Reed College Magazine September 2018

‰ september 2018

constructing gender Theatre class explores gender and performance — on stage and off.

What Is a Reedie, Anyway? | The Butterfly Effect |

Rabbit Unearthed From Eliot

Students working on Campus Day, 1915. Photograph taken by Lindsley Ross ’15.

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REED

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SEPTEMBER 2018

Features

Constructing Gender

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A Reed theatre class explores the relationship between gender and performance—on stage and off.

By Randall S. Barton

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What Is a Reedie, Anyway?

They’re easy to identify, but hard to define.

Meet 12 proud members of the Class of ’18.

By Randall S. Barton

Iron Constitution

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The Alumni Board has voted to amend the constitution and by-laws that govern it.

Take a look at the proposed amendments.

By Mi Ulna

Departments 4

Eliot Circular Bacteria that eat plastic for breakfast.

Classics professor fires back at WSJ. Seven professors granted tenure.

Porter named acting president.

Concrete rabbit unearthed from Eliot Hall.

32 Reediana

Books, Films, and Music by Reedies

The Battle for Fortune: State-Led Development, Personhood, and Power among Tibetans in China by Prof Charlene Makley.

Sage Grouse: Icon of the West by Kathy Such Love ’72 Natural Causes: An Epidemic of Wellness, the Certainty of Dying, and Killing Ourselves to Live Longer by Barbara Ehrenreich ’63 100 Demon Dialogues by Lucy Bellwood ’12 And many more.

36 Class Notes

News from our classmates.

42 In Memoriam

Honoring classmates, professors, and friends who have died.

Entomologist Thomas Emmel ’63 Political scientist Lee Ann Fujii ’84

52 Object of Study

What we’re looking at in class

What board games can teach us about economics.

Cover illustration by Ohni Lisle

september 2018 Reed Magazine

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‰

From the editor

September 2018

Why the Curriculum Keeps Changing Many alumni look back at Reed as a time when we first read the foundational books, encountered the influential ideas, and grappled with the big questions that shaped the course of history.

Those books, those ideas, those questions launched us on a voyage of discovery that has, for some of us, defined our entire lives.

Because this experience was so profound, it is hardly surprising that we have come to think of the Reed curriculum as an island of eternal certitude amid the treacherous tides, a safe harbor from the wine-dark sea.

The metaphor of an unyielding island is misleading, however.

According to a recent paper by researchers in New Zealand, islands are geologically dynamic formations that actively respond to the rising sea. Sometimes, as you’d expect, they shrink. But the researchers found that many islands have actually grown larger, as waves deposit sediment on the shore. It turns out that coastlines undergo constant evolution—and the same is true for the curriculum.

Consider just a few of the changes to the academic program that have taken place in the last 10 years: Environmental Studies. This major gives students the chance to focus on environmental themes through the lens of biology, chemistry, economics, history, or political science. Almost 40 Reedies have graduated in ES since its inception in 2010.

Dance. Despite a legendary tradition, Reed never offered a standalone major—until marshalling the intellectual and financial resources in 2016.

Computer Science. This discipline has followed a classic trajectory. Early courses focused on using computers to solve problems in other disciplines.

The math department offered its first true CS course in 2007. Reed launched a full-fledged major last year.

Neuroscience. Reed created this major last year, drawing on deep faculty expertise and longstanding student interest.

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Reed Magazine september 2018

Hum 110. Since its first lecture in 1943, the geographical and historical range of Hum 110 has been stretched and squashed like an accordion. Starting this semester, the course will be organized in four units: the ancient Mediterranean, classical Athens, Mexico City 1500-2000, and the Harlem Renaissance.

What’s driving these changes? First, scholarship keeps evolving—not only in the sciences, where discovery is fun-

Because this experience was so profound, it’s no surprise that we have come to think of the Reed curriculum as eternal.

www.reed.edu/reed-magazine 3203 SE Woodstock Boulevard, Portland, Oregon 97202 503/777-7591 Volume 97, No. 3 REED MAGAZINE editor

Chris Lydgate ’90 503/777-7596 chris.lydgate@reed.edu writer/In Memoriam editor

Randall S. Barton 503/517-5544 bartonr@reed.edu writer/reediana editor

Katie Pelletier ’03 503/777-7727 pelletic@reed.edu class notes editor

Joanne Hossack ’82 joanne@reed.edu art director

Tom Humphrey tom.humphrey@reed.edu grammatical kapeLlmeister

damental, but also in the humanities, where new tools and new sources are constantly giving us fresh insight. We now know far more about the profound influence of Egypt on the ancient Greeks, for example, than when I took Hum 110 back in the 1980s.

Second, Reed has grown. Since 1990, the number of students has risen by 11% to 1,410. The number of professors has risen by 32% to 140. That means more courses, more majors, and more choices.

Third—and most important—the world is changing. Our society is wrestling with profound questions about race, gender, artificial intelligence, technology, globalization, and the environment. I’m proud that our firstyear students still read Plato on justice.

But shouldn’t they also read Beauvoir on gender? Ellison as well as Euripides?

Study the siege of Tenochtitlán as well as the Peloponnesian War? In the final analysis, a curriculum is a means to an end—it is an instrument whose purpose is not to fill students with facts but to propel them on their own intellectual voyage. It is a ship, not an island—let it sail.

—CHRIS LYDGATE ’90

Virginia O. Hancock ’62 REED COLLEGE Acting president

Hugh Porter director, communications & public affairs

Mandy Heaton Reed College is an institution of higher education in the liberal arts and sciences devoted to the intrinsic value of intellectual pursuit and governed by the highest standards of scholarly practice, critical thought, and creativity.

Reed Magazine provides news of interest to the Reed community. Views expressed in the magazine belong to their authors and do not necessarily represent officers, trustees, faculty, alumni, students, administrators, or anyone else at Reed, all of whom are eminently capable of articulating their own beliefs.

Reed Magazine (ISSN 0895-8564) is published quarterly by the Office of Public Affairs at Reed College.

Periodicals postage paid at Portland, Oregon.

Postmaster: Send address changes to Reed Magazine 3203 SE Woodstock Blvd, Portland OR 97202-8138

Letters to Reed Write to us! We love getting mail from readers. Letters should be about Reed (and its alumni) or Reed (and its contents) and run no more than 300 words; subsequent replies may only run half the length of their predecessors. Our decision to print a letter does not imply any endorsement. Letters are subject to editing. (Beware the editor’s hatchet.) For contact information, look to your left. Read more letters and commentary at www.reed.edu/reed-magazine.

Divestment and Neutrality

My thanks to Michael Munk ’56 for continuing to point out all that is still not clear concerning the lessons learned from the case of Prof. Stanley Moore. His quotation of the Reed trustees’ statement choosing not to divest from Wells Fargo because that would be taking a political position indicates that the trustees are still completely at sea in terms of understanding when the lesson should be applied. Wells Fargo engaged in a leadership-sanctioned program of fraud and deceit, cheating thousands of customers. While the practice of capitalism is inherently amoral, those like Reed College who hope to simply receive a share of the returns of the capitalist can choose to take a moral position about whom they get into bed with. Divestiture from Wells Fargo is not a political question, but an ethical or moral question. If the trustees did indeed understand this, but felt the earnings from Wells Fargo were too rich to give up, they should have had the courage to tell us so.

Peter M. Gladhart ’62 Dayton, Oregon

Oh, the Humanities!

I read with great sadness of the passing of Hum 11 at Reed. In my days there more than 50 years ago, just as now, the students were ardently progressive. The faculty may well have been also—I don’t remember their getting involved in politics. But the curriculum had retained the depth and balance that had been put in place by the early presidents such as Foster and Scholz.

The challenge to authority, the phenomenon of inmates taking over the asylum which was already underway at Berkeley by the time I graduated in 1966, has succeeded beyond imagination.

Yes, the students will succeed in ushering out a century-old tradition of classical education. I am morally certain that collateral damage will

include a reduction in the quality of thinking and written products demanded of the students.

There is no agreed canon of great works by people of color. The best there are have long been wellknown and taught: Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, and W. E. B. Du Bois come to mind.

Rigoberta Menchu and Maya Angelou are overused simply because there are so few like them.

Others who might be included, Thomas Sowell and Clarence Thomas, for example, are rigorously excluded on ideological grounds. Therefore any such curriculum must be mostly ad hoc. It is impossible to imagine any curriculum crafted in 2018 remaining in use even a decade, much less a century. I am resolved that my young children will, in the words of Dale Stephens, “Hack Their Education.” The combination of declining quality, increased cost, and relentless indoctrination makes the traditional American college education a losing proposition for today’s parent. Reed stood against the tide longer than might have been expected. I’m greatly sorry to see it ending.

Graham Seibert ’64 Kiev, Ukraine I have watched with interest and appreciation over the years as Reed reached out to minorities and feminist causes. I applauded the addition of courses that recognized the importance of racial, ethnic, religious, and sexual differences.

However, I shuddered when I received Reed’s announcement of the changes to Hum 110. I feel it was a capitulation to political correctness extremism. Hum 110 set the stage for four years of students learning to question, analyze, and vocalize original thoughts about early history, literature, and philosophy—the humanities. It created and nurtured students’ open approaches to all the courses they would take during their years at Reed. To see it corrupted to pander to present-day social causes, however valid those causes may be, is very disheartening. Worse is hearing that the changes were influenced by student protests and harassment of faculty. That is not what Reed has exemplified over its history.

It is not the Reed of which I was proud to be a graduate. If some students feel the course is too “Caucasian” for their taste, an elective course can be made available that focuses on what they feel is missing from Hum 110. I fully expect that if this letter is published, it will bring vituperative responses, but so be it. I have supported Reed financially for over 50 years and have included a bequest in my will. That ends today.

Ron Becker ’64 Newport, Rhode Island

Expanding Hum 110 to include Mexican invasions is sweet, but I’ve been wondering, ever since I graduated, how come the class starts with the Greeks. Great folks, but I do believe the Jews, who just preceded them by a bit, had a somewhat enormous influence on Western Civ. Doesn’t it make more sense to start with them?

Are we hiding/denying something?

Ncoom Gilbar (Norman Gilbert) ’79 Israel From the Editor: Possibly. But for the last five years, Hum 110 has begun with the Epic of Gilgamesh and included the Torah. Same for the new syllabus.

I’m no right-winger, but what Reed is doing to our core principles (i.e., Hum 110–210) calls for a counter revolution, perhaps a completely new look at the board and administration. Reed ain’t an easy environment to administer, but we must rethink this coup, and return to some basic humanistic tenets that include remembering not to pour the baby out with the (Columbia River) bathwater.

Anna Fleck Jacobs Singer ’68 Tuscaloosa, Alabama And what a lot of terrified Reedies to let curriculum be put into the hands of politically correct students who have never learned the verities of truth, love and honor and now will never learn because they are the teachers.

Mary Klevjord Rothbart ’62 Eugene, Oregon From the Editor: I’d like to respond to these letters collectively. I took Hum 110 in the eighties and share your reverence for the course. But the truth is that the eternal canon is a mirage—the syllabus has changed a dozen times since 1943. The new Hum still features Gilgamesh, Homer, Plato, the Torah, and other classics, but also includes the Codex Mendoza and writings by Octavio Paz, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Zora Neale Hurston—all works of profound depth.

The faculty have been discussing these changes for years, and decided to adopt the new syllabus despite—not because of—the extreme tactics of a handful of students. Beyond Hum 110, Reed still offers an outstanding array of classics courses for students who want to delve deeper into the ancient Mediterranean. For more reflections, check out my editor’s letter on page 2. september 2018 Reed Magazine

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Eliot Circular news from campus

Bacteria That Eat Plastic for Breakfast

nina johnson ’99

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Reed Magazine september 2018

“These are very significant results,” says Prof. Jay Mellies, who supervised Morgan’s research. “It points the way towards a biological means of degrading plastic pollution.”

At the beginning of her quest, Morgan went hunting for microbes in locations with high levels of petroleum pollution, on the theory that those bacteria were most likely to have evolved biological mechanisms for digesting plastic. She traipsed around refineries in her hometown of Houston, Texas, digging up samples of soil, sand, and water around Galveston Bay. Then she began the laborious process of screening her samples.

Out of roughly 300 separate strains of bacteria, she identified just three that boasted high levels of lipase.

Then came the acid test. Morgan put the bacteria on a forced diet of solid plastic,

consisting of strips she cut out of old bottles of Nestlé water that she bought at Safeway.

With no other source of nourishment, the bacteria had a stark choice—eat plastic or die.

Over the course of several weeks, she anxiously monitored her test tubes for signs of growth.

The first glimmer of hope came when she noticed a tiny colony of bacteria forming on the surface of a strip of PET—suggesting that the microbes might consider the plastic toothsome. Then, on a Monday afternoon, she peered through a microscope and noticed that the colony was generating a fluffy structure known as extracellular polymeric substance—a telltale sign that it was thriving.

“I felt like I was on top of a mountain, shouting with joy,” she says. “I’d sunk so much time and energy into this project, and I didn’t know if it would work.”

Scanning electron microscopy image is courtesy of Claudia S. López, PhD, D i r e c t o r o f t h e M u lt i s c a l e M i c r o s c o p y C o r e at O r e g o n H e a lt h & S c i e n c e U n i v e r s i t y.

Biology major Morgan Vague ’18 has isolated three strains of bacteria that consume and degrade polyethylene terephthalate (PET)—the ubiquitous plastic used in textiles, packaging, and soft-drink containers— opening up the tantalizing possibility of using microbes to fight pollution.

PET is biologically inert, notoriously resilient, and takes years, even centuries, to break down. But certain strains of bacteria produce lipase, a fat-digesting enzyme that can attack PET—in theory, anyway. “The problem for most bacteria is that PET is a big, tough molecule with a lot of weird components,” says Morgan, who performed the research for her senior thesis. “Lipase is kind of like marinade on a steak. The bacteria squirts out the lipase and the lipase breaks the plastic into bite-size pieces.”

leah nash

The striking image at left reveals an unusual sight— colonies of bacteria growing on a strip of PET plastic. The lobed structures on the left of the image are Bacillus cereus and Pseudomonas putida. The fluffy stuff on the bottom is extracellular polymeric substance, a sort of foundation that bacteria lay down when colonizing a surface that enables them to form a living community called a biofilm. This material is a telltale clue that the bacteria are actually digesting the plastic.

“ It points the way towards a biological means of degrading plastic pollution.”

—Prof. Jay Mellies

The three substrains of bacteria are Pseudomonas putida, Bacillus cereus, and a hitherto unknown strain tentatively known as Pseudomonas morganensis, since Morgan appears to be the first researcher to identify it.

For her thesis, Morgan was honored with the illustrious Class of ’21 Award, which recognizes “creative work of notable character, involving an unusual degree of initiative and spontaneity.” —CHRIS LYDGATE ’90

Classics Professor: WSJ Blew Off Its Homework Dean of the Faculty Nigel Nicholson said the Wall Street Journal editorial board “went off the rails” last spring when it accused Reed of giving into political correctness by revising the curriculum for Hum 110.

The WSJ accused Reed of “succumb(ing) to demands to let politics trump education” when it expanded the curriculum beyond the ancient Mediterranean to

suit its narrative, and refusing to acknowledge the intellectual underpinnings of the changes. The truth is that the faculty have been discussing the syllabus for years.

Meanwhile, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded Reed $1 million to support the expansion. The grant will allow Reed to hire an extra humanities professor, provide time

Meanwhile, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded Reed $1 million to support the expansion. include Mexico City and Harlem.

Prof. Nicholson, a classics scholar, pointed out that the changes “do not pick a side in any culture wars,” but are focused on the goals of Hum 110, which include analyzing fundamental humanistic questions and exploring civilizations from multiple perspectives.

He also said the editorial mischaracterized Reed’s decision as bowing to student protest by handpicking incidents to

and training for professors to immerse themselves in the new course material, and deepen the collections in the Hauser Library.

“The Mellon Foundation deeply values the notion of a unified first-year humanities course, and recognizes the scale and importance of this revision,” Nicholson said. “Their generous support represents a vote of confidence in this project and provides the resources we need to make these changes successfully.”

september 2018 Reed Magazine

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Eliot Circular

Seven Professors Granted Tenure

Prof. Kara Cerveny [biology 2012–] earned her PhD in biochemistry, cellular, and molecular biolog y from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, where she explored the molecular mechanisms of mitochondrial division and inheritance. She expanded her research interests with a Damon Runyon Post-Doctoral Fellowship, investigating how neuronal tissues grow at University College London, and was also full-time scientific editor of Cell. Since joining the faculty at Reed, she has won more than $1 million in grants, most of it from the NIH, and has published papers with 11 of her students.

Prof. Kris Cohen [art history and humanities 2011–] is trained as a media theorist and an art historian.

T hese two fields come together in his work on the technological mediation of social life. He earned a PhD in art history from the University of Chicago, and is the author of Never Alone, Except for Now. He has also written for the journals Afterall, New Media and Society, Continuum, and caa.reviews.

Prof. Catherine Ming T’ien Duffly [theatre 2012–] is a scholar-director and community-based theatre artist with a PhD in performance studies from UC Berkeley.

Her interests include socially engaged and community-based theatre, 20th and 21st century American theatre, race theory and performance, acting, and directing. She has published articles in TDR, Theatre Topics, Theatre Survey, and Theatre Annual. Before Reed, she taught at UC Berkeley and California College of Arts.

Prof. Sameer ud Dowla Khan [linguistics 2012–] focuses on phonetics and phonology— the physical attributes of speech sounds, the complex patterns they form, and the abstract representations they embody in our

mental grammars. He also serves as the director of Reed’s Lab of Linguistics, where faculty and students conduct research on diverse languages and their varieties, and is co-editor of the Journal of South Asian Linguistics.

Prof. Mariela Szwarcberg Daby [political science 2012– ] studies the incentives that contribute to the persistence of clientelism in consolidated democracies in Latin America. She is also interested in questions of political participation, voter turnout, gender, and development in new democracies.

She is the author of Mobilizing Poor Voters: Machine Politics, Clientelism, and Social Networks in Argentina. She earned her PhD from the University of Chicago.

Prof. Erik Zornik [biology 2012–] is a neuroscientist with a broad interest in understanding how brains generate behaviors. He studied cell and molecular biology at the University of Michigan, trained in neurobiology at Columbia University, and was a postdoc at Boston University and the University of Utah. His courses focus on understanding how neurons work, and how nervous systems control critical functions such as sensory processing, movement, and metabolism. He has authored 12 articles and won more than $500,000 in grants, mostly from the NIH.

Thesis Casts New Light on Rome’s Forgotten Female Poet

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Reed Magazine september 2018

how Sulpicia constructs a feminine persona.

Prof. Jessica Seidman [classics] commended Lina’s “truly brilliant readings.”

“Lina’s approach and her claim are entirely new and have the potential to turn studies of Sulpicia in a completely different direction,” she says.

Lina was “surprised and honored” to learn she won the awards. The Class of ’21 Award honors “creative work of notable character;” the Unrue Award recognizes outstanding work in literature and languages.

katie pelletier ’03

Classics major Lina Neidhardt ’18 won both the Class of ’21 Award and the Unrue Award for her thesis on the Roman poet Sulpicia.

The surviving six or seven elegiac poems

by Sulpicia have been largely dismissed by scholars as difficult, dull, or even “bad.” Some have even wondered whether the poems were really written by a woman.

Lina thought the conventional wisdom was superficial and set out to do something more. For her thesis, “Sulpicia on Her Own Terms,” she spent a year looking closely at

Lina Neidhardt ’18

photos by Nina Johnson ’99 and leah nash

Prof. Samiya Bashir [creative writing 2012–] holds a BA from UC-Berkeley, where she served as Poet Laureate, and an MFA from the University of Michigan, where she received two Hopwood Poetry Awards. In 2017 she was awarded the Regional Arts & Culture Council’s Individual Ar tist Fellowship in Literature in recognition of artistic achievement. She has been the recipient of numerous other awards, grants, fellowships, and residencies, and is a founding organizer of Fire & Ink, an advocacy organization and writers’ festival for LGBT writers of African descent.

mandy heaton

mandy heaton

Porter Named Acting President Hunt for Next Begins Hugh Porter, formerly vice president for college relations, has been named Reed’s acting president while the college searches for a successor to outgoing president John Kroger.

“With great appreciation for the trust bestowed on me by the board of trustees, I am honored to serve as Reed’s interim president,” Porter stated. “This distinctive institution, a college beyond compare, has been much more than my professional home for the past two decades. I look forward to working in partnership with Reed’s exemplary faculty, staff, students, alumni, and friends while leading the college through this next chapter.”

