Barnard Magazine Spring 2020

SPRING 2020

TRAILBLAZING

Aliza Goldberg ’14 turns her wanderlust into social activism for a 2,652-mile trek THE BERMUDA SHORTS AFFAIR

ALUMNAE WHO VOLUNTEER

ATHENA TURNS 10

Inspiration Wanderlust On a safari to Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania in 2007, Frances (Fran) Abramowitz ’48 watched zebras and wildebeests roam the grassland. Read more about her travels in Noteworthy on page 68.

PHOTO BY MARK ABRAMOWITZ SPRING 2020 | BARNARD MAGAZINE 1

44

The Bermuda Shorts Affair

by Rona Wilk ’91 A proposed dress code for students ignited protest — and the activist spirit — on the Barnard campus in 1960 ILLUSTRATION BY FABIEN GILBERT

2

18

Features

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Cover Story: Call of the Wild

by Aliza Goldberg ’14 How a Barnard alumna turned her wanderlust into social activism

Student Life

56

Athena Turns 10

by Kira Goldenberg ’07 The Athena Film Festival caps a milestone as an international forum for stories by and about fearless women

Departments 4 Letters

6 From President Beilock 8 From the Editor 11 D ispatches Headlines Susan Stamberg ’59; Edwidge Danticat ’90; Confronting Coronavirus

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Strides in STEM

PHOTOS BY JONATHAN KING

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Driven to Give

by Marjorie Ingall Volunteering is how these five alums find fulfillment and purpose, drawing on their Barnard experience to give back

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Sketchbook: Suze Myers ’16 A conversation with the graphic artist and art director gives a glimpse into her creative process

67 Noteworthy Travels with Fran Spotlight Martha Stewart ’63 Q&Author Nadine Jolie Courtney ’02 From the AABC President Class Notes

First Person Symposium: Writing by Barnard alumnae

Sources Barnard’s Fundraising Future

Student Life Take the 1 Train

Jody Simms ’17

Wit & Whimsy If I Wrote Course Descriptions 21 D iscourses Arts & Letters Lives in Letters

Strides in STEM Paving the Way

Alumna Profile Regional Roundup Memorial Tobi Tobias ’59, Tessa Rane Majors ’23 In Memoriam Bold Statement

by Ashley Bush ’11 Crossword

Bookshelf

Books by Barnard authors

Faculty Focus JJ Miranda

Student Perspectives Hearts and Minds

On the cover: Aliza Goldberg ’13 sizes up Mount Shasta from Grizzly Peak in Oregon.

PHOTO BY LOÏC BURTON

SPRING 2020 | BARNARD MAGAZINE 3

Letters

The Barnard Effect I read Kira Goldenberg’s article, “The Barnard Effect” [Winter 2020], with great interest and pride. As a Barnard anthropology major (1973) and Columbia anthropology Ph.D. (1980), I’m happy to claim my lineage and the work of Boas, Mead, Benedict, and other pioneers to debunk myths about race and immigrants. Anthropology’s work in the 1920s continues to be relevant and critical in the 2020s. As the owner of an independent bookstore for the past 25 years (The BookMark in Neptune Beach, Florida), I’m enjoying selling Charles King’s Gods of the Upper Air. Thanks, Kira, for your great article.

And always: thanks, Barnard!

—Rona (Mazer) Brinlee ’73 As a writer and an admirer of Zora Neale Hurston, I was delighted to find her featured in “The Barnard Effect.”

Curious about the source and context of the pull-out quotation (“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you”), I Googled and got multiple hits with the words attributed not to Zora Neale Hurston but to Maya Angelou! Thanks to my research skills (developed and honed at Barnard, of course!), I finally found the original quote. It is indeed Zora’s, from her 1942 autobiography, Dust Tracks on a Road, in the section where she wrote about her writing process. Zora’s exact wording has some subtle differences that any writer will appreciate: “There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside you.” Earlier in the volume, Zora recorded some fascinating comments about her experience at Barnard — but I leave it to interested alums to read her book for themselves.

—Bonnie Tocher Clause ’64 The Last Word I felt deeply understood when I read Eve-Lynn Siegel Gardner’s article, 4

“Reclaiming ‘Opinionated Woman’” [Winter 2020]. I serve on a local board. In December, I voted against a program advanced by our board chair, Louise, whom I greatly admire. After the meeting had been adjourned, I heard Louise lament that I had shared multiple opinions before the vote. I paused to breathe. I approached her and said, “While I affirm that you feel upset because I rejected the program, please respect that I value the chance to contribute to this board.” Louise apologized. “I appreciate that you said that,” she said, looking impressed.

“No colleague has ever told me when I mistreated her.” We looked at each other and were free, somehow. I thought about the first place I had seen someone stand up against a person trying to silence her. The place was Barnard.

“Thanks,” I said, not just to Louise.

—Leah Metcalf ’14 Inclusion?

I was incredulous when I read that Barnard had appointed a vice president of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” [“Forward Momentum,” Winter 2020].

For years, Barnard has been working toward its stated goal of an inclusive student body, and the makeup of the incoming class certainly reflects success in reaching that goal. What is the VP going to do all day? Her hiring points to what I find so laughable about Barnard: It has reliably pledged allegiance to all the clichés that have circulated around academia during the past 40 years — “diversity, equity, and inclusion” being one of the latest.

Notice the use of the odd contemporary locution “identify as women of color” in the breakdown of the incoming class. Seriously, could someone with white skin and blue eyes “identify” as a woman of color and be accepted by Barnard as such? [In another article,] Professor Jordan-Young’s research

on testosterone [“The Truth About ‘T’ ”] shows that “it affects bones, brain, heart, blood vessels, skin, hair, and more.” Would she or anyone on the faculty dare say blocking or administering testosterone for gender reassignment could have deleterious effects on multiple body organs? Really now — I should think a college of the stature Barnard aims for would be able to set its own goals and do some independent thinking now and then.

—Carol Crystle ’62 Leaning Out Merri Rosenberg’s article, “Leaning Out” [Winter 2020], was incredibly forthright and perceptive and resonated with my own “retirement” experience.

She nailed the mind games that so many of us are haunted by as we weigh the desire to step away and smell the proverbial roses against the societal (and personal) pressure to maintain a good pace on the professional treadmill. In my case, the pull of being present for my grandkids who live out of town and my mom who has health issues was a powerful force (welcome to the sandwich generation!). After much consternation, I decided to walk away from a career that had long defined me.

I knew I didn’t want to look back and wish I had spent more time caring for family, and/or enjoying life and having new adventures. As Merri states in her article, there is no road map as to how to off-ramp and still feel relevant.

I continue to ponder what I want to do when I grow up, and while I have some wistful moments, I have no regrets.

—Lisa Phillips Davis ’76 It is reassuring to know that, once again, a smart, accomplished Barnard woman is expressing something I was dimly aware of but not yet fully conscious of. I love Merri Rosenberg’s explanation of her choice in lifting

up the next generation of women leaders and helping them step into powerful roles in her article “Leaning Out.” Her generosity of spirit is so apparent and a quality sorely needed in this day and age.

Howard Dean spoke at my husband’s Yale reunion a few years ago and said that part of what needed to happen was for our age group (classes of 1971 and 1972) to step back and assist the next generation to take over because they had fresh thoughts about places where we have been stuck, especially politically. I had heard this partly as “older men need to step back and let younger men step up,” but if we are also assisting women to step up, we’ve got a way better chance! A friend of mine from years ago did her dissertation on the role of older women in succession planning for philanthropic and cultural institutions and found that the mentoring and historical memory that we represent are also crucial to the organizations we continue to serve.

Thanks to Merri and Barnard Magazine for helping bring all these thoughts together for me through your writing, thinking, and examples! In the endless self-promotion and “go for it” attitude of social media, it’s refreshing to have this image of “leaning out” presented as the legitimate and valuable choice that it is.

—Ginny Bales ’72 Correction Famed American humorist Mark Twain once wrote that “the report of my death was an exaggeration.” After our unfortunate blunder in the Class Notes of the Winter 2020 issue, Barbara Guinee Bates ’47 let us know that she is alive and well at 94 years of age, swims 20 laps three times a week, and enjoys traveling to Florida. We very much regret the error.

EDITORIAL EDITOR Nicole Anderson ’12JRN ART DIRECTOR David Hopson COPY EDITOR Molly Frances PRODUCTION DIRECTOR Lisa Buonaiuto WRITER Veronica Suchodolski ’19 STUDENT INTERNS Brigid Cromwell ’22, Solby Lim ’22, Isabella Pechaty ’23, Stefani Shoreibah ’21, Danielle Slepyan ’22 ALUMNAE ASSOCIATION OF BARNARD COLLEGE

PRESIDENT & ALUMNAE TRUSTEE Jyoti

Menon ’01

ALUMNAE RELATIONS EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR Karen A. Sendler COMMUNICATIONS VICE PRESIDENT Gabrielle Simpson ASSOCIATE VICE PRESIDENT Jennifer Goddard DEVELOPMENT

VICE PRESIDENT, DEVELOPMENT AND ALUMNAE RELATIONS

Lisa Yeh

PRESIDENT, BARNARD COLLEGE Sian Leah Beilock Spring 2020, Vol. CIX, No. 1 Barnard Magazine (USPS 875-280, ISSN 1071-6513) is published quarterly by the Communications Department 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 Email: magazine@barnard.edu 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 (200 words maximum), submissions for Symposium (400 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 email 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 Email: alumrecords@barnard.edu

SPRING 2020 | BARNARD MAGAZINE 5

From President Sian Leah Beilock

The Science of Teamwork I write this in the wake of one of the most difficult decisions I’ve made since becoming Barnard’s president: moving the College to online learning for the remainder of the Spring 2020 semester. As we joined our peers across the country to mitigate the growing threat of COVID-19, the community’s grace and flexibility was truly inspiring. The outpouring of encouragement in words and deeds was equally incredible and impactful, with faculty and alumnae going above and beyond to support students. Making this decision while New York City prepared for an extended fight against a pandemic was not an easy call, but it was the right one. Tougher questions remain, unfortunately.

Scientists and research labs across the world are working in close coordination to solve this devastating health crisis — including many just up the street at Columbia University’s Irving Medical Center. Many Barnard alums are on the front lines of the pandemic, including Kamini Doobay ’10, an emergency medicine resident physician at NYU Langone and Bellevue Hospital who recently told the AP, “I’ve never felt so physically and emotionally burdened in my life … so deeply sad and distraught. … It’s really painful to not know what the future holds.”

In time, I am confident that the crisis and our questions surrounding it will be answered. Until then, many are asking, can we expedite this important problem-solving process? In my work as a cognitive scientist, I study how we solve problems under pressure, pinpointing factors for optimal performance, and what makes for successful teams.

Simply put, research shows that diverse groups of people make better decisions and are better collective problem solvers — from the classroom and the workplace to the playing field and the laboratory. Like recent challenges before it, the most successful teams working on COVID-19 will be composed of problem solvers from diverse backgrounds and fields who will use a range of methodologies in the search for medical treatments and vaccines, employing an interdisciplinary approach and sharing a fastgrowing global database of knowledge.

When people come from different disciplinary backgrounds, or have different lived experiences because of their socioeconomic status, race, or gender, the way they approach problems, interpret data, and interact with others can differ, too. The differences often produce something extra — a bonus — when folks get together to work toward a common goal. When people with varying “tools” for complicated tasks work inclusively to find solutions, the group’s results are more powerful, and errors in predictions and solutions are lessened.

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PHOTO BY DOROTHY HONG

Cognitive diversity will help solve today’s toughest challenges

National Science Board | Science & Engineering Indicators | NSB-2019-7

FIGURE 2-9

Science and Engineering Degrees Awarded to Women in the U.S. (2017), from the National Science 2020 Science S&E degrees awarded to women,

by Foundation’s degree level and field: 2017 & Engineering Indicators Report

All fields

All S&E fields

Engineering

Agricultural sciences

Field

Biological sciences

Computer sciences

Earth, atmospheric, and ocean sciences

Mathematics and statistics

Physical sciences

Psychology

Social sciences 0

20

40

60

80

100

Percent Associate's

Bachelor's

Master's

Doctoral

Note(s) Doctoral degree data in this figure differ from doctoral degree data in other tables and figures in this report that are based on the National Science Foundation Survey of Earned Doctorates and that refer to research doctorates only. its 4+1

By expanding Gender diversity is an important part of this equation. As president of Pathways program one of the most selective higher education institutions in the country, I’m Source(s) to include advanced National Center for Education Integrated Education Data System (IPEDS),the Completions proudStatistics, to report thatPostsecondary Barnard is producing exactly kindsSurvey. of problem degrees from Columbia in solvers that today’s biggest challenges need — especially in the sciences.

Science and Engineering Indicators engineering and computer In the past 10 years, the percentage of Barnard graduates in the sciences science, Barnard College is working with funders has increased from 25% to 34%, providing a greater pool of women with like the Alfred P. Sloan liberal arts backgrounds who can think critically, communicate effectively, Foundation to create a and solve STEM-related problems. pipeline for women and Barnard is also creating new pathways for our students to study and minorities to enter the conduct research across STEM, with a special focus on computer science STEM fields where their numbers are lowest (as and engineering in collaboration with Columbia — and changing the shown in the NSF table composition of research teams for the better. above).

With a growing population of talented, creative women ready to share

ideas as experts in STEM-related fields, the odds grow in our favor for being able to predict and solve current and future challenges. At a time when humanity faces a world of tough questions, it’s comforting to know that Barnard is doing its part to help answer some of them. B

SPRING 2020 | BARNARD MAGAZINE 7

From the Editor

New Adventures, Near and Far My refrigerator door bears a miniature collage of my travels: an illustrated postcard of a woman at a market in Majorca is mounted next to a surrealist sketch of the Tokyo skyline. It serves as a daily reminder of worlds beyond my own, which has, in recent weeks, been limited to the confines of my Brooklyn neighborhood.

From mid-February, the first week I started as editor, to now, much has changed at Barnard, in New York City, and around the world. I had imagined that I would be writing this letter — my first for the magazine — in the office that I share with my colleagues inside the Vagelos Alumnae Center in the historic Deanery. Instead, I type these words at a desk in my apartment, as we social distance to mitigate the spread of COVID-19.

It has been, well, an unusual immersion into a new job but one that has perhaps given me a unique vantage point. This turn of events has shown me how dedicated and resourceful Barnard’s community of faculty, students, alumnae, and staff truly is. I’ve watched the College think creatively and move with agility, transforming into a virtual campus as professors reimagine course curriculums for online teaching — something you’ll read about in our newly minted Dispatches section. I’ve had the opportunity to work with students as they manage to simultaneously prepare for a completely new learning experience while contributing stories, such as the alumna profile on Jody Simms ’17, by Solby Lim ’22.

From its conception, this issue has been distinctive for reasons beyond the extraordinary circumstances in which it would later be finalized. It marks Barnard Magazine’s first redesign since 2007. We’ve created a more contemporary look and larger framework to better tell the stories of Barnard. There’s plenty to feast your eyes on, such as our recurring “Artist’s Sketchbook” feature, showcasing the creative process of talented alums, like Suze Myers ’16. We’re also introducing new content that highlights Barnard’s breadth of voices, from our First Person series to a humor column, which was written by alumna JiJi Lee ’01.

Like the redesign that shaped the pages of this issue, they are inspired by wanderlust and sharing adventures. And like the collage on my refrigerator door, they will transport you to other places and new experiences. You’ll read about alumna Aliza Goldberg ’14’s 159-day journey across the grueling terrain of the Pacific Crest Trail as she raises money for the International Rescue Committee. And you’ll be awestruck by seasoned traveler Frances Abramowitz ’48, who has ventured around the world, from the sea-lion-filled beaches of the Galápagos Islands to India’s Taj Mahal. There are more local yet equally significant journeys that are covered in these pages, like the story of student commuter Daniela Lebron ’22, who (usually) travels each day from her home in Inwood to the Barnard campus.

During this period of uncertainty, I’ve found that the stories in this magazine serve an important purpose: They inspire and edify, stimulate and delight. As we spend more time in our homes, perhaps these sojourns to far-off destinations come just at the right time, when we need to be reminded of that sense of excitement derived from experiencing the unfamiliar. It is something that surely awaits us in the future, and I have no doubt that intrepid Barnard alums will be the first to journey to a new city or put their hiking boots back on, because that curiosity is simply part of the Barnard DNA. B

Nicole Anderson ’12JRN, Editor

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It takes more than tuition to create the Barnard experience.

Gifts to the Annual Fund are used immediately to provide what students need most — from financial aid and research spaces to lab equipment and course materials — filling critical gaps that arise as we strive to provide the highest-quality education possible.

Gifts of any amount make a difference.

barnard.edu/gift

The Barnard Annual Fund

BCRW The Barnard Center for Research on Women

CREATING OUR COLLECTIVE STORY In 2021, the Barnard Center for Research on Women (BCRW) will be celebrating 50 years of intersectional feminist research, organizing, and creative collaboration.

Over the next year, we will be collecting materials from our community (that means you!) to curate an archival exhibit that reflects on where we have traveled and where we are going from here. Please share your stories with us!

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Special Content

Send us your memories, photographs, letters, meeting minutes, testimonies, and reflections. Tell us about how BCRW has remained part of your life, your work, or how you see the world. We will welcome any materials that help tell our collective story.

