Bardian 2005 Spring

Bardian Bard College Spring 2005

First-Year Seminar Examines Enlightenment Understanding Proteins Making Waves: Bardians in Radio

Ethan D. Bloch, professor of mathematics

cover First-Year Seminar students

Jon Dame ’06

BARD MOURNS

RICHARD B. FISHER Richard B. Fisher, 68, chair and former treasurer of the Board of Trustees of Bard College and recipient of the 2004 Bard Medal, died on December 16, 2004. The chairman emeritus and former president of Morgan Stanley, he was a patron of the arts and a major benefactor of Bard College.

Fisher’s extraordinary relationship with Bard began when his daughter, Kate, was attending Simon’s Rock College of Bard in the early 1980s. Fisher was impressed by both the school and the philosophy that guided it, and when Bard president Leon Botstein invited him to join the College’s board in 1989, he accepted. For 15 years Bard had the full benefit of his financial acumen, wisdom, and enthusiasm for the arts and education. His generosity created two endowed professorships, now held by Judy Pfaff and Mary Caponegro, and made possible the Fisher Studio Arts Building and, in 2000, The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College, designed by Frank O. Gehry.

Fisher bestowed his largesse on many other institutions besides Bard. Along with his wife, Jeanne Donovan Fisher, he was an ardent and magnanimous supporter of Princeton University, the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), Paris Review Foundation, and Tate Gallery American Fund, among others. At the time of his death, Fisher chaired the boards of The Rockefeller University, Urban Institute, and BAM endowment trust.

Born in Philadelphia, Fisher graduated from the William Penn Charter School and earned a bachelor’s degree from Princeton University and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School. He joined Morgan Stanley in 1962 and served as the firm’s president from 1984 to 1991 and its chairman from 1991 to 1997. Just prior to stepping down as chairman, he helped to negotiate the landmark $10.9 billion merger that combined Morgan Stanley with Dean Witter.

As the presenters of the 2004 Bard Medal noted, however, the key to Fisher’s achievement was not merely his financial wizardry. “What has made him stand apart is his wisdom and the human qualities of empathy, insight, generosity, and honor,” wrote David E. Schwab II ’52 and Judy Pfaff, who sponsored Fisher for the award. “He is a prince in a world not known for its surplus of nobility.”

In comments to Bloomberg, L.P., after Fisher’s death, Botstein said, “Richard B. Fisher was remarkable. He had all the opportunity to be corrupt—he had wealth, power, and position—but he gave the lie to the phrase, ‘Nice guys finish last.’ His manner was so kindly, so humble, one couldn’t quite reconcile this with the august position he had. If Hollywood were making a film about captains of industry, he’d never have passed central casting. Yet beneath his gentle manner was a visionary, clear, and decisive intellect. He had the gift of friendship and virtue, in part as a result of the discipline and courage he developed conquering polio and its consequences.”

Fisher is survived by his wife, Jeanne Donovan Fisher, who serves on the Board of Directors of the Bard Music Festival and chairs the Fisher Center Advisory Board; his daughter, Kate Fisher; two sons, Alexander Fisher MFA ’96 and Richard Britton Fisher; and a brother, David W. Fisher.

He is also survived by Emily H. Fisher, the mother of his children, who serves on Bard’s Board of Trustees and chairs the Board of Overseers of Simon’s Rock College of Bard.

A memorial service took place on January 12 at Manhattan’s Riverside Church. It included poetry readings by Fisher’s sons, tributes by colleagues and friends, including Leon Botstein, and several of Fisher’s favorite compositions, including the Brahms Alto Rhapsody, played by the American Symphony Orchestra, with Botstein conducting.

Bardian

Spring 2005 Contents Features 4

Editor’s Note: On January 19, 2005, the Board of Trustees of Bard College elected Charles P. Stevenson Jr. to serve as its chair.

Stevenson formerly held the position of vice chair and has been a member of the board since October 1983.

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Understanding Proteins: Biophysicist George Rose ’63 named to prestigious professorship at Johns Hopkins University First-Year Seminar Examines Enlightenment

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A Gift for Science Gabrielle H. Reem and Herbert J. Kayden

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A Fellowship Community: Judy Pfaff joins Bard’s MacArthur Fellows

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Bidoun: Art Without Borders

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Making Waves: Bardians in Radio

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Election Aftermath

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Indian Independents

Departments 28

Alumni/ae Notebook

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Books by Bardians

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On and Off Campus

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Class Notes

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Faculty Notes

Biophysicist George Rose ’63 is credited with the fundamental insight that proteins fold hierarchically. This concept has changed the way scientists think about the rules of life. Along with his colleagues, Rose, who was recently named KriegerEisenhower Professor at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, has been developing an algorithm that allows him to predict the fold of a protein based on its amino acid sequence alone.

“For more than 50 years there have been hundreds of scientists working on aspects of the protein-folding problem,” says Rose. “I think it will be solved in the next five to ten years.” The approach used

by Rose and his colleagues has been controversial within the biophysics community. “Some people think that when unfolded, a protein of, say, just 100 amino acids—that’s a very small protein—can explore an astronomical number of different possibilities. We don’t think that’s true. We think proteins are made from a limited repertoire of structures.” Rose believes that, just as DNA’s simple structure explains complex questions, proteins have a similarly elegant set of structural rules, and he wants to find them.

When Rose went to Bard, he decided to study math.

His first postcollege job was in the computer lab at New York University Medical School, where he developed what became a lifelong interest in computing and systems analysis. Rose and his coworkers used a “room-sized” computer for mathematical model making, applying the models to problems such as delivering a radioactive seed to treat Parkinson’s disease. A few years later, he became the assistant director of the computer center at Oregon State University. When a graduate student who had an undergraduate degree in molecular biology came to him for computational help in simulating the flight of honeybees, Rose said, “‘I’d be happy to help you, but let’s make a deal. Teach me about molecular biology.’ The second edition of [James] Watson and [Francis] Crick’s book on DNA had just been published, and we decided to read it together. I ended up reading it in a single 24-hour sitting. It was a transformational experience.” Rose completed his Ph.D. in biophysics at Oregon State in three years, an unusually brief period.

His thesis topic? Protein folding.

UNDERSTANDING PROTEINS Biophysicist George Rose ’63 named to prestigious professorship at Johns Hopkins University Now that the human genome has been mapped, you might expect scientists to be closing in on the fundamental rules of life. Not so fast. Scientists still don’t understand proteins.

Whereas genes are the blueprint for forming proteins, proteins are truly the physical basis of life. Every function in every cell of every live organism, from complex multicelled organisms to the simplest forms of life, depends on them.

Until scientists know why individual proteins behave the way they do, they won’t know how these elemental components of life fit together.

Proteins are molecules made up of chains of amino acids: the longer the chain, the more complex the protein.

Regardless of its length or complexity, every protein assembles itself spontaneously into a highly organized threedimensional structure through a process that biologists call “folding.” Even when a protein is synthesized in an artificial environment outside of an organism, it folds itself correctly, demonstrating that the folding “rules” are in the protein itself, not in the cell. Since the 1930s, many scientists have spent their careers trying to answer a question raised by the work of Nobel Prize–winning chemist Linus Pauling: “Given its amino acid sequence, how does a protein fold?”

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According to Rose, “‘Biophysics’ is a misnomer. We should call it ‘quantitative biology.’ The questions are from biology, but the language and methods we use to answer them come from physics, chemistry, math, and computer science. Here in our lab we do no experiments outside the computer. The computer is a convenient device we use to follow ideas to a conclusion or to dissect large data sets. Our work is very thought-intensive, quite abstract, and sometimes rather uncomfortable. My research group meets once a week for a notoriously long time, often for an entire afternoon. A lot of our ideas grow out of the conversations we have.”

To his prediction that the protein-folding question will be answered soon, Rose adds that the field of biological chemistry will head down a new path in the 21st century. “For the past 500 years, science has been largely reductionist. We peeled phenomena down to their smallest possible form. Now, our approach is becoming integrative. In biology, complexity emerges in unanticipated ways—the whole is more than the sum of its parts. We’re asking, ‘How do complex systems selfassemble from their components, what are the components, and how do they all work together?’ The components, in turn, self-assemble from yet smaller components, and so forth.

Eventually, this hierarchy tracks back to individual protein molecules, the Aristotelian unmoved mover, the molecule that assembles itself. Three and a half billion years ago, at the beginnings of life on earth, the rules were different. But biological systems are self-modifying—they transform their world. It’s quite remarkable, really, and very exciting.”

Rose is as dedicated to teaching as he is to research. “The one person who’s guaranteed to learn something in a classroom is the teacher,” he says. “Look at a textbook, especially at any statement that begins ‘It is well known that . . . .’ I encourage my students to challenge those entrenched statements.

When they do, they challenge me too.”

Rose has been an enthusiastic member of the committee that Bard President Leon Botstein assembled in 2000 to plan and oversee the College’s Science Initiative.

“Early in the process, I said something that may have seemed tongue-in-cheek, but I meant it wholeheartedly,” recalls Rose. “We’d been talking about how, in biology, reductionist approaches will be supplanted by integrative approaches during the 21st century. I explained that in my experience, contemporary science was emulating a classic Bard education. Bard’s teachers are all so smart and wellrounded, and ask interesting questions, and the students are the benefactors. Now, the rest of the world seems to be catching up with Bard.”

—Kelly Spencer

CONCENTRATING ON MATH “It requires more creativity than anything else I’ve done, even creative writing and poetry.” No, Ken Ober ’06 isn’t talking about a newfound interest in sculpture or cooking.

Ober, who entered Bard intending to study biology, is a recent convert to mathematics. He switched concentrations not because anything was wrong with biology, but “because of what’s right about math. I find deep philosophical meaning in it.” Ober’s goal is to teach math at the college level. His Senior Project adviser, Ethan Bloch, professor of mathematics, intends to keep an eye on Ober’s whereabouts: “If we have an opening in the Math Program when he’s finished with his Ph.D., we’ll be interested in him. He’s really good.”

Twin sisters Alina and Janeta Marinova ’05 came to Bard, from Bulgaria, intending to study math “and more,” says Alina. The sisters, both of whom are concentrating in economics as well as math, spent last summer working on a project on mathematical modeling in political science.

Says Alina, “That experience helped me decide to concentrate on applied math. In grad school I’d like to apply my math knowledge to the social sciences.” Janeta’s plan is similar: “Mathematical economics interests me; for example, the math involved in financial markets.”

All three students laud their adviser, Bloch, who returns the compliment and joins them in appreciating Bard’s size. Says Bloch, “The advantage of a small school is that we can be flexible. We can easily accommodate double majors, and so we can encourage our students to follow their interests.”

Ken Ober

Alina (left) and Janeta Marinova

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FIRST-YEAR SEMINAR

Examines Enlightenment First-Year Seminar (FYS), a unique Bard experiment in liberal learning, continues to invigorate the intellectual climate of the College. Begun almost thirty years ago, the course recently has undergone a sea change.

All first-year students are required to take the course, which introduces intellectual, artistic, and cultural ideas that underlie undergraduate liberal arts education at Bard, regardless of a student’s concentration. In fact, faculty from all fields teach the course. Texts—which may include a symphony or painting—focus on a common theme. Before being revamped in 2002, FYS examined common texts, but portions of the syllabus varied by instructor. Today the entire FYS curriculum is unified and supported by the addition of required classwide Monday lectures.

The course is built around a theme; past years have focused on such topics as “Education and Its Uses” and “War and Peace.” This year’s theme is “What Is Enlightenment?”

“The impetus was to make it a more challenging course and draw more on the strengths of the faculty,” says Deirdre d’Albertis, associate professor of English and codirector of FYS (with John Pruitt, associate professor of film). “The theme has to allow for a multiplicity of texts, perspectives, and critical questions. We chose the Enlightenment because it’s a term that’s often bandied about. We’re giving students the chance to critique and engage texts so they can appreciate them from a position of knowledge rather than hearsay.”

Instructors flock to FYS from all disciplines and even from the ranks of administration. David Shein, dean of Lower College studies and a philosopher by training, says, “This isn’t an ‘introduction to college’ course, as so many are. It’s an introduction to critical thinking. The theme changes, but the underlying idea stays the same: how to look at the great texts.”

He adds, “There’s a lot of value in teaching students the basic methodologies of academic discourse. And the course is unique because we’re all reading the same texts at the same time.” A weekend retreat for FYS faculty at the start of each semester, as well as weekly meetings, encourages pedagogical support among instructors.

Monday FYS lectures—which, in the fall, ranged from an American Symphony Orchestra (ASO) performance of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 (conducted by Leon Botstein, Bard president and ASO music director) to a panel discussion on the American slave trade—also bring faculty and students together under one intellectual roof. “The symposium events integrate visual arts and other material into the course, something that can’t be easily done in individual classes,” Pruitt points out.

“FYS is unique, not only in the breadth of the texts, but in having weekly lectures,” concurs Karin Roffman, visiting assistant professor of FYS. “These weekly talks are, in my opinion, one of the best things about the course. The scope

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and style of the lectures have all been phenomenally different. the “scope of ideas” that all FYS students encounter, because it Therefore, students learn a great deal of information, and “puts everyone on the same footing.” are introduced to possible models for how they best learn Sophomore Len Gutkin, a 19-year-old from Baltimore, and what they may want to learn more about. So much of considers FYS “the most valuable part” of his education. “In one’s success in college is figuring out this part of one’s the course are infinite examples of ideas you’ll encounter thinking process, and the class offers a wonderful space to again and again,” he says of the works of such thinkers as do that. In their written reactions, students really respond to Plato, Kant, and Nietzsche. “To not have an idea about these the different approaches to learning that these symposium writers, who are referenced in Upper College courses conevents model.” stantly, would be unfortunate.” Gutkin’s essay on Robinson Even Bard board members are drawn to FYS offerCrusoe was one of four that won First-Year Seminar Essay ings. Felicitas S. Thorne, who is on the Board of Directors Awards, given for the first time last year and posted on the of the Bard Music Festival, attended many Monday lecBard College website. tures during the 2003–2004 academic year. “I go to the lectures to broaden my mental horizon,” she says. “The best part was that it encouraged me to read up on things I had forgotten, political ideas I hadn’t thought about.”

“The fall 2004 First-Year Seminar lecture series was a fascinating mixture of lectures, panels, films, and music,” says James H. Ottaway Jr., a member of the Board of Trustees of Bard College. Olin Auditorium was “packed” on the Mondays he attended—to hear Daniel Berthold, Bard professor of philosophy, and Richard Bulliet, Columbia professor of history. “The great variety of these programs was much more interesting and educational than a semester of lectures by one professor,” Ottaway says.

Michael Ives, visiting lecturer in First-Year Seminar, highlights the dialogue that contributes to the course. “What I like most is the discussion element,” Ives says. “I emphasize a collective and, typically, rather ad hoc debate, and let the students guide the conversation as much as possible.” The FYS format favors such give-and-take, he notes, because “the texts are superb, and there are wonderful juxtapositions between them.”

Students also weigh in with their assessments.

Litta-Iyaloo Naukushu, a 21-year-old sophomore from Namibia, came to America specifically for an education such as the one she is receiving at Bard. “If it hadn’t been for FYS, I wouldn’t have had the chance to read such books,” she says. “In a lot of ways, First-Year Seminar is the epitome of what a liberal arts education is. It allows you to pursue any field of study.” (She is Associate Professor of Film John Pruitt (left), codirector of First-Year Seminar. concentrating in biology.) Naukushu also appreciated

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Gutkin is a peer tutor, a student assigned to an FYS course section to help others with reading and writing assignments. Peer tutoring is another part of FYS that helps “cement solidly the ideas we’ve discussed in class,” says Celia Bland, visiting assistant professor of FYS and director of College writing and of academic resources.

Tanner Vea, whose essay on Notes from Underground also won an FYS award, says the course “really helped me learn how to read ‘for college,’ to think analytically, and absorb ideas at a challenging pace.” It also helped his study habits: “There came a point when my concern changed from ‘I can’t keep up!’ to ‘How can I do my work more

efficiently and push myself to think more thoroughly at the same time?’”

Core texts for fall 2004 emphasized science, culture, and the politics of reason. They were: Plato, The Symposium Confucius, The Analects Saint Augustine, Confessions Ibn Tufayl, The Story of Hayy bin Yaqzan Galileo Galilei, “The Starry Messenger” and “Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina” René Descartes, Discourse on Method Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddimah Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince John Locke, “Second Treatise on Government” Denis Diderot, “Supplement to Bougainville’s Voyage” and selections from Encyclopedia Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself Jane Austen, Mansfield Park This semester focuses on revolution and the limits of reason. The core readings are: Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution: 1789–1848 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality Immanuel Kant, Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Women William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell Mary Shelley, Frankenstein Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto; The German Ideology; “Theses on Feuerbach” Lu Hsun, The True Story of Ah Q Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents Chinua Achebe (Charles P. Stevenson Jr. Professor of Languages and Literature), Things Fall Apart –Cynthia Werthhamer

Associate Professor of English Diedre d’Albertis, codirector of First-Year Seminar.

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A Gift for Science Gabrielle H. Reem Herbert J. Kayden & Thanks to the generosity of two scientists, Bard will have a new facility in which to strengthen and amplify its Division of Science, Mathematics, and Computing. In honor of the donors, the building will be named The Gabrielle H. Reem and Herbert J. Kayden Center for Science and Computation (see Fall 2004 Bardian).

The altruism of Reem and Kayden is especially remarkable, considering that neither one is, nor is related to, a Bard graduate. Their philanthropy, Kayden explains, rests on the belief that “the necessity for science education is now so apparent. You cannot make an adequate college graduate without a broad base in science and the liberal arts.”

Reem is a professor in the New York University School of Medicine’s Department of Pharmacology, member of the Harvey Society, and fellow of the New York Academy of Sciences (NYAS), American Association for Cancer Research, and American Association of Immunologists. She is from Israel, brought up in Palestine before the creation of the Jewish state. After receiving an M.D. from the University of Basel, she traveled to the United States, eager to pursue research into renal function, and contacted Homer Smith, a pioneer in that field. “His book was the definitive Bible on the kidney,” says Reem. Smith invited Reem to work with him and arranged for her to receive a fellowship at New York University. She later worked at Goldwater Memorial Hospital and spent 10 years at Memorial Sloan-Kettering, as a clinical doctor. “The operations were very radical,” Reem says of the surgeries at that time. “It was a very sad place to be.”

She chose to leave the clinical field, was enticed to take a post in NYU’s pharmacology department, and took the shift of concentration in stride. Her explanation, “The disciplines are so interrelated,” reflects her emphasis on “self-motivated” processes. “I want to stress that education starts after graduation,” she says.

The mode of action of immunosuppressive drugs is among Reem’s research interests. She was, for example, involved in early research on cyclosporine, a drug that, among other uses, suppresses the immune system by

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inhibiting cytokine synthesis and lowers the risk of organ transplant rejection. She has also had success in exploring purine metabolism and studying the function of human thymocytes.

While Reem calls herself “lucky,” Kayden dismisses the notion of luck in her work, arguing, instead, that she possesses an intellect both disciplined and individualistic.

“There are minds that run down traditional pathways and others that see the same problems and issues in a different way,” says Kayden. “Gabrielle reads prodigiously. There’s a lot of thinking that goes along with that reading.” Kayden should know. He and Reem have been married for more than five decades and have two adult children.

Kayden calls his education “far more traditional” than Reem’s. A native New Yorker, he attended Columbia College (1936–1940) and then entered an accelerated M.D. program at the NYU School of Medicine. As a physician, he saw duty during World War II, including at Okinawa. He returned to civilian life determined to expand his education. “The period was so unusual,” Kayden says. “It would be hard to re-create the thirst for knowledge of those who had been away three or four years, in war.”

The subsequent period was, for Kayden, a time of medical research (supported by the National Institutes of Health [NIH]), combined with teaching chores and patient care.

When a 1960 NIH policy forced Kayden to choose between research and private practice, he opted to concentrate on lipoprotein research. “Lipoproteins are part of common parlance now,” says Kayden, “but back in those days they weren’t.

On our honeymoon I went to a lab in Sweden where they were doing the first studies in lipoproteins and I learned their techniques. I became interested in lipoprotein genetic disorders.” He studied individuals who, because of genetic abnormalities in lipoprotein synthesis, developed Vitamin E deficiency, and, as a result, suffered neurological problems.

“We learned how to treat the disorder,” Kayden says. He adds, with a laconic modesty that matches that of his wife, “The studies were well regarded.” (One patient, a 7-year-old

when she came under Kayden’s care, is now a mother—an outcome that would have been impossible without Kayden’s treatment.) Kayden continues his research.

Clearly, Reem and Kayden have far-ranging minds.

That quality contributed to their selecting Bard as the recipient of their magnanimity. Says Reem, “Interdisciplinary science is one of the attractive things about Bard.”

“I’m not really sure there are individual disciplines.

‘Interdisciplinary’ is a term forced upon us because, historically, there are ‘disciplines,’” concurs Kayden.

The couple connected with Bard through Terence F. Bertrand-Dewsnap, assistant director of Bard’s Clemente Course in the Humanities, who asked them to support the Clemente Program. As a result of that contact, and subsequent conversations with President Leon Botstein, Reem and Kayden learned of the collaborative Bard-Rockefeller Program, which provides Bard students and faculty with

access to Rockefeller University’s resources and makes it possible for Rockefeller postdoctoral fellows to gain experience in teaching undergraduates.

Kayden refers to the relationship between Rockefeller and Bard as “a sizzling concept.” To which Reem appends, “We were also interested in Bard as a small well-defined unit.”

“The size of Bard and its multiple interests in culture and the humanities create a ripe area for someone to make a contribution, investment, or stimulation,” says Kayden.

“Bard recognized its needs, and we’re happy to join and nurture it.” He says the “icing on the cake” is the fact that Rafael Viñoly Architects designed the new facility. According to Kayden, “Viñoly is thoughtful, talented, and enthusiastic about designing buildings.”

The ardor that Reem and Kayden bring to science and education has another outlet: art collecting. That interest, which offered a respite from science, began before New York’s art scene became a behemoth. As Kayden says, “The world of art in New York was small, sweet; everybody knew everybody. We went to galleries, talked to artists, had dinner with them. It nurtured a different plant.”

Kayden recalls meeting Jacques Lipchitz at the Whitney Museum of American Art, moments after admiring the sculptor’s work. That meeting spawned a long friendship. Kayden explains, “Lipchitz said, ‘Come visit me at my studio.’ We began visiting once a month, with our children. He was a wonderful raconteur. Over the years we acquired a great number of his works.” Reem and Kayden donated one of those works, Bellerophon Taming Pegasus, to Bard. It stands in The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts.

Reem and Kayden also counted Jacob Lawrence and British sculptor Henry Moore among their friends. Kayden fondly recalls Lawrence, an African American painter associated with the Harlem Renaissance, as “a superb artist, and there was no malice in him.”

Reem remembers her first Moore purchase, a small sculpture that could be carried in the hand. It was a gift for Kayden. Years later, when Moore works were typically of a size that precluded personal construction, the artist gave the couple a gift: his last handmade sculpture. It was approximately the same size as Reem’s first acquisition.

A truth resides in that anecdote—a truth about value overleaping scale, a small college’s expanding horizon, and a much-appreciated gift.

—René Houtrides

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A FELLOWSHIP COMMUNITY JUDY PFAFF JOINS BARD’S MacARTHUR FELLOWS Perhaps the most eminent, and most exciting, grant offered to creative thinkers in the United States is the MacArthur Fellowship. Dubbed “genius grants” when the Chicago-based John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation began to give them annually in 1981, the fellowships are awarded in a confidential process, without application. They are generous— $500,000 over five years—and may be used however the recipient wishes.

Bard College is associated with no fewer than six MacArthur Fellows.

Anecdotal evidence would suggest that this is a notable number for a liberal arts college with an on-campus student body of 1,409 and a campus faculty of 219. Judy Pfaff is the most recent of these recipients, having been awarded her fellowship last fall. The others are John Ashbery, who received his fellowship in 1985; Mark Danner (1999); Ann Lauterbach (1993); George Lewis (2002), who teaches at the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts; and Norman Manea (1992).

Judy Pfaff’s large-scale (and usually site-specific) installations combine painting, sculpture, and architecture. She mixes elements of her own making with found materials, both man-made and natural. The MacArthur Selection Committee cited her for working with a wide and unusual range of materials, for inspiring younger artists to venture outside the traditional distinctions made between painting and sculpture, and for an art that is “complex, profuse, and unique,” noting that at the heart of Pfaff’s work is an exploration of ways to make painting more three-dimensional and sculpture more painterly.

Pfaff is credited with pioneering the reappearance of installation art in the 1970s. In 1975 her work was included in the biennial exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Since then she has presented more than 100 solo exhibitions and participated in more than 200 group shows. In 1998 she represented the United States in the Bienal de São Paulo. Her work is part of the permanent collections of the Whitney, Museum of Modern Art, and Brooklyn Museum of Art, among others.

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“I’ve always done the work that I wanted to do, even though it wasn’t profitable,” says Pfaff, adding that the other constant in her life is teaching; she is Richard B. Fisher Professor in the Arts at Bard. “I’m very vested in Bard,” she says. “I’ve been here for 11 years, and I’m proud of the Studio Arts Program,” which she codirects. But days of problem solving and teaching haven’t allowed for time to “take care of the work,” she says. “Now I can reflect. I can look at the work and repair it.” She is also thinking about travel. “My recent work involves architecture of Asia and South America, places I haven’t been to.”

Ultimately, the fellowship confers a subtle security.

“The art world is trendy,” notes Pfaff. “It can throw you away after a while. I feel more secure now in how I’m perceived by my colleagues.”

The MacArthur Foundation first informs fellowship recipients with a personal telephone call, a call that has become the stuff of lore. No matter where the recipient is— Danner was in a remote cabin on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan—the foundation finds him or her. “It’s deeply pleasant to have someone call you out of the blue and offer you a large sum of money with no strings attached,” Danner observes. “This doesn’t happen often in life, especially when you haven’t applied for anything; you’ve just done what you would do anyway.”

When his fellowship was completed last fall, Danner says, “I looked back, and asked myself if I could have done this a different way—taken a year and traveled, not buried myself in work, which might have been salutary. But I didn’t consider the fellowship as a decisive break with the rest of my life. I continued to teach, for example, because I like doing it.”

After the call, a letter from the foundation confirms the fellowship. When Norman Manea received his letter, he was a recent immigrant from Romania, and he noticed immediately the letter’s instruction not to tell anyone about the fellowship until it was officially announced, and “coming from Eastern Europe, I took this admonition very seriously,” he says. “I didn’t know that Bard had already received the same information. When I arrived for a meeting with Stuart Stritzler-Levine [then dean of the college] that had been scheduled weeks before, about something else, he met me with a bottle of champagne. He invited others to join in a toast to me. I played the total idiot; I said I didn’t know what this was all about—because I had been told to keep it secret. They looked at me strangely, amazed. I had taken too seriously the secrecy, in the manner of Eastern Europe.”

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For Manea, the fellowship bought time. He took a year off from teaching and completed his novel The Black Envelope, which was published in 1995.

John Ashbery also appreciated the extended length of the grant. He says, “It was a wonderful period in my life when I could devote myself to writing poetry. I wrote Flow Chart, a book-length poem that had been on my mind for a long time and that I hadn’t been able to do. Now I could write poetry every day.”

George Lewis received “the call” on his cell phone, which, because it hadn’t been recharged, shut off twice. “On their third try, I managed to bark out an alternative phone number,” says Lewis. “Mind you, I still had no idea who was calling. Once I did find out what it was about, an eerie calm washed over me, which was a good thing, since it was perhaps the last moment of relative repose I’ve had since that day.”

Lewis finds that he has changed in two ways. First, the fellowship relieved him of the need to prove himself. “I was invited to believe in myself to a much greater degree than ever before,” he says. “That Rubicon-crossing feeling, perhaps more than anything else, assists me in my daily creative life, offering a sense of clarity that seems to make all things possible.”

