Bardian 2006 Spring

Bardian Bard College Spring 2006

Writing Africa Food Webs as Predictive Tools Clerking for Chief Justice Ginsburg: Anna-Rose Mathieson ’99 Confucian Enlightenment

Professor Maria Simpson discussing the human skeleton with a parent after a Family Weekend lecture

Board of Governors of the Bard–St. Stephen’s Alumni/ae Association Dr. Ingrid Spatt ’69, President Michael DeWitt ’65, Executive Vice President Walter Swett ’96, Vice President Maggie Hopp ’67, Secretary Olivier teBoekhorst ’93, Treasurer David B. Ames ’93 Robert Amsterdam ’53 Claire Angelozzi ’74 Judi Arner ’68 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 Jamie Callan ’75 Cathaline Cantalupo ’67 Charles Clancy ’69, Development Committee Cochairperson

Peter Criswell ’89, Career Connections Committee Cochairperson Arnold Davis ’44, Nominations and Awards Committee Cochairperson Kit Kauders Ellenbogen ’52 Joan Elliott ’67 Naomi Bellinson Feldman ’53 Barbara Grossman Flanagan ’60 Connie Bard Fowle ’80, Career Connections Committee Cochairperson Diana Hirsch Friedman ’68 R. Michael Glass ’75 Eric Warren Goldman ’98, Alumni/ae House

Construction of The Gabrielle H. Reem and Herbert J. Kayden Center for Science and Computation

Committee Cochairperson Rebecca Granato ’99, Young Alumni/ae Committee Cochairperson 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, Career Connections Committee Cochairperson Richard Koch ’40 Erin Law ’93, Development Committee Cochairperson Cynthia Hirsch Levy ’65 Dr. William V. Lewit ’52

Peter F. McCabe ’70, Nominations and Awards Committee Cochairperson Steven Miller ’70, Development Committee Cochairperson Abigail Morgan ’96 Molly Northrup Bloom ’94 Jennifer Novik ’98, Young Alumni/ae Committee Cochairperson Karen Olah ’65, Alumni/ae House Committee Cochairperson Susan Playfair ’62, Bard Associated Research Donation (BARD) Committee Chairperson Arthur “Scott” Porter Jr. ’79 Allison Radzin ’88, Events Committee Cochairperson Penelope Rowlands ’73

Reva Minkin Sanders ’56 Roger Scotland ’93 Benedict S. Seidman ’40 Donna Shepper ’73 George Smith ’82 Andrea J. Stein ’92 Dr. Toni-Michelle Travis ’69 Jill Vasileff MFA ’93, MFA Liaison Marjorie Vecchio MFA ’01, MFA Liaison Samir B. Vural ’98 Barbara Wigren ’68 Ron Wilson ’75, Men and Women of Color Network Liaison

Dear Alumni/ae and Friends, This letter is about connecting.

Perhaps it was a brilliant red leaf fluttering at your feet and a sudden whiff of crisp fall air; or the first few instantly recognizable measures of “Walk on By” drifting out of the radio; or the sound of a waterfall that made you close your eyes to capture the vision of that waterfall . . . and there you were, for a few brief moments in your busy, rushing-on-by life, back at Bard.

For the past two years I have had the opportunity to attend the Life After Bard dinners on campus, where alumni/ae return to talk with current students about their career paths, choices they made along the way, and, essentially, how they got from here to there. Consistently, a theme has emerged from these conversations: that of linkages and the importance of maintaining Bard connections, be it for personal or professional reasons. It is clear that the Bard community is important to these alumni/ae and they cherish the friends they still hold close after many years.

The years go by and we do lose touch. It is quite possible that your only connections with Bard at this time are issues of the Bardian, or an annual contribution (thank you!) to the Bard alumni/ae fund. However, I am delighted to tell you that you do not have to lose the academic and supportive community of Bard. There are many ways you can maintain and strengthen your associations.

There is an active website at www.bard.edu that offers you the opportunity to connect with classmates and other Bardians. Click on “Alumni/ae” and go to Online Community. Once there, you can register and log on to find an alumni/ae directory, websites of fellow Bardians, and a message board. Want to send a unique message? Click on “Send a Postcard” and get an array of Bard landscapes and buildings to accompany your message. Want to send news for publication in the Bardian? Click on “Class Notes.”

Looking for your first job or considering a career change? Click on “Services” and access the college’s Career Development Office. This office also supports the collegecentral.com/ bard site, on which you can post job or internship offerings or sign up to be a mentor to a current student. As a mentor you can choose a wide range of personally fulfilling opportunities, ranging from being a listening ear to assisting with a job placement.

The alumni/ae website offers you details of upcoming events. There is also information on ways to give to Bard—including the alumni/ae fund, gifts of appreciated securities, and planned giving—to support current and future students, and thus future members of the Bard alumni/ae community.

Take a moment. Sit back. Is there a particularly poignant memory you have cherished? Is there a little stirring of desire to take the “then” and make it the “now”? Then reconnect and come back to Bard! Learn about all the new and exciting programs and initiatives that have made Bard a major force in liberal arts education in the 21st century.

Be a part of it.

Ingrid Spatt ’69, Ed.D., President, Board of Governors, Bard–St. Stephen’s Alumni/ae Association

Bardian

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SPRING 2006 Features 4

Roger Scotland ’93 Inspires City Kids

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Supreme Clerkship: Anna-Rose Mathieson ’99

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Writing Africa: In Search of “A Balance of Stories”

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MAT Program Graduates Make Marks in the Inner City

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Looking Homeward: An Internship of Consequence

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Science, Technology, and Society: Furthering Cross-pollination among Academic Fields

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To Bear Witness: Medical Relief in Kashmir

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Holiday Party

Departments 34

Books by Bardians

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On and Off Campus

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Class Notes

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Faculty Notes

The Golden Rule’s Contemporary Relevance Food Webs of the Past, Present, and Future Dissonant Issues about World Music

A MOTIVATIONAL

SLAM DUNK Roger Scotland ’93 Inspires City Kids

When people talk about Roger Scotland ’93, they speak of his willingness—indeed, his determination—to go out of his way to help others.

“In basketball camp, he was one of the counselors, and to my amazement, he was friendly,” recalls David McClure, who was an overwhelmed fourth-grader when he met Scotland a decade ago. Now 19 and a sophomore at Duke University, McClure still sees Scotland as a mentor. He remembers being 15 years old and taking part in a 3-on-3 game with men in their 20s. Scotland was playing too. “I was real intimidated, and Roger just pulled me aside and told me, ‘Don’t be afraid; you’re better than they are.’ He made me realize I could instill confidence in myself.”

Fittingly, Scotland works with youth. He is deputy director for citywide education and youth services in New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s office; before that, he ran one of the city’s summer youth employment programs.

Thanks in part to Scotland, young employees now can receive their pay through a debit-card system. He also has worked for the Madison Square Boys & Girls Club and directed fund development and special projects for Harlem Congregations for Community Improvement (HCCI).

He was himself mentored by many. “I grew up in East New York, Brooklyn, and never had consistent access to afterschool programs,” says Scotland, reached at his office in lower Manhattan. “When I was looking to go to college, I didn’t get sound counseling in school. It was through a basketball coach

that I heard about Bard. . . . My models have been people who didn’t have to be involved with young adults, but were—the late Reverend Dr. Preston R. Washington, Charles McDuffie, Kurt James, Lawrence Smith, and Archdeacon and Mrs. Bernard O. D. Young. ” One coach, Neil Woodard, involved him in Operation Athlete, a program run by the not-for-profit Henry Street Settlement, which tried to form college careers for teenagers interested in improving themselves. When Scotland heard about Bard, he recalls “griping” that he couldn’t afford carfare for the visit. Operation Athlete’s director, James Robinson, gave him and his mother $100 for the trip.

“When I got back, he died,” Scotland recalls. “I knew I had to go to Bard,” which he did through the Higher Education Opportunity Program (HEOP).

As an undergraduate, Scotland helped out with the Special Olympics, while playing varsity basketball (he was captain from 1991 to 1993). “I’ve always acted through the examples others have set,” he says. “My grandfather, a deacon in the church, was a maintenance worker in a Coney Island housing development; no matter what his situation, he always helped others.”

Woodard remembers Scotland, who was 16 at the time the two met, as both organized and smart: “He was my assistant coach in Operation Athlete after he graduated from Bard, and he taught the kids how to think. He made the game as cerebral as it is physical.” Woodard adds, “He was motivational and inspirational for those kids. He would tear you down, then pull you back up, which is necessary because there is a lot of cockiness on the basketball court.”

Scotland grew up with his mother and two siblings; his parents divorced when he was young. His mother, a manager at Citibank, worked an additional part-time job to support her three children while attending community college. Scotland himself is divorced with no children, and has what he calls two “vices”: his two Alaskan Malamute dogs and the antique cars that he restores. He strongly believes that, nowadays, adults increasingly ignore or allow themselves to be intimidated by young people. “If you see children doing something they shouldn’t, go out and talk with them,” he says. “Many adults don’t take the time to engage our kids; many people are scared of children, who try to take advantage. As Leon Botstein wrote in Jefferson’s Children, teenagers have a great deal of perspective, intellect, and curiosity.”

At HCCI, Scotland’s first job after Bard, “I was extended a tremendous opportunity to be involved in the holistic reha-

bilitation of Harlem,” he recalls. “But I realized no one would listen to me with only a B.A.” So he enrolled in a Ph.D. program in history at Columbia. Still at HCCI, he met a consultant, Herb Lowe, who later recruited him for the Madison Square Boys & Girls Club, where Scotland ultimately became director of marketing and community relations and where he learned valuable lessons about life, business, and stewardship.

He began working for New York City in June 2002.

“I saw him in action in the not-for-profit world and in government,” says Ernie Hart, former chief of staff to the deputy mayor for policy and now assistant vice president for employee and labor relations at Columbia University. “At the Department of Youth and Community Development, he helped to start up and maintain day-to-day relationships in a program that involved banks, contractors, parents, and youth.

He made certain the debit card program was successful. The purpose was to make it easier for the city’s bookkeeping, but it also gave kids experience in financial management.”

Scotland is involved with promoting a uniform and responsive policy toward youth and families. His focus is on “disconnected youth”—ages 16 to 24, who are neither in school nor work—and young adults negotiating the criminal justice system. “We are trying to better coordinate services so those who fall through the cracks early in life find . . . access to workforce development programs, life-skills training, and supportive interventions,” he says.

In the midst of this busy life, Scotland found himself diagnosed in 2001 with Guillaume-Barre Syndrome, an immobilizing disorder that later often afflicts sufferers with chronic fatigue. (He conducted negotiations on a tentative property closing from his bed in an intensive care unit.) He says the experience, like so many others in his life, affected him deeply: “It gives you a better appreciation for the things you take for granted. I’d been an athlete all my life and I couldn’t even do a toe raise. Now I always look at programs with an eye toward people with special needs.”

Another example of his concern for youth is his continuing connection with the Bard campus through his participation on the Board of Governors of the Bard–St. Stephen’s Alumni/ae Association. “Since my childhood and my time at Bard, I have always had in me the examples others have set,” Scotland says. “Today’s youth could learn much from intergenerational contact and greater focus—both by them and by the adults who are supposed to prepare them for successful adulthood.”

—Cynthia Werthamer 5

SUPREME CLERKSHIP Anna-Rose Mathieson ’99 Serves the Highest Court They are the highest clerks in the land. Young, bright, diligent, and highly motivated law school graduates, they are handpicked by the nine Justices of the United States Supreme Court for one-year terms characterized by “long hours wading through eye-glazing paperwork,” as Charles Lane put it in the Washington Post. Working well behind the scenes, and outside the hot glare of media scrutiny, they help the Justices pore through certiorari applications (applications requesting the Supreme Court to review lower-court decisions) and assist in researching and writing judicial opinions.

In July 2005, a Bard graduate was welcomed into the elite corps of Supreme Court clerks. Anna-Rose Mathieson ’99, a 6

native Oregonian who earned her bachelor’s degree in philosophy in Annandale and then went on to graduate first in her class at the University of Michigan Law School, was selected

by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to serve as one of four clerks on her staff. For Mathieson, it was—as it no doubt must be for any clerk selected—a case without any experiential precedent.

“Nothing can really prepare you for the substance of a Supreme Court clerkship—all you can do is jump in and hang on as the almost vertical learning curve goes up and up,” she says. “But it helped that I’d been in several other situations that were also intense from the outset. For the eight months before my clerkship, for instance, I worked at the

[Washington, D.C.] law firm of Williams & Connolly. I started in November, and was immediately put on a big criminal case that was going to trial in February. It was an amazing learning experience: for all of February, our trial team camped out in a Manhattan hotel and threw every waking hour into defending our client.”

While clerking for the nation’s highest court may present an unparalleled learning opportunity, Mathieson cannot divulge the details: she and her fellow clerks are bound by the strictest of confidentiality agreements. The Supreme Court, as an institution, places a premium on discretion; while details about the size of Mathieson’s workload, say, or the amount of hours she logs might appear to be trivial, even such humdrum minutiae about the Court’s inner workings are not generally made public. Nothing prohibits her, though, from discussing how her many and varied interests dovetail with her legal career.

“Right after my clerkship interview with Justice Ginsburg, I went to India for a couple of months,” she relates.

“Not to see the tourist sights—I’d already spent several months doing that, being awed by India’s beauty and history, and trying not to be overwhelmed by the sensory overload of sights, smells, and sounds. Instead, this trip was to learn about India’s legal system. I wasn’t planning to have the experience contribute to my professional development in any specific way; nor did I have any contacts there, or even a plan about how I was going to proceed. I just hopped on a flight, showed up at one of the law schools in Bombay, and started talking to professors and students.”

The adventure proved to be as enlightening as it was enjoyable. “I sat in on several law school classes and even taught a contracts class; watched wig-bedecked lawyers argue in several types of courts; talked to law clerks, prosecutors, defense attorneys, and law firm partners; and read the Indian penal code while sitting on a roof overlooking the chaos of Bombay,” she says.

Her Indian sojourn helped Mathieson gain an appreciation for the evolution of criminal law. “Both Indian and American criminal law grew out of the same British common law roots, and both changed and adapted in response to different histories, cultures, and governmental structures,” she says. “It was just fun to learn about something interesting and get to design my own curriculum. [It’s] the sort of thing I would never have done had I not gone to Bard.”

The above account makes abundantly manifest those personal qualities—confidence, resourcefulness, amiability,

and a keen intelligence wedded to a boundless curiosity— that have stood Mathieson in such good stead and make such a lasting impression on those who encounter her.

“Do I remember her? We all do—she is unforgettable,” says William Griffith, professor and director of the Philosophy Program at the College. “She was absolutely an exceptional student—one of the very best we have ever had in the department. We all thought she might do spectacular things. Now, it looks as though she has.”

Garry Hagberg, James H. Ottaway Jr. Professor of Aesthetics and Philosophy, was Mathieson’s adviser on her Senior Project. “What emerged from a flurry of highly focused work was an award-winning, truly exceptional piece of writing on philosophical issues in legal theory,” he says.

“We in the Philosophy Program are very pleased by, and very proud of, her remarkable achievements.”

In case your image of a law clerk is that of a vaguely Dickensian character, haggard and twitchy from squinching over intimidating piles of papers and rarely seeing daylight, let it be noted that Mathieson does have a life outside of law.

She has, at one time or another, been an avid runner, fencer, rower, and white-water rafter; she has a passion for art history and theater; and she is an insatiable traveler, having visited, to date, more than 30 countries and all 50 states.

Mathieson has swum with piranhas in the Amazon, trekked the Inca trail, waded through two kilometers of mud to cross the Laotian-Chinese border on foot, and put the finishing touches on her law school admissions essay in an Internet café in Bangkok.

In July, Mathieson will complete her service with Justice Ginsburg and move on. She will be in an enviable position; according to Legal Times, former Supreme Court clerks are highly prized and aggressively recruited by law firms. For her part, Mathieson has no immediate plans.

“I’m not quite sure what I’ll be doing 10 years from now, or even one year from now,” she says. “I’d love to end up teaching criminal law, but I want to practice first and experience the gritty realities of litigation.”

—Mikhail Horowitz

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Clockwise, from left to right: Helon Habila, Emmanuel Dongala, Kofi Anyidoho, Caryl Phillips, and Chinua Achebe

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WRITING AFRICA In Search of “A Balance of Stories” In Home and Exile, Chinua Achebe, the Charles P. Stevenson Jr. Professor of Literature and Languages at Bard, reflects on the 20th century as the beginning of “‘re-storying’ peoples who had been knocked silent by the trauma of all kinds of dispossession,” and expresses his hope that the 21st century will see a “balance of stories.”

Achebe played a seminal role in creating a tradition for “writing Africa,” and Kofi Anyidoho, Emmanuel Dongala, Helon Habila, and Caryl Phillips are building on that tradition. The five distinguished writers and educators came together at the College last October to discuss the history of fellowship and conflict between African and African diaspora writers and to address the impact of such issues as pan-Africanism, colonialism, and postcolonialism on their work. Jesse Shipley, director of the Africana Studies Program, moderated the event, which inaugurated the Chinua Achebe Fellowship in Global African Studies at Bard College and was cosponsored by Barnard College’s Literature of the Middle Passage course.

Chinua Achebe has taught at Bard since 1990. Originally from Nigeria, the poet, novelist, cultural critic, and essayist is perhaps best known for his 1958 novel Things Fall Apart, considered by many the premier work of African literature. In September 2005, he was named one of the world’s top 100 public intellectuals by Foreign Policy magazine. Helon Habila, also from Nigeria, is the first Chinua Achebe Fellow at Bard. His debut novel, Waiting for an Angel, was published in 2003 and received a Commonwealth Writers Prize. Kofi Anyidoho is a poet, critic, and professor of literature at the University of Ghana, his alma mater. His most recent collection of poetry is PraiseSong for the Land. Emmanuel Dongala, a novelist originally from the Congo Republic, teaches Francophone African literature at the College and is the Richard B. Fisher Chair in Natural Sciences and professor of chemistry at Simon’s Rock College of Bard. Caryl Phillips, a native of St. Kitts who was brought up in Leeds, England, is the author of three books of nonfiction and eight novels, including Dancing in the Dark (2005)

and Crossing the River, which was shortlisted for the 1993 Booker Prize for Fiction. He is a professor of English at Yale University and last fall was a visiting professor at Barnard College.

Excerpts of the panelists’ remarks follow.

CARYL PHILLIPS In the 1930s, in Paris, two remarkable men sat down for a series of conversations. One was Léopold Sédar Senghor, a student from Senegal, and the other Aimé Césaire, from Martinique. The young men saw themselves as artists, but they also felt that they had a responsibility to shape the political direction of their respective countries once they had completed their studies. Senghor would eventually return to Senegal and become its president, and Césaire returned to Martinique and became mayor of its capital city.

Beyond their obvious like and trust for each other, what bound these men together was their conviction that colonialism was most vigorous and corrosive when it sought, as it inevitably did, to destroy something they understood to be black culture. Neither man could conceive a future for himself in which his efforts achieved validation only when reflected through European eyes. Their philosophy—for after all they were French—came to be known as “Negritude.” It was a

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mode of thinking that suggested that a common black culture existed, a culture whose strengths were such that if one could only recognize and promote them, it would no longer be necessary to continually negotiate Europe’s assumption of black inferiority, artistic or otherwise.

In September 1956, both men once again found themselves in Paris for the Conference of Negro African Writers and Artists. It soon became clear that those in attendance were continuing the same conversation that Senghor and Césaire had begun two decades earlier. In the intervening years, the conversation had become a movement, and most of those at the conference took it for granted that all black people possessed a common heritage that existed in opposition to Europe.

James Baldwin, who wrote about the conference, felt that there were three clearly expressed aims: to define or assign responsibility for the state of black culture, to assess the state of black culture at the present time, and to open a new dialogue with Europe. But Baldwin detected something else: a discomfort between what he termed the American Negro and other men of color. Potentially, an African man and a Caribbean man have much in common, largely because they were forged in the same crucible of colonial exploitation. But the African American has an altogether different history. He has not been shaped by colonialism, but by American expansionism. In fact, he’s been a central participant in it. Remember, the buffalo soldiers had rifles.

Along with Baldwin, Richard Wright was in the audience.

Although these two writers hardly agreed on anything else, they were agreed on the central divide between American Negroes and these colonials. Both Baldwin and Wright felt that, despite their checkered relationship with the United States, they had been born into, as Baldwin put it, “a world with a great number of possibilities.” Baldwin felt strongly that it was part of his struggle as a writer to encourage Negro Americans to see themselves as Americans, and until they could do that, they had no place at all thinking of themselves as Africans.

Today, 50 years after the conference, we still have major migration from Africa and the Caribbean to Paris and London and the United States, now clearly the first choice of most migrants. There’s an economic pull that draws people to the United States, but there is also the hope of being able to function in a society that does not view people of African origin through a reductive colonial lens. In this sense, Negritude has been replaced by “migratude.”

But let me conclude by returning to the problem that daunted the conference in 1956 and continues to cloud the 10

conversation today. How does one have a conversation between African writers and writers of the African diaspora and productively include African Americans? And if we do speak, what should we talk about beyond banalities of pigmentation? The question, perhaps, will not be so much about finding a common black culture; it will be a question that brings us back to colonialism: the quest for power. How does power operate on the social, political, and artistic expression of a people? A consensus on the word “power” might be a good place to begin. Baldwin, always intuitive, already knew this: he entitled his essay on the conference “Princes and Power.”

EMMANUEL DONGALA I would like to talk briefly about the problem of identity confronted by Francophone African writers. It seems that this problem of identity, the so-called authentic African identity, has been more of an issue in that part of Africa writing in French. The reason may be that Francophone African literature began not in Africa, but in Paris. In Anglophone countries it started on the continent.

Amos Tutuola’s The Palm-Wine Drinkard and Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, for example, were written in Africa, in Nigeria. Read Things Fall Apart, and there’s no doubt in your mind that the writer knows intimately the culture he’s talking about—it is his culture.

Francophone African literature started from the banks of the Seine. It tried to include all of the diaspora, le monde negre, from Africa to America to the Caribbean. When you have such an inclusive movement, you refer more to imagined entities than to real ones; you deal more with generalities and, inevitably, ideologies. And when you try to deal with a specific culture, it’s a culture remembered, re-created.

In his book L’Enfant Noire, Camara Laye deals with the Malinke culture in Guinea. It’s a culture remembered from Paris, a celebration of a mythical and paradisiacal Africa.

I don’t know whether this quote is true, but Chinua was

quoted as saying that he found that book “too sweet” for his tastes.

Negritude, this sort of celebration of Africa, was in part a reaction to the belief that colonialism had destroyed and offended African culture and identity. The remedy was thought to be simple. It was through anticolonial struggle. It was as if African identity lay somewhere in the path, and to fetch it, to redeem it, all one had to do was remove the cultural and political obstacles preventing you from reaching it. Well, it turned out that was not true. After independence, not only was the so-called authentic African identity nowhere to be found, but the problem was more complex: writers were confronted with a moving identity.

In any case, has there ever been such a thing as an authentic African identity in a continent with so many ethnicities, each with their own individual culture? You read Things Fall Apart and learn that in Ebo traditional society, twins are evil and have to be abandoned to the forest to die. Read my own Little Boys Come from the Stars and you will learn that twins are to be celebrated and that their mother is given a special status. How can a writer in postcolonial Africa talk about a supposedly authentic African identity when it can be, at the same time, Christian and Muslim, animist and Marxist? And what is his or her identity when he or she is a son or daughter of immigration?

Are you still an African writer when you have not lived on the continent at all and do not speak any African languages?

What is happening now is that the Francophone writer does not pretend to speak for the people anymore. He has learned modesty. Like most writers, he or she is now more concerned about his own vision of the world than anything.

Many of them do not want to be called écrivain engagé, the committed writer, anymore. They do not even want to be called an African writer. Just writer. So the problem of identity faced by the first generation of Negritude writers has not been resolved by the younger generation; it is just reappearing under a new guise.

young Africans who do not see their future in Africa. My students are busy spending the time they should be spending on reading their books, preparing for their exams, or thinking of a future for themselves where they are, in planning an exit. At my university, most in the last class of medical doctors were not at the graduation ceremony to receive diplomas; they had already left, most on their way to America.

What would it take for us to reinvent a future for our young people at home? It is important to keep reminding ourselves of stories like those Neto has left us, stories about how once upon a time we had our world in our hands and stories about how we lost that world. And above all, stories about how we can get back our own world.

Some tell us that our salvation lies in the refutation of our history of pain, our history of shame, our history of endless fragmentation. But we must wander through history into myth and memory seeking lost landmarks in a geography of scars and fermented remembrances. It must not be that the rest of the world came upon us, picked us up, used us to clean up their mess, then dropped us off into trash, hoping that we remain forever lost among the shadows of our own doubt.

Ours is a quest for a future aligned with the energy of recovered vision. With so much left undone, to keep calling our situation a dilemma is just an excuse for inaction. We must recall that we are the people who once wrote it down with civilization’s life still blowing through our minds.

