Bardian 2008 Summer

Bardian Bard College Summer 2008

Stepping Forward: Stellar Students Beyond Endless War Science on the Edge Commencement

cover, above, and following Commencement 2008

At the dedication of the Jim Ottaway Jr. Film Center on Commencement morning, (from left to right): Peter Hutton, professor of film; Mary Ottaway; James H. Ottaway Jr.; John Pruitt, associate professor of film; and Leon Botstein, president of the college

Dear Bardians, Congratulations to the Class of 2008! Welcome to the Alumni/ae Association and your first issue of the Bardian. Your address may change frequently over the next few years; be sure to send updates to alumni@bard.edu so that you don’t miss the Bardian.

Commencement and reunions brought a record number of alumni/ae back to campus this year. Can you spot your friends in the gorgeous photos inside? Commencement is a special time at Bard for alumni/ae and parents, but it’s really a celebration of the graduates. Our pride in their work is illustrated in the profiles of seven members of the Class of 2008. They represent the excitement and promise that each class of Bard graduates has brought to the world for nearly 150 years.

Bard’s impact goes far beyond Annandale. In this Bardian, professor and noted author Norman Manea and Israeli writer Michal Govrin discuss the personal and political state of IsraeliPalestinian relations today. Physics professor Matthew Deady describes the international effort to re-create the conditions at the birth of the universe through a particle accelerator. Mark Danner, award-winning investigative journalist and holder of the James Chace Chair, discusses the current state of U.S. foreign policy in regard to the prescient ideas of Bard’s late, great Professor Chace.

The start of Bard’s new fiscal year (July 1) is a good time to make your annual gift to the College, if you haven’t done so already. We, the alumni/ae, are the inner circle of the Bard family; by our participation, we show others that those who know the College best believe it worthy of support.

A heartfelt thank-you is due to Jessica Kemm ’74, who is leaving Bard after almost nine years of service as director of alumni/ae affairs. Jessica’s dedication, superior organizational ability, and Cajun sensibility have been tremendous assets to the College. Embodying the Bardian value of lifelong learning, Jessica leaves to pursue a graduate degree in library science.

Jessica put terrific systems into place to give alumni/ae opportunities to strengthen their relationship with the College.

I urge everyone to take advantage of these opportunities by visiting www.bard.edu/alumni.

Walter Swett ’96 President, Board of Governors, Bard–St. Stephen’s Alumni/ae Association

Board of Governors of the Bard–St. Stephen’s Alumni/ae Association Walter Swett ’96, President Michael DeWitt ’65, Executive Vice President Roger Scotland ’93, Vice President Maggie Hopp ’67, Secretary Olivier te Boekhorst ’93, Treasurer Jonathan Ames ’05 Robert Amsterdam ’53 Claire Angelozzi ’74 David Avallone ’87, Oral History Committee Chairperson Dr. Penny Axelrod ’63 Belinha Rowley Beatty ’69 Eva Thal Belefant ’49 Joshua Bell ’98, Communications and New Technologies Committee Chairperson Dr. Miriam Roskin Berger ’56 Jack Blum ’62 Carla Bolte ’71 Erin Boyer ’00 Randy Buckingham ’73, Events Committee Cochairperson Cathaline Cantalupo ’67 Pia Carusone ’03 Charles Clancy ’69 Peter Criswell ’89 Arnold Davis ’44, Nominations and Awards Committee Cochairperson Elizabeth Dempsey BHSEC ’03, ’05, Young Alumni/ae Committee Cochairperson

Kirsten Dunlaevy ’06 Kit Kauders Ellenbogen ’52 Joan Elliott ’67 Naomi Bellinson Feldman ’53 Barbara Grossman Flanagan ’60 Diana Hirsch Friedman ’68 R. Michael Glass ’75 Eric Warren Goldman ’98, Alumni/ae House Committee Cochairperson Rebecca Granato ’99, Young Alumni/ae Committee Cochairperson Ann Ho ’62, Career Connections Committee Cochairperson Charles Hollander ’65 Dr. John C. Honey ’39 Elaine Marcotte Hyams ’69 Deborah Davidson Kaas ’71 Richard Koch ’40 Erin Law ’93, Fund-raising Committee Chairperson Larry Levine ’74 Cynthia Hirsch Levy ’65 Isaac Liberman ’04 Michelle Dunn Marsh ’95 Peter F. McCabe ’70, Nominations and Awards Committee Cochairperson Mollie Meikle ’03 Steven Miller ’70 Jennifer Novik ’98 Karen Olah ’65, Alumni/ae House Committee Cochairperson

Susan Playfair ’62 Arthur “Scott” Porter Jr. ’79, Alumni/ae House Committee Cochairperson Allison Radzin ’88, Career Connections Committee Cochairperson Emilie Richardson ’05 Reva Minkin Sanders ’56 Joan Schaffer ’75 Donna Shepper ’73 Barry Silkowitz ’71 George A. Smith ’82, Events Committee Cochairperson Dr. Ingrid Spatt ’69 Andrea J. Stein ’92 Paul Thompson ’93, Diversity Committee Chairperson Dr. Toni-Michelle Travis ’69 Marjorie Vecchio MFA ’01, MFA Liaison Samir B. Vural ’98 Brandon Weber ’97 Barbara Crane Wigren ’68 Ron Wilson ’75 Matt Wing ’06 Sung Jee Yoo ’01

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SUMMER 2008 FEATURES 6 STEPPING FORWARD Stellar Students Include Three Fellowship Winners 10 PSYCHOLOGY A Shift in Focus

DEPARTMENTS 44 BOOKS BY BARDIANS 46 ON AND OFF CAMPUS 56 CLASS NOTES 76 FACULTY NOTES

16 BEYOND ENDLESS WAR Terror, Iraq, and the American Search for Solvency

By Mark Danner 24 THE WRITER AS PROVOCATEUR Fiction That Reflects Political Realities 26 SCIENCE ON THE EDGE Getting to the Heart of Matter A Talk by Matthew Deady 30 COMMENCEMENT 2008

Stepping Forward Stellar Students Include Three Fellowship Winners

Bard’s 2008 graduates are rising to meet the challenges of the 21st century. Three of them are moving on with prestigious national fellowships.

Christopher Herring, accepted upon graduation into the highly regarded New York City Urban Fellows Program, began Bard thinking that he would focus on film. But he was drawn to examine social problems after spending time in London, where he lived and worked among the homeless. “I participated in a unique communal society in London, called The Simon Community, that blurs the lines between the volunteers and the people they serve,” he says. “While they were living with us, the homeless members would take part in chores and service work, and make decisions and meals.

It was very much a shared social mechanism of help.”

The experience changed him profoundly and led him to major in economics, flavored with a strong slice of sociology. The drive to take action took him from McLean, Virginia, “the enclave-like suburb where I grew up,” to New Orleans, where he researched his Senior Project. During his involvement in the city’s post–Katrina recovery, Herring began to examine the economic “mutations” that emerged after the hurricane: it was “a case study in the public financing of recovery aid,” and in how radical free-market theories of public aid are “forming the new geography of New Orleans.” His fellowship entails learning about urban policy planning through hands-on research and training in New York City agenices. (He opted for the urban studies opportunity instead of a Thomas J. Watson Foundation 2008–09 Fellowship, which he also received.)

On campus, Herring was involved in the Bard Environmental Resources Department and its organization of the Focus the Nation symposium on global climate solutions (see page 46). He also served on education policy committees that evaluate tenure for College professors. “I think that’s a really important process, and it’s great that at Bard, students are given such an opportunity to have their voices heard,” he says.

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David “Kit” Martin, recipient of a Watson fellowship, grew up in Kenya. His Senior Project in history focused on colonialism and the role of women in the Middle East and Africa. But his Watson fellowship will take him from Mexico to Tanzania to study and photograph four species of ants, in an attempt to redefine how “two of the most successful species on the planet” interact. (The Watson fellowship subsidizes study outside of the United States.)

Though Nashville is his nominal home, Martin says his large family (he is one of eight children) was his traveling home while he grew up. “I moved 20 times—40,000 miles or so, across the United States and Africa—before I was 16,” says Martin, whose parents are linguists in Sudanese languages and culture. Martin, as well as most of his siblings, was home schooled. “My first class at Bard was my first classroom experience,” he recalls. “It was an Arabic class, and it was bizarre to have to sit and wait my turn to ask a question and not be the only student in the room.”

His extracurricular activities included working with a cultural group in northern Kenya, the Jolwolieech (sometimes called the Lost Boys of Sudan by western media), which helps preserve Sudanese songs. The group lives in a refugee camp, where Martin recorded 500 songs that the group had composed and memorized. “South Sudan was unified through the use of song during the civil war,” says Martin, referring to the second civil war in Sudan, which raged from approximately 1983 to 2005. “They used a lot of Christian influences and Ugandan military songs. They come together in a very disciplined marching beat. It’s cool music.”

Another senior who decided to investigate an issue in her home culture was Rushaine McKenzie. Born and raised in Jamaica (she moved to Brooklyn at age 14), the political studies major examined homophobia in that country by reviewing its sodomy laws.

How did her topic come about? McKenzie attended the Bard Globalization and International Affairs Program (BGIA) in New York City, where a course on international human rights law started her thinking. “I wondered what it must feel like to not be yourself out of fear,” she says. “What if the government decided, ‘That’s something we need to deal with’?” Through discussions with adviser Roger Berkowitz, assistant professor of political studies and human rights, her premise became wider and more theoretical, focusing on whether laws can alter societal behavior and consciousness in favor of marginalized groups.

A graduate of Bard High School Early College (BHSEC) in New York City, McKenzie says the education she received there “prepared me immensely for my continued studies at Bard.” The experience reminded her of Wolmer’s Girls School, which she had attended in Kingston, Jamaica: “The professors take an interest in you.” At BHSEC, she adds, “The level of discussion was beyond anything I could have imagined. They give you assignments that make you think, and they encourage you to be more critical.”

clockwise from top David Martin, Rushaine McKenzie, and Christopher Herring

Once at Bard, which she entered as a junior, McKenzie became a peer counselor, one who assists and supports students in the residence halls and acts as a liaison between students and administration. She sees herself as having been “a good resource.” That experience started McKenzie thinking about her legacy at Bard. “I brought a different perspective to a lot of my classes, not only as a person of color, but as someone from another country,” she says. “At the same time, because there are a lot of international students here, I learned more than if I’d stayed in my little corner of the world.”

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Another BHSEC graduate, Ian Olasov, found his studies taking a surprising turn when he discovered psychology at Bard. He had arrived in Annandale expecting to major in philosophy—as his father, now a lawyer, had done in college. “I barely knew a thing about psychology when I got here,” Olasov says. “I don’t know why, but I decided to take two psych classes.” That decision could have been triggered by his reading of famed British philosopher Bertrand Russell, who predicted in the mid-20th century that philosophers would need to become familiar with scientific methods and results to make progress in their own discipline.

As a result, Olasov graduated this spring with a double major in philosophy and psychology, with Senior Projects focusing on semantics (philosophy) and tools for studying states of consciousness (psychology). “We can use psychology and neuroscience to explore aspects of our mental lives, but we need philosophy to explain what we’ve really found,” says Olasov, who has applied to graduate schools for philosophy, “though I wouldn’t mind doing psychology experiments until I die.”

Ultimately, he wants to teach: not surprising, considering that he began teaching Hebrew studies at Brooklyn synagogues when he was 14. His other interests include playing recorder in a rock band, HongKongathon (with fellow Bardian Sam Brodsky ’08).

Somehow, it’s all related to philosophy for Olasov. “I’ve managed to squeeze every ounce of education out of that program that I could,” he chuckles. “It rewards people who push for it.”

Kenyan student Gerald Pambo-Awich found his education at Bard rewarding because it gave him tools to offer society some of the benefits he feels he’s received. He was a member of the Trustee Leader Scholar (TLS) Habitat for Humanity project; served on the Bard student government’s committee for socially responsible investing; belonged to the College’s emergency medical services squad; and cochaired the Black Student Organization. While attending BGIA in New York City, he interned at Banyan Global, a consulting firm that works on projects for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and other multilateral donors. “Because of where I come from, I’m very interested in finding some ways to give back,” he says.

He also worked in the investment firm Goldman Sachs’s market risk management division, where he is beginning a full-time position this summer. That’s where he got the idea for his Senior Project (in computer science) on artificial intelligence and finance. “It requires a lot of knowledge in both computer science and economics,” Pambo-Awich notes. “Everyone looks at outcomes and analyses, but my focus is making the system learn from all past decisions and statistical results—not only from the last time. A learning system can help us improve upon the human analysis of decisions and statistical data in finance.”

He is thoughtful about the differences between education at Alliance High School, the Kenyan boarding school he attended, and Bard: “A lot of learning in Kenya is by rote; you learn the facts and procedures, but do not get to ask how or why. Here, you’re taught to question and deconstruct what the teacher said. Once they teach you, how you piece it together is up to you.”

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Genya Shimkin, with help from the TLS program and Bard’s Institute for International Liberal Education, spent a summer at Smolny College, a liberal arts college connected with Bard, in St. Petersburg, Russia, and conducted her TLS project on how Russian youths reduce the risks of HIV infection. “I have a deep-rooted desire to fight the stigma of HIV,” says Shimkin, who served on queer-straight alliances in high school and at Bard. “Russia dealt with this with what I call ‘historical Russian fatalism,’ with no policy at all until it was too late.” Her Senior Project juxtaposed Vladimir Putin’s policies for population growth with his failure to respond to Russia’s HIV/AIDS epidemic.

Shimkin majored in Russian and Eurasian studies and human rights. Her interest in Russian studies stems from her father’s family, originally from Ukraine. Her greatgrandfather, a Menshevik (the group that opposed the Bolsheviks), fell from favor and eventually made it to the United States, where his newspaper (Novoye Russkoye Slovo, or New Russian Word) became the most widely distributed Russian-language periodical in the country. Shimkin started studying Russian at age 12.

Of her education at Bard, Shimkin says, “This school offers us almost innumerable opportunities. What makes me proudest is that students don’t let those chances go by. With everything I have done here, I have a leg up on anyone.” This is borne out by her extracurricular activities: membership on the Student-Athletic Advisory and Senior Class Committees and experience as a peer health educator (she is interested in graduate study in public health), campus tour guide, residence hall peer counselor, and tennis team captain.

In contrast to Shimkin, Abigail Weil, another senior in Russian and Eurasian studies, came to Bard with Russian studies being “the furthest thing from my mind.” She caught the bug while studying foundations of Marxism during First-Year Seminar with Distinguished Professor of Social Studies Joel Kovel. “I never recovered from it,” she says with a laugh, “so I made it my focus.” She studied at Smolny during the summer of 2006 and was initiated into Russian language and culture. Upon graduation she accepted a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant grant to Russia. She plans to teach American literature to help her students better understand the American people and “build an intellectual bridge between two cultures.”

In Russian and Eurasian studies, an interdivisional major, “there is an interplay between literature and history,” Weil says. “Not only are historical conditions reflected in a novel, but a novel can be published that incites people to action. Nothing moves me like Russian literature.” But in her Russian lit classes, the Cleveland native noticed “a real lack of mother protagonists, absent or ineffective.” So she addressed the topic in her Senior Project.

clockwise from top left Ian Olasov, Genya Shimkin, Abigail Weil, and Gerald Pambo-Awich

“I couldn’t imagine a school more tailor-made than Bard is for me,” she admits. “The way it fosters intellectual curiosity works very well for me. I came in with an attitude of exposing myself to everything I could, things I hadn’t encountered before.”

—Cynthia Werthamer

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psychology A Shift in Focus

Psychology, the scientific study of human behavior, is one of Bard’s “most vibrant programs,” according to Michèle Dominy, dean of the College. Last year it came in second only to literature, measured in terms of Senior Projects. Having undergone major curricular changes over the past several years, the transformed Psychology Program—which has always been one of the top five concentrations on campus numerically—emphasizes empirical studies and analytical skills, and a new group of psychology students is looking at the brain and behavior using tools and perspectives that weren’t available to Bard students until recently.

To understand what prompted the College to transform the Psychology Program, it’s important to know that the discipline itself has changed profoundly over the past decade. From its beginnings in the late 19th century, with the work of Wilhelm Wundt in Germany, Sigmund Freud in Austria, and William James in the United States, psychology lacked unity and identity. It was “a federation of often unrelated disciplines placed in one administrative category because each could be defined by taking an experimental approach to the study of human behavior,” according to John T. Cacioppo, president of the Association for Psychological Science and a 2004 recipient of an honorary Doctor of Science degree from Bard. By the time psychology reached its centenary, the substantive connections between its subdisciplines—for example, biopsychology and social psychology—had become so vague that some academic psychology departments began discussing the possibility of dissolution.

About 10 years ago, psychologists from the various subdisciplines began working together to look for more comprehensive theories to explain social interactions. As a result of these collaborative efforts, psychology became more of a unified science. No longer a “set of balkanized fields,” psychology is fast becoming a “hub scientific discipline” and an “integrative, multilevel science,” says Cacioppo. “The notion that social and biological psychology had nothing substantively to offer one another has been replaced by the rapidly growing field of social neuroscience. . . . Uncovering the biological mechanisms underlying social interactions is one of the major problems for the neurosciences to address in the 21st century.”

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Eager to keep Bard’s psychology students abreast of the revolution taking place in the discipline, the College undertook a number of initiatives over the last few years, restructuring the curriculum, hiring new faculty, and adding research facilities, most notably those in Preston Hall and at The Gabrielle H. Reem and Herbert J. Kayden Center for Science and Computation. The result is a broader program in which nearly as many Bardians study neuroscience and cognition as study clinical psychology.

The revamped program prepares all students for careers in psychology, whether as therapists—“Clinical psychology is still the greatest draw in our program,” says Frank Scalzo, associate professor of psychology and director of the program—or as researchers. “Regardless of the psychology career or graduate degree Bard students may wish to pursue, they need to be able to look at the individual from multiple levels of analysis. We also want to make sure they know the elements of experimental design, inferential statistics, and how to communicate their work effectively,” says Scalzo.

Assistant professor Sarah Lopez-Duran, a developmental psychologist, came to Bard from the University of Michigan last spring. She has established the Child Development Project, where her research group investigates child cognition. The Psychology Program is well designed to expose students to three major dimensions of the discipline: biological, cognitive, and social, Lopez-Duran says. “We’re all trying to explain the same thing: why individuals act the way they do. Because of the integrative approach of our curriculum, students get a complete picture of human behavior as they move through the program. Most small colleges aren’t fortunate enough to have a neuroscientist, such as Frank Scalzo, or a cognitive psychologist who studies physiological measures, like Barbara Luka.” Scalzo studies the brain bases—the neurological core elements—of behavior. Luka, a cognitive psychologist, investigates human memory and language comprehension.

“We’re providing our students with an edge by aligning the focus of the program with the overall focus of the field,” says Lopez-Duran. The field is moving in a cognitive-neuroscience direction; for example, psychopathologies, like autism, are being conceptualized within this framework and are popular topics right now. “I’m very happy that our students can have some experience with these topics as undergrads,” she says. “This is not always the case in a psychology department—especially at a small college. Because Bard has hired faculty with expertise in these areas, our students are able to explore the hottest topics in the field. Bard’s psychology students are really lucky. ” One of the major changes in the program’s curriculum is a restructuring that allows students—first-year included—to collaborate with, and work alongisde, faculty on research projects. This modification accomplishes a very specific goal: providing psychology students with the support they need early on so that they are skilled researchers by the time they approach their Senior Project. As Luka puts it, “Giving all of our students excellent experience in conducting research makes them better at exercising their analytical skills. This way they truly understand the scientific method, and they understand statistics. They’re better prepared for any job interview, and of course research is invaluable for those who are planning on grad school. Graduate psychology programs are extremely competitive right now. If you come from a college that doesn’t offer much in the way of research opportunities, you’re at a serious disadvantage. That was one of the pushes behind getting our students involved in research early.”

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Four members of Bard’s Psychology Program faculty (left to right): Frank Scalzo, Kristin Lane, Sarah Lopez-Duran, and Barbara Luka

Senia Hardwick ’10 arrived at Bard planning to study psychology and quickly gravitated into neuroscience research. Specifically, she is interested in studying fear and anxiety. Through research she is conducting independently, she is learning how neuroscience ties into physiology and memory. Hardwick calls her academic experience at Bard “exceptional.” “The way the program’s requirements are set up allows you to do a lot within your subject area,” she says, “but you can explore more, too. I really enjoy the research I’m doing. Even the parts that most people consider boring are fun for me. I get a lot out of it.”

Another enthusiastic researcher is Anna Katsman ’11, who found a way to explore neuroscience as a first-year student. “I went to Frank [Scalzo] and said, ‘I really want to explore this field. What can I do if, as a first-year student, I don’t have the necessary background for the introductory neuroscience class?’ He said, ‘Join my independent research program. You’ll get a good introduction to neuroscience, and you’ll be able to go at your own pace.’” Katsman read scholarly articles in neuroscience journals and discussed her reading in a weekly meeting with Scalzo. Eventually she wrote a paper on neurogenesis [the process by which the brain generates new neurons], and after Scalzo reviewed it, he helped her come up with a research model that she started during the spring 2008 semester. “Taking on independent research is a matter of being passionate, devoted, and committed to your work—and having a professor there to guide you,” says Katsman, who expects to moderate into psychology and literature next year. Her post-Bard plans include medical school.

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Senia Hardwick ’10 (left) and Anna Katsman ’11

Whereas Lopez-Duran looks at how behavior changes over time, Kristin Lane, a social psychologist, seeks to explain the way that thoughts, behavior, and feelings operate in a social context. Lane, the newest member of the Psychology Program faculty, takes a macro approach, looking at how social environments influence human cognition and behavior. During the spring 2008 semester, students in her Independent Research in Social Psychology course studied how mind and behavior operate in ways that are not accessible to conscious awareness. For example, they considered the theory that a process called self-affirmation may reduce implicit—that is, not conscious— bias. Through self-affirmation, people are reminded of their own positive qualities.

The theory postulates that the degree of self-affirmation people experience may affect—that is, lessen—these more subtle biases they have toward other social groups.

One group of students began the project last fall by looking at similar studies to learn what worked and what didn’t, in terms of the research process. Then they did some computer programming to prepare for the lab-based portions of the study, and designed (and in some cases helped to construct) the physical space of the lab where they conducted their research during the spring. The two stages, or tracks, of the project allowed students to gain experience both in the nuts and bolts of research and in developing their own research ideas around questions that interest and motivate them.

In this way, says Lane, Bard psychology students practice hands-on, intensive research in a way that’s very hard to carry out at larger colleges, where one-on-one interaction time between students and professors can be minimal, and students’ participation in the research process is less frequently in the pursuit of ideas of their own initiative. The program’s cooperative approach is in step with the discipline’s overall trend toward collaboration. “The fact that they’re taking this lab as a class means that they’re taking part in a community of scholars,” says Lane. “I certainly help to facilitate, and I bring my expertise to the table. But the students themselves generate the ideas and critique each other’s studies. They’re seeing psychology as a collaborative science, in which people are comfortable assessing each other’s work in order to improve it.”

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Twenty-first century psychology is research-driven, and the research experience that Bard’s psychology students acquire can also apply to many aspects of life after Bard. “Even if they choose to go into law, medicine, or finance, they’ll be able to apply the same critical thinking and analytic skills to many different fields,” says program director Scalzo. “We’ve developed an innovative program in psychology like no other one that I’m aware of, one that truly emphasizes the empirical, analytical component of the discipline. That’s what’s ‘hot’ about our approach.”