Second, his sense of responsibility—to himself and to the creative communities that nurtured him—was heightened. As the good wishes poured in, “I began to see how truly lucky I was to know such amazing people as our own Professor [of music] Richard Teitelbaum, who is a great mentor and friend,” he says. “In the end, that feeling of support becomes the real foundation for any work I might realize with the material benefits of the MacArthur Fellowship.”

Ann Lauterbach also recalls a sense of validation. “I would have gone on making poems with or without the support of the fellowship,” she says, “probably at the same rate and with the same degree of difficulty or ease. But there was, and still is, a sense of some interest in what I was attempting in the work, an interest that came from anonymous sources, an audience somehow slightly outside one’s own purview.

This gave me a certain sense of permission to go on exploring some of the things I care about in my poetics.

“Finally,” she adds, “one feels a strange grace; that is, an awareness that the relationship between our life choices and their consequences is always in a mutable combination of conviction, risk, hope, and luck.”

—Debby Mayer

MacArthur Fellows at Bard JOHN ASHBERY, Charles P. Stevenson Jr. Professor of Languages and Literature, has taught at Bard since 1990. He is the author of numerous poetry collections, including Where Shall I Wander, forthcoming this spring. His many awards and honors include a National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle award, and Pulitzer Prize. He has served as New York State Poet Laureate (2001–02) and as a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets (1988–99).

MARK DANNER, Henry R. Luce Professor of Human Rights and Journalism since 2003, has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1990. He is the author of The Massacre at El Mozote: A Parable of the Cold War (1994, selected by the New York Times as one of the “Notable Books of the Year”) and, most recently, of Torture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib, and the War on Terror (see Books by Bardians).

ANN LAUTERBACH, David and Ruth Schwab Professor of Languages and Literature since 1997, is also on the faculty of the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts and the Center for Curatorial Studies. Her most recent poetry collection is If in Time: Selected Poems 1975–2000.

She was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow at Columbia University and received a fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation.

GEORGE LEWIS, composer, trombonist, and computer/installation artist, is Edwin H. Case Professor of Music at Columbia University and has been on the music faculty of the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts since 2000. His work as a composer, improviser, performer, and interpreter is documented on more than 120 recordings. His oral history is archived in Yale University’s Major Figures in American Music.

NORMAN MANEA, Francis Flournoy Professor in European Studies and Culture, and writer in residence, has published five books of fiction and nonfiction in English, the most recent of which is The Hooligan’s Return. His awards and honors include a fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation, a National Jewish Book Award, and the Nonino International Prize for literature. He has taught at Bard since 1989.

In addition to these notable recipients, MacArthur Fellows associated with Bard include 1999 Fellow Elizabeth Murray, who was visiting professor of studio art at Bard from 1997 to 2003 and visiting instructor in art from 1973 to 1977; 2003 Fellow Lydia Davis, faculty in writing at the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts from 1986 to 2001; and 1992 Fellow Wendy Ewald, photographer and former visiting lecturer.

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b i d o u n a quarterly forum for middle eastern talent

(Left to right) Ketuta Alexi-Meskhishvili ’03, Brian Ackley ’02, and Lisa Farjam ’00

Art Without Borders “Bidoun,” simply translated as “without” in Arabic and Farsi, is both the name and the core theme of a new magazine dedicated to Middle Eastern arts and culture. Bidoun, the brainchild of its founder and editor in chief, Lisa Farjam ’00, showcases contemporary Arab and Iranian artists, writers, musicians, filmmakers, fashion designers, and architects working in the Mideast and around the world.

Farjam, U.S.-born to Iranian parents, refers back to the name to explain what Bidoun is about. “‘Bidoun’ can mean without a home or without a country,” says Farjam. “But it also describes someone who is not limited by borders, who participates in many cultures, but does not belong to one in particular.” For Farjam and her far-flung international 16

roster of editors, photographers, designers, writers, and contributors, that sense of statelessness—of being nowhere and everywhere—is about freedom from boundaries. “Our purpose is to create a platform for artistic and cultural expression, an open forum for ideas, by and for the international communities of the Middle East, Europe, and America.” Bidoun transcends labels of place, politics, and what Farjam refers to as the facile “branding” of all things Middle Eastern. “We want people to take a fresh look at the region and its peoples, too often presented as onedimensional, and to do this through their art, not through some arbitrary political and colonial borders,” says Farjam.

“In that sense, the magazine is apolitical.”

Bidoun may resist identity politics, but it unabashedly takes on the subject of identity, raising questions and tearing down misconceptions about what it means to be Middle Eastern. For Farjam, the questions of identity that would ultimately find their way into the magazine began surfacing at Bard, where she concentrated in writing. While taking Norman Manea’s class, Exile and Estrangement in Modern Fiction, Farjam began to confront her own sense of estrangement from both her Iranian side and her American side. “I was encouraged to explore being a ‘foreigner,’ to access the culture that is often muted when one assimilates into another culture,” says Farjam.

Farjam began translating her personal journey into concrete plans for a magazine after a stint with the Iranian delegation of UNESCO, and with the encouragement of fellow Bardians, Brian Ackley ’02 and Ketuta Alexi-Meskhishvili ’03. “They influenced me greatly, right from the start,” says Farjam, “by helping me bridge the two cultures rather than feeling like a stranger in both.” With little or no publishing experience and relying on gut intuition, chutzpah, and a Bard-fed sense of infinite possibilities, they gathered a multinational, multitalented, global staff, and an array of international contributors to launch the magazine. “At Bard we were always challenged to think in alternative ways,” says AlexiMeskhishvili. “So we just went ahead and did it because we believed in it. We didn’t wait to take business courses, we just figured it out.” They also drew on Bard’s network of talent to help jump-start the magazine: James Fuentes ’98 and Michael Haggerty ’01 spread the word and introduced them to curators, artists, and contributors; Sameer Reddy ’00 aided in bringing the fashion section together; Jessica Hankey ’03 edited articles and critiqued past issues, and Kelly Taxter ’03, a Center for Curatorial Studies graduate, is writing for the current issue.

Bidoun premiered in March 2004, becoming the first internationally distributed English-language magazine of Middle Eastern arts and culture. Aimed initially at the largely ignored niche market of 18- to 35-year-olds of the Middle East and its diaspora, the magazine’s distribution and subscriber list has grown and broadened in scope.

Published quarterly, Bidoun is found in bookshops, boutiques, and galleries across the Middle East, Europe, and Canada. In the United States, it is distributed in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and San Francisco; Barnes & Noble and Borders picked up the magazine this summer for domestic distribution. “The 2004 winter issue will have a printing of 10,000 copies,” says Ackley. Translated into standard industry projections, that forecasts a readership of some 30,000. “It has been a continuous surprise that the magazine has been received as it has been,” says Farjam.

“We never expected to cross so many borders.”

The Internet plays a key role both in the marketing of Bidoun—through its website, www.bidoun.com—and in the accessibility it affords its polyglot team of editors (based in Dubai, Berlin, and New York) and its contributors and their subjects (writers, artists, and photographers located anywhere and everywhere in the world). The Internet not only enables seamless cross-cultural exchanges, it is mimetic of the “fluidity of geographies and a challenge to the myth of singular and absolute representation” described as the “essence” of Bidoun by its creators. For example, Britishborn Coco Ferguson writes from Tehran about an exhibition of Islamic art at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, post 9/11; Huda Abifarès, born in Beirut, educated at Yale, and chair of the Department of Visual Communication at the American University in Dubai, analyzes contemporary Arabic calligraphy; Walid Raad, an artist “based between Brooklyn and Beirut,” is profiled along with his enigmatic collages of Lebanon’s recent history.

Just below the surface of its edgy, highly textured, and vibrant pages, the magazine teases the reader with a question: Is there really such a thing as a typical Middle Easterner? “Even the term seems arbitrary and limited,” says Farjam, “but for now, it’s what we have. We would like some day to evolve into something entirely new, that is, to move beyond the current need for the term ‘Middle East’, to be a magazine of art, to simply be.”

—Jan Weber

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MAKING WAVES

Bardians in Radio

When Bard’s radio station, WXBC, began in 1947 as a student’s Senior Project, its goal was to “maintain a professional operating technique” and counteract much of the “crassness of commercial radio.” The “X” in its call letters stood for “experimental.” More than 50 years later, the original goal still resonates with the 80 student staff members and on-air hosts who work to make WXBC a vital and uncompromising voice.

In the late 1940s, radio was the primary source of news, sports, and entertainment. Today, there are more stations than ever—and less diversity. In an era of media consolidation, the Clear Channel network alone owns 60 percent of the rock radio business and is inundating the airwaves from New York to Austin with the same preprogrammed playlists.

WXBC is filling the void with 14 hours a day of original programming. “We’re giving exposure to independent artists, doing our own creative thing, and experimenting with new ways to make WXBC responsive to the community,” says station supervisor Nick van der Kolk ’05. WXBC is also mining the past for concepts like the serial drama and comedy hour. The fall schedule included political talk; literature readings; sports coverage; and Scholarly Shakedown, a show that broadcast First-Year Seminar lectures and other academic events. One such event, an interview with Leon Botstein on the subject of sex, received the biggest audience spike since WXBC began broadcasting over the Internet in 2003.

Mindful of WXBC’s history—van der Kolk has been in touch with founder John Marshall Gillin ’48—the staff enjoys the collaborative process of running the station. They work together on technology upgrades, publicity, and getting the latest music from the record labels. Each staff member also gets hands-on experience—and a public forum to share personal passions—as an on-air host.

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(Top to bottom, far left) Jen Holup ’07 and Max Zbiral-Teller ’06; Blake Malin ’06; Abe Jellinek ’06; Karen Soskin ’07; (left) Matt Wing ’06; Joanna Leitch ’08; Allen Josey, director of student activities; Owen Conlow ’07; (far right) Nick van der Kolk ’05 and Adrianne Mathiowetz ’05, Christina Friskey ’05; (right) Akie Bermiss ’04, Sam Kraft ’06

For pianist Akie Bermiss ’04, that passion is jazz. Max Zbiral-Teller ’06, host of a hip-hop and blues show, can’t wait to share a favorite new find, a 1982 release by Buddy Guy and Junior Wells. Office manager Christina Friskey ’05 mixes music with personal stories during her late-night lonely hearts show, while music director Karen Soskin ’07 hosts a classic rock show.

Diversity has not been the only casualty of media consolidation. At the same time that deregulation loosened ownership limits in the early 1980s, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) lifted its requirement that stations carry nonentertainment programming. As a result, expensive-toproduce local news has been largely replaced by top-of-thehour headlines.

Kathleen McKenna ’78 says she is fortunate to work on programming that “doesn’t go by in a second.” The managing editor of Here and Now, a daily news and issues program produced at Boston public radio station WBUR, McKenna was not involved with radio at Bard, but “found the light” after many years in television. “In TV,” she says, “there are cameramen and soundmen between you and an interview subject. In radio, there’s nothing but a microphone. That allows for a more natural conversation, where you can really get at the issues.” McKenna recently completed a show on the U.S. culture wars, in which activists on both sides participated. She sees the role of public radio as providing reliable information. “Though many see NPR as left of center,” she says, “it really is quite middle-of-the-road and reluctant to push the envelope.”

Katie Jacoby ’05, a student in the Human Rights Program, is pushing the envelope. Jacoby believes that “radio is the most democratic means of communication” and is active in the movement to provide Low Power FM (LPFM) access to communities and nonprofit groups. She went to Free Radio Berkeley to train in microbroadcasting (affordable “station-in-a-box” technology) and last year launched Free Radio Annandale. While that station is in a holding pattern, Jacoby is not. She has helped build new stations, organized a conference on human rights and technology, and mobilized a letter-writing campaign urgung the FCC to open up LPFM licensing.

Van der Kolk is also keeping on eye on Washington. Bard began its drive for an FM band in 1999, just before the FCC placed a moratorium on new noncommercial licenses. Even an LPFM home would be an improvement on the station’s current 5-watt AM signal, which can’t penetrate the walls of

many residence halls. Although van der Kolk is stepping back from his managerial duties this semester to help alumnus Devon White ’99 create a college radio network, other staff members are up to speed on the daily operation of WXBC’s new home in Manor House basement. The quarters include a broadcasting studio, office, and meeting space/library.

General manager Blake Malin ’06, host of a jazz and politics show, hopes to use the WXBC library as a performance space for small ensembles. “We’re working with the Entertainment Committee to bring in visiting groups and record them,” he says. “Then we can make the performances available to our DJs.” Also on the agenda are building up the digital library, upgrading the CD system, improving audio stream quality, and getting a bigger server to handle more listeners. The audience has gone up over the past year, on campus and off. Publicity director Matt Wing ’06 has heard from fans as far away as Detroit and as close as Red Hook who say that WXBC is better than their local stations.

And, says Wing, “they’re right.”

You can find WXBC at wxbc.bard.edu.

—Ellen Liebowitz Editor’s Note: WXBC is grateful to Ed Coster ’54, the Class of 1954, and the Class of 1979, who designated their reunion gifts in 2004 to the radio station.

AMY ANSELL What are the most salient issues that stand out for you in this election? Were there any trends or developments that took you by surprise?

ALEX WEINSTEIN The most salient issue was values. In terms of voting it was 25 percent values, 22 percent terrorism, and 20 percent the economy. Those results truly signal that the country has moved beyond tangible concerns into [the realm of ] the intangible . . . As long as that continues, Republicans will continue to be dominant, because their

ELECTION

AFTERMATH Bard Students Discuss the Body Politic On November 5, 2004, three days after the presidential election and two days after a student march to nearby Red Hook to protest the results of the election, five Bard students took part in a roundtable discussion moderated by Amy Ansell, associate professor of sociology. The five undergraduates were Mariah Ernst ’08, a member of Active Young America, who had been an organizer of the protest; Christine George ’07, self-described as the “only vocal female Republican on campus”; Jesse Myerson ’08, a John Kerry supporter who organized the bipartisan effort to get Bard students to vote; Ethan Porter ’07, copresident of the Bard Democrats, who, along with Myerson, went to Pennsylvania to campaign for Kerry; and Alex Weinstein ’06, who chairs the Bard Republican Club and works for Congressman John Sweeney (R,C–Clifton Park, N.Y.). The students were informed, articulate, and ardent, and although at times the discussion grew heated, all participants treated one another with respect. After a bitterly campaigned election, the students’ candor and willingness to communicate their convictions were invigorating and encouraging. The following is an adaptation of their discussion.

success [is ensured by] the Democrats’ failure to communicate a platform that promotes values. If you talk to people on the street, you realize that it’s not about money, it’s not about Iraq; it’s about the way they teach their children and wish their children to be, and what they do in church. That is the heart and soul of this country, and it was the heart and soul of the election.

JESSE MYERSON [If it’s true] that the Republican stronghold in American politics is due to a shift from the tangible to the intangible, it says a lot about the Republican Party—that, to win this election, they relied on things that don’t fall into the realm of reason and evidence. I simply can’t comprehend the viewpoint that it’s important to vote against gay people being married while there are people dying in Iraq, or while there are people like those we talked to in Pennsylvania who don’t have jobs, whose children may die because they don’t have health care.

ETHAN PORTER The really tragic thing is that what won the election for George Bush and the Republicans was [a campaign] based on dividing people, rather than uniting them.

The Republicans are fighting a war where the future of our country is at stake, and yet somehow this issue of gay marriage is what won the election. It’s true; according to the exit polls, the issue of values decided it. Nobody saw that coming; there was no logical reason for it to happen. What we witnessed on Tuesday was a departure from logic by millions of Americans.

MARIAH ERNST I think it’s amazing, the way Bush has capitalized on a word. He’s taken the word values and he’s made it into an entire campaign strategy. Values used to be a pretty objective word, and now it represents Christianity, it represents the pro-life [position], it represents being anti–gay marriage.

CHRISTINE GEORGE One of my professors said that 51 percent of the country identifies itself as Christian in some way.

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I think it’s an important point. I come from a really Catholic background, and people with that background take a different stance. Bush did really well with the Catholic base, because the fact is, if there’s one thing that can get a Catholic person [really angry], it’s to mention abortion. I define myself as a Republican with liberal social views, and I have friends who are Democrat who, since they are pro-life, have to identify themselves as that. You don’t have a clear distinction, and I think that could be part of the problem.

PORTER When I was canvassing for Kerry, we met a woman who had been previously registered Democratic who said she was a born-again, and therefore completely supported Bush because he’s pro-life. I have close friends who are pro-life as well. But the fact is that [despite which party is in power] abortions have continued to increase significantly.

WEINSTEIN I forgot to tell you, we haven’t banned it yet. You can’t stop it.

PORTER But you can, because [Chief Justice William H.] Rehnquist is about to leave, as are some of the more liberal judges, and therefore five Supreme Court justices will oppose Roe v. Wade. It’s going to be banned in our lifetime.

MYERSON And if it’s not, what they have been doing is systematically dismantling it piece by piece, so that, in essence, even if they don’t ban abortion, which would be politically unsavvy, what they’ll do is effectively eliminate it.

ANSELL What do you think about the two-party system, in terms of either its effectiveness or its limitations?

ERNST A lot of people are dissatisfied with the fundamental construction of the government, with the two-party system that excludes so many different viewpoints and so many different people, and creates a kind of a war between two parties instead of letting them work together.

PORTER I personally believe in a two-party system. It’s worked, and I think it will continue to work—it does accommodate all needs, at least for the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party integrates ideas from a wide spectrum of people. On Tuesday, and in the days leading up to the election, we saw labor, students, intellectuals, minorities, all working together. So that’s what the Democratic Party is all about, and I think it can represent the majority of Americans.

Whether or not it does that effectively is another question, but it’s not a question of structural change.

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MYERSON The foot soldiers of the Democratic Party, Ethan and myself included, and well-known activists—MoveOn and Michael Moore and people like that—are precisely what Ethan’s talking about. But in terms of its upper echelons, the Democratic Party is largely made up of very wealthy white males. It’s true that if you vote for the Republicans or the Democrats, you’re voting for the bourgeois party, the capitalist party, and at Bard that’s not a particularly popular thing.

The Democratic Party as it now stands is one of concession and soft middle-of-the-roadness, which has led to a sort of impotence. This was a fighting year, and that’s why people like Howard Dean and Dennis Kucinich came out, to fight.

PORTER The question for Democrats now is whether or not we can maintain the levels of organization we [marshaled against Bush], and if those levels can be transformed into proactive energy, proactive for change. If we harness this energy, I have little doubt that we can triumph.

The future of the Democratic Party lies in its ability to always persuade people, to inspire people. The Republicans succeed when they divide people, when they separate black people from white people, gays from straight people.

ANSELL In the recent past, there was much concern about the low levels of youth participation in the electoral process.

In this election, everyone expected high levels of participation among youth. From your own perspectives, why did that not occur?

ERNST I have no idea. Everybody at this table did their part to insure that there would be a lot of participation . . . I know that what happened at Vassar is that half of the students weren’t able to register to vote, because they put down their home addresses instead of their dorm addresses. At Bard, Jesse and I were registering people for a week, making sure . . .

GEORGE Pretty much everyone I know voted. But I remember that last year, in my First-Year Seminar class, we were talking about the election, and the majority of the class was saying they weren’t planning on voting because they didn’t like either candidate. And a lot of my friends at other colleges just totally spaced out on the deadline for absentee ballots. I can understand how that could be a problem for some people, when you have a million and two other things going on. I don’t know if the numbers are right, but the youth vote, wasn’t it almost fairly split? It was 54 Democrat, 46 Republican? I thought that was interesting . . .

PORTER I don’t know why the Kerry campaign didn’t motivate people, why on the stump he wasn’t more charismatic.

From my own experience I can say that the failure to turn out the youth vote was really a procedural failure of the Democratic Party. I’d been trying to organize students throughout New York to go to Pennsylvania [to register voters] since July—we had 300 to 400 kids interested in the idea. However, our pockets were not exactly overflowing with money. So [Democratic National Committee Chairman] Terry McAuliffe goes around bragging to every possible television station that he’s raised $220 million, and yet it took me a month and a half to get $1,250 out of the DNC. Eventually, we ended up paying for everything. We got 200 people to Pennsylvania, but it could have been a lot more.

WEINSTEIN The youth vote is a tricky subject because you’re dealing with a population that is inherently dependent on its parents, and it’s hard for them to understand the seriousness of the issues, from tax cuts to valuesbased issues. There’s a lack of motivation, because whatever a candidate does has very little effect on their lives, whereas for business owners or union

MYERSON But they’re convinced of that on a lie, because in the last four years the possibility for upward social mobility has decreased more than it has since the Depression. And the lie has been instilled in them, for the last 50 years, by people like George Bush and Dick Cheney.

ANSELL Are issues of values driving the country’s polarization? Or is it the economy, the war?

ERNST I don’t think the economy was necessarily a big issue, mostly because we’re living in college and not having to depend on ourselves or depend on working to survive.

But the war in Iraq was huge. That’s what a lot of the discontent was based on in Bush being reelected.

MYERSON Issues of the war and the economy are issues of values. To separate those from values that have been applied only to matters of religious fundamentalism is limiting and

workers, a candidate correlates directly to how their lives may be. When you’re 19 years old and a college student, and your parents are paying for the college, or taking out the loan, it’s hard to get motivated.

MYERSON I vehemently disagree with that. The three main things that affect young people are the war, which we’re fighting for them; the economy, in which we’re paying the huge deficits that they’re creating; and the environment that they’re creating, which will ruin the world for us. Those are issues that young people ought to, if they don’t, care about.

Mariah Ernst (left) and Christine George

WEINSTEIN Look, Bush had 7 million more votes than he had four years ago. What contributed to his election is not what we’re actually talking about. It is far simpler. How does a party that supposedly appears to value only the rich somehow manage to gain a substantial number of votes from low- and middle-class workers?

When you live in the South, as I have for so long, and you speak to low-income people about their dreams, they think they can be part of management; they think they can be small-business owners. It’s very difficult to convince someone that they need a handout when they’re already convinced that they can be their own manager.

Alex Weinstein

offensive to Americans like me, who have our positions on economic and foreign policy issues as core values.

we make decisions, and that is completely antithetical to the way the Democratic Party is run.

WEINSTEIN What we really have here is a fundamental disconnect between Marxism and how it evolved, and how it’s reshaped the modern Democratic Party. Go back and look at what [Antonio] Gramsci advocated in his prison diaries, because you’ll find that his ideas of what a modern Marxist state would eventually look like have many similarities with what the Democratic Party stands for.

For example, Gramsci said that Marxism could never take root unless Christianity was discredited, because he believed that the same principles that held up Christianity were those that allowed capitalism to exist. And if you look at how the Democratic Party has organized itself, which would be pro-abortion, pro–gay marriage—

MYERSON OK, let’s talk about values and morals. My values and morals include health care for every American,

PORTER This is the classic Republican tactic of red-baiting, which is to say, “The Democrats are communist.” I don’t really know how to respond to that, other than to see it as indicative of the culture war itself, that somehow we find these links between dead philosophers and the current Democratic Party. By the same token, I remember getting in a vehement argument last year with somebody who was claiming that Bush was equal to Hitler.

WEINSTEIN When you have a party that is associated with secularists, it is very hard to convince [religious people] to vote for it, because it is the exact opposite of their core beliefs. The Republican Party is based on the belief in God. PORTER That is an antidemocratic statement. You have indicated that you do not believe in the separation of church and state, that you do not believe in one of the founding principles of this republic.

WEINSTEIN [It does not necessarily follow that] if one is an active Christian and a believer in God, they also wish to have no separation between church and state.

PORTER You just said that a prerequisite for office was a belief in God. WEINSTEIN You misunderstand. [George W. Bush] actively uses religion as a part of his daily life—for example, he has between 10 and 15 Christian spiritual advisers whom he discusses policy with, and they help him to make his decisions.

It’s not that we’re erasing [the separation between] church and state; it’s that we’re including God in the way in which 24

and no unnecessary war based on lies. And why are those not considered moral issues? I think there’s a tremendous moral crisis when we don’t consider an unjust war to be immoral.

WEINSTEIN If the Democrats continue to believe that secularism is the way America wants to live, I guarantee you that in two or three years there’ll be 60, or maybe 75, Republican senators.

ANSELL What do you see as your role for the four years or more to come?

WEINSTEIN I will continue to work for Congressman John Sweeney. Hopefully, what I did during this election to help him get reelected to a fourth term will see me going to D.C. In the next two years I will transition into becoming a naval officer, four years of service.

And for the country? I think the next maybe 10 to 30 years will see a return to what America was based on, which is conservative values centered on people who have a strong belief in God, but at the same time realize that church and state must remain separate to a degree.

But from what I’ve heard today, I’m very optimistic that the Democratic Party, as it is currently structured, will continue to be a party on the periphery, continually weakened by its anger and its inability to engage with the way that Americans have chosen.

ERNST I also hope that America will return to its roots and what it’s founded on. I know that George Washington was an atheist; our Founding Fathers were atheists . . . I hope that we return to the idea of religion and state as two separate entities, one acting for the political well-being of the nation and one for its moral well-being.

I’m definitely going to continue to be active, although I probably won’t be involved in politics as much . . . but I’d really like to work on the level of something like a proven initiative, like educating prisoners.

GEORGE I definitely see myself going further Republican because of the things I’ve witnessed at Bard from the liberal students. I was hoping that after this election the country would be united, and my biggest frustration with all this is

that I know, had the results been switched, that I would have been upset, I would have gone to my room, I would have refused to speak to my strong Kerry-supporting friends for about a day, and then I’d go, “Well, you know what, democracy spoke, and that’s it, I’ll support Kerry.” And when I heard about that Bard protest, I was just furious, because to me that’s just sour grapes.

WEINSTEIN We would never do that.

GEORGE You would never see the Republicans marching.

If we did, you would have told us to go back to wherever. I feel so disgusted with the youth of this country right now— I don’t know if it’s just Bard.

ERNST I have been very vocal in defending Alex’s right to speak. I have said that about anybody—it doesn’t matter whether they’re communist, socialist, Republican, or Democrat. We marched peacefully. It was a propeace, pro-democracy march with a lot of community support. It’s a fundamental right of people to vocalize what they believe in a mass gathering and to make it clear to the government.

PORTER I’m very frightened for the Republic right now. I’m a God-fearing, patriotic American, but I’m very frightened.

Obviously, we’re a very divided country at this point, and I think to impose upon some states what some other states want to do would be very dangerous. So I’m hoping that there’s some understanding by the Republicans that if they want to be responsible for the sanctity of the Republic, they respect that idea.

I think Democrats and the left in general are prepared to work as they’ve never worked before, because the future of the Republic is at stake. If there’s not a viable opposition, we’re in danger. Alex said he would be happy to see 75 Republican senators; I would not be happy to see 75 Democratic senators. I think there’s gotta be more than one party in power. The beautiful thing about this country is the diversity within it, and it has to be represented in the halls of power.

GEORGE I’m all for marching, I think that’s fine. But the way in which it was conducted . . . I don’t know how many “Fuck Bush” signs I saw. Again, if the situation was reversed, do you have any idea what I would have faced? It is true, there are people who are supportive of Republicans speaking out, but when it comes to a mob mentality . . .

MYERSON I think it’s unfair to say that Republicans would never do something like that. It’s unfair to say that your side is righteous and our side is obscene.

For me now, it’s fight, fight, fight until I die, because this was very disheartening that we fought so hard and had such a massive organization and so many people cared, so many people volunteered, and we just lost so badly. And the dread I feel I haven’t felt in my life. I was talking to my parents afterwards, and my mom told me to think about South Africa, where they lived under apartheid for so long, and they fought until they died, and then eventually Nelson Mandela was president. I’ll take it as my personal duty to the people of South Africa who died in that fight to fight in this fight till the very end.

Amy Ansell

Jesse Myerson (left) and Ethan Porter

Ashim Ahluwalia

Bard grads make challenging films in the shadow of Bollywood

By Sarah Neilson ’94

In February 2004, I visited Bombay and caught up with some old friends from Bard: Ashim Ahluwalia ’95, Shumona Goel ’97, and Vishwas Kulkarni ’96. All three are Film and Electronic Arts Program graduates creating independent film in this Bollywood-dominated city. We discussed film, art, and Bard’s influence on our lives.

