. Her artist’s book Grotesque New York was featured in Miniature Books by American Artists, an official part of the Baku Biennale, which took place in mid December 2009. Following the exhibition, the miniature books became part of the permanent collection of the Museum Center in Baku, Azerbaijan.

Bard Center for Environmental Policy ’08

Davina Lilley has been working with other moms to help raise awareness of environmental health issues that pertain to children and mothers-to-be. When not keeping tabs on her firstborn, Arthur, who is “starting to climb on everything,” she advises on issues ranging from healthy eating to risk factors found in homes and home products such as pesticides, phthalates, and parabens. She also advises mothers on issues such as airflow and how to reduce environmental stressors in homes with asthmatic children. Litta Naukushu is enrolled in a Ph.D. program in international public health policy at the University of Edinburgh. Ananta Neelim’s paper, “The Impact of Safe Sanitation Facilities in Reducing the Prevalence of Water-Borne Diseases in Rural Bangladesh,” was accepted for publication in the Waterlines, a quarterly publication of Practical Actions. The article was adapted from Ananta’s thesis work, which he carried out with his adviser and economics professor Gautam Sethi while earning his master’s degree. Ananta started a Ph.D. program this fall at Monash University, with a full tuition scholarship and a generous stipend for the next three years.

’07

Jackson Morris accepted a position as senior policy adviser for the Pace Energy and Climate Center in early November 2009. Jackson works out of Albany, New York, and represents the Center and the Natural Resources Defense Council to advance clean energy policies in the state capital. Jamie Van Nostrand, executive director of the Energy and Climate Center, had this to say about Jackson’s appointment: “We are excited to have Jackson joining us at this critical period in the New York energy scene. Jackson has a tremendous reputation in Albany as an effective advocate for clean-energy polices, and it is a strategic time for us to invest in a full-time, on-the-ground presence in Albany to promote energy efficiency, renewable energy, and reduced greenhouse gas emissions.”

’06

Ben Hoen coauthored a federal study on the impact of wind farms on property values. Released nationally on December 3, 2009, the study, conducted under the auspices of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, found that wind farms have no widespread impact on property values of nearby homes. Hoen is under contract to Berkeley Lab to investigate public acceptance of wind energy and research community responses to other renewable energy sources, such as solar. He is analyzing the impact of solar energy systems on residential sales prices and planning to conduct a survey of households living near wind turbines.

’04

After two years as project manager for Spring Hill Solutions, LLC, Jon Griesser was promoted to vice president. Spring Hill is an environmental consulting firm that specializes in carbon management, clean energy, and business sustainability. Jon says, “It’s a great feeling to help organizations reduce simultaneously their energy usage, energy costs, and emissions, and benefit from an enhanced brand image due to their efforts.”

Bard Graduate Center: Decorative Arts, Design History, Material Culture ’07

Kate Papacosma and her husband, Mike Sacks, welcomed their daughter, Daphne Elisabeth Sacks, on April 14, 2009.

’06

Tricia Tangeman Wimmer has settled into life in Northern California. In 2009 she completed her RYT (registered yoga teaching certificate) with the Laughing Lotus School of Yoga. Namaste!

’00

Anne Eschapasse moved from Paris to Montréal, where she was appointed executive assistant in charge of special exhibitions at the Montréal Museum of Fine Arts. Freya Van Saun lives in New York City with her son Max, 6. She teaches design history at the New York School of Interior Design, and is leading a group of her students to Berlin this spring, on a two-week study abroad program.

Center for Curatorial Studies ’09

Christina Linden, CCS Curatorial Fellow, recently participated in a public discussion with Allison Smith in connection with Fancy Work and Arts & Sills Service, an “immersive installation” that Allison orchestrated at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in conjunction with the museum’s 75th anniversary. Independent curator Katerina Llanes hosted “Nobody Puts Baby in a Corner,” a feminist discussion about organizing collective political action, which took place in New York City in November 2009. The discussion was initiated by Malin Arnell and Johanna Gustavsson, two Swedish artists currently attending the Whitney Independent Study Program. Fionn Meade and Gene McHugh were awarded The Creative Capital Warhol Foundation Arts Writer Grant, which is “designed to encourage and reward writing about contemporary art that is rigorous, passionate, eloquent, and precise.” Fionn, a curator at the SculptureCenter, Long Island City, received the award in support for an article titled “Loose Ends: The Mimetic Faculty and Narrative in Contemporary Film and Video.” He also curated Leopards in the Temple at SculptureCenter, which ran from January through March. Gene, an independent writer and critic living in Chicago, was given the grant in support of his blog, “Post-Internet.”

’08

Vincenzo de Bellis, a cofounder of Peep-Hole, a project space in Milan, organized its first exhibition, Thanksgiving, which was on view in November and December 2009. The show, a benefit for the gallery, consisted of work donated by more than 30 Italian artists. Anet Ebgi, founder and curator of The Company, Los Angeles, organized a project featuring work by Alexander May MFA ’12. An exhibition of May’s work at The Company will take place each year for three years, or until he completes Bard’s MFA program. Tyler Emerson-Dorsch, a partner at Dorsch Gallery in Miami, organized 30, a survey of work by Robert Thiele. The exhibition occupied Dorsch Gallery’s entire 5,000-square-foot space in the heart of Miami’s Wynwood Arts District during Art Basel Miami Beach 2009. Terri Smith curated Recasting Site, an exhibition of work by artists who subvert the commercial and cultural packaging of existence, at Ramapo College of New Jersey. The show, a reconfiguration of Terri’s CCS thesis exhibition, was on view in November and December 2009. Sydney Jenkins ’96 is director of the gallery. Lauren Wolk, an independent curator based in North Adams, Massachusetts, curated Electrical Forest: Made in Troy, at the Arts Center of the Capital Region in Troy, New York, on view in November and December 2009. The exhibition consisted of a site-specific installation by Noah Fischer that explored the distinction between nature and industry, along with collaborations by Ed Kimball and Blair Neal. In January, Lauren organized Oddly Alive, also at the Arts Center.

’07

Markús Andrésson, an independent curator and artist living in Berlin, was included in RAFSKINNA 3 (Reflections), a DVD publication composed of documentaries and short films, video pieces and performances, live recordings and music videos by Icelandic and international artists. Ryan Doherty, a curator at Southern Alberta Art Gallery in Lethbridge, Canada, invited CCS alumni/ae to submit proposals for a commission of public art to be created and installed at the gallery. The project budget is $180,000. Ruba Katrib, assistant curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Miami, curated The Reach of Realism at MOCA, which was on view until February 14. The exhibition featured an international group of artists exploring the traditions of realism in an age of digital manipulation and staged reality. Its opening was the kickoff of Art Basel Miami Beach 2009. Florencia Malbrán, a doctoral fellow at the National Council of Scientific Research, Buenos Aires, curated Otras Voces/Unseen Voices at Fundación Proa. The exhibition featured works by Alejandro Cesarco (New York/Uruguay) and Jorge Méndez Blake (México). Florencia won a grant to work on her dissertation, which will allow her to devote significant time to thinking and writing. Emily Zimmerman, a curatorial assistant at Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, in Troy, New York, organized an evening lecture with Margaret Wertheim, director of the Institute for Figuring, at EMPAC in February. Wertheim’s lecture, “Mathematics as Poetic Enchantment,” discussed her work with the Institute for Figuring, a Los Angeles–based organization devoted to the poetic and aesthetic dimensions of science and mathematics.

