Bardian 2004 Fall by Bardian archives

Bardian Bard College Fall 2004

Special Science Issue Bioinformatics: Biology Meets Computer Science Breaking New Ground Robotics Darwin, Kant, and Rattlesnakes: Appreciating Nature

cover Model of The Gabrielle H. Reem and Herbert J. Kayden Center for Science and Computation this and facing page First-year biology class

In 1999 Bard President Leon Botstein and a number of noted educators convened to address the need to augment the role of science in liberal arts curricula. With the 21st century imminent, the meeting was an acknowledgment of the increasingly powerful role science education would play in the new century and beyond. The Bard Science Initiative was born. This special issue of the Bardian constitutes a report on the ways in which the Bard Science Initiative has been implemented thus far and the ways in which the College’s liberal arts and sciences programs have strengthened one another. In adapting to a changing world, Bard remains true to its historical mission— that of refining and expanding the horizons of undergraduate education.

Board of Governors of the Bard–St. Stephen’s Alumni/ae Association Judith Arner ’68, President Michael DeWitt ’65, Executive Vice President and Recruitment Committee Chairperson Andrea J. Stein ’92, Vice President Maggie Hopp ’67, Secretary David B. Ames ’93 Robert Amsterdam ’53 Claire Angelozzi ’74 David Avallone ’87 Dr. Penny Axelrod ’63 Cathy Thiele Baker ’68, Nominations and Awards Committee Cochairperson Belinha Rowley Beatty ’69, Class Notes Committee Cochairperson Eva Thal Belefant ’49 Dr. Miriam Roskin Berger ’56 Jack Blum ’62 Carla Bolte ’71 Erin Boyer ’00 Randy Buckingham ’73, Events Committee Cochairperson Reginald Bullock Jr. ’84 Jamie Callan ’75 Cathaline Cantalupo ’67, Bard Associated Research Donation (BARD) Committee Cochairperson Charles Clancy ’69, Development Committee Cochairperson Peter Criswell ’89, Events Committee Cochairperson John J. Dalton, Esq. ’74, Commencement Liaison Arnold Davis ’44, Nominations and Awards Committee Cochairperson Dominic East ’91, Class Notes Committee Cochairperson Kit Kauders Ellenbogen ’52 Joan Elliott ’67 Naomi Bellinson Feldman ’53 Barbara Grossman Flanagan ’60

Cormac Flynn ’90 Connie Bard Fowle ’80, Career Networking Committee Cochairperson Diana Hirsch Friedman ’68 R. Michael Glass ’75 Sibel Alparslan Golden ’88 Eric Warren Goldman ’98 Rebecca Granato ’99, Young Alumni/ae Committee Chairperson Charles Hollander ’65 Dr. John C. Honey ’39 Rev. Canon Clinton R. Jones ’38 Deborah Davidson Kaas ’71, Oral History Committee Chairperson Chad Kleitsch ’91, Life After Bard Committee Cochairperson Richard Koch ’40 Erin Law ’93 Cynthia Hirsch Levy ’65 Dr. William V. Lewit ’52 Carolyn Mayo-Winham ’88 Peter F. McCabe ’70, Nominations and Awards Committee Cochairperson Steven Miller ’70, Development Committee Cochairperson Abigail Morgan ’96 Julia McKenzie Munemo ’97 Ngonidzashe Munemo ’00 Molly Northrup Bloom ’94 Brianna Norton ’00 Jennifer Novik ’98, Class Notes Committee Cochairperson Karen Olah ’65, Alumni/ae House Committee Chairperson Susan Playfair ’62, Bard Associated Research Donation (BARD) Committee Cochairperson Arthur “Scott” Porter Jr. ’79 Allison Radzin ’88, Career Networking Committee Cochairperson Elizabeth Reiss ’87 Penelope Rowlands ’73

Reva Minkin Sanders ’56 Roger Scotland ’93, Men and Women of Color Network Liaison Benedict S. Seidman ’40 Donna Shepper ’79 George Smith ’82 Dr. Ingrid Spatt ’69, Life After Bard Committee Cochairperson William Stavru ’87 Walter Swett ’96 Oliver teBoekhorst ’93 Kwesi Thomas ’00 Dr. Toni-Michelle Travis ’69 Jill Vasileff MFA ’93 Marjorie Vecchio MFA ’01 Samir B. Vural ’98 Barbara Wigren ’68 Ron Wilson ’75

Bardian

Fall 2004 Contents Features 4

Bioinformatics: Biology Meets Computer Science

Breaking New Ground: The Gabrielle H. Reem and Herbert J. Kayden Center for Science and Computation

Robotics

Women and Physics: An Interaction

Darwin, Kant, and Rattlesnakes: Appreciating Nature

Enough

A World of Questions: Sanford Simon Discusses Science Education

Collegial Trees

Frog Journey

Departments 40

Alumni/ae Notebook

Books by Bardians

On and Off Campus

Class Notes

Faculty Notes

bioinformatics: The year 2003 was the 50th anniversary of the discovery of the double-helical structure of DNA. The year also marked another milestone in science: the identification of the three billion base pairs that make up human DNA—the sequencing of the entire human genome. And 2003 was the year that a quieter, but no less auspicious, event for Bard College occurred: the graduation of the College’s first biology student to concentrate in bioinformatics. When Rob Cutler ’94 left Bard to begin his graduate work at Vanderbilt University, the term “bioinformatics” was just beginning to surface. Today the field has grown so fast, “there aren’t text books for it,” says Cutler, who earned a Ph.D. in computational biophysics and now teaches bioinformatics as part of the Biology Program at Bard. “It was the Human Genome Project, and the massive amount of data generated from it, that have transformed both life science and computer science,” he says. The Human Genome Project (HGP) and the field of bioinformatics has also transformed Cutler’s classroom. “Students are able to address biological questions from a fundamentally new perspective,” he says, “one that was never possible before we had all of this quantitative data.” Bard students are introduced to the HGP, its history, and the tools to manage the data it has generated. They are taught how to access data banks such as the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), which, as part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), is the primary clearinghouse for all genomic information. Bardians learn how to do sophisticated searches, using the Basic Local Alignment Search Tool (BLAST), to compare gene and protein sequences against those in

Rob Cutler ’94, assistant professor of biology other public databases. And they do research—real hands-on research—much of which has been published in scientific journals and presented at conferences. The definition of bioinformatics goes something like this: the science of managing and analyzing biological data, using advanced computing techniques, particularly in analyzing genomic research data. For Cutler, bioinformatics goes well beyond its plain and functional name. “Bioinformatics enables us to turn biological data into biological knowledge,” he says. “We’re learning about how we function and how our biological systems work on a fundamental level, and out of this is growing a greater understanding of the connections between the genome and human disease.” According to the U.S. Department of Energy, which, with NIH, coordinated the HGP, the technologies and resources resulting from the project have made biology the “foremost science of the 21st century.” As a result of the HGP, the amount of biological data and the technology to manage it are growing exponentially, exceeding Gordon Moore’s eponymous law that data density doubles every 18 months. Researchers in the biological and genomic sciences have long used computer technology, particularly large-scale databases, to collect, store, quantify, and interpret data. However, the HGP has accelerated the demand for bigger, better, and more efficient technologies of all kinds to handle the massive amount of complex genomic information that continues to pour in from the project. With this bounty comes a potential downside, a challenge Cutler refers to as “the data problem.” How can all of this information be managed and made meaningful? How can data in disparate formats and from disparate sources be standardized and made accessible to

a growing and far-flung international scientific community? Or, as the journal Nature put it (in an April 24, 2003, article), how can scientists come to understand the difference between a “bag of molecules” and a biological system? “If we want the data to do more than just sit there,” Cutler says, “we have to go in, mine it, and analyze it somehow. That’s where bioinformatics comes in.” In the early stages of the HGP, genomic sequencing was done piece by piece, one small stretch of DNA at a time. “It made sense at the time,” Cutler says, “and you can certainly put the entire genome together that way, but it was slow.” About midpoint in the project, the technology age and the HGP coalesced. “They simply took the factors that made the HGP slow, turned them into a computing problem, and automated the basics of the process,”

from lecture notes and having students spit it back. Students here learn by doing.” The emphasis in Bard’s bioinformatics lab is on the development and use of tools to find and predict genetic information. But it goes further than building skills and learning methodology for their own sake. Cutler places these research methods into the larger context of human genomics and the direction such research may lead the field of biology. “Being here is about teaching,” he says, “and the academic freedom and openness to new ideas about how and what to teach is what brought me back here. Where else could I teach what I teach and do the kind of research we are doing?” Although bioinformatics and computational biology are specifically directed toward genomic information, the process of digging deeply into stockpiles of information and coming up with

biology meets computer science explains Cutler. Random snippets of DNA were extracted and sequenced, stored in huge databases, then reassembled like a puzzle. “It was a quantum leap,” Cutler says, “It was not only faster, it freed us up to do the analysis—the real work of science.” The same leap helped scientists complete the HGP two years earlier than was anticipated when it was launched in 1990. Though the primary goal of the HGP was to identify all human genes, the underlying strategy included the creation of a sciencebased infrastructure to support and sustain future research, and to train future scientists in genomics. Out of this grew the need for two approaches to the same challenges, one coming from classical biology and the other from classical computer science. Bioinformatics became the true symbiosis of both approaches. On the computer science side, researchers manage biological data by developing software, improving databases so as to integrate and better visualize different data types, and optimizing the algorithms that help manage the required tasks. On the biological side, the technological tools provide a means for parsing through complex data and posing questions that will unravel the mysteries of biological systems. “I see myself as a biologist who uses the tools of computer science to address questions of biology,” Cutler says. “If you’re going to be working in biology today, you must have computing skills.” Today’s students are hardwired to the Internet. “They are just naturally savvy about what you can use a computer to do,” says Cutler, who leverages that inherent skill and directs it toward things biological. “I’ve completely done away with the demarcation between lab and lecture,” Cutler says. “I’m not interested in teaching

relationships and patterns is applicable across a broad spectrum of disciplines, from ecological research, to epidemiology, to results from political primaries—any research area where vast amounts of data are derived. “No matter what field you’re in, you need the skills to deal with the amount of data produced, find things efficiently, and find relationships in huge data sets,” says Cutler. Bioinformatics plays to the strengths of a liberal arts education. “Our students have a wide range of interests and, because of that, they tend to look at things from a multidisciplinary perspective,” Cutler says. “Just look at the list of Nobel Prize winners over the last century. It’s not surprising that most come from liberal arts educations.” A number of respected academic institutions (including Duke University, University of Chicago, and Iowa State University) offer bioinformatics and computational biology programs on a graduate level. However, few undergraduate institutions provide the concentration in bioinformatics and access to real research that Bard does. The College’s new Gabrielle H. Reem and Herbert J. Kayden Center for Science and Computation (see story on page 6), with its advanced research and teaching labs, will have Bardians doing an even higher level of research. The challenge for Bard is to stay on the leading edge of this new genomic era. For Cutler, the College is clearly meeting that challenge. “The administration is behind the growth in the sciences,” he says, “and the school is well placed to make a real impact on the biological sciences through the students we’re putting out, as well as the many fine research projects that we’ve been given the freedom to pursue.” —Jan Weber

Breaking New Ground: The Gabrielle H. Reem and Herbert J. Kayden Center for Science and Computation Designed by Rafael Vi単oly Architects

The Building The Bard Science Initiative is a comprehensive campuswide enterprise aimed at invigorating science education in the context of the liberal arts. The effort will reach a new level of commitment with the construction of The Gabrielle H. Reem and Herbert J. Kayden Center for Science and Computation, a sinuous structure set into the meadows and woodlands of the Annandale-on-Hudson campus. The dramatic 42,000-square-foot building, for which a spring 2005 groundbreaking is planned, is being built on a field alongside Sottery Hall, with Ludlow Hall at its north end. It will represent an expansion of the campus space devoted to biology and computer laboratories as well as science lecture halls and classrooms. The main floor of the new Center will house three large selfcontained “smart” classrooms—their circular walls extending into the lobby—and an egg-shaped auditorium, capable of seating 65 to 80 people, for introductory lectures and other presentations. The classrooms will be set up for multimedia sound and computer projections and videoconferencing. Labs lining the entire western side of the building will be framed by glass walls and will overlook woods leading down a slope to Annandale Road, whose curves will be paralleled by the science building’s fluid lines. Rafael Viñoly Architects, a New York City firm, is designing the building. Firm representatives call attention to another special design feature: the building’s “spine,” which will house lab-support areas (such as storage), with the machine room mounted (out of view) above the building’s central column. Most buildings dedicate considerable floor space to mechanical workings that, in this instance, will be mounted above usable room. The mechanical spine makes for an extremely efficient use of space and allows for light to fill the rest of the building. As vertebrae form the spine of the body, so the backbone of the Center will support the building’s strength and flexibility. The second floor will feature a suspended walkway. This level will include faculty offices, cantilevered above the lobby, with solid glass walls that will echo those on the opposite side of the building. Bridges will link the walkway to open spaces atop the three protruding classrooms. Students may use these spaces for studying, computer work, and informal conversations. Such meeting places are designed to emphasize the close-knit quality of educational culture at Bard, providing areas for quiet study while simultaneously opening up opportunities for students to connect with other students and faculty. The building will wrap around a plaza that will mark the end of another “spine”: an elongated campus path linking Stevenson Library and the science building. The path will also branch off toward Bertelsmann Campus Center. “The new building will become the

intellectual spine of the campus,” says Mark Halsey, associate professor of mathematics and associate dean of academic affairs, adding that the central location of the science facility, with its plentiful, light-filled, and comfortable study areas, will draw students from all disciplines. “In my opinion the building will be a new hub on campus, for people getting work done and engaging in intellectual pursuits,” Halsey says. “I think it will have a dramatic impact on the life of the campus.” The large amount of laboratory space—almost 10,000 square feet—will provide students with an opportunity to pursue the research-based, hands-on study of the sciences that is the identifying factor of Bard’s science programs. Many of the laboratories will be shared by faculty and students conducting research. The dynamic tension of this learning style illustrates Bard’s signature approach to scientific exploration, while the windowed rooms will represent a significant contrast to the traditional lab format of small rooms behind closed doors. The building will include specialized research areas such as instrument centers, a zebrafish facility, an intelligent systems and media lab (in which computers recognize sounds and voices), and a robotics lab, all of which will support projects that Bard faculty are currently undertaking. To stay in stride with state-of-the-art science, lab spaces will be easily adaptable for new kinds of research, as interdisciplinary collaborations continue to develop: labs can be retooled and partitioning walls reconfigured. “The architectural challenge is to keep these labs relevant, so they are designed for maximum flexibility,” a Viñoly associate says. “For a college to invest this much imagination in a science building says a lot about where the sciences are headed.” The Division of Science, Mathematics, and Computing comprises five programs: biology, chemistry, computer science, mathematics, and physics, all currently located in Hegeman Science Hall, Albee Hall, and the David Rose Science Laboratories. The Computer Science, Biology, and Mathematics Programs will move to the new building. The Immediate Science Research Opportunity Program (ISROP), now in Rose, also will relocate to the Center. Once that occurs, the Chemistry Program will expand from its present location in Hegeman Hall and Rose Laboratories to encompass some of the laboratory and office space currently occupied by the Biology Program in those buildings. The remainder of the Biology Program’s former home, as well as the space currently occupied by the Computer Science and Mathematics Programs, will become the new domain of the Psychology Program. Physics also will remain in Hegeman and Rose. When the new building is complete, the total science-related area on campus will approach 70,000 square feet.

The Curriculum The Center will buttress the teaching of science at Bard—science on its own and in combination with the study of arts, literature, social studies, and other disciplines for which Bard College already is renowned. “The idea is that if students see science as a creative process, that will convince them to stay interested in it,” Halsey says. “Science is a very creative process in the same way that making art is.” The creative study of science, as well as the rigor of science as a discipline, is being spearheaded by a new set of distribution requirements obliging all students to take at least one laboratory science course. Furthermore, the science curriculum will integrate student research and direct involvement in lab work into all four years of a science concentration, building on the model developed by ISROP, which places first-year students into the lab as soon as they hit campus (see sidebar, page 9). The ISROP archetype also will be expanded to a new first-year research biology course for students concentrating in the sciences (see sidebar, page 10). “We want to blend the boundaries between teaching and research, so students don’t think of science as something they learn in a lecture room, then go to a lab and practice, but rather as a process by which to see the world,” Halsey says. Increasing the number of students involved in science means increasing the number of science faculty. The Bard Science Initiative has led to a nearly 50 percent increase in the number of science faculty in the last four years, primarily in biology and computer science. The initiative also has led to an increase in students’ research opportunities throughout their Bard education and has created a close affiliation, involving student and faculty exchanges and shared course work, with The Rockefeller University in New York. This connection allows Bard students to benefit from study at one of the world’s premier research universities while simultaneously attending one of the country’s best liberal arts colleges. Bard students are given the opportunity to explore science under the tutelage of a dynamic faculty. For example, Craig Anderson, associate professor of chemistry, who teaches the Forensic Chemistry course (see sidebar, p. 10), is conducting research and teaching advanced courses on metal compounds. “These compounds have very interesting catalytic, therapeutic, and photochemical properties because of the metal at the core,” Anderson says. His research involves synthesizing some ruthenium compounds in order to develop new classes of cancer drugs that will be effective when platinum compounds, now in use as cancer drugs, are not. “We’re trying to make a ‘metadrug’ that combines both metals and hence the properties of both the platinum and ruthenium,” he says. Students in his Advanced Inorganic and Organometallics courses work with Anderson on this research, which requires close examination of the primary literature. 8

The vigorous relationship of Bard faculty to the wider study of science is illustrated by the case of Hilton M. Weiss, David and Rosalie Rose Distinguished Professor in Science, Mathematics, and Computing. Weiss has done more than affect Bard’s chemistry curriculum; he and Kim M. Touchette ’77, visiting professor of chemistry, have changed the very fundamentals of organic chemistry. For decades, traditional texts taught that double and triple bonds behave identically when acids are added. A collaboration between Weiss, Touchette, and their students changed all that. Weiss notes, “There were problems with this idea, and my organic chemistry students often noticed that this mechanism did not fit some of the other concepts they had learned in my course. When I searched other textbooks for a better explanation, I found more evidence that the reaction of triple bonds did not fit the presumed mechanism.” Triggered by the persistent curiosity of their students, Weiss and Touchette pursued the issue. Research that they have published over the past several years has shown that the traditional textbooks were wrong. Many Bard students who assisted with the bonding research became coauthors on Weiss and Touchette’s published papers. Their thesis on triple bonding—initially overlooked—is now accepted by the international chemistry community. “Science students tend to learn by the book, but the research we’ve done at Bard helps students realize that everything they read is not always true,” Touchette says. “And there are a lot of things we’re still discovering.” Clearly, the science curricula at Bard are burgeoning. Halsey sums it up when he says, “We want the curriculum to increase the visibility of science, and the new building will be a physical manifestation of that. We have great—but at present, small—science programs here at Bard. The Center will go a long way toward showing the community, as well as prospective students, that Bard is serious about science. We expect the Center to have a dramatic effect on the number of students studying science at Bard.” —Cynthia Werthamer An interview with Gabrielle H. Reem and Herbert J. Kayden, the donors who have made the building possible, is scheduled to appear in the Spring 2005 issue of the Bardian.

a closer look at bard’s science initiative ISROP: An Update When Valeri Thomson ’85 returned to Bard to teach in 1998, she came with an innovative proposal that would meld research and teaching. The proposal called for the creation of an Immediate Science Research Opportunity Program (ISROP). Today, as director of ISROP, Thomson explains, “I saw that big institutions offered research opportunities that not only trained students early, but opened the door to the most highly sought-after competitive internships.” She also saw ISROP as a way to blend the interests of students and faculty. Students could gain access to meaningful, sophisticated, faculty research and faculty members could conduct research projects during the school year. By putting student researchers “on the job,” says

Amanda Gurung ’07 (facing camera)

When I was chosen as a research assistant at the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center at The Rockefeller University, I hit the ground running. In fact, I was the first undergraduate they had ever hired. I attribute this to ISROP, where I learned the kind of practical skills that research labs of this stature are looking for. —Sarah Alexandra Shapiro ’02 Thomson, “students could grapple with current research, devise their own protocols, collaborate with their professors, and be participants in published research projects.” Of the 70 students who have participated in ISROP since its 1998 inception, most have gone on to graduate programs and careers in medicine, public health, biology, chemistry, and bioinformatics. Currently, the ISROP lab focuses on two projects. “The first is a genetic approach to studying the genes involved in learning and memory,” says Thomson. (For more information on this project, see “Zebrafish,” Summer 2004 Bardian.) In the second project, students are investigating genes that may play a central role in the pathogenesis of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. This work is an outgrowth of previous research in which ISROP students studied isocitrate dehydrogenase (IDH), not in bacteria, but in a common freshwater protozoan, Tetrahymena pyriformis. “The students did everything,” says Thomson. “They found the genes, cloned the genes, purified the protein, showed that the protein had activity, and then built the phylogenetic tree—in other words, they did the full analysis.” That project, under the direction of John Ferguson, professor of biology at Bard, has been presented at conferences and will soon be published.

This year, the ISROP lab took that research to the next level, with the question: Now that we’ve isolated certain genes, how do these genes influence disease? “Tuberculosis kills three million people annually,” Thomson says. “We hope that our work will help to identify potential proteins for drug targeting.” Students cloned and determined the function of two different genes that potentially code for IDH. “The next step is to knock them out,” says Thomson, “to make a tuberculosis strain that doesn’t have those genes.” Because DNA (rather than live, potentially infectious organisms) is used on campus, these new strains will be constructed in the laboratories of collaborators at The Rockefeller University, where Thomson will take her sabbatical. She could have taken the sabbatical a year ago, but delayed it in order to take advantage of the progress being made in Bard’s labs. The ISROP team of research assistants presented their findings, from both projects, at the sixth annual Bard College Science and Mathematics Research Symposium in May 2004. Their projects were titled: “A Study of Genes Involved in Learning and Memory: The Relative Level and Location of Expression of NR1 throughout Zebrafish Ontogeny” and “The Mycobacterium tuberculosis Gene icd2 Encodes a Functional Isocitrate Dehydrogenase.” 9

Forensic Chemistry Sleuths

Craig Anderson, associate professor of chemistry

Many students in Craig Anderson’s Forensic Chemistry class were not yet born when Wayne Williams, suspected of killing 27 boys in Atlanta, was arrested in 1981. What convicted him was analysis of fibers, found on a victim, which matched fibers in Williams’s car and home. It was one of the first times in a criminal trial that lawyers used numerical probability to compare and link commercial products in order to convict a murderer—and one of the real-life case studies that the associate professor of chemistry uses in his class. “One of the main ideas is to get the students to understand the differences between class characteristics, which distinguish a class of substances, like carpet fibers, and individual characteristics, which are unique, like our fingerprints and DNA,” says Anderson. Another case study he uses in class is that of Tylenol, whose makers faced a crisis in 1982 when seven people in Chicago died after taking Tylenol capsules filled with cyanide. The hows and whys of the tampering, which occurred after the product reached the shelves, were never fully discovered. “That case changed how every one of us views objects on a store shelf,” Anderson notes. The class uses analytical techniques that mirror the company’s attempts to solve the mystery. Forensic Chemistry, a course for students not concentrating in science, has waiting lists for enrollment when it is taught. The course imparts an understanding of chemical bonding, simple chemical reactions, and analytical techniques, such as extraction, used in the field of forensic chemistry. “I get lab-phobic people into the lab and get their hands messy,” Anderson says. Anderson also introduces students to the provocative side of science through Environmental Chemistry, a 100-level course that involves analytical chemistry as it relates to the atmosphere and ecosystems.

Fresh Look at First-Year Biology What incoming college students know about science has changed quite a bit in the last two decades, and Bard’s introductory biology course is changing too. “The vast majority of science students have had Advanced Placement work in high school, but they’re not necessarily prepared for second-year work,” says Michael Tibbetts, Biology Program director and associate professor of biology. “This course will be hands-on, not rehash.” The new course, scheduled to debut in fall 2005 and designed for students planning to concentrate in science, will emphasize lab research, and the primary literature to support that research, rather than lectures. It is an approach new to first-year science and is loosely based on Bard’s research-oriented Immediate Science Research Opportunity Program (ISROP).

“The idea behind this is that some students may learn better, retain the information better, and transfer the knowledge to new situations better if they have an interesting framework in which to place the knowledge,” says ISROP director Valeri Thomson ’85. “We will spend far more time doing research than is typically scheduled.” The research will be based on current topics in molecular neuroscience, which includes fundamental concepts of biology and chemistry. “We envision students leaving the course with a real flavor for scientific research and a good grasp of basic concepts,” Thomson says. “The idea is to have the labs drive the discussions, rather than vice versa,” says Craig Anderson, associate professor of chemistry, who is designing the course along with Thomson and Tibbetts. “The hands-on experience will generate the discussions.”

Connecting the Environment and Disease Computer modeling usually utilized only by researchers is part of an introductory interdisciplinary science course for Bard undergraduates. “Modeling is a powerful way to present new data, and it is a relatively young field, so students don’t usually see it until graduate school,” says Sven Anderson, assistant professor of computer science and one of the faculty for the new course, Environment and Disease. During the course—which involves faculty from every science discipline at Bard, as well as from political studies and writing—students examine intricate models of climate change and global warming. The course is one of four chosen last year by SENCER—Science Education for New Civic Engagements and Responsibilities—as an archetypal curriculum connecting science education and civic issues. SENCER is part of the Association of American Colleges and Universities. “We show students the need for an integrated approach to big problems facing the global community,” says Michael Tibbetts, Biology Program director, associate professor of biology, and a cocreator of the course. “To solve them, you have to understand them from multiple perspectives.” The topics in the fall 2004 course are global warming and malaria, persistent organic pollutants, and ozone depletion and skin cancer. Students study global warming, for instance, through atmospheric chemistry, ecology, and physics, as well as through computer models. Students also examine national policies and international conferences on the issue. “What makes this course a model is the number of people from different disciplines who work in unison, rather than as guest speakers,” Tibbetts says. “It’s unique to have this much contribution from faculty in other fields.” The course targets students who exhibit strong scientific interest but are not necessarily planning to concentrate in science. “We want students to be very critical of the data, whether it supports their cause or not,” says Craig Anderson, associate professor of chemistry. Matthew Deady, physics professor and director of the Physics Program, is planning a course on alternative energy sources, using the same interdisciplinary format.