Board Chairman Roger Perlmutter ’73 said Porter’s 20 years of leadership at Reed position him to provide stability and focus during the transition.

“Hugh brings to the interim presidency a profound commitment to liberal arts education and an equally deep understanding of Reed,” Perlmutter said. “His thoughtful advice on the operations of the college has earned the respect of the entire Reed community.”

Porter came to Reed in 1998 from Yale, where he held a senior position in the development office. He earned his bachelor’s degree and master’s degree in music history from Yale and is an accomplished cellist.

Meanwhile, the presidential search committee, chaired by trustee Alex Martinez ’73, is gearing up. For the latest information, see www.reed.edu/presidential-search.

Concrete Rabbit Unearthed from Eliot Hall A construction crew repaving the sidewalk leading to Eliot Hall in July made a surprising discovery inside an underground ventilation chamber—a large concrete rabbit.

The long-eared lagomorph, which weighs more than 100 pounds and stands roughly two feet tall from ears to tail, was wedged against some decaying boards at the entrance to the chamber, which lies directly beneath the main entrance on the south side of Eliot.

Excavator Justin Hibbs of Traxx Underground and his crew were demolishing the sidewalk as part of a project to resurface the entrance with granite pavers. As their backhoe scooped up dirt and rubble, they noticed something strange— dirt disappearing into a sinkhole. Further inspection revealed some ancient planks of wood piled across the entrance to the chamber. And behind the planks, lending crucial support, they discovered... the bunny.

“That rabbit was holding up the whole

wall,” says Hibbs. “I’ve been doing this a long time, and I’ve never seen that before.”

It was not immediately clear how long the rabbit had been performing this feat of architectural prestidigitation. The warren of steam tunnels beneath Reed’s oldest buildings has attracted all kinds of simulacra over the decades, including owls, robots, and an impressive collection of garden gnomes.

The ventilation chamber also contained a brown fedora, scraps of clothing, a scattering of beer cans, and graffiti about “Lord Humongous,” possibly a reference to the villain from the The Road Warrior.

Following its liberation, the rabbit was transported to a secure location, where it was promptly captured... and returned the next day.

If you have any intelligence about the historical, archaeological, or cosmological significance of the find, please email the editor at chris.lydgate@reed.edu.

—ETHYL ELWOOD

september 2018 Reed Magazine

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Advocates of the Griffin

News of the Alumni Association • Connecting Reed alumni across the globe

Alumni Board Votes To Amend Constitution Dear Fellow Alumni, Capping more than 3 years of discussion, the alumni board of directors voted 20-5 (80%) to amend the Constitution and Bylaws of the Alumni Association at its annual Reunions meeting on June 8. These changes set the stage for a more streamlined structure to help the board focus on its mission, align activities to be consistent with the growing alumni community, and strengthen support to be

more nimble for the expanding local Chapters. Below you’ll find a summary of the proposal; on the following pages, you’ll find the text of the amendments. If you are interested in more information either about new volunteer activities that are available through the Board’s committees or about the amendments, please check out alumni.reed.edu /board_of_alumni.

I want to extend heartfelt thanks to all of the members of

the Alumni Board who have put in countless hours over the last 3 years toward the development of these amendments—in particular, the members of the working committee who drafted the constitutional changes to be consistent with the proposals. It is truly a privilege and honor to serve alongside such a diverse and inspiring group.

I lo ok for ward to the

opportunity to see the volunteer community grow. If you are interested in participating in any of our current Alumni Board supported committees (Diversity and Inclusion, Young Alumni, Reed Career Alliance), please contact us at alumni@reed.edu!

Respectfully Yours, Lisa Saldana ’94 Alumni Board President

Proposed Changes in a Nutshell In June 2018, the Alumni Board and its Executive Committee approved a proposal regarding the structure of the Alumni Board and its alignment with the college. The goal of the proposal was to increase alignment while providing additional support to the Chapters to fit their specific needs. The Executive Committee surveyed and consulted with the Alumni Board, including Chapter representatives, to gather ideas and feedback into proposed changes to the work of the Alumni Board and its structure.

Goals for the changes include the following: • Adopt a structure that requires the Alumni Board to nominate and select their own membership, including a nomination process and renewable term limits; • Assign all Alumni Board members to committees or similar working groups, which annually set goals and determine projects that are directed in consultation with the Executive Committee and in alignment with College priorities; • Support the project-based work of the Alumni Board committee structure; • Provide Chapters organizational independence, including the ability to set their own structure, priorities, and goals supported by the College.

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Reed Magazine september 2018

The proposed changes will affect the following areas of the Alumni Board organization: Alumni Board membership, the Chapter Steering Organization, Alumni Board committee structure, voting, and nominations.

alumni board membership

In order to recruit the right volunteers for the strategic needs of the Alumni Board and to be flexible as the needs change, it is important for every single board member to have gone through the vetting process and to have term limits. Having term limits also allows engagement of more alumni volunteers on the Alumni Board, as board members roll off after serving their terms.

The nominations process involves the Nominations Committee, which is chaired by the Past President of the board and made up of individuals who are recruited to serve on the committee for that year. This committee is supported by a staff member from the Office of Alumni Programs.

Each year, a call for nominations is made to fill upcoming vacancies for at-large members and for Executive Committee members. Currently, Chapter leaders do not go through the vetting process, nor do they have term limits.

The following changes are proposed: • All board members have term limits.

• All board members are either selected through the nominations process or appointed by the president (the presidential nominations often come from the list of nominees that were interviewed by the nominations committee and evaluated as being a good fit for the current needs of the board).

• There will be up to three dedicated seats reserved for Chapter representatives on the Alumni Board. These seats must be filled by nominations provided by the Chapter Steering Organization. If there are no nominations, the seats will remain vacant.

• The three Chapter members on the board will serve as all other Alumni Board members and participate in operating committees.

• The slated Chapter members will serve one-year terms, renewable up to 3 years similar to the total term of at-large directors.

Chapter volunteers are welcome and encouraged to be nominated or self-nominate to serve as an at-large member or as part of the Executive Committee.

If You Object...

In accordance with Article VII, Section 3 of the Constitution of the Reed College Alumni Association, if the Alumni Programs Office receives written objections from 50 or more members of the Alumni Association within 30 days of publication of amendments to the Constitution, a ballot of the members of the Alumni Association will be held.

If you wish to submit a written objection please send a letter to: Reed College, Alumni Programs Office, Prexy Hall, 3203 SE Woodstock Blvd., Portland, OR 97202-8199.

All objections must be in writing and received by October 15, 2018.

the chapter steering organization

The Alumni Board will not decide for the Chapters how the independent organization of the Chapters should run. Decisions regarding membership or governance of the Chapter Steering Organization are beyond the authority of the Alumni Board. We would like to encourage Chapter leadership to organize their own structure that will support the advanced alumni engagement work that they have been successfully executing for years. This will allow the Chapters to create their own structure, membership, name, and terms, including the process for nominating Chapter representation to the Alumni Board.

The Chapter Steering Organization will dictate the terms and support for Chapters, including establishing new Chapters, decommissioning inactive Chapters, support for regional activities outside of recognized Chapters, and all Chapter-related programming and decisions. College support can be matched to meet the evolving demands of Chapters.

The College is committed to supporting the new independent Chapter organization with the same level of support as the Alumni Board and the AFR Steering Committee. This includes staff support and travel stipends.

committee structure

Annual goals will be established by the Executive Committee, in coordination with the college, and with input from the Alumni Board. The annual goals will be tentatively laid out prior to the September meeting by the Executive Committee. The focus of the September meeting will be to align the committee structure and articulate the projects and tasks that the committee will undertake throughout the year to reach the Alumni Board goals. That is, the aim will be to have common overarching goals to help move forward a shared vision of the Alumni Board activities. Each committee will outline its individualized committee goals and define how their progress will be measured.

Alumni who are not members of the Board of Directors may participate in the work of any committee as an “ad hoc” member of the committee. Ad hoc members shall have no right to vote on committee matters or matters of the Board of Directors. The President, with the consent of the Executive Committee and in consultation with members of the affected committee, may remove an ad hoc member for any reason.

voting

Technology will be used to facilitate remote communication and voting. “In attendance” will include appearing in person, by telephone, or videoconference. All votes shall be cast personally and not by proxy. A quorum of the Board of Directors must be in attendance throughout the casting of votes. A majority vote shall signify consent.

nominations

Currently the constitution notes: “As soon as possible after November 15, notice of the nominees, including a brief biographical sketch of each, and procedure for proposing alternate nominees, will be printed in a college publication sent to all alumni.” To assist in meeting print deadlines but allowing for maximum visibility of the nominations slate each year, Reed Magazine and other print material sent to all alumni will provide a link to the online profiles of nominees as well as a written description of the nominations process. In addition, electronic communication sent to the general alumni community will be used for more immediate notification of the slate when available.

See following pages for text of the proposed amendments.

september 2018 Reed Magazine

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Proposed Amendments to the Constitution Proposed additions are highlighted in yellow: additions Proposed deletions are struck out: deletions

ARTICLE I Name The name of this organization is the “Reed College Alumni Association.”

ARTICLE II Purpose The Reed College Alumni Association exists to foster the continuing welfare of both the College and its alumni by promoting mutually beneficial interaction, by sustaining a sense of community among alumni and between the College and its alumni, and by contributing to the long-term financial health of the College.

ARTICLE III Membership Section 1. Any person who has attended Reed College (the “College”) for one full year or more and who is not presently attending the College as an undergraduate shall be is a member of this Alumni Association.

Section 2. The President of this Alumni Association shall confer honorary membership in the Alumni Association upon such persons as the Board of Directors shall may select.

Section 3. Any member may withdraw from this Alumni Association by giving written notice of resignation to the Secretary.

ARTICLE IV Board of Directors Section 1. The Board of Directors (“the Board”) shall govern and direct the business of the Alumni Association. The Board may adopt Bylaws for the Alumni Association and amend them from time to time. The shall meet not less than once annually and shall be comprised of the following (collectively, “Directors”): a. Three officers: a President, a Vice-President, and a Secretary, each elected by and from the members of this Alumni Association for a term of one Board Year.

They shall be elected for terms of one year by and from the members of this association.

b. Up to fifteen At-Large-Directors, each elected by and from the members of this Alumni Association for a term of three Board Years, with up to five At-LargeDirectors elected each Board Year. c. Up to three Chapter Directors, each elected by and from the members of this Alumni Association for a term of one Board Year, under the limitations set forth in Article VI; One representative of each recognizedchapter. d. The chair of each officially recognized committee, if that chair is not otherwise a Director of the Alumni Association; e. Four Alumni Trustees of the Reed Institute, one of whom shall be elected each year for a four-year term of four Board Years, by and from the members of this Alumni Association under the limitations set forth in Article V; f. The immediate Past President of the Alumni Association; g. Not more than two Directors appointed in accordance with Section 2 of this Article.

Section 2. As may benefit the interests of the Alumni Association, the President of the Alumni Association, with the consent of the Executive Committee, may appoint not more than two persons Alumni to serve on the Board for a term of one Board Year.

Section 3. All terms of office shall begin July 1 following the election.

For purposes of this Constitution, a “Board Year” means July 1 to June 30 of the subsequent year.

Section 4. The three officers plus the immediate Past President shall constitute the Executive Committee, which shall discharge all day-to-day duties of the Board of Directors between meetings of the full Board of Directors.

Three members of the Executive Committee shall constitute a quorum.

Section 5. Vacancies on the Board of Directors

a. The President of the Alumni Association may declare a vacancy on the Board of Directors in any of the following circumstances: 1. Resignation of a Director of the Alumni Association;

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2. Death or incapacitation of a Director of the Alumni Association; or 3. Failure of a Director of the Alumni Association to attend (either in person or by telephone conference) a majority of the meetings in any consecutive twelve-month period. b. In the event of a vacancy on the Board of Directors, and subject to other provisions in this Constitution regarding Alumni Trustees and Chapter Directors, the President may appoint a replacement with the advice and consent of the Executive Committee. The term of the appointed member will begin upon appointment and end at the conclusion of the term of the vacatedseat.

ARTICLE V Alumni Trustees Section 1. There shall be four Alumni Trustees of the Reed Institute serving terms of four Board Years on the Board of Directors. and until their successors are elected. One such Alumni Trustee shall be elected each year by and from the members of this Alumni Association in accordance with the procedure set forth in Article VII, except that the names of all nominees must be approved by the trustees of the Reed Institute (“Board of Trustees”). No Alumni Trustee shall serve two consecutive terms as Alumni Trustee to the Alumni Board.

Section 2. In the event of any resignation or vacancy of an Alumni Trustee seat, the Nominating Committee will reconvene, if concluded, and will shall recommend to the Board of Trustees a candidate to fill such vacancy.

Section 3. The Alumni Trustees shall attend the meetings of the Board of Directors whenever possible and shall make presentations to the Board of Directors concerning the affairs of the College and shall bring to the attention of the Board of Tustees matters of interest to the Alumni Association.

ARTICLE VI Local Chapters and Chapter Directors Section 1. The policy of the Alumni Association shall be to encourage the organization of local Chapters wherever a significant population of alumni has settled and desires to establish a Chapter.

Section 2. The board of directors of the Alumni Association Chapter Steering Organization shall be responsible for recognizing and decommissioning local Chapters according to standards set forth in the Bylaws of the Alumni Association.

Section 3. There shall be up to three Chapter Directors serving terms of one Board Year on the Board of Directors. Chapter Directors shall be elected each year by and from the members of this Alumni Association in accordance with the procedures set forth in Article VII, except the names of all nominees will be submitted by the Chapter Steering Organization, as provided in the Bylaws. No member of the Alumni Association shall serve as a Chapter Director for more than three consecutive terms. In extraordinary circumstances, the Executive Committee may authorize one additional consecutive term.

ARTICLE VII Nominations and Elections Section 1. A Nominating Committee shall be constituted annually consisting of the immediate Past President; the current President; and three additional members nominated and elected by the members of the Alumni Association pursuant to the procedures provided in Sections 2-7 of this Article VII; and the chair (see Section 2, following). Four members of the Nominating Committee shall constitute a quorum.

Section 2. The immediate Past President shall serve as chair of the Nominating Committee. If, for any reason, the Past President is unwilling or unable to serve in this capacity, the Past President shall not serve on the Nominating Committee, and, instead, the President shall appoint another member of the Board of Directors to serve as chair of the Nominating Committee.

Section 3. Terms of Nominating Committee members begin on July 1 and conclude when the President of the Alumni Association determines that the work of the committee is completed.

Section 4. The President of the Alumni Association shall take necessary steps to ensure that information about the nominating process is published and made available to members of the Alumni Association

prior to June 1, that Alumni Board members, chapter leadership, Chapter Steering Organization, Board of Trustees, Alumni Fundraising for Reed, incoming Nominating Committee members, College staff, and other College-affiliated individuals and groups are consulted, and that members of the Alumni Association are directly solicited for nomination.

Section 5. The Nominating Committee, on or before November 15, shall nominate one candidate for each position to be filled.except for representatives of local chapters. The Nominating Committee shall only consider names provided by the Chapter Steering Organization in nominating one candidate for each Chapter Director position to be filled.

Section 6. As soon as possible after November 15, notice of the nominees, including names, instructions on how to electronically access online biographical profiles of the nominees, and a description of the nominations process, including a brief biographical sketch of each, and procedure for proposing alternate nominees, will be printed published in a College publication and/or on the College website with a link to such information provided in a printed and/or electronic communication sent to all members of the Alumni Association. Additional nominations for each vacant position may be submitted by petition from the membership. Said petitions must contain the name and a brief biographical sketch of the nominee, the office to be filled, and the signatures of 50 or more members of the Alumni Association.

Petitions must be received in the Alumni Relations office by the College on or before April 1.

Section 7. Petitioners for any officer, Alumni Trustee, or Chapter Director positions shall must indicate the office position for which they seek nomination. Those seeking one of the vacant at-large positions on the Board of Directors for which there are multiple seats available for a particular Director category should indicate only that they seek one of these seats, and are not to indicate that they wish to stand for election in opposition to any specific nominee.

Section 8. In all offices positions for which there is only one nominee on April 1, the nominee shall be considered elected as of that date.

Section 9. Election for all offices positions for which there are more nominees than positions available shall be by paper or electronic ballot.

In situations where an electronic ballot is available, those who choose not to participate in using an electronic ballot shall be provided a physical ballot by the College. On or before May 1, ballots shall be distributed to all members of the Alumni Association. The nominees shall appear on the ballot by name and class only. All ballots shall be accompanied by a copy of the appropriate constitutional provisions and a list of the nominees, with a brief biographical summary listing the nominees’ professional, civic, and alumni activities prepared by the alumni director the College based on information, if any, provided by the nominee. Candidates may submit a

statement on behalf of their candidacy of not more than 300 words.

This statement will be transmitted with the ballot and other information by the College at no cost to the petitioners candidate.

Section 10. Any member may require the Alumni Relations office College to distribute one additional mailing containing material supporting a nominee. All material so distributed shall include the names and classes of all sponsoring members. The member requiring such a mailing shall reimburse the Alumni Relations office College in advance for all expenses incident to the mailing.

Section 11. All ballots must be received by the Alumni Relations office College by May 24 in order to be counted. The supervision of the election and the counting of the ballots shall be by the Board of Directors. The nominees receiving the greatest number of votes for each office position shall be elected, subject to the approval of the Board of Trustees and the Chapter Steering Organization for the respective Alumni Trustee and Chapter Director seats before the elected nominee may be appointed. Candidates for positions the vacant for which there are multiple seats available for a particular Director category at-large seats on the board of directors will will be ranked according to the number of votes received, and the vacancies filled beginning with the candidate receiving the greatest number of votes. In the event of a tie vote, the Board of Directors shall elect the candidate from among the tied candidates. In the event the Board

of Trustees or the Chapter Steering Organization does not approve appointment of the elected nominee, the nominee with the next-highest number of votes will be considered for appointment.

ARTICLE VIII Amendments Section 1. Amendments to this Constitution may be proposed by a two-thirds written vote of those present at any meeting of the Board of Directors, as further described in the Bylaws. Such amendments shall be published as soon as practicable in a College publication and/or on the College website with a link to such information provided in a printed and/or electronic communication sent to all members of the Alumni Association.

Section 2. Such amendments will take effect 30 days after publication in accordance with Section 1 of this Article unless, prior to that date, the alumni office College receives written objections from 50 or more members of the Alumni Association.

Section 3. If the alumni office College receives written objections from 50 or more members of the Alumni Association within 30 days after publication in accordance with Section 1 of this Article, a ballot of the members of the Alumni Association will be held by paper or electronic ballot. In situations where an electronic ballot is available, those who choose not to participate by electronic ballot shall be provided a physical ballot by the College. The Board of Directors shall supervise the balloting.

Proposed Amendments to the Bylaws ARTICLE I Duties of the President Section 1. The duties of the President shall be: a. To act as chair of the Board of Directors and of its Executive Committee; b. To preside at all meetings of the Alumni Association Board of Directors;

c. To appoint, with the consent of the Executive Committee, all committees and committee chairs, except as otherwise provided in the Constitution or these Bylaws; d. To serve as a member of and/or appoint an Executive Committee liaison to all committees; e. To issue a call for all meetings as provided in the Bylaws; f. To present, if applicable pursuant to Article VIII, an annual report to the Alumni Association.

ARTICLE II Duties of the Vice President The Vice President shall discharge the duties of the President in the absence or inability of that officer to act and shall serve as a member of the Executive Committee.

ARTICLE III Duties of the Secretary The Secretary shall keep a record of the proceedings of the Alumni AssociationBoard of Directors (also referred to as the “Board”), update relevant documents, and shall serve on the Executive Committee. The Secretary shall discharge the duties of the Vice President in the absence or inability of that officer to act.

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The immediate Past President shall serve as chair of the Nominating Committee and shall serve as a member of the Executive Committee and shall perform such other duties as may pertain to the office.

ARTICLE V Duties of the Board of Directors Section 1. In addition to the duties of the Board of Directors delineated in the Constitution, the Board of Directors shall establish such committees as the affairs of the Alumni Association require.

Section 2. No member of the Board of Directors may receive remuneration for services to the Alumni Association.

ARTICLE VI Decisions of the Board of Directors Section 1. Eleven or more members of the Board of Directors, including at least two members of the Executive Committee, shall constitute a quorum of the Board of Directors.

