2004 Summer Bardian

Bardian Bard College Summer 2004

For the Love of Bard: David E. Schwab ’52 Commencement 2004 China’s Hypergrowth The Kill Zone: Moving the Wounded in Falluja

COVER

David Schwab ’52. Photographed by Enrico Ferorelli.

THIS AND FACING PAGE

Commencement Dinner-Dance. Photographed by Pete Mauney ’93, MFA ’99.

Dear Fellow Bardians, By the time you read this letter, the Class of 2004 will have graduated and many of us will have spent a weekend at Bard renewing friendships and welcoming the graduates into the Alumni/ae Association. Even the most cursory review of Senior Projects is a humbling experience. The students graduating this year are bright, inventive, playful, and extraordinary. We who have gone before them can be proud to be in their company.

As the ranks of the Alumni/ae Association grow, so do the opportunities for each of us to become more involved in it. At more and more events around the country, alumni/ae gather to share common interests or just to enjoy one another’s company. Our mentor program is expanding, and the number of students seeking our guidance grows exponentially. Students are eager for us to tell them about our careers and how we got from Bard to where we are. You can participate in our oral history project and capture your

memories for posterity, and send your news for Class Notes in the Bardian.

As you read this issue of the Bardian, I trust that you will be impressed by the energy and vibrancy of the College.

I encourage you to call the Alumni/ae Office and find a way to take part in Alumni/ae Association or College activities.

And I hope that you will be inspired to provide financial support to whatever extent you can. As alumni/ae you are forever a part of Bard, and Bard needs and appreciates your active participation.

Sincerely,

Judith Arner ’68 President, Board of Governors Bard–St. Stephen’s Alumni/ae Association

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

Dominic East ’91, Class Notes Committee Cochairperson Kit Kauders Ellenbogen ’52 Joan Elliott ’67 Naomi Bellinson Feldman ’53 Barbara Grossman Flanagan ’60 Cormac Flynn ’90 Connie Bard Fowle ’80, Career Networking Committee Cochairperson Diana Hirsch Friedman ’68 R. Michael Glass ’75 Sibel Alparslan Golden ’88 Eric Warren Goldman ’98 Rebecca Granato ’99, Young Alumni/ae Committee Chairperson Charles Hollander ’65 Dr. John C. Honey ’39 Rev. Canon Clinton R. Jones ’38 Deborah Davidson Kaas ’71, Oral History Committee Chairperson Chad Kleitsch ’91, Life After Bard Committee Cochairperson Richard Koch ’40 Erin Law ’93 Cynthia Hirsch Levy ’65 Dr. William V. Lewit ’52 Carolyn Mayo-Winham ’88 Peter F. McCabe ’70, Nominations and Awards Committee Cochairperson Steven Miller ’70, Development Committee Cochairperson Abigail Morgan ’96 Julia McKenzie Munemo ’97

Ngonidzashe Munemo ’00 Molly Northrop ’94 Brianna Norton ’00 Jennifer Novik ’98, Class Notes Committee Cochairperson Karen Olah ’65, Alumni/ae House Committee Chairperson Susan Playfair ’62, Bard Associated Research Donation (BARD) Committee Cochairperson Arthur “Scott” Porter Jr. ’79 Allison Radzin ’88, Career Networking Committee Cochairperson Elizabeth Reiss ’87 Penelope Rowlands ’73 Reva Minkin Sanders ’56 Roger Scotland ’93, Men and Women of Color Network Liaison Benedict S. Seidman ’40 Donna Shepper ’79 George Smith ’82 Dr. Ingrid Spatt ’69, Life After Bard Committee Cochairperson William Stavru ’87 Walter Swett ’96 Oliver teBoekhorst ’93 Kwesi Thomas ’00 Dr. Toni-Michelle Travis ’69 Jill Vasileff MFA ’93 Marji Vecchio MFA ’01 Samir B. Vural ’98 Barbara Wigren ’68 Ron Wilson ’75

Bardian

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Summer 2004 Contents Features

Departments

4

For the Love of Bard

32

Alumni/ae Notebook

6

The Kill Zone: Moving the Wounded in Falluja

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Books by Bardians

36

On and Off Campus

46

Class Notes

70

Faculty Notes

10

Is China’s Hypergrowth Sustainable?

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Sticking to the Union

18

Zebrafish

20

Cutting Edge

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Commencement 2004

Photographs: Enrico Ferorelli

FOR THE LOVE OF BARD David E. Schwab ’52 Has Guided Bard for Almost 50 Years

Lockwood Prize as the senior student who had “contributed most to the general welfare of the College.” He is perhaps most proud of having been elected moderator for one year of the College’s convocation. “In those days Bard operated somewhat like a New England town meeting,” he explains.

“Where most colleges had a student government, Bard’s structure involved students, faculty, administration, and

David circa 1947–48

When a colleague once introduced David Schwab as an attorney and the chairman of the Bard Board of Trustees, Schwab gently corrected her: he was, he said, first and foremost an alumnus of Bard College.

It is this profound affection for Bard that has led Schwab to serve the College so well for more than four decades. He joined the executive committee of the Bard–St. Stephen’s Alumni/ae Association in 1956 and was president of the alumni/ae association from 1960 to 1962. In 1964 he was elected to the Bard Board of Trustees, where he has served as treasurer (1968–78), vice chairman (1978–84), and, since 1984, as chairman.

Schwab arrived at Bard with the goal of a career in law and majored in government. He flourished in Bard’s environment, and his commitment to the College as a center for progressive education is reflected in the fact that he was a John Bard Scholar and the recipient of a William J.

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staff and was simply called convocation.” In addition, he was a member of the Educational Policies Committee, president of his senior class, and station manager of WXBC, the College radio station.

Bard also served as a supremely significant coordinate in Schwab’s personal life: on his first day on campus, he met Ruth Schwartz, another of the 40 students in the Class of 1952. They married a year after they graduated and have lived in Briarcliff Manor, New York, ever since. They have two children and four grandchildren.

On the advice of Louis Koenig, a professor of government at Bard, Schwab attended Yale Law School, graduating in 1955. He clerked for a year for Hon. Alexander Bicks, U.S. District Judge in the Southern District of New York, and then joined the firm of Benjamin, Galton & Robbins. In 1959 he founded his own firm, which practiced general and intellectual property law in New York. In 1998 the firm merged with Cowan, Liebowitz & Latman, where Schwab is senior counsel in trusts and estates.

When Schwab joined the Bard board in 1964, the College sponsored none of the five graduate programs associated with it today. Many of the buildings now familiar to alumni/ae and students did not exist. Yet when asked to cite his chief accomplishment as a trustee, Schwab focuses not on the built environment or new educational initiatives but on the 30-year professional and personal relationship that has helped transform the College.

“My chief accomplishment was being part of the hiring of Leon Botstein as president of Bard in 1975,” he says. “By that time I probably had enough influence around the place to say no, if no was what we wanted to say. So I’m most proud of the fact that we said yes.

“The comparison we used at the time—this is not just hindsight—was that if we didn’t do this for Bard, the College would sink on an even keel. We didn’t want that, and we told Leon we didn’t want it. We said either make something out of Bard or close it.”

As Schwab and Botstein worked closely, year after year, to make something out of Bard, the College did not sink but sailed ahead. The two men speak daily, often more than once. Schwab says, “One of the ways in which I’m useful is as a sounding board for Leon’s ideas. I always react, not always favorably. It’s a useful conversation for him, and both enjoyable and useful for me.”

Schwab has made other generous commitments to Bard. He and Mrs. Schwab have endowed the David and Ruth Schwab Professor of Languages and Literature chair, which is currently held by Ann Lauterbach. He is a member of the Bard Music Festival Board of Directors and is on the advisory board of The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College. In addition, he has been active in his synagogue and in the Reform Judaism community. A devotee of chamber music, he is on the board of Friends of Music Concerts, Inc., which presents chamber music in Westchester County.

The bulk of his volunteer time, however, goes toward Bard’s undergraduate program. Why Bard? Why not Yale, with its active alumni/ae base? “It comes down to the people I’ve been involved with at Bard, as student, alumnus, and trustee,” he says. “People volunteer because they get satisfaction from it.”

Photographs (top to bottom): Jud Levin, David, and Frank Vacca,1952 With “best love,” Dipsy, 1966 David and Ruth at Commencement, 1952 David, Stuart Stritzler-Levine, and Leon Botstein David and Ruth returning from Europe in 1954

Schwab keeps Bard’s future in mind. He wants to see the College continue to expand its horizons, “by which I mean, primarily, its level of excellence,” he says. “I’d like to see the College funded in a way that it never has been, and I’d like to see much of that funding come from alumni/ae.

“I want to see Bard do whatever it does at a very high level,” he concludes. “We are an ambitious college. And should be.”

—Debby Mayer Editor’s Note: As this article went to press, David Schwab stepped down from the chairmanship of the Bard Board of Trustees, with the enduring gratitude of the College for all that he has done for the institution. Bard will continue to benefit from Schwab’s wisdom and guidance, as he remains on the board as chair emeritus.

The Kill Zone: Moving the Wounded in Falluja

by David Martinez ’89

As we enter the kill zone, the no-man’s-land in Falluja between the rebels and the U.S. forces, the first thing I notice is the silence. In the middle of the city at midday, without the sounds of car engines, children playing, or televisions, it’s an unnerving, horrible quiet. Even the birds are wise enough to have gone elsewhere. Two blocks back, the mujahideen patrol waved us through when our escort told them we were there to evacuate the wounded and collect the dead. Our team of three—a British woman, an Iraqi woman, and me—leave our Iraqi driver and guide in the truck and start walking, holding our passports high in our otherwise empty hands. I grab the Brit’s hand and squeeze it. “For luck,” I say. I think I will remember the wink she gives me for the rest of my life.

No one, and I mean no one, is on the street. We advance cautiously for about 50 yards. A man opens the door of a house, gesturing frantically around a corner, his eyes wild. We see what he is pointing at: a man lies in the street, covered in blood, a Kalashnikov still slung around his body. To retrieve him, we will have to walk into the range of American snipers. If we look carefully through cracks in a brick wall, we can see them—three U.S. soldiers in shooting position, aiming toward the victim. The situation is further complicated by a car that stands abandoned behind the prone man, all four doors hanging open as if the occupants have suddenly fled, grenades and rockets scattered around.

If we attempt to do anything, the soldiers will assume we are enemy fighters.

The Brit tries first. “Hello!” she yells. “Can you hear me?” No response.

I give it a try. “We are a medical emergency team! We want to retrieve this man in the street!”

“Go ahead!” someone yells.

Maybe it’s my American accent. I reply, “OK! We’re coming out! Don’t shoot!”

Photograph: MARWAN NAAMANI/AFP/Getty Images

We enter the street. The U.S. soldiers look at us as if we’re insane. Immediately we see that the man in the street is dead: rigor mortis has set in. We pick him up and carry him along the still streets, toward the waiting truck. After we have gone about a block, one of the U.S. soldiers yells from behind us. “Hey!” We stop. “Drop your weapons!” I want to laugh. But it’s not funny. Or maybe it is. “We don’t have any weapons!” He nods. “Oh. OK.” We resume hauling the corpse to the truck.

This venture has been arranged by a friend of ours, an Iraqi activist and professional bodyguard who has the necessary contacts to ensure our safety. He is tall, with a moustache, tiny glasses, and a paunch, and he chain-smokes. He is also, incidentally, barking mad. But in some situations, I’ve found that I trust only the crazy people.

Back at the hospital—really, a converted clinic—where we had delivered medical supplies earlier, casualties start arriving. A car screeches around the corner and slams to a stop. Volunteers scramble for stretchers as young mujahideen, their faces covered by kaffiyehs, scan the horizon. A mother and two children are removed from the vehicle. All have gunshot wounds and are screaming in pain.

We help to bring them inside the already crowded building.

We are shown an ambulance that the Iraqis claim was shot up by U.S. soldiers. It has bullet holes in the front windows, sides, and top. They say the Americans do not respect international law and openly attack ambulances.

Our Iraqi host wades through the crowd to find us. “I need volunteers! Now!” he shouts, his preferred method of communication. “To do what, exactly?” someone inquires.

“Retrieve wounded persons!”

My hand goes up, and the next thing I know, the Brit, the Iraqi woman, and I are standing in the back of a truck.

A grimly smiling local man rides next to us, waving a Red Crescent flag and singing “Allah Akbar, God is great” as we

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roll toward the kill zone. A fighter holding an RPG-7 [rocket-propelled grenade] waves at us as we pass by.

When we return to the hospital, we learn that our activist friend has driven an ambulance past American sniper positions to retrieve wounded people. He returns shortly, his mission accomplished, and the shooting victims are carried into the building.

By now night has fallen. Nevertheless, the three of us volunteer to help on the next ambulance run. As we climb into the van, I squeeze the Brit’s hand and she winks at me.

Our Iraqi guide drives murderously fast. As we wheel around a corner he yells, “Snipers!” We hit the floor. But no shots are fired, and we soon arrive at a clinic. We push rolling gurneys through the dark, there being no electricity in Falluja at the moment, and load the patients into the van for another harrowing ride back to the hospital.

When we arrive, a hospital staffer tells us that there is a pregnant woman in premature labor who needs to come to the hospital. So we are off again, to another part of town.

place,” she says. “Do you want to do it?” We jump on board a truck that’s carrying a Red Crescent flag. Our favorite mujahideen, an 11-year-old boy who is already a seasoned fighter, shouts that nothing will happen to us. They will protect us, and God is on our side. We roll back toward the Kill Zone. I squeeze the Brit’s hand. She winks at me.

Where there were a few U.S. soldiers yesterday, now there are scores. They are on every roof, scanning the horizon with their field glasses. We leave the truck and start walking, repeating, “We are an international emergency medical team! Please do not shoot us!” Three Marines run down the front stairs of a house and approach us cautiously.

Their team leader, sweaty and covered with dust, looks me over incredulously, an American in an orange baseball cap and jeans. “What the hell are you doing here?” he asks. I could well ask the same of him, but I don’t. “We’re here to evacuate wounded people,” the Brit replies. “There aren’t any around here,” he says. We tell him we have to look anyway, and he says OK and returns to the house.

As we begin to remove his body, his family pours out of a nearby house, all of them hysterical with grief and fear.

This time there is no warning from the driver, only the initial crack of a rifle as American snipers open fire on us. It is madness. We are in a clearly marked ambulance, with a flashing, noisy siren, and they are shooting at us. Riding in the back, I can see the flash of the gun as bullets pierce the walls of the vehicle above our heads. Thank God I am on the floor. Another shooter blows out our headlights, and I hear the Brit, who is riding in the front seat, scream as pieces of engine spray into the cabin. Then they take out our front tires. Another bullet rips into the engine as the driver throws the vehicle into reverse.

We hit a curb going about 90 miles an hour. That takes out the rear tires. We screech back to the hospital on the wheel rims.

That was our last trip for the night, since the ambulance is, for the moment, beyond repair. We watch more casualties arrive in private cars, including a severely burned man who was hit by cluster bombs. He prays breathlessly as he is carried inside.

The next morning, as we begin to load our bus with wounded people to take to Baghdad hospitals, the Iraqi woman we worked with the day before runs up to me. “The same mission as before—they want us to go to the same 8

We find an unarmed middle-aged man lying in the street, shot in the neck and dead. As we begin to remove his body, his family pours out of a nearby house, all of them hysterical with grief and fear. They ask us why someone didn’t come earlier, why he had to die, and they want to know if it’s safe for them to leave. It is a very difficult situation, and the Iraqi woman with us does an excellent job of keeping everyone calm. The Brit and I return to the Marines to negotiate the family’s evacuation. The Marines ask us to do a favor in return: there is a family in a house they have occupied, and they cannot give them food or water. Can we evacuate them as well? We agree, and our Iraqi comrade goes inside with the soldiers to talk to the family.

The Brit and I wait on the curb. We’re the only two people on the otherwise empty street. The day is hot and dry, and it seems bizarre to be just sitting there in the dust in the middle of a war. But we feel we are doing the right thing at the moment.

As the family in the house emerges, gunfire starts up nearby, and the Marines tell us we are going to have to get this thing done fast. We load the two families onto the truck. We put the slain father and two dead fighters into an ambulance that has just arrived. Since there’s no room left

for us in the truck, we climb into the ambulance. The stench of death is almost overpowering. A cloud of flies accompanies us back to the hospital.

By now it is time to go back to Baghdad. Our bus is loaded with injured people, including the burn victim. We say our good-byes to the hospital staff. Word is sent out to the mujahideen guarding the roads to let us through safely.

There is only one hitch on the return trip, when we take a wrong turn and run into a bunch of fighters who have not heard about us. They point Kalashnikovs and pistols at the bus and demand to know what we are doing on a bus leaving Falluja. Are we evacuating wounded Americans? Are we spies? It is very tense for a few moments. Luckily, the bus is filled with locals, who explain indignantly to the gunmen what is going on, and we are then free to go.

Our first stop in Baghdad is the Italian hospital, to drop off the most severe injuries. An Italian friend greets me in her usual fashion. “You bastard,” she says. “I am worrying about you all the night.” Yeah, well, I was worrying about me all the night too.

David Martinez is 89a freelance journalist and filmmaker who has spent much of the past year in Iraq making a documentary about the U.S. occupation. He also volunteers with Intersos, a nongovernmental organization that provides medical supplies to displaced people and institutions, especially hospitals, in Iraq. This article is an edited version of an article he wrote on April 16, during the height of the battle in Falluja. His reports from Iraq are available at www.indybay.org.

RAMZI HAIDAR/AFP/Getty Images

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HYPERGROWTHSUSTAINABLE?

IS CHINA’S

A talk by Edward K. Y. Chen

Sze Tsung Leong

Jiaochangkou, Yuzhong District, Chonquing, China, 2003

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The distinguished economist Edward K. Y. Chen is the president of Lingnan University in Hong Kong. He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Hong Kong University and a Ph.D. at Oxford University. He has held visiting appointments at Yale, Oxford, and Stockholm Universities and at the University of California.

His books include Hypergrowth in Asian Economies, The New Multinationals, and Asia’s Borderless Economy.

Katherine Gould-Martin, managing director of Bard in China, met Chen when she visited Hong Kong and invited him to speak at Bard, in a lecture presented with support from Freeman Undergraduate Studies Initiative. Despite a major Hudson Valley blizzard in mid March, a crowd gathered at Bard’s Olin Hall to hear Chen speak. Following is an adaptation of his talk.

For nearly a decade we have seen 8 to 9 percent growth in China. Many observers and analysts try to compare today’s hypergrowth with that of the early 1990s, when the Chinese

sign of warning came in the last quarter of 2003, when inflation increased to about 3 percent. And in the past two months it’s been about 5 to 6 percent. Many analysts say this is very dangerous, a prediction of future inflation and an overheated economy.

I would say the danger is much less, compared with the early 1990s. When we look at inflation we should not just look at the overall CPI (consumer price index), but at the core index—daily consumer items, rather than special items. When we analyze China’s CPI, the major source of inflation comes from food and energy. These are not directly related to overproduction. Food prices are up because of the decrease in arable land and other problems that lead to food shortages. These are still containable, especially since agricultural income is a policy objective for the government. Looking purely at production, then, the economy is not overheated. I predict this year’s inflation rate will

Why should the Chinese government try to stop growth?

Inflation rates are still low, and the economy is growing.

economy really was overheated and the government introduced an austerity program to cool it down. They overdid it, and the economy suffered setbacks. Today, many observers fear that China’s economy will undergo similar setbacks, even that it may collapse in the near future. I would like to look at the issue of China’s hypergrowth from two points of view vis-à-vis the early 1990s: first, in terms of inflation and its relative severity; and second, in terms of whether the economy is or is not overheated. Then I’ll discuss my perspective on a couple of crucial issues that have, in my view, been overlooked.

The Chinese economy of the early 1990s was truly inflationary—close to 15 to 20 percent inflation. In the recent economy, inflation rates have been very low. The first

be 4 percent. Four or 5 percent is not dangerous, and the rate could be even lower, since the Chinese government now has a much more mature financial structure in place to deal with its money supply.

The government is now very conscious of what I call the overheatedness of the economy. This seems strange.

Why should the Chinese government try to stop growth?

Inflation rates are still low, and the economy is growing.

Even with last year’s huge money-supply increase, there was no serious inflation. The liquidity—the increase in money supply—went to the equity sector rather than the commodity and service sector, so consumer prices did not rise very much. People used the excess cash to buy property and shares. Thus the inflation is in the equity sector 11

Sze Tsung Leong

Suzhou Jie, Daoxiangyuan, Haidian District, Beijing, 2004

and the asset market rather than in the products and services market. For the time being, it won’t be dangerous. Let share prices and property prices go up for a little while.

Problems might arise eventually, but for the time being the overheatedness is being cushioned and absorbed by the price increases in the asset markets. When we look at the assets, the share prices, price-earnings ratios seem reasonable. Property prices are increasing less than 10 percent a year, unlike the bubble periods in Hong Kong and Japan.

According to all indicators, then, we can be comfortable about the lack of a clear-cut inflationary tendency or sign of overheatedness in the Chinese economy. That is somewhat reassuring.

A real problem for the money supply is the constant flow of foreign money into China in anticipation of the 12

revaluation of the yuan. That huge inflow of foreign exchange makes maintaining the rate of 8.3 yuan to $1 U.S. a problem for China. The monetary authorities have no choice but to buy foreign currency and sell yuan. This will increase the money supply, certainly. But China has been extremely effective in what is called sterilization, which means that the government is issuing bonds and other paper to absorb the excess money. So the left hand and the right hand of the government are doing different things— one is selling yuan to buy U.S. dollars, and the other is issuing bonds to absorb excess money.

What if there is a bubble in the property market, or in the asset market, and the bubble bursts? In my first analysis, there is no danger. The high rate of growth is sustainable.

Nevertheless, China is predicting a GDP growth of only

Sze Tsung Leong

Wangjing, Chaoyang District, Beijing, 2003

7 percent in the coming few years. China wants to reduce its growth rate by 2 percent. So while everyone else is thinking of enhancing [China’s] growth rate, China is trying to cut back 2 percentage points, from 9 percent to 7 percent, and predicting 3 percent inflation. That may be too optimistic. This year’s inflation rate will probably be 4 to 5 percent. But 7 percent growth, and 4 to 5 percent inflation, would still be acceptable.

When we look at the fundamental factor for Chinese economic growth, we can understand why China wants to contain its money supply and cut back its economic growth rate. Labor productivity has been increasing at around 10 percent. Supply certainly is higher than demand. Companies are very profitable. Price-earnings ratios are still about 20, which is acceptable. But labor

productivity is increasing. Technological changes are progressing rapidly. These trends are different from those of the early 1990s, when the high rate of growth was generated by excess demand. This time it’s based on excess supply because productivity is so high.