In the West we hear about the swirl of Bombay: a hectic, dangerous, and glamorous city, crowded even by Indian standards. Bombay is the postcolonial crossroads of New York, Los Angeles, and outer space: simultaneously familiar, glittery, and otherworldly. Bombayites are tough, generous, and accommodating. They live in a jam-packed, commercialized city where fortunes are made and lost every day. Bombay’s intensity creeps under the skin, urging filmmakers to record its strange impact.

To create independent film in this setting is challenging. Funding from government or private sources is scarce.

Audiences are committed, but small. Living in Bombay is expensive. Working in a developing country adds fresh complications.

Each filmmaker uses a different format: Ashim works in digital video and 35mm, Shumona combines film with photomontage, Vishwas uses found footage and new media. Each filmmaker’s subject matter and method reflect a unique relationship with and interpretation of Bombay.

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Ashim’s documentary film, John and Jane, examines the human impact of the “call center” phenomenon. He says the idea for the film came after he read “news articles and business reports in India about this great call center boom and how terrific it is for the economy. But nobody seemed to be asking questions about the call agents with fake American names. They sit in front of computers for 12 hours every night, trying to sell products to, or recover debts from, people in the United States.”

John and Jane explores the lives of call center agents in suburban Bombay, who are “trained to speak and think like Americans but go home to very Indian existences,” Ashim says. What happens when thousands of young, educated, English-speaking, Indians change their accents, pretend to be someone else, sleep through the day, and talk on the phone through the night, leading continually jet-lagged lives?

Ashim’s choice of luxurious 35mm film, rather than video, transforms cubicle offices into gorgeous Yasujiro Ozu-esque compositions that glow in the twilight. “I was interested in a film that was less ‘real’ looking, more dreamy—the quality of a tropical sci-fi film,” he says.

“When you shoot 35mm, it immediately feels ‘fictional’ even if the content is documentary.

Film also has grandeur, which felt appropriate for shooting the massive call center spaces, ‘technology’ parks, and sprawling industrial landscapes of Bombay.”

Ashim formed Film Republic, a production company, in 1998. His award-winning first documentary, Thin Air, looked at the lives of three Bombay magicians. He has directed documentary films for the Discovery Channel and made television commercials. As a DJ, he cofounded Bhavishyavani, a Bombay-based collective promoting electronic music.

Shumona Goel

Vishwas Kulkarni

After graduating from Bard, Shumona received an M.A. in the anthropology of media/Asian cinema from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London. In Bombay, she works with Ashim and Film Republic as a director and producer. Her 20-minute film, Atreyee, had its world premiere at an experimental film festival in Bombay in March 2004, and has since been shown at festivals in San Francisco, Seattle, and Turin.

Atreyee documents the experiences of a young Bengali woman who leaves Calcutta for a new life in Bombay. In a series of still photographs, the film records her daily routines.

Eventually, she returns home to marry. More than a straightforward “girl-grows-up” film, Atreyee is a meditation on the difficult process of breaking out of predictable life patterns.

Shumona and the film’s subject, Atreyee Sen, were friends at SOAS, and Shumona had arrived in Bombay intending to make a documentary about Atreyee’s Ph.D. research on women who participated in the 1993 Bombay riots. Because Atreyee hadn’t started her research yet, Shumona turned the camera on Atreyee herself.

Atreyee, it turned out, was one step ahead of Shumona.

According to Shumona, Atreyee “had a Walkman, a Dictaphone, a still camera—equipment that I didn’t have as a filmmaker. People are already documenting their lives, not necessarily waiting for a filmmaker to come and do that for them.”

While the film chronicles Atreyee’s migration, it also touches on Shumona’s experience as an Indian-American arriving in Bombay. For Shumona, “Coming to Bombay was more of a culture shock than going from Pennsylvania to Patiala [her parents’ hometown, in Punjab].”

Vishwas Kulkarni founded The Fabulous Laboratory, India’s first “out” production company, which experiments with film, video, new media, literature, and “urban extracurricular” activity. FabLab’s website, www.fabulouslab.com, offers a glimpse into a strange world where a bra strap represents the mystery of Indian womanhood, or Santa Claus resolves an underworld scuffle.

Post-Bard, Vishwas returned to Bombay, pursued filmmaking and new media, and made short films for music television. He developed an aesthetic he calls “the emotionality of kitsch.” For Vishwas, kitsch and low culture are avenues for pure expression. “A lot of it is my reaction to aspirational gloss within the media in India, where everything has to be slick and shiny, in an advertising way,” he explains.

Vishwas’s most recent film project, Main Shaayar Badnaam (A Defamed Poet), consists primarily of found footage. Splicing sections of government farming programs, family planning shows, Independence Day parades, and German gay pornography, the film critiques nationalism and masculinity in contemporary India. The use of television footage invokes the government-run channel, Doordarshan, India’s only channel until the early 1990s.

Because of its pornographic imagery, Main Shaayar Badnaam was banned from India’s first queer film festival, but was shown in July at Outfest 2004, a Los Angeles gay and lesbian film festival. The film will also be shown at the British Film Institute’s London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, and at festivals in Melbourne, Manila, and Turin.

Vishwas’s current project, Zeenat: The Wife and the Widow, is the story of a former Bollywood star, told entirely in footage from her films. Another project, Khachra (Garbage), combines film footage found in garbage bins and other unsavory locations. Vishwas’s emphasis on found footage is a comment on India, where most of the population lives in poverty that many Americans can barely comprehend and ragpickers comb through garbage to find scraps of material to sell for reuse. Found footage is the cinematic parallel to this economy. “There’s a spartan approach to art that comes from being Indian. I think it shows that low culture can be seen as both a genre of necessity and a genre of choice,” Vishwas says.

Sarah Neilson ’94 completed an M.A. in South Asian studies at the University of Washington in 1999. She lives in Chicago, where she manages outreach programs at the University of Chicago’s South Asia Language and Area Center. She visits Bombay as often as she can.

27 A still from John and Jane

ALUMNI/AENOTEBOOK

Bard–St. Stephen’s Alumni/ae Association Spring Events

For the most up-to-date events list, visit www.bard.edu/alumni/events.

For more information or to make reservations, call Robyn Carliss ’02 at 1-800-BARDCOL or e-mail carliss@bard.edu.

Dia:Beacon Saturday, March 19 Dia:Beacon houses the renowned permanent collection of the Dia Art Foundation.

Located on the Hudson River, Dia:Beacon presents major artworks from the 1960s to the present in a historic printing factory of nearly 300,000 square feet.

The collection features works by such artists as Joseph Beuys, Walter De Maria, Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, On Kawara, Agnes Martin, Richard Serra, and Andy Warhol. Join us for a guided tour of outstanding works in an extraordinary space.

Time 11:00 a.m.

Place Dia:Beacon, 3 Beekman Street, Beacon, New York Fee $15; space is limited; reservations required

Bard Reading Tuesday, April 5 Jamie Callan ’75 will host the first in a series of readings by Bard authors who will share their work at the Cornelia Street Café, a Greenwich Village cultural landmark since 1977. Come enjoy a bevy of Bardian prose and poetry over good food and drink.

Time 6 p.m.

Place Cornelia Street Café, 29 Cornelia Street (off Bleecker Street), New York City Fee $5 to Bard plus a one-drink minimum at the café; reservations required

Tour of Mills Mansion Saturday, June 11 Visit Mills Mansion, the country home of Ogden and Ruth Livingston Mills. Its 1895–96 remodeling by McKim, Mead, and White transformed it into an elegant beaux arts example of the magnificent mansions built by America’s financial and industrial leaders during the Gilded Age. The estate, set on 192 acres in Staatsburg, New York, offers direct access to the Hudson River and spectacular views.

Time 11 a.m.

Place Staatsburg, New York, midway between Hyde Park and Rhinebeck, off Route 9 Fee $4; reservations required

SAVE THE DATES! 10th Annual Young Alumni/ae Cities Party Friday, April 8 Information: Rebecca Granato ’99 Young Alumni/ae Committee Chairperson E-mail: rebeccagranato@yahoo.com

Commencement/Reunion Weekend 2005 May 20–22 at Bard Reunion classes: 1935, 1940, 1945, 1950, 1955, 1959–1961, 1965, 1970, 1975, 1980, 1985, 1990, 1995, 2000 For more information, call Stella Wayne at 845-758-7407 or e-mail wayne@bard.edu

Golf Tournament Sunday, June 5 Third Annual Bard College Raptors Classic Golf Tournament at the Thomas Carvel Country Club in Pine Plains, New York. For more information, call Chris Wood at 845-758-7334, or e-mail wood@bard.edu.

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HOLIDAY PARTY 2004 Piano and saxophone music set a mellow tone for this year’s Holiday Party, held on a rainy Friday, December 10, at the National Arts Club on New York’s Gramercy Park.

About 250 people—alumni/ae, faculty, and staff—shook out their umbrellas and proceeded to party, talking and noshing and talking.

Saluted for best attendance were alumni/ae from the 1960s (including Lazlo Bito ’60) and those from the most recent years. But plenty of Bardians from more distant classes were also on hand, including Richard Koch ’40 and Miriam Roskin Berger ’56. The east coast of the United States was well represented, from Florida (Claire Angelozzi ’76) to Maine (Olivier te Boekhorst ’93 and Jennifer Reck ’94). Gabriella Ranelli ’87 put the party on her itinerary, having flown west to New York from her home in San Sebastian, Spain.

President Leon Botstein and Executive Vice President Dimitri B. Papadimitriou mingled with the alumni/ae, as did professors Burt Brody (physics), Lenore Latimer (dance), Robert Rockman (theater and literature), and Peter Sourian (English).

In a first for the Holiday Party, concert tickets were raffled off. Suzy Perler ’85 and Reinaldo Vilarino ’95 each won a pair of tickets to the American Symphony Orchestra concert at Lincoln Center, and Marisa Silverman ’00 and Scott Perkins ’03 each won a pair of tickets to the Bard Music Festival.

At 8:30 p.m., those who felt it was still the shank of the evening followed the Young Alumni/ae Committee to further festivities at the after-party party in Still, a watering hole around the corner from the National Arts Club.

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BOOKSBYBARDIANS

Selected Prose

By John Ashbery UNVERSITY OF MICHIGAN PRESS

Essays on fellow writers, as well as on artists and filmmakers, adorn this volume of miscellaneous prose gleaned from poet John Ashbery’s last half-century of work. It includes introductions to books and readings, musings on the life of a poet, and even an obituary. This collection, organized chronologically, traces Ashbery’s literary development through his focus on works he felt were important enough to ponder in print. Ashbery is Charles P. Stevenson Jr. Professor of Languages and Literature.

The Walls of Circumstance

By Dennis Barone ’77 AVEC BOOKS

This small book of quirky prose takes its title from Ralph Waldo Emerson: “Art should exhilarate, and throw down the walls of circumstance on every side . . .” Dennis Barone’s meditations cover such topics as tools hung on a wall, the experience of being stuck in traffic, and a surreal discussion among a group of girlfriends. Barone chairs the English Department at Saint Joseph College in West Hartford, Connecticut.

I Hate To Be Sick!

By Aamir Lee Bermiss ’05 SCHOLASTIC

Aamir Lee Bermiss’s first book is for young children, relating the story of a boy who wakes up sick one day, stays home from school, and describes his feelings about the situation. He feels terrible, hates the necessary remedies (“Oh, this is a drag! Cough syrup is yucky. It makes me gag!”), and misses his friends and school activities. His father helps him feel better by bringing him soup and a book that they read together. Bermiss is a senior concentrating in music.

Classical Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism: Comparing Theologies

By Bruce D. Chilton ’71 and Jacob Neusner BAKER ACADEMIC

These two major religions share a common heritage and tell a similar story—the story of humanity—but differ in their beliefs on revelation. Christianity offers an alternative reading of Judaic scripture, based, the authors contend, on “a sequence of self-definitions.” They identify fundamental theological differences between Judaism and Christianity and expose the basic confrontations. Bruce Chilton is Bernard Iddings Bell Professor of Philosophy and Religion and chaplain of the college, and Jacob Neusner is Research Professor of Theology and Bard Center Fellow.

Torture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib, and the War on Terror

By Mark Danner NEW YORK REVIEW BOOKS

The most vivid apprehensions many people have of the scandal at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq derive from the searing photographs first aired on CBS television. Mark Danner, who published the first part of this book as articles in the New York Review of Books, argues that the pictures, ironically, are not the most important evidence that U.S. military and security services engaged in torture. The book’s second part places the Abu Ghraib story in its larger context, presenting articles Danner wrote about the war itself. The third section collects the primary documents of the Abu Ghraib abuses, including photographs and reports. Danner is Henry R. Luce Professor of Human Rights and Journalism.

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American Whatever

By Tim Davis ’91 EDGE BOOKS

These short prose poems demonstrate Tim Davis’s desire to redefine poetic forms. The book’s sections are organized into thought-provoking arrangements. “The Missing Month” features whimsical names of days, such as “theartofdon’tknowday” and “City of God Day.” In “The Hair Club,” poems bear the names of presumed testifiers (“Rob S.,” Seth R.”); and “In the Details, A Deviled Dictionary” gives new definitions, in stream-of-consciousness mode, to seemingly random words and phrases, such as “Bourbon Street,” “du jour,” “Giuliani,” and “impeachment.”

Davis is visiting assistant professor of photography.

Defending the Rights of Others: The Great Powers, the Jews, and International Minority Protection, 1878–1938

By Carole Fink (Kapiloff) ’60 CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Carole Fink’s book elucidates the history of international involvement in the “minorities question” in Europe during a 60-year period that included changes in sovereignty, one world war, and the lead-in to the second. Before World War I, an international system was developed to protect Jews in the new Balkan states; in 1919, additional guarantees covered more than 25 million Jews, Germans, Ukrainians, Hungarians, and others in eastern Europe. This was an early foray into human rights diplomacy, and Fink examines how these treaties affected the minorities and countries involved. Fink is a professor of European international history at Ohio State University.

Cheat and Charmer

By Elizabeth Frank RANDOM HOUSE

Praise for this first novel compares it to The Sun Also Rises and The Last Tycoon. Set against the dark backdrop of the 1950s Hollywood blacklist, Elizabeth Frank’s book tells the story of Dinah, whose sister is married to a high-profile Bulgarian Communist. Dinah must make a terrible moral choice when she is subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee. Frank, who won a Pulitzer Prize for her biography of poet Louise Bogan, is Joseph E. Harry Professor of Modern Languages and Literature.

On the Banks of Monks Pond: The Thomas Merton/Jonathan Greene Correspondence

By Jonathan Greene ’65 and Thomas Merton BROADSTONE BOOKS

This slim volume is a balance of insights between two thoughtful writers who care passionately about poetry, the sound of words, and the sight of words as they appear on the page. Jonathan Greene was a young man when he met Thomas Merton, a famous hermit, Trappist monk, and poet who died in 1968. Greene’s two short essays on Merton, and an elegiac poem that he wrote after Merton’s death, bracket the brief correspondence published here. Greene, the author most recently of a collection of poems called Fault Lines, lives in Kentucky with his wife, Dobree Adams.

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Secrets from the Field: An Ethnographer’s Notes from North Western Pakistan

By Benedicte Grima (Johnson) ’79 AUTHORHOUSE

The research in Secrets from the Field covers 12 years of Benedicte Grima’s study and travel in Afghanistan and northwest Pakistan. While she wrote academic treatises about the women she encountered, she saved her descriptions of relationships, events, and other personal anecdotes for this book. She describes meeting and befriending natives as varied as an army technician who is on the run from the law and a multilingual scholar who teaches the author an obscure Pakistani dialect.

The book contains poignant black-and-white photographs of the area’s landscape and people.

Deep Water: A Sailor’s Passage

By E. M. Kahn ’69 HAWORTH PRESS

A journey along New York’s historic waterfronts, areas few people ever see, is at the center of this memoir by Eugene Kahn. The book describes the author’s passion for both his sailing craft and for his sailing partner, Kevin, who is also his lover. The harsh and beautiful realities of a sailing life are coupled with the pathos of passion in the face of death. Reviewer and nautical expert Anthony Dalton says the book “is both a valuable collection of adventures on Long Island Sound, the East River, and New York Bay . . . and a beautifully written love story.”

Cave: An Evocation of the Beginnings of Art

By Richard Lewis ’58 Photographed by George Hirose ’79 TOUCHSTONE CENTER PUBLICATIONS

Evolving from a theater piece for children about humanity’s distant past, when art had magical powers, Cave is a children’s book that combines Richard Lewis’s writing and George Hirose’s photographs of evocative sculptures by Elizabeth Crawford. The book describes how fear, hunger, and loneliness led early people to depict animals on the walls of caves. Lewis is founder and director of the Touchstone Center, a nonprofit educational organization based in New York City.

A Critical Cinema 4: Interviews with Independent Filmmakers

By Scott MacDonald UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

A Critical Cinema 4 is, as its name indicates, the fourth volume in Scott MacDonald’s Critical Cinema series, an extensive, in-depth study of independent cinema. In his continuation of interviews with filmmakers, MacDonald engages them in detailed discussions of their films and the personal, political, and other experiences that have shaped their work. The book features interviews with such names as Stan Brakhage (the most extensive interview yet published with the late filmmaker), P. Adams Sitney, Peter Kubelka, Jill Godmilow and Harun Farocki, Jim McBride, and Abigail Child. MacDonald, who lives in New Hartford, New York, is visiting professor of film.

Facing Death in Cambodia

By Peter Maguire ’88 COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS

Peter Maguire traveled to Cambodia for the first time in 1994 in hope of answering a loaded question: How had the fearsome and bloody Khmer Rouge gotten away with genocide? The leaders of the ruthless regime, which murdered some 1.5 million people between 1975 and 1978, were never tried or punished; Maguire, who has written on the Nuremberg trials, says that earlier research led him to Cambodia because the country “had shattered the ‘never again’ promise once and for all.” Maguire serves on the College’s Board of Trustees.

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A Simple Heart by Gustave Flaubert Translated from the French by Charlotte Mandell ’90 MELVILLE HOUSE PUBLISHING

This novella about the life of a self-effacing servant in a household in the French countryside strongly supports the claim that Flaubert was the first master of realism. The story of Félicité has been touted as an homage to George Sand, as a model of a maid in Flaubert’s household when he was a child, and as a metaphor for his disillusionment with the Roman Catholic Church. Charlotte Mandell’s sensitive translation emphasizes the story’s humanistic and heart-warming qualities as it describes a simple woman’s search for love.

Une Vie Normale

By Reine Arcache Melvin ’87 L’ESPRIT DES PÉNINSULES

Reine Melvin’s book of stories, published in English as A Normal Life, won the Philippines’ National Book Award for fiction. It has now been printed in French. Many of the narratives are set, at least partly, in the Philippines, against the backdrop of that country’s tumultuous recent history. The stories juxtapose external upheaval and private dramas of longing and lust. Melvin lives with her husband and two daughters in Paris.

Memnoir

By Joan Retallack THE POST-APOLLO PRESS

This book-length poem continues Joan Retallack’s exploration in the blending of poetry and prose. Retallack, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Professor of Humanities, says the title came from her examination of “cultural as well as personal memories” in the book, as well as her mother’s love of film noir. Recollections of childhood are interspersed with descriptions of movie scenes and fragments of dialogue in this slim volume, which fellow poet John Ashbery, Charles P. Stevenson Jr. Professor of Languages and Literature, terms “so much more than what one can say about it.”

It Stops With Me: Memoir of a Canuck Girl

By Charleen Touchette ’75 TOUCHART BOOKS

Charleen Touchette, an artist and writer, tells her vivid, loving, and harrowing story in both words and pictures. It Stops With Me invites the reader into the French-Canadian world of Touchette’s family and also reproduces Touchette’s graphic, often surreal, artwork, bearing titles such as Daddy’s Fist and Floating in My Mother’s Womb. The author/protagonist tells of leaving home at 17, falling in love at Bard (with S. Barry Paisner ’77, whom she married), and living the life of a New York City artist. Touchette and Paisner have four children and live in Santa Fe. The Always Present Present

By Theodore Weiss and Renee Weiss ’51 THE SHEEP MEADOW PRESS

This book celebrates a 60-year relationship by intermingling early (1939–41) love letters, from Ted to Renee, and poems the two wrote together. The collaboration is not new: the couple spent almost as many years editing the Quarterly Review of Literature, once based at Bard. Ted Weiss, a widely published poet who died in 2003, taught English at Bard from 1948 to 1969.

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ONANDOFFCAMPUS

Memory and History Recalls Viennese Art Bard has published Memory and History: The Legacy of Alfred Spitzer and Edith Neumann, a catalogue raisonné of the collection of Dr. Alfred Spitzer (1861–1923) of Vienna, Austria. The collection was bequeathed to the College by his daughter, Dr. Edith Neumann (1902–2002) of New York. In his introduction, Leon Botstein discusses the history—artistic, political, and personal—that brought these 92 paintings and drawings to Bard.

Dr. Neumann, a microbiologist, learned of Bard in 1987, when the College was mounting a New York exhibition titled The Pre-Modern Art of Vienna 1848–1896. She lent generously from her collection to this project and afterward offered the bequest to Bard with the proviso that the collection be kept intact and made available to scholars, students, and the general public.

With the exception of Egon Schiele, Max Slevogt, and Max Liebermann, the 52 artists in the collection are familiar only to connoisseurs of 19th- and early 20th-century central European painting, writes Botstein. This makes the collection no less valuable, but more complete, he says: a consideration of turn-of-the-century Viennese art that cannot be found anywhere else outside of Austria. “The keen eye that allowed Dr. Spitzer to collect the work of Schiele also led him to buy all the works catalogued here,” notes Botstein.

Last fall 64 paintings from the Neumann bequest went on permanent display in Blithewood, on view to the public during conferences held by the Levy Economics Institute and other College-related occasions, such as Commencement. The additional 28 paintings are scheduled for restoration and exhibition.

BCEP Outreach Links Science and Policy The Bard Center for Environmental Policy (BCEP), which offers a master of science degree in environmental policy, continues its working relationship with the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA), a public benefit corporation created in 1975 by the New York State Legislature.

NYSERDA funds research concerning the impact of energy production on the environment and human health.

In a five-year contract that began in August 2002, BCEP disseminates the results of this research, as a paid consultant to NYSERDA’s Environmental Monitoring, Evaluation, and Protection Program. In outreach to professionals and the public, BCEP is helping to design an information website. It also issues two-page fact sheets directed at environmental policy analysts, reviews policy briefs on such subjects as mercury and acid rain, attends conferences as a link between NYSERDA and environmental organizations, and assists with NYSERDA’s biennial October conference.

Currently BCEP is preparing the program for the 2005 conference, on linking science and policy.

BCEP students are involved in the NYSERDA contract, doing work that provides them with both a source of

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income and direct exposure to the processes of environmental policy. “This is a wonderful opportunity for us to work closely with the state,” says Zywia Wojnar, who is manager for NSERDA projects at BCEP. The association has bonuses for each side, she notes: “Excellent speakers from NYSERDA address our classes, and NYSERDA has the opportunity, through us, to relay its mission to an international group of students.”

Andrew Revkin (far right), New York Times environmental reporter, talks to students after a BCEP panel discussion

SEEN & HEARD OCTOBER A two-day symposium on “War and the Intellectual” was held at Preston Theater on October 4 and 5. Speakers included Bard faculty members Mario Bick, Bruce Chilton, Tabetha Ewing, and Thomas Keenan on Panel 1; and Michael Donnelly, Robert Kelly, Joel Kovel, and Justus Rosenberg (emeritus) on Panel 2. Alan Sussman, visiting associate professor of philosophy, moderated the Division of Social Studies event.

Bard President Leon Botstein at the opening of the new Center for Film, Electronic Arts, and Music in the Milton and Sally Avery Arts Center

Chinese Studies at Bard High School Early College When Bard High School Early College (BHSEC) first opened its doors in 2001, it offered classes in Spanish, Latin, and Chinese. That very spring, the American Forum for Global Education invited two BHSEC students to study in China. Elizabeth Dempsey, one of the participants in that three-week inaugural program, is scheduled to graduate from Bard College in 2005, with a concentration in Asian studies.

The American Forum has continued to send two BHSEC students to China each summer, and plans to expand the program.

Lori Lee, a second-year college student at BHSEC, is one of the most recent travelers. Her observations appeared in The Horizon, BHSEC’s student newspaper. Following is an excerpt.

My father, fueled by his loyalty and his love for his homeland, always told me passionate stories about China and its history. On July 18, 2004, I was going to China! It didn’t take long to realize I had been given the opportunity of a lifetime. The pleasure and wonder of being in China was captured in walking the downtown streets of small cities at night, sleeping in Mongolian yurts, playing volleyball with townspeople, riding tandem bikes on the ancient city wall of Xi’an, and horseback riding in Inner Mongolia. It was hard saying good-bye to China. It is my history, my culture, my love. On August 8th, 2004, I stepped off a plane and walked into LaGuardia Airport and thought, “I’m home?” I walked through two large sliding doors to the rest of my life, as a new me.

Bruce Chilton, Bernard Iddings Bell Professor of Philosophy and Religion and executive director of the Institute of Advanced Theology, spoke about his recent book, Rabbi Paul: An Intellectual Biograhy, at a public discussion and book signing in the Weis Cinema of the Bertelsmann Campus Center on October 7.

Fresh Triviality, an exhibition of works by artist and photographer Arlene Becker, was on display at the Campus Center from October 8 to October 24. Becker’s work explores icons of everyday American life, such as fast food restaurants, churches, and public festivals.

The American Symphony Orchestra presented a free concert of American orchestral works at The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts on October 8. The program, conducted by Leon Botstein, president of the College, featured works by Aaron Copland, George Perle, Bernard Rands, and Roger Sessions.

Scholar and performer Richard Nunns gave a lecture/demonstration on the traditional instruments of New Zealand’s Maori people on October 14 in Robbins Lounge.

Nunns, considered the world’s leading authority on the subject, also played duet improvisations with Richard Teitelbaum, whose World Music Seminar at Bard sponsored the event.

The Bard Economics Program presented the panel discussion, “Feminist Economics: A Different Approach to the ‘Dismal Science,’” on October 14. Among the panelists were three leading scholars on feminist economics: Diane Elson, University of Essex (UK); Elissa Braunstein, University of Massachusetts, Amherst; and Rania Antonopoulos, New York University and The Levy Economics Institute of Bard College.

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Gates Foundation Funds Expansion of the BHSEC Model The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has awarded Bard High School Early College (BHSEC) a $999,900 grant, effective January 1, 2005, through December 30, 2007. The grant provides BHSEC with operational support and allows for the implementation of a series of summer seminars and follow-up activities that will address the integration of high school and college curricula. BHSEC developed the seminar series in collaboration with Clark University’s University Park Campus School (UPCS).

BHSEC, Simon’s Rock College of Bard, and UPCS offer educational alternatives for highly motivated students

Banquets, Clangs, and Calligraphy: Bard Hosts Asian Studies Conference As flowery fumes of incense flooded the Sosnoff Theater, the procession of Balinese gamelan players—beating drums, blowing wood flutes, striking gongs—descended the aisles from the parterre to the stage. High in the balcony, children clad in ornate, traditional Balinese costumes tossed equally ornate handfuls of autumn leaves to the orchestra seats below. This opening moment of “Watch the Spirits Come Out,” a Halloween-weekend concert by the combined ensembles of Gamelan Dharma Swara, Gamelan Giri Mekar, and Bard’s own Gamelan Chandra Kancana, was buoyant and celebratory. It struck the perfect, shimmering note for the College’s hosting of Asian Border Crossings, the 2004 annual meeting of the New York Conference on Asian Studies, sponsored by Bard’s Asian Studies Program and Bard in China.