For 500 years and more we have journeyed from Africa through the Virgin Islands into Santo Domingo, from Havana in Cuba to Savannah in Georgia, from Ghana to Guyana, from the shantytowns of Johannesburg to the favelas in Rio de Janeiro. And all we find are a dispossessed and battered people still kneeling in a sea of blood, lying in the path of hurricanes.

But no matter how far away we try to hide away from ourselves, we will have to come back home and find out where and how and why we lost the light in our eyes, how and why we

KOFI ANYIDOHO “My hands lay stones upon the foundations of the world. I deserve my piece of bread.” These are the words of the late Agostinho Neto, poet, freedom fighter, president of Angola. In a world in which Africa has taken on the image of poverty, of the professional beggar, we have to come back to the understanding that it has not always been like that. In fact, once upon a time, the world came to Africa to learn.

Today we in Africa ourselves are finding it very difficult to believe that’s true. We are faced with a generation of 11

have become eternal orphans. We must remind ourselves that just to survive, barely to survive, and merely to survive can never be enough.

HELON HABILA It has occurred to me that most of the novels by the new generation of African writers seem to be concerned with coming-of-age themes. This emerging generation of writers has been described as witnesses to the challenges of living in a society in transition, as both the victims and chroniclers of a prolonged season of pain.

In Moses Isegawa’s Abyssinian Chronicles we come face to face with the civil wars in Uganda. In Chris Abani’s GraceLand we see the chaos that was Nigeria under the long stretch of military dictatorships. Diane Awerbuck’s Gardening at Night tells of a young lady’s coming-of-age confusions and desires for South Africa. From the same country we have the late Phaswane Mpe’s Welcome to Our Hillbrow, with its treatment of black-on-black xenophobia and the ravages of AIDS on the people of Johannesburg. Despite the diversity of subjects treated, these young writers are all trying to make sense of the world around them. In choosing the bildungsroman form, it is as if they are crying out, “We are just beginning. We know you look to us for answers and interpretations, but we are as helpless as you are.”

I cannot help but compare this generation to the first generation of African writers whose reign began with the publication of such landmarks as Things Fall Apart, A Grain of Wheat, and The African Child in the 1950s and 1960s. This was a time when Africa was reeling under the shackles of colonialism, when books like Joyce Cary’s Mister Johnson, Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, and even the adventures of Tarzan were the standards by which Africans were judged. The pan-African politicians and poets tried to correct this astigmatic perception of the African, but without much success. After them, the

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Negritude poets tried the same thing. Critic Simon Gikandi suggests that these writers were so focused on countering Western imaginings, that they forgot the essential point at stake: the invention of an African culture independent of Europe. So it was the first generation of writers, and Chinua Achebe in particular, who were able, at that moment of transition, to supply African and even non-African people with an African culture they could read about, discuss in class, and write papers on.

The kind of society that the new African writers, the third generation writers, must make sense of is a society that still struggles between democracy and dictatorship, a society where most of the graduates are unemployed because of the collusion between the unfair global economic system and corrupt politicians, a society where most of the women are still exploited and voiceless. And I see in the works of these young writers a feeling of exhaustion, a lack of conviction about the ability of the societies represented to triumph over the obstacles in their path.

I think my generation seems to lack conviction not because it has forgotten its history, but because it’s not sure of the efficacy of literature to repeat the kind of feat that Professor Achebe achieved. Notice that I’m taking it for granted that one of the most important duties of a writer is to act as his community’s conscience. But we are talking about a society where all accepted avenues for protest and dissent have crumbled. In Africa, we now have more newspapers than we had before, more writers, but because of the desensitization of the societies no one pays attention to the written word. It seems that to protest, to express dissent, one must resort to extraliterary channels. And so recently, to make himself quite clear to the Nigerian government, Professor Achebe had to turn down an award. And two weeks ago, the 71-year-old Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka had to take to the streets to demonstrate against the government’s economic policies. This desensitization to literature is not is unique to Africa. Writers now are in competition with the fact-churning industries—the search engines, live television broadcasts, DVDs. And when people do talk about books it is not about whether they are good or bad, but about what prizes they have won or how photogenic the author is.

I hate to conclude on this pessimistic note, so I will borrow a few hopeful words from a recent essay by Salman Rushdie: “Not even the author of a book can know exactly what effect his book will have, but good books do have effects, and some of these effects are powerful, and all of them, thank goodness, are impossible to predict in advance.”

CHINUA ACHEBE Not long ago, I watched a program in which a group of upper-middle-class white women were discussing the flood in Louisiana. In particular, they were discussing the fact that a disproportionate number of black people were those who appeared in the pictures, who were having the worst of it.

And one of the women asked why it was that, whether in Louisiana, or in Haiti, or in Africa itself, poverty seems somehow to attach to blackness.

Somebody said it was not a question of race, but a question of class, which is the best position we have invented to save us from the awkwardness of this question. But it’s a question that has occurred to many of us. It’s occurred, for instance, to the African American historian Chancellor Williams. I once was in his audience, and he was asking the same question. As a child growing up, he said, he wondered why black people were always at the end of the queue. He knew he wasn’t more dumb than other people; in fact, he beat everyone in his class. So why was it that at the end of the day he was at the end of the queue?

Now this question has a very simple answer. The answer is that these black people, whether you see them in Louisiana or in Haiti or in Africa itself, have the same story: the story of the slave trade. What happened, happened first in Africa.

The consequences then spread throughout the world. We writers have to do the homework to find out the history of what happened to us.

In my third novel, Arrow of God, I wrote in a character from real life. My parents were Christian evangelists and they knew the early missionaries who brought the gospel to my part of the world. And they spoke about a Mr. Blackett, who was so learned, they said, that he was more learned than white people. Blackett came from the West Indies with an Anglican mission. He was the director of education and he became a legend, a man everybody was talking about. This went on under the British, who owned the colony of Nigeria and who, for reasons of their own, decided that they didn’t

need the word of God anymore and sent Blackett home. So I put this man in my novel as a legend. He didn’t do very much, but he lived in my mind and was part of it, so I put him in. Now, 10 years later, I get a letter from a headmaster in the Caribbean. He says, “I just read your novel, Arrow of God. Thank you very much for the tribute you paid my late father.” The letter went on to explain that this was Blackett’s son, who, as it happened, was born in Nigeria. My mother, who was 80, remembered this little boy.

The Caribbean missionaries clearly understood that there was something binding them to the Ebo people in Nigeria.

The experience of black people in the United States is different from the experience of black people in the Caribbean. It is different from the experience of black people in Africa. But that doesn’t cancel the fact that this is basically the same story.

The first and only time I met James Baldwin was in Gainsville, Florida. The African Literature Association had invited him and me to hold a conversation. I was very excited. Six years before I had come to this country for the first time on a fellowship given by UNESCO. I’d discovered Baldwin, and he was one of the reasons for choosing to come here. I came in ’62, I believe, and I was told that Baldwin was in France and wasn’t likely to be back. So I didn’t see him.

Then this opportunity came at the conference. I was so excited that when I met him I wanted to say, “Mr. Baldwin, I presume.” Well, I didn’t, but later I talked to him about it, and Baldwin laughed so much, you could see his eyes jumping. When he had the opportunity to speak, he turned to me and said, “This is a brother I have not seen in 400 years.” The audience exploded. They were so loud they nearly missed the next thing he said, which was, “It was never intended that he and I should ever meet.”

Baldwin had his difficulties with Africa, and he said so quite openly. But he was wrestling with it, because having difficulties with Africa doesn’t mean saying “I didn’t come from there” or “I came from there and I didn’t like it.” It is important for us to understand that when we see black people at the end of the queue in Haiti, in Louisiana, in Nigeria, it’s because they have the same story. And it is the business of the writer to deal with this story and all its ramifications. It’s extremely complex, but we must never surrender to despair. I don’t think that will do at all. We’ve got this task, this job, to write Africa. And it’s extremely important to understand and appreciate that it’s going to take a long, long time.

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NOT BY ROTE Carole Ann Moench and Kate Belin, Members of the MAT Program’s First Graduating Class, Make Marks in the Inner City

Words are scattered across a seventh-grade classroom board: “sound”; “ groaned”; “fawn.” At tables around the room, students sort through envelopes stuffed with words that their teacher has asked them to arrange into a poem. Outside, an autumn sun shines on high-rises covered with graffiti, interrupted by rows of new, single-family row houses, many with cars parked on tiny concrete aprons in front.

Barely 10 years ago, the East Tremont section of the South Bronx still looked as it did in the famous photograph of President Jimmy Carter touring the rubble-strewn neighborhood. Today, the row houses are gaining ground, but the area remains one of the nation’s poorest. Many students at Fannie Lou Hamer Middle School and High School come from East Tremont or other parts of the South Bronx. “The parents come in and say, ‘I teach my kids to fight because that’s what they have to do to survive,’” says Carole Ann Moench, the teacher giving the poetry lesson.

Moench, who teaches humanities at Fannie Lou Hamer Middle School, and Kate Belin, who teaches math at Fannie Lou Hamer High School around the corner, both graduated last year from Bard’s new Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) program. The MAT degree blends advanced work in a grad-

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uate student’s chosen discipline—for Moench, literature; for Belin, math—with teacher training, including practice teaching in public school classrooms, and certification over the course of a full year.

“We believe good teaching should grow out of the practice of the academic discipline being taught,” says MAT program director Ric Campbell. “One error in public schools is that we tend to infantilize learners, to see sixth graders and ninth graders as capable of far less than they are. Typically in schools, we march kids through a fixed curriculum dictated from above, rather than letting a teacher’s deep interest in his or her field determine the course of study.”

In an inner city school, it might seem quixotic to try to turn humanities students with reading problems into poets, or 11th graders struggling with division into mathematicians, but both MAT teachers feel their Bard training has been a plus. “It’s hard to learn if you’re just told to memorize facts,” says Belin. “These kids haven’t been able to explore on the way; it’s not that they’re not capable of it.”

In that spirit, Belin asked a recent class of 11th graders to prove that the same rules apply to polynomials as numerals.

While the students traded insults, magic markers, and iPods,

Belin went from table to table, answering questions and pulling out blocks to help visualize principles of length and height, multiplication and subtraction. When it came time for each table to explain what they had discovered, each group demonstrated their proofs, punctuating explanations with expletives. Belin answered some students’ protests calmly with, “We’re also working on our presentation skills.”

Surface static rarely throws Belin. “The students care a lot about what they’re doing,” she says. “They take it very seriously, even when I think that they’re not. I didn’t like some of the schools in really privileged upstate New York where I student-taught. That’s what brought me to the South Bronx. Fannie Lou Hamer makes sense to me.” Now 23, she grew up in Youngstown, New York, and dreamed for years of being a public school teacher like her aunt. Belin does not gloss over the challenges of teaching a troubled population, but draws a distinction between her learning curve and theirs.

“Making students do things is just hard,” she says. “I can’t tell if I don’t like it or I’m just not good at it yet. I’ll be making people do things for the rest of my teaching career.”

For Moench, 29, who taught for several years in a New York City preschool, handling a classroom isn’t new, but getting the students to focus can be a battle. “I should be able to have a thick skin, but when the kids don’t respond to the lesson plan it upsets me,” she says. A Houston native, Moench found her way to Bard through a college fair. She graduated in 2000, returned for the MAT program, and ended up with a Petrie Fellowship, a cash award to a graduate who commits to teaching five years in New York City schools. “When I came to Fannie Lou Hamer, I wasn’t thinking I was going to save the world,” she says. “These kids are delicate; it’s a tough classroom environment. I knew it was going to be a daily fight to get them to like what I was teaching.”

Carole Ann Moench (center)

Fannie Lou Hamer Middle School principal Lorraine Chanon believes that the schools’ size—the high school has 450 students; the middle school 175— and staff-run structure make a Bard partnership particularly fruitful. “Bard is clearly an institution that believes in the empowerment of students,” she says. “Carole Ann is socializing kids to what it means to be a student, as well as teaching thinking skills they can carry through life. Kate’s classes are prepping students to life beyond high school, to college, to the world of work.”

Campbell believes that the MAT Program, with its emphasis on teaching the discipline of a field, offers particularly good training for schools like Fannie Lou Hamer. “Carole Ann and Kate are poised to move on in their graduate work, but they’ve chosen to go into public schools with a deep commitment to their disciplines and how they look at the world,” he says. “Students often don’t have a grasp of how or why what they’ve been taught works. They just have enough practice to answer test questions correctly. It’s the teach-to-the-test phenomenon. What’s important is for them to achieve an authentic understanding.”

While the MAT philosophy shapes both teachers’ approaches, they have set realistic goals for their students, and themselves. Belin finds her optimism growing. “I find myself looking forward to next year,” she says. “I think every new teacher quits four times a week their first year. I would not want to give up on anything until I knew how to do it well.”

For her part, Moench is learning the limits—and possibilities—of what she can help her students achieve. “There are a lot of things that I have no control over,” she says, “but I do have control over my classroom and what goes on there. I can’t follow every kid home at night. I have little say in legislation that passes or doesn’t. But I have a classroom of 20 kids for an hour and a half each day and I can try to make that as positive a learning experience as I can, both for them and for me.”

—Hanna Rubin

Kate Belin 15

LOOKING HOMEWARD

An Internship of Consequence In 2004, Reporters Without Borders ranked the Philippines second only to Iraq as the most dangerous place for a journalist to work. They reported that more than 50 Filipino journalists have been assassinated since 1986, the year that nation ousted Ferdinand Marcos and returned to democratic government. Jomar Giner ’07 knows these facts well. The political persecution of journalists, human rights advocates, and political opposition leaders in the Philippines was the focus of her internship at Human Rights Watch (HRW) in fall of 2005.

When she opted to intern at Human Rights Watch, as a student in the Bard Globalization and International Affairs (BGIA) Program in New York City, Giner had little idea how vital her work would be. She was initially attracted to HRW because of the group’s film festival, as she’d worked for two summers at Amnesty International’s similar festival.

“I thought that would make an interesting comparison,” she says. “Then I saw that HRW was looking for an intern in its Asia division and that the associate overseeing the internship was Bard alumna Jo-Anne Prud’homme ’04, who also went to BGIA and interned at Human Rights Watch.” Prud’homme ultimately became Giner’s on-site mentor.

“When I was preparing for the interview, I learned that HRW’s Asia division was not actively covering the Philippines,” Giner says. “I was born in the Philippines, lived there for 11 years, and am a native speaker of Tagalog, so I was naturally interested in issues there. I also knew that there were a lot of human rights violations, and I was surprised that they weren’t mentioned on the HRW website. I found out that HRW didn’t have the resources to cover the Philippines at that time, and they wanted an intern who could document the situation there.”

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 Filipino detainees are hosed down after police storm their cells inside the prison camp in Manila’s Police Camp Bagong Diwa.  Jomar Giner ’07

Giner’s language skills, academic goals, and growing personal interest in the research made the internship a perfect fit.

It also met her desire to do work that would matter. “Because she’d worked in a similar position, Jo-Anne understood that I wanted my work to make a difference,” Giner says, “and she continually assured me that the research would be used.”

As soon as she arrived at HRW, Giner began gathering reports and data on specific instances of politically motivated murders, abductions, and torture. The process involved online research, reading Philippine media, and talking with human rights advocates working there. “One good thing is that many of these instances are documented in the media, because Philippine civil society is very strong, even though the press is facing a lot of repression,” Giner says. “I decided to research beginning in 2001 when the current president, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, started her term. At first I recorded violations across the board, against women, children, indigenous people, and political activists, but soon I decided to concentrate on political assassinations, which I felt were the most pressing.”

One of Giner’s first realizations was that, although the United States’ “War on Terror” provides support intended to crack down on Islamic terrorists based in the Philippines, the resulting practice is overall repression of not just the Islamic separatist movement, known to use terrorist tactics, but of all Philippine Muslim populations, communists and former communist associates, and members of any leftist political groups.

Giner’s research began to hit closer to home. “There were points when I became very emotionally involved,” she says.

“I really loved my life there, and I still have friends there and family members. Also, my parents have ties to these victimized groups. My mother used to be a journalist in the Philippines, and her former editor now serves in the Congress for a minority party-list group.” Party-list groups are the political voice of marginalized sectors and are guaranteed 20 percent of Lower House (House of Representative) seats, a per-

centage that suffers under corrupt election processes. They are often accused of having ties to the communist insurgents.

Giner says that while that may have been true in the past, these political minorities are trying to address their concerns through legal means using the political process.

“Many of the victims are people my age doing what I’m doing,” says Giner. “They’re activists doing legal things to voice their concerns, but they’re being targeted. I could easily have been among them if I hadn’t come to the United States. At the end of my research, I had documented over 140 incidents of serious violations since 2001. Many are murders and abductions that took place in broad daylight, committed by masked gunmen on motorcycles. The assailants are often military personnel in civilian clothing, and people know that openly.”

By October 2005, Giner had completed a major research report that, she has been told, will be used as the basis for a fact-finding mission to Mindanao, perhaps in summer of 2006. Following that initial report, Giner began to look into abuses of political detainees. She also continued research on the approximately 140 political assassination she’d recorded, assured that future efforts by HRW would put her work directly to use.

As a BGIA student, Giner combined her internship with academic work at BGIA, spending approximately 25 hours a week at Human Rights Watch and participating in seminars and study at BGIA in New York City. Giner’s internship work led to her successful application for a $2,500 grant through Bard’s Freeman Undergraduate Asian Studies Initiative, supported by the Freeman Foundation. Giner will use the grant to travel to the Philippines in summer of 2006 to research the “people power” movement and the role it has played in Philippine national elections since 1986.

“The people power movement began in 1986, and the current president, Arroyo, got her seat with the movement’s support, which took out the previous president,” Giner says.

“Arroyo is now under criticism for election fraud and related corruption charges, so the process hasn’t worked out the way many thought it would. Some would say it’s even worse now.” She is planning to look at how different segments of the population have participated in the movement.

Giner is looking forward to her return, albeit brief, to the Philippines, to renew contacts with friends and family, meet face-to-face those whose work informed her research, and investigate firsthand the flawed, complex political system she’s been studying at Bard.

—Lucy Hayden 17

The Golden Rule’s Contemporary Relevance Scholar Introduces First-Year Students to Confucius If a man withdraws his mind from the love of beauty, and applies it as sincerely to the love of the virtuous; if, in serving his parents, he can exert his utmost strength; if, in his intercourse with his friends, his words are sincere—although men say that he has not learned, I will certainly say that he has.

—Confucius (551–479 ...), The Confucian Analects, Book 1:7

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The ethical tradition known as Confucianism began 2,500 years ago with the teachings of a man called K’ung-fu-tzu, a native of what is now China’s eastern Shandong Province.

K’ung-fu-tzu (also called Kongfuzi and Kongzi) spent much of the early 500s and late 400s  as a traveling scholar and adviser to political leaders throughout China. The philosophical system he developed and preached became a pillar of traditional Chinese culture and eventually spread across the world.

In the west K’ung-fu-tzu is known as Confucius, a popularization of his Chinese name adopted by Jesuit missionaries in the 16th century, and his teachings are collectively known as Confucianism. Adherents of Confucianism believe that the individual is the key element of all human relations—families, societies, and states. If the individual concentrates on cultivating personal virtues such as honesty, love, and devotion to family, the resulting harmony benefits everyone. The keynote of Confucianism is best expressed by the Confucian “Golden Rule”: “Do not do to others what you do not want done to yourself.”

Chinese philosophy scholar Stephen C. Angle opened this year’s series of First-Year Seminar public lectures at the Sosnoff Theater of the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts with a talk titled “Confucian Enlightenment.”

At Wesleyan University, where he is an associate professor of philosophy, Angle chairs the East Asian Studies Program and directs the Mansfield Freedom Center for East Asian Studies.

He holds a B.A. from Yale University and a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan.

As he explained to his audience at the Fisher Center, Angle’s view is that “Confucianism is a live, ongoing source of creative reflection. One of the fundamental ways one learns to look at others compassionately—to look with just and loving attention, if you like—is to think about oneself. The key is to realize other people are like you in most respects, even though the details are different. I think it’s very natural that Confucius’s initial followers hit upon the notion of ‘sympathetic understanding’ as one way of articulating the good in ourselves, this process of just and loving attention. When you love another person, you identify with them.”

With his current project, a book titled Sagehood: The Contemporary Ethical Significance of Neo-Confucianism, Angle’s goal is to articulate a contemporary philosophy that is informed and influenced by Confucian ethics. In a follow-up conversation after his lecture at the Fisher Center, he said he believes that “rich rewards await us if we look at Confucianism as a

live philosophical tradition rather than only as an object of historical study.”

The title of Angle’s book requires some explanation for Confucian neophytes. “Sagehood” refers to adherents’ ultimate goal: moral perfection. Neo-Confucianism came about during the 11th century when a group of Confucian scholars, reacting to the spiritual challenges posed by the rise of Daoism and Buddhism, came together to create an updated version of Confucianism that was popular until the end of the imperial era.

In response to a student’s question about the differences between neo- and classical Confucians, Angle explained, “Texts from the classical era [pre–221 ] remained touchstones for the neo-Confucians. But they interpreted the canon creatively, so it spoke to the concerns of their age. This open-minded approach to traditional Confucianism has been continued by Chinese philosophers in the 20th century, and I seek to carry on this legacy.

“Topics of philosophical ethics can seem remote from our everyday lives,” he continued. “They seem to have relevance only for major decisions about right and wrong, without attending either to what might motivate us to act well, or what it means to be a good person. Many philosophers have looked back to the Greek and Christian traditions for inspiration in their critique of mainstream approaches to ethics, given the paucity of these discussions elsewhere. But, in fact, there are rich resources in the Confucian tradition as well.”

In his book Angle hopes to demonstrate that the tenets of Confucianism—virtue, family, and sincerity—have a great deal to offer to the contemporary philosophical conversation about how we should live our lives. The result could be a 21st century in which we pay more attention to good behavior and less to vanity; choose to spend more time with our families and less at work; and value altruism over celebrity and power. On the surface, the Golden Rule might seem trite and simplistic. Applied to everyday situations, however, its broader applications become clearer. Give to those who are less fortunate. Respect and value all members of your family.

Listen and respond to others with the same care and thought you’d expect from them. The result could be happier families and neighborhoods, political campaigns that focus on important civic matters rather than scandals, and a global conversation about cultural differences rather than fear, terrorism, and warmongering.

—Kelly Spencer

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FOOD WEBS OF THE PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE From Static Community Description to Predictive Tool

by Daniel Reuman

From Darwin’s observations about simple food chains to today’s more complex predation matrices, the study of food webs is evolving to the point where scientists may soon be able to predict and manipulate the effects of ecological disturbances such as global warming and species extinction. Daniel Reuman, a research associate in the Population Laboratory at The Rockefeller University, visited the College in October to talk about the history and potential of food web research as part of the Frontiers in Science Lecture Series.

The concept of food webs goes back to Charles Darwin and his voyage on the Beagle. One of the first places he stopped was St. Paul’s Rocks, off the coast of Brazil. In narrative form, Darwin noted the species he found there and what

“Corresponding to average external conditions” means that you’re not going to find polar bears in Brazil. “Subject to reciprocal influences” says that each of these species interacts with each other, which is illustrated by the arrows in the directed graph. The fourth part says that you can’t take any old collection of species, toss them into a tank, and call it an ecological community—unless they persist.

The directed graph is one type of mathematical encapsulation of a food web. Another is the predation matrix, which was introduced in the late 1800s. In a predation matrix, you first list all of the species in your system. Let’s say you have salmon, anchovies, zooplankton (floating or weakly swimming animals), and phytoplankton (microscopic plants). You then make a four-by-four table, put the name of each species on

“Ecological research will become increasingly driven by the desire to predict outcomes and manipulate systems. The reason is that humans are taking over more and more of the Earth, and they’re placing greater demands on ecosystems. It will have to happen so that we can learn how to protect our resources.”

each species ate. His account is descriptive, but it can be reformatted and mathematically analyzed using a directed graph. In this graph, nodes represent each species and arrows indicate the flow from prey to predator. For example, one arrow might indicate that the spider eats the fly. This is an object you can analyze. If you had several of these objects from different ecosystems, you could compare them using math and statistics.

Darwin recognized that his system was reasonably isolated, but he didn’t note the importance of that fact. That took another 30 years or so. In 1887, German ecologist Karl Mobius first defined the concept of an ecological community as “a group of living beings of which the numbers and types of species and individuals correspond to the average external conditions, which are subject to reciprocal influences and which maintain themselves permanently in a specified area by reproduction.” Let’s break that down. The “number and types of species” is the same as the nodes in a food web.

each column and row, and put a “1” wherever one organism eats another. So a 1 might indicate that salmon eat anchovies and another 1 indicates that salmon eat salmon.

In a quantitative predation matrix, you also list the amount that gets eaten. For instance, in my fictitious system, you note that salmon eat .01 kilograms per day of salmon and 5 kilograms of anchovies; anchovies eat a lot of zooplankton and very little of their own kind, and zooplankton eat lots of phytoplankton. As a rule of thumb, when an organism eats, it converts one-tenth of the mass that it eats into its own body mass or its own reproduction. So, if zooplankton eat 660 kilograms per day of phytoplankton, roughly 10 percent of that is eaten by anchovies, and so on.