Michael Tibbetts, associate professor of biology and director of the College’s Biology Program

Top image at right: The Genesis General Circulation Model is used to predict climate change, including variables such as temperature, precipitation, and air movement. This image of the northern hemisphere (viewed from above the North Pole) shows the predicted surface temperature during January. The temperature scale ranges from –38.2 to +35.1 Celsius. Bottom image at right: Ocean currents and temperatures are an integral part of accurate climate models. This image shows a three-dimensional representation of ocean temperatures as predicted by the Genesis Oceanic General Circulation Model. A partial cross section (the vertical dimension of which has been exaggerated) reveals a decrease in temperature as ocean depth increases. The temperature scale ranges from –14.0 to +29.8 Celsius.

degree_C – 35.1 – 31 – 27 – 20 – 10 -0.5 – – 0.5 – -12 – -25 – -38.2

T degrees C – 29.8 – 25 – 17.5

– 6 – 3.7 -2.14– – -2.9

– -14

Workshop in Language and Thinking Plays Key Role in College’s Science Initiative What do the following texts have in common? The New Organon, a book published by Francis Bacon in 1620; a 1987 book titled Signifying Nothing: The Semiotics of Zero; an essay written by Galileo during the 1590s, while he was teaching at the University of Padua; a chapter on leading-edge developments in the neuroscience of memory; a contemporary text on fractal geometry; and a historical work by Euclid. Some alumni/ae may be surprised at the answer. Selections from these books, among others, have been on recent reading lists for the Language and Thinking Workshop, which all first-year Bard undergraduates must attend. During the three-week workshop, students read extensively from assigned texts, work on writing projects, and meet in small groups to discuss their reading, as well as their writing. Through this process and the production of a final intellectual essay, students practice writing as a form of imaginative and disciplined thought. Over the past several years, the workshop, popularly known as “L&T,” has played a role in the College’s Science Initiative by including science- and math-related readings among its required texts. The director of the workshop, poet and essayist Joan Retallack, feels there is a natural relationship between the workshop’s goals and these subjects. Retallack, who is the College’s John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Professor of Humanities, is a key advocate of the effort to place greater emphasis on awakening students’ interest in scientific and mathematical concepts. “Knowledge of science and math is essential for a humanist education in today’s world,” Retallack asserts. L&T 2004 inaugurated a forum and lecture series, Science and Society, conducted by Bard faculty. She adds, “We want to stimulate students to pay attention to the many implications of math and science. We believe that you can’t present a meaningful sense of the intellectual environment without including the physical environment.” Surely, Bacon and Galileo would have agreed.

Bard Premeds Score High on Medical College Admission Test Over the past several years, the Bard students who have taken the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) have scored, on average, in the 95th to 98th percentile. These impressive results come as no surprise to John Ferguson, professor of biology. “We’re a highly selective college, and our students’ MCAT scores reflect that fact,” he says. As the College’s health professions adviser, he counsels students about how important it is to prepare thoroughly for the test, saying, “Native intelligence is not enough to get you through it.” Along with the students’ personal motivation, Ferguson credits the academic preparation they receive at Bard. As is the case 12

nationally, roughly half of the dozen or so Bard students who take the MCAT each year have concentrated in biology. Ten percent have concentrated in chemistry, and the rest, says Ferguson, “are all over the place—philosophy, English, history. If you’re a nonscience major and you take the required science courses and do well on the MCAT, you’re going to stand out in the applicant pool.” Recent Bard graduates are enrolled at Columbia University Medical Center, Tufts University School of Medicine, and Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, and several others have chosen to study veterinary medicine, dentistry, and osteopathy. “We don’t have frivolous premed students at Bard,” says Ferguson. Their MCAT scores—and career paths—bear him out.

Bard Math Students Rank High in Prestigious Competition Add “math powerhouse” to the other superlatives assigned to Bard. Last December four Bard students participated in the 64th William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition, an annual contest administered by the Mathematical Association of America. In March the Bard team was thrilled to learn that it had placed 34th among the 401 participating teams from U.S. and Canadian colleges and universities. Bard’s top scorer, Mariana Raykova ’06, ranked 166th among the 3,615 students who competed. Bard’s Putnam participants hail from countries in Eastern Europe where such competitions are part of the educational culture. These students have an enthusiastic attitude toward math competitions that is not often seen in the United States. Raykova acknowledges that math competitions are much more common and popular in her native Bulgaria than in the United States, but adds, “The existence of the Putnam means that there’s interest in this type of competition here. And there was a 10 percent increase in the number of students who participated from throughout the country this year.” Bard’s Mathematics Program has been all they hoped for, the students report. “The small class size guarantees that I receive personal attention, and the faculty is excellent,” says Alina Marinova ’06. The only senior on the team, Elena Grigorescu ’04, who began a Ph.D. program in theoretical computer science at MIT this fall, encouraged her teammates to continue competing. She needn’t be concerned. According to Raykova, the Bardians are looking forward to next year’s contest. “The questions aren’t like textbook exercises,” said Raykova. “They are stated in a funny way and the solutions usually involve a surprising approach.” Sample Putnam Problem Given any five distinct points on the surface of a sphere, show that we can find a closed hemisphere that contains at least four of them. (Solution on page 71)

Catherine Belin ’04 (foreground)

Math Teacher for the Future The Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) Program, Bard’s fifth graduate program, began its inaugural year in June 2004. The program’s goal is to train math, English, biology, and social studies teachers who are willing to make a long-term commitment to public high schools. Of the initial group of 24 enrolled students, 10 are recent Bard graduates. Catherine Belin ’04, who is studying to be a math teacher, entered Bard intending to study photography. A math class changed her mind and, probably, her life. “While I was going through the process of moderating into the Photography Program, I was taking a calculus class that I really loved,” she recalls. “Math becomes more fun as it becomes more abstract.” She moderated into the Mathematics Program and never looked back. During the fall of her senior year, Belin ran into Ric Campbell, the MAT Program’s founder and director, who had been one of her Workshop in Language and Thinking instructors. “Ric remembered that I’d enjoyed tutoring math in high school, and he said, ‘I’m starting this program so you can be a math teacher.’” Belin’s interest was piqued. She attended lectures given by math professors who were applying for positions in the MAT Program. “Listening to the candidates, I realized that this was for me. Liking your subject is not the same as being able to explain it. I can. And I enjoy it.” Belin isn’t worried about her career prospects. “That’s the beauty of this program. When I finish, I’ll receive my teaching certification from New York State, the only certificate that’s recognized by all 50 states. I don’t expect to have trouble finding a job. I’ve never been west of Columbus, Ohio. I’d like to see what’s out there.” High school math departments in the western United States, take note. 13

Mathematicians to Convene at Bard At the initiation of Lauren Rose, associate professor of mathematics, Bard will host the October 2005 Eastern Section Meeting of the American Mathematical Society (AMS). Section meetings provide a popular venue for research mathematicians to get together over a weekend and “talk shop,” says Lesley M. Sibner, professor of mathematics at Polytechnic University in New York and associate secretary of the meeting. Several hundred people are expected to attend, says Sibner, and “interesting things always come out of the sessions.” Special sessions will be offered, including one on the history of mathematics and one on mathematics education reform, a subject of importance to the new Master of Arts in Teaching Program at Bard. The annual Erdös Memorial Lecture, aimed at a “general intellec-

tual audience,” says Sibner, will be given by Persi Diaconis, the Mary V. Sunseri Professor of statistics and mathematics at Stanford University. Diaconis, also an accomplished avocational magician, has studied, professionally, randomization in the shuffling of a deck of cards, the throwing of dice, and the toss of a coin. Paul Erdös (1913–96) was described in his New York Times obituary as a “legendary mathematician,” one of the 20th century’s greatest solvers of number theory problems, and founder of the field of discrete mathematics (the basis of computer science). “Hosting a math conference is a great way to get the word out that Bard is a serious and exciting place to study math and science,” says Rose. “It’s also an excellent opportunity for faculty and students to participate more fully in the profession.”

’04 Grads Tout Benefits of Pairing Science, Arts Studies Emily Grumbling and Hannah Ruth Obermeier-Smith graduated last spring with double concentrations in the arts and sciences. Both plan to continue their science educations, and believe that the engaged, intellectual environment at Bard made them stronger candidates for graduate work. As Obermeier-Smith says, “the ongoing conversation on campus gives me an edge over other students planning to go to medical school.” Obermeier-Smith, a Minneapolis native, studied dance and biology at Bard. She spent the summer doing research at the Joan and Sanford I. Weill Medical College of Cornell University, studying for the MCATs, and pursuing professional dance opportunities. She hopes to perform for five years and then attend medical school, a career choice solidified during an undergraduate research project in Kenya. She is grateful to Bard for presenting a wide picture of the sciences, including “the politics of medicine and the environmental and social components associated with medicine as a career choice,” and foresees a day when she can return to Africa with Doctors Without Borders. Grumbling, from Wells, Maine, plans to pursue her interests in chemistry and film, which developed hand in hand at Bard. Her Senior Projects, while not directly linked, both involved chemical research and the control of light. During her film studies, she became fascinated with the chemistry of the medium. She processed her film by hand and mixed chemicals from scratch. It helped, she says, that Bard provided “access to labs and materials that students at bigger colleges don’t have.” Grumbling, who this fall begins the Ph.D. program in chemistry at the University of Arizona, credits Bard for helping her realize the nature of science. “Science is not truth. It’s a way of knowing the world. Many Bard scientists understand this. They have faith in the ability of science to help us, but it doesn’t dull their acceptance or appreciation of other ideas.”

Emily Grumbling

Hannah Ruth Obermeier-Smith 14

Sample of Projects Undertaken by Students in Bard’s Division of Science, Mathematics, and Computing: Syntenic Reconstruction of Microbial Genome Rearrangements: A Case Study Using the Chlamydia Sequenced Genomes Simulation of the Time Evolution of Quantum Mechanical Systems in Two Dimensions Detecting High-Copy Number Regions in the Apis mellifera (Honey Bee) Genome A Whole-Genome Approach to Bacteria Identification: Finding Evolutionary Relationships with Optimally Designed Primers Identification and Isolation of the Zebrafish NMDA Receptors NR1 Subunit Promoter Components Temperature Transformation and Relativistic Thermodynamics of an Ideal Gas An Incursion into Finite Model Theory Studies on the Stability and Reactivity of Arenediazonium Ions An Experiment to Determine the Skin Depth and Fermi Velocity in Metals Deriving Phylogenetic Trees from Noncoding DNA Tetrahymena thermophila as a Model System for Assessing the Gastrointestinal Toxicity of the Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs Voronoi Tessellations Climactic Influences on Diversity in a Long-Term Mosquito Population (Diptera: Culicidae) Arrays, Rook Circuits, and Minimal Hamiltonian Graphs Determining the Genetic Relationship Between Various Species of 17-Year Periodical Magicicada Generating Class Recommendations through Collaborative Filtering A Study of Genes Involved in Learning and Memory: The Relative Level and Location of Expression of NR1 throughout Zebrafish Ontogeny The Mycobacterium tuberculosis Gene icd2 Encodes a Functional Isocitrate Dehydrogenase

Right: Students, faculty, and guests discuss projects on display during Bard’s sixth annual Science and Mathematics Research Symposium, held last May.

Highlights from the Distinguished Scientist Lecture Series: Dr. George F. Pinder, professor of civil and environmental engineering and director of the Research Center for Groundwater Remediation Design at the University of Vermont, presented “Beneath the Surface of A Civil Action: The Woburn Trial Revisited,” exploring the science behind the famous water contamination trial that was the basis of the book and movie A Civil Action. Dr. Devra Lee Davis, a leading public health expert and research epidemiologist and author of the 2002 National Book Award finalist When Smoke Ran Like Water: Tales of Environmental Deception and the Battle Against Pollution, presented a lecture on public triumphs and private failures in the battle against environmental pollution. She also presented “The Shape of Space,” on the shape of the universe. Dr. Philip Wadler, leading designer of computer programming languages, presented “As Natural as 0, 1, 2,” on a natural programming language. 15

Two Stellar Students Head to Graduate School: Elena Grigorescu and Tapan Maniar Elena Grigorescu ’04 At Bard, Elena Grigorescu concentrated in computer science and mathematics. In the latter, she delved deeply into Hilbert series. “My approach was totally theoretical,” she says of that research. “It was pure algebra. But you never know where theoretical things can occur or where they may lead. I’m very rigorous when I think in math.” She focused an identical rigor on her computer studies. That double focus has now led her to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where she continues her math and theoretical computer science studies. Acceptance to MIT is just the latest step in a series of pleasant surprises for Grigorescu. “Coming to Bard [from Romania] was such a luck that I wasn’t expecting,” she says, her enthusiasm allowing the syntax of her native language to creep into her spoken English. “I didn’t know what a liberal college is. Romanian high school is broad. But once you are in university it’s very fixed. Everybody goes to the same classes and the curriculum is outdated. But here . . .” She leaves the sentence unfinished, the lacuna a stand-in for Bard’s academic expansiveness. “Most of the reason that I’m into math is due to my father,” Grigorescu says. A physicist and researcher in the industrial sector, he entertained his daughter by providing her with math puzzles. Those puzzles go further back than Grigorescu can remember. “My father just started it,” she says, “and then my own interest took over. I think math goes well with my brain connections. It became a hobby.” The hobby expanded into an abiding interest and Grigorescu has pursued mathematics, with great resolve, since sixth grade. Romanian students are encouraged to participate in math “olympiads.” This encouragement suited Grigorescu. “Olympiads really motivated me,” she says. “I just pressured myself, and my family was happy when I achieved. Competition is pleasant and stressful and definitely makes you stronger.” The math contests were graduated, starting at the local school level and moving, by degrees, to national tourneys. “This was the main thing that would happen in the academic year,” she says. “It was fun. You would be in a room for hours, solving problems that required intense concentration. You had to know how to manage yourself and your mind.” Those early experiences, plus her Bard work, prepared Grigorescu well. She brought that preparation to an undergraduate internship at the IBM Almaden Research Center in California, working long hours on a large project at which 100 other undergraduate interns were also toiling. To make the project more manageable, it was segmented into different tasks, four students

tackling each task. The separate groups maintained close contact and engaged in discussions. It was an intellectual environment as congenial to Grigorescu as Bard was. “I suddenly felt what life is once you grow up,” she said of the IBM research. “I was happy with it.” Like her father, Grigorescu is considering doing research in the industrial sector. “I’m inclined toward cryptography and coding, especially algebraic coding,” she explains. Because the encryption of data often derives from theoretical “schemes,” this field may provide a smooth segue between Grigorescu’s interests. “I may take the direction of quantum cryptography or quantum computing,” she says. Both of these studies are based on Einstein’s work in quantum theory and represent a fast-growing area in computer studies. “I’m totally expecting to do hard research,” says Grigorescu. “The research process is familiar to me. I know it can be frustrating. You work days and days just for that time when you have a glimpse. Then you think backwards in order to get to the solution you’ve glimpsed. But it’s worth the pain. It’s beautiful to learn new things.” Tapan Maniar ’04 After graduating from Bard, Tapan Maniar seized an opportunity to spend two months at home with his family in Ahmendabad, India. He has not lived at home since he was 16, when he won a full scholarship from the government of Singapore and the Singapore airlines industry to complete high school in that nation. According to Maniar, competition for the scholarship was steep, with 25 students selected from an applicant pool of almost 10,000. The Singapore government hoped those scholarship students would become permanent residents. However, after completing high school, Maniar chose to accept a full-tuition scholarship to Bard. An unusually mature young man capable of canny assessments, he selected the United States because, he explains, “There are more facilities, more universities, more research options.” Maniar is following up on those U.S. options. After his postgraduation visit to India, he returned to New York last August to begin pursuing a Ph.D. in biology (molecular biology in particular) from The Rockefeller University. He anticipates following up the five-year Ph.D. program with two postdoctoral degrees and expects each of those degrees to require one or two additional years of study. Maniar was drawn to Rockefeller because he considers it “probably more flexible than any other institution. If a course is not available at Rockefeller, you can take it elsewhere. I can do research and pick a lab right away. I can do rotations and decide on a lab, based on topic and compatibility. Choosing your lab is the main

thing. Rockefeller’s less-rigid structure means you need to be selfmotivated. I don’t mind that.” Maniar is already familiar with Rockefeller, having enjoyed an internship there last summer. He is interested in developmental biology and cell biology. Although it is still too early to define his future in absolute terms, the study of the nervous system is his main focus. How are synapses formed? How are axons guided to the right connection? The answers to questions such as these are predicated on DNA mapping. Just as quantum computing is a “hot” area that has drawn Grigorescu’s attention, the burgeoning field of neurology has drawn Maniar’s. For example, due to recent discoveries, the possibility of regenerating nervous systems has stepped out of the realm of science fiction and toward reality. If Maniar’s intellectual life reflects an acute, analytic, and scientific mind, he has also surmounted a number of thorny nonacademic problems. As the only child in a family whose members have never been out of India, he is negotiating uncharted generational and global territory. “I think they have trust in me,” he says of his parents and extended family. “They gave me good advice but allowed me to make my own decisions, which I really respect them for.” Maniar was first captivated by science in the eighth grade, while studying cell structure and mitosis. His fascination was fostered by his biology teacher who, Maniar says, “emphasized understanding and encouraged us to be curious, to ask questions.” Bard’s Immediate Science Research Opportunity Program (ISROP), in which Maniar participated for two years, was also extremely helpful, providing, as its name indicates, an accelerated outlet for his deductive mind. “ISROP was crucial for me in terms of learning how research is done and how projects are designed,” says Maniar. He also notes that ISROP paved the way for his internships.

Two robots cooperate in transporting objects. Their activities are coordinated using infrared signals. 18

robotics The independent study project undertaken by Andrei Furtuna ’05 should appeal to fans of Isaac Asimov’s science fiction. Under the supervision of Rebecca Thomas, associate professor of computer science, Furtuna constructed and programmed several small robots. He employed Agent Oriented Programming (AOP), an experimental software paradigm, to render the robots capable of working cooperatively to perform tasks, such as picking up and transporting objects. Infrared communication, controlled via a movable shutter, is used to coordinate the robots’ actions. AOP is a relatively new and underexplored area in science. Thomas, who is a recognized expert in Agent Oriented Programming, describes Furtuna’s work as “a novel application of the AOP paradigm, which has been used previously to program more complex software systems.” She also notes, “We never envisioned using AOP on machines like these robots. This approach will help us learn about the limitations of the AOP approach to programming. If the experiment succeeds, it has broad implications. AOP is a looser, vaguer type of instruction than we normally give to a computer. The result is a robot that’s more adaptable to external circumstances.” Thomas wrote her Ph.D. dissertation on various artificial intelligence problems that the AOP approach might solve. The field that she is exploring (and that she has introduced to Furtuna) seeks solutions to those real-world external factors that hamper the use of robots in situations where robots could play an essential role. That is, if robots could cooperate. AOP, based on an “if. . . then” approach to programming, offers options and defaults as circumstances arise and change. A hypothetical example of one such circumstance might be a mission to Mars that involved, perhaps, as many as 50 robots. Like many robots currently in use, each would have a dedicated task,

such as sampling rocks or transmitting data back to a space station on earth. If three robots were dedicated to transmitting data and eight were detailed to taking rock samples, what would happen if one of the three transmitting robots were to malfunction? Could the programs in the remaining two transmitting robots and in the eight sampling robots be written in such a way so that the robots could adjust to the situation and find a new pattern of cooperation, just as humans could? In Thomas’s popular Introduction to Robotics course, these kinds of scenarios are examined. Each student in the course receives a LEGO Mindstorms kit—modern kits are a far cry from the early, unsophisticated LEGO sets. Like Furtuna, the students not only build a working robot with the kit, they learn how a central processing unit works, the physics behind the use of motors and gears, and how to write a computer program. By coping with many of the same hurdles that face high-tech engineers, the students also familiarize themselves with artificial intelligence’s current strengths and limits. “There are common programming problems, no matter what kind of robot you are talking about, whether it starts as a LEGO kit or as an industrial model,” says Thomas. 19

Andrei Furtuna ’05 consults with Rebecca Thomas, associate professor of computer science. Furtuna is from Piatra Neamt, Romania. He is a member of Bard’s Distinguished Scientist Scholars Program, has a GPA of 3.95, and has moderated into the Computer Science Program.

For instance, a robot cannot see in the way a human can. Instead, it can use lasers, shot off at timed intervals, to determine how close something may be. However, that information has a builtin margin of error. Even something as seemingly simple as directing a robot to move forward will be affected by any change in the surface on which the robot is operating. Thomas notes, for example, that many of her students have programmed robots that function perfectly on a bare floor but are rendered immobile by a pile carpet. These problems constitute an enticing challenge for the Bardians. With course offerings like Introduction to Robotics, Thomas and several other professors in Bard’s Division of Science, Mathematics, and Computing have taken a creative approach to

a semester of computer science or mathematics. “There’s a concerted effort at Bard to integrate the sciences into the whole curriculum,” says assistant professor of computer science Sven Anderson, who teaches a computer simulation course designed for nonscience students. “Bard wants science to be relevant to all its students. Part of a liberal arts education is realizing that there are interesting ideas in any field.” To foster that relevance and interest, Anderson is constructing a course in cognitive science, an offering usually available only as a survey course in large universities. The Bard course, scheduled for inclusion in the spring 2005 curriculum, will constitute, says Anderson, “a discussion and exploration of what underlies intelli-

“There’s a concerted effort at Bard to integrate the sciences into the whole curriculum,” says assistant professor of computer science Sven Anderson. teaching those students who do not plan to concentrate in the sciences. The professors, feeling that traditional, basic introductory courses rarely touch on a field’s true intellectual challenges, have chosen to plunge students directly into fascinating issues. Bard’s new requirement structure has spurred the professors’ efforts. Under the recently revised system, students must earn credit in quantitative thinking, as well as in the natural sciences. While students may earn quantitative credit by taking advanced courses in physics or chemistry, many nonscience students opt for

gence and thinking.” In that exploration, the course will not limit itself to considering only the human brain. Instead, it will examine the ability to learn, understand, or reason as it exists in, for example, electronic or mechanical forms. The course will be interdisciplinary (drawing on linguistics, computer science, philosophy, psychology, mathematics, biology, chemistry, and other fields), will involve a number of faculty members, and will include lab work. Of the material that will be covered, Anderson says, “I expect it to be congenial to nonscientists, but compelling enough for scientists.”

Several other courses in Bard’s Division of Science, Mathematics, and Computing have already taken an innovative tack. Lauren Rose, associate professor of mathematics, has received excellent student response to her Explorations in Number Theory course. In the course, students work in small groups, often arriving at theorems or proofs that were, relatively recently, among the field’s biggest brainteasers. Other exercises have hands-on applications. One, for example, involves learning how to encrypt communications in a number-based code similar to the one used to secure the amazon.com website. Students then send encrypted messages to one another. “I wanted to show students how to think like mathematicians,” Rose says. “Mathematicians don’t just compute. They create and discover.”

computers create models for everything, from corporate design to children’s games. Students also examine real-world problems, such as the ways in which models for disease control can help stem epidemics, and each student develops a simulation project of his or her own. Recently, one student with an interest in dance explored whether a program that simulated human body movement could record choreography as well as labanotation does. Once nonscience students discover that computer science and math offer plenty of room for creative speculation, many go on to take a second or third course in the division. Thomas lauds students’ willingness to explore ever-expanding areas, such as artificial intelligence. “Where we are now with robots is comparable to

“I wanted to show students how to think like mathematicians,” Rose says. “Mathematicians don’t just compute. They create and discover.” Bard students also have the option of approaching mathematics by delving into its history. Jeffrey A. Suzuki, visiting assistant professor of mathematics, teaches Mathematics of the Premodern Era, a course that traces the mathematical methods used by various civilizations, such as ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, China, India, and Islamic and early Western cultures. By developing proficiency in the mathematical systems used during different historical eras, students acquire an extensive vocabulary of alternative ways to derive valid solutions to problems in numeration, computation, geometry, root extraction, algebra, multilinear systems, and third- and fourthdegree equations. In another course, Simulating Reality (taught by Anderson), the entire world becomes fodder for students to examine how

where we were with personal computers in the 1970s,” she explains. “You used to type letters, or equations, in green letters on a black screen—a Windows-based system was unimaginable. In 10 or 20 years we will see similar improvements in robotics.” Although, at the moment, robots’ uses are limited by their processing units’ inability to assimilate information in real time, eventually, increased capability will dispense with those limitations. In fact, considering that the new Gabrielle H. Reem and Herbert J. Kayden Center for Science and Computation (see page 6) will have a computer lab equipped with more powerful robots than have been used in the curriculum so far, Thomas has a fantasy that, perhaps in 10 years, robots roaming the science building will be capable of running errands on command. —Hanna Rubin

Jeffrey A. Suzuki, visiting assistant professor of mathematics 21

Women and Physics: An Interaction Two Bardians Advance in a Male-Dominated Field

Lisa Downward ’01

In 1997, a group of physicists convened in Cambridge, England, to celebrate the centenary of the discovery of the electron. The eldest physicist in attendance—Bertha Swirles, Lady Jeffreys—was invited to address the gathering. As she later recalled, “I faced an audience mostly of men with a sprinkling of women . . . I find it disappointing that the proportion of women [in physics] is still small. As I was brought up almost entirely by women, it did not occur to me that there was anything strange in wanting to become a mathematician or physicist.” Swirles, who died in 1999, had a long and distinguished career in her chosen field. But her rueful observation on that clubby occasion in Cambridge retains its bite. Although women in the upper echelons of physics are no longer an anomaly, their numbers remain small. “It’s still rare to see women in cosmology or particle physics,” says Dennis Overbye, the former deputy science editor of the New York Times. “When I go to conferences I sometimes take a count and get about 10 percent female.” His observation is supported by statistics: according to research conducted by the American Institute of Physics in 2000, women’s participation in physics tends to decrease at each successive rung of the academic ladder. “It is possible that women still experience subtle discrimination, leading them away from physics and into careers that are less clearly linked to physics,” the researchers concluded. Bard College’s Class of ’01 awarded degrees to four women who concentrated in physics. Two of them, Lisa Downward and Amanda Holt, now attend graduate school at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC), and remain committed to the study of matter, energy, and all their miraculous interactions. On the other hand, they agree that the interactions between entrenched male physicists and ambitious female physicists can sometimes pose a problem. “Although I have not had any direct experience with discrimination as a woman in physics, I am always aware of the possibility,” says Downward, whose current research focuses on two classes of

compounds that exhibit CMR, or colossal magnetoresistance (more on this later). “When I give talks at conferences, I consciously choose to wear a pantsuit rather than a skirt. I want to be noticed first as a physicist, then second as a woman. “ She agrees with the researchers that discrimination, when it does crop up, tends to be subtle. One of Downward’s advisers, for instance, has told her of his “bad luck” with female grad students—they get married, they have babies, and the ensuing domestic responsibilities curtail the pursuit of their degrees. “Is he expecting that I’ll leave, too, or he is warning me not to?” she says. “Would he mention it to his male students? Probably not. Is that discrimination, or is he just making an observation?” Holt, who is studying the physics of condensed matter, concurs with her Bard classmate. Of all the scientific fields, “it seems [that] physics is the slowest to begin to integrate women into the academic and industrial arenas,” she says, adding that although her adviser is a woman, “she is the only female [physics] faculty at UCSC.” Both Downward and Holt agree that things are changing, albeit not in a nanosecond. “At Bard, our physics class was 80 percent female; at UCSC, our class is about 50 percent women, and in my lab, there are about 70 percent women,” says Holt. Nevertheless, she feels

Amanda Holt ’01

that her experience may not be fully representative of an average woman’s in the field, because she has chosen “schools and labs that are trying to change the way women participate in physics.” Holt’s current work, on organic conjugated polymers, is being conducted in the Sue A. Carter Research Group lab at UCSC. “These polymers are disordered materials that can, under certain conditions, conduct electricity; that is, they can be organic semiconductors,” she says. “Part of the excitement in this area of physics is that it is fairly new, [so] the theories that describe the way conducting polymers work are extremely complicated and still being developed.” Ultimately, her research may result in applications for biosensors and solar cells. The manganite compounds that Downward is investigating display, for a limited concentration range, colossal magnetoresistance—meaning that when an external magnetic field is applied to them, there is a sizeable change in their resistivity (or, conversely, their conductivity). “‘Colossal’ is used to distinguish this effect from ‘giant,’ in which the effect is smaller,” she explains. “Giant magnetoresistors are currently used in high-density hard drives. The effect is larger in colossal magnetoresistors, but the field required to produce the effect is too large to be feasibly used in hard drives, at present.” Often, people’s reaction to the career choice of both women is bemusement. “When I tell people I’ve just met that I’m getting my graduate degree in physics, they look at me like I must be crazy,” says Downward. “They say, ‘Oh. How nice,’ and then turn and walk away—sometimes, they practically run. Those who do stick around say something like, ‘Oh, you must be really smart.’ I try to tell them that . . . the truth is, science isn’t harder than any other subject, it’s just different.” “I think it’s sad that science seems so unfriendly to many people,” says Holt, who cites bad experience with a teacher in grade school or high school and lack of a well-rounded education as the usual suspects behind people’s dislike or fear of science. She credits the strong interdisciplinary curriculum of her alma mater with making her a better scientist and a broader person. “At Bard, I double majored in music and physics,” she says. “Because I was able to do that, I realized the importance of being open to different ways of thinking. In my research I am striving to learn about the physics of organic conducting polymers, but in order to do this, I have to incorporate chemical and biological ways of thinking as well. This gives me a more in-depth, complete picture of what I’m studying and opens the scientific community up to me. And to bring it all back together again, I play cello in a quartet with three of my physics professors.” —Mikhail Horowitz

Black-Tailed Rattlesnake 24

Darwin, Kant, and Rattlesnakes: Appreciating Nature Harry W. Greene, Ph.D. Harry W. Greene is professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and curator of vertebrates at Cornell University. His research and teaching interests include behavioral and community ecology, herpetology, feeding and defense in tetrapods—especially lizards and snakes—and the conservation of vertebrates (especially in deserts and tropical forests). His fieldwork has taken him to places as varied as Spain, Guatemala, Chile, Uganda, and Vietnam. Bard’s FirstYear Seminar welcomed Professor Greene as a lecturer in April. An adaptation of his talk follows.