’06

Geir Haraldseth, a writer and independent curator based in Oslo, is doing a curatorial residency at Capacete in São Paulo. Geir curated Case Study: Art and Biography at Capacete, a revised version of the exhibition he did in Norway in May 2009.

’05

Jen Mergel, a former curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, accepted a new position in February as associate curator at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts (MFA). In November, the MFA plans to open a huge new wing, and in 2011, as part of a long-planned $500 million expansion, it will devote its existing West Wing to contemporary art. The Boston Globe reported that Jen has already “made exciting discoveries” within the MFA’s holdings, most of which will remain in storage until the expansion. Erin Riley-Lopez, formerly associate curator at The Bronx Museum of the Arts, is in the job market. When heard from in February, Erin was working on a proposal for an exhibition slot that she had been offered at the Bronx River Art Center.

’04

Claire Barliant, independent writer and critic, has stepped down from her position as senior editor of Modern Painters and is teaching a class at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

Pascal Spengemann and Kelly Taxter ’03, partners in the eponymous gallery Taxter & Spengemann, organized two solo exhibitions by Wardell Milan this past winter: Landscapes! Romance, Recession, and Rottenness, at Taxter & Spengemann, and Drawings of Harlem, at The Studio Museum. The shows received a favorable review from Karen Rosenberg in the New York Times. A book edited by Elizabeth Zechella, Salon to Biennial: Exhibitions that Made Art History, Vol. One: 1863–1959, won the Sir Banister Fletcher Award, presented annually for the most deserving book on art or architecture. One of the judges, calling Salon to Biennial an unprecedented undertaking, said that the book “will make a permanent contribution to the field of museum and exhibition history.” Elizabeth writes that she “spent two-and-a-half years, including holidays and weekends,” working on the book.

’03

Kate Green is working on a Ph.D. in modern and contemporary art history at The University of Texas at Austin. In November 2009, Rachel Gugelberger, codirector of Sara Meltzer Gallery in New York, presented the work of Edgar Orlaineta in Torino, Italy, at Artissima 16, an international fair of contemporary art. Orlaineta was selected by independent curator Jimena Acosta Romero, who was part of the curatorial team of Present Future, the section of Artissima 16 that was dedicated to emerging talents.

’02

Kelly Lindner, director of George Adams Gallery, of New York City and Chico, California, curated Replay: The San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery 1970–Present, which runs through May at City Hall in San Francisco. Part of a citywide series of exhibitions celebrating the 40th anniversary of the San Francisco Arts Commission (SFAC) Gallery, Replay is a diverse array of historic posters, photographs, and artwork that illustrates the impact of SFAC Gallery on the local arts landscape since its founding in 1970 as Capricorn Asunder Gallery.

’01

Gabriela Rangel and Jenni Sorkin ’02 organized Sitac VIII: Blind Spots—Puntos Ciegos, an international symposium of contemporary art in Mexico City that took place in February. Gabriela is the director of visual arts at The Americas Society; Jenni is on the faculty of Center for Curatorial Studies and is a doctoral candidate in the history of art at Yale University.

’00

Mercedes Vicente is the curator of contemporary art at GovettBrewster Art Gallery in New Plymouth, New Zealand. In December and January, she curated a pair of complementary exhibitions in the United States that focused on the work of Darcy Lange, one of New Zealand’s earliest video artists—at Cabinet Magazine in Brooklyn and Yale University School of Art Gallery.

’99

Xandra Eden, curator of exhibitions at Weatherspoon Art Museum, The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, curated Dike Blair: Now and Again, a major solo exhibition that ran from September 13 to December 6, 2009.

Denise Markonish, curator at Mass MoCA (Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art), curated Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle: Gravity Is a Force to be Reckoned With, based upon an uncompleted project by Mies van der Rohe. The exhibition opened in December 2009 and runs through October 31 at the museum in North Adams, Massachusetts.

’96

Regine Basha, an independent curator living in Manhattan, was part of a panel at the Unsound Festival New York, a Polish contemporary music festival that took place at many locations throughout the city in February. Basha discussed the role of sound in the arts with the other panel members at the Goethe-Institut. Robbin Zella is the director of the Housatonic Museum of Art in Bridgeport, Connecticut. In February the museum played host to the traveling exhibition Rememberingstanleyboxer: A Retrospective 1946–2000.

In Memoriam Note: A number of these obituaries appeared in the Winter ’10 issue of the Bardian, which was published online at annandaleonline.org.

’10

James Kirk Bernard, 22, died on January 25, 2010, in Annandale-onHudson. Born in New York City, he lived the first 15 years of his life in Summit, New Jersey, and moved to Aspen, Colorado, in 2002, where he graduated from Aspen High School in 2006. He was majoring in creative writing at Bard. He loved Russian literature and history, and spent the summer of 2007 at the University of California, Berkeley, studying Russian, and the following summer at Smolny College in St. Petersburg. He was actively engaged in the political process, enrolling voters for the November 2008 election and helping to pass an important local environmental referendum. He played soccer throughout his precollege years and worked at an extreme sports camp every summer beginning in 2004, helping young people with autism engage in outdoor recreation. Jamie was one of a set of triplets, and had a special bond with his brothers, Fred and Bill. He is also survived by his parents, Sallie and Tom Bernard; his grandparents, James and Audrey McConnell; and many aunts, uncles, and cousins. A service led by the College chaplain, Reverend Bruce Chilton, took place on February 6 at the Chapel of the Holy Innocents on the Bard campus, followed by a celebration of Jamie’s life. He was buried in the Bard College cemetery. To honor his life, work, and passion, his family has established the James Kirk Bernard Foundation. The fund will focus on scientific research on depression and autism and services for those affected. It will also support Jamie’s home, Bard College, and humanitarian efforts that he cared about so deeply. Donations in his memory may be made to The James Kirk Bernard Foundation, 16033 Bolsa Chica, #104-142, Huntington Beach, CA 92649.