To this point, the food webs described have been static snapshots. Darwin didn’t stick around St. Paul’s Rocks to find out whether one bird species is more abundant at a certain time of year. And that brings us to the dynamics of food webs, how species populations fluctuate over time in an interrelated 21

Daniel Reuman

way. This kind of analysis requires additional data. We’ve talked about whether a species is present or not in a food web, but not about its abundance. And unless you have that data, you can’t talk about how abundance changes over time.

In the 1920s, Alfred Lotka and Vito Volterra wrote equations for the dynamics of food webs. The best way to illustrate

The hare population crashes. And then the lynx population starts to crash, because the hare are becoming less abundant.

Once the lynx population crashes, the predation pressure on the hare clears up and the hare thrive. This cycle repeats every nine to 10 years. The Lotka-Volterra equations model this; they predict how it works.

There are some problems with the equations, primarily because things are rarely as simple as this example. But Darwin said mathematics endows one with something like a sixth sense, and now that we have a mathematical formalism for talking about food webs, maybe we can make use of that sixth sense. We want to look for structural features that are common to all or many food webs.

It turns out that the proportions of top species (no predators), intermediate species (predators and prey), and basal species (no prey) in a food web are, on average, independent of the number of species. If you look at a food web with many species, it has some proportion of top predators. And if you look at a food web with a few species, it has about the same proportion. This is important. Consider that the world’s oceans are being fished at an alarming rate. Typically, the species of fish captured for human consumption are top predators such as salmon and tuna. If we reduce the number of organisms—and potentially even the number of species—at

“Darwin said mathematics endows one with something like a sixth sense.

Now that we have a mathmatical formalism for talking about food webs, we need to make use of that sixth sense.”

these equations is with the famous example of the Canadian lynx and the snowshoe hare. In this simple real food web, the hare eat the plants and the lynx eat the hare. The Hudson Bay Company, which sold the furs of these animals, kept track of how many of each were trapped over a 100-year period. If you make a graph with the years on the X-axis and the abundance of hare and lynx on the Y-axis, you learn a number of interesting things. About 1862, the populations of both lynx and hare are low. Then the hare population goes high really fast. Soon the lynx population starts to rise. Then, once the lynx population gets pretty high, the hare population starts to drop. It’s because the burgeoning lynx population is eating them all.

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the top of the ocean food web, it might lead to consequences where the whole web is modified to bring the proportion back into play. One way might be through the extinctions of smaller organisms.

It also turns out that the number of trophic links (links away from the base food producer) is proportional to the number of species. A big food web has a certain number of predator-predator relationships. A smaller web has a smaller number, and the relationship is linear. You can predict, based on the number of species, approximately how many predator-prey interactions there are going to be in a community.

Scientists want to understand how interacting populations in a food web change over time in order to understand the effects of such ecological disturbances as species invasion or global warming. If you add a new species to the system, what’s going to happen? If you’ve got a lake where a fish dies off for some reason, what are the cascading effects? There are about 50,000 non-native species in the United States, and the cost of managing these invasive species is estimated at $137 billion per year. How do we predict what will invade successfully? How do we control invaders more easily?

To date, much of the work done with food web dynamics has been theoretical. However, several recent improvements are going to help bring dynamics closer to reality, in my opinion. The abundance web is one. There is also a food web that includes average population density and average body mass of each species. If you know the distribution of body masses for each species, then you have a chance of modeling that a particular species will switch prey as it gets bigger.

The addition of stoichiometric data might also make food web dynamics more plausible. Every organism has a

characteristic ratio of carbon to nitrogen to phosphorus. It turns out that vertebrates have more phosphorus than invertebrates. I’m a vertebrate, so it may be that I seek out items with more phosphorus, in order to build my skeleton.

I also think qualitative prediction will become possible in more complex cases than the lynx and hare, and that we will soon be able to say, “the population of this species will go down” or “this ecosystem will become more fragile if we do x, y, and z to it.” As humans take over more and more of the Earth, they’re placing greater demands on ecosystems, and I think research will become increasingly driven by the desire to predict outcomes and manipulate systems. We need to protect our resources.

Daniel Reuman holds Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in mathematics from the University of Chicago and a B.A. from Harvard University. His research interests include applications of mathematics to ecology, epidemiology, and social policy analysis. He has taught at the University of Chicago and Harvard.

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NOT “EASY LISTENING” Mercedes Dujunco Raises Dissonant Issues About World Music “These are the days of miracle and wonder,” sang Paul Simon on Graceland, a 1986 album that introduced Western listeners to Ladysmith Black Mambazo, an ensemble of Zulu singers.

Not least of those miracles and wonders is the fact that, for better or worse, the increased accessibility of sophisticated recording technology and the ineluctable pull of the global market have resulted in “world music,” the widespread dissemination of formerly localized or restricted musical fare.

Even a quick skim of the listings for concert halls and clubs in any cosmopolitan city will reveal performances of Tuvan 24

throat singing, Balinese gamelan, Cuban son, and Japanese Kodo drumming, as well as curious hybrids of every imaginable stripe—Celtic klezmer, Native American jazz, Russian reggae, and even, perhaps, Hawaiian oompah.

So one could assume that students taking Mercedes Dujunco’s Introduction to World Music already have a fairly good grasp of the subject, yes?

“They think they do,” says Dujunco, an ethnomusicologist and an associate professor of music at Bard. “A lot of things are passed off as ‘world music’; it’s essentially a marketing term. Much of what falls under its rubric is very diluted, or exoticized, or put on stage out of context, so that it can cross over to the mainstream and be made more palatable for Western audiences.

“We cannot stop this commodification and appropriation of non-Western music,” she continues. “My job is to inform students of where the music came from, in what context it was played—so that, for instance, when they get their

hands on sampling equipment, they’ll know what is ethical or not ethical to take and manipulate.”

On a clear, crisp, September afternoon outside of Blum Hall, as the sweetly entwined voices of chamber singers further mingle with the raspier voices of late summer cicadas, Dujunco discusses myriad issues addressed by her introductory course, and by ethnomusicology in general.

“Ethnomusicology is basically the study of music and its relationship to different aspects of culture,” she says, adding that the field can accommodate all forms of musical expression—everything from the warrior songs of the Maori to the sonatas of Mozart. “If I were to study Mozart from an ethnomusicological perspective, I would look at him in the social imagination, the perception of him and his music by a cross section of society. This would include an examination of which of his works are played, how often, in what way, and as part of what kind of events—a Mostly Mozart series, concerts in the park, or piped-in music in planes.” Such a study would proceed from the assumption that “Mozart’s music is not handed down wholesale through the ages, but selected and reinterpreted in order to resonate with presentday sensibilities.”

In her world music class, however, Dujunco places the emphasis on non-Western musical styles, “because they get short-shrifted.”

Born in the Philippines and trained as a classical pianist, Dujunco had her first revelation of cultural short-shrifting as an undergraduate. She took a class at the University of the Philippines with the pioneering ethnomusicologist José Maceda, and it opened her eyes, she says. “I thought, here we are, an Asian country, but we’re Americanized; I know nothing of my own traditions. It made me question the whole history of how I got to be playing Western music. . . . I began to realize that music doesn’t exist in a vacuum; it has a social and political context.”

Her postgraduate studies at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music served to deepen her appreciation of non-Western musical traditions, particularly those of China, Vietnam, and the Chinese diaspora communities of Thailand. Eventually, she immersed herself in a form of Chinese string ensemble music called xian shi yue and became proficient on the zheng, a plucked board zither whose modern incarnation has 21 to 25 silk strings. Bard students have had the chance to hear and play the zheng in Dujunco’s Chinese music ensemble workshop, along with other venerable instruments such as the di (a bamboo transverse flute), erhu (a two-stringed fiddle), and the pipa (a short-necked, pear-shaped plucked lute.

Although most of these folk instruments can be traced back to antiquity—the zheng, for instance, dates to the Qin Dynasty, circa 221 ...—how they have been played, and even whether they may be played, has often been influenced by extramusical considerations and circumstances. As Dujunco noted in her Ph.D. dissertation, the Chinese government banned the playing of xian shi yue from 1949 through most of the 1970s, deeming it to be “feudal” or “counter-revolutionary.” It’s precisely this sort of context that students acquire in Dujunco’s classes, along with an increased awareness of the thorny questions involving music and identity politics, music and cultural difference, and music and its commercial exploitation.

A particularly ticklish area is the secular use, by outsiders, of sacred music. Examples of such misrepresentation are depressingly plentiful. “I remember a student of mine who wanted to sample Qur’anic chant and incorporate it in her remix CD,” says Dujunco, with a wry smile. “There’s also the case of Sister Drum, an album by the Chinese composer He Xuntian, the tracks of which include a sampling of Tibetan chant. This is a particularly egregious act of cultural appropriation, given the larger context of the lopsided nature of Chinese-Tibetan ethnic relations.”

The only effective way to countervail such tendencies is to educate listeners—and not merely in the classroom.

“Performances should always be accompanied by symposia,” she says. “Recordings should contain detailed liner notes, such as those provided by the Smithsonian reissues. Even with museums, there’s this tendency to pick the most exotic elements of a culture and package them, so you don’t get to see the broad spectrum of what goes on.” One thing that would help, she says, would be for cultural venues to present a variety of little-known performers in addition to the same two or three “superstars” who have been designated, whether they like it or not, to represent a whole culture.

Ultimately, what Dujunco seeks to impart to her students is that there’s a whole world of musical expression out there that is distinct from our own, and if we approach it respectfully, with open ears and an open mind, it will enrich us.

“Music is a gateway to understanding other cultures,” she says. “I want students to be able to talk about a musical culture other than their own intelligently, on its own terms—to take into consideration how people in that culture think about their own music, rather than imposing our own values on it, and to be able to share that with the people they know. I want them to develop a very cosmopolitan tolerance for music that they may not even like, but can appreciate for its own merits.”

—Mikhail Horowitz 25

SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, AND SOCIETY Furthering Cross-pollination among Academic Fields

What are the possible social consequences of genetic research? How do emerging technologies shape the way elections are run? How have technological advances changed the definition of human rights? These and other questions reflect our increasing concern about the interrelation of scientific and technological systems with social and political life.

Addressing the conversation from an academic perspective is Bard’s new Science, Technology, and Society (STS) Program.

STS provides a foundation in the fields needed to study this interdisciplinary subject in conjunction with a primary divisional program. The program allows for study in a number of areas that span the academic divisions—such as nonfiction science writing, film and electronic arts, or developmental economics and technology—and promotes scholarship that confronts the key issues raised by contemporary science and technology.

Students in STS follow, in conjunction with their primary program requirements, a challenging curriculum that includes 26

one two-course sequence in a basic science (biology, chemistry, computer science, or physics) and two additional courses in the Division of Science, Mathematics, and Computing; two STS core courses, along with two more STS cross-listed courses; and one methodology course, usually in policy analysis or statistics. Starting this spring, STS offers paired science and technology courses that are linked by a common theme and anchored by an introductory science class: for example, an introductory course in epidemiology paired with a course in the history or anthropology of disease.

The idea behind the paired courses, according to Gregory Moynahan, assistant professor of history and codirector of the STS Program, is “to create an immediate logic of why science is in society and society is in science. Our vision is not to reduce a subject to a very specific subfield, but rather to show all the ways in which a topic like epidemiology or biology opens out into these other issues. For example, a Biology Program course in epidemiology might pair with a course in

the history and anthropology of disease. Science students start thinking about public health, for example, and history students start thinking about how we have come to understand the biology of disease.”

Another goal of STS is to create a bridge between those who have not studied or taught science at Bard and those who have. An unexpected outcome of the success of the College’s Science Initiative is that this gap has become clearer. “I don’t want to say ‘Balkanized,’ necessarily, but it’s been hard for students in the other divisions to find a point of entry,” says Jacqueline Goss, assistant professor of film and electronic arts.

“In some ways the science division has been the last frontier.

We’d like the STS Program to be a bridge that helps students from the sciences come to our divisions, and vice versa.”

Both Moynahan and Goss feel that Bard’s relatively small population makes STS more viable than it might be at a larger school. “At a small place like Bard we can work to create connections between the sciences and the social sciences in a way that our society as a whole hasn’t,” says Moynahan. “That becomes a productive aspect of the program; a small community can become a model that can’t be developed at a larger place.” Adds Goss, “At engineering schools, and at places like M.I.T. and R.P.I., the STS programs are like little cells inside much larger organisms. At Bard, STS can take on a much bigger role and have a larger function.”

In the 2006–07 academic year, Noga Arikha, a visiting assistant professor in First-Year Seminar, will teach an STS course titled History of Medicine and Psychiatry in the West. “Liberal arts colleges are places where the humanities need to be practiced rather than just preached,” says Arikha.

“Because we’re living in a world where science rules a lot of our lives, it’s the responsibility of a liberal arts college to actually try to under- stand where we are in regard to science. We need to take stock of where we are; we need to find the tools and concepts to understand how to ask the right questions regarding the relationship between humanity, ethics, and the sciences. A lot of people talk about interdisciplinary curricula, but few practice it. A liberal arts college like Bard, where there’s also a lot of free spirit, is the kind of place where good things like STS happen.”

Moynahan echoes Arikha’s description of Bard’s curriculum—his term is “classic”—when he differentiates the STS Program from those at other schools. “What’s different about our program, and our curriculum, is that it’s more rigorous in terms of requirements,” he says. “This is in keeping with the classic curriculum that Bard emphasizes: students need to

learn a field, and a methodology, well. Precisely because Bard is so tightly knit, it’s a new way of creating a dynamism on campus around thinking about science.”

STS students came to the program from various disciplines and backgrounds, as is the case with their peers in other programs. Some had considered double majors; others became interested in a new subject and conveniently learned of STS at the same time. “STS attracted me because it allows me to formally extend my study of the social and political consequences of scientific knowledge and practice that the traditional Biology Program doesn’t officially promote,” says Parris Humphrey ’06, who is concentrating in STS and biology.

Humphrey’s post-Bard plans include pursuing a degree in medicine as well as a master’s degree in public health. Tenzin Lama ’07, who is studying history along with STS, came to the program from another direction. “During a year away from Bard, I took a class at the New School in New York City entitled Science and Empire,” she explains. “The class was very enlightening, an interesting synthesis of science, history, and politics. Looking through the Fall ’05 course list when I came back to Bard, I saw that similar classes were on offer. STS is a very useful addition to Bard’s academic programs. Now students can take classes that combine technical and theoretical knowledge in a meaningful way.”

Possible future STS offerings include a chemistry course linked with a history course on the second industrial revolution in Germany; a course on the social science issues involved in simulation and modeling in computer science; and a course that studies how mechanism in the 18th century can be studied to help us understand our own problems with technology. Moynahan seems to be confident that STS has a long future ahead of it; he cites several on-campus projects as evidence that applied science is alive and well at Bard.

“Students are putting biodiesel into buses, for example, and they’re making their own radio transmitters,” she says. “Bard students are singular in that, when they’re interested in the material, they’re willing to do the extra work—even outside of their regular course work. At other colleges where I’ve taught, students were just focused on whatever got them good grades. What’s exciting about Bard is the community aspect and the freedom that students have to become energized about projects like these. I feel that the STS Program has enormous potential here.”

—Kelly Spencer

Left to right: Noga Arikha, Gregory Moynahan, and Jacqueline Goss 27

TO BEAR WITNESS MEDICAL RELIEF IN KASHMIR

by Charles Berkowitz ’02 Who knows but that hereafter some traveler like myself will sit down upon the banks of the Seine, the Thames, or the Zuyder Zee, where now, in the tumult of enjoyment, the heart and the eyes are too slow to take in the multitude of sensations? Who knows but he will sit down solitary amid silent ruins, and weep for a people inurned and their greatness changed into an empty name?

—from Ruins, by Constantin François de Chassebeouf de Volney

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Walking through the village of Chinari is one of the saddest things I have ever witnessed. The faces who look upon us are of those of a people desolate of any splendor, eyes hollowed and darkened like the shadows cast from some ancient ruin. They surround us, these dark eyes, as our mule train halts, unable to traverse the monumental collapse of cars, buildings, and people. Reputed to have been a delicate jewel of the Jhelum Valley, infused by emerald orchards of chinar, almond, walnut, and saffron, Chinari is now a sepulcher for several hundred inhabitants who perished in the 7.6 magnitude earthquake that rocked Northern Pakistan on the morning of October 8, 2005.

Located approximately 35 miles southeast of Muzaffarabad, Chinari is an incruent necrotic wound, representative of so many other nameless Kashmiri villages and towns demolished by pancaked concrete roofs and rebar. The damage and destruction are unimaginable and the smell of death lingers in every breath. Perhaps you have heard of Chinari or seen photos in news reports. It has risen to world recognition not from the sheer devastation it has endured, but from the fact that 200 of the several hundred casualties amassed in this tiny village are children, many whom remained trapped under the debris of fallen school buildings. As our medical team walks across the large slabs of fallen concrete, I notice an elbow and a small hand jutting from the wreckage, speckled white with dust. It is a gaunt angular visage, indicative of the passing of several generations of Kashmiris and Pakistanis in just 30 seconds. This is the last place I’d ever expect myself to be: in the middle of what has been called “the most dangerous place on earth.”

Our work here is not with the dead. Scattered reports tell of hundreds of thousands of people severely injured by the quake and many more in need of immediate medical care. Our group is an unlikely one in this region of the world—a volunteer outfit of 10 New York City paramedics and a medical doctor. Combined we have more than 150 years of emergency medical experience between us, earned on the streets and hospitals of Seattle, California, Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the Bronx. As paramedics we are the products of the nation’s fledgling third service—EMS (Emergency Medical Services), mobile nurses trained to encounter any emergency life or God or whatever you want to call it can throw at us. Our specialty is triage; recognition and immediate treatment of the sick and dying. Yet, for the most part, the job remains unseen, save by the few souls involved, and it repeats itself often into some distant obscurity. Over time it becomes difficult to remember the people you treat, and only once in a while do you recall with

clarity the blurry faces you pass by like those from some faded sepia photograph.

Over the past few weeks, prior to our departure, we had read situation reports of the earthquake, watching it slowly fade from the front page news of the New York Times and subsequently from the American consciousness. Casualties mounted—first 1,500, then 3,000, 20,000, and then exponentially upwards. World Health Organization e-mails began circulating within our circle of friends, citing an immediate need for doctors and paramedical personnel to Pakistan. Aid trickled into Islamabad from several countries, but even two weeks after the initial quake, few organizations were on the ground and even fewer resources were available to ferry essential supplies to villages scattered throughout the mountains. Kashmir was an active war zone marred by isolated conflicts along the Line of Control for the past half century, despite the India/Pakistan cease-fire several years before. In our usual fashion we persisted. The decision to go took me about four seconds to make.

As we sit outside, listening to a Pakistani colonel give us a situation report, my eyes follow the occasional invalids being carried in makeshift stretchers down the dusty road.

The rotors of an American MH-53E Sea Dragon solemnly

Encountering the injured on the path to Noor Dijhia (above) and Survivors in Chikoti, Kashmir (left) 29

echo in the distance, the helicopter having cast its cargo of China Aid tents and us onto a concrete pad. “We have little or no supplies with us apart from what the Afghans have brought,” the colonel continues. “This area has begun to clear out and as it is almost two weeks after this quake has hit, most people who are severely injured are dead. The Afghans are leaving tomorrow and it is likely you will have to take over for them. We still are receiving many patients a day and many more are descending from the mountains.”

The colonel brings us to meet the Afghan team, which has been here in Sewan since the beginning. Their field hospital, which emits an ashen glow from a free-hanging fluorescent light, is one of complete dissonance. It is constructed around the rubble of a fallen hospital with an operating theater of several benches, various packets of gauze, rusting instruments, and a improvised curtain made from a patient gown stained brown—streaks of iodine from violent procedures. The pharmacy is absolutely chaotic, with medications from all over the world strewn about along collapsing beds and concrete slabs. Yet the Afghans operate with precision and brutal capability.

A patient enters, her upper leg a festering aggregation of smashed muscle and flesh, the anterior shaft of the femur plainly exposed. Several of the men hold the down the girl as a physician clears the bilateral cavities around the bone of debris with his two index fingers. Tears stream from the patient’s face, her body winces in spasms from the pain, but she makes no sound. The wound is packed with gauze and bandaged in less than five minutes. Dispatched several days after the quake, the team has been operating out of war-torn Kabul for more than 35 years. Over dinner, Ahmad, a medic wearing a jacket bearing a “Kabul Ambulance Corps” patch, briefs me on the first days of the recovery. “We saw hundreds and hundreds of people,” he relates. “They sat along the road, lined up as far as we could see. Many people died. Many people lost limbs. I have not witnessed such suffering in many years.” I look down at the ground of the hospital and cannot imagine the sheer trauma endured here during the first few days after the quake. The thoughts of it are simply overwhelming.

We are in the depths of Azad Kashmir, four miles from the Line of Control. Travel through this area reveals our worst fears—absolute destruction of every building with nearly half of the population dead.

Walking farther up the Jhelum Valley, I cannot help but remember a passage from Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness”— “as if Nature herself had tried to ward off intruders; in and

out of rivers, streams of death in life, whose banks were rotting into mud . . . writhe at us in the extremity of an impotent despair.” The road is plagued by continuous landslides of boulders the size of buses and the miasma of decomposition looms around every corner in thick veils of stagnancy.

Five of us have moved on from our initial clinic to the village of Kathai, a Pakistani army forward artillery base. Our treatment area is flanked by two 130mm artillery guns pointed across the Line of Control into India. The Pakistani army has been nothing short of remarkable in its efforts to recover what has been left of this region. They are beside usat every moment, integral to our efforts by helping with Urdu translation, supplies, water, and food. Our relationships with them have taken on a fascinating candor, tinged with childhood innocence and inquisitiveness. We know them by name— Salat, Arfan, Boota, Major Zubair, Arshad, Farooq—and they tell us of their families and their lives here in Kashmir. We watch them pray five times a day during this time of Ramadan, bowing in the direction of Mecca and obeying the daily fast until the sun sets quietly behind the mountains.

The wounded begin to gather again. Silent throngs of destitute villagers gather along the periphery of our hospital to bear witness to the sick and injured. They stand fixated, watching like the chorus of some ancient Greek tragedy.

Together our team begins to see 200 patients a day, from 6 a.m. until sunset. Forty percent of our patients are children.

Two areas are set up, one for medial ailments and the other for trauma. The vast amount of injuries seen here are traumatic— fractures, gangrene, deep lacerations, ulcerations, abscesses, soft tissue, and penetrating trauma—wounds left uncared for nearly two and a half weeks. To make matters worse, nearly all the wounds are rife with severe infection. The result is that without proper medical attention, many people will end up dying from complications brought on by minor injuries.

A woman is brought to me on a bed, carried by five men over six miles of nearly impassable terrain. Her legs have been crushed by falling concrete and now the wounds on her lower legs have become thick with necrosis. She looks to be in her mid 20s and we exchange a smile. She blushes, hiding her face in a saffron scarf. I take a quick history from her through an interpreter, make sure her vital signs (pulse, respiration, blood pressure) are stable, and insert an IV into her vein. After exploring the wounds, I consult with our medical doctor and we decide her treatment. The legs are thoroughly cleansed with an antiseptic solution of iodine, sterile water, and hydrogen peroxide. I administer pain medication into

30

New York City medics with an Afghan medical team, Sawanj, Kashmir.

Charles Berkowitz is seated in the foreground (second from right), with photographer Phil Suarez to his left.

the IV and begin the injection of local anesthetic around the wound borders.

When the woman looks adequately sedated I begin the process of debridement, surgical removal of debris and devitalized tissue. The pale white mucilage of infection seeps with the slightest pressure as the scalpel scrapes away at the white layers of fibrinous exudate and dead material. Layers of granulated tissue slowly appear and the wound takes on a healthy pink tone, raw and bleeding. The area is then soaked in Bacitracin antibiotic, covered with sterile petroleum gauze, wrapped with a dressing, and the patient is prescribed Cipro antibiotic. I can tell the procedure has been extremely painful to the young woman and I try to help her move back to the bed. But then a remarkable thing happens. Aided by another man, she stands up and proceeds to walk back to her village.

Days later, as I am suturing up the foot of a little girl, she taps me on my shoulder. Through an interpreter she tells me, “You have given my legs back to me.” I undress the wound.

Still raw, it is free from infection.

As we fly over the village of Chinari for the last time, the blades of the Huey whipping the air violently above, I see the

white canvas of a large International Red Cross Hospital in the distance. Huge tent cities have since sprung up, some made out of billboards advertising Nestlé and shampoo into the cosmos.

My mind drifts to the events of the past 10 days and to the people we have met. I remember small things: wiping tears off a face, holding a child’s hand, playing walnut soccer with the soldiers. Neither Kashmir nor Islam are unknowns anymore— they are imbued with beauty, heartfelt relationships, faces, and names. What remains of this experience is a deeply profound realization that, as human beings, we are remarkably alike despite our differing cultures and geography. Perhaps it is the reason we came to this land in the first place, and perhaps it is the reason for my plans to return in the spring to see my friends once again. Back to Pakistan, the country of the pure—back to my beloved Kashmir.

