Barnard Magazine Fall 2015

FALL 2015 • Futurecast: New Campus Construction A Political Science Professor Parses Putin Caribbean Feminisms Defined Acting Up: Learning History in Today’s Classrooms

BARNARD COLLEGE PRESENTS THE EIGHTH ANNUAL GLOBAL SYMPOSIUM

WOMEN CHANGING THE WORLD FRIDAY, MARCH 18, 2016 PARIS, FRANCE

Information: barnard.edu/global/symposia For more information on alumnae travel opportunities, please email alumnaerelations@barnard.edu.

FEATURES

DEPARTMENTS

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A Visionary Look Toward the Future

by Mervyn Kaufman, Abigail Beshkin, and Annette Kahn New campus construction will bring new technologies and facilities for teaching and learning into the 21st century

President’s Page

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A Global View

by Elicia Brown Professor Kimberly Marten brings research and experience to her analysis of Russian president Vladimir Putin 24

Reenacting the Past

by Sherry Karabin A unique pedagogy developed by Professor Mark Carnes brings history to life in classrooms around the world 28

From Beans to Bars—and Beyond

by Amy Miller Amy Guittard enters the family chocolate business (and shares recipes) 32

Academics Interrupted

by Mervyn Kaufman Terry Weeks returned to Barnard for her degree after a 27-year hiatus

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Inside 5

Through the Gates STUDENTS In a Class of Their Own EVENT Caribbean Feminisms on the Page STAFF Special Ops STUDENT Putting the Brakes on Bullies EVENT A Moving Experience EVENT Convocation 2015 14

Syllabus The Lens of Paige West 15

Salon Julia Pierpont Candice Agree PRODUCER Adrienne Campbell-Holt AUTHOR

BROADCASTER

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Alumnae Association PRESIDENT’S LETTER NEWS LEGACIES

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Class Notes ALUMNAE PROFILES Phebe Marr, Abigail Carroll, Kelsey Brown IN MEMORIAM

ON THE COVER

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Photograph of writer Edwidge Danticat by Will Mebane

Sources Entering the Academy

by Melissa Phipps 75

Last Image

by Julia Westerbeke 76

Last Word

by Karen Cohen

BARNARD MAGAZINE FALL 2015 1

THE BARNARD STORE

EDITORIAL STAFF Annette Stramesi Kahn ’67 EDITORIAL MANAGER Abigail Beshkin ART DIRECTOR & DESIGNER Anna Nozaki RESEARCH EDITOR Rebecca Geiger EDITOR

ALUMNAE ASSOCIATION OF BARNARD COLLEGE Terry Newman ’79

PRESIDENT & ALUMNAE TRUSTEE

ALUMNAE RELATIONS Caitlin D. Tramel

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

COMMUNICATIONS Joanne Kwong ASSISTANT VICE PRESIDENT Patricia Keim CREATIVE DIRECTOR David Hopson EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Annette Stramesi Kahn VICE PRESIDENT

DEVELOPMENT VICE PRESIDENT FOR DEVELOPMENT

Bret Silver

Fall 2015, Vol. CIV, No. 4 Barnard Magazine (USPS 875-280, ISSN 1071-6513) is published quarterly by the Alumnae Association of Barnard College.

Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY, and additional mailing offices.

Postmaster: Send change of address form to: Alumnae Records, Barnard College, Box AS, 3009 Broadway, New York, NY 10027-6598

EDITORIAL OFFICE Vagelos Alumnae Center, Barnard College, 3009 Broadway, New York, NY 10027-6598 Phone: 212.854.0085 E-mail: magazine@barnard.edu Amy Rosales ’17

The Stitched B Sweater $80 This classic sweater will keep you cozy and collegiate wherever you are this fall.

Just one of many new items available in store or online.

thebarnardstore.com

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Opinions expressed are those of contributors or the editor and do not represent official positions of Barnard College or the Alumnae Association of Barnard College.

Letters to the editor (150 words maximum), submissions for Last Word (600 words maximum), and unsolicited articles and/or photographs will be published at the discretion of the editor and will be edited for length and clarity.

The contact information listed in Class Notes is for the exclusive purpose of providing information for the magazine and may not be used for any other purpose.

For alumnae related inquiries, call Alumnae Relations at 212.854.2005 or e-mail alumnaerelations@barnard.edu.

To change your address, write to Alumnae Records, Barnard College, Box AS, 3009 Broadway, New York, NY 10027-6598 Phone: 646.745.8344 E-mail: alumrecords@barnard.edu

PRESIDENT’S PAGE

Photograph by Steve DeCanio

DEBORA SPAR

A Framework for the Future • In the spring of 2011, Barnard launched a strategic planning process. The goal, as with most such processes, was to outline our plans and dreams for the College’s next decade; to figure out as a community where we were heading, and how we wanted to go. I led most of the sessions myself, armed with some whiteboards, markers, and Professor Paul Hertz, who was serving at the time as our interim provost. They were lively sessions, and—despite a predictably wide range of people, opinions, and preferences—remarkably consistent. At each session, Professor Hertz and I asked: “What do you see as Barnard’s greatest challenge in the years ahead?” (We also asked, more optimistically, about the College’s greatest strengths and opportunities.) And at each session, voiced loudly and circled in red on every board and flip chart, was the single, simple word: SPACE. From those beginnings—humble yet powerful—our new teaching and learning center was born. In the Strategic Plan, we outlined our hopes for a new building that would create sufficient space for the College to grow; embrace the latest technology and thought in library design; and bring students and faculty into closer proximity, “literally embracing the connections that lie at the core of Barnard’s learning philosophy.” We then consulted with real estate experts about the best possible site for such a space; with architectural planners about various construction plans and configurations; with faculty committees and library staff about needs for the new space; and with investment advisors about potential modes of funding. And now, nearly five years later, we find ourselves on the cusp of what will be a transformative building project—not only for the Barnard campus, but for the entire Barnard community as well.

Our students come to college to learn—to read and study and analyze texts and problems sets. They love the city, too, of course, as well as all of their extracurricular pursuits. But, for the most part, our students choose Barnard because they want to get the kind of education that we pride ourselves on providing. But our library, which should be the physical heart of our learning endeavor, simply does not live up to what our students and our faculty deserve. Our library staff is stellar. We have a dedicated team of top-notch archivists, a cutting-edge group of media technologists, and—unique to Barnard—a staff of research librarians who serve as individual consultants to our students. But the physical space that has housed and surrounded this staff since 1959 is far less impressive. It is a building built, understandably, for the learning environment of the mid-20th century, an environment dominated by stacks of books, single-space carrels, large check-out desks, and smoking lounges. Our students study differently today. They read online, they study with coffee, they work in groups with an everexpanding array of media. They write, still, but they also produce films and zines and three-dimensional models. Our new library will give them the tools and space they need to create work that is relevant today and in the future.

When the building opens in 2018, it will give our campus an additional 63,000 square feet of total space, including 185 additional seats for reading and study and nine new classrooms. It will contain 155,000 books (nearly all of our current collection), still arranged in the kind of easily accessible shelves that allow for browsing and serendipitous discovery. It will house a digital movement laboratory, a maker space, and a digital humanities center—the kinds of flexible rooms and places that will allow our students and faculty to keep pace with the changing nature of education and pedagogy.

Stretching across the sixth floor, it will also house an innovative Computational Science Center, a laboratory and teaching space that will both literally and figuratively connect Continued on Page 71 BARNARD MAGAZINE FALL 2015 3

INSIDE EDITOR’S LETTER

BARNARD LOVE ON INSTAGRAM

Innovation & Tradition

Student takes on decorating their spaces

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@remykinsss A little washi tape and a lot of time. Good to be back @barnardcollege #junior #barnardcollege #nyc #skyline #washitape #diy #labordayweekend #barnard

@nataliepino Da Humble Abode #barnardcollege #dorm

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The quote from Barnard COO Rob Goldberg, which opens his profile on page 8 of this issue, perhaps says it best: this is indeed an optimistic moment in the history of Barnard College.

With this line-up of articles and features, we can see growth and innovation in academic programs, our physical plant, and in a record number of students both applying to the College and accepting its offer of admission.

Our lead article, which begins on page 18, explains the exciting features of the new teaching and learning center that will rise on the Lehman Hall site, catapulting the College into the future. The center will ensure that both students and faculty have at their disposal all the teaching and learning tools that modern technology affords higher education. We also include renderings of the new LeFrak Center, a renovation of the LeFrak Gymnasium to provide temporary quarters for the library and several academic departments. Given the need to best utilize the space of this most urban campus, and concerns about construction disruptions, innovative design and remodeling seeded by thoughtful study and meticulous planning are key to the successful completion of this major undertaking.

Innovation is not limited to new technologies and new media.

Professor Mark Carnes brings the study of history to life with his Reacting to the Past programs, which allow students to enmesh themselves in history’s momentous dialogues and events by reenacting them. What began here has spread throughout the Academy; the phenomenal growth in popularity of these reenactment scenarios illustrates the power of thought-provoking performance to engage attention and spur understanding.

Professors Kimberly Marten, in the political science department, and Paige West, in anthropology, explore more contemporary subject matter. Marten, whose special interest is Russia, provides trenchant observations about Russian leader Vladimir Putin, whose recent forays into Ukraine and Syria have dominated the headlines. Through her research in Papua New Guinea, West pursues questions of economic development within and respect for the contemporaneity of indigenous cultures.

—Annette Kahn

THROUGH THE GATES

by Stephanie Browne ’10

Illustration by Alex Eben Meyer

STUDENTS

In a Class of Their Own • Barnard’s newest students distinguish themselves through academic excellence and accomplishments

• On August 30, Barnard enthusiastically welcomed the 635 exceptional young women of the Class of 2019. “This group of young women has a remarkably diverse range of strengths and talents, and we are so excited for them to weave themselves into Barnard’s brilliant fabric,” says Dean of the College Avis Hinkson ’84.

Even before arriving at the College, many of its newest students had impressive achievements on their résumés. “Our goal is to find students who are accomplished, show promise, and have an intellectual spark,” explains Jennifer Fondiller, dean of enrollment management.

Erica Jong with Student Fellows: (from left) Gabrielle Davenport, Katy Lasell, and Claire Daniels

The Class of 2019 includes:

• A former member of the board of directors of Planned Parenthood’s Southwest Oregon chapter • An accomplished writer from New York City who had an essay published in The New York Times • A British actor who performs with the famous Bristol Old Vic • An entrepreneur from India who runs her own online business and cofounded an NGO that supports education • An Ann Arbor, Mich., woman who raises Chinook salmon as a hobby • A musician from Los Angeles who released an album and has performed live in L.A.’s House of Blues This year, the College accepted 19.5 percent of its applicants, marking the

lowest admit rate in the College’s history.

Fifty percent of admitted students chose to enroll, the highest yield in Barnard’s history and one of the highest of any institution in the country. In addition, applicant numbers have increased by almost 45 percent over the last 10 years.

“We were struck by the increase in applications, but not exactly surprised,” says Fondiller. “The interest at our visits to high schools around the country was evident. We saw a significant jump in attendance by prospective students at events such as Founders Day, which

indicated that more young women were taking Barnard seriously.”

First-year and transfer students spent a week participating in orientation, which included several new features.

Students shared talents at an amateurnight performance while faculty shared their academic expertise in an event titled Barnard Reads. New students also received a special zine, which included advice from older students, games, and tips on settling into campus life.

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BARNARD MAGAZINE FALL 2015 5

THROUGH THE GATES

by Louise Bernikow ’61

Photographs by Will Mebane

EVENT

Caribbean Feminisms On the Page • Writers find compatibility in regional diversity

• Haiti is not Trinidad is not St. Lucia is not Jamaica. The plural “feminisms” in the fall program at The Diana Center proved yet again that not only is feminism plural, but so too is “Caribbean.” The second in a yearly series devoted to showcasing the range of literary voices and variety of political issues occupying women whose origins are in the area generally referred to as the Caribbean, the event featured Haiti-born Edwidge Danticat ’90 and Trinidad-born Victoria Brown. Caribbean Feminisms on the Page is a series of the Barnard Center for Research on Women.

It brings together writers to discuss feminism, diaspora, and writing methods.

Last spring, the program featured Jamaica Kincaid and Tiphanie Yanique.

For Brooklyn-raised Danticat, Haiti, which she left at age 12 and often returns to, in her books and as an activist, is never far away. Nor is the subject of race. During her Barnard years, she read “textbook feminism,” though she believes the women in her family have lived feminist lives, even while not using the term. In college, Danticat called herself a “womanist,” a term originating with poet Alice Walker; it signified a feminism entwined with issues of race. She told the audience she felt “part of a conversation” with other writers of color who had been at the College, including Zora Neale Hurston ’28, Thulani Davis ’70, and Ntozake Shange ’70.

Danticat, recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, has written novels, essays, 6

Edwidge Danticat ’90

an autobiography, a young-adult novel, and a forthcoming picture book. At the event, she read from the chapter “Di Mwen, Tell Me” from her 2013 novel, Claire of the Sea Light, set in a small town on the island. Louise George is host of a radio show, on which she broadcasts stories of abuse and atrocities.

(Much of the writer’s work includes the popular and powerful medium of radio.)

George, whom Danticat called her “most

feminist character,” interviews Flore, who describes having been raped and impregnated by the son of the rich family she worked for. George pushes Flore for details, insisting on naming names. She is, in Danticat’s word, a “justice giver,” whose political action is to demand the real story—“tell me.”

Victoria Brown, an emerging writer, although close to Danticat chronologically, is only now beginning to claim her place.

Victoria Brown

Wanting “a bigger life,” she left Trinidad at 16 for New York City, where she worked as a nanny before eventually getting a college degree and an MFA in fiction writing from Hunter College. Minding Ben, her first novel, newly published in paperback as Grace in the City, is the kind of story Danticat’s Louise George would want to hear. The protagonist is an immigrant nanny, exploited in her domestic situation, working for a Jewish

family on Central Park West. One negative review called the book nothing more than a modern-day slavery story, said Brown, adding, “Perhaps more than any other reader, that reviewer got the point I was trying so very hard to make.”

Brown read a scene in which the new immigrant, having placed an ad seeking domestic work in The Irish Echo, receives phone calls from potential employers, one more appalling than the next. (“What is

her breast size?” one caller asks.)