The two-day conference featured six sets of panels, with eminent scholars holding forth on an impressive range of topics—the tattooed body in contemporary Japanese literature; merchants and missionaries in 19th-century China; intra-Asian racism in the film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; and ongoing repercussions of U.S. atrocities in Southeast Asia, to cite just a few.

Punctuating the discussions were the gamelan concert; an Indian banquet catered by Bard’s Trustee Leader Scholar students, who spoke about their Asian community service projects; screenings of Asian films; and a lecture by Donald Richie, Japan’s illustrious film critic, who was awarded an honorary degree from the College during a two-week residency.

who are capable of embarking on college-level work at the age of 15 or 16. The Gates grant acknowledges the potential for applying the pedagogical principles of these three institutions on a wider scale.

With the grant support, BHSEC and UPCS are now in a position to provide technical assistance and professional development services to colleges and universities eager to participate in the early-college initiative.

The Gates Foundation generously supported the creation of BHSEC, which has been in existence since fall 2001 and has been in the vanguard of the burgeoning early-college movement.

Two stunning exhibitions of Chinese calligraphy were mounted in Bertelsmann Campus Center. Heart Prints, curated by Patricia Karetzky, Bard’s Oskar Munsterberg Lecturer in Art History, presented works by nine contemporary Chinese calligraphers. Zhang O’s C print photographs depicted cursive swirls of long, black hair mimicking Chinese characters on the pale necks and shoulders of models. Another highlight was Zhao Suikang’s intricately overlaid texts in English, Chinese, and Arabic, which dissolve into beautifully transparent abstract designs. The smaller show, curated by Feng Liu CCS ’02, displayed the large, complexly interfolded, single characters created digitially by Diana Xing ’03; several exquisite joinings of brushed writing and monotype media, including a delicately rendered crane fly—looking remarkably like the character for itself—

by Jin Xu ’98; and works by a number of current students.

Gamelan dancers

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Oregon, a Grammy-nominated acoustic jazz ensemble that for 30 years has inspired audiences at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, and jazz clubs and festivals throughout the world, performed at Olin Hall on October 16. Oregon musicians include Ralph Towner, Paul McCandless, Glen Moore, and Mark Walker.

On October 18, Aaron Fox, of Columbia University, read from his book on Texas working-class culture, Real Country, as part of the Anthropology Program’s lecture series History and the Performance of Culture.

The Center for Curatorial Studies hosted a conversation with Swedish curator and critic Maria Lind on October 19.

Lind has been director of the Munich Kunstverein since 2002, and previously served as curator at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm.

An example from the Mandelbrot Set

Chaos Comes to Bard A new math course currently in development promises chaos, and more, for fall 2005. As its working title suggests, Introduction to Chaos, Fractals, and Dynamical Systems is about just that. The mere mention of the words “chaos” and “fractal” will attract the attention of students from a broad range of concentrations, according to Jeff Suzuki, course designer and visiting assistant professor of mathematics. “These terms and their now-familiar graphic designs have worked their way into popular culture,” says Suzuki. “They’re hot topics that we hear about and see often, but don’t know very much about.”

While fractals are a rich source of design elements, for everything from quilts to album covers, the course will focus on the underlying beauty of their mathematics. “Mathematicians come up with these ideas in pure math, using complex numbers, yet later real-world applications often result from the theoretical ‘toys’ we play around with,” says Suzuki. The Mandelbrot Set is just such a set of complex numbers.

“There’s nothing wrong with appreciating the elegant beauty of these designs,” says Suzuki, “but when you add a mathematical understanding, you can look not only at what is created, but how.

From there, you can create new objects that have the same sort of depth, beauty, and interest as the Mandelbrot Set and others.

Ultimately, what mathematics is about is finding and elaborating patterns. To that extent, mathematics is the most human of activities, and discovering and inventing patterns is probably the quintessential human activity.”

The Human Rights Project presented “Breakdown in the Gray Room: The Images from Abu Ghraib,” an October 19 discussion by writer David Levi Strauss, who teaches at the Center for Curatorial Studies and the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts.

Congressman Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) and New York State Assembly members Kevin Cahill (D), Patrick Manning (R), and Joel Miller (R) participated in an October 20 panel discussion on 2004 election issues, titled “Why I’m a Democrat/Why I’m a Republican.”

This fall’s first John Ashbery Poetry Series reading featured Bard professors Mary Caponegro and Robert Kelly. The event was held in the Weis Cinema of the Bertelsmann Campus Center on October 21.

Oregon-based filmmaker Matt McCormick presented “From Tugboats to Polar Bears,” a program of experimental documentaries and other short films, on October 21.

McCormick’s films have been featured in international film festivals and on TV’s Sundance Channel.

The inaugural exhibit of the Dr. Edith Neumann Collection of paintings and drawings was on view at The Levy Economics Institute of Bard College over Family Weekend, October 22–24.

“Across Musical Cultures,” a program featuring Bard music faculty, the Bard Chamber Singers, and the Da Capo Chamber Players, celebrated the opening of The Center for Film, Electronic Arts, and Music in the Milton and Sally Avery Arts Center on October 22.

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Paul LaFarge

Author of “Distinction” Wins Bard Fiction Prize Novelist Paul LaFarge has been selected to receive the annual Bard Fiction Prize, which consists of a $30,000 cash award and appointment as writer in residence at the College for one semester. LaFarge was awarded the prize on the merits of his second novel, Haussmann, or the Distinction, published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in 2001 and chosen as a New York Times Notable Book for that year.

The novel’s protagonist is the ambitious and mysterious Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann, the architect of

BGC Celebrates New England More than a hundred rarely seen artifacts spanning four centuries of New England history are on display this spring at the Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design, and Culture. The traveling exhibition Cherished Possessions: A New England Legacy draws from the collections of the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, whose holdings include 35 historic house museums and some of the most notable examples of American fine and decorative arts in the United States.

These collections are being seen outside of New England for the first time in 95 years.

The objects in the exhibition have been selected for the stories they tell, as much as for their artistry. Related documents, photographs, and genealogical evidence help place the artifacts in the context of their history of use and manufacture. The “cherished possessions” include paintings, furniture, needlework, ceramics, costumes, textiles, and photographs—the daily objects of ordinary people.

Highlights include a rare, japanned high chest from 1735; a dress that belonged to Deborah Sampson, who fought in the American Revolution dressed as a man; and an early

modern Paris, who schemes with a shady demolition expert while secretly consorting with the man’s adopted daughter. Writes the novelist and critic Colson Whitehead, “Haussmann designed cities; LaFarge designs worlds— splendid, elegant edifices built on the rubble of our dreams and history.”

LaFarge, who has a B.A. in comparative literature, is also the author of The Artist of the Missing, which won the 1999 California Book Award for First Fiction, and a translation of The Facts of Winter, by Paul Poissel. While in residence at Bard, he plans to work on Luminous Airplanes, a two-part project comprising a novel and a nonlinear electronic fiction. He will also give a public reading and hold a weekly colloquium for 15 students during the spring 2005 semester.

Established in 2001, the Bard Fiction Prize is awarded annually to an emerging writer who is an American citizen 39 years or younger at the time of application. The selection committee consists of three professors in the Division of Languages and Literature, Mary Caponegro, Robert Kelly, and Bradford Morrow. Previous recipients have been Nathan Englander (2001), Emily Barton (2002), and Monique Truong (2003).

photograph of India by Ogden Codman, who coauthored The Decoration of Houses with novelist Edith Wharton.

The exhibition runs from March 10 through June 5. The Bard Graduate Center will offer a variety of related programs, including lectures, panels, and walking tours. For more information, see the BGC website at www.bgc.bard.edu, call 212-501-3011, or e-mail programs@bgc.bard.edu. The BGC is located at 18 West 86th Street, New York City.

Sewing kit. England, 1765–90. Gift of Reginald Allen.

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Among the festivities marking the reopening of the Avery Arts Center was an October 23 panel discussion, “Adventures in the Film Trade,” featuring Bard alumni/ae David Avallone ’87, Erica Beeney ’96, Jim Browne ’86, and Amy Herzog ’94.

Marjorie Senechal of Smith College speaks on “Quasicrystals and Golden Rhombohedra” at Discrete Mathematics Day. More than 50 graduate and undergraduate students and leading mathematicians from throughout the

A breakfast discussion on the presidential election was held on October 24 at the Bertelsmann Campus Center.

Featured speakers included Leon Botstein, president of the College; Jonathan Becker, associate professor of political studies and dean of international studies; Ian Buruma, Henry R. Luce Professor of Human Rights and Journalism; Dick Polman, political reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer; and Jean Krasno, visiting assistant professor, Bard Globalization and International Affairs Program.

Northeast attended the October 9 conference, which was sponsored by Bard and the National Security Agency. The event was a model for serious mathematical inquiry and set the stage for future collaborations. Lauren Rose, associate professor of mathematics and director of Bard’s Mathematics Program, organized the event.

MAT Gets $1 Million Grant Last October, Bard’s Master of Arts in Teaching Program (MAT) received a $1 million grant from the Carroll and Milton Petrie Foundation. The grant, to be paid over three years, will be used to partner with selected New York City schools on innovative mentoring and educational projects. It will also support $25,000 fellowships for MAT students who commit to teaching in New York City public schools.

MAT Director Ric Campbell is thrilled that the grant both validates the program’s mission to effect broad school reform and enables it to build upon research projects already under way with teachers from six Hudson Valley school districts. A veteran of 23 years of teaching, many in New York City, Campbell is confident that similar initiatives will make a difference in highneeds urban schools.

“The grant will help provide time for the teachers and our students to work together as educators and intellectuals,” says Campbell. “The goal is to move students toward the kind of critical thinking that happens in college. We look at what colleges do, then at how we can bring that to a high school level. It’s not that we want to teach quantum mechanics to kids, but we should teach science in a way that will let us teach quantum mechanics later on. ” Campbell and his staff selected two MAT students, Carole Anne Moench ’00 and Jeanine Tegano, as the first Petrie Fellows, on the basis of their scholarship, commitment, and leadership. In the future, applications for the fellowships will be part of the admission process.

The Africana Studies Program sponsored an October 25 discussion with Conrad K. Harper on the legal, political, and racial ramifications of the seminal Supreme Court case, Brown v. Board of Education. Harper has worked at the NAACP Legal and Educational Defense Fund and as legal adviser to the U.S. Department of State.

The Bard College debate team battled Marist College over politics at the Olin Language Center on October 25.

The Bard team negated the resolution: George W. Bush deserves four more years as the president. Marist affirmed the resolution.

On October 26, Russian-born conceptual artist Alex Melamid, whose work can be found in collections at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, and Museum of Modern Art, presented “The Gospel According to Alex,” his wry look at art as religion, at Bard Chapel.

As part of its conversation series, the Center for Curatorial Studies sponsored an informal discussion with Brazilian curator Ivo Mesquita on October 26.

Robert Martin and Friends, a chamber concert presented by the Bard College Conservatory of Music on October 27, featured cellist and Conservatory director Martin, violinist Sharon Roffman, and pianist Melvin Chen, associate director of the Conservatory. The group performed works by Mozart, Copland, and Brahms.

On October 28, the John Ashbery Poetry Series featured readings by Robert N. Casper and Christian Hawkey, poets and founding editors of the international poetry journal jubilat.

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An Honorary Degree for Donald Richie Bard College celebrated the work of Donald Richie, awarding him an honorary degree of doctor of fine arts. Richie is an internationally renowned writer on, and scholar of, Japanese film. The increasing popularity of Asian cinema in the United States arguably could derive from Richie’s postwar introduction of Japanese film to American audiences.

The October 30, 2004, degree ceremony was surrounded by a variety of events—including film screenings and lectures—in the new Center for Film, Electronic Arts, and Music in the Milton and Sally Avery Arts Center. Richie served a two-week residency at Bard that featured a screening of several of his own short films; his keynote address during the New York Conference on Asian Studies, held at Bard; discussions of films made by Yasujiro Ozu and Teinosuke Kinugasa; and a showing of the documentary Sneaking In: Donald Richie’s Life in Film (2002). Richie is the author of some thirty books, including The Films of Akira Kurosawa; A Hundred Years of Japanese Film; and his most

Language Center Gets State-of-the-Art Update In the past year, Bard’s Center for Foreign Languages and Cultures (CFLC) has grown into a cutting-edge facility with more than 20 multimedia workstations, classroom and tutorial spaces, a development room, and a lounge. Located in the F. W. Olin Language Center, CFLC also boasts selfstudy programs in 13 languages, an extensive database of foreign-language films, and international satellite feeds.

“Going digital was a big jump,” says Stephanie Kufner, academic director of CFLC and visiting assistant professor of German. “We now have the ability for about fifty people to access the same program simultaneously, and this has already had an impact on how we teach and learn languages.” Foreign language study is not mandatory at Bard, but 400 to 500 students, or about a third of undergraduates, voluntarily enroll in language courses. The new resources, says Kufner, also provide exciting opportunities for research across disciplines.

Students in the Political Studies Program, for example, can compare coverage of news events with one-click access to dozens of stations around the world, including Aljazeera.

Film students have at their fingertips hundreds of foreignlanguage movies, documentaries, and soap operas. A sound program that lets users visually compare wave files of their own phrasing with those of native speakers is a gold mine for linguists.

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recent, The Japan Journals, comprising his private journals from 1947 to 2004.

Donald Richie (center) at his honorary degree ceremony, with Leon Botstein (left) and John Pruitt (right)

Undergraduates actively contribute to the Center, as tutors and as program designers. One student developed a program that makes it possible to access an opera libretto, and click on a phrase to hear the corresponding music.

Another click provides a translation.

For more information on CFLC resources and projects, visit inside.bard.edu/blrc.

Stephanie Kufner, academic director of the Center for Foreign Languages and Cultures, with students

New Wings for Simon’s Rock

NOVEMBER

Simon’s Rock College of Bard celebrated the opening of its new Daniel Arts Center with a gala weekend of concerts. With more than 50,000 square feet, the facility (Ann Beha Architects) bolsters the school’s programs in theater, dance, music, and visual arts.

The building is named in honor of Jeannette Snead Daniel, the grandmother of Emily H. Fisher. Fisher is chairman of the Board of Overseers of Simon’s Rock College and second vice chair of the Board of Trustees of Bard College.

The new Center consists of two wings, one devoted to the

A reading and reception was held on November 1 at Manor House to celebrate the publication of John Ashbery’s new book, Selected Prose (see Books by Bardians).

performing arts and the other to the visual arts. The performing arts wing comprises the 350-seat McConnell Mainstage proscenium theater; 100-seat Liebowitz Studio Theater; Susan and Mark Beckerman Dance Studio; and rehearsal, classroom, greenroom, and dressing room spaces. The visual arts wing contains studios for painting, drawing, printmaking, photography, and electronic arts. It also has production and editing studios; darkrooms for black-and-white and color film; a film-processing room; tape and slide libraries; a computer laboratory; faculty offices; and classrooms, including one intended for distance learning projects.

A separate shop building, also part of the Center, contains 3-D design, sculpture, and ceramics studios; a wood/metal assembly shop; a welding shop; a sculpture terrace; additional faculty offices; and space for set design and construction.

Pianist Peter Serkin performed during the Daniel Arts Center’s opening gala. The American Symphony Orchestra and a cast of singers, under the baton of Bard President Leon Botstein, performed Haydn’s opera L’Infedelta delusa. Battleworks Dance Company was also featured in the festivities.

The Bard Music Festival celebrated composer Dmitrii Shostakovich and his work in a series of concerts and panel discussions over the weekend of November 5–7. Featured artists included the Emerson String Quartet, Shanghai String Quartet, American Symphony Orchestra, flutist Paula Robison, and mezzo-soprano Janice Meyerson.

The Human Rights Project sponsored an election-eve talk

by Roger Berkowitz, “Habeas Corpus and the Quest for Justice.” Berkowitz, a research fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, is author of the forthcoming The Gift of Science: Leibniz and the Foundation of Modern Law, as well as numerous articles on law, philosophy, and politics.

Andrew Revkin, environment reporter for the New York Times and author of The Burning Season: The Murder of Chico Mendes and the Fight for the Amazon Rain Forest, discussed human rights and the environment at Bertelsmann Campus Center on November 9. The open forum on the legacy of Mendes, which was sponsored by the Bard Center for Environmental Policy, also featured environmentalist Stephan Schwartzman and Larry Cox of the Ford Foundation’s Human Rights Unit.

The Da Capo Chamber Players performed at Olin Hall on November 10, presenting a preview of their Moscow Autumn Festival program. The program included the world premiere of Oracle by Chinary Ung and works by Dmitri Capyrin, Dmitri Riabtsev, Kirill Umansky, and Joan Tower, Asher B. Edelman Professor in the Arts.

The Campus Center was the setting for the November 10 panel discussion, “After the Election: Reactions and Responses.” Participants included Leon Botstein, president of Bard; Jonathan Becker, dean of international studies and associate professor of political studies; Amy Ansell, associate professor of sociology; Elaine Thomas, assistant professor of political studies; and alumna Emma Kreyche ’02, who works for the Rural Migrant Ministry.

Daniel Arts Center at Simon’s Rock College of Bard

Jonathan Schell, the peace and disarmament correspondent for The Nation, spoke about “American Foreign Policy after the Election” at Bard Hall in New York City on November 11.

The talk was part of the Bard Globalization and International Affairs Program fall lecture series.

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Sculptor Roger Phillips ’53 stands in front of Three Discs in a Rectangle, a work he donated to Bard

Be a Mentor Think back to when you were a senior, considering what you were going to do after graduation . . .

Remember those days a year or two after you left Bard, when you were faced with that critical career decision. How many times since then have you made an important career change? Wouldn’t it have been helpful to talk to a Bardian who had been there before?

You can be that resource person for a current Bard student, a recent graduate, or an alumnus/a considering a career change.

To become a mentor, go to www.collegecentral.com/bard/alum.cfm. Click on Mentoring Network and then on Join Our Mentoring Network. Type in “mentor” as your password, then follow the prompts. You will create your own unique access ID and password. If you have any questions, please call April Kinser in the Career Development Office at 845-758-7177 or e-mail her at kinser@bard.edu.

Sixteen alumni/ae mentors currently working in arts-related professions conducted informational interviews with students from the Classes of ’04, ’05, and ’06. The November 13 event took place at Bard Hall in New York City and was cosponsored by the Office of Career Development and the Bard–St. Stephen’s Alumni/ae Association Career Networking Committee.

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(Top left) Cree Nevins ’95; (bottom left) Chad Kleitsch ’91 mentor undergraduates

Raptors Finish Strong Season The Bard Raptors were flying high last semester, as the men’s and women’s fall teams concluded their association with the Hudson Valley Athletic Conference (HVAC) at the top of their game, and men’s basketball started out strong.

Tennis The women’s team was HVWAC champion in regular and tournament play. Cross-country Both men’s and women’s teams were HVAC champions. Soccer The men’s team was HVMAC champion in regular season and tournament play. The women’s team finished third in regular play and lost in the semifinals of tournament play. Volleyball The women’s team finished third in regular and tournament play.

Scott Swere was named HVMAC soccer coach of the year, and Fred Pavlich was named cross-country coach of the year for both the HVMAC and HVWAC. Beginning with the 2005–2006 academic year, Bard will play in the North Eastern Athletic Conference, which consists of 12 Division III colleges from New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland.

Men’s basketball opened its exhibition season with cocaptain Adam Turner ’06 back on the roster again, after a serious accident in a game with Vassar sidelined him last winter. Turner, of New York City, led first-game scoring with 38 points, followed by Josef Woldense ’06, of Asmara, Eritrea, with 30 points. The 11 hoopsters (four first-year students, seven juniors) ranged in height from 5’11 to 6’8”. Chris Wood, head men’s basketball coach, nominated Turner, Woldense, and cocaptain Collin Orcutt ’06 to the National Association of Basketball Coaches Academic Honor Roll. Nominees must be juniors or seniors and have a GPA above 3.2.

For sports schedules, results, news, and photos visit www.bard.edu/athletics.

The John Ashbery Poetry Series presented a reading by Alice Notley on November 11 at Weis Cinema.

William Anthony, described by the New York Times as “a sophisticated visual comedian who plays the fool to hilarious and often profound effect,” performed at the College on November 11.

David Leighton was the guest conductor for a concert by the Woodstock Chamber Orchestra on November 12 at Olin Hall. The program included the premiere of a work for jazz combo and orchestra by Loren Lentz, as well as pieces by Carl Maria von Weber and Beethoven.

“Altruism in World Religions,” a conference sponsored by the Institute of Advanced Theology, was held November 16–18 at the Bertelsmann Campus Center. Bruce Chilton, the Institute’s executive director, and Jacob Neusner, Senior Fellow and Research Professor of Theology, chaired the event.

The Bard College Conservatory of Music presented a lecture/recital by pianist and psychiatrist Richard Kogan, titled “Schumann: Manic Depression and the Creative Process,” on November 17 at Olin Hall.

During a November 18 event sponsored by the Human Rights Project, British journalist David Rose, author of Guantánamo: The War on Human Rights, discussed the situation at Guantánamo Bay Camp Delta prison.

The John Ashbery Poetry Series presented readings by Rachel Levitsky and Linh Dinh on November 18 at the Bertlesmann Campus Center. Ann Lauterbach, David and Ruth Schwab Professor of Languages and Literature, introduced the speakers.

On November 22, Nobel Prize–nominee Ismail Kadare, distinguished visiting writer-in-residence at Bard, talked about “Ancient Tragedy and Contemporary Literature.” The lecture by the Albanian-born novelist was part of Norman Manea’s course, Contemporary Masters: Terror and Beauty.

Adam Turner ’06, cocaptain of the men’s basketball team, was named to the D III News Preseason All-American Honorable Mention list.

Turner, a 6’6” swing forward, has become the fourth player in Bard’s basketball history to score more than 1,000 points. Turner’s concentration is literature and creative writing; off court he does two sports-related shows on Bard radio station WXBC and works in the Admission Office.

Also on November 22, Christopher H. Gibbs, James H. Ottaway Jr. Professor of Music, lectured on “Mozart’s Final Reconciliation: The Magic Flute and the Enlightenment” as part of the First-Year Seminar Series. “Equiano and the Transatlantic Slave Trade” was the subject of the November 29 lecture by Myra Young Armstead, professor of history.

On November 30, James M. Gentile, Kenneth G. Herrick Professor of Biology at Hope College, discussed parasiteassociated cancers as part of the Frontiers in Science Lecture Series.

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Gallery Owner, Alumnus Join Bard Board The head of a renowned art gallery and an alumnus who is a human rights scholar have been elected to Bard’s Board of Trustees.

Roland J. Augustine is co-owner of Luhring Augustine Gallery, which he and Lawrence Luhring founded in Manhattan in 1985. The gallery represents an international group of contemporary artists whose work includes painting, drawing, sculpture, video, and photography. Augustine is also president of Printed Matter, Inc., the leading U.S. distributor of artists’ publications. He will continue in his capacity as cochair of the Advisory Council of the Center for Curatorial Studies.

Augustine lives in Pine Plains, New York, and holds a B.S. in business administration from Georgetown University.

Peter H. Maguire ’88 is the author of Facing Death in Cambodia, to be published by Columbia University Press (see Books by Bardians), and Law and War: An American Story (2001). Each book is the result of 10 years of research and writing. For Facing Death, Maguire worked from 1994 to 2003, often on-site in Phnom Penh, with various organizations recovering documentary evidence of Khmer Rouge war crimes.

In the Fall 2001 Bardian, Thomas Keenan (director of the Human Rights Project and associate professor of comparative literature at Bard) described Law and War as “a pioneering account of the international and U.S. war crimes trials in Nuremberg after World War II.” Maguire lives in New York City and Hawaii. He earned three degrees from Columbia University: a master of arts and a Ph.D. in American history and a master of philosophy. At Bard he received the Marc Bloch Prize for the best Senior Project in the Historical Studies Program and the Reamer Kline Award, given to students who “best perpetuate the high ideals, devotion, and energetic involvement in the life and work of the College exemplified by Dr. Kline during his 14 years as president of Bard.” Maguire returned to Bard in 1996 to teach Military History: The Law and Theory of War, and in 1998 to organize and participate in the conference “Accounting for Atrocities.”

With the addition of Augustine and Maguire, the Bard Board of Trustees consists of 32 members, who are listed on the inside back page of this publication.

Roland J. Augustine (above) and Peter H. Maguire ’88 (below)

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Bard Alumni/ae Endow a Senior Project Prize

DECEMBER

The Classes of 2003 and 2004 have decided to give back to the Bard community by endowing the Classes of 2003/2004 Senior Project Prize. The prize will be given annually to assist a student with the expenses associated with researching, writing, or performing a Senior Project in any discipline.

The prize is the result of two years of fund-raising that included the creation of the Old Gym III CD, a bake sale and auction at Spring Fling, gift basket sales, a Family Weekend apple-batting competition, collaborations in hosting events, and generous donations from parents of Bard students.

The establishment of the Classes of 2003/2004 Senior Project Prize comes at an important threshold in American politics and supports globally diverse, challenging academic work.

Although not limited to explicitly political Senior Projects, the prize is designed to uphold academic integrity and reflect Bard’s encouragement of rigorous scholarship.

The Classes of 2003 and 2004 thank Bard’s student activities staff; the Offices of the Dean of Students and the Dean of the College; and Debra Pemstein, vice president for development and alumni/ae affairs, for their support in establishing the prize.

The Africana Studies Program sponsored a reading by Ghanian novelist, playwright, and poet Ama Ata Aidoo on December 1. Aidoo was introduced by Chinua Achebe, Charles P. Stevenson Jr. Professor of Languages and Literature.

—Caroline Muglia ’04

“Democracy in the Middle East and Elsewhere—Is it the Right American Policy?” was the subject of a talk by Adrian Karatnycky, senior scholar at Freedom House, and Omar Encarnación, associate professor of political studies at Bard College, on December 2 at Bard Hall in New York City. The discussion concluded the Bard Globalization and International Affairs Program’s fall lecture series.

The Art History Program sponsored a December 2 talk by visiting scholars in residence Natalie Lettner, curator at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, and Werner Hanak, curator at the Jewish Museum, Vienna.

Folk singer and fiddle player Tracy Grammer, who has been called “a brilliant artist” by Joan Baez, performed at the Down the Road Café in Bertelsmann Campus Center on December 2.

In the Wings Productions presented two performances of Santa Meets the Ice Dragon at The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts on December 4 and 5, before starting its holiday run at New York City’s Beacon Theater. The musical Christmas tale featured Bob McGrath (Bob from Sesame Street) as the narrator, a company of dancers, and the American Symphony Orchestra.

On December 5 at Olin Hall, the Colorado Quartet, artists in residence at Bard, performed the first half of the cycle of Bartók string quartets. The following week, the group completed the cycle.

Orhan Pamuk (far left) after the October 5 lecture “Melancholy Tristesse: Landscape of Istanbul”

From December 7 through December 15, the Music Program presented five concerts that showcased student performers and composers. The programs included performances by the College Electro-Acoustic Ensemble; the Bard College Chamber Singers and Community Chorus, who sang works by Stravinsky and Haydn; the Bard College Big Band, which celebrated modern jazz composers such as Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, and Miles Davis; and the Bard College Orchestra, which played works by Mendelssohn and Schubert. The Da Capo Chamber Players and the Colorado Quintet presented an evening of new works by Bard composers

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CLASSNOTES

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

Mona Pine Monroe is enjoying her retirement after a lifetime of

instituting a system of class correspondents who will actively seek out

working in the New York City schools. She is a part-time volunteer

information for Class Notes. Anyone interested in serving as a class

at the River East School, a public, experimental K–6 grade school,

correspondent should contact the alumni/ae office. Alumni/ae with

where she teaches writing and how to use computers in writing.

information for the Bardian should contact their class correspondent

She also takes advantage now of all the benefits of living in

or Robyn Carliss ’02 at the alumni/ae office, 845-758-7089.

Manhattan, for which she had little time before.

