Thursday, January 30, 2020 by The Brown Daily Herald

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THE BROWN DAILY HERALD THURSDAY, JANUARY 30, 2020

VOLUME CLV, ISSUE 7

UNIVERSITY NEWS

Watson launches documentary initiative John F. Kennedy Jr. Initiative to feature screenings, discussions, master classes

help people have a greater depth of understanding (of) the world around

rector of the Watson Institute Edward Steinfeld. The proposal for the initiative

ni and filmmakers Randall Poster ’84, Rory Kennedy ’91, Davis Guggenheim ’86 and Gary Ginsberg ’84. They proposed the initiative and served as the program curators to honor Kennedy Jr.’s commitment to conveying the truth through film and narrative in the face of societal issues, according to a Watson news release. “John had always been very interested in storytelling and images to

them,” said Rory Kennedy, an American documentary filmmaker and Kennedy Jr.’s cousin. In his life, Kennedy Jr. co-founded George, a magazine focused on contextualizing politics in popular culture in order to engage the general reader. “We deeply admired [Kennedy Jr.]’s desire to make news available through different media channels and democratize the provision of news,” said Di-

was also aligned with the Institute’s longstanding interest in filmmaking and screening. Documentary film is the centerpiece of the initiative as the organizers found this medium effective in conveying both emotion and truth. “It can be emotionally very provocative because the image is so powerful,” Steinfeld said.

HUAYU OUYANG / HERALD

The Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs uses documentary film and discussion to convey ideas of social progress.

U. students travel to Arctic Circle for Wintersession act with the climate they studied while completing nightly readings and interdisciplinary group work for the course. Once in Norway, students spent the majority of their 16-day trip on the Nord University campus in Bodø — a town located just north of the Arctic Circle. Daylight was limited to between two and four hours each day during their visit. From Bodø, the class crossed the Arctic Ocean by ferry to spend one weekend in Svolvær, a city located on the northern coast of Norway, Steiro said. In Svolvær, students visited the Norweigian Red Cross Search and Rescue Corps, a volunteer organization that provides disaster relief and rescue support for boats lost in the Arctic Circle. The students’ ferry ride gave them a first-hand understanding of the organization’s importance. “Being on a boat in the Arctic Circle in January in the dark really (puts) things into perspective,” Goldstein said, emphasizing that these conditions make traversing the Arctic Ocean dangerous. Back in Bodø, students spent time in class and visited local environmen-

SEE ARCTIC PAGE 7

SEE WATSON PAGE 3

The Undergraduate Council of Students elected Claire Brown ’22 and Kushagra Agarwal ’22 to fill two vacancies on the Undergraduate Finance Board at its first general body meeting of the semester Wednesday evening. Brown and Agarwal ran alongside Amienne Spencer-Blume ’23 and Benjamin Kilimnik ’23. The positions, which opened up after two members of the Board went abroad this spring, will only run to the end of the semester. Elections for at-large representatives typically occur in the spring for year-long terms. Before the candidates gave their speeches, UFB Chair Julian DeGeorgia ’20 spoke about the role UFB plays on campus. “Money is often the barrier

to making things happen, so if we can make sure that those resources are allocated successfully, and we can help all of these groups be successful, we can have a big impact on campus,” he said. In her speech, Brown highlighted her experience working with UFB in her roles on Mock Trial and the Class Coordinating Board. “Working so closely with those budgets, I really know how inequitable funding has been in the past and how much money that those groups get that they don’t necessarily need,” she said. “The main reason I’m running for UFB is because I feel like being on the Board is a really great way to be able to implement that change.” Agarwal emphasized his experience as treasurer for the South Asian Students Association on campus during his speech. “I know a lot of UFB policies, and that’s what motivated me.” He added that his experience with both successful and unsuccessful requests for funding have prepared

SEE UCS PAGE 3

ARTS & CULTURE

Alum reflects on ‘You,’ her novel turned series Caroline Kepnes ’98.5 reflects on Brown career, time spent writing “You” BY NICHOLAS MICHAEL SENIOR STAFF WRITER Saccharine narratives of love are commonplace in the romance genre. But Caroline Kepnes ’98.5 subverts the tired romantic cliche that we all love so much in her psychological thriller “You” — now adapted into the well-known television series — which was published in 2014 and released to Lifetime and then Netflix in 2018. “I’d always loved these stories of love that were so horribly ostentatious,” Kepnes confessed with a laugh, “and ‘You’ was my way of rationalizing and working out why I love love stories so much.” Though Kepnes knew she’d never author flowery narratives of love, she thought she could satirize romance with thrill — a crude, real form of love, she said. “You” follows Joe Goldberg, a twenty-something New Yorker who works in a local bookstore, and his obsession with Beck, a poetry graduate student — and University alum. The novel illustrates a romance where the lover can