Unfortunately, we will not be able to return anything sent in the mail.

Please send copies or originals

you are willing to donate to the Barnard Archives.

Materials can be sent to bcrw@barnard.edu or BCRW, Milstein Center 6th Floor, 3009 Broadway, New York, NY 10027.

Thank you for sharing your stories with us!

Dispatches News. Musings. Insights.

12 Headlines 14 First Person 18 Student Life 20 Wit & Whimsy

PHOTO BY JONATHAN KING

Speed of Life A roundup of “dispatches” from campus and the community, including news and events, personal essays, reflections, and doses of humor — all through the unequivocally Barnard point of view.

Daniela Lebron ’22 shares her experience as a commuter student on page 18 (photographed here waiting for the 1 train).

SPRING 2020 | BARNARD MAGAZINE 11

Headlines

Susan Stamberg ’59 Gets Her Star

PHOTO BY PAUL ARCHULETA

In March, Susan Stamberg ’59 received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her pioneering work in broadcast journalism. Family and friends gathered to honor the renowned host and correspondent who is known as one of NPR’s “founding mothers” (along with Cokie Roberts and Nina Totenberg). “Susan Stamberg is my hero,” actress Annette Bening told the crowd. Stamberg became the first woman to hold an anchor position on a nightly news show, All Things Considered, in 1972. Her career spans five decades and includes interviews with high-profile figures such as Rosa Parks. Accepting the honor, she said, “Public radio — I know it’s an old-fashioned, oldfangled medium, but it’s the medium of my heart.” Read an interview with Stamberg in the “Being the First” series on barnard.edu.

By the Numbers THE MOVE ONLINE How a small army of educators and staff created a virtual campus*

864

courses transitioned

18,000

virtual class sessions scheduled via Zoom

2

days to prep

100+

faculty supported

$100,000+

raised for Safety Net fund

450+

alumnae & parent donors

325+

PHOTO BY ERNESTO RUSCIO

students receiving Safety Net fund financial assistance

200

students studying abroad brought back by the College

410

Edwidge Danticat ’90 Awarded the 2020 Vilcek Prize Soon after taking home the 2019 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, for Everything Inside, a new collection of short stories, Edwidge Danticat ’90 won the the 2020 Vilcek Prize for Literature, given to immigrants who’ve made lasting contributions to American society. She visited campus in February for an event, “Coming to Barnard,” where she, Mary Gordon ’71, Mary Beth Keane ’99, and Cecily Wong ’10 shared their experiences as budding writers and firstgeneration students. “We all have the potential to be storytellers,” Danticat told students.

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working remotely in student jobs

1,022

admitted students welcomed online

9,000+

views of 6 new campus tour videos *as of April 14, 2020

Barnard Confronts the Coronavirus Together

Faculty on the COVID-19 Crisis

by Stefani Shoreibah ’21 On March 8, President Sian Leah Beilock made the unprecedented announcement that Barnard would conduct classes remotely starting March 11 for the remainder of the semester in response to the COVID-19 pandemic that has shaken the world. “This is not a decision we have come to lightly,” Beilock’s email stated. “But it is one we feel best supports the academic excellence that Barnard prides itself on and promotes the health and well-being of our community.”

In the days that followed, the College transitioned swiftly to online teaching, providing tools and technology through its IT department, IMATS, and the Center for Engaged Pedagogy to help professors reimagine their course curriculums for virtual classrooms.

The College assisted students off campus in many ways. (See “By the Numbers” at left for more.) “This crisis demands that we open our minds, our hearts, and our teaching process,” said Sandra Goldmark, theatre professor and Barnard’s director of sustainability and climate action. “We’re developing new curricula at top speeds,” she continued. Her students are turning their Spring Thesis Festival into a series of virtual performances.

In addition to online classes, many activities and clubs are also being held virtually, as well as career workshops and mental health support groups. “Be it over FaceTime, text, or phone call,” says psychology major Sylvie Sanders ’21, “it’s so important to let your friends know that you’re always a listening ear and that they’re not alone.”

Tara Well

Belinda Archibong

Associate Professor of Psychology

Assistant Professor of Economics

Alexandra Horowitz Adjunct Associate Professor of English and Psychology

“We need to oftentimes take the focus off ourselves, because that creates more anxiety and depression, and put it on other people ... how [they] are feeling and how we can support [them].” (NBC)

“Women might experience a slower financial recovery, which may widen the existing pay gap ... and slow the advances women have made worldwide.” (Fortune)

Tovah Klein

Jennifer Finney Boylan

Elizabeth Ananat

“We use real-time data on hourly service workers and find that the coronavirus crisis has already led to drastic reductions in work hours, income, and family wellbeing.”

(PBS NewsHour)

Director, Barnard Center for Toddler Development

“The most important thing across ages is that children need to know that they’re going to be okay and chances are their parents are going to be okay. ... The first thing is to reassure them about that.”

(CNN)

Anna Quindlen Writer-in-Residence

“Maybe, in this new [world], we will better understand just how much we need each other, now that being together in one room has become so hard.”

(The New York Times)

“I hope we will come out of this with a fuller appreciation of the privilege that it is to keep the company of animals.”

(The New York Times)

Associate Professor of Economics

SPRING 2020 | BARNARD MAGAZINE 13

First Person

Impressions and digressions from your point of view

Columbo on Campus

by Barbara Florio Graham ’56 He’s ageless, that bumbling detective in the rumpled raincoat. Since his first appearance in 1968 as Columbo, through his last appearance as the character, in 2003, Peter Falk delighted television audiences around the world. I still love to watch Columbo, amazed that Falk always remains the same, even though co-stars, settings, and locations change over the years.

But I remember him most clearly in a Barnard College production of Thomas Middleton and William Rowley’s The Changeling.

It was 1955, and as a member of the Drama Workshop, I had been appointed stage manager for our current theatrical offering. Workshop director Norris Houghton divided his time between producing plays at the off-Broadway Phoenix Theatre and teaching drama at Barnard.

After we had decided to attempt The Changeling, we ran into a casting problem. We had been unable to find a student actor to play the crucial role of De Flores. Would we be willing, Houghton proposed, to consider a young actor he’d just auditioned for the Phoenix? At 29, he was just a few years older than most of us and 14

had decided to leave his business career for acting. Houghton felt certain he would take part in our amateur production to gain experience playing the villain in a Jacobean melodrama.

We agreed, and Falk joined our cast. He was treated just like the rest of us. The photo accompanying a newspaper article on the play did not even identify him by name.

One of Houghton’s clever ideas for portraying the duality of De Flores’ personality was to give Peter a disfiguring port-wine birthmark on the left side of his face. His initial entrance was on the floor level, where a single spotlight picked up the handsome profile as he crossed in front of the stage and mounted the steps onto the platform. Then, with a flourish of his black cape, he turned to the audience, revealing the grossly deformed left side of his face for the first time. The audience reacted with a collective gasp. (None of us at that time realized that Peter had an artificial eye. He’d lost his right eye to cancer at age 3, and it gave him an odd squint and a droopy eyelid. It actually gave his handsome face more character.)

Peter was easy to work with, asking for no special consideration from our student group. But then came production week. I was overwhelmed with the mechanics of running the backstage apparatus, juggling light and sound cues, directing the stage crew, and even pulling the curtain by hand. Peter came to me in his costume, announcing that he would need an athletic supporter. “Fine,” I replied. “Buy whatever you need, and we’ll reimburse you.”

“You’re the stage manager, right?” he answered, in the gruff voice we all came to know years later as Lt. Columbo’s. “You buy it.” I was too intimidated to argue. This was the uptight ’50s, an era when sanitary products were kept discreetly behind the counter, and there were no ads for men’s bikini underwear.

ILLUSTRATIONS BY ROWAN WU ’18

I’d grown up in a second-generation Italian household, with two sisters but no brothers. I wasn’t sure what an athletic supporter looked like and had only a vague idea of what it was for. I went to the campus pharmacy, to the gentle, elderly man from whom I bought “unmentionables,” in a whisper, when the store was almost empty. I explained that I was stagemanaging a play whose male characters were attired in doublet and hose, and he, bless him, understood immediately. “What size?” he asked.

Panic colored my cheeks. “Why don’t you take a medium,” he suggested when I didn’t answer. I grabbed the package, paid him, and rushed out the door.

I left the parcel in Peter’s dressing room. Five days later, the Changeling curtain went up, on time. I didn’t forget any cues, nothing fell over as we changed the sets, nobody forgot their lines, and Norris Houghton told us he was proud of our accomplishment. Soon after, Peter Falk was cast as the bartender in the acclaimed Phoenix production of Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh and went on to Hollywood for his first movie role.

Over the years, Falk acted in more than 50 films, was nominated for two Academy Awards,

appeared in more than 75 Columbo episodes and other movies for TV, won five Emmys, and starred on Broadway. He was the first actor to be nominated for an Oscar and an Emmy in the same year, and the original Columbo (which aired for seven seasons) has been shown around the world.

In 1989, when he was 62, Falk revived Columbo, becoming executive producer. He began to write and direct new episodes, earning another generation of admirers. Most of us will forever remember him in his rumpled trenchcoat, pointing that cigar, and saying, “Just one more thing.” But every time I see Peter Falk on TV, I think about The Changeling and that athletic supporter.

I never did find out if it fit.

spring in a plague year

by Judith E. Johnson ’54 the space our deaths leave is an apparent emptiness, not a real one outside my window the forsythia spins gold from the powder of last year’s chrysanthemums and daffodils wake up their brief lives the earth will not cry over our spent tulips but find a use for them, and the cardinals still weave their nest on a low, floating branch and splash their bright bleeds into my jeweled fountain not one of them cares what presidents fail to say or what the suits in their corporate drabness buy, sell, or ignore we are all going about our business making our lives generous and green

Life Is a Highway

by Dara Meyers-Kingsley ’83 My daughter Ava ’17 has always been a “car girl.” In her Barnard application essay, she even wrote about a game she played with her dad — Evan Kingsley CC ’84 — while driving north at night on the Saw Mill SPRING 2020 | BARNARD MAGAZINE 15

River Parkway every Sunday, coming home to Westchester from music rehearsals. They would try to guess cars’ make, model, and year by the design of their tail lights. The one who could identify the car farthest away was the winner.

She applied early and was accepted.

At Barnard, Ava chose the fastest lane. She studied economics and finished a semester early. After graduation, Ava threw her hat in the ring for her dream job: working at the corporate headquarters of Audi of America. (She had come home from the hospital as a baby in her grandfather’s red Audi A4, after all.) She was chosen from a pool of 1,000 candidates to join the strategy team in northern Virginia doing volume planning and determining the future of the Audi brand. Soon after, she settled into her own apartment in Arlington, Virginia, made new friends, and spent evenings playing the guitar in a band called Camo Chic with co-workers from Audi.

Nothing made Ava happier than auto industry shop talk, all day, every day. Barnard gave her the tools she needed as the only woman in the conference room, and she began a fast-track rise. (She also gained notoriety for winning the women’s arm-wrestling contest during a corporate Octoberfest one year.) And she enjoyed her daily commute, first driving a VW GTI stick shift and then moving into a red Audi TT that she nicknamed “Flamin’ Hot.” On Friday afternoons, she volunteered for “STEM for Her: Drive Like a Girl,” working with high school students interested in engineering and science by coaching them in a competition to envision innovation for the automobile. She had 16

established a whole new life for herself on her own.

Then the road took a turn. After experiencing several days of a sore throat that wouldn’t go away, Ava drove herself in Flamin’ Hot to a Virginia emergency room for a strep and blood test. Several hours later, she was diagnosed with leukemia. Since then, she’s spent more than 100 days in the hospital in three rounds (the second two at NYC’s amazing Memorial Sloan Kettering). After the most punishing chemotherapy and radiation, she received a stem-cell transplant for an entirely new immune system, and she is now in remission.

Living back at home, Ava is driving again in the new six-speed manual Mustang that she bought herself as a present for her perseverance. Her natural love of driving, coupled with the need for mobility after such confinement, is a joy. There are plans for getting back on life’s highway, with almost all pistons firing, this coming year. Watch out, world. Soon cancer will be in the rearview mirror as she picks up speed.

Expires in March of 2020

by Simone Norman ’15 I took a lot of things with me when I left college. The plots of some books. Facts about people in other places. Information about … subjects. But the day I graduated from Barnard, in May 2015, I walked off campus with one of the most important and enduring relics of my college tenure: an IUD. I remember the 30 seconds of discomfort, the friendly Primary Care Health Services provider who inserted the device, and what she said as I walked out of her office: “Don’t forget, it expires in March of 2020.” That future month seemed more hypothetical to me than eventual; I couldn’t even imagine what my life would look like five years from then.

Fast forward to March of 2020, and my IUD is straining to pump out the final dregs of expired synthetic hormone. Once I get it replaced, I’ll be toting one less treasured artifact from college. So, in the midst of all this nostalgia (and to procrastinate making that dreaded replacement appointment), I thought I’d advise seniors on the top three things they should take with them when they graduate.

(These will mostly be intangible things, but I do encourage adventurous seniors to take what you physically can from campus, like those few extra sugar packets and Diana sushi containers you’ve collected in your dorm

room. I took my thing with me by getting it implanted in my body. For your stuff, you should probably just invest in a new suitcase.)

1. The contact information of every single person you interacted with. I’m not being facetious. You don’t have to be their friend, or even have that awkward “Let’s get lunch!” conversation, but you should definitely grab their email addresses or link up on social media. At some point down the road, you will need a foothold for a job application, or to fill a room when your flaky roommate suddenly moves out, or to corral just as many bodies as you can fit in the audience of your one-person show premiering in a grungy Brooklyn basement theater.

2. An alumna library card. Apply for one! It’s really cool that you can retain access to Barnard’s extensive catalog of resources. Plus, you can hang out in the library and pretend like you have stuff going for you long after graduation.

3. Pride in your accomplishments. I’m serious!

Whether you got Phi Beta Kappa or just crammed your way to a degree, you undoubtedly worked really hard. Your professors, family, and friends are all very proud of you. Take that feeling and cherish it! Get it implanted physically in your body.

Just don’t forget to get it replaced in five years’ time.

A Silver Lining

by Jami Bernard ’78 I’m not shy, so I’ll just say it — while a student at Barnard, I received many awards, honors, and distinctions. The Frank Gilbert Bryson Prize came along with a $500 check. I got a free room in Furnald as a perk of being editor-in-chief of The Barnard Bulletin. But the one distinction of which I was not proud was becoming the first person ever turned down for the Senior Scholar Program.

This is a program in which “a qualified student” spends her senior year working on a particular project, and I proposed that I use the

time to write a book. What kind of book? Um, a novel? Very literary? A vaguely defined story about a young woman who wants to date a cute yet remote guy in her dorm?

Story and character arc, theme and structure? Well, let’s not get bogged down in details.

“You’ve taken a very literature-heavy course load,” remarked one of the several professors who interviewed me around a long conference table.

“Have you considered trying other classes, such as psychology?”

Psychology this, Professor So-&-So! I took the news of my failure to qualify for the Senior Scholar Program with the same grace with which I historically took rejection — seething rage, bouts of depression, becoming a cauldron of conspiracy theories. (They had it in for me! Especially the 16thCentury Literature professor who did not care for my theory that the poet John Donne could not have become religious after such a randy youth!)

In a last-ditch effort to persuade the panel, I spent a weekend feverishly writing a two-page “short story” about my sister wearing a woolen scarf to bed to ward off vampires.

“When did you write this?” someone asked when I faced the panel again on Monday. “This weekend,” I said with pride.

“In one weekend?” The professor sounded shocked.

“N-no, of course not,” I said, attempting to backpedal. “What I meant was that I finished it this weekend.”

No one bit.

One member of the panel, professor of chemistry Bernice Segal, returned my work in a manila envelope, which I only had the courage to open 20 years later. She had kindly given me what I recognized as excellent notes on my vampire vignette. I tried to look her up to thank her, but she had died in 1989.

In my senior year, I instead took courses in French (I now live part-time in France), linguistics (a deeper dive into words and wordplay), psychology (my book clients tell me it’s like having a shrink), anthropology (the last course taught by the great Margaret Mead ’23), and film (Ann Douglas’s class spurred me on to a 20-year career as a film critic).

I have since had 10 books published and am wrapping up the 11th.

Painful as it was, missing out on the Senior Scholar Program was a blessing in disguise. The panel was correct in sensing I was in no way prepared for life, let alone writing a book, too. It wasn’t the only time someone at Barnard had the unenviable task of saving me from myself. B SPRING 2020 | BARNARD MAGAZINE 17

PHOTOS BY JONATHAN KING

Student Life

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Take the 1 Train

Daniela Lebron ’22 shares her experience as a commuter I commute from Inwood, which is a 20-minute ride straight down to campus on the 1 train. When I decided to attend Barnard, commuting seemed to make the most sense. If I’m from New York City and live relatively close, why would I dorm? Throughout my first year at Barnard, I was constantly asked, “Oh, you’re a commuter? What’s that like?”

Commuting is all about timing, which is something that, although it seems obvious, can be very complicated. Traveling to campus makes you plan every moment down to a T. I plan my class schedule, sleep schedule, work schedule, clubs, social outings, and workouts around my commute to and from campus.