—Kelly Spencer

’07 Graduate Receives Prestigious Ph.D. Fellowship In March Lauren Hallion ’07 was offered admission, along with full fellowship, to the University of Pennsylvania’s Ph.D. degree program in clinical psychology. The toptier program, located in Philadelphia, takes only a handful of students each year: of the approximately 350 applicants for 2008 admission, Hallion was one of five accepted.

The Benjamin Franklin Fellowship will cover her tuition and pay her a stipend. She credits the research projects she conducted and the laboratory experience she gained as an undergraduate psychology student at Bard as “extremely helpful in my being accepted at Penn.” Hallion remembers “falling in love” with psychology during her first semester at Bard. Her Senior Project, which she began researching during the summer after her sophomore year, was an empirical investigation of the factors that predict the academic achievement of adolescent girls. Hallion’s adviser, Bart Meyers, and the rest of the faculty were “incredibly supportive,” she says, and she remains in close touch with them. In fact, as soon as she received the offer from Penn, she drove from her home in Rhinebeck to the Psychology Program office to give them the good news in person.

At Penn, Hallion plans to follow up her interest in anxiety disorders; specifically, she says, “I’m hoping to look at comorbidity of anxiety disorders and depression in treatment-seeking and non–treatment-seeking populations.” After three years of course work, a year to write a dissertation, and a yearlong internship, Hallion will have her Ph.D. Eventually, she says, she’d like to be an academic psychologist, involved with a research-oriented university.

Lauren Hallion ’07

Lecture Series Honors Bernstein’s Interest In Social Psychology Andrew J. Bernstein ’68 was planning a career in psychology when he was killed in a swimming accident soon after graduation. To honor his interest in the subject, as well as his personal talents, his family established the Andrew J. Bernstein Memorial Lecture Series and a number of scholarships and prizes. The scholarships and prizes are awarded to Bard psychology students who demonstrate an unusually deep commitment to the field. The lecture series brings prominent social psychologists to campus to speak on topics that are chosen based on Bernstein’s interests, particularly his search for further understanding of the impact that social context has on behavior.

Past lecturers include Howard Leventhal, University of Wisconsin; John T. Cacioppo, University of Chicago; Thomas Blass, University of Maryland; and Susan Fiske, Princeton University. Planning is under way for the Fall 2008 Bernstein Lecture to take place during a Bard-hosted conference on the work of Stanley Milgram, one of the 20th century’s most important, and controversial, psychologists.

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I am haunted by the possibility of a world where laws are not obeyed, where the state is predatory or disintegrating, where terrorism has replaced large-scale warfare and the balance of power among nations has broken down with nothing to replace it. —James Clarke Chace Solvency: The Price of Survival. An Essay on American Foreign Policy (1981)

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Beyond Endless War Terror, Iraq, and the American Search for Solvency

By Mark Danner

Mark Danner is James Clark Chace Professor in Human Rights and the Humanities.

This endowed chair honors his one-time mentor, the late James Clark Chace, founder of Bard’s innovative Globalization and International Affairs Program. In a lecture last December inaugurating the chair (which Danner shares with Caleb Carr, another Chace friend and protégé), Danner discussed the United States’ involvement in Iraq, Chace’s vision of “solvency” in foreign policy, and how far the United States has strayed from that vision in the past half-dozen years. Following are edited excerpts drawn from Danner’s remarks.

In the title of my speech tonight, I’ve been reckless enough to quote not one but two of James Chace’s titles, Endless War and Solvency. The second is perhaps my favorite of his books. His words [opposite] written during the late 70s, were, like much of Solvency, prophetic, predicting our current moment with an almost shocking specificity. It seems to me that we now find ourselves caught between James’s nightmare of endless war—of terrorism, decline, and disintegration—and his vision of a strikingly different kind of foreign policy, one founded on what he called solvency.

What is solvency? As James defined it—drawing on the words of his beloved Walter Lippmann—the statesman who would create a solvent American foreign policy sets himself the task of “bringing into balance, with a comfortable surplus of power in reserve, a nation’s commitments—economic, political, military—and a nation’s power.”

As we gather today to honor James Chace’s life and work, it seems to me that we have traveled an immense distance from this vision. In the last half-dozen years we have become immersed in a “war on terror” that is unbounded in space and time and near religious in its stated goals. This war was proclaimed days after the attacks of 9/11, when President Bush called on Americans to respond with a war that would “rid the world of evil”—a shockingly evangelistic phrase for a president to use and one that stands about as far as one can, in philosophy and tenor, from the pragmatic, prudent, and historically minded approach that James spent his life advocating.

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Let me start on the micro level, with what is happening in Baghdad, and move from there to Iraq as a whole and finally to the broader Middle East and the history of U.S. policy there. I hope some of my comments about what has happened to our foreign policy, and to the world we have made, will provoke you, as James Chace so loved to do.

Imagine a field in western Baghdad, what once was a playing field but now resembles a garbage dump. This is a Sunni neighborhood, and the Shia government no longer picks up the trash. Throughout Baghdad concrete barriers and walls surround any public building of note, any hotel, any government building. Where you don’t see concrete, you see barbed wire. Or tank traps, resembling nothing so much as gargantuan versions of a child’s jacks. Imagine, snaking through the postapocalyptic landscape, an armored convoy, which comes to an abrupt stop and lets out its crew of soldiers, American and Iraqi. With his rifle, one soldier pushes aside a slab of cardboard, revealing a pair of bare feet and, after a bit more jostling of trash, what was once—quite recently—a man, wearing old brown trousers and nothing else. His hands are bound behind him with wire, the right side of his forehead obliterated by a bullet.

In the last few years, Iraqis have fought an extraordinarily vicious sectarian civil war with the object of changing Baghdad from a mixed city, Sunni and Shia, into an ethnically cleansed city.

About five feet away, another pair of feet sticks out of the trash. The translator, when asked whether these men are Shia or Sunni, immediately answers, “Shia.” How did he know? “This is still a mostly Sunni neighborhood.” A Sunni neighborhood means Shia bodies. The work of ethnic cleansing is going on methodically across Baghdad.

In the last few years, Iraqis have fought an extraordinarily vicious sectarian civil war with the object of changing Baghdad from a mixed city, Sunni and Shia, into an ethnically cleansed city. The Sunni insurgents have worked hard to provoke a Shia response, largely by means of improvised explosive devices and suicide car bombs, which they have driven into predominantly Shia markets, mosques, and other public areas, and detonated with horrific effect. Hundreds of such suicide bombs have been exploded during the last several years, and thousands have been killed.

The late Sunni insurgent leader known as Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi was explicit about this strategy of provocation. “If we succeed in dragging the Shia into the arena of sectarian war,” Zarqawi wrote in a letter intercepted by U.S. intelligence, “it will become possible to awaken the inattentive Sunnis as they feel imminent danger and annihilating death at the hands of the [Shia].” Zarqawi’s goal was to start a regionwide Sunni uprising that would eventually destabilize and overthrow the established Sunni regimes in Cairo and Saudi Arabia, among others. If you look at a map of the religious composition of the Middle East, you will see that Iraq sits squarely athwart this sec-

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tarian divide; the line where the Shia and Sunni worlds meet runs right down the middle of the country. The Shia power base in Iran is to the east and north; the Sunni heartland of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Syria is to the west and south. If you succeed in provoking a war along that line, you may ignite a regionwide conflict.

Let me say a bit about the progress of the war. We’re at the point where the surge—30,000 extra U.S. troops—is about to come to an end. It is true that violence has gone down in the later stages of the surge. This is partly thanks to the efforts of these additional troops. It is partly thanks as well to these mysterious people you’ve been hearing about lately—the Sunni tribesmen. In Anbar Province, Fallujah, Ramadi—places that had been very “hot,” and at times almost unapproachable by the Americans —the United States now finds itself in association with these Sunni tribesmen, arming them, training them, putting them on its payroll. Where have these tribesmen come from? Well, they used to be called by a different name—insurgents.

The United States has essentially hired the insurgency.

While this is a good strategy to reduce death and destruction in the near term, it’s not such a good strategy for getting the United States out of Iraq. In fact, one could

The United States finds itself, not for the first time, in the position of arming both sides of a civil war—and following a policy that will require its endless presence rather than the departure that most Americans demand.

argue that it makes “reconciliation”—the transformation from politics conducted with guns to politics conducted with votes—nearly impossible. The federal government in Baghdad is controlled by religious Shia, and now most of those Sunni who oppose it, many of them former Ba’athists who worked under Saddam Hussein, have become American clients. And despite their American arms and weapons and money, they remain as opposed to the Shia government as the Shia government is opposed to them.

Iraq seems to be moving toward a kind of cold war in which both sides are heavily armed, each ready to kill the other; territory is being parsed out; and violence is slackening but only because of the intervening presence of the United States. Without the U.S. presence, one could expect a hot war to restart, partly because the United States has done such a good job of arming these factions. The United States finds itself, not for the first time, in the position of arming both sides of a civil war—and following a policy that will require its endless presence rather than the departure that most Americans demand.

Let’s move from Iraq itself to the war’s implications for the region. Here we must begin by doing what James Chace always cautioned one to do: look closely at the history. The short history of America’s relations with the Middle East begins in 1945, when President Franklin Roosevelt met with King Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia, father of the present king, aboard an American cruiser in Egypt’s Great Bitter Lake. Both

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leaders had prominently in mind two critical facts: after the war, the British would be withdrawing from “east of Suez”; and the postwar American economy would be gobbling up vast amounts of oil. Confronted with these facts, the two leaders forged a relationship built on strong interests: the Saudis would provide the West with as much oil as it needed—drawn from wells that would continue to be developed by American companies; and the United States in turn would assume responsibility for protecting the rich but weak kingdom, against all internal and external threats. For six decades, American policy in the Middle East has rested on this strategic alliance.

One might mention other events in this whirlwind tour through a complicated history. One could point to the covert CIA coup, in 1953, that unseated a popular Iranian prime minister, Mohammed Mossadegh, and returned the young shah, Reza Pahlevi, to power, earning his undying gratitude. One might mention the brilliant shuttle diplomacy of Henry Kissinger, which, after the 1973 Yom Kippur War, led Egypt’s Anwar Sadat to switch his fealty from the Soviet Union to the United States, making the United States the main supporter of both Saudi Arabia and Egypt, the latter to the tune of more than two billion dollars a year. One might mention the Nixon

The War on Terror became a broad, overarching ideological rationale for America’s mission in the world and an all-purpose justification for the use of American power. It was useful and, to a people that had witnessed the horrific attacks of that bright fall day, it seemed well-founded. And yet it has led not to wisdom but to overreaching self-delusion and catastrophic mistakes. It has taken us far, far from the dream of solvency.

Doctrine, which, in the American “retrenchment” after Vietnam, envisioned the shah as the critical American surrogate in the Middle East, responsible, among other things, for sending Iranian troops to defend the Saudi kingdom in the event of an internal revolt—a vote of trust that opened the American arms bazaar to the shah’s generals (including, one should mention, the supplies of American nuclear technology, for these were the years when Iran’s much-discussed nuclear program actually began).

Then came the late 70s, and everything changed. In 1978, Ayatollah Khomeini’s Islamic Revolution engulfed Iran, finally sweeping the shah, America’s closest ally, from power. In 1979, the Soviet Army invaded Afghanistan. Suddenly the threats to American interests in the Gulf were very great and American assets were very few.

President Carter declared his own doctrine, according to which the Middle East and its supply of oil were a “vital interest” of the United States and would be defended with force, if necessary.

You may remember the story from here. Khomeini began threatening Saddam Hussein’s rule in neighboring Iraq, demanding his overthrow by Iraq’s majority Shia population. Saddam, with typical ill-judged audacity, decided the time was right to send his army into an Iran convulsed by revolution and seize its oil-rich southern region. Some Carter administration officials were aware of these plans; some critics say they “green-lighted” them. In any event, the Iraqis discovered, to their sorrow,

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that the Iranian army was not in as much disarray as they had believed. The war dragged on for nearly a decade and left hundreds of thousands dead.

In this war, the United States strongly supported Saddam Hussein, floating the Iraqi economy with financial aid to the tune of several billion dollars, delivered as farm credits through the Department of Agriculture; supplying advanced weapons— transshipped through Egypt and Saudi Arabia—and critical satellite intelligence that allowed Iraqi artillerymen to direct their chemical munitions (later called “weapons of mass destruction”) most effectively at Iranian troop concentrations.

The eventual cease-fire would leave Saddam Hussein with an army of more than a million men and enormous debts to Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and his other neighbors.

Saddam believed these debts should be forgiven—had he not, after all, fought a war to contain Khomeini and his revolution, a war to protect his Sunni neighbors in the Gulf?

His neighbors, alas, wanted their money back. Saddam lined up his army on the border of Kuwait, in full view of American satellites. To Saddam’s inquiry, the then ambassador proclaimed her country’s lack of interest in inter-Arab disputes. Saddam invaded Kuwait on August 2, 1990. Within hours Iraqi tanks stood miles from the Saudi border.

Our present practices in foreign policy are about as far from James Chace’s view of a statesmanship of solvency—the bringing into balance, with a comfortable surplus of power in reserve, a nation’s commitments and a nation’s power—as one can possibly imagine.

President George H. W. Bush declared the invasion “would not stand” and began to muster American forces. And Osama bin Laden, who had been organizing his Arab “holy warriors” to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan, rushed back to Saudi Arabia, his homeland, and met with the king, urging him not to invite the Americans into the Holy Land. He, bin Laden, would organize his Arab warriors to face Saddam’s tanks.

The king was polite but noncommittal. The American forces arrived in the “Land of the Two Holy Places,” and bin Laden began to make his own plans—plans that would attract the full attention of Americans only a decade later, on that fateful day of September 11, 2001.

We come back now to the striking post–9/11 vow of President Bush—our current President Bush—to “rid the world of evil” and its consequences in the unbounded, unending War on Terror. I am reminded, when I consider those remarkable words and the policy response they foretold, of what James taught me—and taught his readers, in his magisterial Acheson biography, among other places—about the roots of the Truman Doctrine. President Truman was not alone in fearing that what he saw as the great mistakes made by U.S. statesmen in the wake of the First World War—with the United States removing its power from the European continent—would be repeated after the second. The immediate background was the prospect, in 1947, of the withdrawal of British forces from Greece and Turkey, whose governments were under

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threat from communist insurgencies. The British ambassador in Washington came to the State Department and told Dean Acheson that the British were withdrawing and that the Americans must replace them, lest those friendly governments fall. Truman was faced with the same task Woodrow Wilson had before him three decades earlier: to convince the American people that they had to support a permanent, enduring role for their country in the affairs of “Old Europe.” Senator Arthur Vandenberg, the powerful Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, offered Truman some simple advice: “Mr. President, you have to scare hell out of the American people.”

Truman duly went before Congress and uttered a speech that’s now known as the Truman Doctrine. Its most famous line—called at the time its “credo” (the religious tone of that is not an accident)—was blunt and sweeping: “I believe it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.” These words—the most famous Truman ever spoke—have become such an established part of our history that one is prone to forget that, at the time, they were deeply controversial. James’s hero, the highly influential columnist Walter Lippmann, strongly criticized the speech, deriding it as “a vague global policy that sounds like the tocsin of an ideological crusade that has no limits. . . . Its effects cannot be predicted.”

Lippmann’s criticisms—and those of George Kennan and many other prominent thinkers—were well-taken; for the speech’s commitments were sweeping and vague.

Together, those words set out the frame of an ideologically fueled foreign policy that tended to expand and blur American commitments rather than tie them securely to clearly defined interests. And in the domestic political arena they became a kind of trap, leaving American statesmen vulnerable to political attacks because of their supposed failure to “stand up to the Communists” and “fight for freedom.” The terms set out so boldly in the Truman Doctrine became a kind of ideological canopy over American foreign policy, sheltering its most subtle decisions under a political shadow not of the statesmen’s choosing. As Lyndon Johnson, agonizing over sending more troops to South Vietnam to prevent its “falling to the Communists,” remarked to a powerful senator, “They’d impeach a president who ran out of there, wouldn’t they?”

After a post–Cold War decade of sunshine, we find ourselves living under a similar ideological canopy today, one hurriedly constructed in the days immediately following 9/11. The War on Terror was conceived as the new Cold War, with terrorists standing in for the Communists of old. The War on Terror became a broad, overarching ideological rationale for America’s mission in the world and an all-purpose justification for the use of American power. It was useful and, to a people that had witnessed the horrific attacks of that bright fall day, it seemed well-founded. And yet it has led not to wisdom but to overreaching self-delusion and catastrophic mistakes.

It has taken us far, far from the dream of solvency.

As the difficulties in Iraq have grown more obvious, and as the years have passed without the capture of bin Laden or any other dramatic results in the War on Terror, the administration’s rhetoric has grown more ideologically extreme. “For a half a century, America defended our own freedom by standing watch on distant borders,” said President Bush in his second inaugural address, in January 2005. “After the shipwreck of communism came years of relative quiet, years of repose, years of sabbatical.” That would be the Clinton administration. “And then there came a day of fire.”

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He goes on: “ . . . There is only one force of history that can break the reign of hatred and resentment, and expose the pretensions of tyrants, and reward the hopes of the decent and tolerant, and that is the force of human freedom. . . . So it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.”

The echo of Truman’s famous words rings clearly; indeed, it is meant to be unmistakable. And yet we have come far from the Truman Doctrine, which was declared in response to what was, after all, the challenge of a geopolitical competitor of great power and ambition. In their sweeping grandeur and ambition, Bush’s crusading words are far from the ideas of America’s founders and far from those of its statesmen of the 19th and early 20th centuries. And our present practices in foreign policy are about as far from James Chace’s view of a statesmanship of solvency—the bringing into balance, with a comfortable surplus of power in reserve, a nation’s commitments and a nation’s power—as one can possibly imagine.

One might cite a few basic statistics. As I stand here tonight, the combined annual defense budget of the United States, including the budget for the Iraq and Afghan wars, is nearly $700 billion—a full 25 percent more than the defense budget in 1968, at the height of the Cold War, when the United States had almost half a million troops deployed and fighting in Vietnam. Meantime, in our balance of payments—which James worried about already in 1981, when America had just gone into the red— Americans are buying close to a trillion dollars more in products every year than they are producing, a degree of radical insolvency that dramatically contradicts any notion of balancing resources and commitments.

Beyond these numbers, however, lies a much broader flight from solvency: an ideological project that is vast, sweeping, never-ending; that has brought in its wake ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which together drain the U.S. Treasury of more than $10 billion a month; and that has pointed the Bush administration squarely toward a new and, to some, welcome confrontation with the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The country is weary of war, of course, and its military is overstretched. But the administration’s ideological ambitions, the political interests of the Republican Party, and the geostrategic implications of the irresolvable Iraq War together lead inexorably in the direction of more war—indeed, of “endless war.” This is a policy that, in its lack of proportion and pragmatism, James Chace deplored. But it is not one that, in his wisdom and farsightedness and humanity, he failed to predict.

Mark Danner, B.A., Harvard College, is a frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books and the New York Times Magazine, in which his memorial essay on James Chace appeared in December 2004. A longtime staff writer for the New Yorker and a 1999 recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship, Danner has authored books on Haiti, El Salvador, the Balkans, and, most recently, Iraq and Abu Ghraib. He also teaches journalism at the University of California at Berkeley.

Mark Danner

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the writer as provocateur fiction that reflects political realities The writer’s role as provocateur, the energy begat by survival, and the fascination with the enemy were just a few of the topics discussed in a wide-ranging conversation last November between Norman Manea and Michal Govrin, Israeli poet, novelist, and theater director and teacher. In a forum sponsored by the Human Rights Project and the Jewish Studies Program at Bard, Manea (who is Francis Flournoy Professor in European Studies and Culture and writer in residence at Bard) and Govrin used her novel Snapshots as a springboard for discussion on the current state of IsraeliPalestinian relations—political and personal.

Snapshots, first published in Hebrew in 2002, came out in English last year from Riverhead Books. The novel, which Govrin wrote off and on between 1993 and 2002, explicates Israel’s contemporary political situation through the lens of a character whose fictional life echoes that of her homeland. Snapshots opens with the death in an automobile accident of Ilana Tsuriel, a well-known Israeli architect. Her estranged husband, a renowned Holocaust scholar, asks a friend to sort through his wife’s papers. The letters, diaries, drawings, and photos that are part of the novel provide glimpses into the brash, beautiful architect’s tumultuous and abbreviated life: drawings of buildings that made her famous—and controversial; photographs of her children; letters to and from her famous father, one of the pioneers of Israel; and diaries that chronicle her marriage and also a long-term extramarital affair with Said, a Palestinian theater director.

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Govrin’s writing of Snapshots began in a conversation with Jacques Derrida (1930–2004) and continued in a close working relationship with the French philosopher and deconstructionist. An epigraph that begins the novel is from a work by Derrida, one that Govrin had translated into Hebrew. Part of it reads as follows: [The hedgehog] blinds itself. Rolled up in a ball, prickly with spines, vulnerable and dangerous, calculating and ill-adapted (because it rolls itself up into a ball, sensing the danger on the highway, it exposes itself to the accident).

“The first time I read this text,” said Govrin, “it was very clear what it meant for me . . . the [hedgehog] . . . with all his spines up on the road waiting for the accident was the Jew, and even more so the State of Israel—this military place . . . like a machine of war, yet totally vulnerable.”

Govrin, who earned a Ph.D. from the University of Paris, described herself as inhabited by the “modernist disease” of wanting the form and content of a written work to reflect each other. As a result, she had devised a different form for each of her two novels. The Name, “an extremely personal book,” she said, took the form of prayer. After that book she felt that she had to “face the world,” and she began Snapshots, the story of a contemporary woman with lives in Jerusalem, Paris, and New York, which is built from fragments and illustrations. The “temporary” nature of such work reflects the idea of Ilana as an “anti-monument,” Govrin suggested, something not solid but rather “breaking through or deconstructing, if you want, that image . . . of the [hedgehog].”

As Ilana’s architecture is controversial, so Govrin’s goal in writing is always in part to provoke, she said: “To provoke, and not leave any clichés taken for granted, and to go beyond the politically correct, which I feel is as boring and rigid as any other thing.”

In another sense of the word provocation, she said, “I think there is something extremely erotic in the energy of survival of the Jewish people . . . [an] excessive energy of power” that provokes others into jealousy and hatred. But without that energy, how can one even imagine the possibility of survival, she asked, describing Israelis as caught in a double bind “between this excess of crazy energy that can be caricaturized and laughed at—can be seen as greedy capitalist or extreme communist” — and what is necessary for survival.

As for Ilana’s affair with Said, the Palestinian, which alone might provoke Jewish readers, Govrin said that she had tried to create “an affair of fascination more than a romance. Fascination is a dangerous feeling,” she added, “and I remind you that fascination, a mutual fascination, was the relationship between the Germans and the Jews. [There] is a fascination also between enemies.”

In a book on politics, the writer has to sell an ideology, said Govrin. In contrast, a book of fiction can convey a much more complex place, one in which characters live simultaneously in different realities. Enemies can share, in addition to fascination, a desire for the same place, a love of the same landscapes. A novel, said Govrin, can address “the provocation of the Jews,” who arrived in Israel suddenly, in a unique way, outside the usual channels of history, “claiming their place from the world and at the same time being threatened constantly” for that place. The result is another constant double bind for the Jewish people, she said: “If we lose the fragility of hope and dream, we lose everything. To become the warrior, the Arab hater, the paranoid militant— you kill yourself as well.”