The many meanings of “feminism” and its complication by race, class, history, and geography in the lives and work of both writers, are entwined with themes of immigration, migration, transnationalism, and the idea of home. “It has to be homegrown, central to the community,” Danticat said. “It comes of having lived under 30 years of dictatorship, colonialisms, the use of rape as a political tool, and a lot of migration....What is known as the Haitian Diaspora constitutes a transnationalism under duress—you don’t always get to decide where home is,” she said. At that very moment, Danticat added, on the border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic were an estimated 200,000 people in legal limbo after children of Haitian migrants had been stripped of their Dominican nationality.

Both said they turn to writing essays for similar reasons. For Danticat, “The non-fiction keeps the fiction from being preachy. I get the preach out of the way.”

Brown writes essays, “when something declares itself to me,” which happens often, given the popularity of her blog, byvictoriabrown.blogspot.com, where she records everything from the perils of cooking spicy curry to promoting unionization for domestic workers.

While Danticat and Brown help mold awareness of a substantial and growing body of work by Caribbean-connected women, a certain peril hovers. The same danger nipped decades ago at the heels of novelist Philip Roth, whose portrayal of Jewish characters embarrassed and angered many Jews. So, too, has Danticat been moved to respond to the idea that “everybody expects you to write everybody’s experience. You have to be representative. You’re making us look bad.” This is an old struggle, addressed

by Danticat in an afterword to her provocative novel Breath, Eyes, Memory, and discussed again at The Diana Center: “We don’t work for the tourism board.”

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BARNARD MAGAZINE FALL 2015 7

THROUGH THE GATES

by Annette Kahn

Photograph by Dorothy Hong

his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in international relations. He then joined the General Accounting Office (GAO), now the Government Accountability Office, running audits of national-security programs to determine effectiveness.

After five years, he moved to the national security division of the Office of Management and Budget, assessing budgets and policy and taking charge of procurement programs. The Department of State came next; he developed foreign-aid budgets and was charged with defending them to Congressional leadership. The negotiation process, sometimes tedious and partisan, ultimately led to his desire to move on. But Goldberg didn’t want to lose the sense of “mission” in public service. Below, he describes his transition from government to education and offers insights into his current responsibilities.

Are there similarities between the work you did as the director of the office of foreign assistance and as Barnard’s COO? There is a strong connection between working at senior levels in government and working at Barnard. Both are mission-driven, complex institutions. Each has critical constituencies, both internal and external, that are important to achieving their missions; each has complex financial and organizational needs that need to be managed. While the issues are different—I no longer have to worry about such things as how to fund humanitarian relief or counterterrorism programs—I do work on issues that are critical to Barnard. I still have to build and implement a budget that requires the same skill set that I honed in my government career. And while managing the design and construction process of the new teaching and learning center is complex, it requires the same organizational, financial, and interpersonal skills that I needed to be effective in Washington.

How do you begin planning for the College’s budget in an academic year? Budget planning is an ongoing process. We monitor spending, work

with departments and offices to make adjustments throughout the year, and spend time planning for the following year.

To build the budget, we ask departments and offices for their proposals; at the same time we assess the available revenue to determine how much we have to spend in a given year. Our goal is to protect the academic program, ensure our ability to recruit and retain the best faculty and staff, and contain costs.

Can you elaborate on what President Spar refers to as the College’s “complex fiscal landscape?”

I agree that managing the financial operation of the College is a complex undertaking. Many factors contribute to our financial health. Barnard is tuitiondependent: tuition, room, and board charges comprise nearly 80 percent of our revenue. Growth in our endowment is another critical part of our finances and key to our long-term financial wellbeing. Our endowment is small for an institution of our size and reputation. A robust fundraising effort is important to endowment growth. We must tend to our financial health and maintain the College’s academic standards.

What aspects of Barnard’s relationship to Columbia do you oversee? I work with Columbia’s finance and facilities folks on areas where we have mutual interests, which include our relationship with their dining services, coordinating policy on environmental health and safety, implementing aspects of our intercorporate agreement, and discussing the status of our new teaching and learning center.

Where would you like to see the College be financially in another 5–10 years? I would like to see steady and sustained endowment growth to support Barnard in the future and to continue to enhance Barnard’s financial health to ensure that we maintain our academic excellence. How will I do this?

Through careful cost management, more sophisticated long-range planning, system updates, and finding many more administrative efficiencies.

STAFF

Special Ops • Administration skills make a smooth transition from government to an institution of higher learning

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history,” says Chief Operating Officer Robert Goldberg, referring to the transformative on-campus building and renovation projects currently being undertaken to ensure Barnard’s continuing educational leadership. Coming to the post just about one year ago, the native New Yorker entered the academic world after a long career in public service with the federal government.

Before joining Barnard, Goldberg spent much of his life in and around the Washington, D.C., area, attending George Washington University, where he received 8

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THROUGH THE GATES

by Merri Rosenberg ’78

Photograph by Will Mebane

what you can control.”

Rigal, an urban studies major with a sociology concentration, says the Barnard community strongly supports her antibullying efforts. In fact, she wrote the book proposal for FLAWD as a sophomore.

She was approached by Penguin and was connected to a literary agent through the Athena Leadership Mastermind program of the Athena Center for Leadership Studies. The proposal sold within a month, and Rigal had to consider

competing offers from publishers during her finals. Released in August, the book has garnered significant attention; in September, Oprah’s Book Club named it among the “6 Self-Help Books That— Really!—Help!”

Rigal herself has been widely recognized for her anti-bullying activism.

Her essay about her experience was a winner in a competition that The New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof Continued on Page 71

STUDENT

Putting the Brakes on Bullies • A senior teaches readers how to build self-esteem

• Failure is OK. Imperfection is fine. So writes Emily-Anne Rigal ’16 in her new book, FLAWD: How to Stop Hating on Yourself, Others, and the Things That Make You Who You Are (Perigee Books, with illustrator Jeanne Demers, 2015). As the founder of WeStopHate.org, a nonprofit designed to stop bullying by fostering self-esteem, Rigal believes that people who accept themselves—flaws and all— will deflect nastiness directed at them by bullies. Those targeted by bullies, says Rigal, often turn their unhappiness against others. To stop that cycle, she wants people to understand that imperfections are not weaknesses, but strengths that illuminate their distinctive personalities.

Born and raised in Larchmont, N.Y., and Williamsburg, Va., Rigal was bullied during elementary school. She remembers the pain of “being picked on for being fat,” adding, “No one would be my partner in school.”

That experience stayed with her. Eager to help others who found themselves similarly tormented, Rigal, as a high school sophomore, launched WeStopHate as a YouTube channel, featuring teens sharing videos that deal with bullying. WeStopHate has 100 videos, and is one of YouTube’s top 30 channels. For Rigal, having people become self-aware and enhance their selfesteem are intrinsically linked. She says, “You’re not ever going to have people stop saying mean things. WeStopHate is about: how do you deal with it? If someone says something negative, how it affects you is

BARNARD MAGAZINE FALL 2015 9

THROUGH THE GATES

Photographs by Juliana Sohn

EVENT

A Moving Experience • The line of parents with first-years ready to move into the dorms formed early Sunday morning, August 30, as Barnard College prepared to welcome a record-breaking 635 new students to the Class of 2019. Our portfolio of images from Move-In Day highlights some of its memorable moments—loading laundry carts with stuff, unpacking in the dorm room, personalizing spaces, making new acquaintances; then late afternoon goodbye hugs, President Spar’s welcome in Riverside Church, and meeting Millie the Bear. Registration on arrival, directions to various activities, and any potential bumps in the process were smoothed over by New Student Orientation Program (NSOP) coordinators in turquoise T-shirts.

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BARNARD MAGAZINE FALL 2015 11

THROUGH THE GATES

Photographs by Dorothy Hong

EVENT

Convocation 2015 • Building a spirit of community

• In September, Barnard students, faculty, staff, and alumnae officially began the 2015–16 academic year with Convocation at Riverside Church, a service once reserved for anniversary celebrations, but with this year, an annual tradition. Keynote speaker Dara Richardson-Heron ’85, CEO of the YWCA/USA, spoke to her transformative Barnard experience, saying, “It is still the best college in the world.” She echoed President Debora Spar’s words that the College is a place where “young women can define themselves unencumbered by societal expectations.”

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Photos (from left): Dara Richardson-Heron ’85, Debora Spar, Provost Linda Bell, and Dean of the College Avis Hinkson ’84

At Riverside Church

Associate Provost Patricia Denison, Professor Peter Balsam

Dean Natalie Friedman with seniors

Students in block-party T-shirts from the annual barbecue

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FALL 2015 CALENDAR OF EVENTS

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THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 19–SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 21 7:30 PM (2 PM SATURDAY)

Barnard/Columbia Dances at New York Live Arts NEW YORK LIVE ARTS, 219 WEST 19TH STREET

Barnard/Columbia Dances at New York Live Arts features three world premieres, along with Mark Morris’s Canonic 3/4 Studies, staged by Marjorie Folkman ’91. The premieres are by Molissa Fenley, Caitlin Trainor, and Alexandra Beller, whose pieces straddle dance and theatre.

Information: boxoffice@newyorklivearts.org

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Beatrice Arlt Wolfe ’47, class fund chair

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 2015, 7:30 PM

The Muse’s Voice: Thea Musgrave and Clare Shore SULZBERGER PARLOR, 3RD FLOOR BARNARD HALL

The works of Scottish-American composer Thea Musgrave include instrumental concertos and 10 large-scale and several chamber operas.

Clare Shore has received acclaim for her works, which reviewers have hailed as “ingenious and evocative.” Join us as these musical artists discuss their work, which will then be featured in a concert. Information: 212.854.5096

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FRIDAY, DECEMBER 4, 2015, 12 PM

The Caribbean Digital II: History.

Cartography. Narrative.

MAISON FRANÇAISE, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

Board of Trustees Vice-Chair Cheryl Glicker Milstein ’82

Panelists discuss work that brings Caribbean studies and the digital humanities into conversation. Participants share digital scholarship related to slavery and colonialism, Afro-Atlantic intellectual history, and creative experimentation with multimodal technologies.

Featured panelists include Kaiama L. Glover, associate professor of French at Barnard College. Information: 212.854.8312

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THURSDAY, DECEMBER 10–SATURDAY, DECEMBER 12, 8 PM (3 PM SATURDAY)

Bingo THE GLICKER-MILSTEIN THEATRE, THE DIANA CENTER, LL200

In his final days, Shakespeare measures the value of writing against the grim reality surrounding his Stratford garden. Written by Edward Bond, the great political dramatist of modern England, Bingo explores the costs of a life in art.

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COMPLETE LISTINGS AT BARNARD.EDU/CALENDAR

Juniors in yellow T-shirts

BARNARD MAGAZINE FALL 2015 13

SYLLABUS

by Jessica Gross

Photograph by Dustin Aksland

On a sunny Wednesday morning in September, I sat down with Paige West, the chair of the anthropology department, in her colorful office in Milbank Hall.

The first thing she told me was that it was Independence Day in Papua New Guinea (PNG), where she does her fieldwork.

“Forty years! It’s a major milestone.”

And then she made an appeal. “Can you please make sure that you don’t write that I write about culture change—in

Papua New Guinea?” she said. “Because that’s not what I do.” This isn’t an idle concern. The fact that she does not write about PNG through the lens of Western values gets at the heart of what West has investigated and written about over two decades of work there. But to fully understand her meaning, we need—as in all matters—an immersion in context.

Papua New Guinea entered West’s consciousness very early, way before she first encountered anthropology. She grew up in Atlanta, where her mother lived, and in Murray County, Georgia, with her grandparents. One day, when she was a little girl, her aunt showed up at her grandparents’ house with a cat. The cat had a stick with a pillowcase, on which was a note: “We’re going to go to Papua New Guinea.” The seed took root. From then on, “I had sort of an interest in Papua New Guinea always,” she says, “but never imagined I would actually go there.”

West’s is not the stereotypical academic’s background, but her childhood inadvertently fostered skills vital to her ethnographic practice. Her grandparents lived on a farm until they had to work in the mills. “I grew up, when I was at my grandmother’s house, outside roaming around in the woods with my cousins,” she says. The rest of the time, she lived in downtown Atlanta with her mom, and was, as she says, a latchkey kid. The balance between rural and urban lifestyles carries through: for several months a year, West leaves New York City for Papua New Guinea.

She went to an elementary school in a working-class neighborhood at the tail end of busing, a social experiment that profoundly shaped her perspective on race and class. “I have ideas about what makes a person a good ethnographer. I’m a pretty good observer of the social world,” West says. “From early on, I understood that some people were marked as different, and in that school environment, I saw that difference was not well tolerated, be it based on race, class, or gender. “It became clear that there’s race and there’s class, Continued on Page 71

ANTHROPOLOGY

The Lens of Paige West • Reflections on an indigenous society and its development

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THE SALON

by Abigail Deutsch

Photograph by Shiva Rouhani

fiction is uniquely well suited.”

At Barnard, Pierpont studied life’s many truths not as an English major but as a film major. She recalls, “I didn’t know at the time that I would become a writer, or more accurately, I didn’t know what form my writing would take.”

Pierpont took several workshops that she considers necessary to her development as a writer, learning, she says, “to share my work with others, to receive criticism and insight from my peers, and from my professors—Mary Gordon, Lynne Tillman, and Richard Panek—all of whom were wonderful.”

After graduation, Pierpont stayed in touch with her writing professors, as well as with several alumnae who write. This network continues to yield fruit; recently, one professor introduced her to another Barnard alumna and first-time novelist, Cecily Wong ’10, author of the wellreceived Diamond Head.

Yet Pierpont’s path to full-time writing wasn’t always obvious. Immediately postcollege, she spent a “scary” year or two working various jobs and planning what to do next. That uncertain time was, in the end, crucial for her work: “I found myself working on short stories obsessively,” she says. “At some point I became aware of MFA programs, and that there were about a dozen across the country that offered full funding to a small cohort. [That] became the impossible dream: time to

write, and the authority to admit that it was what I was trying to do.” Pierpont graduated from New York University’s MFA program in 2013. At NYU, she learned a lot and found supportive friends and mentors; her time there, she says, made this novel possible.