In the end, we will conserve only what we love. We love only what we understand. We will understand only what we are taught. I agree with the Senegalese conservationist Baba Dioum, who said these lines many years ago. The more we learn about nature, the more likely we are to appreciate and value it. And the more we value nature, the more likely we are to make sacrifices in order to preserve some semblance of wilderness in our natural environment. Much of my work is with snakes, animals that most people dislike and many despise. For example, the 18th-century Swedish

botanist Carolus Linnaeus, who founded the system of binomial nomenclature that we continue to use today, said about snakes, “Most amphibia are abhorrent because of their cold body, pale color, cartilaginous skeleton”—none of those things are true, by the way—“filthy skin, fierce aspect, calculating eye, offensive smell, harsh voice, squalid habitation, and terrible venom. And so the Creator has not exerted His powers to make very many of them.” Isn’t that a horrible thing for a scientist to say about a wonderful organism? I’ve been teaching about amphibians and reptiles for 26 years, so I have a notion of what it takes to get people to appreciate nature. But until recently I hadn’t really understood why the teaching worked. About five years ago I read a remarkable paper by a U.S. Forest Service scientist named Ross Kiester. After reading Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Judgment, Kiester, seizing on a distinction that Kant made between aesthetic beauty and “the sublime,” applied the distinction to biological diversity. I realized that I’d been using this distinction without really understanding it, and I decided to make it even more useful in my teaching. Here’s how Kiester translated a quote from Kant regarding the beautiful: “The beautiful in nature concerns the form of the object, which consists in the object’s being bounded.” Note that Kant uses the word beautiful to talk about the aesthetics of particular objects. Now here’s Kiester’s translation of Kant talking about the sublime: “The sublime is to be found in the contemplation of objects that are

formless and unbounded and that strike the imagination in a particularly powerful way.” In other words, for Kant, the sublime refers to things that transcend the object. That is the goal of my talk today, to encourage you to think about frogs and snakes not just as individual animals, but rather in their context, in terms of their evolutionary history and their contemporary lifestyles. Charles Darwin, the author of On the Origin of Species and father of evolutionary biology, lived at a time when nearly everyone believed that all of life was created in seven days, one organism at a time, and people were still arguing about whether fossils were mineralized bones. Darwin came to believe that all of life must have had one or just a few origins, and that most of the diversity we see on Earth is the result of what he called “descent with modification.” Today evolutionary biologists define evolution as descent with modification from a common ancestor.

all female frogs in the United States lay their eggs in the water, and the males fertilize them externally. The eggs develop in the water and hatch into tadpoles. When the tadpoles metamorphose into froglets, they leave the water and stay on land until they reach maturity. Then they come back to the water, and the whole process starts over. But in tropical regions that type of frog reproduction is not common. For example, rather than laying eggs in water, the redeyed tree frog in Costa Rica lays them on a leaf overhanging a body of water, and the embryos develop on the leaf. Eventually, the tadpoles hatch, flip themselves into the water, and then go through a normal larval stage. Many species of rain frogs lay their eggs in a moist site on land. There’s no tadpole stage—the embryos develop on land and then hatch. Then there are species of frogs that give live birth, an example of which is the gastric

The Don’t Tread on Me flag was based on an essay that Benjamin Franklin wrote in 1776, extolling the rattlesnake’s virtues and offering it as a model of independence.

Let’s look at some examples of descent with modification. The next time you hear a spring peeper, remember it’s a member of just one of the 4,500 species of frogs. All frogs and toads are essentially jumping machines. At one extreme there are little burrowing frogs that have such shortened hind legs that they can scarcely hop. In fact, they’re such poor jumpers that they have other means of avoiding predators. For example, there’s a little frog in southeastern Brazil that uses its strong squatty legs for digging, not for jumping. On its rump it has glands between a pair of spots that look like eyes. When a predator disturbs it, it hops away, tucks its head down, sticks its butt up in the air, and secretes from its glands. A predatory bird sees the fake eyes, gets a mouthful of toxic substance, and avoids this type of frog the next time. At the other extreme, there’s a frog in Costa Rica that uses the webbings between its long fingers and toes, along with the flaps on its hind legs and the side of its body, to glide or parachute from the tops of trees to breeding ponds below. This locomotive diversity is impressive, but what strikes me as even more impressive is the frog’s reproductive diversity. Frogs lay eggs or give birth out of just about every hole in their body. Almost

breeding frog, in Australia. After the eggs are laid, the female ingests them. Digestive function shuts down and her stomach functions, essentially, as a uterus. When the eggs have developed to the frog stage, the female opens her mouth and her offspring pop out of it. Finally, in central Chile there’s a frog species whose males become pregnant. After the eggs are laid, the male ingests them. But instead of the eggs’ going to his stomach, they go into his vocal pouch. They develop to the froglet stage there and he gives birth by regurgitating his offspring. About 10 years ago there was a spectacular David Attenborough film that included footage of a pregnant male frog who looked like he was going to cough. Suddenly, he opened his mouth, and little frogs hopped out of it. My point is that all of these 4,500 different jumping machines descended from a common ancestral frog that lived 200 million years ago. And all of them, in their various methods of locomotion and reproduction, have resulted from the wonderful process that Darwin called descent with modification. Now I’d like to talk about snakes. I spent 15 years studying the black-tailed rattlesnake in southern Arizona. This species is typical of all the 2,700 species of living snakes in that it has no

functional limbs and no sternum. Most snakes also have the capacity to eat enormous meals. I once examined a small Columbian viper that had recently eaten a lizard that weighed 156 percent of the snake’s own body mass. Imagine being able to eat a 270pound hamburger, whole. When I was in college, my hero was the field biologist George Schaller, who is best known for his studies of pandas and Tibetan antelope. I idolized Schaller because he watched particular animals for long periods and got to know them as individuals. I wanted to know snakes as individuals, but it seemed like that wasn’t possible. It’s hard enough to find a snake once, let alone find the same one over and over. That problem has now been solved, thanks to the invention of miniature radio telemetry devices and a method for implanting them inside snakes. The transmitter we use is the size and shape of a lipstick and weighs about 15 grams, far less than a developing snake embryo. We implant the transmitters surgically and are careful not to traumatize the snakes. We will be watching them for many years, ideally, so we don’t want them to be afraid of us. The transmitter allows us to sneak up on a snake without disturbing it, so we can observe it without interrupting its behavior. Telemetry has revolutionized snake biology over the past 20 years. What is most exciting about our findings is that we now understand these animals better. It turns out that rattlesnakes aren’t creatures that exist only to harm us. In fact, they don’t want to have anything to do with us. Their lives are much more complicated than we previously appreciated. You get to know snakes as individuals when you do this kind of work. For example, Super Female 21 is my favorite snake. I’ve had about 450 encounters with her during our 15-year study. I call her Super Female because, of the 150 snakes we studied, she’s the best hunter. She’s given birth to three big litters of healthy babies and she stays out of trouble. I happen to know that, right now, she’s sitting in front of a hole in the ground. She’s been there since late March; she’ll stay there until late July, when she gives birth, and she won’t eat at all during that time. The rattlesnake is a wonderful creature to use to promote nature appreciation—it has historical symbolism in our country. The Don’t Tread on Me flag, which shows a rattlesnake, was a naval battle flag during the American Revolution. At that time rattlesnakes were extremely common in eastern North America. The Don’t Tread on Me flag was based on an essay that Benjamin Franklin wrote in 1776, extolling the rattlesnake’s virtues and offering it as a model of independence. Now, 228 years later, solely because of human persecution, this animal is either extinct or on the endangered species list in many places where it was previously common.

I’ve become involved in the Finger Lakes Land Trust, an organization in upstate New York that buys land and puts it in perpetual trust in order to preserve the environment. The trust also runs a program called Talks and Treks. We hold a talk on Thursday night, and then on Saturday morning we take a hike that is somehow associated with the talk. One Thursday night I gave a talk about the biology of snakes, especially rattlesnakes. I showed slides from my field studies of the black-tailed rattlesnake so the audience could get a feel for what these organisms are like, as individuals. I talked about how easy it is to avoid the dangers of this animal and about how important it is not to frighten it, to stand back at a distance and watch with binoculars. And then on Saturday the 10 or 12 of us hiked all morning long. When we found a timber rattlesnake, the group was absolutely ecstatic. One of my favorite field-trip pictures is of one of my students, with her nose about 12 inches from a half-digested mouse that a rattlesnake recently vomited up. The student is wearing a huge smile—it’s obvious she could not be happier. To get back to Kiester’s interpretation of Kant, this student’s newfound appreciation of nature has reached the sublime stage. The photograph represents why I became a biologist—to learn and teach about nature in a broader context. We only conserve what we care about and we only care about what we understand. Ultimately, it’s our understanding and appreciation of the sublime that will keep our interest and make us want to care for our world.

Harry W. Greene

Enough Genetic Engineering: How Much Is Too Much? Bill McKibben Bill McKibben is a graduate of Harvard University, a former staff writer for the New Yorker, and a frequent contributor to the Atlantic, Harper’s, New York Review of Books, and New York Times. His bestknown book, The End of Nature, published in 1989, is widely regarded as among the most prescient statements for a general audience on the problem of global warming. His most recent book is Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age. All of McKibben’s work discusses what we can do, individually and collectively, with the formidable challenges of living at this pivotal moment in human history. He drew from this knowledge when he taught Journalism from the Ground Up, an intensive four-week course offered at Bard. In March he gave a lecture at Bard that was cosponsored by the First-Year Seminar, Human Rights Project, and Bard Center for Environmental Policy. An adaptation of his talk follows. I’d like to consider a question that may seem far-fetched, but that I believe may turn out to be the pivotal question of our time: Are human beings good enough as presently constituted? Do we need quantum improvements in our reach and power? Or would we be wise to shun those enhancements and figure out ways to say, “Enough”?

Over the last decade, a growing cadre of researchers has gone beyond the more benign innovations of genetic research to tackle the more basic task of rewriting, in embryo, a child’s genetic code so as to create a better child. James Watson, the codiscoverer of the double helix, recently asked, “If we could make better human beings by knowing how to add genes, why shouldn’t we do it?” Watson has called repeatedly for genetic manipulation, among other reasons, to “cure what I feel is a very serious disease: stupidity. It’s not much fun being around dumb people.” Whether it’s achievable or not, higher intelligence is far from the only goal of genetic manipulation. There are an endless number of physical variables we might control, from height to eye color, along with emotional and psychological states we might enhance. Consider the prediction of Dean Hamer, chief of the Gene Structure and Regulation Section at the National Cancer Institute’s biochemistry lab. In a recent essay, he imagined a future in which a couple can tweak the emotional makeup of their fetus. They ponder the choices before them, which range from the altruism level of Mother Teresa to that of the most cutthroat CEO. In the end they choose a level midway between, hoping for the perfect mix of benevolence and competitive edge.

Given the strides we’ve made over the last decade in understanding and controlling the production and absorption of brain chemicals like serotonin and dopamine, scenarios such as Hamer’s owe as much now to science as they do to fiction. As we’ve come to understand the degree to which virtually everything we do and are has at least some genetic influence, the number of possible targets for enhancement has grown apace. And if the genetic engineers fall short, engineers from other disciplines are waiting to take up the slack. The rapidly emerging field of advanced robotics, for instance, foresees a not-too-distant connection between carbon and silicon that would endow us with faster, more powerful brains. Computer science professor Rodney Brooks, who is the director of the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and the chairman and chief technical officer of iRobot Corporation, said recently that he believes that those of us alive today will morph ourselves into machines over the course of our lifetimes. What interests me is less the technical detail than the spirit that animates these visions and this work. “Myself, I don’t much like how people are now,” says MIT’s Marvin Minsky, considered the father of artificial intelligence. “There’s no sign that we’re getting smarter. The limitations are built into our hardware,” says Minsky. Humans can learn only about two bits of information per second, so even if you set out to learn 12 hours a day for 100 years, at the end of the century you would have acquired fewer bits than you can store today on a regular five-inch compact disk. “That’s not good enough,” Minsky says. “More is better” might as well be our national motto. More intelligence, more social stability, more physical strength—all of those are deeply enticing. What parent doesn’t want children who are more intelligent? As we begin the conversion of people into products, their characteristics ticked off a list, let’s consider some of the reasons that might be proposed for such an alteration, aside from pure competition. A more noble reason might be to allow your child to be more fulfilled, more satisfied—more happy. In our moreis-better model of the world, this makes a kind of intuitive sense. What makes us happy is a question that has received relatively little study, but a few people have looked into it. In the 1960s, an émigré psychologist named Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi watched painters at their easels. What struck him most vividly was the trancelike state they entered when the work was going well. The motivation to go on painting was so intense that fatigue, hunger, and discomfort ceased to matter. He wondered why. A behaviorist would suggest that they wanted the reward of a finished painting. But Csikszentmihalyi noticed that as soon as the painters were done with one canvas, they tended to lose interest in it. They’d go on to the next thing. Finding out why—that is, finding where satisfaction and

fulfillment lay—turned out to be his life’s work. He studied many types of people who found deep satisfaction in some activity or another—chess players, rock climbers, composers of music—and attempted to figure out where that pleasure came from. Through a series of ingeniously designed experiments, he reached the conclusion that what is satisfying is to be at the limits of your abilities and your competence. He called this state “flow, the utter absorption in what you are doing.” This theory, which is now widely accepted, indicates to me why this more noble case for enhancing human beings doesn’t really lead to an increase in satisfaction, fulfillment, or happiness. It’s because you can’t add any extra quantum to this level. Let’s say you engineer your child so that she has four arms that are twice as strong as they would otherwise have been. You’re hoping that she’ll be able to become a more adept rock climber. Climbing is where you find your satisfaction, so you figure that she may, too. But you don’t get any extra satisfaction. All you’ve done for this child is insure that she will have to travel farther in order to find big enough rocks on which to exercise this new equipment. Worse, there’s a point at which the genetic manipulation might begin to actually interfere with that process, because these changes begin to undercut identity in an interesting way. We’re forced to confront some deep questions here, the deepest of which is, “What is the goal we’re speeding toward, for which we need to be enhanced and improved?” I’m aware that this is uncomfortably close to asking questions like, “What is the meaning of life?” But when someone tells you that they want to take us posthuman, to fast-forward evolution in our time, it behooves us to ask why. Answers Rodney Brooks, the MIT robotocist, “It will allow us a deeper understanding of what we truly are.” Answers Gregory Stock, head of the UCLA program on medicine and technology, “Our new biology will allow us to pierce the veneer of inside things and reach the naked soul of man.” Maybe. To me, these answers sound suspiciously like what people say to each other in the parking lot at a Grateful Dead concert. The idea that, like it or not, we must move willy-nilly forward into the future posits that human nature is mostly the curious, grasping, ambitious part. I’d like to suggest that this is not the only part of human nature. The question “are we special, we human beings?” is an old one. Many techno-utopians go out of their way to insist that we are special in no way at all. Rodney Brooks has said, “We are machines, as are our spouses, our children, and our dogs, and now we are building machines that will match and surpass us. Resistance is futile.” Maybe so. If you completely buy the idea that we’re machines and nothing more, then little of what I’ve said will appeal to you.

If you don’t buy that idea, I’d like to offer one possibility that will sound familiar to those of you who’ve read Kant. If we humans are special, I would submit it’s because we’re the animal that can choose not to do something that we’re capable of doing. We’re the animal that can exercise self-restraint. We can decide to say no. We may be at the moment when it’s time to assert this ability for self-restraint societally and politically, as well as individually, spiritually, and aesthetically. There are at least a few halting signs that we’re starting down that path. The most important developments of the 20th century were technological—the invention of computers and cars and airplanes. Other things happened too, however, and it’s possible that three or four hundred years from now, people will look back on other developments as technologies that are more interesting. One was the spread of environmentalism, the idea that humans can’t afford and shouldn’t attempt to be the absolute center of the universe. Another was nonviolent civil disobedience, which was used

This answer helps explain, at least to my satisfaction, why the “Enough?” question seems to be so urgent. I’ve spent most of my life working on problems that you might think of as more classically environmental. Back in the 1980s, I wrote the first book about global warming. It wasn’t just the practical consequences of global warming that alarmed me, although those should clearly give us pause and make us work hard to avoid it. As with this issue, the deeper outcomes worried me the most. I felt sad at the notion that there would be no place on Earth not deeply affected by human beings. It seems to me that now there’s another interesting and beautiful nature under siege from new technologies: human nature. We can’t forget what we have learned about genetic engineering, any more than we can forget how to make atomic weapons. The question is whether we can take control of the process of turning that information into changes that deeply affect who we are as individuals and what we are as a society. I’m not at all convinced that

We can’t forget what we have learned about genetic engineering, any more than we can forget how to make atomic weapons.

to overthrow empire in the Asian subcontinent, subvert totalitarianism in Eastern Europe, and bring some modicum of racial justice to our own country. That’s quite a powerful development, and we’ve barely begun to explore all its ramifications. These developments celebrate the possibilities within us that make us most fully human. Sadly, I think it’s unlikely that humans and technologies can coexist. I can’t prove that, obviously, but if you’re interested in the subject, science fiction is a good place to turn. The science fiction aisle is the darkest one in the bookstore. The Matrix and Gattica are absolutely representative of the genre. This is because science fiction writers are the only people who’ve had to, in the laboratory of their minds, perform the experiment in which they hold up human beings—the characters they’re creating—against technologies of the scale that I’ve been describing and see whether or not they can coexist. In most of these cases, the answer seems to be no, they can’t. The scale of that technology is too large, too overpowering.

we can. We tend to let technology run its course. We may never get around to making a decision about whether or not we’re unsatisfactory. If we don’t, we will go down the path toward the goal of fastforwarding human evolution. On the other hand, we might make a collective decision that we’re good enough as presently constituted. That would be a very interesting moment in human history. I think that moment is possible because these technologies pose unique questions that make a lot of human beings feel a visceral unease—regardless of class, education, religious, and political lines. The fact that so many people feel this unease raises the possibility that we might create a new kind of politics that allows us to begin to rein ourselves in. I’m not enormously optimistic about the world. But I do think that the possibility of this decision—to say “Enough”—remains, and I’m glad to know that people are weighing it.

A World of Questions: Sanford Simon Discusses Science Education

In forging a mutually productive collaboration with The Rockefeller University, Bard has tapped into the resources of a leading research center, provided the College’s undergraduates with a venue for exciting internships, and opened itself to insights from some of the most incisive minds in science education today. Sanford Simon, who has been at the fore of the BardRockefeller union, is one of those minds. He received a B.A. from Princeton University and a Ph.D. from the NYU Medical Center School of Medicine. Simon heads Rockefeller’s Cellular Biophysics Laboratory. Simon’s laboratory seeks to solve such mysteries as how cells selectively allow the internal transport of substances crucial to cellular activities and precisely how those transports occur. Even at their most deceptively basic, cells are highly sophisticated, differing from one another in size, function, and the nature and placement of their internal structures. “Most of the questions we work with have to do with how cells organize themselves,” says Simon of his research. “How are messages sent within cells? Over the last 15 or 20 years, scientists have been successful in identifying a lot of the molecules involved. But what are these molecules doing? What is the timing of the steps in these processes? How are cellular components put together to create cells as differentiated as those involved in muscle contraction; impulse transmission along nerves; or the making of substances like insulin, dopamine, or serotonin?” Simon likens attempts to decipher the intricacies of cell function to trying to understand a chess game. If one watches just the white pieces, only partial information can be gleaned. Similarly limited information can be derived from watching just the black pieces. Watching how both sets of pieces interact provides additional knowledge. This simile, extrapolated to observing cell function, suggests an exponentially squared complexity—organelles within cells interrelate, and cells coordinate with other cells, in labyrinthine physiological patterns. His lab’s research has huge potential impact on a number of areas in medicine. It may yield information on chemotherapeutics and drug sensitivity. Or it may provide insights into the bloodbrain barrier, which protects the brain and cerebrospinal fluid from invasion by dangerous substances. A portion of Simon’s research addresses a cell’s internal “geography.” For example, in cystic fibrosis (a fiercely intransigent genetic disease with a poor prognosis) a culprit protein functions (ironically) in an entirely normal manner. The difficulty lies in the fact that the protein is located in the “wrong” portion of the cell. This fact, says Simon, “immediately suggests all sorts of therapies” and saves precious research time that might otherwise be spent in fruitless efforts to “fix” the protein’s functioning. Researchers can concentrate, instead, on rectifying the protein’s location.

When Simon speaks of his work, he reverts, most readily, to questions. “How do proteins fuse to a membrane? How do they cross a membrane without compromising the integrity of the membrane?” Returning to his chess analogy, Simon explains, “You’re following multiple players. In trying to understand, you’re eliminating one player at a time. Sometimes you’re adding one player at a time. There never is a ‘best’ way of doing it. I always ask myself, ‘Can I see the same result using a very different approach?’ If I can do so, I feel much more comfortable with my results.” This attitude toward research corresponds perfectly to Simon’s approach to science education, and provides a road map for fusing science and liberal arts to the benefit of scientists and nonscientists alike. “If I bring in a separate perspective for students, I’m trying to get them to approach things from a different direction,” says Simon. “I want them to consider that there are at least four or five assumptions in everything they’ve ever done. There is no absolute truth. This is where it gets beyond science. I think it’s important, in all areas of education, for students to know the assumptions we make. You don’t teach students, ‘This is what Roman civilization was like and this is what the Greeks did.’ Instead, it’s, ‘This is what we think the Greeks did, based on the following observations. Given these observations, and based on the following assumptions, we come to the following conclusions.’ It’s the same in science; every experiment has assumptions. Students have to understand their assumptions. Be aware of them. They may change over time. How you take students through that balancing of assumptions is another issue. So, when someone says there are weapons of mass destruction, students will ask, ‘What are the assumptions on which this is based?’” The questioning of assumptions is, for Simon, a crucial initial step. “I may have a really nice model for a bridge and it fits with my theories,” says Simon. “But if the bridge falls down it’s not very useful. There’s a certain point where you have to start balancing the relative merits of assumptions and realize that not all of them are equally subjective. Most students think that science is about giving the right answer, rather than asking the right question. When they learn about science, they’re taught facts rather than the process of science.” In constantly testing his own research by using different approaches and in urging students to seek information by embracing different directions, Simon ratifies an educational approach based on the belief that scientific information can come from unexpected sources—history, literature, and so forth. The obverse constitutes a call to the liberal arts world, to include more science in its embrace of multiple pedagogical routes. “Science is a system of thought, an intellectual discipline,” says Simon. “It’s something very important for everyone to go through, even if they don’t plan to go 33

into science. If students start questioning their world a little more, it will make the world more interesting to them. Another compelling reason is that modern biology will have an impact on people’s lives in a way it never has before. It’s in the decision on whether to give your children genetically modified food, or in responding to an insurance company that wants to test for certain potential diseases, or in developing an opinion on stem cell research. I want people to be able to critically evaluate these things. To do that, they have to be scientifically literate. They need to be empowered. Science is no longer a backwater. I think there isn’t such a strict demarcation between science and health and drugs and social policy. In terms of education, I think there’s a continuum there.” Simon had a strong role in creating the science curriculum at Bard High School Early College and Bard’s new first-year biology course. “I feel students should learn how to read a science article, how to critique assumptions, how to read lab reports, how to consider whether there are alternative interpretations of the data.” He also places great emphasis on science and math education at the elementary school level and has been active in that arena since he was a New York City high school student spending summers teaching remedial math. To this day, he conducts science projects with elementary schools and has an evident fondness for the questions asked by what he prefers to call “nonprofessional scientists” or young children. He recalls, “I was walking my son to nursery school and he asked, ‘Why doesn’t the moon fall down?’ What a great question! When you hear a question like that, don’t postpone it. We have to make it very clear that asking a question is wonderful. A question without an answer is, potentially, a great question. Teachers don’t have to have the answer. They should have the attitude of, ‘Let’s find out together.’ We have to bring science into every subject. If students are learning about bridges, bring the science of bridges in. I teach a membrane biophysics course, lecture and lab, at Rockefeller. In the lab, students collect data and compare results. Then they’re befuddled because the results don’t correspond to the text. I’ve tricked them; there’s a fundamental assumption built into the lab work and that assumption is flawed. When they figure it out, they’re livid. They hate me. But they’ll never make that mistake again. It’s a very important lesson for them. You can just tell them to be careful with assumptions, but it doesn’t register. They have to experience it.” Experiential learning is at the center of Simon’s approach. In devising lessons, he makes a point of providing a kinesthetic memory of the scientific principle being studied. Rather than providing a formula for the displacement of water, he will challenge students to design a boat—one that will float. The students experiment with different objects, note whether the objects float, and keep records of how much water each object displaces. This process

enables them to deduce the relevant formula. “If the teacher said, ‘OK, to make things float you’ve got to have your mass be above the following . . .’ it would be the right answer,” says Simon. “But the kids never would internalize it. If you take students through the process, that’s how they learn, that’s how they remember.” Similarly, Simon feels that science education benefits greatly from an apprentice-mentor model in which students do actual research and are encouraged to expand their educational horizons. According to Simon, if the mentor relationship works well, the apprentices develop enough independence to define their own questions and “are constantly filling new ecological niches, sort of like Darwin with his finches. They go off to a new island where there wasn’t a finch that did X, Y, or Z. If you’re getting students to take courses outside of their area of study, what you’re effectively doing is increasing that mutation rate. One gimmick that I use with people in my lab is that at the beginning of our weekly lab meetings, everyone is supposed to bring in one article on a subject completely unrelated to anything going on in the lab. They can bring in anything from ecology to tales of chlorophyll synthesis, just to get them thinking about things that are totally different from what we’re working on. I think that as long as we allow the scientific community to be disorganized—to the extent that you can, on a local level, let these individual variations occur—you’re going to continue to have people discovering new places to go. I am worried about the trend nowadays toward big science, a system in which one person or one group dictates, ‘This is where we’re going to go now with our science research. This is going to be the next important problem.’ And they support big labs with hundreds of people. When you start doing that, as soon as you start to play God in the equation and decide where the evolution is going to go, we’re mucking with the process that we know works very well, and then we run the risk of getting only students who end up being clones of their mentors and going in the directions where the money is. Just as I don’t think there’s a right answer in science, I think there isn’t even a right question to go after, especially at this point in science.” For Simon, the goal in teaching science remains the same, regardless of the age of the student. “What are the things that haven’t been solved in science, yet? How do we get students to become inquisitive about the world around them? How do we empower them to pursue that inquisitiveness?” In the end, Simon returns to questions. —René Houtrides In tribute to his professional achievements and his commitment to improving science education, Sanford Simon was awarded the John and Samuel Bard Award in Medicine and Science at this year’s President’s Dinner, held during Commencement Weekend.