Joyce Lasky Reed is the president of the Fabergé Arts Foundation of Washington, D.C., and St. Petersburg, Russia. In her capacity with

’35, ’40, and ’45 70th, 65th, and 60th Reunions: May 20–22, 2005

the Foundation, which supports architectural restorations in St. Petersburg, she travels frequently to Russia and manages to visit with her children, who live in Paris and Geneva. Fabergé Flowers, a

Class contacts: Richard Koch ’40, 516-599-3489 book edited by Joyce and published by Harry Abrams, was pubBenedict Seidman ’40, 914-633-7072 lished this fall.

Arnold Davis ’44, 914-472-3256 Staff contact: Stella Wayne, 845-758-7407 or wayne@bard.edu

’53

’46

Class correspondent: Kit Ellenbogen ’52, max4794@netzero.net

Lloyd Marcus’s elder son, David L. Marcus, a journalist and shared Pulitzer Prize winner, had a book published by Houghton Mifflin

Herbert Severtsen lives in Spokane, Washington, with his wife,

in January 2005. What It Takes to Pull Me Through tells the true

who teaches nursing at the University of Washington. Herb plays

story of four American teenagers and their families who are

the organ at St. John’s Episcopal Church, where he also conducts

trapped in self-destructive pathologies, and whose lives are turned

the choir. He plays the piano for Saturday night services as well,

around by a therapeutic boarding school.

and, as at Bard, continues to tune pianos. The Severtsens have five children, two of whom were adopted, and all of whom are

’50

flourishing.

55th Reunion: May 20–22, 2005 Sherman Yellen has returned to New York after years in Los Class contacts: John Deimel, 847-446-8425 Angeles, California, and remains as productive as ever. A new Naomi Fox Rothfield, 860-679-3604 or rothfield@nso.uchc.edu musical, Josephine Tonight, about the early career of Josephine Janet Zimmerman Segal, 914-763-8151, exts. 2589 or 2227, Baker, for which Sherman has written the lyrics and the book, is or 914-834-4017, or jsegal@fourwindshospital.com scheduled to open in London in 2005. The show had a successful Staff contact: Stella Wayne, 845-758-7407 or wayne@bard.edu workshop production as well as a concert version produced in

’51 Class correspondent: Kit Ellenbogen ’52, max4794@netzero.net Carol (Sam) Summers has been living in Santa Cruz, California, for

Chicago, Illinois, this year. Sherman has also written a new play, December Fools, which is in development by the Abingdon Theatre Company in New York City. Sherman and his wife, Joan Yellen (Fuhr) ’55, have two sons who, much to their parents’ delight, also live in Manhattan.

some 30 years, where he has continued printmaking and collecting artifacts such as primitive masks, textiles (particularly from India),

’55

and Oriental rugs. He travels to Rajistan, India, each year to lead

50th Reunion: May 20–22, 2005

small groups in experiencing the nature, culture, and arts of the

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

area. Carol is also the proud owner of a well-known B & B in Steven Barbash was invited to the 179th annual exhibition at the Guanajuato, Mexico, named Las Casa de Espiritus Alegres. In addiNational Academy of Design in New York City and awarded the tion, he has produced a book on 20th-century Indian textiles and Academy’s Ralph Fabri Prize for Graphics. been honored by the Central States Printmaking Society for his life’s work in printmaking.

’56

’52

Miriam Berger delivered the keynote speech “Dance Education in the 21st Century” at the Dance Education Conference in Tel Aviv,

Class correspondent: sponsored by the Dance Library of Israel, in May 2004. More than Kit Ellenbogen ’52, max4794@netzero.net 450 dance professionals from throughout Israel attended the conference. She also conducted four days of dance therapy workshops

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in Tel Aviv. In January, Dr. Berger spent a week in Athens, training dance therapists for the Greek Association of Dance Therapy. In addition to teaching at New York University, she is on the faculty at Pratt Institute and in the Dance Division of the 92nd Street Y in New York City.

’59 Frank E. Robinson has joined the Masonic Retirement Community.

’60 45th Reunion (Classes of 1959–61): May 20–22, 2005 Class contacts: Barbara Grossman Flanagan ’60, 212-741-0577 or bwifl@earthlink.net Gary Goldberg ’61, 845-368-2900 or garyg@garygoldberg.com

Louise Gruner Gans ’55 The Honorable Louise Gruner Gans retired in December 2003 as

Herman Tietjen ’60, 845-876-7066

an acting justice of the New York State Supreme Court, Civil

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

Branch, and went right on working, as a judicial hearing officer in Family Court, Kings County (Brooklyn).

’63

Before ascending to the bench, Gans worked for 20 years as

Dr. George D. Rose, a member of the Thomas C. Jenkins

a legal services lawyer. A highlight was her victory in the United

Department of Biophysics at Johns Hopkins University, has been

States Supreme Court, where she argued the case of Smith v.

named to a Krieger-Eisenhower Professorship (see page 4).

O.F.F.E.R. (1977), on behalf of parents of children in foster care.

’65

Court of the City of New York in 1987 and included service on

40th Reunion: May 20–22, 2005

criminal court before promotion to the Supreme Court. For 16

Gans’s judicial career began with her election to the Civil

Class contacts: Russell Allen, 860-664-0260 or revruss@snet.net

years she heard cases and published opinions involving problems

Michael DeWitt, 800-221-7734 (weekdays), 212-255-7572

of private, commercial, or political life, sometimes of constitu-

(evenings), 518-329-0456 (weekends), or dewbro@earthlink.net Charles Hollander, 201-435-5671 or chas956@rcn.com

tional dimension.

In Family Court, she rules on cases no less crucial. Last year

Cynthia Hirsch Levy, wowcynthia@aol.com

she heard extensive testimony in the case of a 17-year-old Haitian

Karen Olah, 212-628-7664

girl whose mother had arranged to smuggle her into the United

Stan Reichel, 973-676-2900 or bannerchem@aol.com

States in hopes of saving her from her father’s killers. Now the

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

girl faced deportation. Judge Gans ruled that it was not in the girl’s best interest to return to Haiti and that she was eligible to

As an international marketing executive, Johannes (John) Costa has

apply for a special juvenile green card. “I was thinking how des-

started and nurtured highly profitable businesses in more than 20

perate these families must be,” Judge Gans told the New York

countries. He is currently president of Costa Consult, Global

Times last spring, remembering her own mother’s heroic efforts

Marketing Management, based in New York and Paris. In addition,

when they were in a German concentration camp.

he has lectured on marketing and new business development in

The two immigrated to New York in 1947, and Gans attended

Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and

Bard on a full scholarship. Law school was not yet on the horizon;

Switzerland, and is an affiliate professor at the Universities of Paris,

she majored in literature, studying with Saul Bellow, Theodore

Marseilles, and Aix. The clinic for handicapped children that he

Weiss, William Humphrey, and Anthony Hecht (see page 70).

built in Cyprus, however, remains his greatest source of pride. John resides in the south of France and in Manhattan with his wife, Karin. His daughter is Kerstin Costa ’94.

Last year Lindy Sutton had photographs in several Cambridge Art

Robert Weissberg, after 34 years of university teaching, has retired

Association shows, the Stebbins Gallery Photography Show

and moved to the Battery Park section of New York City. His book,

(Harvard Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts), the Brush Art

The Limits of Civic Activism (Transactions Publishers), was pub-

Gallery Annual Members Show (Lowell, Massachusetts), and at the

lished in the fall, and his scholarly essays have appeared in Policy

Boskone Science Fiction Convention and the World Science Fiction

Studies Journal and Society. Robert has several other projects in the

Convention, both in Boston.

works, and keeps busy with book reviews as well.

49

Association of Retired People in September 2004 (see article at www.seniorspellingbee.com). She also won first place in the 2004 Oregon competition. She writes that, as a lifelong “word nerd,” these spelling bees have been a great place to meet people with similar interests.

A book of Pablo Picasso’s poetry, edited by Pierre Joris and Jerome Rothenberg, was published in October 2004 by Exact Change Publishers, Cambridge, Massachusetts. The book, Pablo Picasso: The Burial of the Count of Orgaz & Other Poems, employed the expertise

Emily W. Matlin ’73

of 13 contributing translators, one of whom was Robert Kelly, Bard’s

Emily Matlin’s solo medical practice in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania,

Asher B. Edelman Professor of Literature. Joris also published two

has long been a refuge for those suffering from migraines and

books of translations from the German poet Paul Celan this fall—

multiple sclerosis.

The migraine patients, for whom excruciating pain is often

Lightduress, from Green Integer, and Paul Celan: Selections, from the University of California Press.

a part of daily life, may find it unsurprising that the World Health Organization, according to Matlin, lists the affliction as the fourth

’70

most disabling disorder (after quadriplegia, dementia, and active

35th Reunion: May 20–22, 2005

psychosis). It is also estimated that less than half of migraine

Class contact: John Maas, xaxat@stny.rr.com

cases in the United States have been diagnosed and less than a

Peter F. McCabe, 203-625-4868 or peter.f.mccabe@smithbarney.com

fifth of those treated successfully. These shortcomings are gener-

Sara Vass, 212-720-7636 or saravass1@aol.com

ally attributable to physicians’ unfamiliarity with migraine. “Most

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

doctors don’t receive any training or education in the management of migraine,” says Matlin, who graduated from the former

’71

Kansas City (now University of Medicine and Biosciences)

Carla Bolte lives in lower Manhattan and designs books for Viking,

College of Osteopathic Medicine, in Kansas City, Missouri, and

part of the Penguin Group, USA. She guest-lectures on book design

completed an internship and residency in neurology in Detroit. In

at the New York University Center for Publishing, and occasionally

1986 she settled in Harrisburg. Her nonmedical interests include

jumps in the Hudson River for an organized half-mile swim under

gardening, cooking, traveling, and theater.

the auspices of the Manhattan Island Foundation. She is on the Board

Matlin majored in biology at Bard, where she enrolled at age 16 after graduating from Syosset (New York) High School. “Bard

of Governors of the Bard–St. Stephen’s Alumni/ae Association, and always enjoys visiting Bard.

excelled at teaching us to think instead of memorize,” she says.

“That didn’t prepare me for medical school, where they wanted you to memorize, but it has been very helpful to me as a practicing physician. You are presented with a situation, you have a certain amount of knowledge, and you have to think how to solve that problem, how to synthesize information and use it.”

’68 Alvin Rosenbaum, senior visiting scholar at the School of Business and Public Management at George Washington University since 2001, has been engaged in international development projects in Sri Lanka, southern Africa, and other parts of the world. His book, Heritage Development and Cultural Tourism, will be published in late 2005.

’69 Lilja Toban Finzel won third place in the National Senior Spelling Bee sponsored by the Cheyenne, Wyoming, chapter of the American

50

Members of the Bard alumni/ae team for the 2004 Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation New York City Race for the Cure (left to right) Rebecca Granato '99, Judith Arner '68, Michael Maresca '86, Joy Lai '03, Cynthia Hirsch Levy '65, Jennifer Novik '98

’72 Coralie Moorhead (Gram) is a music and science teacher at the Shipley School in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. She has been living and teaching in the Main Line area for 22 years, and was recently awarded the Margaret Bailey Speer Distinguished Teacher Award from the Shipley School. In 1989, Coralie married Scott Moorhead, a computer analyst who works in Philadelphia. They have one daughter, Greta, age 13.

’73

Donna Lampert (Nussinow) ’79

Kirk Bjornsgaard works as an acquisitions editor for the University

Donna Lampert came to Bard to study art, graduated with a degree

of Oklahoma Press in Norman, Oklahoma, where he recruits

in philosophy, and went on to become one of the nation’s leading

authors for regional books concerning Oklahoma’s past, present,

experts in communications law. It wasn’t a predictable path, she

and future.

says, but it has been a satisfying and surprisingly creative one.

’75

problem,” says Lampert, founder of Lampert & O’Connor, a

“In tax or real estate law, you can look up the answer to a

30th Reunion: May 20–22, 2005

Washington, D.C. firm. “In communications, we get the opportu-

Class contacts: Jamie Callan, jamiecatcallan@aol.com

nity to create law and a framework for policy that will be workable

Michael Glass, 206-322-7868 (home), 206-324-9942 (cell), or

long-range.” As an example, she cites Voice-over Internet

glass.michael@comcast.net

Protocol, the next big thing, which lets users make calls over

Chris Hillegass, 406-222-7563 or 406-222-5755

broadband connections. Questions abound. “Who,” she asks, “is

Amy Natkins Lipton, 203-625-8695 or amylipton123@aol.com

accountable? How do we pay?” For clients like AOL, she has also

Lisa Newmann (Aronson), 413-274-0022 or lnewmann@bcn.net

tackled such issues as digital-rights management, free speech, and

Lisa Pence, lisa.pence@comcast.net

the balance between privacy and security.

Joan Schaffer, 301-320-2728 or dbear17@aol.com

Lampert was in the right place at the right time. After earn-

Ken Stern, 212-891-1444 or sternk@ajc.org

ing a J.D. degree from the University of California, Los Angeles,

Jamie Treanor, 718-855-8073

she rejected an offer from a big law firm, in favor of working with

Ron Wilson, 714-544-0326 or rwilson@uci.edu

public interest groups on communication policy. It was 1982, and

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

the field was about to explode, due to emerging cable, satellite, and telecommunications technologies. Lampert went on to positions

Sally Haig (Erickson) is pursuing her painting career. She shows and

at Duke University, the FCC, and a Boston-based law firm before

sells her paintings at local outdoor art shows and had a one-person

striking out on her own seven years ago. Now, with her firm well

show at the Museum on Main Street in Pleasanton, California, in

established and her two children in college (including a daughter

December 2004.

at Bard), she is looking ahead to her next challenge: starting a non-

Bonnie Solomon has moved to St. Augustine, Florida, with her 6-

profit to provide life skills to 18- to 25-year olds.

year-old son, Alex. She would love to hear from her classmates and looks forward to seeing everyone at this year’s reunion.

Pamela Richards Villars works as counseling manager for the

dance schools, and events. She teaches modern dance locally and

American Cancer Society’s Quitline program in Austin, Texas. She

dance history at a performing arts high school. She writes, “The

has a 16-year-old daughter, Shae, who is a much more talented actress

postmodern movement in dance was at its height while I was at

than her mother was. Pamela is happy to host visitors to Austin.

Bard. It is the Bard experience I take with me when I shoot and when I teach dance.”

’76 Class correspondent: Michele Petruzzelli, bardcollege76@yahoo.com

Roy Herrmann’s work with the United Nations has taken him to Nzerekore, Guinea, among other places. In October 2004 he wrote, “I’m stuck in Monrovia, Liberia. Couldn’t fly out to Abidjan [Ivory

Deborah Bornstein Gichan lives in Hunterdon County, New Jersey,

Coast] today, as planned, because the UN placed security restric-

with her husband, Greg, and their two sets of twins. For her 50th

tions on travel there in anticipation of domestic disturbances tied to

birthday, she took a group of friends indoor rock climbing and then

the demobilization of combatants that is to begin. Hope to be out of

had a feast back at her farmhouse. Her business, The Farm Studio,

here before the next reunion.”

which she started with the intent of photographing families and children on her property, has since grown to include local schools, 51

because I believe that my best years are yet to come, if only I can survive Zachary’s teenage years!” She has just become class correspondent for the class of 1976, and would love to hear the latest news from classmates at bardcollege76@yahoo.com.

Steve Pouchie, a player of Latin jazz and a music teacher at Walton High School in the Bronx, was one of 10 winners of the third annual New York Post Liberty Medals. At a reception on October 7, 2004, he was awarded the Educator Medal for his work with high school students. Mayor Michael Bloomberg, New York Post publisher Lachlan Murdoch, Governor George Pataki, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, and TV talk show host Regis

B. Alex Henderson ’81 Alex Henderson moves in a high-powered world. After concentrating in physics and applied math at Bard, he received an

Philbin were all on hand for the festivities. Steve was also recognized as the producer of a music cable show titled Latin Jazz—Alive n’ Kickin’ and as the founder of the LatinJazzAlive.org website.

Grant Harper Reid ’76 nominated Steve for the medal.

M.B.A. from Vanderbilt University. Today he works for Smith Barney Citigroup as a Wall Street research analyst, with particular

Grant Harper Reid was Rolling Out’s 2004 national Poet Tree con-

expertise in estimating the earnings momentum and strategic

test winner.

positions of technology companies.

Henderson transmits that information to approximately 1,500 clients, via telephone (several hundred calls a week), paper (5,000 pages of research per year), and face-to-face visits. “I spend an enormous amount of time on the road,” Henderson notes.

“Asia. Europe. U.S. cities. I don’t feel the tensions on a day-to-day basis. But this is a very competitive industry. You’re making decisions that can move a stock and millions of dollars. You need a broad base of information plus intimate knowledge of details. I spend a lot of time thinking about how companies fit into their competitive environment.”

He also stays apprised of news events, which he views as

Shelley Weinstock moved with her husband and two children, in August 2004, from New Jersey to Malibu, California. Although a biochemist by training, Shelley stopped teaching a few years ago to be home with her kids. She volunteers in the schools and in the community; her latest appointment is to the board of Women at Risk in Los Angeles, an organization that helps women with HIV/AIDS. Shelley is also working on a book about the discrimination against women in academia, and is an amateur potter. She writes, “I turned 50 last year, and had a series of wonderful events to mark the birthday. I am blessed with an incredible family and great friends and feel fortunate every day in my life.” Shelley has reconnected with some Bard friends by e-mail, and would love to hear from more at SBW2@aol.com.

“critical drivers.” “In any given day,” he says, “there are announcements that will affect stocks. I have an orientation to strategy. The exciting part is building the information and foreseeing what might happen. Are stocks going to go up? Down? The trick to this business is not that I’m going to be right or wrong, but that I express what we know, what we don’t know, and what the variables and risks are.”

Henderson is not complaining about the stresses of his job.

“If you don’t love what you’re doing,” he says, “you’d better find something else to do.”

Michele Petruzzelli still lives with her husband, Steve, and son, Zachary, in Albany’s Capital District. Zachary has just started 9th grade at an alternative “Lab School” at their local high school.

Michele writes that the program’s structure and expectations are very reminiscent of Bard, and she is thrilled that her son was chosen to attend. She still works as a senior attorney for the New York State Department of Health, where she most enjoys her work on advance directives and pain management. As her 50th birthday approaches, she writes that she is getting her purple dresses and red hats ready: “I’m welcoming 50, rather than dreading it,

52

Steve Pouchie ’76, receiving a New York Post “Liberty Medal” from Cindy Adams as New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg looks on

’77 Thomas Blackburn worked as cowriter and creative consultant for the feature documentary Orwell Rolls in His Grave, which opened in the United States in the summer of 2004 and is now showing

in

Europe.

For

more

information,

visit

www.orwellrollsinhisgrave.com.

’80 25th Reunion: May 20–22, 2005 Class contacts: Connie Bard Fowle, 413-623-0182 or ferncottage36@hotmail.com Matthew Gordon, 860-561-7077 or MGordon@skelleyrottner.com Lisa Foley Stand, 301-386-9817 or lstand@comcast.net Staff contact: Stella Wayne, 845-758-7407 or wayne@bard.edu

Peter Holland ’86 Peter Holland, who concentrated in philosophy at Bard, is an unlikely entrepreneur. This Maryland-based, private practice, public interest attorney has built his career around his desire to

Anne Finkelstein lives in Manhattan with her husband, James

help those who have been wronged. He specializes in consumer

Acevedo, and her daughter, Joanna, 7. She teaches computer graph-

protection law and has handled cases involving real estate fraud,

ics at the Fashion Institute of Technology and Parsons School of

mortgage fraud, and complaints against car dealerships. “I repre-

Design, and runs her own graphic design business, AJ & J Design.

sent David against Goliath,” says Holland.

Holland feels that private practice, public interest law is a

Michael Heller received the 2004 Videofuego Golden Firefighter award for his photograph titled “Ground Zero Dawn, 9/12/01.”

Michael’s photo was in competition with more than 138 entries from 21 countries. For more information, visit www.videofuego.com.

great way for students “who walk into law schools with lots of ideals, but walk out burdened by debt,” to hold on to their integrity while making a living. “My motto is ‘Do well financially by doing good works,’” he says. Holland’s fees are based upon the settle-

’81 Kristin Bundesen has been given a scholarship for Ph.D. research at the University of Nottingham, U.K., where she will examine gender

ments he wins; clients who can’t afford legal representation are not put into a situation where they pay large retainers and hourly rates for services.

But the real joy for Holland comes from making a differ-

and politics in 16th-century England, Scotland, and France.

ence. “Consumer law holds companies accountable,” he says.

Kate Charbonneau contributed a chapter, “Ein amerikanisches

“And it gives me the opportunity to wear a white hat.” Holland is

AIDS-Projekt: Leben durch die Kunst” (“An American AIDS Project:

passionate about his work and the chance to really effect change

Living Through Art”), to the anthology Internationale Perspekitiven

and help individuals. His late wife, Anne Gallagher ’87, was also

der Kunsttherapie (International Perspectives of Art Therapy), pub-

a public interest attorney. She represented children in the foster

lished by Nausner & Nausner (Berlin) in 2003.

care system (see page 66).

“It’s all about trying to increase access to justice,” Holland

Jonathan M. Feldman lives and works in Stockholm, Sweden, where he is finishing up a self-initiated, three-country European Commission project that explores social inclusion of women and

explains. “Too often in our society, people without means cannot afford legal representation. My wife cared about that, and so do I.” Peter Holland is eager to hear from other Bardians. He can be

ethnic groups in the information society. He is also working on a history of the U.S. military-industrial complex, based on oral history

reached at phollandlaw@msn.com.

interviews and archival research.

’86 ’85

Christine LeGoff Kauffmann married Dr. Michael G. Kauffman in

20th Reunion: May 20–22, 2005

Lincoln, Massachusetts. Christine is exploring a career change in

Class contacts: Judith Hess (Miller), 203-387-2280 or

the interior design field and may pursue a full-time academic pro-

rjhess89@optonline.net

gram in Boston, where she and Michael reside.

John Mendelsohn, 508-944-3947 or edodmd@adelphia.net

Heidi Stahl continues to work to realize her lifelong dream of becom-

Josh Royte, 207-846-0643 or bakerroyte@aol.com

ing a therapist. In the fall of 2004, she began an internship

Helene Tieger, 518-943-3448 or shane@francomm.com

at Seattle Mental Health, working as a counselor with children and

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

adults. She is studying at the Leadership Institute of Seattle and hoping to earn a master’s degree in applied behavioral science.

She plans to open a private practice in the Seattle area, focusing on 53

exhibitions in New York City—at Kerrigan Campbell Art + Projects, PS 122 Gallery, and Wave Hill Glyndor Gallery in the Bronx—and in two exhibitions in Connecticut, at Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield and the Yale School of Art Gallery in New Haven.

’88 Laura Giletti and her husband, John Meany, are happy to announce the birth of their daughter, Margaret Ann Meany, born on October 4, 2004, in Sydney, Australia.

’89 Anne Meredith ’86 Many screenwriters would jump for joy if even one of their screenplays actually saw life in a commercially released film.

Anne Meredith has been “luckier,” she says, although her phenomenal success has been “obviously not all luck—I’m a pretty good writer.” Meredith has seen her name grace the credits of such acclaimed, made-for-cable films as Bastard Out of Carolina, Out of the Ashes (for which her screenplay received an award from the Writers Guild of America), Losing Chase (which was based on a novella that she wrote for her Senior Project), and Cavedweller, whose movie theater debut at the Woodstock Film Festival coin-

Julie Williams is an assistant professor at The University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, where she teaches in the Center for Advanced Biotechnology and Medicine and studies molecular biology and the genetics of sleep in Drosophila in the Center’s Department of Pharmacology.

’90 15th Reunion: May 20–22, 2005 Class contacts: Rebecca Kleister, rkleister@msn.com Shannon Miller, 845-758-2874 or bassmiller@webjogger.net Staff contact: Stella Wayne, 845-758-7407 or wayne@bard.edu

cided with its television premiere on Showtime in October 2004.

Laurence Cohen is a teacher’s assistant in a school for autistic chil-

Of course, the screenplay one writes is not always the

dren and plays trumpet in a community band. His girlfriend is

screenplay that winds up on screen, although Meredith has been

from Saint Martin. He writes that he would like to be in contact

fortunate in this regard, too. Losing Chase—which starred Kyra

with more Bard people.

Sedgwick, the sister of Meredith’s old buddy from Bard days, Nikko Sedgwick ’88—was “almost word for word what I wrote,” Meredith says. Then again, another film, which she describes as “an absolute disaster,” pooled her with three other writers, a situation similar to “having five directors trying to direct the same picture.” She barely recognized her contributions to that one—yet another instance, perhaps, of her good luck.

Meredith divides her time between Los Angeles and

Charlotte Mandell Kelly has three new translations out: War, Evil, and the End of History by Bernard-Henri Lévy, published by Melville House; The Flesh of Words by Jacques Rancière, published by Stanford University Press; and A Simple Heart by Gustave Flaubert, published by Melville House (see Books by Bardians).

Brian Krex is happy to report the birth of his son, Spencer Ward Krex, on June 4, 2004.

Staatsburg, New York, a Dutchess County community that puts the pretensions of Southern California in “proper perspective,” she says. She plans to make her directorial debut with a film shot on location at her Hudson Valley home.

After living in Yellow Springs, Ohio, for nine years and working as advertising manager at the Yellow Springs News for five of those years, Christie Lapitan has traded a midwestern landscape for one inhabited by roadrunners, scorpions, and cacti in Tucson, Arizona,

body- and spirit-centered therapy, specializing in narrative therapy and

where she moved with her partner, Robert Neifert, and two cats in

the use of creative writing as a healing tool. So, she says, from mating

June 2004. Christie is a master’s degree student in Antioch

fruit flies in a drafty office in Hegeman, to teaching literature at UC

University McGregor’s conflict resolution program, and while in

Santa Cruz, to helping people construct and tell their life stories as a

Tucson plans to fulfill her practicum in mediation at the Family

way toward healing—she knows there’s a through line in there some-

Center of Conciliation Court and at a community mediation center.

where, but has yet to articulate it. “Ongoing thanks to Nancy Leonard,

She would like to hear from fellow classmates and from other

Ferg, and Sibel Alparslan Golden ’88 for being special guides along

Bardians involved in the ADR (alternative dispute resolution) field.

the way,” she writes. Drop Heidi a line at hoot@drizzle.com.

She can be reached at clapitan@yahoo.com.

Brenda Lee Rogers and her children are exploring their new town

’87

of Thousand Oaks, California, about an hour from Los Angeles.

Eva Lee has returned to Bard for the spring 2005 semester to teach a

Brenda and her husband, along with their partners, publish a comic

science and art class. Her work was most recently included in three

book called Shooting Star Anthology.

54

Amara Willey gave birth to a son, Samuel Louis, on March 17, 2003.

On August 31, 2003, her partner, Peggy Sahulka, adopted Samuel.

Amara is a professional organizer in New Jersey.

’91 Tim Davis will have a monograph of his “Permanent Collection” (featured in the fall 2003 issue of the Bardian) published by Nazraeli Press in early 2005. Venues for his solo exhibitions include the Bohen Foundation (fall 2004), the Kevin Bruk Gallery in Miami (January 2005), and Jackson Fine Art in Atlanta (May 2005). He is also participating in Arti & Architettura 1900–2000 at the Palazzo Ducale in Genova, Italy. In addition, Tim is giving lectures at Yale University, Eastern Tennessee State University,

Zoltan Bruckner ’94

Bowdoin College, and at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. His

After four years of working as a banker in the Netherlands, Zoltan

work was featured in the fall 2004 issue of Aperture.

Bruckner returned to his native Hungary to run operations for a U.S. venture capital firm that was seeking to invest in Central

’92 David Cote is the theater editor and chief drama critic of Time Out New York, a weekly entertainment magazine. Once or twice a month, he appears on the local cable channel, NY1, as a contributing critic for the On Stage program. He also freelances for Opera News and the New York Times. He hopes to eventually get around to that novel or bunch of short stories.

European technology companies. Bruckner saw real potential for small Hungarian technology and service companies to expand, so in June 2003, he founded his own venture capital firm, Primus Capital Partners, with a group of American investors. Primus funds Mirai Interactive, Hungary’s leading digital marketing agency.