—Debby Mayer

Snapshots opens with the death in an automobile accident of Ilana Tsuriel, a well-known Israeli architect. Her estranged husband, a renowned Holocaust scholar, asks a friend to sort through his wife’s papers.

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The Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) pictured here is one of the massive particle detectors that make up CERN’s Large Hadron Collider. Nearly 70 feet long and 50 feet tall, it is expected to sample and record up to 600 million high-energy proton collisions per second.

SCIENCE ON THE EDGE: GETTING TO THE HEART OF MATTER A Talk by Matthew Deady

A multinational community of physicists is hoping for nothing less than answers to the last remaining mysteries of the early universe when they flip the switch on the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator this summer.

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), 27 kilometers in circumference and more than 13 years in the making, is located at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), a facility that straddles the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva. Scientists there will use the LHC, which has been called the “Hubble Telescope of Inner Space,” to smash subatomic particles together with enough energy to recreate conditions at the time the universe formed, and to do it repeatedly, so that they can better understand the creation of matter and the fundamental forces that hold it together. In the process, they will push the limits of data storage and other equipment, which could lead to spin-off technologies that will enhance our everyday life. Past research at CERN has resulted in the World Wide Web and PET scans; the LHC could lead to improvements in search engines, optical computing, and maglev (magnetically levitating) train technology.

Matthew Deady, a professor of physics at Bard who has worked at various particle accelerators in the United States and Europe, discussed the promise of the LHC during the inaugural lecture of Bard’s Science on the Edge series. Created to address significant science stories as, or before, they happen, the standing-room-only lectures have also explored new theories regarding “junk” DNA, a label for the 80–90 percent of the human genome that seems to serve no present purpose; a recent solution to the game of checkers that used artificial intelligence; and a potentially effective vaccine for malaria, which remains the world’s most deadly infectious disease.

Following is an edited summary of Deady’s remarks.

Photograph (right): The New York Times

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With the LHC, which will take protons going in one direction and smash them into antiprotons going in the other direction— matter-antimatter collisions, just like on Star Trek—we can begin to get high enough energies to look for unification.

The idea behind particle accelerators goes back about a hundred years. In the early 1900s, Ernest Rutherford conducted experiments on the inner structure of the atom, using radioactive sources to shoot alpha particles toward [a thin sheet of gold foil] and then counting the particles as they came in. Actually, his graduate students did this, including one named Hans Geiger, who got tired of looking for little flashes of light on a screen and invented the Geiger counter. What they found was that most of the alpha particles flew straight through but that others scattered at different angles, including some that scattered back toward the source. Rutherford said of the results: “It was almost as incredible as if you fired a 15-inch shell at a pile of tissue paper, and it came flying back and hit you.” That is actually a wonderful analogy. If you shoot something at a sheet of tissue, it’s going to pass through. If you pack the paper into a tight little ball, then it’s usually going to go flying past, but if it hits, it could fly back at you.

What Rutherford discovered was that most of the mass of the atom was concentrated in a very small ball in the center, the nucleus. To get at that, you have to penetrate further. And to get at the protons and neutrons within the nucleus, you have to shoot your energy bullets even harder. So the size of accelerators like the LHC isn’t just because physicists like big toys; it’s that you have to build bigger and bigger machines to get to the smallest subatomic levels.

The unit of energy used in particle physics is the electron volt, or eV. If you have a 9-volt battery, and you use that to make an electron go faster, it would gain 9 eVs. Particle accelerators string together a lot of batteries to get the energies up to a very high rate. To get to the nucleus, you need about a million electron volts [MeV]. To get to a proton, you need 50 to 100 MeVs. And if you want to get inside the proton to the quark, you need about 1,000 MeV, which we call a GeV, for gigaelectron volts. The LHC is supposed to get up to 14 trillion electron volts [TeV]—seven times the energy capability of the largest U.S. accelerator, Fermilab [in Batavia, Illinois].

What do we hope to find with that capability? First of all, physics is about simplifying things. We’ve taken everything that happens in the world and boiled it down to four forces. Gravity and electromagnetism—the lights, the current—you’re familiar with.

Then there is the strong nuclear force, the force that holds the nucleus together [without it, the positively charged protons would fly apart, as like charges repel], and the weak nuclear force, which is responsible for radioactive decay and anything that violates the rules of the other forces. One goal for the work at CERN is to bring all four forces together in a unified theory.

We first understood that there was a connection between electricity and magnetism in the early 19th century. In the 1970s, a trio of physicists won the Nobel Prize for combining electromagnetism and the weak nuclear force into a unified force they called the electroweak force. Today, we’re pretty sure we know how to bring in the strong nuclear force. With the LHC, which will take protons going in one direction and smash them into antiprotons going in the other direction—matter-antimatter collisions, just like on Star Trek—we can begin to get high enough energies to look for unification. What exactly do I mean by a unified force? Well, the only thing that prevents us from seeing

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that electricity and magnetism are the same force is the fact that we don’t move at the speed of light. But if we get particles to move at the speed of light, you can actually see that the forces are modified versions of the same thing.

It also turns out that everything around us is made up of only a few fundamental bits.

The development of accelerators led to the discovery of about 150 particles, but nobody could make rhyme or reason out of them until the late 1960s, when Murray Gell-Mann figured out how to apply group representation theory [a mathematical structure] to them. He determined that the particles were combinations of something more fundamental and fell into just two groups: quarks and leptons. He stole the word quark from James Joyce. Lepton is a word left over from when particles were first discovered and comes from the Greek word for light. The names may be silly, but the system worked well. Today, after subsequent discoveries, we recognize 12 particles— actually 24, because every particle has its antiparticle equivalent; that is, there is something just like the electron, except it has the opposite charge.

So we think we know that all these particles are due to a few fundamental pieces and we think we know what’s going on with the forces. One gap in scientific understanding is the question of mass. In pure mathematical group theory, the particles should be massless. The fact that they have mass means a piece is missing from the puzzle. In the mid-1960s, Scottish physicist Peter Higgs theorized that, since every interaction we know of is the result of the exchange of particles with some underlying field, there might be a field that corresponds to inertia—the property of matter by which something is hard to get moving or hard to stop moving. In other words, if I ran out of this room, it would take me X amount of time. But if the room is full of people and I have to fight my way through them, shaking hands and interacting, it’s going to slow me down. The LHC is expected to get up to the energy required to see the particle that corresponds to the exchange of any particle’s interaction with the inertia, or Higgs, field [this has been called the Higgs boson, or God particle].

Also, by going to very high energies at the LHC, we hope to uncover some of the fundamental questions of cosmology, in particular, the nature of dark matter and dark energy. By looking at how fast galaxies are spinning around their centers, we know how much mass is in the galaxy, just as we can tell the mass of the sun by how long it takes the Earth to go around it. So people know how much energy and mass there are in a galaxy, but when they add up all the stars they see, they’re off by about a factor of 10. So 90 percent of the energy, the mass in the universe, is something we can’t see. Is it regular matter that is too cold to be seen? Is it some new kind of particle?

Matthew Deady

Finally, we know the universe is expanding and that there is subsequently something pushing matter away—some antigravity that’s at work on a very large scale. We have some hints about how to look for this dark matter and dark energy, and there are hopes that more clues will result as the LHC creates little explosions that are so dense, so hot, and so concentrated that they resemble what the universe looked like in the first 10-43 seconds. Maybe then we’ll understand how things degenerated into the different forces we have now.

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ONE HUNDRED FORTY-EIGHTH

COMMENCEMENT Attendees at the College’s 148th Commencement saw 339 undergraduates and 137 graduate students receive their degrees on a breezy May afternoon. In his address, Congressman Charles B. Rangel challenged the new graduates to use “your courage and your talents” to take on the significant problems that they face as citizens: “You’ll be able to say, with so much pride, that it’s your class that made the changes, your class that made the differences. It will be on your terms that we will see our nation stop depending on fossil fuel. It will be your ingeniousness that will harness the powers of the wind, the sun, the oceans.”

Honorary degrees were awarded to Rangel; to the dancer and choreographer Merce Cunningham; Margaret H. Marshall, chief justice of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, who is best known for leading the first court in the United States to hold that same-sex marriage is a constitutionally protected right; Eric S. Maskin, a recipient of the 2007 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences; Marjorie Perloff, literary critic, teacher, essayist, and comparatist; and Ajai Singh “Sonny” Mehta, the legendary Knopf chairman and editor-in-chief who is known in the industry as “that rarest of birds: a publisher who genuinely loves to read.”

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COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS

By Congressman Charles B. Rangel First, let me thank Walter Swett, of the Class of ’96, for making it possible for me to be here on this occasion, at this historic college. I want to thank the clergy, the trustees, and the professors who have groomed you to make you ready for this wonderful day.

And, of course, your parents and friends—some of whom probably thought it never would happen—but I know that they are excited on this wonderful occasion.

I really think that this class is going to be historic in nature, and I’ll tell you why.

But, before I get into that, I hope you will turn to your fellow graduates and say to them, “You ain’t seen the last of me yet.” The reason I say that is because there’s no question in my mind that, as you leave this great institution, you are going to be embarking on a historic journey, one that this nation has never seen. And we’re going to need you—your courage and your talents—to make certain that our great country can once again be all that she can be and more.

When I think of the great occasions in my life, they did not seem historic at the time—seeing off my late brother in 1941 to fight the great war, joining the military in 1948, being shot and left for dead in Korea in 1950, finishing school and going off into the civil rights movement. When I marched with Dr. Martin Luther King from Selma to Montgomery, I cursed every step of the 54 miles; I had no clue as to how I got caught up in that. What I did not know then was the greatness of Dr. King, how he would later be regarded as the spirit of the movement; or that, as a result of that march, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 would be enacted; or how, as a result of that, it was possible for me to become a candidate, to go into Congress and be one of the founders of the Congressional Black Caucus, which had only 13 members at the time. Now we have 43 members, including one who aspires to become the president of these great United States.

None of these events in my younger life appeared really to be historic. But, at 78, as I review where I’ve been, what I participated in, it becomes abundantly clear how many shoulders I stood on to be able to have the honor of addressing you today. And 36

in the world that you’re going out into, you will be the leaders in making certain that never again in your lifetime will you allow this great country to enter into a war that is so unjust, so immoral, or to allow a Congress to allow a president to do that.

Soon you’ll be able to tell your children and your grandchildren that one of the very first things that you wanted to do is to get this great country back on track. To make certain that war is to be a defensive mechanism, not something simply to show the power of a great country. You will be able to say, with so much pride, the dignity that you brought to our country abroad, where foreigners will say that it’s your class that made the changes, your class that made the differences, your class that restored all of the wonderful things that this democracy had been so proud of in the past. It will be on your terms that we will see our nation stop depending on fossil fuel. It will be your ingeniousness that will harness the powers of the wind, the sun, the oceans.

It will be your genius to be able to say just how slow our country had been until the Class of ’08 came along and put us on the right path.

At the end of the day, you will be able to say that things are very different from when you graduated, when 40 million Americans went to work every day and still couldn’t afford to have health care. So many diseases that could have been prevented were not because of lack of preventive care.

Even in terms of international trade, our work force was not as successful as it could have been because health care was not universal. I can just hear you exaggerating your contributions now and saying, “It was our class that changed all of that.”

And with the exchanges that you’ve had in getting to know each other and in getting to know what potential America has, you are not going to tolerate two million people locked up in jail when they could be out there working. And how very proud I am of your college—not just to be concerned about you, but to be concerned about the lesser of our brothers and sisters, those who have no hopes and no dreams, those who are incarcerated, or those who really need more than anyone the tools to negotiate through their lives. And when we see the failure of our public school system, where half the kids are in the street without jobs, without hope, we know that it’s not only just the right thing to do, but it’s in our national interest to have the strongest, most educated, and healthiest workforce. I can hear it now: “There goes the Class of ’08, the ones that changed it around.”

And that’s the way it should be, because we have so many things that we have to accomplish. And just as we’re talking about the immorality of what we’re doing in Iraq today, and in Vietnam before, we will be able to say, as Leon pointed out, that progress has been made. But in the last few years we have taken one gigantic step backward, and it’s up to us as Americans to make certain that we change this on our watch, that we have the mutual respect of all people regardless of their color or religion, and that there is no glass ceiling for women or black folks or brown people in this country, because what makes us so great are the contributions that are made by so many people from so many different parts of the world.

And so it is with deep pride that I will be going home and telling my kids and my grandkids that I was able to talk to Bard College’s Class of 2008. And I’ll tell them, “If you think that you guys are doing something, you wait till they hit the ground.” God bless each and every one of you. I’m so proud of what you’re going to do.

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CHARGE TO THE CLASS OF 2008

By Leon Botstein The president’s charge represents the last institutional occasion for giving advice, both practical and philosophical. Since what is said on such occasions is forgettable, if not predictable, particularly on the philosophical side, it is best to smuggle in some pithy, practical tips for life. I have only one. When you read the newspaper each day, whether online or in its smudging newsprint form, always read the obituaries first.

The obituary section is usually the most truthful and reliable part of the paper. It goes downhill from there. An obituary can be an inspiration. At the beginning of each day we can get a quick, welcome reminder of how lucky we are to be alive, how much we might still do, what things we might aspire to, and what to avoid if we wish to have our reputations intact for posterity.

About a month ago, my eye caught a lengthy obituary, with a photograph, of one Abe Osheroff in the New York Times. He died in his early 90s on the West Coast. I doubt if anyone in this vast crowd has ever heard of him. I certainly hadn’t. Mr. Osheroff grew up on the Lower East Side, went to City College in the early 1930s, and joined the Communist Party. His claim to fame was that he was a veteran of the Lincoln Brigade and fought on behalf of the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War. Despite the defeat of the Republic, Mr. Osheroff, like most Lincoln Brigade veterans, remained fiercely idealistic and committed to progressive causes. Mr. Osheroff made a documentary on the Spanish Civil War. He was a carpenter and a kind of professional gadfly, protesting and speaking out against all sorts of injustice and causes, including the war in Vietnam and the war in Iraq. He became a legend in the Pacific Northwest, an embodiment, if not a caricature, of the left-wing Jewish liberal activist, born of working-class parents, armed with convictions forged in the competitive and inspiring crucible of City College in the era of the Great Depression.

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Mr. Osheroff, like many of his fellow fighters on behalf of Republican Spain, believed that if only the democracies of the world had not been so cowardly, and had actually risen to the defense of the Republican government, Franco would have been defeated and, in turn, Hitler and Mussolini. The carnage and catastrophe of the Second World War would have been prevented. But as Mr. Osheroff got older, he realized that the outcome of his generation’s last “great cause”—its failure—was less important than the experience itself. What one does, he concluded, ought not to be measured by the result—the success or failure—but by the principles that guide one’s behavior. The obituary concluded with this observation from Mr. Osheroff: “If you need a victory, you aren’t a fighter, you’re an opportunist.”

I wish to commend Abe Osheroff’s insight to the Class of 2008. As you go forward to choose what you do and how you do it, whether in the private sphere or public arena, if you first calculate the odds for success and failure and avoid risk, you will not only show cowardice but cheat yourself. Be fighters. Resist the temptation to shrink from the odds. It is, finally, those who challenge the conventional wisdom of probabilities who change the calculus of reality and contribute something new to the world around them.

Given the legacy of the past eight dark and disappointing years of the Bush administration, finding just causes will, tragically, not be difficult. But there are four great causes that compel us. First, we must fight on behalf of liberty. That is an old-fashioned word, carrying echoes from the 18th century. But in today’s context it means that we must preserve our civil liberties, the due process of law, and the rule of law for all. These principles have been violated by the conduct of our federal government. Liberty further demands that the character of our country remain open with respect to immigrants and foreign visitors.

Second, we need a fight on behalf of excellence. It is startling that, in the context of a seemingly endless campaign for the presidency, the one aspect of American culture and society most in need of improvement and investment—education—has been greeted by a deafening silence on the part of all candidates.

Nothing in the infrastructure of the United States is more dangerous to the well-being and future of the country than the crumbling public school system, the low rates of high school graduation, the uncompetitive standards reflected by standardized curriculum and tests, the neglect of our public universities, and the selfishness and insularity of our wealthiest private universities and schools. We have permitted our research institutions in science and technology to lose their competitive edge. The strength of our economy and the quality of our daily lives are dependent on the intellectual capital we nurture. If there is cause for worry about the decline of America, that cause is the inattention and complacency with which we treat education in this nation.

The third cause worth fighting for is justice. It is the access to justice that requires our greatest attention, not so much its definition. By justice I mean social as well as legal justice. Justice requires that we lessen the widening gap between the rich and the poor here and abroad, that we work for the prevention of disease and the extension of proper medical care to all citizens, not only in this country but throughout the world.

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Fourth, we need to fight to preserve our environment so that we may survive as a species. Collectively and individually, we need to address climate change, the demand for energy, boldly and not incrementally, in a manner that links this nation with the rest of the world.

To fight for these four causes in your life requires that you give up any prior assurance of victory. But you have the tools to fight. Not in recent memory has a graduating class received its diplomas in as decisive a moment in history. Although our attention is focused on the forthcoming election for president, this country needs more than a new occupant of the White House.

No progress will be made on any of the crucial challenges that face us—from foreign policy to the environment, immigration, and civil liberties—if we do not have an active and informed citizenry. We tolerate levels of ignorance and mediocrity that are incompatible with a free and open society. How can we make cogent decisions through the ballot box on stem cell research, cloning, biodiversity, global warming, the prevention of disease, energy policy, the provision of food, and economic development— or more vividly, our policies in the Middle East, Asia, and Africa—when we blithely as a citizenry are unaware of the basic facts, incapable of understanding the issues in their complexity, resistant to reasoned challenges to firm but dubious beliefs, entirely content to accept clichés and sound bites, and susceptible to manipulation at the hands of ever more powerful instruments of mass communication?

There has probably never been a moment in history when the proper education of a few, the kind of education you have received here, has been invested with more potential power and importance in the public arena. You represent an elite, a cadre of potential leadership blessed with the tools that our democracy desperately needs: the capacity to distinguish truth from fiction, to differentiate claims, to analyze arguments, to negotiate complexity, and above all to tolerate dissent with civility. Bard shows, through your accomplishments, that a serious education can be provided in our society. You bear witness to the unique power of learning in the 21st century and the indispensable link between learning and liberty.

In the months ahead, set a pattern for the rest of your lives.

Do more than support a candidate for president. Do not rely on any public office or single individual—whether monarch, prime minister, or president—for leadership. Become leaders in your own right beyond the boundaries of your vocations. As informed and engaged citizens, use the power of your education in the service of the public good at all levels on behalf of the rights and freedoms we possess. Do this not for our private comforts but for the benefit of humankind.

May the educated exercise of your civic virtue and your civic duty make us proud of you as alumni/ae of this college. So my charge to you, Class of 2008, is to remember Abe Osheroff. Be fighters, not opportunists.

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Merce Cunningham, Doctor of Fine Arts

Margaret H. Marshall, Doctor of Laws

Marjorie Perloff, Doctor of Letters

Ajai Singh “Sonny� Mehta, Doctor of Letters

Eric S. Maskin, Doctor of Humane Letters

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THE PRESIDENT’S DINNER Success achieved with no loss of idealism was the underlying theme of the 2008 President’s Dinner, as alumni/ae, faculty, and friends in education, medicine, the arts, and public law were honored with Bard awards.

Lorelle Marcus Phillips ’57, visual artist, former Head Teacher at Sarah Lawrence College Early Childhood Center, and one of six family graduates of Bard across three generations, received the Bard Medal. She was praised for collapsing “the artificial social distinctions we wedge between the intimate and institutional, the private and public, for family is her business.”

Joel H. Fields ’53, M.D., was honored with the John and Samuel Bard Award in Medicine and Science for a distinguished career as a practicing psychiatrist, teacher, and scientist—a lifetime of work that “exemplifies the very best of the psychiatric profession, as it represents a synthesis of a concern for rigorous scientific thinking with the humanistic care of severely ill patients.”

Elizabeth Prince ’83, an award-winning costume designer, returned to Bard for her 25th reunion and accepted the Charles Flint Kellogg Award in Arts and Letters. Prince was praised as a “practical dreamer who has carved a place for herself in the fiercely competitive theatrical field without compromising her ideals. Designer, collaborator, teacher, she is an inspiration to her fellow dreamers.”

Hannah “Kit” Kauders Ellenbogen ’52, one of five family Bardians, was honored with the John Dewey Award for Distinguished Public Service for her important work as staff attorney for the Association for Children of New Jersey, and for “her dedication to the humanitarian aims of education and her consistent support of the College.”

Joyce Carol Oates, whose writing has “investigated the most spiritually traumatic and socially harrowing subjects of our time,” received the Mary McCarthy Award, which is given in recognition of engagement in the public sphere by an intellectual, artist, or writer.

Richard A. Gordon, professor of psychology and practicing psychologist and jazz pianist, received the Bardian Award, which honors the service of longtime members of the Bard community. Gordon was celebrated for his 35 years at Bard, “during which his creativity, intellectual curiosity, and learning have benefited his students and colleagues alike.”

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Joyce Carol Oates, Mary McCarthy Award

Lorelle Marcus Phillips ’57, Bard Medal

Elizabeth Prince ’83, Charles Flint Kellogg Award in Arts and Letters

Richard A. Gordon, Bardian Award

Hannah “Kit” Kauders Ellenbogen ’52, John Dewey Award for Distinguished Public Service

Joel H. Fields ’53, M.D., John and Samuel Bard Award in Medicine and Science

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Bard–St. Stephen’s Alumni/ae Association

Reminiscing under Spring Skies Alumni/ae and their families and friends gathered at Commencement and Alumni/ae Weekend events and at reunions all over campus to catch up on each other’s lives and talk and laugh about old times.

Popular among alumni/ae who hadn't been to Annandale recently were tours of The Gabrielle H. Reem and Herbert J. Kayden Center for Science and Computation and the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts, and a bus tour to see those buildings as well as the new residence halls. Children enjoyed running across the campus’s broad lawns, and everyone took great pleasure in the lovely spring weather.

B OOK S B Y B A R D I A N S

Anatomy for Artists: A New Approach to Discovering, Learning and Remembering the Body

by Anthony Apesos MFA ’92 north light books Unlike most other studies of anatomy, this meticulously illustrated book explains human physical structure by having the reader locate and understand the part in question on his/her own body. By clarifying the evolution and function of each body part, from sternum to instep, Anthony Apesos believes that the artist, dancer, or athlete can better appreciate why and how the parts of the body make sense. Apesos is an artist and a professor at the Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University.

Postfrontier Blues: Toward a New Policy Framework for Northeast India

by Sanjib Baruah east-west center washington Conflict in India’s northeastern border region has been long-lived, but is little known in the West. Insurgencies and counterinsurgencies stem from clashes between various ethnic groups, some of which are more favored than others in India’s distribution of development funding. Sanjib Baruah, professor of political studies, suggests that a “transnational” policy and strong political leadership could create the seeds of regional cooperation.