The Annandale–Rockefeller Bridge The collaboration between Bard College and The Rockefeller University is an amalgam of progressive liberal arts and premier biomedical research. “The collaboration goes both ways,” says Valeri Thomson ’85, director of Bard’s Immediate Science Research Opportunity Program (ISROP). She explains that, besides providing Bardians with summer internships, “Rockefeller sends postdoctoral fellows, with an interest in teaching, here to gain experience in undergraduate education.” Furthermore, Bard alumni/ae often opt to join Rockefeller’s graduate programs and do research there. Thomson, during her upcoming sabbatical from Bard, will continue her research on Mycobacterium tuberculosis. “The research the Bard undergraduates started is at a stage where it can be completed in the Rockefeller laboratories, using live bacterium,” she says. “Because my Senior Project was closely related to research being done at the Laboratory of Sensory Neuroscience,” says Jessica Baucom ’04, “my adviser at Bard prompted a relationship between me and the Rockefeller research group. Bard set me up to move into this job. I work at a large and amazing facility. Plus, Rockefeller has many research labs, all of which are interconnected. It’s a great place to work.” Baucom is part of a team that is researching the auditory system of zebrafish. The research is expected to lead to a greater understanding of the hearing mechanism in human beings, who have, in this regard, a genetic similarity with zebrafish. The information gleaned would help in establishing treatments for hearing loss and developing medication that would prolong the life of auditory “hair cells.” Research results will also have a probable impact on the improvement of cochlear implants and hearing aids. For Baucom, the project is, essentially, a continuation of her undergraduate work. She anticipates remaining at Rockefeller for approximately two years, at which time she will apply to graduate school. Alexis Gambis ’02 is Bard College’s first bioinformatics graduate. In September 2004 he entered the graduate program at The Rockefeller University, where he will concentrate on evolutionary biology. “I started my first year at Bard studying the history of film and finished my senior year doing research in the field of comparative genomics,” Gambis explains. “My fascination with science

Alexis Gambis ’02 and Jessica Baucom ’04 has always coexisted with a love for the arts.” With Rob Cutler ’94, assistant professor of biology, as his adviser, Gambis found his niche. “I could study the dynamics of bacterial chromosome rearrangements during the day and rehearse for a student play in the evening.” Gambis’s interest in doctoral work at Rockefeller began when he took a Bard-Rockefeller class called Genomics and Genetics. When he saw a draft of the human genome, Gambis was struck with its potential for making abstract biological concepts understood. “That life, as complex as it seems, can be reduced to large flat data files of sequences stored on super workstations, stacked in the obscurity of sterile computer labs, seemed to me at first to be inherently absurd,” he says. “Yet, this data, vast as it is, can provide a limitless platform on which to wrestle with quandaries as thrilling and mysterious as the dynamics of complex biological systems.” After serving an internship at Rockefeller’s Laboratory of Biochemical Genetics and Metabolism, Gambis chose to attend the university. He made that decision not only because of Rockefeller’s prominent researchers and diverse scientific community, “but because students can conduct their research from various perspectives through collaborations with multiple laboratories,” he says.

A white oak (Quercus alba) near Ludlow

Collegial Trees Once again, autumn becomes Annandale “Why are there trees I never walk under but large and melodious thoughts descend upon me?” So sang Walt Whitman, in his “Song of the Open Road.” Had the road in question been Annandale Road, with little detours around, over, and through Bard’s campus, can we not assume that the thoughts falling upon the poet would have been even grander and more lyrical? Especially in October, when the maples, oaks, and others of their deciduous kin are completing their Senior Projects in the ancient arts of painting the wind and sky? From the white pines lining the way to the Milton and Sally Avery Center for the Arts to the grove of beeches just south of the Stevenson Gymnasium; from the larches on the north lawn of Blithewood to the yews in the Bard cemetery; from the shaggy row of Norway spruce near Bertelsmann Campus Center to the great 36

oaks just below Ludlow—Bard is eloquently verdant, peopled by tribes of stately, gnarled, and graceful trees as richly diverse as the students who walk among them. Many have been here longer than the longest-tenured professor; a few of the more venerable specimens predate the College’s rite of passage from St. Stephen’s to Bard. A small, even hoarier number are thought to be between 150 and 200 years old. The trees depicted here were selected by the appropriately named William Maple, professor of biology and director of the Bard College Field Station. Photographed in all their autumnal glory in 2003, they take flame once again on these two pages, even as their living counterparts, one year older, do likewise. —Mikhail Horowitz

Horse chestnut Every autumn, this exultantly sculptural horse chestnut (Aesculus hippocastanum) deposits large “buckeyes” on the road to the Field Station (top left). Sycamore Considered by many Bardians to be the most beautiful tree on campus, this magnificent sycamore (Platanus occidentalis) graces the field just south of The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts (center). Hemlock Many a budding bard at Bard has sat on the bench encircling this hemlock (Tsuga canadensis) (top right). White pines At one time, these stately white pines (Pinus strobes) were mirrored by a corresponding row on the opposite side of Blithewood Road (bottom left). Maple The ancient maple on Blithewood’s lawn is thought to be the oldest tree on College grounds. A red maple (Acer rubrum)–silver maple (Acer saccharinum) hybrid, it once received an award for having the greatest circumference of any maple in New York State (bottom right).

Frog Journey It will happen at night, under pale stars, in a drenching, cool, summer rain that follows a dry spell. July, maybe. The frogs will begin their journey. They will emerge, thousands of them, from damp forests, from streams and swamps, from membranes of mud, from wet leaves, their eyes bulbous with yearning for primal byways over which we have built Route 212 or Route 42. Because their sensate moist skin is prone to desiccation, the frogs, I believe, will have waited for a night of flying rain, so that they may roam with water on their bodies. They travel on the rain. I will note their general direction; they will be traveling toward the Esopus Creek as if it were a highway they sought. I suppose they are called, propelled in this way, from place of water to place of water, to stir up the gene pool, to make new frogs in a new place next year. Many frogs are like fish in the beginning, their eggs gelatinous in the water, specked with mobile dots. Then they transform into mercurial tadpoles until, gradually, they change again, trading gills and tails for lungs and legs. I have never, myself, actually seen that final transition. Do they struggle at that seam, that threshold of air and water, gas and liquid? Does it pain them somehow, the movement from one medium to another? And is it the memory of that early life’s “water breathing” that calls them out on rainy nights to hop and breathe in an air that is mostly liquid? Does the slosh of rain make them feel, once again, the rudder of their now-gone tail, as amputees experience “phantom limb,” the sensation that their lost body part still exists, beyond the seeming stump? I know the frogs will make their journey unless we’ve done some dreadful and irrevocable damage to the earth. The frogs are, after all, in trouble these days. Fruitful for millions of years, they are having reproductive difficulties now, producing mutant offspring with distorted limbs. Their skins are more pervious than ours, more delicate; more damaged by parasites, chemicals, pollutants—who knows what. They are victims, too, of our misguided destruction of their wetland homes. We humans are in the same soup, dependent on water. Our body tissue is essentially liquid. The blood sloshing against our

veins and arteries is 70 percent water. We may live weeks without food, but only a fraction of that time without water. We need water, inside and out. We, in the Catskills area, have chosen to live in a place of reservoirs, water catchers. I hope I will see the frogs again next year, when I’m driving the dark curves of the roads so ominous to people not familiar with the dark weight of the mountains at night. My car wheels will spray up water, and other cars will be a passing drench as my windshield wipers click their arc. My headlights will shimmer on the road and I will see the movement of the frogs. They will be leaping into the night’s mystery, their hinged legs flexing into the center ridge of their spines. For the smallest instant, as they jump, the puddles will mirror their bodies. That is one of water’s secrets—everything twice, the thing and its reflection, the shadow of the thing and the reflection of the shadow. As in years past, I will stop my car along a still shoulder of road. I will hear the soft spill of rain. I will taste the mist on my tongue and the smell of rainwater will surround me. The moon will be soft, silver, barely visible in a dripping sky. And on that night I will recognize it, water inside and out, water sweeping from the dark sky and hopping, encased in skin, along the roads. I too will be traveling that night, unable to rest, moving along ancient pathways I cannot define. I will be on that same road, under the same moon. Where will I be driving? What will be urging me on? Will it be my amphibious ancestors back in some primordial time, their wet snouts poked experimentally into the air, their fins resting in question on a muddy border? I will remember once again that I am on a liquid planet, which itself is swimming in the glistening air. The air will be so wet that I might as well be breathing underwater, frog-like. Around me the rain will be washing an earth that is two-thirds water. I will pour myself back into my car, my skin wet as a frog’s. I will drive, welling with sorrows older than myself, through the weep of water. The earth will be moving in its accustomed way, water running along its seams. The water will be carrying me, and the frogs, with it as it runs. Water in water on water through water. —René Houtrides MFA ’97 39

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Fall 2004 Alumni/ae Events For more information and to make reservations, call Robyn Carliss ’02 at 1-800-BARDCOL or e-mail carliss@bard.edu.

The Annotated Christmas Carol Thursday, November 18 6:00 p.m. National Arts Club, 15 Gramercy Park South, New York City Michael Patrick Hearn ’72 will sign copies of his book The Annotated Christmas Carol, following a reading, by Tony Award–winning actor Roger Rees, from Dickens’s renowned work. Hearn’s beautifully illustrated book tells the story behind the story of A Christmas Carol. Delving into the origins of curious customs and explaining words and phrases, Hearn enriches our understanding of the tale. Fee $25 (includes signed copy of book). Reservations required.

Alexander Hamilton: The Man Who Made Modern America Saturday, January 29, 2005 11:00 a.m. New-York Historical Society, 2 West 77 Street, New York City Reva Minkin Sanders ’56 will lead a guided tour of this special exhibition, which features rare historical materials and interactive displays, film, and special programs. Fee $10. Reservations required.

The Bard Book Club Organized by the Young Alumni/ae Committee Meets approximately once a month in New York City For more information, e-mail Rebecca Granato at rebeccagranato@yahoo.com.

Update: Online Community Services to the Bard Alumni/ae Online Community continue to expand. Each alumnus/a can now customize which details in his/her profile are visible to online community members. By default, all profile details are set as private, except for name, class year, phone number, and e-mail address. To display a street address and business information, alumni/ae need only log in and update their profiles. An e-postcard tool now allows alumni/ae to send images of Bard landscapes, buildings, and scenes to family and friends. Still not registered for the Online Community? Visit www.bard.edu/alumni/community and click on the “LOG ON” link. Scroll down to the section entitled “Register Now” and follow the instructions.

Alumni/ae Association Holiday Party Friday, December 10 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. National Arts Club 15 Gramercy Park South, New York City Reservations required

Holiday Party After-Party Hosted by the Young Alumni/ae Committee 8:30 p.m. until . . . Location to be announced For reservations and information, call Robyn Carliss â&#x20AC;&#x2122;02 at 845-758-7089 or 1-800-BARDCOL or e-mail carliss@bard.edu.

booksbybardians

Collected Poems by Chinua Achebe anchor books Featuring seven never-before-published verses, this new collection makes available again, after 25 years, the poetry of award-winning writer Chinua Achebe, Charles P. Stevenson Jr. Professor of Languages and Literature. The poems, which date from 1966, include meditations on subjects as big as war and as small as a mango seedling. They share an eloquence and richness of language that is suffused with wisdom and compassion.

Soft Box by Celia Bland cavankerry press This first collection of poetry by Celia Bland, Bard’s director of college writing, is, by turns, lyrical, wild, spare, and laced with black humor as it brings an extended family to life. In poems like “Misconceptions of Childhood,” “Breaking Water,” and “Wisdom Teeth,” Bland captures the poetry—and the eroticism— of the everyday. Poet and Bard colleague Robert Kelly says of Soft Box, “I feel forgiven for sins I don’t remember committing. She draws me into the way she looks around her like a tender clinician, making me feel uncomfortably at home in houses I have never entered.”

Vienna: Jews and the City of Music 1870–1938 edited by Leon Botstein and Werner Hanak princeton university press This comprehensive, beautifully illustrated book has been published in conjunction with an exhibition of the same name at Yeshiva University Museum in New York. The exhibition originated at the Jewish Museum Vienna, where Werner Hanak, coauthor and Bard’s visiting scholar in residence, is chief curator. Bard president Leon Botstein acted as scholarly adviser to the exhibition, and here contributes an introduction, locating Jews in the musical life of Vienna, as well as the essay, “Social History and the Politics of the Aesthetic.” Additional essays explore the influence of Jewish composers, performers, and patrons on the city’s musical culture and social life. The book includes two CDs of classical and popular Viennese music.

Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of Its Enemy by Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit penguin In a book the New York Times called an “elegant, breezily erudite . . . primer on the habits of mind that drive our most implacable foes,” authors Ian Buruma, Henry R. Luce Professor of Human Rights and Journalism, and Avishai Margalit, of Hebrew University, provide an intellectual history of “Occidentalism,” the anti-Western, antimodernist ideology embraced by today’s Islamists. They trace the lineage of demonizing anti-Western stereotypes (in many cases, back to the West); draw parallels between the jihadists and other extremist groups, including Japanese kamikazes and the Khmer Rouge; and show how exposure to Western society was transformed into hatred.

Materia Prima by Mary Caponegro ’78 leconte Materia Prima is an Italian-language collection of short fiction by Mary Caponegro, Richard B. Fisher Family Professor in Literature and Writing. The work includes a series of five previously published stories, an excerpt from a novel, and three stories that have never before appeared in American collections, including one about 9/11. Translator Daniela Daniele contributes a critical essay on Caponegro, a writer hailed by the Los Angeles Book Review for her “elegant depictions of lives and places . . . full of quiet power and the imagery of a fever dream.” 42

1912: Wilson, Roosevelt, Taft & Debs—The Election that Changed the Country by James Chace simon & schuster James Chace, Paul W. Williams Professor of Government and Public Law and Administration, looks back at the colorful election of 1912 and, in a lively authoritative style, builds his case that it was a defining moment for 20th-century America. The four candidates—a former president, current president, future president, and fiery, Socialist labor leader—are brought to rousing life, and their debates are framed in the larger context of “America’s exceptional destiny” as they struggled to balance 19th-century democratic values with emerging technologies and excesses of big business. The election, says Chace, “introduced a conflict between progressive idealism, later incarnated by FDR’s New Deal, and conservative values, which reached their fullness with Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush.” Editor’s note: As this issue went to press, we were saddened to receive word of the death of James Chace. An obituary and appreciation will appear in the Spring ’05 Bardian.

Papacy and Politics in Eighteenth-Century Rome: Pius VI and the Arts by Jeffrey Collins cambridge university press Scholars have long considered 18th-century Rome as “a locus of decadence or stagnation.” Jeffrey Collins, visiting faculty at the Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design, and Culture, reevaluates the period, particularly the 25-year reign of Pope Pius VI. Pius led the Church at a time of political upheaval in Europe, when monarchies were being overthrown and the power of the papacy was in jeopardy. Collins examines a wide range of works, from prints to palaces, within this broader historical context, to show how Pius bridged the old and new orders and, through art and architecture, sought to make the city a showcase of a reinvigorated papacy.

Here They Come by David Costello ’94 farrar, straus & giroux Witches, ogres, werewolves, ghouls, and other fearsome creatures gather in the woods for a Halloween bash in David Costello’s first work of fiction for young readers. The charming watercolor illustrations are rendered in glowing autumnal colors, the rhymes are fun, and there’s even a twist that is sure to delight children ages 4 and up. Costello, who wrote and illustrated the book, lives in Belchertown, Massachusetts.

Hollywood Interrupted by Andrew Breitbart and Mark Ebner ’82 john wiley & sons The subtitle of this New York Times bestseller is “Insanity Chic in Babylon—The Case Against Celebrity,” and the authors use insider info and heavily footnoted anecdotes and quotes to illustrate the self-absorbed, excessive culture of Hollywood, which they claim is undermining America. Mark Ebner, who lives in Venice, California, has covered celebrity culture for Spy, Rolling Stone, Details, and Salon, among other publications.

Faces of Home Care: Stories of the Rehabilitation Process by Gail Gilkey ’71 windy hill press Gail Gilkey performed for many years with a New York City dance troupe before earning a master’s degree in physical therapy. She has practiced as a therapist for the last 22 years, and here presents the stories of 20 patients with various diagnoses and living situations. In a first-person narrative, she shows special moments in these patients’ lives and offers creative solutions and treatment options for their particular problems and needs. Faces of Home Care offers inspiration and insight into the rehabilitation process.

Written in Water: The Prose Poems of Luis Cernuda translated from the Spanish by Stephen Kessler ’68 city lights publishers Stephen Kessler, who has translated dozens of works by noted Spanish and Latin American writers, here turns to the prose poems of Luis Cernuda, one of the leading poets of Spain’s Generation of 1927, which also included Federico Garcia Lorca and Rafael Alberti. Written in Water combines the volumes Ocnos and Variations on a Mexican Theme into a single book, as the author had always intended. The verses explore scenes and moments from different periods in Cernuda’s life, including his childhood in Seville, his exile during the Spanish Civil War, and his first encounter with Mexico, his last adopted home.

Conservation and Ecology of Turtles of the Mid-Atlantic Region: A Symposium edited by Erik Kiviat ’76, Willem M. Roosenburg, and Christopher W. Swarth bibliomania! In response to a worldwide concern over declining turtle populations, more than 160 herpetologists gathered at a 1999 conference to discuss problems specific to nearly two dozen mid-Atlantic species, as well as recent research findings. Erik Kiviat, cofounder of Hudsonia Ltd., coedited this compilation of highlights and papers, including one on Hudsonia’s award-winning Blanding’s turtle habitat restoration project. He also wrote the concluding remarks, in which he covers developments in research and management over the last four years.

Going Alone: Women’s Adventures in the Wild edited by Susan Fox Rogers seal press Going Alone celebrates the exhilaration and solace of solo travel. The 20 first-person essays cover a range of adventures, including a winter trek in the White Mountains, a walk across Antarctica’s Lake Fryxell, a Yosemite climb, salmon dipping along Alaska’s Copper River, cycling in France, and Rogers’s own reflections on “the temptations of two” while paddling the Hudson. In addition to relating the thrills of adventure travel, the authors also tackle the challenges and fears of striking out on their own. Going Alone is the 10th anthology by Rogers, visiting assistant professor of writing and First-Year Seminar.

The Sleeping Father by Matthew Sharpe soft skull press Matthew Sharpe’s second novel was selected for the Today show Book Club by Susan Isaacs and hailed as “a fresh, funny, quirky book” by Anne Tyler in the New York Times. It tells the story of the dysfunctional Schwartzes of Bellweather, Connecticut, at a time of family crisis. Father Bernie has inadvertently combined incompatible antidepressants and suffered a stroke, a coma, and brain damage. With Bernie’s ex-wife Lila “finding herself” in California, his children attempt to rehabilitate him themselves, even as they struggle their way through adolescence. Sharpe, a faculty member at the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts, lives in New York City.

Uncommon Places: The Complete Works by Stephen Shore aperture Uncommon Places, first published in 1982, is widely considered one of the most influential books of photographic work in the last 30 years. Aaron Schuman, in Modern Painters magazine, says the collection “in many ways influenced how we have come to define art photography itself.” In May, Uncommon Places was reissued in its entirety, with nearly 60 additional photographs. The images date from a nine-year period in the 1970s and early ’80s when Shore crisscrossed the country, capturing its landscapes from his passenger window. The collection also includes portraits and interiors. Shore is Susan Weber Soros Professor in the Arts.

The Dodgers: 120 Years of Dodgers Baseball by Glenn Stout ’81 and Richard A. Johnson houghton mifflin “The game of ball is glorious,” Walt Whitman wrote in the Brooklyn Eagle in 1846. The Dodgers franchise was born nearly 40 years later, and the full story of its glorious history in Brooklyn and Los Angeles is chronicled in this follow-up to Yankees Century and Red Sox Century. Stout and other noted baseball writers look at the Dodgers’ 120 years in the context of American mythology: a story of immigration, assimilation, migration, and change. Along the way, they provide new information about Jackie Robinson, Sandy Koufax, the 1951 pennant race, and the move from Brooklyn’s beloved Ebbets Field to the West Coast. Johnson provides more than 200 photographs, many of which have never been published before.

Between the Eyes: Essays on Photography and Politics by David Levi Strauss aperture Many of the essays in Between the Eyes first appeared in such publications as ArtForum and the Nation. They range from reviews of photographers such as Alfredo Jaar, Joel-Peter Witkin, and Francesca Woodman to commentary on social documentary and photojournalism, and even an imagined conversation on democracy and images between Walt Whitman, George Eastman, and Paul Virilio. Other subjects include street kids, genocide in Rwanda, and images of 9/11. Provocative, accessible, and insightful, these meditations challenge and deepen our understanding of what and how we see. David Levi Strauss is on the faculty of both the Center for Curatorial Studies and the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts.

Sky by Roderick Townley ’65 atheneum Sky is Alec Schuyler, a 15-year-old jazz piano whiz in 1959 New York, who has troubles with his widowed father, his girlfriend, school authorities, and his uncertain future. As he struggles to find his own voice, Sky learns lessons in music and life from a blind jazz great. This novel for grades 7–10, which is written in three sets and an encore, celebrates the world of Beat poets and jazz joints and New York City. Townley, the award-winning author of The Great Good Thing, Into the Labyrinth, and other works of poetry and literary criticism, lives with his family in Kansas City.

Good Grief by Lolly Winston ’81 warner books Upon its release last spring, Winston’s comic debut novel was the No. 1 pick of Book Sense, a list of recommendations by independent booksellers. Good Grief tells the story of Sophie Stanton, a one-liner-slinging young widow, and her journey through the traditional stages of grief, as well as a few stages of her own, including excessive consumption of Oreos. Sophie rediscovers life with the help of a grief group, an office meltdown, a move to Oregon, and the friendship of a troubled teenage girl. Winston, a corporate PR dropout like her likable protagonist, lives in northern California and is at work on her second novel.

onandoffcampus

BHSEC Commencement Caps Busy Year Bard High School Early College (BHSEC) ended another active year with its second Commencement, on June 23. President Leon Botstein awarded associate in arts (A.A.) degrees and high school diplomas to 54 students in the Great Hall of Cooper Union. The Class of 2004 was composed of students who, having finished 10th grade at public and private high schools throughout the five boroughs of New York City, transferred in September 2002 to BHSEC, the alternative school jointly supported by Bard College and the New York City Department of Education. Reflecting the city’s diversity, a third of the graduates were born outside of the United States and seven were the first in their families to earn postsecondary school degrees. The Commencement address was given by New York City Council Member Margarita López, who represents the Lower East Side of Manhattan, where BHSEC is located. Born in Puerto Rico, López moved to the Lower East Side in 1979. She chairs the council’s Committee on Mental Health, Mental Retardation, Alcoholism, Drug Abuse and Disability Services. BHSEC graduates received offers of admission from more than 72 public and private institutions, at which they could apply their A.A. degree credits and earn B.A. degrees. In addition to Bard, these included Haverford, Middlebury, Smith, Trinity, and Mount Holyoke Colleges; Columbia, Cornell, New York, and Wesleyan Universities; seven branches of the City University of New York; and eight universities of the State University of New York system.

Following are highlights from BHSEC’s 2003–2004 academic year. Aesthetics Week In December 2004, members of the BHSEC Music, Drama, Art, English, Philosophy, and Chemistry Departments organized a series of events to highlight the arts at BHSEC and explore the many ways in which they relate to other disciplines. The week began with a concert by all of BHSEC’s music ensembles and continued with discussions of issues related to aesthetics and aesthetic judgment, including a visit by several classes to the Winter Garden in Lower Manhattan to view plans for the then-proposed September 11 memorials. Other sessions included a forum and panel discussion on improvisation and its relationship to creative writing, drama, art, and music; a discussion of the music and drama of war; and an interdisciplinary presentation on the chemistry of art. Community Service BHSEC students continued volunteer work at P.S. 188, P.S. 20, University Settlement, Henry Street Settlement, the Door, Cabrini Center, Roberto Clemente Center, and Jewish Community Center. The school developed new collaborations with the Lower East Side Girl’s Club, American Museum of Natural History, American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Grace Opportunity Project, and P.S. 110. Two of BHSEC’s Year-1 students received community service awards from C. Virginia Fields, Manhattan borough president. Da Vinci Program This program offers internships; academic courses at other institutions; opportunities to study art, music, dance, and filmmaking; guidance in researching placements; and symposiums. Through these experiences, BHSEC students explore disciplines that they hope to pursue, entertain their scholastic curiosity, and grow emotionally and socially. In 2003–2004, almost 250 students took advantage of the Da Vinci Program. During the summer of 2004, students attended more than 60 different summer programs. Diversity Field Day On April 30, the entire BHSEC community addressed the many aspects of identity, race, sexual orientation, class, and gender. The day included a panel discussion followed by a writing workshop, an interactive theater performance by the Irondale Ensemble Project, and a multicultural lunch at which students shared foods from their ethnic backgrounds. Early College Visitors As the early college model gains national momentum, the BHSEC campus, home to one of the first public high school–college partnerships of its kind, is visited almost weekly by representatives of colleges and universities across the country who are planning the launch of their own early college programs. Freedom School In cooperation with P.S. 188, this past summer BHSEC ran a Freedom School modeled after the Freedom Schools established as part of the voter registration and community mobilization effort made during the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer. Sixty children ages 9 to 13 attended the school, which integrated reading, conflict resolution, and social action in an

activity-based curriculum that promoted social, cultural, and historical awareness. BHSEC student leaders staffed the school. NBC Speakers Through a partnership with the National Broadcasting Corporation, NBC’s Kerry Sanders (correspondent), Lai-Ling Jew (producer), and David Verdi (executive director of news) participated in a panel discussion regarding war reporting in Iraq. In another program, Lester Holt, MSNBC anchor, spoke to students and answered their questions on a wide range of topics. Partnerships with Regional Middle Schools and Bard’s MAT Program With the launch of the Master of Arts in Teaching Program at Bard College, BHSEC will work with student teachers who finish their teaching practicum at BHSEC and at P.S. 188. Simon’s Rock Retreat Year-1 BHSEC students and faculty and staff participated in a four-day retreat at Simon’s Rock College of Bard in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. The trip gave the students an overview of the college application and transfer process, a residential college “school away from home” experience, and a look at different types of colleges and universities.