Now that I am in the second semester of my sophomore year, I’ve learned how to balance classes, work, and extracurriculars with commuting. I like to structure my day so class starts in the late morning and goes until the mid-afternoon/early evening, followed by work, clubs, or events. This gives me the ability to spend more time on campus and do all of the things I would’ve done as a residential student, without tiring myself out. Throughout the day I like to stop by the commuter lounge (in the Diana Center), which is an opportunity for me to see friends and take a moment to relax. The lounge fosters a sense of community among a group of people with shared experience.

While commuting comes with its own learning curve, there are upsides: It allows me to participate in the Barnard community but also go home every day, see my family, my cat, and get space and time to myself, away from campus, which is something I wouldn’t change for the world. B From left to right: Daniela prepares for the day ahead in her kitchen and gives her cat, Leyla, one last hug before she embarks on her commute. The 5-minute walk from her apartment building to the subway takes her beneath the elevated 1 train to the 215 Street station. The subway ride is an opportunity for Daniela to get some reading done before a day of classes and extracurriculars.

Once on campus, Daniela stops by the commuter lounge to check email with a friend before class.

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Wit & Whimsy

If I Wrote College Course Descriptions

by JiJi Lee ’01 Physics for Poets: This class is neither an “easy A” nor about the connection between Schrödinger’s cat, T.S. Eliot, and Cats.

European Art History: Study the great works of art and develop a newfound appreciation for Renaissance artists such as Leonardo da Vinci.

Learn to channel the brilliance of this gifted artist by sleeping in your XL twin size bed in the pose of the Vitruvian Man. Latin: Study classic texts and enhance your understanding of other languages, as well as gain crucial insights into your new favorite book, The Da Vinci Code.

Cryptography: Learn to encode ciphers and then start creating complex passwords for all your social media accounts, which you will definitely end up forgetting every time you try to log on.

secrets to the Holy Grail. (Also, this class can help you snag an internship at an investment bank!)

Creative Writing: Learn the craft of short story writing and critique your classmates’ stories, which all revolve around their dysfunctional families.

Feel confident that your story about a crime that takes place in the Louvre is highly original.

East Asian History: This class will cover key political, historical, and cultural moments in Korea, Japan, and China. Despite this, you will keep asking your professor questions related to the cover-up of the real relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene. When the professor politely mentions that this course only covers the region of East Asia, take this as confirmation that your professor is indeed involved in the cover-up and a member of Opus Dei. Calculus II: While you would think that a sequel to Calculus I was unnecessary, Calculus II is a delightful addition to the franchise (don’t listen to the haters!) and offers a host of exciting new characters and situations, such as vectors and partial derivatives.

Colloquium on The Da Vinci Code: 10 prerequisites required for this course. Term paper includes analysis of Tom Hanks’ questionable hair choice in the film version. B .

Architecture: This course will explore architectural space and design, as well as make you seem more like a protagonist in a groundbreaking thriller that features the iconic churches and museums of Paris.

Principles of Economics: Learn about consumption and production, inelastic and elastic demand, and other important economic terms so that you can allay your parents’ fears that you are only going to college to study the clues in Leonardo’s Last Supper and unlock the 20

ILLUSTRATION BY EMILY FLAKE

Philosophy 101: This class will introduce you to the works of classic philosophers while preparing you for cocktail party conversations where men try to explain Hegel to you.

Discourses

Fresh ideas. Diverse perspectives. A closer look.

22 Arts & Letters 26 Strides in STEM 28 Bookshelf 30 Faculty Focus 32 Student Perspectives

PHOTO BY SUSAN WOOD/GETTY IMAGES

‘To Persevere Because I Must’ An interdisciplinary forum where voices are heard in lively “discourses” that provide a deep dive into the College’s community — from faculty profiles and in-depth interviews to students’ achievements and recently published books by Barnard authors.

American novelist and literary critic Elizabeth Hardwick wrote in a letter to Robert Lowell about the process of writing Sleepless Nights, “Yet I mean to persevere because I must.” (At home in Castine, Maine; January 1, 1980)

SPRING 2020 | BARNARD MAGAZINE 21

Arts & Letters

Lives in Letters

A collection of letters edited by Professor Saskia Hamilton paints an illuminating portrait of the marriage of two literary greats: writer Elizabeth Hardwick, who taught at Barnard for 20 years, and poet Robert Lowell

by Catherine Barnett Few things are more intimate and revealing than the exchange of letters, especially those that passed between one of the most famous couples of 20th-century literature, the poet Robert Lowell (called “Cal” by his friends and intimates) and the writer Elizabeth Hardwick, who wrote some of her best essays and fiction while she was teaching at Barnard. Farrar, Straus and Giroux (FSG) recently published Barnard professor and vice provost Saskia Hamilton’s meticulously edited The Dolphin Letters, 19701977: Elizabeth Hardwick, Robert Lowell and Their Circle, which has generated much interest in the literary community, garnering enthusiastic reviews from The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, and The New York Times, among others. In The New York Review of Books — the literary journal that Elizabeth Hardwick helped found in 1962 — Langdon Hammer, in his review, poignantly notes that “a letter passes between people, like a gift.” Poet and Barnard visiting professor Catherine Barnett spoke with Saskia Hamilton about the making of The Dolphin Letters.

Elizabeth Hardwick (1916-2007) in New York, circa 1985 22

How did you come to edit this book, and what were some key moments in its making?

Saskia Hamilton: In 1989, I was 22 years old, a first-semester graduate student in poetry at NYU, and I heard Elizabeth Hardwick needed an assistant. I didn’t have a sense in advance what the job would be — I thought it might be to type her essays — but it turned out that she had what she called a “whole room full of Cal’s things.” She said she needed somebody to organize and present these materials to librarians and archivists who would assess them for their collections. And so I created a catalog for her.

Elizabeth Bishop’s letters were published in 1994, and then Paul Mariani’s biography of Robert Lowell, Lost Puritan, came out the same year. When I was reading Mariani’s biography, I kept coming upon phrases I recalled from the work I had done with Elizabeth Hardwick. I had been very careful in 1989 not to read the letters I was cataloging because I didn’t want to intrude on her privacy, but upon occasion,

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PHOTO FROM THE ESTATE OF EVELYN HOFER / GETTY IMAGES

PHOTO BY MEG TYLER

if there was an undated letter, I’d have to read a little to get some context. It was from those letters that I recognized Mariani’s quotations and paraphrases. I was very interested to hear Lowell’s full voice, so I wrote to Elizabeth to ask if there was any current project to edit Lowell’s letters. I told her that if so I’d really love to work as an assistant on the project. She spoke to Jonathan Galassi at FSG, and together they arranged for me to edit the letters.

I edited Lowell’s letters, then later I co-edited the Bishop/Lowell letters. And then some years went by, and I thought I was done editing letters for a while! But after Hardwick’s death, when it was revealed that her letters to Lowell had survived — she thought they had been destroyed — Hardwick and Lowell’s daughter, Harriet, and Lowell’s stepdaughter Evgenia Citkowitz both asked if I would consider editing them. They both had a sense of their importance.

But the letters did present a puzzle, because they record a very particular and distressed period in the lives of these two writers. The portrait the letters give of each of them is vital and necessarily incomplete, occasioned by a period of great distress and creative innovation. So how to present a rounded portrait of them both as writers and thinkers out of this material was a challenge.

Professor Saskia Hamilton

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What are the ethical issues you’ve had to contend with — with these letters in particular and with publishing collections of letters in general?

When Hardwick’s letters were uncovered and revealed, I was concerned about the best way to present them fairly — I was concerned about publishing them just as-is, without hearing Lowell’s replies or understanding the ways in which Hardwick’s letters were in direct response to his. I wanted the complete correspondence and understood very

quickly that it would have to be a conversation between them. So outsized was Lowell’s personality and effect on their literary milieu, especially due to his episodic mania [from bipolar disorder], that, as Lowell’s editor Robert Giroux said, “the whole continental literary set is now in the act.” I felt it was important to step back from the intensity of the marital conversation and include what both Hardwick and Lowell wrote to their friends — and to include what those friends wrote to them — about their own experiences and dilemmas with the writing. This was an ethical problem, in terms of honoring Elizabeth Hardwick, because otherwise these letters would have presented such a distorted portrait of her, drawn from one of the most painful times of her life and written during great distress. So the challenge was how to be most ethical toward her — and also toward him, who is sometimes too quickly judged.

The other ethical dilemma — and this is probably true with any collection of letters — is that the publication of letters intrudes on the privacy of more than just the writers themselves but also on the other people whose private lives they discuss.

What moves you most in these letters?

Where is it that Yeats says that “words alone are certain good”? What moves me most in these letters are the precise words that Lowell and Hardwick use to describe their thinking, their reading, their feelings — the way they cut a certain kind of figure in prose. The clarity of expression set alongside the contradictions of feelings. To me, the most moving letters are in the last quarter of the book, where you have a sense that Lizzie really has achieved something very difficult in not settling for any of the roles that the breakup might have written for her.

I’m also moved by Lowell’s wish for the true shape of his experience to be revealed to him in his lines, to help him know if his new life is an arrival or a departure. He has a wish for release from his vacillating feelings, a wish to know that what he had done by leaving Hardwick for [Caroline] Blackwood was fated somehow. The Continued on page 117

Hardwick’s Classroom Lessons Some of Elizabeth Hardwick’s most important work was written while she was a professor at Barnard, where for 20 years — from 1965 to 1985 — she taught Experiments in Writing. “[Students] think short stories are written out of sensations and feelings,” she said in a 1974 profile of her published in the Barnard Bulletin. “I, personally, feel that any student who’s really interested in writing benefits far more from taking courses in Shakespeare or art history or reading Plato than they do in taking a writing course.”

But for a handful of America’s talented writers — including Mona Simpson, Tama Janowitz, Daphne Merkin, and Darryl Pinckney, all of whom were in her workshop together in 1973 — the chance to study with Hardwick was life-changing, if you could bear the challenge. “She taught by quotation and aside, citation and remark, stone down the well and echo,” writes Pinckney in the introduction to Hardwick’s Collected Essays (recently published by The New York Review of Books). “She would peer over the book and exhale, trusting to Fortuna that somebody sitting around the table might get it eventually.”

Hardwick told the Bulletin that she wanted students to question not only “how you go about it” but also “what’s worth writing.”

When you write, she said, “you’re up against the limits of your mind, your experience, your depth as a person. ... I think you can be helped by a good critic, but only if the idea is good.”

Questioning — rather than knowing, or being certain — was also part of Hardwick’s philosophy when she taught critical writing, or what she called “imaginative prose.”

Barnard shows up fairly frequently in Saskia Hamilton’s The Dolphin Letters: In August

1971, Hardwick writes to Lowell about a former student who had become a “new wonderful friend” — Mary Gordon ’71, who went on to write more than a dozen books of fiction and memoir (and has been the Millicent C. McIntosh Professor in English and Writing at Barnard for over 30 years).

In 1976, half a decade after a tumultuous breakup, filled with recrimination, compassion, and reconciliations, Hardwick wrote to Lowell to tell him that their daughter, Harriet (then a student at Barnard), was doing well and that she herself was starting back at Barnard for the spring term, teaching one day a week. “But I am simply terrified of writing on this soi-disant novel,” she lamented, describing what would become Sleepless Nights. “It goes about one trembling paragraph per day. ... Yet I mean to persevere because I must.”

Barnard appears again in a heartbreaking entry in the “Table of Dates,” a timeline for the years covered by the letters. It’s moving to discover that on the last day of Robert Lowell’s life — just hours before his death of a heart attack in a taxi on his way back to Hardwick — she taught her 2:10 p.m. class, Experiments in Writing, a course she would teach for another eight years. Both in and out of the classroom, Hardwick went on waging what she saw as the writer’s task — the “battle with the inexpressible.” B —Catherine Barnett

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Strides in STEM

Paving the Way

Barnard’s SP2 Program helps students build experience in the lab to become leaders in science

by Andrea Cooper Sedelia Rodriguez remembers how it feels to be an outsider in science. She grew up in California with parents from Mexico who didn’t expect her to go to college, let alone pursue a career in science. It was, Rodriguez says, “unheard of.” But she discovered her passion for the subject as a first-generation college student in a geology class at California State University, Los Angeles. There, she met a professor, a Latino like her (he was the only one in the department), who pushed her to graduate and continue her studies, encouraging her to ‘“be an example for others,’” she recalls. “He kept saying — not in a gruff way – that it was my responsibility to do this not just for myself but for others.”

Rodriguez took heed of this advice. She went on to complete her postdoctoral research at Columbia University. Today, she’s the assistant director and academic coordinator for the Science Pathways Scholars Program — nicknamed SP2 — at Barnard. And she’s become that very role model for Maria Blankemeyer ’23, an SP2 student

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in chemistry from Austin, Texas. Rodriguez was the first person Blankemeyer had ever met who “had a high-standing role within the sciences who was like me,” she says. “It was a relief to be able to recognize myself in somebody else who has everything I hope for.”

Providing mentorship is just one of many goals for SP2. The four-year program brings to Barnard exceptional minority and first-generation students with a strong interest in science.

Students can major in biology, chemistry, environmental science, physics/astronomy, or neuroscience. (Computer science majors will be offered in fall 2020.) And the benefits are manifold. From three summers of funded research to academic advising by senior STEM faculty, SP2 provides each participant with a number of unique opportunities to delve into their studies and forge a career path in the field of science.

Launched in 2016 with a grant from the Sherman Fairchild Foundation, SP2 now includes 32 students. The first cohort graduates in May. The pool of applicants is competitive: For the class entering in fall 2019, 446 students applied for 10 slots in the program.

Barnard developed SP2 to help address the serious lack of diversity among U.S. science students and, subsequently, in the science professions, including academia. “We were tracking national trends but also responding to our perceptions of what was happening with students at Barnard,” explains Paul Hertz, Claire Tow Professor of Biology and SP2 director.

“The numbers of underrepresented minority students and first-generation students who express an interest in science and then switch out [of the field] have been pretty high nationally.”

The reasons for this fallout are complex. For some students, the need to hold a job during college can make pursuing a demanding science curriculum especially challenging. And, as Rachel Narehood Austin, chair of Barnard’s chemistry department and SP2 faculty advisor, points out, “there just is still quite a bit of implicit and explicit bias about race in America,” which can manifest in different ways on college campuses and make students feel as if “they don’t belong.”

SP2 is designed to do the opposite, welcoming young talent into the

PHOTOS BY JONATHAN KING

fold. It starts with the pre-first-year summer experience: Students visit the research facilities, meet professors, and get acquainted with each other and the campus. “Knowing my professors made going into introductory science courses much less intimidating and instilled me with confidence,” recalls environmental biology major Livia Martinez ’21, a Miami resident whose family immigrated from Cuba.

First-years take a seminar together called the Journal Club to read and discuss scientific literature. Students also learn how to write a résumé, create a cover letter, and approach potential mentors to discuss interest in their work. The training has proved successful based on where SP2 students have landed summer research posts, including a Nobel Prize winner’s lab in Columbia University’s biology department and a spot at the National Science Foundation program for physics research in Paris.

Martinez found her place at the New York Botanical Garden, where she’s carried out research since 2018. Her current focus is extracting DNA from historic herbarium specimens and studying their genes to better

This page: Professor Rachel Austin with Nicole Townsend ’21 and Janine Sempel ’20. Opposite: Professor John Glendinning with Gabriella Ortiz.

understand the implications they might have for contemporary agriculture.

Though the research opportunities are extraordinary, Martinez says the friendships among SP2 students have been “one of the most amazing parts” of her Barnard experience. “The older cohorts always feel a sense of responsibility to those who are younger than them,” says Martinez. This support she says, creates “a safe space where we can ask for help from those who can give it and extend our helping hand to those who need it.”

Though the retention rate in SP2 has been high, a few students have left the program when other subjects beckoned. That’s okay, Austin says.

“College is a time of exploration. It’s fine if a student gets here and then realizes there’s something she likes more.” Those students even continue to receive summer research funding in their new disciplines.

For Janine Sempel ’20, SP2 spurred a revelation. She knew two things about herself when she arrived at Barnard from her home in Los Angeles: She hated chemistry, and she planned to major in neuroscience. Then she decided to take a chemistry class her sophomore year. That changed her world. She switched majors, published a paper in an academic journal with Austin, who is her mentor, and is in the process of writing two more.

In August, Sempel will move to Mozambique to teach high school science with the Peace Corps, serving as that critical role model for a new generation of students. Down the road, she plans to study for a Ph.D. Ultimately, she wants to work in green chemistry, researching biofuels and finding more sustainable sources of energy. “I’ve grown a lot in my time at Barnard,” she says. Thanks to SP2, she feels “at home and most confident in a lab.” Science, she knows, is where she is supposed to be. B SPRING 2020 | BARNARD MAGAZINE 27

Bookshelf

Books by Barnard Authors

by Isabella Pechaty ’23 FICTION Homicide & Vine: A Black Comedy About Comedy Writing

by Mindy Glazer ’73 Glazer, a veteran comedy writer, loosely based this darkly hilarious tale, set in 1984 L.A., on her own experiences in the writing room. The cast and crew of fictional sitcom Something Fishy strive to keep their struggling program afloat. Enter writer Jody Gellis, breaking into their writing team with her own aspirations of stardom. Glazer’s book makes a comedy of comedy itself, offering an exclusive look at how a television show unravels.

Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick

by Zora Neale Hurston ’28 As the only African-American student during her time at Barnard, and a young female writer studying in 1920s New York, Hurston was uniquely placed to be the voice of a generation.

Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick is a compilation of her work that helped drive movements like American modernism and the Harlem Renaissance. Readers can now enjoy these stories of American life — timely, satiric, and brilliantly insightful — all in one place, including eight rediscovered ones. Hurston’s legacy as an American artist remains secure even 60 years after her passing.

Not a Thing to Comfort You

by Emily Wortman-Wunder ’92 Winner of an Iowa Short Fiction Award, Wortman-Wunder’s collection of short stories all revolve around the natural world and its evercomplicated, ever-evolving relationship with humanity. People living closely with nature strive to understand the often unknowable

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natural world. Depicting nature with as much intricacy, unpredictability, and nuance as any of their human characters, these stories stay true to their title, captivating the reader.

NONFICTION Concealed: Memoir of a Jewish-Iranian Daughter Caught Between the Chador and America

by Esther Amini ’71 In her memoir of a first-generation IranianAmerican young woman in mid-20th-century America, Amini discusses her storied past with captivating authenticity and insightfulness.

Detailing her Persian Jewish family’s flight from religious persecution to Queens, New York, their tumultuous home life, and Amini’s contentious decision to study at Barnard, Concealed is a story of how ties to home and family can both ground and obstruct our personal growth.

Don’t Be Evil: How Big Tech Betrayed Its Founding Principles and All of Us

by Rana Foroohar ’92 Financial Times business columnist Foroohar responds to the recent events that have shaken public faith in big tech companies. She explains how these new tech enterprises went unchecked, taking the business world by storm and growing into traffickers of our attention and data. Informed by several years of reporting on business and technology, Don’t Be Evil is a topical guidebook on how modern citizens can be prepared for the future.

Speaking of Writing

by Richard Maibaum, compiled by Sylvia Kamion Maibaum ’31 Drawn from decades of experience in the entertainment industry, writer Richard Maibaum’s essays on Broadway and Hollywood were compiled for print by his wife, Sylvia Kamion Maibaum ’31. Speaking of Writing documents Maibaum’s illustrious career,

including pictures, photographs, interviews, lectures, presentations, and essays. Aspiring playwrights and screenwriters can learn from a longtime devotee and master of the field.

A Month in Siena

by Hisham Matar Following his Pulitzer Prize-winning The Return, Barnard professor Hisham Matar produces another compelling memoir. A Month in Siena describes the illuminating relationship that unfolds between the author, the city, and selected works of the Sienese school of painting.

An aged city and its artworks, portrayed here in full color, provide the backdrop for Matar’s discussion of how the past still has the power to touch and transform our present world.

A Soul’s Journey: Franciscan Art, Theology, and Devotion in the Supplicationes variae

by Amy Neff ’69 Neff explores the hidden meaning of a 13thcentury devotional manuscript, Supplicationes variae, through the philosophy of the theologian Bonaventure. Using Bonaventure’s The Soul’s Journey Into God and the ornate images and texts of the Supplicationes, Neff reveals the Franciscan design for man’s journey into salvation. Years of dedicated study bring an ancient, elegant text into a new light.

Pain Studies

by Lisa Olstein ’96 Through a series of short essays, Olstein investigates how our culture negotiates the idea of pain. The writer tackles this monumental concept using carefully selected historical, pop culture, scientific, philosophical, and artistic references, even drawing on personal experiences with migraines. Pain Studies is an unapologetic reckoning with pain, a prevalent and unavoidable aspect of being a human being.

This Is All I Got: A New Mother’s Search for Home

by Lauren Sandler ’96 Sandler’s immersive approach to journalism

leads her to form a close relationship with Camila, a young mother-to-be in New York City. Sandler is drawn to Camila’s unwavering pursuit of a better life, all while she grapples with childbirth and motherhood, relationships, homelessness, and a broken welfare system. The constant roadblocks obstructing her tenacious efforts reveal the unwinnable battle that is America’s social services system.

If I Could Paint the Moon Black: Imbi Peebo’s Wartime Journey from Estonia to America

by Nancy Burke, with Imbi Peebo Truumees ’53 Truumees’ vivid recollections of a childhood in World War II Estonia are brought to life in this collaboration with writer Nancy Burke. Her memoir illuminates a long-overlooked moment in history, that of the Eastern Europeans trapped between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. Powerful memories and riveting storytelling come together to depict Truumees’ journey from hiding to escape and freedom.

POETRY Dub: Finding Ceremony

by Alexis Pauline Gumbs ’04 The final volume of Gumbs’ prose poetry trilogy explores black feminism and what that means for her ancestral, gender, and racial identities. Inspired by author and theorist Sylvia Wynter, Gumbs draws from dub poetry and oceanic themes to tell a story of human nature, suffering, and renewal.

The In(ter)vention of the Hay(na)ku: Selected Tercets 1996-2019

by Eileen R. Tabios ’82 Tabios’ latest collection showcases her mastery of the genre and emphasizes the various uses of tercets in her formats over the years. With universal subject matter ranging from love and gender to class and power, this compilation details the triumphs of a decade-spanning writing career. B

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Faculty Focus

Collaborative Learning

Biology professor JJ Miranda counts on teamwork to research the mysteries of cancer-causing viruses

by Dana Najjar JJ Miranda didn’t approach graduate school the way most people would. When he arrived at Harvard’s department of molecular biology in 2001, he was less concerned with choosing a topic and more intent on finding an advisor who could teach him the ins and outs of research and academia. At Barnard, he’s taken a similar, mentorship-driven approach. Since joining the faculty as an assistant professor in biology in 2018, he’s fostered the very same collaborative learning environment in the lab and classroom that benefited him in his own graduate studies.

“The sciences, maybe more so than a lot of the other fields, are really a group effort,” he says. “I could not accomplish what I’m doing without the students and staff that have decided to join this crazy roller coaster ride of a research program.”

Miranda was drawn to science by the promise of what it could accomplish. While still a freshman at Reed College, he read And the Band Played On, a journalistic account of the HIV epidemic, which set him on a path toward a career in biomedical research. “It was a book about the interplay of the scientists and researchers, the activists, and government,” Miranda says. “It was a very real kind of depiction of how different groups have to work together and coordinate to actually get something done.”

Inspired by what could be accomplished when scientists tackled real issues, he narrowed in on the field that best suited his curiosity and objectives. “Biochemistry is that sweet spot where you can engage in academic intellectualism yet do something that at some 30

point might have an impact on medicine,” he says. “I wanted to do something that I enjoyed, but I also wanted a reason to get out of bed in the morning.”

Miranda has found that sense of purpose in the lab, where he and his group of technicians and students focus on unraveling the mysteries of cancer-causing viruses. Specifically, they study the ways in which viruses can turn on or off certain cancer-causing genes. Viruses “have evolved to basically take advantage of human processes and manipulate them to facilitate [their own] growth and reproduction,” says Miranda.

“So if you learn how a virus works, you learn something about the cell at the same time.”

Some viruses can have an especially nasty effect. Epstein-Barr virus, for example, causes mononucleosis in most people it infects. The kissing disease, as it’s known, can cause fatigue and fever but ultimately resolves itself. “But in some people,” Miranda says, “it goes on to cause lymphomas or throat cancers, and we don’t know why that is.”

To try to find out, the lab isolates healthy human cells, then infects them with a cancercausing virus. Some of the cells turn into cancer cells, which multiply feverishly and start to overtake all the healthy cells. Miranda and his team then compare the sick cells to the healthy ones: “And often the main difference is the presence or the state of the virus,” he says. Once they’ve pinpointed the ways in which the virus might be changing the healthy cells into cancer cells — the “pathway” of the disease — the team then checks to see if there are any drugs already on the market that might target that pathway and reverse the virus’s effect.

Growing and maintaining human cells is a constant challenge. “It’s like a combination of being a gardener and a preschool teacher and a zookeeper all at once,” Miranda says. “You have all these living organisms outside of your control and you have to constantly manage and feed and observe them.”

In addition to his work in the lab, Miranda teaches several classes. To him, teaching and research are two sides of the same coin. “In order to be a good researcher, you also need to be a good teacher. It’s easy to have this

PHOTO BY JONATHAN KING

misconception that we only teach when we’re in the classroom, that we only have those hours that are on the course catalog, but we are teaching all the time,” he says.

And Miranda’s love of teaching is not lost on his students or colleagues. Nicole Rondeau, a technician in his lab, considers him one of the best teachers she’s ever had. Rondeau graduated from Barnard in 2018 with degrees in dance and biology. “I really appreciate how patient he is and how well he’s able to articulate the things that need to get done, how to do them, and then gives you the space to try and then fail,” she says. “It’s refreshing to be allowed to fail and have someone say, ‘That’s okay, try it again.’”

Rondeau describes working with Miranda as a full-on immersion into the real world of academia and research: “That’s the mark of a

phenomenal teacher, that they’re not shielding you from the things that aren’t pretty,” she says. “It doesn’t matter, they’ll equip you with the tools to be able to take those challenges as they come.” But that doesn’t mean it’s all grunt work. The attitude in Miranda’s lab, she says, is very much “We’re here to do science! And we’re gonna have fun doing that!”

True to form, Miranda’s outlook on the future of cancer research is hopeful, and he’s focused on what can be achieved by working together: “I don’t want the complexity [of the problem] to give the impression that progress can’t be made,” he says. “In order to solve a problem, you need a ton of people trying, with the full knowledge that most of us are not going to succeed. But you need that critical mass to get enough shots on goal.” B

“I could not accomplish what I’m doing without the students and staff that have decided to join this crazy roller coaster ride of a research program.”

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CALL HOWA BARNARD ALUMNA TURNED

O F T H E HER WANDERLUST INTOSOCIAL ACTIVISM

WILD

BY ALIZA GOLDBERG’14

Photos by Loïc Burton, Michael Fearon, and Aliza Goldberg on the Pacific Crest Trail All captions are from Goldberg’s on-the-trail Instagram account of the trek.

(Photos are paired with captions but not as they originally appeared.) ç Day 132-135, mile 2,054-2,124.4: The area was a stark contrast to the forests I was used to. I had to

concentrate fully on my feet to make sure I didn’t trip on the loose rocks. Sometimes the trail became a series of stone slabs and boulders, like a staircase for giants, which was cumbersome for my short legs.

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ven in the worst of times, when I woke up groggy because my own shivering body kept jolting me awake or my knees buckled from dehydration or the chafing on my thighs was so raw I had to waddle down the trail, I still felt eager to see what would happen next.

The routine of thru-hiking is rather predictable, but the moments of each day are thrilling. Sometimes the most gorgeous views of a vast valley come simply from turning a corner or when thick forest coverage disappears.

Sometimes you wake up in snow, and by the afternoon have descended so far down a mountain that you end up walking in hot sand or through giant fern fronds. I miss the simplicity of that life, where every flower is special and every pebble surprising.

I had known about the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) since 2017, when a friend walked the first 200 miles as her spring vacation. At the time, I did not think about thru-hiking for myself. I enjoyed the occasional day hike in the summer, but had little experience with camping. I do not regard myself as an athlete. I am also professionally ambitious and thought it was reckless for anyone to abandon a career path.

In November 2018, I began reading about the “refugee caravan”: the 2,500-mile journey undertaken by Central American refugees from San Pedro Sula in Honduras to Tijuana in Mexico. Thousands of men, women, and children were walking this distance because they had no other choice. Walking was their best option at a better life.

Supporting refugees has always been an important cause for me. As the child of immigrants from France and Argentina, I understand how difficult it is to find and adjust to a new homeland. It is a privilege that I can hike the length of my country — 2,652 miles, almost the same distance as the refugee caravan — aided by the luxury of ultralight camping gear. And so I chose to do so, raising money and awareness for the International Rescue Committee along the way. It was a crisp dawn in April 2019 when I set out on the trail at the Mexican border with my boyfriend and his roommate from college — both of whom I affectionately called my entourage — on a journey that lasted 159 days.

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On the days when my legs sunk deep into the snow up to my hip and I had to wriggle free, the days when the sun was so hot I felt woozy, the days mosquito clouds followed me relentlessly and bit every inch of my skin, the days my calves cramped from hours of incline, the days I tripped on a tree root and fell on my face, I’d remember that I was the reason why I was there. No one dragged me to the PCT. I chose this.

At Barnard, I learned to “major in unafraid.” I have taken those lessons from my unofficial major and extended them into my postgrad years.

That does not mean I don’t feel fear, I just don’t fear fear. That is why I sewed a BOLD SINCE 1889 patch onto my Osprey backpack [on this issue’s cover], so I could see that strong, beautiful torchbearer every day. I have always appreciated that Barnard celebrates strength and boldness, not just academic success.

One moment in particular has served me as a guide in the months since I finished the PCT. I had been walking along a mountain ridge covered in snow, up and down rocky crags, careful not to slip or make any missteps.

In the afternoon, it was time to descend. Looking down to the valley below, all I could see was a huge white sheet before me and no indication of how to get down. Tears clouding my vision, I whispered aloud, “I can’t do this.”

I stood there, looking back at the ridge now in the distance, knowing the only way out was forward. And then I did what I thought I could not do, first kicking steps into the snow, one by one, and then sliding down in my shorts when I had passed the tree line.

I still think to myself “I can’t do this,” but now I go ahead and step toward what scares me instead of turning away. B

ë Day 155-159, mile 2,518.5-2,652: After the climb, we were officially in the Sequoia National Park. ... Last 15 miles, last 10 miles, last 5 miles, last mile. And then we were done and had walked the Pacific Crest Trail [PCT]. Getting off the trail felt like staring into the sun, when you’re squinting and trying to avert your gaze. There was too much of everything and the brightness of possibility prickled my skin. é Day 136-139, mile 2,124.4-2,216: The section felt very remote and wild, with nonplussed elk and deer eating alongside us and sniffing our tent at night. ì Day 93-98, mile 1,374.3-1,521.8: The terrain was a vibrant green, like a rainforest. We walked through meadows of flowers. The foliage was so lush sometimes it surrounded us completely, towering over the trail. That vitality could only mean one thing: rain. We were often wet, either from precipitation, dew, or fog. Some days the sun never came out, so we never really woke up. Some nights we crawled into damp sleeping bags in damp tents, our efforts to dry out our gear proving futile in such feeble sunshine. è Day 132-135, mile 2,054-2,124.4: In the valleys, purple and orange wildflowers danced in the strong winds. The dozens of lakes in Desolation Wilderness mirrored the surrounding rocks and mountains in such detail, creating optical illusions and doubling the beauty.

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é Day 8-12, mile 109.5-179.4: We are still waiting for the day without challenges. ... Each day is harder than the last, in surprising ways. The desert is not a scorching desolate place but rather filled with characters and switchbacks.

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é Day 145-148, mile 2,297.2-2,381.1: There isn’t much time to pat yourself on the back on the PCT — you stop to admire the view and catch your breath, then keep walking.

The beauty of your surroundings takes your breath away figuratively, so it’s all about balance.

é Day 63-67, mile 865.5-953.2: Bending down to filter water from steamy bug-infested ponds felt like an impossible endeavor, so I had no water to drink. By the time I got to Old Station, I was vomiting from dehydration, heat exhaustion, deet poisoning, or a fun combo. One of the locals of this tiny town gave me saltines and ice water.

é Day 21-25, mile 266.1-369.3: The daily mileage is getting bigger and the sights more and more strange. In some moments, we are wading through river crossing after river crossing. In others, screaming wind threatens to knock us off a mountain ridge. We no longer have cell service or meet anyone without a ludicrous trail name, so each paved road or other reminder of civilization shocks us.

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é Day 78-85, mile 1,080.4-1,210.9: There should be more words for snow. There’s the sharp frosty snow of morning that gives a satisfying crunch. There’s the soft snow that you slip on constantly. There’s the afternoon slush that you plunge through toward the hidden rocks and dirt below. There are the mounds of icy snow, piled high and sporadically.

There are the long stretches of flat white, difficult to navigate through but easier to walk over. Walking on snow means wet feet. Bruises are immediately iced upon impact. Sliding downhill saves time and effort. è Day 136-139, mile 2,124.4-2,216.8: It felt like walking through an old Western film. Rocky cliffsides full of purple and turquoise stones gave off an otherworldly vibe. All this unexpected tenderness combined with the peculiar scenery left me sparkling.

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ê Day 105-109, mile 1,603.1-1,699.2: We climbed so much that it felt like we were walking to the stratosphere.

Sometimes I would look at a majestic mountain, panting from exertion, and wonder if the view was really worth the struggle. It is in the Northern Cascades, with their strange jagged peaks and glittering alpine lakes. The scale of these beauties was difficult to comprehend. The trail grew wilder, made of either gravel, fist-size rocks, or tall boulders.

Sometimes it was overgrown with dew-laden plants or full of fallen trees. We grew wilder also.

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é Day 33-40, mile 454-558.5: The days heated up, which was a welcome respite. I had a 15-minute showdown with a rattlesnake, who slithered down the trail to say hi. ... In the evening we walked by moonlight the long, waterless stretch along the L.A. aqueduct. ... Joshua trees popped up around the trail like flamboyant Dr. Seuss creatures.