What does Bruckner look for in the companies he funds? “A technology with a global appeal, such as diamond coating of metal surfaces; a new skin-cell culturing method; or a service company

’93

that can be a leader in the local or regional market,” says Bruckner.

“My daily challenge is to choose well among the dozens of compa-

Joe Iannacone is the summer director of educational outreach for nies that come to me for an investment,” he explains. “I have very Theatre Three Dallas (http://www.theatre3dallas.com/). His limited information about the product, the market, and the responsibilities are twofold: creating print and web resources for founders, and limited time, so I have to decide whether to invest educators and students attending plays, and coordinating the playmore time and energy or quickly end the dialogue—and risk letting house’s efforts to get actors into Dallas area schools. Weekends are the next hot technology walk out the door.” spent with his partner, hopping on small planes to interesting In his off time, Bruckner, who concentrated in American places throughout Texas, the Southwest, and Mexico. studies at Bard, enjoys life in Budapest with his wife and young

’94 Fitz (Brian) Patton scored and designed the sound for 20 theatrical productions around the United States in 2003, including Things of Dry Hours by Naomi Wallace; The Women of Lockerbie by Deborah Brevoort;

daughter. The trio makes annual trips to the United States, which Bruckner says “always puts things into a different perspective.

The U.S. is a big, developed country and a lot of things we struggle with in Hungary—in business, politics, and science—have already been thought of and implemented.”

Of a White Christmas by Rinne Groff; Get What You Need by Jessica Goldberg; A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest Gaines; Fran’s Bed by James Goldie Heidi Gider, 202-232-4070 or GHG8874@hotmail.com Lapine; Matt and Ben by Kahling and Withers; Anna in the Tropics by Anina Moore, 512-916-8161 or aninamoore@excite.com Nilo Cruz; A Safe Harbor for Elizabeth Bishop by Marta Góes; Guinea Pig Staff contact: Stella Wayne, 845-758-7407 or wayne@bard.edu Solo by Brett Leonard; and Dirty Tricks by John Jeter. His work has appeared in productions at Playwrights Horizons, Long Wharf Theatre,

Class correspondent:

Pittsburgh Public Theater, Dallas Theater Center, Baltimore Centerstage,

Walter Swett ’96, walter@charlierangel.org

New York Stage and Film, The Public Theater, PS 122, and The Lincoln Stephanie Chasteen expects to get her Ph.D. in condensed matter Center Festival. His sound field design for Shen Wei Dance Art’s new physics from the University of California, Santa Cruz, in June. In piece, Connect/Transfer, will tour internationally this year. the summer of 2004, she went back to Guinea, West Africa, to visit

’95

the village where she served in the Peace Corps.

10th Reunion: May 20–22, 2005

Sage Jacobs started the nonprofit organization Critter Knitters

Class contacts: Sally Drake (Mehrtens), 518-482-8092 or

Coalition, which provides handmade blankets to animal shelters in

sdrake@nycap.rr.com

New York and beyond, in December 2003. It is Sage’s goal for no 55

out at the Brooklyn Animal Resource Coalition (BARC), a no-kill animal shelter in Williamsburg.

Althea Holzapfel was born on September 1, 2004, to Jessica Weitz and Forrest Holzapfel ’97. She joins her brother, Leander, who is now 3. The family lives in Marlboro, Vermont.

Anna White and her husband, Rajiv Gala, are proud to announce the birth of their son, Shalin Rajiv Gala, born on April 18, 2004.

Anna and Rajiv have relocated to Dallas to take academic positions at the University of Texas Southwestern. They work in UT’s Department of Obstetrics/Gynecology as general OB/GYNs.

Tim Griffin MFA ’99 As a poet with a discerning eye for painting, sculpture, and the

’96

strange provocations of performance art, Tim Griffin has followed

Class correspondents:

the exemplary path of Frank O’Hara, John Ashbery, and Peter

Abigail Morgan ’96, abigailmorgan@earthlink.net

Schjeldahl. He, too, has brought a poet’s sensibility to bear on

Walter Swett ’96, walter@charlierangel.org

writing about the contemporary art scene.

Julia Wolk Munemo ’97, juliamunemo@yahoo.com

Griffin, who was drawn to Bard’s Avery graduate program for “its

Brent Armendinger writes that he “won a Hopwood Award because

unique overlap of writing with visual arts,” was hired by Artforum in

Carolyn Forché liked my poems.” He also reports that he rode a

2001 as reviews editor. After a brief term as senior editor, he was

bicycle named Butch with a bright yellow trailer named Roo from

appointed editor in chief in the summer of 2003. The outgoing edi-

Paris to Barcelona. He teaches creative writing to senior citizens at

tor lauded Griffin’s “essential commitment to the contemporary,”

the Bernal Heights Neighborhood Center in the abandoned fishing

praising him as someone who would carry forth the magazine’s

hamlet where he lives in San Francisco.

mandate to explore those areas of the cultural landscape that remain terrae incognitae, “the ferment that has yet to be canonized.”

In July 2004, partners Karin Bolender and Jack Christian, along

Artforum exerts its influence on the art world in many ways,

with the other hooved, furred, and feathered characters who com-

some of which can be subtle. Noting that the magazine’s full-

prise Ass Family Rawesome, sadly departed their home in Virginia

color photographs are the only way that many readers experience

and migrated south in their rusty Dead-Car Wagon. Drawn by a

the artwork under discussion, Griffin cites a revelation he had as

team of American Spotted Asses, the wagon was born from the

a lecturer at an art school: “In studio visit after studio visit, I

stripped body of a salvaged orange 1980 Ford Pinto, with green

noticed a strange, undynamic flatness in the treatment of the pic-

flames ripping from the wheel wells. Bolender and Christian

ture plane, which I just couldn’t fathom until I realized [the stu-

received a grant for the summer’s journey-project—a maiden voyage

dents] were following the young painters of their day, whom they

from the Martinsville Speedway to Eden, North Carolina—from the

encountered only in magazines. Hence, their painting approach

Gunk Foundation, which supports public performance art projects

had the flatness of reproduced illustrations. So I realize how

that reach audiences in nontraditional, nonmarket places.

spoiled I am to see so much art firsthand, and I also understand

Anna Boroughs earned a master’s degree in nonprofit manage-

that magazines can play an important role in even the most fun-

ment from Case Western Reserve University. She has been paying

damental formations of art.”

off her student loan by working as a fund-raising consultant.

shelter animal in New York to ever have to sleep on cement, metal cage bars, or newspaper. To date, Critter Knitters Coalition has

Melanie Brockert (Schlosser) married Dean Brockert on September 6, 2003. They are “living happily ever after” in Massachusetts.

donated more than 4,500 blankets to shelter animals in need. The

Allison Brudno earned a graduate degree from Johns Hopkins

Coalition’s website is www.critterknitters.org. Sage works as an

University in 2004.

architectural door hardware specialist and writes for two dog magazines, Bark and Modern Dog.

Jessica Burr lives on as the proud co-artistic director of blessed unrest (www.blessedunrest.org), a New York City–based theater company.

Anne R. Miller works in the children’s department at HarperCollins

Many beloved Bardians were present at Jessica’s marriage to “partner

and loves every minute of it. When she does not have her nose

in crime” Matt Opatrny, whom Jessica describes as “easy on the eyes

stuck in a children’s novel, she is actively involved with the Junior

and also just darned wonderful.” She writes that despite her overall

Committee of the New York City Chapter of the Alzheimer’s

jadedness, she was forced to admit that the wedding really was her best

Association. Anne also volunteers for New York Cares and helps

day ever. The happy couple continues to just barely reside in the East

56

Village with their enigmatic cat Lentil, who was quoted as saying, “I’ve

such as Vogue and Vanity Fair and stores such as Barneys. She is

been ticked for two years about having to live in their nest of sin.

married to a musician/DJ who records under the guise of Ursula

I really don’t enjoy crowds, but I’m glad they had that party.”

1000; the other member of their household is Lolita, a Chihuahua.

Visit Marissa online at www.MarissaGimeno.com.

Jackie Del Valle (Fiesinger) is a community organizer in the Bronx, working to empower tenants to make immediate as well as

Merryl Gladstone lives in Princeton, New Jersey, and teaches fourth

structural changes in their neighborhoods. This includes forcing

grade. She moved there in 2003 after teaching in Paris for two

their landlords to make repairs, stopping banks from lending

years.

to slumlords, and getting the city to build and make available more affordable housing. Jackie is also in graduate school at Hunter College, for urban planning. She married Nick Del Valle, “a very hot high school teacher,” at a wedding attended by several Bardians more than two years ago. Friends can e-mail her at jfiesinger@hotmail.com.

Galen Joseph-Hunter and her husband relocated to 30 amazing acres in Greene County, New York (about 20 miles north of Bard), in October 2004. With this move, they expanded the activities of free103point9, the transmission arts organization they codirect.

Projected plans for the organization include an artist residency program, performance series, sound walk, and archive and study

Cecilia Dobi lives in Glenside, Pennsylvania, with her husband,

center. Activities at their Brooklyn gallery space and with partnering

Louis Dobi Jr. ’98; their son, Henry, 5; their cat, Georgia; and their

organizations remain lively as well. For more information, visit

dog, Cassie. Cecilia is a clinical research coordinator for Temple

www.free103point9.org.

University’s Department of Urology, and is also pursuing a master’s degree in quality assurance and regulatory affairs from the

Joshua S. Richman has completed his Ph.D. in medical biostatistics at

Temple University School of Pharmacy. Louis graduated from

the University of Alabama at Birmingham. In August 2004, he began

Temple University James E. Beasley School of Law in 2001 and

studies to finish his M.D. degree, which he plans to earn in a year and

works in consumer protection litigation. Cecilia writes, “We have

a half. Joshua and his wife, Kristin Graham Richman, are the parents

all greatly mourned the passing of my stepdad, Professor Clark

of two children, Benjamin David, 4, and Zoë Elizabeth Anne, 2.

Rodewald ’59.”

Jen Shykula left San Francisco, where she had been living for two Marissa Gimeno (Bernstein) is alive and well in New York City, where

years, to help the Howard Dean team run the Get Out the Vote

she makes her living as a fashion- and prop-stylist for magazines

Campaign for the Iowa caucus. She now lives in Washington, D.C.,

Lisa Kereszi ’95: Ferris wheel mural, Broadway Arcade, Times Square, NY 2004, from New York Stories, on view at the Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York City, through March 19.

57

Marta Topferova has signed with the World Village/Harmonia Mundi record label. Her album La Marea (The Tide), consisting of nine original songs and featuring some of New York’s finest musicians, will be released this spring. During the fall of 2004, Marta did some touring, including three concerts at the World Music Festival in Chicago. Her website is www.martatopferova.com.

Susan Tran (Larsen) lives happily in Portland, Maine, with her husband, Phuc Tran ’95, and their emotionally needy cat, Mazie.

By day, Susan works for Maine Public Broadcasting; by night (and on weekends), she runs Tsunami Tattoo, which she co-owns with Phuc.

Dave Tucker has been promoted to director of community development at GrantWorks, Inc., in Austin, Texas. GrantWorks assists lower-income cities and counties in pursuing and administering Screen gems: Walter Swett ’96 hosted a screening of alumni/ae films last fall

Community Development Block Grants, which are used to improve housing and infrastructure in economically distressed areas through-

and works as director of contract organizing for the Hotel and

out rural Texas. Dave lives with his wife, Becky, in North Austin.

Restaurant Workers Union, spearheading a three-city campaign.

She may soon add to her global resumé by moving back to New York City, which was home for five years after she graduated from Bard.

’97 Class correspondent: Julia Wolk Munemo juliamunemo@yahoo.com

Jennifer Abrams Thompson very happily returned to New York with her “California husband” and two cats and now lives in the Albany area. She teaches English as a second language to students in grades K–6. More exciting is the news that her first child, Nazhlah Eve, was born on May 23, 2004. Her Bard classmates Abigail Feldman, Erica Marciniec, and Jean Doughty Popovich have all visited the “little tomato.” Jennifer wants all her friends to know that she gave birth naturally (without drugs), and that “giving birth hurts!”

Since graduation, Hillary Claussen has been living, studying, and working in Jerusalem. After pursuing an M.A. in Bible studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, she says she decided to move into the modern world, and started working in journalism. She is currently a researcher in the Washington Post’s Jerusalem bureau, and writes, “There are few boring days here!”

Theresa Daleo-Stock continues to love teaching French at Arlington High School in Lagrangeville, New York. She was married in September 2004 and lives in New Paltz, New York, with her husband, Andrew.

Ben Epstein is a college instructor in Los Angeles, and a playwright and screenwriter on the side.

Sandra Kalm, M.D., is a second-year pediatric resident at St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children in Philadelphia. Sandy would like to reconnect with her friends from Bard and invites people to contact her at sandykalm@wildmail.com or at 215-856-0311.

Kenny Kozol completed a master’s degree in music education, with honors, from Columbia University in December 2003. From there, he embarked on many projects and was awarded a number of grants. Among them was The President’s Community and Diversity Grant, for which he traveled to the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, and Mexico, gathering children’s songs that he later shared with children of the same origin in the South Bronx. As an educator, Kenny has taught preschool to 8th grade general music at the Children’s Storefront School in Harlem for the last seven years, and works as a teaching artist for the 92nd Street Y. Last

Joshua Lutz ’97: Behind a Casino, Las Vegas, 2003 58

winter, Kenny and the Children’s Storefront Gospel Choir, which

he codirects, performed with Dr. Billy Taylor and Spirit, an 18piece orchestra. His teaching work is part-time and he is increasingly busy performing and recording music. Kenny can be found playing many nights a week in New York and beyond with the legendary Cuban guitarist and singer Jose Luis Martinez, in a trio they founded a year ago called Son Amigos. Kenny mourns the recent death of his dear friend and musical mentor from Bard College, Joel “Bishop” O’Brien (see page 67). You can contact Kenny at kendoza@hotmail.com or check out his musical groups at sonamigos.com and losacustilocos.com.

Joshua Lutz had a solo exhibition at the Gitterman Gallery—his first solo show in New York City—in the fall of 2004. The show elicited reviews from the New Yorker, New York Times, New York Sun, and Village Voice. Joshua was also named one of the top 30 emerging photographers by Photo District News (PDN), and won two “best editorial” awards—one from PDN, for a photo essay in Architectural Record; the other from Communication Arts, for a photo essay published in Harper’s. His editorial work is represented

by Marcel Saba at Redux Pictures (www.reduxpictures.com).

Traditional gers (framed circular tents) at the CRTP restoration site at the Baldan Baraivan monastery in the Khentji region of Mongolia (see Eve Stahlberger entry).

In May, Joshua will earn a master’s degree from the International Center of Photography–Bard Program in Advanced Photographic

adviser] Gennady Shkliarevsky’s words: ‘Find a problem, and get

Studies.

excited about it.’”

Julia Wolk Munemo and Ngonidzashe Munemo ’00 welcomed

‘‘Chacha’’ (a.k.a. Kristin Sikes) lives in Berkeley, California, where

their first baby, Julius Tafadzwa, in December 2002. Now 2, Juli is

she works at the Exploratorium (a science museum in San

entirely in charge of their new home in western Massachusetts.

Francisco) as a web developer for the museum’s public exhibitions.

From there, Ngoni is working on his dissertation, which he hopes

Sometimes, Megan Pruiett ’97 can be seen at the same museum.

to complete this year, and Julia is working on her first book, a nonFollowing graduation from Bard, Carrie Smith-Prei accepted a fiction narrative about the family’s experiences living in southern Fulbright to teach English in Weimar, Germany. There she met the Africa. The three Munemos went back to that region, for more woman whom she has finally—almost seven years later and amid research on all sides, in January. heated gay-marriage debates in the United States—married in Meri Pritchett lives in Los Angeles, where she works as a freelance

Berlin, Germany. She now lives in Berlin, where she is writing her

producer and writer for documentary television (mostly Discovery

Ph.D. thesis in German literature, which she hopes to successfully

Channel and Animal Planet). When not working, she spends time

complete this year, for Washington University in St. Louis.

with her two pooches.

Eve Stahlberger traveled to Mongolia in July 2004. Several people Rosanna Reff married Gregg DeMammos ’96 in 2001. They live in

from her yoga center joined the Cultural Restoration Tourism

New York City, where Rosanna has been teaching for the past seven

Project (to learn more, visit www.crtp.net) in rebuilding the Baldan

years at The Young Women’s Leadership School of East Harlem,

Baraivan monastery, located 300 kilometers northeast of the capital

the first single-sex public school in New York City in recent history.

city of Ulaanbaatar. She writes that both the scenery and the people

Gregg has been working in the music business as a manager of var-

were incredible. Eve hopes to return to the area this year as a fully

ious clients for the last eight years. They are extremely excited about

certified Jivamukti yoga teacher, her training for which will take

a new addition, their first child, expected in early May.

place at the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, New York. She is looking forward to returning to the Hudson Valley.

Sebastián Salazar finished his master’s degree in urban planning in Montreal and returned to Peru after 11 years of living abroad.

Aerin Tedesco lives in Chicago. She plays in an electro/folk/rock

He is now working to create Lima’s new urban transport system,

duo with her musical partner and girlfriend, Andrea Bunch.

which is a bus rapid transit system of the type being considered

The two have played numerous shows and festivals throughout

for many developing cities that cannot afford underground rail

the country, most notably the Iowa Women’s Music Festival and

systems. Seb writes, “It seems like such a change from my Eastern

National Women’s Music Festival last year. The duo plans to re-

European interests at Bard, but going back to Lima has been

cord an album together this year. For more information, visit

both exhilarating and frustrating. However, I’ll never forget [my

www.aerintedesco.com and www.andreabunch.com.

59

husband, Michael Billa, is recording an album with his band, The Octopus. The couple’s son, Julian Star, is 4.

’00 5th Reunion: May 20–22, 2005 Class contacts: eboyer@alum.dartmouth.org David Gruber, 615-292-1538 or gruberds@hotmail.com Coleen Murphy Alexander, 845-758-7431 or murphy@bard.edu Staff contact: Stella Wayne, 845-758-7407 or wayne@bard.edu Man-Shan (Susan) Tsui is engaged and will be happily married in

Marcus Mello BCEP ’04

July 2005.

Take a career in banking in Brazil and the United States, add flying, and top it off with a master’s degree from the Bard Center for

’01

Environmental Policy (BCEP) at the age of 73, and you’ve got a

Blanca Lista has been accepted to start the first year of her MFA

nutshell résumé of Marcus de Albuquerque Mello.

work at Transmedia, a postgraduate program in arts, media, and

Receiving a graduate degree late in life—and in a field unre-

design at Sint Lukas School of Arts, a university in Brussels,

lated to one’s previous work—might seem a maverick choice.

Belgium. Her project proposal, “The Mathematical Alphabet of

But Mello has always bucked convention. Born in Brazil, Mello

Inverted Words,” was highly praised by the school.

received a scholarship to the Mount Hermon School in Northfield, Massachusetts, when he was 16; he came, alone, to the United States and went on to Yale University for a B.A. For more than 20 years, his livelihood in finance and real estate investment spanned Rio de Janeiro and New York.

Already the holder of a private pilot’s license, he earned a commercial pilot’s license in his 50s. He then founded a company that

From 2001 to 2003, Malini Ranganathan worked for Tata Energy Research Institute (TERI), an environmental NGO dealing with alternative energy, climate change, and sustainable resource issues in her native India. From TERI, she went on to graduate studies at the Energy and Resources Group at the University of California, Berkeley. Over the summer of 2004, she received a UN grant to do work on sugarcane-based energy generation in India.

refurbished and delivered small airplanes to companies in Brazil.

Around the time of the United Nations Conference on

Noah Sheola’s original play, The Grotesque History of Marie

Environment and Development in Rio in 1992, Mello met Charles

Antoinette, was produced at the Players’ Ring in Portsmouth, New

Haskell, CEO of New Century Conservation Trust. Haskell retraced

Hampshire, in January 2004. Noah performs with the improv

the journey of Theodore Roosevelt on the River of Doubt (now

group Stranger Than Fiction (www.strangerthanfiction.us). He lives

Roosevelt River) in the Amazon. Mello went along for the ride and

in Portsmouth and misses all his Bard friends.

became “deeply impressed and concerned about a number of environmental issues.”

Over the next decade, his environmental involvement— notably in alternative energy—increased, and he decided to enroll

Lauren Willis is pursuing a Ph.D. in the Department of Physiology and Neuroscience at the Medical University of South Carolina, where she is researching the cellular effects of nutritional intervention to combat memory loss during aging.

in BCEP. “It was the best thing I’ve done in years,” says Mello, now contemplating yet another career—writing about energy, of which he has an obvious abundance.

’02 Clarisse Labro is in the graduate program at the Yale School of Architecture. She writes, “Very hard profession. I am passionate

’98 Natasha Shrieves is marketing manager at the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association/Hollywood Bowl, based at the new

about it—it feels great!” Over the summer of 2004, she and her classmates built a house that they designed.

Frank Gehry–designed Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los

’03

Angeles, California. She loves living in Silver Lake, California, where

Jacqueline LaDuke Sahacic lives in central New Jersey, where she

her apartment has a classic view of the Hollywood sign. Natasha is

works as a research assistant for a personality-testing company. In

also pursuing certification as a Kundalini yoga instructor.

September 2003, she married a former PIE student, Benjamin Sahacic ’00, in Tivoli, New York. Ben graduated from Syracuse

’99 Nicole DiSalvo-Billa teaches yoga classes and workshops in northern New Jersey, and is also working on a book about yoga. Nicole’s 60

University with an M.B.A. and now works as a supply chain analyst at Bristol Myers Squibb. Jacqueline writes, “We are happy here but miss all of our Bard friends!”

Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts MFA correspondents: Marjorie Vecchio MFA ’01, ABTOK@aol.com Jill Vasileff MFA ’93, jillvasileff@sbcglobal.net

’92 Christina Saj opened artspace 129, an alternative exhibition space that features contemporary art, in Montclair, New Jersey, in the fall of 2004. For more information, visit www.artspace129.com.

’93

Hal Niedzviecki MFA ’97 His works of cultural criticism—in particular, We Want Some Too:

Leslie Fry’s exhibition, Cast-Offs: Girls, Riddles, Fate, ran from Underground Desire and the Reinvention of Mass Culture—have September 24 to October 31, 2004, at the Firehouse Gallery in earned Hal Niedzviecki such typically glib media handles as the Burlington, Vermont. The show was a two-part installation of cast“Poster Boy for Slackerism” and the “Alternative Culture Guru.” paper and cast-concrete surreal sculptures based on themes of But there’s nothing remotely slackerish about his work ethic: in metamorphosis. addition to his essays and exegeses of the cultural moment, which

’94 Kim Krause participated in a group painting exhibition titled In Thrall at the University of Dayton in October 2004. (Editor’s note:

have seen print in Utne Reader, Descant, Geist, and scads of other periodicals and newspapers, the resident of Toronto has also written a book of short stories and three novels, the latest of which— The Program—is forthcoming from Random House Canada.

In the Fall 2004 Bardian, we mistakenly identified Kim Krause as a “she.” As he writes, “I’m not a ‘she’ but a ‘he’.” The Bardian regrets the error.)

’97 Carolyn Guinzio (Koo)’s first book, West Pullman, won the 2004 Bordighera Poetry Prize and will appear in a bilingual English/Italian edition next year. She lives in Fayetteville, Arkansas.

“I find that as much as I love being a critic, I can go places in fiction that I just can’t get to in cultural commentary,” says Niedzviecki, whose new novel considers and contends with, among other things, what it means to be a Jew in North America.

“Ultimately, I hope that my work in one genre complements my work in another, though I think my fiction tends toward the visceral and emotional, and, in that sense, feels more immediately powerful.”

Hal Niedzviecki’s new book, Hello, I’m Special: How Individuality

Niedzviecki credits the Milton Avery Graduate School of the

Became the New Conformity, has been published by Penguin Canada.

Arts with giving his career a jump start. “Bard was instrumental

For more information on the book, visit www.helloimspecial.ca.

in my development by simply creating a free space to experiment

Visit Hal’s website at www.smellit.ca. (See spotlight on this page.)

and grow as a writer,” he says, citing Leslie Scalapino and former

’00

tant mentors.

MFA faculty members Lynne Tillman and Lydia Davis as imporFor more information on Niedzviecki’s novels, essays, and

Nina Bovasso received a 2004 Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant.

She can be found online at www.ninabovasso.com.

other works, check out his website, www.smellit.ca.

Serkan Ozkaya had a solo show titled Hermes at SOX36 in Berlin in September 2004. A piece of Serkan’s, a proposal to the New York

’03

Times titled Today Could Be a Day of Historical Importance, appeared

Isaac Diggs’s solo exhibition, titled re-pose, was on view at the Print

in a show at White Box in New York City in October 2004. He also

Center in Philadelphia from September 9 to November 10, 2004.

exhibited a recent piece at the Platform Center for Contemporary

He received a grant from the Asian Cultural Council to pursue cre-

Art in Istanbul.

ative work and research in Tokyo this winter.

’01 Holly Lynton had her second solo show at Mixed Greens Gallery in New York City in the spring of 2004. She also has work in inventory at Jen Bekman Gallery in New York City.

Elise Gardella’s work appeared in several galleries and publications in 2004: Punk Planet #64 (November/December issue), This Is What Democracy Looks Like (photographs of the Republican National Convention); Society for Contemporary Photography in Kansas City, Missouri, group show (November); International

61

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

’98 Heather Jane McCormick married Ian Andrew Zimmerman on October 9, 2004. Her article “John Hatch and the Gothic Chamber” appeared in the summer/fall 2004 edition of Friends of Philipse Manor Hall News.

’99 Tumelo Mosaka CCS ’00

Judith Gura was the adviser to the spring 2004 exhibition Nordic Cool: Hot Women Designers at the National Museum of Women in

Only months after Tumelo Mosaka received his fine-arts degree the Arts, Washington, D.C. Her book, Guide to Period Design (Harry from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in 1993, N. Abrams), will be published this fall. apartheid ended in South Africa. “What had seemed impossible was suddenly actually happening,” says the Soweto-born photographer.

When venues showing the work of black artists were virtually nonexistent, President Nelson Mandela’s new government organized a 63-nation Johannesburg Biennale. Mosaka was awarded a curatorial traineeship that ultimately led him to Bard.

“We were building a new culture,” he says. “My creative response to the realities of the artistic situation was as a curator.”

Mosaka is now the assistant curator of contemporary art at the Brooklyn Museum of Art (BMA), at the center of one of the largest international art communities in the world. He gives artists opportunities on a scale that defies barriers and boundaries. “The nature of art today is nomadic,” he says. “Artists are constantly looking at local and global issues and responding to both conditions simultaneously.”

The same may be said of curators. While staying connected with his homeland on the Internet and making annual trips there, Mosaka presents the world’s art to New York audiences. For last summer’s BMA show, Open House: Working in Brooklyn, he visited

’00 Stephanie Day Iverson curated “Make Beauty”: Costumes by Dorothy Jeakins, an exhibition tracing Jeakins’s work through her more than 80 film projects spanning nearly 40 years. Jeakins was the recipient of the first Oscar to be awarded in the field of costume design, and her film work includes Joan of Arc, The Music Man, and The Sound of Music. “Make Beauty” opened in late September 2004 at the University of California, Los Angeles, and was accompanied by an online exhibition. In October, Stephanie opened a lecture series at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art with a talk on Bonnie Cashin.

’01 Daan De Kuyper moved to Holland in August 2003. She is the special projects coordinator for the Frank Mohr Instituut in Groningen and an adjunct faculty member at Minerva Art Academy. In addition, she had a small exhibition at a local graphic design museum. She teaches Dutch as a second language.

studios throughout the museum’s own “backyard” and discovered

Cynthia Sparke (Coleman) and her husband, Andrew, welcomed

the work of nearly 200 artists who are defining contemporary art’s

baby Alexander in June 2004.

cutting edge. “A museum is a dialogue,” he says. “A curator is an interpreter, providing access to emerging culture and giving it longevity.”