Section 2. Unless otherwise provided in the Constitution or these Bylaws, all decisions of the Board of Directors shall be by majority vote of the Directors in attendance at a duly constituted meeting of the Board of Directors. “In attendance” means appearing in person, by telephone, or video conference. All votes shall be cast personally, and not by proxy. A quorum of the Board of Directors must be in attendance throughout the casting of vote. A majority vote shall signify Such a majority vote shall also signify the “consent” of the Board consistent with the requirements of these Bylaws.

Section 3. In the interest of expediting discussion or obtaining approval for measures that may be determined without calling a formal meeting of the Board of Directors, as authorized by the President, a vote for a specific question presented may be conducted by electronic communication. “Electronic communication” means email, and such other means as the President

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may specify for a particular vote.

When voting by electronic communication is authorized by the President on a specific question, a quorum of the Board of Directors (either in attendance or by electronic communication), must cast a vote for question to be resolved. The electronic communication shall be made to the Secretary and the entire Board of Directors. When voting by electronic communication is authorized by the President, there must be at least a72-hour window of time given before the Secretary will no longer count votes cast by electronic communication. The Executive Committee, by majority decision not including the President, may override the President’s decision to allow electronic communication on a particular question.

ARTICLE VII Committees Section 1. The President, with the consent of the Executive Committee, may appoint members Directors to be members and chairs of the committees, unless otherwise provided in the Constitution or these Bylaws.

Section 2. All committees of the Alumni Association, except the Nominating Committee, shall work under the direction of the Board of Directors and shall submit reports as the Board may require.

Section 3. A quorum of each committee shall consist of a majority of the members of such committee, except as otherwise provided.

Section 4. Members of the Alumni Association who are not otherwise Directors may participate in the work of any committee as an “ad hoc” member of the committee. Ad hoc members shall have no right to vote on committee matters or matters of the Board of Directors. The President, with the consent of the Executive Committee and in consultation with members of the affected committee, may remove an ad hoc member for any reason.

ARTICLE VIII Meetings Section 1. The Board of Directors shall meet at least once annually.

The Executive Committe shall establish an annual schedule of meetings.

Section 2. If a meeting of the Board of Directors is held at the time of the annual class reunion, members of the Alumni Association may attend the Board meeting as guests.

ARTICLE IX Recognition of Local ChaptersChapter Steering Organization Section 1. The Chapter Steering Organization is an independent organization, supported by the College, and represented by up to three Chapter Directors on the Board of Directors. The organization may determine its own structure, meeting schedule, and process for Chapterrelated programs and activities Section 2. The Chapter Steering Organization is responsible for recognizing and establishing Chapters, and decommissioning inactive Chapters, according to terms and guidelines established by the Organization, and in doing so is encouraged to consult with members of the Past President Association.

Section 3. The Chapter Steering Organization, with the support of the College, may provide regional activities outside of recognized Chapters.

Section 4. All Chapter-related activities of any recognized Chapter shall be open, at aminimum, to all members of the Alumni Association within the geographical area.

However, the Chapter Steering Organization may, for good cause, including but not limited to acts of violence, threatening to harm, intimidation, or deception, exclude a member from attending Chapterrelated activities.

Section 5. Chapter Directors shall report on Chapter activities and finances to the Board of Directors at least once a year.

UPDATED: July, 2015; Revised: June, 2018.

Section 1. To secure recognition as a local chapter, members of the Alumni Association living inthe same geographical area shall submit to the board of directors a written application which includes: 1. a statement of the geographical area the chapter plans to cover,and 2. an organizational plan for the chapter, specifying the manner in which leadership will be chosen and recordskept.

Section 2. Local chapters will choose chapter chairs to lead volunteers in chapter activities.

Chapter chairs may serve a term of up to three years in length with a one-year extension if agreedupon by the chapter volunteers.

Section 3. The board may declare a chapter inactive if the chapter does not operate as specifiedin its organizational plan, does not recruit and install new leadership as specified in Section 2above, or if it otherwise fails to organize alumni activities on a regular basis.

Section 4. Each chapter may designate one representative to vote on behalf of the chapter atmeetings of the board of directors. In the event that more than one person purports to represent achapter, the President of the Alumni Association will decide which person is entitled to vote onbehalf of the chapter.

Section 5. The board of directors may recognize the existence of a new chapter or declare anexisting chapter inactive at any meeting of the board of directors.

Section 6. All activities of any chapter shall be open to all alumni within the geographical area.

Section 7. Local chapters shall report on their activities to the board of directors at least once ayear. Local chapters shall report discretionary spending of College funds to the board of directorsand the College at least once a year.

Section 8. Where there are no organized local chapters, the board of directors and thealumni office shall encourage and assist in the formation of informal local groups.

UPDATED: July, 2015

photos by lauren labarre and nina johnson ’99

ARTICLE IV Duties of the Immediate Past President

REUNIONS 2018

We danced to playlists new and olde, dove into the curriculum, and still managed to rearrange the lawn letters between hail storms during Reunions ’18 in June. Check out the candid shots and class photos in our gallery at reedcollege.smugmug.com/Reunions-June-2018/

CONSTRUCTING GENDER

A Reed theatre class explores the relationship between gender and performance—on stage and off.

BY RANDALL S. BARTON | ILLUSTRATION BY OHNI LISLE

Put your hand to your chest. Gaze at the audience. Achingly. Strut in time with the beat. You own the stage. As the NSYNC dance hit Tearin’ Up My Heart reaches its climax, spin around and slide forward on your knees, stretching your fingertips towards your adoring fans. Drink in their rapturous applause.

On one level, the students in this Reed theatre workshop are learning to perform a classic boy-band routine from the 1990s. But on a deeper level, they are learning to perform masculinity itself—or one flavor of it, anyway.

“Performing masculinity means taking up space,” explains Max Voltage, a Portland drag king who is leading the students through the routine. “We’re taught that femininity is performative, and masculinity isn’t. But there is a space that allows for feelings and sensibility in masculinity—for only a short time and not for the old—that’s called boy band.”

Voltage, who performs as Peter Pansy in the boy band Turnback Boyz, is one of two local performance artists who have been invited to lead a workshop on drag as a part of Theatre 280, Gender and Theatre, taught by Prof. Kate Bredeson [theatre 2009–]. The course uses performance as a lens through which to study gender and sexuality—on stage and off—while at the same time using gender as a lens through which to study theatre.

The course has earned a reputation on campus as challenging, rigorous, and

meaningful. The syllabus is composed of readings in queer theory, performance studies scholarship, plays, video screenings, workshops, and end-of-term performance projects. Like all classes in the theatre department, it combines theory and practice.

“Our students right now are really hungry to talk about social constructs; to dig into race, class, gender, and sexuality,” Prof.

Bredeson says. “That reflects the cultural moment we’re in. We are in the midst of a massive moment around trans rights, breaking down gender binaries, and intersectional feminism, and students are excited to have some places on campus where they can talk about these things in an academic way.”

Redressing the Canon Gender play is as old as theatre itself. In ancient Greece, for example, male and female roles were both usually played by male actors.

Prof. Bredeson’s syllabus focuses primarily on the 20th century, however, zooming in on theatre that undermines or disrupts established systems of hierarchy. “Every time we make something—a theatre production, a work of art, a syllabus—we subscribe to some kind of belief about power,” she says. “As artists, how do we use what we have learned to shake that up?”

One tool is “queering,” or looking at a text or performance through the lens of queerness to challenge binaries and assumptions about an object of study.

natalie behring

Exploring this and other concepts, the course devotes several weeks to queer performers and drag—a medium that deals explicitly with gender and performance.

Students study the history of drag and read work by scholar Marlon Bailey, author of Butch Queens Up in Pumps, an in-depth look at the contemporary ballroom scene in Detroit, as a reminder that for performers from marginalized communities, drag is not a hobby, but a survival strategy. Indeed, to perform gender can result in violence and death for the performer, particularly the performer who is a person of color.

After reading A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams and watching the 1951 film, the class studies Belle Reprieve by the lesbian performance group Split Britches (coproduced with queer performance group Bloolips). First performed in 1991, it queers Streetcar and marks the departure point for the class in terms of analyzing a play. Students read an essay by Alisa Solomon on redressing canonical plays in queerness and drag, and study the tradition of military drag performances during the two world wars.

But the highlights of the unit are the workshops led by visiting drag artists such as Kareem Khubchandani—an assistant professor at Tufts University by day, and a radical-feminist, bi-curious Bollywood drag queen by night. “Gender is a social, cultural system that is used to regulate our bodies,” Khubchandani tells the students. “Some bodies are given more privilege than others.”

When he performs, for example, his body is more subject to objectification; strangers

“Our students right now are really hungry to talk about social constructs,” says Prof. Kate Bredeson. “To dig into race, class, gender, and sexuality.”

come up and touch his padded bra.

During the classroom conversation, a student explains that the class has been studying queerness, not just as an identity, but as a process of destabilization.

“Queerness is a way of seeing,” Khubchandani replies. “Performance is a way of understanding people who do things differently. Living in the margins of sexual identity and gender helps us see things differently.” That evening, Khubchandani performs a solo show, Lessons in Drag as LaWhore Vagistan onstage at the Performing Arts Building.

“All of us are involved in gender play every day, in terms of how we are in the world,” Bredeson says. “Drag is not performing an

opposite, it is performing a gender. I think one of the reasons this class is particularly memorable to students is we don’t just study gender and sexuality performance by reading about it—we explore it with our bodies.”

Students learn drag moves from Pepper Pepper, a Portland drag artist who uses drag to practice theatricality, exploring the intersection of power and gender to grow as an artist. “I use the mask to become myself, not hide behind it,” they explain. Clattering forth on platform heels, Pepper greets them, “Relax! This is a warehouse party with no bar.”

Performing can be intimidating, but it can also be invigorating. “Try new things and be generous with each other,” Bredeson encourages her students as they commence

The Deep Dive: Gender and Sexuality Reed has no major or formal program in gender studies, but it does offer more than a dozen courses that focus on gender and sexuality. Here’s a partial list with abbreviated descriptions. For full descriptions, see www.reed.edu/catalog.

Art 355, Representation and After. Starting with secondwave feminism, gay liberation, and civil rights in the ’60s, we will study different forms of representational politics in and around the visual arts.

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Anthro 344, Anthropology of Sex and Gender. What is the difference between sex and gender? And why is this important in today’s world? This course introduces students to an anthropological perspective on the relationship between sex and gender. In order to understand the debates and their stakes, we will read anthropological accounts of communities in which sex, gender, and sexuality are construed very differently from our own.

Anthro 345, Black Queer Diaspora. This course examines the lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, and transgender people across the black diaspora. The slave trade, European colonialisms, and their ongoing aftermaths have created both interlinked and locally variant cultures and lifeways across the Americas, Africa, and Europe.

We interrogate how conceptions of race, gender, and sexuality shift across time and space and as lived by black social actors who both participate in and defy colonial and nationalist projects.

Anthro 362, Gender and Ethnicity in China and Tibet.

Chinese and Tibetan peoples have interacted for centuries, but it is only in the last half of the 20th century that the “Tibet question” in China has risen to global attention. This course looks at modern Sino-Tibetan relations through the lens of ethnicity and gender as a way to understand the contentious process through which the Chinese nation-state and national identity have been constructed.

Setting the Stage To ensure that students in class can discuss the sensitive issues and themes in the material, Bredeson establishes a common vocabulary. Language about gender is rapidly changing—some terms that were part of the vernacular back in 1995 are patronizing or offensive today. She begins the class by introducing students to gender theory and queer theory so that the subject matter becomes accessible to everyone, regardless of how familiar they may be with the work of bell hooks or José Esteban Muñoz.

“I have a lot of students in my classroom who are new to all of this,” she says. “At the same time, I have a lot of trans students who

Dance 270, Dance, Gender, and Sexuality. How do global dance practices perform and/or contest gender and sexual identities? What is the relationship between quotidian and danced identities? This course explores the intersections between dance studies and gender, queer, feminist, and transgender studies, with special attention to how these fields intersect with questions of race, class, and ability over a wide range of historical and contemporary dance practices.

need a space where they can study, speak, and learn in a way that is supportive to them.

I want to honor both of those experiences— and those are not opposite experiences. This is a space where all of the voices in the room are welcome, and we’re all coming together in good faith in a thoughtful and compassionate way.”

Gender and Theatre was the first theatre class Juliana Cable ’19 took at Reed, and initially they found it intimidating, despite having led a theatre club in high school. “I didn’t even know that theatre theory existed, or who Brecht and Artaud were,” they remember. “But Kate does a good job of creating a foundation at the beginning of the course.”

Bredeson is a proponent of studentled learning. Early in the term, each student selects one of the syllabus topics and devises discussion questions for that day; they then write a critical analysis on that theme. Classroom conversation is not limited to staged theatre performance, because it quickly becomes obvious that gender is something everyone is experiencing, and experiencing in their own way.

“Before taking that class, I was under the impression there were only a handful of different ways you could experience gender,” Cable says, “or that other people were experiencing it the exact same way that I was. I learned that even though it’s something that we perform in public, gender is an incredibly personal experience. Seeing the artwork of so many different human beings and so many different very gendered bodies helped

Economics 364, Economics of Population, Gender, and Race.

This course will consider race and gender as they influence and are reflected in decisions about schooling, work, and, family. It will also examine trends in population and consider how and why they might change over time. We will use microeconomic models of fertility, migration, decisions to work, and decisions to invest in human capital in an effort to analyze and explain observed outcomes.

m e a pa r t e . c o m

following Pepper’s instructions. The immediate enterprise is performing attitude—using your face and body to punctuate the drama as you move in and out of the spotlight. Pepper breaks down the formula: use the music to make choices, and follow through with a progression of motion, stillness, and presence.

“Distinguish yourself with movement,” Pepper explains, “and then there is a dramatic stillness when you hit the light. Crystallize it, and then melt out of it.”

Students practice moving toward the center spotlight and, as the light hits them, pose in frozen tableaux, the ones in front shadowing those in the rear.

“Find your light!” Pepper cajoles the shadow dwellers. “The drag attitude is, ‘I’m going to die if you don’t pay attention to me.’ You’re serving to each other and fighting for the audience.

I want to see your personalities exploding!”

Portland drag king Max Voltage (center)performs as Peter Pansy in the boy band Turnback Boyz.

Kareem Khubchandani, an assistant professor at Tufts University, performs as LaWhore Vagistan, a radical feminist Bollywood drag queen.

English 341, American Literature to 1865: Sex and Gender. This course explores the origins and development of the notions of masculinity and femininity in American literature to 1865. We will pay close attention to how gender and sexuality were used to construct individual, communal, and racial identities and how definitions of transgressive behavior changed during periods of social unrest and cultural anxiety.

History 301, Gender and Sexuality in Africa. This course examines constructions of gender and sexuality in sub-Saharan Africa from the 19th century to the present. This seminar supplants Western constructions of gender and sexuality with African feminism(s). Topics include kinship and dual-sex systems; how categories such as “men” and “women” change over time; the effects of colonization; anticolonial politics and gendered nationalisms; women’s “domestic” roles; and the effects of migration, urbanization, and globalization on sex and sexuality. september 2018 Reed Magazine 17

me to understand that individualism, and to have a lot more empathy for people who are having different gendered experiences than I’m having.”

Taiga Christie ’10, a graduate student at the Yale School of Public Health, describes the class as “an oasis where the contributions of queer and feminist artists were acknowledged and celebrated. Kate’s class taught us the legacy of queer and feminist performance art in the U.S., a vital piece of the industry’s history that is often overlooked. But it also gave us, as students, space to be entire beings, to struggle through the ways our own relationships to gender influence our art, and to question norms we had previously taken for granted.”

When Helena Pennington ’15, dramaturg and literary associate at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center in Waterford, Connecticut, took the class as a first year, she was excited about studying theatre through the lens of gender studies and queer theory.

“That class cracked my freshman world wide open,” she says. “It was my introduction to feminist theory, queer theory, postcolonial criticism, post-modern criticism, and, surely, a host of other modes of literary analysis that I’m forgetting to name. I’ve only just come to appreciate the care and the acumen with which Kate curated this course’s comprehensive—and essential—selection of artists, scholars, and performance models, which provided a sturdy foundation from

which most, if not all, contemporary American theatre can be analyzed and understood.”

Breaking the Fourth Wall The class also explores how performance helps shape culture, and conversely how culture shapes performance. They study the landmark case of the NEA Four—performance artists Tim Miller, Karen Finley, Holly Hughes, and John Fleck, whose proposed grants were vetoed by the chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts in 1990, based on alleged obscenity in their work dealing with sexuality, gender, and queerness. They examine the glam rock musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch, which revolves around the adventures of a genderqueer East German singer (who is obsessed with the classic passage in Plato’s Symposium where Aristophanes explains the origin of love).

They read contemporary plays and examine contemporary artists such as Beyoncé and all-women Japanese drag troupe the Takarazuka Revue. Each time she teaches the class, Bredeson refreshes the syllabus in order to to incorporate new artists such as Taylor Mac, the Kilroys, and Nicki Minaj.

Noah Atchison ’15 does research on the criminal justice system for the Brennan Center for Justice in New York City. He explains that theatre classes were among the most intellectually rigorous courses he took at Reed because they required a quick transition between learning a theory and

Students learn drag moves from Portland artist Pepper Pepper.

Feminist performance artist Karen Finley in 1986.

The Deep Dive: Gender and Sexuality continued History 372, U.S. Women’s History, 1890–1990. This course examines transformations in women’s economic status, political participation, educational opportunities, and familial and reproductive lives. We consider how structural changes and political movements affected women of different classes, races, and ethnic groups. Major topics include: women’s participation in the paid labor force, especially wage work by married women with children; political struggles for equal rights; the separation of sexuality and reproduction; and the intellectual origins and development of feminism, as well as the arguments of those who opposed it.

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History 378, Gender and Family.

The course begins with the rise and spread of waged labor, with emphasis on how new economic structures altered household and familial life. We consider families under slavery and in transition to freedom, and how migration and resettlement in the West shaped families on the frontier. The legal and political meanings of marriage also changed; we will examine arguments for and against married women’s ownership of property, and Mormon polygamy, to see how 19th-century Americans understood the relationship between patriarchy and democracy.

Linguistics 335, Language, Sex, Gender, and Sexuality.

This course is an introduction to the large body of literature on language and gender within sociolinguistics and the study of language in context more generally. Students will investigate how language mediates, and is mediated by, social constructions of gender and sexuality.

Particular attention will be paid to the evolution of feminist theory, the political economy, ideology, hegemony, performativity, resistance, and the “borders” of gender identities.

Music 249, Race, Sexuality, and Empire on the Operatic Stage.

This course focuses on three operas that premiered during what some European historians have called the “Age of Empire”: Verdi’s Aida, Bizet’s Carmen, and Puccini’s Madama Butterfly.

These works are famous both for their scores and for the complex, romantically doomed, and racially marked women who are the title characters: Aida, the enslaved Ethiopian princess; Carmen, the “gypsy” femme fatale; and Cio-Cio San, the tragic geisha. Students will be introduced to opera as a genre, to late romantic musical aesthetics, to the literary origins of these works, and to scholarship on empire and representations of difference.

recognizing how it is practiced. As an economics major at Reed, he decided to take Gender and Theatre in 2014 after becoming intrigued about concepts that were originating in gender studies. Bredeson became one of his favorite professors at Reed.

“Navigating conversations about gender and queerness when students face discrimination and violence for expressing their gender requires a professor to both maintain the safety of queer and gender-nonconforming students while making sure that students who haven’t thought about these ideas before have the space to learn,” he says. “The way the class was structured put complex theories into contexts that made them seem intuitive. This is difficult subject matter, but Kate successfully navigates some potentially very difficult discussions, and because of this the class was able to delve deeply into topics that I had only seen given lip service before.”

For their final project, Bredeson divides the class into small groups; each group creates a performance by taking on one of the companies or movements studied during the term, such as Split Britches or RuPaul’s Drag Race.

Bredeson then asks each group to perform a scene from a classic play. Students choose whether they want to design, direct, perform, write, or act as dramaturg. Within their groups, students work to make 10–15-minute performances that take place around campus (in the PAB, in the Paradox, on the front lawn, in the chapel, and more), and write a critical

Political Science 394, Sex, Gender, and Political Theory.

What do we see when we look at politics through the lens of sex and gender, and sex and gender through the lens of politics? Scholars have produced a rich body of literature engaging these questions. This research challenges and reconceptualizes not only traditional views of sex, gender, sexuality, and “gender relations,” but also fundamental notions of power and politics, public and private, human identity, agency, and subjectivity.

analysis of their project. For example, Helena learning and create, and often the messy proPennington adapted the malt shop scene from cess of giving life to our visions was its own Thornton Wilder’s Our Town in the style of lesson—it’s one thing to discuss misogyny the feminist performance artist Karen Finley, and hyperfeminine beauty standards in reconfiguring the teenagers’ fledgling court- RuPaul’s Drag Race, it’s quite another to ship with the heightened language of Finley’s embed those critiques into our adaptation of My Fair Lady as a competition-elimination taboo-flouting monologues.