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é Day 68-77, mile 953.2-1,082.4: I’m proud to be a member of the four-digit mileage club, but have no desire to make it to the five-digit club. ... Day 110-114, mile 1699.2-1797.3: From our vantage point in bright green meadows, we had expansive views of the whole Northern Cascades mountain range we had just walked through. There aren’t many moments like that in life when you can look back on the progress you’ve made.

To see more of Goldberg’s trek across the PCT, visit her Instagram at @pctshewrote.

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The

Bermuda Shorts Affair A proposed dress code for students ignited protest — and the activist spirit — on the Barnard campus in 1960

by Rona Wilk ‘91 44

ILLUSTRATION BY FABIEN GILBERT SPRING 2020 | BARNARD MAGAZINE 45

The day after news spread of Barnard’s controversial dress code, two first-year students, Wendy Supovitz [Reilly] ’63, left, and Martha Kostyra [Stewart] ’63, right, paid no mind to the proposed rules, wearing Bermuda shorts to accompany Japanese guest Takako Hayashi around campus.

AP PHOTO/ANTHONY CAMERANO

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N

ew Yorkers woke up on April 28, 1960, to find the headline “Ban on Shorts Threatens Classic Barnard Couture” gracing the front page of The New York Times. Elsa Solender ’61, the Barnard press correspondent for the Times, captured the contentious debate erupting on campus over a newly enforced dress code barring women from wearing the then-popular Bermuda shorts, as well as slacks.

Barnard president Millicent McIntosh had been set to issue a statement later that day to the student body, supporting Columbia University president Grayson Kirk’s concern about sartorial impropriety on campus and his request that “women in the university wear skirts to class and off campus.” Despite the headline’s levity, the ban struck a chord. Many Barnard students felt the college acting in loco parentis had overstepped its bounds, and they saw the administration’s decision as an infringement on their personal freedoms — an infuriating attempt to police women’s bodies.

The following day, students sprang into action, showing up to school defiantly baring their legs in Bermuda shorts that soon became, as described in a follow-up article in the Times, the “campus badges of independence.” As the Bermuda shorts affair unfolded — covered at length in newspapers and on television — parents, alumnae, and even the editorial board of The New York Times felt entitled to weigh in on just what it meant for young women to dress as they pleased.

Barnard’s peculiar position as a private space in the middle of the city made the administration particularly concerned with the public presentation of its students, who were considered not just private individuals but representatives of the institution. One alarmed alum wrote

“Petitions popped up in every elevator; astonished professors found springfeverish students bent over their chairs in intensive scribbling.

Four hundred indignant Barnardites were reported to have signed protests-inadvance.”

The New York Times, April 28, 1960

“One student objection to the new restrictions was that the prestige of the University should not depend on what others think of the appearance of the students but on their leadership and scholastic abilities.”

Barnard Bulletin, April 28, 1960

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“Said one very determined young lady, ‘Kneecaps are at stake here, as well as such minor issues as personal liberties.’... The babble of voices rose. ‘Let’s MARCH!’ ... ‘They didn’t say anything about the rest of our apparel; we’ll wear burlap bags.’ ” Barnard Bulletin, April 28, 1960

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to Mrs. McIntosh to chide that such informal attire seemed “ill-suited to the needs of students … attending an urban college of high standing.”

Letters to Mrs. McIntosh and the administration both supported and opposed the ban. Those in favor often focused on the sloppy look of the shorts, which they felt were undignified given Barnard’s esteemed reputation. Others fixated on the inflammatory effect of abbreviated attire on men, leading to trouble that was, of course, the woman’s fault. One concerned woman — a self-described “70-year-old writer of love stories” — exhorted, “Desire is roused in any male who views the delectable sight. ...

Give the New York male a break!” Another woman starchily suggested that shorts and slacks, plus excessive makeup, offered quite an “education” for young boys.

Those who spoke out against the ban emphasized the connection between freedom of choice and a thriving democracy, especially in the wake of McCarthyism and the growing civil rights and anti-nuclear arms movements. One alum cited “the freedom in all spheres of life and learning” that she felt Barnard represented as reason to strike down the sanctions.

Another correspondent cheered the students’ protests: “This momentous struggle fits the tradition of free, liberal, democratic, choice education.” Even the president of a sportswear company wrote to voice his support of the student protestors by suggesting that Barnard was “entrusted with the very ideals of personal freedom on which our country is founded.” (He added that students could also concentrate better in shorts, without the worry of adjusting their skirts all the time for propriety.)

The first-year Class of 1963 took a vote and submitted a memorandum to Mrs. McIntosh against the ban, arguing that being at Barnard “presupposes a certain responsibility and maturity on our part.” They conceded that President Kirk had the right to enforce rules at Columbia, but, they said, “Barnard must consider this matter separately, in the tradition of her individual identity” and invoked it as contrary to “Barnard’s liberal tradition.”

The members of the Class of 1963 remember their own positions well. “I was fully supportive, especially for wearing slacks in the winter when the commute was pure agony on snowy winter days,” recalls Marlene Ruthen, a commuter student. According to dorm student Sheila Gordon: “We felt strongly. I remember wearing my Bermudas and protesting … and being angry that we could only wear them on campus and not ‘across the street.’”

Mrs. McIntosh had, herself, been increasingly concerned about the informal dress of students and the reputation of the college. But as a Quaker, she also believed in consensus, and that attitude meant she was open to the students’ suggestions. In a letter to student council president Ruth Cowan ’61, Mrs. McIntosh wrote: “I think you all know there is no one who respects the rights of students as much as I do.”

And so, a compromise was reached. The students would police themselves. On Columbia’s campus, it was skirts only, unless the student was just passing through, in which case a long coat could be worn to cover up shorts or slacks. On Barnard’s campus, Bermuda shorts could be worn, but they had to be no more than two inches above the knee and of a dignified nature “suitable to the academic institution,” which meant no gaudy colors or loud patterns, like the “orange, pink, and yellow” ones that Francine Stein ’63 laughingly remembers owning.

The rules were published that fall in the 1960-61 student handbook.

As Cowan recalls: The rules went into effect, they worked, and that was that.

The protests of 1968 have received more attention over the years, but these early pushbacks against authority at the start of the decade can be seen as an opening salvo presaging the social and cultural changes to come. (And if Grayson Kirk had known what was in store for him eight years later, he might have considered Bermuda shorts the least of his problems.) Were there plenty of political issues to protest at the time? Of course. Cowan recalls a sit-in at a local Woolworth’s to protest racial segregation, and there was a protest in May 1960 on College Walk against “duck and cover” and the nuclear arms race. But the Bermuda shorts affair offers a glimpse of where society was heading, the rumblings of protest and change, and the ongoing conversations around women’s bodies that we are still having today. B

In an article, “The Long and the Short of It,” appearing in Barnard Magazine’s Summer 1960 issue, students are shown donning Bermuda shorts on campus.

“The resolutions passed by the students showed a real sense of responsibility for solving our dress problem,” President Millicent C. McIntosh told the magazine.

PHOTO COURTESY OF BARNARD’S DIGITAL ARCHIVES

Interested in Barnard history?

Visit digitalcollections. barnard.edu

SPRING 2020 | BARNARD MAGAZINE 49

Driven to Give

olunteering helps these alums find fulfillment and purpose, drawing on their Barnard experience to give back

Exercise isn’t the only way to get healthy.

Research shows that volunteering can reduce stress, improve blood pressure, and maybe even help you live longer. And of course it can nourish your soul, strengthen your connections, improve your marketable skills, and make you see the world in new ways. Meet five Barnard grads — Vivien Li ’75, Zuhirah Khaldun-Diarra ’96, Miriam Scharfman Zadek ’50, Farah Kathwari ’96, and Susan Chapnick ’78 — who share why they love donating their time to charitable causes, ranging from environmental conservation to human rights advocacy.

by Marjorie Ingall Looking for a cause closer to home? Visit barnardconnect.barnard.edu to help students gain skills and experience for life after college.

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PHOTO BY NOAH WILLMAN

Vivien Li ’75 Food Pantry Volunteer

“What I’m doing now veers away from what I’ve done professionally, and that’s deliberate,” Vivien Li ’75 says. After two-plus decades at The Boston Harbor Association, followed by several years as president and CEO of Pittsburgh’s Riverlife, she decided to come back to Boston in 2018. “People assumed I’d do what I’d always done: work on waterfront access and climate change,” she recalls. Instead, Li’s taking what she calls Gap Year 2.0. “I’m taking time to think about what’s next,” she says. “I enjoy travel and a good meal, but there has to be more to life than that.”

Her focus is on helping people with food insecurity. “I’d volunteered at Women’s Lunch Place going back to 1990, when I was a young mother here in Boston,” she says.

The organization serves meals and helps

with housing, job training, and more. “Sometimes someone comes to do makeup; sometimes there’s live music at lunchtime — it’s the gamut of getting people services and bringing them joy. It’s all about respect and dignity,” she explains. “We don’t ask anyone for ID; we don’t care if they’re here legally or not. You’re in need. We’re there to help.”

Li also volunteers with a Friday night supper program at Arlington Street Church and at a food pantry at the Church of the Covenant, both in close proximity to Chinatown. The clients are primarily Chinese and “tend to be older, some in senior and affordable housing,” she says. “I speak Cantonese, and I’ll help them pack their bags. And the clients always say what a good girl I am!” She laughs.

Helping out at these different organizations gives Li plenty of food for thought. “People in need can’t get healthy food, and yet in a country as rich as ours, so much food is wasted,” she says. “Corporations throw out food because it’s not beautiful or because the expiration date is in a day or two. What I’m thinking about, but haven’t quite developed yet, is how to lessen food waste in general.”

And Li loves the work. “I want the opportunity to work with the guests being served by the program, loading the dishwasher, running back to get the vegetarian option,” she says. “It isn’t glamorous; it doesn’t require a degree from Barnard or a master’s from Princeton. But it opens your eyes to the fact that bad things can happen to good people. I’m grateful I can make people’s day a bit better in a small way, with a little banter, a moment to make them feel welcome.”

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Cultural Educator

The need to give back was instilled in Zuhirah Khaldun-Diarra ’96 at an early age. “I remember my very first volunteer experience,” she says. “I used to go up to Harlem with my family — my father is co-founder of the Harlem Children’s Zone, and my mother is the former secretary of education of Bermuda — to feed the hungry on Christmas,” she recalls. “It was a great reminder of the dignity and autonomy of all people, regardless of their current condition or position.”

As an adult, Khaldun-Diarra, who is the brand marketing director at UNICEF, has continued this family tradition, melding her personal interests with community engagement.

At Barnard, she majored in economics, but the

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arts were always vital to her. She was the director of WBAR and hosted Strange Fruit, which she describes as “a multicultural open-mic night monthly where people of color had a platform to share their artistic expression.”

From Barnard onward, she’s been involved in a number of projects that are at the nexus of culture and education. She was the founding board member of the Hip-Hop Education Center at NYU, an institute that “focused on how hip-hop can be used to empower marginalized communities, influence the field of education to be more inclusive and culturally responsive, and improve educational outcomes,” she says.

“Then, I became a host committee member for what was then called the Block Party — a pun on ‘prison block’ — which supported the Horticultural Society of New York, providing green jobs training and horticultural therapy for people detained in a facility.”

This year, she and some friends decided to do a benefit to support the National Association for Women Artists. The funds raised would go to providing gallery space across the country. The inaugural event honored Shaniqwa Jarvis, an African American woman photographer.

“It’s interesting to come full circle,” she reflects. “What motivated me earlier in my life was providing spaces for marginalized groups to share their voices. Today, the internet has democratized the distribution of music, but fine art is still so dependent on having galleries to show work.”

For Khaldun-Diarra, there is still more important work to be done, and she’s up for the challenge.

PHOTO BY JONATHAN KING

Zuhirah Khaldun-Diarra ’96

PHOTO BY ROBYN OSTEN

Miriam Scharfman Zadek ’50 Communication Advocate

Since 1975, Miriam Scharfman Zadek ’50 has been helping people who face communication challenges. She started nearly 46 years ago at the Hearing and Speech Agency of Baltimore, and, well, she’s essentially never left.

“I got a call from the director of the agency saying they’d gotten a federal grant to develop a model of intervention for children with communicative disorders,” Zadek recalls, “and they needed someone to develop a social work counseling program for families. Would I be interested?” She wound up saying yes, and over the past four-plus decades, she’s been hard at work: She founded the organization’s Centralized Interpreter Referral Service (the first American

Sign Language interpreting agency in Baltimore), served on their executive board, and is now on the president’s advisory council.

For Zadek, this professional calling was personal. She grew up with two deaf sisters and always felt she straddled different worlds. “I was part of the deaf community and the hearing community,” she says. “I could understand communication and separation between groups as well as methods of bringing them together.” At Barnard, she majored in sociology and went on to get a degree from Columbia’s School of Social Work. She’s devoted herself to helping people with hearing and speech disorders ever since. In 2017, Zadek received the Maryland Governor’s Service Lifetime Achievement Award for her many years of service to the community.

She has no intention of quitting. “I was 91 this month and spent yesterday at the office because there is a new small agency in Baltimore that provides pro bono psychiatric and social work counseling, which thrilled me, and I wanted to see how to integrate that into our other programs,” she says. “They’re developing a new research grant, and I’ve been asked to give input. I like doing [these] things! I know what a grievous loss I’d feel if I could no longer engage in this way.”

Volunteering is a family affair for the Zadeks; after her husband retired as an orthopedic surgeon, he spent 15 years teaching literacy and math to adults. “Part of living is the opportunity to give and share and learn,” she says. “And it’s fun! Get that across!”

Zadek wouldn’t know how to stop volunteering anyway, she says: “I don’t know another way to be.”

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Human Rights Activist

“I’ve always seesawed between design and human-rights-related stuff,” Farah Kathwari ’96 says, laughing. “I was meant to go to art school, and at the last minute I didn’t and went to Barnard. And then I went to Parsons, where I studied interior design.” Along the way, she got a master’s in Middle East studies and worked for Ethan Allen. But through volunteering, she’s been able to pursue her passion for human rights advocacy.

She’s currently a board member of two organizations — Refugees International and Westchester County Human Rights Commission — that focus on a range of issues, from improving the lives of displaced people around the world to protecting local residents from discrimination in housing and employment.

Kathwari’s parents, who grew up in Kashmir, worked hard to make sure she knew how

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fortunate she was. “Coming from a place of conflict gives you a different perspective,” she says. The Kathwaris established a family foundation, and their children were involved in both charitable giving and volunteering.

So when Kathwari was asked to join the committee for the New York office of Human Rights Watch, she quickly said yes. That was 10 years ago, and now, she’s on the executive committee.

One of her causes was ending child marriage in New York. Until recently, New York was one of only three states in which a 14-year-old could be married without parental permission. “If you look at countries where women have the worst standards of living, it correlates with child marriage,” Kathwari points out. “We needed to help with that at home first.” Despite pushback from some religious groups, a judge in 2017 raised the marriage age to 18, or 17 with both parental and court consent.

Kathwari is now fighting another battle: ending solitary confinement.

“There are internationally accepted norms about how long a person can be in solitary confinement and how it’s used, but in New York they’ve been keeping prisoners in solitary for years. It’s literally torture.”

Kathwari initially called her disparate interests in human rights and design “right brain/left brain” but then acknowledged that perhaps her passions are related after all. “In my design work, what I love most is things that are handmade by people, that reflect their culture. To me, it shows their humanity. And it ties in with my volunteering because both are from a place of love. I know that sounds cheesy. But it’s about being human.”

PHOTO BY JONATHAN KING

Farah Kathwari ’96

PHOTO BY NOAH WILLMAN

Susan Chapnick ’78 Environmental Conservationist

Susan Chapnick ’78 is an environmental chemist who runs New Environmental Horizons, a consulting firm, which helps with the cleanup of contaminated sites. In her volunteer work, she leverages her scientific background to advocate for climate change resiliency in her community. She’s the chair of the conservation commission in her town of Arlington, Massachusetts, and serves on the science advisory board of the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection’s Bureau of Waste Site Cleanup, among other environmentalism-focused volunteer gigs.

“Scientists have gotten a bad reputation as elitist lately,” Chapnick notes. “But I feel it’s critically important to base decisions on data rather than intuition. Climate change is caused by human intervention. And policies being made now will be in place for years to come.”

She has three grandchildren and thinks a lot about the planet they’ll inherit. Back when she was at Barnard, climate change advocacy wasn’t yet a thing. “We forget, but there were days in NYC you were advised not to go outside because the air was so bad. Then the Clean Air Act was put in place, which really helped improve air quality. Now we take it for granted.”

Today, many of us feel hopeless about climate change. Taking action, Chapnick says, helps a lot. Several years ago, there was a huge oil-tanker spill on a local highway; thousands of gallons of oil flowed into the Mystic River. “The accident made us say, ‘What can we do to improve this area and make it more resilient?’” She swiftly volunteered to help the conservation commission with the cleanup and secured a National Resource Damage Assessment and Restoration Program grant, which allowed them to add flood storage, fix a broken outfall, and create infrastructure to improve water quality and take care of storm water. They also built a small riparian habitat and enlisted students at the local elementary school to help with planting. “We said we hoped they’d come back to help take care of the plants, and we gave them each a wetland plant to put in their garden. You have to engage the next generation to care.”