Jersey Boys: The Story of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons

by David Cote ’92 broadway books This large-scale map to the world of Jersey Boys, the 2006 Tony Award® winner for best musical, contains everything a Four Seasons fan could want: the show’s complete libretto, new interviews with the original band members and cast, and personal band photos and other memorabilia. The book also highlights other pop-music greats from New Jersey. David Cote is theater editor and drama critic for Time Out New York.

Farewell, Shanghai

by Angel Wagenstein, translated by Elizabeth Frank and Deliana Simeonova handsel books World War II is the setting and orchestral music the leitmotif of this novel by prizewinning Bulgarian author Angel Wagenstein. He chronicles the intertwining lives of four European exiles in Shanghai, one of the only wartime refuges: Hilde, a Jewish beauty whom filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl chooses as the picture of Aryan womanhood; her shady sometime companion, Vladek; and famed musicians Theodore and Elisabeth Weissberg. Cotranslator Elizabeth Frank, who has won a Pulitzer Prize, is Joseph E. Harry Professor of Modern Languages and Literature.

Why I’d Rather Date My Dog: Musings for Savvy Singles

by Nancy Furstinger ’78 bowtie press When Nancy Furstinger told friends her reasons for preferring canine companionship to dating, the idea took hold, she says, among those in the “dog-eat-dog dating scene.”

Furstinger seeks to provide a respite from the stresses of dating with “tongue-in-jowl” aphorisms (“Dogs never need to examine the relationship”) and serious advice about dating and dog adoption. Furstinger lives in New York’s Hudson Valley.

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Money Jungle: Imagining the New Times Square

by Benjamin Chesluk, photographs by Maggie Hopp ’67 rutgers university press Behind the redevelopment of New York City’s Times Square lie stories of transformation in which cultural anthropologist Benjamin Chesluk revels, from streetwalkers to the Art Project, seedy movie theaters to Disney glitz. Maggie Hopp’s photographs vividly document the upheaval of Times Square amid the flow of pedestrians, traffic, and changing cinema marquees. Hopp is secretary of the Bard–St. Stephen’s Alumni/ae Association Board of Governors.

Burning Daylight

by Stephen Kessler ’68 littoral press In his eighth collection of poetry, Stephen Kessler continues to explore what it means to be literate, passionate, politically engaged, joyfully skeptical, and attentive to the minute particulars of life in the United States, post–9/11. A translator of critically lauded English-language versions of works by Luis Cernuda, Pablo Neruda, and other Spanish and South American poets, Kessler lives in California and edits The Redwood Coast Review, a quarterly literary newspaper.

Judaism in Contemporary Context

by Jacob Neusner vallentine mitchell For half a century, Jacob Neusner has been writing about the “enduring issues and chronic crises,” as he calls them, of modern-day Judaism. This collection of essays, selected from his writings of the past 45 years, considers, among many other issues, how the Holocaust and the establishment of the state of Israel affected the world’s Jews; what constitutes Jewishness; and how, as a teacher, Neusner reacted to his audiences, from Germany to Minnesota. Neusner is Distinguished Service Professor in the History and Theology of Judaism.

Day Ocean State of Stars’ Night: Poems & Writings, 1989 & 1999–2006

by Leslie Scalapino green integer This compilation of eight years of Leslie Scalapino’s postmodernist writing includes “‘Can’t’ is ‘Night,’” a piece that Scalapino performed with dancers and improvisational musicians; “The Tango,” an examination of mental phenomena; and words set to photographs. Her varied stanzas, ranging from one-word lines to paragraphs, depict separations and connections of space and time. Scalapino is on the writing faculty of the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts and lives in Oakland.

La Terreur à l’oeuvre: Théorie, poétique et éthique chez Jean Paulhan

by Eric Trudel presses universitaires de vincennes According to Jean Paulhan, legendary director of the Nouvelle Revue Française (1925–40 and 1946–68), “terror” in literature is a kind of hatred of language, an aversion that leads inevitably to silence and madness. To combat it, Paulhan looks for shared meaning, but in this book, Eric Trudel seeks out the places where terror might lurk in the very fabric of Paulhan’s own work. Trudel is assistant professor of French.

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ONANDOFFCAMPUS

Bard Celebrates Achebe Milestone 2008 marks the 50th anniversary of Things Fall Apart, the critically influential first novel by Nigerian writer and educator Chinua Achebe, Charles P. Stevenson Jr. Professor of Languages and Literature at Bard since 1990. The College honored the occasion with a series of literary events throughout the Hudson Valley, including “Revisiting Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart: A 50thYear Retrospective,” a panel discussion at the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts.

Music of Our Times Bard High School Early College (BHSEC) received a $100,000 grant from the New York State Music Fund to support a series of weeklong teaching residencies with leading contemporary musicians. Fully engaged in the life of the school, the artists in residence worked with BHSEC music classes, ensembles, and selected humanities and science classes. They led master classes, gave lectures, performed with students, and taught new approaches to music. Each residency also included a public concert.

Todd Reynolds, composer, conductor, arranger, and violinist, held two workshops, “Color and Sound” (with painting students) and “Technology in Music Performance and Production.” He also worked with BHSEC guitar and drumming classes, and gave numerous performances, including “Still Life with Mic” with video artist R. Luke DuBois.

Andrew Sterman, saxophonist, clarinetist, flutist, and composer, gave two lectures, “Music in Literature” and “Physics and Music,” and performed with pianist Mick Rossi.

Kenny Werner, jazz pianist, Grammy-nominated composer, recording artist, and author, conducted classes with BHSEC pianists, drummers, chamber ensemble, and rock ensemble. He spoke on creativity, technique, and world music.

The Argento New Music Project worked with Year II seminars, examining postmodernism, experimental music of the

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In the half century since its publication, Things Fall Apart has sold more than 12 million copies; appeared on many lists of the 100 greatest novels, including critic Harold Bloom’s selection of the canonical works of world literature; and been translated into 50 languages. Novelist Nadine Gordimer, a member of the judging panel that awarded Achebe the 2007 Man Booker International Prize, called his fiction “a joy and an illumination to read,” adding that “he has gone on to achieve what one of his characters brilliantly defines as the writer’s purpose: ‘a new-found utterance’ for the capture of life’s complexity.”

Panelists at the April 11 event included Achebe; Simon Gikandi, professor of English at Princeton University; Christine Griffin, English teacher at Red Hook High School; Jesse Weaver Shipley, assistant professor of anthropology and Africana studies at Bard; Binyavanga Wainaina, visiting writer in residence at Union College; and moderator Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina, chair of the Department of English at Dartmouth College. Myra Young Armstead, professor of history at Bard, and Derek Furr and Wendy Urban-Mead from Bard’s Master of Arts in Teaching Program participated in events at SUNY Ulster and at the Kingston and Poughkeepsie public libraries. The events were made possible with funding from the New York Council for the Humanities; WAMC, the Albany affiliate of National Public Radio; the Poughkeepsie Public Library District; SUNY Ulster; and the Kingston branch of the American Association of University Women.

German Darmstadt School, spectralism, and innovative U.S., Latin American, and Asian composers. Arthur Kampela, a Brazilian composer, guitarist, and singer who worked with BHSEC students in exploring the western/indigenous influences in the new music of South America, joined the Argento Chamber Ensemble in concert. They played works by Berio, Klingbeil, Chong, and Prawobo, and Terry Riley’s Concert in C, in which students performed. The grant also funded a Capoeira (a Brazilian martial art and dance form) class taught by Sujey de Coo, after-school music classes, and a college elective on world music.

Kenny Werner visits BHSEC’s Rock Ensemble class (from left to right): Jason Collado, Julianne Beidel, Corey Switzer, Duncan Powell, Nick Scarim (of the Third Street Music School Settlement), Werner, Wolfe Margolies, Nick Gnat.

Bardians Win Award for Peace Project Jennifer Lemanski ’09 and Sofia Belenky ’11 have won a Davis Projects for Peace award to start an expressive arts therapy center in Colombo, Sri Lanka, this summer. Intended as a long-term facility, the center brings together Tamil, Sinhalese, and Muslim youth, ages 7 to 17, for after-school and weekend workshops in which traumatized children can free their imaginations and process the harsh experiences of their lives through nonviolent, creative expression.

Lemanski, of Boulder, Colorado, is majoring in art history and studies in race and ethnicity. Belenky’s hometown is Cabot, Vermont, and she plans to major in studio arts and human rights.

Since 1983, Sri Lanka has suffered a civil war that has claimed the lives of more than 50,000 people. On January 2, 2008, the country’s 2002 cease-fire agreement was terminated, resulting in the departure of foreign peacekeepers. “There is an immediate need for social reconciliation in Sri Lanka,” write Lemanski and Belenky. “At the expressive arts center, children will come together to heal the relations that have broken down between their ethnic and religious groups as a result of terror tactics and the untold miseries of war. It is our hope that the youth who participate in the workshops will plant the seeds for a nonviolent, thoughtful, and tolerant society.”

Jennifer Lemanski (left) and Sofia Belenky

The Davis Projects for Peace program, in its second year, honors philanthropist Kathryn Wasserman Davis, who launched the initiative on the occasion of her 100th birthday in 2007.

Designed to encourage and support motivated youth to create and implement their ideas for building peace throughout the world in the 21st century, the program awards $10,000 to each of 100 winning projects.

Contemporary Operas a Cause for Collaboration

Top: A Bird in Your Ear: Yulia Van Doren and Sung Eun Lee. Bottom: Four Saints in Three Acts (l-r): Solange Merdinian, Yohan Yi, Maghan Stewart, Patrick Cook, and members of the Bard College Chamber Singers.

“New opera can provide a wide canvas and a wealth of opportunity for the meeting of musical minds,” says Dawn Upshaw, soprano and artistic director of the Graduate Program in Vocal Arts at The Bard College Conservatory of Music. Proof of such valuable collaboration was seen in sold-out performances at Bard on March 21 and 22, when two contemporary operas—one a world premiere— were sung by 14 students in the Vocal Arts Program, accompanied by the Conservatory Orchestra and the Bard College Chamber Singers.

Four Saints in Three Acts, composed by Virgil Thomson, with a libretto by Gertrude Stein, depicts imaginary events from the lives of saints in 16th-century Spain. A Bird in Your Ear, composed

by David Bruce, libretto by Alasdair Middleton, is based on a Russian folk tale, “The Language of Birds.” It was commissioned by the Conservatory for the 2008 premiere in the Sosnoff Theater of the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts. Mimi Levitt, a longtime champion of music programs at Bard, supported the premiere. The evenings were produced in collaboration with Intercontinental Pictures, which provided live animation and projections, and benefited the Conservatory’s Scholarship Fund.

James Bagwell, associate professor of music, who conducted the orchestra and chorus, also notes the production’s collaborative aspect: ”It was a wonderful way for Bard’s Music Program and Conservatory to collaborate,” he says. Further, “We wanted to present high-quality opera, but we were centered on learning how to do it—how to sing in an opera, how to play in an orchestra not onstage but in an orchestra pit. Our first goal was to teach.”

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BGC Bestows a Bouquet of Irises Architect Phyllis Lambert and art scholars Robert Hillenbrand and David Crowley were the recipients of this year’s Iris Foundation Awards, bestowed by The Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design, and Culture (BGC). The Irises, presented by the BGC for the 12th consecutive year, honor outstanding contributions to the decorative arts.

Lambert, founding director and chair of the Board of Trustees of the Canadian Centre for Architecture, is internationally recognized for her advocacy on behalf of contemporary architecture and its role in the public sphere. Hillenbrand, who holds a chair in Islamic art at the University of Edinburgh, is an honored authority on that subject, having written the prizewinning Islamic Architecture: Form, Function and Meaning. Crowley, deputy head of the Department of Design History at the Royal College of Art in London, has published widely on the history of architecture and design in Poland and Central Europe and the history of graphic design.

In addition to the Iris Awards, the BGC honored Philippe de Montebello, the retiring director of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, with a special award for his “inestimable” contributions to artistic life in the United States.

The awards were presented to the honorees on April 16 in New York City.

(Top) Philippe de Montebello, David Crowley, Susan Weber, and Phyllis Lambert; (bottom) Robert Hillenbrand

Artists at Smolny and Bard Linked Online Beny Wagner ’08 and Open Studio founder Emily Newman ’00 worked together for six months preparing to launch the Open Studio website before they ever got an opportunity to meet in person. Newman teaches at Smolny College in St. Petersburg, and Wagner was at Bard, so their collaboration, like the Open Studio, occurred entirely online.

The Open Studio website (www.vcopenstudio.org) houses individual virtual studios. Bard and Smolny students are invited to use these private online work spaces to post their artwork, works in progress, notes, and thoughts. Visitors can take studio tours, look at the work, and engage with artists.

“The aim of the project is not only to create a discourse around finished artworks, but also to uncover the mechanics of the individual’s creative process,” say the co-creators.

In addition to its virtual studios, the project includes a web magazine; a residency program, in which students from institutions outside of Bard and Smolny are invited to showcase their work; and a forum to help artists find resources and opportunities.

Open Studio is sponsored by grants from the Mellon Foundation and Bard’s Institute for International Liberal Education.

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Bard College at Simon’s Rock: The Early College celebrated its 39th Commencement on May 17. The exercises featured keynote speaker Blenda J. Wilson, former president and CEO of the Nellie Mae Education Foundation, and remarks by Mary B. Marcy, provost and vice president; Bard president Leon Botstein; Emily H. Fisher, chairman of the Board of Overseers; B.A. graduate Skyler Balbus; and A.A. graduate Rose Li. Forty-seven graduates were awarded bachelor of arts degrees, and 98 graduates received associate of arts degrees. The full text of Wilson’s speech can be found at www.simons-rock.edu.

SEEN & HEARD FEBRUARY 1, 2—The American Symphony Orchestra (ASO), with Leon Botstein, music director, performed works by Debussy, Dukas, Scriabin, and Copland at The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College.

4, 5—Bard in China presented “Vietnamese Cinema: Past, Present, and Future,” a two-day event at Weis Cinema, featuring a screening of Dang Nhat Minh’s When the Tenth Month Comes, with commentary by Gerald Herman, founder of Hanoi Cinematheque; and a presentation of The Owl and the Sparrow by director Stephane Gauger.

Leon Botstein (right), president of the college, and the renowned architect Frank Gehry, designer of such landmark buildings as The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College, discussed matters of culture, science, and the arts in a conversation before a large crowd at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles in April.

11—Salvador Plascencia, 2008 recipient of the Bard Fiction Prize for his novel The People of Paper, read from recent work at Weis Cinema.

13—The Institute of Advanced Theology presented “Prophecy, Social Justice, and the Vision of God,” a weekly luncheon lecture series at the Bertelsmann Campus Center, beginning February 13 and running through March 12.

Debate Teams Make Their Points The rhetorical competition called debate can be as spirited and heated as any athletic contest. In this politically charged year, Bard’s debate teams—collectively called Forensics—have been active and successful.

Forensics fields three teams: Policy, Worlds, and Model United Nations. The nature of the competitions they enter differs broadly. Each year the Policy team debates one topic (for example: “Constructive engagement with the Middle East: yes or no?”) at all the tournaments it enters. Worlds debaters must rely upon their background knowledge—they receive their debate topic (example: “This house regrets Vladimir Putin”), along with their assignment to argue it affirmatively or negatively, exactly 20 minutes before competition begins. The Model UN team, assigned a country several weeks before a competition, works collaboratively to prepare and negotiate a solution to a problem. The outstanding delegation prize, which Bard’s team won at a Model UN conference held at Northeastern University in October, is given to the team that best represents the policy of its assigned country. Bard’s Model UN team also did well in contests held at Yale, McGill, and Harvard.

Worlds, Bard’s newest debate team, won the first tournament it entered. At a tournament held at West Point, the two teams fielded by Policy finished as finalist and semifinalist among the 50 teams competing. Debating in their fourth national championship in four years, Bard’s Policy teams placed 17th and 33rd out of more than 200 invited colleges and universities at Wichita State in March.

16—The Mannes Orchestra, conducted by David Hayes, performed works by Mozart and Jennifer Higdon.

18—The Center for Curatorial Studies hosted a talk with artists Michael Beutler, Esra Ersen, and Kirstine Roepstorff. All three are represented in the CCS Galleries’ summer exhibition Personal Protocols and Other Preferences (June 14 – September 7).

21—Bard’s Globalization and International Affairs Program in New York City presented “Venture Philanthrophy: Can Social Investors Transform Nonprofits?” The talk was part of the James Clarke Chace Memorial Speaker Series.

22, 23—The Darfur Action Campaign, in conjunction with the Bard College office of the Rift Valley Institute (RVI), presented a series of events to help raise awareness of the conflict in Sudan. Programs included a screening of the prizewinning documentary God Grew Tired of Us and talks by John Ryle, Legrand Ramsey Professor of Anthropology and chair of RVI, and Bol Riiny, a survivor of the civil war in Sudan.

25—The Sociology and LAIS Programs sponsored “Art in Contested Territories,” a presentation by Bonnie Donohue, professor of photography at Boston’s School of the Museum of Fine Arts.

29—The Woodstock Chamber Orchestra presented “String Theory,” a program of works by J. S. Bach, Leopold Hoffmann, Samuel Barber, and Joseph Suk.

MARCH 1—Leon Botstein led the Bard Conservatory Orchestra in a performance of songs by Richard Strauss and works by Haydn and Bruckner.

Welsh soprano Rachel Schutz was featured soloist at the Fisher Center event.

ON AND OFF CAMPUS | 51

Focusing the Nation, Starting at Home Along with more than a thousand other colleges and universities, Bard focused attention on global warming solutions during Focus the Nation, an event encompassing workshops, art and film exhibitions, and a way to give new cars a charge.

Focus the Nation took place at Bard in late January and early February, with a daylong teach-in on February 1. The opening

workshop, “Stabilizing the Climate in the 21st Century,” featured William Schlesinger, president of the Institute for Ecosystem Studies; and from Bard, Matthew Deady, professor of physics; Catherine O’Reilly, assistant professor of biology; Jennifer Phillips, faculty at Bard Center for Environmental Policy; and moderator Felicia Keesing, associate professor of biology. “We have to think about efficiency, renewability from new sources such as geothermal, and scale,” Keesing said. As if to prove her point, the lunch hour included a demonstration of a new solar charging station for electric vehicles. (Lunch itself involved all local foods and “zero waste.”) Other workshops discussed technological solutions to climate change and motivations for change. Special thanks go to Carolyn Marks Blackwood for helping to make Focus the Nation possible at Bard.

Among the nationwide events were a live webcast, environmental fairs, and other promotions of environmental activism on campus.

“People are recognizing the need to make a quick transition from awareness to action,” says Laurie Husted, Bard’s environmental resources auditor. “The list of solutions expands daily and there is room for each idea, whether it’s installing solar thermal panels to heat our gymnasium or buying one less bottle of water.”

International Center of Photography In collaboration with the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts, the International Center of Photography (ICP)—Bard Program in Advanced Photographic Studies awards an M.F.A. degree in photography through ICP’s Manhattan campus. At the ICP museum, 1133 Avenue of the Americas at 43rd Street, exhibitions through September 7 are: Heavy Light: Recent Photography and Video from Japan Exploring the inventive imagery and unconventional sensibilities that characterize recent photo-based art in Japan, the exhibition features works by 13 Japanese artists and concentrates on four major themes that have come to occupy Japanese artists working with photography and video: the reshaping of Japanese tradition, the relation of nature to the man-made world, costume play and the search for personal identity, and the child as cultural icon.

Risaku Suzuki, Kumano, 1997, chromogenic print ©Risaku Suzuki, courtesy of Gallery Koyanagi and Yoshii Gallery NY

Bill Wood’s Business From the late 1930s to the early 1970s, Bill Wood, a native Texan, operated a photography studio in Fort Worth. Co-curated by the actor Diane Keaton and art historian Marvin Heiferman, approximately 400 photographs drawn from Keaton’s extensive Bill Wood collection are presented in a single small room, organized thematically by subject matter and genre.

Arbus/Avedon/Model: Selections from the Bank of America LaSalle Collection This exhibition brings together 15 classic works by three of the most important photographers of the 1960s: Diane Arbus, Richard

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Avedon, and Lisette Model. The intense creative relationships between these three artists helped to generate a new look in photographic portraiture and idiosyncratic approaches to both style and subjects.

Additional 2008 exhibitions will include Susan Meiselas: In History and America and the Tintype. For more information, visit www.icp.org.

2—The Bard Center Concerts and Da Capo Chamber Players celebrated works by College faculty, alumni/ae (Matt Schickele ’92, Daniel Wohl ’03), and student composers (Benjamin Richter ’08, Yiwen Shen ’10). Guest artists included Shawn Moore ’11, Leah Gastler ’11, and K. C. Brazeau ’10.

5, 6 and 12, 13—The Institute of Advanced Theology hosted a four-day seminar,“Archaeology and the History and Religion of Ancient Israel.”

Participants included noted biblical archaeologist William Dever, professor emeritus at the University of Arizona.

9—Melvin Chen, associate director of the Bard Conservatory, gave a piano recital at Olin Hall that featured works by Franz Josef Haydn, György Ligeti, and Johannes Brahms.

11, 12—The Rift Valley Institute and the Human Rights and Africana Orhan Pamuk, the Nobel Prize–winning novelist and a writer in residence at the College since 2007, teaches an open class as part of the Contemporary Masters series. The series offers Bard students and the public the opportunity to meet and converse with some of the world’s greatest living writers.

Studies Programs sponsored a talk and documentary screening by South African activist Graeme Reid, founder of the Gay and Lesbian Archives of South Africa.

14, 15—Media artist Eric Saks ’83 presented and discussed his video work in programs at the Avery Arts Center.

Prestigious Awards to Five Five Bard faculty members were recognized last winter with distinguished national and international awards. These honors are bestowed without application.

Ian Buruma, author, political commentator, and Henry R. Luce Professor of Human Rights and Journalism, received the 2008 Erasmus Prize, which is awarded annually by a Dutch foundation to a person who, “within the cultural traditions of Europe, has made an especially important contribution to culture, society or social science in Europe.”

Edie Meidav, novelist and visiting assistant professor of writing, received a literary fellowship from the Lannan Foundation. Lannan fellowships “recognize writers of distinctive literary merit who demonstrate potential for continued outstanding work.”

Daniel Mendelsohn, author and Charles Ranlett Flint Professor of Humanities, won the 2007 Prix Médicis étranger, France’s most important prize for foreign literature, for his book The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million. Les disparus [The Lost] became a best seller in France and was hailed as “the masterpiece of the season.”

Francine Prose, novelist, critic, short story writer, and Distinguished Writer in Residence, received the 2008 Edith Wharton Women of Achievement Award for Literature in recognition of her career in American letters.

A recording of Made in America, by Joan Tower, composer, Asher B. Edelman Professor in the Arts, and faculty, The Bard College Conservatory of Music, received three Grammy Awards in February. A Grammy went to Tower for best classical contemporary composition. The Naxos recording of Joan Tower: Made in America won best classical album and best orchestral performance.

15—Bard in China presented “Japanese Prints from Ukiyoe to the Modern Day,” a lecture and demonstration by award-winning printmaker Akira Kurosaki.

—Bard’s Conservatory of Music and Russian Program presented “Alexander Scriabin: The Russian Prometheus” at Bard Hall. The program was moderated by Marina Kostalevsky, associate professor of Russian, and featured pianist Dmitry Rachmanov.