’02 Laura DeNormandie is currently a Ph.D. candidate in American studies at the University of Texas at Austin. She was the 2004 recip-

Meetings of Photography in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, solo exhibition

ient of the Robert Morse Crunden Memorial Research Fellowship.

(October); The People’s Guide to the Republican National Convention, collaborator and artist (published in August); Square Foot, A.W.O.L.

’03

Gallery in Toronto, Ontario, group show (August); and The Women

Melissa Cohn Lindbeck cocurated her third exhibition for the

and Work Performance Project and Art Exhibit in Huntington, New

Merchant’s House Museum, Sacred to the Memory: A 19th-Century

York, group show (April).

House in Mourning. The exhibition was on view from October 7 to November 9, 2004. In conjunction with the exhibition, Melissa

Samuael Topiary has held residencies at the MacDowell Colony

gave a lecture on the history of mourning jewelry.

(September through November 2004) and at the Dance Theater Workshop. He also received a grant from the Experimental Television Finishing Fund. New Kicks, the music video that Samuael directed for Le Tigre, can be viewed online by visiting the video section of www.letigreworld.com.

62

’04 Mary Dohne was guest curator of an exhibition of American Mingei ceramics at the Ohr–O’Keefe Museum of Art in Biloxi,

Mississippi. The exhibition ran from September 17 through the

Tomas Pospiszyl was married in July 2004. He lives in Prague,

end of October 2004.

where he continues to teach at the Film Academy.

Jeanne Ingram is the curator of collections at the Litchfield

Brian Wallace, director, Galleries at Moore College, Philadelphia, mod-

Historical Society, Litchfield, Connecticut. She curated the

erated a roundtable discussion in conjunction with Past Presence:

Society’s exhibition The Ties That Bind: A Sampler of Litchfield

Contemporary Reflections on the Main Line, an exhibition of large-scale

County Quilts.

temporary outdoor installations curated by Denise Markonish ’99.

Christine Brennan is the collections manager in The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Department of Medieval Art and The Cloisters.

Christine married Craig Steven Feder, also of The Metropolitan Museum, on June 19, 2004, at The Roycroft Inn in East Aurora, New York. They reside in Glen Ridge, New Jersey.

’98 Sarah Cook completed her Ph.D. in new media curation at the University of Sunderland/Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, England, and is now doing postdoctoral research at Sunderland.

Since early summer, Victoria Noorthoorn has been curator of the

Center for Curatorial Studies

permanent collection at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes Neuquén, the only provincial branch of the National Museum of

’96

Fine Arts in Buenos Aires.

Regine Basha, adjunct curator at Arthouse in Austin, Texas, curated

Zhang Zhao-hui is enrolled in a Ph.D. program at the Central Academy

Treble at the SculptureCenter in Queens.

of Fine Arts, Beijing. His studies focus on contemporary Chinese art.

Pip Day, independent curator, is working on a number of curatorial projects as well as a residency program in Mexico City.

’99 Independent curator and conceptual artist Alejandro Diaz was part

’97 Rachel Gugelberger, independent curator and associate director, School of Visual Arts Galleries and Museums, New York City, cocurated Beginning Here: 101 Ways, an exhibition of works

of a September 2004 group show at the Drawing Center in New York City, in which in-house curators chose for exhibition the work of artists unrepresented in New York. He was also one of three artists in an exhibition at Galeria Animal in Santiago, Chile.

by contemporary artists whose careers began at the School of

Xandra Eden, assistant curator at The Power Plant Contemporary

Visual Arts. The exhibition was on view in September and

Art Gallery in Toronto, curated The Cave and the Island at Galerie

October, 2004.

Kunstbuero in Vienna.

On October 16, CCS celebrated its first alumni/ae reunion. Twenty alumni/ae, representing each class from 1996 through 2004, attended.

A panel of five CCS alumni/ae led a forum that included a discussion on the economics of art. The forum was followed by a wine and cheese reception with current CCS students, a tour of The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College, and dinner.

63

’00

’03

Lisa Hatchadoorian is the director of Westby Gallery at Rowan

Ingrid Chu, a New York–based independent curator and critic, is

University, Glassboro, New Jersey. She has been busy with gallery

director/curator of Red-I, an organization dedicated to assisting

construction at Rowan, as well as some outside projects, including

artists in the creation of new work in public sites. She is also organ-

Color Lines at the Islip Art Museum and an exhibition of drawings,

izing public programs for the Americas Society.

Sensitive Dependence on Initial Conditions, at Kerrigan Campbell, a Jimena Acosta Romero has returned to Mexico, where she is gallery in New York City. involved in a project for a new contemporary art museum, Museo Lorelei Stewart is the director of Gallery 400 at the University of

de Arte Contemporaneo Hidalgo.

Illinois, Chicago. This past summer, the university hosted the Amaya de Miguel Sanz curated Secret Affinities at La Casa Summer Contemporary Curators Conference, which was attended Encendida in Madrid, Spain, where she is enrolled in a Ph.D. by three other CCS alumni/ae in addition to Stewart: Ian Berry ’98, program in aesthetics at U.N.E.D. University. curator and associate director of curatorial affairs at the Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery, Skidmore College; Tumelo

Jenni Sorkin curated Judy Chicago: Minimalism, 1965–1973, an exhi-

Mosaka ’00, assistant curator, Department of Contemporary Art,

bition that opened this fall at LewAllen Contemporary in Santa Fe,

Brooklyn Museum (see page 62); and William Stover ’96, assistant

New Mexico. She is currently studying for her Ph.D. at Yale University.

curator of contemporary art, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Ana Vejzovic has joined the Museum of Contemporary Art This fall, the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery presented the sole New

Cleveland as assistant curator.

Zealand exhibition of Slowness, a show developed by emerging New York curator Mercedes Vicente. Slowness examines different aspects

’04

of speed, duration, and time and offered a range of works by inter-

Stacey Allan is the registrar at the Yvon Lambert Gallery in New

national artists.

York City. She continues to work as research assistant to artist Allan McCollum.

’01

Claire Barliant is a fellow at the Core Residency Program in critical

Olga Kopenkina received a grant from the Trust for Mutual writing at the Glassell School of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Understanding and curated Post-Diasporas for the Moscow Biennale Houston, Texas. of Contemporary Art in January.

Caroline Knebelsberger is the assistant director at the Roswell Dermis León has returned to the United States after living in Museum and Art Center, Roswell, New Mexico. The museum Düsseldorf for the past year and a half. Her next destination is focuses on the Southwest and has an artist residency program.

Santiago, Chile, where she will be executive director of AtlanticaTransArt (Institute for Contemporary Art and Research), a

Mary Katherine Matalon is the curator of visual art at a small,

nonprofit institution dedicated to the development and investigation

spunky contemporary art space called Space One Eleven in

of visual contemporary arts.

Birmingham, Alabama.

Allison Peters is exhibitions coordinator at the Hyde Park Art

Aubrey Reeves works as programming director for Trinity Square

Center in Chicago, where she is involved in planning for a new

Video in Toronto. The not-for-profit center provides artists and

facility that will open in early 2006.

community organizations with video production/postproduction support and services.

Gabriela Rangel, director of visual arts at the Americas Society, New York City, curated So Far So Close, an exhibition of contemporary art

Ryan Rice finished a commission for the Smithsonian and attended

from Guadalajara. The show was on view at the Society in fall 2004.

the festivities in Washington, D.C., for the opening of the National Museum of the American Indian.

’02 Lizzie Fisher is in charge of organizing exhibitions at Kettle’s Yard, University of Cambridge, U.K. Kelly Lindner was married in October 2004. She is associate director of the George Adams Gallery in New York City.

Jill Winder is a fellow of the Institute of Current World Affairs in Berlin. She previously worked as a freelance curatorial assistant and editor in New York City.

64

Elizabeth Zechella is a research assistant for the Felix Gonzales Torres Archive at Andrea Rosen Gallery in New York City.

Bard High School Early College

In Memoriam

’03

’41

Anton Spivack is a senior at Simon’s Rock College of Bard. His the-

Jack C. Oppenheimer, 86, died on June 26, 2004. A native of

sis is based on the television series The Prisoner, and writing it has

New York City, he attended Bard and went on to graduate from the

inspired him to create his own series.

University of Wisconsin and Yale Law School. His career in the federal government spanned 33 years, during which time he worked in the White House and for the Departments of Interior and State, the

Program in International Education (PIE)

National Science Foundation, the National Aeronautics and Space

’96

Ford Foundation Fellow and a law professor at George Washington

Agency, and the Environmental Protection Agency. He was also a Manja Klemencic returned to Cambridge, England, after a year at

University. Following his retirement, he moved to the San Francisco

Harvard University as a Fulbright Fellow at the Center for Business

area and served on the boards of the California Alliance for the

and Government, John F. Kennedy School of Government. She is

Mentally Ill and the American Lung Association. His survivors

now in the final year of her Ph.D. at Cambridge, writing up her the-

include his longtime companion, Ruth Church Gupta; a son; a

sis on the negotiation strategies of European Union member states

daughter; his wife, Harriet; and two brothers.

during the 2002–04 treaty talks. She spent the summer of 2004 in Brussels, pursuing empirical research.

’43 Frederick Steinway died on November 9, 2004. He was the young-

’97

est son of the late Theodore E. Steinway and great-grandson of

Nora Kovacs lives in Budapest, Hungary, and works at the Prime

Henry Engelhard Steinway, the founder of Steinway & Sons. After

Minister’s Office, where she coordinates European Union funds.

serving in the Navy during World War II, he received a master’s

She writes that Zsofia Rudnay works at the College of Fine Arts in

degree in business administration from Harvard University. He

Budapest, coordinating international scholarships, and that Tamas

joined Steinway & Sons in 1948 and was appointed concert and

Papp is the head of the Budapest office of the Hungarian Human

artist manager in 1958. He later pursued a career in artist manage-

Rights Foundation.

ment apart from the firm. His survivors include his wife, three sons, and four grandchildren.

’47 Mollie Day Boring, 78, died on May 26, 2004, of pancreatic cancer.

Born and raised in Cambridge, Massachusetts, she spent a year at Black Mountain College in North Carolina, and then earned degrees at Bard and Columbia University. Following college, she left America to work and study in France and Greece before returning to Cambridge in the early 1950s. Once home, she embarked on a series of editing jobs that culminated in a 30-year position at Sky and Telescope magazine, from which she retired in 1991. She also taught at Goddard College and was a member of the New England Poetry Society.

During the 1950s she worked at the Poet’s Theater, translated contemporary Greek poetry, studied modern dance, and composed and performed her own poems and stories at a variety of collaborative venues with artists such as Brother Blue and groups such as (Left to right) PIE alumnae Ana Térfy ’98, Nora Kovacs ’97,

Stone Soup. Her survivors include five nephews; two nieces; and

Manja Klemencic ’96

several grandnephews, grandnieces, great-grandnephews, and great-grandnieces.

’55 David T. Eames died on July 22, 2004. Born in Poughkeepsie, New York, he lived in Paris in the late 1950s and Rome in the 1960s before settling in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the mid-1960s.

65

He and his longtime companion, Carmine Cerone, moved to

could not attend school. She also taught in the Walter P. Carter

Martha’s Vineyard in 1995. His fiction and travel articles appeared

Center, a state psychiatric hospital for 9- to 12-year-old inpatient

in such publications as Connoisseur, The New York Times Magazine,

children. Through extensive contact with these children and their

and Transatlantic Review. His novel, Family Style, was published in

families, Anne decided to go to law school, in order to have a

1975. Over the course of his career, he also did reportage for a San

broader impact as a legal advocate for disadvantaged children. She

Jose, California, newspaper and the Martha’s Vineyard Gazette, and

wanted to intervene earlier in the lives of these children in need

worked for Look magazine in New York and Little, Brown & Co. in

so that the legal and political system might work for them more

Boston. At the time of his death, he had been working on a novel

effectively.

about five important men in his life. In addition to Cerone, his

Anne graduated from the University of Maryland School of

survivors include two sons, two daughters, a sister, and six grand-

Law in 1994. During law school, she continued to advocate for chil-

children.

dren and won the Clinical Award for Outstanding Legal Advocacy.

’78

“shining student, always with a sweet disposition, a smile and end-

Her former professor, Beth Pepper, remembered Anne as her John S. Burnett died on March 3, 2004. Born in Washington, D.C.,

less dedication to her clients and her work. Her clinical award was

he followed his studies at Bard with a degree from Vanderbilt

only a pale reflection of her wonderful spirit.”

University Law School. He was a member of the Florida Bar and the

After law school, Anne provided legal advocacy for foster,

St. Petersburg Bar Association, and a partner in the law firm of

abused, and neglected children throughout the Eastern Shore of

Mohip & Burnett since 2000. His survivors include a wife, two

Maryland. For many years, she held office hours at Maryland court-

sons, a sister, a stepdaughter, a stepson, and two nieces.

houses to provide legal counseling and information to more than a thousand individuals. She will be posthumously awarded the 2004 Founder’s Day Award of Children’s Choice, a regional children’s advocacy organization, for her outstanding work on behalf of children in need.

In recent years, Anne spent most of her time at home with her own beloved children, daughter Delia Holland, 7, and son Jimmy Holland, 5, and with her beloved husband Peter Holland, whom she married on September 24, 1994. Anne considered parenthood to be both a gift and a privilege. She was an active member and volunteer in the Key School community of Annapolis, Maryland, where her children attend school. She enjoyed creative art projects and was an accomplished weaver. She is remembered for her compassion, devotion, gentle spirit, kindness, humility, integrity, sense of humor, willingness to help others, and remarkable humanity. As one friend said, “I don’t know of any other friends who have her rich combination of compassion and humor.”

Anne is survived by her parents, Margaret Parr Gallagher and

Anne Barlow Gallagher ’87

John Scott Gallagher; her husband, Peter Holland; daughter, Delia

’87

aunts, uncles, nieces, and nephews; other extended family; and a

Anne Barlow Gallagher of Stevensville, Maryland, died Thursday,

circle of close friends.

Holland; son, Jimmy Holland; brother, Andrew Gallagher; several

April 1, 2004, at home, after a 14-week battle with lung cancer

A memorial celebration of Anne’s life will be held at a later date.

(although a lifelong nonsmoker). She was 38. Born November 8,

Donations may be made to the Anne Gallagher Memorial Fund for

1965, in Baltimore, the daughter of John Scott Gallagher and

Child Advocacy, a nonprofit entity for the education, legal rights, and

Margaret Parr Gallagher, she grew up in Columbia, Maryland. She

welfare of children, at PO Box 88, Annapolis, MD 21404-0088.

graduated from Sandy Spring Friends School in Olney, Maryland, in 1981 at the age of 16 with high distinction. She then went to

She whom we love and lose is no longer where she was before. She is now wherever we are. —St. John Chrysostom

Bard, where she fell in love with Peter Holland, who became her husband, and graduated with a major in photography in 1987.

’92

After college, Anne taught home- and hospital-bound children

Christopher James Wise died on October 5, 2004, in Eugene,

through the Baltimore City Public Schools. These were children in

Oregon. Born in Washington, he was founder and executive direc-

special circumstances who, for either health or emotional reasons,

tor of the Northwest Environmental Justice Center, a foundation

66

he established to protect residents in the Pacific Northwest from

selected theater students together for intensive summer workshops

environmental pollution. He was also active in a coalition of envi-

and performances. In honor of his contributions to the theater

ronmental groups in Eugene that are working to counter contami-

department, the university gave his name to a 200-seat theater in

nation from the railroad yard in that city. When he lived in Flagstaff,

Chico State’s performing arts center.

Arizona, he represented the legal interests of Native Americans, having earned a degree from Georgetown Law Center in 1999. He

Remembering Joel “Bishop” O’Brien

also worked for SANE/FREEZE, the antinuclear weapons organiza-

Joel O’Brien died September 9, 2004, of liver cancer. As a

tion, for several years. In 1988–89, he visited 23 countries as a

member (from 1990 to 1998) of the elective faculty in the Music

member of an international honors program, studying and writing

Program, O’Brien, known as “Bishop” to many Bard students,

about the peaceful resolution of global conflicts, and was in Berlin

taught private lessons in jazz piano, jazz and rock drumming, and

when the wall came down. His survivors include his father, David;

jazz vocals. In addition, he accompanied many Bardians in their

his mother, Joan; and a brother, Jonathan, all of Washington.

Moderation and Senior Project concerts and performed in on-campus jazz ensembles. A well-seasoned musician, Bishop worked with musical greats, such as James Taylor, George

Faculty

Harrison, and Carole King. O’Brien was an astute student of

Neil McKenzie, 88, professor emeritus of drama, died on

possessed thousands of musical recordings and was known

music. The son of one of New York City’s first rock disc jockeys, he November 29 in Smithtown, Long Island, New York. A Phi Beta

for making mixed tapes for the enjoyment and edification of his

Kappa graduate of New York University in 1951, he had a distin-

students. Always willing to share his musical knowledge, O’Brien

guished career in the theater. His dramatic adaptation of Frank

participated in educating Bardians through a Jazz Heritage

O’Connor’s short story, “Guests of the Nation,” won an Obie Award

Club–sponsored lecture on the roots of rock and roll in jazz,

for Best One-Act Play in 1957–58 and was later staged for the

adding his voice to Bard’s musical collective, and entertaining stu-

ANTA (American National Theater and Academy) Matinee Series

dents at highly attended College-sponsored swing dances.

and Channel 13 PBS. He directed Ah, Wilderness! at New York’s

He loved collaborating with musicians of all levels. He will be

Circle in the Square; Othello at Clark Center for the Performing

missed.

Arts in Arroyo Grande, California; and the American premiere of Daisy Miller at Equity Library Theatre in Chicago, among other pro-

More information on O’Brien’s life and contributions can be found at www.joel-bishop-obrien.com.

ductions. He was also affiliated, at various times in his career, with

—Melanie Sara Stern (Shaw) ’98

the Robin Hood Theatre, Martha’s Vineyard Summer Theatre, John Drew Theatre, Hedgerow Theatre, and summer theaters in Woodstock and Hyde Park, New York. He was a former member of

Staff

Actors Equity, the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers, the Screen Actors Guild, and AFTRA (the American Federation of Television & Radio Artists).

Marjorie Beach, 79, who worked for Bard’s Buildings and Grounds department for 44 years, died on October 25, 2004, at the Baptist

McKenzie served on the Bard faculty from 1962 until his

Nursing Home in Rhinebeck. The College employed her from

retirement in 1986. During those years he was closely associated

1942 to 1986, first as a secretary and then as assistant superin-

with the late William Driver and with Robert Rockman, professor

tendent of Buildings and Grounds until her retirement. “She was

emeritus of literature and theater. “He was kind to students, but

a very competent, faithful, and energetic asset to the department,”

without indulging them, especially when it came to the work,” says

said Richard Griffiths, special assistant to the president of the

Rockman. “He would not let them just generalize; he’d insist upon

College. Her husband, Carl Beach, died in 1965, and her brother,

their knowing what they were doing, and it showed on the stage. He

Donald F. Teator, died in 1999. She is survived by her sister-in-law,

made them work, and the students admired him for it.” A private

Patricia Teator.

cremation was followed by interment in the Bard College Cemetery, at a site Professor McKenzie chose many years ago.

Lawrence Wismer, 90, died on March 21, 2004. He taught drama at Bard for four years, as an instructor from 1949 to 1951 and as an assistant professor from 1951 to 1953. His teaching career flowered, however, at California State University, Chico, where he taught drama from 1963 to 1980. He was responsible for creating Court Theatre at Chico State, a summer theater program that brings

67

whose aides had seized upon a phrase attributed to Chace, “America, the indispensable nation,” to help advocate U.S. intervention in Bosnia). But he also won critical praise for 1912: Wilson, Roosevelt, Taft and Debs—The Election That Changed the Country; The Consequences of the Peace: The New Internationalism and American Foreign Policy; Solvency, The Price of Survival: An Essay on American Foreign Policy; and America Invulnerable: The Quest for Absolute Security from 1812 to Star Wars. He also published a memoir, What We Had, and wrote a novel. In 1986, France awarded him a Chevalier des Arts et Lettres.

James Chace was born in Fall River, Massachusetts, in 1931.

After receiving his bachelor’s degree from Harvard, he did graduate work in France, and subsequently served there as an American soldier, translating French newspapers for the Central Intelligence Agency. Beginning in 1959, he edited a succession of political reviews and foreign policy journals—East Europe, Interplay, Foreign Affairs, and World Policy Journal. After a brief term as an editor at the New York Times Book Review, he joined the Bard faculty in 1990 as the Henry Luce Professor in Freedom of Inquiry and Expression.

He was appointed to direct the BGIA in 2001.

“He was motivated by a powerful sense of history,” his longtime friend, author Ronald Steel, told the Washington Post. “He believed political decisions aren’t made by mathematical formulations, but by people with personalities, foibles, and problems. That sense of the importance of personality infused his writing and allowed him to go beyond the narrow interpretations of policy wonks.”

He is survived by his companion, Joan Bingham; two former wives, the poet Jean Valentine and Susan Denvir Chace; three

James Chace

daughters, Sarah, Rebecca, and Zoe; and two grandchildren. Burial

James Chace, 72, one of the country’s foremost analysts of U.S.

ducted at Bard’s Chapel of the Holy Innocents in November, at

was in Little Compton, Rhode Island. A memorial service was conforeign policy and a preeminent member of Bard’s faculty, died of

which friends, colleagues, and students offered encomiums and the

a heart attack in Paris on October 8, 2004. Chace—whose work,

Colorado Quartet performed. Following the service, there was a

according to an obituary in the New York Times, “altered main-

reception at the President’s House.

stream thought about American global power”—was the College’s Paul W. Williams Professor of Government and Public Law and

Excerpts from the work of James Chace

Administration and director of the Bard Globalization and

Security, as we approach the end of the second century of our history, can

International Affairs Program (BGIA) in New York City. At the

never be more than relative. To say this is to do no more than to admit

time of his death, he was doing research for a book about the

a condition with which our country has always lived, but which we have

Marquis de Lafayette.

seldom been willing to acknowledge. In the nuclear era, however, to do

“Bard was fortunate to have James Chace as an integral part of

anything other than to accept our lot would be dangerously quixotic.

the College for 15 years,” said Bard president Leon Botstein. “He

Relative security will mean that despite our massive military and eco-

was a true public intellectual who loved literature and the arts. He

nomic power and the blessings of a liberal democracy, we will be required

lived a life of enthusiasm, energy, optimism, and ambition, in

to live as other great powers have lived in the past—with our safety, and

which ideas mattered and history was indispensable.”

Chace poured that enthusiasm, energy, optimism, and ambi-

the world’s peace, dependent on a judicious accommodation of often conflicting national interests.

tion into nine books, which, along with the many foreign policy

Such an accommodation will no doubt be psychologically unset-

journals he edited, exerted a tremendous influence on policymak-

tling. . . . But so long as the deceitful dream of absolute security is held

ers and historians alike. His biography of Dean Acheson, Acheson:

up before the American people as an attainable goal, no real progress can

The Secretary of State Who Created the American World, was perhaps

be made. It is only by abandoning that fateful quest that America will

his crowning achievement (it was consulted by President Clinton,

finally be able to bring her commitments and her capabilities into

68

balance and learn to live within what even Thomas Jefferson, who was

James Chace: An Appreciation

himself driven by a passion for security, once called the “safe measure of

The death of James Chace has evoked an outpouring of grief

power,” so that “our peace, commerce and friendship may be sought and

among his friends, his colleagues, and his many admiring stu-

cultivated by all.”

dents. There have always been and will always be other teach—from America Invulnerable:

The Quest for Absolute Security from 1812 to Star Wars

ers as popular, but few have inspired the same degree of awe and love.

In certain respects, James Chace was an “odd man out”

At first Roosevelt was not sure he had been wounded, but when one of his

among his academic colleagues. He wrote an unadorned prose,

secretaries pointed to a hole in his overcoat, Roosevelt unbuttoned the

notable for its clarity and precision, and he stoutly maintained

coat and put his hand beneath it. When he withdrew it, his fingers were

his faith in the value of narrative history at a time when it was

coated with blood. “It looks as though I have been hit,” he said, “but I

fashionable to doubt that narrative history could any longer

don’t think it is anything serious.”

serve a useful purpose. He was fond of calling himself a politi-

. . . In the dressing room at the auditorium, Dr. Terrell and two

cal liberal and a cultural conservative—by which he meant, as he

other doctors who were in the audience made a quick examination and

explained, that he was a liberal on domestic matters, a centrist

determined that the bullet, slowed by the fifty-page speech that had been

on foreign affairs, and a traditionalist in his view of what under-

in Roosevelt’s right breast pocket, had punctured his flesh just below the

graduates at a liberal arts college ought to learn. He had no

nipple. The wound was bleeding slightly, making a stain about the size

patience with revisionists who wanted to have them read

of a man’s fist on TR’s shirt. All three doctors urged Roosevelt to go to a

Gilgamesh and skip the Iliad.

hospital because they could not gauge the full extent of his injury. “I will

During his 14 years at Bard, he had become an almost leg-

deliver this speech or die, one or the other,” Roosevelt replied. Under these

endary teacher. There were undoubtedly several reasons for this,

circumstances, the doctors bandaged him up with a handkerchief and

but perhaps foremost among them were his infectious optimism,

Roosevelt walked on stage.

his genuine interest in other people, and his strong partisan —from 1912: Wilson, Roosevelt,

opinions, both in political and literary matters. One may suspect

Taft & Debs—The Election that Changed the Country

that for his students this was a welcome contrast to the ambiguity and doubt characteristic of so much academic thought.

One of his most lovable qualities was an absolute loyalty to old friends, several of whom he had known since high school and college. He was also fiercely devoted to his family, whose fortunes had suffered a fatal blow in the Great Depression. More than once in recent years he was heard to say that he regarded his entire adult career as an act of “revenge” on his father’s failure. It must also be said that ambition was another one of his most admirable traits. He was always at work, always engaged.

There is no better tribute than the October 20th issue of The Bard Observer, which featured a full photograph of him on the front cover and an editorial that read, in part, “Professor Chace’s . . . commitment to his students prompted several to remark over the years that were it not for his encouragement, they [might] never have graduated. When we were disillusioned, Professor Chace provided inspiration. When we were frustrated, he was there to remind us that no task was insurmountable . . .

Coming from James, the knowledge that others no better than [ourselves] had successfully traversed the intimidating path in front of us gave us the strength to succeed. For countless aspir-

James Chace referred to his students affectionately as his “kids.”

ing political studies majors, James provided a personal connection that made the process bearable. James was widely loved and universally admired; it is truly difficult to imagine Bard College without him.”

—Benjamin La Farge, Professor of English

69

Anthony Hecht, ’44 Anthony Hecht, 81, a major American poet and a former member

Life,” a barbed lampoon of Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach,” is dedicated to another Bard colleague, Andrews Wanning.

“As a colleague, he had a singular impulse to be generous,

of Bard’s faculty, died on October 20, 2004, at his home in which he never touted,” said Peter Sourian, professor of English, Washington, D.C. The cause was lymphoma.

Born in New York City on January 16, 1923, Hecht entered Bard at 17. He described his undergraduate days at the College as “unquestionably the happiest” time of his life to that point and a period during which he “fell in love” with poetry. Over the course of his career, he would go on to publish seven volumes of formalist verse, along with two books of critical essays and a study of W. H. Auden. He won a Pulitzer Prize (in 1968, for The Hard Hours); the Bollingen Prize (1983); the $100,000 Tanning Prize (1997), presented by the Academy of American Poets; and many other awards and honors.

“His verbal control was extraordinary—unequaled, really—

whose first year on the Bard faculty coincided with Hecht’s penultimate year at the College. By way of illustrating Hecht’s effectiveness as a teacher, Sourian recalled a mid-sixties event at the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan, at which Hecht read aloud from James Joyce’s Ulysses. “He had that sonorous voice, and he gave it flesh, made its heart beat,” said Sourian. “And I realized, ‘That is teaching,’ when you can read a demanding work of art aloud and make it come to life for your listeners.”