Shabab Mirza ’15, who works at the Cen- reality TV show.”

For Bredeson, the final projects are the ter for American Progress in Washington D.C., took the class in 2014. For that year’s final highlight of the whole semester. “The projprojects, the groups adapted scenes from My ects are always fun, beautiful, irreverent, and Fair Lady. Mirza writes of the class, “What I often deeply moving,” she says. “It’s imporloved about Kate’s class was that it wasn’t just tant to me that the class is not just reading about living the life of the mind in a bubble. about drag or transgressive gender perforShe also created opportunities for us to put mance or solo art. We have to put our bodies academic ideas into praxis, not unlike the on the line and do it, too.” ethos of the Reed thesis. We would take our

One Field, Many Disciplines Reed professors who teach courses in sex, gender, and sexuality have formed a multidiscipinary consortium to coordinate learning opportunities for students and to bring a speaker to campus for an annual lecture and workshop.

Members of the Faculty Consortium on Sex, Gender, and Sexuality include Prof. Kara Becker [linguistics], Prof. Kate Bredeson [theatre], Prof. Kris Cohen [art history], Prof. Jacqueline Dirks [history], Prof. Alex Hrycak [sociology], Prof. Charlene Makley [anthro], Prof. Tamara Metz [poli sci], and Prof. Kjersten Whittington [sociology].

For more information, see www.reed.edu/diversity/gender-studies.html

Religion 334, Gender and Buddhism. We will consider the ways in which categories such as woman, man, intersex, gender, nun, and monk have been explained and imagined by Buddhist communities through history. We will examine depictions of the Buddha as a sexualized “bull of a man,” the stories surrounding the founding of the nun’s order, the songs of women saints, and gender(ed) imagery in Mahāyāna sources, with a focus on the gender transformation of the bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara in India to Guānyīn in China and Kannon in Japan, as well as the feminine principle envisioned by Tibetan Vajrayāna traditions.

Sociology 326, Science and Social Difference. Is race biological? Do men and women have different brains? Categories such as race and gender are often presumed to be socially constructed classifications linked to difference. At the same time, references to scientific claims that prioritize the biological underpinnings of behavior and outcomes are common. This raises questions about the role of biology in determining differences between men and women, racial/ethnic groups, and regarding sexuality, and how these ideas relate to the design of science policy and practice. We will examine the reciprocal relationships between scientific inquiry, science politics, social identity, and belonging.

Sociology 320, Feminisms: Comparative Perspectives on Women’s Activism. This course examines feminisms, the diversity of feminist movements that have come into existence in the last four decades. We proceed through a review of classical and contemporary theories and case studies, placing particular emphasis on feminist critiques of violence and/or feminist attempts to raise issues of diversity (e.g., bell hooks, Catharine MacKinnon, Dorothy Smith, Patricia Hill Collins). We will examine how feminism emerged as a movement and how it has changed as it moves across borders and generations.

september 2018 Reed Magazine 19

What Is a Reedie, Anyway?

BY RANDALL S. BARTON | PHOTOS BY CLAYTON COTTERELL

They're easy to identify but hard to define. To shed light on this fascinating but elusive species, we tracked down a dozen members of the Class of ’18 and asked them about their thesis, their professors, and their time at Reed. You'll be surprised by what they have to say.

Meaza Abate

M AT H A N D C O M P U T E R S C I E N C E

Hometown: A ddis Ababa,

Influential book: Medea in Hum

Ethiopia

Thesis adviser: P rof. Jim Fix [computer science 1999–] Thesis: A Runtime System and Translator for a Concurrent Language What it’s about: I t is an

exploration of concurrency, which is computers’ ability to handle more than one program at a time (this was not possible once upon a time, gasp!). I got to do this thanks to a new and simple concurrent programming language called JML.

110. It was great to read a book with a strong, independent female protagonist whom I could appreciate not because she was likeable but because she was unapologetically flawed.

Favorite professor: To be honest, every professor I have had makes my favorites list. That is what makes Reed so great. I'm grateful to all my professors for their time and dedication.

How Reed changed me:

things I didn’t get a chance to in my computer science classes.

Reed has taught me to pursue more options. When I applied, I didn’t think I would get in, and that also stands true for most things I ended up doing here. It has definitely encouraged me to go after my interests.

On my first day of class:

What’s next: Working as a

What it’s really about: D oing

I was excited to engage in a community that valued my education over my grades and scared that I would not live up to Reed’s high standards.

Cool stuff I did: I taught fifth-

graders computer science as part of Reed’s Computer Science and Math Outreach program.

Tutoring computer science at Reed has been one of my favorite things. Reed is a hard place to navigate alone and it feels good to help someone out a little. I won an award from the Davis Projects for Peace that allowed me to return to my home country one summer and work with high schoolers to increase awareness and reduce stigma around HIV and AIDS. I made great friends through the International Student Services InterConnect program.

20 Reed Magazine september 2018

developer for a company in North Portland.

Financial aid: F inancial aid made my education at Reed possible. I am very grateful to Reed and those who donate. It really does make a big difference.

Desired superpower:

Instant sleep.

Actual superpower: P atience.

Pet peeve: W hen people refer to

specific places in Africa as Africa.

This is how you say “Hello, World” in the language I helped develop as part of my thesis.

Trevor Soucy Hometown: S pringfield, Oregon Thesis adviser: P rof. Jay Mellies

[biology 1999–]

Thesis: P erC and RNA Polymerase: An Attempt to PerCeive an Interaction What it’s about: I looked at a protein called PerC, a known regulator of virulence genes in pathogenic E. coli, in order to understand how it operates.

What it’s really about:

I’m trying to get two proteins to stick together.

On the first day of class: I definitely had impostor

syndrome—I felt like everyone was so much smarter than me. But after a while, I gained confidence and was thrilled to be in an environment filled with people who were so passionate about learning.

Cool stuff I did: I ran with

the campus running club, participated in the Portland Marathon/Half Marathon, and qualified for the Boston Marathon. I led a freshman odyssey backpacking trip, worked as a Peer Health Advocate, helped start Reed’s first student health advisory council, volunteered at the OHSU intensive care unit, and played in a local marimba group.

Obstacles I have overcome: C ontinuing to live a balanced

lifestyle was a big one. As a lowincome student it was essential to find a way to manage my academic work with my activities.

Influential book: The Demon-

Haunted World by Carl Sagan.

Sagan is one of the big forces that drove me to Reed because of his belief that learning is a thrilling and worthwhile pursuit.

I honestly don’t think I would be here pursuing science without it.

B I O C H E M I S T R Y A N D M O L E C U L A R B I O LO G Y Concept that blew my mind: W hen I first encountered

the concept of emptiness in Buddhism, I was vehemently opposed to it. But as I thought about it more, I began to see it everywhere. It’s a radically different way of looking at the world that I find so fascinating.

Favorite professors:

Reed is filled with so many great professors that I could likely list each and every class I’ve taken. I’m grateful to Prof. Kelly Chacón [chemistry 2015–] for her never-ending enthusiasm, to Prof. Arthur Glasfeld [chemistry 1989–] for his humor and passionate lectures, to Prof. Ken Brashier [religion 1998–] for letting an unqualified science major in his 300-level Chinese Buddhism class, and to Prof. Jay Mellies for sparking my passion for the fascinating biology of microbes.

This was the sole decoration in my thesis office. Each of us in the Mellies lab had a different plush microbe in our office.

How Reed changed me:

Reed has made me so much more aware: of the issues going on around me, of my ability to question parts of my thinking and identity, and most importantly of the type of person I want to be and the life I would like to lead.

What's next: I currently work

for Providence Medical Group and plan to enroll in a nursing program next year to prepare for my eventual career as a psychiatric nurse practitioner.

Financial aid: I n high school I honestly did not know I had any realistic option for college besides state university. Then I heard about Reed. I am so thankful that financial aid allowed me the opportunity to attend. I can’t imagine where I would be now without Reed!

Desired superpower: F lying.

Actual superpower: U nwavering optimism.

Pet peeve: S tress culture.

september 2018 Reed Magazine 21

Autumn Wheeler Hometown: S anta Cruz,

Influential book: The Dance that

Thesis adviser: P rof. Catherine Ming T’ien Duffly [theatre 2012–]

Favorite class: I n Dance

California

Thesis: M oving Between

Nightshade and Sunlight: Transformative and Violent Representations of Disability in Performance and Protest What it’s about: M y thesis

investigates representations of disability and relationships across ability in various performance contexts. I analyze an AXIS Dance Company piece and a recent protest organized by ADAPT to demonstrate how these organizations both reinvent representations of disability and mobilize harmful representations of disability in order to work for disability justice.

What it’s really about:

Bringing disability into the conversation at Reed.

Autumn balanced art, anthropology, and theatre on a sturdy unicycle.

Cool stuff: Acted in Reed’s first devised faculty theatre production. Worked for Prof.

Kate Bredeson [theatre 2009–] documenting diaries written

by Judith Malina (a cofounder of the Living Theatre). Worked as a dramaturg on several Reed theatre productions. Covered myself in pink milkshake for a class performance. Worked for SEEDS (Students for Education, Empowerment, and Direct Service). Led a SEEDS Orientation Odyssey.

Student groups: I was involved

with the Reed Air force (Reed’s aerial group), the Feminist Student Union, and Weapons of Mass Distraction. I lived in the Spanish House and in the Garden House, and worked as an intern for Radicle, which is Reed’s student-led anthro journal.

Obstacles I have overcome:

I finally settled on my major after officially declaring it three different times (I was torn between anthropology, psychology, and theatre).

22 Reed Magazine september 2018

T H E AT R E

Makes You Vanish by Rachmi Diyah Larasati.

Ethnography I studied negotiations surrounding femininity and beauty in contemporary circus. Prof.

Victoria Fortuna [dance 2015–] is an incredible conference leader.

How Reed changed me:

My classes at Reed demonstrated to me that making art is a political practice and inspired me to self-identify as an artist.

What’s next: Moving to

Vermont to attend circus training at the New England Center for Circus Arts.

Financial aid: I decided to go to Reed because of the generous financial aid package I received, and am deeply grateful for the financial support that made my education possible.

Awards, fellowships, grants: C ommendations for academic

excellence all four years. A paper I wrote on Ireland’s same-sex marriage referendum was published in Radicle. I received funding through a Reed College Undergraduate Research Initiative Grant to attend a workshop on dance and disability for my thesis and received funding from the Career Advancement Fund to attend circus school auditions.

Desired superpower: To make

the sun shine in my window every morning.

Actual superpower: Ability to

escape the Reed bubble.

Pet peeve: W hen people assume

that classes in the performing arts aren’t academically rigorous.

Rika Yotsumoto Hometown: M unich, Germany Thesis advisor: Prof. Victoria

Fortuna [dance 2015–]

Thesis: m eat of the matter What it's about: M y thesis is a choreographic reinscription of the oneiric experience, as corporeal consciousness viscerally perceived through the lacking body in dream, onto the waking living body.

What it’s really about: B odies,

bodies, bodies. Running bodies, sweating bodies, living bodies.

Cool stuff I did: I become a

barista, got into kickboxing, and got to know some amazing dance artists.

STUDIO DANCE

How Reed changed me: I have felt many intellectual and

emotional challenges during my time here and feel that I have grown and learned a lot from that.

What's Next: Sleep and hydrate,

binge watch The Office.

Awards, fellowships, grants: M ellon grant for winter/summer

opportunities in dance, Career Advancement Fund, Opportunity Grant, Initiative Grant.

Desired superpower: F lying.

Actual superpower: F alling.

Pet peeve: P utting in milk

before the powder for cocoa drink.

Influential book: Discipline and

Punish by Michel Foucault.

Concept that blew my mind: H ow discreetly people waste

$$$.

Favorite professors: Mariela

Szwarcberg Daby [political science 2012–]! The Idea of the State with Peter Steinberger [political science 1977–]! His class was exactly the way I hoped all classes at Reed would be like.

I greatly enjoyed the Tragedies of American Diplomacy with Josh Howe [history 2012–]. Jan Mieszkowski [German 1997–]!

I almost made a Twitter account just to follow him. Catherine Witt [French 2005–]! Hugh Hochman [French 1999–]!

september 2018 Reed Magazine 23

Joshua Tsang Hometown: V ancouver, Canada Thesis adviser: P rof. Miriam

Bowring [chemistry 2016–]

Thesis: S ynthesis of a Heterobimetallic IridiumRuthenium Complex towards the Investigation of a Large Kinetic Isotope Effect What it’s about: D ifferent

chemical reactions occur at different speeds. What’s weird is that the speeds of two identical chemical reactions can differ by 40-fold when only the mass of a reactant changes slightly.

The molecule I’m synthesizing has been shown to behave like this and the explanations are contentious but may involve the molecule acting as a wave instead of a particle.

What it’s really about: T eleporting protons, maybe?

A molecular model of the complex that I synthesized, bis(2,2�-bipyridyl) ruthenium(II)-µbipyrimidylpentamethylcyclo….

Let’s just call it [1-H]3+.

Cool stuff: I helped develop a chemistry lab class curriculum and then taught it. I learned to white-water kayak—it started as a PE course but became a passion; next thing you know, I’m throwing myself down a 20-foot waterfall. My involvement in the Portland water sports community led me to become an ACA-certified stand-up paddleboard instructor.

I also went to Jingdezhen, China, to study ceramics with an International Travel Fellowship and coincidentally met my artistic idol.

Concept that blew my mind: Th e

Copenhagen interpretation, one of many descriptions of quantum mechanics, proposes that the physical properties of matter do not exist until they’re measured.

CHEMISTRY Favorite classes: M y favorite

chemistry class was Physical Chemistry Laboratory with Prof. Dan Gerrity [chemistry 1987–]. Physical chemistry can seem like a bunch of math and theory, but this class really helped me to visualize these theoretical concepts through the spectroscopy of simple molecules.

Natural Resource Economics with Prof. Noelwah Netusil [economics 1990–] opened my eyes to the global challenges and consequences of resource management.

How Reed changed me: R eed has helped me develop an intuition of how I think the world should work, whether through chemistry or not. In science, this is the basis of forming hypotheses: applying patterns of known phenomena to predict unknown events. Elsewhere, my intuition has helped construct and support arguments with the fundamental beliefs that I stand for.

Awards, fellowships, grants: A ll of my summer opportunities

have been funded by fellowships, including the McGill Lawrence fellowship, the Environmental Studies Summer Experience Award, and the Arthur F. Scott summer research fellowship. As an international student, I was not permitted to earn money off campus, nor was I eligible for any federal grants. Funding from Reed opened amazing research opportunities despite these setbacks.

What’s next: PhD in chemistry at

UC Berkeley.

Desired superpower: T elekinesis.

Actual superpower: C uring (my

own) hiccups.

Pet peeve: W hen other

people ask “Whaddja get?” on assignments or tests. Thankfully this never happens at Reed.

24 Reed Magazine september 2018

Avery Van Duzer Hometown: Bend, Oregon Thesis adviser: Prof. Kara Cerveny [biology 2012–] Thesis: Signaling Interactions Between FGF and RA in the Developing Zebrafish Retina.

What it’s about: I looked at the interactions between two signaling molecules in the developing zebrafish retina.

One molecule (fibroblast growth factor) promotes growth, while the other (retinoic acid) promotes differentiation. We think that the two pathways regulate each other in some way, and it results in a balance between growth and differentiation.

What it’s really about: T aking

beautiful fluorescent pictures of zebrafish eyes.

On my first day of class: I remember being so excited to

be surrounded by people who were just as excited as I was to be learning at Reed.

Cool stuff: I got to have my gut

microbiome sequenced for the Human Microbiome seminar taught by Prof. Jay Mellies [biology 1999–]. Everyone in the class was able to compare our results, which was fascinating (and a little scary). I worked in the admission office for three years and loved meeting with the prospective students, because they are all so excited about Reed.

Obstacles I have overcome:

I had no idea what I was doing my first couple of years here—I’m the first generation to go to college in my family.

Learning to go to tutoring and developing close relationships with professors really saved me.

B I O C H E M I S T R Y A N D M O L E C U L A R B I O LO G Y

Concept that blew my mind: Y ou only have to fold a piece of

paper 42 times in order for it to reach to the moon.

Favorite class: I f thesis counts

as a class then it is definitely thesis. I loved being able to approach a research question, and problem solve along the way. I also really enjoyed working with Kara, my thesis adviser, and everyone else in her lab. Everyone is always very supportive of each other and we are all trying to answer our questions together.

How Reed changed me:

I have learned both how to listen to others better and how to assert myself so that I am listened to when I have something important to say.

Financial aid: I am continually grateful for the countless opportunities that financial aid has provided me. It would have been impossible for me to attend Reed without it.

What’s next: I spent the

summer in Kara’s lab expanding on the research that I conducted for my thesis. Now, I am working as a Research Assistant in the Oshimori Lab at OHSU investigating cellular signaling in stem cell and skin cancer microenvironments.

Desired superpower: Th e ability

to remember anything that I want.

Actual superpower: Th e

ability to remember useless information.

Pet peeve: C old tomato sauce.

Influential book: A Small Place

by Jamaica Kincaid. It made me think a lot about global tourism and how I consume information.

september 2018 Reed Magazine 25

Timmy Straw Hometown: Corvallis, Oregon Thesis adviser: P rof. Marat

Grinberg [Russian 2006–]

Thesis: “ In Memory of Memory”: The Poetry of Maria Stepanova What it’s about: W ell known

in literary circles in her native Russia, little of contemporary poet and journalist Maria Stepanova’s poetry is available in English. I translated a selection of her poems with the hope of “opening them up” to the English reader, and tried to situate her work both in the Russian literary canon and in the political and cultural context she is writing out of and responding to: specifically, the increasingly repressive atmospherics of Putin’s Russia, the Putinist distortions of history and memory, etc.

What it’s really about:

How do you bring a poem from one language into another without clipping its taproot?

What can poetry be for us in the present?

My first day of class: I felt like I absolutely did not belong, like I was the sole member of an intensely somber peanut gallery, if such a thing could exist.

A hand-tinted Brezhnev-era Russian postcard of the statue of Peter the Great in St. Petersburg, found in a junk shop years before I ever thought I'd have the opportunity to study Russian or go to college.

Cool stuff: T ai chi (much gratitude to Dave Barrett ’79 RIP), piano (thank you to Denise VanLeuven), running.

Obstacles I have overcome: I have not overcome but brought

to size the primordial terror somehow linked to speaking in class.

Influential book: A tie between

Yuri Lotman’s Universe of the Mind and Hans Blumenberg’s Paradigms for a Metaphorology.

I liked Blumenberg’s idea that metaphors give “courage” to the mind (the individual, or the epoch) to think ahead of itself.

26 Reed Magazine september 2018

RUSSIAN Favorite professors:

Prof. Johannes Wankhammer’s [German 2016–17] teaching on German aesthetic theory was lively, oxygenated, ethically demanding, and intellectually generous. The way I think, read and write was given shape, voice, and—for me—emotional life in different ways by the teachings and being of Professors Ben Lazier [history 2005–], and Zhenya Bershtein [1999–], Marat Grinberg, and Lena Lencek [1977–] in the Russian department. I carry their voices in my head and their thoughts at the foundations and margins of my own experience. I’m grateful that it was through them that I first encountered many of the writers and thinkers I’ve come to love.

How Reed changed me:

It helped me to name the garden, the animals; which is to say, it brought a greater individuation, speciation, complexity, and sense of home to my life in the world.

Financial aid: I ’m an older student from a low-income background and had no money at all when I applied; none of my studies would have been possible without the full scholarship Reed arranged.

Awards, fellowships, grants:

Prof. Grinberg and I were given a Ruby-Lankford Grant to work on Joseph Brodsky; I was Reed’s selection for the Beinecke, and received a commendation for academic excellence.

Desired superpower:

The eternal life of my dog.

Actual superpower: My dog.

Pet peeve: Th at irritating

timbre of voice that’s crept into American discourse directly from social media/tech/neoliberal dandyism.

What’s next: A research

Fulbright in Moscow, and then entering the MFA program in poetry at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

Morgan Vague Hometown: H ouston, Texas Thesis adviser: Prof. Jay Mellies

[biology 1999–]

Thesis: P lastic Pollution and Bacterial Solutions.