Normally, we would think that with productivity so high, why should the Chinese government contain the growth rate? According to the classic theory, high productivity means high demand, and the money supply should be increased to accommodate it. But because of bottlenecks in the supply of raw materials, the Chinese government has been taking a very cautious attitude toward trying to slow down economic growth. In the most basic, simple analysis, then, we shouldn’t compare today’s high rate of growth with that of the early 1990s. The Chinese government’s steps to 13

reduce the money supply are more cautious and effective than those they took in the early 1990s. I hope the government will not go overboard, however.

The crucial factor in the sustainability of China’s economic growth is its exchange rate. On this issue, I hold a very different view from most analysts and policy makers who think the yuan is undervalued and is causing the huge trade imbalance with the United States. As a result, the political pressure on China to revalue its currency is fierce, and dangerous. Whether Chinese currency is overvalued or undervalued is debatable and, ultimately, beside the point.

Any attempt by China to change its currency might have

According to Ricardian trade theory, however, we should look at multilateral, rather than bilateral, trade balances: for the United States simply to concentrate on trade balances on a bilateral basis is not right. Because while China is generating a surplus from trading with the United States, it is in a trade deficit with most Asian countries. In a roundabout kind of international trade balance, China has become a locomotive for Asian economic growth, replacing Japan.

The most serious consequence of changing China’s exchange rate would be a very significant negative impact on the Chinese economy. The reason is this: if we assume

In a roundabout kind of international trade balance, China has become a locomotive for Asian economic growth, replacing Japan.

very significant repercussions that would not be good for Hong Kong, China, the United States, or the world. The political pressure on China to do so is unwarranted.

I’ll explain. If the exchange rate was the reason for the imbalance of trade, then any change in the currency, even a significant revaluation of the Chinese currency, would not improve the U.S. deficit. The issue can be analyzed simply.

A country’s deficit is due to differentials in savings rates, rather than exchange rates. With China’s savings rate close to 40 percent and the U.S. rate close to zero, the imbalance is predictable. This is a structural problem and not an exchange rate problem. If China revalues its currency, the United States will still need imports. The structural problem is so huge, I don’t think even this [revaluation] would improve the imbalance with China, not to mention that the United States would still have to import from somewhere else—Vietnam, or Mexico. This is a serious problem. I hope the State Department people are just using it as a political point of view, not an economic argument. Because as an economic argument, it doesn’t stand.

The exchange rate today is not determined by trade.

It’s 90-percent determined by short-term capital flows, which determine the short-term exchange rate. Take a look at China’s balance of payments and balance of trade.

Basically, China has a very favorable balance of payments, from the inflow of capital. Certainly China is now the second largest, if not the largest, surplus country, compared to the United States.

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that the exchange rate is not in equilibrium—say, it’s undervalued—then the question becomes, what is the next exchange-rate regimen? Even if what you’re doing now is wrong, what you’re going to do may lead to even more serious consequences.

So what can China do, if it recognizes its currency as undervalued? Pick a lucky number. I’m not kidding. In Hong Kong, the exchange rate of 7.8 was fixed in 1983, and it hasn’t been changed since. In Chinese culture the number 7.8 means prosperity and good fortune. You see? We picked 7.8 for no reason other than good fortune. Another example: the postwar exchange rate for the Japanese yen was set at 360 to $1 U.S. Why? Because the Japanese word yen means circle, and a circle is 360 degrees. It seems like a joke, but it’s not, it’s true. The yen was fixed at 360 until 1971, the end of the gold standard. Exchange rates can be fixed like that. If you have a flexible economy, you have so many macroeconomic variables that if you fix one, the others will adjust. China could pick a number to revalue from 8.3—it doesn’t matter what.

Alternatively, of course, China could just let the yuan float. In either case, the consequences would be disastrous.

The real world works on speculation and anticipation. The speculation would happen like this: a lot of capital would flow into China to bet on further revaluation. Domesticasset holders would then convert all their foreign assets to yuan because everyone would expect it to change further, subject to revaluation. This change in the balance of asset

holding would have very serious consequences on the money supply and therefore on financial circumstances in China.

What we have to watch very carefully is whether China will be able to resist political pressure, in particular from the United States, to revalue its currency. That’s the biggest risk factor I see for the economic growth of China, not the overheatedness or the productivity. Whether the Chinese currency is overvalued or undervalued is beside the point.

The practical actions and policies in such a situation may lead to very serious consequences. Revaluation would drag down the economic growth of China and by extension

would affect the growth of the entire Asian region. It’s not the fundamentals that are in question; rather, it’s some of the issues that we tend to overlook.

More from Bard in China

FILM Farewell to Shanghai , an audiovisual exploration of the lives of two English teachers—Bard graduates Jacob Mitas ’99 and Ting Ting Cheng ’02—and various artists during the SARS outbreak in Shanghai in May 2003.

Bard in China is a program of China-related events and exchanges that involves Asian studies students and faculty, as well as scholars and students from China, and brings to campus renowned speakers and performers in the fields of literature, social science, and the arts. Bard in China also helps administer and fund faculty and student travel to and within Asia. In addition to Edward K. Y. Chen’s lecture, Bard in China presented the following events, among others, during the past academic year.

LECTURE “What Do We Think We Are Doing When We Do

History of the Body?” by Charlotte Furth, University of Southern California; scholar of Chinese history and culture, author of A Flourishing Yin: Gender in China’s Medical History 960–1665; examining approaches to studying the history of the body. Supported by the Freeman Undergraduate Asian Studies Initiative.

Sze Tsung Leong’s photographs of China are on exhibition through September 5 in Between Past and Future: New Photography and Video from China, at the International Center for Photography in New York. Bard and ICP jointly offer a master of fine arts degree in the Program in Advanced Photographic Studies. Leong’s work can also be seen in Sze Tsung Leong: History Images, a solo show at Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York, through July 31.

THEATER Gods and the Good Woman, presented at Bard and at the Shanghai Theater Academy, in conjunction with the Bard Theater Program.

LECTURE “North Korea, Its Neighbors, and the United

States,” featuring experts exploring the history of the current situation, the views of North Korea’s regional neighbors, and the changing relationships among South Korea, Russia, China, Japan, and the United States.

Sponsored in conjunction with Bard’s Global and International Studies Program, with support from the Freeman Undergraduate Asian Studies Initiative.

OPEN FORUM “China’s Energy: Resources, Demands,

Concerns, and the Future,” a panel of energy and economic experts. Supported by the Freeman Undergraduate Asian Studies Initiative.

OPEN FORUM “AIDS and SARS in China: Disease, Public

Health, and Politics,” featuring three experts in the study of and fight against AIDS and SARS in China, in conjunction with the Bard Center for Environmental Policy. Supported by the Freeman Undergraduate Asian Studies Initiative.

LECTURE “The Stigmatization of Leprosy in Late Imperial

China: Contagion, Sex, and Black Magic,” by Taiwanese historian Angela Ki Che Leung. Supported by the Freeman Undergraduate Asian Studies Initiative.

UPCOMING CONFERENCE Bard College will host the New York Conference on Asian Studies, October 29–30, featuring a lecture by Donald Richie, distinguished writer on Japanese culture and film. During Richie’s visit, Bard will award him an honorary Doctor of Letters.

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STICKING TO THE UNION In 1940 Woody Guthrie and Millard Lampell wrote a song containing the refrain, “Oh you can’t scare me, I’m sticking to the union. I’m sticking to the union ’til the day I die.” The song was written five years after the creation of a National Labor Relations Board that formulated rules requiring employers to negotiate with certified unions. ©Doug Wilson/Blackstar

David Rolf ’92, who concentrated in social studies and history at Bard, has gone on to take a place of his own in union history. As deputy general manager for Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 434-B from 1995 to 1999, he played a crucial role in organizing home health-care workers in Los Angeles. It was the largest single union-organizing project since the 1930s.

Rolf, who joined the staff of SEIU after graduating from Bard, moved to Los Angeles in early 1995 to lead the campaign, which had been in process since 1987. Ultimately, the entire campaign would last 12 years and would prove to be an exercise in perseverance. During that time, SEIU hammered out a mutually beneficial consensus among home-care workers, home-care consumers, disability activists, and political entities.

The fruition of that consensus came in 1999, when 74,000 home-care workers voted to join SEIU, an AFL-CIO member union with approximately 1.6 million members nationwide.

Home-care workers, who serve the elderly and disabled, are in great demand. The aging baby boom population is

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adding to their client base in numbers that may well engulf the nation’s Social Security system. And, as nursing home costs rise, the viability of in-home care increases.

Although they meet a dire need and perform toilsome work, home-care workers are typically paid minimum wage and are not eligible for vacations or health insurance. Most of them are women; many are people of color and/or immigrants and must hold more than one job in order to survive. The parameters of their home-care duties are neither standardized nor codified and, since many function as independent contractors, they are isolated from one another and are paid via a complex bureaucratic amalgam of individual clients (or consumers) and government agencies (e.g., Medicare and Medicaid). This last factor makes it difficult to define who the “employer” is, a definition necessary in order to initiate collective bargaining.

“It took time to figure out methodology and logistics,” says Rolf. “We had to organize one house at a time.” SEIU also cultivated local centers (such as churches and libraries) that could serve as meeting places for home-care workers eager to discuss shared problems and possible solutions.

Once SEIU had galvanized enough support to sign up home-care workers as union members, it attempted to have Los Angeles County (rather than the individual consumers) defined as the employer of record. The courts rejected this attempt, holding that the county simply administered funds derived from various sources. This absence of a defined single employer made collective bargaining impossible.

SEIU was undaunted. “Workers have to build political power for themselves,” Rolf explains. “For home health-care workers, the ballot box is more important than the picket line. It’s a matter of economics and politics—we have to do both of them right. A single strategy doesn’t work. We can win something at the bargaining table that can be taken away by politicians. And vice versa.”

Over the years in Los Angeles, SEIU used multiple strategies, such as demonstrations and civil disobedience, in order to express its potential power and to lubricate political alliances. It also mustered its membership to bear upon local elections. As a result of these strategies, in 1997, Los Angeles created the Personal Assistance Services Council (PASC), designed to oversee the home-care field and serve as the employer of record. The union now had an entity with which it could enter into collective bargaining.

Meanwhile, home-care consumers were brought on board with the SEIU plan by being reassured that they would have input into PASC, retain their ability to select and manage their own home-care workers, and be protected against strikes and grievances. Consumers were further encouraged by SEIU’s establishment of a procedure for training and registering home-care workers and by the probability that unionization would stabilize a heretofore fluctuating workforce. So successful was the Los Angeles campaign, it is being used as a model for similar organizing in other states across America.

That campaign is but one example of SEIU’s success.

The union (which represents health-care workers, janitors, security officers, and public employees) is noteworthy for the fact that it spends approximately 40 percent of its monetary resources on organizing new workers. As a result, “SEIU is growing while most other labor organizations are shrinking,” says Rolf. “There are more jobs now than there were 40 years ago, but union membership is about the same as it was then. Unions haven’t done their job. Ten years from now the American labor movement can be gone or it can be twice as strong as it is now. We’re definitely at a

crossroads. We have to get to the mass organizing we’ve seen in other points in labor history. We have to organize globally, build cross-border solidarity. The people who run the biggest companies in the world will do anything they can to make more money. We have to let them know, ‘If you leave workers high and dry in one place, you won’t be welcomed by workers elsewhere.’ We can’t sit around waiting for trade agreements.”

Rolf now lives in Seattle, where he continues his labor work as the president of SEIU Local 775, Washington State’s long-term care union. His commitment to political issues and social justice is long-lived. “The Buildings and Grounds staff organized under SEIU while I was at Bard,” Rolf recalls. “The students were activists. But it was also in my background. I grew up in Cincinnati, where career factory workers lived next door to teachers and doctors. Three of my grandparents were factory workers at some point in their careers. They retired as part of the American middle class. I wasn’t a ‘red-diaper’ baby. I wasn’t told bedtime stories about Eugene V. Debs—but my parents taught me right and wrong. I saw Reagan’s policies in South America. I learned about apartheid, explosions at abortion clinics, the economic exploitation of workers. These things did not make sense as part of my becoming an adult and figuring out the world around me. In my work I’m applying a set of values that I was taught as a child.”

Well aware of the challenges ahead, Rolf notes, “At WalMart, for example, supervisors are trained to call a hotline to headquarters if they hear the word ‘union.’ We have to make unionizing a public fight, a broader discussion of employer responsibilities. We have to take on these corporations and the politicians who become lackeys for the corporations.”

Rolf looks forward to his job’s challenges with clear relish. “Economic issues unite everyone,” he says. “Unions are institutions, not temporary structures. Fundamentally, that’s more important than single-issue activist groups. The labor movement has no romance with powerlessness. Power is the currency of change. We’re a movement based on hope and on a vision of fighting for a better world for ourselves.

Because of SEIU, more Boston janitors have health-care coverage for themselves and their families than they had a year ago. We have a lot to be proud of. Once you do this work, you’re not happy doing anything else.”

Rolf is sticking to the union.

—René Houtrides

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zfin.org

ZEBRAFISH Groundbreaking Research on Miniscule Models Watch a tiny, darting zebrafish, and you might never guess that its genetic makeup shares much with that of humans.

Bard scientists in three fields, and their students, have seized on that phenomenon for groundbreaking research on behavior and genetics. Frank M. Scalzo, director of the Psychology Program and associate professor of psychology; Michael Tibbetts, director of the Biology Program and associate professor of biology; and Valeri J. Thomson ’85, director of the Immediate Science Research Opportunity Program (ISROP), say they are among the first at any undergraduate institution to conduct experiments on the flashy little fish.

Scalzo has spent years studying the effects of drugs and toxicants (man-made toxins) on neurobehavioral development. Now he and his students are examining a specific neurotransmitter system, a set of proteins that together make up what are called NMDA receptors, in zebrafish (Danio rerio). This receptor system is also found in rodents

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and humans, among other vertebrates, and is involved in learning, memory, and the development of certain mental diseases, such as schizophrenia. Tibbetts and Thomson manipulate the genetics of the zebrafish receptor system by injecting various substances into the embryos, then study structural changes; Scalzo analyzes the ensuing behavior.

The tanks in the lab on the third floor of Hegeman Science Hall are identical except for the critters swimming around in each one, which range from newborns the size of pinpoints to nearly adult zebrafish. Students carefully observe and document their development.

“The zebrafish are a very flexible model organism,” Thomson says. “They can be easily manipulated at the genetic, biochemical, and cellular levels. From those manipulations we can draw connections: how each gene further relates to the neurobehavioral development of the fish, which parallels development in many organisms.”

That’s because the fish are complex vertebrates, like humans. And like humans, their genome has already been sequenced. That gives the Bard scientists an important tool for mapping how the fish develop, both neurologically and behaviorally. Another advantage is that the fish are transparent in early stages of development, allowing for easy identification and study of normal and abnormal organ growth.

First- and second-year ISROP students can begin their study of developmental neurobiology by examining normal growth in the zebrafish, looking specifically at the geneexpression pattern for the NMDA receptor system that’s involved in the development of brain structure. “The students examine when genes turn on after fertilization, how the level of activity changes and in what tissues,” Thomson says. The next step will be disrupting the normal expression of that gene by injecting a morpholino oligonucleotide, a molecular substance that blocks specific gene expression, into the fish eggs, then studying the effects on neurobehavioral development.

Bard is one of the few undergraduate institutions to investigate neurotoxicology involving the brain, gene

way as other animals justifies using them as a model,” Scalzo says. “MK-801 studies have been done in rats, but not in zebrafish.”

Michal Marszal ’04, who started at Bard as an ISROP student, completed a Senior Project on the role of the NMDA receptor in the early development of the zebrafish brain. Specifically, he detailed the effect MK-801 had on cell death (apoptosis) in the fish. Marszal, who had done research on the NMDA receptor in his native Poland before he came to Bard, says that ISROP and the multidisciplinary nature of the zebrafish work, combining study of both cellular and behavioral effects of the drug, drew him to Bard. He plans to attend medical school.

Key to the Bardians’ work, says Scalzo, is the assistance they have received from the Laboratory of Sensory Neuroscience at The Rockefeller University, headed by A. James Hudspeth. In addition, Bard has an ongoing relationship with Rockefeller in which Bard students serve as summer interns at Rockefeller, faculty and postdoctoral fellows from Rockefeller teach courses to Bard students, and Bard faculty and students have access to Rockefeller’s core

Bard is one of the few undergraduate institutions to investigate neurotoxicology involving the brain, gene development, and behavior of the zebrafish.

development, and behavior of the zebrafish. Scalzo’s students are studying how the drug dizocilpine, called MK801, affects the behavior of the fish. In normal development, neurons die when NMDA receptors are overstimulated. MK-801—originally developed as a neuroprotective agent to prevent brain damage from stroke, for example—blocks the receptors, thus preventing neuron death. But it is also a drug that can induce psychosis.

Scalzo’s students placed the water-soluble drug into the zebrafish tanks for four days and discovered that it affected the fishes’ activities and learning abilities. For example, while normal zebrafish prefer an “enriched chamber”—containing deeper water, plants, and shiny marbles—the treated fish exhibited no such preference, indicating impaired learning ability. The fish also swam in circles much more frequently when the drug was administered. “Showing that the fish are responsive to this compound in much the same

laboratories. So far, about 50 Bard students have taken part in programs with Rockefeller.

What’s next? The Bard scientists have isolated the gene for a protein called NR1, present in all NMDA receptors no matter what the species, a discovery that opens the door to even more research. “Having the gene identified allows us to manipulate it in the test tube, put the altered form back into the zebrafish, and ask how the alterations affect brain development, brain structure, and behavior,” Tibbetts says.

Isolation of the zebrafish NR1 gene also was key to the ISROP gene-expression studies. “We are probably the first to do this in zebrafish,” says Tibbetts. “The NR1 gene and protein have been studied in fruit flies, rodents, and people, and we have the zebrafish version.” Bard plans to remain in the forefront of zebrafish exploration, with research in chemistry and computer science possible additions to the multidisciplinary mix.

—Cynthia Werthamer

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CUTTING EDGE Music and film alumni/ae take Bard’s creative spirit into the field

Bard is expanding the facilities devoted to its Film and Electronic Arts and Music Programs. Plans include extensive renovation of the Milton and Sally Avery Center for the Arts and the creation of a three-story addition to the Edith C. Blum Institute.

With construction slated for completion in September, the Bard community looks to the work of four of its music and film alumni/ae. The individuals interviewed for this article represent a fraction of those graduates of Bard’s Film and Electronic Arts and Music Programs who are making valuable contributions in their creative fields.

Charles Berkowitz ’02 In his book Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character, psychiatrist Jonathan Shay, who works with Vietnam veterans, posits that Homer’s Iliad, in exploring themes such as the betrayal of moral consensus, guilt, death of a special comrade, and berserk behavior, provides accurate information regarding post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Intrigued by that premise, Charles Berkowitz created, for his Senior Project, Achilles in Vietnam, a documentary film built upon interviews with Shay, veterans, military personnel, and classicists (including William Mullen, professor of classics at Bard). The film’s life has extended well beyond its initial undergraduate-project status. It continues to be screened at places such as Yale University; United States Military Academy at West Point; University of Southern California; University of California, Santa Barbara; and classicists’ conventions; and has been incorporated into history and classics curricula throughout the country.

The response should facilitate Berkowitz’s next project, a follow-up film based on Shay’s second book, Odysseus in America: Combat Trauma and the Trials of Homecoming. The new film will expand on the Achilles in Vietnam format by also including interviews with Pentagon officials, politicians, and authors.

Vietnam veterans are particularly subject to PTSD because, as Berkowitz notes, that war was “essentially sui generis” in that it had no formal front. This issue is especially resonant today, with the ambiguities of military activity in Afghanistan and Iraq suggesting increased cases of PTSD among returning American soldiers. “A lot of people

Photograph oppostie page: ©Erik Dreyer/Getty Images

don’t realize that this psychological trauma is a physical wound,” says Berkowitz. “PTSD causes physiological changes that are visible on CAT scans.”

Bard’s Film and Electronic Arts Program promises to “encourage interest in a wide range of expressive modes” and eschew “fixed professional formulas.” Berkowitz is a product of that philosophy. “I wanted to break the template of a documentary,” he says, “to break the ‘voice-of-God’ narrative and let Dr. Shay and his veterans tell their story. Part of the reason I went to Bard was this ‘renaissance education’ idea, which is ideal for a director.”

For Berkowitz, as for many directors, film festivals are a great resource. “I interned for a digital film festival called RESFEST during my first year at Bard,” he says. “They were on the cusp of a digital revolution and I watched them do special effects on the computer. I plan to use some of the same three-dimensional programs to give Odysseus in America depth.”

The use of digital video, which requires no crew and minimal equipment, was essential to the creation of Achilles in Vietnam. “That made the filming process easier for the veterans from the Veterans Improvement Outpatient Program,” says Berkowitz. “I had no business having a presence. They had suffered a tremendous amount, and I was a stranger. Your heart and soul goes out to these guys.

That’s why I want to do this on a national level. It’s good medicine.”

For information, go to www.odysseusinamerica.com.

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about recreating the instrument to suit her musical vision.

Technology for amplifying an acoustic harp already existed, but Parkins went further, using C-ducer strips, pickups, compressors, alligator clips, metal bolts, guitar pedals, screws, felt, plastic tubing, and the like. “There was no precedent for what a harp would sound like going through guitar effects,” says Parkins. “I began experimenting.”

Ultimately, her experimentation went beyond merely amplifying an acoustic instrument. She created an electric harp, the first version of which she remembers as “a banged-together hybrid of a harp and a guitar.” She then approached a professional luthier, and together they created an instrument that underwent multiple revamps until, says Parkins, “I made the final, most refined revision. It’s as far as I want to take this particular instrument.”

Although a maverick, Parkins is not alone, spending a

Zeena Parkins ’79 Zeena Parkins started college at the University of Michigan School of Music. Disappointed by that program’s pedagogical approach, she transferred to Bard during her junior year, where, as a piano student, she participated in many performance ensembles and dance programs. She recalls a “world opening up in a way it never had.”

Post-Bard, Parkins was playing accordion in a traveling circus when a drummer’s interest in collaborating with a harpist spurred her to reconnect with the harp, an instrument that had supplemented her high school piano studies.

Resistant to traditional harp repertoire, which she describes as “mostly transcriptions” of classical music, Parkins reinitiated her harp studies with an ear to contemporary music.

Thus refueled, she moved to Manhattan in 1984 and became involved in the East Village music scene.

Chafing under the harp’s historical subordination (“Harpists would have to wait until the other instruments stopped. Why would I want to repeat that model?”), she set 22

good part of her time collaborating with filmmakers and choreographers. In many of those collaborations she serves as composer, rather than harpist. Her work has been performed at the Kitchen, Museum of Contemporary Art Serralves, Symphony Space, and other venues. One collaboration, an interactive website, can be located at www.weightlessanimals.com.