Grant Boosts BPI Activities The Bard Prison Initiative (BPI) has received a three-year, $493,000 grant from the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE), a program of the U.S. Department of Education. Each semester BPI trains between 40 and 50 Bard students to provide precollege education to more than 150 inmates per week in five prisons in the surrounding area. FIPSE grant moneys will be used to assist these students in meshing their Bard College course work with their work in prisons. Course work on campus will be civics and “targeted civics— criminal justice courses, specifically,” says Max Kenner ’01, founder and director of BPI. With the grant assistance, Kenner and Daniel Karpowitz, visiting assistant professor of political studies, will create a model in which colleges can teach civics with a link to courses taught in prisons. The FIPSE funds will also help pay for BPI’s current college programs at two correctional facilities in the area and to bring nationally respected experts on criminal justice issues to speak at Bard.

SEEN & HEARD JUNE The Hudson Valley Chamber Music Circle presented a threeconcert series at Olin Hall on June 5, 19, and 26. Violinist Jennifer Koh and pianist Benjamin Hochman performed pieces from Debussy, Schubert, and Brahms, among others, in the first event; in the second concert, the St. Lawrence String Quartet performed Ravel, Beethoven, and the world premiere of Jonathan Berger’s “Doubles”; and the series conclusion featured the Juilliard String Quartet performing Mendelssohn, Schoenberg, and Mozart. World-renowned pianist, vocalist, and composer Terry Riley, a seminal figure in the minimalist movement, performed at Olin Hall on June 7. A panel discussion followed. Bruce Chilton ’71, executive director of the Institute of Advanced Theology, and Andrew Harvey, renowned author, presided over a June 24 luncheon discussion of comparative mysticism, at Kline Commons. “Rumi and the Way of Passion” was the topic of a June 25–27 seminar presented jointly by the Institute of Advanced Theology and Miriam’s Well in Saugerties, New York.

JULY On July 2, David Levi Strauss, writer, photography critic, and faculty member of the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts, discussed the politics of images from Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison, as well as the Bush administration’s production and manipulation of images in the two-and-a-half years since 9/11. Aston Magna, with Daniel Stepner, artistic director, opened the first of five summer concerts at Bard on July 9 with “Music for William Shakespeare,” a tribute to the Bard of Stratford-on-Avon that featured soprano Sharon Baker and bass-baritone David Ripley. A talk preceded the Olin Hall concert. The Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts presented the warm weather is holding, the 2004 M.F.A. thesis exhibition, at the UBS/ Bard College Exhibition Center in Red Hook, New York, from July 11 through July 22. Additional presentations in writing, film, video, and music were held July 12, 13, 15, and 20 at the Bertelsmann Campus Center. Aston Magna presented “Mozart, Weber, and the Clarinet,” featuring clarinetist Eric Hoeprich, on July 16 at Olin Hall. “Completely Mozart,” the third concert in the series (see above), took place on July 23 and featured two well-known chamber works and a newly discovered transcription of Serenade in B-flat Major, K. 361, for piano, oboe, and strings.

Max Kenner (center) with BPI students 47

Fellowships Take Juniors Abroad Ghana, Cambodia, and Germany were among the sites where recipients of Junior Fellowships interned this past summer. The 13 members of the Class of 2005—the largest group of Junior Fellows ever—were selected from 22 applicants. Sponsored by The Bard Center, the Junior Fellowship Program gives qualified students the opportunity to pursue unpaid, supervised work experience designed to help them learn about a potential career. The awards ranged from $250 to $1,700. Following is a list of recipients, along with their hometown, area of concentration at Bard, and the organization or individual that they worked for. Jennifer Brehm, Babylon, New York; studio art; Greene Naftali Gallery, New York City. Elizabeth Daley, New York City; American studies and film and electronic arts; Studio 360, New York City. Sophia Friedson-Ridenour, Denton, Texas; political studies. Friedson-Ridenour was a cofounder, in 2001, of the Ghana Project at Bard, which in January 2003 helped to build a secondary school in the village of Adafeanu (Summer 2003 Bardian). As a Junior Fellow, Friedson-Ridenour returned to Adafeanu to help prepare the school for new students this fall. David “Tavit” Geudelekian, New York City; Human Rights Program; Institute for War and Peace Reporting, New York City office. Ramy Hemeid, Cairo, Egypt; photography and film and electronic arts; Herzog Productions, North Hollywood, California. Elizabeth Howort; Brooklyn; literature and creative writing; Center for Family Life, Brooklyn. Tatiana Gurbich, Obninsk, Russia; biology; University of California, Davis, Section of

Bard and Smolny Present Petersburg Impressions Summer 2004 in St. Petersburg, Russia, saw a joint performance in which 10 Bard students, along with Bard Theater Program faculty, collaborated with 8 students and faculty from Smolny College of Liberal Arts and Sciences as well as local artists, to present Petersburg Impressions, a bilingual theatrical adaptation of Petersburg, a novel by Russian symbolist Andrei Bely. Stephanie Fleischmann, visiting lecturer in theater at Bard, wrote the adaptation, with dramaturgy and guidance by Tatiana Boborykia of Smolny. The city of St. Petersburg is the main character in Bely’s 1913 evocation of the prerevolutionary Russian capital, and the July performance of Petersburg Impressions was site specific, presented at the 18th-century Bobrinskiy Palace, the nonresidential campus of Smolny, Russia’s first liberal arts college. In September the group reconvened at Bard and performed the work at The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts. During the six months preceding the performances, more than 20 individuals on both sides of the Atlantic studied Bely’s 48

Evolution and Ecology in the Division of Biological Sciences. Kristin Macleod-Ball, Kennebunkport, Maine; political studies; Witness. Gabriel Rey-Goodlatte, Oakland; film and electronic arts; Hotbed Media, San Francisco. Gabriel Shalom, Fairfax, Virginia; film and electronic arts; Fried Dahn, German electronic cellist. Lacy Simkowitz, Chevy Chase, Maryland; art history; The Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design, and Culture, New York City. Sho Spaeth, Carsway Bay, Hong Kong; theology and literature; Cambodia Daily, Phnom Phen. Taun Toay, New York City; economics; Oxford Analytica, New York City office.

Students at Tetekope Junior Secondary School in Adafeanu, Ghana, carry their new books, purchased with funds raised through Bard’s Trustee Leader Scholar program.

novel in the context of other literary works, along with Russian history, language, and theatrical tradition. They used the existing videoconferencing technology at the two colleges for joint lectures and collaboration on design and dramaturgy. In January six Bard students took a special Russian language intensive course taught by Jennifer Day, assistant professor of Russian, who also accompanied the students to St. Petersburg. Smolny College, which currently has 320 students, is a joint enterprise of Bard College and Saint Petersburg State University. The Ford Foundation provided funds for Russian students to travel to Bard for the September production.

The Bard Graduate Center presented Vasemania—Neoclassical Form and Ornament: Selections from the Metropolitan Museum of Art at its New York City exhibition gallery from July 22 through October 17. On July 30, Aston Magna director and violinist Daniel Stepner was joined by harpsichordist John Gibbons for “Bach the Keyboardist, Bach the Violinist.”

AUGUST Laura Elizabeth Wellman (far right)

MAT Welcomes Distinguished Teachers Bard’s Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) Program debuted in June with 24 students and a core faculty of seven. The teachers include Raphael Allison, whose areas of expertise are American poetry and philosophy; Julia Emig (adolescent literacy); Derek Lance Furr (Romantic and Victorian literature); Kelly Gaddis (mathematics); Wendy Urban-Mead (history); and Laura Elizabeth Wellman (educational psychology). Myra Young Armstead, professor of history at Bard College, completes the core staff. In its first year, the MAT Program is offering certificates in mathematics, English, and history. Biology will be added in 2005 as the yearlong program expands to include other fields. Allison, who has taught at Bard’s Workshop in Language and Thinking, received a B.A. from Bates College and a Ph.D. from New York University. He previously taught at New York University, Barnard College, and Harvard University. Emig received a B.A. from Kenyon College; a master’s degree in teaching from Teachers College, Columbia University; and is an Ed.D. candidate at Boston University School of Education. Furr received a B.A. from Wake Forest University, and M.Ed., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Virginia. Gaddis, previously on the faculty of the Workshop in Language and Thinking, earned a bachelor’s degree at SUNY New Paltz and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees at Cornell University. Urban-Mead earned a B.A. at Carleton College, an M.A. at SUNY Albany, and a Ph.D. at Columbia University. She is a member of the American Historical Association, African Studies Association, and Coordinating Council of Women Historians. Wellman received a B.S. degree from Pennsylvania State University; an M.Ed. from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst; and an Ed.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles. Her areas of specialization include teacher scholarship. The MAT Program’s offices are in the former home of the late Fritz Q. Shafer ’37 and Margaret Creal Shafer. Fritz was Bernard Iddings Bell Professor of Philosophy and Religion and chaplain of the College from 1959 to 1989. Margaret, who received the Bard Medal in 1999, was a founder of the Hudson Valley Chamber Music Circle, which she served as artistic director for 20 years.

The Conductors Institute held a graduation gala at Olin Hall on August 1. The concert included six individual programs (conducted by the six candidates for the master of fine arts degree in conducting) and featured the work of Beethoven, Berlioz, Mahler, Mozart, and Puccini, among others. In its final concert of the summer season, on August 6, Aston Magna presented Monteverdi’s l’Orfeo, with a stellar cast that included Frank Kelley as Orfeo.

SEPTEMBER Daniel Berthold, professor of philosophy, opened the First-Year Seminar lecture series on September 6 with “Gimme One Reason.” The series is titled What Is Enlightenment? The Science, Culture, and Politics of Reason. Petersburg Impressions, a site-specific production staged by Bard College in collaboration with Russia’s Smolny College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Saint Petersburg State University, was performed in Theater Two of The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College on September 10 and 11. Bryan Van Norden of Vassar College presented the lecture “Three Trends in the Study of Confucius” on September 13 as part of the First-Year Seminar. The American Symphony Orchestra performed Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 and selected works by Wagner at The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College on September 17 and 18. From September 19 through October 4, the Lifetime Learning Institute presented an exhibition and silent auction of signed graphic works donated by the artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude. All events, including documentary film screenings, were held at the Bertelsmann Campus Center. Moneys raised will benefit Bard students who are creating environmental art installations. As part of the First-Year Seminar, Leon Botstein, president of the College, and the American Symphony Orchestra presented a lecture and concert titled “Between Centuries: The Classic and the Romantic.” The September 20 event, which included a performance of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7, was held at the Sosnoff Theater at The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College. 49

Fisher Center Aglow with Music and Theater The American Symphony Orchestra opened its second season in The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College in September ’04, with a program of music by Wagner and Beethoven. Under the baton of Music Director Leon Botstein, the orchestra continues its Fisher Center season with concerts in February ’05 (Brahms, Strauss, and Elgar) and April (Zwilich, Tchaikovsky, and Shostakovich). “Shostakovich and His World,” the theme for this year’s 15th annual Bard Music Festival, brought the composer’s world vividly to life with concerts, panel discussions, and other events offered over two weekends in August. The festival continued at the Fisher Center on the weekend of November 5–7, with a focus on music composed during World War II and its aftermath. Featured composers, in addition to Dmitrii Shostakovich, were Benjamin Britten, Sergey Prokofiev, Paul Hindemith, and Béla Bartók. The second annual SummerScape opened the Fisher Center’s 2004 season in July, presenting another profusion of music, theater, and film. The centerpiece of the eight-week festival was The Nose, an opera with music and libretto by Shostakovich, after the story by Nikolai Gogol. Among other highlights were theater (Gogol’s The Inspector General), music theater (Shostakovich’s Moscow: Cherry Tree Towers), a Russian film festival, puppet theater, and NightScape, a late-night cabaret. Also in July, The Conductors Institute at Bard presented The Song of Eddie, an opera in two acts with music by Harold Farberman, the Institute’s founder and director, and libretto by Andrew Joffe ’82.

Jewel of an Exhibition at BGC This fall, the Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design, and Culture (BGC) presents The Castellani and Italian Archaeological Jewelry, the first exhibition to explore, in depth, the work and legacy of the Castellani family of 19th-century Rome. The exhibition runs from November 18, 2004 through February 6, 2005 and then travels to the National Etruscan Museum in Rome and Somerset House in London. In the 1830s, Roman goldsmith Fortunato Pio Castellani began to create works modeled after the classical Italian and Greek prototypes being unearthed at nearby Etruscan archaeological sites. His distinctive jewels, whose simple geometric patterns were enhanced with patterns of gold granules and miniature mosaics, quickly became the rage across Europe. His family’s workshop also revived other periods of Italian jewelry, producing lines of medieval and Renaissance pieces. The exhibition features more than 250 objects representing these styles, including jewelry, drawings, paintings, and historical documents culled from museums and important private collections. For more information on this exhibition and related public programs, call 212-501-3000 or visit www.bgc.bard.edu.

Max Boot, author of the highly acclaimed The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power, and Mark Danner, Henry R. Luce Professor of Human Rights and Journalism at Bard and author of The Massacre at El Mozote: A Parable of the Cold War, discussed “The Future of Iraq” at Bard Hall in New York City on September 21. The evening event was sponsored by the Bard Globalization and International Affairs Program. The First-Year Seminar hosted Richard Bulliet of Columbia University, who spoke about “Islamic Society” on September 27 at Olin Hall.

OCTOBER October lectures in the First-Year Seminar series included “Competing Views of the Cosmos in Galileo’s Time,” by Matthew Deady, professor of physics; “Artisanal Knowledge: Dutch Artists and Optics in 17thCentury Holland,” by Susan Merriam, assistant professor of art history; and a panel discussion, “Machiavelli and Politics,” moderated by Elaine Thomas, assistant professor of political studies. World-renowned novelist and visiting writer in residence Orhan Pamuk presented the lecture “Melancholy Tristesse: Landscape of Istanbul” at the Bertelsmann Campus Center on October 5. The talk by Pamuk, author of Snow and My Name is Red, was part of Norman Manea’s course, Contemporary Masters: Terror and Beauty. An open class featuring Pamuk was held later in the month. The Woodstock Chamber Orchestra, with guest conductor Brian Salesky, performed works by Beethoven, Rossini, and Louis Spohr, as well as the world premiere of Green Lakes by Elizabeth Luttinger ’03, during an October 6 concert at Olin Hall. Bard community and area musicians, including pianist John Esposito and his ensemble, celebrated the music of jazz legend Thelonious Monk in an October 13 marathon concert at Bertelsmann Campus Center.

Acoustician Honored Yasuhisa Toyota, acoustical engineer for The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts, was awarded an honorary doctor of science degree at Bard on August 1. Toyota, who is internationally known in his field, is seen above in the Fisher Center’s Sosnoff Theater, for which he created the splendid acoustics. He received his degree during Bard’s second annual SummerScape festival, before the matinee performance of The Nose, an opera by Dmitrii Shostakovich. Reached in his Santa Monica, California, office, Toyota described listening to the rich, full sound of the orchestra in the Sosnoff as “wonderful.” The acoustic design of the theater was a “big challenge,” he said, “because we had to come up with super acoustics that would be suitable not only for a concert hall or an opera house, but for a multiuse facility.”

“Inside the Iraqi Resistance,” a talk by photojournalists Molly Bingham and Steven Connors, who both spent more than a year in Iraq, was held October 13 at Bard Hall in New York City as part of the Bard Globalization and International Affairs Program. Bingham was imprisoned for seven days at Abu Ghraib before the war. Banjo virtuoso Bela Fleck and renowned bassist Edgar Meyer helped kick off the 5th Anniversary Woodstock Film Festival with an evening of acoustic music at the Fisher Center on October 13. Obstinato: Making Music for Two, a documentary about the Grammy-winning Fleck and his musical partnership with Meyer, was featured at the weekend festival. The Levy Economics Institute hosted internationally renowned economists and award-winning New York Times reporter David Cay Johnston at its October 15–16 conference, “The Distributional Effects of Government Spending and Taxation.” 51

Operatic, Athletic, and Peripatetic: Introducing the Class of 2008 They are orchid growers, discus throwers, and glassblowers; tap dancers and ballet dancers; chess masters and concertmasters. One excavates dinosaur bones; one built his own telescope. Two sang at the annual summer arts festival in Spoleto, Italy, and one at the Metropolitan Opera; yet another produces the eerie overtones that typify Tuvan throat singing. Pool their respective musical instruments, and you’d have an ensemble featuring five flutes, three trombones, three cellos, three clarinets, three violins, two violas, two saxophones, two basses, a mandolin, and an Irish harp. They are the 410 members of the Class of 2008, and they are multinational, multiracial, multilingual, and impressively multitalented. The incoming class hails from 40 states and 30 countries, and includes two political refugees. Six percent are “legacy” students, who follow a parent, grandparent, or sibling to the Annandale campus. Fully 10 percent were editors-in-chief of their school newspapers or literary magazines; one started his own record label, and another was on the advisory board of a newly forming human rights high school. Many have done volunteer work in distant ports of call—Estonia, Ghana, China, and the Czech Republic. Once again, they will engage the Bard community in a dialogue of mutual enrichment. And here’s hoping that, amid all the exigencies of course work and the rigors of study, they find the time to stop and smell the orchids, or dinosaur bones.

Renowned Novelists in Residence Ismail Kadare, a Nobel Prize nominee from Albania, and Orhan Pamuk, a Turkish novelist whom John Updike has likened to Proust, Mann, and Borges, have joined the Bard community as distinguished visiting writers in residence and participants in Norman Manea’s Contemporary Masters seminar series, which this year is subtitled “Terror and Beauty.” Both Kadare and Pamuk are from the general region of southeastern Europe where Christianity, Islam, and Communism have often clashed in bloody conflicts. “Discussing the writing of these brilliant authors . . . and their impact in the daily reality of the world today is a special chance and challenge,” Manea says. Kadare was educated at the University of Tirana and Moscow’s Gorky Institute of World Literature. He published his first collection of poetry at 18. A novel, The General of the Dead Army, followed nine years later and led to international acclaim. Other works include The Pyramid, The Palace of Dreams, The Concert, and Elegy for Kosovo.

The New York Times called Pamuk’s 2003 novel, My Name is Red, “the grandest and most astonishing contest in Pamuk’s internal East-West war.” Other titles by the Istanbul native, whose work has been translated into more than 20 languages, include Snow, The Black Book, The New Life, and The White Castle.

Beginning October 15 and continuing weekly through November 12, the Institute of Advanced Theology at Bard College presented “Mystical Practices of Jesus and Paul,” a luncheon series of lectures by Bruce Chilton, executive director of the institute and Bernard Iddings Bell Professor of Philosophy and Religion. During Family Weekend, October 22–24, the Bard Theater Program presented Euripides’ Orestes at The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College. Screenings of films selected by the Asian Film Club were held at the Weis Cinema on October 29. Films included The Classic, Blue Spring, and Memories of Murder.

New Wing Takes Wing at CCS The Marieluise Hessel Collection—a significant collection of contemporary art on permanent loan to the Center for Curatorial Studies—will soon be displayed in new galleries. This fall, thanks to gifts from Hessel—the Center's founder—and other donors, including Laura-Lee Whittier Woods, Robert and Melissa Soros, and an anonymous donor, construction will begin on a 16,000-square-foot gallery wing, a 2,300-square-foot addition to the CCS library, and renovation of storage areas and mechanical systems. James Goettsch and Nada Andric, architects of the existing Center building, are overseeing design of the new facilities, slated for completion by 2006.

For Kicks With the growth of the student body and the increasing popularity of soccer, Bard plans to upgrade its Memorial Soccer Field and add another field. Having two fields will allow the men’s and women’s teams to practice simultaneously. The fields also will be used to host exhibition games and regional events. Among the improvements to Memorial Field will be lights to allow for night games, a sod surface, a state-of-the-art subsurface irrigation system, and better drainage so that games and practices can take place during or after a heavy rain. While the second field will not have lights, it will have a subsurface irrigation system and a new sod surface. According to facility engineer John Gall, work should be completed by July 2005. Memorial Soccer Field has been the home of the men’s and women’s soccer teams since 1994. It also hosts the Bard Soccer Camp. Thanks to a challenge grant by a generous donor, Bard has raised half of the money needed for the project. Anyone interested in contributing may contact Bard’s Office of Alumni/ae Affairs and Development at 845-758-7407.

The New York Conference on Asian Studies presented “Watch the Spirits Come Out,” a Balinese Gamelan Halloween extravaganza, on October 29. The conference also sponsored an exhibition of contemporary Chinese artists, Heart Prints: Contemporary Chinese Calligraphy; a display of calligraphic art by Bard students and recent graduates; a screening of North of 49, a documentary about the post–9/11 burning of a Sikh worship center by upstate New York teenagers; a lecture by Donald Richie, an authority on Japanese culture and film; and Parallel Worlds, an exhibition and panel discussion featuring artists and filmmakers from Beijing, Hong Kong, and the United States.

NOVEMBER “Adam Smith and ‘The Two Greatest Events in Human History,’” a lecture by Perry Mehrling of Barnard College, was presented by the First-Year Seminar on November 1. The weekly series continued with “The Persistence of Classicisms in Architecture from the 18th Century to the Present,” a lecture by Noah Chasin, visiting assistant professor of art history.

classnotes

Editor’s note: The Office of Alumni/ae Affairs and Development is initiat-

at Le Canard, a restaurant in Vienna, Virginia, and other venues, and she

ing a system of class correspondents who will actively seek Class Notes.

recently became a member of the Screen Actors Guild.

Anyone interested in serving as a class correspondent should contact the alumni/ae office. Alumni/ae with information for the Bardian should contact their class correspondent or Robyn Carliss at the alumni/ae office, 845-758-7089.

’35

New John Bard Society Member Hannah Kit Ellenbogen Although Barbara Herst (Schamberg) retains her interior decorating and design business, she has reduced the size and number of her projects in order to spend more time with her family and grandchildren. She makes

70th Reunion: May 20–22, 2005

yearly visits to Kauai, where she owns a condominium. Visiting Bardians

Contact: Stella Wayne, 845-758-7407 or wayne@bard.edu

can usually find her there in March.

’40

enjoys frequent travels to France with his wife, Ellie. He is practicing his

Jud Levin retired from the practice of law some years ago, and now

65th Reunion: May 20–22, 2005

Russian in preparation for another trip to Russia. A prolific writer, he is

Contact: Stella Wayne, 845-758-7407 or wayne@bard.edu

working on a book about the Federalist historians, the Bill of Rights, and the

New Bard College Legacy Club Members Mr. and Mrs. John F. Goldsmith

political ideas rejected by the Constitutional Convention. He has written several plays, which have been performed by local theater groups, and two novels. A publisher would be welcomed.

’43 New Bard College Legacy Club Member Dr. James A. Storer

’45 60th Reunion: May 20–22, 2005 Contact: Stella Wayne, 845-758-7407 or wayne@bard.edu

’49 Guy Robinson’s Philosophy and Mystification: A Reflection on Nonsense and Clarity was published by Fordham University Press in 2003. The book’s original publisher was Routledge, in 1998. Guy resides in Dalkey in South County Dublin, Ireland.

’50 55th Reunion: May 20–22, 2005 Contact: Stella Wayne, 845-758-7407 or wayne@bard.edu

Naomi Rothfield ’50 Dr. Naomi Rothfield, a rheumatologist and professor at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine, spends her days dealing with a disease few people have heard of: scleroderma. An extremely rare, progressive, connective tissue disease, sclero-

’51 New John Bard Society Member Renee K. Weiss

’52 Class correspondent: Hannah Kit Ellenbogen ’52, max4794@aol.com

derma subjects its sufferers to grueling symptoms, most notably a painful thickening and tightening of the skin and underlying tissue. Scleroderma can also cause a host of other ailments, including pulmonary hypertension, kidney failure, and impaired cardiac function. “It’s not a disease with a lot of answers,” says Rothfield, who began researching scleroderma in the late 1980s. “But I feel very committed to working on it. It’s a challenge to deal with a multisystem disease.” Currently, Rothfield is participating in numerous clinical trials

Anita Bellin (Gonzalez) continues to enjoy life in Bennington, Vermont,

involving scleroderma. Some trials are run by the National Institutes of

where she is active in the Progressive Party. Her efforts are mainly devoted

Health, others by pharmaceutical companies. Although research has its

to establishing a planned community that would permit affordable housing

rewards, Rothfield says her first love is seeing patients. “When you’re a

for people of modest means. The primary support for this planned commu-

physician dealing with chronic diseases, you get to know your patients very

nity is an association of churches that have agreed to provide the land

well,” she says. “Sometimes it’s depressing. But today I saw upbeat

needed by potential homeowners. Volunteers are welcome.

patients who are doing fine, which is uplifting. And it’s gratifying when

Judy Dolinger (Diamond) has a real estate practice, but her chief passion is for the performing arts. She has accepted singing engagements

they have problems I can solve.” Rothfield has seen major advances in the treatment of scleroderma. “There are many drugs available now that are helping patients live

longer,” she says. “I think there will absolutely be a cure.”

The Reverend Canon James Elliott Lindsley gave a talk titled “High Church, Low Church, and Broad Church in the Diocese of New York” on March 4 at St. Bartholomew’s Church in New York City, as part of the Church Club of New York’s lecture series. As the historiographer of the Episcopalian Diocese of New York, Rev. Lindsley wrote its bicentennial history in 1984. Scott Peyton retired from business 12 years ago and has since been teaching English as a Second Language to adults in the Englewood, New Jersey, school district. He is training to become a tutor with Literacy Volunteers of America. Once he completes his training, he will work with adults who have never learned to read in any language.

’55 50th Reunion: May 20–22, 2005

’69 Tina Chisena retired from the National Cancer Institute in the summer of 2002, after 31 years of doing bench science. For the five years preceding her retirement, she had been attending graduate school part-time while working full-time. In the semester following her retirement, Tina completed her graduate work and received a master’s degree in fine arts as a studio art major with an emphasis on metalsmithing and sculpture. Since then, she has been making metal objects, both jewelry and sculpture, enjoying several sports, and wondering how she ever had time to go to work. Chris and Judy Mauran report that on July 3, 2003, their grandson, Timoteo Alfonso Christopher Patrick, was born in Soave, Italy. They call him “Teo.”

Contact: Jessica Kemm, 845-758-7406 or kemm@bard.edu

’60 45th Reunion: May 20–22, 2005 Contact: Stella Wayne, 845-758-7407 or wayne@bard.edu

’63 Nan Toby Tyrrell produced two benefits in Port Townsend, Washington, for the Library Music Fund, and her seventh annual concert to benefit the local women’s shelter. She welcomes any Bardians who are visiting the Seattle area.

’65 40th Reunion: May 20–22, 2005 Contact: Jessica Kemm, 845-758-7406 or kemm@bard.edu

’67 Mack McCune’s suburban Maryland landscape business is doing fine. He writes, “Got a handful of kids growing up and moving on, then moving back, then moving on again.”