Editor’s Note: For more information about Charles Berkowitz and his volunteer group of paramedics, visit www.nycmedic.org.

HOLIDAY PARTY 2005

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Neither an ice storm nor a threatened transit strike deterred revelers from the Bard–St. Stephen’s Alumni/ae Association’s annual Holiday Party, which took place on December 16 at the National Arts Club on Grammercy Park in Manhattan. Six decades of Bardians—from the Class of 1940’s Richard Koch and Benedict Seidman on

through Third Millennium graduates—were present and accounted for in the club’s Grand Gallery, along with President Leon Botstein, Justus Rosenberg, Burton Brody, Peter Sourian, and other faculty and staff members. The jubilance continued at an excellent “after party” at Link, organized by the Young Alumni/ae Committee.

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BOOKSBYBARDIANS

God’s Whisper

by Dennis Barone ’77 SPUYTEN DUYVIL

The narrator of this small book is Heather, a journalist writing about an almost-famous Italian runner named Renzi and about what long-distance running means to him: it is “how he praises God.” The novel includes a bizarre scene involving out-of-shape tag-sale shoppers in a melee with runners during a race. Dennis Barone teaches English at St. Joseph College in West Hartford, Connecticut.

Fig

by Caroline Bergvall SALT PUBLISHING

Many of the pieces in this eclectic volume were written by invitation or in response to an occasion: “16 Flowers” is a group of one-liners to accompany a CD-ROM about flower motifs in Proust and Genet; “More Pets,” written for an arts journal, consists of repetitive but changing lines as “a game of domino . . . developed using visual elements, small connecting signs.” The sections are visually challenging and mentally invigorating. Caroline Bergvall cochairs the writing faculty at the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts.

The Young Widow

by Cassandra Chan ’78 ST. MARTIN’S MINOTAUR

Jack Gibbons, a Scotland Yard detective sergeant, tracks down cases with the help of his best friend, the rich and charismatic Phillip Bethancourt. Jack’s latest case, on which Phillip tags along, involves the poisoning death of Geoffrey Berowne, a biscuit magnate, at his Surrey estate. Berowne’s young wife is the prime suspect; Phillip is afraid Jack’s judgment could be clouded by the widow’s charms. This book, Cassandra Chan’s first novel, is a contemporary homage to classic English mystery writers. Chan lives in Port St. Lucie, Florida.

Mary Magdalene: A Biography

by Bruce Chilton ’71 DOUBLEDAY

Mary Magdalene, Bruce Chilton argues, should be on the list of the creators of Christianity.

Though references to women in the New Testament and other ancient Christian writings are fleeting, Chilton examines biblical and historical texts to shape his biography of the woman he says had “mastery of Jesus’ wisdom.” Chilton is Bernard Iddings Bell Professor of Philosophy and Religion and chaplain of the College.

The Theory of Oz: Rediscovering the Aims of Education

by Howard Good ’73 ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD EDUCATION

Howard Good starts his book by asking, “What defines someone as educated?” and proceeds to answer himself with the metaphor of the four companions who skip down the Yellow Brick Road in the famous Wizard of Oz movie and book. An educated person, contends this former school board president, needs what the Scarecrow, Tin Man, Lion, and Dorothy want: a brain, a heart, courage, and home. Mandatory testing, and even the structure of the classroom itself, does little to create a well-rounded student, argues Good, who suggests smaller schools and more individualized attention, among other solutions. Good is professor of journalism at SUNY New Paltz.

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The Bhopal Reader: Remembering Twenty Years of the World’s Worst Industrial Disaster edited by Bridget Hanna ’03, Ward Morehouse, and Satinath Sarangi THE APEX PRESS

Shortly after midnight on December 3, 1984, a storage tank at a neglected Union Carbide pesticide factory in Bhopal, India, began leaking a toxic substance that instantly killed an estimated 2,000 to 10,000 people. Up to 500,000 others were exposed to the cloud of poison gas. This collection, described as “a textbook for prevention and activism,” brings together first-person accounts of the catastrophe, reports of its aftermath, and examinations of how the disaster continues to shape the world.

Adam Ferguson: His Social and Political Thought

by David Kettler TRANSACTION PUBLISHERS

First published in 1965, this comprehensive study of Adam Ferguson, the Scottish Enlightenment historian and philosopher, has been reissued with a new introduction and afterword. A contemporary of David Hume and Adam Smith, Ferguson is best known for An Essay on the History of Civil Society, which David Kettler, research professor of social studies, revisits, through his comments, in the context of present-day debates over the concept of civil society.

Small Wars

by An-My Lê APERTURE

In this elegant volume, An-My Lê presents delicate yet bold black-and-white photographs of Vietnam and the Iraqi conflict—but not for real. She captures the worlds of reenactors, those often obsessed individuals who play out past conflicts (in this case, Vietnam, her native country, replayed in Virginia). She goes on to document training for the Iraqi war, which takes place in a California desert. The book includes an essay by Richard B. Woodward, former editor at large for DoubleTake magazine, and an interview of Lê by New Yorker staff writer Hilton Als. Lê is an assistant professor of photography.

America’s Uncivil Wars: The Sixties Era from Elvis to the Fall of Richard Nixon

by Mark Hamilton Lytle OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Bracketed between the birth of rock and roll and the resignation of a president, the period now known loosely as “the sixties” was one of profound changes and turmoil. Professor of history Mark Lytle begins his examination of the era with the mid 1950s: the fight against communism and the seeds of teen culture. He chooses a chronological, rather than a topical, approach to the cultural and political sights, sounds, and clashes of the period.

Performing Israel’s Faith: Narrative and Law in Rabbinic Theology

by Jacob Neusner BAYLOR UNIVERSITY PRESS

The laws of conduct set forth in the Torah are an integral part of the religion of Judaism. In his latest book, Jacob Neusner shows, in practical terms, how Jewish theology expresses itself in law, and how law embodies theology in everyday conduct. He examines the doctrine of sin and atonement, and the doctrine of treatment of other nations, through theological definition of “right belief ” and details of the applicable law. Neusner is Research Professor of Religion and Theology and a Bard Center Fellow.

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The Program

by Hal Niedzviecki MFA ’97 RANDOM HOUSE CANADA

The mores of a troubled Jewish American family are at the center of Hal Niedzviecki’s third novel, which begins when Maury Stern takes his young son Danny on a camping trip that ends in near disaster. Memories erupt: of Zionist summer camp, Maury’s brother Cal, and Cal’s disturbing relationship with Danny. As a young man, Danny escapes from reality by locking himself into a computer lab to write “The Program,” a computer code designed to meld irreconcilable past and present. Niedzviecki lives in Toronto.

Alexander the Great: Selections from Arrian, Diodorus, Plutarch, and Quintus Curtius edited by James Romm HACKETT PUBLISHING COMPANY

In recent years, Alexander has been portrayed as both an enlightened humanitarian and a bloodthirsty tyrant. Which is closer to the truth? What really motivated the man whose actions irrevocably changed a large part of the world? James Romm, James H. Ottaway Jr. Professor of Classics, uses selections from four ancient writers—Arrian, Diodorus, Plutarch, and Quintus Curtius—to provide a narrative of the highlights in Alexander’s life as well as those events in which his character is most at issue. Romm’s introduction and chapter notes provide historical context.

Garbage Land: On the Secret Trail of Trash

by Elizabeth Royte ’81 LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY

A recent study estimates that every American generates 1.3 tons of garbage a year, and Elizabeth Royte decided to find out where it goes. She started by measuring her own trash output—7 pounds, 9 ounces in one day—and following the trash down the street in her Brooklyn neighborhood. The entertaining and educational volume goes on to discover the paths taken by “thrown out,” recycled, and composted garbage and suggests ways that the process will have to change.

Flesh

by Hollis Seamon (Rowan) ’83 MEMENTO MORI MYSTERIES

Graduate student Suzanne Brown, a.k.a. Suzanne LaFleshe, is the heroine of this tongue-incheek murder mystery about cannibalism, evil spirits, and academia (she imagines “All But Dissertation” written on her tombstone). As her name implies, LaFleshe is preoccupied with bodily pleasures. Several of her ex- and present lovers are among those who help her investigate the death of Sam Tindell, also her lover, who plummets to his death from the humanities building at the university where they both work. Seamon lives in Albany, New York.

A Painter’s Path through the Catskill Mountains

by Robert Selkowitz MFA ’84 CATSKILL PRESS

In his foreword to this book of Robert Selkowitz’s pastel landscapes, John Kleinhans, a photographer and chairman of the Woodstock Artists Association, says, “Selkowitz’s choice of pastel as the medium of these works is crucial to their vitality and vibrancy.” Selkowitz and art historian Wayne Lempka also add forewords to the book, which includes maps of the Catskill areas where the landscapes were painted. A member of Bard’s first MFA graduating class, Selkowitz lives in Ashokan, New York.

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Truth and the Heretic: Crises of Knowledge in Medieval French Literature

by Karen Sullivan UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS

In the European Middle Ages, Karen Sullivan points out, a heretic was an entirely imaginary concept: everyone knew heretics existed, but no member of the Christian majority admitted to being outside the fold. In any case, it was not easy to distinguish between those who believed ecclesiastical dictates and those who believed what they chose (“heresy” derives from the Greek for “choice”). Sullivan, associate professor of literature, examines the paradox of why literatures of the period celebrated the very characters who were denigrated by society at large.

The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Plays: Inspired by Edgar Allan Poe

by Lance Tait ’78 ENFIELD PUBLISHING

Though Edgar Allan Poe wrote only one play, which remained unfinished, theater was in his blood: his mother was a popular actress. His stories, with their dramatic tension and exquisite eye for detail, have been famously adapted to stage and screen. Lance Tait wrote these one-act plays, performed in Paris in 2002–03, based on well-known and lesser-known Poe classics. The volume concludes with an afterword by the author.

Upcity Service(s)

by Dominic Taylor BROADWAY PLAY PUBLISHING

Dominic Taylor’s latest play involves intersections—of both the human and street variety—in Harlem, where Jacqueeda is trying to find money to attend the funeral of her mother’s boyfriend. She enlists the aid of her friend Poppy, who reads in the paper that Deacon Derricott, a local preacher whose Lincoln Continental sits onstage, has won millions in the lottery. The play’s action is supplemented by a Greek chorus of eight television sets. Taylor is visiting assistant professor of theater.

Say “Saah”: A Bathtub Yoga Book

by Kim Canazzi and Frolic Taylor ’70 CONARI PRESS

What could be more relaxing than combining the practice of yoga, that ancient physical and spiritual form of exercise, with a soak in a warm bath? Practicing simple yoga poses in the tub, along with breathing and visualization techniques, brings relaxation from stress and releases aches, the authors contend. Frolic Taylor is a yoga teacher, writer, and horse-farm owner in Cazenovia, New York.

SEND US YOUR CDs! Beginning with the Fall 2006 Bardian, Books by Bardians will be expanded to include CDs. Alumni/ae and faculty are invited to send their recent recordings to CDs by Bardians, c/o Cynthia Werthamer, Publications Office, Bard College, PO Box 5000, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY 12504.

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ONANDOFFCAMPUS

Seminars Share Early College Techniques Time-tested methods for educating younger scholars were shared last summer as Simon’s Rock College of Bard inaugurated its Early College High School Teaching Seminar.

Twenty-nine participants traveled from across the country to the Simon’s Rock campus in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, for an intensive four-day workshop in a new series of programs funded by a $156,000 grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The core of the seminar was observation of Writing and Thinking workshops (an approach to learning created by the Institute for Writing and Thinking at Bard College), followed by group discussions. Among the Simon’s Rock faculty leading the seminar was Joan DelPlato, who directs the Simon’s Rock Writing and Thinking Workshop for incoming students and teaches art history and women’s studies. Participants ranged from teachers of literacy to science educators, and from principals of inner city high schools to university administrators. They came from institutions as diverse as an early college high school on a tribal reservation in Washington State, a

charter school in Salt Lake City, a college in Maryland, and traditional high schools in Philadelphia and Chicago.

The program took advantage of having 145 first-year Simon’s Rock students on campus, along with a student group from Bard High School Early College (BHSEC) attending a workshop to prepare them to serve as mentors and tutors at their school.

BHSEC faculty offered a panel on their experience in launching an early college high school in New York City, which demonstrated that the Simon’s Rock model could succeed in an urban setting. “This was the turning point in helping participants see the relevance of the Writing and Thinking work in their home schools,” says DelPlato, noting that several had set up new schools or were in the process of doing so.

In addition to Simon’s Rock and BHSEC, program partners are Jobs for the Future in Boston and the University Park Campus School associated with Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts.

Some of the teachers from across the country who took part in the Early College High School Training Seminar at Simon’s Rock College of Bard last summer

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SEEN & HEARD SEPTEMBER Bruce Chilton, executive director of the Institute of Advanced Theology, and Bard’s Rabbi Lawrence Troster discussed religion and the environment during a luncheon lecture on September 14 at Bertelsmann Campus Center.

Pianist Jeremy Denk, faculty member of The Bard College Conservatory of Music, performed Bach partitas at Olin Hall on September 14.

The eminent American playwright Romulus Linney participated in a staged reading of Aristophanes’ The Clouds in the Sosnoff Theater in September. Part of the First-Year Seminar lecture series, the reading was directed by Peter J. Criswell ’89 and featured three Bard professors—Daniel Berthold, William Mullen, and Kristin Scheible—and many students.

Drucilla Cornell of Rutgers University gave the inaugural lecture in the “Constitutional Ideal” series on September 20 at the Franklin W. Olin Humanities Building. The talk, titled “Dignity Jurisprudence in South Africa,” was sponsored by the Bard Prison Initiative, Human Rights Project, and Science, Technology, and Society Program.

German artist Thomas Struth, known for bringing largescale color photography to the forefront of contemporary art, spoke at Olin Hall on September 21, in an event sponsored by the Photography Program.

On September 21, the Middle East Studies Program presented a talk by Bradley Clough of American University in Cairo on “Teaching Comparative Religion in the Contemporary Middle East.”

The Center for Curatorial Studies presented a conversation with Laura Hoptman, curator of the 2004 Carnegie International Exhibition, at the Avery Center theater on September 21.

Radio station WXBC and Student Activities presented a concert by the Texas indie rock band Hundred Year Storm at Bertelsmann Campus Center on September 22.

Bard celebrated the culture of the former Soviet republic of Georgia on September 24 with a dance performance by the Dancing Crane ensemble, a food and wine reception, and a panel discussion, “Georgia at a Crossroads.”

John Barth, introduced by Bard professor Bradford Morrow as “the greatest postmodernist we have,” spoke on the art of fiction and gave a reading from his recent work in Olin Hall on October 4. The author of The Sot-Weed Factor, Giles Goat-Boy, and the National Book Award–winning Chimera joked that he was reading at “Barth College,” and treated a large audience to hefty sections of a novella, I’ve Been Told, and a work in progress about a “mediocre writer teaching at Stratford College in Pennsylvania,” where an annual literary prize known as “The Bard’s Petard” results only in misfortune for those who win it. “If language were poker, you wouldn’t want to play this guy,” said Morrow, whose course on contemporary fiction brought Barth to campus.

Documentary filmmaker Avi Mograbi was on campus for a September 26 screening of Avenge But One of My Two Eyes, his provocative examination of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that was shown at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.

Jonathan Rosen, former arts editor of the Forward and author of the forthcoming novel Joy Comes in the Morning, gave a talk on “Writing, Without Shame, about Jews” on September 27 at Bertelsmann Campus Center.

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Miss Barich Retires after Six Decades at Bard On Monday, June 25, 1945, the day that Susan Barich began her tenure in Bard’s business office, Imperial General Headquarters in Tokyo announced the fall of Okinawa to the U.S. Marines. Harry Truman was in the White House, and it cost three cents to mail a letter, nine cents to purchase a loaf of bread, and less than a quarter for a gallon of gas.

On November 17, 2005, the College held a retirement party for the woman fondly referred to as Miss Barich by three generation of Bardians. For the record, it now costs 37 cents to mail a letter, more than two bucks for a loaf of bread, and something approaching the GNP of Venezuela to fill up the car.

Over that 60-year span, Miss Barich—who reportedly never took a vacation—was a rock of constancy at Bard, serving the College as assistant controller, controller, and business manager. And it was an “extraordinary” term of service, as Professor Peter Sourian recalled in a letter that was read at her retirement party: “Her civility, her intelligence, her implicit sympathy for us as individuals with individual needs, have represented the particular sense of community that we have always had at this place. I remember when she and Bill Asip virtually ran Bard with nothing but the help of a couple of secretaries. And then, she by herself. . . . She is a real factor in [Bard’s] survival and in [its] subsequent renaissance.”

With her oversized sunglasses, chocolate-colored Cadillac, and tradition of stepping up to the plate in high heels at Bard’s annual Fourth of July softball game, Miss Barich cut a colorful figure on campus. But it will be her devotion to the College, and the standard of excellence that she upheld for six decades on the job, for which she will be remembered in years to come.

Persi Diaconis, a mathematician, magician, and former MacArthur Fellow, gave the keynote address to the Northeast regional meeting of the American Mathematical Society in October. The two-day event was hosted by Bard and took place in Olin Hall.

Students of The Bard College Conservatory of Music rehearse prior to a performance on November 16 at the Renee Weiler Concert Hall at Greenwich House Music School in Manhattan. The concert took place five days after a panel discussion at the school in which several key administrators and faculty of the Conservatory participated, including director Robert Martin, associate director Melvin Chen, and violinist and teacher Weigang Li, along with Conservatory student Wui Ming Gan. The student musicians pictured are (from left) Anja Boenicke, violin; Tian Zhou, violin; Emanuel Evans, cello; and Liyuan Liu, viola.

Susan Barich speaking at her retirement party; Alice Stroup listens.

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The Center for Curatorial Studies’ Conversation Series continued on September 28 with curator Cuauhtémoc Medina, who discussed “When Faith Moves Mountains,” a project by artist Francis Alÿs.

Wesleyan University classics professor Andrew SzegedyMaszak gave a talk titled “Clear Light and Shining Ruins: 19th-Century Travelers and Photographers in Athens” on September 29 at Preston Theater.

Printmaker Yuri Shtapakov (left) with two Smolny College students and Lisa Duva, Emily Kaufman, and Richard Gray, U.S. exchange students participating in the Bard-Smolny study abroad program

Smolny Strengthens Art Curriculum Smolny College, a collaboration between Bard College and Saint Petersburg State University, is unique in Russia not only as a liberal arts institution, but also as the only study-abroad program that allows North American students to matriculate fully into general academic courses taught in Russian and English. Now in its eighth year, Smolny College enrolls more than 100 new students each year and hosts a growing number of international exchange students.

Developments in Smolny’s art history and studio art courses offer a snapshot of the ways in which Russian and North American students learn side by side as the College establishes itself as an international liberal arts institution. Ivan Czeczot, a distinguished art historian, chairs the Art History and Architecture Program. He taught a course last semester on the German painter Philipp Otto Runge, using German-language texts as source material. Other art history faculty include Yekatirina Andreevna, a Russian art critic of international distinction, and Olesya Turkina, a curator of the Russian Museum, who is teaching The History and Theory of Video Art this spring.

A new studio art course in printmaking is taught by Peter Bely and Yuri Shtapokov, St. Petersburg’s leading art printmakers. Two U.S. fine-art majors are among those taking the course, which is taught in Russian.

Late Soviet Unofficial Art is taught in English by Stanislav Savitski, a renowned writer and critic. Seeking to construct a new understanding of Soviet culture while its art forms are still recent enough to be visible and tangible, Savitski draws a connection between early Soviet attempts to create a cultural perception of new ideology and developments in the arts of the late- and post-Soviet culture. Course materials include a variety of genres, such as conceptual and performance art pieces, film, memoirs, poetry, and critical works. By teaching in English, Savitski makes difficult concepts more accessible to international students still learning Russian, while he creates an additional challenge for the Russian students.

OCTOBER Architectural historian Matthew A. Postal led a walking tour of Manhattan titled “More Than Tall: Ornament and Line in Midtown.” The October 1 event was presented by The Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design, and Culture (BGC).

On October 3, Hossein Kamaly of Columbia University gave a talk, “From Island to Mainland: Varieties of Rationality,” as part of the First-Year Seminar lecture series.

In conjunction with its exhibition Georg Jensen Jewelry, the BGC offered a series of lectures (October 5, 7, and 11) by leading experts in Scandinavian art and design at a variety of New York City locations. Topics included “Viking Silversmiths,” “Georg Jensen in America,” and “New Classicism and Danish Design in the 1920s: The Transition to Modernism.”

The first lecture in the Technology, Technocracy, and Human Rights series, “Constructing Race, Defining Citizens: Racializing and Deracializing Immigrants in U.S. Federal Statistics, 1898–1913,” featured Levy Institute Research Professor Joel Perlmann and was held on October 6.

Siddartha, an activist for cultural renewal in his native India, visited the College on October 12 to discuss “Culture and Sustainable Development in India.”

Bard in China presented a lecture by art historian Midori Yoshimoto on October 14 at the Olin Language Center.

The talk was titled “Into Performance: Japanese Women Artists in New York, 1955–75.”

Folk music legend Richie Havens appeared at the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts on October 16 in support of the second annual Walk for Opportunity, an event cosponsored by Bard to benefit the Hudson Valley Cerebral Palsy Association.

Thanks to Nina Chesakov, an exchange student from Youngstown State University, for her contribution to this article.

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Roots Rockers Raise Funds for Hurricane Relief The grizzled New Orleans roots rocker Dr. John and the celebrated vocalist and lyricist Natalie Merchant combined their considerable talents on December 3, when they performed a benefit concert to raise funds for the victims of hurricanes Katrina and Rita at the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts.

The audience, which packed the Sosnoff Theater, was treated to full sets by each of the pop luminaries (including a collaboration on two songs), as well as performances by such special guests as Fergus Bordewich, Michael Doucet, John Sebastian, Artie Traum, Roswell Rudd, and the River Road Ramblers, among other supporting players.

The concert, titled “Build a Levee,” was the inspiration of the Hudson Valley Levee Board, an organization of area residents committed to keeping the Gulf Coast assistance effort on track. The board consists of Michael Pillot, a fourth-generation resident of New Orleans, and Paul Antonell, who were the concert’s coproducers; Terence Boylan ’70; and Kenneth Cooke, Georgia Dent, Kristine Hanson, and Deborah Macaluso.

Dr. John and Natalie Merchant performing together at the Sosnoff Theater.

Bard’s team emerged victorious in the 2005 North Eastern Atlantic Conference Women’s Tennis Championship, which took place over two days in October at SUNY Purchase. Team members are (from left) Sarah Elia ’06, Ayesha Bari ’07, Kate Myers ’07, head coach Fred Feldman, Genya Shimkin ’08, Chelsea Herman ’09, and Mary Magellan ’06, voted NEAC Player of the Year. The conference also honored Feldman (Coach of the Year) and named the Bard women its Team of the Year.

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Levy Institute Receives Grant from Smith Richardson Foundation The Levy Economics Institute of Bard College, a nonprofit, nonpartisan public policy research organization, has received a $50,000 grant from the Smith Richardson Foundation in support of a project titled Government Spending on the Elderly.

The project’s mission is first to explore the implications of an aging society for the economy and public policy. Policy makers, professional associations, and advocacy organizations will then be provided with new, crucial information as they explore options for the future financing of health and economic support programs for the aging.

To this end, the Levy Institute is commissioning a series of papers that examine various aspects of the economics of aging, including prospects for aging and government spending, retirement security overall and for women in particular, progressivity of Social Security and Medicare, retirement behavior, the interaction between private and public provisioning of retiree benefits, and government expenditures and the well-being of the elderly.

The papers will be reviewed at a workshop for feedback from others in the field and will then be presented at a conference and issued as working papers by the Levy Institute. A summary of the conference proceedings will be disseminated to members and staff of Congressional committees, federal and state officials, the academic community, and the media.

The First-Year Seminar presented the lecture “Science and Religion in the Age of Galileo and Descartes” by Alice Stroup, professor of history at Bard, at the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts on October 17.

A panel discussion on the sacred landscapes of Tibet was held on October 19 at the Olin Language Center. Hosted

by Bard in China, the panel featured Li-Hua Ying, associate professor of Chinese at Bard, and Christopher Reed Coggins, associate professor of geography and Asian studies at Simon’s Rock College of Bard.

The Bard Orchestra and the Erica Lindsay/Sumi Tonooka Quartet performed a program of classical music and jazz at Olin Hall on October 19.

The Bard Center for Environmental Policy presented an open forum, “The Origins of Amnesty International and the Human Rights Movement in the United States: A Dialogue with the Founders,” on October 20 at Bertelsmann Campus Center.

Folk festival headliner Tracy Grammer, called “a brilliant artist” by Joan Baez, performed at Down the Road Café on October 20.

Also on October 20, Jessica Feldman, professor at the University of Virginia, delivered a lecture on John Ruskin and the rise of modernism.