What it's about: I gathered soil samples from polluted sites in Texas and isolated three novel bacterial consortia with the ability to colonize and degrade PET plastic (the big bad plastic used for bottled water).

What it’s really about:

Plastic-eating bacteria and how we can use them to combat plastic pollution!

First day of class: I was both excited and terrified.

Cool stuff: Every biology class

I ever took, including intro!

Spanish and German House conversation groups, climbing, Brazilian jiu-jitsu.

Student groups/clubs/ activities: W omen’s rugby, Reed

Mixed Martial Arts club.

Obstacles I have overcome:

I transferred to Reed from Houston Community College and entered as a nontraditional 22-year-old freshman. My hands shake but I can still do dissections and load protein gels with the best of them.

Influential book: One Bullet

Away by Nathaniel Fick.

Lt. Fick’s biography taught me valuable lessons about leadership and keeping a cool head during the most pressurefilled situations, which served me well during my time at Reed.

Concept that blew my mind:

Microbiological evolution and gene expression. It’s a really beautiful, awe-inspiring, and terrifying topic!

B I O LO GY

Favorite professors:

In Microbiology, Immunology, and the Human Microbiome, Prof. Jay Mellies is so enthusiastic and approachable about his subject. His classes literally changed my life and set me on my current research path. Prof. Iliana Alcántar [Spanish 2007–17] is hilarious, passionate, and she uses a blend of music, media, and modern authors to bring the subject to life. Even though I never took a proper class with Prof. Kara Cerveny [biology 2012–], she always makes time to talk me through and offer advice on my experiments. Prof.

Suzy Renn [biology 2006–] helped me navigate the bio major path.

How Reed changed me: I never thought I’d major

in a STEM field or pursue research, and I blame intro bio for planting the wonderful science seed in my head.

Awards, fellowships, grants: F inancial

Services Fellowship, faculty commendation for junior qual performance, commendations for academic performance: 2016, 2017, 2018, Stafford Post-Bac Fellowship Award; Betty Liu Summer Research Fellowship.

Desired superpower: F light.

Actual superpower: W astebasket-ball.

Pet peeve: M ean people.

What’s next: Medical school or

graduate school.

My best buddy, Holly Golightly, who helped me through Reed.

Marjorie Oxley Hometown: G rass Valley,

California

to demonstrate how ChineseAmericans cultivated and sold a sense of authentic China during the Cold War. Specifically, I’m looking at the Chinese-American culinary scene in San Francisco during this time, and focusing on two Chinese-American chefs—Cecilia Chiang and Johnny Kan—and contrasting their conceptualizations of culinary authenticity.

What it’s really about: I order

How Reed changed me:

Thesis: Th e Last Mandarin:

Problematizing Authenticity in Chinese-American Cuisine in the 20th Century

What it’s about: M y goal is

Chinese food to my apartment and tell myself that qualifies as thesis work.

Cool stuff: I was the training supervisor at Reed's nuclear reactor and raised 30 freshmen into competent reactor operators. I did my thesis on something I love, coached a softball team, read the longest book ever written, fell in love, learned how to code and speak my mother’s native language, and started a foodie blog with my best friend.

Influential book: Th e Lucky Ones: One Family and the Extraordinary Invention of Chinese America by Mae Ngai.

Concept that blew my mind: S cience is not apolitical. Working

at the reactor taught me that as a scientist and operator I am still as subjected to the biases that affect me in my work as a historian.

28 Reed Magazine september 2018

Favorite class:

Chinese literature­—Chinese Narrative Traditions with Prof.

Alexei Ditter [Chinese 2006–] was the hardest I have ever had to work at Reed for a single class, but the work made me fall in love with an amazing narrative and made me feel the most engaged I have ever felt in conference. We read the longest book in all of Chinese literature, The Dream of the Red Chamber (红楼梦)—2,500 pages long.

Alexei was an amazing teacher and always came to class really excited to teach us. I loved how direct he always was with our small five-person class. It also reminded me how proud I am to be Chinese-American and that badass literature comes out of China, even if no one in the United States knows that.

Thesis adviser: P rof. Lara Netting [history 2017–18]

Marjorie brandishes a Geiger counter, used to detect radiation.

HISTORY

It made me a leader and challenged me to grow into a stronger and more thoughtful person.

Awards, fellowships, grants: I received a commendation

of excellence, and gave a presentation on my thesis work at the Lewis & Clark Gender Studies Symposium about how one of the female restaurant owners I looked at in my thesis dressed in a cheongsam to bring to mind a certain image of feminized China, to sell an elite exoticism in her restaurant and cuisine.

Desired superpower: F lying.

Actual superpower: S hutting

down men who interrupt me.

Pet peeve: W hite-owned ethnic

restaurants.

What’s next: Working at the

Portland Chinatown Museum.

Pedro Henriques Da Silva Hometown: A lexandria, Virginia Thesis adviser: P rof. Kim

Clausing [economics 1996–] Thesis: P eople, Place, and Pulse: How Relational Goods Affect Happiness What it's about: I n studying how to best produce and allocate scarce goods and resources, economics asks a broader, more important question: what makes a good life, and how do we enable it? Economists have explored the effects of income and health on (the dodgy metrics of) happiness.

Interestingly, healthy social bonds have been correlated to both income and health, as well as happiness, but little has been done to further explore this correlation—and its magnitude.

This thesis asks: how do relationships impact happiness?

What it’s really about: B eyond

income, beyond health, how do interpersonal relationships affect our happiness?

The first day of class: I felt like I’d stumbled into a parallel universe.

Cool stuff: I started a business, learned how to box, spent an incredible year at the London School of Economics, and met some of the smartest, most thoughtful people ever.

Obstacles I have overcome: F lashback: High school pre-

calc. I got a D—my worst grade ever. I thought I was the worst mathematician of all time. I decided to become a better one.

The first class I signed up for at Reed was calculus. I did great, so I took another math class. And the truth is, after years of saying “I’m a communication person, not a math person,” I realized that anything, yes anything, can be learned.

ECONOMICS

Influential book:

Avoiding Politics by Nina Eliasoph is about the ways in which Americans avoid talking about politics in their daily lives and how this contributes to a culture of apathy, underengagement, and power imbalance. Polarization, misinformation, and corruption thrive in environments where people are largely silent about their politics. That’s how democracy fails.

Concept that blew my mind: J ames Lovelock’s

Gaia hypothesis posits that the earth is actually a sort of superorganism made up of the interactions between living and nonliving things.

Favorite professors: P rof. Kim Clausing embodies

all the ideals of a Reed professor—encouraging questions, pushing you to think critically, and inspiring you to aspire to just that much more than you thought you could do. She ties ideas to real-life situations, and always answered my questions with a touch of humor, wit, and relatability.

How Reed changed me:

I came to Reed an over-thinker.

I’m leaving even more so one.

Financial aid: Th ank you. The only reason I was able to stay here was financial aid. (Also, as a former Phonathon caller, as annoying as the calls may be, you are really making or breaking it for a lot of students through your help—so, again, thank you.)

Desired superpower:

Breathe underwater.

Actual superpower: M ind-

reading.

Pet peeve: P eople chewing.

What's Next: I’m headed back

East to start a two-year corps experience with Teach for America.

september 2018 Reed Magazine 29

Alex Moses Hometown: G rass Valley,

California

Thesis adviser: P rof. Gail Sherman [English 1981–] Thesis: M y House Is Constructed of Dream-Fabric: Desire in Selected Short Fiction of Zora Neale Hurston, Jessie Fauset, and Dorothy West What it’s about: I look at the

short stories of three Harlem Renaissance women authors, to see how they engage with the politics of the Harlem Renaissance and in particular the ways that they employ class and gender to write political fiction differently than many predominant Harlem Renaissance figures.

What it’s really about: I f we include women writers in

our definition of the Harlem Renaissance, it is a politically diverse and feminist literary movement.

The Crisis is the official magazine of the NAACP. Jessie Fauset, one of the authors I examine in my thesis, was its literary editor from 1919 to 1926, often considered to be the magazine's "golden era," in the heart of the Harlem Renaissance.

Influential book: I’m incredibly

grateful to have been taught Jane Eyre in not one but two classes

by Prof. Jay Dickson [English 1996–­].

Concept that blew my mind: W e are all inundated in ideology,

no matter how subversive we think we’re being.

Favorite professor: rof. Radhika Natarajan [history P

2014–] made Hum 110 so much fun.

How Reed changed me: I f

you had told me in high school that I’d be speaking in front of an entire faculty and freshman class, giving advice on how to navigate Reed, or that I would plan some weird festival, book artists, and manage upwards of $80,000, I would not have believed you. Reed made me grow so much, giving me the confidence to speak out, get involved, and actively participate in my community.

My first day of class: I felt so out of place. Intro Biology lab was immediately overwhelming, and then I had second-year Spanish, which I had placed into, but I was incredibly nervous to be in a classroom where we would only be speaking in Spanish. It was a good wake-up call, though—I came here to challenge myself. I studied hard, and eagerly prepared for the second day of class and beyond.

Financial aid: Th anks to the wonderful, hardworking staff of the financial aid office for the financial support. The staff at Reed are some of the most competent and dedicated people I’ve ever met and make this place so special.

Cool stuff: I taught a Paideia

up dozens of people’s Google Calendars to find a meeting time that works for everyone.

class on Peanuts (the comics), directed a Hum play, gave countless campus tours, planned some big parties (orientation and Renn Fayre) with some of my best friends, and presented a paper at the Northwest Undergraduate Conference on Literature.

Obstacles I have overcome: B eing gay at Reed is harder than

many people think. But I’m grateful that this place exists and let me discover myself.

30 Reed Magazine september 2018

ENGLISH

Desired superpower:

Hold breath underwater forever.

I love fish.

Actual superpower: L ining

Pet peeve: P eople are never

on time at Reed! And we’re a leashed campus!

What’s next: I’ll be moving to Southern California to be an admission counselor for another institution.

Henry DeMarais Hometown: T acoma,

Washington

Thesis adviser: P rof. David Garrett [history 1998–] Thesis: Th e Rise of Modernism in Postrevolutionary Mexican Art Music What it’s about: T wentieth-

century Mexican art music is unfamiliar to global audiences.

The few well-known works advertise their nationalistic identities, often through references to traditional indigenous music. Although such pieces were politically popular after the revolution, most Mexican composers preferred to write in an abstract, modernist idiom.

What it’s really about: W hy

nationalism in art gets boring.

My first day of class:

I felt idealistic.

Cool stuff: I wrote papers on gambling legislation in medieval Spain and Jesuit missionaries in imperial China. I played in the Reed Orchestra, composed a few pieces for chamber ensembles, gained the freshman 15 in muscle, and learned to love country music, SPAM®, and the Fast and the Furious franchise.

Influential book: Don Quixote.

It was hilarious, meaningful, and ingeniously structured.

Concept that blew my mind: A pparently some people still

think communism works?

HISTORY

Favorite class: I loved the three

yearlong humanities courses on the ancient Mediterranean, the Renaissance, and modern Europe. They introduced me to art and literature I might never have tackled on my own and provided the perfect basis for continued exploration.

How Reed changed me: W hen I came here I thought

I was really smart. I wasn’t disappointed when I realized that I’m not. Instead, everything became more interesting to me. This, as well as exposure to Reed’s attitudes towards education and the world, helped me learn what kind of person I want to be.

Awards, fellowships, grants: I got a grant to do research in

the National Archives and visit historical sites in Mexico City. I also received a Kahan Summer Fellowship to study modern violin music in upstate New York.

Desired superpower: I mmortality.

Actual superpower: Th e

“ability” to destroy the “meaning” of simple words by enclosing them in shudder quotes.

Pet peeve: E xtremism.

What’s next: I'm studying

for a master of arts in teaching degree at the University of Puget Sound. I plan to teach high school history.

september 2018 Reed Magazine 31

Reediana Books. Music. Film. Send us your work!

EDITED BY KATIE PELLETIER Email reed.magazine@reed.edu

The Battle for Fortune State-Led Development, Personhood, and Power among Tibetans in China

(Cornell University Press, 2018)

During the year leading up to the Beijing Olympics (2007–08) Prof.

Charlene Makley [anthropology 2000–] was living among Tibetans in western China conducting field research on the effects of state-led development programs. One evening, her hostess told her that she had had some disturbing dreams.

So, disturbing, she consulted with her natal village temple about them, and had come to the conclusion that the deity Palden Lhamo was angered by some offering scarves Makley had brought into the hostess’s home, which had been gifted to Makley by upriver villages—villages with different divine supporters than the hostess. Makley was abruptly sent out into the night to rid the household of these scarves.

Makley knew that there were other anxieties at play. As the

nation was preparing for its first Olympic Games, Tibetans’ resentment about westward state-led development had come to a head, resulting in demonstrations and a crackdown by the state that was shocking and violent. Oncebusy streets in Qinghai were now empty, and people became guarded and wary of foreigners. Soon after the incident with the scarves, Makley moved from her hostesses’ home, found accommodations where she would not put anyone at risk, and began to try to understand why, after so many years of fieldwork in the region, she hadn’t seen this turmoil coming.

The results challenged and deepened her anthropological methods, the result of which is her latest book, The Battle for Fortune.

Primarily an academic book, it

also contains much to offer a nonacademic audience interested in the experiences and culture of Tibetans living in China. Makley’s approach is a dialogic ethnography in which, as the story of the scarves demonstrates, she includes her “ethnographic self”­—not to dwell on her own experiences or “‘give voice’ to Tibetans” but rather to show and examine what sort of understanding can arise from her observations and experiences of her subject. Makley’s work is a reminder of the importance of anthropology’s qualitative analysis, especially when it comes to development stories, which, with their frequent emphasis on quantities and percentages, too frequently reduce and flatten the richness of human striving and creative adaptation. —KATIE PELLETIER ’03

Sage Grouse Icon of the West

32 Reed Magazine september 2018

white ruff, and peculiar olivecolored air sacs that inflate and deflate audibly during its elaborate courtship ritual, lives in the intermountain West in a vast, but threatened area known as the Sagebrush Sea. The gorgeous photography alone will disabuse any notion that this wide, flat country is monochromatic or dull, and the narrative of natural history that Love tells in these pages sparks an affection for these peculiar, imperiled creatures.

—KATIE PELLETIER ’03

n o p pa d o l pa o t h o n g

If you don’t have the wherewithal to travel to the Great Basin region of the United States, wake before dawn, and make your way to a camouflaged blind to watch the spectacularly bizarre courtship dance of the sage grouse in person, the next best thing might be to spend some time with a new book by natural history writer Kathy Such Love ’72 and photographer Noppadol Paothong, Sage Grouse: Icon of the West. The exotic-looking sage grouse, with its brindled feathers,

(Sunbelt Publications, 2017)

Natural Causes An Epidemic of Wellness, the Certainty of Dying, and Killing Ourselves to Live Longer In her 20th book, 76-year-old journalist Barbara Ehrenreich ’63 flies in the face of preventive health care: she proclaims that she is old enough to die. No more bone-density scans for her. No more painful and humiliating mammograms or colonoscopies. No sleep apnea tests.

No self-martyrdom at the dinner table. And if she goes on working out in a gym, it will be for the pleasure of it.

From its subtitle, you might guess that Natural Causes is a sequel to Bright-Sided, her 2009 polemic about the cult of “positive thinking” and how it demoralizes people who are already contending with crushing financial or medical issues. Nearly half of the book revisits her deep skepticism about modern medicine, with its aggressive promotion of dubiously valuable medical tests and pharmaceuticals; the cult of “mindfulness,” divorced from any desire for enlightenment; and the Silicon Valley billionaires who pursue ever more arcane mind-body regimens in hopes of outliving us all.

But, the actual genesis for Natural Causes was a 2008 article in Scientific American describing how the immune system—macrophages, to be precise—actually abets the growth and spread of tumors. To Ehrenreich, who earned a PhD in cellular immunology from Rockefeller University, this was like saying that “the fire department is indeed staffed by arsonists.”

The idea that the body’s firstline defenders against microbes and cancer cells can change roles and actually welcome them is for Ehrenreich a stunning reversal of the notion of the body as a harmonious system. And this role switching represents a form of “cellular decision making” that suggests profound metaphysical possibilities. If cells have agency, she says, perhaps so do other things we normally think of as inert. “If cells are alive and can seemingly act in their own interests against other parts of the body,” she writes, “then we may need to see ourselves . . . as confederations, or at least temporary

Road Trips: Becoming an American in the Vapor Trail of the Sixties (Kajakai Press, 2016)

In 1969 Tamim Ansary ’70 hitchhiked across North America from his home base in Portland, Oregon with five dollars in his pocket. Road Trips recounts stories from this trip and his subsequent odysseys, set against the familiar background of communes and collectives, Woodstock and Watergate, sex, dope, acid, rock ’n’ roll, and the end of civilization as we know it.

alliances, of microscopic creatures.”

The second half of Natural Causes plunges into the behaviors of macrophages and other leukocytes, made visible by intravital microscopy, which follows cell movement in living tissue. Macrophages have often been described as the body’s garbage collectors, but some of them become serial killers, accessories not only to cancer’s spread but also to the inflammation associated with arthritis, diabetes, osteoporosis, strokes, and heart attacks.

In her final chapters, she builds a rather breathless case for redefining selfhood in the face of such bodily revelations. She is certainly not immune to the universal wish to outsmart death. At Powell’s Books this May, she noted that much of her energy goes to the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, which she founded in 2011 to fund journalists who document poverty and economic insecurity. “We nurture them,” she said. “You might say that is my bid for immortality.”

(Twelve/Hachette Book Group, 2018)

—ANGIE JABINE ’79

Echoes (Baobab Press, 2018)

In this debut fiction by Roger Arthur Smith ’72, Attorney Will Dubykky keeps a watchful eye over a secluded desert town, when a strange boy suddenly appears. Why is this boy disfigured? Why does he have difficulty speaking? Why can’t some people seem to see him? As one of the initiated, Dubykky has an inkling; the boy is evil, an echo sent to rectify the wrongs of an indulgent murderer. Echoes, is an exploration of humanity, evil, and the stark environs in which both exist.

september 2018 Reed Magazine 33

Reediana

Understanding Your Baby

Lettered Artists and the Languages of Empire (University of Texas Press, 2017)

Susan Verdi Webster ’82 uses extensive and largely unpublished archival documentation in this this major new work which recovers the first century of artistic practice in colonial Quito, one of colonial South America’s most important artistic centers.

Lullaby Road (Crown, 2018)

In James Anderson ’77’s latest book, a mute child is left at a truck stop with a note that reads “Please Ben. Bad trouble. My son . . . Tell no one.” Despite deep misgivings, and without any hint of who this child is or the grave danger he’s facing, Ben Jones, a short-haul truck driver on remote Route 117, takes the child with him in his truck and sets out into an environment that is as dangerous as it is beautiful and silent.

Project Fire (Workman Publishing Company, 2018)

Steven Raichlen ’75, New York Times bestselling writer of the Barbecue Bible, five-time winner of the James Beard award, and TV host, has a new cookbook, Project Fire, a full-color celebration of contemporary grilling.

Soon after I had my baby and was settled in at home, I realized that I had no idea how to play with this brand-new little person who was quickly wanting to do more than eat and sleep. I had trouble finding a go-to resource for ideas—something that was not (Strength in Words a textbook, nor overly simplistic.

LLC, 2018) Ayelet Marinovich ’03, a pediatric speech-language pathologist and parent educator, has a new book that strikes that difficult balance. The book is full of well-researched, distilled information and ideas for playing and engaging with babies to support their development. Concisely presented information is also well organized, so it’s easy to grab an age-appropriate activity and use it right away while understanding its developmental benefit.

The text is carefully footnoted so that interested readers can see source material and relevant studies, read further, and find related podcasts and other web content on the Strength In Words website, a resource Ayelet created to “promote caregiver / baby interaction and support parent education through music, play, sensory experiences, and language-rich environments.” The book is governed by Ayelet’s philosophy that emphasizes respect for babies, as well as her conviction that caregivers need not go buy toys and devices to support infant development, but have everything they need already at home. —KATIE PELLETIER ’03

Mouth toward Sky

Oregon Confetti

Conversation Club

Future First

Geraldine Foote ’82 has a new book of poetry that explores her personal experience of American historical events such as the Kennedy assassination, Hiroshima, Vietnam, and 9/11. She explores relationships and motherhood and draws images from Northwest landscapes.

In Lee Oser ’88’s new work of fiction, Portland art dealer Devin Adams is content earning a semihonest living until one night his friend John Sun comes knocking at the door, bearing a mysterious baby. Despite Devin’s strong natural preference for easy profits and easy women, the baby moves him in his wayward soul to join Sun on an absurd quest.