Parkins has also toured, recorded with, or collaborated with Yoko Ono, John Zorn, Fred Frist, Pauline Oliveros, Courtney Love, Björk, and others. She has participated in numerous music festivals, particularly in Europe, where, she says, an extensive festival circuit “brings people from halfway around the world.” Her work has been presented at Lincoln Center Out of Doors and International Festival Musique Actuel Victoriaville, as well as the Serious Fun Festival, Music Merge Festival, and Moers Festival.

New instrument horizons beckon. Parkins is on the trail of a design that will be “a combination of a controller for other sounds—something that will use light sensors, gesture, and electronics.” One thing will remain constant.

“It’s going to be a harp,” she says. “The creation of this instrument is a big part of what I do.”

For more information, go to www.zeenaparkins.com.

Amie Siegel ’96 Earlier this year, Manhattan’s Film Forum screened Empathy, a feature-length film written, directed, and edited by Amie Siegel. In examining the psychoanalytic process, the film explores layers of authenticity and questions the border between inside and outside, private and public. Those explorations are mirrored in the film’s form, a meld of documentary and fictional screenplay. “I’m interested in how people perform themselves, how they play up different aspects of

their personality to different people,” says Siegel, who interviewed a number of male psychoanalysts on camera for the film. In Pirandellian fashion, one real-life analyst played a fictional one, following Siegel’s scripted dialogue during border-warping sessions with a patient played by an actress.

Currently, Siegel is participating in a DAAD BerlinerKünstlerprogramm artist-in-residency. In Berlin, Siegel has been familiarizing herself with German culture and language and planning a new film. “After one year, though you’re still a foreigner, you start seeing things not as a tourist,” she says. “Part of my experiences as an American in Berlin will play into the new film.”

That new film will address hefty material—contemporary race relations in Berlin, a city that has seen its homogeneity disturbed, particularly since the collapse of the Iron Curtain. Siegel is posing a series of potentially explosive questions such as, “What does it mean to be Jewish in Germany?” “Turkish in Berlin?” “German in another country?” “What does it mean to do a casting call for Jews in Germany?” She notes, “Germany prides itself on being humanistic and post-Fascist. In some ways, the film will be about cultural ‘passing.’” Once again, Siegel will combine fiction and documentary formats, thereby eliminating some of the cueing that permits audiences to make clear distinctions between reality and artifice.

Siegel, too, feels that festivals provide great opportunities, particularly for avant-garde artists. Empathy, for example, premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival. It was also shown at the Jerusalem Film Festival and Chicago International Film Festival.

Renovations and Innovations Renovations to the Milton and Sally Avery Center for the Arts are necessary to meet the expanding needs of Bard’s 30-year-old Film and Electronic Arts Program. In keeping with Bard’s educational vision, the improved facility will also foster partnerships with the Human Rights Program (which makes extensive use of video), SummerScape (the on-campus festival of international performing arts and film), and the Center for Curatorial Studies.

The renovated Avery Center will include a 110seat theater (with 16- and 35-millimeter and video projection equipment); an integrative arts–multimedia presentation space that can seat up to 100; two 25-seat screening/seminar rooms; a video installation gallery; printing, processing, multimedia video, and sound labs; shooting and animation studios; 20 editing suites; eight faculty offices; a library; a skylighted public area; storage space; and a loading dock.

Bard’s active Music Program, which offers classical, jazz, electronic, and choral education, has grown beyond the existing facilities of the Edith C. Blum Institute. The Blum Institute will be expanded to allow for a new main entrance and to connect it to the neighboring Avery Center. Twenty practice rooms will be added to the Blum Institute’s current seven.

One floor of the enlarged building will be devoted to jazz studies and will house a soundproof, big-band rehearsal room. Another floor, devoted to electronic studies, will include a state-of-the-art recording studio and two editing rooms.

The courtyard between the Blum Institute and the Avery Center will be redesigned to accommodate public gatherings and outdoor concerts.

Renovating and expanding the facilities for the Film and Electronic Arts and Music Programs will cost $8 million. Bard welcomes support and invites alumni/ae and friends to contribute to this exciting project. For a complete list of donor opportunities and information on contributions in honor of Adolfas Mekas, please contact Jessica Kemm, director of alumni/ae affairs, at 845-758-7406 or kemm@bard.edu.

First Run/Icarus Films

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After moderating in film at Bard, Siegel went on to receive an M.F.A. degree in film and video from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has created video installations and gallery-based projects. Her work has appeared at the Whitney Museum of American Art; Kino Arsenal; University of California, Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive; Cinematheque Ontario; Filmforum Los Angeles; Anthology Film Archives; Chicago Filmmakers; San Francisco Cinematheque; and others.

Siegel also did extensive undergraduate work in Bard’s Writing Program in Fiction and Poetry and is the author of The Waking Life, a poetry collection.

For more information, visit www.empathythemovie.com.

Stefan Weisman ’92 After graduating from Bard’s Music Program (his Senior Project, a 12-minute orchestral piece titled “flea circus,” was performed by the Hudson Valley Philharmonic under Leon Botstein), Stefan Weisman studied at the Mannes College of Music. He then received a master’s degree in music from Yale University. Currently a Ph.D. candidate at Princeton University, he expects to complete that degree in 2006.

Despite a personal distance from organized religion, Weisman has created music drawn from biblical themes (such as the relationship between David and Jonathan, as described in the Old Testament) as well as a languorous, liturgical-sounding choral piece (Light, light, light, light, light). The latter was commissioned as an offertory.

He is working now on From Frankenstein, a 30-minute, staged song cycle based on Mary Shelley’s novel. Early last spring Weisman was also composing a piece for the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra. In addition, he is active in the Composers & the Voice series of American Opera Projects, an organization committed to enlarging the contemporary opera audience.

Community for composers is evident, as for other artists, in participation in festivals, fellowship programs, residencies, and the like. In Weisman’s case those venues include the Bang on a Can Summer Institute of Music at MASS MoCA, Djerassi Resident Artists Program, June in Buffalo festival, Bang on a Can Marathon concert, and Meet the Composer. Weisman has received commissions from the Gay Gotham Choir and the Battell Chapel Choir, among others; and has participated in theater, dance, and video collaborations at places such as the Knitting Factory, Collective: Unconscious, and HERE Theater.

Although he is committed to exploring experimental territory in his music, Weisman also seeks to keep his work accessible. “The music I write tends to be very focused,” he 24

Stefan Weisman

says. “I like to find a sound and stick to it. I love minimalist music, and I’m not afraid of music that is emotional, not ‘cold surface.’ Luckily, I’m having pieces played a lot. I’m interested in this idea of reception of music.” Amplifying on this theme, Weisman refers to two modes of thought.

The first was expressed in a 1958 article, “Who Cares If You Listen?” written by distinguished composer Milton Babbitt.

In that article, Babbitt opined that “societal isolation” is “potentially advantageous for the composer and his music.”

The second mode of thought, expressed by Evan Zaporyn (composer, performer, recording artist, and conductor) countered, “Who listens if you care?” Weisman pauses, and then concludes, “I write music that people, not just specialists, can relate to.”

For more information about a recent Weisman project, go to www.FromFrankenstein.com.

—Réne Houtrides

Hallelujah Adolfas!

In a sense, the seeds for the relocation of the Film and Electronic Arts Program to the renovated Avery Center for the Arts were sown in the fall of 1971, when the College hired Adolfas Mekas, a free spirit from Lithuania by way of the Lower East Side, as a lecturer in film. More than any single person, Mekas—who retired in June as professor of film and received the Bardian Award at the President’s Dinner, where his acceptance speech had everyone in stitches—was responsible for shaping the study of film at Bard into a program worthy of his beloved St. Tula, the patron saint of cinema.

At the time of his hiring, Mekas was at the vanguard of the New American Cinema, a loose affiliation of filmmakers who were using their cameras to challenge and subvert the values of the status quo. He had made Hallelujah the Hills, a rhapsodic feature that married the zany antics of silent movies to the Beat ethos (Time magazine called it a “slapstick poem”), and The Double-Barreled Detective Story, a quirky adaptation of a Mark Twain tale, which was purloined by an unprincipled producer and never released.

He brought the same exuberant, overturning-the-apple-cart sensibility to his tenure at Bard.

“His spirit—irascible, anarchistic, dadaistic—is so distinct that we can never replace it,” says Peter Hutton, director of the Film and Electronic Arts Program. That spirit led him, among other things, to dub his bailiwick at Bard “The People’s Film and Electronic Arts Program,” and to create a periodic publication, the Cinemagic Bulletin, to stay in touch with former students and those he describes as the “mad, crazy, obsessed, and completely useless breed of people known as filmmakers and cinema lovers.”

For their part, many of his students affectionately recall the special bond that Mekas and his wife, Pola Chapelle, shared with them, a bond that extended far beyond the classroom. “Some of my fondest memories of my years at Bard are those spent in Adolfas and Pola’s house,” says Lola Glaudini ’93. “After a great meal and lots of grappa, we’d watch and comment on films until sunrise . . . That was his real classroom, and I am honored to have been included. I hope to always have the same joie de vivre that shone through Adolfas in my life and home.”

—Mikhail Horowitz

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COMMENCEMENT

2004

Pete Mauney ’93, MFA ’99

COMMENCEMENT 2004 More than 2,500 alumni/ae, new graduates and their families, faculty, staff, and friends celebrated the awarding of 306 bachelor of arts degrees and 92 master’s degrees at Bard’s 144th Commencement on May 22.

Robert Redford, actor, director, and environmental activist, received a doctor of humane letters and gave the Commencement address. Quoting philosopher Hannah Arendt—“the tug toward apathy will be overcome by the lure of human improvement and preservation”—Redford urged on the graduates continued public engagement and collective action.

Other honorary degrees were awarded to K. Anthony Appiah, Elizabeth H. Blackburn, John T. Cacioppo, Richard J. Goldstone, and James J. Heckman. In an emotional

moment during the ceremonies, David E. Schwab II ’52, chair emeritus of the Bard Board of Trustees, received an honorary doctor of civil law. Bard had given this degree only twice before, to Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968 and to the Right Reverend Paul Moore Jr., honorary trustee of the College, in 2003.

President Leon Botstein drew his charge to the graduates from Middlemarch by George Eliot. He framed his talk with Eliot’s “we insignificant people, with our daily acts and words” and concluded that “a free, tolerant, civilized society, now at risk, renders each of us, despite our insignificance, an historic personality, capable of helping to make the world once again a place where the good can flourish and suffering and injustice wither.”

Jim and Mary Ottaway at the dedication of the Ottaway Gatehouse for International Study

Robert Redford, Commencement speaker, Doctor of Humane Letters

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Graduating seniors

John T. Cacioppo, Doctor of Science

Elizabeth H. Blackburn, Doctor of Science

Richard J. Goldstone, Doctor of Laws

K. Anthony Appiah, Doctor of Humane Letters

James J. Heckman, Doctor of Humane Letters

David E. Schwab II ’52, Doctor of Civil Law

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REUNION WEEKEND SALUTES BARD STALWARTS

Luis Garcia-Renart, Bardian Award

Adolfas Mekas, Bardian Award

A festive President’s Dinner opened Commencement and Reunion Weekend on May 21. The dinner, which honors Bard’s alumni/ae and friends, this year included an affectionate acceptance speech from Luis Garcia-Renart, recipient of a Bardian Award upon his retirement after 42 years on the Music Program faculty; a show-stopping thanks for his Bardian Award from Adolfas Mekas, who was retiring after 33 years as sustainer of the Film and Electronic Arts Program; and a standing ovation for David E. Schwab II ’52, who, having served 40 years on Bard’s Board of Trustees, 20 of them as chairman, was moving to chair emeritus.

Those receiving awards also included Rita McBride ’82, the Charles Flint Kellogg Award in Arts and Letters; Sanford M. Simon, the John and Samuel Bard Award in Medicine and Science; William T. Dickens ’76, the John Dewey Award for Distinguished Public Service; Shirley Hazzard, the Mary McCarthy Award; and Bard trustee Richard B. Fisher, the Bard Medal. “The Bard Medal for 2004 is being awarded not only for past service,” Fisher’s citation read, “but in grateful anticipation of his enlightened leadership in the years ahead” upon his election as chair of the Bard board.

In other weekend events, a memorial reading on Friday celebrated Clark Rodewald ’59, who had taught at the College from 1968 to 2000 and remained in residence as Professor Emeritus of English until his death in January.

On Saturday the Blithewood Gatehouse was rededicated as the Jim and Mary Ottaway Gatehouse for International Study. The historic hexagonal gatehouse is now home to the Institute for International Liberal Education, whose Board of Advisors Bard trustee Ottaway chairs, and the Human Rights Project.

Tours were offered Saturday of the new facilities under construction for the Film and Electronic Arts and Music Programs; the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts; WXBC, the College radio station; and Blithewood, home of the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College. And alumni/ae new and old learned more about the Master of Arts in Teaching Program at Bard College and the Bard Center for Environmental Policy in graduate program information sessions held at the Bertelsmann Campus Center.

Rita McBride ’82, Charles Flint Kellogg Award in Arts and Letters

Photographs, pages 28, 29, 30, 31: Enrico Ferorelli

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Sanford M. Simon, John and Samuel Bard Award in Medicine and Science

Richard B. Fisher, Bard Medal

Shirley Hazzard, Mary McCarthy Award, with Robert Redford

David E. Schwab II ’52, Chair Emeritus of the Bard

William T. Dickens ’76, John Dewey Award for

Board of Trustees

Distinguished Public Service

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ALUMNI/AE NOTEBOOK

JOHN BARD SOCIETY NEWS Ensuring the College’s Future Bard College expresses its deepest gratitude to the alumni/ae and friends who have joined the John Bard Society. These individuals, listed below, will help ensure that Bard has the resources it needs to continue to offer an outstanding liberal arts education to talented students now and in the future.

Consider becoming a member of the John Bard Society. By simply including the College in your estate plans and notifying the Development Office, you, too, can help Bard sustain its tradition of innovative programs and excellent teaching.

For further information on the John Bard Society, please contact Debra Pemstein, vice president for development and alumni/ae affairs, at 845-758-7405 or pemstein@bard.edu Robert ’53 and Marcia Amsterdam Anonymous Judith Arner ’68 Robert C. ’57 and Lynn A. Bassler Stephen H. ’74 and Laurie A. ’74 Berman Anne T. Brown Mary S. Burns ’73 Edward L. Coster ’54 George M. Coulter ’51 Peter J. Criswell ’89 Arnold J. ’44 and Seena Davis John A. Dierdorff Robert C. Edmonds ’68 Kit Hannah Ellenbogen ’52 Elizabeth W. Ely ’65 Barbara D. Finberg Eric W. Goldman ’98 Phillip H. ’43 and Sandra Gordon

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Edward S. Grandin III ’37 Gail C. Grisetti ’68 Rosalind Smith Holt Marie T. Horhota Wayne Horvitz ’42 Clinton R. Jones ’38 Mark N. and Helene L. Kaplan Mary-Margaret Kellogg Richard F. Koch ’40 Lenore Lattimore Cynthia Hirsch Levy ’65 William V. Lewit ’52 Gregory Lindin ’43 Steve Lipson ’65 and Serl E. Zimmerman Robert J. Mac Alister ’50 Margit Malmstrom ’66 Francis X. McWilliams ’44 Adolfas Mekas Mary L. Nathan ’76 Karen Olah ’65 Paul Pacini Ellen Kaplan Perless ’63 and Robert Perless Janice H. Rabinowitz ’51 Max Reimerdes Irwin and M. Susan Richman Anne Atwood Rieder Lilly Scholler Louise T. Schulman ’51 David E. Schwab II ’52 Martin T. Sosnoff Beth Uffner Mildred J. Van Tienen Jonathan S. Wyner ’68 As of April 26, 2004

Young Alumni/ae Party at Cities Party Alumni/ae on both coasts rallied at the ninth annual Young Alumni/ae Cities Party on April 2. Tamara Plummer ’02 was the contact for the Boston party at The Burren in Somerville; Devon White ’99 convened Chicago alumni/ae at The Hideout; Rebecca Granato ’99 organized the New York City event at Tavaru Bar and Grille (right and below); Tim Siftar ’89 helped assemble alumni/ae in Philadelphia at the 700 Club; Matthew Garrett ’98 headed up the San Francisco gathering at Doc’s Clock; Cara Cibener ’96 and Michelle Dunn Marsh ’95 tag-teamed the Seattle get-together at The Pink Door; and David Case ’98 coordinated the Washington, D.C., party at the Capitol City Brewing Company. David Avallone ’87 helped muster up a crowd of Los Angeles alumni/ae at the Dresden Room in Hollywood on April 18.

COME BACK TO BARD

SAVE THE DATE!

Family Weekend October 22–24 Saturday, September 18* CHECK OUT what’s happening on campus

FILM, FOOD AND DRINK

ENJOY a fall weekend in the Hudson Valley

at the downtown Brooklyn garden apartment of Walter Swett ’96

BARD FILM FESTIVAL DEDICATION OF NEW FACILITY for film, electronic arts, music, and integrated arts at the Avery Center for the Arts CLASSES AND PANELS with Bard faculty ATHLETIC EVENTS For more information, contact the Office of Alumni/ae Affairs, alumni@bard.edu or 845-758-7089.

We’re pulling together the perfect collection of alumni/ae films for an outdoor screening. We’re looking for films short or long, old or new, and from young and not-so-young alumni/ae. If you have a film that you’d like to show, please e-mail alumni@bard.edu. (*Rain date: Saturday, October 2)

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BOOKS BY BARDIANS

Philosophische Reflexionen über die Kunst (Philosophical Reflections on the Arts) by Horst Herke EDITION SERAPION

Horst Herke, a former exchange student from Germany, looks at art theory from the perspective of contemporary philosophy. He examines the relationship between the arts and such concepts as truth, ethics, intentionality, and language. He also explores the impact of the life sciences, emphasizing the findings of U.S. researchers, on the theory of art. Herke, who spent the 1951–52 academic year at Bard, lives in Mainz.

The Malady of Islam

by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Pierre Joris ’69 and Charlotte Mandell ’90 BASIC BOOKS

Since 1979, when Ayatollah Khomeini triumphed in Iran and the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, fundamentalism has been on the rise in the Islamic world.

Abdelwahab Meddeb, a professor of comparative literature at the University of Paris X-Nanterre, finds fundamentalism a “sickness” in Islam that isolates the religion from its rich history and tradition. In this wide-ranging volume, which Pierre Joris and Charlotte Mandell (under the nom de plume Ann Reid) translated from the French, Meddeb examines the historical roots of fundamentalism and the role of western culture in its growth.

Solidarity and Contention: Networks of Polish Opposition

by Maryjane Osa ’83 UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA PRESS

The Solidarity trade union took western society by surprise in 1980. In fact, the movement had been gradually growing out of failed attempts at dissension during the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, Maryjane Osa writes. Those attempts left behind an organizational blueprint, of structures and individuals, on which Solidarity’s founders could draw. Osa also examines the Solidarity movement to determine the nature of politics in a repressive regime. She is a visiting assistant professor of sociology at Northwestern University.

Middlefield: Otsego Lake’s Eastern Shore

by Dominick J. Reisen ’89 ARCADIA

Middlefield is a town in central New York State’s Leatherstocking region, an area of scenic valleys that is also home to Cooperstown. Dominick J. Reisen, Middlefield’s town historian, uses photographs—many never before published—to tell the story of his picturesque town, featuring its historic churches, commercial establishments, and farms. The book is part of the Images of America series, highlighting the histories of neighborhoods, towns, and cities across the country.

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Baptist Faith in Action: The Private Writings of Maria Baker Taylor, 1813–1895

by Kathryn Carlisle Schwartz ’47 UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH CAROLINA PRESS

This collection of letters, essays, poems, and diary entries documents a world and time for which few primary sources exist. Kathryn Carlisle Schwartz, professor emerita of English at Ohio Wesleyan University, brings to light the life of Maria Baker Taylor, the granddaughter of South Carolina’s foremost Baptist minister. The biography documents the spiritual life of an evangelical woman, and the impact of the Civil War on her world. Schwartz is a great-granddaughter of her subject.

The Myth of Civil Society: Social Capital and Democratic Consolidation in Spain and Brazil

by Omar G. Encarnación PALGRAVE MACMILLAN

Over the last three decades, dozens of countries once thought condemned to authoritarian rule have moved toward democracy. Regardless of the geographical setting, the emergence of a robust civil society was assumed essential for democratic evolution.

Omar G. Encarnación, associate professor of political studies, confronts that assumption, using Brazil and Spain as case studies. He argues that a strong civil society is not necessary to stabilize a new democracy, and in fact may contribute to some of the very social problems—such as unrestrained state control and violence—that it is meant to alleviate.

Making God’s Word Work: A Guide to the Mishnah

by Jacob Neusner CONTINUUM

Study of the Mishnah, the ancient philosophical and legal code that complements the Torah, and its companion documents has occupied Rabbi Jacob Neusner for some fifty years of scholarship. In his latest book, Neusner examines the law, religion, history, and literature of formative Rabbinic Judaism to show how they convey the same message: norms of conduct and principle. He also relates the historical and theological context in which the Mishnah was written to the aftermath of the Holocaust and other issues facing Judaism today. Neusner is a Bard Center Fellow and Research Professor of Religion and Theology.

Replaceable You: Engineering the Body in Postwar America

by David Serlin UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS

Medical technologies developed after World War II improved prosthetics, plastic surgery, hormone treatments, and sex reassignment, among other procedures. Using individual stories of war disfigurement and other bodily changes as metaphors, David Serlin shows how those same advances mirrored the nation’s postwar rehabilitation in the late 1940s and early 1950s. He examines the stigmatization of those who were physically or psychologically different, and the pressure on them to conform to social standards, to demonstrate the alignment of private potential and public responsibility. Serlin is an assistant professor of history and social sciences at Bard High School Early College.

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ON AND OFF CAMPUS

The occasion highlighted the significance of the Dance Program’s recent move into the Fisher Center, said Churchill, who directs the program and chairs the Division of the Arts. Bard students are now able to develop their dance and choreographic skills in a light-filled, fully equipped dance studio that can function as both rehearsal and performance space.

Dion Ogust

Evening of Dance Celebrates Thorne Studio “Dances at a Celebration” marked the dedication of the Felicitas S. Thorne Dance Studio in The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts. The studio is named for the woman known at Bard as “Feli” (above)—neighbor, student, avid concertgoer, lecture attendee, and member of the Bard Music Festival Board of Directors.