’06

Abraham “Abe” Jellinek, 24, died on October 26, 2009. He majored in philosophy at Bard, then moved to New York City, where he was an entrepreneur, investor, artist, stand-up comic, and technology blogger. In 2008 he and a friend founded Hyperbodega.com, a late-night,

bodega-based bicycle delivery service, fetching anything from gouda to plantain chips to diapers for residents of the Williamsburg and Greenpoint neighborhoods in Brooklyn, even at 3 a.m.—a service so unusual that it was written up in the New York Times. His survivors include his parents, Barbara and Dr. Michael Jellinek; two brothers, David and Isaiah; two sisters, Sarah and Hannah; his grandparents, Kate Jellinek and Traude and Alfred Manasse; and an aunt and uncle.

’95

Dan Aronie died on January 29, 2009. He was diagnosed with diabetes at nine months, and with multiple sclerosis at 22. In a moving tribute to him in The Martha’s Vineyard Times, his family wrote of his good humor in the face of his mounting medical problems. He attended Bard during the 1991–92 academic year, starring in a campus production of A View from the Bridge. He is survived by his family—Nancy, Josh, and Joel Aronie—and countless friends.

’84

Jessica Winslow Lord Levine, 47, died on February 12, 2010, in Traverse City, Michigan. She grew up on the Bard College campus, where her father, Stuart Stritzler-Levine, teaches psychology and was dean of the college for many years. After attending nearby Red Hook High School, she graduated with honors from Bard with a degree in studio arts, and later studied art at Hunter College of the City University of New York. An abstract expressionist painter, she exhibited her work in San Francisco and throughout Marin County, California. She owned Jessica Lord Design, which created fine and commercial art on commission and faux finishing. A passionate sailor, she raced in the Melges 24 class, and was named Yachstswoman of the Year for 2002 by the St. Francis Yacht Club in San Francisco. In addition to her father, her survivors include her stepmother, Nina Stritzler-Levine; her sister, Jennifer Levine, and brother-in-law, Joe Fudali; her half sister, Alyssa Avery Stritzler-Levine; a niece and a nephew; and many aunts, uncles, and cousins. She was predeceased by her mother, Pamela Winslow King Levine. A memorial service took place on February 28 at Ward Manor on the Bard campus.

’81

Editor’s note: Kate Charbonneau’s son, Isaiah Greenwald ’08, sent the following notice to the Bardian. Kate Charbonneau died on October 3, 2009, after suffering a brain aneurysm. She was born in Valley Stream, New York, into a family of 10 children. Her passion was always her art, and her love for art was rivaled only by her love for her family and the people who touched her life. She began singing at an early age, was a talented painter, and in the last two years learned how to throw pottery, creating an impressive number of beautiful works in clay. Kate worked tirelessly as an art therapist at the Parson’s Child and Family Center in Albany, New York, where she guided many troubled and emotionally disturbed children through art. Kate was an incredibly loving and empathetic person, and her passing is felt by all who knew her. She is survived by four children: Zachary, Nina, Isaiah, and Benjamin; and four grandchildren: Luke, Rece, Tate, and Kayden.

’77

William J. Carrow, 74, of Greenfield, Massachusetts, died on November 23, 2009. He served in the U.S. Air Force from 1952 to 1956. He graduated from Orange County Community College and then earned his bachelor’s degree from Bard. He worked for many years in the Hudson Valley in social services. His survivors include his children, Andrew and Dawn; his sisters, Elva, Ruth, and Catherine; his former wife and dear friend, Barbara Perkowski; and many nieces and nephews.

where, for 43 years, she taught composition, literature, and film. From 2001 on, she was chapter chair of the faculty union. She was chosen Member of the Year for Higher Education by the New York State United Teachers in 2007. A freelance writer and poet, she published articles in academic journals and in New York magazine, the Village Voice, Daily News, and Newsday. She is survived by her life partner, Phil Eggers; sister, Paula; daughter, Victoria; granddaughter, Natasha; stepsons David and Michael; and stepdaughter, Cynthia.

’74

’60

James T. Reynolds died on December 29, 2008. He studied literature at Bard, then went on to law school. He was a lawyer in the Washington, D.C., area, serving for a time as attorney for the Department of Justice.

’73

Natalie Kaye died on August 26, 2009. In addition to her undergraduate degree in literature from Bard, she earned a master’s degree in business administration from Fordham University and a diploma from the Sorbonne in Paris. Over the course of her career she held executive positions at such distinguished companies as the Cunard Cruise Line, Washington Post, and Time Inc. Most recently, she had become a certified life coach. At the time of her death, she lived in New York City and in her beloved home in Woodstock, New York. A gifted cook and hostess, it was in her oversized kitchen/dining room where she flourished. She loved to read, travel, and knit. In addition to her many close friends, she leaves behind her mother and sister, Bella and Susan Kaye.

’71

Lauren Totty Higginbotham died on May 10, 2008, in Jersey City. Born in Troy, New York, she became an actress at a young age; in 1961, she replaced Patty Duke in the national tour of The Miracle Worker. She majored in literature at Bard, and went on to spend most of her life in New York City. She worked for 30 years as a legal secretary at New York Law School and for New York City property attorneys. She is survived by her husband, John, and two sisters, Martha and Susan.

’66

Peter Kenner died on March 18, 2010, in New York City. After studying history at Bard, he ran Kenner Printing from 1970 to 1995, producing brochures and annual reports for many corporations based in the New York metropolitan area. In 1995, after 30 years of successful investing for himself, he founded Tivoli Partners, L.P., an investment fund of which he was president and managing partner. A loyal alumnus of Bard, he was an engaged member of the Board of Directors of the Bard Music Festival. He was also a past board member of the Young Presidents Organization and a member of The Executive Connection, an international organization of CEOs. His survivors include his wife, Barbara; a son, Nicholas; and a daughter, Kate.

’61

Jane Jaffe Young, Ph.D., died on April 10, 2009. She graduated from the High School of Music and Art, studied literature at Bard, then went on to receive her bachelor’s degree Phi Beta Kappa from the City College of New York. She earned a master’s degree at Harvard University and completed her Ph.D. at New York University. She was professor of English at the Borough of Manhattan Community College,

Helen Mandelbaum died on July 3, 2009. She had moved to Israel four years before from Boca Raton, Florida, where she worked for many years as a family therapist. After retiring in Jerusalem, she focused on more spiritual and artistic pursuits, including creating designs for jewelry, stationary, textiles, and glassware. She is survived by her sister and several nieces and nephews.

’55

Mildred Ann Rosenberg died in Washington, D.C., on October 22, 2009. A native of Roanoke, Virginia, she studied sociology at Bard. For 25 years she was director of volunteers at the Washington Heart Association. Her survivors include her sister-in-law, Diane; her nephews, Rick and Stephen; and her niece, Elise.