New Bard College Legacy Club Member Dr. Marika R. Taaffe

’68 New Bard College Legacy Club Member Howard F. Dratch

Richard C. Friedman ’61 While concentrating in English at Bard, Richard C. Friedman learned to look below the surface, “to understand that things are not always what they seem,” he says. If asked to identify Bard’s most precious gift to him, he answers, “Idealism—it formed my stance toward my whole development and future work, and it is a quality so needed, particularly in medicine and psychiatry.” Today, Friedman is a practicing psychoanalyst, psychiatrist, and clinical professor of psychiatry at Weill Medical College of Cornell University. Over his career of 35 years, he’s used both the skepticism and idealism honed at Bard to nudge the psychoanalytic community past many outdated theories, especially when it comes to homosexuality. Friedman delivered his first paper on the subject in the early 80s. “It was,” he says, “an explicit, outspoken, but scientifically based rationale for discarding outdated ideas that equated homosexuality with psychopathology.” At the time, gay and lesbian people could not be psychoanalysts, explains Friedman, “because they were considered mentally ill.” When Friedman’s first book, Male Homosexuality: A Contemporary Psychoanalytic Perspective, was published in 1988, it was the first in the field to integrate science with psychoanalytic theory and practice, a synthesis also at the core of his latest book, Sexual Orientation and Psychoanalysis: Sexual Science and Clinical Practice, coauthored with Jennifer I. Downey. “I felt an ethical obligation to find the reasons for antihomosexual prejudice. There had to be a more academic and modern approach by therapists to understanding sexuality, development, and psychopathology, and that is the thrust of what my work is all about.”

Left to right: Barbara Crane Wigner ‘68, Tatiana Brockman ’00, Diana Hirsch Friedman ‘68, and Paula Fuchs Blasier ‘68 at Muir Woods, California, April ’04.

New John Bard Society Member Anne M. Morris

’80 25th Reunion: May 20–22, 2005 Contact: Stella Wayne, 845-758-7407 or wayne@bard.edu

’70 35th Reunion: May 20–22, 2005 Contact: Jessica Kemm, 845-758-7406 or kemm@bard.edu

’81 Glenn Stout’s book, The Dodgers: 120 Years of Dodgers Baseball, was pub-

Steve Miller writes, “Alumni/ae should never ignore an opportunity to pro-

lished by Houghton Mifflin in September 2004 (see page 45). His next proj-

mote Bard.” Steve and his high school friends formed the Philadelphia Jug

ect is a history of the cleanup of the World Trade Center site after 9/11, as

Band in 1962 and have been playing ever since, when their mutual sched-

told through the experiences of construction workers. Scribner’s will pub-

ules allow, which is not too often. They always get together, however, for

lish the book in 2006.

the annual Philadelphia Folk Festival, where they perform in either a formal or informal capacity. Visit www.folkfest.org and click on the “Camping

’82

Information” section to view a photograph of the band, with Steve sporting

Alice E. Knapp left 11 years of state service and founded a solo law prac-

a Bard T-shirt.

tice in Richmond, Maine, in May 2002. In July 2003, she moved her offices

’73 Ana Cervantes, Fulbright Scholar to Mexico 1999–2000, released her second recording, Agua y Piedra/Water & Stone: Recent Music of México, in June. The new CD, which was made possible by a grant from CONACULTA-FONCA (the Mexican National Council for Culture and the Arts) as well as the support of the State Institute of Culture (Instituto Estatal de la Cultura) of Guanajuato, includes the music of seven Mexican composers, three of them women. All of the works but one are world premiere recordings. Ana invites everyone to visit her website at www.cervantespiano.com.

New Bard College Legacy Club Member Barbara S. Grossman

’75 30th Reunion: May 20–22, 2005 Contact: Jessica Kemm, 845-758-7406 or kemm@bard.edu

Daniel F. O’Neill ’79 Daniel F. O’Neill is an orthopedic surgeon at the New Hampshire Knee Center in Ashland. After concentrating in chemistry at Bard, O’Neill attended medical school at SUNY Stony Brook. He graduated, with honors, completed a sports medicine fellowship in Oregon, and then moved to New Hampshire, where he began serving as physician to the U.S. Ski Team.

Jamie Callan’s essay, “Just Another Movie Star,” is included in How I Learned

O’Neill specializes in knee surgery, has a particular interest in the

to Cook & Other Writings on Complex Mother-Daughter Relationships, edited

mental aspects of postsurgical rehabilitation, and is obtaining a doctorate

by Margo Perin and published by J. P. Tarcher in March 2004. She is engaged

in sports psychology from Boston University. He is researching whether

to marry Bill Thompson, a geochemist who plans to do his postdoctorate work

one teammate’s injury affects the performance or risk of injury of another

at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Woods Hole, Massachusetts

teammate. He is drawing much of his data from the numerous ski acade-

(on Cape Cod), investigating climate change.

mies in Vermont, Maine, and New Hampshire. “I’m trying to balance as

’77

many of the variables as possible,” he says. To benefit his patients who are facing anterior cruciate ligament sur-

Liza Wherry, a freelance copyeditor, writes that her oldest son, Jesse, has

gery, O’Neill has self-published a 150-page book containing information

graduated from Concordia University in Montreal. Her middle son, Robbie,

on anatomy, physiology, surgery choices, and preoperative instructions. It

attends the NEST+M (New Explorations into Science, Technology and Math)

also includes detailed, day-by-day, postoperative exercises.

High School, and her youngest son, Charlie, has entered middle school.

He is also interested in developing a program to encourage doctors

Liza’s husband, John Cline ’77, is the head of production at Big Chair, an

to use sports psychology as a way of dealing with their own professional

advertising agency in New York City.

performance. New Hampshire fits O’Neill’s lifestyle. “I do bike racing. I can get on my bike and ride for 50 miles and not hit a traffic light,” he says. “It’s ideal. I work with three hospitals. I was able to build a good practice and

I have a great life.”

into a 167-year-old historic building that she and her sweetie, Matt Tilley,

Margaret Loftus and Jonathan Durham ’93 live in Brooklyn with

purchased and continue to renovate. Alice is in her sixth year as a Richmond

their two sons, Keelan (2) and Tobin (born on March 22, 2004). Margaret is

selectman and is a certified Maine Clean Election candidate for state senate,

an attorney who does juvenile justice policy work; Jonathan has his own busi-

running as an Independent.

ness providing technical services and support to nonprofit organizations. Ann Pedone and her husband welcomed their first child, Mary-

’83

Elizabeth Catherine, into the world in January 2004. Ann writes that it has

Allen Yates and Kimi Nishikawa have a daughter, Jane Yates. Kimi is com-

been a wonderful experience, one that she would highly recommend to all.

pleting her doctoral thesis in biology at SUNY Albany, and Allen is a 2004 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow in video.

’84 Claire Surovell Litteral is in the process of getting a real estate license.

’93 Caitlin Adams gave birth to her first child, Isaac Felton Adams-Cutler, at 3:58 p.m. on April 17, 2004. Caitlin and her husband, Gary Cutler, live in Cheverly, Maryland, just outside of Washington, D.C. They report that they

’85 20th Reunion: May 20–22, 2005 Contact: Stella Wayne, 845-758-7407 or wayne@bard.edu

’87 Pamela Wallace, a sculptor, had a solo exhibition of her work titled Space: Substance, Matter, Bits and Pieces at the Arts Society of Kingston Gallery in Kingston, New York, this past spring. Pamela lives in Red Hook and is building a house in nearby Germantown, New York, with her husband, Stephen Reynolds, who also is a sculptor. She teaches at SUNY New Paltz and has exhibited her work throughout the Midwest and New England. Christina Araiza Griffith, after living in the Southwest for the past nine years, has relocated to San Francisco, California, to join the Gateway Charter High School community as assistant principal. The school provides a college preparatory program for a diverse student body, including many traditionally underserved students.

’89 Ray Brahmi and his wife, Elyse Singer, welcomed their daughter, Sophia Singer Brahmi, into the world on October 29, 2003. Ray began the master’s program in education at New York University’s Steinhardt School of Education in June 2004.

’90 15th Reunion: May 20–22, 2005

Rebecca Smith ’93 After earning a Ph.D. in biochemistry, a process she describes as “six years in a lab studying three amino acids,” Rebecca Smith is delighted to be out in the real world and having an impact on public school students and teachers. Smith received her doctorate from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) in 1999. She now works for UCSF as the academic coordinator for the Science and Health Education Partnership (SEP), a collaborative program that is breathing new life into the way science is taught in the San Francisco Unified School District. SEP does everything from working with elementary school teachers to make them feel more comfortable teaching science to having high school juniors assist graduate students in the UCSF labs over the course of a summer. “The high schoolers we work with tend to be at-risk kids,” explains Smith. The lucky 25 who make it into the SEP summer program (two years ago, 168 students applied) receive college and financial aid counseling from Smith, a stipend for their work, and an invaluable experience. The

Contact: Stella Wayne, 845-758-7407 or wayne@bard.edu

students work on real projects with scientists who mentor them; they keep

Jennifer D. Klein had two articles on education published in the

journals about their experiences; and complete five full drafts of a per-

Independent School journal, and one in Education Week.

sonal statement designed to be used in the college application process. Smith is proud of the program’s results: nearly 100 percent of the students

’91

who have been through the program go on to college. The program is sim-

William Lackey‘s wife, Sheryl Odems, gave birth to Katherine Elizabeth

ilar to Bard’s own Immediate Science Research Opportunity Program,

Lackey on April 7. Katherine is the couple’s first child.

which allows first- and second-year students to gain hands-on experience working with faculty on research projects.

’92 Chidi Chike Achebe, who earned his M.D. from Dartmouth Medical School in 1996 and his M.P.H. from the Harvard School of Public Health in 2004, has been appointed the medical director of Whittier Street Health Center in

Unfortunately, the budget crisis in California has forced SEP to go on hiatus this year. Smith and her colleagues plan a major fund-raising drive in the fall. She remains optimistic. “This job makes it easy to get up in the morning,” she says.

Boston, Massachusetts. 57

are “feeling pretty good” and beginning to adjust to their strange, new

performed works by Aaron Copland, M. Camargo Guarnieri, Daniel

sleeping patterns. Caitlin, a freelance editor, works from her home office

Sonenberg, Frank Martin, and P. A. Genin. In the past, Kerstin has per-

while caring for Isaac. It is a demanding combination, but she feels lucky

formed at summer festivals around Europe and at various events and ven-

to have the flexibility to handle both chores.

ues in New York City, including “88 Keys: A Celebration of the Piano” at the

’94

Winter Garden of the World Financial Center in September 2003. Rachel Fisher (Smith)’s daughter, Zoë Jane Fisher, was born on

Kerstin Costa, a pianist, and flutist Roberto Pitre performed at the

May 16, 2004. Zoë is a happy, healthy baby, and Rachel writes that she and

Riverdale Yonkers Society for Ethical Culture on February 29, 2004. The duo

her husband, Mike, are “totally in love with her and wrapped around her pudgy little finger.” Rachel would love to hear from other classmates at res912@hotmail.com. Lesley McClintock lived on an educational farm in 2003, where she taught elementary school students about organic farming, the wilderness, and animals. She says that she loves the simple life: shoveling manure, milking cows, watching animal births, and hearing frogs sing at night. She is on course to earn an M.F.A. degree in film at San Francisco State University, having made an underwater film of a river near Yosemite for her thesis. She looks forward to teaching kids about ecology and art, and to the many adventures and “compassionate actions” to come. In the summer of 2003 she hiked 140 miles on the Pacific Crest Trail, and she spent this summer living in the wilderness. Molly Northup and Joshua (Jabe) Bloom ’95 were married on June 26 in Dover, New Hampshire. Alex Chesler ’95 solemnized the marriage. Mike Guy ’96 was best man and Melanie Oster ’94 was best woman. Kira Sue Sloop’s second son, Alexander “Sandy” McCain Sloop, was born on June 14, 2004. Kira was sorry to miss her 10th reunion this year, but she writes, “We’ll plan to saddle up our little fellows for the next big

Robert Reynolds ‘94

one in five years.” After staying at home with Sandy for several months,

As director of global epidemiology for Pfizer Pharmaceuticals, Robert

Kira returned to ORC Macro, where she has been employed since 1995 as

Reynolds heads a group of associates charged with determining the safety

a public health consultant. She lives with her husband, Ross; Sandy; and 3-

of a variety of drugs from their earliest stages of development through the

year-old Jamie in Atlanta, Georgia.

approval process and beyond. “Our goal is ultimately to get a safe medication to the patients who need it,” says Reynolds.

Michael Weintraub finished his Ph.D. in ecosystem ecology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and has since moved to Boulder,

After majoring in biology at Bard, Reynolds went on to Harvard,

Colorado, where he studies carbon dynamics in subalpine forests of the

where he earned a master’s degree in epidemiology and a Ph.D. in inter-

Rockies as a postdoctoral research associate. He and his wife were sad to

national health. He has worked for Pfizer since 2000. “I made an active

leave Santa Barbara, but have really enjoyed Boulder so far. Fellow

decision to go to work for a pharmaceutical company,” he says. “I looked

alumni/ae can reach Michael at bacchus@arcticmail.com.

at academic positions but decided I wanted a real-world, fast-paced environment. And it’s been great. At Pfizer, I can use creative approaches and

’95

have an impact.”

10th Reunion: May 20–22, 2005

Reynolds manages a team of 12 people at Pfizer’s New York headquarters and currently heads two major projects: the design of a test for a new HIV drug that’s in an early stage of development, and a large-scale study of a drug used to treat schizophrenia. The latter, a postapproval review of the drug, will follow 18,000 patients. In contrast to a closely controlled clinical trial, this study will track the drug’s efficacy out in the world, observing patients’ actual use patterns, including dosage changes. This work goes right to the heart of Reynolds’s interests—the impact of real-life issues on a patient’s use of medicine. For example, a patient suffering from a virus may take an antibiotic, even though antibiotics are ineffective against viral diseases. “We need to examine the user perspective—people’s expectations of medicine,” says Reynolds.

Contact: Stella Wayne, 845-758-7407 or wayne@bard.edu Sallie Mehrtens Drake and her husband Jeff are proud to announce the birth of their son, Matthew, born on August 15. He joins big brother Ben, who is 3. Faith A. Fisher lives in Connecticut with her dog and works as a volunteer coordinator with a hospice program. She writes, “Life is good!” Carrie Haddad has collaborated with Ramon Lascano to open up a second gallery, the Haddad Lascano Gallery, in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. Her first gallery, the Carrie Haddad Gallery, continues to thrive in Hudson, New York.

’96

’98

Christina Amato had a solo exhibition of drawings at the AS220 Gallery in

New John Bard Society Member

Providence, Rhode Island, from May 20 to June 12. Aaron McCormick ’96

Eric Warren Goldman

and Katie Walther ’96 were both present at the opening. Shehreyar Hameed writes that he is interested in catching up with Bard alumni/ae in the Chicago area. Enayat Qasimi lives in Kabul, Afghanistan, where he works as the chief legal and foreign affairs adviser to President Hamid Karzai, handling both ministerial-level advisory positions. Marta Topferova collaborated with Enrique Lopez ’92 on the compact disc Sueño Verde (Green Dream), which was released on Circular Moves/ Rykodisc in 2003. For more information, visit www.martatopferova.com.

Eugene Kublanovsky is pursuing a J.D. at Brooklyn Law School. Patricia Moussatche graduated from the University of Florida with a Ph.D. in plant molecular and cellular biology in May 2004. She is now doing postdoctorate work in biochemistry at the University of Florida.

’99 Karen Dugan is “living the good life” with her 2-year-old, Saia, and her lover, Sarab, in Seattle, Washington. She was on a Discovery Health Channel special titled “Unconventional Birth,” which aired over the summer of 2004. For information about midwifery or home birth, Karen can be contacted at kd725@hotmail.com. Danielle Pafunda’s first book of poems, Pretty Young Thing, is forthcoming from Soft Skull Press in 2005. Her poetry appears in a number of journals and publications, including Best American Poetry 2004. She coedits the online journal La Petite Zine, and is an associate editor of Verse. Danielle and her husband live in Athens, Georgia, where she teaches creative writing and works on her Ph.D., both at the University of Georgia. Joseph Anthony Stanco Jr. graduated from Columbia University’s Computer Technology and Applications Program with a certificate in C++ software development last fall.

Babacar Cisse ’03 Babacar Cisse is in his second year of the Columbia University College of

’00 5th Reunion: May 20–22, 2005 Contact: Stella Wayne, 845-758-7407 or wayne@bard.edu

Physicians and Surgeons M.D./Ph. D. program. He has received a Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans, as well as a Medical Scientists

Lisa Farjam is the publisher and editor-in-chief of the bidoun, “a quarterly

Training Program grant from the National Institutes of Health.

forum for Middle Eastern talent.” She writes that Sameer Reddy ’00,

“I thought I would concentrate on infectious diseases,” says Cisse. “I love interacting with patients and I love developmental biology and

Brian Ackley ’02, and Ketuta Alexi-Meskhishvili ’03 are also involved in the project.

embryology. We’re trying to learn how cells that are part of the immune

Thomas Lannon earned an M.S. in library and information science

system develop. This ties in well with infectious diseases.” The research to

from the Pratt Institute in May. In August, he left his position at the Columbia

which he refers involves tracking recently discovered entities known as

University Rare Book and Manuscript Library to begin work as an archivist at

plasmacytoid dendritic cells.

the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

Cisse’s journey to Bard was not easy. In his native Dakar, he attended religious high school, where the emphasis was on studying the

’01

Koran. “I didn’t learn science in high school, but I was interested in med-

David Homan‘s new CD of chamber works premiered in New York City.

icine because of what I saw around me,” he says of the disarray of

Check his website, www.homanmusic.com, for upcoming projects and new

Senegal’s medical system. His high school training precluded admission

information.

into medical school. Undaunted, he took to Dakar’s libraries. “I was six years trying to learn science on my own,” he says.

’02

He arrived in the United States and applied, on a long shot, to Bard.

Kerry Chance is a Mellon Fellow in humanistic studies and a Ph.D. student

John Ferguson, professor of biology, recognized Cisse’s self-motivation and

in anthropology at the University of Chicago. She is currently a visiting

intellectual gifts. In his first Bard semester, Cisse’s intellectual courage

researcher at the Centre for Civil Society in Durban, Republic of South Africa.

came to the fore. Despite his lack of formal preparation, he plunged into courses in calculus, physics, and eukaryotic genetics. He says, with remark-

’03

able understatement, “It was a very hard semester.” After a brief shaky

Briana Davis has started Hearty Roots Community Farm in Red Hook, a

start, Cisse found his scientific sea legs, excelled, concentrated in chem-

Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm. Many residents of the

istry, and was able to take all the premed courses he needed.

Hudson Valley are involved in the farm’s workings, doing everything from

“I’m sure that I’ll always be grateful to this country,” he says of the United States.

weeding to grant writing. 59

Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts MFA correspondent: Marji Vecchio MFA ’01, ABTOK@aol.com

’86 Marilyn Bruya teaches painting at the University of Montana in Missoula. Despite her western residence, she continues to be a member of the Associated Artists of Pittsburgh, and often exhibits in the group’s annual juried shows.

House. He has also had solo shows of his paintings in many cities, with an exhibition scheduled for December in Key West. He has taught creative writing and fine arts studio courses, and is the founder of Farmer Farmer, an experimental music collective, which has released three CDs. Margie Neuhaus had work featured in the exhibition Ekeichiera: Truce at Schopf Gallery on Lake in Chicago.

’94 Gary Green’s photographs were included in the biennial exhibition at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art in Rockport. His short video piece was featured in Waterworks at the Area Gallery of the University of Southern

’88

Maine, where he has been on the faculty since 1999. He is currently work-

Richard Aunspaugh had a retrospective exhibition of his work at the

that continue to explore his interest in the landscape.

ing on several new digital video pieces and a new group of photographs

Fincher Visual Arts Center at Reinhardt College in Waleska, Georgia, in

Kim Krause was named full professor of art at the Art Academy of

February. He teaches art at Young Harris College in Young Harris, Georgia.

Cincinnati, where she chairs the Fine Arts Program. She had a solo exhibi-

’89

tion, Selections from Spirals and Found Credo, at the Annie Bolling Gallery

Liz McIlvaine moved to Old Chatham, New York, from Philadelphia last year, and also relocated her business—Blue Diamond Studio, a small, fastpaced design firm started in 1997 that does work in outdoor fabrics. Prior

in Cincinnati.

’96 Mara Adamitz Scrupe is working on commissions in 2004–05 for the

to the move she was on staff at the Fabric Workshop and Museum in

Tranekaer International Centre for Art and Nature (TICKON) in Rudkobing,

Philadelphia. Along with the business, she continues to do her personal

Denmark; Crawford Municipal Art Gallery in Cork, Ireland; Buffalo Bayou

photographic artwork.

Art Park in Houston, Texas; and the Southwest School of Art and Craft/The

’90

San Antonio Botanical Garden. In addition, she has been awarded a perma-

Joan Giroux teaches at Brooklyn College and the School of Visual Arts. In

Barbara L. Bishop Endowed Chair in Art at Longwood University in Virginia.

nent public art commission by Agnes Scott College in Atlanta. She holds the

recent years, she has exhibited and performed solo or in group shows at

Natasha Sweeten’s work was included in a group show, Greetings from

such venues as Bellport Atrium Gallery, Tokyo; Ace Gallery, New York City;

Chelsea, at Edward Thorp Gallery, New York City. She also had two solo shows

Sansung Park, Gongju, Korea; Mysliborz Regional Museum, Poland; and

in Brooklyn: Natasha Sweeten: A Mini-Retrospective, at Realform Project

Bahnhof Westend, Berlin. She has had residencies at the Marie Walsh

Space, and Natasha Sweeten: Call This Home, at East Gallery. Her work can be

Sharpe Art Foundation Space Program and received grants from the John

viewed at http://registry.whitecolumns.org/view_artist.php?artist=201.

Anson Kittredge Memorial, Harvestworks/Studio PASS, Berlin Cultural Council, and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation.

’97

’92

Hal Niedzviecki has two books forthcoming from major publishers. Hello,

Linda Tonetti Dugan participated in Pittsburgh’s Arts Education

work, is slated for publication by Penguin Canada in October. A novel, The

Collaborative Leadership Academy and continues to teach at the Ellis

Program, published by Random House of Canada, will appear in January

School, where she also writes and maps curriculum. As an organizer of

2005. He lives in Toronto and his work can be sampled at www.smellit.ca.

assembly programming for grades 5–12, she invited Ann Lauterbach, Bard’s David and Ruth Schwab Professor of Languages and Literature, to read her poetry at the school, and as a result met two other Bard MFA grads, Tony Goodwin ’00 and Jen Saffron ’02.

I’m Special: How Individuality Became the New Conformity, a nonfiction

’98 Taylor Davis’s work was included in the Whitney Museum of American Art Biennial 2004, and in exhibitions at Triple Candie, New York City, and the

Marilyn Wenker teaches full-time in the English Department at

Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), Boston. Recent grants and awards include

Brooklyn College. Two of her plays were produced in New York City: Boxes

a St. Botolph Foundation Grant, an Association of International Art Critics

of Blood, at Manhattan Theatre Source, and Meet, at the Neighborhood

award, and the ICA Boston Artist Prize. Articles about and reviews of her work

Playhouse.

have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, and Boston Globe, as

’93

well as in Art in America and Artforum. She is an associate professor at

Since graduating, George Farrah has published his poetry nationally in

Graduate School of the Arts. Her website is www.taylordavissculptor.com.

various magazines. His latest poetry manuscript is titled Swans through the

Massachusetts College of Art and a faculty member of Bard’s Milton Avery

Anna Moschovakis has worked for several years with Ugly Duckling

teaches ceramics at the Bronx River Art Center. One of her “Disaster

Presse, an upstart nonprofit art and publishing collective based in Brooklyn

Drawings,” made at the site of the former World Trade Center, was pur-

(www.uglyducklingpresse.org). The collective’s membership includes artists,

chased by the Altoids Collection and gifted to the New Museum for its per-

writers, designers, performers, and educators. This year Ugly Duckling pub-

manent collection.

lished more than a dozen poetry books and chapbooks (often with hand-

Mary Pinto lives in Brooklyn and works as a Spanish interpreter and

made elements); it also produced broadsides and artist’s books, and staged

translator in Queens. She had a residency at the Virginia Center for Creative

the occasional performance/installation. Among the authors of published

Arts in summer 2004.

and soon-to-be published chapbooks are Trey Sager MFA ’04 and Genya Turovskaya MFA ’05.

’00

Nick Tobier has made a gradual shift from sculpture to performance,

Nina Bovasso had two solo shows this year: Labor of Love at Perugi

with recent participation in shows at MASS MoCA and performances in New

Artecontemporanea in Padua, Italy, and Sex, Fat, Industry Meltdown at

York City, Frankfurt, Tokyo, and Paramaribo, Suriname. A resident of Ann

Clementine Gallery in New York City. She was also included in a three-person

Arbor, he is working on public projects for the city of Detroit and teaching

exhibition at Diana Stigter Gallery, Amsterdam, and enjoyed a residency at Dieu

at the University of Michigan. His website is www.everydayplaces.com.

Donné Papermill in New York City. She was invited to produce a print edition

’99

for a new program of Princeton University’s art department. Anthony Goodwin exhibited works on paper at Penn Gallery and

Daniel DuVall taught photography at Simon’s Rock College of Bard from

Garfield Artworks in Pittsburgh. He chairs the Visual Art Department at

1995 to 2003. He plans to move to the Dominican Republic, where he will

Shady Side Academy Senior School in Fox Chapel, a Pittsburgh suburb.

continue to photograph pre-Colombian Taíno rock drawings in endangered

Serkan Ozkaya has had solo shows at MiniGallery, Stockholm;

caves. Over the past few years his work has appeared in solo and group

BeganeGrond, Utrecht, Netherlands; and three venues in Istanbul: Galerist,

exhibitions at Berkshire South Regional Community Center (2003); Doreen

the French Cultural Institute, and ICAP. Within the last two years he has also

Young Gallery, Simon’s Rock College of Bard (2002); West End Gallery,

participated in the Tirana Biennale and in group shows at Exit Art in New York

Houston (Houston Fotofest, 2002); and Burge/XXth Century Photographs,

City; the Belgrade Museum of Contemporary Art; Chapman University, Orange,

Ltd., New York City (2000). Robert Burge and West End Gallery represent

California; 5020, Salzburg; Galerie Loevenbruck, Paris; Charlottenborg

him. Upcoming exhibits include Museo del Hombre Dominicano in 2005

Museum, Copenhagen; Proje 4L, Istanbul; TN Probe, Tokyo; Centre National de

and Third International Conference of Rock Art, Havana, Cuba, in 2006.

la Photographie, Paris; and Fabbrica del Vapore, Milan. His books include

After graduating, Pamela Hastings taught photography at Lacoste School of the Arts in France. She then worked for Condé Nast in New York City,

Genius and Creativity in the Arts: Schoenberg, Adorno, Thomas Mann (2000) and It’s not what it looks like! I can explain (2004).

spent two years as director of new media for Vogue, and taught at Pratt

Amanda Wojick is an assistant professor of art at the University of

Institute. After moving to California, she had her first solo exhibition, in Echo

Oregon. She has finished her fifth year of teaching (Colgate University

Park. She now lives in New Mexico, where she wrote college-level curriculum

1999–2001, University of Oregon 2001–04). Her work was exhibited at the

and taught at the Institute of American Indian Arts, and currently serves as art

Portland Art Museum and the Elizabeth Leach Gallery in Portland, Oregon.

director of the Gerald Peters Gallery and designs art publications. Becky Howland’s sculpture will be exhibited at the New Museum of

’01

Contemporary Art in East Village USA, a group show curated by Dan

Thi Bui writes that she teaches global history and art at the High School of

Cameron, opening in December and running through March 2005. She

Telecommunication Arts and Technology in Brooklyn. She would like to start

What an Art Gallery Should Actually Look Like (Large Glass) by Serkan Ozkaya ‘00. The piece, exhibited in the windows of Exit Art gallery in Manhattan, comprised slides of thousands of works of art submitted in response to an Internet request. 61

a public art course and a visiting artist series at the high school; if anyone

Jen DeNike curated a group exhibition at Ambrosino Gallery in

is interested in giving young people reasons to think and care about con-

North Miami, which was reviewed in the Broward–Palm Beach New Times

temporary art, they can e-mail her at thi_bui@earthlink.net.

magazine. The exhibition included works by several other Bard alumni/ae

Michelle Handelman teaches in the Media Studies Program at New

and students—Bobby Abate MFA ’02, Carrie Moyer MFA ’02, Isaac

School University. Her work has been shown at the Palm Beach Institute of

Diggs MFA ’03, Marc Swanson MFA ’04, Joshua Thorson MFA ’06, and

Contemporary Art, curated by Michael Rush; in two group shows,

Sabrina Gschwandtner MFA ’07—as well as Polly Apfelbaum and Bard

Public.exe:Public Execution, curated by Anne Ellegood CCS ’98 and Michele

faculty members Amy Sillman MFA ’95 and Stephen Shore.