Plus, she notes, environmental volunteerism can have a great ripple effect. “After I helped the town put in place these regulations for climate change around wetlands, the regulations were adopted by the town of Brookline, and some were adopted by the city of Boston,” she says. “It’s spreading out!” B SPRING 2020 | BARNARD MAGAZINE 55

ATHENA TURNS 10 The Athena Film Festival caps a milestone as an international forum for stories by and about fearless women

by Kira Goldenberg ’07

WITH APPEARANCES BY

CAROL JENKINS DAVID OYELOWO GRACE LEE BOGGS DIABLO CODY AVA DUVERNAY GRETA GERWIG BEANIE FELDMAN MIRA NAIR SHEILA NEVINS DEBORAH MARTIN CHASE JODI FOSTER DOLORES HUERTA REGINA K. SCULLY GLORIA STEINEM

SPRING 2020 | BARNARD MAGAZINE 57

B

arnard College’s most prominent, signature annual event was conceived in the most Barnard way possible: in Gloria Steinem’s living room. As Kathryn Kolbert, the Athena Film Festival’s cofounder and current producing director, remembers it, Women and Hollywood’s Melissa Silverstein had invited her to a party at Steinem’s in honor of New Zealand filmmaker Jane Campion.

“It was a great party,” she says, “and I’m walking around the living room hearing women filmmakers talk about how they have trouble getting their second and third films made.” Kolbert and festival co-founder and artistic director Silverstein agreed that something had to be done, and a film festival was born to champion women and underrepresented filmmakers.

The festival furthers Silverstein’s allencompassing professional mission to push for a film culture that centers on gender diversity and inclusion. “Films are like our cave paintings,” she says. “They’re what is going to be left behind. And if you don’t have any women there, and you don’t have any people of color, what are people going to remember? The world is not just white men, even though they want us to continue to believe that it is.”

For Kolbert, the festival was a natural extension of the Athena Center for Leadership, which she served as director of from its launch in 2009 until 2018. The center sought the same objectives that Silverstein and Kolbert, an esteemed journalist and public interest attorney (Planned Parenthood v. Casey), had for the festival: “... building a world where leadership is constantly reimagined to reflect the needs of women and society — where women obtaining and exercising power is both expected and commonplace.”

Today, the center has matured into an integral part of Barnard and grown far beyond its humble beginnings in historic Milbank Hall. As the center celebrates its 10year anniversary and better digs in the sleek, new Milstein Center, it looks to the future

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with its new director, Umbreen Bhatti ’00, at the helm and its mission to define and develop women’s leadership as vital as ever.

“When I was a student here, there was no place like this. I’m looking forward to growing Athena as a home for students who will lead us to a better world,” says Bhatti.

Imagining an ideal world demands visionaries, which the festival welcomes en masse every year. It has become the place for women leaders in film and filmmaking.

Reverberations from the creation of this forum have been huge. Some 40,000 people have attended the film festival in the past decade, viewing more than 400 films.

“It’s a testament to the festival’s mission that 70% of all films ever screened at Athena have been directed by women, with 64% written by women,” says President Sian Leah Beilock. “And all of these films center on strong women, leading in different places and spaces throughout time and around the world. In contrast, just 25% of the films at top international festivals in the past three years were from women directors.”

Last year, the festival started to award grant money in partnership with the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and Netflix to help support the work of up-and-coming women filmmakers. The first Sloan development grant, established to promote stories of women in STEM, was awarded to Denise Meyers for her screenplay Lucky 13, and the inaugural Athena Breakthrough Award, sponsored by Netflix,

went to director Unjoo Moon for her Helen Reddy biopic, I Am Woman.

Silverstein is especially proud of the emerging filmmakers honored by the festival who have subsequently found wide acclaim: Greta Gerwig ’06 won an Athena Award in 2011, long before 2017’s Lady Bird and 2019’s Little Women launched her into prominence for her directing chops. (The festival has screened both of Greta’s Oscar-winning films, with the director making video and in-person appearances, respectively.) And it honored Chinonye Chukwu’s script Clemency with a spot on the 2017 Athena List (a “Black List”-inspired roster that recognizes the best women-inspired screenplays not yet produced). Chukwu went on to direct the film, which took the top prize at Sundance in 2019, making her the first black woman to win it.

While the festival has proved to be a successful launch pad for women in film on a global scale, it has also had a formidable

impact on the next generation of women filmmakers. For Ashley Bush ’11, who interned for the inaugural festival in the months before it opened, its mission has been personal, too.

“We spent the entire summer in the new Diana Center holed up in a room just watching all these films made by women,” Bush says. “That was incredibly impactful for me as a young filmmaker.” Since graduating from Barnard, she has built a career producing and writing in film and is currently working on a documentary that examines the history of the male gaze in cinema. Her work with the film festival “definitely affects my choices of what I work on,” she says. “What I write, who I work with — it’s had a long-term impact.” (For more on how the festival and Barnard changed Ashley Bush ’11’s idea of what’s possible in film, see page 118.)

For filmmakers like Bush, the festival very quickly became both a beacon and platform, shining a spotlight on the important work underrepresented artists are doing in film. It demonstrates and announces to Hollywood establishment what women can and should be doing as filmmakers and protagonists, while demanding change in movements such as Time’s Up and #MeToo, both of which have been featured in panels hosted by the festival.

As Athena looks to chart its next 10 years amid the rising tide of films about and by women, a sea change is coming in the industry — thanks, in no small part, to the festival that took root at Barnard. B

Films are like our cave paintings.

They’re what is going to be left behind.

And if you don’t have any women there, and you don’t have any people of color, what are people going to remember?

The world is not just white men, even though they want us to continue to believe that it is.

ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ, KATE McKINNON, PAUL FEIG, LENA DUNHAM, J.J. ABRAMS, KARYN KUSAMA

2020

VISION A look back at the Athena Film Festival’s 10th anniversary celebration

T

Save the date for the 11th annual Athena Film Festival: FEBRUARY 18-21, 2021.

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he Athena Film Festival wrapped a perfect 10 on March 1, 2020, capping a decade of hosting 40,000 attendees at Barnard College’s signature annual event.

Activists, directors, actors, and writers came together to celebrate the festival’s milestone and commitment to showcasing the work of underrepresented filmmakers in partnership with the Athena Center for Leadership and Women and Hollywood.

“Every year I watch a screening at the Athena Film Festival, and I leave all the more inspired by the strong female characters and women behind the camera,” said history major Connie Cai ’21, who attended the showing of Sister Aimee.

This year’s festival lineup presented more than 50 events and 62 films, including narrative, documentary, and short films; Q&As and panels; workshops and master classes; and more New York and international premieres than ever before — 22 total — as well as screening Golden Globe and Sundance prizewinners and Academy Award nominees over the course of the weekend-long event.

The College’s faculty participated as well, attending screenings with students for classroom discussions and also through panels on topics such as women in science, which featured professor of physics and astronomy Janna Levin, and art and activism, with professors of English and Africana studies Monica Miller and Yvette Christiansë.

On February 26, the 2020 Athena Awards honored Golden Globe-nominated actress Beanie Feldstein (Booksmart), producer and CEO of Gamechanger Effie T. Brown, director Unjoo Moon (I Am Woman), and filmmaker Jennifer Kaytin Robinson (Someone Great).

Moon was honored with the inaugural Athena Breakthrough Award, sponsored by Netflix, which provides $25,000 to a first- or secondtime woman filmmaker whose project has not yet secured U.S. distribution. Her film follows singer Helen Reddy and her hit song “I Am Woman,” which became an anthem amid the second-wave feminist movement of the 1970s.

Guests included Gloria Steinem, filmmaker Lorraine Toussaint, and Netflix vice president of inclusion strategy Vernā Myers ’82, among other luminaries. Academy Award-nominated director Greta Gerwig ’06 presented Feldstein with an Athena Award in what became an onstage Lady Bird reunion for the two friends.

On Friday night,

Yu Gu’s documentary A Woman’s Work: The NFL’s Cheerleader Problem screened, followed by a Q&A with former New York Jets cheerleader Krystal Cruz and New York Assemblywoman Nily Rozic. The film takes a closer look at the salary imbalance between NFL cheerleaders and the football players, highlighting the mistreatment of the cheerleaders and lawsuits against their teams.

On Saturday, Disney’s Frozen II gathered students, staff, and children dressed as their favorite characters to see the animated feminist tale. The screening was preceded by “The Present and Future of Women in Animation,” a panel moderated by animation veteran Jinko Gotoh.

In what was a powerful discussion, Hollywood Reporter journalist Tatiana Siegel moderated the “Silence Breakers” panel with music producer Drew Dixon, writer Sheri Sher, actress Sarah Masse, and writer Jasmine Lobe. Dixon and Sher discussed breaking their silence against hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons, while Masse and Lobe discussed coming forward to describe their experiences with the former Hollywood media giant Harvey Weinstein.

The four are now advocating together to further the employment of sexual

survivors in Hollywood, via the #HireSurvivorsHollywood initiative, spearheaded by Masse. “It is important for me to let fellow artists know that this is an issue in our industry right now and how they can be a part of changing it,” Masse stated.

“Barnard sits at the intersection of STEM fields and female narrative[s],” said screenwriter Mary Elder. This year, the festival featured more STEM-focused films and events than ever before, through its partnership with the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, a nonprofit organization that awards grants for science and technology. The Foundation bolsters screenwriting labs and STEM-focused films as part of Athena’s larger parity pipeline that features women on screen and at the forefront of creative development.

The festival screened four films centered on women in STEM fields: Neasa Hardiman’s Sea Fever, Marie-Sophie Chambon’s Stars by the Pound, Todd Thompson’s Woman in Motion, and Jack Thorne’s Radioactive. “With research showing how important it is for girls to ‘do science,’ as opposed to ‘being scientists,’ it’s critical that films represent women doing science and achieving their dreams,” said President Beilock. B — Stefani Shoreibah ’21

UNJOO MOON, LIZ GARBUS, DAN COGAN, LORRAINE TOUSSAINT, ARI AFSAR, PAUL FEIG, EFFIE T. BROWN, VERNĀ MYERS ’82, KATHRYN KOLBERT, SIAN LEAH BEILOCK, MELISSA SILVERSTEIN, UMBREEN BHATTI ’00

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Sketchbook 62

A Conversation with Suze Myers ’16 The graphic artist and art director gives us a glimpse into her creative process and talks feminist zines, fine paperstock, and sketching under the magnolia tree

Where do you draw inspiration from?

I do read design publications, like It’s Nice That or AIGA’s Eye on Design, but my favorite projects draw inspiration from elsewhere, like community activist movements, illustrated children’s books, archival collections, or the film world.

Which classes at Barnard have most informed your work?

Every art history class I took at Barnard shaped the way I understand methods of looking and seeing in both art and design. I loved Jack McGrath’s Body Politics Since 1945, Elizabeth Hutchinson’s Native American Art, and Rosalyn Deutsche’s Institutional Critique.

What is your creative process like?

Ideally, I like to start by doing research. I pull inspiration from books, online, or real life, and print it all out. I physically cut and paste the images into a sketchbook, making notes alongside them. Before this, I have a general concept of what I’m trying to communicate, but this is the point where I start to ideate on what form my final product should actually take. I then design a few rudimentary experiments.

How would you describe your aesthetic (in 3-5 adjectives)?

Playful, irreverent, feminist.

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What is your favorite project or piece?

I’m very proud of my thesis from design school, Women’s Lib. It was a feminist toolkit full of interventions that one could take into a library to protest and make visible the dearth of women in the art and design canon. I screen printed library cards, bookmarks, shelf talkers, and posters, and designed (and dyed and sewed!) a backpack to hold everything. It was specifically inspired by my time as a worker in the Barnard Library — after I left, I wished every library could be as radical, warm, and inclusive as the community there. It was the first time I had approached a design project like I would a research paper, and it fundamentally changed the way I thought about my work and my process.

Where would I find you sketching on campus?

Back in the day, I’d be under the magnolia tree!

If I were a student at Barnard now, you would definitely catch me working on my sketchbooks in the Design Center.

What do you listen to while at work in your studio?

Garrett, the bartender at my favorite bar, has a great collection of playlists for every mood, so I’ll usually put one of them on since they’re 8-9 hours long each!

Also, in grad school, I listened to all seven Harry Potter audiobooks while working on my thesis.

Who is at your dream dinner party?

Bong Joon Ho, Alexandria OcasioCortez, Claire Saffitz from the Bon Appétit Test Kitchen, and Elena Ferrante.

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I would roast a chicken, but Claire would have to bring dessert.

What artwork was on your dorm wall?

The walls had a similar mishmash aesthetic and DIY vibe to my sketchbooks and zines. Any well-designed printed matter could go up there — postcards from the Met, illustrations from zine fests, notes from friends, a giant foldout map of London’s independent bookstores, prints of photos from the Archives that I rescued before the Lehman Hall demolition. I had this huge poster of a smashed clementine that someone had scanned and a thin newsprint drawing of a sad Bigfoot with a speech bubble that said “I stink.”

Which living person do you most admire?

I’ve worked a bit in film as both a producer and first assistant director, and off set as a graphic artist. I have the utmost respect for all women working in that wild industry, which somehow

To see more of Myers’ work, visit Sketchbook at Barnard.edu/ magazine

manages to be even more white and maledominated than the world of graphic design. I particularly admire the directors Lulu Wang, Céline Sciamma, Ava DuVernay, and Lorene Scafaria.

What’s your guilty pleasure?

The Instagram algorithm continuously shows me pictures of Timothée Chalamet....

What is your idea of perfect happiness?

A library book, a loaf of homemade sourdough bread, and a picnic blanket in Prospect Park on the first warm day of the year.

What is your favorite place to see art?

In New York: the Met, the Cooper Hewitt, and Chinatown Soup. In London: the Design Museum and the ICA. What is your greatest extravagance?

Fancy paper stock for printmaking. I have a box full under my bed.

What do you consider your greatest achievement?

I love being a co-organizer of the NYC Feminist Zine Fest alongside fellow Barnard alum Lili Finckel ’16 and Barnard zine librarian Jenna Freedman! Even though it’s just one day a year, it really feels like a community space that brings people together.

Where would you most like to live?

I would love to live in London again someday!

Other contenders: Amsterdam, Copenhagen, or anywhere in Japan.

What is your most treasured possession?

My zine collection, which has 500+ zines and counting. Plus, my four external hard drives that archive my work, and my grandmother’s jewelry box from Trinidad.

Who are your heroes in real life?

All community activists everywhere.

What is your motto?

Start before you’re ready.

B SPRING 2020 | BARNARD MAGAZINE 65

KEEP WRITING THE BOOK

ON BEING DRIVEN, PASSIONATE, PROUD, IN-THE-KNOW, EAGER, IRREVERENT, ORIGINAL, GUTSY, MOTIVATED, FOCUSED, HUNGRY FOR EXPERIENCE, INTENSE, ENGAGED, AMBITIOUS, CONFIDENT, WORLDLY, FORTHRIGHT, INCLUSIVE, UNAPOLOGETIC, BOLD, POWERFUL, VIBRANT, ASPIRATIONAL, DISCERNING, GENUINE, AWARE, SPIRITED, WITTY, IRONIC, DIRECT, RELEVANT, COMMUNITY-DRIVEN, SUSTAINABLE, AUDACIOUS, AGGRESSIVE, INDEPENDENT, FEARLESS, THOUGHTFUL, RESILIENT, COSMOPOLITAN, AND FIERCELY INTELLECTUAL.

Send your unequivocally Barnard letters, essays, poems, art, photos, travels, and ideas to magazine@barnard.edu

Noteworthy

Connecting and celebrating alumnae. Inspiring community.

To Boldly Go A home to share your stories and reconnect with alums through “noteworthy” posts. Celebrate what makes Barnard graduates so unique, catch up with Class Notes, and get informed about alumnae events and how our dedicated community is giving back, effecting change, and doing good.

PHOTO BY MARK ABRAMOWITZ

Frances Abramowitz ’48 (far left) is shown on a safari in Kaziranga National Park, Assam, India, April 2009.

68 Alumnae Adventures 72 Spotlight 73 Q&Author 74 From the AABC President 76 Class Notes 82 Sources 90 Alumna Profile 109 Regional Roundup 114 Memorial 116 In Memoriam 118 Bold Statement 120 Crossword

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Alumnae Adventures

T R AV E L S W I T H F R A N With the world “on pause” for 2020, globetrotter Frances Abramowitz ’48 shares her favorite trips and tips

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Interview by Merri Rosenberg ’78 Photos by Mark Abramowitz The wanderlust that comes upon Frances (Fran) Abramowitz ’48 has taken her from the Andes mountains in Patagonia to the sidewalks of Barcelona.

Abramowitz may divide her time between her homes in northern New Jersey and Boca Raton, Florida, but her heart belongs to travel.

With her husband, Larry Abramowitz, she trekked all around the United States on extensive road trips throughout their 35-year marriage, visiting every state in the continental U.S., as well as Canada and Mexico. But he had no interest in overseas travel. Since becoming a widow, Abramowitz has expanded her itinerary to include international destinations. Her son Mark is supportive of her explorations, and as Abramowitz says, he often asks, “Where are you going next?” He has even joined her on a few trips, to such far-off locales as the Galápagos, Tanzania, and India (his photographs are featured on these pages).