The April 10 festivities kicked off with a free dance concert, open to the public, in the Fisher Center’s Sosnoff Theater. Bard dancers, with special guest Arthur Aviles ’87, performed a diverse program of selected works choreographed by Bard dance faculty (including Jean Churchill and Garry Reigenborn) and choreographers in residence.

Music for the dances came from composers and arrangers as varied as Sam Cooke, Tom Lehrer, Yo-Yo Ma, and Maurice Ravel. Guest musicians were Bard faculty members Robert Martin, cello, and Julie Rosenfeld, violin.

Following the concert, the festivities moved to the Thorne Dance Studio. In a dedication and toast, the College community expressed its deep appreciation and gratitude to Thorne for her continuing friendship and generous support. The celebration continued with supper and dancing.

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Doug Baz

Kushner Recieves Honorary Degree Playwright and activist Tony Kushner (second from left), wearing his honorary degree hood, accepts his doctor of fine arts from (left to right) David E. Schwab II ’52, chairman of the Bard Board of Trustees; President Leon Botstein; and Marcelle Clements ’69, College trustee.

Kushner wowed an SRO crowd in the Sosnoff Theater with the warmth and humor of his politically up-to-the-minute acceptance speech, and played the role of Laura Bush in a reading of his play-in-progress, Only We Who Guard the Mystery Shall Be Unhappy. Bard students Naomi Hard ’04 and Jacob Burstein-Stern ’04 joined Kushner on stage in the play, as, respectively, the Angel and the narrator of stage directions.

New Music Conservatory to Offer Unprecedented Program The double-degree program to be pursued by all students enrolled in The Bard College Conservatory of Music, which opens its doors in September 2005, is a new thing under the sun. There is no other program at which all conservatory students also pursue a liberal arts degree in a field other than music.

The nascent Bard program will provide musically gifted students with a fully integrated conservatory-liberal arts environment. Completion of the Conservatory’s five-year program will earn students a bachelor of music degree and a bachelor of arts degree in a field other than music. (No separate bachelor of music program will be offered.) Musical history, theory, and philosophy will be taught in ways that augment performance, and the curriculum will be coordinated with music-related elements of Bard’s graduate programs and the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts. Students will also take part in the annual Bard Music Festival, now in its 15th season.

Conservatory students will study with Joan Tower, Bard’s Asher B. Edelman Professor in the Arts and a composer of international repute; other faculty of the Bard Music Program; and distinguished musicians such as clarinetist David Krakauer; violinists Ani Kavafian and Arnold Steinhardt; pianists Richard Goode, Melvin Chen, and Jeremy Denk; and the Colorado Quartet, the College’s ensemble in residence.

Rodgers Retires After 19 years of administrative duty, Bernard F. Rodgers Jr. stepped down from his positions as vice president and dean of Simon’s Rock College of Bard. His retirement went into effect at the end of the past academic year.

Following a one-semester sabbatical, Rodgers will serve as a full-time faculty member in the area of languages and literature.

Throughout his years as an administrator, he continued to teach one course each semester.

During Rodgers’s tenure, Simon’s Rock doubled its enrollment. He also oversaw a $38 million “Building the Future” campaign that resulted in a dramatic growth in Simon’s Rock facilities, including classrooms, a science center, residence halls, and faculty housing, as well as an expanded library, upgraded communications infrastructure, and athletic complex.

Mary B. March, former codirector and senior administrator of the Project of the Future of Higher Education at Antioch University in Seattle, has been appointed to succeed Rodgers, as vice president and provost of Simon’s Rock.

SEEN & HEARD ON CAMPUS MAY Peter Lamborn Wilson, David Levi Strauss, Robert Kelly, and Charlotte Mandell, among others, read from Coleridge, Novalis, and their own works as part of a May Day Celebration of Romanticism at Poet’s Walk.

Ian Buruma, Caleb Carr, and James Chace discussed the Iraqi conflict and where it is going during a May 3 event at Olin Language Center.

On May 3, Satinath (Sathyu) Sarangi, a noted activist and Bhopal victims’ advocate, talked about the political dimensions of the Union Carbide pesticide plant explosion nearly 20 years ago.

Naomi Chazan, who served three terms in the Israeli Knesset and is a professor of political science at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, gave a May 4 talk entitled Israeli-Palestinian Peace: Trends and Prospects.

Jazz at Bard presented the William Parker Quintet in a May 6 concert that featured cellist and Bard senior Shiau-Shu Yu. The Village Voice has called Parker “the most consistently brilliant free jazz bassist of all time.”

On May 6, the First-Year Seminar Lecture Series sponsored a panel discussion entitled “Chinua Achebe’s Fiction and Post-Colonial Thought.”

Dr. George F. Pinder of the University of Vermont presented the lecture “Beneath the Surface of A Civil Action: The Woburn Trial Revisited” on May 6 as part of the Distinguished Scientist Lecture Series.

Dr. George Gmelch, professor of anthropology at Union College, gave a May 6 lecture on “The Realities of Change in Baseball since 1960.”

A performance of John Gay’s The Beggar s Opera , directed by the Theater Program’s Shelley Wyant and featuring a student cast, was staged on May 7 and 8 at Bard’s Chapel of the Holy Innocents.

The Center for Curatorial Studies hosted William Pope.L’s performance installation, The Black Factory, on May 15.

APRIL Ian Buruma, author and professor of human rights and journalism at Bard, gave an open lecture, “The Consequences of Iraq,” April 8 at Bard Hall in Manhattan.

The John Ashbery Poetry Series presented three poetry readings in April: Carolyn Forché; Ammiel Alcalay, Vanessa Corpuz, and Michelle Naka; and literary critic Angus Fletcher,

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Nguyen says. “I also wanted to find a community of Vietnamese immigrant artists and understand my place in it.”

Garbasz, too, will be using the fellowship to retrace family roots. The Israel native and Continuing Studies Program alumnus will travel to Germany, Holland, Czech Republic, Poland, France, and Greece to document his project: “In My Mother’s Footsteps: A Journey through the Landscape of One Survivor’s Holocaust.”

Garbasz’s mother was 17 when she was liberated from the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Several years ago she wrote a book about her wartime experiences, but “it had little emotional content,” Garbasz says. He hopes that by retracing and photographing her life, beginning with her childhood home in Berlin, “I can reclaim this history for both of us.”

Inaugurated in 1968 by the children of IBM founder Thomas J. Watson and his wife, Jeannette K. Watson, the fellowship program rewards students who demonstrate a capacity for vision and leadership, excellence within a chosen field, and the potential for humane and effective participation in the world community.

Tania Barricklo

Five Avery MFA Artists in Whitney Biennial Two Seniors Win Watson Fellowships For the second straight year, two Bard seniors have been awarded Thomas J. Watson Fellowships. Nguyen Khoi Nguyen ’03, who studied jazz piano composition and integrated arts at Bard, and Yishay Garbasz ’03, who concentrated in photography, will each receive $22,000 to pursue a year of independent study abroad. They are two of only 50 recipients selected from among approximately 1,000 applicants nationwide.

Nguyen (right), a transfer student from Cooper Union, received the fellowship for his project, “Innovation and Tradition: Today’s Young Vietnamese Musicians and Artists.” His travel plans include Vietnam, where he was born, and Australia, France, Germany, and Russia— countries where many Vietnamese relocated after the war.

Growing up in Cape Coral, Florida, where his family moved when he was one and a half, Nguyen had no peers involved in art and music. A Bard Junior Fellowship allowed him to spend time in the Vietnamese community of Dorchester, Massachusetts, where he heard grandmothers singing traditional folk songs and kids doing karaoke versions of Vietnamese pop. The experience solidified his Watson project goals. “I knew I had to go to Vietnam,”

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Standing in a long line outside of the Whitney Museum of American Art this past April, I debated with myself about coming back another day to see the biennial exhibition. I stayed, and after viewing the sweeping show, I decided the line should have been longer: this year’s Whitney Biennial was worth the wait. And, out of a total of 108 artists, no fewer than five Bardians, all associated with the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts, raised the quality level of the exhibition.

The mission of the Whitney Biennial is to reach deeply into the U.S. art community and represent, in one large exhibition, a national survey of the unique strengths and eclectic forefronts of international contemporary art coming from U.S. artists. Often in the past this was too big a bite to take. This year’s success comes in part from the curatorial board’s decision to drop thematic pretense and simply let the work speak for itself. The board called it an “Intergenerational Conversation” and wrote in their catalogue essay, “In 2004 a new transition is occurring, giving rise to an unprecedented dialogue between generations sharing experiences within a time of striking uncertainty and transformation.”

The five Bard artists are Avery M.F.A. degree candidates, alumni/ae, and/or faculty.

The sculpture of Taylor Davis, MFA ’98 and faculty, precariously and elegantly combined otherwise disparate materials of wood and mirror.

Amy Sillman, MFA ’95 and faculty, exhibited three largescale paintings of ritualistic narrative in landscapes in which human forms were distorted by scale and caricature.

The latest silent film by Peter Hutton, film and video faculty, was included in the biennial’s film programming.

Skagafjördur documents the dramatic landscape of northern Iceland.

Julianne Swartz MFA ’02 took over the museum’s dark, sixstory stairwell with an installation in which the walls were lined with clear plastic tubes that emitted various renditions of “Somewhere over the Rainbow.”

Wynne Greenwood, MFA candidate ‘05, included live performances of her punk trio, Tracy and the Plastics, in which Greenwood herself played all three roles, two of which were on video screens.

The Avery program’s presence and leadership in artistic communities is obvious. Unlike artists in some M.F.A. degree programs, Bard artists graduate with a heightened individual quality in their work, rather than stylistic and contextual similarities. This achievement makes Bard’s Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts a leading environment rather than hip alcove.

Its complex organization of mixed disciplines, summer comforts, and superior faculty provides the bridge to artistic maturity.

—Marjorie Vecchio MFA ’01

whose lecture, “The Environmental Poem,” focused on Walt Whitman, A.R. Ammons, and John Ashbery.

Nancy Davenport, a faculty member of the International Center of Photography–Bard Program in Advanced Photographic Studies, gave a presentation about her work on April 8 at the Campus Center.

Fode Sissoko, master drummer, kora player, and griot from Senegal, taught a drumming workshop on April 8, followed by a concert with his Afro-Mandink band, Fakoli.

Arthur Aviles ’87, hailed by the New York Times as “one of the great modern dancers of the last 15 years,” was the special guest performer at Dances at a Celebration at the Sosnoff Theater in the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts on April 10. Guest musicians Robert Martin, cello, and Julie Rosenfeld, violin, accompanied the dancers.

Russell Banks, novelist and short story writer, read selections of recent work at the Campus Center on April 12. He is the author of 14 works of fiction, including Continental Drift, The Sweet Hereafter, Affliction, and Cloudsplitter.

Bard hosted the last of a series of lectures on Japanese classical theater on April 13, as NYU professor Carol Martin discussed “Japanese Noh Drama in Performance.”

Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright Tony Kushner performed in his recent work, Only We Who Guard the Mystery Shall Be Unhappy, on April 14 at the Sosnoff Theater in the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts.

Atzilut, a joint Arab and Jewish 10-person ensemble that has been described as “North Africa and the Middle East meet modern jazz,” performed at “Envision Peace,” an April 15 concert presented by the Jewish and Muslim Student Organizations.

Hugh Raffles, author of In Amazonia: A Natural History, discussed the politics of nature in the Brazilian Amazon in an April 15 lecture presented by the Latin American and Iberian Studies Program.

Recording artist and composer Rabbi Shefa Gold, the 2004 Anna Jones Fellow at Bard, was in residence at the College from April 15 to 20. She led two workshops, “The Art of Leading Sacred Chant” and “When Is Love? The Song of Songs and the Effects of Chanting on the Human Spirit.”

The American Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Leon Botstein, music director, performed a concert of works

by Chopin and Berlioz at the Sosnoff Theater on April 17.

Clements and Howcroft

Taylor Davis MFA ’98: pallet, 2002–2004.

Wood and mirrors, 5 in. x 52 in. x 45 in.

Renowned Vancouver-based artist Rodney Graham, whose work includes photography, film, video, painting, and sculpture, spoke at Bard on April 19 in a visit sponsored by the Photography Program.

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for Hurlin’s show). Students were deeply moved by the performance and discussion, as well as by gripping photographs of the Hiroshima bombing that Yamaoka brought with her.

For her part, Yamaoka was impressed with the BHSEC students, observing that they “asked better questions than any of the groups I usually speak to.”

—David Serlin David Serlin is an assistant professor of history at BHSEC. His essay, “Reconstructing the Hiroshima Maidens,” appears as a chapter in his new book, Replaceable You: Engineering the Body in Postwar America (see Books by Bardians in this issue).

Intersession Around the World

Brian Selznick

Hiroshima Maiden Comes to Bard High School Early College Earlier this year, Bard High School Early College (BHSEC) played host to an extraordinary visitor: Michiko Yamaoka, a survivor of the 1945 atomic bombing of Hiroshima and the subject of a new performance piece, Hiroshima Maiden, created by artist Dan Hurlin.

In 1955 Yamaoka (right, with David Serlin) was one of 25 young Hiroshima women, burned and disfigured by the bomb, chosen to receive free plastic surgery at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan. These women became minor celebrities, known around the world as the “Hiroshima Maidens.”

For many, they symbolized an attempt to repair, both literally and metaphorically, Japanese-American relations in the post–World War II era. Yamaoka, now 75, is an established antiwar activist in Japan who travels regularly to speak on the topic of nuclear disarmament.

In 2000, Dan Hurlin, a professor of theater and puppetry at Sarah Lawrence College, began work on a performance piece about the Maidens. Hurlin chose to focus on the story of Yamaoka, whom he interviewed during a research trip to Japan in 2001. Hiroshima Maiden combines traditional Bunraku-style Japanese puppets with avant-garde use of physical objects, all set to composer Robert Een’s haiku-inspired score for double bass, marimba, dulcimer, and percussion.

As part of the project’s educational mission, Hurlin invited Yamaoka to New York. In January BHSEC students, faculty, and staff were treated to an excerpt of Hiroshima Maiden and a post-show Q&A session with Hurlin, Yamaoka, and me (my historical research had served as the inspiration

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A number of Bard undergraduates gained inestimable work and life experience during January intersession. The College’s Career Development Office, Trustee Leader Scholar Program, and/or Human Rights Program assisted them with their endeavors.

Angelique Ahmed ’07 and Rubaba Ali ’04 worked at a Bangladeshi rehabilitation center for the children of sex workers or prostitutes. Among other activities, Ahmed and Ali convened a conference (in coordination with the Program for the Introduction and Adoption of Contraceptive Technology) and recruited local university volunteers for continuing educational programs for the children, whose opportunities are limited by severe social stigmatization.

John Hagan ’05, Yassmine Hamayel ’06, Christine Neuman ’05, and Blerina Xeneli ’05 assisted with classes at Bard High School Early College and participated in that school’s admission process by organizing information sessions and helping with assessments and interviews.

Kaythee Hlaing ’06 returned home to Burma to lay the groundwork necessary to enable five Bard students to travel there in May to offer expressive-arts workshops for disadvantaged children and their caregivers.

Rachael Hunt ’07, Kristin Macleod-Ball ’05, Maude Standish ’06, and Stephanie Wells ’06 helped build housing in Charaseca, Nicaragua. They worked in cooperation with a local construction team, the family slated to inhabit the house, volunteer labor, and Maryknoll nuns.

As interns with Free Radio Berkeley, Katie Jacoby ’05 and Kiernan Rok ’05 learned to build transmitters, antennae, and other equipment, in preparation for creating a microradio station for Bard.

As part of her Senior Project, Jean Klasovsky ’04 did research at the University of Texas at Austin’s Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection. Klasovsky examined Para

Ti, an Argentinian women’s magazine that, from 1976 to 1983, supported that country’s dictatorship.

Emily Price ’04 was in Mexico working with Justice for Our Daughters, a group pursuing information on the disappearance and/or murder of hundreds of young women in the Juárez and Chihuahua areas.

Ryan Schwarz ’05 worked as a medical assistant at Bairo Pite Medical Clinic in Dili, East Timor. The clinic sees approximately 350 patients per day and provides 70 percent of the region’s health care.

Sarit Shatken ’05 traveled to Mae Sot, Thailand, where she taught classes in women’s rights to young female refugees from Burma.

Valon Xharra ’04 was in Belgrade, Serbia, doing research for his Senior Project, “Yugoslavia: History of a Failed Idea.” He interviewed former communist leaders, as well as prominent intellectuals, writers, and activists.

Dr. Angela Ki Che Leung, of Princeton University, gave a lecture on April 20 titled “The Stigmatization of Leprosy in Late Imperial China: Contagion, Sex, and Black Magic.”

The Da Capo Quartet performed works by Bard faculty and alumni/ae, including the world premiere of a quintet written for them by Conductors Institute artistic director Harold Farberman, at an April 21 concert presented by The Bard Center.

Vermont artist Patty Mucha discussed her experiences in the New York art world of the 1950s and ‘60s, including her collaboration with then husband Claes Oldenburg, in an April 22 presentation sponsored by CCS and the Studio Art and Art History Programs.

Leading economists from around the world gathered at Blithewood April 23–24 for the Levy Economics Institute’s 14th annual Hyman P. Minsky Conference.

The jazz trio Jackalope performed a free concert on April 24 that featured selections from the recent release, Saltier Than Ever.

The fifth annual God and Sexuality Conference convened at the College April 25–26 for a combination of academic presentations, workshops, and discussions on the topic “Homosexuality and the World Religions: Part III.” The Woodstock Chamber Orchestra, Luis Garcia-Renart, artistic director, performed works by Joaquin Rodrigo, Scarlatti, and Mozart in a concert on April 28.

“Florence After Florence,” a three-week intergenerational forum sponsored by the Continuing Studies Program, examined Florentine culture from the 19th century to the present.

A second program studied Old Master prints by such artists as Durer, Rembrandt, and Jacques Callot.

Israel in More Than One Dimension, an exhibition of photographs by Bard senior and Israel native Yishay Garbasz, was on view in the Campus Center throughout April.

“Religious Foundations of Western Civilizations,” a spring lecture series presented by the Institute of Advanced Theology, included such topics as “Defining ‘Religion’ and the ‘West’”; “The Modernization of Christianity: Renaissance and Reformation”; and “The Secularization of Culture: The Case of Music.”

Dion Ogust

The Bard community got a fascinating glimpse of Tibetan culture and heritage in March during a visit by Tibetan Buddhist monks from the Tashi Lhunpo monastery in India. The monks performed a sacred cham dance that featured music and healing chants, presented a demonstration of monastic debate, and took part in “Tibet: The Issues,” a panel discussion with Bard faculty.

MARCH Inventor and RPI math professor David Isaacson lectured on March 4—“Why and How Medical Imaging Systems Are Invented”—as part of the new Frontiers in Science Lecture Series.

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CCS Museum Mounts 16 Spring Exhibitions The Center for Curatorial Studies Museum was an artistic beehive this spring, filled with a wide variety of contemporary art in annual and special exhibitions, while additional CCS activities took place on campus and in New York.

The last exhibition of the spring semester was The Black Factory, a performance installation by William Pope.L consisting of a panel truck containing an interactive public environment—including a library, workshop, and gift shop—designed to reenergize discussions about race in the United States.

On May 4 Walter Hopps, founding director of the Menil Collection in Houston and a distinguished curator for more than 40 years, received the annual Award for Curatorial Excellence from the Center for Curatorial Studies during a gala benefit dinner in New York that supported student scholarships and the student exhibition program.

CCS continued its public “conversations” series with an informal discussion in New York on May 6 between Hopps and Nina Felshin, curator of exhibitions at the Zilkha Gallery at Wesleyan University. In April Nadine Robinson, an artist recognized for large-scale sculptures and monumental sound pieces, discussed her work on the Bard campus.

All spring the museum galleries were filled with the annual exhibitions curated by second-year master of arts students as part of their degree requirements. In March Pascal Spengemann curated Economies of Scale, small works about money; Ryan Rice presented Flock, works by five indigenous artists; Yasmil Raymond Ventura curated The Happy Worker, which addressed the difference between doing and making; and Elizabeth Zechella presented Between Above and Below, photographs and works in video.

In April Claire Barliant presented Astonishing Knowledge, in which artists adopted scientific data and reconstituted it as art. Mary Katherine Matalon curated ChanSchatz, which focused on the unconventional archive central to the work of collaborative artists Eric Chan and Heather Schatz. Master Blaster, curated by Stacey Allan, brought together five artists who used humor and noise.

Caroline Knebelsberger introduced The Past Recaptured, which examined the complex relationship among history, fiction, and personal narrative.

In May as yet unnamable, curated by Steven Matijcio, presented interactive artworks that explored the social impact of technology. Tairone Bastien curated Far Away So Close, in which six artists examined the relationship between desire and alienation in a fan’s relationship to pop culture icons.

Joanna Montoya presented Great White, works by three artists that used autobiography to investigate constructs of 42

whiteness. Usual, curated by Mayumi Hirano, addressed the poetics of the ordinary in works by five artists.

First-year students in the graduate program also presented their annual exhibitions, culled from works in the Marieluise Hessel Collection, on permanent loan to the Center. Assemblance focused on artists’ interest in the body.

If it’s not love, it’s the bomb surveyed works from the collection that used different media to address political and cultural traumas. s u s p e n d e d s t a t e explored how a viewer’s expectations may be held and manipulated. In conjunction with that exhibition, American Beauty was screened at Weis Cinema in the Bertelsmann Campus Center.

Vase as Key Design Element on View at BGC Eighteenth-century vases—as urns, knife boxes, inkwells, and perfume burners; as furnishing fabrics and carved paneling—are on exhibition at the Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design, and Culture. In about a hundred works, Vasemania—Neoclassical Form and Ornament: Selections from The Metropolitan Museum of Art explores the revival of classicism in the 18th century as exemplified by the vase motif. The exhibition goes well beyond the vase as functional vessel or garden ornament, to consider it as the central element of design in a variety of items. On view are objects in precious stones and elegant pieces of marquetry furniture, as well as ceramics and silver.

Vasemania, which runs through October 17, is the first exhibition resulting from a collaboration between the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Bard Graduate Center that offers BGC students the opportunity to curate an exhibition firsthand with objects from the Metropolitan’s collections. A full-color catalogue, distributed

by Yale University Press, accompanies the exhibition.

The BGC gallery is at 18 West 86 Street in Manhattan. For further information, call 212-501-3000, e-mail generalinfo@bgc.bard.edu, or visit www.bgc.bard.edu.

Image: Vase with Putti and a Medallion of Louis XVI, Sevres Manufactory (c. 1778). Gift of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, 1958. Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Update: Bard Prison Initiative The Bard Prison Initiative (BPI), founded by Max Kenner ’01 and officially launched in 2001, is currently operating college programs at Eastern New York Correctional Facility and Woodbourne Correctional Facility. Sixty incarcerated students are enrolled full-time in the program. BPI offers a liberal arts curriculum with a focus on the humanities (particularly social studies). Courses are taught by instructors from Bard College, City College of New York, Columbia University, New York University, and SUNY New Paltz.