The writing process was not without its challenges: “Writing is lonely, though while I was writing the book I didn’t mind.” Pierpont describes a “necessary trance” that enabled her to work harder than she’d ever thought possible.

The rewards for that work have been considerable. Among the Ten Thousand Things has received excellent reviews and become a national bestseller. The financial rewards have been impressive, too: the novel sold for six figures. “I remember coming out of work and calling my mother [journalist and New Yorker writer Claudia Roth Pierpont ’79] in the middle of Times Square and just having no words,” Pierpont says of the day of the sale. But most meaningful of all are the reader’s compensations—delicately drawn characters navigating a strange, sad, funny landscape that closely resembles our own.

As for what’s next, “I’m taking notes and working on a short story that may or may not amount to more,” she says.

“Mostly I’m trying to engage in looking at the world around me.” Such attention will no doubt prove essential to her next piece of meticulously observed fiction.

AUTHOR

Writing the Family Portrait • Julia Pierpont ’08

• In the first scene of Julia Pierpont’s debut novel, Among the Ten Thousand Things (Random House, 2015), 11-year-old Kay Shanley comes home to a mysterious package and can’t resist a peek. The carton turns out to be a Pandora’s box of letters, one bearing a secret that will forever change the way Kay understands her family—and the way her family members understand one another.

What follows is a book in canon form: we move out of Kay’s perspective and into her brother’s, her mother’s, her father’s, then back to Kay’s. Pierpont traces each character as precisely as the last: there’s Kay, forever uncertain what to say yet luridly expressive in her Seinfeld fan fiction; there’s her brother, Simon, who has embarked on a desperate quest for cool (and for girls); there’s Jack, their father, a sculptor who brings his flair for artifice to himself and his relationships— as the box reveals, he had an affair.

Then there’s Deb, their mother, who is heartbreakingly aware that, though a victim of her husband’s philandering, she risks seeming to her children as though she is at fault. And as this impressively complex family portrait indicates, maybe, in a way, she is.

The book’s form serves various purposes, Pierpont says. “I love it when writers dip in and out of different characters’ perspectives, showing you different versions of the same event or coercing you into empathizing with opposing sides of a story. It feels truer to life’s many truths, and something to which

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BARNARD MAGAZINE FALL 2015 15

THE SALON

by Jennifer Altmann

BROADCASTER

Around the Dial • Candice Agree ’79

• For Candice Agree ’79, the path to becoming a classical music radio host wound through an internship with shockjock Howard Stern and a job at a station that played heavy metal before arriving at her current spot as an afternoon drivetime host at Chicago’s WFMT, a classical and fine-arts station.

Agree was still in high school when her father suggested she consider pursuing a broadcast career. “My dad read in the New York Post that WPLJ had hired Carol Miller, and he said, ‘That would be a great job for you,’ ” she recalls. “I said, ‘They’re never going to hire me. They hired the one token woman.’ You just did not hear women on the radio that much, and it was extremely unusual to see a female instrumentalist in a symphony orchestra.”

Agree, a native New Yorker, majored in Russian at Barnard, to which she transferred after two years at the University of Rochester. After college, she worked for the US-USSR Trade and Economic Council and later held positions in Columbia’s history and Slavic languages departments. One afternoon, she called Howard Stern’s show to answer a question about opera star Placido Domingo, after which his producer asked her to come meet Stern, who hired her as an intern. “My job was convincing former stars—C- and D-list celebrities—to do an interview with Howard Stern,” she says.

She then went on to work at various stations in and around New York. In 1988 she began working at the New York classical music commercial station WNCN; in 1993 that job took an unexpected twist. One day, the staff was assembled and told that the format 16

was changing at midnight from classical to “pure rock.” Agree was the only announcer kept on. “One day I’m playing Beethoven and Bach, and then I went on the air playing the Stone Temple Pilots and Nine Inch Nails,” she says. “Being able to make that jump gave me a lot of confidence as a radio announcer.”

Whatever the format, Agree’s philosophy is “less talk, more music.” She hopes “to entertain more than teach. A lot of people have the idea with classical radio that it’s a lecture or a music class.

My approach is that it’s entertainment.

I try to think of interesting things to say about the music, so if I were listening, I’d say, ‘Oh, I didn’t know that.’ ” She veers away from the dates when a composer lived, for example, in favor of anecdotes that illuminate the music. Her facility in languages, including French, Italian, Spanish, and Russian, has come in handy for pronouncing composers’ names and doing research.

Live radio has its share of challenges— a CD fails, an LP skips, the network-news feed is supposed to start but doesn’t—so there’s dead air to fill. “One thing that has always saved me from true disasters is that I come in prepared,” Agree says.

After two years as the station’s weekend morning host, she has served, since October, as the afternoon drive-time host, bringing listeners her “warm personality

and sophisticated musical sensibility,” says David Polk, the program director at Chicago’s WFMT. The station has an audience of 240,000 monthly listeners and is one of the few where the announcers themselves select the music they play.

Agree also continues to host and produce the early-music program Baroque and Before, which she created in 2014.

Dividing her time between Chicago and New York, Agree has numerous other projects. She serves as the off-camera announcer for CBS Sunday Morning with Charles Osgood, and she records audiobooks, commercials, training videos, and documentaries. Much of her free time is also spent working on her self-produced, syndicated show The Spanish Hour, which features the classical music of the Spanishspeaking world. “A handful of works came to represent everything ‘Spanish,’ so I designed a program for anyone who has an interest in the cultural life of Spain and the Spanish-speaking world,” she explains.

“Along with recorded performances of great works by great artists, I present recordings of live concerts featuring Iberian and Latin American composers, conductors, and performers.” The show is heard on several stations around the country.

While being on the radio affords Agree the privilege of “being in people’s cars as they’re leaving work and school, or making dinner—relaxing and recharging,” what she likes most about her career is that it touches on so many different talents.

“Being able to work in so many facets of broadcasting—as a voice actor, radio personality, writer, producer, and content distributor—is deeply rewarding. I can’t wait to find out what I’ll do next,” she says.

•

THE SALON

by June D. Bell

PRODUCER/DIRECTOR

A Stage for Gender Equity • Adrienne CampbellHolt ’02

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Director Adrienne Campbell-Holt’s desire to collaborate regularly with dynamic playwrights, set designers, and actors could have remained a wish. But, she admits with a laugh, “I realized I am not a person who enjoys waiting for things to happen. The most compelling thing I could do was start a theatre company with the people I loved working with.”

That company is Colt Coeur, a Brooklyn-based group now entering its sixth season buoyed by a slew of critics’ accolades. A New York Times reviewer described Colt Coeur’s 2014 production of Ruby Rae Spiegel’s Dry Land as “remarkable” and praised CampbellHolt’s direction as “rippling fluidness.”

The New York Post called the drama “keenly directed.”

For the company’s fall season, Campbell-Holt directed the world

premier of How To Live on Earth, about the wrenching choices facing applicants for a one-way ticket to a colony on Mars.

Written by MJ Kaufman, the script was “wildly collaborative,” Campbell-Holt says, and evolved from blunt conversations among Colt Coeur members about transitions, identity, and “the unattainable things we all want.”

The 14-member ensemble will tackle another production in the spring, the first time it is undertaking two productions in a year. Cal In Camo by William Francis Hoffman, also directed by Campbell-Holt, explores the common ground between a new mother and her brother, who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder.

It runs April 23 through June 4, 2016, at New York’s Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, which is coproducing the show.

Given Colt Coeur’s success and accolades, it’s hard to believe CampbellHolt initially wavered on whether she was ready to start and lead a theater company.

“For a while, I was worried because sometimes people are very outgoing and sort of hammy,” she says, “and I’m not like that at all.” But Alex Timbers, a Tonynominated director she’s worked with and respects, thought otherwise. He assured her that she was ready to take the leap.

More important than having an outgoing personality, in retrospect, was getting assurances from colleagues that they shared her commitment to an untested venture. Campbell-Holt asked, “Do you understand we will be painting the set after we’re finished with rehearsals and pulling props from our own homes and sewing the costumes ourselves? Are you excited for that? And there was a resounding response of ‘Yes.’ ” Though based in New York, CampbellHolt travels widely to direct. She spent 10 days in Chile last spring directing five new one-act plays, and she’ll travel to Denver next year to direct Theresa Rebeck’s The Nest, which Campbell-Holt describes as “A Long Day’s Journey Into Night meets Cheers.”

Committed to gender parity, CampbellContinued on Page 72

NEW & UPCOMING RELEASES FICTION

•Beauty is a Wound

by Eka Kurniawan translated by Annie Tucker ’02 New Directions, 2015, $19.95 Among the Ten Thousand Things

by Julia Pierpont ’08 Random House, 2015, $26 Patient Women

by Larissa Shmailo ’79 BlazeVOX, 2015, $18 NONFICTION

•Stop the Fight!: How to Break Free from the 12 Most Common Arguments and Build a Relationship that Lasts

by Michelle Brody ’88 The Experiment, 2015, $15.95 Lectiones Memorabiles:Volume I: Selections from Catullus, Cicero, Livy, Ovid, Propertius, Tibullus, and Vergil edited by Marianthe Colakis ’77 Bolchazy-Carducci Press, 2015, $29 Flawd: How to Stop Hating on Yourself, Others, and the Things That Make You Who You Are

by Emily-Anne Rigal ’16 Perigee, 2015, $15.95 Jewish Soul Food: Traditional Fare and What it Means

by Carol Ungar ’81 Brandeis University Press, 2015, $27.95 POETRY

•WREN

by Elizabeth Stabler ’54 Red Barn Books, 2015, $15.95 INVENT[ST]ORY: Selected Catalog Poems & New (1996-2015)

by Eileen Tabios ’82 Dos Madres Press, 2015, $20 FACULTY

•Household Workers Unite: The Untold Story of African American Women who Built a Movement

by Premilla Nadasen Beacon Press, 2015, $27.95

BARNARD MAGAZINE FALL 2015 17

by Mervyn Kaufman, Abigail Beshkin, and Annette Kahn

A Visionary Look Toward the Future • Barnard College’s new on-campus center will lead the way to continued excellence in teaching and learning 18

LEARN MORE ABOUT THE TEACHING & LEARNING CENTER AT BARNARD.EDU/TLC FOLLOW @MILLIEBUILDS ON TWITTER FOR THE LATEST UPDATES

“What does the library of the 21st

century look like?” asked Barnard president Debora Spar at one of a series of strategic planning sessions begun four years ago to determine the College’s needs for future growth and continuation of the highest academic standards. The campus

community and visitors will see the answer to Spar’s question by the summer of 2018: a cutting-edge 128,000-square foot teaching and learning center (TLC) that will rise on the site of Lehman Hall.

The new complex embraces changes that new technologies and media have

brought to higher education and the many ways teaching, learning, and research are conducted with these new learning tools.

(Please read Spar’s letter on page 3.)

Partner and lead designer Roger Duffy, with Meredith Bostwick-Lorenzo Eiroa, both of the award-winning architectural BARNARD MAGAZINE FALL 2015 19

firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), led the design and development of the new structure. “We took on this fantastic project for Barnard…because it’s a wonderful institution, a fantastic site, and we feel privileged to be able to work and to collaborate with them on this amazing new contribution to their campus,” says Duffy. “[The TLC is] essentially a very high-tech library and supporting academic space and faculty offices, all commingled and networked together with other buildings on their campus.”

When it opened in April 1960, Lehman Hall was hailed as Barnard’s first major campus addition since 1926. Rising to four stories and including one level below ground, the building devoted three floors and 65,000 square feet to storing 150,000 volumes. Within Lehman, the Wollman Library capably housed Barnard’s growing collection of books and research materials—until the digital age began challenging its limitations. Renovation was considered, and surveys were conducted, but from all reports it was clear that the renovation price tag would be daunting and the result would only satisfy current needs, providing an insufficient nod to Barnard’s projected future. New construction offered the best solution that balanced needs, costs, and ultimate value.

What the new building will encompass evolved from the strategic planning sessions launched by Spar in 2011. At these meetings, additional space emerged as the overriding concern of faculty, administrative staff, and students. Other pressing needs surfaced. Additions to the must-have list: cutting-edge educational technologies; library facilities in tune with how students study today (online and more collaboratively); and interactive spaces for teaching, learning, and collaborative research between students and faculty. Within the TLC will be a state-of-the art library designed to embrace cutting-edge educational technologies and interactive learning spaces in a four-story base topped by an 11-story tower that aligns with the façade of neighboring Altschul Hall.

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Color blocks in this rendering indicate proposed locations for various departments and functions.

The center will include: • Five innovative labs—for movement, digital humanities, creativity, multimedia, and empirical reasoning—that will comprise a digital commons • A computational science center established for research-focused students and faculty across disciplines • Technologically up-to-date classrooms flexibly designed for seminars and large-group instruction, plus a variety of study areas for individual and group student use • New homes for the Barnard Center for Research on Women and the Athena Center for Leadership Studies, plus conferencing facilities linked to meeting and event spaces in The Diana Center • Departmental offices for economics, history, political science, and urban studies • Accessible outdoor terraces plus an intimate café Throughout the two-plus years of demolition and construction, campus life and learning will continue uninterrupted.

The College’s 20,000 most-circulated books have been transferred to the fourth floor of Columbia’s Butler Library where they can be available to Barnard

students, staff, and faculty while the new facility is being built. The remainder of Barnard’s stored books will be inaccessible throughout the construction period, but its archival book collections will be retrievable weekly. In addition, the Columbia library’s 4.6 million books and archives will be available via the university’s online retrieval system.

Facilities are already under construction at various campus sites for programs and activities displaced when Lehman Hall closes. The creation of the two-story LeFrak Center, formerly the LeFrak Gymnasium, will become temporary quarters for the library and several academic departments, and is one of the most innovative designs for the reuse of a space. (See page 21 for construction photos and renderings.)

Women Take the Lead in Major Campus Construction Three women direct teams involved

with Barnard’s campus construction and renovations: architect Heidi Blau, architect and project manager Meredith BostwickLorenzo Eiroa, and construction manager Suzanne Castellano. All three have Continued on Page 72

Photographs by Dorothy Hong

Seeing the Light

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• The new LeFrak Center will provide temporary homes for the library and several academic departments

• Closed for construction in June 2015, the

LeFrak Gymnasium, recently renamed LeFrak Center, is scheduled to reopen this December. Transformed into a two-story space, the center will temporarily house a portion of the library, archives, study spaces, the Empirical Reasoning Lab, digital classroom, and two seminar spaces on the first floor; and offices and meeting spaces for the departments of economics, history, political science, and urban studies on the second. Activities that were in the LeFrak gym have been moved to other locations around the campus.