’52

Bert A. Prall, 78, a telecommunications historian, electronics expert, and small business owner and operator, died on March 30, 2008, in San Antonio. His fascination with mechanical and electrical devices drove his lifetime pursuits. As a young man he embarked on a lifetime of community service, beginning in the Illinois National Guard, and then providing technical services and volunteering his radio and communications expertise to various fire departments and county civil defense organizations. He was instrumental in the installation and operation of a public safety radio and teletype network throughout Illinois. Professionally, he was the president of Midwest Variety, Inc., the owner and operator of the Ben Franklin Department Stores in the Chicago area. In San Antonio, he was affiliated with Datapoint Corporation, and also founded South Texas Telecom, a telecommunications installation and servicing company. His lifelong passion was telephone history, and he dedicated much of his time to the study and restoration of antique telephone equipment. He was active in the Antique Telephone Collectors Association and Telephone Collectors International, dedicating thousands of hours to teaching and helping others in the field. His survivors include three cousins and an aunt.

’51

Donald Campbell Walker died on June 18, 2009. He was born and raised in Bellingham, Washington. After graduating from Bard, he continued his education at the Institute of Design in Chicago before returning home to Bellingham. He owned Bellingham Marine, Inc., and was involved with boat sales, the fishing industry, and land development. He was preceded in death by his parents and his sister, Sudie. He is survived by his wife of 32 years, Gloria; his two children, Hall and Dana; two brothers, Bob and Jim; his stepchildren, Barbara, Carrie, Mike, and Mark; three grandchildren; and many stepgrandchildren and great-grandchildren.

’50

Mary Louise Henderson (Campbell), 81, died on October 23, 2009. Raised in Detroit, she studied creative writing at Bard and wrote her Senior Project on F. Scott Fitzgerald under her adviser, Ted Weiss. She returned to Detroit after graduation and joined the advertising agency of Ruse & Urban, where she eventually became vice president. She wrote, produced, and directed three weekly television shows in the early 1950s, an unusual accomplishment for a woman at that time. She also served as executive director of the Michigan Committee for Balanced Legislation, which successfully prevented the AFL-CIO from controlling the state through redistricting. She married Ernest Flagg Henderson III, who is a life trustee of Bard College, on New Year’s Eve, 1953. The couple settled in Wellesley Hills, Massachusetts, and spent the next 55 years together, which included travel to more than 125 countries and not a single fight or misunderstanding, according to Ernest Henderson. The Hendersons were great friends of Bard, and were instrumental in the creation of the Henderson Computer Resources Center. Mary Henderson worked countless hours as a volunteer and was elected to numerous community councils and boards. She was the first woman on the Executive Committee of the Newton-Wellesley Hospital, and was president of Wellesley Visiting Nurses. She was also the first woman to be elected president of a Boy Scout council in the United States. She deeply valued her associations with The Salvation Army, Newton Wellesley Hospital, Wellesley Community Center, Norumbega Council/Knox Trail Council, American Needlepoint Guild, Wellesley Friendly Aide, House and Garden Club of Wellesley, St. Andrew’s Church, Buddy Dog Humane Society, and many others. Her belief was that “your life is defined not by what you do for yourself, but what you do for others.” In addition to her husband, her survivors include her son, Ernest “Spike” Henderson ’81; a daughter, Roberta Campbell Henderson; two nieces; and many grandnieces and nephews. Elizabeth Hanft Sorvillo died on September 19, 2009, in New Haven, Connecticut. A native of Duluth, Minnesota, she graduated from Bard, then settled in Connecticut. She was the proprietor of Curious Eye Antiques in New Haven. She was predeceased by her husband, Ralph E. Sorvillo, and a brother, Philip. She is survived by her brother, Robert; six children, Suzanne, Laura, Ralph, Christian, Scott, and David; and nine grandchildren.

’47

Walter Liggett, “Haiku Master of Berkeley,” died on January 10, 2010, at the age of 86. He was a prolific poet, artist, archivist, and scholar, and a devout Baha’i. He was an active member of the Berkeley Poetry Coalition, amassing the work of many fellow poets and producing numerous self-published books. He was predeceased by his sister, Marda Liggett Woodbury ’46, and is survived by his wife, Barbara, three stepdaughters; and two nephews and a niece. Below are three of his “weather haiku” from 2008, from a volume of poetry he dedicated to his sister and presented to her four days before her death: Cold March morning, Green leaves, green grass. Black crow, swaying pine.

Warm April morning, Green hummingbirds dart. Easter eggs at Safeway. Hazy sun, strong wind, Swaying leaves, six shades of green. Dry summer ahead.

’43

Editor’s note: David Linn Coursen’s son, Derek, sent the following notice to the Bardian. David Linn Coursen, 86, known as “Linn,” died at his home in Tacoma on October 22, 2009, surrounded by his wife, Margaret Walsh, and his children, Sandra, Holly, and Derek. He had been battling pancreatic cancer since August. He was raised in Ulster County, New York. In early childhood he lived among the artistic community around Woodstock with his mother, the novelist Dorothy B. Coursen. Later, in the Depression, he lived on his father’s parents’ farm in nearby Mount Marion. This upbringing left him with an abiding appreciation for art and literature and an affinity for gardens, forests, and wild places. Invited as a young boy into the laboratory of his mother’s father, a chemist, Linn discovered what would become his profession. But in the Depression years, the family had little money to send him to college. When he was admitted to Bard, his father, Carl, made his attendance possible by taking a job managing the College’s groundskeeping operations. Following graduation in 1943, Linn served as an officer on the U.S.S. Lavaca, a troop transport in the Pacific theater. When the war ended, he studied physical chemistry at Cornell University, receiving his Ph.D. in 1951. He went to work for E. I. DuPont de Nemours, where he carried out research projects in explosives, remote sensing, and polymer development until his retirement in the late 1980s. He and his first wife, Olga P. Coursen, raised their family in New Jersey, Delaware, and Pennsylvania. After retirement, Linn moved to the Southwest, living for a few years in Sedona, Arizona, and for more than a decade near Santa Fe, New Mexico. He loved reading the latest scientific research, visiting art galleries, and walking in the desert. He also took French lessons, and in 1995, at the age of 72, he and three friends sailed a small boat from Antigua across the Atlantic to France. In 2005 he moved to Washington to be nearer to his daughters and granddaughters. Science was for him both a profession and a way of life. He was an ardent secular humanist and environmentalist, and he believed in social responsibility based on human reason. He is greatly missed by his family and friends.

’42

Harold Paul Altshuler died on December 16, 2009. After his graduation from Bard, he entered the U.S. Air Force and became a B-17 pilot. During World War II he flew 33 bombing missions over Germany and twice received the Purple Heart. He left the Air Force with the rank of captain and earned a J.D. degree from the University of Virginia Law School. After briefly practicing law in New Jersey, he entered the insurance business and set up a number of agencies in the United States and Canada. In the mid 1950s he settled in Dallas, where he headquartered and expanded his holdings in the insurance and banking business. He

owned Life of America insurance company (formerly Republic Bankers Life) and its subsidiaries. He is survived by his wife, P. J.; a brother; three sisters; and many nieces and nephews.