Abramowitz, a Manhattan native, attended the Nightingale-Bamford School before entering Barnard. She majored in history and went on to earn a master’s degree in American history, with a focus on colonial history, from Columbia.

She spent more than 40 years in publishing as a business and professional texts editor for Prentice-Hall, ultimately specializing in human relations and labor law. Abramowitz has also been a dedicated and active alumna volunteer. She served on the AABC’s Nominating Committee and has been her class correspondent for the past 20 years.

Fran most recently came back from Costa Rica and Panama with Road Scholar this winter, and though her busy travel schedule might be on hold for now, she’s looking forward to packing her bags for her next adventure.

What’s your philosophy of travel?

I don’t have one. I go to places that I’ve never been. I select the location rather than a theme. I have revisited the same countries but not the same places — like going to Portugal and Spain and then going to Madrid and other parts of Spain. I always go by myself [in groups], but after the first dinner, I’m never alone.

One of my favorite walkabout destinations is to check out the local grocery stores or, say, a fabric shop in France.

Opposite page: Fran Abramowitz in front of the Taj Mahal in Agra, India, in 2009.

This page, top: Abramowitz on a safari at Serengeti National Park in Tanzania in 2007; bottom: Abramowitz poses with a tortoise in Isla Santa Cruz in the Galápagos Islands (Ecuador) in 2004.

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Left to right: Abramowitz resting on a bench at the Red Fort in Agra, India, and swimming at the Singinawa Jungle Lodge near Kanha National Park, India, in 2009; a tiger guarding its kill at Kanha National Park, India; Abramowitz saying hello to a sea lion on the beach at Gardner Bay, Isla Española, in the Galápagos Islands in 2004.

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Do you have any advice for someone who has a travel bucket list but is afraid or unsure about booking a trip?

They should take hold of themselves. If you’re not going to do it next year, you’re not going to do it in five years. Don’t be fearful of going by yourself. You won’t be alone. You don’t need to go with another person. That can be limiting.

Give yourself permission to do what you enjoy.

Don’t do anything stupid.

the Mediterranean and wind up in Barcelona, which is one of my favorite cities because of its architecture. I also like San Francisco, with its hills and the sea, although I don’t do mountain hiking anymore.

I’m also discovering South America. I had a wonderful trip to Patagonia, Chile, and Argentina. It was so beautiful. That’s where I’ve traveled now that I have the freedom to make my own arrangements.

What are your top destinations, and what makes them special?

It’s hard to answer. They’ve all been places I’ve wanted to see. I’ve enjoyed trips that have a cruise with a land component. I like Road Scholar [formerly ElderHostel]. Usually it’s groups of 20-40 people, with our own activities, who share the amenities of a small ship. Highlights were South Africa, with Johannesburg and Cape Town, where we sailed up the Indian Ocean to Durban and back to Cape Town. It was a fascinating and beautiful part of the world. In Spain, we sailed around the west coast of Portugal and the west coast of France, going upriver to Burgundy and its vineyards. One of my favorites was going from Brittany to the coast of England, and Falmouth, and London. That was very enjoyable. Next summer, I’ll go to Genoa along

How does Barnard inform your travels? Have you ever traveled with other alumnae or met any on your travels?

I was bold before Barnard had that in their motto. I’m interested in seeing a world outside my comfort zone. I carry a Barnard tote bag or something with Barnard on it, and people always ask, “What’s that?” It’s part of what I do. Or people come up to me when I’m sitting on the steps of the Met [Museum] eating a sandwich and say “Barnard!”

There were two Barnard alumnae on one of my trips. They noticed me because I had my Barnard notebook. We were two groups of 20 going to the same places in separate buses [on different tours]. We were at several meals and lectures together. There’s always a conversation if you went to Barnard, no matter what year or decade. I’m delighted when that happens.

Do you have an especially memorable story from your travels?

There was one that went off the program.

Instead of landing at the airport, we landed two miles away because there was a threat of a bomb in the luggage. It was the middle of India, and we landed in a field. We went down the chutes — it’s important to keep your money and passport on your body when you’re traveling — and when we were off the plane, we ran like hell to the buses. We were contained in what serves as an airport lounge, an open shed with no air at high noon. We were there two hours until they loaded our luggage. That was my first trip to India, 15 years ago.

What is it like to travel now that you’re in your 90s?

People in the group come up and say, “Do you mind if I ask how old you are?” I tell them that’s my business. One time on the bus to the airport, I wanted to have some fun, so I got on the mike and told them how old I was. There were lots of gasps. I get that at Barnard, too, when I go to Reunion.

I get a good night’s sleep. I know I’m one of the older tourists, so I want to make sure I can keep up. I never want to be the last one on the trail. I’m at the head of the line. It’s a point of pride. B

F R A N ’ S T R AV E L T I P S EATING Food is very important. Even in our good hotels and vetted restaurants, I never eat raw salads, fresh fruits, or drinks with ice cubes. I choose beer, and wine’s okay. Only bottled water.

Salads and fruits are okay in England, northern Europe, and Australia. I always bring snacks from home: baggies of dried apricots and walnuts, and a knife to peel an apple or pear. Make sure the knife goes in the checked luggage.

PACKING I like having my stuff. I never take anything that I can’t pack or carry myself. I take drip-dry shirts and tops. I always take a skirt in hot climates like India. My attire tends to be casual, although I have one indulgence outfit. I’m big on scarves, and take about 10. I mix and match. If it fits, it goes. I take one suitcase and one carry-on.

PRO TIP Never be late when the group bus is scheduled to depart. And actually watch them put your bag on the bus.

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Spotlight

Catching Up With ...

Martha Stewart ’63

Have you traveled recently?

I last took an eight-day trip to mainland China with my 7- and 8-year-old grandchildren and daughter Alexis, also a Barnard graduate. It was a very good trip and a good opportunity for the children to practice their Mandarin, which they are learning to speak and read at the Avenues school in Manhattan. According to the guides in Beijing and in Xi’an, their comprehension was excellent. We travel quite extensively as a family, and this gives the children the opportunity to see the world and compare country to country. Their favorites so far have been the Galápagos, Botswana, Dubai, and Abu Dhabi.

Are you working, retired, semiretired?

I am working very hard 24/7 at my job at Martha Stewart Living, which is now a part of Marquee Brands in New York City.

What have you been doing for fun and for enlightenment?

For fun, I garden, horseback ride, hike, and build. For enlightenment, I am an active philanthropist, focusing on geriatric care —

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PHOTO COURTESY OF THE EVERETT COLLECTION

Where are you living?

I live in Katonah, New York, on a 150-acre farm with six horses, four dogs, two cats, 17 peacocks, 200 chickens, 12 geese, five donkeys, and 40 homing pigeons.

the Martha Stewart Center for Living, part of the Mount Sinai Hospital family, has two locations in Manhattan — and on environmental issues, primarily in Maine, with a focus on Acadia National Park and Maine Coast Heritage Trust.

What kind of impact did Barnard have on you?

I am very pleased with the progress Barnard has made in educating the young women of this next generation. Many members of my family have attended Barnard, and the education we all received there has helped us tremendously in the rest of our lives.

Thank you, Barnard. B

Q&Author

Tête-à-tête with Nadine Jolie Courtney ’02 In her fourth book, the young adult novel All-American Muslim Girl, author Nadine Jolie Courtney ’02 brings her own experiences growing up as Muslim-American to life through the character Allie Abraham. Struggling to bridge the gap between her Muslim heritage and her public all-American girl persona, 16-year-old Allie decides to embrace her faith and let it guide her through these uncertain times. We caught up with Courtney and discussed her writing process, Barnard professors, and the books currently on her nightstand.

What’s your favorite book from childhood?

When I was younger, I read Cheaper by the Dozen over and over (and over and over!). I also liked the sequel, Belles on Their Toes; for some reason the adventures of the Gilbreth family really spoke to me!

How long did it take to write this book?

It took a little over two years to write: I pitched it just after the Muslim [travel] Ban in 2017 and was still tweaking it up until the last possible second.

What’s the most illuminating or helpful advice you received about writing?

Don’t be afraid to write a garbage first draft. The magic comes in the editing process — and it’s so much easier to finesse something fully written than to existentially wrestle with a blank page.

Do you enjoy the writing process, or are you like Dorothy Parker, who once said, “I hate writing. I love having written”?

It might sound nerdy, but I love to write! It’s all I ever wanted to do, from the time I was a young kid. And, of course, while an English major at Barnard, it was my hope that I’d someday be able to make the dream come true.

What was the hardest part of your book to write?

Although I obviously hope readers of all stripes will love All-American Muslim Girl, it was

especially important to me for Muslim readers to feel validated, because actually seeing ourselves on the page is so rare. Some of the scenes that were hardest for me to write were when my main character Allie is deepdiving Islam with her Muslim study group. Many of my early non-Muslim readers felt those scenes were a bit dense, but they were also the scenes that my Muslim readers told me they loved the most!

Did you have to do research to write All-American Muslim Girl?

Even though I’m a (mostly) practicing Muslim, I still spent a lot of time researching Islam to make sure I was getting details correct. Being a Muslim writer at a time when our stories are still not widely told and Muslims are often misrepresented, there’s a sense of pressure to get the representation absolutely perfect.

As a result, I had a mentality of “First Do No Harm” with this book. Even though I was essentially telling my own story, I spent months working with various sensitivity readers to make sure there was nothing inadvertently problematic for young or marginalized readers. I really wanted young Muslims, especially, to read the book and feel proud of their religion and to feel heard, seen, and valued.

What did you study at Barnard that helped you become the writer you are?

I was an English and European studies major. Funnily enough, my European studies advisor was one of my most influential teachers: Lisa Tiersten, whom I adored and worked closely with on my thesis.

Some other great teachers were Margaret Vandenburg, Maire Jaanus, Timea Szell, and Peter Platt.

How would you advise an aspiring writer?

Just write. Don’t overthink it, don’t put it off, don’t beat yourself up for a bad writing day — just keep writing and finish the damn thing.

What books are on your nightstand right now?

Right now, I’m alternating between Such a Fun Age, Dear Edward, Red, White and Royal Blue, and a parenting guide called How to Talk So Little Kids Can Listen. B SPRING 2020 | BARNARD MAGAZINE 73

From the AABC President

Forward, Together

Sincerely,

Jyoti Menon ’01 President, Alumnae Association of Barnard College

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PHOTO COURTESY OF THE BARNARD ARCHIVES

When Barnard students walked onto campus in the fall, no one was aware of the challenges we would face as a community.

Times of crisis are surrounded with uncertainty, and though I do not know what the future holds, I know one thing — the Barnard community is resilient and determined. We have weathered many storms throughout our long history, and we will continue to stand strong, together.

Over the course of Barnard’s 130 years, our country and our world have experienced times of great political and economic unrest. Throughout it all, Barnard women continued to build laboratories and classrooms, to conduct groundbreaking research, and to publish powerful literary works. They continued to expand access to higher education and to fight for the rights of women, communities of color, and all those whose voices must be heard. Most of all, Barnard women have continued to lead, to break barriers, and to support their College and this amazing community.

The same is true today. Our professors are still teaching, our students are still learning and researching, our staff are still working, our alumnae are still mentoring, and Barnard remains strong.

This is my final Barnard Magazine message to you as president of the Alumnae Association of Barnard College. It has been an honor and a privilege to serve as AABC president for the past three years, and, as my term ends, I wish to remind you that the Barnard community is wherever you are. We must remain connected and look to each other for strength and support. If we do that, nothing can stop us.

So, let’s go forward into the future together and remain strong in our dedication to each other, our shared values, and our beloved alma mater.

SPRING 2020 | BARNARD MAGAZINE 75

Sources

Barnard’s Fundraising Future It takes more than tuition to create the Barnard experience. Alumnae Class Agents are rolling up their sleeves and fundraising at the grass roots.

The Barnard Annual Fund recently welcomed 169 new alumnae volunteers to its new and growing Class Agent peer-to-peer fundraising program, which now boasts 249 total volunteers. This fresh strategic direction is an expansion of a long-standing volunteer fundraising tradition at Barnard. Expanding the program and inviting volunteers to participate in any capacity, and on a schedule that works best for them, is reflective of our desire to make the program more inclusive, to bolster alumnae participation, to build relationships among alumnae and their classmates, and to raise more Annual Fund dollars to support current students.

Every dollar raised by Class Agents goes directly to the Barnard Annual Fund, which lays at the foundation of every student’s education, filling critical gaps that arise — from lab equipment and textbooks to classroom improvements, wellness programs, and financial aid — as the College strives to provide the highest quality education possible. Every gift, of any amount, strengthens Barnard’s foundation and has a direct impact on current students.

“There are so many ways to get involved as a Class Agent,” says Sally Vallimarescu, director of annual giving at Barnard. “Our volunteers can reach out to classmates through email, text, or phone and in whatever capacity works for them. It’s a great opportunity to reconnect with classmates over a shared goal: supporting the next generation of Barnard women.”

Barnard’s Class Agents are working hard to build a lasting structure for future generations of Barnard women, ensuring students receive support from alumnae worldwide, year after year.

We value the enthusiasm and participation of our volunteers. All alumnae are welcome to volunteer in any capacity, and on a schedule that works best for them. Would you like to join them?

Please contact: Jasmyn Davis Manager, Senior Fund and Volunteers 212-870-2578 jmdavis@barnard.edu

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ILLUSTRATION BY ALEX EBEN MEYER SPRING 2020 | BARNARD MAGAZINE 83

Alumnae, parents, and their families gathered at C.W.S. Bar + Kitchen in Palm Beach, Florida, for a networking reception and lecture by Barnard professor Martin Stute.

Regional Roundup Throughout the year, the Office of Development and Alumnae Relations collaborates with alumnae volunteers to offer Barnard graduates across the globe the chance to connect with one another.

Community events include book clubs, networking, receptions, lectures, and more!

An Evening at the National Library of Israel In December, more than 50 alumnae and guests gathered for an evening at the National Library of Israel in Jerusalem. This event included guided tours and a special talk featuring artist Mierle Laderman Ukeles ’61. “We had alumnae present from seven decades, from the 1950s to the 2010s,” said Naomi Bloom Wurtman ’96, one of the leaders of the Barnard Club of Israel. “This kind of blew me away.”

Barnard in India In January, Dipak and Sohni Tanna P’23 hosted a wonderful dinner at their home in Mumbai with alumnae, current parents, and students who were home for winter break. Barnard president Sian Leah Beilock gave an update from campus, and guests discussed the various ways that the Indian community can support Barnard.

Barnard Regional Faculty Series in Palm Beach The Barnard Regional Faculty Series traveled to Palm Beach in February. Alumnae, Barnard parents, and guests attended a lecture by Martin Stute, the Alena Wels Hirschorn ’58 and Martin Hirschorn Professor in Environmental and Applied Sciences. Professor Stute discussed trends in climate change and possible solutions.

Barnard in Your Area One of the most precious aspects of a Barnard education is our global network of interesting, intelligent women. Learn more about upcoming events in your area and the various ways you can get involved at our.barnard.edu/events. If you are interested in joining or starting a Barnard club in your area, please visit our.barnard.edu/regionalclubs or contact Lacey Beck ’14 at lbeck@barnard.edu or 646-745-8315.

SPRING 2020 | BARNARD MAGAZINE 109

Memorial

Remembering Tobi Tobias ’59 (1938–2020)

by Lynne Sharon Schwartz ’59

In 1968, Tobi Tobias and I, friends since childhood, were young mothers trying to become writers while caring for small children. The second wave of feminism was cresting, and thousands like us were feeling the tug of war between home and work — ­ or, rather, work done for the home and the work we craved for ourselves.

Once her children were enrolled in school, Tobi announced to me, “Now I’m going to give it five years and see what happens.” Meaning, could she get anything written and published in that time? Her first published essay, on Twyla Tharp, a fellow Barnard alum, appeared in the 1970 issue of Barnard Magazine. Like Twyla, who had her own dance company just a few years after Commencement, Tobi, the future major dance critic, was on her way.

It’s easy to see why she chose Twyla Tharp as her first subject. The words she uses to describe Twyla — “talent, assurance, a clear cool vision of what she’s doing, and a formidable capacity for hard work” — define Tobi as well.

Add to those Tobi’s effervescent delight in anything of beauty she found in art, books, the passing scene, and especially children. She loved to frequent flea markets and bring home rareties — Bakelite bracelets, Depression glass goblets. (I still use the two she gave me.) Aside from those oddments, her taste was for the pure, the classic, the meticulous: like the perfect line of a dancer’s leg in arabesque or the perfect sweep of an arm.

We met at age 12, in junior high school, living half a mile apart in a Brooklyn that back then was consummately dull. She showed me the path in more ways than her commitment to writing. When we were 15, she introduced me to the excitement of modern dance classes at the Henry Street Playhouse with the pioneering choreographers Murray Louis and Alwin Nikolais. “It’s just a trolley ride over the bridge,” she urged. When I wasn’t happy in my freshman year of college, she said, “Transfer to Barnard and we’ll take classes together.” At Barnard, she led me to French classes: The lectures given in French were challenging, and Tobi, sitting beside me, was taking notes in outline form!

What makes a friendship last more than 60 years? Besides our shared love of literature and of laughter, there was the growing up and growing old together — decades of intimate talk about marriage and children, the frustrations and triumphs of our writing, the intricate weaving of sensibilities, and the deeply satisfying sense of being known and loved.