The Human Rights Project, Bard chaplaincy, and Christian Student Fellowship presented a talk by G. Simon Harak, cofounder of Voices in the Wilderness, on October 20.

Harak’s organization has brought medicine and toys into Iraq in defiance of U.S. sanctions.

A panel of journalists who covered the Yugoslav wars— Roger Cohen of the New York Times; Emma Daly, then of the Independent of London; Newsday’s Roy Gutman; David Rieff, author of Slaughterhouse: Bosnia and the Failure of the West; Stacy Sullivan, then of Newsweek, and Ed Vulliamy, of the Guardian—gathered at Bard Hall in New York City on October 21, the 10th anniversary of the Dayton Peace Accords, to discuss the lessons of Bosnia.

Elizabeth Larison ’06 (left) and Alexandra Tatarsky, a Bard High School Early College student, were named the winners of the Institute for International Liberal Education’s essay contest, which was organized to promote understanding of the links between HIV/AIDS infection and human rights needs. Both Larison, a senior concentrating in human rights, and Tatarsky, who is in her third year at BHSEC, won trips to Russia to attend that country’s first international conference on HIV/AIDS and human rights, which was hosted by Smolny College and took place in October.

Evelyn Fox-Keller of MIT gave a talk titled “Innate Confusions: Nature, Nurture, and All of That,” at Weis Cinema on October 21.

Rock historian Barry Drake presented “60s Rock: When the Music Mattered,” a show featuring hundreds of slides, videos, and musical clips, on October 21 at the Campus Center.

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Bard Cavaliers When Sarah Perkins ’07 from Branford, Connecticut, and Susannah Bradley ’07 from Dallas arrived at Bard, they were surprised to find that the College, set in rural Annandale, did not have an equestrian club. Perkins and Bradley, who lived in the same first-year residence hall, rode together a few times a week at a local barn off campus. Before long, they decided to try getting others involved.

In the spring of 2004, Perkins and Bradley cofounded the Bard Equestrian Club, which is a recognized student club with some funding through the Convocation/Student Activities Fund. Fifty students signed up for their mailing list, and 12 began taking lessons with the club. A small show team— Perkins, Bradley, and Elizabeth Ford ’08—started competing in the Intercollegiate Horse Show Association (IHSA) against 15 other colleges in the region including Marist, Vassar, Columbia, and New York University. In November 2004, Ford won champion in her division at the Vassar show.

This year, Bard’s equestrian club—now called the Bard Cavaliers—has 21 Bard students, with varying levels of experience, taking riding lessons. The show team now has at least

Andrea Conner

New Director of Student Activities Bard has more than 100 student clubs, half a dozen student publications, an active student government, and a campus center that hosts films, readings, exhibitions, concerts, and a variety of additional student activities. Overseeing it all is Iowa native Andrea Conner, the director of Bertelsmann Campus Center and student activities.

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Bard Cavaliers

seven equestrians competing in IHSA shows. Bard alumna Andrea Nussinow ’84 coaches the intercollegiate team at her new equestrian facility, Blue Star Farms.

“It’s the perfect blend of what we were looking for,” says Bradley. “The gorgeous facility is just minutes from campus and the training is excellent.”

Conner received a master’s degree in higher education/ student affairs administration from Iowa State University. It was a career direction she chose as an undergraduate at Coe College, when she realized she “loved ‘college’ and the idea of the liberal arts education even more than music and theater.”

Conner has since worked as a residence counselor at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, and as assistant director of campus life at Illinois’s Knox College, where last spring the commencement activities she helped plan included an address by Senator Barack Obama.

At Bard, Conner quickly learned about the high level of student activism from the community’s response to Hurricane Katrina. She helped advise students on their relief efforts, including an all-night concert by Bard bands at Bertelsmann.

Just weeks into the fall semester, she was helping 15 new clubs get off the ground, advising them on how to generate interest, write budgets, and secure funding. While Conner hopes to support the academic mission of the College with the level and types of programming offered, it’s also her mission, she says, “to find ways to help the students relax and have fun.” So, along with students, she is working to expand the Thursday night coffee house concerts at Down the Road Café and planning a few big campuswide events for spring, including Super Bowl and Oscar parties and Spring Fling.

American Streamlined Design on View at the BGC A chrome-plated iron, a bullet-shaped soda siphon, and a boldly angled lounge chair of leather and tubular steel are among the 180 objects on display in American Streamlined Design: The World of Tomorrow, an exhibition at The Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design, and Culture (BGC), which will open on March 15 and run through June 25, 2006.

The streamlined idiom evolved in the 1930s and 1940s, in defiance of art deco and functionalist modernism. “It was based on an admiration for industry and speed,” says cocurator David A. Hanks, who has gathered a selection of ceramics, metalworks, furniture, and graphic designs by such notable practitioners of the movement as Norman Bel Geddes (the Futurama exhibit at the 1939 World’s Fair), Henry Dreyfuss (20th Century Limited train), Raymond Loewy (Lucky Strike packaging), and Walter Dorwin Teague (Texaco gas station), among others.

Many of the objects in American Streamlined Design were culled from the Eric Brill Collection and speak to the birth of American consumerism, when time-saving products such as mixers, blenders, and power drills spurred spending and promised a better world for everyone. In addition to offering a fresh appraisal of these classic industrial designs, the exhibition looks at the revival of streamlining in design today. Lectures, tours, and other public programs will be offered in conjunction with the exhibition. For additional information, see www.bgc.bard.edu or call 212-501-3011. The BGC is located at 18 West 86th Street in New York City.

On October 23, Bard president Leon Botstein and a distinguished panel of speakers, including Alan Sussman, Jack Blum ’62, Daniel Karpowitz, and CNN correspondent Kitty Pilgrim, discussed the future of the Supreme Court. The Campus Center program concluded the College’s Family Weekend events.

Director Todd Solondz, known for indie favorites Welcome to the Dollhouse and Happiness, and producer Michael Ryan screened their 2004 film Palindromes on October 23. The film was shot on and around the Bard campus.

Susan Merriam, assistant professor of art history at Bard, was the featured speaker at the First-Year Seminar on October 24, discussing “Producing Knowledge in the Early Modern Curiosity Collection.”

Heinrich Dohna of The Rockefeller University lectured on “Spatial Population Dynamics of Chagas Disease Vectors” on October 24, as part of Bard’s Frontiers in Science Lecture Series.

Novelist and translator Sergio Waisman, of George Washington University, talked about Argentine literature and Jorge Luis Borges’s theories of translation on October 24. On the same day, Fred Lazin of Ben Gurion University of the Negev lectured on “Israel versus the American Jewish Establishment.”

In a conversation at the Center for Curatorial Studies on October 25, executive director Tom Eccles provided a behind-the-scenes look at several of his installation and curatorial projects, which have featured work by Nam June Paik, Jeff Koons, Willem de Kooning, Keith Haring, and others.

On October 27, Bard’s Globalization and International Affairs Program presented a talk by Thomas M. Nichols, former chairman of the Department of Strategy and Policy at the U.S. Naval College, and Scott Silverstone, assistant professor of international relations at West Point, titled “Does Preventive War Have a Future?” The event was held at Bard Hall in New York City.

“Rethinking Tourette Syndrome,” a screening of the Emmy-nominated documentary Twitch and Shout and a discussion of the syndrome with the film’s narrator and coauthor, Lowell Handler, was held on October 27 as the first event in the College’s “Rethinking Difference beyond the Classroom” series.

Skippy-Racer Scooter, c. 1933. Harold L. Van Doren and John Gordon Rideout.

The Eric Brill Collection.

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La Voz staffers (from left) Elisa Ureña ’06, Mariel Fiori ’05, and Nevena Gadjeva ’06

La Voz Makes Itself Heard Now entering its third year, La Voz (The Voice) is a magazine that aims to shake, stir, inform, and delight its audience of Spanish—and would-be Spanish—readers. “The idea was always to be a bridge between the English and Spanish communities,” says Mariel Fiori ’05, managing editor. “It’s for the Hispanic community, but it’s also for people studying Spanish who want to practice.”

La Voz publishes articles about immigrants’ and students’ experiences, current events, and life in the Hudson Valley, as well as short stories, opinions, and legal and health advice from area experts. An educational supplement offers dialogue phrases in both English and Spanish, to aid readers of both languages.

La Voz’s popularity is such that, as of January, the magazine went from quarterly to monthly publication and expanded from 12 to 16 pages. It is distributed free on the Bard campus and in supermarkets, post offices, and “any place else people can see it in Dutchess and Ulster counties,” Fiori says.

The magazine began as a Trustee Leader Scholar (TLS) project of Fiori and Emily Schmall ’05, who approached her classmate about starting the publication after Fiori had written a Spanish-language column for The Citizen, a regional magazine published by Elaine Fernandez ’01. The first issue’s print run was 1,000 copies; now it is up to 4,000. The current editor is TLS student Nevena Gadjeva ’06.

Though still supported by Bard, the goal now is to find funding from other sources as well so that La Voz can continue to reach out to the community. “You don’t get all these perspectives in other publications,” says Fiori. “Perhaps it should be called Las Voces.”

Digging Up More than Dirt More than 100 pieces of ceramic, intact bottles, two toothbrushes, and even a tortoise shell comb, all from the mid to late 1800s, have been carefully removed from a deep shaft behind the construction site of The Gabrielle H. Reem and Herbert J. Kayden Center for Science and Computation. The artifacts within the stonelined shaft are prime archaeological finds from a 6,000-square-foot site that has been cordoned off between the future science building and the Sands House student residence.

Christopher Lindner, archaeologist in residence and visiting assistant professor of anthropology, discovered through shovel tests the remains of two buried stone walls, one a possible barn or shed foundation and the other “almost certainly” a privy shaft, which Sands House inhabitants began filling with broken pottery and other debris in the 1880s. “We knew from several shovel tests we were into something rich,” Lindner said. As a result of the dig, the utility pad and transformer for the science building have been moved from the locations sited in original plans.

“It’s very exciting to know about the history of the land on which this college is constructed,” said Diana Brown, associate professor of anthropology. She toured the site with Mario Bick, professor of anthropology, who added, “History is literally embedded in the ground as well as the texts. To have such archaeological programs right on campus is a rare opportunity for students to gain visceral insights into local history.”

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William Ruiz '03 takes measurements of a stone shaft that is part of a 6,000-square-foot archeological site between the Sands House and The Gabrielle H. Reem and Herbert J. Kayden Center for Science and Computation.

A Bard Forum on Science and Society showcased a panel discussion on genetics and race with faculty members Michael Tibbetts, biology; Gregory Moynahan, history; and Amy Ansell, sociology. Mark Halsey moderated the October 27 event at the Campus Center.

The Levy Economics Institute hosted the conference “Time Use and Economic Well-Being” on October 28 and 29 at Blithewood.

The Colorado Quartet performed works by Beethoven, Rochberg, and Haydn at an afternoon concert at Olin Hall on October 30.

NOVEMBER Investigative journalist Ana Arana discussed the rise of transnational crime in Latin America on November 1 as part of Bard’s Technology, Technocracy, and Human Rights lecture series.

Jesse D. Cain ’05 won a Princess Grace Award for excellence in film. The prestigious scholarship will fund the production of his Senior Project—a film based on footage of his journeys on the Trans-Siberian Railway. “I’m interested in doing work that is concerned with narrative informed by real experience,” says Cain, whose script is derived from his experiences aboard the epic train ride from St. Petersburg to Beijing. Established in 1984, the Princess Grace Awards recognize and nurture a new generation of young artists studying at institutions nationwide.

The Da Capo Chamber Players celebrated the works of Bard faculty, alumni/ae, and student composers during a Bard Center concert at Olin Hall on November 2.

The Woodstock Chamber Orchestra performed works

by Barber, Copland, Gershwin, and Woodstock composer Alan Shulman during An American Thanksgiving, a concert at Olin Hall on November 4.

Michael Almereyda presented his recent documentary on world-renowned photographer William Eggleston on November 4 at the Avery Center theater.

The Institute of Advanced Theology sponsored a luncheon lecture and book signing with Bruce Chilton, executive director of the Institute, and Jacob Neusner, Research Professor of Religion and Theology, on November 7 at the Campus Center. Their recent books include Chilton’s Mary Magdalene: A Biography and Altruism in World Religions, edited by Chilton and Neusner.

David Hinkley, a veteran member and officer of Amnesty International (AI), was one of the panelists in an open forum at the College on October 20, on the origins of the group and its growth in the United States. Hinkley, a founding member of several West Coast AI chapters who now serves as executive director of Survivors International, joined other AI pioneers in the dialogue, which was presented by the Bard Center for Environmental Policy and moderated by BCEP director Joanne Fox-Przeworski.

Christopher Gibbs, James H. Ottaway Jr. Professor of Music, addressed the First-Year Seminar on November 7 on the topic “Mozart’s Final Reconciliation: The Magic Flute and the Enlightenment.”

On November 8, Bard in China presented a lecture by historian Dan Shao of the University of Illinois, UrbanaChampaign, titled “Chinese by Definition: The Making and Practice of Nationality Law, 1909–1980.”

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Zachary Hamacker ’08, Dylan Cummins ’07, and Colin Safranek ’08

Men’s Volleyball Roster Includes Star Players The men’s volleyball team has stepped up its game. Last year, Dylan Cummins ’07, Colin Safranek ’08, and Zachary Hamaker ’08—all nationally ranked players from northern California—joined the roster. “These guys are phenomenal athletes, extremely intelligent people, and great students,” says head coach Owen Roberts, who is from Berkeley, California, and works in Bard’s Admission Office.

Recruiting these players to Bard—two outside hitters and one setter—wasn’t a hard sell. Safranek, who ranked first nationally in kills per game last season, was accepted at Bard on a full-tuition scholarship as a Distinguished Scientist Scholar. Hamaker, whose father is a professor at Saint Mary’s College, received a tuition exchange scholarship and came to study math at Bard. Cummins, looking for an academically challenging liberal arts college, transferred to Bard from Sonoma State University as a sophomore. “This team’s chemistry is one of the best I have ever experienced in 14 seasons,” says Cummins, who cocaptains the team alongside Safranek and Hamaker. “Although the level of competition on the East Coast does not rival that of Sonoma State [a Division II team], Bard’s superior attitude and coaching make it more rewarding.”

Last season’s turnaround success—ranking second nationally in team hitting percentages—won Bard an invitation to join the North Eastern Collegiate Volleyball Association (NECVA), a top Division III conference. “The competition will be much stiffer and the season more rigorous,” says Cummins, who played in high school on the same championship team as Safranek in Santa Cruz. Roberts continues to recruit other positions, especially defenders, as his team’s intensity and competitive spirit heightens.

Edie Meidav Wins Bard Fiction Prize Edie Meidav, whose second novel, Crawl Space, paints a chilling portrait of a French collaborator with the Nazis, has been named the recipient of the annual Bard Fiction Prize. Meidav, a native of Toronto who lives in San Francisco, won the 2001 Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize for Fiction by an American Woman for The Far Field: A Novel of Ceylon.

In Crawl Space, Meidav dares to inhabit the mind and soul of a 20th-century monster, Emile Poulquet, “a morbid opportunist who artfully isolates his guilt with the lie that men are mere cogs in the wheel of history” (Thomas Meaney, Los Angeles Times). The novel, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, has been widely praised for its unflinching delineation of its protagonist, the power and scope of its narrative, and the originality of its treatment of the Holocaust.

The Bard Fiction Prize, which consists of a $30,000 cash award and a one-semester residency at the College, is bestowed annually to a writer of promise who is 39 years or younger and an American citizen 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), Monique Truong (2003), and Paul LaFarge (2004).

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Edie Meidav

Family Weekend Each fall Bard hosts parents of current students during Family Weekend. While together on campus, families are invited to attend classes, panel discussions, performances, sporting events and more.

This year’s program highlighted the Science, Technology, and Society Program offering such classes as Matthew Deady’s FirstYear Seminar Galileo and Catherine O’Reilly’s Global Change.

The Life after Bard Dinner, held November 9 at the Manor House Café, featured talks by Lukas Alpert ’99, a reporter at the New York Post; graphic designer Anne Finkelstein ’80; dancer Abby Bender Lauren ’95; John Rolfe ’79, a journalist with Sports Illustrated for Kids; and attorney Ken Stern ’79.

“The Rise of Chinese Power” was the topic of a November 10 lecture by Elizabeth C. Economy, director of Asia studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, and Dan Blumenthal, American Enterprise Institute fellow, at Bard Hall in New York City. The talk was part of the Bard Globalization and International Affairs Program’s James Clarke Chace Memorial Speaker Series.

On November 10, the Bard Center for Environmental Policy presented a talk by Dick White, professor emeritus at Smith College, about Las Gaviotas, a self-sustaining community and reforestation center in Colombia.

Mark Halsey, associate dean of the college and mathematics professor, addresses Family Weekend participants.

The Bard College Conservatory of Music concert and lecture series offered four fall programs, beginning with a November 13 concert by renowned pianist Simone Dinnerstein, who performed Bach’s Goldberg Variations.

Other programs included a performance by the Conservatory orchestra, guest-conducted by Fabio Mechetti; a concert by pianist Melvin Chen and violinist Arnold Steinhardt; and a recital of chamber music by Conservatory students and faculty.

Jonathan Lethem, author of Motherless Brooklyn, The Fortress of Solitude, and The Disappointment Artist, read from his works on November 14 as part of the Innovative Contemporary Fiction Reading Series. Bradford Morrow, professor of literature at Bard and founding editor of Conjunctions, introduced the award-winning writer.

President Leon Botstein presents Stefano Ferrari with a soccer shirt at the dedication of the Lorenzo Ferrari Soccer Complex, named after Stefano’s father.

Dean of the College Michèle D. Dominy lectured on “Captain Cook’s Endeavor: Science and Exploration in the Pacific” on November 14. The talk, part of the First-Year Seminar, took place at the Sosnoff Theater.

The November 15 lecture in Bard’s Technology, Technocracy, and Human Rights series featured Michael Menser, Brooklyn College, who discussed “Infrastructure Is a Political Act: Obligation, Place, and the Borders of the Polis.”

Mich`ele D. Dominy engages parents in a question-and-answer session.

Bard in China presented a lecture by Joshua Muldavin, Henry R. Luce Professor of Asian Studies and Human Geography at Sarah Lawrence College, on the environmental and social implications of China’s recent economic success on November 17 at the Olin Humanities Building.

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New Trustee Appointed Robert Epstein ’63, a principal of The Abbey Group and a co-owner and comanaging partner of the Boston Celtics, was elected to the Board of Trustees of Bard College in October 2005.

Epstein, who earned his bachelor’s degree in political studies, is a real estate developer in the Boston area. The Abbey Group, of which he is chief executive officer, has developed many key properties in that city, notably Lafayette Corporate Center and the awardwinning Landmark Center near Fenway Park. A lifelong Celtics fan—as a young boy, he attended a summer camp run by Celtics Hall of Famer Bob Cousy—he became an executive of the fabled basketball franchise in 2002. The New England Sports Lodge chose him as its 2005 Sportsman of the Year.

Epstein also serves on the boards of numerous organizations, including Team Harmony, the Anti-Defamation League, Rose Art Museum, Wang Center, and Boston Celtics Shamrock Foundation.

Robert Epstein

 A rendering of The Gabrielle H. Reem and Herbert J. Kayden Center for Science and Computation by Rafael Viñoly Architects PC. The view is from the northeast, along the extension of Campus Walk, which now ends at the plaza in front of the science building. The rendering shows, on the east side, the mezzanine level of faculty offices and the lobby with classrooms and an auditorium.

On the west side, one sees the north end of the laboratories.  Construction of the Reem and Kayden Center is well under way.

The two foundation walls that will support the main laboratories and support areas have been completed. The building is scheduled to be enclosed sometime this spring, with an expected completion date of February 2007.

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Five-time Emmy winner David Javerbaum, head writer for the Daily Show with Jon Stewart and one of the primary authors of the bestselling America (The Book), talked to the Bard community on November 18 at Olin Hall.

The exhibition Wearing Propaganda: Textiles on the Home Front in Japan, Britain, and the United States, 1931–1945 opened at The Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design, and Culture on November 18 and ran through February 5.

Language and Thinking Workshop teachers for 2005 included alumni/ae (from left) Delia Mellis ’86, Stephanie Hopkins ’94, Colleen Murphy Alexander ’00, Andrew McCarron ’98, and Rebecca Granato ’99

BHSEC Outreach Bolstered Last summer Bard High School Early College (BHSEC) offered a five-week academy to selected students from three middle schools in its Lower East Side neighborhood. These are “Title I” schools, with an economically disadvantaged student body.

Despite previous BHSEC tutoring, most of the students’ reading and math skills remained too low to allow them entry into BHSEC, a public high school in which students can progress in four years from ninth grade through the first two years of college.

When promised funding for the summer academy did not materialize, BHSEC students and staff volunteered their time to make the program happen. A pilot class of 28 students, rising sixth and seventh graders, had their first Bard experience. They wore lab coats and protective goggles in science labs. They read and wrote about authors they had never met and revisited familiar ideas from a different angle. Field trips were modest, ranging from work in a neighborhood garden to a tour of Columbia University.

The Columbia tour, at an institution the academy students had not heard of before, proved to be one of the most successful outings.

While there, the group met, quite by chance, two BHSEC graduates who had gone on to Columbia.

The academy’s ending was bittersweet; without funding, a Saturday program could not continue during the academic year.

That changed in September when District I of the New York City Department of Education—of which the three middle schools are a part—received a grant from the Jacob K. Javits Gifted and Talented Students Education Program of the U.S. Department of Education. Among other programming, the three-year grant will allow the expansion of BHSEC’s summer academy. Ultimately, the students will be better prepared for the rigors and opportunities of the best public high schools in New York City. “If all goes well,” says Ray Peterson, BHSEC principal, “we feel confident that many of these students will be with us for the Bard High School Early College experience.”

Robert Coover, former Bard professor and prize-winning author of The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., Henry J. Waugh, Prop.; The Public Burning; Pricksongs & Descants; and many other works of fiction, read from his new short story collection, A Child Again, on November 28 at the Bertelsmann Campus Center.

The First-Year Seminar presented a November 28 lecture

by Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze of DePaul University, titled “Philosophy, Science, and Cultural Principles of Reason.”

DECEMBER The James Clarke Chace Memorial Speaker Series concluded its fall schedule on December 1 with a lecture on “Coming Challenges to the United Nations” by Barbara Crossette, former UN bureau chief of the New York Times, and Edward Luck, professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. The talk took place at Bard Hall in New York City and was sponsored by Bard’s Globalization and International Affairs Program.

The First-Year Seminar Series presented “Gender Trouble in the Age of Reason: Mansfield Park and the Enlightenment Project,” a lecture by Eileen Gilloooly of Columbia University, on December 5 at the Sosnoff Theater.

The Bard College Community Chorus, directed by James Bagwell, performed Haydn’s Mass in the Time of War at the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts on December 7. The performance was dedicated to the late John Dalton ’74.

The Winter Dance, featuring Senior Project and faculty choreography, was held at the Fisher Center on December 10.

FEBRUARY The American Symphony Orchestra, with Leon Botstein, music director, performed Don Quixote and Ein Helenleben

by Richard Strauss on February 3 and 4 at the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts.

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CLASSNOTES

Editor’s Note: Alumni/ae wishing to submit a class note can do so by filling out the envelope enclosed in the Bardian or going to www.bard.edu/alumni and clicking on the link for Class Notes.

’36 70th Reunion: May 19–21, 2006 Staff contact: Jessica Kemm ’74, 845-758-7406 or kemm@bard.edu

’39 Who, besides George Rosenberg, remembers that diner in Red Hook and its remarkable proprietor? As often as possible, George went to watch in awe as, with one hand, the man toasted and buttered bread while with the other he broke eggs, stirred in diced onion, peppers, and who knows what else to make George a western sandwich. George read in the Escapes section of the 8/19/05 New York Times that if he were to return to Red Hook today, he might dine at J & J’s Gourmet Deli and have an ice cream dessert at Holy Cow. Holy Cow, indeed! Tempus fugit—and quickly, too!

and inspired him. A Stegner Fellow (and sometime teacher) at Stanford University, as well as a teacher at Colorado State University and Foothill Community College, Bill retired in 1989. He spends his time reading, writing, and gardening.

’56 50th Reunion: May 19–21, 2006 Contacts: Miriam Roskin Berger, mb33@nyu.edu; Steve Portman, steveportmandesign.co.ule.uk. Staff contact: Jessica Kemm ’74, 845758-7406 or kemm@bard.edu

’60 Amy Green, M.D., was included in the 2004–05 edition of the Consumers’ Research Council of America’s Guide to America’s Top Psychiatrists. Her husband, Dr. Jack M. Clemente, died in 2002. Her daughter, Laura, is engaged, and plans to marry next year.

’61 At 75, Barbara Hanes Morse, a.k.a. “Hafner,” is still teaching yoga at the Palomar Community College in San Marcos, California.