In addition to his wife, the former Helen D’Alessandro, and their son, Evan Alexander, Hecht is survived by two sons from his first marriage, Jason and Adam; and two grandchildren. A memorial reading of his poetry took place at Bard on November 3, 2004.

but to call his work ‘lapidary,’ as many critics have done, implies that his verse was too well mannered, too precious, to be powerful,” said Benjamin La Farge, professor of English. “Yet his greatest poems are very powerful indeed. Hecht came of age as a poet at a time when the poetic values championed by the New Critics—the values of wit, irony, ambiguity, and paradox—were in vogue among

Editor’s Note: Unaware of his medical circumstances, the Bardian contacted Anthony Hecht the week before his death, requesting permission to print one of his poems. He and his wife, Helen, unhesitatingly offered “The Darkness and the Light Are Both Alike to Thee.” We appreciate the generosity all the more, knowing, as we do now, that it was a parting gift.

professors of English literature, and it was the poets these critics admired who had a lasting influence on the young American poets emerging after World War II, who included Lowell, Berryman,

“The Darkness and the Light Are Both Alike to Thee” Psalms 139:12

Wilbur, and Hecht himself.”

As a soldier who saw action in France, Germany, and

Like trailing silks, the light

Czechoslovakia with the 97th Infantry Division during World War Hangs in the olive trees II, Hecht was involved in the liberation of the Flossenburg extermination camp. The experience, from which he would “wake shrieking”

As the pale wine of day

for many years, as he later confided to an interviewer, profoundly

Drains to its very lees:

influenced his life and work. The Holocaust made its first appear-

Huge presences of gray

ance in Hecht’s poetry in The Hard Hours, and persisted in his work thereafter as either a subject or a great, palpable, underlying darkness

Rise up, and then it’s night.

that was “central to his understanding of evil in the world,” as the New York Times noted in his obituary.

After the war, Hecht earned a master’s degree from Columbia University and studied with John Crowe Ransom at Kenyon

Distantly lights go on.

Scattered like fallen sparks Bedded in peat, they seem

College. He was awarded honorary doctorates from Towson State University, Bard, Georgetown University, and the University of

Set in the plushest darks

Rochester, serving as a distinguished faculty member at the latter

Until a timid gleam

three institutions. He also held academic positions at Smith College

Of matins turns them wan,

and at Harvard and Yale Universities.

At Bard, Hecht was an instructor in English from 1952 to

Like the elderly and frail

1955. He returned to Annandale in 1962 as an associate professor, was appointed a professor in 1966, and left the College the follow-

Who’ve lasted through the night,

ing year. As both an actual milieu and a psychic landscape, Bard

Cold brows and silent lips,

figures in several of Hecht’s poems. “More Light! More Light!”, one

For whom the rising light

of his most powerful poems confronting the Holocaust, is dedicated to his Bard colleagues Heinrich Bluecher and Bluecher’s wife, the philosopher Hannah Arendt. “The Dover Bitch: A Criticism of

70

Entails their own eclipse, Brightening as they fail.

John Bard Society News To paraphrase Shakespeare: How do I contribute to Bard?

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Office of Development and Alumni/ae Affairs PO Box 5000 Annandale-on-Hudson, NY 12504

These descriptions provide general information only. For specific information on your personal situation, please consult your legal and financial advisers.

Appreciated Securities A gift of appreciated securities may be a very tax-effective way to support Bard. If you donate appreciated stock that you have owned for longer than 12 months, you may take a charitable income tax deduction for the full fair market value of the stock and avoid paying any capital gains taxes. These tax savings make a gift of securities a popular alternative to cash.

Bequests A bequest is a donation made through a will. By including Bard in your will, you help future generations of Bardians benefit from a liberal arts education. A bequest may also allow you to make a larger gift than would be possible during your lifetime and possibly to save on estate taxes. You can specify an amount or a percentage of your estate.

Pooled Income Fund Alumni/ae and friends contribute cash or marketable securities into Bard’s Pooled Income Fund. Each donor receives a pro rata share of the fund’s net payout, all of which must be distributed annually. If marketable securities are contributed, the donor may

(Left to right) Barbara Italie ’50, Ralph Italie, and Bard trustee Betsy Ely ’65 at the John Bard Society luncheon

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F A C U LT Y N O T E S

Leonora Carrington: Surrealism, Alchemy and Art by Susan Aberth,

about Jewish immigrants; lectured on “Einstein and Music” at the

assistant professor of art history, was published by Lund

Einstein Forum in Berlin; talked about education and the arts at

Humphries. Aberth lectured on Carrington for the Art History

the Montclair Art Museum in New Jersey; and spoke to the staff of

Department of the University of Texas in Corpus Christi and gave

the Scarsdale School District about the characteristics of good

a talk, “19th-Century Latin American Art,” for Christie’s Education

teaching. In a recording released by Telarc, he led the London

in New York.

Symphony Orchestra in music by Popov and Shostakovich. In addition to regular conducting responsibilities with the American

John Ashbery, Charles P. Stevenson Jr. Professor of Languages and Literature, had a two-volume set of his poetry, with critical commentary, published in Chinese translation. He published new poems in American Poetry Review, TLS (Times Literary Supplement), and the Denver Quarterly, among others, and his work was included in several new anthologies, among them Best American Poetry 2004.

He published new essays on James Tate (in the New York Times Book Review), Christian Hawkey (in Conjunctions), and Jane Freilicher (in

Symphony Orchestra and the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra (whose concerts were broadcast in the United States on NPR stations through the courtesy of WFMT-Chicago), he was a guest conductor with the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra in Germany, with the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra, and at the Wratislava Cantans Festival in Poland, for which he conducted a nationally televised concert commemorating the 10th anniversary of the death of Witold Lutoslawski.

Jane Freilicher) and was the subject of feature interviews in jubilat and the Sunday Times of London.

Mary Caponegro ’78, Richard B. Fisher Family Professor in Literature and Writing, read from her work at the Walt Disney

Jonathan Becker, associate professor of political studies, published

Concert Hall (designed by Frank O. Gehry) in Los Angeles and

a paper, “Lessons from Russia: A Neo-Authoritarian Media

was interviewed by Michael Silverblatt for Bookworm on KCRW.

System,” in European Journal of Communications. He facilitated

With alumnae Rita McBride ’82 (sculpture) and Zeena Parkins ’79

workshops of international scholars from Europe and the former

(electric harp), Caponegro did a collaborative performance at the

Soviet Union, and prepared a report on Eurasia for the Global

SculptureCenter in Long Island City, in a program sponsored by the

Trends 2020 project of the National Intelligence Council. He pre-

Society of Fellows of the American Academy in Rome. She had a

sented a paper, “US/Russian Relations after Russian Elections: A

story published in the inaugural issue of The Fairy Tale Review.

Tectonic Shift?” at the annual convention of the International Studies Association, held in Montreal.

The Colorado Quartet (Julie Rosenfeld, Deborah Redding, Marka Gustavsson and Diane Chaplin, visiting assistant professors of

Daniel Berthold, professor of philosophy, has two articles forthcom-

music and Bard Center Fellows) presented the Bartók Quartet Cycle

ing: “Aldo Leopold: In Search of a Poetic Science” in Human Ecology

in Las Vegas in December and in Cincinnati in January.

Review and “Kierkegaard’s Seductions: The Ethics of Authorship” in Modern Language Notes.

Laurie Dahlberg, associate professor of art history and photography,

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

France in celebration of the 150th anniversary of the Société

director of college writing, gave readings at Keene State College in

française de photographie.

gave a lecture on Victor Regnault at the Bibliothèque nationale de

New Hampshire; the Women’s Equality Center in Englewood, New Jersey; and the Bright Hill Press reading series in Upstate New York.

Illilluminations by Tim Davis ’91, visiting assistant professor of photography, is being published this winter by Aperture and Blind Spot.

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

A solo exhibition of work from Permanent Collection will be pre-

the Arts and Humanities, addressed the United Nations with “Why

sented at Jackson Fine Art in Atlanta in May. Davis lectured at

Music Matters,” as part of Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s lecture

Eastern Tennessee State University and at Yale University, and is

series. He participated in a panel discussion at the 92nd Street Y

giving a series of poetry readings along the eastern seaboard.

72

Michèle D. Dominy, dean of the college and professor of anthropol-

Cleveland Symphony, American Symphony Orchestra, and

ogy, organized and presented a session entitled “Seasons of a

Gewandhaus Orchestra of Leipzig. His recent publications include

Dean’s Life” at the joint annual meeting of the American

“‘The Phenomenon of the Seventh’: A Documentary Essay on

Conference of Academic Deans and American Council of Colleges

Shostakovich’s ‘War’ Symphony” in Shostakovich and His World,

and Universities in San Francisco.

Larry Fink 55, with photographs by Larry Fink, professor of photography, and text by Laurie Dahlberg, associate professor of art history and photography, is being published by Phaidon Press this spring.

Joanne Fox-Przeworski, director of the Bard Center for Environmental Policy, has been appointed to the Board of Regents, Policy Academy, of the Multi-State Working Group on Environmental

edited by Laurel E. Fay and published by Princeton University Press, and “Writing Under the Influence? Salieri and Schubert’s Early Opinion of Beethoven” in Current Musicology.

Richard A. Gordon, professor of psychology, completed a series of interviews in London, Paris, and Milan of significant figures in the history of eating disorders. This work, supported by the Bard Research Fund, is part of larger book project.

Performance. She gave the keynote address, “Environment as the

Rebecca Cole Heinowitz, assistant professor of literature, has an arti-

Quintessential Global Connector,” and a talk, “Connecting to Local

cle, “‘An Empire in Men’s Hearts’: Helen Maria Williams’s

Communities,” to the Future Leaders for Environment Exchange (12

Sentimental Conquest of Peru” in Connecting Continents: Britain and

former Soviet Union countries) at the annual conference of the

Latin America, 1780–1900, to be published this spring. She pre-

Center for Cultural Interchange, held in New Orleans. She led a

sented a paper, “‘Fearful Symmetry’ across ‘the Atlantic Deep:’

roundtable discussion at the Businesswomen’s Sustainability

Latin America and the Romantic Imagination” at the North

Leadership Summit of the Women’s Network for a Sustainable

American Society for the Study of Romanticism Conference, in

Future, for which she serves on the board of directors. She also

Boulder, Colorado, last September and participated in a reading at a

attended a workshop at the National Academies of Science in

launch party for Free Radicals: American Poets Before Their First Books

Washington, D.C., to design a scientific and technical review process

at The Poetry Project at Saint Mark’s Church in New York City.

for the new edition of the World Bank Group’s Pollution Prevention and Abatement Handbook. As a featured speaker in the “Justice for

Skagafjördur, the most recent film by Peter Hutton, professor of

All” forum at St. Margaret’s Episcopal Church in Staatsburg, New

film, was screened with live musical accompaniment by the

York, she gave a talk titled “U.S. Foreign Policy and Human Rights.”

Icelandic band Sigur Rós at the Reykjavík Art Musuem, opening

Jean French, Edith C. Blum Professor of Art History, presented an

was also shown at Viennial, the Vienna film festival; Anthology

invited paper, “Charity and Ideology at Saint-Denis: The Parable of

Film Archives in New York City; and the Rotterdam Film Festival.

Lazarus and Dives” at the “Saint-Denis Revisited,” a conference

Hutton presented a program of his films at Yale University, and the

sponsored by the Index of Christian Art and the Department of Art

Minetta Brook Watershed Project presented The Floating Cinema,

and Archaeology at Princeton University.

including three of Hutton’s Hudson River films, in a barge screen-

Derek Furr, assistant professor of English in the Master of Arts in

ing on the river in the cities of Hudson and Poughkeepsie.

the Nordisk Panorama, a festival of Scandinavian films. The film

Teaching Program, published a short story, “War Wounds,” in The Literary Review and presented “The boy stood on the burning deck: teaching poetry and the ‘new’ historicism,” a workshop for middle and high school English teachers, at the New York State English Council conference.

Guan Yin: Buddhist Deity of Compassion in China, Images of Asia

by Patricia Karetzky (Oskar Munsterberg Lecturer in Art History), was published by Oxford University Press. Among Karetsky’s recent exhibitions with catalogues was Who Am I: Chinese and Chinese American Female Artists at the Chinese American Arts

Christopher H. Gibbs, James H. Ottaway Jr. Professor of Music,

Council gallery. Her published articles include “Four Female

gave preconcert lectures last fall for the Philadelphia Orchestra,

Contemporary Artists from Beijing” in World Art. 73

Felicia Keesing, associate professor of biology, gave a talk on the

Sixteenth Century Society and Conference in Toronto she presented

theory of disease ecology at the Ecological Society of America; was a

“Trompe l’oeil and the Devotional Image: The Collection and

coauthor of two other talks at that meeting (one on effects of acorn

Display of Flemish Garland Paintings.”

production on Lyme Disease risk and the other on the effects of large Diana Minsky, visiting assistant professor of art history, particimammals on community dynamics of African savannas). She gave pated in the Classical Architecture Lecture Series at Montgomery another talk, “The dilution effect: how species diversity can reduce Place in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. disease risk,” at the New York Academy of Sciences. She received three grants (National Science Foundation, Doris Duke Charitable

Jacob Neusner, Research Professor of Theology and Bard Center

Foundation, U.S. Department of Agriculture) to support an upcom-

Fellow, gave the Bokser Memorial Lecture at the Jewish Theological

ing conference on the ecology of infectious disease, to be held at

Seminary in New York City, and will give the keynote address at the

the Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, New York. She pub-

Karl-Johan Illman Memorial Conference at Åbo Akademi

lished a paper on the effects of large and small mammals on tree-

University in Åbo (Turku), Finland, in June.

seedling survival in an African savanna in Ecology and was coauthor, Dimitri B. Papadimitriou, executive vice president of the college, with Pam Roy ’03 and others, on a Journal of Medical Entomology Jerome Levy Professor of Economics, and president of the Levy paper about sand fly ecology in Upstate New York.

Economics Institute, was interviewed on the state of the global David Kettler, research professor, presented “The History of

economy in the October 4, 2004, Seattle Times and regarding the

Conservatism: Revisiting Mannheim’s Structural Analysis” at

economic impact of the current account deficit in the October 18,

a symposium, “The Meaning of Ideology: Cross-Disciplinary

2004, Investment Dealers’ Digest. In January he presented a paper,

Conversations,” at the Centre for Political Ideologies at Oxford

“The Fragility of the U.S. Economy” at the Western Economic

University. He presented “Karl Mannheim’s Jewish Question”

Association International 2005 Pacific Rim Conference in Hong Kong.

at a conference, “The Fruits of Exile: Central European Intellectual Jennifer Phillips, faculty at the Bard Center for Environmental Emigration to America in the Age of Fascism,” organized by the Policy, has received grants from the National Oceanic and Jewish Studies Program at the College of Charleston in South Atmospheric Administration Office of Global Programs and from Carolina. He published “Utopia as Discovery Process” in Die the National Science Foundation for a research project titled Unruhe der Kultur. Potentiale des Utopischen (Vellbrueck, 2004); “Decision Making under Risk of Extreme Climate Events: Applying “Karl Mannheim’s Jewish Question” (with Volker Meja) in Leipziger Lessons from Seasonal Forecasting.” She was copresenter of a talk, Beitraege fuer Juedische Geschichte und Kultur (2004); and “Improving Communication of Climate Information for Small“‘Weimar and Labor’ as Legacy: Ernst Fraenkel, Otto Kahn-Freund, holder Farm Management in Uganda,” at the annual meeting of the and Franz L. Neumann” in Die Alchemie des Exils. Exil als American Society of Agronomy, held in Seattle. schoepferischer Impuls (Edition Praesens 2005).

John Pilson, visiting assistant professor of photography, had work An-My Lê, assistant professor of photography, showed 29 Palms, a in Version, a Biennial of Video Art at the Centre Pour l’Image new series of photographs of Marines training for service in Iraq Contemporaine in Geneva, Switzerland. Three of his recent videos and Afghanistan at Murray Guy Gallery in New York City. Small were screened at the Museum of Modern Art, as part of its Wars, an older series on Vietnam War reenactors, was published in Premieres series, and he presented a solo exhibition at the Blind Spot. She received the John Gutmann Photography Raucci/Santamaria Gallery in Naples, Italy.

Fellowship Award from the San Francisco Foundation.

Susan Fox Rogers, visiting assistant professor of writing and FirstThe Hooligan’s Return, by Norman Manea (Francis Flournoy Year Seminar, had an essay published in France, A Love Story: Professor in European Studies and Culture and writer in resiWomen Write about the French Experience and has given numerous dence), is being published this year in France, Spain, and Holland. readings, from Alaska to Massachusetts.

Polirom Publishing House in Romania published Plicuri si portrete (Envelopes and Portraits), a collection of his essays. He was guest edi-

James Romm, James H. Ottaway Jr. Associate Professor of Classics,

tor of an issue on Romanian literature for the online magazine

presented a paper, “From Babylon to Baghdad: Teaching Alexander

Words Without Borders. A special issue of Words Without Borders

the Great in the Post–9/11 Era,” at the meeting of the Classical

published (in English, Spanish, and Romanian) his antitotalitarian

Association of the Atlantic States, held in Philadelphia. A volume

text “Open Letter to Ernesto Sabato,” which originally appeared 20

he edited for Hackett Publications of the life of Alexander as

years ago in Romania.

recorded by ancient sources will be published this spring.

Susan Merriam, assistant professor of art history, lectured on

Geoffrey Sanborn, associate professor of literature, had an essay,

domestic and institutional interiors in early modern Europe in a

“Mother’s Milk: Frances Harper and the Circulation of Blood,”

talk titled “The Garland Pictures: Two Receptions in Italy and

accepted at ELH (English Literary History). Another essay, “The

Flanders” at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. At the

Motive for Metaphor: Typee, Omoo, Mardi” is forthcoming in The

74

Blackwell Companion to Herman Melville. His essay “Purple Haze:

and “Douleur Exquise: Sophie Calle et les fins de la mélancolie” at

Making Sense of Uncertainty (and Uncertainty of Sense) in Typee”

the 72nd Congrès de L’ACFAS in Montreal.

will appear in a symposium on Typee in ESQ (Emerson Society Tom Wolf, professor of art history, cocurated the exhibition Byrdcliffe, An Quarterly). With assistance from a Bard Research Grant, Sanborn American Art Colony, which surveyed the history of Woodstock’s original will conduct research in New Zealand for a new book, which has art colony, founded in 1902, and the varied types of art and craft objects the working title Whipscars and Tattoos: Maori Voyagers in The Last made there. The exhibition’s tour includes the Milwaukee Art Museum, of the Mohicans and Moby-Dick.

Cornell University, Albany (New York) Institute of History and Art, Gautam Sethi, visiting assistant professor of economics and faculty,

New-York Historical Society, and Winterthur museum. Wolf wrote

Bard Center for Environmental Policy, is a cowriter on a paper, “Fishery

two essays for the exhibition catalogue, an overview of Byrdcliffe’s

Management Under Multiple Uncertainty,” scheduled for publication

history and a study of the fine arts associated with the colony.

by the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management.

Shelley Wyant, visiting assistant professor of theater, gave a workGennady Shkliarevsky, professor of history, presented a talk,

shop titled “The Artistry of Education” at the 11th International

“The Paradox of Observing, Autopoiesis, and the Future of Social

Literacy and Education Research Network Conference on Learning

Sciences” at the International Conference on the Future of Social

in Havana, Cuba.

Sciences, held in St. Petersburg, Russia.

FACULTY EMERITUS Stephen Shore, Susan Weber Soros Professor in the Arts, presented Artine Artinian, professor emeritus of French (1935–64), was the subject work in a solo exhibition at Galerie Kamel Mennour in Paris and in of an interview in Horizons, the Bowdoin College magazine, on the occagroup shows at the Palazzo Ducale in Genoa (Arts and Architecture) sion of his gift to Bowdoin, his alma mater, of an album of 201 rare and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York (American 18th-century drawings. Artinian, 96, lives in Palm Beach, Florida.

Pictures). He published a portfolio in Dwell magazine and lectured as part of a symposium at Museum Folkwang in Essen, Germany.

Pressing Pleasures: Recent Prints by Matt Phillips (Asher B. Edelman

Arion Press has published a limited edition of Edith Wharton’s Age

Professor Emeritus of Art, 1964–87) has been published in con-

of Innocence illustrated with 32 photographs by Shore, which the

junction with the exhibition of the same name at de Saisset

publisher commissioned from him.

Museum, Santa Clara (California) University, with a critical essay by curator Karen Kienzle. Phillips divides his time between

Maria Simpson, visiting assistant professor of dance, presented Emeryville, California, and Pray, Montana. work and performed at Joyce SoHo as part of the 10th annual Dancenow/NYC festival. Simpson performed in “Canyon,” choreo-

Robert Rockman, professor emeritus of literature and theater

graphed in collaboration with Peter Kyle, and also danced on screen

(1956–2002), has written the script for Blue Danube, a short film,

in filmmaker Robert Tynes’s the hip.

and a play, Rendezvous/Flight. He appeared in A Tender Worm in a Rotten Apple, a film written and directed by Kent Johnson ’03.

Valeri J. Thomson ’85, director of the Immediate Science Research Rockman lives in New York City Opportunity Program (ISROP), was on sabbatical during the fall 2004 semester, working as a visiting scientist in the Rockefeller University

Justus Rosenberg, professor emeritus of languages and literature

laboratory of John D. McKinney.

The laboratory stud-

(1962–2003), gave a series of lectures, Kafka as a Social Commentator,

ies Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the causative agent of tuberculosis

last fall at New School University in New York. Rosenberg lives in

infection. Thomson’s research in this field is based on results obtained

Rhinebeck, New York.

in collaboration with ISROP research assistants and John Ferguson, James Sullivan, professor emeritus of studio arts (1966–95), had a professor of biology (see “ISROP: an Update” in the Fall 2004 small show of paintings at the Project Room in the Nancy Hoffman Bardian).

Gallery in New York City. He has also completed several dry Eric Trudel, assistant professor of French, presented a paper, “C’est

[unmortared] stone structures, such as a 9-foot tower, a 7-foot bee-

un mot affreux: commentaires. La pratique mélancolique de Chris

hive dome, a lip bridge, and many walls in Upstate New York.

Marker” at the University of Quebec in Montreal and spoke, on the Suzanne Vromen,professor emeritus of sociology (1978–2000), wrote works of Jean Paulhan, at the University of Bordeaux. an entry on Maurice Halbwachs, the French sociologist, for the Marina van Zuylen, associate professor of French and comparative

Encyclopedia of Sociology, to be published in six volumes by Blackwell.

literature, wrote “Double Vision,” the catalogue essay for Martin

She contributed an essay to Diverse Histories of American Sociology,

Kline: Oilstick Paintings (Jason McCoy, Inc.) and “Monomanie à

sponsored by the American Sociological Association (ASA) and pub-

deux: Baudelaire et le dialogue avec l’insensé,” an article for Etudes

lished this year in celebration of its centennial. She has been invited

Françaises. She presented two papers: “Pierre Janet and the

to organize a special centennial session, “Sociology Faces the Holocaust

Redemption of Everyday Life” at the Nineteenth-Century French

and Genocide,” for the ASA meetings in Philadelphia in August.

Studies Colloquium, held at Washington University in St. Louis; 75

Matt Phillips, Asher B. Edelman Professor Emeritus of Art, had three exhibitions of his work last fall in California: Pressing Pleasures: Recent Prints, at de Saisset Museum, Santa Clara University; The Magician, the Chorus Girl, and Las Vegas, at Smith Andersen Editions, Palo Alto; and Imaginary Gardens, at Meyerovich Gallery, San Francisco. Pictured is Self Portrait with Blue Phantom (2004), a monotype.

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 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 ’68 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 Kit Kauders Ellenbogen ’52 Joan Elliott ’67 Naomi Bellinson Feldman ’53

76

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 Karen Olah ’65, Alumni/ae House Committee Chairperson

Susan Playfair ’62, Bard Associated Research Donation (BARD) Committee Chairperson 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

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

Charles P. Stevenson Jr., Chair Emily H. Fisher, Second Vice Chair

Jessica Kemm ’74 Director of Alumni/ae Affairs 845-758-7406 or kemm@bard.edu

Mark Schwartz, Treasurer Elizabeth Ely ’65, Secretary

Stella Wayne Associate Director of Alumni/ae Affairs 845-758-7407 or wayne@bard.edu

Peter C. Aldrich Roland J. Augustine

Robyn Carliss ’02 Administrative Assistant, Alumni/ae Affairs 845-758-7089 or carliss@bard.edu

+Leon Botstein, President of the College David C. Clapp *Marcelle Clements ’69

Published by the Bard Publications Office René Houtrides, MFA ’97, Editor of the Bardian

Rt. Rev. Herbert A. Donovan Jr., Honorary Trustee Asher B. Edelman ’61

Ginger Shore, Director; Julia Jordan, Assistant Director; Mary Smith, Art Director;

*Philip H. Gordon ’43

Debby Mayer, Editorial Director; Mikhail Horowitz, Ellen Liebowitz, Cynthia

*Barbara S. Grossman ’73

Werthamer, Editors; Diane Rosasco, Production Manager; Jamie Ficker, Bridget

Elizabeth Blodgett Hall, Life Trustee Emerita

Murphy, Francie Soosman ’90, Kevin Trabucco, Designers

Sally Hambrecht

©2005 Bard College. All rights reserved.

Ernest F. Henderson III Marieluise Hessel

Photography

John C. Honey ’39, Life Trustee

Cover, pages 8, 9: Antonin Kratochvil

Mark N. Kaplan

Inside front cover, pages 11, 15 (top, bottom), 29, 47: Don Hamerman

George A. Kellner

Pages 1, 3 (left, center), 15 (center), 41, 72 (left), 73: Pete Mauney ’93, MFA ’99

Cynthia Hirsch Levy ’65

Pages 2, 15 (second from top): Enrico Ferorelli

Murray Liebowitz

Pages 3 (right), 36: Dion Ogust

Peter H. Maguire ’88

Pages 4, 53: Dennis Brack/Black Star

James H. Ottaway Jr.

Pages 5, 12, 18, 19, 23, 25, 30, 31, 42 (bottom), 60, 71, 72 (center, right): Noah Sheldon

Martin Peretz

Page 6 (background book page): ©Jennifer Kennard/Corbis; artwork Bridget Murphy

Stanley A. Reichel ’65

Page 15: Courtesy of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation

Stewart Resnick

Page 16, 44 (center, bottom), 56, 62, 63: Lisa Kereszi ’95

Susan Weber Soros

Page 20 (top): Getty Image News

Martin T. Sosnoff

Page 20 (bottom): Rob Finch/The Oregonian/Corbis

Patricia Ross Weis ’52

Pages 26,27 (background filmstrip artwork): Digital Vision/Veer

William Julius Wilson

Page 28 (top): Mikael Govan ©Dia Art Foundation Page 28 (bottom): Property of Staatsburg State Historic Site

*alumni/ae trustee

Pages 37, 38, 42 (top), 44 (top): Karl Rabe

+ex officio

Page 39: ©Stephen Johnson/Getty Images Page 40 (top): Carol Shadford Page 40 (bottom): Courtesy of the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities; photographer, Peter Harholdt Page 43: Daniel Vander-Warker Page 46 (top): Jessica Craig-Martin Page 46 (bottom): Chris Decherd Page 49: Courtesy of Louise Gruner Gans Page 50: Bill Cain/Black Star Page 51: Courtesy of Donna Lampert (Nussinow) Page 52 (top): Courtesy of Citigroup Page 54: China Jorrin Page 55: Courtesy of the Budapest Business Journal Page 58 (top): Walter Swett ’96 Page 61: Edward Wilkinson-Latham

1-800-BARDCOL

Pages 68, 69: Doug Baz Page 76: John Wilson White Back cover: Tania Barricklo

www.bard.edu/alumni i

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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