Thursz, and Transcinema at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; on

Carrie Moyer had solo exhibitions at Triple Candie, New York City,

Reel NY, PBS-Thirteen/WNET; and in two shows with Bard faculty member

and DiverseWorks, Houston. She also exhibited in two-person and group

Peggy Ahwesh: Action Figure, at Bellevue Museum of Art, and Acting Out, at

shows at Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art, Florida; Tang Teaching

York University, Toronto. She received a 2003 New York State Council on the

Museum, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, New York; Ambrosino

Arts individual artist grant for film, video, and electronic media.

Gallery, North Miami; and Aljira Contemporary Arts Center, Newark, New

Carolyn Kuebler moved to Vermont to be the managing editor of New

Jersey. Her work was discussed in Raphael Rubinstein’s review 8 Painters:

England Review. She recently published short fiction in the literary journal

New Work in Art in America. She was the beneficiary of a Special Editions

Conduit. She moved with her husband, Christopher Ross (Tinney) ’00.

Fellowship from the Lower East Side Printshop, New York City, and a multi-

Holly Lynton exhibited Mean Ceiling at Mixed Greens Gallery in New York City. The landscapes in the show served as settings for photographs and a video that examined the space between play and danger. The work can be viewed at www.mixedgreens.com/hlynton.

media residency at BCAT/Rotunda Gallery, Brooklyn. Alexandra Newmark’s new email is alexnewmark@earthlink.net. Jen Saffron cocurated PIN UP, a photography show at SPACE gallery in Pittsburgh. In 2003 she participated in A is for Aperture at Pittsburgh’s

Xan Palay participated in a two-person exhibition titled How Nature

Silver Eye Center for Photography and taught a service-learning video

Works and gave a talk about her work at the Alice F. and Harris K. Weston

course in Jamaica. Her class of 10 University of Pittsburgh students created

Art Gallery in Cincinnati.

an advocacy video with the Jamaican grassroots organization Association of

George Sanchez is an assistant professor in the Performing and Creative

Clubs to help raise funds for their camp for underserved youth.

Arts Department at the College of Staten Island. In 2003, in addition to receiv-

Raissa Venables participated in a group show at latincollector gallery

ing a Space Grant from the Brooklyn Arts Exchange, he and Patricia Hoffbauer,

in New York City. The exhibition included three other Bard MFA students:

his fellow Viola Farber Artist-in-Residence at Sarah Lawrence College, presented

curator Carlos Motta MFA ’04 and artists Frank Oudeman MFA ’04 and

a new collaborative piece titled Hoc Est Corpus/This Is a Body at Symphony

Michelle Kloehn MFA ’05. She can be reached at raissav@hotmail.com.

Space in the Leonard Nimoy Thalia theater. This year the two artists premiered a collaborative performance piece titled Milagro, which was commissioned by and presented at Dance Theater Workshop in New York City.

’03 Paul Chan was one of the artists lending his talents to The People’s Guide to

Trevor Stafford was awarded a studio in the Marie Walsh Sharpe

the Republican National Convention, an informational booklet that was dis-

Space Program for 2004–05. He participated in the Artist in the

tributed to protesters visiting New York City during the convention in August.

Marketplace Program, Bronx Museum of the Arts, in 2004, and was an

The guide had more than 600 points of information, including locations of

Emerging Artist Fellow at Socrates Sculpture Park, Long Island City, in

convention-related events, protest sites, accessible bathrooms, affordable

2003. He exhibited work in 2003 at the Kingston Sculpture Biennial and at

lodging, and legal pointers. Chan, who participated in the 2004 Carnegie

Carriage House, Islip Art Museum.

International exhibition, was one of several members of the Bard community

Marjorie Vecchio moved to Brooklyn two years ago and is finishing

contributing to the People’s Guide. Among the others were Emilie Clark

her Ph.D. in philosophy of communications media at the European

MFA ’02, Shoshana Dentz MFA ’04, Elise Gardella MFA ’03, Julianne

Graduate School in Switzerland. She participated in an exhibition at Schopf

Swartz MFA ’03, and three faculty members: Peggy Ahwesh, associate pro-

Gallery on Lake in Chicago, for which she received an award and the oppor-

fessor of film and electronic arts; Tim Davis, visiting assistant professor of

tunity to discuss her work on NBC news. In January 2005 she will curate an

photography; and Amy Sillman MFA ’95, assistant professor of studio art.

exhibition at the Evanston Art Center in Chicago. In spring 2004 she was

Isaac Diggs presented his solo show Ritual Sights at LUXE Gallery in

invited to study with philosopher Jacques Derrida in Paris; she is also a seri-

New York City. The work explored African American beach parties along the

ous student of Argentinean tango dancing.

eastern and southern coasts of the United States.

’02

a group exhibition of the eponymous women’s photography collective, of

Emilie Clark’s work was included in three group exhibitions: Living in a

which she is a member, at the David Allen Art and Design Gallery in New York

Cloud at the Royal Hibernian Academy in Dublin; Pondering the Marvelous,

City; other exhibitions included solo shows at Galleri Image, Aarhus, Denmark

a three-person show at Wave Hill in the Bronx; and Romantic Detachment

(Fliegen), and Presse-und Informationsamt, Frankfurt am Main, Germany.

at PS1, Long Island City. In 2005 she will have her first New York solo show,

She was also represented in group shows at 320 Gallery, Indiana, and Ghar

at Michael Steinberg in Chelsea. She and her husband, Lytle, have a baby

El Melh, Tunisia. She has published work in Camera Austria, No. 86; Paper

son, Cosmo Clark-Shaw.

Placemats; and Artkaleidoscope. Her website is aprilgertler.com.

April Gertler lives in Germany. In 2004 she participated in Nymphoto,

Jennifer Hayashida lives in New York City and works as a project manager for a translation agency in Brooklyn. She completed a booklength translation project from Swedish to English during a translator residency at the Santa Fe Art Institute, and is working now on a new series of vignettes imagining presidential domesticity. Kelly Kaczynski moved to Chicago for a one-year position at the University of Illinois. She had a site-specific installation titled As a Bird Flies Above So Below a Hollow in the Ground in Past Presence: Contemporary Reflections, an exhibition curated by Denise Markonish CCS ’99 at the Main Line Art Center in Haverford, Pennsylvania. She also exhibited work at Artspace in New Haven and Triple Candie in New York City. Alisdair MacRae moved to New York City a couple of years ago and is employed as the student technology assistant coordinator at Seton Hall University in New Jersey. He exhibited his work in Quebec and in a group show, titled Altaring the Neighborhood: A Local Paradise in New York City and curated by Tara Ruth ’01, at the Interfaith Center of New York. Sunsook Roh participated in Exit Art Biennial, The Reconstruction, Exit Art’s inaugural show at its new facility. She was one of 100 Korean artists residing in America invited to participate in a show celebrating the 100th year of Korean immigration to the United States. She works parttime as a nurse at Mount Sinai Hospital, and is actively involved in performing Korean traditional dancing and drumming at church events, including Christian mission work in Honduras and Bolivia. She plans to follow her husband, Bill, to Tokyo, where he will be working for the next two years. Since graduating, Julianne Swartz participated in exhibitions at Artists Space and PS.1 Museum (both 2003) and the 2004 Whitney Biennial. Her website is www.juliannswartz.com.

’04 The movie Winner by Harry Dodge and Stanya Kahn received screenings at the Mix Festival in New York City and the Egyptian Theater/American Cinemateque in Los Angeles. Kahn also read and performed at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles as part of the New American Writing series curated by Benjamin Weissman. Marc Swanson exhibited work at the Chelsea Museum in New York City. Ho Tam, based in Toronto, presented a video installation titled Still Lives & Studies at Paul Petro Contemporary Art Gallery in Canada.

’97 Malcolm MacNeil was hired by Doyle New York as the firm’s specialist in charge of the Belle Epoque auctions, which are held three times a year. He taught a course this summer in American and European art glass for New York University’s School of Continuing and Professional Studies, and also offered a new course in October on American glass.

’98 Natasha Schlesinger continues to run Museum Adventures!, a weekly children’s museum program. She has added a weekly adult museum program, as well as a monthly program for couples. Another venture, ART DATE for Singles, was successfully launched in June. ART DATE gives single men and women the opportunity to enjoy an evening of culture, meet new people, and learn about new exhibitions and permanent collections in New York City. For further information about programs and registration, e-mail Natasha at ns@artdate.com.

’01 Lee Talbot is a curator at the Chung Young Yang Embroidery Museum at Sookmyung Women’s University in Seoul, Korea, which opened on May 11, 2004. He was cocurator of the museum’s inaugural exhibition, Silken Threads: Masterpieces of Silk Embroidery from the Chung Young Yang Embroidery Museum, and coauthor of its accompanying catalogue. He is preparing the museum’s second exhibition, which explores the history, use, and design of wrapping cloths in East Asia.

’03 Alexa Griffith wrote a short essay titled “Architecture and Design, 1925–1950” and numerous object descriptions for The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s “Timeline of Art History,” an Internet reference resource. She also received a grant from the Society for the Preservation of American Modernists for her research on Dorothy Liebes. Her article on Liebes appeared in the September 2004 issue of Modernism. Miranda Pildes works for Patti Cadby Birch, a patron of the arts who is in the process of converting a 19th-century palace in Marrakech into a museum that will hold her collection of Islamic, Persian, Chinese, West African, Mexican, pre-Columbian, and other artifacts. Though it is far from the jewelry path she was determined to follow, Miranda is very excited

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

’96 Jeanne-Marie Musto is completing her dissertation with the support of a Whiting Fellowship in the Humanities. Her dissertation explores the interrelationship between politics and the origins of art history as an academic

about the opportunity to participate in this venture. Irene Sunwoo is teaching a course this fall for the Architectural Association in London, where she is completing a master’s degree in the histories and theories of architecture.

Center for Curatorial Studies

discipline. She would be delighted to hear from other Bard people passing

’96

through Philly—contact her at jmusto@brynmawr.edu.

Regine Basha was guest curator of TREBLE, a group exhibition that explored sound as material and subject in contemporary art, on view this summer at the Sculpture Center in Long Island City. She was also selected

as an ARCO ’04 curator. She is adjunct curator at Arthouse and an associate

The exhibition reflected the emotionally disarming process of falling in love.

at Fluent Collaborative, a contemporary art initiative based in Austin, Texas.

Edwards also cocurated Quicksand at De Appel Centre of Contemporary Art,

Rachel Gugelberger, associate director of the Visual Arts Museum, School of Visual Arts, New York City, curated the exhibition blameless, which opened in June at the school’s Visual Arts Gallery.

Amsterdam, as part of a curatorial training program. Ingrid Chu is interim assistant curator at the Americas Society and an independent curator and critic based in New York City. She has curated numer-

Goran Tomcic is an independent curator and artist. When his exhibi-

ous exhibitions and projects sited in public spaces. In April she cocurated

tion A Sunny Room, on view at the Naked Duck Gallery, came to an early

Unscene at (VIDEOBOX), a new initiative of White Box that showcases artists

and unexpected end, he reinstalled the same work in his Brooklyn apart-

working in video and film, presenting them in White Box’s street-level window.

ment, with visiting hours by appointment.

’98 Sarah Cook continues to curate new media projects and publish with the support of a research grant at CRUMB, University of Sunderland, England. Anne Ellegood, curator of the Norton Collection in New York City, cocurated public.exe:Public Execution at Exit Art.

’99 Xandra Eden, assistant curator at the Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery in Toronto, curated The Cave and the Island, an exhibition of works by eight Canadian artists, at White Columns in New York City.

Anna Vejzovic is the assistant curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Cleveland. She was previously the assistant curator at Memphis Brooks Museum of Art in Tennessee.

’04 Stacey Allan was awarded the 2004 Ramapo Prize by the art faculty at Ramapo College of New Jersey. The curatorial prize included a stipend as well as an exhibition budget, which will allow Stacey to present a reconfigured version of her M.A. exhibition, Master Blaster, at the Berrie Center for the Performing Arts in November 2005. Yasmil Raymond Ventura began a one-year paid internship at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, in September.

Denise Markonish, gallery director and curator at Artspace in New Haven, curated Past Presence: Contemporary Reflections on the Main Line at the Main Line Art Center in Haverford, Pennsylvania, in April. The exhibition, which remains on view through October, included four newly com-

In Memoriam

missioned temporary outdoor public artworks—one of them by Kelly

’35

Kaczynski MFA ’03—installed throughout Lower Merion, Pennsylvania.

The Honorable Laurence Roe Hancock died on February 10, 2004. He

’01

worked as a chemist for Texaco for 40 years, retiring in 1976. He also served as town justice of Fishkill, New York, for 63 years, which made him

Ines Katzenstein returned to Argentina, where she is a curator at the

the longest sitting judge in New York State. During World War II he served

Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires. She was previously an edi-

in General Patton’s Third Army as a forward observer. He was a member of

torial assistant in the International Program at the Museum of Modern Art

the Slater Chemical Fire Company in Glenham, New York; the Fishkill

in New York City.

Chapter of the VFW; the Dutchess County Magistrates’ Association; and

Gabriela Rangel moved from Houston, Texas, where she was assis-

Trinity Episcopal Church in Fishkill. His wife, Annina Roberto, whom he

tant curator at the Museum of Fine Arts, to New York City, where she is

married on July 4, 1942, predeceased him, as did three brothers and three

director of visual arts at the Americas Society.

sisters. His survivors include three children, five grandchildren, and many

Victoria Noorthoorn recently curated Power Inside Out at the Centro Cultural Recoleta in Buenos Aires. She was also selected as an ARCO ’04 curator.

’02

nieces and nephews.

’37 Clifford Wilson Burgess died on July 18, 2004. After graduating from Bard, he entered the family business, the P&B Engraving Company, Inc., in

Open, an exhibition cocurated by Sandra Firmin, associate curator at the

Springfield, Massachusetts, later becoming its president. He served as a

University at Buffalo Art Gallery, opened in June at Arcadia University Art

trustee of Bard from 1953 to 1963. Mr. Burgess was very involved in town

Gallery in Pennsylvania. The exhibition was held in conjunction with “The

politics in Kennebunkport, Maine, where he and his wife vacationed and

Big Nothing,” a citywide festival initiated by the Institute of Contemporary

then became full-time residents. He was an enthusiastic oil painter, bicy-

Art in Philadelphia.

clist, and reader, specifically on the subjects of English history and architec-

’03

ture. During his undergraduate days at Bard, he was the makeup editor on the Bardian when it was the student newspaper; postgraduation, he was edi-

Rob Blackson, curator at Reg Vardy Gallery, University of Sunderland,

tor of the Alumni News for several years. An article he wrote for the Spring

England, and Bree Edwards cocurated Your Heart is No Match for My Love,

2002 Bardian, “Tales of the Thirties,” was replete with wonderful stories and

a group show at No Name Exhibitions at the Soap Factory in Minneapolis.

anecdotes of the College and some of its more colorful professors and

administrators during those years; it elicited many letters of praise and fur-

Green Harbor Golf Club, both in Marshfield, Massachusetts. She played the

ther reminiscences from readers. A son, David, predeceased him in 2002.

clarinet, saxophone, and French horn, and was a member of several area

His survivors include his wife Mary, a son, a daughter-in-law, and four

bands. Her survivors include her husband, Chester W. Perkins, three sons

grandchildren.

and their wives, a daughter and her husband, and a sister.

’46

’55

Howard Dressner Fischer of Poulsbo, Washington, died on June 28, 2004.

Laurence R. Wunder, 74, died on February 17, 2004, in the U.S.

He was a U.S. Navy veteran of World War II and the Korean War. A career

Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Leeds, Massachusetts.

federal employee, he retired as director of industrial relations at the naval

He was a U.S. Army veteran of the Korean War, having served from 1951

shipyard in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. His wife preceded him in death.

to 1953.

His survivors include two sons, a daughter, and their spouses; eight grandchildren; and a brother- and sister-in-law.

’48

’68 Elizabeth Joan Haines died on March 14, 2004. She received her master’s degree from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, in 1971.

Bernard Henry Baker died on April 18, 2004. A World War II U.S. Army

A journalist, she began her career in the 1970s with the St. John’s Telegram

infantry veteran, he helped American forces liberate Buchenwald in 1945.

in Newfoundland, Canada, before switching over to broadcasting with CBC

In 1947, he produced and starred in Pal Joey at Bard. His dramatic tenure

in St. John’s and later in Halifax and Sydney. At CBC, she hosted the pro-

at Bard led to his career as a theater manager and producer. Some of the

gram Radio Noon for eight years, before retiring in 1998. She traveled

positions he held over the years included stage manager for Jam Handy

extensively, from Amsterdam to Austria, Italy, and Israel, and lived in

Productions and Humble Oil convention shows in Detroit, Michigan

England and Scotland. Her survivors include her partner, Robert Spanik; a

(1960–63); in-country field manager for USO shows in Saigon, Vietnam

sister; a niece and a nephew; and many aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends.

(1969–71); and production stage manager for Clarence Darrow, starring Henry Fonda. His survivors include two sons, a daughter-in-law, and two

’77

grandchildren.

Joan Davies Jones died on January 3, 2004. Following her years at Bard,

’50

she received her M.S. in art from the College of New Rochelle. Selfemployed as an exhibit designer for 10 years, she also owned an interior

Joan Williams died on April 11, 2004. A writer, she was born in Memphis,

design business, Joan Jones Designs, based in Red Hook, New York, for 15

Tennessee, and in 1960 moved to Westport, Connecticut, where she made

years. Her artwork was featured in several solo exhibitions and many group

her home. In 1949, while a senior at Bard, her short story, “Rain Later,”

shows, including national juried exhibitions in New York and Colorado. She

won first prize in the Mademoiselle college fiction contest. Her novel The

served on the board of trustees at Friends of Clermont, New York, and on

Morning and the Evening won the John P. Marquand First Novel Award in

the Columbia County Council of the Arts, and was a member of the Hudson

1961 and was a finalist for the National Book Award. She received an award

Valley Watercolor Society. Her survivors include her husband, five sons, a

from the National Institute of Arts and Letters for the same book in 1962.

brother, and seven grandchildren.

Several more novels and short story collections followed: Old Powder Man (1966), The Wintering (1971), County Woman (1982), Pariah and Other

’83

Stories (1983), and Pay the Piper (1987). Her novels and stories have been

Harold S. “Hal” Hillman died on January 9, 2004. He worked as a travel

reviewed in the New York Review of Books, the New York Times Book Review,

agent. His survivors include his father, his stepmother, a brother (Daniel

Saturday Review, Time, and Life. Her most recent publications were two

Hillman ’88), and an uncle.

novellas, “The Contest,” which appeared in the Chattahoochee Review (Summer 1995), and “Happy Anniversary,” which appeared in the Southern Review (Autumn 1995). She earned a master’s degree from Fairfield

’93 Sarah Jacobson died on February 13, 2004. Born in Minneapolis, she

University in the mid 1980s. Her husband, Ezra Bowen, died in 1997. Her

spent two years at Bard before moving to San Francisco to attend the San

survivors include two sons and two grandchildren.

Francisco Art Institute. While there, she produced and directed I Was a

’54

Teenage Serial Killer. In 1993, she and her mother formed Station Wagon Productions to aid in the distribution and promotion of Sarah’s films. She

Claire C. Perkins died on February 22, 2004. After graduating from Bard,

was well known in the independent film community for her “do it yourself”

she received her master’s degree from Temple University in Pennsylvania.

philosophy and for her enthusiastic advocacy of the work of her colleagues.

Over the course of 18 years, she taught at Brockton North Junior High

Her feature film, Mary Jane’s Not a Virgin Anymore, received a screening at

School in Brockton, Massachusetts, and Brockton High School. An avid

the Sundance Film Festival in 1997. Her survivors include her mother, Ruth

golfer, she was club champion at the Marshfield Country Club and the

Ellen Jacobson, and many friends and fans.

facultynotes

Chinua Achebe, Charles P. Stevenson Jr. Professor of Languages and

New Yorker, New York Review of Books, and Poetry Review (U.K.). Ashbery

Literature, was included in New African magazine’s list of 100 Greatest

was the subject of feature interviews in El País (Madrid) and Frieze (U.K.).

Africans, published in August. In July, on the eve of the Harlem Book Fair, he

He collaborated with composer Christian Wolff on “Hölderlin Marginalia,”

received a Wheatley Book Award at the New York Public Library’s Schomburg

commissioned and premiered by Swedish Radio, based on a text from his

Center for Research in Black Culture. The award ceremony—named for Phillis

forthcoming poetry collection. Speculum Musicae’s program “Celebrating

Wheatley, 18th-century African American “slave” poet—took place in the

John Ashbery” at Cooper Union in New York City included musical treat-

Center’s Langston Hughes Auditorium, and in his acceptance speech, Achebe

ments of his work by Elliott Carter, Charles Wuorinen, Lee Hyla, John Zorn,

recalled the historic moment in 1962 at the University College in Makerere,

and Milton Babbitt. Ashbery read from his work at New School University

Uganda, when he and other young African writers first met to discuss their

and the Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church in New York City; Providence

emerging literature and “a benevolent elder, Langston Hughes, stepped into

(Rhode Island) Atheneum; University of Massachusetts, Amherst (Juniper

[our] midst with his wisdom and solidarity.”

Festival); Spencertown (New York) Academy; and University of Iowa. In New

Deirdre d’Albertis, associate professor of English, chaired “Commodity Culture,” a panel discussion at the inaugural conference of the North American Victorian Studies Association in October 2003. This past April she delivered a paper, “Eliza Lynn Linton as Anti-Celebrity,” at Serious

York City he participated in group readings at St. Mark’s, celebrating the birthday of the poet and librettist Kenward Elmslie, and at the Instituto Cervantes, highlighting links between Hispanic and U.S. poetry, and was a literary host at the annual PEN Gala.

Pleasures, the Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies Conference,

Sanjib Baruah, professor of political studies on leave from Bard, contin-

held at the University of Iowa. A version of that paper is being published

ues to head the Centre for North East India, South and Southeast Asian

in Serious Pleasures in the Nineteenth Century: The USA, Great Britain, and

Studies (CENISEAS) in Guwahati, India. Funded by the Ford Foundation,

France, a collection edited by Teresa Mangum. As one of nine volume edi-

the Centre works for economic integration between India’s northeastern

tors for the forthcoming Pickering & Chatto Publishers edition of The Works

borderlands and the surrounding transnational neighborhood, including

of Elizabeth Gaskell, the first comprehensive critical edition of Gaskell’s

Burma, Bhutan, and Bangladesh. “Globalization,” Baruah wrote to the

works, d’Albertis is editing Ruth, Gaskell’s 1853 social-problem novel.

Bardian, “can be made to work in favor of ‘peripheral’ regions like

D’Albertis has also been commissioned to contribute an essay to The

Northeast India, for it can enable them to get out of the territorial trap of

Cambridge Companion to Elizabeth Gaskell.

colonial and postcolonial geopolitics.” More information on the Centre’s

Craig Anderson, associate professor of chemistry, was coauthor, with

work is available on its website, http://www.ceniseas.org.

Margarita Crespo, of “Cyclometallated Platinum Complexes with Heterocyclic

Martine Bellen, writing faculty, Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts,

Ligands,” published in May in Journal of Organometallic Chemistry. His arti-

participated in a conference, “Avantesti e retrospezioni nell’era dei bit,”

cle “Presumptive and Confirmatory Drug Tests” has been accepted for publi-

last spring at the Università degli Studi di Cassino in Cassino, Italy. She dis-

cation in Journal of Chemical Education. He was an invited lecturer in the

cussed her poetry and read from a section of her work that had been trans-

Chemistry Department at l’Université de Montréal in Quebec this year.

lated into Italian.

Selected Prose, by John Ashbery (Charles P. Stevenson Jr. Professor of

Celia Bland, visiting assistant professor of First-Year Seminar and director

Languages and Literature), a collection of his work from the last 50 years,

of college writing, read from Soft Box, her new collection of poetry, at Poets

was published by the University of Michigan and, in the United Kingdom,

House in New York City.

by Carcanet. Collections of Ashbery’s poetry were published in Finnish and Swedish translation, and translations of individual poems appeared in French, Greek, and Spanish periodicals. New poems were published in The

Ethan Bloch, professor of mathematics, is the author of “Critical Points and the Angle Defect,” accepted for publication in Geometriae Dedicata.

Leon Botstein, president of the college and Leon Levy Professor in the Arts

Laurie Dahlberg, associate professor of art history and photography, has

and Humanities, conducted the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra (JSO) at the

a book, Victor Regnault and the Advance of Photography: The Art of

annual Israel Festival in May. Later that month, he spoke about the reli-

Avoiding Errors, scheduled for publication in January 2005 by Princeton

gious foundations of Western civilization for Bard’s Institute of Advanced

University Press.

Theology lecture series and discussed alternative approaches to education at a reception for the Hayground School of Long Island. He also participated in a panel discussion at the Yeshiva University Museum in conjunction with Vienna: Jews and the City of Music, an exhibition for which he served as scholarly adviser. In June, he conducted two major concerts:

Mark Danner, Henry R. Luce Professor of Human Rights and Journalism, published a two-part article in the New York Review of Books (“Torture and Truth,” June 10, and “The Logic of Torture,” June 24) about the torture of international prisoners held in U.S. custody.