In addition, each semester BPI trains 40 to 50 Bard students in providing precollege training to more than 150 inmates per week in five prisons in the surrounding region. The precollege programs include a creative writing workshop at Beacon Correctional Facility for Women, tutoring for inmates preparing for GED and Adult Basic Education (ABE) exams, and mentoring for Spanish-speaking inmates preparing for SABE (Spanish language high school equivalency) exams.

Kenner, who directs BPI, and Daniel Karpowitz (visiting assistant professor of political studies and Soros Justice Fellow, Open Society Institute) have informed the extended community about BPI through lectures, discussion groups, and screenings of documentaries.

Educational programs for inmates are known to result in lower recidivism rates. Nevertheless, by 1995, New York State programs (which were instituted in the wake of the 1971 uprisings at Attica Correctional Facility) had been phased out because of budget cuts. BPI is committed to offsetting the lack of educational opportunities for the incarcerated population.

Partial list of BPI college courses: English Composition Introduction to Media Studies Existentialism Rousseau: Critic/Visionary Introduction to American Studies Introduction to Sociology The Civil Rights Movement Comparative Mythology Making North American Identity: An Anthropological Perspective Making National Citizens: U.S. History, 1790–1820 Advanced Topics in Law and Literature Civics: An Introduction to the American Political System Introduction to American Popular Culture Critical Reasoning/Informal Logic The American Revolution Japan: From Feudal Isolation to Modern Democracy Introduction to Cultural Anthropology Claiming One’s Voice: An Introduction to Poetry

Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ was the subject of a talk

by Columbia professor James Shapiro in a lecture sponsored

by Bard’s Medieval Studies, Literature, and Human Rights Programs on March 4.

Hudson Pro Musica and Bard’s Music Program presented a chamber music concert on March 5 that featured bassoonist Elisabeth Romano, oboist Stephen Hammer, and pianist Sylvia Suzowsky.

Andrew Harvey, noted author and mystic, was a featured speaker at the first of a four-weekend seminar entitled “The Mystical Revolution.” The series, sponsored by Bard’s Institute of Advanced Theology and Miriam’s Well in Saugerties, New York, kicked off March 5–7 with “Return of the Mother.”

Renowned novelist and cultural critic Edmund White gave a reading from his latest novel, Fanny: A Fiction, on March 8 at the Bertelsmann Campus Center.

Seven Tibetan Buddhist monks from a monastery in south India gave a sacred cham performance at Bard Hall on March 10. The monks also took part in a panel discussion on Tibet.

“From the National to the Global and Back? The Role of the United Nations as a Supranational Institution” was the topic of the second annual Bard-Humboldt University (Berlin) student symposium on March 12 and 13.

The Theater Program presented In a Pig s Valise from March 12 to 15. Described as a “hard-boiled yarn with music,” the Eric Overmyer musical featured direction by Sam Helfrich, musical direction by James Bagwell, and a cast of Bard students.

The Colorado Quartet, artists in residence at Bard, performed a concert on March 14 that included works by George Tsontakis, Brahms, and Bartok.

Bard faculty members Bruce Chilton and Jacob Neusner joined Peter Feinman, director of the Institute of History, Archaeology, and Education of Purchase, New York, as participants in a Bard-sponsored symposium in Manhattan on March 14 entitled “The Death of Jesus and Anti-Semitism.”

Noted Chinese economist Edward K. Y. Chen discussed growth and sustainability in China in a March 16 address at the Olin Language Center.

Zlatko Anguelov, physician, professor, journalist, and author of Communism and the Remorse of an Innocent Victimizer, was the featured speaker in the March 17 program “Minders and Keepers: Intellectuals in Communist Bulgaria.”

Nikos Skalkottas was the subject of a centennial celebration concert on March 17 that featured the composer’s granddaughter, violinist Eva Lindal; cellist Robert Martin; and pianist Idith Meshulam.

43

BARD COLLEGE ATHLETICS AND RECREATION DEPARTMENT TEAM SCHEDULES, FALL 2004 MEN’S SOCCER Date

Day

Sept. 4 Sat. Sept. 8 Wed. Sept. 11 Sat. Sept. 14 Tues.

Sept. 18 Sat. Sept. 23 Thurs.

Sept. 26 Sun. Sept. 29 Wed. Oct. 2 Sat. Oct. 3 Sun. Oct. 7 Thurs.

Oct. 9 Sat. Oct. 16 Sat. Oct. 17 Sun. Oct. 23 Sat. Oct. 27 Wed. Oct. 30 Sat. Nov. 5 Fri. Nov. 7 Sun.

MEN AND WOMEN’S CROSS COUNTRY Opponent

Site

Time

City College of New York Mount Saint Mary College Elms College Southern Vermont College Becker College Keystone College + Polytechnic University John Jay College D’Youville College Cazenovia College Albany College of Pharmacy Johnson State College + Purchase College + Webb Institute # + Mount Saint Vincent College SUNY Institute of Technology + Pratt Institute HVMAC Championship Tournament HVMAC Championship Tournament

Away 12:00 p.m.

Home 4:00 p.m.

Home 3:00 p.m.

Home 4:00 p.m.

Away 3:30 p.m.

Away 4:00 p.m.

Away 3:00 p.m.

Home 4:30 p.m.

Away 1:00 p.m.

Away 3:00 p.m.

Home 4:30 p.m.

Home 3:00 p.m.

Home 3:00 p.m.

Home 2:00 p.m.

Home 3:00 p.m.

Away 3:30 p.m.

Home 2:00 p.m.

TBA TBA TBA TBA

WOMEN’S SOCCER Date

Day

Sept. 4 Sat. Sept. 7 Tues.

Sept. 11 Sat. Sept. 18 Sat. Sept. 24 Fri. Sept. 26 Sun. Sept. 30 Thurs.

Oct. 2 Sat. Oct. 3 Sun. Oct. 6 Wed. Oct. 9 Sat. Oct. 12 Tues.

44 Oct. 16 Sat. Oct. 21 Thurs.

Oct. 23 Sat. Oct. 24 Sun. Oct. 29 Fri. Oct. 30 Sat. Nov. 4 Thurs.

Nov. 6 Sat.

44

Date

Day

Opponent

Site

Time

Sept. 11 Sept. 18 Sept. 25 Oct. 2 Oct. 16 Oct. 23 Oct. 30

Sat. Sat. Sat. Sat. Sat. Sat. Sat.

Away 11:00 a.m.

Away TBA Home 12:00 p.m.

Away 11:00 a.m.

Away 11:00 a.m.

Away TBA

Nov. 6

Sat.

Vassar College Invitational Castleton State College Invitational Bard College Invitational Stevens Institute of Technology Southern Vermont College Invitational Union College Invitational Hudson Valley Men’s and Women’s Athletic Conference Championships Eastern College Athletic Conference Championships

Home 12:00 p.m.

Away

TBA

WOMEN’S TENNIS

Opponent

Site

Keuka College Albany College of Pharmacy Elms College + Mount Saint Vincent College Southern Vermont College Polytechnic University St. Joseph’s College (CT) D’Youville College Cazenovia College Mount Saint Mary College Pratt Institute + City College of New York + Purchase College New Jersey City University # Keystone College Bay Path College + Medgar Evers College + College of Saint Elizabeth’s HVWAC Championship Tournament HVWAC Championship Tournament

Home Away Home Home Away Away Home Away Away Away Home Away Home Home Home Away Away Away TBA TBA

Time

3:00 p.m.

4:30 p.m.

1:00 p.m.

1:00 p.m.

4:00 p.m.

1:00 p.m.

4:00 p.m.

1:00 p.m.

1:00 p.m.

7:00 p.m.

1:00 p.m.

4:00 p.m.

1:00 p.m.

3:00 p.m.

1:00 p.m.

1:00 p.m.

7:00 p.m.

1:00 p.m.

TBA TBA

Date

Day

Opponent

Site

Sept. 11 Sept. 12 Sept. 16 Sept. 17 Sept. 19 Sept. 24 Sept. 26 Sept. 29 Oct. 1 Oct. 3 Oct. 6 Oct. 14 Oct. 16 Oct. 17 Oct. 22 Oct. 23 Oct. 30

Sat. Sun. Thurs.

Fri. Sun. Fri. Sun. Wed. Fri. Sun. Wed. Thurs.

Sat. Sun. Fri. Sat. Sat.

Becker College Manhattanville College St. Joseph’s College (CT) Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts + Polytechnic University + St. Joseph’s College (Brooklyn) Keystone College Russell Sage College + Mount Saint Vincent College + Pratt Institute Mount Saint Mary College + Purchase College + College of Saint Elizabeth’s + Sarah Lawrence College Bay Path College + College of New Rochelle HVWAC Championship Tournament

Home 1:00 p.m.

Away 1:00 p.m.

Home 6:00 p.m.

Home 6:00 p.m.

Away 2:00 p.m.

Home 5:00 p.m.

Away 1:00 p.m.

Away 3:30 p.m.

Home 6:00 p.m.

Home 1:00 p.m.

Away 6:00 p.m.

Away 6:00 p.m.

Home 442:00 p.m.

Away 1:00 p.m.

Home 5:00 p.m.

Home 2:00 p.m.

TBA TBA

+ HVAC Conference Match # Family Weekend

Time

WOMEN’S VOLLEYBALL Date

Day

Sept. 4

Sat.

Sept. 11 Sept. 14 Sept. 17 Sept. 18 Sept. 22 Sept. 25 Sept. 30 Oct. 2 Oct. 5 Oct. 9

Oct. 16 Oct. 23 Oct. 27 Oct. 30 Nov. 6

Opponent

At Becker College with Southern Vermont College Sat. Bay Path College with Medgar Evers College Tues. Mount Saint Mary College Fri. Boston Baptist College Sat. + Mount Saint Vincent College Wed. Russell Sage College Sat. Cazenovia College Thurs. St. Joseph’s College (CT ) Sat. + Sarah Lawrence College with + College of New Rochelle Tues. Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts Sat. At + Purchase College with + Polytechnic University and + Medgar Evers College Sat. + St. Joseph’s College (Brooklyn) with SUNY Institute of Technology Sat. At + Pratt Institute with + Polytechnic University Wed. + Marymount College Sat. + College of Saint Elizabeth’s Sat. HVWAC Championships

Site

Away

Time

12:00 p.m.

Home 1:00 p.m.

Away 7:00 p.m.

Home 6:00 p.m.

Away 1:00 p.m.

Away 7:00 p.m.

Away 12:00 p.m.

Away 7:00 p.m.

Home Away

1:00 p.m.

7:00 p.m.

Away

12:00 p.m.

Home

1:00 p.m.

Away Home Away TBA

1:00 p.m.

7:00 p.m.

1:00 p.m.

TBA

Poets John Ashbery, Mark McMorris, and Lorenzo Thomas read from recent works as part of the John Ashbery Poetry Series. The Ashbery and McMorris reading was on March 4, while Thomas addressed a Bertelsmann Campus Center audience on March 18.

Jack Blum ’62, an expert on international criminal law who has served as special counsel to the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, spoke about international crime on March 18 at Bard Hall in Manhattan.

The Osagyefo Theatre Company of Ghana, in residence at the College from March 17 to 20, performed a series of contemporary and traditional African dances and the play Verdict of the Cobra by Mohammed Ben Abdallah.

John Shelby Spong, former Episcopal Bishop of New Jersey and author of Living in Sin? A Bishop Rethinks Human Sexuality and A New Christianity for a New World, discussed religion, sexuality, and church crisis in a March 23 program sponsored by the God and Sexuality Conference at Bard.

Prize-winning author Jonathan Schell from the Nation and Vanity Fair columnist Christopher Hitchens were among the nearly two dozen speakers at a two-day conference, “One Year Later: Critically Thinking Global Resistance,” presented by Bard at Columbia University on March 27–28.

FEBRUARY Monique Truong, recipient of the Bard FictionPrize, read from her work on February 4 in the Weis Cinema at the Bertelsmann Campus Center.

A New League of Their Own: Bard Joins NEAC The Bard Raptors have a new logo and a new conference. Bard has become a charter member of the NCAA–recognized North Eastern Athletic Conference (NEAC), which comprises 12 Division III colleges from New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland. Bard will phase out of the Hudson Valley Men’s and Women’s Athletic Conferences and compete under NEAC as of the 2005–2006 academic year.

“Advantages for Bard’s student athletes drove our making this change,” says Kristen Hall, Bard’s director of athletics and recreation. “It’s an upgrade in acknowledging athletics at Bard.

We met with our athletes, coaches, and upper administration.

This was a College-wide decision.”

As Bard’s athletic sphere broadens, its pool of athletes will have to change accordingly. “We’ll be competing with schools that have a longer, deeper tradition in athletics,” explains Hall.

“Our goal is to increase the number of athletes coming to Bard.

This doesn’t mean increasing total enrollment. It means making a refined effort to identify committed, appropriate, student athletes. NEAC will make us more attractive to them.”

A February 8 recital by pianist Melvin Chen, whose playing the New York Times calls “powerful and driven,” featured works by Chopin, Debussy, Gottschalk, Mozart, and Ravel, among others.

Leon Botstein and the American Symphony Orchestra presented “Reading Between the Notes: Beethoven, Romanticism, and Politics,” a February 16 discussion and illustration of the social, political, and musical contexts of the symphony Eroica. The program was part of the weekly FirstYear Seminar series “Revolution and the Limits of Reason.”

Bard in China hosted a public forum on February 19 to discuss the crisis in North Korea. Leading scholars and diplomats explored the history of the current crisis, the views of North Korea’s regional neighbors, and the changing relationships among the leading parties: South Korea, Russia, China, Japan, and the United States.

The internationally renowned Bread and Puppet Theater, one of the oldest self-supporting theater companies in the United States, performed Imminent Attack at Bard on February 24.

45

CLASS NOTES

Reunion Weekend 2004 Late May in Annandale, and more than three hundred alumni/ae and their spouses, partners, friends, and children gathered at Bard for Reunion Weekend 2004. They came from as far away as London and Hong Kong to renew old friendships and catch up with the Bard of today. The annual dinner, dance, and fireworks on the Blithewood main lawn drew a record 1,200 partygoers, including faculty and graduating seniors and their families, even as a smaller reunion group (Classes of 1939 through 1954) dined in the Olin Atrium, and the Classes of 1964 and 1969 held their party at Ward Manor.

Helaine Kushner, 1953

Cynthia Maris Dantzic, 1954

Photographs this page: Sarah Blodgett

Back at Bard for Reunion 2004: (left to right) Richard Koch ‘40, Arnold Davis ‘44, David Schwab ‘52, Seena Davis, Wayne Horvitz ‘42, and Richard Price ‘44

46

Class of 1964, 40th Reunion

Photographs this page: Karl Rabe

Class of 1969, 35th Reunion 47

’35 70th Reunion: May 20–22, 2005 Contact: Stella Wayne, 845-758-7407 or wayne@bard.edu

’40 65th Reunion: May 20–22, 2005 Contact: Stella Wayne, 845-758-7407 or wayne@bard.edu

’44 Richard Price writes that things are slowing down, but still picking up. In the summer of 2003, at age 82, he climbed Mount Washington. At age 75, he paddled a kayak around Cape Horn, Chile. He also races iceboats in the winter.

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

’47 Kit Ellenbogen ’52 After a successful career as a high school guidance counselor, Kit Ellenbogen started law school at the tender age of 54, the “token grandmother” in her class at Rutgers, she quips. In most of her classes she was the oldest person in the room, but Ellenbogen says she never felt self-conscious. She balanced course work with a full-time job and the care of her elderly mother. “Sheer perseverance and determination saw me through,” she says. “Those are the qualities I find most useful.”

Upon graduation, her two grown sons threw her a well-deserved party.

Ellenbogen is now a staff attorney for the nonprofit Association for the Children of New Jersey, helping parents ensure that New Jersey’s school districts meet their children’s needs. Most of her clients are immigrants, a circumstance she understands firsthand, having escaped from Europe with her parents just as Hitler was taking over Czechoslovakia. “I know from experience that there’s a lot of injustice in the world,” she says. “Working with immigrant parents really hits home for me. I delight in telling them what their rights are.”

Another source of delight for Ellenbogen is that her grandson, Monroe, will attend the College this coming fall as a third-generation Bardian, following in the footsteps of his uncle Anthony Ellenbogen ’82 and his aunt Kristina Ellenbogen (Mickelson) ’83.

Photograph: Doug Baz

48

Walter Liggett is self-employed as a painter, poet, and compiler of poetry anthologies, including Facets from a Crystal, Volume One (2003). He is also the self-appointed haiku master of Berkeley. One of his more recent haiku: November nineteenth, red leaves, Japanese maple.

Branches twist skyward.

Mark Stroock writes that he is still working as a consultant for Young & Rubicam, Inc., but that he mostly enjoys spending time with his children, grandchildren, and greatgrandchildren.

’48 Susan Lowenstein-Kitchell (Wender) is codirector of the Abortion Rights Fund of Western Massachusetts.

’50 55th Reunion: May 20–22, 2005 Contact: Stella Wayne, 845-758-7407 or wayne@bard.edu Mary Gelb Park sends word that she recently had a successful show of her paintings in Portland, Oregon. She writes, “I sold seven, which I consider a minor triumph!”

’53 Bastiaan Kooiman is enjoying retirement. He travels a fair amount and otherwise keeps busy by volunteering at an area homeless shelter and in church. He writes that he visited Bard four years ago in the summer and found much changed since 1953.

Roger Phillips’s Concept to Construct sculpture exhibition was on view at Weber Fine Art in Chatham, New York, from December 6, 2003, to January 31, 2004. He gave a special gallery talk on January 17.

’54 McAlister Coleman was awarded professor emeritus status

by Endicott College at a convocation September 4, 2003. He used the opportunity to introduce new students to two of his sculptures on campus: a granite carving, A Taoist Landscape, and a welded steel piece, X, The Unknown is Not Nothing. He had retired four years earlier after teaching in the Art and Design Division for 30 years.

Heywood Zeidman is a psychiatrist in San Diego. His group, Psychiatric Centers at San Diego, employs 35 psychiatrists, as well as psychologists, social workers, and therapists. One of his daughters, who has a Ph.D., works with his group, while another daughter works as an industrial psychologist helping corporations attract and motivate management employees. As of December 2003, his son was in the process of applying to college.

’64 Stuart L. Posner, M.D.’s rheumatology practice continues at a busy pace. Photography and travel, along with family (two grandchildren so far!), occupy his leisure time.

Dr. Gregory Tucker is semiretired from his clinical practice.

He is writing a book and working on psychotherapeutic techniques based on Buddhist concepts.

’65

’55

Roderick Townley’s new novel for young adults, Sky, will be released this summer. The third novel in his Sylvie Cycle, The Constellation of Sylvie (Simon & Schuster), will be out in 2005. The Sylvie books have been optioned by Utopia Films.

50th Reunion: May 20–22, 2005 Contact: Jessica Kemm, 845-758-7406 or kemm@bard.edu

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

’59 Joint reunion celebration with the Classes of 1960 and 1961: May 20–22, 2005 Contact: Stella Wayne, 845-758-7407 or wayne@bard.edu

Bibi Wein received the 2002–2003 Tupelo Press Editor’s Award for Prose for her first work of creative nonfiction, The Way Home. The book will be published by Tupelo this fall.

’60

’66

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

Esther Wanning received an M.S. in counseling psychology from Dominican University in 2002 and is now a psychotherapy intern at a low-fee agency in Marin County, California.

After many years as a writer, she is very pleased with her new career and spends her spare time working toward single-payer health care, particularly CA Senate Bill 921.

’61 Joint reunion celebration with the Classes of 1959 and 1960: May 20–22, 2005 Contact: Stella Wayne, 845-758-7407 or wayne@bard.edu

’68 ’63 Richard Perry, who received his master of arts from Teacher’s College, Columbia University following his years at Bard, has retired from the Corning–Painted Post Area School District after 36 years of teaching vocal music. He remains as choir director at the First Congregational– United Church of Christ in Corning, New York, where he lives, and continues to teach chorus, voice, recorder, and jazz at institutes throughout the United States and Canada.

His service to education has earned him the honor of Paul Harris Fellow, given by the Rotary Foundation of Rotary International. He is the father of three grown sons—James of Cincinnati; David of Corning; and Thomas of Charlotte, North Carolina—and grandfather of five.

Joan Wishkoff reports that her car was rear-ended on I-95 last November, and she sustained a broken back. She is mobile now and doing well in physical therapy. She wore a seat belt and reminds all to do the same. She moved out of her cabin on the banks of the Delaware River and bought a condominium in a high-rise in Wilmington, Delaware, where she enjoys her view of the city, especially at night.

Her youngest son, Ari, 25, is an assistant producer with Richard Frankel on Broadway.

49

apples, rural Bard—a place that definitely wasn’t Scarsdale— and my first sight of the beatniks studying there. Soon enough I was taking the train to New York, to hang out with the beats in the Village. I went to the University of Arizona for a semester and then came back to New York to go to the New School, where I studied with Justus Rosenberg, who was also teaching at Bard. He encouraged me to apply to Bard, giving me my first ideas of Bard excellence and freedom.

Later there was my tutor, Murray Reich [assistant professor of art], and Jim Sullivan [assistant professor of art], who made pictures with glee, and Wyn Chamberlain with his film, Brand X, parties, and happenings in his classes. Dylan was singing “The pump don’t work ’cause the vandals took the handles” about the pump at the triangle across from Adolph’s. “Sgt. Pepper” poured out of windows on campus, and I loved my freedom living off campus in Schuyler House.

Yesterday . . .

Bard in the 1960s

By Howard Dratch ’68 and Patricia Beringer ’68 Patricia Beringer entered Bard in 1965; Howard Dratch in 1966. She went on to art school in London, he to law school at Cornell. They married in 1969 and settled in the mid Hudson Valley until 1998. Then, having developed congestive heart failure, Dratch bought a big red Bronco and drove them both to Mexico, to the shore of Laguna Bacalar, “the hemisphere’s prettiest swimming hole.”

After receiving the Fall 2003 Bardian, with its call for remembrances of Bard, Beringer and Dratch settled down for a chat with an imaginary student from the Class of 2008.

Student ’08 How did you feel when you first encountered Bard? Was it a lot different then? The ’60s are only history for me . . . wow! Almost 40 years ago.

Patricia I first saw Bard when I was 8. My father had attended the College in the 1930s, and in the fall he liked to go back to the old school. I remember the heady taste of 50

Howard My first view of Bard was at Grand Central Station, where Bruce Blowitz [’71] was in antipreppy, anti–Chicago Latin School regalia asking, “Hey man, is this the Bard Train?” I was culture shocked as we left the station, and Bard’s 19th-century majesty and mystery finished me off.