’41

’63

65th Reunion: May 19–21, 2006 Staff contact: Jessica Kemm ’74, 845-758-7406 or kemm@bard.edu

Phyllis Chesler was one of 75 Jewish women featured in an online exhibition titled Jewish Women and the Feminist Revolution. Organized by the Jewish Women’s Archive, the virtual exhibition featured art, writing, radio and TV clips, and other work by the participants, each of whom wrote a short essay about the importance of her contribution to feminism. Chesler, an active participant in the National Organization of Women, supported one of the country’s first women’s crisis centers in Brooklyn and cofounded both the Association for Women in Psychology (1969) and the National Women’s Health Network. She is also a charter member of the Women’s Forum. The Jewish Women’s Archive exhibition can be visited at www.jwa.org/ feminism.

’46 60th Reunion: May 19–21, 2006 Staff contact: Jessica Kemm ’74, 845-758-7406 or kemm@bard.edu

’50 Mary Gelb Park had a successful exhibition of brightly colored abstract oils at the OTWAU gallery in Portland, Oregon. She sends a cheery hello to all the “Old Wrinklies” from her era. Her daughter, Lucy, also graduated from Bard, and was Elaine de Kooning’s studio assistant. There are actually granddaughters waiting in the wings!

John Rice has sold his Queen Palm Nurseries in Sarasota, Florida, after 45 good years. He says retirement is great. He now enjoys spending more time around his young grandchildren.

’51 55th Reunion: May 19–21, 2006 Staff contact: Jessica Kemm ’74, 845-758-7406 or kemm@bard.edu

’52 Class Correspondent: Kit Ellenbogen ’52, max4794@netzero.net William Walker has been living happily in California since 1960.

He reports that his success as a writer and teacher was the result of his years at Bard. He attributes his awakenings to Ted Weiss, James Merrill, Bill Humphrey, and other faculty members who encouraged Untitled, by Judith Trepp ’63 52

Morris Museum Sunday, March 19 A tour of the exhibition Musical Machines and Living Dolls: Mechanical Musical Instruments and Automata from the Murgoth D. Guinness Collection, hosted by Steve Miller ’70 and Charlie Clancy ’69. This important collection features 60 mechanical musical instruments and automata, dating from the early 18th to the early 19th century. Reception to follow.

Time: 1:30 p.m. Place: Morris Museum, 6 Normandy Heights Road, Morristown, New Jersey. Reservations required.

11th Annual Young Alumni/ae Cities Party Friday, April 7, and Sunday, April 9 Information: Rebecca Granato ’99 and Jennifer Novik ’98 Young Alumni/ae Committee Cochairs E-mail: rebecca.granato@gmail.com or jnovik@gmail.com

Tour of Chelsea art galleries led by Professor Tom Wolf Saturday, May 6 Information: Taryn McGray ’05, e-mail: mcgray@bard.edu Reservations required.

Commencement/Reunion Weekend 2006 May 19–21 Reunion Classes: 1936, 1941, 1946, 1951, 1956, 1966, 1971, 1976, 1981, 1986, 1991, 1996, 2001 For more information, call Jessica Kemm ’74 at 845-758-7406 or e-mail kemm@bard.edu.

Bard Fiction Reading Tuesday, June 13 The new alumni/ae reading series, hosted by Jamie Callan ’75, continues with Bardian authors reading from recent works of fiction.Time: 6:00 p.m. Place: Bowery Poetry Club, 308 Bowery, New York City. Fee: $5 cover at the door, and one drink minimum. Reservations required.

Judith Trepp-Sklar has lived and worked in Thalwil-Zurich, Switzerland, since 1970. For the past 15 years she has spent the summer months at her studio in Provincetown, Massachusetts.

Trepp, a painter and art critic, is represented by Art Forum Ute Barth in Zurich. Her work was shown in 2005 at the Pentimenti Gallery in Philadelphia. A one-person show is planned for Zurich in November 2006.

’66 40th Reunion: May 19–21, 2006 Contacts: Peter Kenner, peter@tivolipartner.com; Kathryn Stein, kestein@erols.com. Staff contact: Jessica Kemm ’74, 845-758-7406 or kemm@bard.edu

’68 Gail Grisetti received the Provost Award for Leadership in International Education from Old Dominion University.

Marjorie Mann married Don Baier ’66 in 2002 and works as a psychiatric nurse at Sheppard Pratt in Baltimore. Don is retired; the couple tries to spend a lot of time traveling, and visited Italy in fall 2005. They recently acquired paintings by Michael DeWitt ’65 and Wendy Weldon ’71.

’70 Photographer Jane Evelyn Atwood’s sixth book, Sentinelles de l’ombre, Editions Le Seuil, was published in France, where she has lived for 33 years. Visit her website: www.JaneEvelynAtwood.com.

’71 35th Reunion: May 19–21, 2006 Contacts: Carla Bolte, carla.bolte@us.penguingroup.com; Rhonda Harrow Engel, harrowengel@yahoo.com; Debby Davidson Kaas, dkass@rcn.com. Staff contact: Jessica Kemm ’74, 845-758-7406 or kemm@bard.edu Mark Barnett has expanded his company both in Vietnam and Cambodia, and his family is growing as well.

’76 30th Reunion: May 19–21, 2006 Contacts: Richard Caliban, caliban421@aol.com; Angelo DePalma, adp@tellurian.net; Jerry Drucker, jerrydsurf@cox.net; James Fishman, jamesr626@aol.com; Deborah Bornstein Gichan, debgichan photography@mac.com; Michelle Petruzelli, mapny13@yahoo.com; Janice Storozum, janicederosa@mac.com; Shelley Weinstock, sbw2 @aol.com. Staff contact: Jessica Kemm ’74, 845-758-7406 or kemm @bard.edu

’78 Doreen Clark and Lewis Copulsky ’79 are pleased to announce the academic progress of their two sons Ben Copulsky and Dan Copulsky.

Ben is a first-year student at Bard, and Dan has begun his first year at Simon’s Rock.

Emily Hay, flutist and vocalist, was featured on KXLU in Los Angeles (and at www.kxlu.com), and music from her CD Like Minds, released on pfMentum Records, was highlighted on BBC Radio.

She has also appeared in numerous concerts with such musicians as cellist Michael Intriere, bassist Anthony Shadduck, percussionist Brad Dutz, trombonist/vocalist Kurt Heyl, violinist Ronit Kirchman, and keyboardist Wayne Peet. Additional performances in 2005 included the Thingamajigs Festival, Electric Lodge, and South California Sonic Festival of New Music. Visit her website for updated events and record releases: www.emilyhay.com.

After a minireunion/alumni/ae get-together in the land of not one, but two hurricanes (a.k.a. Stuart, Florida), Karen Varbalow again came to realize just how important her years at Bard were, and still are. She invites any “Bardie” to look her up, say hello, and stop by sunny Florida as long as there are no hurricanes blowing through. Her daughter graduated from high school this year and has chosen a college as diametrically different from Bard as possible: one with more than 30,000 students and a Division I sports program, where she will be on the dive team and study international business and Chinese. She hopes her daughter’s college experience is as fulfilling as her own was.

’73 Together with their son, Salim Haruka, Stephen Goto Gerald and Yoshiko Goto Gerald ’83 returned from Tokyo, where they taught an acting workshop together at Nihon Daigaku ( Japan University).

Stephen was honored to receive a Presidential Medal for Distinguished Service to Japan University’s College of Fine Art. They look forward to teaching and traveling to Japan and Korea in the summer.

’74 Margaret Sleeper has joined the faculty of the University of Wisconsin–Madison School of Social Work as a full-time clinical assistant professor.

Emily Hay ’78 54

’79 Dr. Michael Gold is the founder of Jazz Impact. More information is available at www.jazz-impact.com. His wife, Deborah Dachis Gold ’81, is a creative director in digital marketing communications.

’81 25th Reunion: May 19–21, 2006 Contacts: Janet Stetson, stetson@bard.edu. Staff contact: Matt Soper, 845-758-7505 or soper@bard.edu Kathie diStefano still lives in Rotterdam with her Dutch husband. In 1984 she founded Avalanche Theater. It has toured and played for elementary and high school audiences for the past seven years, winning prizes in support of its “learning through laughter” projects. She plans to take a break from performance and financial director duties to focus full-time on education. Her high school job will include teaching drama and directing theatrical projects at a Dalton-style public high school in Rotterdam. In addition, she will teach drama workshops to elementary school pupils. Both of these teaching activities will be conducted in English. Although Kathie speaks fluent Dutch, bilingual education is gaining popularity at many Dutch schools, which creates the opportunity for her to work in her native language.

’83 Sharon Spector (Gellman) was married on June 19, 2004, to Harv Spector. In 2005 she received the Nexus Award from the Association of American Medical Publications for her work on the journal Current Psychiatry.

Press coverage and photos for the May 1, 2005, world premiere of Dirck Toll’s one-man stunt show Irregular Opposition appeared in the Albany Times Union, Glens Falls Post-Star, and Saratoga Springs Saratogian. The Times Union selected Irregular Opposition as a “Pick of the Week.” In October, Dirck performed his show Relax—I Brought Enough Ego for Everybody at Simon’s Rock College of Bard.

’85 Mimi Czajka Graminski is a sculptor and artist whose work was exhibited at a number of shows in the Hudson Valley and Long Island areas this past fall. Mimi had work in the Kingston Sculpture Biennial, Mohawk-Hudson Regional at the Albany Institute of History and Art, and group shows at the Arts Society of Kingston, Islip Art Museum, Sanjula Exhibitions Space in Tivoli, and Pocketbook Factory in Hudson. She lives in Red Hook with her husband, Mark, and 6-year-old son, Thomas.

Liz Korabek is editor of The Physical Actor, a new journal inspired by the “poetry of the body.” The Physical Actor covers the history and current developments in physical theater performances and training.

Jim Toia’s exhibition Spore was shown in San Francisco in 2005.

The show consisted of mushroom spore drawings made during a winter 2004–05 trip to northern California.

Allison Radzin ’88, with daughters Caleigh (left) and Wyatt

’86 20th Reunion: May 19–21, 2006 Contacts: Michael Maresca, mjmaresca@earthlink.net; Chris LeGoff Kauffman, cak64@comcast.net. Staff contact: Sasha Boak Kelly, 845-758-7406 or boak@bard.edu

’87 Michael Burgi moved to New Jersey with his wife, Christine, in the fall of 2002, after the birth of their daughter, Caelin. A second daughter, Sara, was born in June 2003. Two months later, Michael was promoted to editor of Mediaweek, where he has worked for 13 years. “Life is great!”

Eva Lee’s New Drawings and Digital Animations ran from June 11 to September 11, 2005, at the Real Art Ways Gallery in Hartford, Connecticut. This solo exhibition featured new large-scale drawings and the continuation of The Liminal Series, an ongoing project of short, abstract, digitally generated animation.

’89 Jane Andromache Brien and Rhinebeck local Stewart Emil Verrilli, Pratt, ’87, were married in Milan in August. Their son, Burt (see page 56), attended, along with friend Wendelin Scott ’96, who also recently married, in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Jane, Stewart, and Burt live in the Hudson Valley, where they host many kitchen parties.

’91 15th Reunion: May 19–21, 2006 Contacts: J. J. Austrian, johnjaustrian@hotmail.com; Carrie (Eudaly) Benevento, cbene@optonline.net; Benjamin Goldberg, benjamin goldberg.email@gmail.com; Chad Kleitsch, chadkleitsch@hotmail. com; Mark Nichols, marknichols@mindstream.com; Matt Phillips, mphillips@wingedkeel.com; Stacy Pilson, staceynyc@yahoo.com.

Staff contact: Sasha Boak Kelly, 845-758-7406 or boak@bard.edu 55

Christiane Cullens continues to teach high school on an island off the coast of Downeast, Maine. She just bought a big old farmhouse and has discovered a strange affinity for power tools. She is glad to report that Ariel, her oldest cat, is still spry and kicking, and has done fair justice to the stamina and cheek that are indigenous to the rare breed of Tivoli cat that she is.

After 15 years of talk and no walk, Julian De Marchi finally moved to Amsterdam. He’s still working as an engineer, but is now rounding off his 10th year of fantasizing about becoming an artist, so who knows what will happen in another five?

Jane Andromache Brien ’89 with son Burt

After graduation, Kamran Anwar worked in a bank in New York for five years before moving back to Karachi, his hometown, in Pakistan.

Returning to Pakistan was a challenge at first, as he was 18 when he left and 27 when he went back. When the harsh reality of what it would mean to thrive in a developing country hit him, it was his Bard zest and vision that carried him through. After some time in Karachi, he moved to Dubai. While there, he visited Amman, Beirut, Bahrain, and Qatar. Now he is in London—with the same bank. Still single, his family continues to exert tremendous pressure on him to “settle down.”

Ty Donaldson lives in Los Angeles and produces films through his company, Buddha-Cowboy Productions. He coproduced/line produced Soldier of God (www.soldierofgod.net), a historical epic set during the Crusades, which was accepted for the 2005 Stratfordupon-Avon International Film Festival. His short film RewinD, directed by Jonah Salander, was accepted for the same festival, and was chosen for the Los Angeles International Short Film Festival.

He is in postproduction with the film Love, Fear and Rabbits and in development for a number of feature films, most notably The Hootch (www.thehootchmovie.com) and another film with David Avallone ’87. He enjoys watching movies and scuba diving. His son, Ross, 14, is starting high school, and boy does that make Ty feel old.

After completing a five-year doctoral program at Bastyr University, Dr. Laura Eastman has earned her degree as a naturopathic doctor (ND). NDs are trained as primary care physicians who use natural medicine to aid the body in healing itself. Laura will serve as a resident for two years at Emerald City Clinic in Seattle, where she has lived since she graduated from Bard. She is overjoyed to be practicing naturopathic medicine, and welcomes all communication from fellow Bardians at laura.eastman@bastyr.edu.

’92 Class Correspondent: Andrea Stein ’92, AJS630@aol.com Throughout May and June 2005, Mallory Catlett directed the company Banana Bag and Bodice in a production titled Panel. Animal, presented at The Collapsable Hole in Brooklyn and OntologicalHysteric Theatre in Manhattan. For information about Banana Bag and Bodice, contact www.bananabagand bodice.org. For information about Mallory Catlett, visit http://homepage.mac.com/mallory catlett/ home.html.

Morgan Cleveland is still living in Oakland (“the best city on Earth”) with her husband and two children (a son and a daughter, ages 7 and 4, respectively). She works as an independent consultant in the field of education. Last summer, she and her family rediscovered the joys of baseball (“Go A’s!”), skimboarding, and sea kayaking.

She would love to hear from any Bard friends. Her e-mail address is nnebe4@yahoo.com.

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This sculpture by Linda Ganjian ’92 is titled Ode to Disappearing Smokestacks (2005; mixed media)

with Christina acting as the general contractor. She still writes haiku and participated in several writing workshops in the spring of 2005.

Allison Parker serves as a contributing editor for Other Voices, an all-fiction literary magazine, as well as its imprint, OV Books.

Allison is finishing a novel that began as her Y2K M.F.A. thesis and is working on a collection of critical essays. She lives without regret in the no-man’s-land between Hell’s Kitchen and the Upper West Side of Manhattan with her husband, André Compeyre, and their Franco-American toddler, Quentin. She writes, “I have to thank Odile Chilton for all my years of French!” She welcomes contact from fellow Bardians.

Daniel Sonenberg is assistant professor and resident composer at the University of Southern Maine. He lives with his wife, Alexandra, in Portland.

Flyway, by Grace Markman ’92

Linda Ganjian is enjoying life—and many ethnic culinary delights — in Jackson Heights, Queens, with her partner, Jesse Lambert. She is still making art; her sculpture was displayed at the Brooklyn Museum last year as part of the Open House: Working in Brooklyn show. She is currently preparing for a solo exhibition at Gallery Boreas in Williamsburg, Virginia, in March. Visit www. lindagan jian.net for details.

Christine Gobbo Petrella lives happily in Katonah, New York, with her husband, Larry, and two beautiful boys: Christopher, 5, and Nicholas, 3. She would be thrilled to hear from any of her old Bard friends.

Sian Jacobwitz and Todd Defren ’91 are still happily together after 17-plus years, and have two great kids—Luke, 13, and Branwen, 10.

Sian is in nursing school and Todd is a principal at SHIFT Communications, a public relations firm. They split their time between homes in the San Francisco and Boston areas. Most of their free time is spent coddling their 200-pound English mastiff, Owen the Wonderdog.

Karyn Kloumann was married to Lucas Cushanick in August 2004, after meeting him online in 2001. They live in Brooklyn Heights with two cats, Philo and Porphyrio. Karyn has worked in production at Lucky magazine for the past five years, and maintains an art studio in her neighborhood, where she experiments with resin-based paintings.

Katya McElfresh is a social worker in Brooklyn, working as a therapist with families who are at risk of having children placed in foster care.

Christina O’Connor still lives in Branford, Connecticut, on the Farm River Estuary, but now she’s married! She and her husband, Michael Mahoney, eloped on April 29, 2005, after a 12-year courtship. They’ve been renovating their 1928 stone house for the past year and a half,

The American Composers Orchestra presented Stefan Weisman’s work in May 2005, as part of its Underwood New Music Readings.

On March 1, 2006, male soprano Anthony Costanzo and the Ensemble Newspeak will perform Weisman’s piece “From Frankenstein” at Merkin Concert Hall in New York City, as part of the “Ear Department Emerging Composers” series. Stefan’s 90-minute opera Darkling was commissioned by American Opera Projects and was included in the Guggenheim Museum’s “Works & Process” series in November 2005. For more information, visit www.stefanweisman.com.

Ellen Wickersham and her husband, Pascal Vincent, are thrilled to announce the arrival of their daughter, Uma Lee Vincent, born at home in San Diego on July 25, 2005. Assuming that domestic duties allow her the time, Ellen will graduate from acupuncture school this spring. The couple is dying to move back to Philadelphia soon, where Ellen will start her practice. She would love to hear from anyone who might have moved or lost touch. Contact her at ellengvincent@yahoo.com.

Susanne Williams is back to freelancing as a lighting technician in TV and Broadway after an exhausting four-year stint at Good Morning America in New York City. She is still living in Park Slope, Brooklyn, where many other Bard alumni/ae have chosen to settle.

She’s currently searching for a mentor in gymnastics choreography, a field she would like to enter. P.S.: Has anyone seen Carlos Luna?

’93 In 2005, Joseph O. Iannacone received a study and travel fellowship from the Goethe-Institut. He toured Germany’s historic sites, museums, attended lectures, and met German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.

Danielle Woerner lives in Shokan, New York, with her husband, Claude Johnson. She is working as a singer, voice teacher, and writer. In June 2005, she sang Heitor Villa-Lobos’s Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5 for one soprano and eight cellos at the Maverick Concert Hall in Woodstock. Danielle is also a faculty adjunct voice teacher at Vassar,

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Bard, and Dutchess Community Colleges. She is writing her first novel, for which she recently made a research trip to France.

Danielle’s first-person essay, “Struggling to Make Peace with the Atom,” which appeared in the July 11, 2005, issue of Newsweek, dealt with her father’s work on the Manhattan Project and her own work as a peace activist.

’94 Renee Cramer’s book Cash, Color and Colonialism: The Politics of Tribal Acknowledgment was published in June 2005 by the University of Oklahoma Press. In December 2004, she gave birth to an amazing baby boy, Wyatt Saille. She, Wyatt, and Wyatt’s dad, Aaron, are still in Long Beach, California, but are hoping to move somewhere more rural soon.

Mark L. Feinsod’s short film, Virginal Young Blondes, was screened as part of the NewFilmmakers series at the Anthology Film Archives in New York City in June 2005. The Pioneer Theater in New York hosted a retrospective of Mark’s short movies on January 9, 2005.

Gary Green is a visiting assistant professor of art at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine. His photographs were purchased for the permanent collections of the Portland Museum of Art in Portland, Maine, and Bates College Museum of Art in Lewiston, Maine, where his work was shown in Off the Coast: A Landscape Chronology in August 2005.

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation awarded Alex John London a New Directions Fellowship, to develop rigorous standards for the ethical evaluation of how medical research is conducted. Alex is an associate professor of philosophy at Carnegie Mellon University.

’96 10th Reunion: May 19–21, 2006 Contacts: Jennifer Abrahms Thompson, jennifer@abramstechnology. com. Aaron Shottenfeld, aaronperi23@hotmail.com;Walter Swett, walter@charlieangel.org. Staff contact: Jessica Kemm ’74, 845-7587406 or kemm@bard.edu Krista David is a staff psychiatrist at A.W.A.R.E. in Helena, Montana. She and her husband, Len Lantz, are thrilled to announce the birth of their daughter, Lucy Coral Lantz, in April 2005. They enjoy living in Helena.

Staci Schwartz is the photo editor for the Village Voice. As a photographer, she has been shooting various New York social events over the past 10 years that feature parties, personalities, and pop culture. She writes, “No matter what full-time photo-editing positions I have undertaken, I have never ceased to stop shooting my documentary projects. It is this personal work that gives me the drive and fulfillment of being an artist.” Staci has lectured at the School of Visual Arts and Empire State College. She is a portfolio consultant for the International Center of Photography, and her work has been featured in American Photo, Trace, and Photo District News. She will have a solo exhibition of photographs documenting Long Island proms at San Bernardino University Museum in California. To see some of her photography, visit www.stacipop.com.

Works by William Lamson MFA ’07 (above), Matthew Porter ’98 (opposite page, top left), Matthew Spiegelman ’97 (left), and Ben Ruggiero MFA ’05 (opposite page, bottom) were all represented in the Art and Commerce 2005 Festival of Emerging Photographers, which took place at the Tobacco Warehouse in Brooklyn in October. Selections from their photographs and accompanying texts were published in the exhibition’s catalogue, Peek.

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’97 Class Correspondent: Julia Munemo ’97, juliamunemo@yahoo.com Marina Prager-Kranz and her husband, Jim, climbed Mount Kilimanjaro (19,240 feet) in Tanzania, Africa. This adventure was followed by an extraordinary safari experience, including visiting a Masai village.

Imteaz Mannan is finishing a two-and-a-half-year stint at a Save the Children initiative called Saving Newborn Lives, a project to improve maternal and neonatal health in rural Bangladesh. In September 2005, he presented results of a research project on ensuring health-service equity at a meeting of the Global Forum for Health Research in Mumbai, India.

Andrew McIntosh works as caretaker of the River Valley Waldorf elementary school during the day and teaches a hip-hop history

Marina Prager-Kranz ’97 at Uhuru Peak, Tanzania

class by night at Lehigh University. He is living happily in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, with his wife, Elleyn. Their 10-year-old daughter, Anna, is in fifth grade; their son, Philip, is 6, and the newest member of the family, Margaret, is a wild 1-year-old.

Andrew would like to thank the Tewks 208 crew for surprising him on his 30th birthday in July 2005.

Julia Wolk Munemo and her husband, Ngonidzashe Munemo ’00, have returned from another six-month trip to southern Africa.

Their son, Julius, is almost three.

Matthew Spiegelman was represented by nine works in Art and Commerce’s Festival of Emerging Photographers, which took place in October 2005 in New York City (see photo, page 58). He also had a portfolio of images published in Big magazine’s “Broadway” issue in October/November, and a photograph included in Looking at Los Angeles, a coffee-table book published by Metropolis Books.

’98 Kristina Olson gave birth to a son, Liam Timothy Malouf, on April 8, 2005. She is finishing her Ph.D. in Italian literature at Columbia University.

Paul Rich married Holly Andres in July 2005 in a nontraditional double wedding. In attendance were jugglers, stilt walkers, and fire dancers. Paul and Holly have three Siamese kittens and can be seen driving around in two matching Saabs. Holly teaches at Portland State University and at the Art Institute of Portland, Oregon, and Paul has been photographing weddings. To view Paul’s work, visit www.paulrichstudio.com.

’99 Susan Murtha Bandrowsky and her husband of five years, Todd Bandrowsky, celebrated the birth of their son, Garrett Sheridan

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film, Pioneers Lost, which centers on a retired DJ who relives his youth through hip-hop music.

Bernard Geoghegan was awarded a 2005 Jacob K. Javits Fellowship, one of the nation’s most competitive awards in the social sciences, arts, and humanities. Geoghegan received a master’s degree in media, technology, and society from Northwestern University in 2004, and is remaining at Northwestern to earn a doctorate. His research focuses on the history of computing and its influence upon philosophy, aesthetics, and representation; he is especially interested in how changing technologies affect the form and content of communications.

’02 James Curcio’s first novel, Join My Cult!, has been published by New Falcon Press, the Arizona-based publisher of Timothy Leary, Robert Anton Wilson, and Aleister Crowley. According to Peter Carrol, “Join My Cult! reads like a stroboscopic MTV docudrama of Ulysses and Illuminatus.” To find out more, visit www.jamescurcio.net.

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Bandrowsky, on May 8, 2005. Susan works as a full-time mom, freelance photographer, and moderator of a popular mental health website, and also plays mom to three 85-pound lapdogs and two killer tabby cats. In her spare time, she sleeps.