’39

Dalton McBee, 93, a former English teacher and admissions officer at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, died on April 6, 2009. After majoring in American studies at Bard, he went on to Columbia University Teacher’s College, and began a career in education. He taught at Kimball Union Academy in Meriden, New Hampshire, and at the Ransom School in Coconut Grove, Florida, before joining the Phillips faculty in 1953. At Phillips, he taught English, coached tennis, and served as an admissions officer before retiring in 1981. He wrote two books about the art and the practice of writing: Writer’s Journal: Explorations and Writer’s Journal: Experiments, published by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc. He was a passionate gardener, a voracious reader with wide-ranging interests, and a lover of all things Italian (he studied the language, and traveled to Italy several times). He was predeceased by his wife, Leona “Lee” McBee, and a son, Coles. He is survived by his son, Joel; a sister and several nieces and nephews; and by Barbara Tompkins, his close companion of many years.

’38

Albert Cullum Jr., M.D., died on December 3, 2009. After studying chemistry at Bard, he graduated from New York Medical College. From 1943 to 1947 he was a member of the medical corps in America’s China/ India/Burma campaign; he left the military with the rank of major. After World War II he began his medical practice, eventually settling in Kentucky, where he worked for many years in Benham, under the auspices of the United Mine Workers of America. He also established a clinic for deaf children in Barbourville, Kentucky, and worked at the Middlesboro Community Hospital, where he was chief of staff. He was a member of numerous professional groups and civic organizations, and was, for a time, president of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons. He was also named a Kentucky Colonel, one of the state’s highest honors. Dr. Cullum’s other interests included photography, flying (he piloted his own Cessna), and music (he was trained by his father, a concert pianist). He is survived by his wife, Mary Beth Cullum; two daughters, Mary-Louise and Cynthia-Marie; a stepson, Michael; and many grandchildren, nieces, and nephews.

Faculty Maryanne Amacher, a faculty member in the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts from 2000 to 2009 and a distinguished sound artist, died on October 22, 2009, in Rhinebeck, New York. Born in Kane, Pennsylvania, in 1938, she studied with George Rochberg and Karlheinz Stockhausen as an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania and created the radio broadcast piece City Links: Buffalo (1967) during graduate study at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She created sonic environments for John Cage’s Lecture on the Weather (1975), music for Merce Cunningham’s Torse (1976), and the sound installations Music for Sound-Joined Rooms (1980– ) and Mini-Sound Series (1985– ), the latter a new multimedia form that she created, innovative in its use of architecture and serialized narrative. She also made

two albums for John Zorn’s Tzadik label, including the highly regarded Sound Characters 2 (2009). “As with La Monte Young, you felt that her ears were picking up things yours couldn’t,” said her colleague Kyle Gann, associate professor of music at Bard. “But she was some kind of genius, and her spatially intricate sound installations, better appreciated in Europe than here, had to be heard live: there is no way to adequately document them on recording.” According to critic Monica Kendrick, Amacher’s work had much to do with the physical process of hearing and “the effects created by the human ear itself—the resonance of one’s own tympanum and ossicles and pinna—which she ‘plays’ using certain frequencies.” Amacher received several major commissions here and abroad. She was awarded a grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts (1998); in 2005, she was awarded the Prix Ars Electronica (the Golden Nica) in the Digital Musics category for her project TEO! A sonic sculpture. At the time of her death she had been working for three years on a 40-channel piece commissioned by The Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center in Troy, New York. She left no surviving relatives. Two friends, the artists Micah Silver and Robert The, have assembled an online archive of her work at maryanneamacher.org. Kenneth Noland, 85, one of the first and finest exemplars of what came to be known as color-field painting, died on January 5, 2010, at his home in Port Clyde, Maine. Noland, whose work was championed by the art critic Clement Greenberg and whose paintings are included in the collections of most of the world’s major museums, served as Milton Avery Distinguished Professor of the Arts at Bard in 1985. In May of that year, his Sketches of Spain, mixed media on paper, was included in an exhibition titled Contemporary Monotypes at the College’s Edith C. Blum Art Institute. Noland’s influence at Bard may have extended beyond the brief term that he taught here. In a 1993 New York Times article, architecture critic Herbert Muschamp, reflecting on Robert Venturi’s new addition to Bard’s Stevenson Library, remarked that Venturi’s “inspiration appears to be the painter Kenneth Noland. . . . The entrance facade suspends a color field over a soccer field, a scrimmage between study and play.” After a stint in the Army Air Forces during World War II, Noland attended Black Mountain College in North Carolina, where he studied music with John Cage and art with Willem de Kooning, Josef Albers, and Ilya Bolotowsky. Exposure to the work of Matisse inspired him to develop his ideas and practice of what he called “color structure.” Art critic Hilton Kramer, quoted in Noland’s New York Times obituary, said that “Noland has been consistent and unvarying—not to say single-minded—in his artistic purpose, which has been to fill the canvas surface with a pictorial experience of pure color.” His survivors include his third wife, Paige Rense; two sons, William and Samuel Jesse Noland; two daughters, Cady Noland and Lynn Noland; a brother; and one grandchild. Frank Edward Oja, 81, professor emeritus of psychology, died on November 27, 2009. He came to Annandale in 1957 and taught at Bard for 43 years, until his retirement in 2000. During that time he served as director of the Psychology Program and chair of the Social Studies Division. He was a leading member of the committees that drafted a sabbatical plan and a retirement plan for Bard faculty members. He also played a key role in the founding of Bard’s University Without Walls, serving as its codirector for many years, and was among the first

survivors include four daughters, Lois Thomas, Caroline Gergel, Anne Oja, and Marya Oja; two sons, Dave and Matt; and many grandchildren and great-grandchildren. A daughter, Jane Oja, and a son, John, predeceased him. He was buried in the Bard College cemetery. At this writing, memorial postings from former colleagues and students have been received from four continents, seven countries, and 29 states, at http://burnettwhitefuneralhomes.com.