Happily, my first new Bard idea came from my tutor, Bob Koblitz [professor of government], who listened to my tale of terror—that everyone else spoke an academic language with references to Hobbes and Locke, Latin phrases, and verbal footnotes—and taught me to sift through the verbiage, find the information, distill my own thoughts, and believe that I could join this exclusive world that I hadn’t known before.

Student ’08 Do you think of anyone special from your days at Bard?

Howard Girls. Timothy Leary speaking behind Stone Row. Old friends. Regrets of friendships not made. Peter Sourian [professor of English], with whom I still wish I had studied.

Patricia & Howard Ken Grimwood [’69] and Lonnie Younge [’67]. The Fall 2003 Bardian came with the news that Ken had died at 59. Lonnie died in 1998. Both deaths surprised us.

Howard Patricia and I met in 1966 in the dining commons. But not until a famous three-day party at Lonnie’s did we “lock eyes” and begin to go out. Late at night, Ken and Pat and I would turn Blithewood into an antebellum plantation for impromptu plays bathed in the scent of the garden. We heard the Clermont sound her whistle as she steamed up the Hudson.

Student ’08 What do you remember of Bard in the different seasons?

Patricia Apple smells and River Road, the changing colors of the trees and getting my Senior Project ready, lost in my little, private Proctor studio, painting until I couldn’t see, then dancing at Adolph’s until late. Young men not named Howard. My brass bed at Schuyler House and the old garden there. Blithewood garden in spring bloom.

Howard My first sight of real snow. Steve Miller [’70] getting me to slide down the hill in front of our North Hoffman rooms on a dining commons tray. Winter Field Periods working for law firms in Chicago and New York.

The Blithewood garden in 1969 when David Pierce, then an Episcopal priest, later friend and editor, married us as the bees danced by the fountain in the pool. David had long blond hair and blue eyes and he ad-libbed a marriage ceremony to suit our ’60s lives and the mention that I made on the way to the garden that I happened to be Jewish.

Student ’08 What do you remember of Commencement?

Pat & Howard Finishing Senior Projects and papers, thinking about Life and grad schools. Heinz Bertelsmann yelling at us for refusing to come to Baccalaureate, but God was in a blue sky that day, and neither of us would get off the grass to sit inside and miss a drop of sky.

Patricia My grandmother hired a limo and driver to come up from Park Avenue. She was proud of me. It was sweet because she died the next year.

Student ’08 And what about leaving Bard?

Patricia I hated to leave. Graduate art school in London didn’t come close to the education and freedom I had at Bard. I came back and we were married and lived in Germantown, Barrytown, and Saugerties. Bard was always part of our lives. Movies, lectures, friends, music . . .

Howard In 1982 I began to freelance for Bard as a photographer. We knew people in many Bard classes and at many reunions. We had a lot of faculty friends, whom I miss, including David Pierce, gone now too. Working on the Hudson Valley Regional Review with Dick Wiles [professor emeritus of economics]. Shooting the art faculty for the new Avery M.F.A. program. What is not a memory is Bard, still a voice of reason, for freedom and human rights.

’69 Peter Minichiello has been appointed director of development of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. The BSO recruited Peter, whose career has included time in the corporate publishing world as well as development positions at AmFar, The Lighthouse, and WNYC public radio in New York City. After years of fund-raising, he says he’s learned to never take any gift for granted. “Small donations are as important as anything else,” he says. Regarding the fundraising climate in these difficult economic times, he is matter-of-fact: “You simply keep soliciting. You never stop.”

’70 35th Reunion: May 20–22, 2005 Contact: Jessica Kemm, 845-758-7406 or kemm@bard.edu George Brewster left his position as president of JVA Properties to start Kiwi Properties, LLC, a real estate investment and development firm specializing in New Zealand properties.

Steve Levy, who received his V.M.D from the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine in 1977, practiced for two years as an associate veterinarian in Guilford, Connecticut, before purchasing the Durham Veterinary Hospital in Durham, Connecticut, in 1979. His practice is limited to dogs and cats and he has developed a strong specialty in Lyme disease and tick biology. Since 1986, when he diagnosed the first case of canine cardiac Lyme disease, Steve has accumulated the majority of primary authorships on clinical Lyme disease in dogs. In addition to his clinical and research activities, he presents continuing education on ticks and tick-borne diseases throughout the United States and internationally. Steve has also been chief of the Durham Volunteer Fire Company for 10 years. He is married to Diane (Seltzer) Levy. They have one daughter, Hilary, and a grandson, Jacob Eric Beler.

Mark Zuckerman has been awarded a New Jersey State Council on the Arts (NJSCA) fellowship for 2004, one of only two given to New Jersey composers. The NJSCA granted fellowships, based solely on artistic excellence, to 26 New Jersey artists out of a pool of 303 applicants in five disciplines.

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’71

’74

Seth Kammerer writes that his wife, Hatsue, died in Tokyo on December 6, 2003. Seth, their son, her sister, and two close family friends were with her at her bedside. Her wake was held on December 12, and a formal service on December 13. She was interred at her family’s formal burial site in her hometown of Chiba, Japan.

Mardi-Ellen Hill has launched her own multimedia company.

’73 Natalie Kaye is very happy living a “bicoastal” life in Woodstock, New York, and New York City. She is the director of marketing services at the magazine Organic Style.

Leslie Phillips is a partner in Burke/Phillips Design (www.burkephillips.com) and founder of the Robert Phillips –Youman Memorial Foundation (www.robertphillipsyouman.org), in memory of her late son, Robbie. The Foundation is an outreach group that serves severely mentally ill and suicidal young people. Leslie is happy to report that her daughter, Courtney, 21, loves the University of Washington, where she is studying geography and sustainable economics in third world countries, and that her son Seth, 11, continues to play Little League and dreams of becoming a Mariner. Leslie encourages any Bardians who find themselves in the Seattle area to look her up.

Jeannie Motherwell exhibits at the Lyman-Eyer Gallery (http://www.lymaneyerart.com) in Provincetown, Massachusetts, where she has summered most of her life.

She exhibited her recent work in June; new work will be on view this fall. Jeannie is a full-time employee at Boston University for the Arts Administration Graduate Program.

She has been appointed to the Cambridge Arts Council’s Public Art Commission advisory committee, a nine-member board that reflects the cultural, ethnic, and geographic makeup of Cambridge, Massachusetts. You can contact Jeannie at Jmotharts@aol.com.

Caroline Muir shares her loft space in an artists’ cooperative with her sweetie, Steve, and her cat, Mercury. Her efforts to master HTML have paid off: a Google search for “Caroline Muir” now easily returns her site.

Brother Francis E. Revels-Bey encourages fellow Bardians to check out his two websites: www.circleofgrace1.com and circleofgrace1.byregion.net.

Pete Mauney ’93, MFA ’99

Class of 1974, 30th Reunion 52

’75 30th Reunion: May 20–22, 2005 Contact: Jessica Kemm, 845-758-7406 or kemm@bard.edu Roberta Maria Baldini has been appointed to the Office of the Prosecutor at the UN International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in Arusha, Tanzania. The UN Security Council established the ad hoc ICTR to prosecute those most responsible for the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

Robert “Ron” Wilson retired as assistant executive vice chancellor emeritus after 27 years with the University of California, Irvine. He was the first administrator to retire with this honor. This past December 9 marked the first anniversary of his heart transplant. Ron and his wife, Carol, are looking forward to their 29th anniversary in August and have been spending time traveling and visiting with friends and family. Their three children (Jascha, Shanta, and Alina) are all happy and healthy.

Ron Wilson and Bard friends from all over (left to right): Jackie Nieves ’77 of Jamesburg, New Jersey; Dawn deLeongh (Toppin) ’76 of Alexandria, Virginia; Wilson; Marlene Rubain ’76 of Oakland; Anita Rodriguez ’77 of Riverdale, New York; and (center) Pat Rock ’78 of Brooklyn.

’76 Steven Haber lives with his wife, Xiaolan, and their two children, Jonathan, 12, and Maya Lin, 9, in New Jersey. He teaches English at New Jersey City University in Jersey City and writes that he would love to hear from fellow Bardians.

Richard Frank ’74 The high cost of health care in the United States is a concern for many. For Richard Frank, it’s a passion. “The connection between economics and health is direct,” he says.

“One of every seven dollars in the United States is spent on health care. That’s 15 percent of our economy.”

Frank, who majored in economics at Bard, is the Margaret T. Morris Professor of Health Economics in the Department of Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School. He found his calling as a graduate student research assistant at Boston University (where he earned a Ph.D. in economics), studying the effect of the expansion of health insurance to cover mental illness. “I thought it was extraordinarily cool,” he recalls. “I was interested in understanding how markets intersect with policy.”

In 1993 Frank got a firsthand look at health care policy when he served on President Clinton’s Task Force on National Health Care Reform—“an amazing experience,” he says. “I worked on mental health issues in the reform plan with Mrs. Gore. For six months I worked literally round the clock.” Disappointed by the task force’s outcome, he nevertheless says, “I wouldn’t have traded my involvement in it for the world.”

Last fall Frank wrapped up the first portion of a major study looking at the impact of direct-to-consumer advertising on the prescription drug industry. The study combines two of his favorite pastimes, he quips: “health economics and watching television.” Papers about the study have been published in the New England Journal of Medicine and by the National Bureau of Economic Research, where Frank is a research associate. Frank was also seeking a publisher for a book he has written about the state of mental health care in the United States. Tentative title: Better but Not Well.

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’78 Kathleen C. Reardon has been named counsel at the international law firm of Bryan Cave LLP. She joined the firm’s St. Louis office in 1998 and is a member of the Health Care Client Service Group.

’79 Tom Carpenter Hunter reports from Iowa City that he is still a meat eater and has, in fact, become a modest grill master. He earned a master of arts in teaching in 1991 and a master of fine arts in creative nonfiction in 2003, both from the University of Iowa. Tom and his wife, Annie, have three nonhuman children: Sunny, a yellow lab; and the Larrys, big and little, two feline brothers.

Gretchen Fierle ’78 As executive director of the Research Center for Stroke and Heart Disease at the Jacobs Neurological Insititute in Buffalo, Gretchen Fierle heads a team that designs and implements projects to change behaviors relating to health.

Fierle’s team covers an eight-county area of western New York that has the highest rates of stroke and heart disease in the country. “Our work is not clinically based,” she says. “We design broad-based interventions in an effort to promote behavior changes that will prevent these diseases.”

One such intervention involved working with church congregations in a physical activity program; another is an effort to bring healthier foods to public schools, to put the next generation on the road to good health.

Fierle, who majored in psychology at Bard, also invests her time in community issues, particularly those focused on women and girls. She serves on the national board of the National Women’s Hall of Fame, an organization she holds in high esteem. “The people most likely to be poor in our country are women,” she says. “They need not only opportunity, but also role models. Women who have overcome extraordinary obstacles can be found at the Hall of Fame, as inspiration.” Targeting youth, Fierle wants to see the organization work with more school curricula and offer its website as a learning tool in schools.

Fierle sums up her interest: “Not too long ago, women had no rights. Today we’re leveling the playing field, but we need to bring up the next generation in an inspired way.”

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Madeline Wilson teaches photography and graphic design at the Masters School in Dobbs Ferry, New York. She kayaks the Hudson River during the summer and skis in the winter. Her girls are getting big, ages 13 and 16, respectively.

“It’s all good,” she writes.

Ed Winter is on the faculty of Thomas Jefferson Medical School in Philadelphia, where he teaches and does research. He is married to Jeannette Dumas and they have a 2-year-old son, Theo. He can be reached at winter@lac.jci.tju.edu.

’80 25th Reunion: May 20–22, 2005 Contact: Stella Wayne, 845-758-7406 or wayne@bard.edu Aliza Driller is the mother of two awesome kids as well as an art teacher and the department chairperson for K-12 in the Highland (New York) Central School District. She is also still making “art things.”

Stephanie Leighton works as a portfolio manager for a Bostonbased, socially responsible investment management firm called Trillium Asset Management. In December 2003 she wrote, “I am looking forward to marrying my partner of 15 years, due to the recent gay marriage ruling in Massachusetts!”

Samuel D. Marshall, Ph.D., assistant professor of biology and director of the J. H. Barrow Field Station at Hiram College in Ohio, was the subject of an article entitled “Stalking Spiders” in the February 2004 issue of Discover magazine. The article, an offshoot of the book The Tarantula Scientist by Sy Montgomery (Houghton Mifflin, spring 2004), details

Sam’s career as one of only a dozen arachnologists worldwide specializing in tarantulas. The article may be viewed online at http://www.discover.com/issues/feb-04/ features/stalking-spiders/. Sam notes that his career in tarantula research started with his Senior Project at Bard.

’81 Stacy Presha’s play, Elaina Vance’s Last Dance, was produced at Theater for the New City in Manhattan, April 2–25.

the state legislature. The series can still be viewed at: http://www.daytondailynews.com/project/content/project/ mrdd/mrdd_index.html (free registration is required).

Steven Colatrella is an assistant professor of sociology at Mount Mercy College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and the 2003–2004 president of the Iowa Sociological Association.

Lisa R. Jaccoma is vice president of public affairs at Mystic Aquarium’s Institute for Exploration in Mystic, Connecticut.

’82 Steve Bennish, assistant regional editor at the Dayton (Ohio) Daily News, is pleased to report that in January 2004, Ohio Governor Bob Taft signed a landmark bill reforming the ways in which the state handles crimes against the developmentally disabled and retarded. The bill, authored largely by a blue-ribbon panel of police, prosecutors, and judges, follows the Dayton Daily News’s series “Deadly Consequences,” written by Bennish and reporter Tom Beyerlein, which detailed deaths due to abuse and neglect.

The signing of the bill echoed overwhelming support by

’83 Jan Altshool, after moving into a 1910 Craftsman five years ago with her partner Deb, has pledged to find time to put pictures on the walls. They were honored to accept the British Columbia Human Rights Commission Award on Human Rights Day 2003, on behalf of the Lesbian and Gay Immigration Task Force for their work with lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, and transgendered people in cross-border relationships.

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Class of 1979, 25th Reunion 55

’84 Karen Lehmann and her husband, Dennis, are completely smitten with their daughter, Amelia Louise, born March 14, 2003. While the days fly by in one big “Mommy swirl,” she steals time for poetry and continues to mentor other writers, while simultaneously completing her training as a Montessori teacher. The family, including four dogs, lives in Denver.

Leonard Schwartz was appointed professor of creative writing at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, last fall. Talisman House published his new collection of poems, The Tower of Diverse Shores, in November 2003.

Leonard hosts his own radio program, Cross-Cultural Poetics, on KAOS, 89.3, in Olympia. In January, he was an invited reader at the WordFeast Poetry Festival in Singapore.

Lisa Vasey (Jurkowski) earned an M.B.A. degree in nonprofit management after 10 years in the music industry.

She is now the program manager of artistic operations for the Henry Mancini Institute in Los Angeles, where she manages a four-week summer education program and produces a free concert series.

’85 20th Reunion: May 20–22, 2005 Contact: Stella Wayne, 845-758-7406 or wayne@bard.edu Lisa Uchrin (Ferguson) is the mayor of her tiny borough in New Jersey. She won the Democratic nomination by one vote and went on to unseat a 30-year incumbent.

’88 Laura Giletti married John Meany in 1999, after a courtship of more than seven years. In 2003 they moved to Sydney, Australia, where they are exploring life in the land “down under.”

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Class of 1984, 20th Reunion 56

Sheryl Korsnes is helping to develop the endoscopy research program at the University of Michigan Medical School. She is an investigator on a clinical project that involves the use of optical coherence tomography in ulcerative colitis surveillance. She is also investigating the use of capsule endoscopy in the detection of sources of small bowel bleeding. She writes that she is happy with what she is doing, and sends greetings to her professors and classmates.

Allison Radzin and her husband, Mark, welcomed their daughter, Wyatt C. F. Radzin, into the world on October 29, 2003, in Greenwich, Connecticut.

’89 Dominick Reisen curated the exhibition Freemasonry in Cooperstown, which runs from June 21 to September 19 at the Smithy Pioneer Gallery in Cooperstown, New York. He is also president of the Otsego County Historical Association.

Julia Williams (Todd) is the director of the nursing program for the Brattleboro campus of Vermont Technical College.

’90 15th Reunion: May 20–22, 2005 Contact: Stella Wayne, 845-758-7406 or wayne@bard.edu Thomas Crofts lives with his wife, Molly, and sons, Rex and August, in Norman, Oklahoma, where he is an assistant professor of medieval English literature at the University of Oklahoma.

Marcos Morales and his wife, Nancy, had their first child, Marcos Antonio II, on October 30, 2003. In December Marcos reported, “Mom and baby doing great, and dad is wonderfully tired.” The family lives in Yonkers, New York.

’91 Chad Kleitsch participated in the inaugural exhibition of the Haddad Lascano Gallery (cofounded by Carrie Haddad ’95) in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, last March 27.

Elizabeth Reiss ’87 After years of working in New York City museums, Elizabeth Reiss left Gotham in 2001 for Pittsburgh and the helm of a major annual arts festival.

As director of the Three Rivers Arts Festival, Reiss raises funds and selects artists for the 45-year-old festival, which runs for 17 days each June, featuring music, visual arts, crafts, and dance performances. “I like institutional planning, and thinking in advance to make things happen,” she says. “I’m not a ‘detail’ person, but I love thinking about how it all comes together.”

Challenges include the current economy, which makes fund-raising difficult. Further, an annual event is “weird,” says Reiss. “You think you have all the time in the world, and then it’s like a freight train coming at you— everything happens at once.”

The freight train does bring its rewards. “I remember the opening night concert of my first real year on the job.

The Indigo Girls were playing to an audience of fifteen thousand. I attended the event with my staff, and one of them turned to me and said, ‘You did this.’ It was a tremendous feeling. Through all my work in museums over the years I’ve probably had an impact on a lot of people, but the impact of this festival is just palpable.”

’92 Christina Hajagos-Clausen and Jakob Clausen still live in New York City, where they are learning how to balance work, school, and parenthood. Their son, Andreas, is now an active and curious 2-year-old. Jakob has earned a master’s degree at Teachers College, Columbia University, and continues to teach ESL at a New York City public high school.

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Christina, director of organizing at a local union, is finishing up a master’s degree in labor relations from the University of Massachusetts.

Heather Klinkhamer earned an M.S. degree in education from St. John’s University in 2003, as part of the New York City Teaching Fellows program, Her oil painting, Turquoise Nun, was selected for inclusion in Touchstone Gallery’s sixth annual All Media Exhibition, which ran from February 11, 2003, to March 7, 2004, in Washington, D. C. Margaret Sova McCabe and her husband, Tom, added another son to their family. Hank was born on February 2, 2004, joining big brother Tommie, who is 3. Margaret enjoys teaching at Pierce Law in Concord, New Hampshire.

She continues to practice law on a limited basis, working mostly on contracting projects.

Andrew Joffe ’82 Playwright Terrence McNally has noted that in opera, the music is everything and a “good libretto, or a bad one, is everything else.” Andrew Joffe, who penned the libretto for The Song of Eddie, an opera in two acts that premiered in July at The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts, would probably agree, but he’d add a kicker: “It’s true that a good libretto never saved a bad opera, but a bad libretto has sunk many a good one.”

Joffe, who has staged more than 40 productions as the artistic director of the American Chamber Opera Company, has written the libretti for two chamber operas, Faust Triumphant and Medea in Exile; a two-act opera based on the Joris-Karl Huysmans novel A Rebours; and Beast and Superbeast, an operatic trilogy inspired by Saki’s short stories. As a librettist, Joffe describes his collaborative modus operandi as “anything that gives you a good piece,” but he prefers give-and-take with the composer. “I’ve been lucky, in that the composers I’ve worked with value the input,” he says, adding that he knows of many who “beat up on the librettist.”

The chemistry of interacting with a composer and creating something that is somehow magically other than either the music or the text is what Joffe finds most stimulating. “The most amazing alchemical transformations happen, because your libretto is essentially incomplete [without the music],” he says of the process. “Things come up that you would never have foreseen.”

Photograph: Tania Barricklo

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Katya McElfresh received a master’s degree in social work from Hunter College in 2001. At Hunter, she was awarded the Helena Rubinstein Foundation Award for academically outstanding women in social work and the Reva Fine Holtzman Award for her work with families. She is a social worker at the Family Reception Center, where she works with children at risk for placement in foster care. She writes that she loves her life and work in Brooklyn, where she frequently babysits for Keelan Durham, the perfect child of Jon Durham ’93 and Margaret Loftus ’92.

Bryony Renner attends law school at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia. Her full-length play, Can’t Make Me, was selected for the 2003 FringeACT Festival of New Original Work in Seattle.

Claudia Smith’s stories have appeared online (in Pindeldyboz, Eyeshot, and the Mississippi Review) and in print (in Ink Pot, Night Train, and Flash!Point). Her short story, “How To Catch A Good Girl,” published by Word Riot, was shortlisted for storySouth’s Million Writers Award as one of the top 10 online stories of 2003.

Daniel Sonenberg completed his dissertation about Joni Mitchell in May 2003, and received a doctorate in music composition from the CUNY Graduate School. Together with librettist/poet Daniel Nester, he is composing an opera, The Summer King, on the life of Negro League baseball legend Josh Gibson. Excerpts of the work have been performed at the Manhattan School of Music and Peter Norton Symphony Space, under the sponsorship of American Opera Projects. He

is a visiting assistant professor of music at Brooklyn College, and lives with his wife, Alexandra, in Astoria, Queens.

children and “enthusiastic adults.” She lives in Red Hook, New York.

’93

Benjamin Schneider writes that he is still living in Manhattan, practicing law, studying jazz and blues guitar, and searching for like-minded musicians to play with.

Andrew Browne finds himself in Shanghai, China, following stays in Germany and Kuwait. He writes that life in Shanghai is very fast-paced, the work week not long enough, and that he regrets not having taken an intensive Chinese course while at Bard. Fellow Bardians in China (or elsewhere) can contact Andrew at abrowne123@yahoo.com.

Dr. Catherine “Betsy” Buck works as a small animal veterinarian in York, Pennsylvania.

Ling Kwan earned a master’s degree in music from Ithaca College and now teaches at the Mountain Laurel Waldorf School in New Paltz, New York, and at the Dutchess Community College Music School. In addition, the mother of Julian, 7, and AnaIsabel, 3, gives private cello lessons to

’94 Georgia Hodes made the “logical shift” from acting to psychology. She is in her third year of the Ph.D. program in biopsychology and behavorial neuroscience at Rutgers University.