22—The Classics Program, with support from Bard trustee James H. Ottaway Jr., presented a reading of Sophocles’ Philoctetes, which was followed by a panel discussion featuring Norman Austin, professor emeritus at the University of Arizona; Daniel Mendelsohn, Charles Ranlett Flint Professor of Humanities at Bard; Alice Quinn, former poetry editor at the New Yorker; Jonathan Shay, author of Achilles in Vietnam; and William Mullen, professor of classics at the College.

23—Grammy Award–winning mezzo-soprano Kelley O’Connor performed with the Bard Orchestra at Olin Hall.

24 through 27—The Center for Curatorial Studies kicked off a series of screenings and discussions as part of a long-term research project on the documentary that will culminate with an exhibition at the Hessel Museum of Art in the fall. Guest artists included Hito Steyerl, Carles Guerra, Petra Bauer, Matthew Buckingham, and Walid Raad.

26—Pianist Stefano Greco performed Bach’s The Art of Fugue at Olin Hall. The next day, he conducted a master class with selected students from the Bard Conservatory.

27—“Pakistan: What Happens Now?” was the title of the James Clarke Chace Memorial Speaker Series lecture by journalist Arif Jamal. The talk took place at the New York City headquarters of Bard’s Program on Globalization and International Affairs.

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Fulbright Awards to Three Three Bardians—an alumnus and two members of the Class of 2008 —have received awards from the Fulbright U.S. Student Program.

Salim Morsy ’05 received a study/research grant to Colombia, where he will be a visiting researcher at the Universidad de los Andes. He will study recent Colombian policies aimed at promoting biodiesel fuels from palm oil and the possible impacts on the country’s environmental balance. At Bard, Morsy majored in political studies and global and international studies. In 2007 he earned an M.S. at the London School of Economics, where he studied European political economy and wrote his dissertation on the political economy of bioethanol production in the European Union.

Siobhan Churchill, who majored in Asian studies, was awarded a one-year English Teaching Assistantship in South Korea. At Bard, Churchill studied Chinese for four years and Japanese for two-and-a-half years. Study abroad has always interested her; she spent the summer of 2005 in Qingdao and the fall 2006 semester in Beijing. Her Senior Project addressed the tension between Japanese and Chinese nationalism in the context of economic globalization. All of Churchill’s class teaching will be in English; she will take the opportunity of a year in Korea to study the language.

Abigail Weil, who majored in Russian and Eurasian studies, received an English Teaching Assistantship in Russia (see “Stepping Forward” on page 6 of this issue).

The Fulbright Program is the flagship international education exchange program sponsored by the U.S. government.

David Wins Curatorial Award Catherine David is this year’s recipient of the Center for Curatorial Studies (CCS) Award for Curatorial Excellence. The 11th recipient of the award, which the CCS bestows annually to an outstanding figure in the field of exhibition making, David was feted in April at a gala dinner at Manhattan’s Gotham Hall.

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Yurii Kuperin, professor and leading research associate at Saint Petersburg State University and head of the Program in Complex Systems in Nature and Society at Smolny College, gave a presentation at Bard on this new science program, which currently has six students enrolled with plans to expand to 10 students per year. The main tracks of study include neuromodeling, data mining, risk management, econophysics, artificial intelligence, fractals and nonlinear analysis of data, multiagent systems, and artificial immune systems.

Smolny is a joint venture of Bard and Saint Petersburg State University and is Russia’s first liberal arts college, with an enrollment of 450 students.

Born in Paris, David began her curatorial career there at the National Museum of Modern Art, Centre Georges Pompidou, in the 1980s. Her tenure as director of documenta X in Kassel, Germany, provoked much controversy for its rigorously intellectual focus, yet also resulted in a popular and financial success for the citywide arts festival. More recently, her exhibitions at the Witte de With Centre for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam and her globally touring project, Contemporary Arab Representations 1 and 2, have been characterized by their intense examination of art practice in relation to sociopolitical issues. The latter project, which has fostered collaborations between institutions in the Arab world and the art world, earned particular praise from this year’s award selection panel as being especially important for our time.

The artist Jeff Wall, whose career benefited from David’s early advocacy, presented the award to the often embattled curator. “Catherine was one of the first to see the connection between political discourse and aesthetics,” Wall told Artforum magazine in 2001. “She’s not one of these curators who’s just read her Derrida and her Foucault and is now running around trying to apply it.

She’s lived it.”

APRIL 3—Master cabinetmaker Thomas Moser discussed his 30 years in furniture design and the influence of the Shakers on his work in a lecture at the Manhattan campus of The Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design, and Culture.

8—Anne Tardos, author and multimedia artist, and Michael Ives, visiting assistant professor of the humanities at Bard, read from recent work as part of the John Ashbery Poetry Series.

15—The Institute of Advanced Theology began a three-day conference, “The Golden Rule in the Religions of the World.”

—Pianist Peter Frankl conducted a master class with Bard Conservatory students and gave a public recital at Olin Hall the following evening.

16—As part of the James Clarke Chace Memorial Speaker Series, the Globalization and International Affairs Program addressed the question: “Has Multiculturalism Failed?” Participants included Ian Buruma, Henry R. Luce Professor of Human Rights and Journalism, and Paul The Bard men’s volleyball team won the 2008 Skyline Conference Championship at home, defeating the College of Mount Saint Vincent, 3-0, for the title. Above are (front, left to right) Zachary Hamaker ’08, Steven Alday ’10, Travis McGrath ’11, Carlos Apostle ’11, and Andrew Cortrite ’11; (rear) Iga Mrozek ’11 (manager), Mike Abalos (head coach), Jenesy Brubaker ’07 (assistant coach), Erik Shagdar ’11, Henry Schenker ’09, Brice Ormesher ’11, Demetrius Washington ’08, Max Howard ’11, Elijah Strauss ’11, Scott McMillen ’09, Raman Gardner (assistant coach), and Tracy King (Skyline commissioner).

Scheffer, professor of urban sociology at the University of Amsterdam.

17, 18—The Levy Economics Institute hosted the 17th annual Hyman P. Minsky Conference, which addressed the topic,“Credit, Markets, and the Real Economy: Is the Financial System Working?”

24—The Bard Graduate Center hosted a panel discussion,“Enduring Influence: Contemporary Artists on Shaker Design,” which featured sculptor and installation artist Lauren Ewing and curator Kory Rogers.

—The Woodstock Chamber Orchestra, in cooperation with The Bard Center, presented Mozart’s Don Giovanni at Olin Hall.

25, 26—The American Symphony Orchestra, with music director Leon Botstein, performed works by Barber, Sibelius, and Strauss in concerts at the Fisher Center. ASO composer in residence Richard Wilson gave a preconcert talk.

29—The John Ashbery Poetry Series presented a reading at Weis Cinema

by Forrest Gander, a poet, novelist, translator, essayist, and professor of English at Brown University.

MAY 3—The Hudson Valley Gamelan, featuring the Chandra Kanchana (Golden Moon) and Giri Mekar (Mountain Flower) ensembles, performed under the direction of Tjokorda Gde Arsa Artha.

4—The Colorado Quartet performed Benjamin Britten’s String Quartet No. 2, Op. 36 and Alberto Ginastera’s Quartet No. 2.

Bard’s women’s soccer team had a record-breaking season, ending as the runner-up in the Skyline Conference Championship Tournament and playing for the first time in the Eastern College Athletic Conference Metro Championship Tournament. The squad was captained by Mozhdeh Zahedi ’09 (left), a three-time All Conference and two-time All Region award-winning forward, and was coached by Bill Kelly, John LaRose, and Marina Michahelles.

JUNE 14—Esra Ersen / Kirstine Roepstorff, curated by Maria Lind, director of the graduate program at the Center for Curatorial Studies, opened at the Hessel Museum of Art. Also opening was an exhibition of drawings from the Marieluise Hessel Collection. Both shows run through September 7.

27—Aston Magna kicked off its summer series of concerts at Olin Hall with a program featuring early masterworks of Mendelssohn.

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BPI Awards First B.A. Degrees

Under the BPI Commencement tent at Woodbourne

MAT Program Expands West The faculty and staff of the Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) Program plan to open a self-contained satellite campus at a new public school in California’s Central Valley. The project will integrate Bard’s MAT Program with a fully functioning school for grades 6 through 12 in Delano, California. Middle and high school students will be taught by public school teachers and teaching apprentices, who will in turn be taught by graduate professors, all in one building. Teenagers will walk the halls with their student teachers on their way to high school classes and college seminars, respectively. College has never been closer.

The project was sparked by a conversation between Bard president Leon Botstein and Bard trustee Stewart Resnick, owner of Paramount Agricultural Companies, a large farming concern in California. Resnick, a longtime supporter of innovative school initiatives, wanted to improve educational opportunities for Paramount employees’ children. Botstein encouraged Resnick to think big: “If you want to change education, start a different kind of school, and educate high-quality teachers.” Resnick and Paramount committed resources to fund the school’s first few years, and plans are proceeding for the administrative team to be in place by this July. The first group of MAT students will begin graduate classes in June 2009, and that August, 100 sixth-graders

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Describing his Bard degree as representing “a series of actions and experiences that have freed me from my own prison of low expectations,” Ronald Hughes took part in the fourth Commencement of the Bard Prison Initiative (BPI) on June 7 at Woodbourne (New York) Correctional Facility. In a first for the BPI program, eight students received the bachelor of arts degree from Bard College. Six of them majored in social studies and one each in mathematics and literature/humanities; each had written a Senior Project, advised by a Bard faculty member. In addition, 16 students earned associate in arts degrees. Leon Botstein, president of the college, conferred the degrees, in the presence of a festive group of proud families and friends.

Hughes was one of four student speakers. “I spent many years imagining how, within the range of opportunities available to me here, I could redefine who I was,” he said. “And then, Bard happened . . . If it were up to me, a Bard degree would be the litmus test for what rehabilitation is all about, measuring the distance between what we as a society say about ourselves and what we in practice actually do.”

Since 2001, the Bard Prison Initiative has provided opportunities for higher education inside the prisons of New York State.

BPI enrolls incarcerated students full time in a robust liberal arts curriculum. Bard faculty members travel to the prisons to teach, and Bard campus students visit the prisons as volunteers, facilitating workshops and courses.

and 100 ninth-graders will enroll at the school. By 2013 the school should be at capacity enrollment, with 700 students in grades 6 through 12, and 72 MAT Program students.

Ric Campbell, director of the MAT Program (center rear), meets with teachers from three school districts in California’s Central Valley.

Guggenheim Fellowships Support Two

Alumni/ae Cities Party | April 2008

Two Bard faculty members were among the 190 artists, scholars, and scientists selected from 2,600 applicants for 2008 fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

Sigrid Sandström, a painter, has been an assistant professor of studio arts since 2005. She earned a B.F.A. in the Netherlands and an M.F.A. from the Yale University School of Art. Her work has been exhibited widely in the United States and Europe, most recently in 2007 solo shows in New York City and Stockholm.

Michael Brenson, an independent critic and curator, has been on the faculty of the Center for Curatorial Studies since 2001, and faculty in sculpture at the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts since 2004. A former art critic for the New York Times, Brenson is the author of numerous books, exhibition catalogues, and essays. The Guggenheim fellowship supports his writing of a biography of sculptor David Smith (1906–65).

The Guggenheim fellowship program considered applications in 75 disciplines for the current awards.

Boston

Eight Bardians in Whitney Biennial Seven Bardians were among the 81 artists who exhibited work in the 2008 Whitney Biennial (March 6 – June 1) at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. They included two alumna: Amie Siegel ’96, who majored in film and is now based in New York and Berlin, and Shannon Ebner ’93 of Los Angeles, who majored in photography.

Six current and recent faculty members at the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts presented a variety of work, at times going outside the home field that they teach at Bard. For example, Marina Rosenfeld, faculty in music/sound, showed a still from White Lines, a 2005 Super 8 film transferred to video with digital animation and color. Rodney McMillian, faculty in painting, was

Los Angeles

represented by an installation created of vinyl and thread.

McMillian, Rosenfeld, Walead Beshty ’99 (photography), and Rachel Harrison (sculpture) are teaching in the Avery program this summer. Seth Price and Cheyney Thompson taught film/video and painting, respectively, in the summer of 2007. Harrison, Rosenfeld, and Price were making repeat appearances, having shown work in the 2002 biennial.

Seattle

Bard Alumni/ae Day

Annual Alumni/ae Holiday Party

Saturday, October 4

Friday, December 12

SAVE THE DATE

A look at campus life during a fall Hudson Valley weekend.

New York City

Visit www.bard.edu/alumni for updates.

Classes, student presentations, dinner with the president, and a dance performance on the roof of the Fisher Center for the Performing Arts. Full schedule available soon!

Location to be announced

ON AND OFF CAMPUS | 57

CLASSNOTES Board of Governors of the Bard–St. Stephen’s Alumni/ae Association

’06

’04

Class correspondent Kirsten Dunlaevy, kdunlaevy@gmail.com

5th Reunion: May 22–24, 2009 Staff contact: Brad Whitmore, 845-758-7663 or whitmore@bard.edu

Adam Greene has officially launched his film/video company Marksman Ship Pictures, which focuses on “legacy films” for families and corporations. They combine new interviews with existing film/video footage and photos to preserve and pass down histories that would otherwise be lost. For more information, visit www.MarksmanShipPictures.com.

Yishay Garbasz worked on a photographic project in Taiwan that documented houses lived in by families for four generations or more. He was in a group show celebrating the reopening of the Meinung Hakka Museum in Taiwan, and also showed his work at the Chiang Mai Museum of Art in Thailand and in the National Gallery in Bangkok.

After graduation, Adam Turner became Bard’s assistant basketball coach under head coach Chris Wood. He left coaching at Bard to accept a position with the Hoop Group (the largest basketball instructional organization in the world) as director of its Pocono Invitational Basketball Camp (training camps for middle and early high school players).

’05 Michael Nason’s latest film, a feature-length musical titled Journey to the Very Heart of the Constitution, was screened in December 2007 at a gallery in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and at Anthology Film Archives in Manhattan. Early this year he began work on his new film, Cut Out of the Will, shooting in the west Texas desert. For more information, visit www.mikenasonx.com.

After returning from a Fulbright Fellowship year in Athens, Greece, Taun Toay joined the Levy Economics Institute. His work at Levy focuses on pro-poor economic development and gender dimensions of social mobility.

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Jonathan Reingold passed both the New York and New Jersey state bar exams. He is now a fellow at the Center for New York City Law at New York Law School.

’03 Alan Newcomb and his partner, Ekaterina Rodriguez, had a baby son, Rowan Isador Newcomb-Rodriguez, on November 7, 2007.

Alan’s e-mail address is codevacation@gmail.com.

’02 Ava Fedorov left her job at the New Yorker magazine after “three very fulfilling years.” In April she embarked on her “grand expedition”: a trans-Siberian railroad journey across Russia, through Mongolia, and into China.

Ashley Triffletti coached mogul skiing for the Telluride Mountain School in the winter of 2002–03. He earned a master’s degree in film and video production from the University of Iowa in the spring of 2006. He teaches digital filmmaking as an adjunct professor at Emerson College.

5th Reunion, Class of 2003

’99 10th Reunion: May 22–24, 2009 Staff contact: Brad Whitmore, 845-758-7663 or whitmore@bard.edu In January 2008, Gwenaëlle Gobé’s film The Old Noise was screened at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood as part of the First Sight Scene Festival, a series organized by the Los Angeles Filmforum. Los Angeles Filmforum is the city’s longest-running organization that screens noncommercial experimental and avantgarde films and video art, documentaries, and animation.

Rachel Israel Rosenfield and her husband, Avi, welcomed a son, Noam, on August 17, 2007. He joins older brother Micha. They live in Riverdale, New York, and Rachel writes that it is “nice to be back near the Hudson Valley!”

Marina Smerling sings in a folkish-rock band and is a budding yoga teacher.

’98 Class correspondent Jennifer Novik, jnovik@gmail.com

’97 Class correspondent Julia Wolk Munemo, jmunemo@roadrunner.com Johanna DeBiase gave birth to a redheaded baby girl, Flora Galena Mack, on October 3, 2007. The birth was assisted by midwife Kiersten Figurski ’93.

Ian Ennis lives in Athens, Georgia, with three cats and one extraordinary woman.

Joshua Lutz, ICP–Bard MFA ’05, had a solo show at the Heimbold Visual Art Center at Sarah Lawrence College in February, and has another show coming up in September at ClampArt in New York City. He is on the faculty at the International Center of Photography in New York.

Imteaz Mannan has moved to Kabul, Afghanistan, to work with Save the Children in building the communication capacity of the Afghan Ministry of Public Health. In December 2007, he met up with Rachel Saunders ’97, who completed two years in Kabul and is now back in New York.

Sean O’Neill is a senior editor of www.BudgetTravel.com. He has moved from Washington, D.C., to the Fort Greene neighborhood of Brooklyn with his partner, Chris.

Nina Siulc is an assistant professor in the Department of Legal Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She continues to teach and develop research around the intersection of immigration and criminal justice policies.

Aerin Tedesco is still one-half of the band Congress of Starlings (www.congressofstarlings.com) with her partner, Andrea Bunch.

An electro-folk duo based in Chicago, they released their album Albedo in November 2007 and are continually writing and performing. Aerin is also returning to her creative writing roots, working on a series of fiction stories.

Adam Weiss is a registered architect in Texas.

CLASS NOTES | 59

10th Reunion, Class of 1998

’96 Class correspondents Gavin Kleespies, gwkleespies@hotmail.com Abigail Morgan, abigail@floatchinesemedicalarts.com Jessica Burr and Matt Opatrny had a baby! Evelyn Thayer Opatrny Burr was born on November 16, 2007, and has been a source of perpetual joy and entertainment for her parents ever since. Matt and Jessica’s theater company, blessed unrest, is still going strong. For more information, including performance schedules in New York City, visit www.blessedunrest.org.

Holly Graff and Nick Kolba ’94 and their daughter, Lucia (7), spent seven months in Paris in 2007, where Nick worked on a special assignment for Reuters, and Holly and Lucia enjoyed the unschooling life, Parisian style. To read about their school-free life and philosophy, visit http://www.unschoolgirls.blogspot.com/.

David Johnson lives in Brooklyn and works as the sous chef at Chanterelle in Manhattan.

Talya Rubin is based in Montreal, where she makes solo work for the stage and teaches theater at McGill University. In early 2008 she performed her original solo play The Girl With No Hands at the Wildside Theatre Festival at Centaur Theatre in Montreal, a curated festival of cutting-edge work, and directed a production of the opera Cendrillon by Massenet, with the voice performance students at McGill. Talya writes that she is “married to a fabulous Australian man and will be living in Sydney for a good part of 2008.”

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Aaron Schottenfeld was the eighth-grade English teacher at Bohanon Middle School in San Lorenzo, California, for the 2007– 08 school year.

Ben Schwabe is in hiding with his partner, Emi, and their 4-yearold daughter, Aziza.

Jennifer Abrams Thompson, husband Michael, and daughter Nazhlah welcomed to the family Noah Michael, born December 19, 2007. The happy family lives in Troy, New York, and enjoys the tiny city. Jennifer continues to teach English as a second language in a neighboring community.

’95 Noah K. Mullette-Gillman has finished writing his first fantasy novel, The Song of the Feathered Serpent, and is looking for a publisher. He would love to be in touch with any/all Bardian literary agents. His e-mail address is noahlot@gmail.com.

’94 15th Reunion: May 22–24, 2009 Staff contact: Sasha Boak-Kelly, 845-758-7407 or boak@bard.edu Jennifer Reck is a policy analyst at a nonprofit organization promoting policy options for state legislatures to control drug costs and to increase access to safe, affordable drugs. She and Olivier te Boekhorst ’93 plan to renew their vows on their upcoming 10th wedding anniversary. They love watching their daughters, Daphne and Stephanie, grow up on the beaches and snow banks of Maine

(although after seeing Sicko they might be heading back to the Netherlands).

home—and every minute I can get with my daughter is gold!”

Jonah can be reached at jonahgensler@gmail.com.

Henri Ringel is the vice president of sales for Disney–ABC International Television in Miami. He writes that he “can still manage to put a pass or two together on the soccer field.”

After graduating from Bard, Haider G. Mian started working for the United Nations World Food Program in Pakistan. He reports that during his initial two years, he kept switching jobs to be certain that he really wanted to pursue a career in the development sector. He then made the decision to get a master’s degree in development economics from the University of Kent at Canterbury, England. He writes, “I am currently working with the Asian Development Bank in Pakistan and am happily married with two very naughty but wonderful children. I am also glad to report that my nephew Hamza Hayauddin ’11 just finished his freshman year at Bard, and hope that he too enjoys the Bard experience as I did 15 years ago. Would love to hear from all at haider_ghani1@hotmail.com.”

’93 Christopher Riley is the managing director of Cornell Cinema in Ithaca, New York. In April 2007 he welcomed his son, Julian Freer Riley. Christopher writes, “Now I spend all my time doting on him.”

Nancy Jones Robicheaw and her husband, Dana, and daughter, Helen, have opened Clementine Restaurant in Brunswick, Maine.

’92 Class correspondent Andrea J. Stein, stein@bard.edu Jonathan Englert lives with his family in New York City. A Dog About Town and A Dog Among Diplomats, his first two books in a literary mystery series from Dell, were published in 2007. He is at work on the third, A Dog at Sea. Linda Ganjian and her husband, Jesse Lambert, welcomed the arrival of their son, Arek Ganjian Lambert, on November 11, 2007.

Jonah Gensler and his wife, Mariana, had their first baby, Micaela Paz Canale Gensler, on September 19, 2007. They live in Newark, New Jersey. Jonah is the Family Services director at Ironbound Community Corporation. He writes, “I work just a few blocks from

Kimberly Moore’s hand-painted silks are featured at www.kjmSILKS.etsy.com. Her drawings, paintings, and what she calls ACEOs (short for art cards, editions, and originals) are available at www.kjmART.etsy.

In June 2008 Yasmin Padamsee earned her master’s degree in public administration from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Daniel Sonenberg lives in Portland, Maine, with his wife, Alex Sax, and his cat, Judy Johnson (named after the Negro Leagues baseball player). In the summer of 2007 he was the coorganizer and coleader of a weeklong musical composition seminar in

15th Reunion, Class of 1993 CLASS NOTES | 61

20th Reunion, Class of 1988

Sombor, Serbia, with the New York–based composers collective South Oxford Six (southoxfordsix.org). The program will be repeated in the summer of 2008. Sonenberg’s compositions in 2007 and 2008 were performed by the Season and Momenta string quartets, the University of Southern Maine Wind Ensemble, and the Da Capo Chamber Players, and at the Florida State University Festival of New Music, Washington Musica Viva, the Manhattan School of Music, American Opera Projects, and others. He is writing a book on Joni Mitchell for the University of Michigan Press (working title: So Busy Being Free: Joni Mitchell in Context). He writes, “Check out my website, danielsonenberg.com, and blog, arghablog.com, and get in touch!”

Andrea J. Stein and her husband, B. David Naidu, are proud to announce the birth of their son, Kieran Sion Naidu. Kieran came into the world in December 2007, joining older brother Ravi.

Mark Steiner is happy to announce that Stagger Records (Norway/France) has released his debut solo album, Fallen Birds, on CD and 12” vinyl. Recorded in Paris, New York, Oslo, and Dortmund, it took a year to complete and features a variety of international musicians. Fallen Birds can be purchased on CDBaby, iTunes, and at www.StaggerHome.com.