Friends

Professor Frank Oja teaches a psychology class in Tewksbury basement, spring 1965.

faculty to introduce computers into the curriculum. Upon his retirement, he was awarded the John and Samuel Bard Award in Medicine and Science; the encomium in that year’s Commencement program, written by his colleague Richard Gordon, acknowledged his “profound commitment to the intellectual growth of the individual student, the highest standards of scientific rigor in the teaching of psychology, and the larger humanistic mission of the College.” “Frank knew the history of psychology better than any other Bard faculty member, before or since,” said Bill Griffith, professor of philosophy, who enjoyed a close, 40-year friendship with Oja and his family. “We both delighted in William James’s Principles of Psychology, and Frank knew many of the most memorable passages by heart, which he enjoyed reciting and I enjoyed hearing, again and again. He knew the ins and outs of Freud’s thinking at a truly deep philosophy-of-science level and could have written a valuable book on the subject. . . . In some respects, being a good salesman is an essential qualification for being an unusually successful teacher. Frank could have been a successful salesman for many products, but he happened to pick psychology, to the great benefit of generations of Bard students. He had wit, humor, and the ability to convey enthusiasm for his subject matter. And he was very bright—not just intellectually bright, but also ‘people smart.’ To these virtues he added an inner drive to do high-quality work in his teaching and advising. I never saw him cutting corners in this regard.” From the time of his arrival at Bard, Frank Oja and his wife, Ruth— to whom he was married for 59 years—and their eight children lived on the Bard campus. He designed and built their home on Annandale Road on the foundation of what had been, successively, a sawmill, a gristmill, and a chocolate factory; the lumber used in its construction was almost entirely reclaimed from several buildings in the abandoned Ward Manor Village. One of his great joys was discussing construction methods with members of Bard’s Building and Grounds crew, who considered him “one of the gang.” He and Ruth were also ardent peace activists and talented gardeners and landscapers. Frank Oja earned a bachelor’s degree from Swarthmore College and a master’s degree from the New School for Social Research. Prior to his career at Bard, he lectured and taught at Wagner College, and taught at the New School for Social Research as a member of both the graduate and undergraduate faculties. In addition to his wife, his

Susan Brody, 64, died on February 6, 2010. She attended Bronx High School of Science and earned a bachelor’s degree from City University of New York. She worked as a computer programmer and analyst from the mid 1960s to the late 1990s. Along with her husband, Burton Brody, a professor of physics at Bard since 1970, she renovated their Colonialera farmhouse in Germantown, New York, where she maintained a garden described by friends as “spectacular.” She also did gardening work at Clermont State Historic Site in Columbia County. In addition to her husband, her survivors include a brother, Richard Smith, and his wife and daughter. A celebration of Susan Brody’s life, which included remembrances and musical and dance performances by Bard faculty, took place on March 16 in the Chapel of the Holy Innocents on the Annandale campus. Paul J. Kellner, 98, a Hungarian émigré whose generosity helped, and continues to help, many Hungarian students attend Bard and other U.S. colleges and universities, died on December 27, 2009, in Hudson, New York. Born in Yugoslavia, he was raised in Budapest, and served as a captain in the cavalry of the Hungarian army during World War II. After immigrating to the United States in 1947 with his wife and son, he settled in New York City and became the CEO of Better Cravats, a company he founded. After retiring, he moved to Mountain Range Farm in Germantown, New York. Beginning with the fall of communism in Eastern Europe in 1990, Paul Kellner originated and sustained a program that, as of last year, had brought 130 Kellner Scholars to study in the United States. Among them have been the five annual recipients of the Paul J. Kellner Scholarships, awarded to Bard students with limited resources under the Excellence at Equal Cost (EEC) scholarship program, and the three annual recipients of the Kellner Hungarian Scholarships, given to students from Hungary who participate in Bard’s Program in International Education (PIE). In recognition of this service, Kellner was given the Knight’s Cross of the Order of St. Stephen, one of Hungary’s highest civilian honors, in 2003. He also received the George Washington Award from the Hungarian-American Foundation in 2004, and was named the Columbia County Association’s Distinguished Citizen of the Year in 2009. He is survived by Clara Kellner, his wife of 70 years; his son, George, who has been a member of the Board of Advisors of Bard’s Institute for International Liberal Education, which administers PIE, since 1993; and two grandchildren.

FACULTYNOTES Emily Barton, visiting assistant professor of writing, was invited by the National Book Foundation to participate in a public panel discussion on Thomas Pynchon’s novel Gravity’s Rainbow in November. Laura Battle, professor of studio arts, showed work in the Invitational Exhibition of Visual Arts at the American Academy of Arts and Letters in New York, March 11 to April 11. Other studio arts faculty included in the exhibition were Lothar Osterburg, Lisa Sanditz, Joseph Santore, and Julianne Swartz. Roger Berkowitz, assistant professor of political studies and human rights, was interviewed by Scott Horton for Harper’s Magazine in December. His book, The Gift of Science (Fordham University Press), is being published in paperback this spring. Leon Botstein, president of the college and Leon Levy Professor in the Arts and Humanities, gave the commencement address at Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion, which awarded him an honorary doctorate of humane letters. He delivered a keynote speech— “Performance after the Age of Recording”—at the 32nd annual conference of Chamber Music America that addressed the ways sound technology has profoundly altered how we hear and think about music. A featured guest on the CNBC special Meeting of the Minds, he spoke about the future of American education. His essay “Liberating the Pariah: Politics, the Jews, and Hannah Arendt” appeared in Thinking in Dark Times: Hannah Arendt on Ethics and Politics (Fordham University Press). For the German-language volume Art & Now, published by the University of Applied Arts Vienna, he contributed the essay “Music and Freedom: A Polemical History.” He also wrote the preface for WritingBased Teaching: Essential Practices and Enduring Questions (SUNY Press), coedited by Teresa Vilardi, director of the Institute for Writing and Thinking. In addition, President Botstein continued his work as conductor of the American Symphony Orchestra and the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra. Anna Cafaro, visiting assistant professor of Italian and Spanish, published a new book, L’improvvisazione dell’Attore nel Teatro di Ricerca Contemporaneo: tra Determinismo e Aleatorietà—The Actor’s Improvisation in Contemporary Theatre Research: Between Determinism and Uncertainty (Angelo Longo Editore) in January. The book is an experimental attempt to apply Chaos Theory to theatrical phenomena in an effort to understand the ways in which an actor is able to express a fixed text and why the actor’s performance is different each night. Gabriela Carrión, assistant professor of Spanish, presented a paper, “‘Burlas en tiempo de tantas veras’: Humor and Violence in Lope’s Los melindres de Belisa,” at the American Society for Theatre Research conference in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in November. Laurie Dahlberg, professor of art history and photography, contributed to the catalogue, published by Skira, for the exhibition Impressionism and the Ecology of Landscape at the Complesso del Vittoriano in Rome, March 5 to June 29.