News

Commentary

A&C

Watson Institute hosts director and editor of documentary “Coup 53” after screening Page 2

Thomas ’21: Students should study abroad for optimal college experience Page 6

RISD Museum exhibits grow with additions from donors hoping to aid art education Back

COURTESY OF NETFLIX

“You” season two characters Joe Goldberg and Love Quinn bring U. alum Kepnes’ second “You” novel to life in hit Netflix series. be unhinged, neurotic and violent, but still very much in love. During most of her Brown career, Kepnes was unsure of the path she’d take after graduating. “As much as I wanted to be a writer, I wanted to learn about a lot of different things,” she explained of her choice to concentrate in American Civilization, now American Studies. Kepnes took full advantage of the University’s curricular flexibility, even working on an independent study on “South Park” and eating disorders. Her only self-imposed requirement was to enroll in one writing workshop each semester. At The Underground Coffee

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UNIVERSITY NEWS

For the first time ever this Wintersession, a group of University students traveled to Norway for a course entitled ENVS 1225: “Arctic Climate and Policy” that studies how science, policy and economics will shape the future of the Arctic. University students joined students from Babson College and Nord University Business School, which is located just outside of Bodø, Norway. The course enrolled a total of 18students — six from each school — who were accompanied by Professor of Finance and Applied Investments Michael Goldstein of Babson College, Professor of Environmental Studies and Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences Amanda Lynch and undergraduate Teaching Assistant Vida Steiro ’20. Students engaged in an immersive learning experience that allowed them to directly inter-

UCS elects two students to UFB at first meeting

BY JACK BORRIS SENIOR STAFF WRITER

The Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs launched the John F. Kennedy Jr. Initiative for Documentary Film and Social Progress this semester, a program designed to emphasize social issues and inspire students to explore filmmaking with renowned media practitioners. The initiative, which is in memory of John F. Kennedy Jr. ’83, was founded collaboratively with University alum-

BY MAISIE NEWBURY SENIOR STAFF WRITER

UNIVERSITY NEWS

Council also discusses election processes, addition of diversity, inclusion chair

BY AUBREY LI SENIOR STAFF WRITER

Six U. students gain insight into Arctic environment, economy in Bodø, Norway

BROWNDAILYHERALD.COM

Co., her favorite campus spot, Kepnes buried herself in her short stories and began to realize that all she wanted to do was write, she reflected to The Herald. After graduating, Kepnes moved to New York “with a dream, not a plan,” instead of opting for the security of a job at a Providence-based law firm, she explained with a sort of nostalgic fondness. Not too long after her spontaneous move, Kepnes secured an editorial position at Tiger Beat through a serendipitous New York Times job listing.

SEE YOU PAGE 7

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THURSDAY, JANUARY 30, 2020

ARTS & CULTURE

Watson kicks off documentary initiative with screening of ‘Coup 53’ Director, editor discuss documentary film based on book by Professor Stephen Kinzer BY PREETI GANESH SENIOR STAFF WRITER The Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs kick-started the John F. Kennedy Jr. Initiative for Documentary Film and Social Progress with a screening of “Coup 53” at the Granoff Center for the Creative Arts Tuesday evening. A documentary on the 1953 Anglo-American coup in Iran, “Coup 53” is “politically explosive and cinematically innovative,” according to the Watson Institute’s press release. The event began with a screening of the film, which was followed by a question-and-answer session with the film’s director, Iranian-born filmmaker Taghi Amirani, as well as its co-writer and editor Walter Murch, an Academy-Award winning and renowned film editor and sound designer. Stephen Kinzer, a senior fellow at the Watson Institute and an award-winning author and journalist, moderated the discussion. The film was based on one of Kinzer’s books, “All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror,” which details the coup of 1953. The coup, a CIA operation led by President Franklin Roosevelt, overthrew the democratically elected Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh to reinstate the last Shah

PREETI GANESH / HERALD

Taghi Amirani, Walter Murch and Watson Fellow Stephen Kinzer discussed inspiration and complex history behind the new documentary “Coup 53” at a screening of the film in the Granoff Center Tuesday night. of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. After initially planning to direct a feature film based on the book, Amirani decided to produce a documentary when he met with Mossadegh’s bodyguard during his research process. “I was blown away by his vivid memory, his eloquence and the fact that this was a man who was there. … Why would you want to do this with actors, (when) you have a real man here?” Amirani said. “Nobody

is being stitched up in this film. Every single thing is exactly as they said it.” Amirani discussed evolution of the project beyond its original scope. “The original concept of the film as I understood it, and as Taghi understood it, was that we were going to tell a story of what happened on the four days of the coup,” said Murch, who previously worked on feature films such as “The Godfather” and “Apocalypse Now.” “In