The overall redesign of the gym reflects the desire to provide suitable quarters while maximizing natural light. As an example, the original windows suggested the location of the second floor; the semicircular window top will allow natural light to filter into this second floor. Glass doors on some meeting and conference rooms will also brighten the hallways.

Heidi Blau, lead architect on the center, informally known as the swing-space project, says, “Building for temporary facilities is a different mindset…. There were a lot of parts and pieces that had to be accommodated, and in some ways, the temporary nature of the construction allowed us some latitude in art and color choices,” although the colors shown in the renderings have not been finalized as of this writing. Important questions focused on how the spaces flowed together,

Architectural Renderings 1 The library will be housed temporarily on the first floor of the LeFrak Center.

2 and 3 Meeting rooms and several hallways on the second floor will receive natural light from the uppermost portion of the gymnasium’s original windows.

and how the spaces impacted the work experiences for library staff, faculty, and students.

Blau also addressed questions of interaction among students. She notes that many of the materials in the library are available digitally today, and studentgathering spaces need to provide enough room to work on projects in a collaborative manner.

•

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Construction Photos 1 When brass letters announcing the gym’s name were removed, vestiges of the lettering remained on the wallboard.

2 The new floor accommodates the original windows.

3 Hexagonal cutouts in ceiling beams become part of the overall design.

4 A view of the first floor looks toward the former stage.

BARNARD MAGAZINE FALL 2015 21

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by Elicia Brown ’90

Photographs by Dorothy Hong

A Global View • A peripatetic professor brings firsthand experience and insights into global politics, but her fascination with Russia remains a focus

• She has traveled to 33 countries for her work on international security problems, to do field research, or to give presentations to international audiences.

She lived for three months in Tokyo as a Council on Foreign Relations/Hitachi International Affairs Fellow, visited Turkmenistan with a delegation from Columbia’s Harriman Institute, and went on patrol with U.S. military troops on a NATO-led peace operation in Kosovo.

Kimberly Marten, the Ann Whitney Olin Professor of Political Science, was also embedded for a week with Canadian forces on another NATO-led mission in Afghanistan. In 2012, she visited Ramallah for a research project on the Palestinian security forces that was funded by a Barnard grant; she also spoke to Barnard alumnae in Jerusalem at the request of former dean Dorothy Denburg.

Despite the global reach of her interests, Marten keeps returning to her first love: Russia.

She credits her enthusiasm for international travel in general, and her interest in Russia in particular, to the influence of her father, who spent most of his career as a research leader for the U.S. Department of Agriculture and traveled frequently to international scientific conferences. In 1974 he presented a paper at the International Grassland Congress in Moscow, and he came back with fascinating stories about Soviet life and the KGB, as well as with gorgeous photographic slides of the country.

Marten got her start as an academic analyst of the Cold War. Her Harvard undergraduate honors thesis looked at Soviet reactions to the Iranian revolution of 1979; her PhD dissertation at Stanford

focused on how the Soviet military responded to changes in U.S. and NATO military doctrine in Europe. Naturally, her work has evolved as Russia has changed since the collapse of the former Soviet Union. In recent years, she has been focusing on the effects that corruption and patron/client politics—in which leaders (the patrons) reward lower-level functionaries (the clients) for their loyalty with benefits such as jobs, graft, or the dismissal of a legal problem—have on international security. Her most recent book, Warlords: Strong-Arm Brokers in Weak States (Cornell University Press, 2012), examines the relationship between state leaders and armed local power brokers throughout the world, including in two post-Soviet cases (Georgia and Chechnya). She says her findings inspired her to take a new look at Russia as a whole, in particular its leader President Vladimir Putin, whom she calls “a former KGB operative who loves surprises.”

Her students joined her in exploring the fraught relationship Putin has with the outside world in her newly revamped course in spring 2015, Russia and the West, which will be offered again this spring and is open to “anyone who has an interest in Russia.”

As Putin has increasingly pushed Russian military and security issues back onto the international stage, Marten has been called upon to discuss his possible motives in Ukraine, Iran, and Syria.

Her insights have been sought by The Daily Show, NPR’s Fresh Air, The Rachel Maddow Show, Charlie Rose, and PBS’s NewsHour Weekend as well as the public radio show The Takeaway. She’s written recently for ForeignAffairs.com, the

Monkey Cage Blog of the Washington Post, and the Huffington Post.

In a thought-provoking article for The Washington Quarterly, published over the summer, Marten writes that it’s a mistake to focus on Putin’s “endgame.” The term comes from chess, but Putin is a judo master, not a chess master, and that means he thinks tactically, not strategically; he treats every interaction as a new match.

While he has two overarching goals, to stay in power, and to go down in history as the man who restored Russia’s great power status—in other words, to be the “last man standing at the end of the tournament”—there are many ways to get there, and Putin tends to think in terms of short-term victories rather than long-term plans, Marten argues. When his actions in Ukraine left him bogged down, with his economy in shambles from the doublewhammy of the collapse in global oil prices and Western sanctions, he needed to pull a new surprise. The result is that we now see the Russian air force and special operations forces deployed to Syria, perhaps in an effort to shore up Bashar al-Assad’s regime there, even though many objective observers of Russian national interests think it’s a mistake for Moscow to become embroiled in the current mess of warfare in the Middle East.

Beyond Putin’s personal style, Marten explains that the Russian political system as a whole is opaque. There are no institutions or legal rules that shape decision-making, just powerful individuals.

Many of them have come out of the KGB and are now backed by its successor, the FSB. Even if Putin were to leave power, the same kind of patron-client Continued on Page 73 BARNARD MAGAZINE FALL 2015 23

by Sherry Karabin

Photographs by Dustin Aksland

Reenacting the Past • Student role-playing makes major historical events come alive in the classroom 24

Photos (from left across both pages) Top row: Kate Iida ’19, Sarah Shevchuk ’19, Genevieve Henderson ’19, Najaad Dayib ’19 Second row: Samantha Lish ’19, Rida Aziz ’19, Kira Dennis ’19, Professor Mark Carnes BARNARD MAGAZINE FALL 2015 25

It’s just before 1 p.m. on the second floor of Milbank Hall and students are rushing to put the final touches on their costumes as they prepare to portray Athenians during the starvation winter of 405–404 B.C. But these students are not traditional actors. They’re participating in a different type of classroom experience known as Reacting to the Past (RTTP).

The brainchild of history professor Mark Carnes, RTTP foregoes the traditional lecture format, instead asking students to take on the personas of historical characters in elaborate games that allow them to gain a more thorough understanding of the issues and conflicts of a given time period.

Carnes says RTTP produces students who become passionate about the material. “Reacting to the Past not only engages students, but it taps into their world of social competition, motivating them to work harder to engage with important texts and to prepare solid arguments,” he says.

The curriculum is demanding. In addition to reading classical texts like Plato’s Republic for the Athens game, students must read hundreds of pages of historical documents and essays and write several papers for each game. Grading is based on the papers, as well as the student’s ability to bring her character’s point of view to light in the classroom.

RTTP also encourages teamwork, as students are often divided into factions, with members dependent upon each other to win their case. “The game becomes a part of their life, not just a class they take for credit,” Carnes explains.

In “The Threshold of Democracy: Athens in 403 B.C.,” student Athenians debate whether Athens should surrender to Sparta. Carnes sits in the back, more an observer than a teacher, only speaking to help move the game along. Carnes asks this writer from Barnard Magazine to join the game as an Athenian. After dying of starvation, I am sent from the room with an envelope containing a new role as a Spartan king, charged with deciding the fate of the Athenians who surrendered.

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The exercise is what’s known as a micro-game, designed to set the scene for what will follow: the roughly month-long Reacting game. The Athenian scenario is one of 12 published games played in about 350 colleges and universities around the world, ranging from Ivy League schools to community colleges. The games are even used in graduate programs, senior centers, and a few prisons, and reenact such historical events as the trial of Socrates, the French Revolution, and the women’s suffrage movement in turn-of-the-century New York City. “There are over 150 games in various stages of development,” says Jennifer Worth, membership and outreach manager at the nonprofit Reacting Consortium, an organization of about 50 colleges that pay dues to sustain Reacting programming. “We hope to publish three more scenarios in the coming year.”

It all began after what Carnes calls “one failed class in December 1995.”

Soon after, he experimented with making the classroom more compelling; he told the students in his first-year seminar they would not just discuss the readings, but would instead play three games that semester. The concept took on new life after two students, assigned roles as rulers of a game set during the Ming dynasty, threatened to “exile” those students who failed to abide by Ming rules of etiquette and behavior. “When students took charge of the class, the debates became deeper and richer,” he recalls. The students unknowingly laid the foundation for a new type of student-run learning experience that hundreds of scholars eventually transformed into the Reacting movement.

“Back in 1996, I just wanted a more stimulating classroom experience for myself as much as for my students. I never could have imagined that this simple idea would catch fire and spread.”

RTTP is now used by other professors at Barnard, like senior lecturer in French Laurie J. Postlewate, who started teaching RTTP in the first-year seminar in the fall of 2005. “Reacting to the Past is a very interdisciplinary approach that can incorporate visual art, music, and other

elements into discussions of social history, politics and philosophy,” she says. “The games not only deal with the history, they teach public speaking and listening skills, and reinforce the importance of teamwork.” This year, Postlewate served as a gamemaster during the Annual Faculty Institute, the consortium’s largest annual event.

While the Reacting Consortium is supported by member dues, the event is based at Barnard, with the College providing space and administrative support. The College also hosts the Annual Faculty Institute, which takes place each summer on campus and gathers faculty and administrators from across the country to practice playing the games and exchange tips and techniques for enhancing the classroom experience.

Attending last summer’s program was Jeffrey Hyson, assistant professor of history at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. “The institute is a great opportunity for those new to Reacting to learn how to teach it, and it’s a chance for old hands like myself to try out other games that I might want to use in my classroom,” he says. He took part in the “Mexico in Revolution, 1911–1920” game, playing the part of President Francisco Madero, assassinated in 1913.

“As a character, it is a little unsettling to find yourself thrown into an unfamiliar situation where you are fighting for your life,” observes Hyson.

Jennifer Jung-Kim ’89, lecturer in Korean history and East Asian studies at UCLA, has been using RTTP games since she attended the summer institute in 2007. “I started off using the China and India games when I was teaching East Asian history at Occidental College in 2007 and 2008,” recalls Jung-Kim. “The students were much more engaged. Even students who were often reluctant to speak up did so in the game because they were not speaking as themselves but as different people.” She currently teaches the “Greenwich Village, 1913: Suffrage, Labor, and the New Woman” game as well as “Korea at the

Crossroads of Civilizations: Confucianism, Westernization, and the 1894 Kabo Reforms,” which she developed with UCLA professor John Duncan, codirector of the Center for Korean Studies.

Carnes’s original theory—that turning the classroom into a living theatre would keep students engaged—is borne out across campus by countless students.

Among them is Jamie Lerner-Brecher ’17, who took two RTTP classes with Carnes during her freshman year, and now works for the consortium. She says RTTP games make students invest in the material. “If you read a text, you are reading it from the perspective of your character and are trying to pull out as much information as you can to make your arguments as that character,” explains Lerner-Brecher, who is majoring in American studies and music. “It also provides you with an automatic group of friends, since Professor Carnes asks you to interact with your teammates and opponents outside of the classroom as part of the exercise.”

Meital Sapir ’17 says RTTP introduced her to a new way of learning. “[It] allows us to simultaneously learn history while developing confidence speaking and working independently…. Professor

Carnes challenged us to advertise our political party, which in my case was the radical Democrats,” she recalls of her firstyear course. “My teammates and I created posters and put them up all over campus.

When I was in the dining hall and saw people from the opposite faction, I even considered whether I should talk to them as Meital or put on my Thrasybulus game face. It was fully encompassing.” Adds Sapir, “We found our voices during our first year in college because of this class and we had a lot of fun in the process.”

Carnes recently published a book based on interviews with students and faculty about Reacting, as well as his own personal experiences teaching the role-immersion methodology. In his book, Minds on Fire: How Role Immersion Games Transform College (Harvard University Press, 2014), he discusses the events leading up to that first seminar and how the class eventually led to the widespread use of Reacting to the Past games.

Carnes explains that as he pondered a student statement that “all classes are sorta boring,” he realized that this was a common frustration expressed by scholars for almost two centuries. He cites Harvard philosopher George Santayana who once

said that students and teachers were “animals of different species…periodic contributions could pass between them, but not conversation.”

In direct contradiction to this idea, Carnes opens with a story about a group of students who ask their professor if their 8 a.m. class could begin 30 minutes earlier to allow a Reacting to the Past game to play out in its entirety before the end of the semester.

The book has garnered praise from such education experts as James M. Lang at The Chronicle of Higher Education, who wrote, “If we are willing to open our minds and explore student-centered approaches like Reacting, we might just find that the spark of student engagement we have been searching for in higher education’s mythical past can catch fire in the classrooms of the present.”

University of Richmond Chancellor Richard L. Morrill said, “Every professor who wrestles with finding ways to bring more vitality to the classroom will find Minds on Fire to be disarmingly honest, with insights that invite a serious consideration of role-immersion games.”

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In the photo: Professor Mark Carnes with Reacting to the Past students

BARNARD MAGAZINE FALL 2015 27

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by Amy Miller

Photograph by Aya Brackett

From Beans to Bars—and Beyond • A love of chocolate runs through generations of this California family

• Amy Guittard ’05 mentions a favorite family saying: Taste has memory. “Your memories of growing up oftentimes are associated with flavors and foods,” she explains. Her family’s chocolate-making business, the Guittard Chocolate Co., is based in San Francisco, and her favorite childhood memories revolve around chocolate. The Guittards have been turning cocoa beans into this ambrosia for home bakers, pastry chefs, and candy makers for 150 years; the company is America’s oldest continuously family-run chocolate producer.

Guittard, 32, oversees marketing at the company, which was founded by her great-great-grandfather, Etienne.