Alessandro Thompson’s company in East Los Angeles is called Barnacle Bros. Sculpture and Custom Fabrication. They can make almost anything: a hippopotamus out of mud, a fax machine out of limestone, tiki heads, a soap machine gun, furniture, motorcycles, and puppets. His work was exhibited at the Patricia Correia Gallery in Santa Monica in 2007. He also plays with a performance

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outfit called Trash Band, which has made two films, The Pirates vs. the Unicorn and Bananagun: Padre Brown vs. the Vampire Cowboys of Venice.

’90 Tim Sternberg’s first film, Salim Baba, a portrait of a Calcutta man who screens spliced-together films for neighborhood children on a hand-cranked, Lumière-era projector, received awards at the Palm Springs, Woodstock, and Cleveland Film Festivals and has been included in more than a dozen other film festivals, including Sundance, Telluride, Tribeca, and Amsterdam. The film was nominated for a 2008 Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Subject. Tim screened Salim Baba at Bard in April, and spoke to current film students and members of the community about his work.

’89 20th Reunion: May 22–24, 2009 Staff contact: Sasha Boak-Kelly, 845-758-7407 or boak@bard.edu Class correspondent Lisa DeTora, detoral@lafayette.edu James Snow is a part-time media studies instructor at the Jewish Community School in Istanbul and the music and nightlife editor of Time Out Istanbul (English edition). He is also part of the successful event-organizing team Istanbul Street Style (www.istanbulstreetstyle.com), and works as a videographer and codirector of the International Herald Tribune’s Istanbul blog Globespotters. He veejays at The Hall (www.thehallistanbul.com), where he has a

residency, and at other clubs and for other events around town. He is married to Emma Snow from Exeter, England. His e-mail is james@timeoutistanbul.com

’88 Class correspondent Tena Cohen, callejero@earthlink.net Dena Katzen-Seidel is a full-time instructor at Rutgers University, where she teaches digital storytelling and documentary filmmaking in the English Department. Dena is an award-winning documentary editor, producer, and writer. Her credits include films for National Geographic, Discovery Channel, PBS, HBO, ABC, the Learning Channel, Turner Broadcasting, and Court TV. She is the recipient of a New York Festivals Award for best editing and a New York Emmy Award for outstanding editing. Dena’s short stories have appeared in the Hudson Review (New Writers Edition, April 2005) and Half/Life: An Anthology (Soft Skull Press, 2006). Her short story “Good Times” was accepted for inclusion in the Hudson Review’s upcoming anthology Writes of Passage. Dena majored in film at Bard and holds a master of arts degree in anthropology from Hunter College. She and Doug Seidel ’84 recently celebrated their 16th wedding anniversary. They are the proud parents of three boys: Ezra and Jem, age 7, and Micah, 3.

After an 18-year separation, Jeremy R. Kipnis and Carolina Rodriguez ’87 met up again over Thanksgiving 2005, thanks to a very good friend, Steven Carpenter ’87. Six weeks later, on

December 30, 2005, they were married in Redding, Connecticut.

Carolina has been singing and teaching voice professionally since 2002; her specialty is early music from the Renaissance to the Classical periods. Jeremy has been hard at work designing, testing, and building the first of a series of cutting-edge motion picture screening rooms, The Kipnis Studio Standard. For more information, visit www.kipnis-studios.com.

Jennifer Lupo is pleased to announce the formation of St. Tula Films, LLC, an independent film production company. As of early 2008, she and her partners were in development on two feature films and a television series.

On January 4, 2008, Allison Radzin welcomed a new baby boy into the world: Shepherd Lordan Radzin, born in Greenwich, Connecticut. He joins his older sisters Wyatt, 4, and Caleigh, 2.

’87 Class correspondent David Avallone, ednoon@aol.com

’86 Class correspondent Chris LeGoff, cak64@comcast.net In 2005 Jim Browne started Argot Pictures, an independent film distribution/production company that sets up theatrical releases and produces documentaries. He is the distributor of Note by Note:

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The Making of Steinway L1037. He is now producing Fire Under the Snow, about Palden Gyatso, a Tibetan Buddhist monk who was imprisoned and tortured by the Chinese government for 33 years.

This year will be Jim’s third year as associate programmer for the Tribeca Film Festival. He also curates Divine Lens, an online series about women documentary filmmakers for the website divinecaroline.com. For more information, visit www.argotpictures.com.

’85 Richard Donnelly married Britta Rohrer ’90 in Bethesda, Maryland, in 1996. In 1994 Richard received his juris doctor degree from the District of Columbia School of Law in Washington, D.C., and Britta received her master’s degree in education from Loyola College in 2000. After briefly working for a chain of private schools in Florida, they became involved in the charter school movement. They now run an elementary/middle school (for more information, visit www.bradentoncharterschool.com). They are the parents of a little girl, Francesca, and live in Sarasota, Florida.

Lisa C. Uchrin had an exhibition of her watercolor paintings at the Visions Gallery in Clinton, New Jersey, in late 2007.

Christian Wright married William Rashbaum in May 2007 and became senior editor at Gourmet magazine in July 2007.

’84 25th Reunion: May 22–24, 2009 Staff contact: Matt Soper, 845-758-7505 or soper@bard.edu

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’83 Donna Knee-Baran lives and works as a chef on Yacht Slipstream, where she is part of a team offering adventure travel in the Caribbean. Friends can contact her through the business at www.sailyactslipstream.com or at daijavu22@yahoo.com.

In the spring of 2007, Andrea Zimmermann took a memoirwriting workshop with the author Sidney Offit at Marymount Manhattan College. She does volunteer work for the East 79th Street Neighborhood Association, edits the association’s publicity and newsletter, and works on the zoning/historic preservation committee. Her e-mail address is andreakz@netzero.com.

’82 The University of California at San Diego has purchased the personal literary archives of David Gansz, MFA ’05, including the preliminary manuscripts for his books and extensive letters from prominent persons gathered when he was managing editor of Station Hill Press, contributing editor of Notus: New Writing magazine, editor of Ashen Meal magazine, and publisher of Stone House Press. The author of Millennial Scriptions, a volume of collected poems, he has taught writing at Marist College; served as assistant professor and director of the library at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado; and was library director and assistant professor of English at Wilmington College in Wilmington, Ohio. He is now dean for learning support and information literacy at Edison Community College in Piqua, Ohio.

George Smith has rejoined the firm of Murphy and Lambaise in Goshen, New York, and is litigating personal injury cases throughout the Hudson Valley. On March 3, 2008, he was admitted to practice before the Supreme Court of the United States.

’79 30th Reunion: May 22–24, 2009 Staff contact: Sasha Boak-Kelly, 845-758-7407 or boak@bard.edu Adam Markowitz owns a piano showroom in Kingston, New York, and a jazz performance space in Shokan called ADAM’SPACE. In February 2007 Adam drove to New Orleans with a truckload of nine pianos, which he then distributed among schools, churches, and individuals in need. Two local filmmakers documented the trip. The trailer for the documentary film 9 Pianos is viewable on YouTube. Adam made a second trip in February 2008 and plans to make many more. To help this cause or get in touch, visit www.adamspiano.com and click on “contact us.”

Alexander N. McKnight lives with his wife, Elizabeth, in Kingston, New York, and writes nonfiction and short stories. He has been on the board of the Museum of Rhinebeck History since 2002. Alex worked in the Higher Education Opportunity Program office at Bard for 15 years until his retirement in 1995. He then dedicated much of his time to developing his Senior Project under adviser William Gaddis into a book. In early 2008 the resulting volume, Never Seen, Only Heard: The Impact of Radio 1930–1945, was published by Publish America.

’77 Bill Averbach received a grant from the Arts and Sciences Council of North Carolina to record traditional and original jazz and blues.

The project is scheduled for completion by March 2008. For more information, contact Bill at www.bamusic.net.

Alan Bigelow’s online work, installations, and conversations concerning digital fiction have appeared in Turbulence.org, Rhizome.org, Media-N: Journal of the New Media Caucus, Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, e-poetry 2007, BlazeVOX.org, New River Journal, FILE 2007, DreamingMethods.com, and elsewhere. In addition to teaching full-time in the Humanities Department at Medaille College in Buffalo, Alan is a visiting online lecturer in writing and new media at De Montfort University, United Kingdom.

New Mexico Law Review of the University of New Mexico included an article by S. Barry Paisner (with coauthor Michelle R. Haubert-Barela), “Correcting the Imbalance: The New Mexico Public Employee Bargaining Act and the Statutory Rights Provided to Public Employees,” in its volume 7, number 32 edition.

’76 In October 2007 Grant Harper Reid took part in a get-together of black and Latino Bard alumni/ae organized by Ron Wilson ’75 at the Dinosaur Restaurant in Harlem. Participants included Wilson, Nia “Pat” Rock ’78, Mike Flaherty ’74, Millie Flaherty ’76, Marlene Rubain ’76, and Anita Rodriquez ’77.

’75 Joanne Greenbaum had a survey of her work open on March 5, 2008, at Haus Konstructiv Museum in Zurich, Switzerland. In June the show traveled to Museum Abteiberg in Mönchengladbach, Germany. In conjunction with these exhibitions, a monograph on the artist was published in March 2008 by Hatje Cantz.

Eric Schwartz and his Amazon La Selva Jungle Lodge have won an Ecotourism Award from the Ecoclub of Athens, Greece. For full details, visit his website, where a download of his winning proposal may be found: www.laselvajunglelodge.com.

In May 2007 Ron Wilson was one of a handful of University of California, Irvine, faculty and staff invited to join former president Jimmy Carter for brunch before a public lecture at the college’s Center for the Study of Democracy. Ron was invited because of his status as assistant executive vice chancellor emeritus and his background in the area of conflict resolution.

’74 35th Reunion: May 22–24, 2009 Staff contact: Sasha Boak-Kelly, 845-758-7407 or boak@bard.edu Margaret Sleeper is on the faculty of the University of Wisconsin– Madison School of Social Work as clinical assistant professor.

’73 Howard Good has been nominated for a 2007 Pushcart Prize for his poem, “Schoolyard Blues,” which appeared in Raving Dove.

This is his second Pushcart nomination in two years. Howard, who is a journalism professor at SUNY New Paltz, is the author of three poetry chapbooks, including the forthcoming Strangers & Angels from Scintillating Publications of Burlington, Vermont.

Natalie Kaye is a personal and professional coach practicing in Woodstock, New York, where she lives in a Civil War–era farmhouse. She would love to hear from old friends, and can be e-mailed at kayenatalie@yahoo.com.

Jeffrey Miller continues to practice as a landscape architect in San Francisco, with a focus on the design of green schoolyards, affordable housing, child care and elder care facilities, community gardens, public parks, and neighborhood restoration projects associated with sustainable development. A recent article about his work, published in the George Lucas Educational Foundation magazine Edutopia, highlights the community organizing and design work of Miller Company in the creation of learning gardens for public schools in San Francisco. To view the article online, visit http://www.edutopia.org/sustainable-schoolyard-design.

Christina “Tina” Thuermer is the alumni coordinator at Washington International School in Washington, D.C. She also teaches journalism and a course entitled “The Theory of Knowledge.”

’71 Class correspondent Carla Bolte, carlabolte@excite.com CLASS NOTES | 65

35th Reunion, Class of 1973

’69 40th Reunion: May 22–24, 2009 Staff contact: Sasha Boak-Kelly, 845-758-7407 or boak@bard.edu Class correspondent Elaine Marcotte Hyams, eshyams@yahoo.com Peggy Aulisio is an assistant editor of Westport Shorelines, a weekly newspaper in southeastern Massachusetts. She is also a part-time lecturer in freshman English at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth. She moved back east after many years in California, where she worked in corporate public relations in San Francisco. After transferring from Bard, she graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, and earned a master’s degree from Tufts University.

Regan O’Connell Burnham notes that retirement is busier than she ever thought possible, with three volunteer jobs, one grandchild on the West Coast, singing in two choirs, and entering “intermediate” status on the flute.

Since leaving Bard, Ellen (Giordano) Cartledge has spent much of her career in the insurance industry, working in research, communications, and now as a technical analyst. She received a master’s degree in business administration from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and has been happily married for 28 years to Norm Cartledge, whom she credits with having helped turn her life around. They live in Rocky Hill, Connecticut.

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Charlie Clancy retired from law in 1999 to be an at-home parent/housewife. He enjoys reading, doing good deeds, his band, corresponding excessively online, bad golf, and vintage motorcycles. He writes that a bout with prostate cancer stimulated in him an “unnatural interest in health and fitness.”

Paula (Melnick) Elliot has retired from Washington State University, where she was the music and humanities librarian. She and her husband, Paul Brians, a retired professor of English, have retreated to Bainbridge Island near Seattle. A music major at Bard, Paula has remained an active singer, and is still delivering high C’s.

Pierre Joris has two books coming out in 2008: Aljibar II (poems, Editions phi) and Justifying the Margins: Essays 1990–2006 (Salt Publishing). His 2007 publications included Aljibar I and Meditations on the Stations of Mansour Al-Hallaj 1-21 (Anchorite Press), and the CD Routes, not Roots (spoken word accompanied

by Munir Beken, oud; Mike Bisio, bass; Ben Chadabe, percussion; and Mitch Elrod, guitar) from Ta’wil Productions.

Kadi Kiiss lives in Mill Valley, California, and works as a freelance graphic artist. She is married to Tom Scott, a sound engineer. They have a cat named Mackerel. Although she transferred in ’67, Bard remains an integral part of her personal history. Visit her website at www.kadikiiss.com.

After selling his partnership in the design/build company Vermont Vernacular Designs, Peter Peltz is now a representative in the Vermont House of Representatives. He and his wife are enjoying their first grandchild, Ellis.

Carla Sayers Tabourne is associate professor of kinesiology at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. In addition to conducting research on life-review intervention with elders who have Alzheimer’s disease, she has a new grant that allows her to study cultural competence in health care. She commutes between Minnesota and New Jersey, where her husband, Joey works, and regularly summers on Martha’s Vineyard.

After moderating at Bard, Devorah Tarrow did field work in New Guinea. In 1968, she began studying aesthetic realism with its founder, poet and critic Eli Siegel. She went on to earn her bachelor’s degree at The New School and her master’s at New York University. She presents seminars on women’s issues at the Aesthetic Realism Foundation, and lectures at libraries, schools, and historical societies on “Harriet Tubman, the Underground Railroad, and the Cause of Slavery.” For more information, visit the website of Devorah and her husband, Jeffrey Carduner, at http://www.tarrow-carduner.net.

Norman Weinstein writes about architecture for Architectural Record and other national publications. His essay on why architecture curricula should include intensive writing courses was included in the “Architectural Education” supplement of the March 2008 issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education. He would appreciate hearing from current or past Bardians involved in architecture (“especially those with an ear for music and poetry”).

His e-mail address is nweinste@mindspring.com.

’68 Class correspondents Diana Hirsch Friedman, wowdiana@optonline.net Barbara Crane Wigren, bcwigren@aol.com Martha Schwartz Bragin is, happily, back in New York as an associate professor at Hunter College School of Social Work. In July 2007 her paper “Knowing Terrible Things” (on treating survivors of violence) was awarded the Tyson Prize at the International Psychoanalytic Association convention in Berlin. Martha consults internationally and writes about mitigating the effects of violence on children affected by war and disaster, and about demobilization and reintegration of child soldiers. She writes, “The spirit of ’68 lives!”

Marylyn Donahue is the special projects editor at Pharmaceutical Executive magazine. She divides her time between New York City and Saugerties, New York.

Henry K. Nelson has retired from the California Superior Court and now lives in Port Ludlow, Washington, where he enjoys boating in Puget Sound and hiking in Olympic National Park. He also travels extensively with his wife, Margaret, and takes judicial assignments in California when and where needed.

Richard Ransohoff, M.D., is a neurologist and multiple sclerosis researcher at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio. In the spring of 2007, a national crisis in funding scientific research led to a policy at the National Institute of Neurological Disease and Stroke that limited renewals of five-year program project grants. This new policy

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55th Reunion, Class of 1953

would have effectively killed numerous long-standing projects, including Richard’s own program, which had attracted $10 million over 10 years. In response, Richard wrote an e-mail requesting a dialogue between NINDS and researchers directly affected by the policy. His e-mail, eventually cosigned by 34 other researchers around the country whose projects were also in jeopardy (along with an article about his e-mail protest in Neurology Today), prompted a thorough reconsideration of the policy at NINDS. In all, 12 especially disease-focused projects nationwide were saved, including his own—which follows, in part, a cohort of 90 MS patients at the Cleveland Clinic. Some of the patients have been involved in the study for more than 20 years. Richard and his colleagues are now launching their efforts to renew support for their research program.

’67 Class correspondent Pamela Dendy Knap, pdknap@optonline.net Barry Fruchter, class president in 1967, lives in Woodstock, New York, where he spent much of his time while a Bard student. His wife, Amber Rose, is such a Renaissance woman that, although a graduate of the University of Chicago (where she studied with Hannah Arendt), she might as well have gone to Bard. Barry has taught English at Nassau Community College for more than 20 years and is now also coordinator of its Jewish Studies Program.

He has also taught at Ulster and Orange Community Colleges.

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’66 Mary Pottker Rosenbaum had a new book, Jezebel’s Daughter, a biblical novel about Queen Athaliah of Judah, published by Blue Grape Press. It is available at barnesandnoble.com, amazon.com, or rosenbaumbooks.com.

’65 Class correspondent Charlie Hollander, chas956@rcn.com

’64 45th Reunion: May 22–24, 2009 Staff contact: Sasha Boak-Kelly, 845-758-7407 or boak@bard.edu

’63 Class correspondent Penny Axelrod, axelrodp@earthlink.net

’62 Class correspondent Susan Playfair, srplayfair@comcast.net After leaving Bard, Peter Rainey earned graduate degrees from Colgate University and Simmons College as well as a Fulbright Fellowship to India. He has been the keeper of rare books at Dartmouth, executive director of career services at Vassar College, and director of administration at the Harvard Business School Library. He went back to school at the age of 63 and now counsels

and works with ex-offenders, sex offenders, and those dealing with substance-abuse issues. With his life partner/husband of 38 years and two grandchildren, he traveled in India for several weeks in early 2008. His e-mail address is prainey@kitclark.org.

’56 Miriam Roskin Berger received the American Dance Therapy Association Lifetime Achievement Award in recognition of her lifelong and significant contribution to the association and to the growth and development of the profession of dance/movement therapy. She received the award at the annual conference of the ADTA in Brooklyn in September 2007.

’53 Class correspondent Naomi Bellinson Feldman, nada1500@comcast.net Naomi Bellinson Feldman continues to toil as class correspondent (keep those notes and e-mails coming, please) while also pursuing her retirement career as a pianist, enjoying both chamber music and occasional solo performances. She and her husband, Dan, report that by the end of 2007 they had 20 grandchildren and one incredible great-granddaughter. They are quite sure they will never run out of babies.

Martin A. Johnson has been the judge at juried art exhibitions in South Florida, including those at Palm Beach Community College in Lake Worth.

Charlie Naef is the leader of the Obama for America campaign in the 23rd Congressional District of New York (which covers one quarter of the land mass of New York State). He writes, “The 23rd is the second largest district east of the Mississippi, and is predominantly Republican.” Stay tuned.

Bob Ronder reports that in 2007 he was elected chairman of the board of Ulster Savings Bank, a regional financial center in New York. He has been a member of the board almost since graduating from law school. He and Margie recently celebrated significant birthdays by taking 17 children, grandchildren, and assorted spouses on a cruise in Bermuda.

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

’51 Kent (Jorgensen) Ozarow has moved to White Plains, New York, from Great Neck, leaving behind a large garden and artist’s studio.

Fortunately, her new co-op apartment is spacious, with light, air, and a studio. She will continue to teach poetry and writing workshops in Great Neck adult programs.

Gertrude “Trudy” Works lost her husband of 52 years in November 2007.

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’43 Philip H. Gordon has stepped down as chairman of EdVestors, a nonprofit organization he cofounded five years ago. The organization attracts private funding for innovative educational projects that help to level the playing field for urban schoolchildren in Boston and Lowell, Massachusetts.

’40 Class correspondent Dick Koch, 516-599-3489 or rfkoch@macdave.com Dick Koch writes, “There really is love in the afternoon—late afternoon!”

Classes of 1948 and 1949

’39 70th Reunion: May 22–24, 2009 Staff contact: Sasha Boak-Kelly, 845-758-7407 or boak@bard.edu

’50 Brandon Grove is executive director of the Genocide Prevention Task Force, whose purpose is to generate practical recommendations to enhance the U.S. government’s capacity to respond to emerging threats of genocide and mass atrocities. Its cochairs are former secretary of state Madeleine Albright and former defense secretary William Cohen. Their final report will be released in November 2008, in time for a new administration to consider its recommendations.

In March 2007 Richard Amero received the Man of Distinction Award from the Congress of History of San Diego and Imperial Counties for his lifetime work on southern California history.

Richard would like to pay tribute to Dr. Theodore Weiss, the late poet and Bard teacher who gave him the encouragement he needed to continue his work as a part-time historian and writer. He writes, “I miss his hearty sense of humor.” Richard’s e-mail is ramero@cox.net and his website is http://balboaparkhistory.net/glimpses/index.htm.

’49 Charlotte Hahn Arner is a writer and researcher who is especially interested in history.

Guy Robinson has a blogsite: www.dalkeyguy.blogspot.com.

John Leggett turned 90 in 2007 and “keeps a bounce in [his] elderly legs” by writing a lot. He has two biographies and five novels published to date.

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

’06 Joshua Thorson screened his short documentary video UFO DAYS in the CELLuloid: Cell-Phone Made Documentaries program at the Museum of Modern Art as a part of the Documentary Fortnight on February 20, 2008. He also designed the video for Charles Mee’s newest play, Paradise Park, at the Signature Theater in New York City. The play ran from February 12 to April 6.

’05 Paolo Javier has two new chapbooks out, LMFAO (OMG Press) and Goldfish Kisses (Sona Books). Goldfish Kisses is a collaboration with artist Ernest Concepcion and is part of an ongoing illustrated poem/novel called the Original Brown Boy, about an octopus and catfish moving through New York City at the turn of the millennium.

’45 Benson Snyder retired from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1988. He is at work in his studio, with a recent emphasis on lithography.

’44 65th Reunion: May 22–24, 2009 Staff contact: Sasha Boak-Kelly, 845-758-7407 or boak@bard.edu Taro Kawa writes: “In spite of my old age, I’m still alive and kicking. I guess there have been many changes at Bard since I left in 1944.”

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’04 In February 2008 Adriana Farmiga had a solo show in La Galleria, the gallery of the nonprofit experimental theater La MaMa in Manhattan.

On October 13, 2007, Sue Havens was pleased to collaborate with artist and Bard MFA faculty member Kristin Lucas in the project space at Postmasters in New York. In February, Sue exhibited a series of gouache paintings in a group show at the Jeff Bailey Gallery in New York.

In September 2007 Abbey Williams exhibited video work in the project room at Bellwether Gallery in New York City. She was featured in Bellwether’s booth at the New Art Dealers Alliance (NADA) Art Fair in Miami in December.

’02 Alexandra Newmark exhibited last year in Philadelphia and New York. In October 2007 she gave birth to Lucas John Bear. She resides in Kensington, Brooklyn, where she is working on a new series of sculptures and watching the horses.