’01 5th Reunion: May 19–21, 2006 Contacts: Max Kenner, kenner@bard.edu; Sung Jee Yoo, sujeyo@ gmail.com; Lori Fromowitz, lfromowitz@yahoo.com. Staff contact: Heather Deichler, 845-758-7663 or deichler@bard.edu Tyrone Santana Copeland collaborated this year with the Harlem YMCA Arts Collective in New York City to present his latest short

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’03 Bianca D’Allesandro is teaching English language arts to seventhand eighth-graders at KIPP Bridge College Prep, a middle school located in West Oakland, California. The school follows the KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program) model, which is known for its high expectations and focus on academic results. Most of the students are African American or Hispanic, and all of them plan to attend private schools when they graduate. Each homeroom is given the name of a college. Bianca has chosen Bard as hers!

Sarah Schendel works as a paralegal with Prisoners Legal Services in Ithaca, New York.

’04 Yishay Garbasz had an exhibition of Holocaust photography, titled In My Mother’s Footsteps, as part of Noorderlicht Photofestival 2005 in the Netherlands. The exhibition, which traced his mother’s “journey into hell” through a series of concentration camps, was on display in a synagogue from September 4 through October 2. It was the result of his yearlong Watson Fellowship project.

Connor Gaudet spent time this past year videotaping life at Nativity Preparatory School in New Bedford, Massachusetts.

’05 Emily Schmall was selected from more than 1,000 applicants to be a National Public Radio (NPR) summer intern. As executive producer of the intern-produced program, Intern Edition, her duties included managing staff activities and production of the audio program. She led all staff meetings; oversaw the story assignment process with interns; assisted with reporting, writing, editing, and music selections for the program; and ensured a finished product. She was also instrumental in facilitating communication between interns and NPR’s

professional staff, especially for Intern Edition. A native of Chicago, Emily has written and produced stories for NPR, the London Financial Times, Salon.com, and the Miami Herald.

Taun N. Toay, who earned a bachelor’s degree in economics in spring 2005, received a Fulbright Award to study economics in Greece. He will concentrate on isolating and studying the euro’s inflationary effects on the Greek economic system.

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

’84 David Abel moved to Portland, Oregon, in 1997, after success with the Bridge Bookshop in New York City and Passages Bookshop & Gallery in Albuquerque. He recently sang the role of Dr. Knox in the Liminal Performance Group’s The Resurrectory, and performed in the third annual Richard Foreman mini-festival at Performance Works NW. He is an organizer of the monthly Spare Room reading series (www.flim.com/spareroom). He also organized a reading tour of the Southwest in the fall of 2004, and did a residency at THE LAND/an art site (near Albuquerque).

’87 Maddy Rosenberg had several paintings in two group exhibitions during the DUMBO Art Under the Bridge Festival in Brooklyn in October 2005. Maddy’s work was shown at Safe-T-Gallery and at the Brooklyn Arts Council, where she also had a solo show in April.

’90 Together with artist Lisa Kaftori, Joan Giroux founded Compassionate Action Enterprises, a collaborative promoting art geared toward ecofeminism as well as social, political, and cultural activism. Using art and art strategies to raise awareness and cultivate understanding, CAE has performed actions and exhibited in Japan, Korea, Israel, and the United States since 2000.

large sculptural wall-reliefs for branch libraries in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

’94 Brian Patton composed and designed the sound for several plays around the country and has a busy schedule for the coming year. He will open a new play by James Lapine, starring Mia Farrow and Julia Stiles, at Playwrights Horizons, and also contribute to productions of Charles Fuller’s A Soldier’s Play at Second Stage (with Jo Bonney); Cat on a Hot Tin Roof at ACT San Francisco, directed by Israel Hicks; Manic Flight Reaction with Trip Cullman (also at Playwrights Horizons); and The Trip to Bountiful at Signature Theater, as well as several other productions in New York City and elsewhere in the United States. He gives his best to all his friends from the Avery School. If anyone would like to attend a production, please write him at fitzpatton@mac.com and he will be happy to arrange for tickets.

’96 Tara Conant received an Artist Fellowship Award in photography from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. She also received a 2005 Artist Grant Recognition from the Massachusetts State Senate for Photographic Excellence. Her work was included in Photography Now: Selections from the Massachusetts Cultural Council Artists Grants Awards (hosted by the Art Space Gallery, Maynard); a members exhibit at the Provincetown Art Association & Museum in Provincetown, Massachusetts; and a solo exhibit of Sites at Westfield State College in Westfield, Massachusetts.

’97 Jasmina Danowski was awarded a 2005 Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant.

Nick Tobier collaborated with the site-specific theater group, Red Dive, on Peripheral City, a walking tour and performance staged along the banks of Brooklyn’s Gowanus Canal.

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Anna Moschovakis continues her work with the Brooklyn-based collaborative Ugly Duckling Presse (uglyducklingpresse.org). Her first book of poems, I Have Not Been Able to Get Through to Everyone, will be published next year by Turtle Point Press.

Grace Markman had her second solo painting show, titled Rainbow Twist, at Holland Tunnel, Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

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Marilyn Wenker continues to teach creative writing in the English Department at Brooklyn College. Her play, Meet, was performed at the Neighborhood Playhouse in Manhattan.

’93 Leslie Fry completed a public art commission from the Broward County Public Art and Design in May 2005, which included four

Geoff Bouvier received the 2005 American Poetry Review/ Honickman First Book Prize in Poetry. The prize, made possible by a partnership between American Poetry Review and The Honickman Foundation, includes a monetary award and publication of a volume of poetry. Bouvier’s Living Room, with an introduction by Heather McHugh, will be published in the fall of 2005, with distribution by Copper Canyon Press through Consortium.

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Stephen Clair’s latest album, Under the Bed, was released on October 25, 2005, by Valley Entertainment. His first child, Esther Rose, was born June 12, 2005.

Becky Howland’s work was shown in an exhibition titled Downtown New York, curated by Carlo McCormick, at the Grey Art Gallery at New York University. At Jeffrey Deitch’s Wooster Street space, she participated in a benefit for the artist-run alternative space ABC No Rio, which she cofounded.

’00 Mary Pinto participated again in a three-week summer residency at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.

’01 Michelle Handelman had a solo show at Rx Gallery, San Francisco.

A selection of her video work was shown at the International Art Connection, vols. 1 and 2, which took place at 00130 Gallery in Helsinki, Finland.

Holly Lynton’s work titled then I woke up, and it was still there was included in the fall 2005 exhibition at Ambrosino Gallery in North Miami, Florida.

exhibition at Samson Projects, a new gallery in Boston, in February.

David Levi Strauss will be featuring her work in the third installment of his public conversation with Daniel Martinez in the forthcoming CAA Art Journal.

Alexandra Newmark was a 2005 recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant. She has an upcoming exhibition at the Carl Berg Gallery in Los Angeles. She lives in Brooklyn.

’03 In July 2005, April Gertler was in Voices Off, a group show presented during the Arles Photography Festival, in Arles, France. She participated in an artist residency with 12 other international artists in Verneusses, Normandy, and the work produced there was exhibited in a group show in Le Havre in November 2005. In fall 2005, April’s series Still Lives was presented in the Greek photo magazine, Photo Book.

Joel Griffith was awarded a Peter S. Reed Foundation grant in June 2005. The Dutchess County Arts Council included his work in an exhibition in Poughkeepsie that was part of the 2005 Empire State Games. Joel is working on a second suite of paintings commissioned by the Village of Tivoli, which will be unveiled in September 2006.

Judy Radul had two new multiscreen installation works exhibited at Presentation House Gallery in Vancouver, British Columbia, from September 17 to October 30, 2005. Downes Point, filmed in a grove on Hornby Island, featured two panoramic projections spatially configured to interpose the viewer in middle of the scene. And So Departed (Again), a DVD installation presented on three screens, documented five directors rehearsing an actress in a death scene over a period of 12 hours.

’02 Jen DeNike’s wrestling and dunking videos have been acquisitioned for the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art. Selections of her video work were included in the Greater New York 2005 exhibition at P.S.1 MoMA. A portfolio of her video stills was published in the fall 2005 issue of Topic magazine. She has forthcoming solo exhibitions at the Oliver Kamm Gallery in New York City and 404 Contemporari in Naples, Italy.

In May 2005, Kelly Kaczynski had her New York solo debut in an exhibition titled air is air and thing is thing at Triple Candie. A member of the visiting faculty at Northwestern University in Chicago, she will also be a visiting lecturer at the University of Chicago.

Carrie Moyer had a painting installation included in the Next Next Wave Festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in October 2005.

She also participated in Around About Abstraction (curated by Ron Platt at the Weatherspoon Museum); a queer sandwich-board project at the University of California at Davis; a group exhibition called Young American Artists at the Galeria Marlborough in Madrid; and an

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5 North Road by Joel Griffith, MFA ’03

The first suite is on permanent display in the Watts dePeyster Hall in the village.

In August 2005, Litmus press published Jennifer Hayashida’s translation of Inner China—a Tale, a book-length prose poem by Swedish author Eva Sjödin. In 2005 she was a visiting lecturer at the University of California at Davis.

Sunsook Roh was busy in 2005. She participated in a stage production of traditional Korean music and dance in Seoul in April, and appeared in collaborative shows at two venues in Japan—in Tokyo’s

Ginza in July and in Kawasaki in August. She also had a solo show in Ono Gallery, Tokyo, in September.

Manhattan. She plans to translate her background as a freelancer into a specialty in financial planning for the self-employed.

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

Catherine Youngman and her husband, Cameron, welcomed a baby girl, Kelly Forbes Youngman, on July 22, 2005.

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Judith Gura recently published The Abrams Guide to Period Styles for Interiors (Abrams, 2005). Her Sourcebook of Scandinavian Furniture will be published by W. W. Norton in 2007.

Marcella Ruble Harris’s law firm, Harris & Ruble, filed a case to recover La Belle Ferronière, a painting attributed to Leonardo da Vinci. The painting achieved fame in the 1920s when the art dealer, Lord Joseph Duveen of Millbank, disputed its authenticity. The current case is of particular interest to Marcella, who wrote her master’s thesis on Lord Duveen.

’00 Joanna Pessa has returned to The Stradlings Antiquarians in New York City, where she is the firm’s research director.

Jennifer Pitman married Bobby Hager on May 14, 2005, in New York City.

’02 Ron Labaco curated the first exhibition in the United States on Ettore Sottsass, the Italian architect-designer. Ettore Sottsass: Designer covers its subject’s designs in furniture, ceramics, glass, metalwork, and product design. The show opened at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art on March 12 and runs through June 11.

Ron edited and contributed to the accompanying catalogue, Ettore Sottsass: Architect and Designer, which reviews Sottsass’s contribution to architecture and design.

’03 After more than five years, Melissa Cohn Lindbeck has left the Merchant’s House Museum, where she had been a volunteer, cocurator, and most recently, the museum’s education coordinator. Her husband’s company has transferred them to the Durham/Raleigh area. Melissa would love to get in touch with BGC alums in North Carolina!

Alexa Griffith Winton received grants from the Graham Foundation, Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation, and New York State Council on the Arts in support of her book project on Dorothy Liebes. She teaches design history at Pratt.

’04 Emily Wheat Maynard has started her own jewelry business in Louisville, Kentucky. The business is called Elva Fields, in honor of Emily’s great-grandmother. Some of the collection can be viewed online at www.elvafields.com.

Han Vu completed a yearlong documentary project on a 9/11 memorial sculpture by Sassona Norton. As writer and director, Han followed the memorial from its initial conception to its dedication at the Norristown Courthouse in Pennsylvania.

Center for Curatorial Studies

’96 Regine Basha, adjunct curator, Arthouse, Jones Center of Contemporary Art, Austin; Gilbert Vicario, assistant curator of Latin American Art and coordinator, International Center for the Arts of the Americas, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and Sofia Hernandez ’00, curator and program manager, Art in General, New York City, were among a group of international curators who selected the film and video works for e-flux video rental (EVR), a project comprising a free video rental store, public screening room, and film and video archive.

Goran Tomcic, director of Moti Hasson Gallery in New York City, has temporarily moved to Berlin to help facilitate the Gallery’s expanding vision for a European audience.

’97 Rachel Gugelberger resigned as associate director of the Galleries at the School of Visual Arts in order to focus on independent curatorial projects.

’98 Jessica Hough was promoted from associate curator to curatorial director at the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, Connecticut.

Victoria Noorthoorn has been very active as an independent curator in Buenos Aires, curating exhibitions in various museum, galleries, and other public spaces. She is also associate curator of the permanent collection of the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes Neuquén, a new branch of the national Fine Arts Museum in Argentina.

Zhang Zhaohui, Ph.D. candidate at the Central Academy of Art, Beijing, has been working as a researcher of Chinese art at the Asia Art

Katherine Wahlberg recently joined Ameriprise Financial, formerly American Express Financial Advisors, as a financial adviser in 63

Archive in Hong Kong. He also works as a consultant to curators, critics, and gallery owners interested in contemporary Chinese art.

Marketa Uhlirova are curating a film festival that focuses on fashion in the moving image for two London venues.

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Alejandro Diaz is an artist and independent curator living in New York. Public Art Fund presented his A Can for All Seasons—a series of sculptural renditions of brand-name canned goods enlarged to the size of planters—on the Grand Concourse in the Bronx, across the street from the Bronx Museum of the Arts.

Mayumi Hirano has returned to Japan, where she is working for the Yokohama Triennial.

Xandra Eden left her position as assistant curator at The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery in Toronto to become curator of exhibitions at Weatherspoon Art Museum at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where she is an adjunct faculty member.

Judy Kim, curator of exhibitions at the American Federation of Arts, and Allison Peters ’01 curated INterACTION at the Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago, where Allison is exhibition coordinator.

’01 Cecilia Brunson left her position as assistant curator of Latin American Art at the Jack S. Banton Museum of Art in Austin to pursue curatorial projects in Chile, her native country.

Gabriela Rangel, visual arts director of the Americas Society, curated Beyond Geography, the Society’s archival exhibition celebrating 40 years at the vanguard of visual arts in the Americas.

Formerly, Gabriela was assistant curator for Latin American Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, where she helped establish the museum’s Department of Latin American Art.

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Steven Matijcio left his job as curatorial assistant at the Agnes Etherington Art Centre in Kingston, Ontario. He is now curator at Plug In ICA, a laboratory for the research and presentation of contemporary ideas manifested as works of art, in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Yasmil Raymond accepted a permanent position as assistant curator at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. She was previously a curatorial fellow in the Visual Arts Department at the Walker.

Ryan Rice finished up a contract for a newly formed organization for Aboriginal curators and has begun a one-year curatorial residency at the Carleton University Art Gallery in Ottawa, Ontario, where he will work on two of his own exhibitions.

’05 Nicole Caruth is the interpretive materials manager at the Brooklyn Museum.

Judy Ditner began work in August as collection assistant of the Historical Black and White Photography Collection at Ryerson University in Toronto. Gifted to the school in June 2005, the collection includes nearly 3 million photographs that document photojournalism as we know it, including iconic images that were published in popular media such as Life, Look, and the Saturday Evening Post.

Gillian Cuthill works at the National Portrait Gallery in Scotland.

Erin Salazar is a curatorial assistant at the Bronx Museum of the Arts.

Jill Winder lives in Berlin, where she is an ICWA Donors’ Fellow studying Germany through the work, ideas, and viewpoints of its contemporary artists. Prior to six months of intensive study of German in Berlin, she was a Thomas J. Watson Fellow, studying postcommunist art practice and the cultural politics of transition in the former Soviet bloc.

Ramona Piagentini writes that she is settling into her new position as exhibition assistant at Independent Curators International in New York City.

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Yasmeen Siddiqui is assistant curator/programs coordinator at Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York City, a nonprofit organization committed to advancing innovative positions in art, architecture, and design.

Rob Blackson and Candice Hopkins were among many CCS alumni/ae in attendance at the Venice Biennale in June. Also on hand were Goran Tomcic ’96, Anne Ellegood ’98, Mercedes Vicente ’00, Lizzie Fisher ’02, Tairone Bastien ’04, Camilla Pignatti Morano ’05, and Pelin Uran ’05.

Kate Green, assistant curator of education and exhibitions at ArtPace in San Antonio, curated Mental Maps at the Dorsky Gallery in Long Island City.

Christel Tsilibari works as a researcher at Saint Martins College in London and interns at Spruth Magers Lee gallery. Christel and

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Camilla Pignatti Morano returned to her native Italy, where she accepted the position of assistant curator at Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea in Rivoli.

The Conductors Institute at Bard

’04 Richard A. Haglund is the assistant conductor of the Illinois Symphony Orchestra and music director of the Sangamon Valley Youth Symphony. He has also served as the pops conductor for the

Newburgh Symphony, and will be a guest conductor in Bulgaria this year.

Takyua Nishiwaki entered the doctor of musical arts program at the University of Maryland in the fall of 2005.

’05 Elizabeth Askren-Brie was chosen as assistant conductor for the Centre de la Voix of Royaumont’s opera project involving two versions of Finta Giardiniera: the one created by Mozart in 1775, and the one presented the previous year in Rome by Pasquale Anfossi.

The production will tour Europe this year. Askren-Brie is the cultural attaché for the Fondation des Etats-Unis in Paris, where she lives with her husband and musical partner, violinist Paul Brie, and is in her fifth season as music director of the chorus and orchestra of Sciences Po (Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris). This spring, the ensemble will perform the European premiere of Bard faculty member Kyle Gann’s “Transcendental Sonnets” in an all-American contemporary program.

In Memoriam

’28 Edward Gustave Colin Lodter died on January 4, 2005. Born in Newport, Rhode Island, on November 8, 1907, Professor Lodter majored in French at St. Stephen’s College, now Bard. He received his master’s degree from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, with a major in foreign languages, in 1929. He did a year of further graduate study at Columbia University, New York City, before taking a faculty position at Milligan College in 1931, where he taught French and German. In 1949 he became chairman of the Department of Foreign Languages and professor of French and German at East Tennessee State College (now University). During this time he initiated a program of elementary French at what is now University School. His survivors include his wife of 64 years, Carsie Hyder Lodter; a daughter and a son; and eight grandchildren.

’35 William H. Meyer Jr., 92, died on July 6, 2005. He worked in his family’s grocery business for many years, and put that background to use in World War II, when he worked for the food-rationing program in Washington, D.C. Born in Haverstraw, New York, he was designated his hometown’s village historian a few years ago, and wrote a history column for the Rockland County Times. His daughter, Sandra Jean, died in 1946, and his wife, Helen, died in 1986. He is survived by his two sons, Richard and William III, and by numerous grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

The Hon. Jack Wilson Lydman died on September 17, 2005, in Washington, D.C. In his long career with the U.S. Department of State’s Foreign Service, he served as deputy chief of mission to the U.S. Embassy in Indonesia (1960–69) and political consul to the U.S. Embassy in Malaysia (1969–74). Among his other assignments were deputy chief of mission in Australia, economic counselor in Indonesia, principal officer in Surabaya, and deputy director for research, SEATO-Bangkok. Prior to his career in the Foreign Service, he worked for the Department of State in Washington, D.C., and served as an operations analyst in the Pentagon and in the Pacific Theater during World War II. Lydman was an instructor in German at Bard from 1937 to 1940, and an instructor in German and drama from 1940 to 1943. The College awarded him an honorary Doctor of Laws degree in 1973. He was a Bard trustee from 1976 to 1981, and then served as a trustee associate. He also served on the boards of the Humane Society of the United States, the Asia Society Washington Center, and DACOR (Diplomatic and Consular Officers, Retired). He and his wife, Janine Cabirol Bowie, had an extensive and highly regarded collection of miniature Chinese ceramics. In addition to his wife, his survivors include three stepchildren, a nephew and a niece, and several stepgrandchildren, grandnephews, and grandnieces.

’57 Eugene Mittelman died on May 19, 2005. Born in 1935 in New York, he earned his law degree from Columbia University. He served as minority counsel to the U.S. Senate Labor and Public Welfare Committee, where he helped to shape progressive labor legislation. Subsequently, he practiced privately and specialized in litigation and labor issues. He is survived by his wife, Frances; two daughters; his mother; and a grandson.

’83 John Cardello died at 43. Born in Everett, Massachusetts, he had lived in Saugus, Massachusetts, for the past 36 years. In addition to being a Bard alumnus, he was a graduate of the University of Southern Florida and the University of Massachusetts Amherst, earning degrees in math, computer science, and teaching. He taught for several years at Matignon High School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Chelsea High School in Chelsea, Massachusetts.

Prior to teaching, he worked in the computer software department at Raytheon in Burlington, Massachusetts. His survivors include his mother, a sister, two nieces, and a large extended family.

’87 Avery Lincoln Chappell-Smith died on May 14, 2005. She worked as a broker for Stribbling and Associates. Survivors include her husband, J. Kevin Smith; her children; her parents; and her brother.

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Faculty Artine Artinian, 97, Professor Emeritus of French and a member of Bard’s faculty for nearly 30 years, died on November 19, 2005, at his home in Lantana, Florida. In addition to teaching, his multifaceted career embraced the rigors of scholarship, the joys of collecting, and literary immortality—the last as a thinly disguised version of himself in novels by his Bard colleague Mary McCarthy and his friend Gore Vidal.

Born on December 8, 1907, in Pazardzhik, Bulgaria, to Armenian parents, Artinian came to the United States with his family in 1920. As a bootblack working in Attleboro, Massachusetts, he had his tuition to Bowdoin College paid for by a group of prominent citizens whose shoes he had shined. He subsequently earned a B.A. from Bowdoin, an M.A. from Harvard University, a doctorate from Columbia University, and honorary degrees from Bowdoin and Appalachian State University. He also earned a diploma from the University of Paris, and was eventually named Officier d’Academie de la Legion d’Honneur by the French government. While in Paris, he began his lifelong exploration of French literature—in particular the works of Guy de Maupassant, whose short stories he translated in what is deemed to be the definitive English-language edition.

Artinian’s active teaching career at Bard lasted from 1936 until 1964. Esteemed by his colleagues for his convivial, expansive nature as well as his considerable scholarship, he nevertheless was at the center of a controversy involving Paul de Man, the Belgian deconstructionist who served the College as an instructor of French from 1949 to 1951.

Professor Artinian helped de Man to obtain his job at Bard; two years later, after allegations of thievery and dishonesty were levied against de Man, Artinian helped to get him fired. Almost 40 years later, Artinian’s account of de Man’s stormy tenure at Bard formed part of the afterword to the paperback edition of David Lehman’s book, Signs of the Times: Deconstruction and the Fall of Paul de Man. Over the years, Artinian assembled a collection of original letters and manuscripts that included an unpublished text by Marcel Proust as well as rare works by de Maupassant, Flaubert, Zola, and other French writers. He sold a large part of his collection to the University of Texas shortly before retiring from Bard. In later years, he also collected portraits of artists and writers such as Jules Verne, Marcel Marceau, and the poet Rabindranath Tagore.

His wife, the former Margaret Willard Woodbridge, who died earlier in 2005, also taught at the College, from 1948 to 1949 and from 1958 to 1961. They were married in 1936, having met as graduate students at Columbia. He is survived by a son, Robert; two daughters, Ellen Artinian Strickland and Margaret Artinian Laske; two grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.

Justine Augusta Salton, 33, a visiting assistant professor of biology, died on October 28, 2005. She came to Bard in the fall of 2004 after earning a master’s degree from Hampshire College and a doctorate in ecology and evolutionary biology from The Graduate School and

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University Center, City University of New York. Prior to Bard, she had taught at New York University Medical Center, Hunter College, and Baruch College, and had done fieldwork in Madagascar and Bolivia. A great lover of animals, she spent much of her free time volunteering at shelters; over the years, she adopted many of their inhabitants. She is survived by her husband, Raphael Allison, a member of the faculty of Bard’s Master of Arts in Teaching Program; her mother, Edith Salton; a sister, Gillian, and a brother, William; and her beloved dogs: Bert, Monday, Oscar, and Shaba.

Mary Lee Settle, 87, a preeminent American novelist and a professor at the College from 1965 to 1978, died on September 27, 2005, in Charlottesville, Virginia. One of the most acclaimed contemporary writers of historical fiction, her “Beulah Quintet” novels, written between 1956 (O Beulah Land) and 1982 (The Killing Ground), were praised by critics for their “seamless, flowing narratives” that combined impeccable research, strong characterizations, dialogue true to time and place, and an exacting eye for detail. She also wrote and published other novels, works of nonfiction, memoirs, short stories, essays, plays, and screenplays.

During her tenure at Bard, Settle won a National Book Award for Blood Tie (1977), a novel about American expatriates in Turkey, and wrote the fourth novel in the Beulah series, The Scapegoat. She returned to the Annandale campus on several occasions in the early 1980s to give readings, and was granted the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters at the College’s 125th anniversary academic con-

Mary Lee Settle speaks at the President’s Dinner in 1979 as part of Bard’s 119th Commencement.

vocation in September 1985. In bestowing the honorary degree, the presenters praised Settle’s “generous capacity for friendship, for human love across all boundaries, and for true independence of mind and imagination,” adding, “She restores our faith in eloquent writing, and in so doing, she bears witness to our possibilities for decent survival.”