He arrived in Northern California from France during the Gold Rush, hoping to sell a stash of chocolate and buy mining equipment. He soon discovered he could make more money selling chocolate to miners than he could prospecting, and set up his first chocolate shop in downtown San Francisco.

Today, most of the business is wholesale: Guittard custom-blends chocolates for global retailers such as Williams-Sonoma, or produces 10-pound bars for specialty shops and chefs at top restaurants. Production is based at a factory in Burlingame, south of San Francisco. But consumers can buy Guittard’s cocoas, chocolate chips, and chocolate bars in a range of flavors, from silky smooth milk chocolate to bittersweet, to spicy dark chocolate. “We’re kind of San Francisco’s little-known secret,” says Guittard.

Chocolate-making is both science and art, she explains. The chocolate flavor we experience doesn’t just come from its texture and smell; it also comes from

our memories of the people, places, and times when we enjoyed eating it. “My first chocolate memory was when my dad would come home from the factory and smell like chocolate,” she says. Others include watching her older brother make what he called “Cloud Nine” brownies before she was old enough to cook, and drinking hot chocolate with her dad at Giants baseball games in notoriously windy Candlestick Park.

She shares all these stories and others, along with her family’s recipes, in her new cookbook: The Guittard Chocolate Cookbook: Decadent Recipes from San Francisco’s Premium Bean-to-Bar Chocolate Company (Chronicle Books, 2015).

An English and anthropology major, Guittard took a creative writing class in her sophomore year at Barnard with Peggy Ellsberg, senior lecturer in English, and resolved to write the book that following summer, but confesses she spent more time surfing in Southern California than writing.

Guittard joined the family business about three-and-a-half years ago, when a marketing position became available. One day she was walking through the office of the company’s president, her father Gary, and spotted her great-great-grandfather’s handwritten recipe book. “I’m a penand-paper girl, and [this was] beautiful calligraphy,” she says. “At that moment, I thought: what if I took the same premise of this book, which was capturing our formulas, and translated that to a recipe book telling the stories of our family?”

About two years later, she was talking to a standing-room only crowd at a small specialty cookbook store in San Francisco’s Noe Valley about her recipes and her family’s passion for making

chocolate. The audience asked as many questions about the business and politics of chocolate as they did about the proper amount of fat in ganache. One woman asked, “Do cocoa farmers know what chocolate tastes like? Because I saw a film a few years ago, and farmers had no idea what these beans were going to be in the end.” Guittard, the company’s first full-time female executive, had no trouble explaining from personal experience how cocoa beans grown primarily on small family farms around the world become fine chocolate. She travels the globe meeting with farmers to learn more about the best ways to grow and harvest cocoa beans and talking about chocolate’s flavor.

She’s often surprised when farmers don’t know that cocoa beans grown in different regions have different flavors.

“And we say, ‘Hey, you should own and celebrate your beans and your farm and your blend because that’s unique to you.’ ” Her feedback is occasionally unwelcome, particularly if it’s critical; but most of the time, she says, small farmers enjoy the exchange of information.

Cocoa farming is one of the few agricultural industries still dominated by small family farms, adds Guittard. Eighty percent of the world’s cocoa beans are grown on farms of just 10 acres or less, and most of the beans are grown in Africa, where support and resources for farmers are typically limited.

Big chocolate companies are encouraging cocoa farmers to plant higher-yield trees to meet the growing global demand for chocolate. But small chocolate producers like Guittard want cocoa famers to celebrate the uniqueness and flavor of the beans they already grow because beans from higher-yield trees just BARNARD MAGAZINE FALL 2015 29

aren’t as flavorful.

“You’re a farmer, you want highly productive trees, so of course you’re going to plant this other tree,” she says. “But it’s that notion of incremental degradation.

Slowly but surely things change, and you don’t realize it until it’s too late.”

Guittard is helping set up so-called flavor labs in Africa, where local farmers can better understand and taste the nuances of cocoa beans, and learn how and why beans that are grown on trees just miles apart can taste completely different.

Guittard may be a small company with only about 150 employees, but “we play with the big guys,” Amy says. “I sit around the table talking with sustainability people from all over the world.” She’s particularly proud of her recent appointment as a mentor for Spring Accelerator, an organization that aids small business in East Africa serving adolescent girls.

Back in the Bay Area, Guittard, who also has master’s degree in business administration from California College of the Arts, has been busy revamping and synchronizing Guittard’s various brands and relaunching its logo. “I was brand new, and a little bit worried I was pulling the rug out from under everyone,” she says. “But I was really trying to get us back to telling our story as it was meant to be told. We’re a very innovative company.”

Even though she spends most of her time thinking and talking about the business of chocolate, Guittard hasn’t lost of her love of baking, which began as a child with her first Easy-Bake Oven. She still enjoys the simple pleasure of cracking an egg into a bowl of chocolate, and brings pumpkin chocolate-chip cookies to just about every party she attends. When Guittard recently asked a friend who’d just had a baby what she could bring her, the friend requested five batches of pumpkin chocolate-chip cookies, with several batches unbaked and freezable. “I stuck a bunch of dough in a Tupperware container and gave it to her, and she couldn’t have been happier,” Amy says. “I love creating more of those moments for myself and other people who love chocolate too.”

•

30

Recipes from The Guittard Chocolate Cookbook

by Amy Guittard

Photographs by Antonis Achilleos

SIERRA NUGGETS

Chips or Guittard Semisweet Chocolate Baking Chips

I like these hearty cookies in part because they remind me of the people who flooded into California in the 1800s in search of gold, including my great-great-grandfather Etienne. These nuggets are packed full of energy-sustaining ingredients—nuts, cornflakes, oats, and coconut—as well as a variety of fragrant spices. They make for an unexpectedly delicious treat. Eureka!

1½ cups [180 g] all-purpose flour 1¼ tsp baking soda 1 tsp salt 1½ tsp ground cinnamon ½ tsp ground mace ¼ tsp ground nutmeg ⅛ tsp ground cloves 1 cup [110 g] unsalted butter, at room temperature 1½ cups [300 g] granulated sugar 1 cup [200 g] firmly packed dark brown sugar 3 Tbsp whole milk 1½ tsp vanilla extract 2 large eggs, lightly beaten 1 cup [25 g] cornflakes

1 cup [110 g] pine nuts, peanuts, or chopped walnuts

Preheat the oven to 350ºF [180ºC].

Line two baking sheets with parchment paper. In a medium bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, mace, nutmeg, and cloves. Set aside.

In a large bowl, using a hand mixer, beat together the butter, granulated sugar, and brown sugar until smooth. Beat in the milk, vanilla, and eggs until well combined.

One item at a time, stir in the cornflakes, oats, flour mixture, coconut, chocolate chips, and nuts until each addition is just incorporated. Drop the dough by wellrounded teaspoonsful onto the prepared baking sheets about 1 in [2.5 cm] apart.

Bake for 9 to 11 minutes, or until the tops are crisp. Let the cookies sit for 2 minutes before removing them from the baking sheets. Store in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 1 week.

3 cups [240 g] old-fashioned rolled oats 1 cup [90 g] unsweetened shredded coconut 2 cups [340 g] Guittard Milk Chocolate Baking

MAKES FORTY-EIGHT 2‑IN [5‑CM] COOKIES

CHOCOLATE PERSIMMON CAKE This persimmon cake recipe might be the oldest recipe in the book. It was created in the 1890s by someone on my paternal grandmother’s side of the family. It’s a gem of a recipe that can add a little excitement to a brunch spread or star on the dessert table when baked in a Bundt pan. Even people who aren’t familiar with persimmons love this cake. For one reason or another, the cake vanished from our Christmas Eve table for years until recently, when my uncle Hoddy and cousin Jennifer took it upon themselves to bring it back—not an easy task, given that my granny never wrote down the complete recipe. They worked in the kitchen until they were able to duplicate the cake, and now once again it takes pride of place at the holiday table. The recipe includes both cocoa powder and bittersweet chocolate for a silky, fudgelike texture. To get the freshest persimmon pulp, choose fresh, ripe Hachiya persimmons that are extra soft.While the traditional method calls for steaming this cake, we’ve simplified the recipe so it can be baked in the oven. If persimmons are out of season, substitute 1½ cups [365 g] pumpkin purée. ½ cup [60 g] all-purpose flour ½ cup [60 g] whole-wheat flour 6 Tbsp [30 g] Guittard Cocoa Rouge (Dutchprocessed unsweetened cocoa powder) 2 tsp baking soda ½ tsp salt 1 tsp ground cinnamon ½ tsp ground cloves ½ cup [110 g] unsalted butter, at room temperature ½ cup [100 g] granulated sugar ½ cup [100 g] firmly packed light brown sugar 2 large eggs ½ cup [120 ml] full-fat plain yogurt 1½ cups [400 g] persimmon pulp ½ cup [170 g] Guittard Extra Dark Chocolate Baking Chips

Preheat the oven to 375°F [190°C].

Lightly butter a 6-cup [1.4-L] Bundt pan or cut a 9‑in [23‑cm] piece of parchment paper, lightly butter it, then lay it, butter-side up, inside a 9-by-5-by-3-in

[23-by-12-by-7.5-cm] loaf pan, leaving the extra parchment sticking out the sides; the parchment will not cover the two 5‑in [12‑cm] ends.

In a medium bowl, combine the allpurpose flour, whole-wheat flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, and cloves. Set aside.

In a large bowl, with a hand mixer, beat together the butter, granulated sugar, and brown sugar until light and smooth, about 3 minutes. Add the eggs, one at a time, and the yogurt and mix after each addition until smooth. Add the persimmon pulp and the flour mixture, alternating between the two, in four parts, mixing after each part until well combined. Fold in the chocolate chips. Pour the batter into the prepared pan.

Bake for 1 hour, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.

Let the cake sit on a wire rack for 10 minutes to cool. Invert a second wire rack over the top of the cake. Using both hands, flip the cake and rack so the pan is upside

down on the rack. Gently shake the pan to release the cake onto the rack. Flip the cake back over so it is right-side up. Allow to cool completely, 2 to 4 hours, then wrap tightly in plastic wrap. (The cake is best served the morning after you make it.)

Store wrapped tightly in plastic wrap at room temperature for up to 5 days, or in the freezer for up to 2 months. To defrost, move the wrapped cake to the refrigerator overnight. Reheat in a 350°F [180°C] oven for 5 to 10 minutes or until heated through.

MAKES ONE 6-CUP [1.4-L] BUNDT CAKE OR ONE 9-BY-5‑IN [23-BY-12‑CM] LOAF

BARNARD MAGAZINE FALL 2015 31

by Mervyn Kaufman

Photograph by Joel Barhamand

Academics Interrupted • Terry Weeks left Barnard to raise her children, returned 27 years later, graduated, and launched a new career

•

32

“I went to the Spence School in

Manhattan and then Miss Porter’s School in Farmington, Conn.,” Terry Herring Weeks ’76 recalls. “But I didn’t take the college course there—my father had never given me any indication that he wanted me to go to college. My brother had gone to Groton and then to Yale, but there was never any thought of my going to college.”

Enter Virginia Gildersleeve, Barnard’s formidable dean from 1911 until her retirement in 1947. (The title of president was awarded her successor, Millicent McIntosh, in 1952.) Gildersleeve, an icon in the long-waged fight for women’s rights, persuaded Columbia to open its professional schools—journalism, engineering, medicine, and law—to women students. She championed the rights of married women at Barnard. And she was also a patient of Terry Weeks’s physician father.

“She came in for a physical in January of 1944,” Weeks recalls, “ and at one point asked my father, ‘What is Teresa doing?’ I was just out of school then and working as a file clerk. Apparently Dean Gildersleeve sat up right on the examining table and said, ‘Why is she not at college?’ I don’t know how my father answered, but the next Monday I came to Barnard to meet Dr. Gildersleeve. I took the SATs (I did miserably in math but did well on the verbal), and the next thing I knew, I was a February freshman at Barnard.”

With no thought of her future, Weeks took the poetry, literature, and language courses that interested her, ducking many essential core courses until later. But as it happened, there was no later. She met Louis Weeks, a Columbia law school student, and ultimately left school to marry him and become a stay-at-home mom to their three children, born in 1948, 1949, and 1953.

“I was a very good mother for the next 30 years,” she recalls. “All three children went to Country Day School on Long Island, and I went to every event at school—I didn’t do anything but that. But when the youngest went off to boarding school, I figured I was either going to,

maybe, like Julia Child said, become an alcoholic or learn to play bridge. As that was unacceptable, I decided to go back to Barnard.”

The College honored her previous credits, but of course insisted “that I take everything I hadn’t taken before. I resisted, at first, but finally did it and it gave me a real sense of accomplishment. People had urged me to go to Columbia’s School of General Studies, but I said no—I wanted that Barnard diploma.”

Was it difficult for her? Certainly.

“Imagine going back there after 30 years of not doing anything? I was still a wife and a mother at home—those duties do not disappear. But my husband was wonderful; he would give up anything to have me do it. My children were maybe a little less understanding. All four of them came to my commencement, and my husband wept tears. I’m not sure whether the tears meant ‘brava’ or ‘thank God it’s over,’ but he seemed very moved by it.”

Terry’s classmates had all been welcoming and nice. “I enjoyed them,” she says. “They were younger than my children, but that didn’t matter. I bonded with them. At one point I thought of taking some courses at Columbia but was discouraged by the red tape that registration involved. ‘Oh, you’ve got to go there,’ one of my classmates insisted.

‘That’s where you get to meet all the guys.’

I guess she forgot who I was, other than someone to ask for Kleenex from time to time.”

Terry grew up in a household where three languages were spoken. “My mother was Colombian—I spoke Spanish to her at home,” she says. “I spoke English to my father, of course, but I had a French governess.” Among the literature and poetry courses she took at Barnard were Italian, Spanish, and advanced French.

Upon graduating, she boasted great language skills—as well as a flair for writing. She then took courses at the New School, to learn how to prepare and submit manuscripts.

In 1978, the Weeks family decided to spend Christmas on the Caribbean

island of Nevis. “When we got back,” she recalls, “my oldest son said, ‘You ought to write about this,’ and I did.” When she finished the piece, she submitted it to Gourmet magazine, and to her surprise they accepted it. That was the beginning of what became a major career for Weeks, one that extended well into the ’90s.