In 2007 Raïssa Venables had several solo exhibitions of her photographic works in Germany. In February, an exhibit opened at the Städtische Galerie im Haus der Kultur in Waldkraiburg.

In May, her show Mysterious Rooms opened at the Kunstverein Ludwigshafen, near Mannheim; in October, a similar show opened at the Kunstverein Grafschaft Bentheim. She also had a solo exhibit at the Roswell Museum of Art in Roswell, New Mexico, in June and participated in the group exhibit R.A.i.R. Works 40 at 516 Arts in Albuquerque in November.

’01 Nina Max Daly and husband, Shane, had a daughter, Rose Lilliana Murray, born in October 2007. Nina’s work was included in group shows at Gallery 51 in North Adams, Massachusetts, and Kingston Gallery in Boston.

In October 2007, Michelle Handelman’s photo and video work were featured in the Third Avenue windows of Bloomingdale’s flagship store in New York, as part of ARTrageous, an art and fashion campaign created in collaboration with the New Museum of Contemporary Art and Vanity Fair. Her new 3-channel video Star Crash Dust Down had its premiere at Art-Claims-Impulse, Berlin.

Jennifer Riley had a solo show of new work in Boston at OH+T Gallery in September 2007 and a second solo show of monumentally scaled paintings at Dust Gallery in Las Vegas, Nevada, in October.

She was also in a summerlong group show at Spanierman Modern and a group show on geometric abstraction in January 2008 at McKenzie Gallery, both in New York City. She was represented at the art fairs Scope Hamptons in East Hampton and Aqua Art Miami.

She taught two graduate painting studios in the fall of 2007 at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, and continues to be a Rouse Artist in Residence at Harvard University, teaching drawing to graduate architecture students in Rome. She has been writing art reviews for the Brooklyn Rail, New York Sun, and artcritical.com. Jennifer was adopted by two kittens, Astrid and Hadrian, in late December 2007.

In 2007 Marjorie Vecchio curated the exhibition Whole Fragment at Sheppard Gallery at the University of Nevada, Reno, where she is the gallery’s director and curator. An essay by poet and Bard professor Ann Lauterbach inspired the exhibition, and Lauterbach wrote a new essay for the catalogue. The show included mostly artists and writers who have studied or taught alongside Marjorie, although a few did not. Past Bard students and faculty involved

included writers Joel Felix MFA ’01 and Tim Griffin MFA ’99 and artists Nina Bovasso MFA ’00, Jennilie Brewster MFA ’07, Fawn Krieger MFA ’05, Polly Apfelbaum, and Arturo Herrera.

The artists and Lauterbach came out for a week of activities in the high desert of northern Nevada, and Jennilie Brewster had a twoweek residency.

’98 In May 2008 Arpine Konyalian Grenier read from her new volume of poetry, Part, Part Euphrates, at the Poetic Ecologies Conference at l’Université Libre de Bruxelles in Belgium.

A profile of Nick Tobier’s public performance work appears in issue number 5 of the Canadian journal Locus Suspectus.

’97 Carolyn Guinzio’s second poetry collection, Quarry, will be published this fall as part of Parlor Press’s Free Verse Editions series.

She lives in Fayetteville, Arkansas.

In 2007 David Newton was given the Bruce B. Stewart Award for Excellence in Teaching at Guilford College in Greensboro, North Carolina, where he just finished his fifth year as a tenure track sculpture professor.

Bard Center for Environmental Policy ’06 Ben Hoen left Brooklyn and moved to the Rhinebeck, New York, area with his wife and two kids, ages 4 and 2. He continues his work with Berkeley Lab in California. Having completed a study on the potential effects of wind energy on property values, he began work on a California-wide study of the potential benefits solar systems have on home values. The results of the wind study were presented at the annual American Wind Energy Association convention in Houston, Texas, in June 2008.

After several months as an independent contractor conducting research and writing for the Pace Energy Project at Pace University Law School, Todd Paul accepted a full-time position as energy policy analyst. He works primarily on Pace’s NYSERDA contracts in the fields of renewable energy and environmental impacts.

’05 Lauren Franke is an environmental specialist on the Paul S. Sarbanes Ecosystem Restoration Project at Poplar Island, Maryland. She lives in Easton, Maryland, and began work for Maryland Environmental Service in June 2007.

’04 Teresa Rusinek gave birth to her second child, Molly Daly, who celebrated her first birthday in February.

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The Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design, and Culture ’07 Jennifer Klos is an assistant curator at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art. Rebecca Tilles joined the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, as a curatorial research associate for decorative arts and sculpture in the Art of Europe Department. For the past year she was involved in comprehensive curatorial support of the exhibition Symbols of Power: Napoleon and the Art of the Empire. She is currently working on object selection and documentation for the upcoming exhibition, Horace W. Brock Collection, which will open in 2009 and feature a private collection of European decorative arts and Old Master drawings and paintings.

’06 Kristin Martin is associate administrator for the Development Office at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. She is engaged to Christopher Todd McGuire, whom she plans to marry in the spring of 2009.

’04 Katherine Wahlberg published an article based on her thesis, “Cornelius Kierstede, Colonial Silversmith,” which appeared in the January 2008 issue of The Magazine Antiques.

Leigh Wishner gave a lecture at Fashion Institute of Technology, New York, on April 17, on the subject “Shoes 101: Footwear of the 18th and 19th Centuries.” Her talk was in conjunction with the exhibition Sole Desire: The Shoes of Christian Louboutin. In May, she presented a paper at the Costume Society of America’s 34th Annual Meeting and Symposium in New Orleans. Her topic was “Modern Maenads and the Feline Mystique: Pin-Up Girls and Burlesque Queens in Leopard Costume, 1940–1960.”

’03 Remi Spriggs is a curatorial assistant at Bayou Bend Collection and Gardens in Houston, Texas.

a rewarding one. So now I’ve got the whole package—new baby, new house, and new job!”

Ruba Katrib, associate curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Miami, contributed a catalogue essay for the exhibition Jorge Pardo: House at MOCA. She also participated in the Miami Roundtable on Contemporary Curating at Art Basel Miami Beach 2007, one of the world’s most prestigious international contemporary art fairs.

Chen Tamir, an independent curator living in New York City, cocurated New York, New York, New York at Flux Factory.

’06 Erica (Fisher) Battle, project curatorial assistant in modern and contemporary art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, worked on the exhibition William Kentridge: Tapestries, which ran from December 2007 to April 2008 at the museum. Erica is also assisting the museum’s organization of Bruce Nauman’s exhibition for the 2009 Venice Biennale. Erica will work on all aspects of the exhibition and its accompanying catalogue.

Kerryn Greenberg cocurated Juan Muñoz: A Retrospective at the Tate Modern, London, where she is an assistant curator. The retrospective ran from January to the end of April.

’05 Cecilia Alemani cocurated boundLES, a collaborative project between commercial galleries, nonprofit art spaces, and artists that celebrated the rich creative spirit of Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Cecilia’s exhibition review of Cut was one of artforum.com Critic’s Picks.

Jyeong Yeon Kim, artistic director of Gallery Hyundai, Seoul, is working toward her doctorate in visual culture studies at Korea University. She has also received financial support from the Korean Foundation for a cultural exchange program, which will entail a collaborative exhibition with Pelin Uran ’05 in both Seoul and Istanbul. She writes, “We are so happy that we can travel to each other’s country, and work and spend time together.”

Risa Puleo is the assistant curator of American and contemporary art at the Blanton Museum of Art, University of Texas at Austin.

’00 Stephanie Iverson Lake is the décor editor for MARQ magazine, a publication that covers luxury living in the Twin Cities of Minnesota. She is also a contributor to the upcoming Encyclopedia of World Dress and Fashion.

’04

Center for Curatorial Studies

Dagbok, a video installation by Aubrey Reeves, was included in a two-person exhibition called Constellation, which was on view in January and February at Gallery 44, Toronto. Reeves, whose video offered contemplative ideas on the complex relationships created by war, is the programming director of Toronto’s Trinity Square Video.

’07

’03

Ryan Doherty writes that he is settling into his new position as curator at Southern Alberta Art Gallery. “It was a long process, but

Rob Blackson, curator at Reg Vardy Gallery at the University of Sunderland, U.K., published an extensive article titled “Once

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More . . . With Feeling: Reenactment in Contemporary Art and Culture” in the spring 2007 issue of art journal.

Ingrid Chu contributed an introductory text to the catalogue that accompanied Shinique Smith’s first solo exhibition, which took place at Moti Hasson Gallery in Manhattan, where Ingrid is director of development and special projects. She is also director and curator of RED-I Projects, a public arts commissioning organization.

Bree Edwards, a special projects curator at Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts, University of Houston, organized “You Are Here,” a two-day conference in Houston that took place on November 30 and December 1, 2007. The conference focused on artists and researchers who work with mapping and tactical media.

Candice Hopkins, director and curator of exhibitions at Western Front Society, Vancouver, British Columbia, curated an exhibition at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. She reports that Western Front Society also played host to a solo show by Paul Chan MFA ’03.

’01

The Center for Curatorial Studies (CCS) held its third alumni/ae reunion on February 22 in the Tiffany Room of the Park Avenue Armory in New York City.

About 250 alumni/ae, patrons and friends, artists, curators, and CCS faculty and staff attended. Projects on view at the Armory included work by Lisi Raskin, who was CCS artist in residence for the spring of 2008, and a program of videos from Electronic Arts Intermix that was selected by CCS students.

’98

Olga Kopenkina, independent curator and art critic, contributed an essay to the book related to Communist Guide New York City, a collection of 79 photographs of buildings, public places, and sites in the city that are connected to the history of the Communist Party USA.

Anne Ellegood, an associate curator at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, cocurated The Cinema Effect: Illusion, Reality, and the Moving Image at the museum in Washington, D.C. She also contributed an essay to the catalogue of the ambitious eight-month project, which consisted of exhibitions, public programs, and other events.

Gabriela Rangel, director of visual arts at the Americas Society, was a participant in ARCO8, the sixth International Contemporary Art Experts Forum, where she addressed the issue of public and private collections.

Jessica Hough, director, Mills College Art Museum, coedited a book titled Revisiting the Glass House: Contemporary Art and Modern Architecture, to be published by Yale University Press this fall.

’00

’96

Tumelo Mosaka, assistant curator, Department of Contemporary Art, Brooklyn Museum, conceived and organized an exhibition of contemporary Caribbean art, Infinite Island, which ran from the end of August 2007 to the end of January 2008.

Tumelo also edited the accompanying catalogue and wrote an introductory essay.

Regine Basha, an independent curator in Austin, Texas, was a participant in the Marfa Sessions in Texas, curating a group show of 11 artists who work with sound. She also curated exhibitions by Setareh Shahbazi at Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum and Julieta Aranda at Sala Diaz in San Antonio, Texas.

’99 Xandra Eden, curator of exhibitions at Weatherspoon Art Museum, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, curated The Lining of Forgetting: Internal and Eternal Memory in Art, which ran from February 10 to May 25 at the Weatherspoon.

Tatjana von Prittwitz und Gaffron, curatorial researcher at the Center for Curatorial Studies, had a review, The Janus-faced Legacy of Joseph Beuys, published in the first issue of the Journal of Surrealism and the Americas.

Goran Tomcic’s installation Kairos (Lost to You Somewhere) was included in the Haifa Museum of Art’s group show BoysCraft, along with works by 41 Israeli and international artists. The exhibition aimed “to shed light on the engagement with manual crafts as cultural and sociopolitical pratices,” and the participating artists presented works composed of fabric, paper, beads, thread, wallpaper and other decorative materials. Tomcic is an independent curator, writer, and artist.

CLASS NOTES | 73

The Conductors Institute at Bard ’04 Elizabeth Askren was one of six conductors chosen to participate in the Ensemble Orchestral de Paris’ 2007 Académie de Vendome with conducting pedagogue Kenneth Keisler and music director John Nelson. A passionate advocate of contemporary music, Elizabeth has conducted several premieres and commissioned works as music director of Orchestre 2021, a chamber orchestra dedicated to 20th- and 21st-century works. She is in her fourth season as artistic director of the Fondation des États-Unis cultural season, where she has programmed more than 150 contemporary works with the members of PONT—Portes Ouvertes aux Nouveaux Talents. She conducts throughout France and regularly assists productions in Hungary, Belgium, Germany, Greece, and Holland.

Bard High School Early College

in intellectual, philosophical, and academic pursuits. He loved his friends, education, and travel, managing to combine the three by traveling throughout Europe with his friends while studying Spanish in Barcelona and French in Montpellier. He enjoyed playing his guitar and jamming with other musicians, creating sketches, working part-time with the College’s Horticulture Department planting bulbs, and training at Chamberlain School of Martial Arts, which awarded him brown belts in both kenpo karate and jiujitsu.

He is survived by his parents, James Olan and Sarah Warren Hutcheson, and his older brother, Nathaniel “Nathan” Olan Hutcheson, all of Dallas; his paternal grandmother, Patricia Mills Hutcheson, of Dallas, and maternal grandmother, Alice Ford Warren, of Kentucky; five uncles and seven aunts; and 10 first cousins. He is also survived by his godmother, Sharon Mills of Chattanooga, Tennessee, and two longtime and devoted friends, Dr. Michael and Mary Ann Cofield of Arizona. A memorial service at Bard’s Chapel of the Holy Innocents took place on February 14, followed by an exhibition of Warren’s artwork in the Fisher Studio.

’78

Alumni/ae from the five graduating classes of Bard High School Early College gathered in January with members of the Class of 2008, faculty, and staff to catch up with old friends and share their post–BHSEC experiences.

In Memoriam ’10 Warren Mills Hutcheson, 19, a second-year student at Bard, died on January 1, 2008, in Las Vegas, Nevada, following a car accident in Arizona while in route to Telluride, Colorado, with close friends. Born June 24, 1988, in Saratoga Springs, New York, he graduated from Highland Park High School in Dallas, Texas, in 2006. While in high school, he was a member of the regional championship Academic Decathlon team, winning a bronze medal in the Academic Decathlon State Championship in Economics. He was also a member of the Quill and Scroll Society, and was published in The Tartan, a peer-reviewed literary and arts magazine that he later served as senior editor. He received several academic achievement awards while at Highland Park, and was a Blue Jacket recipient from Blue Mountain Ranch in Colorado.

At Bard, Warren was concentrating in religious studies.

Friends recall that he had an inquisitive mind and found great joy

74

Clifford C. Forrest died on December 28, 2007, after a long battle with cancer. Born February 14, 1951, he was raised by his aunt, Maggie Ackers, in New York City after the death of his mother. As a teen he quit school and followed the flower children of that era.

When that lost its luster, he returned to New York, earned his G.E.D., graduated with a B.A. in psychology from Bard (where he was the captain of the basketball team), and earned his master’s degree in speech and hearing from Teachers College, of Columbia University. He worked as a consultant for youth programs in the New York City mayor’s office for five years, and then pursued a career in insurance, but continued to work with troubled and challenged youth. A dedicated athlete, he once trained for and finished the Marathon Swim Around Manhattan. His family notes that this marathon gave him the “strength and stamina he needed to fight the very long fight against the illness that befell him.”

’77 Marian M. Alves died on November 14, 2007, at her home in Tallahassee, Florida, after a two-year battle with cancer. She studied performing arts at Bard, and went on to graduate with honors in history at Wheaton College in Massachusetts. She earned a degree from Suffolk University Law School in Boston and pursued a career as a lawyer. She is survived by her parents, Jacqueline Lazare McNeill and Thomas Hudson McNeill; two sons; a daughter; a brother and a sister; and several nieces and nephews.

’72 Diana M. Lawry died of cancer on June 17, 2007, at her home in Bethesda, Maryland. After her time at Bard, she graduated from Skidmore College and went on to earn a master’s degree in education. She spent her career working with and for older adults, beginning in 1975, when she designed and directed the first adult day-care center in Massachusetts, the Amherst Center. She even-

tually worked for the Massachusetts Department of Elder Affairs, and then moved on to Washington, D.C., in 1981. At the time of her death, she was a program specialist with the Center for Planning and Policy Development at the U.S. Administration on Aging and Department of Health and Human Services. She is survived by her son, Will; her father, William; and a brother.

’64

attended the New York Institute for the Blind, Bard College, and Columbia University, where he received a master’s degree and professional diploma in music. He worked in his chosen field his entire life: in church music, as a jazz pianist, and as a piano technician. He lived in Spokane, Washington, where he played at St. John’s Cathedral and the Unitarian Universalist Church. He is survived by Billie Marie, his wife of 41 years; five children and their partners; and two grandchildren.

Editor’s Note: Bibi Wein ’65 sent the following notice to the Bardian.

’51 Amy H. (Wohlgemuth) Gateff died on January 9, 2008, after a courageous six-month battle with cancer. At Bard, she majored in languages and literature; after spending part of her junior year in Paris, she chaired the literature club and was an editor of the Bard Review. She completed a master’s degree in Poitiers, France, and in 1969 permanently changed her name to Amy Gateff after a brief marriage. She worked as a translator and editor in Montreal, England, and Manhattan, and in 1984 was about to leave for a position at the United Nations in Geneva when a massive stroke brought her career to a halt. For the next 23 years, she lived an active, independent, and creative life that inspired countless others, especially at the International Center for the Disabled in Manhattan, where she studied ceramics, writing, and photography.

Shortly before her death, she moved to Utah to be with her sister, Miriam Davis. Her life was celebrated in a memorial service on January 27, which would have been her 65th birthday.

’55 Susannah Leeman Fiering of Berkeley, California, died on June 8, 2007. An artist with a passion for nature and social justice, she created woodcut prints, acrylics, watercolors, and cast bronze sculptures. In November 2007 she was honored with a solo art exhibition and sale organized by the Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists to benefit the Middle East Children’s Alliance. She is survived by her daughters—Gina Fiering Trent ’80, Wendy Chaudhry, and Chloë Chaudhry—and five grandchildren.

Mason M. Lemont died at home on September 7, 2007. Born in Norfolk, Virginia, he graduated from Harvard University with a degree in philosophy in 1963 after attending Bard. He was a banker with State Street Bank in Boston for 25 years. He then worked for Connecticut Bank and Trust, which later became State Street Bank, and retired in 1994. He lived in Hanover, Massachusetts, for many years and then in Bolton, Connecticut, before moving to Andover upon his retirement. A member of the Ragged Mountain Fish and Game Club, he enjoyed the outdoors and liked to hike and garden. He is survived by his wife of 50 years, Elsa V. Hurtig Lemont; their children, Ruth, Kara, and Bruce; a sister, Virginia; six grandchildren, Amanda, Matthew, Simon, Isabella, Sofia, and Melia; and many nieces and nephews.

’53

E. Dan Cappel of Wilton, Connecticut, died on October 12, 2007.

He was a science teacher for 35 years in Wilton, where he taught biology and, for a time, was chairman of the high school science department. He was also a cellist, a lacrosse enthusiast, adviser to the school’s ecology club, and avid biker and kayaker. He was the first teacher at Wilton High School ever to earn a doctorate, earning his degree in plant taxonomy from the University of Massachusetts in 1969. He is survived by his wife, Brita Cappel, two daughters, and two grandchildren.

Emma Akana Aluli Meyer of Honolulu, a homemaker and the founder of Young of Heart Gallery, died on March 26, 2007, in Kailua, Hawaii. She is survived by her former husband, Harry King Meyer, and their six children, 12 grandchildren, and three greatgrandchildren.

’40 Leonard B. Meyer died at his home in Manhattan on December 30, 2007. A pioneer in the field of musicology, his book Emotion and Meaning in Music remains in print more than 50 years after its initial publication, and is still regarded as one of the most significant scholarly works in the field of music cognition. He served with the army in World War II, earning a Bronze Star for service in Normandy and at the Battle of the Bulge. After earning a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and a master’s in music at Columbia University, he moved to the Department of Music at the University of Chicago, where he received his doctorate in the history of culture and taught for 29 years. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship, was elected into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and, in 1976, received an honorary doctorate from Bard.

He is survived by three daughters—Carlin, Muffie, and Erica Meyer—two granddaughters, and his first wife, Lee Meyer.

’36 George M. Galloway Jr. of East Orleans, Cape Cod, Massachusetts, died at his home on December 30, 2007, following a long illness.

After graduating from Bard he earned a degree from the University of Michigan School of Business and went on to become senior vice president of the Reuben H. Donnelley Corporation. He ended his career as chairman of Donnelley’s International in London, England. He is survived by his wife, the former Mary Elizabeth Codet, with whom he enjoyed nearly 70 years of marriage; two sons; and seven grandchildren, eight great-grandchildren, and a niece.

Herbert A. Severtsen died on October 1, 2007, following a threeyear struggle with Parkinson’s disease. A New Yorker by birth, he

CLASS NOTES | 75

JOHN BARD SOCIETY NEWS The John Bard Society honors contributors who help plan for Bard’s future by documenting their planned gifts to the College. With their planned gifts, these friends help the College ensure its tradition of excellence and innovation.

What exactly are planned gifts?

Simply put, a planned gift is a donation of assets that also helps the donor meet personal and financial objectives. For example, you may give appreciated stock to Bard for your Annual Fund contribution. Donating appreciated securities (stock you have owned for at least 12 months and one day) may allow you to make a gift larger than you had thought possible and may provide you with tax savings.

Another type of planned gift is a beneficiary designation on your retirement account.

Every retirement account requires a beneficiary designation. Your 401(k), 403(b), or Roth IRA all require you to complete a form and name a beneficiary or beneficiaries. By designating Bard as a beneficiary, you have taken the easy step of making a planned gift.

A charitable gift annuity is another example of a planned gift. A charitable gift annuity is a contract between you and Bard by which you give a gift to the College, and in exchange Bard provides you with an annual income for your life and possibly the life of a loved one.

Part of the initial donation and part of the annual income are tax deductible.

The most common type of planned gift is a bequest. A bequest—a donation through your will—is the easiest planned gift to make. Establishing a bequest costs nothing now and can provide you with the satisfaction of knowing that you are helping to ensure a Bard education for future generations. You can make a bequest by writing your will or revising it. You may change at any time a charitable bequest made to Bard in your will. By providing a copy of the relevant portion of your will to Bard, you become a member of the John Bard Society.

Other types of planned gifts also have the ability to help you achieve your philanthropic objective while possibly saving on estate and personal income taxes.

For more information on how you can make a planned gift and join the John Bard Society, please call Debra Pemstein, vice president for development and alumni/ae affairs, at 845-758-7405 or e-mail pemstein@bard.edu. All inquiries will be kept confidential.

This information is for descriptive purposes only. For specific information on your personal situation, please consult your legal and financial advisers.

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bard music festival

Sung in Polish with English supertitles

PROKOFIEV AND HIS WORLD

KAROL SZYMANOWSKI’S HARNASIE

Leon Botstein, Christopher H. Gibbs, and Robert Martin, artistic directors Simon Morrison, scholar in residence

Scenario by Karol Szymanowski and Jerzy Rytard AND

KING ROGER (THE SHEPHERD) Libretto by Jaroslaw Iwaszkiewicz American Symphony Orchestra Conducted by Leon Botstein, music director Wroclaw Opera Chorus Director and Designer Lech Majewski Choreographer Noémie Lafrance sosnoff theater July 25, 31, and August 2 at 8 pm July 27 and August 3 at 3 pm

The 19th Bard Music Festival features two weekends of concerts with the American Symphony Orchestra—conducted by Leon Botstein, music director—as well as chamber concerts, talks, panels, and other events that bring the musical world of Sergey Prokofiev vividly to life.