“Spiritual Romanticism,” with the American Symphony Orchestra (ASO),

Richard H. Davis, associate professor of religion, visited Madurai in Tamil

and “Shakespeare in Music,” with the JSO. He also spoke about the role of

Nadu, southern India, during his spring semester sabbatical. He observed

the arts in Jewish tradition for the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies in

and participated in the 12-day Chittrai Festival, one of the premier Hindu

Jerusalem. In July, he served as coartistic director of the 15th annual Bard

religious festivals at the temple of the Goddess Minakshi. In Tamil Nadu he

Music Festival, dedicated to the works of Dmitrii Shostakovich; led the ASO

also presented a lecture, “Teaching Hinduism in an Age of Hindutva,” at

in a performance of the composer’s opera The Nose; and lectured about the

the Madras Institute of Development Studies.

social and political contexts in which Shostakovich composed music. In August, his essay “Music of a Century: Museum Culture and the Politics of Subsidy” appeared in The Cambridge History of Twentieth-Century Music.

Tim Davis ’91, visiting assistant professor of photography, has a solo exhibition, My Life in Politics, at the Bohen Foundation in New York; it opened on September 11 and runs through Election Day. Permanent Collection

Nancy Bowen, sculpture faculty, Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts,

(see the Fall 2003 Bardian), another solo show, will open in January at the

was part of an open-studio project in Building 30 at the Brooklyn Navy

Kevin Bruk Gallery in Miami, Florida. Permanent Collection will be pub-

Yard. The public viewed artwork and explored the yard, with its vestiges of

lished next year by Nazraeli Press.

the naval industry.

Emmanuel Dongala, professor of French, Bard Center Fellow, and visiting

Mary Caponegro ’78, Richard B. Fisher Family Professor in Literature and

professor of chemistry and French at Simon’s Rock College of Bard, pub-

Writing, had a collection of new and selected fiction translated into Italian

lished “The Genocide Next Door,” his thoughts on the Rwandan genocide,

and published by Leconte as Materia Prima this past summer (see Books

on the op-ed page of the New York Times in April. A Hebrew edition of his

by Bardians). Her fiction was included in The Anchor Book of New American

novel Little Boys Come from the Stars was published in June by Shocken

Short Stories, published in August, and her essay on the work of William

Publishing House, Tel Aviv.

Gass appears in the Fall 2004 Review of Contemporary Fiction.

Cecilia Dougherty, film/video faculty, Milton Avery Graduate School of the

Rob Cutler ’94, assistant professor of biology, on sabbatical for the fall

Arts, has opened Anthology Books, an independent bookstore, in Dublin,

2004 semester, is conducting research at Chiang Mai University in Chiang

Ireland, with her partner, Susan O’Brien. Anthology Books specializes in

Mai, Thailand. This work, which builds upon research begun in the summer

small press, alternative, and progressive publications, including writings by

of 2003, during which he was a Fulbright fellow in bioinformatics, could pro-

many of Bard’s faculty. The store, located at Meeting House Square in the

vide a fundamental shift in the understanding of the evolution of bacteria.

Temple Bar district, also carries books on art, design, architecture, and sus-

Another area of Cutler’s ongoing research concerns the structure of the hon-

tainable living.

eybee genome and previously undiscovered structures that could shed light on olfaction, aging, or the spread of diseases within dense populations.

Omar G. Encarnación, associate professor of political studies, published “The

Paul Ramírez Jonas, assistant professor of studio art, has had a survey

Strange Persistence of Latin American Democracy” in the winter issue of World

exhibition of his sculpture, Heavier than Air, at two galleries in England:

Policy Journal. In June he delivered a talk, “Democratic Imperialism and

Ikon Gallery in Birmingham last spring, and Cornerhouse in Manchester

Democratic Peace,” at the Center for International Development, SUNY Albany.

from July to September. A monograph on his sculpture was published in

Barbara Ess, associate professor of photography, and photography faculty, Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts, presented new work—a suite of color photographs and a sound/video installation—in an exhibition titled Cipher at Wallspace Gallery in New York last spring. John Ferguson, professor of biology, and Valeri J. Thomson ’85, director of the Immediate Science Research Opportunity Program (ISROP), along with several ISROP students, presented “The Mycobacterium tuberculosis Gene icd2, but Not icd1, Encodes a Functional Isocitrate Dehydrogenase” at the 15th annual Saint Joseph’s University Sigma Xi Student Research Symposium in Philadelphia in April.

conjunction with these exhibitions and is being distributed by Cornerhouse Publications. Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy CCS ’00 edited the book and Inés Katzenstein CCS ’01 wrote the principal essay for it. Felicia Keesing, associate professor of biology, has given several talks this year, among them “Urbanization, Forest Fragmentation, and Missing Weapons of Mouse Destruction: Effects of Biodiversity Loss on Dynamics of Vector-Borne Zoonotic Disease,” with Richard Ostfeld at the Society for Conservation Biology in New York in July; and with Ostfeld and others prepared two talks for the meeting of the Ecological Society of America in Portland, Oregon: “Acorn and White-Footed Mouse Abundance as Predictors of Lyme-Disease Risk and Incidence” and “Modes of the

Joanne Fox-Przeworski, director of the Bard Center for Environmental

Dilution Effect in Disease Ecology.” With Ostfeld and others she coau-

Policy, gave a plenary session talk at the annual conference of the Multi-

thored “Sandfly (Lutzomyia vexator) Populations in Upstate New York:

State Working Group on Environmental Performance (MSWG) in Charleston,

Abundance, Microhabitat, and Phenology,” forthcoming this year in

West Virginia, in June. MSWG (a diverse network of businesspeople, govern-

Journal of Medical Entomology.

ment and nongovernment officials, and academics) assists organizations in improving their environmental performance through environmental policy innovation.

David Kettler, scholar in residence, published “Contested Legacies: Political Theory and the Hitler Regime,” edited with Thomas Wheatland, in a special issue of European Journal of Political Theory in April. This was a

Mark Halsey, associate professor of mathematics and associate dean of

selection of the papers on Hannah Arendt and Max Weber that were pre-

academic affairs, is coauthor, with Rob Cutler ’94, assistant professor of

sented during the summer 2002 Bard conference, “Contested Legacies.”

biology, of “Cartesian Products and Edge Domination,” which was pub-

Kettler’s other publications this year include “Temporizing with Time Wars:

lished this year in Ars Combinatoria.

Karl Mannheim and Problems of Historical Time,” written with Colin

Brenda Hutchinson, visiting associate professor of music, and music faculty, Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts, created sound works that were part of “New Sound, New York,” a New York City–wide festival of performances, installations, and public dialogues that was presented last spring. During the festival, she participated in an artist panel at Columbia University, part of a daylong event titled “Murmurs: A Conference on Sound and Art.” Her work “Ambient Poems” and “The Star Strangled Banner” and

Loader, in Time and Society; and “Globalization as Constitutional Myth” and “Et les émigrés sont les vaincus” in the Journal of Interdisciplinary Crossroads. His numerous conference presentations include “Civil Society and Politics” (with Patricia Nordeen) and an “author meets critics” session on Sven Eliaeson, Max Weber’s Methodologies, at the biannual meeting of the Research Committee on the History of Sociology, held in May in Marienthal, Austria.

other work for the Long Tube (a musical instrument that extends vocal

Erik Kiviat ’76, executive director of Hudsonia Ltd., published “Review of

techniques) were part of Rock’s Role (After Ryoanji), an installation at Art

World Literature on Water-Chestnut (Trapa natans) with Implications for

In General in New York City.

Management in North America,” coauthored with Meredith Hummel BCEP

Peter Hutton, professor of film, presented a selection of his films at the 50th annual Robert Flaherty Film Seminar, held at Vassar College in June. Skagafjördur, his most recent film, is being screened at several film festivals this fall, including the Nordisk Panorama Festival in Reykjavík, Iceland, and the Toronto International Film Festival, both in September, and at the London Film Festival in October. Michael Ives, visiting lecturer in First-Year Seminar, has a poetry collection, The External Combustion Engine (Prose Devices), due out this fall from Futurepoem books. A selection of his poetry, with an after note by

’04, in Journal of Aquatic Plant Management 42(1), 2004. His paper on the invasive tree-of-heaven, “Occurrence of Ailanthus altissima on a Maryland Tidal Estuary,” was published in Castanea 69(2), 2004. His article “Who Lives With You?” was included in Voices of the Land (Chelsea Green, 2004), a collection of pieces for landowners preparing to build houses. Benjamin La Farge, professor of English, published an essay, “Comedy’s Intention,” in the spring issue of Philosophy and Literature. Coeditor of the journal is Garry L. Hagberg, James H. Ottaway Jr. Professor of Aesthetics and Philosophy.

Robert Kelly, Asher B. Edelman Professor of Literature, will appear in

Ann Lauterbach, David and Ruth Schwab Professor of Languages and

Conjunctions 43: Beyond Arcadia in November.

Literature, published poems in No, Court Green, and Conjunctions magazines. She judged the North Carolina Poetry Society Lyman Haiku award

and the Phoebe magazine prize. She taught four Sunday master classes at

Red Again, a play by Chiori Miyagawa, associate professor of theater, had

the 92nd Street Y in New York City and gave the Phi Beta Kappa address,

its Off-Broadway premiere in October 2003 as part of Antigone Project at

“After Emerson: Of General Interest and the Common Good,” at City

Women’s Project & Productions. Miyagawa’s work is included in Trans-

College of New York.

Global Readings: Crossing Theatrical Boundaries, an anthology featuring

An-My Lê, assistant professor of photography, had work included in Only Skin Deep at the International Center of Photography (ICP) in February. She participated in the ICP lecture series The Photographers in February

theater artists who work internationally, published in May by Manchester University Press. Her review of Political Stages: Plays That Shaped a Century was published in the summer 2004 issue of The Drama Review.

and hosted a studio visit for a group of advanced photography students

Bradford Morrow, professor of literature and Bard Center Fellow, pub-

from Princeton University in April.

lished a short story, “The Thoreau Society,” in the Denver Quarterly and an

Joseph Luzzi, assistant professor of Italian, received a fellowship from the National Humanities Center for the 2004–2005 academic year. His translation, with introduction, of Alessandro Manzoni’s “Letter on Romanticism” (1823) appeared in the March issue of PMLA. Mark Lytle, professor of history on leave for the 2004–2005 academic year, is the Mary Ball Washington Professor of American History at University College, Dublin. The fifth editions of After the Fact: The Art of Historical Detection and Nation of Nations: A Narrative History of the American Republic were published this past summer. To After the Fact he added a chapter, “The Body in Question,” which compares male and female preoccupations with body image in the late 19th and late 20th centuries. The Hooligan’s Return, the 2003 memoir by Norman Manea, Francis Flournoy Professor in European Studies and Culture and writer in residence, was published this year in Germany, where it made the best-seller list, and in Italy, where it received the Napoli Literary Prize. Manea took part in readings, debates, and interviews about the book in Frankfurt, Wiesbaden, Berlin, Cologne, Leipzig, Rome, Milan, Turin, and Genoa. His essays and fiction also appeared this year in literary magazines in Germany, France, Italy, and Romania. Robert L. Martin, vice president for academic affairs and dean of gradu-

essay, “A Girandole for Mr. Gass,” in the Review of Contemporary Fiction. He was a featured reader at the launch of Black Clock, the new journal from California Institute of the Arts, which included another story, “Tsunami.” Jacob Neusner, Research Professor of Religion and Theology and Bard Center Fellow, published The Routledge Dictionary of Judaism. In March he gave a lecture, “Good Friday and Easter Sunday: Reading the Passion Narratives in the Context of the Mishnah’s Rabbinic Theology, or How, in the Mishnah, the Death Penalty Is Merciful,” in a symposium jointly sponsored by the Institute of Advanced Theology at Bard, Ecumenical Commission of the Episcopal Diocese of New York, House of the Redeemer, and Auburn Theological Seminary in New York City, where the symposium took place. Dimitri B. Papadimitriou, executive vice president of the College, Jerome Levy Professor of Economics, and president of the Levy Economics Institute, presented a paper titled “Is the U.S. Recovery Sustainable?” at Panteion University, Athens; was a discussant at the International Conference on Engendering Macroeconomics and International Economics at the University of Utah; and participated in discussion groups at “The Macroeconomics of Fiscal Policy,” a conference sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. He was interviewed by the Sacramento Bee regarding the growing wealth and income gap; Washington Post on the future of

ate studies, gave a talk on the philosophy of language in April for “Forms

the dollar; Financial Times about the U.S. labor market and job creation;

of Freedom: Reflections on Freewriting as Discovery,” a workshop pre-

Baltimore Sun on the future of the consumer; Bloomberg News regarding

sented by the Institute for Writing and Thinking. He played cello with the

the limitations of deficit-financed growth; and Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Bard Festival String Quartet in several concerts this past summer: in June

about what bank mergers indicate about the broader economy.

(Shostakovich’s Quartet No. 8) in Millbrook, New York; in August, a concert of Mozart, Schubert, and Elgar at Music Mountain in Falls Village, Connecticut, and with the Colorado Quartet at the Bard Music Festival; and in September in an all-Beethoven concert at Simon’s Rock College of Bard in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.

Matt Phillips, Asher B. Edelman Professor Emeritus of Art, is exhibiting 100 prints in Pressing Pleasures: Recent Prints by Matt Phillips at the de Saisset Museum in Santa Clara, California, until December 3. In September Imaginary Gardens, recent collage monotypes, was on exhibit at the Meyerovich Gallery in San Francisco. The Magician, the Chorus Girl, Las

Thomas Martin, art history faculty, Bard High School Early College, gave

Vegas, recent prints, was presented this summer at Smith-Andersen Gallery

a talk, “Quality Control: Alessandro Vittoria’s Portrait Busts as Case Studies

in Palo Alto, California.

in Connoisseurship,” at the 92nd annual conference of the College Art Association, held in Seattle in February.

John Pilson, visiting assistant professor of photography, presented St. Denis, a solo show of photography and video, at the Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery

Bruce Matthews, philosophy faculty, Bard High School Early College, has

in New York City in October 2003. In March, he had a solo exhibition at

received a Fulbright Senior Scholar Award to travel to Germany during the

Max Wigram Projects in London, and Moving Pictures, an exhibition in

fall semester and lecture at the University of Tübingen on the philosophy

which he had a video installation, opened at the Guggenheim Museum

of Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling.

Bilbao, Spain. His work was featured in Cream 3, a survey of international contemporary art published by Phaidon Press.

Elizabeth Poreba, global history and literature faculty, Bard High School

Stephen Shore, Susan Weber Soros Professor in the Arts, had solo exhibi-

Early College, was named a semifinalist in the 92nd Street Y’s “Discovery”/

tions of photographs this year at Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich,

The Nation 2004 poetry contest. Her poetry was most recently published in

Germany, and Galerie Rodolphe Janssen in Brussels, Belgium. Shore’s work

Albatross, a literary journal focusing on environmental issues.

was included in several recent group shows, including Social Creatures: How

Jennifer Reeves ’93, visiting assistant professor of film and electronic arts, presented The Time We Killed, described as “a cinematic fugue of lost lovers, found memories, and televised invasions,” at the Tribeca Film Festival in May, where it was voted Best NY, NY Narrative Feature. Reeves wrote, directed, edited, coproduced, and acted in the film, which won a FIPRESCI Prize at the 2004 Berlin Film Festival. Elliott Sharp ’74 and Zeena Parkins ’79 wrote original music for the score, and Lisa Jarnot, faculty, Workshop in Language and Thinking, starred in the film.

the Body Becomes Art at the Sprengel Museum in Hannover, Germany, and Inside-Out: Portrait Photographs and Evidence of Impact: Art and Photography 1963–1978, both at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. A traveling exhibition, Stephen Shore: Biographical Landscape, opened at the Academy of Fine Art in Vienna this fall and will go to the Jeu de Paume in Paris in January. During his spring sabbatical, Shore lectured at the Art Academy in Vienna, Austria; Armand Hammer Museum of Art and Culture Center, Los Angeles; San Francisco Art Institute; and Seattle Art Museum. In September he participated in “Whose America: Scenes from

Susan Fox Rogers, visiting assistant professor of writing and First-Year

the Road,” a panel discussion (with John Baldessari, Philip Gefter, and Wim

Seminar, received an Artists and Writers Program award from the National

Wenders) about the experience of the road in art, at The New School in New

Science Foundation to travel to Antarctica during the 2004–2005 austral

York City. In December he will take part in a symposium about Robert Frank

summer. She published her 10th anthology collection, Going Alone:

at the Tate Modern in London. He completed a major advertising campaign

Women’s Adventures in the Wild (see Books by Bardians), which includes

for Orange, a European mobile telephone company, and published portfolios

an essay by Dorothy Albertini ’02.

in two magazines: photos of Wellington, New Zealand, in Wallpaper, and

Julia Rosenbaum, visiting assistant professor of art history and associate dean of the College, coorganized “Distinction and Identity: Bourgeois Culture in 19th-Century America,” a conference held in October 2003 at Harvard University. She also presented a paper there on public sculpture. Justus Rosenberg, professor emeritus of languages and literature, addressed the literary merits and veracity of biographies at a writing seminar at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, New York; spoke to a special class at Stissing Mountain Junior-Senior High School in Pine Plains, New York on the biographical and autobiographical literature of the Holocaust, relating it to his own experience; and gave a lecture, “Aragon and the Poetry of Resistance,” to a seminar in French at New School University in New York City.

photos of Athens art collector Dakis Ioannou in W. Aperture has published his Uncommon Places, The Complete Works (see Books by Bardians) and Blind Spot magazine published “Jigsaw Puzzle,” a portfolio, and a conversation: “A Fluttering Knuckleball: Lunch with Stephen Shore and Tim Davis” (’91, visiting assistant professor of photography). Amy Sillman, MFA ’95, assistant professor of studio art, and painting faculty, Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts, exhibited work in the following group shows in the spring of 2004: Open House at the Brooklyn Museum of Art; affect at Ursinus College, Collegeville, Pennsylvania; and Cakewalk at the Genaro Ambrosino Gallery in Miami, Florida. This fall she has a mural commission at the Institute for Contemporary Art in Philadelphia and solo exhibitions at the University of North Texas in

Geoffrey Sanborn, associate professor of literature, has two essays scheduled

Denton (The Horizon Line) and the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus,

for publication: “Whence Come You, Queequeg?” in American Literature

Ohio (Landscape Confection). Her drawings were part of a three-person

this year and “Mother’s Milk: Frances Harper and the Circulation of Blood”

show at the Brent Sikkema Gallery in New York City in September.

in ELH (English Literary History) next year.

Elizabeth Simpson, associate professor at The Bard Graduate Center for

Simeen Sattar, professor of chemistry, presented a poster, “Modeling the

Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design, and Culture, has been named a

chlorite/iodide reaction as a subsystem of the chlorine dioxide/iodide reac-

J. Paul Getty Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts

tion,” at the Gordon Research Conference on Oscillations and Dynamic

(CASVA) at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., for 2004. The

Instabilities in Chemical Systems at Bates College in July. This work follows

fellowship was awarded for work she did this past summer on ancient

up on the Senior Project of Maryam Jowza ’01.

wooden furniture from Gordion, Turkey, at the Museum of Anatolian

Matthew Sharpe, writing faculty, Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts, received a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship in writing, in May. His novel The Sleeping Father (see Books by Bardians) was chosen for NBC’s Today Show Book Club in February, and Sharpe appeared on the show to discuss the book. This fall he begins an appointment as an assistant professor of English at Wesleyan University.

Civilizations in Ankara, and includes a fall residency at CASVA. Simpson also received a Samuel H. Kress Foundation grant to visit Herculaneum in Italy this past summer to examine ancient wooden objects there and advise on methods of conservation, storage, and display. A report on her reconstruction of the inlaid table from Tumulus MM, Gordion, appeared in the German news magazine Der Spiegel in January.

Jeffrey A. Suzuki, visiting assistant professor of mathematics and director of the Quantitative Program, published “Conjuring the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus” in Mathematics Teacher last fall. He presented “Student Use of and Benefit from Online Quizzes” at the joint annual meeting of the American Mathematical Society and the Mathematical Association of America, held in Phoenix in January. Richard Teitelbaum, professor of music, and faculty in music, Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts, took part, along with other Bard and Avery faculty—Peggy Ahwesh (film, Bard and Avery), Barbara Ess (photography,

Solution from page 13 Take a great circle through two of the points. The great circle divides the sphere into two hemispheres. Of the three remaining points, at least two must lie in one of the hemispheres (formally, use the Pigeonhole Principle). These two points, together with the two on the great circle, all lie in a closed hemisphere. Example: Suppose the sphere has five points, as shown:

Bard and Avery), Marina Rosenfeld (music, Avery), and David Behrman (music, Avery)—in “New Music, New York + 25,” a live web broadcast from

the Kitchen in New York City. Elaine Thomas, assistant professor of political studies, gave a series of

invited presentations on European immigration politics and changing ideas

of citizenship at the University of Quebec in Montreal this past winter and spring. She published a research note (“La laïcité renouvelée? dissensions

françaises”) in the winter 2004 issue of MCD, Bulletin de la Chaire de recherche du Canada en mondialisation, citoyenneté et démocratie. Joan Tower, Asher B. Edelman Professor in the Arts, was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in April and inducted into the

Draw the great circle through points 1 and 4:

Academy on October 9. Performances of her work included the premiere of “In Memory,” for string orchestra, by the American Symphony Orchestra (Leon Botstein conducting) in May; “Tambor,” performed by the Pittsburgh Symphony at the American Symphony Orchestra League convention in June;

Right 1

and Emerson String Quartet performances of “Incandescent” at the Aspen 5

Music Festival and Tanglewood, both in July, and in Toronto in October and at Wigmore Hall in London in November, as part of the quartet’s world tour.

Left

Tower was the featured composer in the Orchestra of St. Luke’s Second Helpings series at the Chelsea Art Museum in New York City in June and was

composer in residence with the New World Symphony in Miami, Florida, in September. Patricia Spencer, visiting associate professor of music, played Tower’s “Flute Concerto” at the gala concert of the National Flute Association Convention in Memphis in August. Eric Trudel, assistant professor of French, has an article, “Those Who Have Fallen Silent: Keeping Literature ‘au secret’” forthcoming in Yale French Studies 106: The Power of Rhetoric, The Rhetoric of Power, a special volume

Points 1, 3, 4, and 5 are in the closed left hemisphere: Left Hemisphere 1

on Jean Paulhan. 5

Suzanne Vromen, professor emeritus of sociology, taught workshops on

the Holocaust at New York University and Hofstra University, under the auspices of Facing History and Ourselves, an organization dedicated to promoting tolerance, whose founder, Margot Stern Strom, received an

honorary doctor of humane letters degree from Bard College in 2001. Vromen also traveled to Russia under the auspices of Project Kesher, an organization founded by Sallie Gratch (Eichengreen) ’57 that is dedicated to helping Russian Jewish women gain economic independence, eliminate domestic violence, and acquire religious freedom.

points on the front side of the sphere points on the back side of the sphere

For his Senior Project, “Empirical Evidence,” Jacques Del Conte ’04 explored the 19th-century medical establishment’s interest in the phenomenon of hysteria. Much of that scientific interest was documented through illustrations, paintings, and photographs.

Une Leçon de clinique à la Salpêtrière, 1887, by André Brouillet

Del Conte’s photographic-tableau recreation of Brouillet’s painting

Office of Development and Alumni/ae Affairs

Board of Trustees of Bard College

Debra Pemstein Vice President for Development and Alumni/ae Affairs

David E. Schwab II ’52, Chair Emeritus

845-758-7405 or pemstein@bard.edu

Richard B. Fisher, Chair

Jessica Kemm ’74 Director of Alumni/ae Affairs 845-758-7406 or kemm@bard.edu Stella Wayne Associate Director of Alumni/ae Affairs

Charles P. Stevenson Jr., Vice Chair Emily H. Fisher, Second Vice Chair Mark Schwartz, Treasurer Elizabeth Ely ’65, Secretary

845-758-7407 or wayne@bard.edu Robyn Carliss ’02 Administrative Assistant, Alumni/ae Affairs 845-758-7089 or carliss@bard.edu

Published by the Bard Publications Office Ginger Shore, Director; Julia Jordan, Assistant Director; Mary Smith, Art Director; Debby Mayer, Editorial Director; René Houtrides MFA ’97, Managing Editor; Mikhail Horowitz, Ellen Liebowitz, Cynthia Werthamer, Editors; Diane Rosasco, Production Manager; Jamie Ficker, Bridget Murphy, Francie Soosman ’90, Kevin Trabucco, Designers ©2004 Bard College. All rights reserved.

Peter C. Aldrich +Leon Botstein, President of the College David C. Clapp *Marcelle Clements ’69 Rt. Rev. Herbert A. Donovan Jr., Honorary Trustee Asher B. Edelman ’61 *Philip H. Gordon ’43 *Barbara S. Grossman ’73 Elizabeth Blodgett Hall, Life Trustee Emerita Sally Hambrecht

Corrections

Ernest F. Henderson III

The name of Mary B. Marcy, provost and vice president of Simon’s Rock College of Bard,

Marieluise Hessel

was misspelled in “Rodgers Retires” in the Summer 2004 Bardian.

John C. Honey ’39, Life Trustee Mark N. Kaplan

The photograph of Adolfas Mekas in the Summer 2004 Bardian was taken by Syd Johnson ’87.

Photography Cover, page 6, 8: ©Jock Pottle/Esto Inside front cover, pages 1, 3 (center), 11, 12, 13, 20, 21, 49, 52, 66 (right), 67 (center), 99 (right): Pete Mauney ’93, MFA ’99 Pages 2, 3 (right), 9, 14 (top), 15, 17: Roy Gumpel Pages 3 (left), 35, 59 (right): Lisa Kereszi ’95 Page 4: Enrico Ferorelli Pages 10, 14 (bottom): Tania Barricklo Page 18: ©Kenji Toma/Apostrophe Pages 22, 23: ©Toerge/Black Star Page 24: Joe McDonald/Corbis Pages 28, 31: ©Imtek Imagineering/Corbis Pages 32, 54, 66 (center), 67 (left), back cover: Don Hamerman

George A. Kellner Cynthia Hirsch Levy ’65 Murray Liebowitz James H. Ottaway Jr. Martin Peretz Stanley A. Reichel ’65 Stewart Resnick Susan Weber Soros Martin T. Sosnoff Patricia Ross Weis ’52 William Julius Wilson *alumni/ae trustee +ex officio

Pages 36, 37: Doug Baz Page 38: Denis Scott/Corbis Pages 40 (center), 41: Bettmann/Corbis Page 46: ©Lisa Quiñones/Black Star Page 48 (bottom): Igor Lebedev Page 50 (left): ©Peter Aaron/Esto Page 50 (right top, right center, right bottom): Stephanie Berger Page 51: Karl Rabe Page 53: Lohan Caprile Goettsch Architects Page 56: ©2004 Bill Cain/Black Star Page 58: Erik Cassel Page 61: Serkan Ozkaya Page 66 (left): ©Alex Webb/Magnum Photos Page 67 (right): Tobey Sanford

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save the date reunions 2005 May 20–22 Reunion classes: 1935, 1940, 1945, 1950, 1955, 1959–61, 1965, 1970, 1975, 1980, 1985, 1990, 1995, 2000 Would you like to help contact classmates? Please call Stella Wayne at 845-758-7407 or e-mail wayne@bard.edu.

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