Eve Muller ’89 recently coauthored a curriculum for teaching students with high-functioning autism the “how” and “why” of conversation. The books are illustrated by one of her students with autism, and findings from her pilot study, published in a peerreviewed journal in 2016, indicated that the curriculum was not only fun and motivating for kids, but also effective.

Alice Mann ’91, a former vice president at JPMorgan Chase who holds a PhD in social and organizational psychology, has recently published her first book, Future First: How Successful Leaders Turn Innovation Challenges into New Value Frontiers. Mann advises future-leaning leaders to expand, reinvent, and transform their businesses into future-first companies.

(Finishing Line Press, 2018)

(Wiseblood Books, 2017)

34 Reed Magazine september 2018

(AAPC Publishing, 2018)

(Routledge, 2018)

Compassionate Moral Realism

(Oxford University Press, 2018)

Colin Marshall ’03, associate professor of philosophy at the University of Washington, offers a ground-up defense of objective morality, drawing inspiration from a wide range of philosophers, including John Locke, Arthur Schopenhauer, Iris Murdoch, Nel Noddings, and David Lewis.

Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics: New Edition

100 Demon Dialogues Every artist is beset by doubt. In a stroke of diabolical ingenuity, Lucy Bellwood ’12 figured out how to turn her demons into drawings and transform her anxieties into art. Heartfelt, (Toonhound Studios LLC, 2018) profound, and inspiring, these comics show an artist wrestling with a fiendish array of doubts— and finding unexpected ways to overcome them.

—CHRIS LYDGATE ’90

When Spirit Calls: A Healing Odyssey

(Monkfish Book Publishing, 2018)

This compelling memoir chronicles how the life of Joan Diver (married to former Reed president Colin Diver) was turned inside out by devastating spinal pain—and brings us along on her extraordinary journey from Boston foundation executive to spiritual healer.

With vivid writing and heartfelt honesty, Joan shows how her misfortune led not just to recovery, but also to awakening.

In 2014, Prof. Nicholas Wheeler ’55 [physics 1963–] edited a classic work by John von Neumann, initially for his own use. The available English translation by Robert Beyer, dating from 1955, was riddled with equations that were unreadable due to the typewriter used to produce them and text that read like “transliterated German.”

Prof. Wheeler undertook to produce his own version, encouraged Translated by Robert T. Beyer, edited by Nicholas A. Wheeler ’55

by Prof. Thomas Wieting [math [physics 1963–] 1965–2016], Peter Renz ’59, and (Princeton University Press, 2018) Marina von Neumann Whitman, von Neumann’s distinguished daughter. Equations and polished text were rendered in TeX, prefatory essays were added by distinguished physicists Freeman Dyson and Léon Van Hove, an index, and other supplemental material were added as well.

When Renz learned of Wheeler’s work, he brought it to the attention of an editorial colleague at Princeton University Press, which published it in February 2018.

Prof. Wheeler says, “It is my thought that some of my former students (Reed physics grads 1964–2010) might have interest in knowing that Prof. Wheeler was involved in such an effort.”

Call Me Phaedra: The Life and Times of Movement Lawyer Fay Stender (Regent Press, 2018)

Lise Pearlman delivers an in-depth portrait of Fay Abrahams Stender ’53, a renowned lawyer who advocated for criminal defendants from the McCarthy era through the 1970s, including the Rosenberg espionage case, Black Panther Party leader Huey Newton, and revolutionary prisoner George Jackson.

Stray City (Custom House, 2018)

Chelsey Johnson’s debut novel is an “anti-romance” set in the ’90s about a lesbian Reed graduate who, reeling from a breakup and a friend’s betrayal, hooks up with a man. She is soon shocked to discover she is pregnant, and despite the concerns of her astonished gay friends, she decides to have the baby. This funny debut explores the complications of belonging­—to a city, a culture, and a family.

september 2018 Reed Magazine 35

Thank you for supporting Reed’s intellectual, ambitious, and diverse community of scholars.

5,354 alumni, parents, students, and friends gave $4,890,650 to support Reed’s Annual Fund.

In 2017–18,

INTELLECTUAL •

289 new theses were added to the thesis tower.

•

Seven Reedies received the prestigious Fulbright award.

•

•

•

Seven professors earned tenure in 2017–18. In 2018–19, Reed will welcome new tenure-track and visiting faculty from Stanford, UCLA, UC Berkeley, Cornell, Harvard, and University of Chicago.

AMBITIOUS

DIVERSE

•

238 students participated in winter externships, summer internships, and job shadows this year.

•

11% of the class of 2021 are the first in their family to attend college.

•

The Center for Life Beyond Reed advised 571 students about careers, graduate school, internships, and other opportunities.

•

Domestic and international students of color increased by 46% over the past ten years.

•

•

95 Opportunity Grants, Initiative Grants, and Opportunity Fellowships supported students undertaking summer research, presenting papers at conferences, and conducting research with faculty.

Reed added a new professional staff position as well as a student coordinator position to the Multicultural Resource Center, which just celebrated its 25th anniversary.

•

51% of Reed students received need-based aid in 2017–18.

Reed meets 100% of demonstrated need; the average financial aid award for the class of 2021 was $43,306.

Reed unanimously approved a new major in comparative race and ethnic studies.

This year, Reed faculty secured $1,665,142 in research grants from the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, Environmental Protection Agency, and others.

•

Reedies summited three Pacific Northwest peaks: Mt. Saint Helens, Mt. Adams, and Mt. Hood.

In Memoriam The Butterfly Effect Thomas Emmel ’63

May 26, 2018, while traveling in Brazil, of natural causes.

Eminent zoologist, ecologist, and entomologist, Thomas was a prolific researcher who authored more than 395 publications, including 35 books, on a dazzling array of biological subjects. But his international renown rested primarily on a lifetime of devotion to a single insect—the butterfly.

A leading lepidopterist, he founded the only institution in the world dedicated solely to butterfly and moth research, led efforts to save rare species from extinction, and worked tirelessly to make butterflies into “a welcome symbol of nature that people can identify with.”

His lifelong fascination with butterflies began at the age of 8, when his father made butterfly nets for Tom and his brother. “To his great surprise, and eventual regret, it consumed us as a hobby and finally became a profession for me and a continued avocation for my brother,” Tom remembered.

At Reed, Tom majored in biology and wrote his thesis, “Studies of Infection and Intracellular Populations of the Chlorella Symbionts of Paramecium bursaria,” with Prof. Stephen J. Karakasian [biology 1962–67]. He went on to get his doctorate in population biology from Stanford University in 1967 and was selected as a Guggenheim Foundation Fellow. Tom became a professor of zoology and entomology at the University of Florida in Gainesville.

Tom was the founding director of the McGuire Center for Lepidoptera and Biodiversity at the University of Florida in Gainesville.

The $12 million center features a vivarium with waterfalls, tropical plants, and other butterfly haunts.

He gained renown for helping save two species of butterflies in the Florida Keys, directing an extensive reintroduction effort to help the endangered Schaus swallowtail butterfly recover after the devastating effects of Hurricane Andrew, as well as an extensive ecological survey and restoration effort for the endangered Miami blue butterfly. Tom also conducted research on the effects of mosquitocontrol pesticides on nontarget wildlife and humans living in south Florida. Those findings led to better control measures for the use of pesticides, enhancing the survival of wildlife 42 Reed Magazine september 2018

and human health in the Keys. He led Lepidoptera expeditions to more than 40 countries around the globe.

“The next time you see a pair of Stock Island tree snails locked in a rousing bout of bizarre yet not entirely inappropriate hermaphroditic sex, you can thank Thomas C. Emmel,” wrote William Booth in a 1993 article for the Washington Post. “Were it not for Emmel, the planet probably would be waving goodbye to the rare and endangered tree snail, whose last hiding place on Earth was laid waste by Hurricane Andrew.”

Tom’s lifelong habit of careful observation yielded great scientific dividends. In 1959, as a teenager, he collected a fawn-colored species of butterfly during a three-month expedition in the Mexican highlands of Chiapas. For decades those butterflies traveled around the country with him until he landed at the University of Florida campus. In 2017, Andrew Warren, the senior collections manager at the McGuire Center, pulled out a drawer, saw the butterflies and thought to himself, “That’s new.” Nearly 60 years after the Chiapas expedition, the Cyllopsis tomemmeli were recognized as being a new species and named to honor Tom.

Tom held up Cyllopsis tomemmeli as an example of how a new species can hide in plain sight, and of the value of museum collections.

“The fact that something can be preserved for future students and professional people to study at a time when new techniques are available to verify the discovery is very important,” he said. “It shows just how long specimens can be preserved, hundreds of years in a museum, and still be invaluable to understanding the changes that have occurred. Climatic change, pesticides, heavy-metal pollution in the air— all that is recorded in the wings and bodies of butterflies.”

Tom mentored countless students in many areas, including microevolution, population biology, and ecological genetics of Cercyonis butterflies; chromosome evolution and macroevolution in the Lepidoptera; mimicry complexes in Mechanitis and Melinaea ithomiine butterflies in the Neotropics; biology, life histories, ecology, and conservation of the California butterfly fauna; fossil butterflies; and conservation efforts for the overwintering Monarch butterfly sites in southern Mexico.

Scholar of Violence, Agent of Justice Lee Ann Fujii ’84

March 2, 2018, in Seattle, Washington, of influenza.

A leading political scientist, Lee Ann examined the motivations behind interpersonal violence in Rwanda, Bosnia, and the United States. She was an associate professor in political science at the University of Toronto and leaves behind nearly two decades of extensive research into genocide and political violence.

She was born in Seattle to parents of Japanese descent who met while interned during World War II. Her brother, Carey, remembered that everyone in the family expressed their views forcefully. Lee Ann was outspoken and once had a run-in with her high school teacher after refusing to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. Her parents’ internment may have influenced her career path, he says, because “she always wanted to make the world better, to right social injustice.”

At Reed, she majored in music, and wrote her thesis, “A Reconsideration of Metastasian Opera Seria as a Dramatic Form through an Analysis of Handel’s Serse,” with Prof. Leila Falk [music 1969–2009]. After graduation, she moved to San Francisco, where she worked a number of different jobs, got involved in theatre, took workshops, and acted in plays.

Jumping back into academia, Lee Ann

Patricia Mitchell ’32

March 27, 2018, in Portland, at 108 years of age.

The only child of Hugh and Jane Mitchell, Patricia was born in Orland, Califor nia , where her father worked for the Bureau of Fisheries. The family moved up and down the Pacific coast, and after attending grade school in Clackamas, Pat graduated from Washington High School. At Reed, she majored in art and wrote her thesis, “A Sketch for a Mural Painting to be Placed over a Fireplace,” gaining a combined liberal arts and fine arts degree from Reed and the School of Museum of Fine Arts.

In the 1932 Griffin, she is described as “quiet but charming, and a grand sense of humor. She has had a busy time trekking back and forth between art school and Reed. She is very apt at wielding the paintbrush, whether sketching a mountain, a limpid lady, or dizzy skyscrapers for dance decorations.”

In 1941, she began working as the executive secretary for Clarence Bishop, the president of Pendleton Woolen Mills. Upon Bishop’s

earned a master’s degree in international relations at San Francisco State in 2001 with a thesis on the genocide in Rwanda. She earned a PhD in political science from George Washington University in 2006, taught there for several years, and moved to Toronto in 2011.

She made use of her theatrical background to enliven her lectures. “She could command a room,” said a UT colleague. “She had an incredible presence.”

Lee Ann’s innovative study of violence examined the complex reasons behind individual behavior, allowing that complex individuals were full of contradictions and dilemmas. She believed that the emotions of research subjects were important, and that one could get deeper and more meaningful data by seeing people not just as research participants, but as human beings. In her book Killing Neighbors: Webs of Violence in Rwanda, she posed the question that drove her research: “How do ordinary people come to commit mass violence against their own neighbors, friends, and family?”

At the time of her death, she was at work on a second major book, Show Time: The Logic and Power of Violent Display, examining how many violent acts are choreographed to make an impact, as in the lynching of African Americans in the United States during the Jim Crow era.

The Spirit of Reed READ about classmates and professors who have died at reed.edu/reed-magazine/in-memoriam.

SHARE your memories on our website or via email at reed.magazine@reed.edu.

HONOR them with a gift in their name at reed.edu/givingtoreed.

EDITED BY RANDALL S. BARTON

She wanted to make the point to North Americans that shocking violence is not confined to other parts of the world.

Lee Ann mentored other women of color in pursuing academic careers, helping them navigate the landscape. In a 2017 posting on a political science website, she argued that the “abhorrent lack of diversity in our discipline keeps us collectively deaf, dumb and blind to the larger world around us, the very world we purport to analyze and explain.”

She was visiting her terminally ill mother in Seattle when she caught the flu, dying only a few days after her mother passed away. Lee Ann is survived by her brothers, Jeff and Carey.

She moved from her Eastmoreland home in 1986 to an apartment in Holladay Park Plaza, where she resided for 32 years. Pat enjoyed traveling with passport entries for Australia, China, Japan, New Zealand, and Europe. She is survived by her many friends and family at Pendleton Woolen Mills and her former Pendleton associate, Dave Taft, who following his own retirement became her daily champion of care and friendship for more than 13 years.

Richard Irving Maddox ’41 March 14, 2018, in the Bay Area, California.

passing, she assisted C.M. “Mort” Bishop Jr. and his brother B.H. “Brot” Bishop, their mother Harriet, and CFOs Mike Haggerty, Bob Mathis, and Dennis Simmonds. Pat officially retired in 1999 at the age of 90, concluding her Pendleton career of 58 years. She was inducted into Pendleton’s “Modern Day Hall of Fame,” with a “Patricia Weekender Jacket” named after her.

In 2009, she celebrated her 100th birthday as Pendleton was also celebrating 100 years of incorporation. It was a memorable occasion as she was ceremoniously draped with a centennial blanket called “Spirit of the Peoples.”

Dick grew up near the University of Portland and attended Reed as a freshman, where his professors provided him with invaluable insight into the emerging European conflicts. He was in the naval reserve and was called up the next year to go to the U.S. Naval Academy, graduating with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering just days after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Nine days later, he married Marie Javerliat ’41, a classmate from both Portland’s Clinton Kelly High september 2018 Reed Magazine 43

In Memoriam

Virginia Hake Speckman ’44

School of Commerce and Reed. Dick was immediately assigned to duty in the Pacific, serving aboard destroyers throughout the war.

Following his resignation from the Navy in 1946, Dick earned a graduate degree at the California Institute of Technology, and then joined the staff of Standard Oil of California (Chevron) as a research physicist. The Korean War resulted in his recall by the Navy, and he was attached to an East Coast ship. The family moved to homes in Virginia, Massachusetts, and Washington, D.C., where Dick was assigned to the Office of Naval Research. In 1954, the family returned to their home in Fullerton, California, where Dick continued his career with Standard Oil. Special assignments with the company moved Dick to Houston for three years, and finally to San Mateo, in the Bay Area.

Responding to an alumni survey, Dick wrote: “After 50+ years, the name Reed evokes feelings of pride, respect, admiration, and affection in a one-year student.” Marie died in 2009. Dick is survived by his daughters, Danielle Ringen and Marya Hughes, and his son, Brian Maddox.

Born in her family home in Toppenish, Washington, Virginia was raised in the Yakima Valley.

She learned how to tell a good story from characters among the farmhands in her father’s employ, a skill she used to entertain friends and family for the rest of her life. After graduating from Toppenish High School, she attended Reed for two years, attending classes while working at the post exchange (PX) on the Portland Army Air Base. On base she met her future husband, Lt. Henry A. Speckman, a native of Newport, Rhode Island, and after a short courtship, they married at the base chapel in 1943.

They were married 58 years and had five children. In the mid-’60s she reentered the workforce alongside Henry until they both retired in 1985. Until her final day, Virginia’s sense of humor remained sharp, bringing smiles and laughter to her friends and family. Her strong will, impeccable memory, and fierce independence kept her behind the wheel and living in her own home. Preceded in death by her husband, Henry, she is survived by her children: Jean Eves, Jim Speckman, Bob Speckman, Steve Speckman, and Jane Ellsworth.

Charlene Welsh Miller ’42

April 25, 2018, in Ithaca, New York, following a stroke.

A Portland native, Charlene graduated from Reed with a degree in English language and literature. Four years later, she married the love of her life, a fellow Reedie named Frank Barton Miller Jr. ’43.

After receiving his doctorate from Cornell University, Frank joined its faculty as a professor of industrial and labor relations. An active member of the Cornell community, Charlene worked in the music department of the College of Arts & Sciences, volunteered as an employment counselor at the Professional Skills Roster, and participated in the activities of the Cornell Catholic Community. She was a proud member of the Drama Club of Ithaca for more than 30 years and provided piano lessons to people in the area. During their 60 years of marriage, the couple was rarely apart, sharing a love of music and the arts, traveling to Shakespeare festivals, the ballet, concerts, and art tours.

Many years after graduating from Reed, Charlene wrote to say, “My life was much enriched by my Reed experience of the values on ‘learning to learn,’ and the nobility of the endeavor of becoming an informed and literate adult. In addition, I must acknowledge the high value to me of my experiences with such outstanding scholars as Profs. Collier, Cerf, Munk, and Reynolds.”

Frank died in 2006. Charlene is survived by her sister, Patricia Cook; her daughter, Patricia Ross; and her sons, Kevin and Brian.

44 Reed Magazine september 2018

May 28, 2018, at her home in West Salem, Oregon.

Merlin Morasch ’48 March 21, 2018, in Portland.

Except for his time in the army, Portland was the only home Mel knew. He graduated from Benson Polytechnic High School and went to work at Boeing, where he proudly worked on the B-17 bomber assembly line.

Mel was drafted in 1943 and placed in the Army Specialized Training Program, a higher-education program at Fordham University instituted to provision the army with junior officers. After only nine months, the army realized it didn’t need more officers; it needed soldiers. Thus began Mel’s time with the U.S. Army’s 104th Infantry Division—better known as the Timberwolves. From the 104th’s training camp in Camp Carson, Colorado, he landed in Cherbourg, France. Serving as a medic with the 329th Medical Battalion, Mel was one of the first medics sent into the Nordhausen concentration camp to search for survivors. He was honorably discharged from the army in 1945 and returned to Portland, where he graduated from Reed on the GI Bill in 1948. He wrote his thesis, “Reproducibility of Decay Curves of Infra-red Phosphors,” with Prof. Raymond Ellickson [physics 1946–48].

After graduation from Reed, Mel was a physicist for the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA). While he enjoyed his time with the BPA, he had a burning desire to have

his own business. In 1956, he founded Blue Ribbon Food Service, a home delivery service of frozen food to customers throughout Oregon and Washington. Today, the family business— now Morasch Meats—employs more than 150 people at its two processing facilities in Portland and Wood Village. Remarkably, even into his 94th year, Mel still went into his office six days a week.

Throughout his life, Mel was an avid reader, often holding a book in one hand and his yellow magic marker or pen in the other. He would make numerous notations, highlighting passages that supported his position or that demonstrated that the author was “full of malarkey.” A favorite book was the Bible, and Mel was proud to say he had read it 115 times in his lifetime.

He is survived by his six children, Steven, Michael, Douglas, Alan, Melissa, and Melody, and his sister, Ruth Williams. He was predeceased by Sallie, his wife of 60 years.

Billie Herzog Marx ’49

April 20, 2018, in Portland.

Billie grew up in Portland and graduated from Grant High School. She attended Reed for two years and graduated from the University of Oregon. After several years working in San Francisco, she returned to Portland to marry Chuck Marx. The couple enjoyed playing tennis, and highlights in their lives were trips to Italy and England. After Chuck passed away in 2002, Billie moved to Holladay Park Plaza, where she lived until her death. Her interests included reading, rooting for the Trail Blazers, attending plays, and spending time with family and friends.

George Edward Bussell ’51

March 7, 2018, on Bainbridge Island, Washington.

Born in Tacoma, Washington, George was raised in Everett, where he graduated from Everett High School.

Showing an early interest in science, he made toy soldiers by pouring molten lead into molds and playing with liquid mercury in his parents’ basement. After his senior year, he worked on a tugboat, earning enough to pay for his first year at Reed.

George and some buddies were on their way to check out the University of Oregon when somebody told them about Reed. Late that summer, he toured a virtually empty campus, and in Eliot Hall, they encountered Prof. Adolph Bittner [mathematics 1943– 49], who was also the director of admission.