WEEKEND ONE August 8–10

From East to West FRIDAY, AUGUST 8 Program One: From Russia and Back: The Career of Sergey Prokofiev Chamber works by Prokofiev

SATURDAY, AUGUST 9

musical theater

GEORGE AND IRA GERSHWIN’S OF THEE I SING Music and lyrics by George Gershwin and Ira Gershwin Book by George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind Conductor James Bagwell Director and Choreographer Will Pomerantz theater two August 1, 6, 7 at 8 pm August 2, 9, 10 at 3 pm August 3 at 7 pm August 6 at 2 pm August 8 at 5 p

Program Two: Before Emigration: Teachers and Influences Chamber works by Prokofiev, Tcherepnin, Glière, Taneyev, Medtner, Stravinsky, Glazunov Program Three: The Silver Age: Mystic Symbols Prokofiev, Piano Concerto No. 1, Symphony No. 3; Scriabin, Le poème de l’extase; Joseph Achron, Epitaph (World Premiere); and works by Lyadov and Rimsky-Korsakov

SUNDAY, AUGUST 10 Program Four: The Paris Years Chamber works by Prokofiev, Poulenc, Honegger, Milhaud, Satie, Ravel, Tailleferre, Stravinsky, Auric Program Five: The Cult of the Child Works by Prokofiev, Poulenc, Ravel, Carpenter, Satie

WEEKEND TWO August 15–17

The Faustian Pact FRIDAY, AUGUST 15

theater

ANTON CHEKHOV’S UNCLE VANYA Translated by Paul Schmidt With Peter Dinklage as Uncle Vanya

Program Six: White Russians Abroad Choral works by Prokofiev, Grechaninoff, Rachmaninoff, Stravinsky, Obukhov

SATURDAY, AUGUST 16

theater two July 9*, 10*, 11, 12, 16, 17, 18, 19 at 8 pm (*Previews) July 12, 16, 19 at 2 pm July 13, 20 at 3 pm

Program Seven: From Broadway to Gorky Street Songs by Prokofiev, Duke, Gershwin, Porter, Dunayevsky, Shostakovich Program Eight: The Return to the U.S.S.R. Chamber works by Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Khachaturian, Feinberg Program Nine: Manufacturing a Soviet Sound Prokofiev, Summer Night, Symphony-Concerto; Shebalin, Variations on the Russian Folk Song “Oh My Field”; Myaskovsky, Symphony No. 13

film festival

SUNDAY, AUGUST 17

CINÉMA TRANSCONTINENTAL: AMERICA, RUSSIA, AND FRANCE IN THE 1930s

Program Ten: Formalism: Challenge and Response Chamber works by Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Kabalevsky, Shcherbachyov Program Eleven: 20th-Century Russia: Nostalgia and Reality Prokofiev, Egyptian Nights, Cantata for the 20th Anniversary of the October Revolution, They Are Seven; Dukelsky, Epitaph; Rachmaninoff, Three Russian Songs for chorus and orchestra.

July 6 – August 14

SPIEGELTENT Cabaret, Family Fare, SpiegelClub July 5 – August 17

Order tickets today: 845-758-7900 www.fishercenter.bard.edu

BARD SUMMERSCAPE

an opera double bill

FA C U LT Y N O T E S

Susan Aberth, assistant professor of art history and author of Leonora Carrington: Surrealism, Alchemy, and Art, took part in a roundtable discussion on Carrington’s artwork and legacy at the San Francisco Art Institute in February. With Raman Frey ’97, Aberth hosted a reception at the opening of Leonora Carrington: The Talismanic Lens at the Frey Norris Gallery in San Francisco.

The Etymology of Bird, a play by Zakiyyah Alexander, visiting assistant professor of theater, was produced last spring at the Providence Black Repertory Company. The Providence Journal called the play “the best thing Black Rep has done this season.”

John Ashbery, Charles P. Stevenson Professor of Languages and Literature, exhibited several of his collages in POETS at ZieherSmith Gallery in New York City. New translations of his work were published in Portuguese and Slovenian periodicals, and he gave readings at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C.; 192 Books in New York City; Wellesley College; and Princeton University.

James Bagwell, associate professor of music, conducted three concerts in late 2007 (two in October, one on New Year’s Eve) with the Tulsa Symphony Orchestra. For Light Opera Oklahoma (for which he is music director), he conducted new productions of Sweeney Todd and The Music Man. He prepared the Dessoff Symphonic Choir for an October performance of Alexander Nevsky with the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra at Carnegie Hall.

Thurman Barker, associate professor of music, issued a CD, Bard College Big Band, featuring cuts by Bard student musicians.

“Eli Miller’s Seltzer Delivery Service,” an essay by Emily Barton, assistant professor of writing, appeared in the anthology Brooklyn Was Mine, published by Riverhead Books in January, and on nextbook.org, which also published her essays on Al Jolson’s film The Jazz Singer and on Fiorello LaGuardia’s Jewish heritage.

The work of Laura Battle, professor of studio arts, was the subject of a feature in the January 2008 issue of Art in America.

“Putin and the Dawn of the New Authoritarians,” by Jonathan Becker, dean of international studies and associate professor of political studies, was selected as number three in the top ten

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articles published by The Globalist, a daily online magazine on the global economy, politics, and culture.

Roger Berkowitz, assistant professor of political studies and human rights, published an article, “Transcendence & Finitude in Drucilla Cornell’s Philosophy of the Limit,” in Imagining Law: On Drucilla Cornell (SUNY Press, 2008). Berkowitz’s review of Peg Birmingham’s Hannah Arendt and Human Rights appeared in Philosophy in Review in December 2007. He is the coeditor of a new book series, Just Ideas, from Fordham University Press. His article “Friedrich Nietzsche, the Code of Manu, and the Art of Legislation,” originally published in the Cardozo Law Review, is being reprinted this summer by Ashgate Publishing in Nietzsche and Law. Leon Botstein, president of the college and Leon Levy Professor in the Arts and Humanities, was elected chairman of the Board of Trustees of Central European University (CEU) in Budapest, a postgraduate institution with an international student body, accredited by the United States and Hungary. He previously held the post of vice-chairman of the CEU board. For the One Day University, which provides adults with a daylong series of lectures by distinguished academics, he delivered a talk about the role of formal education in shaping U.S. politics and culture. He participated in a public discussion about lives and careers with architect Frank Gehry at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles and gave a lecture at the Morgan Library & Museum previewing the offerings of the 2008 SummerScape festival. For Learning in Progress, a documentary produced for a local television program, he was interviewed about the role community colleges will play in the future of U.S. education; he also addressed an Ulster County Board of Cooperative Education Services conference in Kingston, New York. For Bard’s First-Year Seminar symposium series he presented “Richard Strauss’s Nietzsche,” a lecture-concert during which he led the American Symphony Orchestra (ASO) in a performance of Also sprach Zarathustra. With the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, the radio orchestra of Israel, he gave a concert in London and performed programs in Jerusalem in honor of Holocaust Memorial Day and Independence Day. In addition, he fulfilled regular conducting duties with the ASO.

Jonathan Brent, Visiting Alger Hiss Professor of History and Literature and associate director and editorial director of Yale University Press, was awarded a grant from the Andrew Mellon Foundation for his work in the Stalin Archives in Moscow.

Franklin Bruno, visiting assistant professor of philosophy, took part in a panel discussion last November at New York University, celebrating the launch of Listen Again: A Momentary History of Pop Music (Duke University Press). In January he performed his own songs at “Songs of the City,” a group concert that was part of the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Concrete Frequency series, at the Walt Disney Concert Hall.

Nina Cannizzaro, assistant professor of Italian, was editor of Paolo Sarpi. Della potestà de’ prencipi (Marsillo).

Gabriela Carrión, assistant professor of Spanish, delivered a paper, “Widow’s Honor,” at the American Comparative Literature Association annual meeting, held in Puebla, Mexico, in April 2007.

Nicole Caso, assistant professor of Spanish, contributed “Laberintos de apariencias y reiteraciones: Reconstruyendo la integridad psíquica/nacional en Laberintos de orgullo de Rosa María Britton” to Rosa María Britton ante la crítica, published last year in Madrid by Editorial Verbum.

Richard Davis, professor of religion, published “Ethnosociology” in Studying Hinduism: Key Concepts and Methods (Routledge, 2008) and “From the Wedding Chamber to the Museum: Relocating the Ritual Arts of Madhubani” in What’s the Use of Art? Asian Visual and Material Culture in Context (University of Hawaii Press, 2007).

In April he presented a paper, “Siva Crowned King of Madurai,” for a panel, “Comparing Gods: Indian and Chinese Gods and the Rites that Define Them,” at the annual meeting of the Association for Asian Studies.

Michèle Dominy, vice president, dean of the college, and professor of anthropology, published “Pulling the Right Thread” in Pulling the Right Threads: The Ethnographic Life and Legacy of Jane C. Goodale (University of Illinois Press, 2008), a volume in honor of her undergraduate adviser at Bryn Mawr. For the annual meeting of the Northeast Deans Association, held last November at Skidmore College, Dominy led a workshop on faculty mentorship.

“Democracy and Dirty Wars in Spain,” by Omar G. Encarnación, associate professor of political studies, appeared in the November 2007 issue of Human Rights Quarterly, which is published by the Urban Morgan Institute for Human Rights at the University of Cincinnati College of Law. The essay was previously presented at the 2006 meeting of the American Political Science Association.

Peter Filkins, visiting professor in literature and First-Year Seminar, received a 2007 Distinguished Translation Award from the Austrian Federal Ministry for Education, the Arts, and Culture for his translation of Darkness Spoken (Zephyr Press), the collected poems of Ingeborg Bachmann. He also received a 2007 Stover Award in poetry from Southwest Review for his poem “Vermeer.”

His translation of H. G. Adler’s novel The Journey will be published this fall by Random House.

Keith Fitch, visiting assistant professor of music, had “This Rough Magicke,” a new chamber work commissioned by St. Luke’s Chamber Ensemble, premiered by the ensemble in March in New York and at Dia:Beacon. His new orchestral work, “Summer and Shade: Three Dream-dances for Orchestra,” was premiered by the Mannes Orchestra at New York’s Symphony Space last October.

Private Dances, a CD of compositions by Kyle Gann, associate professor of music, came out last fall from New Albion. In February he delivered the Longyear Musicology Lecture at the University of Kentucky, where a university student group performed a concert of his music.

Arthur Gibbons, S. William Senfeld Artist in Residence and director of the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts, presented a solo exhibition of his sculpture at Incident Report in Hudson, New York, last fall.

Cole Heinowitz, assistant professor of literature, presented a paper, “Venezuela Dreaming: Byron’s Anti-Imperialism and the Question of South American Settlement,” at the North American Society for the Study of Romanticism / Bologna Conference, held in Italy in March.

A 30-year retrospective of the films of Peter Hutton, professor of film, was screened in May at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Hutton presented his film At Sea at the International

FACULTY NOTES | 79

Rotterdam Film Festival in the Netherlands in February. In March he gave three graduate workshops at the International Center for Photography on city and landscape films. In April he was a visiting artist at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and presented his work at Harvard University and Colgate University.

Felicia Keesing and Michael Tibbetts, associate professors of biology, have received a five-year grant from the National Science Foundation to study anaplasmosis (aka ehrlichiosis), an emerging tick-borne disease. The grant is based at Bard and the study will take place in Dutchess County; Keesing and Tibbets will work with collaborators at the Dutchess County Department of Health, Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, Texas Tech University, and Union College. Keesing also received a grant from the Environmental Protection Agency for a three-year study in Dutchess County of the mechanisms underlying the effects of species diversity on Lyme disease risk. Infectious Disease Ecology: Effects of Ecosystems on Disease and of Disease on Ecosystems, which Keesing edited, was published by Princeton University Press.

Lothar Osterburg, visiting assistant professor of studio arts, collaborated with Elizabeth Brown, a composer and thereminist, on Piranesi, an homage to the visionary etchings of Giovanni Battista Piranesi. Osterburg, a photographer, printmaker, and filmmaker, created a stop-motion animation for a video projection that was accompanied by Brown’s composition for theremin, string quartet, and video. The project was performed in March at The Old American Can Factory in Brooklyn, on a set that Osterburg built, inspired by Piranesi’s etchings of imaginary prisons. A DVD of the performance is being published.

Hoyt Long, assistant professor of Japanese literature, presented a paper, “Bringing Hokkaid Home: Miyazawa Kenji and the Transposition of ‘Landscape,’” at the annual meeting of the Association for Japanese Literary Studies, held at Princeton University in November 2007. The paper was part of a panel that he chaired on Japanese literature and modern spatial imaginary.

He also presented a paper, “Producing Literary Genius in 1930s Japan: The Case of Miyazawa Kenji,” at the annual meeting of the Association for Asian Studies, held in Atlanta in April.

Dimitri B. Papadimitriou, executive vice president of the college and president of the Levy Economics Institute, was interviewed in September by Steve Johnson at Reuters regarding currency intervention; in November and December by Nicholas Rummel at Financial Week regarding Federal Reserve rate cuts and Basel II, respectively; in January by Craig Torres at Bloomberg regarding Federal Reserve supervisory and regulatory authority; in February

by Laura Mandaro at MarketWatch regarding economic issues and the presidential primary, by Alison Damast at Business Week regarding Bard’s new economics and finance dual-degree program, by Marine Cole at Financial Week regarding Basel II and securitization, and by Lenny Broytman at RiskCenter, LLC, regarding the economic timelines for the presidential frontrunners.

Papadimitriou was a keynote speaker at “Prioritizing Employment in Government Policies and Investments in Infrastructure Programs,” the 12th Regional Seminar for Labour-Based Practitioners, sponsored by the International Labour Organization in Durban, South Africa, October 8–12. He wrote the bibliographic entry for Hyman Minsky in the second edition of the International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (Macmillan, 2008), and cowrote, with L. Randall Wray, the introduction to a new edition of Stabilizing an Unstable Economy and John Maynard Keynes by Hyman P. Minsky (McGraw-Hill, 2008). The Levy Institute Policy Brief Cracks in the Foundations of Growth, which he coauthored with Greg Hannsgen and Gennaro Zezza, was cited by Wolfgang Münchau at the Financial Times on September 3; the Levy Institute Strategic Analysis The U.S. Economy: Is There a Way Out of the Woods? which he coauthored with Wynne Godley, Hannsgen, and Zezza, was cited by Martin Wolf at the Financial Times on November 20 and Tara Kawalski at Financial Week on November 26.

Medrie MacPhee, Sherri Burt Hennessey Artist in Residence, showed work in a group exhibition at the Claire Oliver Gallery in New York City last winter.

Judy Pfaff, Richard B. Fisher Professor in the Arts, was among the 17 artists featured in Arts: 21—Art in the Twenty-First Century on PBS during the fall of 2007.

Jacob Neusner, Distinguished Service Professor in the History and Theology of Judaism, gave the Womack Lecture at Methodist University in Fayetteville, North Carolina, last September; delivered a conference address at the Institute for Research on Unlimited Love, Altruism, Compassion, Service, held in Philadelphia in November; and was keynote speaker at “History and Hermeneutics: Talmud as a Historical Source” at a conference held at Bar Ilan University in May.

Jennifer Phillips, faculty, Bard Center for Environmental Policy, Bard Center for Environmental Policy, was an invited speaker on a panel, “Manhattan to Lake Tear of the Clouds: Impacts on the Hudson Valley,” which took place at “Climate Change: Science, Culture, and the Regional Response,” the fifth annual conference of the Environmental Consortium of Hudson Valley Colleges and Universities, held at Fordham University, January 24–25.

Peter Laki, visiting associate professor of music, published two essays last year: “Jenseits des Wortes: Die Sprachmagie von Sandor Weores in der ungarischen Musik von Zoltan Kodaly bis Peter Eotvos” [Beyond Words: The Verbal Magic of Sandor Weores in Hungarian Music from Zoltan Kodaly to Peter Eotvos] in Kosmoi: Peter Eotvos an der Hochschule fur Musik der Musik-Akademie der Stadt Basel—Schriften, Gespraeche, Dokumente [Kosmoi: Peter Eotvos at the Basel City Conservatory—Articles, Interviews, Documents] (Pfau); and “Ungarische Totalitaet im Zeichen des Todes. Halotti szertartas: ein dreistuendiges Trauerritual von Zoltan Jeney” [Hungarian Totality under the Sign of Death. Funeral Rites: a three-hour composition by Zoltan Jeney] in Dissonanz/Dissonance.

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The Slow Creaking of Planets, a chapbook of poems by Gretchen Primack, visiting instructor of writing in the Writing Resources Center, was published in December by Finishing Line Press.

Primack’s work can also be found in two recent anthologies, Best New Poets (University of Virginia Press) and Riverine: An Anthology of Hudson Valley Poets (Codhill Press).

Gertrude Stein: Selections, edited and with an introduction by Joan Retallack, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Professor of Humanities, was published in February by the University of California Press. “Gertrude Stein in the Forties: Politics and Poethics in Catastrophic Times,” a keynote lecture given by Retallack at the annual meeting of the German Association for American Studies, held at Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt, was published last year in Transatlantic Negotiations.

A keynote lecture—“What Is Experimental Poetry and Why Do We Need It?”—given at “Pressure to Experiment,” a conference at the Centre for Contemporary Writing at the University of Southampton (U.K.), appears in the online journal Jacket #32.

Retallack delivers a keynote lecture in Melbourne, Australia, in July at “Poetry and the Trace,” an international conference.

Lauren Rose, associate professor of mathematics, and faculty, the Master of Arts in Teaching Program, had a proposal, “Discrete Mathematics Days in the Northeast,” selected for funding from the National Security Agency/Central Security Service.

Justus Rosenberg, professor emeritus of languages and literature, delivered a series of lectures at the New School for Social Research on the genesis and growth of cultural concepts. In December, he addressed the International Rescue Committee on his experiences as a member of one of the earliest American rescue committees in Europe.

Michael Sadowski, faculty, Master of Arts in Teaching Program, presented at the annual conference of the National Association for Multicultural Education, held in Baltimore in November. His presentation focused on how educators can provide school-based “relational assets” to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender students. A second edition of the book Sadowski edited, Adolescents at School: Perspectives on Youth, Identity, and Education, is scheduled for fall publication by the Harvard Education Press.

Monique Segarra, faculty, Bard Center for Environmental Policy, chaired a panel, “Multilateral Narratives, National Processes, Social Differences: Encuentros and Desencuentros in the post–Washington Consensus,” and presented a paper, “Partnership Politics: The World Bank and the Ecuadorian Indigenous and AfroEcuadorian Peoples Development Project (PRODEPINE),” on that panel, at the annual meeting of the Latin American Studies Association, held in September in Montreal. “Difficult Partnerships: The World Bank, States, and NGOs,” which she coauthored, was scheduled for publication in the winter 2007–08 issue of Latin American Politics and Society.

Joan Tower, Asher B. Edelman Professor in the Arts, was the 2007–08 Season Composer for the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. Six of her works were performed by the Society, including three premieres. In June she toured with the Orpheus Ensemble as they performed her Chamber Dance in South Korea and Japan, and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra performed her Concerto for Orchestra. Her first choral piece, Can I, was premiered by the Young People’s Chorus of New York City in its “Transient Glory” series in April. Tower’s 70th birthday year was celebrated in different parts of the country, beginning with a three-concert series presented by St. Luke’s Chamber Ensemble in New York City and at Dia:Beacon in February and March.

Living the Hiplife, the feature documentary by Jesse Weaver Shipley, assistant professor of anthropology and Africana studies, was released last year. It is being distributed by Third World Newsreel, which describes the film as “a musical portrait of street life in urban West Africa.”

Photographs by Stephen Shore, Susan Weber Professor in the Arts, were part of Mobile Art, which opened in February in Hong Kong. In a futuristic pavilion, 20 international contemporary artists showed work inspired by elements associated with Chanel’s emblematic quilted bag. Mobile Art will tour to Tokyo, New York (September), London, Moscow, and Paris.

Peter Skiff, professor of physics, delivered the inaugural lecture, “Einstein vs. the Enlightenment,” in “Proof and Possibility, Matter and Meaning,” a lecture series in the history and philosophy of mathematics and science, in November at Tunxis Community College in Farmington, Connecticut.

Michael Vahrenwald, visiting lecturer in photography, presented The Mythic Has No Medium, a solo exhibition consisting of medium-scale photographs, at Southfirst gallery in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, last fall.

Suzanne Vromen, professor emeritus of sociology, is the author of Hidden Children of the Holocaust: Belgian Nuns and Their Daring Rescue of Young Jews from the Nazis, published in April by Oxford University Press. In April and during the summer she was invited to address various audiences at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City in connection with its exhibition on Jewish resistance during the Holocaust.

Tom Wolf, professor of art history, wrote two essays for the catalogue for Byrdcliffe: An American Arts and Crafts Colony, an exhibition he cocurated. The catalogue received a Henry Allen Moe Prize, awarded by the New York State Historical Association for Catalogs of Distinction in the Arts.

FACULTY NOTES | 81

An image from “They Are What They Aren’t: New Photographs,” a Senior Project by Lanya Snyder ’08

Photography Cover: Scott Barrow 1–2: Scott Barrow 3: Sasha Boak-Kelly 4: Don Hamerman 5: (left) Scott Barrow; (center and right) Karl Rabe 6-9: Don Hamerman 10: Max Ernst, Compendium of the History of the Universe, 1953. ©2008 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris 13-15: Don Hamerman 16: Alex Majoli/Magnum Photos 23: Dominique Nabokov 24: ©Lisa Quin˜ones/Black Star 27: The New York Times 29: Pete Mauney ’93, MFA ’99 30-33: Scott Barrow 34: Karl Rabe 35: Scott Barrow 36-37: Karl Rabe 38: Scott Barrow 39-41: Karl Rabe 42-43: David Wanderman; ©Ben Gancsos; Pete Mauney ’93, MFA ’99 46: (top) ©Frank Fournier; (bottom) Janet Charles 47: (top) Pete Mauney ’93, MFA ’99; (bottom) Stephanie Berger 48: (top) Manal Abu-Shaheen; (bottom) Gregory Cherin 49: Courtesy of the Hammer Museum 50: (top) Pete Mauney ’93, MFA ’99; (bottom) ©Risaku Suzuki, courtesy of Gallery Koyanagi and Yoshii Gallery NY 51: Karl Rabe 52: (top) L. A. Dmitrieva; (bottom) ©Lisa Quin˜ones/Black Star 53: (top) Kristen Hall; (bottom) Stockton Photography 54: (top) Karl Rabe; (bottom) ©Keith Skelton/Black Star 55: (top) Emilie Richardson ’05; (middle) Samir Vural ’98; (bottom) R. Michael Glass ’75 56: David Wanderman 57-60: Pete Mauney ’93, MFA ’99 61-62, 64: David Wanderman 65-66: ©Ben Gancsos 67: Sasha Boak-Kelly 68: ©Ben Gancsos 71: Letitia Smith 72: ©Lisa Quin˜ones/Black Star 74: Pete Mauney ’93, MFA ’99 75: Scott Barrow 76: Pete Mauney ’93, MFA ’99 77: (left) Pete Mauney ’93, MFA ’99; (center) Israeli Reichman; (right) Pete Mauney ’93, MFA ’99 80: Lanya Snyder ’08 Back cover: Pete Mauney ’93, MFA ’99

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