Some of the articles were her suggestions, but most were assigned to her by the magazine, which leaned on her language skills as well as her writing gift and ability to include the details, history, and color Gourmet readers appreciated.

For instance, at Airds, a Scottish inn, she reported, “Our first evening we sipped a glass of wine in one of the parlors and tasted canapés of smoked salmon on pastry rounds. Crisp white table linens and napkins tied with plaid ribbons give the low-ceilinged dining room an opulent air.” At Manoir du Stang, not far from Quimper, in Brittany, she describes the salon, “where one can have a drink before meals, or coffee afterward, [that] comes alive with a blazing fire when the weather provides enough of an excuse, and there are always flowers about, regardless of the season.”

Weeks’s husband always accompanied his wife on her assignments, though he was usually identified as “my companion, as I tried to keep it away from being personal,” she explains. “All except once.

We were in Alsace, home of choucroute (from the German for ‘sour cabbage’).

We had heard glowing reports of the restaurant Au Bon Accueil, and so decided to stop for lunch on our way from Nancy to Lunéville. We had a fine meal. Sandre, a local river fish resembling perch, was served with homemade noodles in a light beurre blanc. Choucroute with pheasant, smoked goose and boudin noir (blood sausage) followed. Our cabbage, the first of the autumn season, was so slightly pickled that my companion, who generally behaves as if sauerkraut were the enemy, cleaned his plate.”

From 1980 to 1993, Weeks wrote more than 40 articles for Gourmet, each one thoroughly researched before she set out.

“Writing those pieces was arduous,” says Weeks. “With each one, I said, ‘This is the last one,’ because of the demanding mix of elements—food, of course, but also history, touring, shopping, museums, art and crafts. I always did a lot of work before I went—three or four weeks before taking a trip, gathering information that would probably be available immediately online today.

“I was eventually made a contributing editor, and they knew I spoke Spanish, French, and Italian—that made a difference. It is very difficult for me to think of doing any of those articles without speaking the language. I was much more comfortable where I could talk.”

This year, 29 of Terry Weeks’s Gourmet articles were republished in book form; their subject matter ranges from coastal Maine and San Miguel de Allende to north and south Wales, the Amalfi coast, Venice, and Florence. The 367-page Travels with Louis: Two Decades of Writing for Gourmet is available on Amazon or at some bookstores. The book includes a bonus chapter, “Back to School . . . After Twenty-Seven Years,” an article she wrote about Barnard for Vogue in 1980. After being a “dropout” for more than a quarter of a century, she writes about the pleasures and challenges of being an older student, remarking, “I am certain that anyone who decides to go back to college at middle age has a great awareness of how precious are the time and opportunities that present themselves.”

•

BARNARD MAGAZINE FALL 2015 33

ALUMNAE ASSOCIATION

Photograph by Brandon Schulman

PRESIDENT’S LETTER

Connecting at Convocation and Fall Events • As I write this letter students are back on campus and the renovation of the LeFrak

Gymnasium is advancing; alumnae, trustees, faculty, and the administration joined students for Convocation at Riverside Church on September 10 to kick off the new academic year. While Convocation has been an ongoing event during the start of each academic year, this year’s Convocation repeated the special celebration of Barnard’s 125th-anniversary ceremony, encouraging broader participation and the opportunity for the extended Barnard community to welcome incoming students.

Participating in Convocation made me feel like a student again, and allowed those in attendance to reflect on the unique opportunities that Barnard affords its students.

Alumnae came away inspired and feeling a connection to the College and the students.

President Spar, Dean Hinkson, Provost Bell, student leaders, and one of our trailblazing alumnae, Dara Richardson-Heron ’85, encouraged the students to take full advantage of the opportunities and the possibilities that Barnard and New York City offer.

Richardson-Heron, who was Convocation’s keynote speaker, talked to us about her leadership journey, a story of personal ambition and resilience. She told of going from audacious 2-year-old growing up in Oklahoma to ambitious Barnard premed student, enduring a battle with cancer, and becoming a leader on a national stage, currently as CEO of YWCA USA. She introduced us to her prescription for leadership and success, stressing the importance of setting aspirational goals and persevering despite setbacks.

(See a video of Convocation at barnard.edu/news/convocation-2015-celebrates-newschool-year.)

I hope you will take advantage of opportunities to attend a Barnard event on campus, virtually, or in your community. In September, we livestreamed a panel discussion with Edwidge Danticat ’90 as part of the Barnard Center for Research on Women’s series Caribbean Feminisms on the Page. (Go to bcrw.barnard.edu for the discussion or see page 6 of this issue.) We plan to offer more such online programs during the year.

Dean of International and Global Strategy Lisa Hollibaugh recently met with alumnae in London and Paris to update them on exciting international initiatives as well as the Global Symposium scheduled for March 18 in Paris. For those in the tristate area, Professor Kimberly Marten, an expert on Eurasian politics and affairs, is scheduled to speak December 1 at a Project Continuum event that is open to the alumnae community.

Wishing you a productive fall. I look forward to seeing many of you over this new academic year and to more opportunities to connect, give back, and be inspired.

—Terry S. Newman ’79

34

ALUMNAE ASSOCIATION

by Matt Hamilton

Illustration by Marina Muun

D.C., there is always an opportunity to show Barnard pride in a meaningful way. Likewise, events and lectures from Barnard’s on-campus programs are increasingly being made available online.

In addition, a new source of inspiration for programs and discussions could be the College’s annual Global Symposium.

In March 2016, the eighth Global Symposium will be held in Paris, with a focus on some of the current events and rapidly changing policies affecting women’s experiences both in and out of the workplace. Barnard recently held events with the London and Paris clubs to introduce the symposium as an exciting affair for alumnae in the region.

“It will be an opportunity for our Paris alums—myself included—to learn about the symposium and see if they might be able to participate,” says Genevieve Ramos Acker ’61, president of the Barnard Club of Paris since 2007. She adds, “Our goal is to engage in intelligent discussions and share our insights. We have also evolved into a close-knit group and support system.”

This sense of camaraderie and shared interest in discourse is also a central ambition of the Symposia, explains

Lisa Hollibaugh, Dean of International & Global Strategy at Barnard, who coordinated the 2015 Global Symposium on campus in celebration of the College’s 125th anniversary. “It was particularly special to see the number of alumnae who attended and wanted to continue the conversations long after the event had ended,” she says. “We hope the Global Symposium events will continue to generate that kind of inspiration throughout the year, and the regional clubs seem like a perfect venue for the continuing discussions.”

The plans for the 2016 Global Symposium may offer even more opportunities for continuing conversations, as the series shifts its focus slightly. “Our past Global Symposium programs have offered broad discussions of women and leadership in ways that allowed us to hear amazing and inspirational stories from women around the globe. This year, as we take the series to Europe for the first time, we want to dig deeper into current events and changing policies that are affecting the experiences of women in that region. And as always, we want to ask, how can we continue those Continued on Page 73

NEWS & EVENTS

Globalizing the Conversation • Alumnae clubs abroad partner with the College to connect graduates around the globe

• It’s no doubt that Morningside Heights is

the epicenter of the Barnard community.

But with 18,000 alumnae residing outside the tristate area, including over 1,500 abroad, Barnard recognizes the importance of creating engagement opportunities for those who can’t regularly make it to campus. These include partnering with regional clubs in cities throughout the U.S., Europe, and more, to create Barnard-centric programming, online lectures, and events that can be experienced remotely, and fostering discussions of important issues for Barnard alumnae everywhere.

Leila Bassi ’94, president of the 200-member Barnard Club in London since 2009, has partnered with the College, as well as the Seven Sisters Consortium in London, to organize many events, including receptions, networking panels, and much more. “As the number of Barnard alumnae grows internationally, it is important to engage with them to make connections and build a Barnard community away from campus,” she says. “The global network of Barnard alumnae…represents an amazing mixture of diverse, dynamic women.” She adds that Barnard graduates have a keen interest in reconnecting with the College and with peers over mutual interests.

Around the world, a host of regional engagement opportunities are available for alumnae to stay connected to their alma mater. Whether it’s a book club in London, or a scholarship dinner in Washington,

BARNARD MAGAZINE FALL 2015 35

ALUMNAE ASSOCIATION NEWS & EVENTS

Alumnae Connections to the Class of 2019 • Great-Granddaughters Anna Ballard Elizabeth Hubbard ’17

Mary Muro ’15 Ayelet Jacobson Els Bendheim ’44 Granddaughters Rebecca Barabas Marilyn Graton ’55 Jennifer Baran Claire Metz ’52 Hannah Berck Lenore Berck ’52 Olivia Bloom Jacqueline Bloom ’60 Catalina Feder Ruth Feder ’49 Sandra Gooen Ellen Levy ’57 Eden Gordon Rosalind Gordon ’62 Ayelet Jacobson Gail Bendheim ’69 Nikki Shaner-Bradford Jane Bradford ’55 Caroline Strauss Rochelle Strauss ’57 Daughters Rebecca Barabas Cynthia Barabas ’84 Jennifer Baran Melissa Metz ’86 Emily Birnbaum Rona Birnbaum ’86 Alexandra Boubour Susan Browning-Boubour ’90 Bernadette Bradley Brenda Clark ’80 Amy Bravman Nancy Fish ’81 Shiloh Cleveland Bettina Gilois ’85 Kira Dennis Karen Dennis ’76 Alyson Dennis Karen Dennis ’76 Daniella Dennis Karen Dennis ’76 Shoshana Edelman Leslie Edelman ’85 Anna Fondiller Jennifer Fondiller ’88 Sophie Fox Nicole Fox ’83 Avital Goldstein Tamar Goldstein ’87 Jenny Goodgal Susan Lee ’72 Alexandra Humair Angela Bow ’85 Arielle Isaac Deborah Isaac ’86 Ayelet Jacobson Yonina Jacobson ’93 Taylor Leong Judy Yee ’83 Miriam Lichtenberg Rifka Rosenwein ’83 Aliza Penn Ronne Penn ’83 Nina Rosella Paula Franzese ’80 Sylvie Rosen Hali Weiss ’84 Danya Rubenstein-Markiewicz Beth Rubenstein ’81 Jessie Rubin Rachel Rubin ’86 Tania Saffari Nina Ansary ’89 Yiela Saperstein Adena Burnstein ’82 Arianne Siegel Monique Rothman ’87 Meenakshi Singh Monica Singh ’86 Antonella Sturniolo Stefanie Soichet ’78 Madeleine Tipp Victoria Tipp ’83 Yael Turitz Orlee Turitz ’91 Rachel Winton Judith Lamble ’81 Miranda Jarrett Gail Jarrett ’77 Liat Wasserman Chana Wasserman ’89 Sisters Kira Dennis Samara Dennis ’16 36

Alyson Dennis Daniella Dennis Shoshana Edelman Bridget Harrison Evelyn McCorkle Sara Ardehali Leora Balinsky Michaela Burger Samanta Dalchand Hana Fusman Natalie Greenberg Danielle Lefkowitz Serena Lewis Talia Malekan Rachel Meier

Sara Samuel Sara Schroder Ailin Valdivia-McCarthy Nieces Lauren Aboodi Bernadette Bradley Amy Bravman Shiloh Cleveland Madeline Cohen Kira Dennis

Alyson Dennis

Daniella Dennis

Rachel Eu Naomi Fischer Avital Goldstein

Jenny Goodgal

Shira Halpern Erica Ho Alexandra Humair

Sarah-Jennie Hyman Arielle Isaac

Ayelet Jacobson Carson Kraft Lucie Krovatin Taylor Leong Samantha Lish Evelyn McCorkle Julia Multedo Aliza Penn Yiela Saperstein

Emma Seely-Katz Marie Sgouros Nikki Shaner-Bradford Noa Shapiro Caroline Strauss Madelyn Teller Claire Thomas Sarah Tisch Yael Turitz

Caroline Wallis Anna Workman

Samara Dennis ’16 Samara Dennis ’16 Michal Edelman’15 Madelaine Harrison ’16 Julianna McCorkle ’15 Leila Ardehali ’18 Ruth Balinsky ’07 Chelsea Burger ’09 Naomi Dalchand ’16 Lior Fusman ’16 Alexandrea Greenberg ’16 Talia Lefkowitz ’16 Sophie Lewis ’15 Lana Malekan ’12 Efrat Meier-Ginsberg ’95 Karen Goodman ’98 Sharon Samuel ’11 Jenny Schroder ’14 Rhiannon Bettivia ’05 Monica Aboodi ’85 Bernice Clark-Bonnett ’85 Irene Gottesman ’79 Eva Bremner ’91 Judith Freudman ’58 Bryna Kranzler ’80 Heather Sered ’97 Bryna Kranzler ’80 Heather Sered ’97 Bryna Kranzler ’80 Heather Sered ’97 Elka Deitsch ’91 Judy Katz ’82 Rena Goldstein ’80 Sandra Goldstein ’84 Riva Koschitzky ’81 Eleanor Li ’68 Eileen Moy ’73 Esther East ’73 Rose Ho ’82 Cynthia Bow ’80 Lisa Bow ’89 Shirley Bow ’78 Leah Spiro ’78 Beth Lewis ’96 Rachel Steiner ’65 Tamar Bendheim ’04 Susan Canning ’84 Anna Quindlen ’74 Darlene Yee-Melichar ’80 Tiara Shoter ’93 Martha McCorkle-Morgan ’82 Mary (Michaela) Colquhoun ’72 Rona Greenberg ’54 Penina Burnstein ’85 Shira Burnstein ’80 Doris Herzfeld ’89 Shari Katz ’93 Michelle Chiu ’99 Janelle Hill ’80 Geri Gindea ’81 Jacqueline Knoll ’84 Betty Teller ’73 Jennifer McGrath ’83 Merryl Tisch ’77 Laurie Pinchot ’90 Karen Wasserstein ’55 Judith Dieckmann ’90 Wanda Chin ’77

ALUMNAE ASSOCIATION

•

The Alumnae Association of Barnard College was established in 1895 to further the interests of the College and connect alumnae worldwide.

Learn more online at alum.barnard.edu.