He invited George to take an admission test, and two weeks later George started classes at Reed. It was harder than he imagined, and he was often up late at night studying. During a

class with Prof. A.A. Knowlton [physics 1915– 48], George dozed off during the lecture. “I woke up suddenly as he threw a piece of chalk and it bounced off my head,” George recalled.

“Knowlton said, ‘You don’t go to sleep in my class.’”

He lived in Winch, where 12 people were served by one bathroom and a shower.

“The plumbing was such that if someone was in the shower and you were going to flush the toilet, you had to yell, ‘Fire!’ because the toilet flushing consumed all the cold water and the person would be standing in hot water,” he remembered.

In the spring of ’46, he was drafted, and he served in the U.S. Army Air Corps as a chaplain’s assistant at Geiger Field in Spokane. He was strongly affected by the segregation of black and white soldiers, which came to an end a year after his service by an executive order from President Truman. That year of service made George eligible for the GI Bill, allowing him to finish his education at Reed.

“The GI Bill was one of the greatest things that ever happened to the United States,” George said. “It got students into college that might never have even dreamt of doing it before. It was quite a different atmosphere. There were more mature students who had been in the army quite a while, and done a lot of reading and so forth, and it changed the atmosphere a great deal. They were earnest.”

Back at Reed, he fell in love with academics, and developed an intellectual curiosity fostered by the research he was doing as well as his thesis. His senior year, he took a class in radioactive materials, taught by Prof. Arthur Scott [chemistry 1923-79].

“It was the first class in studying radioactive materials using Geiger counters and so forth,” George explained. “It was really quite primitive, long before Reed had a reactor there or anything like that. The only shielding we had were some lead bricks around it, and you looked down into it, and tested it and so forth. It was amazing— we were exploring a new world.”

He wrote his thesis, “Further Investigation of the Von Richter Reaction,” with Prof. Josef F. Bunnett [chemistry 1946–52] advising. During that year, he became nervous about delivering an exploratory speech in senior seminar, and decided if he memorized the first few sentences, the rest would flow naturally. The day of the speech came and with his friends in the first row gently heckling him, George began with the first few sentences; the rest of the speech flowed easily. When he finished, Prof. Fred Ayres [chemistry 1940–70] approached him and said, “Have you ever considered going into teaching, George?”

After graduating from Reed, George obtained a teaching credential from the University of Washington and accepted a teaching job at tiny South Bend High School in Washington,

where he taught chemistry, math, and physics and drove the school bus. On a blind date back in Everett, he met Delores Ringman, whom he married in 1954. After the birth of their first son, Michael, they moved to Mercer Island.

A couple of years into teaching at the Mercer Island high school, George was one of 50 high school teachers from across the country to receive a National Science Foundation fellowship to support graduate study at Oregon State College (now University) that culminated in a master’s degree in chemistry.

The family returned to Mercer Island, where their children Mark and Karen were born, and George moved into administration as vice-principal of the high school. He started a doctoral program at Columbia University in 1967. Two years later, the family moved to Bainbridge Island, Washington, where George became principal of the high school. He was a true believer in public education and that it should open doors for students of all backgrounds.

He finished his dissertation and received his doctorate of education from Columbia.

In 1981, George began working in in hospital administration at Virginia Mason Hospital in Seattle, retiring in 1990. In retirement, George and Delores, enjoyed traveling to Europe, gardening, volunteering and spending time with family and friends. Retirement also brought more time to pursue interests in coin and stamp collecting and writing and painting classes. George loved living on Bainbridge Island and served one term as President of the Bainbridge Island Historical Museum. He is survived by his wife Delores, and his three children, Mike, Karen, and Mark Bussell ’83.

Barbara Bernstein ’52 May 2, 2018, in Kenmore, Washington.

Born in Saint Cloud, Minnesota, Barbara moved with her family to Bellingham, Washington, in the early ’30s, where they lived on a 38-acre farm purchased for the family by Barbara’s beloved uncle, Richard Drew, inventor of both masking tape and cellophane tape for 3M. Barbara loved to tell the story of how her Uncle Dick invented Scotch tape, and she was motivate d by his creat iv i t y, war mth, and intelligence.

After graduating from Bellingham High School, Barbara started at Reed, but transferred to the University of Washington, where she got her bachelor of arts in sociology. She became a certified instructor for Parent Effectiveness Training and taught many early childhood programs. Barbara loved teaching and taught parent education classes at Edmonds Community College. When she was in her 60s

she went back to college and got her master’s in psychology from Antioch University. As a mental health counselor, she provided years of service helping people to embrace life and encouraging them to fulfill their potential.

One of the greatest satisfactions of her life was as founder and owner of the Small Farm, which incorporated her love of horses, children, and teaching. Barbara watched with delight as children grew and learned autonomy through riding and caring for horses, swimming, and other creative activities. She loved horses and became educated in the art of massage therapy for horses. She and her husband, Louis, were very progressive and involved in the first alternative school in Seattle, where children learned to take responsibility for their own education and choices at an early age. The couple was involved in social justice, environmental, peace, and education causers, and with great sincerity lived the values of these causes.

Barbara was an avid skier and loved gardening, swimming, utilizing art in a therapeutic process, reading, and creative writing, including poetry. An animal lover, she adopted countless dogs, cats, horses, and other living beings. Predeceased by her husband, Louis, Barbara is survived by her daughter, Shelly Bernstein, and her sons David Bernstein and Aaron Bernstein.

Benjamin Stark ’53

March 6, 2018, in Kent, Washington.

Benjamin grew up in Seattle in a house his grandfather built at the end of the streetcar line in Rainier Beach in 1908. He was oldest of six children known to neighbors as “Stark’s Army.” Fearing attack during World War II, the family moved to a “country estate” in Kent.

Liking neither school nor farm work, Ben dropped out at age 16 to work on the Northern Pacific Bridge crew. After the war, he returned to graduate from Meridian High.

When his father insisted he attend college, Ben chose Reed. There he met Darryl Irene Johnson ’50. After she graduated, they moved to Newhalem, where Ben surveyed the upper Skagit River for Ross Dam power lines.

Ben and Darryl returned to Rainier Beach to raise a family, and he purchased Western Homes Realty in Rainier Valley. Investing in tax foreclosures—odd parcels someone would want someday—in 1975, he moved his family to a Des Moines, Washington, home he had purchased as an FHA repo. Ben’s two passions were wooden boats and bargains. He rebuilt a classic 39-footer as a salmon trawler and fished out of Neah Bay with his wife and kids as crew. He was active in 33rd district politics september 2018 Reed Magazine 45

In Memoriam and fought the SeaTac Airport Third Runway.

Preceded in death by his wife, Darryl, and son, Steven, Ben is survived by his children Peter, Patrick, Shelly, and Susan, and his siblings, John, David, Fred, and Marietta.

William Terry ’54

March 16, 2015, in Riverside, California from Parkinson’s disease.

Born in St. Maries, Idaho, Bill was a longtime resident of Oregon. After serving in World War II in the U.S. Army, he studied psychology at Reed and went on to get his JD from Lewis & Clark College. He joined a law firm in Portland and then established a partnership with Ben Madison in eastern Oregon as an independent claims adjuster. Bill was married for 64 years to Myrtle Terry, who predeceased him.

The couple dreamed of living in sunny Southern California, and he found employment as a claim manager and settlement specialist for Ohio Casualty Insurance Company in Riverside, California.

Bill was a world traveler, photographer, pilot, golfer, and patron of the arts and of music. He was a quiet man who lived for his family and is survived by his sons, Mark, Mike, and Mitchell.

Eli (Robert) Leon ’57

March 6, 2018, in Emeryville, California, of septic shock.

Those who relish the materiality of the material world sometimes get a bad rap. Demonstrating an unbridled affection for things that dazzle, they may be termed hoarders. But a zealous collector knows both the thrill of the hunt and the joy of lolling knee-deep in treasures.

Eli had what the Italians call bellocchio, “beautiful eye.” He was enchanted by the visual thrum of arranging a cache of Depression era goods into the artful displays that lined the walls of his bungalow in Oakland, California. Having just one mint-green meat grinder didn’t telegraph the message as well as having a dozen of them. When the Grove Street Freeway was being constructed in the late 1960s, Eli went through the homes that had been condemned by eminent domain and scooped up the everyday things that had been abandoned in the working-class neighborhood. These formed the nucleus of his collection.

He was born Robert Stanley Leon in the Bronx. His parents were first-generation Jews from Lithuania. His father was a jeweler and watch repairman and ran a small accessory shop on the Lower East Side. Robert attended the High School of Music and Art, where he pursued poetry, graphics, and ceramics. He spent a summer at Black Mountain College in Asheville, North Carolina, studying with potter Karen Karnes, and entered Oberlin College in Ohio before transferring to Reed. Majoring in psychology, he wrote his thesis, “Differences 46 Reed Magazine september 2018

Between Gifted Academic Achievers and Underachievers: An Analysis of Responses to OpenEnded Questions,” with Prof. Robert Wilson [psychology 1953–57] advising.

He went on to get his master’s at the University of Chicago, where he trained in Reichian psychotherapy, the practice of which became his main source of income. He was briefly married to his college girlfriend, Anne Drummond, although they both knew he was gay.

Sometime later, he changed his first name to Eli. By the 1970s, he was becoming a regular at flea markets, and began specializing in quilts of all kinds. Even dedicated gatherers realize that they can’t collect everything, and Eli began focusing on African American quilts with their irregular, improvisatory patterns. As he shopped the flea markets, he pressed dealers for knowledge of local quilt makers. One day in 1985, he encountered Rosie Lee Tompkins (1936–2006) selling household items at a Marin County flea market, and asked if she knew any African American quilt makers. She said that she dabbled in the craft.

Born in rural Arkansas, Effie Mae Howard (she adopted the pseudonym of Rosie Lee Tompkins for her quilts) picked cotton and pieced quilts with her mother before moving to California, where she worked as a nurse in a convalescent home. Suffering a nervous breakdown in the late-’70s, she found solace in needlework. Critics likened her improvisational quilts to Modernist paintings. Tompkins credited God as the artist and said her brilliant colors and geometric shapes were often inspired by deep prayer.

Dazzled by Tompkins’ work, Eli began to buy whatever she would sell him. He also purchased from other African American quilt makers in the Oakland area, accruing a collection of nearly 3,500 quilts, including some 200

by Tompkins. He studied the quilts and related their ad hoc patterns to textiles made in West Africa. Eli made trips to Texas, Louisiana, and

Arkansas—areas he knew the California quiltmakers had come from—to interview their relatives, and, of course, buy more quilts. In 1989, he received a Guggenheim Fellowship to conduct research in the South.

Gaining acclaim as a self-taught scholar of African American quilts, he brought attention to the field, and especially to the quilts of Rosie Lee Tompkins. He began mounting museum exhibitions of her work and wrote books and catalogues published in conjunction with the shows. Eli organized his first exhibition of quilts from his collection at the San Francisco Craft and Folk Art Museum in 1987 and would go on to organize nearly a dozen exhibitions across the country. His most ambitious show was Accidentally on Purpose: The Aesthetic Management of Irregularities in African Textiles and African-American Quilts, held at the Figge Art Museum in Davenport, Iowa, in 2006, the year Tompkins died.

“Eli Leon turned the full force of his exceptional intelligence and visual acumen onto the field of African American quilts,” Lawrence Rinder, director of the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, told the San Francisco Chronicle. “His exhibitions and publications, as well as his phenomenal collections, leave a profound legacy.”

Eli, who learned he had primary progressive aphasia in 2012, died in a care facility. The fate of his quilt collection has not yet been decided.

George G. Barnes ’58 Nov. 9, 2017, in Palo Alto, California.

George was born on Christmas Day in Boston.

In the late ’40s, his family moved to California.

At Reed, he wrote his thesis, “A Resonance Method for Determining the Speed of Sound in Liquids,” with Prof. Ken Davis [physics 1948–80] advising.

“George was my best friend, classmate, and onetime roommate at Reed, and was my best man at our wedding,” says Richard A. Cellarius ’58. “He was what I would call a ‘desert rat,’ who spent every possible weekend exploring the California desert and Death Valley. He spent his Reed summers working at the China Lake Naval Ordnance Test Station at Ridgecrest, California, only 100 miles away from Death Valley National Park.”

George earned three master’s degrees, in mechanical engineering and statistics from

UCLA and Stanford, respectively, and later in life, in business administration from Santa Clara University. He worked at Stanford Research Institute, SCI, Mellonics, and Litton Computer Services. George enjoyed mountaineering and was a volunteer with the local unit of the Mountain Rescue Association. A fixture at Off-Highway Vehicle Commission meetings, he chaired the Off-Road Vehicle Task Force for the Sierra Club and earned an award for that work.

Seldom speaking himself, he marshalled votes and got others to raise key issues. For 30 years, he led the Sierra Club annual meeting with Death Valley National Park staff, sharing his latest observations on bighorn sheep, burros, wilderness proposals, and bats. George’s knowledge of the desert around Death Valley was put to the test in the 1980s when wilderness and possible expansions of Death Valley were being considered. He took on the task of preparing a range of alternatives with realistic boundaries, and the best of outcomes became law in 1994.

He is survived by his wife, Joanne; his sons, Gregory Barnes ’93 and Keith Barnes; and sister, Lynne Barnes Small ’61.

Barbara Jean Heigel Orr ’58 February 18, 2018, in McMinnville, Oregon.

Barbara was born in Longview, Washington, and grew up in Portland, where she attended Reed. She worked as a bookkeeper and for more than 20 years bred, raised, and trained Labrador retrievers. Raising her children in California, she later relocated first to Carlton, Oregon, and then to Yamhill, Oregon. She is survived by her three children.

Loralene James ’62

May 5, 2018, in Lake Oswego, Oregon, of natural causes.

Lorie was born in Alameda, California, and moved with her family to Portland in 1951, where she attended Sylvan Grade School and Lincoln High School.

She studied at Reed for two years and then moved to the Bay Area, where she worked for AT&T and earned her bachelor’s degree in history at UC Berkeley.

Lorie returned to Portland, joined Georgia Pacific as an executive secretary, and, in 1967, married Tim James. When their first child, Jason, was born 10 years later, she left Georgia Pacific. After Tim left his corporate job at Freightliner to begin a commercial fishing operation, Lorie assumed financial accounting for the business’s three corporations while spending months alone each year raising Jason and their second son, Jared. With a strong sense of civic duty, she volunteered many hours at the boys’ cooperative preschool and participated at civic meetings on a variety

of issues. She was a 30-year member of the League of Women Voters, serving on the board for 20 of those years. An AFS exchange student in high school, Lorie supported the program throughout her life by interviewing applicants and running fundraising events each spring at Lakeridge High School. She loved the performing arts, attending the symphony, opera, and ballet, and listened daily to NPR. In addition to annual sojourns to the Ashland Shakespeare Festival, she held season tickets for local theatres. Lorie is survived by her husband, Tim, and her sons, Jared and Jason.

Neal Snyder ’63

March 11, 2018, in San Leandro, California, of prostate cancer.

Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Neal started at Reed but finished his bachelor’s degree in sociology at UC Berkeley, where he also got a master’s. In 1972, he got his law degree from Hastings College in Hastings, Nebraska. As an attorney, Neal specialized in protecting children from abuse and became a role model for others in the field.

When he was a teenager, Neal discovered DJ Johnny Otis, whose shows inspired his love of jazz, Latin jazz, blues, rock, R&B, and soul. In recent years, Neal wrote an online newsletter, Music and More, alerting fans to favorite Bay area musicians. He was a lifelong traveler, and with his wife, Yvonne Garcia, spent winter months in Southeast Asia. He loved shooting hoops and watching the Warriors and was an avid follower of the news and a supporter of independent progressive reporting. He is survived by his wife; his children, Alanya, Rumeli, and Dann; and his sister, Karen Mead.

Lynn Bowers ’65

February 10, 2018, in Eugene, Oregon, of metastatic cancer.

An accomplished artist and tireless activist, Lynn dwelt in the forest, where she championed ecological land use, toxin-free forests, and other rights of nature.

Born in Lakewood, she graduated from San Rafael High School in California and began working with clay early in her life. She earned a fine arts degree at Reed in a combined program with the Museum Art School (now the Pacific Northwest College of Art). For the first time in her life she felt at home among like-minded people. Reed also supported her inclination to pursue a self-directed and nontraditional career. Lynn wrote her thesis, “The Hangup: An Attempt to Discover the Proper Relation Between Form and Content in a Series of Ceramic Sculptures,” with Prof. Manuel Izquierdo [art 1953–56] advising. The calligraphic brush strokes she learned in classes with Lloyd Reynolds [English & art, 1929–69] informed her artwork for the rest of her life.

From 1962 to 1980, Lynn attended summer workshops at the Pond Farm in northern

California, where she studied with Marguerite Wildenhain, master potter from the Bauhaus and one of the 20th century’s most influential teachers and artists.

“I first came to Pond Farm from Reed College, 19 years old, as agitated and ardent as most teenagers,” Lynn wrote in the anthology Marguerite Wildenhain and the Bauhaus. “The beauty, the quiet, and the clay centered me.

Marguerite showed us a simple, dignified and honorable life. … All these years I have made my living by my hands and have never been an employee. Marguerite gave me the core, and I have wound my life around it.”

Lynn worked in ceramics, sculpture, painting, and costume design. In 1971, she established Fox Hollow Pottery in Eugene, Oregon, where she designed costumes for the ballet, theater, and opera; created ceramic sculptures and pottery; and painted residential murals for clients. Lynn created masks, puppets, and costumes for everything from Die Fledermaus to Swan Lake. It took her two years to construct the masks and puppets for Mowgli, a ballet based on Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book, which premiered at the Eugene Ballet. Her “mad cow” suits for a Eugene Earth Day celebration earned her the Eugene Weekly’s accolade as best artist of 2004.

Lynn lived simply on her rural land without benefit of a computer, microwave, or television.

As a forestland dwelling activist, she tirelessly championed rights of nature. She pioneered forest mapping and originated and was president of Forestland Dwellers, a neighborhood nonprofit group that investigated pesticides in forestry and collaborated with University of Oregon scientists to invent collection systems for bioassays of pesticide drift. Lynn made maps, documented statistics, wrote essays, gave speeches, and held prayer circles at corporate timber offices. She was appointed to a county advisory committee examining vegetation management and testified at the Oregon Board september 2018 Reed Magazine 47

In Memoriam of Forestry on the inadequacy of forest practices rules, and was president of the Northwest Land Conservation Trust.

It is likely that Lynn would have been an artist without attending college. But the things she learned at Reed—how to write concisely and evaluate evidence (Is it plausible? Is it true?

Does the evidence actually support the assertion?)—helped her cut through the red tape and hype of herbicide spray practices being used for forest management in Oregon. Being an activist was less than a stone’s throw from Lynn’s work as an artist. Both demonstrated a commitment to living simply and whole, and stewardship of the gifts she had been given: a keen eye, a sharp intellect, and a passion for things of the earth.

She is survived by her husband, Alan Foster.

Linda Louise Blackwelder Pall ’67

April 29, 2018, in Moscow, Idaho, in her sleep.

Attorney, activist, teacher, mother, mentor, and friend, Linda imparted fierce devotion to justice, inclusion, and community, and gave others strength they didn’t know they had.

As a child, Linda moved with her family from Virginia to The Dalles, Oregon, where she graduated valedictorian of her high school class. From a young age she was interested in music and the arts and became an avid flutist and pianist. As her talent progressed, she began taking the bus to Portland for lessons and eventually earned a chance to play with the Portland Symphony. Linda’s passion for jazz, baroque, and woodwind quintets was matched by her passion for learning. She began at Reed as a philosophy major and wrote her thesis, “Reflections on the Problem of Obligation,” with Prof. Robert Paul [philosophy 1966–96] advising. This was followed by a master’s degree in philosophy of science from the University of London. While in England, Linda lectured in liberal studies at Kingston Polytechnic.

One of her favorite Reed professors was Robert Reynolds [physics 1963–2008], who remembered, “When she was still a Reed student, Linda Blackwelder impressed my wife, Ellen, and me as a force of nature. Her academic, musical, and calligraphic skills were manifest, as was her prodigious energy. Later, we enjoyed visits to her student digs in London, to her mother Dorothy’s home in The Dalles, and to her Portland residence as Linda Pall, wife of biologist Martin Pall.

Her subsequent multi-faceted academic careers, political offices, and campaigns were stunning, as was her decade-long refusal to succumb to her illness. Late one night in my Reed office, I tuned to the local NPR station only to hear Linda 48 Reed Magazine september 2018

initiating a conversation with Vladimir Putin.