In addition to teaching at Bard, she taught at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, where she lived, at one time or another, throughout her life. Before becoming a writer, she worked as a fashion model and later as a magazine editor. During World War II, she served in the women’s branch of England’s Royal Air Force, an experience she described in All the Brave Promises: Memories of Aircraft Woman 2nd Class 2146391. She was the recipient of Guggenheim fel-

lowships in 1958 and 1960, a Merrill Foundation Award in 1975, and an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1984, among other honors. She founded the PEN/Faulkner Award—the first major award to be given to writers by writers, independent of the publishing industry—in 1980.

In an address given at a Bard faculty seminar in the fall of 1976, she had this to say about the discipline of writing: “The will and the rigor are in the sitting down, the closing of a door, the day after day after day. There is often here the accusation of self-indulgence. I will surprise you. There is none. You have been misled. That retiring is its opposite. To face the blank and yet unformed for so much time with so much necessary patience is a rigor in itself that must be demanded of the apprentice, and the one who tries it should be

JOHN BARD SOCIETY NEWS On December 16, 2005, the members of the John Bard Society gathered for their annual luncheon in New York City. Justus Rosenberg, Bard Professor Emeritus of Languages and Literature and a member of the Society,

spoke to the group about his 40 years of teaching at Bard and the impact that the College has had on his life. Leon Botstein followed with a discussion on the state of the College and its future plans.

Justus Rosenberg

Bob Edmonds ’68 and Herbert “Jimmy” Schwarz Jr. ’49

Eric Goldman’ 98 and Karen Olah ’65

David Schwab ’52, Charles P. Stevenson Jr., and Robert Amsterdam ’53

For information on how to join the John Bard Society, please contact Debra Pemstein at 845-758-7405 or pemstein@bard.edu. All inquiries will be kept confidential.

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F A C U LT Y N O T E S

Peggy Ahwesh, associate professor of film and electronic arts, was featured in Brides of Frankenstein at the San Jose Museum of Art, an exhibition of work by women artists about virtuality, hybrid bodies, and synthetic intelligence. She was interviewed about her videos on This Spartan Life, a Web-based talk show. Ahwesh and Barbara Ess, associate professor of photography, performed last summer at Tune (Out)))side, an audio microcasting event. They are featured on the CD Tune (In))) The Kitchen (audio dispatches 026), sponsored by free103point9, which curates works in radio and other transmission arts.

Raphael Allison, faculty, the Master of Arts in Teaching Program, published an essay, “David Antin’s Pragmatist Technophobia” in the Journal of Modern Literature last November. His essay “Muriel Rukeyser Goes to War: Pragmatism, Pluralism, and the Politics of Ekphrasis” is forthcoming this April in College Literature. With MAT faculty member Derek Furr he organized a panel presentation, “Sounding Modernism: Tapping the Oral Archive,” at the 2005 conference of the Modernist Studies Association, held in November in Chicago. The panel subject was poets and recording technologies; Furr and Allison presented “Reading the Poetry Reading,” a cowritten paper about the uses of recorded poetry.

Myra Young Armstead, professor of history and faculty, The Master of Arts in Teaching Program, published “Revisiting Hotels and Other Lodgings: American Tourist Spaces through the Lens of Black Pleasure-Travelers, 1880–1950” in a special issue (No. 25) of The Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts on the American hotel.

Where Shall I Wander, by John Ashbery, Charles P. Stevenson Professor of Languages and Literature, was nominated for a National Book Award in poetry. Ashbery was a subject of Invisible Listeners: Lyric Intimacy in Herbert, Whitman, and Ashbery, a new critical study by Helen Vendler, who received an Honorary Doctor of Letters degree from Bard at Commencement 2005. Ashbery was also the subject of a profile in The New Yorker. He participated in several benefit readings: in Philadelphia for the American Poetry Review; and in New York City on the 25th anniversary of the National Poetry Series, at the City University of New York Graduate Center’s benefit for the victims of Hurricane Katrina, and for the Walt Whitman Hom(m)age,

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an anthology and reading celebrating the 150th anniversary of the publication of Leaves of Grass.

James Bagwell, director of orchestra and choral music and associate professor of music, was appointed music director of the Dessoff Choirs in New York City. He conducted the choirs in three concerts this season, in addition to collaborating with Michael Tilson Thomas on a concert with the San Francisco Symphony at Carnegie Hall.

Ethan Bloch, professor of mathematics, has a paper, “The angle defect for odd-dimensional simplicial manifolds,” forthcoming in Discrete and Computational Geometry. The paper defines and studies a new type of curvature function for simplicial polyhedra; “this curvature,” says Bloch, “which somewhat surprisingly uses the Bernoulli numbers, behaves particularly nicely on odd-dimensional simplicial manifolds.”

Roddy Bogowa, faculty in film at the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts, had two films screened: I Was Born, But . . ., his latest work, at the American Film Institute Silver Springs Theater in Washington, D.C., as part of the Asian Pacific American Film Festival; and an early short, Four or Five Accidents, One June, at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. His essay “If Films Could Smell” is forthcoming in Yard magazine.

Leon Botstein, president of the college and Leon Levy Professor in the Arts and Humanities, spoke about the necessity of reforming public secondary education to superintendents attending the fall meeting of the Tri-State Consortium, an organization dedicated to improving the curricula of public school districts in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. He led a seminar for the faculty and administration of the Scarsdale (New York) Public Schools in which he discussed the early college movement and described the successes of Bard High School Early College in New York City. At Brown University, he participated in a symposium, “Reinvigorating the Humanities,” that focused on recent recommendations of the Association of American Universities to improve the status of the humanities in liberal arts education. The lecture he delivered last fall at the United Nations, “Why Music Matters,” was published in The Musical Quarterly. He spoke about Paul Dukas’s opera Ariane et Barbe-Bleue for a New Visions at the Guggenheim evening, which

accompanied his premiere at the New York City Opera, for which he conducted six performances of the work. As guest conductor, he led the Düsseldorf Symphony Orchestra in a performance of Brahms’s German Requiem. He conducted the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra ( JSO), for which he is music director, on a tour of eastern and southern United States. After engagements in Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, and Virginia, the orchestra finished its tour with performances at Carnegie Hall and the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts. In Israel, he conducted the JSO in a memorial concert for Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin on the 10th anniversary of his assassination. In addition, he fulfilled regular conducting responsibilities with the American Symphony Orchestra.

Richard Davis, professor of religion, gave several invited talks last fall: “The Art of the Procession” at St. Lawrence University in September; “Chittrai Revisited: Continuity and Change in an Urban Temple Festival” at the Columbia University South Asia Seminar (October); and “Ritual Inside and Outside the Text” at the University of Chicago South Asia Seminar (November). In April, he will present “What’s that British Couple doing in Jagannatha’s Procession” at the annual conference of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, held in Montreal, and “The Art of the Procession” as the Lehman Lecture at Bowdoin College.

Laurie Dahlberg, associate professor of art history and photography, presented papers at Smolny College (“Vulgar Success: The Conflicts and Conquests of Early Photography”) and the State Hermitage Museum (“Of Nudity and Nationality: Photography and the Nude in 19th-Century Europe”) in St. Petersburg in October.

Tim Davis ’91, visiting assistant professor of photography, spoke at the Whitney Museum of American Art in connection with The New City: Sub/Urbia in Recent Photography, in which his work was included. He presented a solo exhibition at Galerie Rodolphe Janssen in Brussels. He lectured at Mills College in Oakland and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and published articles in ArtForum and Foam magazine.

Jennifer Day, assistant professor of Russian, published “Strange Spaces: Balabanov and the Petersburg Text” in the Winter 2005 Slavic and East European Journal.

Linh Dinh, faculty in writing, Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts, published two collections of new poems last year: American Tatts (Chax Press) and Borderless Bodies (Factory School). He is the recipient of a David K. Wong Fellowship, to be spent at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England.

Mark Alice Durant, faculty in photography, Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts, curated Blur of the Otherworldly: Contemporary Art, Technology and the Paranormal, which opened last October at the Center for Art and Visual Culture at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. He is also editor of the accompanying catalogue, which features essays by Lynne Tillman, Marina Warner, Jane D. Marsching, and himself.

“Coming to Terms with Iraq,” by Omar Encarnación, associate professor of political studies, was published in the winter issue of Ethics & International Affairs. The essay reviews recent books about the U.S. occupation of Iraq and reflects on the history of U.S. attempts to export democracy abroad.

Joanne Fox-Przeworski, director of the Bard Center for Environmental Policy, gave an invited talk on BCEP’s innovative modular graduate program to educators at “Integrated Education for Sustainable Development,” held in Tokyo last September. From Japan she went to Szenzhen, China, to speak to mayors at the Sustainable Communities Conference about a model partnership, the New York City Watershed Agreement.

Derek Furr, faculty, the Master of Arts in Teaching Program, has a short story, “Feed My Sheep,” forthcoming in Potomac Review, and an article, “Listening to Millay,” forthcoming in the Journal of Modern Literature.

Christopher H. Gibbs, James H. Ottaway Jr. Professor of Music, gave lectures over the summer at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, Sembrich Opera Museum, and New York City Opera. His article “From Haus to Konzerthaus: Orchestrations of Schubert’s Erlkönig and other Lieder” appeared in Liberamicorum Isabelle Cazeaux:

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Symbols, Parallels and Discoveries in Her Honor. His book The Life of Schubert has been issued in a Greek translation.

Richard Gordon, professor of psychology, contributed an article, “Towards a Clinical Ethnography,” to a special issue of the journal Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry. The issue, edited by the psychiatrist and anthropologist Anne Becker, addressed the spread of eating disorders across the globe. It contained articles from Fiji, Japan, Curacao, and South Africa, in a unique approach in which cultural issues are studied in depth in order to understand clinical problems.

Teresa Hubbard and Alexander Birchler, photography faculty, Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts, were commissioned to create four new video works, one for each program in the third season of the PBS television series, Art in the 21st Century, which aired last fall. The two received a 2005–06 Landis & Gyr Foundation grant for a studio residency in London. Their fall exhibitions included Museum Sammlung Goetz, Münich; Galerie Bob van Orsouw, Zürich; Les Abbatoirs Museum, Toulouse; and Württembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart.

“Negotiating Exile: Franz L. Neumann as Political Scientist” in Fruits of Exile; and “Women and the State: Käthe Truhel and the Idea of a Social Bureaucracy” in Festschrift für Claudia Honegger. He is editor of “The Limits of Exile,” a special issue of Journal of the Interdisciplinary Crossroads published in April. Last September he organized a workshop and gave the opening presentation on “Limits of Exile: Exile Studies and Comparative Historiography” in St. Petersburg, Russia, under the joint auspices of Bard and Smolny Colleges. Last spring he published “Robert Cumming, 1916–2004” in Political Theory.

Ann Lauterbach, David and Ruth Schwab Professor of Languages and Literature, was a visiting art critic last September at the Anderson Ranch in Aspen, Colorado, where she also gave a reading from her two recent books, The Night Sky (prose) and Hum (poems).

Nancy Leonard, professor of English, chaired a session of film scholars and musicologists at “Beyond the Soundtrack: Representing Music and Cinema,” a conference at the University of Minnesota.

This spring she will read from her recent poetry at the National Arts Club in New York City.

Last fall, Peter Hutton, professor of film, presented a program of his recent work from Bangladesh and South Korea at Harvard University, Massachusetts College of Art, and The Museum School in Boston. In January Hutton traveled on a Russian freighter from the Gulf of Mexico to St. Petersburg, Russia, to shoot the final section of his film trilogy on the sea.

Steven Mazie, faculty in politics at Bard High School Early College, published “Consenting Adults? Amish ‘Rumspringa’ and the Quandary of Exit in Liberalism” in the December 2005 issue of Perspectives on Politics. His first book, Israel’s Higher Law: Religion and Liberal Democracy in the Jewish State, will be published this spring by Lexington Books, an imprint of Rowman & Littlefield.

Paul Ramírez Jonas, assistant professor of studio arts, presented work last fall in two exhibitions: The Plain of Heaven, an international show organized by Creative Time and inspired by the impending redevelopment of the High Line, the unused elevated rail structure that runs up the west side of Manhattan; and Dreaming of a More Better Future in the Reinberger Galleries at the Cleveland Institute of Art.

Altruism in World Religions was edited by Jacob Neusner, Research Professor of Religion and Theology, and Bruce Chilton ’71, chaplain and Bernard Iddings Bell Professor of Philosophy and Religion.

Published last fall by Georgetown University Press, the book is based upon a conference of the same name that was presented in 2004 by the Institute of Advanced Theology, of which Chilton is the executive director.

Felicia Keesing, associate professor of biology, was one of the featured scientists in the “Profiles of Ecologists” series at the 90th meeting of the Ecological Society of America, held in Montreal last August. She coauthored three papers presented at that meeting: “Effects of large mammalian herbivores on snakes in an African savanna” (coauthored by Jennifer Peters ’06); “Linearities, nonlinearities, and thresholds in the ecology of Lyme disease”; and “Effects of guinea fowl on blacklegged ticks in eastern New York.”

She also organized a symposium on the ecology of infectious disease as part of the meeting. A paper Keesing cowrote with Lindsay O’Reilly ’05 was accepted for publication in the Journal of African Ecology. The paper describes O’Reilly’s study of the effects of fire on savanna bird communities in Kenya, based on work she did in Keesing’s “Ecology of African Savannas” class.

David Kettler, research professor in social studies, is the author of several essays published or forthcoming this year: “Political Theory and Political Science: The Heart of the Matter” in Making Political Science Matter: The Flyvbjerg Debate and Beyond (NYU Press);

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Amy Ogata, associate professor at The Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design, and Culture, was the recipient last year of a senior fellowship at the Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation, at the Smithsonian Institution.

Her article on the design of educational toys and postwar American culture appeared in the summer 2005 issue of Winterthur Portfolio.

Over the summer and fall, she presented her research on the material culture of postwar American childhood at the National Museum of American History and at the Society for the History of Children and Youth conference in Milwaukee. She spoke on World’s Fairs at the Art Institute of Chicago, and this spring she is presenting papers at the College Art Association Annual Meeting in Boston and the European Social Science History Conference in Amsterdam.

Dimitri B. Papadimitriou, executive vice president of the college, Jerome Levy Professor of Economics, and president of the Levy Economics Institute, was interviewed on June 28 by Cheryl Glaser

on American Public Radio’s Marketplace regarding the structure of the Federal Reserve; on September 29 by Richard Freeman at Executive Intelligence Review regarding the financial system, speculative funds, and the energy crisis; and on October 25 during Ben Merens’s Ideas Network program on Wisconsin Public Radio, regarding the nomination of Ben Bernanke to replace Alan Greenspan as chair of the Federal Reserve. Papadimitriou was a participant and discussant of “Keynesian Money Endogeneity” at an international conference in Cassino, Italy, in September; keynote speaker (“The United States and Her Creditors”) at the Centre for Full Employment and Equity, University of Newcastle, Australia, in December; and guest speaker (“The Outlook for the U.S. Economy”) at a conference, “International Monetary Policy: The Role of Aspect Prices in Central Banking,” on St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands, this past January.

Julia Rosenbaum, visiting assistant professor of art history, presented a talk, “The Power of Nomenclature and the Contradictions of American Impressionism,” at the College Art Association meetings held in Boston in February. The talk was part of the Association of Historians of American Art session.

Justus Rosenberg, professor emeritus of languages and literature (1962–2003), gave a lecture at the Dahesh Museum in New York City on the activities of the International Rescue Committee and read from his translation (No Trojan War) of Jean Giraudoux’ play La Guerre de Troie N’aura Pas Lieu.

Michael Sadowski, faculty, the Master of Arts in Teaching Program, was a presenter at the second annual “Youth and Race” conference, sponsored by the Institute of African American Research and held in October at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University. His topic was “The ‘Acting White’ Hypothesis and Teacher Education: What Educators Need to Know.” He discussed the classroom implications of the debate over the “acting white” theory, which holds that some peer groups of color reject academic achievement, and reviewed recent research that has called this theory into question.

Stephen Shore, Susan Weber Soros Professor in the Arts, is beginning a collaboration with Pietro Perona, director of the Computational Vision Group at California Institute of Technology. The group is studying the bases of visual perception with the aim of applying this understanding to computational vision. Shore presented his work in four recent solo exhibitions: at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, Galerie Sprüth Magers in Cologne, P.S. 1 MoMA in New York City, and Presentation House Gallery in Vancouver. Last October he gave public lectures at the University of Las Vegas, Hammer Museum (with Michael Fried), and Tokion Magazine Creativity Now Conference (with William Eggleston), and conducted a workshop at the Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon.

Cut at Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects last fall. Sillman’s work is included in Part 4 of The Triumph of Painting, on view at the Saatchi Gallery in London until May 7, and she will have a solo exhibition in April at Sikkema Jenkins & Co. in New York City. A book about her drawings, with an essay by Wayne Koestenbaum, is forthcoming this spring from Gregory R. Miller & Co. Benjamin Stevens, visiting assistant professor of classics, received his Ph.D. last August from the University of Chicago’s Committee on the Ancient Mediterranean World. In January he presented a paper, “Lingua olet: The Scent of Language and Social Synaesthesia at Rome,” at the 137th annual meeting of the American Philological Association, held in Montreal.

Elaine Thomas, assistant professor of political studies, will publish “Keeping Identity at a Distance: France’s Renewed Reaction to the Islamic Headscarf ” in the March 2006 issue of Ethnic and Racial Studies. Last September she presented a paper on a panel titled “Immigration and Political Theory” at the American Political Science Association annual meeting in Washington, D.C. Hap Tivey, artist in residence, presented work in Leucos Transit at the Elizabeth Leach Gallery in Portland, Oregon, last November and December.

Eric Trudel, assistant professor of French, published “The Power of Rhetoric, the Rhetoric of Power: Jean Paulhan’s Fiction, Criticism and Editorial Activity” in Yale French Studies No.106, a special issue devoted to Jean Paulhan. Trudel is guest editor of the Etudes Françaises, Vol. 42, No. 2, “Figures artistiques du littéraire,” forthcoming this spring, which includes his introduction and an article, “Spectres de la peinture. Paulhan (et Ponge) face à Braque et Fautrier.”

Marina van Zuylen, associate professor of French and comparative literature, published an essay, “The Secret Life of Monsters,” in Beyond the Visible: The Art of Odilon Redon, the catalogue accompanying the Odilon Redon retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. She presented a paper, “Spiderman’s Strategy: Odilon Redon and the Science of Monsters” at the NineteenthCentury French Studies Colloquium in Austin, Texas, last October.

Suzanne Vromen, professor emeritus of sociology (1978–2000), participated in the Social Memory Studies International Workshop at the University of Virginia last October and was keynote speaker at “Resistance and Memory in Belgium,” organized in New York City

by The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. In December she presented a paper, “The Rescue of Jewish Children by Belgian Convents during the Holocaust and the Politics of Commemoration” at the annual conference of the Association for Jewish Studies, held in Washington, D.C.

Amy Sillman, MFA ’95 and faculty in painting at the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts, presented work in the group exhibition

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Edward McKeever ’05, Tiger, mixed media on wood. The piece was part of McKeever's Senior Project, titled “Liminal Space: An Eastern Boy in a Western Body.” To see more of his work, visit edwardmckeever@hotmail.com.

Corrections In the Fall 2005 Bardian, an item about Mark Lytle in the Faculty Notes section incorrectly identified Ireland as part of the United Kingdom. The Bardian regrets the error.

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Photography Cover: (foreground) Don Hamerman; (background) ©Pete Leonard/zefa/Corbis Inside front cover: Pete Mauney ’93, MFA ’99 Page 1: Julia Jordan Page 2: Pete Mauney ’93, MFA ’99 Page 3, (left) Don Hamerman; (center) Noah Sheldon; (right) Pete Mauney ’93, MFA ’99 Page 4: Don Hamerman Page 6: Dennis Brack Page 8: Don Hamerman Page 9: Don Hamerman Page 10: Don Hamerman Page 11: Don Hamerman Page 12: Don Hamerman Page 13: Don Hamerman Page 14: Bridget Hurlihy Page 15: (all) Don Hamerman Page 16: ©Cheryl Ravelo/Reuters/Corbis Page 17: Lisa Kereszi ’95 Page 18: Keren Su/Getty Page 20: ©Tom Brakefield/Corbis Page 22: Pete Mauney ’93, MFA ’99 Page 23: www.broadwaters.fsnet.co.uk/images/ six.gif, manipulated by Kevin Trabucco Page 24: Noah Sheldon Page 26: (all) Pete Mauney ’93, MFA ’99 Page 28: Phil Suarez Page 29: Phil Suarez Page 31: Phil Suarez Page 32: (all) Noah Sheldon Page 33: (all) Noah Sheldon Page 38: Julie McCarthy Page 39: (all) Pete Mauney ’93, MFA ’99 Page 40 (top right) Pete Mauney ’93, MFA ’99; (bottom left) Tania Barricklo; (bottom right) Karl Rabe Page 41: Nina Chefakov

1-800-BARDCOL www.bard.edu/alumni

Page 42: (top) Pete Mauney ’93, MFA ’99; (bottom) photographer unknown Page 43: Noah Sheldon Page 44: (top) Courtesy of Susannah Bradley; (bottom) Tanio Barricklo Page 45: Skippy-Racer Scooter, c. 1933, The Eric Brill Collection Page 46: (top) Pete Mauney ’93, MFA ’99; (bottom) Christopher Lindner Page 47: (top) Molly Page (bottom) Pete Mauney ’93, MFA ’99; Page 48: (top) Scott Swere (bottom) Deborah Durant Page 49: (all) Pete Mauney ’93, MFA ’99; Page 50: (top) Brian Babineau (middle) Courtesy of Rafael Vinoly Architects; (bottom) Pete Mauney ’93, MFA ’99 Page 51: Pete Mauney ’93, MFA ’99 Page 52: Courtesy of Judith Trepp ’63 Page 53: ©Buddy Mays/Corbis Page 54: Courtesy of Emily Hay ’78 Page 55: Stewart Verrilli Page 56: (top) Courtesy of Allison Radzin ’88 (bottom) Courtesy of Linda Ganjian ’92 Page 57: Courtesy of Grace Markman ’92 Page 58: (left) Matthew Spiegelman ’97; (right) William Lamson MFA ’97 Page 59: (top) Courtesy of Marina Prager-Kranz ’97; (middle) Matthew Porter ’98; (bottom) Ben Ruggiero MFA ’05 Page 62: Pete Mauney ’93, MFA ’99 Page 66: Bard College Archive Page 67: (all) Noah Sheldon Page 68: (left) Pete Mauney ’93, MFA ’99; (middle) Don Hamerman; (right) Noah Sheldon Page 69: (all) Pete Mauney ’93, MFA ’99 Page 72: Pete Mauney ’93, MFA ’99 Back cover: Pete Mauney ’93, MFA ’99

Board of Trustees of Bard College David E. Schwab II ’52, Chair Emeritus Charles P. Stevenson Jr., Chair Emily H. Fisher, Second Vice Chair Mark Schwartz, Treasurer Elizabeth Ely ’65, Secretary Roland J. Augustine + Leon Botstein, President of the College David C. Clapp * Marcelle Clements ’69 Rt. Rev. Herbert A. Donovan Jr., Honorary Trustee Asher B. Edelman ’61 Robert S. Epstein ’63 * Philip H. Gordon ’43 * Barbara S. Grossman ’73 Sally Hambrecht Ernest F. Henderson III Marieluise Hessel John C. Honey ’39, Life Trustee Mark N. Kaplan George A. Kellner Cynthia Hirsch Levy ’65 Murray Liebowitz Peter H. Maguire ’88 James H. Ottaway Jr. Martin Peretz Stanley A. Reichel ’65 Stewart Resnick Susan Weber Soros Martin T. Sosnoff Patricia Ross Weis ’52 William Julius Wilson * alumni/ae trustee +ex officio Office of Development and Alumni/ae Affairs Debra Pemstein Vice President for Development and Alumni/ae Affairs 845-758-7405 or pemstein @bard.edu; Jessica Kemm ’74 Director of Alumni/ae Affairs, 845-758-7406 or kemm@bard.edu; Sasha Boak Kelly, Associate Director of Alumni/ae Affairs, 845-758-7407, boak@bard.edu; Taryn Hart McGray '05, Administrative Assistant, Alumni/ae Affairs, 845-758-7089 or mcgray@bard.edu Published by the Bard Publications Office Mikhail Horowitz, Editor of the Bardian; Ginger Shore, Director; Julia Jordan, Assistant Director; Mary Smith, Art Director; Debby Mayer, Editorial Director; René Houtrides MFA’ 97, Ellen Liebowitz, Cynthia Werthamer, Editors; Diane Rosasco, Production Manager; Jamie Ficker, Bridget Murphy, Francie Soosman ’90, Kevin Trabucco, Designers ©2006 Bard College. All rights reserved. i

SAVE THE DATE REUNIONS 2006 May 19–21 Reunion classes: 1936, 1941, 1946, 1951, 1956, 1966, 1971, 1976, 1981, 1986, 1991, 1996, 2001 Would you like to help contact classmates?

Please call Jessica Kemm ’74 at 845-758-7406 or e-mail kemm@bard.edu.

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