Kristi Martel moved from Oakland, California, back home to Rhode Island after the sudden death of her life partner, Littlebird. She writes that it has been an enormous loss and trauma, but that she is healing. Check www.kmetal.net/blogger.html for details of Kristi’s recording, touring, and CD release schedules.

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Class of 1989, 15th Reunion 59

Tatiana Prowell is pursuing a fellowship in oncology and conducting breast cancer clinical trials at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. She and her husband of two years, Todd Gleeson, a fellow physician, welcomed their first son, Gavin Rhys Gleeson, on January 16, 2004.

’95 10th Reunion: May 20–22, 2005 Contact: Stella Wayne, 845-758-7406 or wayne@bard.edu Pamela Chaplin-Loebell and her husband, David ’98, are pleased to share the news of the birth of their second daughter, Amelia Robin, on May 11, 2003. Following a fourmonth maternity break, Pam took over the management of their family business, Klatha.com, which provides computer and Internet consulting services to small businesses, community organizations, artists, and arts institutions.

Premraj Makkuni is a resident in internal medicine at the Albert Einstein Medical Center in Philadelphia.

Phuc and Susan Tran ’96 moved from New York City to Portland, Maine, where they opened up their own tattoo shop. Phuc also teaches Latin. You can view their website at www.tsunamitattoo.com.

Hoa Tu will serve as the coprincipal of a new public school on the Lower East Side in New York City, starting in September 2004. The Henry Street Secondary School for International Studies has been created in collaboration with the Asia Society to serve inner city minority children.

’96 Sarah Popdan writes that Lucian Robert Popdan Li arrived on November 1, 2003, to bring her and her husband, Eric Li, one step closer to their goal of a family mah jong foursome.

Among Lucian’s first admirers were Katrina Hajagos ’97 (whose birthday he shares), Priya George ’97, Godric Shoesmith ’97, Wendy Grunseich ’96, Cree (Christopher) Nevins ’95, and Elizabeth Norton ’95. Those wishing to join the crew, view photographs, or contact Mama can visit http://mysite.verizon.net/vze8dvk2/index.html.

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Class of 1994, 10th Reunion 60

Lisa Kereszi ’95 was approached in October 2003 by the Public Art Fund to document Governor’s Island, a former U.S. Army base and later a Coast Guard base in the middle of New York Harbor, the proposed redevelopment of which may produce the next Central Park. On the island, accessible only by private a ferry, she found a ghost town—mansions, apartment buildings, two hospitals, a Burger King, bowling alley, Super 8 motel, movie theater, beauty salon, bank, churches, dormitories, classrooms, and a gym. Her work, and that of fellow project photographer Andrew Moore, was shown in May at the Urban Center. A soft-cover book will follow the exhibition. The project is made possible by the support of the Public Art Fund and the Governor’s Island Preservation and Education Committee (GIPEC). For more information, visit www.lisakereszi.com.

Lisa Kereszi

Mara Tillett lives in Mexico City, where she was born. She is active as a flamenco dancer (having founded her own company), flute performer, and teacher. She shares her apartment with three cats.

’97 Rakhel Milstein (Speyer ) passed the New York bar exam and now works in immigration law in New York City.

’98 Something in Between, a short film directed by Zackary Adler and produced by Adrian Bartol ’99, was screened at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. The film, which deals with drug addiction, has also been shown at drug treatment centers for teens to stimulate discussion in a group therapy setting.

’99 Amy Foster graduated from the Longwood Gardens Professional Gardener Training Program in 2002 and has been the education manager at the Delaware Center for Horticulture for the past two years Molly Heekin graduated with a master’s degree in the science of teaching from the State University of New York at New Paltz this spring.

’00 5th Reunion: May 20–22, 2005 Contact: Stella Wayne, 845-758-7406 or wayne@bard.edu Maro Sevastopoulos works as a full-time labor union organizer with Service Employees International Union, Local 503, Oregon.

Hilary Takiff received a master of fine arts degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 2003.

’01 Benjamin Blattberg attends the University of Chicago, where he is in the Ph.D. program in the Department of English Language and Literature.

Blanca Lista was invited to be part of the jury at Belgium’s Mons International Film Festival in February 2004. She is finishing her next 16mm film, Galore.

Cecilia Maple and her long-time partner, Dwane Decker, were married on May 29, 2004, in the Bard Chapel. Cecilia has returned to Bard, where she now works as the assistant to the director of the new Master of Arts in Teaching Program.

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Anthony Rivera, of New York City, writes that he is still striving for greatness and giving back to the community that nurtured him.

’02 Jessica Farwell ran her first marathon this June in San Diego to raise money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. She lives in Somerville, Massachusetts, and is a sixth grade science teacher at Frank Ashley Day Middle School in Newton.

Jean-Marc Gorelick is serving a 27-month tour for the United States Peace Corps in Togo, Africa, in the field of girls education and empowerment. An article he wrote about his experience, “The Africa We Aren’t Shown on TV,” appeared in the January 30, 2004 edition of The Christian Science Monitor.

Jonathan Leach is a staff reporter/assistant producer for the CBS documentary news magazine 48 Hours, television’s third longest-running news program.

’03 Gabrielle Becker is the founder of Grand St. Community Arts, Inc., a nonprofit arts organization that is converting the long-abandoned St. Anthony’s Church in downtown Albany, New York, into a community arts center. Gabrielle and her dedicated volunteers, including Monique Roberts ’03, foresee many uses for the center, including after-school programs, live musical performances, and rental space for nonprofit groups.

Pia Carusone moved to New Hampshire last fall to work on Howard Dean’s presidential campaign. As an area organizer based in Laconia, she was responsible for building local teams of activists. Initially attracted to Dean’s political courage, she was even more impressed by the grassroots style of his campaign. She writes, “Never before had the principles of social justice organizing been applied to a presidential campaign.” She has since moved to Telluride, Colorado, where she snowboards to and from work and is “enjoying the view of election-time turmoil from a distance.”

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Class of 1999, 5th Reunion 62

She remains hopeful that she will be as passionate about her next job as she was about the Dean campaign.

Babacar Cisse, now a student in a combined M.D./Ph.D. program at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University, has been awarded a 2004 Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans (immigrants and children of immigrants). Fellows receive a stipend of up to $20,000, plus half-tuition for as many as two years of graduate study at any institution of higher learning in the United States. Babacar is one of 30 fellows chosen from an applicant pool of nearly 1,000 this year. In other news, Babacar married Fatou Toure in July 2003. His wife remains in Senegal.

Lily Prince’s Candlesmoke and Fingerprints on Paper 22” x 30” appeared in the March 2004 exhibition Meditations, New York at 473 Broadway Gallery in New York City.

’93 Jane Schiowitz had a solo exhibition of new paintings at the Elizabeth Harris Gallery in New York City last January. It was her fourth one-person show with the gallery.

’94 Gary Green, an assistant professor of art at the University of Southern Maine, was a visiting lecturer in art at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, this past spring.

’95 Mneesha Gellman lives in Arcata, California, where she helps produce a weekly public affairs radio program for the Mainstream Media Project. In her free time, she does Aikido, volunteers at Pelican Bay State Prison, and serves on the Nuclear Weapons Free Zone Commission for the City of Arcata. She misses her Bard friends and loves visitors.

Luke Venezia has gained recognition from European and United States labels for his electronic music under the alias “drop the lime.” In addition to touring Europe with material from his five records, Luke has made his way up the ranks at Outpost Digital, a production company at Radical Media in New York City. He began working in the dub room, but soon moved on to motion graphics and compositing. To date, he has worked on animated logos for clients such as VH-1, done flash motion graphics for the new Reebok S. Carter sneaker, and is head compositor on an Errol Morris–directed CVS ad. Acknowledging his years at Bard, Luke writes, “Thank you Richard Teitelbaum, Bob Bielecki, Jackie Goss, Leah Gilliam, and Hap Tivey.”

Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts ’92 Michael Merchant and his family have returned to the U.S. after two and a half years in Brussels. They are restoring and working on their 19th-century farmstead and organic farm in New Jersey, where, they report, the countryside still exists, but is disappearing quickly. Their 29-acre farm is a television-free sanctuary for Michael, his wife, and their three children.

Janet Echelman exhibited her works at the Florence Lynch Gallery in New York City in January. Entitled Projects in the Public Realm, the show featured work from three important public sculpture projects completed or conceived in the past year, including a one-tenth scale prototype of her $1.25 million commission currently under construction in Porto, Portugal. Rising 14 stories to visually connect a city park and a popular beach on the Atlantic coast, the work suspends multiple 150-foot-diameter sculptural nets over a three-lane highway roundabout.

Jackie Lipton’s work was featured at Brooklyn’s Gallery Boreas in its February exhibition, Visual Dialogue.

’96 Mara Adamitz Scrupe, an environmental artist, had a solo exhibition of her work at Grand Arts in Kansas City. Entitled Back to Nature: Collecting the Preserved Garden, the work was jointly commissioned for exhibition by the Aldrich Contemporary Arts Museum (Connecticut) and Grand Arts.

She is currently at work on new commissions for TICKON (Tranekaer International Centre for Art and Nature) in Rudkobing, Denmark; Crawford Municipal Art Gallery, Cork, Ireland (funded by the Arts Council of Ireland); Buffalo Bayou Art Park, Houston; and Agnes Scott College Public Art Commission, Atlanta. Scrupe holds the Barbara L. Bishop Endowed Chair in Art at Longwood University in Virginia.

’99 Tom Johnson and Carrie Moyer ’02 had simultaneous exhibitions at the New York City gallery Canada this winter.

Tom’s Better Social Realism also featured a performance by the artist. Carrie’s exhibition was entitled Chromafesto.

Wallace Whitney ’01 is one of the gallery’s founders.

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’00 Serkan Ozkaya, of Istanbul, is a Ph.D. candidate in German literature at Istanbul University. He was a fellow of the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire and has been an artist-in-residence at Ecole Regionale des Beaux-Arts de Nantes, France, and in Malmo, Sweden, as recipient of an IASPIS grant (International Artists’ Studio Program in Sweden). Recent exhibitions include Minerva Street at Galerist, Istanbul, and Look Again at Proje 4L, Istanbul.

’01 Michelle Handelman’s video work, along with work by Bard associate professor of film and electronic arts Peggy Ahwesh, was featured in the exhibition Acting Out at the Art Gallery of York University in Toronto this past January.

Michelle also received a 2004 New York State Council on the Arts Individual Artist Grant for her new animation project, ’lil m vs. ’lil m.

A solo exhibition featuring photographs by Holly Lynton took place this spring at Mixed Greens in New York City.

Judy Radul did two video installations, Empathy with the Victor and No One Must Know, for an exhibition at the Power Plant in Toronto this past winter.

Work by Trevor Stafford was included in Projects ’03 at the Carriage House at the Islip Art Museum in East Islip, New York.

seminal structural film, Wavelength (1967), reflecting on Snow’s work from a contemporary (digital) vantage point.”

Joel Griffith’s paintings were on exhibit at 69 Broadway, in Tivoli, New York.

’04 Stanya Kahn and Harry Dodge collaborated on Winner, a short film that played at the Mix Festival in New York City last fall. The improvised short about a fictional interview gone awry was described as “smartly and deftly sideswiping the gap between those who ‘get’ and ‘don’t get’ art.”

Laurel Sparks was one of eight artists included in Terra (in)Cognita at Hampshire College Gallery in Amherst, Massachusetts. The spring exhibition explored the “maps” that define everyday existence and distinguish internal and external, public and private domains.

Center for Curatorial Studies ’96 Regine Basha and artist Roy Stanfield collaborated on The Vulcan 20 and the Commodore 1541, a project involving three sites in Austin, Texas, where Regine is adjunct curator at Arthouse and an associate at Fluent Collaborative, a contemporary art initiative. Her writing has appeared in art/text, Performance Art Journal, ARude, and Modern Painters.

’02 Alexandra Newmark’s Cycle of Three, an installation of mohair creatures, was on exhibit this winter at PS122 Gallery in New York City.

Raïssa Venables was awarded the Andrew Rhodes Fund for Young Artists grant from the Visual Arts Foundation in March. In April, she was in residence and gave a solo exhibition at the Galerie SPHN in Berlin. Raïssa’s artwork and her Berlin exhibition were the subjects of a feature article in the April 2004 issue of the German photography magazine Photography-Now.

’03 Ben Coonley’s experimental video, Wavelength 3-D, was shown at the New York Underground Film Festival at Anthology Film Archives in March. It was described in promotional literature as “a 3D video cover of Michael Snow’s

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Gilbert Vicario received an award from the U.S. Section of the International Association of Art Critics for Diller + Scofidio, an exhibition he curated at Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art. Gilbert is assistant curator at the ICA.

’97 Rachel Gugelberger, associate director at the Visual Arts Museum, School of Visual Arts, New York, recently curated Rubbish at Chuchifritos, an art gallery and project space.

The exhibition included site-specific works by three artists.

Tomas Pospiszyl is teaching at the Film Academy in Prague as well as writing and working on curatorial projects.

’98 Anne Ellegood, curator of the Norton Collection in New York City, was a participant in a four-panel debate at the

ARCO Forum at the Armory Show, The International Fair of New Art, March 2003.

Zhang Zhaohui, former director of Xray Art Center, Beijing, is enrolled in a Ph.D. program at the Central Academy of Fine Art, Beijing, focusing on 20th-Century Chinese art history.

’99 Tobias Ostrander curated an exhibition of paintings and drawings by Kevin Appel at Rufino Tamayo, Mexico City, where he is curator. He also contributed an essay to the accompanying catalogue.

’03 Kazeem Adeleke will attend the Ph.D. program at Cornell University.

Robert Blackson has accepted the position of curator at the Reg Vardy Gallery at the University of Sunderland, England.

He will curate about seven exhibitions a year.

Finland Station, curated by Ingrid Chu, launches White Box’s new program, VIDEOBOX, which features ongoing video screenings in its street level window in New York City.

Tracee Robertson (Williams) has written three articles for ARTL!ES, a Houston-based journal that examines contemporary art and art issues throughout Texas.

Candice Hopkins was awarded the 2003 Ramapo Prize for her exhibition Every Stone Tells a Story: The Work of David Hammons and Jimmie Durham. The exhibition will be on view at New Jersey’s Berrie Center for the Performing and Visual Arts in November. Candice is a curatorial resident at the Walter Phillips Gallery in Banff, Alberta.

Gregory Sandoval began the year with a new job as manager of adult interpretive programs at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

’04

’00

SLOWNESS, an exhibition curated by Mercedes Vicente, presented works from five artists who have taken critical positions around issues of time. It opened in November 2003 at New York City’s Dorsky Gallery Curatorial Programs, a not-for-profit organization that explores themes relevant to our understanding of visual arts today.

’01 Katherine Chan is associate director at Nolan/Eckman Gallery in New York City.

’02 Elizabeth Fisher has moved to Cambridge, England, where she has accepted the position of exhibitions organiser at Kettle’s Yard, a major center for 20th-century and contemporary art.

Jenni Sorkin received the College Art Association’s Art Journal Award for her article “Envisioning High Performance,” which was based on a section of her CCS thesis. Jenni, a research assistant at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, will be pursuing a Ph.D. at Yale in the fall.

Jill Winder is still living in Berlin, where she has been involved in a number of projects, including acting as curatorial assistant to Carina Plath ’01 at the Kunstverein in Munster.

Pascal Spengemann navigated his final year of graduate study at CCS while simultaneously putting together five exhibitions at Taxter & Spengemann, a fledgling gallery in Chelsea that he co-owns with Kelly Taxter ’03. Their exhibition of emerging artist Matt Johnson’s work was noted in the New York Times on March 21.

Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design, and Culture ’97 Malcolm MacNeil is teaching a new survey course on American glass at the BGC as a visiting faculty member. He is also an adjunct faculty member at New York University’s School of Continuing and Professional Studies, where he teaches classes on European and American glass of the Victorian, Art Nouveau, and Art Deco periods. He is the current president of the New York Metropolitan Glass Club, a chapter of the National American Glass Club.

’98 Julia Gorzka has been busy with a career transition in the last eight months. Under the name “The House of Julia,” she has done a variety of projects: she started a line of handpainted baby clothes; worked her first spokesmodel gig; acted in a Ghost Walk of Ybor City, Tampa’s Latin Quarter;

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taught “Fundamentals of Design” in the Interior Design Department at the International Academy of Design and Technology; and took on her first decorating project. During this time she searched for a way to be hands-on in the redevelopment and revitalization of Tampa’s urban core and the movement to encourage more creative workers to make Tampa home. She found her niche in real estate and is selling real estate with a focus on downtown projects.

’00 Ayesha Abdur-Rahman was appointed associate curator of Visual Media Resources at the BGC. Ayesha continues to travel back to her native Sri Lanka, where she is researching that country’s decorative arts tradition. Last summer she took numerous digital images of the furniture collection at the National Museum of Colombo. Other visits allowed her to gather family portraits that reveal insights into the costumes of the colonial period.

Jason Petty BGC ’97 Few musical instruments carry as many romantic associations as the lute. Angels, minstrels, and ladies of noble mien have all been depicted strumming its strings, or plucking them with a plectrum, by Piero della Francesca, Caravaggio, Vermeer, and other venerated painters. For Jason Petty, though, the ultimate expression of love for the lute is not to limn its contours in oil, but to build it from maple, yew, or rosewood.

Petty’s passion for the pear-shaped instrument was initially kindled by playing lute music transcribed for the classical guitar. He eventually became a luthier because building a lute was cheaper than buying one. “It was obviously not a very satisfactory instrument,” he says of his first effort, which involved completing a half-finished lute from an English kit. But he persisted, and gradually began to master his craft. To date, Petty has built more than 20 lutes in various styles from the pre-Renaissance, Renaissance, and Baroque periods. He specializes in theorbos, or lutes with extended necks and 14 strings, which were popular circa 1600, when the birth of opera required lutes to “play larger” and to have a more dynamic range, especially in the bass registers.

“My lute-building and scholarly careers inform each other nicely,” says Petty, who lives in Brooklyn and is working on a doctorate at the BGC. His postgraduate work is in the field of cultural organology—the study of musical instruments “from an art-historical, as opposed to a musical, perspective,” he says.

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Caroline Hannah is acting assistant curator of American decorative arts at the Yale University Art Gallery. She is involved in a number of projects there, including research and writing for a catalogue accompanying a major traveling exhibition of American art and decorative arts; coordinating a Tiffany & Co. Foundation–funded Internet project; and supervising the Furniture Study, a collection of more than 1,000 examples of mainly American furniture dating from 350 years ago to the present.

Stephanie Day Iverson curated Chic is Where You Find It: Selections from the Bonnie Cashin Collection of Theater, Film and Fashion Design, on exhibit from January 14 to March 25 at UCLA, where she is curator of the Bonnie Cashin Collection. She is also lecturing, creating an annual Bonnie Cashin lecture series, and working with the BGC to endow a Cashin travel grant. On a personal note, Stephanie married Clifford Franklin Lake III (her long-lost, high school almostsweetheart) last October in Manhattan. They split their time between Los Angeles and Minneapolis, where his company, American Guitar Boutique, is based.

Constantine Ramantanin has joined the faculty at the Fashion Institute of Technology, where he teaches “Metallurgy” and “History of Jewelry.” He continues to design and create custom jewelry and decorative objects in gold, platinum, and silver.

’01 Elizabeth Caffry Frankel, her husband, and their two children (Sam and Sadie) left Los Angeles and relocated to Lyme, Connecticut.

’02 Ron Labaco left the BGC in December 2003, and is now assistant curator of decorative arts at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. His article, “Serving Modern to America: The Museum Dinnerware Collaboration,” was published in the March issue of Modernism magazine. Ron recently adopted two dogs: Daisy, a miniature pinscher-beagle mix puppy, and Maddie, a year-old chow–German shepherd mix.

Program in International Education (PIE) ’95 Monika Nica met her husband, Bogdan Nica ’95, while at Bard, where she was a Kellner Scholar and he was a PIE student. They married in 1996 and lived in Budapest for three years, while Bogdan studied at Central European University. Since 2001, they have worked in New York City, Monika in financial consulting, and Bogdan in software development. Now living in Port Washington, New York, they are the proud parents of two sons.

’98 ’03 Alexa Griffith published several articles this spring. The March edition of Dwell magazine featured her story on a Paul Randolph house on Sanibel Island, Florida. She had a piece about Modernist design in the Minneapolis/St. Paul region in the March issue of Modernism. In the Journal of Design History, vol. 17, she has written about the Walker Art Center’s 1941 and 1947 exhibition houses, called Idea House I and II. She also was a guest lecturer in a course on history and theory of modern architecture at Columbia University this spring.

Anna Térfy works for the Student Records Office of Central European University in Budapest, and also serves as registrar of the CEU Business School.

’00 Edit “Dit” Bori graduated from both the Department of Border Policing of the Police Academy and the Department of Political Science of Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest this spring.

’02 Miranda Pildes obtained a gemology degree from the Gemological Institute of America and completed a threemonth internship in Sotheby’s Jewelry Department. She now works with Judy Price, director of the National Jewelry Institute, who is preparing to found the first museum of jewelry in New York City.

Bard High School Early College

Zoltán Fehér graduated from Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary in 2002 with a double M.A. degree in American studies and political science. He graduated from Pázmány University Law School this year. Since the fall of 2002, Zoltán has worked as a diplomat at the Hungarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where he has attained the rank of attaché.

He also teaches various courses on foreign policy and public policy at Eötvös Loránd University. A research paper of his, written partly during his time at Bard, was published in the December 2002 and May 2003 issues of the Hungarian Review of Political Science.

’03 Hamza Alizai lives in Binghamton, New York, where he taught “Introduction to Cellular and Molecular Biology Labs and Discussions” last semester. He writes, “It’s great experience to do exactly what grads do, at my age.”

Daphne Perez is at SUNY Stony Brook, where she’s a member of Minorities in Medicine and plays on the softball team.

György “George” Tóth was elected president of the Kellner Scholars’ Society (an organization of Hungarian Bard alumni/ae) in May 2003. He is in the midst of his 11month-long “civilian service” (an alternative to being drafted into the army) as an instructor at the Department of Foreign Languages of Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest. George urges Bard students to consider the Bard–Central European University study-abroad program and all Bard alumni/ae visiting the region to contact him at chippewa@galamb.net or 36-30-402-6014. “Bard has a home in Budapest,” he writes.

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In Memoriam ’42 Edgar A. “Ted” Anderson, 84, died at Nantucket Cottage Hospital on November 30, 2003. A native of the Hudson Valley, he worked as a newspaperman in New York City and Newark, New Jersey, during the 1940s. In the Summer 2001 Bardian, he wrote about how his sophomore year “field period” (now known as January intersession) opened the door to his career in journalism. In 1950, he moved to Daytona Beach, Florida, where he was involved in several small businesses while pursuing a teaching certificate from Stetson University. Upon achieving that goal, he became an English teacher in the Volusia County school system. During this period he also wrote and published two books for young people, Salt in Their Hair and Day Number 142. He retired from teaching in 1970 and moved to Nantucket, where his family had summered since the 1920s. On Nantucket, he became involved with the Theatre Workshop, Brant Point Association, and Civic League. His survivors include a son, a grandson, and his sister.