Omar G. Encarnación, professor of political studies, published an essay, “Justice in Times of Transition: Lessons from the Iberian Experience,” as a working paper at the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies at Harvard University in October. Peter Filkins, visiting professor of literature, visited the Literary Translation Seminar at Boston University in March to talk about his translation of H. G. Adler’s The Journey. Marka Gustavsson, visiting assistant professor of music, served on a jury panel to choose the participants for the 10th International Banff String Quartet Competition in March. She and her colleagues in the Colorado Quartet concluded their Beethoven recordings with the Opus 18 Quartets. The complete cycle is being released this spring on Parnassus Records. Ed Halter, visiting assistant professor of film and electronic arts, won a Creative Capital Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant to work on his book, tentatively titled New Experimental Cinema in America, 1990–Now. Samuel K. Hsiao, assistant professor of mathematics, coauthored a research article, “Random walks on quasisymmetric functions,” published in the journal Advances in Mathematics in October. Peter Hutton, professor of film, will be honored in May at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid, with a retrospective of 18 films. Patricia Karetzky, Oskar Munsterberg Lecturer in Art History, wrote the catalogue for and curated the exhibition The State of the Dao: Contemporary Chinese Art, on view at the Lehman College Art Gallery from February to May. Among numerous published articles and abstracts was “Cui Guotai, ‘Rust Never Sleeps,’” Yishu (vol. 8, no. 4, 2009). She also delivered several papers, including “Tang Buddhist Metropolitan Style” for “T’ang Studies: The Next Twenty-five Years” at the University at Albany SUNY last May and “The Evolution of the Image of the Divine in Daoist Art” for the Fifth International Daoist Studies Conference at Mount Wudang, Hubei, China, in June. Franz Kempf, professor of German, published “Enlightened Italian Opera? Schiller and Verdi” in Shades of Enlightenment, International Journal of Humanistic Studies and Literature, and “Närrische Gespenster: Zum Humor in Kafkas Betrachtung” in Schriftenreihe der deutschen Kafkagesellschaft, Bd. III. In January, David Kettler, research professor in social studies, gave two lectures: “My Six Teachers” at Pedagogische Hochschule in Heidelberg, Germany; and “Unfinished Business” for the First Letters Workshop at the University of Mainz in Germany. Peter Laki, visiting associate professor of music, presented his paper “Hymn and Waltz: György Kurtág’s Compositions in Homage of Alfred Schnittke” at “Post-Modernism Behind the Iron Curtain,” an international conference held at the University of Hanover in Germany and at the University of Geneva, Switzerland. Joseph Luzzi, associate professor of Italian, received the Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for Italian Studies from the Modern Language Association for his book Romantic Europe and the Ghost of Italy. The prize is awarded biennially for an outstanding book by an association

member in the field of Italian literature or comparative literature involving Italian. Luzzi was honored in December, during the MLA’s annual convention. Thomas Martin, faculty at Bard High School Early College Manhattan, presented a paper, “Forging Bronzes and New Identities: The Case of Filarete,” at the 2009 New England Renaissance Conference, held at Boston University. Edie Meidav, visiting assistant professor of writing, had work published in Fifth Wednesday Journal and the Argentina-based International Literary Quarterly. Her story “Kingdom of the Young” has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize XXXV by Fifth Wednesday Journal.

Education Letter about school-family partnerships to support lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender students. Luc Sante, visiting professor of writing and photography, has been awarded the International Center of Photography 2010 Infinity Award for Writing. Peter Sourian, professor of English, presented a paper, “Armenian Writing in North America,” at the third biennial Conference of Armenian Writers, held at the University of California, Los Angeles, in November.

Stephen Mucher, faculty in the Master of Arts in Teaching Program, presented “The American High School at the Counterculture Crossroad, 1966–1972” at the annual conference of the National Council for History Education, held in San Diego in March.

Benjamin Stevens, assistant professor of classics, published “Akira and the (post-?)human condition: identity, cognition, and the mindbody problem” in Anime and Philosophy (Open Court Publishing), a series on popular culture and philosophy. He has an article in the new Encyclopedia of Ancient History (Wiley-Blackwell) under the entry “Calendar, Roman.”

Jacob Neusner, Distinguished Service Professor of the History and

Elaine Thomas, assistant professor of political studies, served as chair

Theology of Judaism, received an honorary doctorate of humane letters from the Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion. Neusner gave the Dr. Fritz Bamberger Memorial Lecture, “Reform Judaism in Our Day: Why It Is Necessary.”

of a panel on the social integration of immigrants in Europe at the Council for European Studies conference, held in Montreal in April.

Dimitri B. Papadimitriou, executive vice president of the college and president of the Levy Economics Institute, was interviewed in October by Michael Hirsh at Newsweek about the influence of Hyman Minsky; in November by Eleftherotypia on the challenges of the Greek economy; in December by Paul Davis at American Banker regarding small business lending; by Ron Fink at CFOZone.com on the latest Strategic Analysis report and monetary policy; and by Constance Gutske at CBS Money Watch about U.S. gold holdings. He presented three talks: “Addressing Global Imbalances After the Economic Crisis” with Gennaro Zezza at the 13th conference of the Research Network Macroeconomics and Macroeconomic Policies, “The World Economy in Crisis—The Return of Keynesianism?” held in Germany; “Global Imbalances After the Economic Crisis” at the conference “Financial Globalization: Culprit, Survivor or Casualty of the Great Crisis?” held at the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization in Connecticut; and a talk at the International Development Economics Associates (IDEAs) conference, “Reforming the Financial System: Proposals, Constraints and New Directions,” held in India. He participated in the Euro50 Group Roundtable on the 10th anniversary of the Euro, “Is There Still a Paradigm for Monetary Policy Today?” held in Paris; and in a seminar, “The ‘Great Recession’ and Beyond: Economic Outlook for the U.S. and Global Economy,” held at the University of Athens. Judy Pfaff, Richard B. Fisher Professor in the Arts, has solo exhibitions this year at the Cole Art Center @ The Old Opera House in Nacogdoches, Texas, April 10 to May; David Weinberg Gallery, Chicago, April 16 to May 29; Ameringer McEnery Yohe, New York, in September; and Braunstein/Quay Gallery, San Francisco, October 7 to November 6. “Sitting By the River,” an essay by Susan Fox Rogers, visiting associate professor of writing, was accepted for publication in the Alaska Quarterly Review. Michael Sadowski, faculty of the Master of Arts in Teaching Program, wrote an article for the March/April 2010 issue of the Harvard

Peter Trachtenberg, an instructor in the Language & Thinking Program, received the Phi Beta Kappa Society’s Ralph Waldo Emerson Award for his Book of Calamities: Five Questions About Suffering and Its Meaning (Little, Brown). Since 1960, the Emerson award has been given annually for significant contributions to interpretations of the intellectual and cultural condition of humanity. KC Trommer, faculty at Bard High School Early College Queens, published “Reformation” in Poetry East and “Room Tone” in MARGIE. NewLights Press selected “Meat Cove, Cape Breton” as one of five works to be included in a new series of text-image-process-object broadsides. Her collage work “Ha Ha Momma” was on exhibit at Central Booking Gallery in Brooklyn. Wendy Urban-Mead, faculty in the Master of Arts in Teaching Program, will present a paper in June, at the Britain Zimbabwe Society Research Days, which will address the theme “Religion in Contemporary Zimbabwe” at St. Antony’s College, Oxford, U.K. Suzanne Vromen, professor emeritus of sociology, took part in the Symposium on Religion and Youth at the University of Mississippi in March. She spoke at the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium, at the University of Antwerp, and at the University of Brussels. In April, she was a panelist at the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute Conference on families and children after World War II. Japheth Wood, faculty in the Master of Arts in Teaching Program, presented a workshop, “Mathematical Origami,” at the Barnard College Sonia Kovalevsky Day, a celebration of mathematics for middle-school girls held in November. He also organized the New York Math Circle Election Day Workshop for Middle School Math Teachers at Stuyvesant High School and presented a session, “The Multiplication Principle and Divisors,” there. Li-Hua Ying, associate professor of Chinese, published a book, Historical Dictionary of Modern Chinese Literature (Scarecrow Press) in January.