PRESIDENT & ALUMNAE TRUSTEE

Terry Newman ’79 VICE PRESIDENT

Francine Benzaken Glick ’77 TREASURER

Kathie Plourde ’73 ALUMNAE TRUSTEE

Camille Kiely Kelleher ’70 ALUMNAE TRUSTEE

Jyoti Menon ’01 ALUMNAE TRUSTEE / ANNUAL GIVING COMMITTEE CHAIR

Linda Sweet ’63 BYLAWS CHAIR

Rosalind Marshack Gordon ’62 DIRECTOR-AT-LARGE

Leila Rafizadeh Bassi ’94 DIRECTOR-AT-LARGE / WEBSITE ADVISORY COMMITTEE CHAIR

Anastasia Andrzejewski ’97 DIRECTOR-AT-LARGE / ALMA MATERS COMMITTEE CHAIR

Amy Blumberg Schrader ’92 FELLOWSHIP COMMITTEE CHAIR

Melissa Nathanson ’78 LEADERSHIP ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE CHAIR

Jennifer Feierman ’09 NOMINATING COMMITTEE CHAIR

(To be elected in September) PROFESSIONAL & LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT COMMITTEE CHAIR

Rochelle Cooper-Schneider ’84 PROJECT CONTINUUM COMMITTEE CHAIR

Doralynn Schlossman Pines ’69 REGIONAL NETWORKS CHAIR

Patricia Tinto ’76 REUNION COMMITTEE CHAIR

Merri Rosenberg ’78 YOUNG ALUMNAE COMMITTEE CHAIR

Julie Malyn ’09 SGA PRESIDENT

Shivani Vikuntam ’16

ALUMNAE RELATIONS

•

The Alumnae Relations staff works closely with students and alumnae volunteers to carry out program initiatives and further the mission of the Alumnae Association.

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF ALUMNAE RELATIONS

Caitlin D. Tramel ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR OF ALUMNAE COMMUNICATIONS

Matt Hamilton MANAGER OF REGIONAL & INTERNATIONAL ENGAGEMENT

Lauren Glover ’09 MANAGER OF YOUNG ALUMNAE & STUDENT ENGAGEMENT

Shelli Luchs DEPARTMENT ASSISTANT

Clara Bauman

SOURCES

by Melissa Phipps

Photograph by Will Mebane

FELLOWSHIP

In the photo (from left): Alycia Gideon ’16, Anta Touray ’17, Rachel Kronberg ’17, Annaliese Grant ’17, Nadia Mbonde ’17, Prof. Monica Miller, Dina Asfaha ’16, Grace Ko ’16, Clarke Wheeler ’16, and graduate student Anna Hidalgo

Entering the Academy • Program provides a path to a professorial career

• How does one become a professor?

This is a question that Monica Miller, now associate professor of English at Barnard, asked herself as a Dartmouth undergraduate. If one does not come from a long line of traditional academic professionals, is it possible to make it to the head of the class?

For Miller, the answer was obviously yes. She had help from the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship (MMUF), a program designed to encourage diversity in academia by supporting the pursuit of PhD degrees by underrepresented students. Becoming an academic was not something Miller had thought about until a favorite English professor urged her to apply for the then new fellowship. “When I got in and met the other students, who

were phenomenal and are now some of the best known academics in their fields,” Miller says, “it really inspired me.”

She has since received a PhD from Harvard University and built a distinguished body of research in African American literature and cultural studies. Her book Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity received the 2010 William Sanders Scarborough Prize for the best book in African American literature and culture. A Barnard faculty member since 2001, Miller earned the College’s Gladys Brooks Junior Faculty Excellence in Teaching Award in 2008.

Today, along with Michell TollinchiMichel, dean of academic enrichment and community initiatives, Miller champions diversity by coordinating and overseeing the MMUF program at Barnard.

Offered at Barnard since 1996, MMUF is a program of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Students apply in their sophomore year and become fellows in their junior and senior years. The specifics of how the fellowship works vary from campus to campus, but at Barnard, fellows take on a research project. They meet bimonthly with Miller and Tollinchi-Michel to discuss their research and share ideas to

further one another’s work. A student will also work directly with a mentor, typically a professor in her field of interest.

Students also receive research stipends. “Many students do projects that require travel to other countries,” says Tollinchi-Michel. “The money can support travel to attend conferences, or pay for online conferences. It’s helping them really get involved in their research.”

Another financial benefit comes in the form of student-loan help: once a fellow completes a PhD, MMUF helps pay off undergraduate loans up to $10,000.

Since an important element in increasing diversity is what MMUF calls the “cohort effect,” networking is strongly encouraged, and the group is kept small, with no more than 10 MMUF students on campus at a time. “It’s definitely a support system,” says Sujata Bajracharya ’15, a fellow who is pursuing a master’s degree in religion at Syracuse University.

Regional and national MMUF events, like the successful 13th annual New York City regional conference held at Barnard in April, provide a great way for students to meet and share ideas. (For more on the conference see the sidebar on page 70.) Rebecca Deng ’15, whose field is Classics, echoes the importance of the BARNARD MAGAZINE FALL 2015 69

community of scholars. “It’s really nice to have peers who know what you’re going through, and who have a passion for their study,” she says. “This program has helped me get to know other people at Barnard who, like me, want to go to graduate school.”

Once fellows have entered graduate school, support from MMUF continues through workshops on subjects such as how to write a grant, how to put together a great research proposal, and how to write a dissertation. Additional support is provided as students prepare to leave graduate school, says Miller, and includes such assistance as how to search for a job, how to interview, how to negotiate for a position, and how to transition into the profession.

The benefits of diversity in higher education are well documented, with studies showing that exposure to many types of experiences, outlooks, and ideas has positive outcomes. Faculty from underrepresented groups enrich scholarship by offering fresh perspectives and raising new questions, according to a 1995 UCLA study. Studies also show that students who interact with racially and ethnically diverse peers demonstrate the greatest growth in motivation, intellectual engagement, and academic skills.

In seeking to increase diversity across the board in academia, MMUF has a broad reach. “Barnard is among 46 schools and consortia around the country, as well as three in South Africa, that participate in the MMUF program today,” says Laura Washington, director of communications at the Mellon foundation in New York. Mellon makes grants directly to each MMUF member institution or consortium to administer the program, and institutions offer in-kind support such as use of facilities and professors’ and administrators’ time.

It’s no easy task finding students who know they want to become professors and have a specific field of interest. “Young people don’t even know what they want to major in and we’re asking them to say they want to be professors in X discipline,” 70

she says. Miller and Tollinchi-Michel ask professors and fellows to keep their eyes out for potential fellows. “The person we are interested in is someone who is knocking it out of the park … being creative,” Miller adds.

Interested students must also be involved in an eligible field of study. This is an important decision; a Mellon Mays Fellow is expected to stay in her chosen discipline, though she may switch to another field supported by Mellon Mays.

They are expected to apply to graduate school within two or three years. “The commitment … is important,” says Tollinchi-Michel.

While the MMUF used to be available only to students of color, it was opened up to all students in the early 2000s; now any student interested in promoting diversity (for instance, a student pursuing gender studies) in their studies or who is underrepresented in a given field (such as a woman in physics) may qualify. “The program is designed to help different types of students,” Miller says. “Some people are bringing their histories and others are bringing different perspectives to things we know. [Others] are entirely committed to the idea that the academy needs to be a diverse place,” Miller says.

This year, Barnard welcomed its 100th student into the program. The milestone is exciting, says Miller, but it’s not as important as what the number signifies: that 100 Barnard students have been strongly supported over the years toward academic careers, and more than 10 of those students have gone on to receive PhDs. The numbers grow exponentially over time. For the MMUF program as a whole, 4,649 fellows have been through the program, 574 have earned PhDs, and more than 300 of those individuals are on tenure track or hold tenured positions.

Even for those who don’t ultimately enter academia, being part of the MMUF program is unparalleled, and can help foster a lifetime of achievement.

Miller says. “We give the students the opportunity and support them at a very high and rigorous level.”

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THE GOOD, THE GRAD, & THE UGLY

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Each spring, MMUF students from New York Cityarea colleges gather for a conference where they present their theses to a larger audience. Barnard hosted the 2015 event, where about 200 students heard presentations on topics ranging from the West’s influence on Korean nationalism to Thai transgender cabaret. At a luncheon, MMUF alumnae Camille Avestruz ’10 and Nell Gabiam ’98 were featured panelists. Avestruz is a doctoral candidate in astrophysics at Yale University; Gabiam received her PhD in anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, and is now an assistant professor at Iowa State University. The two shared their tips for getting in, and through, graduate school.

1. Say yes to support MMUF recipients have access to mentors even while in graduate school.

Avestruz said when she was first paired with a mentor, she was not interested. But once her work became daunting, she set up biweekly phone calls with a peer mentor, who helped tremendously. She recommends that students say yes to any support that’s offered. “It may seem like an extra time commitment but in the end it will be so helpful.”

2. Mingle at conferences “Get to know other scholars. They might write you letters of recommendation, or invite you to write or present something,” Gabiam said. One of her most important advocates was someone she met at a conference in Beirut, who approached her to say she really enjoyed Gabiam’s paper. Rather than ending the interaction with a “thank you,” Gabiam invited her to breakfast.

3. Be strategic When looking for a graduate program, find mentors who will be around for the long term. And don’t pick a school based on the desire to work with a single person. “Look for one where there are at least two or three people who are well established and have tenure,” said Avestruz.

4. Publish wisely whenever and wherever you can “It used to be the exception to be a grad student and be published while you were hitting the market,” said Gabiam. “Now it’s the norm.” As a graduate student it’s not as important to be published in a top journal as it is to show you are capable of being published.

5. Learn to deal with criticism and rejection Gabiam told a story about being disappointed after a stellar campus visit that initially went nowhere. But she made such an impression that faculty invited her to speak, which led to other opportunities. In cases where criticism comes with condescension or cruelty, Gabiam said, “Condescension makes you question yourself, but if you made it this far, you have promise.”

6. Take care of yourself It’s an all too familiar scene: You haven’t slept in days, haven’t made wise food choices, and sunshine is a forgotten concept.

“You have to realize, I’m no longer being efficient at this point,” said Gabiam, with Avestruz agreeing.

“The most important thing I learned in grad school is self care,” Avestruz said, saying that she took up rock climbing, and was so serious about it, she asked friends to hold her accountable. “When you take care of yourself, you work better,” she said.

PRESIDENT’S PAGE Continued from Page 3

computing technologies to our naturalscience classrooms. Faculty offices in the new building will be light and open, bringing professors from our social sciences departments (economics, history, political science, and urban studies) into easy proximity with one another and providing spectacular views of both the city and the Hudson. Together, these new spaces will do much more than house and accommodate our students, faculty, and staff. They will be worthy of them, as well.

Buildings, of course, are only bricks and mortar (or, in this case, glass and metal!) They cannot by themselves nurture a student’s mind or advance a professor’s research agenda. But all of us who have been involved in the design of our new teaching and learning center firmly believe that this space will, at long last, provide a physical home for Barnard’s intellectual heart. It will be a place that inspires and facilitates learning, a space for students to discover both others’ wisdom and their own minds. It will sit at the core of our campus and of our mission—to educate young women to understand the world they will inherit, and to send them into that world enriched and empowered by a love for learning.

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PUTTING THE BRAKES ON BULLIES Continued from Page 9

offered about bullying. Newsweek named her one of the 150 Fearless Women in the World. She won a Presidential Volunteer Service Award from Barack Obama. The Today Show filmed its segment about WeStopHate on campus. And then there’s the Nickelodeon HALO award she received from Lady Gaga.

As a member of the Internet generation, Rigal says cyberbullying brings a new set of challenges. “Physical bullying is easier to detect and see,” she acknowledges. “My focus is on the kind of bullying, like cyberbullying, that’s just as hurtful but harder to see.” Rigal adds,

“Being a tween or a teenager, everything feels like the end of the world. If you see something, delete it. Don’t engage with it.”

For more on the Athena Center’s Mastermind program, go to athenacenter.barnard.edu/ mastermind.

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THE LENS OF PAIGE WEST Continued from Page 14

and there’s this world in which there’s a constant sense of judgment.”

For high school, West’s elementary cohort was transitioned to a well-to-do school next to the Emory campus. Several teachers noticed that “even though I was a working-class kid, I wasn’t an idiot,” as she puts it, and college appeared as an option for the first time.

At Wofford College, the idea of Papua New Guinea, which had been percolating in her mind since that pillowcase, reared its head once more. In an anthropology class she’d taken, West read Pigs for the Ancestors, on ritual and ecology in PNG. Until then, she had wanted to go to medical school, but now, suddenly, the script flipped, and for good: “I’m going to go to Papua New Guinea!”

West attended the University of Georgia for her master’s, then Rutgers for her PhD. At that time, in the early 90s, there was a big political shift toward the belief that in order for environmental conservation to work, it had to be twinned with economic development.

One place this experimental model for conservation was being heavily enacted was Papua New Guinea: one of the most biologically diverse areas on the planet, with a low population density and high rate of endemism, or species that occur nowhere else. “It was a perfect storm for this experiment, which was basically: if we provide development for indigenous people, then they will conserve their biological diversity,” she explains. “As a young anthropology student, that brings up all kinds of red flags. What is development? What does it mean to talk

about nature? What does it mean to talk about wilderness? Are these real things or are these ideological constructs from Europe that are overlaid on indigenous communities?”

So began West’s work in Papua New Guinea, which focused on the assumptions these conservation and development projects brought to bear. She did research at the Wildlife Conservation Society in New York City, which had a big conservation project in PNG; other organizations and NGOs in PNG; and in PNG’s Maimafu village, to examine how this conservation ideology was being enacted.

West’s dissertation, which became the 2006 book Conservation is Our Government Now, argues the notion that Western ideals about nature and value will solve our environmental crisis.

“That overlay of non-indigenous ideas onto indigenous spaces and places and peoples doesn’t work. Conservation fails everywhere,” she says. “I argue that it fails in part because there’s this fundamental mismatch between the indigenous ontology and epistemology and the Western ontology and epistemology. But also because these conservation ideologies very rarely even notice that indigenous people actually have pretty hardcore systems of value around the environment.”

In the area of PNG she studied, there is “a synergy between people and their surroundings,” she says, “a relation with the biophysical world that is so much more detailed and deep than this conservation ideology, which is basically a capitalist ideology that for anything to be valuable, it has to have an economic benefit. I argue that conservation has become much more of a vehicle for neoliberal economic intervention than for anything that actually will help to maintain different systems of ontology and epistemology and value.” Relating to nature through quantification and classification is not the same thing as an intrinsic philosophy, and to assume it will be more effective is not only ethnocentric, but a fallacy.