When I showed her my first collection of stories, dedicated to her, she admired them but said she wanted more. More what? I asked. I’m not sure, she said, just more. Now that she’s gone, that’s what I want of her too. More. B

(Read Tobias’ full article, “Twyla Tharp,” featured in Barnard Magazine’s Winter 1970 issue, in the online edition of this story.)

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A Tribute to Tessa Rane Majors ’23 (2001–2019)

A heartbroken community grieves and heals together

PHOTO BY GILLIAN RAE COHEN/RATROCK MAGAZINE

First-year student Tessa Rane Majors had been on Barnard College’s campus just a few months when she left her dorm around 6 p.m. on Wednesday, December 11, 2019. The 18-year-old native of Charlottesville, Virginia, had already made many friends and brightened the days of many more with the kind smile and gregarious energy that she so freely shared.

The aspiring journalist had been working hard as a talented musician and songwriter to finish an album with her Patient 0 bandmates. And then, in one tragic moment, the promise of a young life just beginning to take flight was broken on a cascade of steps in Morningside Park.

A grieving campus came together the following night to mourn Tess’ murder. The canceled “Midnight Breakfast,” when administrators traditionally serve students cramming for finals, donated its tables of catered food to a makeshift gathering in and around the Diana Center, where President Sian Leah Beilock and Columbia University’s President Lee

Bollinger offered words of comfort to hundreds of tearful students, faculty, and staff.

A group of alumnae in New York City joined the gathering after placing a wreath of flowers they had collected donations for atop the “B” engraved in the paved bricks just inside the 117th Street gates. The impromptu memorial had quickly become covered in flowers, teddy bears, notes, and the Convocation candles of Tess’ firstyear peers whom she’d connected with in dining halls, between classes, or in Sulzberger Hall, where she had dyed her hair green one recent laughter-filled evening.

In the days and weeks that followed, one alumna organized a letter-writing campaign, reaching out to fellow alumnae to collect more than 100 messages of support for first-year students. She handwrote the messages and delivered them to the Dean’s office; she also created a website for the letters that the first-year dean shared with the class.

Another alumna raised money along with a few friends to help fund travel arrangements so students who otherwise would not have been able to go home for the holidays could. The donations supported airport transfers and even a ticket to Zimbabwe for one student. This same group of alumnae also organized social events for students who remained on campus over the holiday break and provided meals for them.

The College provided constant support to students through the Furman Counseling Center and the Center for Engaged Pedagogy, who organized safe spaces for students to meet in the dark days of winter. When students reconvened after the break, support continued as plans took shape for a larger memorial at Riverside Church on February 7, 2020. “Help build the community Tess wanted,” President Beilock told the hundreds in attendance that day from the larger Barnard and Columbia communities, including city officials. “Talk to new people. Try to take a different point of view. Be vulnerable.

Expect greatness. And love one another.” These words were followed by a musical tribute to Tess, a bright young woman whose extraordinary life and heartbreaking loss inspired the best in everyone around her. B SPRING 2020 | BARNARD MAGAZINE 115

In Memoriam 1937 Isabel Malone 3/22/2010 Isabel Pick Robinault-Sheffield 12/8/1996 Doris Gottscho Schleisner 10/6/1999 Ruth Crucet Strodt 1995 Alice Ginsburg Thorner 9/12/05 Hilda Loveman Wilson 12/16/2013 1938 Virginia Traband Fish 11/3/2019 Margaret Ridder Nicholas 12/7/2019 Catherine Maloney Ryan 12/31/2006 Vera Halper Schiller 12/8/2019 1939 Elinor Stiefel Appleby 1/9/2020 1940 Jean Walline Houser 1/1/2020 1942 Rosalie Geller Altman 10/3/2019 Flora Bridges Harper 1/8/2020 Joan Brown Wettingfeld 1/11/2020 1943 Shirley Aronow Samis 2/9/2020 Anne Heene Serra 8/4/2016 1944 Robertina Campbell 6/5/2018 1945 Ruth Cretaux Kingry 3/21/20 116

Sallie Good Von Mechow 5/13/2018 1946 Evelyn Bialer Gresser 12/3/2019 Emily O’Connor Pernice 10/14/2019 Patricia FitzGerald McWilliams 10/4/2017 Ellen “Pucky” McCarter Violett 2/13/2020 Phyllis Hoecker Wojan 10/29/2019 1947 Nancy Cameron Dickinson 11/20/2019 Joyce Dill McRae 5/20/2017 1948 Jane Clark Byers 1/2/2020 Beatrice Meirowitz Shriver 1/13/2020 1949 Joan Benson Miller 1/1/2020 Ethel Schneider Paley 11/18/2019 1950

Joan Leftow Weinstein-Mirken 12/7/2017 1954 Jean McGregor Parnes 12/27/2019 1955 Marion Sobol Freed 12/22/2011 Irene Ann Epp Gordon 12/31/19 Harriet Wish Gusman 2/28/2018 Carol Koch Kaufman 10/25/18 Elisabeth Graff Merrett 1/12/19 Althea Shalen Pedersen 1/18/2020 Mary Keelty Prescott 1/28/2015 Eunice Spiro Stein 3/3/2017 1956 Liane Reif-Lehrer 11/6/2019 Carole Lewis Rifkind 7/22/2019 Claudine Friedman Siegel 2/13/20 1958

Elizabeth Williams Sanchez 12/27/2019 Marjorie Wechsler 12/9/2019 1961 Norma Fox Moxley 11/3/2019 1963 Marta Muller Close 12/25/2019 1964 Edith Carlson Reese 10/28/2019 1965 Emily Harding 9/8/2019 Lorna Sieber Strausbaugh 12/17/2019 1967 Rachel Davis 5/19/2019 1969 Mary McDonough 10/17/2019 Marcia Paul 2/12/2020 1973

Renee Ehrick Cohen 12/24/2019 Charlotte Gunn Heath 3/13/2017 Christina Lammers Hirschhorn 11/16/2019

Beverly Charlotte Finkelstein Hamburger 8/21/18 Mary Majeski Stone 9/10/2019 Mary Rodgers Van Orman 1/16/2020

1951

1959

1977

Sophie Finkenstaedt Danforth 11/15/2019 Virginia Bloedel Wright 2/18/2020

Billie Tabat Gillespie 12/6/2019 Tobi Bernstein Tobias 2/13/2020

Nina Renshaw Griscom 1/25/2020

1952

1960

Patricia Smith Adler 10/30/2018

Helen Worms Arfin 1/10/2020 Marcia Goldberg Glasser 2/26/2018

1953 Hanna Kiep Clements 1/17/2020

Patricia Levin Grossman 1/9/2020 1976 Liza Chan 11/13/2019

1987 Christianne Orto 2/22/2020 2015 Korinne DeCesario 8/29/2019 Carol Koch Kaufman 10/25/2018

Continued from page 24 actual events of his life, and the end of his life, stand in contrast to that wish.

You’ve written three books of poems — The New Yorker listed your most recent collection, Corridor, as one of the 10 best books of poetry published in 2014. From a writer’s perspective, what is of greatest interest in these letters?

I don’t know if I have a ready answer. Certainly the formal shape of a single whole letter that either of them writes — the balance and the composition and the dash and the precision, landing on the offbeat. How unconventional, unclichéd, they are — this writing is thrilling to encounter. It’s always instructive for me to read Lowell — he was a great poet. And yet when I write about my own life, I find myself closer in affinity, perhaps, to the spirit of Hardwick on questions of reticence, candor, and discretion.

What do these letters convey about love?

The letters themselves and Lowell’s book of poems The Dolphin are equally about love. The Dolphin is about Lowell’s passionate pursuit of Caroline. It is also about being driven off course in his pursuit of his sanity and his own art.

The dolphin is the classical symbol of Apollo, the god of poetry, healing, and divination. The letters are a story of love that endures despite a terrible breakup that first unfolded privately between Hardwick and Lowell, then publicly when Lowell published The Dolphin. The book was reviewed as if the characters in the book of poems were the real people, so the real people were judged by their representation as characters in Lowell’s poems. Lizzie was always absolutely clear-eyed about Lowell’s faults — completely unsentimental — and her love comes out of a deep respect for him despite his illness and despite the suffering he caused.

labor, the building of a piece of writing from a first draft she judges as terrible through to publication, and the daring of this, as well.

If you could ask Lowell and Hardwick one question, what would it be?

For Hardwick it would be: What would she have done if she knew the letters had survived? And what would she have wanted done?

For Lowell: If he’d had a chance to do things differently before his death, to return her letters to her as she asked, would he have?

What do the reviews get right? What do they get wrong?

Well, it’s really not for me to say. My job as an editor is to present the material as responsibly, as accurately as possible, and with as much aid to a reader’s understanding as I can give, and then to let others make of it what they will. Who was it who said that each review is in some ways a portrait of the reviewer? B

CROSSWORD ANSWERS Puzzle on page 120

And in terms of the creative process?

Lowell’s constant restless testing of his own feeling and thinking by writing — his discovery by writing of the dimensions of his feeling and thinking — is courageous. With Hardwick, you get a sense of the mystery of why writing doesn’t work on Tuesday but works on Friday — the SPRING 2020 | BARNARD MAGAZINE 117

ILLUSTRATION BY VERONIQUE STOHRER

Bold Statement

Where Are All the Women?

Oscars’ annual reminder: we have a long way to go

by Ashley Bush ’11

Ten years ago, I worked on the first-ever Athena Film Festival. I was a junior in college and had no clue the lasting impact this fourmonth summer internship would have on me.

The festival, hosted by Barnard College, was established to open a much-needed dialogue 118

about the representation of women in film (or lack thereof). It was founded

by Women and Hollywood’s Melissa Silverstein and Athena Center director Kathryn Kolbert as a call to arms to highlight the too often overlooked stories by and about extraordinary women.

I spent the summer camped out in a windowless room screening hundreds of film submissions from all over the world. Films with spirited, brave, unfettered women at the center. I clung to Miss Representation, Winter’s Bone, experimental short films, documentaries … movies that not only moved me but also stories I could find a voice in and a perspective I could relate to. I had never experienced a world in which so many female-centric films existed.

Growing up, I was inexplicably told that the male perspective was the most worthy. It’s everywhere — in commercials, ads, literature, and especially film.

And ever since I was old enough to stay up past 9 p.m., I watched the Oscars. I saw Steven Spielberg accept the best director award for Saving Private Ryan, Steven Soderbergh for Traffic, Ron Howard for A Beautiful Mind, and on and on. I learned to love these films. I do love these films. I

PHOTO BY JULIAN LEFEVRE

wept, I laughed, I was transported. And pretty soon their perspective was my perspective. Women were secondary characters to the more robust, complex male characters. Young, beautiful women often got ahead in life, and women over 45 were sort of invisible.

In order to erode those compromising female stereotypes, we need more women nationally recognized for their unprecedented storytelling. And that’s just not happening.

2019 was a banner year for women in film: Barnard alumna Greta Gerwig’s Little Women, Lulu Wang’s The Farewell, Alma Har’el’s Honey Boy. These movies, among so many other female-helmed stories, ranked as some of the most critically acclaimed of the year. So why were no women nominated in this year’s best director category?

One answer seems simple: Name recognition goes a long way. Award voters tend to gravitate to the director who’s been given the chance time and again to make their second, third, fourth movie. But statistics show that women receive dramatically fewer opportunities to direct that second film. According to the Annenberg Institute, of the top 1,200 movies made between 2007 to 2018, only 6 women (13%) out of 46 went on to helm a second movie, while 138 male directors (21%) out of 658 were granted a second chance.

It peters out from there, with women receiving even fewer opportunities to direct that third and fourth film. All of this despite both male- and female-directed films receiving the same average critical reviews.

Another major factor is that best director nominations are almost always awarded to men by men for films that center around male characters. Even director Kathryn Bigelow’s Oscar-winning The Hurt Locker centers around men. Are we conditioned to think that these films and perspectives are the most important?

I hate to give awards this much weight. Because as filmmaker Alma Har’el said, “Do not look for justice in the awards system. We are building a new world.” Yes, yes, and yes! But also … it’s those little 9-year-old girls watching the big awards shows at home who need to see it to believe that they too can do it. And until we start awarding women’s stories and the deserving women who tell them, the message is clear: Directing is a “male job,” and those perspectives are the “most worthy.”

Do yourself a favor — check out AthenaFilmFestival.com, scroll through the curated films screened in the past, and stream one of the many wonderful, moving, and too often overlooked films by and about women. We, as viewers, have a lot of catching up to do. B

“I hate to give awards this much weight. Because as filmmaker Alma Har’el said, ‘Do not look for justice in the awards system.

We are building a new world.’ Yes, yes, and yes! But also ... it’s those little 9-year-old girls watching the big awards shows at home who need to see it to believe that they too can do it.”

Ashley Bush ’11 is a writer and producer based in Los Angeles. Her film The Queen’s New Clothes recently won the Audience Award at the Dallas International Film Festival.

SPRING 2020 | BARNARD MAGAZINE 119

Crossword

by Patrick Blindauer

1 Hold responsible 6 Times Sq. divider 10 Driveway surface 13 George M. ___ (composer with a statue in Times Square) 14 Social grace 15 Co. insurance plan 16 Barnardian on the go (p. 69) 18 Go bad 19 Female hoops gp.

20 American Idol runner-up Clay or poet Conrad 21 “That hurts!”

22 Sea, in Paris 24 Greek poet born on Lesbos 26 Stipulations 29 Barnard ___ (award of recognition) 32 Apple’s virtual assistant 33 Cambridge univ.

34 Jacket writing 36 Movie shots 39 Elite guest roster 41 ___ Canals (Great Lakes connectors) 42 Top 43 Stickers in the desert 44 Zenith product 46 Freudian “never” 47 Adidas alternative 49 Standard Oil brand 50 Jewel 51 “It’s the truth!”

53 Marienbad, for one 55 ___ scale of hardness 56 Stiller’s comedy partner 59 Board game whose earliest version came out in 1860 63 Singer DiFranco 64 What it takes to get to Barnard (p. 19) 66 Peter Pan rival 67 Movie units 68 Film critic with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame 69 Play a part 70 Woes 71 The ___ Center 120

ANSWERS ON PAGE 117

ACROSS

DOWN

1 BC’s No. 1 feminist outpost 2 Bird on a Canadian dollar 3 Ishmael’s captain 4 Sir’s counterpart 5 Coast Guard rank: Abbr.

6 Reserve, as rooms 7 Cunning tricks 8 Yoga class regimen 9 “___ out!”

10 One alumna’s way to explore (p. 36) 11 BP acquisition of 1998 12 Van Halen’s David Lee ___ 14 Letter between upsilon and chi 17 Seasonal song 21 Sofia’s portrayer in The Color Purple 23 Receding ocean movement 25 Pause during the Indy 500 26 Technology debut of 1998 27 Sportswear brand

28 Alumna’s automatic alternative (p. 16) 30 Third deadly sin 31 Used a 1-wood 35 BC black student leadership org.

37 Buffalo’s lake 38 Educational acronym 40 Worries 45 Piece of Bacon?

48 Playwright Beckett 51 Alternative to Doric or Corinthian 52 Mutinous type 54 Cover story, say 55 Goya’s “The Naked ___” 57 Some punching tools 58 Dorm VIPs 60 Genesis of an invention 61 Terrarium plant 62 This, in Toledo 64 Seasonal 38-Down Inst. at BC 65 Outermost color of a rainbow

IMAGINE YOUR LEGACY

When you include Barnard College in your estate plan, your generosity empowers young women to pursue their passions.

We are here to help you plan for your financial future.

Barnard Planned Giving Website navigates you through estate planning, charitable gift annuities, IRA distributions, and more.

Financial Planning Guides are free, downloadable resources that can help you secure the future for the people and causes you care about.

Information Sessions include Why Women Save Less Than Men and How to Change It on Friday, June 5, 9–10 a.m.

The Planned Giving Team are accessible and supportive experts who are ready to work with you and answer your questions.

The Athena Society recognizes donors who support Barnard through bequest, retirement, life income, and other planned gifts.

Reach JiHae Munro and Alison Robbins of the Planned Giving Team at plannedgiving@barnard.edu.

“Since first arriving at Barnard in 1983 at the age of 17, my appreciation for how exceptional it is to be part of the Barnard community has continued to grow. Being a member of the Athena Society, by including Barnard in my estate plans, gives me an ongoing connection to Barnard and its students, both now and well into the future.”

—Katherine E. Fleming ’87, Provost, NYU

CONNECT WITH

Beyond

GET SUPPORT Tailored support for careers, graduate and professional school, competitive fellowships, and more Attend workshops covering a wide variety of topics and areas of interests Connect with students and alumnae who share your interests Use Barnard’s Handshake platform to find and apply for jobs GIVE BACK

Whether you graduated last year or decades ago, Beyond Barnard is here to support you as you define, pursue, and even redefine your career path. There are also many opportunities for alumnae to deepen their connection to the Barnard community and give back.

Spend one day per month, per semester, or per year mentoring Barnard students Share your expertise in “Career Insights” panel discussions Use Barnard’s Handshake platform to share job and internship opportunities with students and alumnae

barnard.edu/beyond-barnard/alumnae

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