Board of Trustees of Bard College David E. Schwab II ’52, Chair Emeritus Charles P. Stevenson Jr., Chair Emily H. Fisher, Vice Chair Elizabeth Ely ’65, Secretary Roland J. Augustine, Treasurer Fiona Angelini + Leon Botstein, President of the College David C. Clapp Marcelle Clements ’69, Alumni/ae Trustee Asher B. Edelman ’61 Robert S. Epstein ’63 Barbara S. Grossman ’73, Alumni/ae Trustee Sally Hambrecht Ernest F. Henderson III, Life Trustee 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 Bruce C. Ratner Stanley A. Reichel ’65 Stewart Resnick Roger N. Scotland ’93, Alumni/ae Trustee The Rt. Rev. Mark S. Sisk, Honorary Trustee Martin T. Sosnoff Susan Weber Patricia Ross Weis ’52 + ex officio

Image Credits Cover: ©Richard Renaldi Inside front cover–1: John Harte 2: Don Hamerman 3: (top to bottom) Karl Rabe; John Harte; courtesy of Eban Goodstein; portrait by Katie Osgood; Karl Rabe 4–5: Courtesy of Jaya Spier ’10 6: (top) Courtesy of Zoe Elizabeth Noyes ’11; (bottom) Courtesy of Shawn Moore ’11 7: Courtesy of Shawn Moore ’11 8: (top) ©Philippe Body/Hemis/Corbis 10: ©Richard Renaldi 12: John Harte 14: Courtesy of Aileen Passloff 15: Karl Rabe 16: ©Christian Charisius/Reuters/Corbis 18: Daniel Gordon ’04 and Leo Koenig Inc 20: Courtesy of the artist, Wallspace, New York, and Thomas Dane, London 21: James Ewing 22–23: Daniel Gordon ’04 and Leo Koenig Inc 24: Courtesy of Eban Goodstein 25: Pete Mauney ’93, MFA ’00 26: (left and middle) Pete Mauney ’93, MFA ’00; (right) David Hofstra 28: Karl Rabe 29: Courtesy of the Center for Curatorial Studies 30: (left) Courtesy of Jacob Neusner; (right) Sasha Boak-Kelly 31: ©Peter Aaron ’68/Esto 32: Pete Mauney ’93, MFA ’00 34: Giancarlo Traverso 35: (left) Lisa Kereszi ’95; (right) Courtesy of Heather Klinkhamer ’92 36: Lori Adams ’84 45: Bard College Archives and Special Collections Inside back cover: Courtesy of Bill Horvitz Back cover: Don Hamerman

Office of Development and Alumni/ae Affairs Debra Pemstein, Vice President for Development and Alumni/ae Affairs, 845-758-7405, pemstein@bard.edu; Jane Brien ’89, Director of Alumni/ae Affairs, 845-758-7406, brien@bard.edu; Tricia Fleming, Assistant Director of Alumni/ae Affairs, 845-758-7089, fleming@bard.edu; Anne Canzonetti ’84, Assistant Director of Alumni/ae Affairs, 845-758-7187, canzonet@bard.edu Published by the Bard Publications Office Mary Smith, Director; Ginger Shore, Consultant; Debby Mayer, Editorial Director; Mikhail Horowitz, Ellen Liebowitz, Cynthia Werthamer, Editors; Diane Rosasco, Production Manager; Kevin Trabucco, Designer ©2010 Bard College. All rights reserved. Printed at Quality Printing Company, Pittsfield, Massachusetts, using soy-based inks on recycled paper

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JOHN BARD SOCIETY NEWS Wayne Horvitz ’42 Shares His Love of Bard “My Dad loved Bard,” said Bill Horvitz, son of Wayne L. Horvitz ’42. Bill shared this memory in a conversation with Debra Pemstein, Bard’s vice president for development and alumni/ae affairs, as he told her that his father had made Bard the beneficiary of his IRA. Wayne died on June 17, 2009 (his obituary ran in the Fall 2009 Bardian). A loyal alumnus and an active member of the Bard–St. Stephen’s Alumni/ae Association, he was also a member of the John Bard Society, which recognizes and thanks those individuals who have included Bard in their estate plans and notified the College of their intentions. As a member of the John Bard Society, Wayne received invitations to special receptions and an annual luncheon with representatives of the faculty, administration, and trustees, but more important, he knew that he would help future students benefit from a Bard education. Debra, who knew Wayne, recalled with Bill that his father loved to reminisce about Bard in the 1940s, when, he said, “the College was really broke.” Wayne often spoke of his friends Bob Haberman ’41, Alvin Sapinsley ’42, Greeley Wells ’42, Jack Honey ’39, Arnold Davis ’44, Dick Koch ’40, Clint Jones ’38, and Charlie Post, among others. Professionally, Wayne was a nationally recognized labor negotiator and mediator. Outside of his work, Wayne had many passions, two of which were tennis and music. During his time at Bard, he and Al Sapinsley wrote musicals together, including Exit Laughing. Wayne and Tony Hecht ’44 played the piano together for numerous parties, including, said Wayne, several “for the Vassar girls,” one of whom, Ann Battie, he married in 1945. Wayne’s gift to Bard is unrestricted, allowing the College to allocate it to where it is needed most. His donation will fund scholarships, a critical component of College operations, and just as Wayne had planned, will allow others to attend Bard and experience a liberal arts education. For further information on the John Bard Society or to include Bard in your estate plans, please contact Debra Pemstein, vice president for development and alumni/ae affairs, at pemstein@bard.edu or by calling 845-758-7405. All inquiries are confidential.

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COMMENCEMENT AND ALUMNI/AE WEEKEND May 21, 22, 23 REUNION CLASSES 1940, 1945, 1950, 1954 and 1955, 1958–1961, 1964 and 1965, 1970, 1975, 1980, 1985, 1990, 1995, 2000, and 2005

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