West’s second book, From Modern BARNARD MAGAZINE FALL 2015 71

Production to Imagined Primitive: The World of Coffee from Papua New Guinea, published in 2012, emerged from her relationships with villagers in PNG, who gave her the idea to focus on coffee.

“The general argument is that places like Maimafu village are cast as out-of-theway places. They’re cast as places that are cut off from modern systems,” she says.

West argues against this misconception by tracing the trajectory of coffee’s production and how its semiotic meaning changes at every stage, from the coffee growers all the way to the Brooklynites sipping their Papua New Guineasourced blend. In PNG, coffee signifies a connection to the rest of the world; by the end of the chain, the meaning of the coffee has become the inverse—part of a stubborn insistence on viewing PNG as primitive and disconnected.

“I leave people with a more critical lens on what it means to constantly cast Papua New Guinea as the primitive. I leave that as a question—and that’s the book I’m writing now.” West’s current investigation is into the material manifestations of this vast, wrongheaded belief; she focuses on tourism, journalism, development, and conservation, all of which she says operate under the misunderstanding that PNG has very recently been brought into modernity—that is, to come back around to the beginning, that the country has undergone a big, Western-driven culture change, from the primitive to the more modern. This belief is false—PNG existed in richness and complexity before white people became interested in the area in the 1930s—and is detrimental to PNG. So to say that West studies “culture change” in Papua New Guinea is to reinforce the very belief systems she is arguing against.

In her work both in PNG and at home, West has prioritized both mentorship and cross-discipline dialogue. The most meaningful course she teaches at Barnard is, she says, The Interpretation of Culture, a huge lecture class of mostly firstyear students. Though she knows most students won’t major in anthropology, become anthropologists, or work in 72

PNG, she believes the course “does open up the possibility seeing the world in a different way,” she says—that it can yield “a fundamental shift in people’s ideas about others.” West’s seminar on the anthropology of the anthropocene is holding several meetings with a class on climate change and law taught by sociology professor J. C. Salyer. West and Salyer are currently conducting a joint project on climate change and migration in the Pacific region. The shared course meetings offer students a truly interdisciplinary focus on current events and global climate change.

West also takes great joy in witnessing the skills her students have developed over their undergraduate years. She takes her mentorship role seriously in PNG, too: she co-founded the Papua New Guinea Institute of Biological Research, an NGO dedicated to Papua New Guinean academic researchers. West’s sense of empathy—which has roots in her elementary school days—is crucial not only to her role as a professor and mentor, but to her ethnographic work as well.

There’s a sensibility that ethnographers have, she says: “It’s empathy, especially for people that you don’t agree with, because that’s the way that you can understand how transformation might happen.”

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A STAGE FOR GENDER EQUITY Continued from Page 17

Holt insists that at least 50 percent of her staff on projects be female; women typically account for just 25 percent of a creative team, she says. She’ll also take a playwright to task if female characters are one-dimensional or stereotypes, or if a script has few women characters—and she’ll nix advertising that relies on scantily clad women to promote a show.

Campbell-Holt and a group of likeminded women this spring were behind Make It Fair (themakeitfairproject, #makeitfair), a tongue-in-cheek video that skewers male-dominated Hollywood.

“Only 93 percent of popular films are

made by men,” women lament as a chorus sings, “It’s only fair that men should have it all.” The three-minute video was featured on several media outlets, including Good Morning America, The Hollywood Reporter, and MSNBC. Campbell-Holt, who directed and produced it, notes that everyone involved in making the video—including gaffers, sound team, and camera operators—was a woman.

An urban studies major, CampbellHolt regrets not having taken any women’s studies classes at Barnard. But she notes that she became involved with New York City’s theatre community as an undergraduate and continues to collaborate with people she met then. She wrote her thesis on Brooklyn’s DUMBO area, which, she notes, isn’t that far from Colt Coeur’s space. “It all feels very connected to me,” Campbell-Holt says.

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A VISIONARY LOOK TOWARD THE FUTURE Continued from Page 20

decades of experience managing complex, multifaceted building projects. While each plays a different role, they are tasked with ensuring that every element of the work—from the installation of the HVAC system in LeFrak Center to the placement of digital screens in the TLC—is executed with timeliness, accuracy, and precision.

Before construction begins on the TLC, the College had to create a new space for the people and programs housed in Lehman Hall, which includes the staff of the Wollman Library. Throughout the fall, crews have been busy turning LeFrak Gymnasium into LeFrak Center to house academic departments and a temporary library. Heidi Blau, a partner at FXFOWLE Architects, led the team of architects and designers who conceived this renovation. A strong proponent of a liberal-arts education, Blau is excited to be part of creating the “spaces where people can learn and interact with each other,

and all of this interdisciplinary work that’s going on.” A Smith College graduate, Blau says, “The opportunity to work with one of the sister schools is wonderful.” She is also active with initiatives to attract and retain women in architecture, serving on the diversity task force for the New York State chapter of the American Institute of Architects. “Having different ideas put forward just enriches what we do as architects. It’s enriching to the people and it’s enriching to the project.”

Considering different ideas has been essential to the development of the TLC, says architect Bostwick-Lorenzo Eiroa of SOM, architects of the TLC. As the project manager, she is in charge of listening to the Barnard community’s needs, then communicating them to the architects. “Our mandate was to be a collaborative team player with multiple constituents,” she explains. She finds working with Barnard inspirational. “The TLC has been shaped by many great women who have been integral in thinking about the vision of what the architecture would be. It’s not often that you get to work with so many great women leaders, designers, and educators.” BostwickLorenzo Eiroa works closely with SOM partner Roger Duffy, the lead designer.

“Getting to this design has been iterative and collaborative in ways that are unique,” Duffy says.

Then there are the nuts and bolts—literally—of this major campus construction, overseen by project executive Suzanne Castellano of Turner Construction, the general contractor building both the LeFrak Center and the TLC. “The architect and the design engineers put together the drawings, then write contracts to buy the work specified in the drawings, along with the engineering and installations,” she explains. “My job is basically to make sure that the boat stays on course and to get us to completion.”

After earning a mechanical engineering degree, Castellano launched her career by working for utility companies. She

transitioned to construction management in 1994, and except for a three-year hiatus, has worked for Turner for more than 20 years. While the construction field mostly attracts men, that is changing rapidly, per Castellano. “There are more women being hired,” she says. “You still come across people who you have to prove yourself to, but younger people don’t think twice about working with a woman.”

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A GLOBAL VIEW Continued from Page 23

relationships would endure. Given the tools that KGB and FSB affiliates have available to them, like the ability to release or invent information that can destroy someone’s career or send them to prison, it would take a very brave soul indeed to challenge the current order.

These informal networks influence Putin’s behavior in Ukraine, and his policy in Syria and Iran, serving the interests of his political allies, says Marten. Many of his cronies have been installed in key defense enterprises, for example, and stand to benefit when weapons are sold.

“Putin also has to look like a strong leader who will never give in to Western pressure,” adds Marten.

The author of four books, Marten admits that she’s hesitant to start writing a book about Russia right now, because events are unfolding so rapidly that it would be out of date by the time it went to press. Instead she is using this time to gather as many points of view as possible about what is happening in Russia. Last March, she traveled to Moscow to talk with foreign-policy experts and give presentations at two universities. As the director of a new program on U.S.– Russia relations at Columbia’s Harriman Institute, Marten is planning a number of events that will bring high-profile experts to talk to faculty, students, and professionals in the New York area about their work. This fall there was a conference of U.S. and Russian historians and political scientists that asked whether any

lessons from the collapse of U.S.–Soviet détente in the 1970s apply to the current era. Next spring there will be a more policy-oriented conference on U.S.-Russia relations in the Arctic. She has also created a visiting speaker series on Russian business and finance, and a student forum where students registered in degree programs at all levels, from Barnard, Columbia, and elsewhere in the Greater New York area, choose speakers to invite to campus for informal presentations.

Despite the ambiguity and complexity of her field, Marten expresses satisfaction with her work. “I like challenges,” she says with a laugh. Global politics offers abundant choices.

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GLOBALIZING THE CONVERSATION Continued from Page 35

conversations throughout the year, around the globe as well as on campus?”

Hollibaugh hopes the Global Symposium events will serve as a launch point for the exchange of ideas that regional alumnae groups hold yearround. This would allow for a unique opportunity for alumnae to connect over these important shared interests, and stay engaged with what is being discussed on campus, despite geographical boundaries.

By way of regional events in the U.S. and abroad, large campus gatherings such as Reunion, online discussions surrounding the symposium, and various on-campus programming that can be experienced through the Barnard community of websites and social media, space to affect the debate may prove to be more accessible than ever.

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BARNARD MAGAZINE FALL 2015 73

LAST IMAGE

LAST IMAGE: CALL FOR ENTRIES

Do you have an amazing image or work of art that you would like to share with fellow alumnae?

Please send submissions to David Hopson at dhopson@barnard.edu.

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Julia Westerbeke ’03

Geophony, 2015 Punctured and carved paper, 22 x 15 inches

LAST WORD

by Karen Cohen ’64

Illustration by Rebbeka Dunlap

my mother held Zora, she told Anne that when they did “the dig” in the house and found the gown, it would be Zora’s. (Lucy Kramer Cohen was not someone to throw things out and she had been living in the house for 65 years.)

My mother died at home on January 2, 2007, a few months short of her hundredth birthday. My sister and I, with our spouses, children, cousins and friends, worked to get the house ready for sale.

(Our dad died in 1953.) Our mother used to refer to her various “collections”— many of which are now residing at the Beinecke Library at Yale University, as are Hurston’s papers, in part, because Lucy and our father, Felix S. Cohen, both worked crafting the legislation that became the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act, the “Indian New Deal.” Signed into law by President Franklin Roosevelt, it

was meant to give American Indians more power over their lives and lands. Lucy Cohen contributed several chapters to her husband’s work, The Handbook of Federal Indian Law, still considered the bible in the field. Both of our parents were lifelong campaigners for civil rights, particularly those of Native Americans and African Americans.

On Easter Sunday, 2007, we were able to get to a previously inaccessible closet in our parents’ bedroom. There was a dress box containing the commencement gown with the initials ZNH embroidered inside the neckband. On the day we reached Anne and Zora to give them the news, a Legon colleague had asked Anne to teach his literature class for him in his absence; when she asked him what the text was, it was Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God. (Turn the page)

A Fitting Cap to a Graduation Gown • As undergraduates, my mother and

math major Lucy Kramer Cohen ’28, and Zora Neale Hurston ’28, worked for Franz Boas, professor of anthropology at Columbia University. The two women knew each other, and when Hurston received funds to start field research in April of that year, she knew she would not be attending Commencement. In the days when gowns were bought, not rented, Hurston sold hers (with her initials already embroidered in it) to Lucy Kramer.

My sister, Gene, and I had always heard that the gown was stored somewhere in our house in Washington, D.C. After graduating from Barnard with a major in German foreign-area studies, I spent the academic year 1964–65 at the Freie Universität Berlin. In one of my first days of living in the student village of the FU, the cleaning lady, Frau Loll, told me there was another American student downstairs.

Anne Adams was finishing a Fulbright, about to move to a nearby apartment and teach at the JFK German-American Schule in Berlin. We became friends and have remained so ever since.

In 1993, Anne, a professor in the Africana Studies and Research Center at Cornell University, was a Fulbright Senior Scholar in Accra at the University of Ghana, Legon. She phoned that summer to wish me a happy 50th birthday and to say she had adopted a Ghanaian baby girl whom she had named Zora, after Hurston.

Eventually Adams brought her child home to Baltimore to meet her own mother, in her 80s. She also visited our house in Washington to introduce baby Zora to me and my mother, also an octogenarian. As

BARNARD MAGAZINE FALL 2015 75

The gown has been with Anne and Zora ever since. A very large hem had to be taken down for young Zora; my mother was 4 feet 10 ¾ inches tall and Hurston was much taller. On May 17, 2015, at the Spelman College commencement, Zora Adams-Williams wore the gown bequeathed to her by Lucy Kramer Cohen. My husband, Graham, and I were privileged to be there to celebrate the spirits of two 1928 Barnard alumnae together with one young Spelman College graduate 87 years later.

Karen Cohen worked in city planning and in public radio, and spent most of her career in public health as a health educator and medical writer.

The gown is being donated in Lucy’s and young Zora’s names, to the Smithsonian’s new National Museum of African American History and Culture. Learn more about Lucy Kramer Cohen by watching Nancy Kramer Bickel’s film, A Twentieth Century Woman, Lucy Kramer Cohen, 1907–2007. Alice Beck Kehoe ’56 wrote a book about Lucy and her husband, A Passion for the True and Just: Felix and Lucy Kramer Cohen and the Indian New Deal, published in 2014.

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THE SISTERHOOD OF THE TRAVELING GOWN In the photos (from left): 1 Karen Cohen ’64, Zora Adams-Williams, and Anne Adams 2 Zora Neale Hurston ’28 3 Anne Adams holding the embroidered gown 4 Lucy Kramer Cohen ’28

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SUMMER IN NEW YORK CITY

PROGRAMS FOR RISING HIGH SCHOOL JUNIOR AND SENIOR GIRLS SUMMER IN THE CITY PROGRAM • LIBERAL ARTS INTENSIVE • YOUNG WOMEN’S LEADERSHIP INSTITUTE DANCE IN THE CITY • SUMMER SCIENCE SEMINARS • ENTREPRENEURS-IN-TRAINING

barnard.edu/summer

Applications for summer 2016 available in January

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FEBRUARY 18–21, 2016 BARNARD COLLEGE athenafilmfestival.com

A Celebration of Women and Leadership

Film Festival 6 th A n n i v e r s a r y

REUNITE. BARNARD REUNION June 2–5, 2016

Please mark your calendars for Reunion 2016!

From lectures and storytelling to luncheons and receptions, Reunion 2016 is a weekend for you to reconnect with Barnard, your classmates, and alumnae across generations.

If you would like to serve on your class committee and be involved in planning Reunion, please contact Alumnae Relations at reunion@barnard.edu or 212.854.2005.