She invited him to visit Moscow (Idaho). He demurred, citing the large number of U.S. cities with Russian names. Her chutzpah, however, was totally unsurprising.”

Linda met her husband, Martin, while teaching at Portland State University. The couple moved to Moscow, Idaho, in 1972, and two years later welcomed their son Zachary.

“Many years ago, Linda adopted Judaism as her religion, and brought up Zach as a Jew, religiously,” Prof. William Peck [philosophy 1961– 2002] said. “I asked her if there were any Jews in her family; she replied, ‘Blackwelder?! That’s half an anglicization of the German word for people from the Black Forest (Schwarzwälder).

I’ve been there—they’re all Catholics.’ I forget what led her to start going to Jewish services, but she was impressed.”

Linda stayed home during Zach’s early years, and when he became a preschooler, she saw the need in the community for a preschool/kindergarten. As she did with so many projects, Linda dug in and helped to found the Moscow Day School. This was the beginning of a long and dedicated commitment to improve the Moscow community. As Zach grew older, Linda became active in city politics. She served as a city council member from 1977 to 1983, working tirelessly for community and progressive causes, including land use policies, local arts programs, downtown revitalization, a farmer’s market, library development, and historic preservation of buildings like Moscow’s Old Post Office, the 1912 Building, and the Carnegie Library.

To nurture her love of education and passion for politics and government, Linda earned both a master’s degree and a PhD in political science at Washington State University. While working on her PhD, she also enrolled in the University of Idaho, graduating from law school in 1985. After passing the bar, she set about building a practice in family law, employment law, and civil rights, in addition to a general civil practice.

Linda loved being involved in local government, and 10 years after her first stint on Moscow’s City Council, she ran again, serving from 1993 to 2001. After a narrow defeat in 2001, she was returned to a four-year seat on the council in 2003.

She worked in Lewiston, Idaho, until 1996, when she opened a solo practice in her beloved Moscow, where she practiced until her death.

She taught Idaho State Bar courses and section events, served as a three-time vice president of the Second Bar District, and helped found several sections of the state bar, including the Family Law Section and the Diversity Section. Linda was also a prime mover in a series of civil rights seminars and celebrations to celebrate the 225th anniversary of the U.S. Bill of Rights, including major symposia in 2011 and 2016, with nationally distinguished speakers and programs to facilitate young people’s appreciation for the rule of

law and the traditions of the Bill of Rights in everyday America.

Prof. Peck was on the panel of speakers and remembered, “She wanted at least one nonlawyer on her panel and thought of me. I couldn’t say no, though I had to do some pretty fast studying to try to get up to speed for the discussions. I told them and our audience, mostly law students, that most of us don’t want a lot to do with lawyers, that litigation is only one way to solve social problems, and that legal solutions and procedures only work well when what some people call ‘civil society’ is in good shape—i.e., the network of nonlegal and nongovernmental agencies and institutions, e.g., churches, that connect people and support cooperation. It was a very exhilarating experience, as was the many hours I turned out spending with Linda during that event, notably an all-night drive from Moscow to Boise along with an ACLU lawyer who had flown in from D.C. for the symposium.

I prompted her to talk to keep awake, and she practically recited her life story. That was Linda all the way. I’m very sorry indeed that I won’t see her again. I know I won’t see her like again.”

In 2013, after 26 years of teaching at Washington State University and a year of serious illness, Linda retired from teaching and as coordinator of business law for the College of Business at WSU. For nearly a decade she had been living with primary pulmonary hypertension— a terminal condition—and had been recently diagnosed with uterine cancer and acute kidney failure. She was in and out of hospitals and care facilities, at death’s door, and as she put it, “doing hand-to-hand combat with the grim reaper on a daily basis.” Linda emerged a fierce advocate for improved diagnostic services for patients with rare, orphan diseases like PAH. She founded the Inland Northwest Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension Support Group, Inc., which, in addition to lobbying Congress for research funds for NSF and other research organizations, formed a steering committee to establish a center at the Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine at Washington State University, Spokane, to give medical students education and opportunities to hone their skills in the diagnostics of this complicated and difficult disease.

During the first week of dialysis, Linda lost 50 pounds of water weight, and as the weeks went by, more weight came off. Following physical and occupational therapy, she gained strength, became more confident, and was able to return home. She began gardening with a vengeance. “I thought I better do something since I was given time,” she said. “I may be a short-timer, but I feel better than I have for years.”

Linda volunteered for the Moscow Board of Adjustment, advocated for sensible town planning with a local citizens group, and was active in Democratic Party politics. She was a chair of the county Democratic Party in the ’70s and a delegate to the Democratic National Convention for

Jimmy Carter in 1980. In 2000, she secured the Democratic nomination for the First Congressional District and went on to face Lt. Gov. Butch Otter that fall. Otter went to Congress and Linda returned to her law practice and the town that she loved. A longtime member of the county’s human rights task force, she was the prime mover in the creation of the City of Moscow’s Human Rights Commission. Her devotion and commitment were acknowledged with numerous civic and human rights awards, including Idaho Politician of the Year, the Access to Justice Award from the Idaho State Bar Association, and the Eva Lassman Take Action Against Hate Award from Gonzaga University. Moscow honored her in 2008 with Linda Pall Day. In addition to her volunteer work, Linda found time to take photographs and had public exhibitions in Moscow, Idaho, and Kansas City, Missouri. She was a calligrapher since taking courses with Prof. Lloyd Reynolds [English & art 1929–69] at Reed.

“We were somewhat consoled to learn that her last evening was spent in relaxed dining and conversation with her beloved son Zachary,” said Prof. Bob Reynolds.

Hugh Goldhammer ’68

April 19, 2018, in Topeka, Kansas.

Hugh was the son of Earl Goldhammer ’35 and Elsie Willer Goldhammer, who worked as executive assistant to the president of Reed College from 1955 to 1965, serving under Acting President Frank Loxley Griffin [1954– 56] and President Richard Sullivan [1956–67].

Three of Hugh’s uncles attended Reed, including Bernard Goldhammer ’37, who married Elsie after Earl’s death. Majoring in math, Hugh wrote his thesis, “Nets and Filters in Topology,” with Prof. Larry Edison [math 1964–70] advising and went on to graduate school at the University of Oregon. Tragically, while at Reed, Hugh contracted a schizoaffective disorder that afflicted him through the rest of his life. He worked for Kansas Power and Light Co. (later Westar) as a systems analyst for more than 20 years and enjoyed photography. For years, he contributed to the Bernard Goldhammer Fund endowment at Reed, which supports both the Bernard Goldhammer Grants for Research on Economics and Natural Resources, and the

Bernard Goldhammer Memorial Lecture Fund, focusing on economics, public policy, and resource management.

Hugh is survived by his sister, Joan Hart.

Paul Somerson ’73

May 25, 2018, in Providence, Rhode Island.

A n award- w inning writer, Paul was an editor for PC Magazine in the 1980s, publisher and editorial director of MacUser, and the editor-in-chief of PC/ Computing from 1991 to 2000.

He was born in Philadelphia and majored in psychology at Reed, where he wrote his thesis, “The Effect of N₂O on Laughter Responses to Grotesque and Obscene Stimuli: A Graphic Analysis of Psychological Change,” advised by Prof. Les Squier [psychology 1953–88].

John Dickinson held a number of roles at PC Magazine and credited Paul with playing a crucial role in making the magazine successful after it was acquired by Ziff-Davis.

“His key contribution was his insistence that PCs should be fun as well as useful and that the magazine should be composed of great writing,” Dickinson said. “His ideas for feature articles were wonderful, and his own writing so good that copy editors were afraid to touch them.”

Bill Howard, a columnist and executive editor of the magazine, recalled that “Paul was the classic New York City editor: brilliant, mercurial, proud of every word he wrote.”

PC/Computing won a national magazine award in 1999 for an issue on “Undocumented Internet Secrets.”

Paul wrote the bestselling book DOS Power Tools, a primer for users struggling to understand their PCs. Filled with tips and techniques, the book was easily understood and sold nearly a million copies.

He left PC Magazine to help found MacUser and work on the UK version of PC Magazine, and then became editor-in-chief of PC/ Computing. “Many of his ideas that would not fit into the business-serious mold that came to define PC Magazine became the foundation of PC/Computing,” Dickinson said.

Paul helped create a usability lab at PC/ Computing, recruiting users of different skill levels to test hardware and software. Torture tests were devised to see whether keyboards would survive coffee, water, and soda spills.

After leaving Ziff-Davis in 2001, Paul established an antiques business specializing in early 20th-century American Arts and Crafts metal objects. Objects from his collection will be part of an exhibition on Arts and Crafts design at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts opening in November 2018.

A kind and intelligent man of broad interests,

Paul savored good writing, great jokes, lively conversation, excellent food, and walks on the beaches of Westport. He was never happier than when he was home with family and his dogs, Ziggy and Coco, his parrot, Katie, and his cat, Simon. Paul is survived by his wife, Terry; his son, Sam; and his sister, Rosanne.

Bill Bulick ’74

March 15, 2018, in Portland, Oregon, of Parkinson’s disease.

Bill was a master at shaping cultural potential and used the arts to build livable and vital communities.

He came to Portland to attend Reed, where he met his wife, Carol McIntosh ’75, and then went to the University of Chicago. He began working as a studio potter and folk musician. After returning to Portland from a two-year adventure playing music and working in Europe, he became an owner in Artichoke Music, a folk music center and instrument shop. This provided a platform for bringing folk music from all over the world to the city, and he founded the World Music Festival.

Bill was named the first program director for Pioneer Courthouse Square and brought thousands of performances to Portland’s living room.

Then switching gears, he moved from the folk music niche into arts administration. His calm demeanor, sense of fairness, and determination were a perfect fit for this role, and he quickly became a crucial figure at the old Metropolitan Arts Commission, the arts bureau that supported the operating budgets of major organizations such as the Portland Opera and the Oregon Symphony, and oversaw the purchase and maintenance of public art works. By 1989, he had become executive director and oversaw the bureau’s transition into the Regional Arts and Culture Council (RACC), the primary way the Portland metro government supports art in the tri-county area. During his tenure, the agency quadrupled in size to a budget of more than $4 million, with a full-time staff of more than 20, launching programs that were praised and imitated nationally.

“A thriving arts scene is essential to the vitality, livability, and prosperity of our communities,” Bill said, delineating his business philosophy. “Public and private investment in the arts pays huge dividends because the arts help us to revitalize our neighborhoods and downtown, educate and inspire our youth, celebrate our diverse heritages, animate our public spaces, and attract business investment and jobs.”

He built RACC into a model arts agency, and when he left the agency and became an independent consultant, he used this model to transform other cities, like Austin and Minneapolis, into september 2018 Reed Magazine 49

In Memoriam crucibles for arts and culture. Bill was inclusive in the way he approached arts planning within a community; he wanted everyone to get their fingers in the dirt or get involved in community music. As a principal in Creative Planning, Inc., he worked on master plans for Austin, Minneapolis, the Canada Council for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, Partners for Livable Communities, the Washington State Arts Commission, the Ohio Arts Council and many others.

After his diagnosis of Parkinson’s and retirement, he became a chi gong teacher. Working to transform subtle energy into health was a further refinement of his work on earth. He leaves his wife, Carol McIntosh, and daughters, Eva and Bita.

Mary Freeman Rosenblum ’74

March 11, 2018, in La Center, Washington, in a plane crash.

Award-winning author Mary Rosenblum, who also played a significant role in Oregon aviation—tirelessly advocating on behalf of pilots of light aircraft—died when her Piper Super Cub plane hit trees and crashed near Daybreak Field in Clark County, Washington.

Born in Levittown, New York, she grew up outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She came west in 1970 to attend Reed, where she majored in biology and wrote her thesis, “The Survival of Transfused Feline Erythrocytes,” with Prof.

Jeffrey Freedman [biology 1973–75] advising.

“Reed is a good place to go if you don’t have a clue what you want to be when you grow up and don’t want someone to tell you,” she said.

Following a brief detour to do medical research in Framingham, Massachusetts, Mary returned to the Portland area, where she lived the rest of her life. She tried her hand at doing bioresearch, farming rats, manufacturing cheese, working at the Oregon Primate Center, and showing livestock professionally.

In 1988, she started writing fiction. “One day I decided that I would simply try my hand at it,” she said. After selling her first story, “For a Price,” to the editor of Asimov’s Science Fiction magazine, she discovered what she wanted to be when she grew up. Other short stories followed, including “Gas Fish,” a Hugo Award finalist, “Nightwind,” a Nebula Award finalist, and the Sidewise Award-winner “Sacrifice” (2008). Some of her short fiction was collected in Synthesis and Other Virtual Realities (1996) and Water Rites (2007).

“I have found science fiction to be a wonderful, warped glass with which to take a look at some of the things we have stopped seeing because they are all around us, and so usual,” she explained.

In 1994 she won the Compton Crook Award for best new novel for Drylands. Other science fiction novels followed, including 50 Reed Magazine september 2018

Chimera, The Stone Garden, and Horizons. She also wrote mysteries under her maiden name, Mary Freeman. Her first mystery novel, Devil’s Trumpet, was published by Putnam in 1999. The detective of her mystery series was an amateur sleuth, a gardener by trade, who, the Oregonian observed, “trips over murder the way other Oregon gardeners trip over blackberry vines.”

Mary lived on two and a half acres outside of Portland with assorted livestock, and raised fruits and vegetables, which she said was part of the reason she was able to survive on a writer’s income. She wrote every day but had no set time or requirements. When the words slowed down, she’d head out to do farm work—digging beds, weeding, hauling manure.

She took up flying later in life, receiving her private pilot’s license in 2010, and once served as president of the Oregon Pilots Association. A strong advocate for safety issues affecting pilots and airports, she testified against the development of a proposed natural gas–fired generating plant called the Troutdale Energy Center because she feared the plumes of hot air arising from the proposed plant’s smokestacks could imperil small planes using the nearby Troutdale, Oregon, airport.

She married Charles Rosenblum ’72, whom she later divorced, and had two sons, Jacob and Nathan, who survive her. Her sister, Sarah Freeman ’77, predeceased her.

Peter Abrahams ’77

March 4, 2018, in Los Angeles, California, of cardiac arrest.

An avid astronomer and independent scholar, Peter devoted much of his life to researching and writing about the history of telescopes and binoculars.

At Reed, he majored in English and wrote his thesis, “Till We Have Built Jerusalem: The Vision of William Blake,” with Prof. Robert Knapp [English 1974–] advising. After graduating, Peter made a life in Portland as an independent scholar.

He lectured and published locally, nationally, and internationally on the history of optics, with a particular interest in telescopes and astronomy.

Considering himself lucky to have discovered a field of study where there were few publications, he wrote: “It is wonderful for a writer to receive appreciative feedback, rather than fighting to get published or lost in a larger arena.”

Peter was president of the Antique Telescope Society and served on its board for eight years.

He was a founding member and president of the Rose City Astronomers and began the tradition of the monthly Night Sky Report, where he gave short reviews of the latest in astronomical news informed by his deep scholarship and dry wit. With a passion for the history of scientific instruments, he was a collector— and sometimes dealer—in historical books, telescopes, microscopes, and binoculars. Peter wrote for and spoke before a variety of global scientific organizations, including the Historical

Astronomy Division of the American Astronomical Society, Amateur Telescope Making Journal, and the Antique Telescope Society. He spoke at conferences in Europe and the U.S. Known for wearing socks with sandals whatever the weather, Peter enjoyed a good artisanal beer and possessed a very dry sense of humor.

A man of far-ranging curiosities and interests, he was a skilled woodworker who showcased his wares at reunions. He collected antique telescopes and other optical devices; had an interest in choral music and early jazz; practiced calligraphy and origami; gardened; studied ballet, gymnastics, and religion; and was an accomplished photographer and amateur astronomer. Particularly fitting for living in Portland, he loved roses.

He is survived by his daughter Katie; mother and stepfather, Rosalie and Stanley Minsk; siblings Mike and Barbara. Toni DeVito ’77 was his companion since reunions 2017, where they connected in MacNaughton III, and was with him when he died. Peter’s website, europa.com/~telscope/binotele.htm, contains links to his research.

Robert Querry ’88

March 5, 2018, in Santa Maria, California, from cancer.

Born in Munich, Germany, Robert grew up in Spokane and Olympia, Washington, and graduated from North Thurston High School in Lacey.

After majoring in political science at Reed, he received a bachelor’s degree in city planning from Portland State University and did graduate work in architectural history at Harvard University. Bob said, “Reed clarified the nature of the fiction we live under: i.e. that we can individually be moved without the help of the group.” He worked for the Washington County Planning Department and the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area Commission as a land use planner.

For many years, Bob made his home in Friday Harbor, San Juan Island, Washington,

and enjoyed a career with the county planning department before starting his own land-use consulting firm. He married Terra Tamai in 2008, and the couple moved to the central coast of California in 2013.

Bob had a lifelong passion for all kinds of music and his creative and artistic talents resulted in numerous interesting collections. He is survived by his wife, Terra Tamai; his stepson, Tyler Tamai; his mother, Priscilla Querry; and his sisters, Kathryn and Suzanne.

Blake Lee Carper ’93

October 31, 2017, in London, England, from sudden brain bleed.

Blake was born in Pendleton, Oregon, but considered the town of Joseph—where he was a star athlete in football, wrestling, and soccer—his hometown. His love of sports lasted throughout his life. He majored in philosophy at Reed, where he met the love of his life, Johanna Swanson ’97, whom he married in 1996.

Blake continued his education for many years, ultimately studying and excelling in computers and programming. He was at the height of his career, working for Expedia in London, when he passed away. In addition to Johanna, Blake is survived by his sister Alicia.

Paul Dew Ward ’02

October 4, 2011, in Santa Fe, New Mexico, after a 12-year struggle with bipolar illness.

Paul was a writer and philosopher who strove to understand life in all its complexities. At its heart, he found life beautiful and worthwhile, but deep personal pain brought him neither rest nor peace.

Paul lost many friends along the way, young men condemned for being gay, or cast aside for their addiction to drugs. He honored their memory and grieved for them always. Brilliant, quirky, and loving, he was also bossy, argumentative, stubborn, generous and kind. His greatest joys were his family, poetry, the trails of Rancho Viejo, long walks with his best friend and spiritual

brother, Greg Relkin, and his dog, Pi. “Never before or since have I encountered a soul with so much compassion and understanding,” said Michael Golan ’03. “Paul was the greatest of teachers, educating me through conversation and by example on how to be a scholar, a friend, a man, a human being. I think back to Paul instructing me on Aristotle’s notion of friendship as a soul inhabiting two bodies, knowing that with Paul’s passing, a bright light within my own soul has been extinguished, never to be rekindled. Goodbye my brother philosopher, my teacher, my friend.”

Paul is survived by his brothers, Robert and Patrick Ward, and his mother, Sylvie Ward.

Pending Ben Ross Burgoyne ’39, Lyle Ross Crafton ’41, Opal Gardner ’49, Irvin Jolliver ’51, Michael Baird ’53, Ray Ownbey ’66, Steven Boggs ’68, Ben Howe Rowland ’07.

Parent & Family Weekend November 2–3, 2018

Parents and family members of Reed students are invited to campus for Parent & Family Weekend 2018.

Schedule and registration: reed.edu/pfw

♦ Connect with your student and experience Reed campus life together. ♦ Learn important information about declaring a major, the junior qual, the thesis process, and resources available at the Center for Life Beyond Reed. ♦ Immerse yourself in the Reed experience by touring campus and Portland.

september 2018 Reed Magazine 51

Object of Study

What we’re looking at in class

Economics: The Games of Life Rork [economics 2010–] uses board games such as this one to teach students about the mathematical modeling of strategy in Economics 315: Game Theory. Starting with tic-tac -toe, and advancing to more complex games like Quarto, Kamisado, Santorini, and GIPF, students learn how to apply the mathematical models from class into their strategic thinking, while sharpening their boardgame skills at the same time.

photo by tom humphrey

Some are short, some are tall. Some are dark, some are light. Some are circular, some are square. Some are solid, some are hollow. This describes the 16 pieces in Quarto, a game invented by Swiss mathematician Blaise Müller. Players take turns choosing a game piece which the other player must place on the board. The winner is the player who first completes a line of four pieces that share a characteristic. Prof. Jon

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 2018 9 A.M. RACE START, REED COLLEGE QUAD Register, volunteer, sponsor, and learn more at reed.edu/5k.

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This Must Be the Place. Alumni revelers raise the roof during the Stop Making Sense dance party in the SU at Reunions 2018.