’48 David E. MacDonald died on May 21, 2001.

’50 The Very Reverend Robert Bizzaro died on February 21, 2004. He was a World War II Navy veteran, serving his country from October 21, 1944, to July 10, 1946. He held a bachelor of sacred theology degree from the General Theological Seminary in New York City, a master of divinity degree from Philadelphia Divinity School, and a master of sacred theology degree from the New York Theological Seminary. He was ordained to the priesthood on October 24, 1953. Since 1998, he had worked at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Mishawaka, Indiana. From 1975 to 1991, he served as dean of the Cathedral of St. James in South Bend, Indiana, where he was granted the title of dean emeritus.

Prior to that, he served as rector of Gethsemane Episcopal Church in Marion, Indiana, and Trinity Church in Cranford, New Jersey. He was active in community, peace, and civil rights causes. He participated in the March on Washington with Martin Luther King Jr. in 1963, and later helped establish the South Bend Advocacy Center and St. Margaret’s House, a daytime shelter for women and children in need.

His survivors include his wife, his daughter and her family, his two sons and their families, and his dog, Mac.

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Mark G. Richard died on June 21, 2003, in Naples, Florida. He had owned and operated Mark R. Buick-Pontiac in East Hampton, New York, for 25 years. In 1986, he sold the dealership and retired to Naples. Born on January 1, 1924, in Bexhill, England, he grew up on Long Island. He served in the 142d Regiment of the 36th Army Infantry Division during World War II and earned two Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star with cluster. His artwork, along with that of his wife, Catherine, was displayed in several galleries. His survivors include his wife, four children from his first marriage, a brother, 10 grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.

’53 Richard L. Bush-Brown died on October 18, 2003.

’73 James Gardner died on March 30, 2003.

’87 Anne Barlow Gallagher, 38, of Stevensville, Maryland, died April 1, 2004, after a 14- week battle with lung cancer (although she was a lifelong nonsmoker). Born in Baltimore, she grew up in Columbia, Maryland. She met her husband, Peter Holland, while at Bard, where she studied photography.

After college, she taught home- and hospital-bound children through the Baltimore City Public School System. She also taught in the Walter P. Carter Center, a state psychiatric hospital for 9- to 12-year-old inpatient children. Extensive contact with these children and their families helped her decide to go to law school in order to have a broader impact as a legal advocate for disadvantaged children. She graduated from the University of Maryland School of Law in 1994, and then provided legal advocacy for foster, abused, and neglected children throughout the Eastern Shore. For many years, she held office hours at Maryland courthouses to provide legal counseling and information to more than a thousand individuals. She will be posthumously awarded the 2004 Founder’s Day Award of Children’s Choice, a regional children’s advocacy organization, for her outstanding work on behalf of children in need. She was also an active member and volunteer in the Key School community of Annapolis, Maryland, where her children attend school. Her survivors include her parents, her husband, a daughter, a son, and a brother; several aunts, uncles, nieces, and nephews; and other extended family and close friends.

’96 Christopher T. Smith died on August 12, 2003. An accomplished musician and composer, he studied music composition at Bard, and most recently played keyboards and wrote the music for his San Francisco–based band, Samara. His survivors include his long-time partner, Tony Koester of San Francisco; his parents, Tom and Elsa Smith of Tiburon, California; and his brother, Tommy, of San Diego.

Faculty Frank Riessman died on March 1, 2004. At Bard, he was assistant professor of psychology from 1955 to 1958 and associate professor of psychology from 1958 to 1964. He wrote a number of books on social class and poverty in the United States, and was the editor of Social Policy magazine.

His survivors include his wife, Julia, daughters Robin and Janet, son Jeffrey, and two grandchildren.

Staff Linda Forstrom, 55, died on January 25, 2004, as a result of a fire at her Germantown, New York, home. She had worked for Chartwells, Bard’s food services department, for three years and was involved with the College’s rape and associated violence education program (BRAVE) as a speaker and friend.

Also lost in the fire were her 13-year-old daughter, Mara Mahig, and her 11-year-old granddaughter, Carianne Scholefield.

Survivors include her daughter, Korrena Salerno, a Chartwells employee for seven years and the invited guest speaker at the 2002 Senior Dinner; her mother; her sister; and her grandson.

Frances “Frannie” Kurdziel, 70, who made the dining commons run smoothly for 32 years before she retired in 2001, died on February 23, 2004. A longtime resident of Red Hook, New York, she was active in the Columbia County–Southern Tier Senior Citizens and the Red Hook Senior Citizens. The Queens native was a communicant of St. Christopher’s Church in Red Hook. In his announcement to the Bard community, Chas Cerulli, director of food services, remembered Frannie’s hospitality and vibrant personality and noted, “She will be greatly missed” by all of those she touched during her long tenure at Bard. Surviving are her husband, Mathew B. Kurdziel Sr., three sons, three granddaughters, and five grandsons.

Clark G. Rodewald ’59,

professor emeritus of English, died at his home on January 18, 2004. He had served the College for 36 years, having joined the faculty of the Division of Languages and Literature in 1968.

“Clark was fiercely loyal to the College as an alumnus and faculty member,” President Leon Botstein wrote to the Bard community. “He was a distinguished teacher who loved his subject and his students.” Stuart StritzlerLevine, dean emeritus of the College, recalled Rodewald’s high standards and hailed him as a “singular individual in our midst” in his written remembrance. He added that despite physical limitations resulting from a car crash in the 1960s, “Clark was always on board for the journey . . . always vital.”

Literature Program colleague Nancy Leonard recalled Clark with the following story. “I sometimes brought my daughter to campus to play with Clara Botstein, and one sunny weekend afternoon the two, about 9 and 10, were riding their bikes with a gleeful pleasure in being faster and more elusive than I. I kept looking for them, and near Preston I found the small basement terrace leading into Clark Rodewald’s office— with two bikes fallen on their sides outside it. I entered his office warily, and found the girls in intense conversation with Clark. He spoke with them in careful, respectful conversation about their immediate doings; began to talk to them about a poem or two he loved; asked them questions. His was an astonishing hospitality toward the individuality of beings, of language, of poems. These two children were as graciously received as young colleagues and the many students who visited his office.

We all found his conversation a mix of difficulty and delight, wit and seriousness together. Poetry was always central to his imagination, and I like to think he struck sparks not only from me, but from my now almost-adult daughter, who writes poetry still.”

Rodewald received a master’s degree from John Hopkins University. Other academic achievements include the prestigious Woodrow Wilson Fellowship.

Prior to returning to the College as a faculty member, he taught at the University of Puerto Rico, University of Southern California, and Southern Illinois University.

He is survived by his wife, Carolyn Blatchley; his children, James ’82, Christopher, and Cecilia; and his grandchildren, Rosa, Henry, and Lucia. A memorial reading was held in his honor at the Chapel of the Holy Innocents on May 21, during Commencement weekend.

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F A C U LT Y N O T E S

Peggy Ahwesh, associate professor of film and electronic arts, screened new work at REDCAT, the Roy and Edna Disney–Cal Arts Theater, in the Disney Concert Hall complex in Los Angeles. Certain Women, a video feature she made with Robert Abate MFA ’02, premiered at the Rotterdam International Film Festival in the Netherlands, then was screened at the New York Underground Film Festival and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. A musical collaboration with Barbara Ess, associate professor of photography, entitled Thrum, has been released on vinyl in the Lanthanides series on the Table of the Elements label.

Sanjib Baruah, professor of political studies, is on a twoyear leave of absence to head the Ford Foundation–funded Centre for Northeast India, South and Southeast Asian Studies (CENISEAS) in Guwahati, India, which seeks to promote an understanding of northeast India and regional policy challenges such as water resources, immigration, and cultural and economic ties. Baruah welcomes Bard faculty and alumni/ae interested in any of those areas to include Guwahati in their visits to Asia. He can be contacted at baruah@bard.edu.

Susan Bernofsky, assistant professor of German, presented a paper at a New York University symposium on Robert Walser and at an American Literary Translators Association meeting about archaism in translation, focusing on the work of Ludwig Harig and Friedrich Schleiermacher. She also spoke at SUNY New Paltz on the history of translations of Don Quixote into German, and coordinated the PEN Translation Committee’s annual Works-in-Progress event in New York.

Leon Botstein, president of the College and Leon Levy Professor in the Arts and Humanities, was scholarly advisor to the exhibition Vienna: Jews and the City of Music, 1870–1938, presented in Vienna last year and at the Yeshiva University Museum in New York this year; he coedited the catalogue for the exhibition (Wolke Verlag). He spoke at the annual conference of the Headmasters Association in Princeton, and lectured on “Confronting the Adolescent: The Abolition of High School” at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, where he also led semi-

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nars as part of Phi Beta Kappa’s Visiting Scholar Program.

He wrote an essay for I Am Jewish: Personal Reflections Inspired by the Last Words of Daniel Pearl, edited by Judea and Ruth Pearl (Jewish Lights Publishing), and an essay for Gramophone magazine, and judged the Bamberger Symphoniker Gustav Mahler–Dirigentenwettbewerb (conducting competition) in Bamberg, Germany.

Marco Breuer, faculty member in photography at the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts, exhibited (Outward Manifestations of) Something Else, a series of new, cameraless photographs in which he marked the surface of photographic color material with a razor blade. The solo exhibition was held at the Von Lintel Gallery in New York.

Mary Caponegro ’78, Richard B. Fisher Family Professor in Literature and Writing, read from her fiction at the Exhibit X Series of Innovative Fiction at Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center in Buffalo, New York, in partnership with the SUNY Buffalo English Department. A story, “Toyota Widow,” is being published in the first issue of the California literary magazine Black Clock, and an excerpt from a novel-in-progress, Chinese Chocolate, appeared in the Italian literary journal Storie.

Gabriela Carrión, assistant professor of Spanish, presented “The Song of History: The Ballad in El médico de su honra” at the Society for Renaissance and Baroque Hispanic Poetry at Boston University.

Diane Chaplin, visiting assistant professor of music and cellist of the Colorado String Quartet, announces the quartet’s 20th-anniversary release, a double CD of Beethoven quartets comprising the three Opus 59 quartets and the Opus 74 quartet. Other quartet members are Julie Rosenfeld and Deborah Redding, violins, and Marka Gustavsson, viola, all visiting assistant professors of music.

Allison Morrill Chatrchyan, lecturer at the Bard Center for Environmental Policy, received the best paper award for her article, “Democratic Transition, Stagnation, and Its Environmental Effects: Forestry Policy in Postcommunist

Armenia” from the environmental studies section of the International Studies Association at its meeting in Montreal. The paper was published in the journal Global Environmental Politics.

Mary Clayton Coleman, assistant professor of philosophy, presented a paper, “Practical Reasons and Intuition: The Road to Modest Constructivism” at SUNY Albany and at Union College. She presented “Public Reasons and Practical Solipsism: A Reconstruction of Korsgaard’s Private Reasons Argument” at the Pacific Division of the American Philosophical Association, and “Practical Reasons and Practical Solipsism” in Madrid at the third annual Interuniversity Conference on Mind, Art, and Morality.

Jeffrey L. Collins, visiting associate professor at the Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design, and Culture, cochaired a session in baroque art at the annual College Art Association conference in Seattle, and addressed the general meeting of the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia.

Robert W. Cutler ’94, assistant professor of biology, volunteered again at an orphanage in Thailand near the Burmese border. He reports that significant donations from the Bard community enabled the orphanage to buy futon beds for 45 of the home’s 75 children; a pillow, watch, and knapsack for each child; soccer uniforms for all; and soccer nets and goal frames. Bardians’ support also provided funds for surgeries for several children and for a conference table and chairs.

Nancy Darling, associate professor of psychology, presented papers on adolescent conflict resolution and on aggression and conflict at the Society for Research on Adolescence in Baltimore, and on mentoring during adolescence at the National Research Summit on Mentoring. A study she coauthored on adolescent drinking and vandalism appeared in the Korean Journal of Child Studies.

Michèle D. Dominy, dean of the college and professor of anthropology, presented a paper on the tension between administrative responsibility and faculty autonomy at the annual meeting of the Central States Anthropological Society in Milwaukee. She also gave the Cum Laude Society induction keynote address at her high school alma mater, Albany (New York) Academy for Girls.

Jean M. French, Edith C. Blum Professor of Art History, gave a lecture, “Charity and Ideology at Saint-Denis: The

Parable of Lazarus and Dives” at a conference, “Saint-Denis Revisited,” at Princeton University.

Joanne Fox-Przeworski, director of and professor at the Bard Center for Environmental Policy (BCEP), participated in the opening panel, “Defining an Environmental Role for Higher Education,” at the Environmental Consortium for the Hudson Valley in Tarrytown, New York. She was also a panelist on global markets and pollution at a Northeastern University School of Law symposium, “Rethinking Ideology and Strategy: Progressive Lawyering.” Working with the New York State Energy and Research Development Authority, BCEP helped organize the third biennial international conference, “Linking Science and Policy: Energy Monitoring and Energy Production,” in Albany, New York.

Richard A. Gordon, professor of psychology, presented two papers at the Academy for Eating Disorders conference in Orlando, Florida: “The Global Epidemiology of Eating Disorders: An Update” and “The Ups and Downs of Bulimia Nervosa: An Inquiry into Fluctuating Incidence Rates.” He was also program chair of the scientific session on population studies at the conference. He chairs the academy’s transcultural special-interest group.

Peter Hutton, professor of film, presented Time and Tide, his study of the Hudson River, in a program entitled “Waterfront” at MoMA Film and Media at the Gramercy Theater in New York.

Felicia Keesing, associate professor of biology, coauthored a paper on modeling in undergraduate education, published in Models in Ecosystem Science (Princeton University Press) and on Acacia seedling survival in an East African savanna in the journal Ecology.

Erik Kiviat ’76, executive director of Hudsonia Ltd., coauthored, with Tanessa Hartwig ’95/ GSES ’04, an article, “A Second Look at Invasives,” in Volunteer Monitor. He also gave presentations on invasive species at the American Institute of Biological Sciences conference in Washington, D.C., and the Society for Conservation Biology conference at Columbia University.

Les LeVeque, videomaker and faculty member in film/video at the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts, directed Strained Andromeda Strain, which was screened at the New York Underground Film Festival at Anthology Film Archives.

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George Lewis, trombonist, composer, and faculty member in music at the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts, presented a new interactive computer work for pianist Muhal Richard Abrams at Merkin Concert Hall in New York in May. Christopher R. Lindner, director of the Bard Archaeology Field School, visiting assistant professor of anthropology, and archaeologist in residence, presented a paper, “Eastern New York’s Bushkill Complex: Delving into the Great Gap,” at the annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology in Montreal.

Thomas Martin, faculty member in art history at Bard High School Early College, presented a paper, “Quality Control: Alessandro Vittoria’s Portrait Busts as Case Studies in Connoisseurship,” at the 92nd annual meeting of the College Art Association in Seattle.

Steven V. Mazie, assistant professor of politics at Bard High School Early College, received the 2003 American Political Science Association’s best paper award, in the religion and politics section, for “Political Liberalism and Public Religion: Lessons from Israel.” His article, “Importing Liberalism: Brown v. Board of Education in the Israeli Context” appeared in Polity: the Journal of the Northeastern Political Science Association in April.

Going Home and Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania, films by Adolfas Mekas, professor emeritus of film, were screened at the Cinémathèque Française in Paris.

Amy Ogata, assistant professor at the Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design, and Culture, received fellowships from the American Association of University Women and the Canadian Centre for Architecture for work on a new book project, Object Lessons: Design, Creativity, and the Material Culture of Childhood in Postwar America.

Dimitri B. Papadimitriou, executive vice president of the College, Jerome Levy Professor of Economics, and president of the Levy Economics Institute, presented a paper on the jobless recovery at a conference, “Macroeconomics of Asset Bubbles,” at the University of Utah. He also participated in a discussion group at the Santa Fe Institute and a conference on nonprofit higher education sponsored by Morgan Stanley. He was interviewed by Barron’s, CBS MarketWatch, and CFO. 72

Jennifer G. Phillips, assistant professor at the Bard Center for Environmental Policy, received a grant from the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration’s Office of Global Programs. The award will help support her research on the use of climate information in decision making by farmers in the Hudson Valley.

Blake Rayne, faculty in painting at the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts, and Carlos Motta MFA ’04 showed work in Establishing Shot at Artists Space in New York.

Bahlia’s Iris: Secret Autobiography and Fiction, a new book by Leslie Scalapino, writing faculty at the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts, was featured in the winter issue of How2 magazine.

Gautam Sethi, assistant professor at the Bard Center for Environmental Policy, presented a paper, “Have Your Fish and Eat It Too,” at the International Economic Studies meeting in Denver.

David Levi Strauss, faculty member in writing at the Center for Curatorial Studies and at the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts, received a Guggenheim Fellowship to support the writing of his next book, Photography & Belief, this year.

Joan Tower, Asher B. Edelman Professor in the Arts, had a concert of her music performed at Carnegie Hall with the Tokyo Quartet, Ursula Oppens, Melvin Chen, Paul Neubauer, and the New England Conservatory Percussion Ensemble. All-Tower concerts were featured at Oberlin College, Michigan State University, and the Chelsea Museum in New York. Her new trio, “For Daniel,” was premiered by the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio in Tucson and at the 92nd Street Y in New York. Tower was the featured composer at the American Symphony Orchestra League convention in Pittsburgh and at the National Flute Association convention in Nashville. She held a residency with the Muir Quartet in Park City, Utah, in July.

Suzanne Vromen, professor emeritus of sociology, received a Fulbright Senior Specialists grant in sociology at the Institute of Judaic Studies at Free University of Brussels.

While in Belgium she gave a lecture on the Holocaust at the University of Antwerp. She presented a paper at the Eastern Sociological Society meeting in New York, and an article she wrote on Hannah Arendt appeared in the European Journal of Political Theory.

BARDSUMMERSCAPE July 8 – August 22, 2004

O P E R A East Coast Professional Premiere

Experience a performing arts festival like no other. Bard SummerScape presents world-class opera, music, and theater you won’t hear anywhere else, in a venue you can’t find anywhere else: the Frank Gehry–designed Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts, hailed by critics as “an acoustic jewel” and “a virtuoso piece.”

The Nose July 28 – August 7 An opera by Dmitrii Shostakovich American Symphony Orchestra Conducted by Leon Botstein Directed by Francesca Zambello Set design by Rafael Viñoly Costume design by Georgi Alexi-Meskhishvili Lighting design by Mark McCullough

T H E AT E R American Premiere

St. Petersburg’s Alexandrinsky Theatre presents

The Inspector General July 8–11 A play in two acts by Nikolai Gogol Directed by Valery Fokin

M U S I C

T H E AT E R

World Premiere

Guest from the Future July 22 – August 1 Music by Mel Marvin Libretto by Jonathan Levi Directed by David Chambers

Moscow: Cherry Tree Towers August 12–15 A musical in two acts by Dmitrii Shostakovich Directed by Francesca Zambello

B A R D

M U S I C

F E S T I VA L

Fifteenth Season

Shostakovich and His World August 13–22 Two weekends of concerts, panels, and other events bring the musical world of Russian composer Dmitrii Shostakovich vividly to life.

Bard SummerScape 2004 also features a Russian film festival, puppet theater, late-night cabaret, and other special events.

For tickets and information, call 845-758-7900 or visit summerscape.bard.edu.

Bard College Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y.

Photo: © Bilyana Dimitrova

SHOSTAKOVICH AND HIS WORLD

bard music festival rediscoveries AUGUST 13–15 AUGUST 20–22 NOVEMBER 5–7 Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts Bard College

Artistic Directors

Leon Botstein Christopher H. Gibbs Robert Martin Scholar in Residence 2004

Laurel E. Fay

For ticket information call 845-758-7900 or visit www.bard.edu/bmf

Three Friday or Saturday Concerts

just $76 Beethoven • Elgar • Strauss • Shostakovich • Brahms • Wagner at The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts

american symphony

orchestra

leon botstein, music director September 17 & 18, 2004 wagner Tannhäuser Overture and Venusberg (1843–45) wagner Excerpts from Götterdämmerung (1873-74) beethoven Symphony No. 7 (1811–12) February 4 & 5, 2005 brahms Piano Concerto No. 1 (1854–58) strauss Don Juan (1888–89) elgar “Enigma” Variations (1898–99) April 8 & 9, 2005 zwilich Millennium Fantasy for Piano and Orchestra (2000) schreker Der Geburtstag der Infantin (1908–1910) shostakovich Symphony No. 5 (1937)

subscribe today (800) 505-1ASO(1276) [Outside New York City]

or (212) 868-9ASO(9276) www.americansymphony.org www.bard.edu/fishercenter The American Symphony Orchestra’s series at the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College is made possible, in part, with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency.

© Peter Aaron/Esto

Michael Adelman ’90 and Francie Soosman ’90

Pete Mauney ’93, MFA ’99

Published by the Bard Publications Office Ginger Shore, Director; Julia Jordan, Assistant Director; Debby Mayer, Editorial Director; Mary Smith, Art Director; Mikhail Horowitz, René Houtrides MFA ’97, Ellen Liebowitz, Cynthia Werthamer, Editors; Diane Rosasco, Production Manager; Meera Bowman, Michael Elrod, Francie Soosman ’90, Kevin Trabucco, Designers ©2004 Bard College. All rights reserved.

www.bard.edu

Commencement Dinner-Dance

Pete Mauney ’93, MFA ’99

Office of Development and Alumni/ae Affairs Debra Pemstein

Stella Wayne

Vice President for Development and

Associate Director of Alumni/ae Affairs

Alumni/ae Affairs

845-758-7407

845-758-7405

wayne@bard.edu

pemstein@bard.edu Robyn Carliss ’02 Jessica Kemm ’74

Administrative Assistant, Alumni/ae Affairs

Director of Alumni/ae Affairs

845-758-7089

845-758-7406

carliss@bard.edu

kemm@bard.edu

SAVE THE DATE REUNIONS 2005 May 20–22 Reunion classes: 1935, 1940, 1945, 1950, 1955, 1959–61, 1965, 1970, 1975, 1980, 1985, 1990, 1995, 2000

Would you like to help contact classmates?

Please call Stella Wayne at 845-758-7407 or e-mail wayne@bard.edu.

Enrico Ferorelli

Bard College PO Box 5000 Annandale-on-Hudson, NY 12504-5000

Address Service Requested

www.bard.edu

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