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the end it turned out to be a much longer and bigger project than any of the team that worked on the film thought, for all kinds of reasons,” he added. “I grew up with the story,” Amirani said, explaining how he lived under the fear of Reza Shah during his childhood in Iran from 1960 to 1975. The film documented Amirani’s process of discovering archives that unraveled the development of the coup. When ques-

tioned by Kinzer about his choice to frame the film “as kind of a detective story rather than (a simple presentation) of the material,” Amirani responded that it “wasn’t a decision, it’s something that organically grew out of the process.” In “Coup 53,” the filmmakers present new evidence detailing the involvement of MI6 operative Norman Darbyshire in the coup — a revelation that Variety called “cinematically thrilling.” “(When you) look at the panoply of events and characters, and as the steam built up in the story — particularly with the discovery of … Darbyshire’s involvement and the attempt to erase the history of that involvement — that’s where you begin to smell blood in the water which gets you excited as a storyteller,” Murch said. Murch was provided with 532 hours of material, which he condensed to an hour and 59 minutes. He compared the editing process to “building a mosaic out of 532,000 chips of little stones.” The film is part of the John F. Kennedy Jr. Initiative for Documentary Film and Social Progress, a project organized by the Watson Institute that aims to shed light on complex social issues through documentary screenings. Kathryn Dunkelman, director of communications and outreach at the Watson Institute, said that the initiative is dedicated to “honoring (John F. Kennedy Jr. ’83’s) legacy and his commitment to bringing news and narrative to a wider audience in creative ways.” “Coup 53” was a “great fit with Watson considering it’s a historical look at the coup in Iran,” she added.

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THURSDAY, JANUARY 30, 2020

WATSON FROM PAGE 1 In a documentary, music further places the “story in time to either reinforce the emotion, help to capture the energy of the story or character and sometimes to give broader context,” said Poster, a music supervisor for many films and television shows, including “The Irishman” and “Lost.” Stephen Kinzer, a senior fellow in international and public affairs at the Watson Institute, pointed to the ability of documentary to give audiences a holistic background on social and political events, in contrast with mainstream social media. “Coup 53,” the first documentary featured as a part of the initiative, addresses U.S.-Iran relations and shows how film “gives people the background that allows them to understand events as they

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | NEWS unfold,” he said. To present and preserve truth through multiple perspectives, the initiative is supported by various groups on campus, Steinfeld said. These entities include the Brown Arts Initiative, the Department of Modern Culture and Media, the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America, the Brazil Initiative and the Department of Africana Studies. “We plan to continue to include this collaboration as part of a larger momentum to support film across campus,” BAI Faculty Director and Professor of Literary Arts Thalia Field said. Poster added that “we are hoping to align ourselves with various departments … to make (the initiative) a vibrant and vital program.” In the future, the initiative will continue to engage the student body

and inspire those interested in media, music and journalism, Steinfeld said. Scheduled events for the spring include master classes by renowned filmmakers such as Kennedy and Emily Kassie ’14, documentary screenings and panel discussions and a forum themed “Democracy in Peril.” As the initiative expands, it will likely be incorporated into the curriculum through additional course offerings, Steinfeld added. Fellowships and professorships may also be offered. “In this stage where people don’t necessarily trust the news, documentaries have the potential to … give a sense and depth of understanding of how other people live,” Kennedy said. “It can enable all of us to open our hearts and minds a little bit more, which I think is exactly what’s needed in our world.”

EILEEN ZHANG / HERALD

The new Watson Institute film initiative will feature documentary screenings, panel discussions with renowned media practitioners and a forum themed “Democracy in Peril.”

UCS FROM PAGE 1 him for the role. Each candidate was allotted two minutes to speak and two minutes to answer questions. Also at the meeting, the general body discussed a proposal to add a diversity and inclusion chair position within UCS. The proposal was drafted by Chief of Staff Melissa Lee ’20 and Chair of Student Wellness Shivani Nishar ’20. “In the past, diversity and inclusion has not really been a priority of UCS; it’s been more of an afterthought dependent on the experiences and expertise of people in UCS, and so we thought that it’s really important that we formalize this role,” Lee said. Nishar added that the role is intended to be an advisory position for the Council to ensure that all members are considering aspects of diversity, equity and inclusion with their initiatives. “We never had a point person who really spoke to community members,” she said. “It was just community members who were already involved” in UCS. The Council also discussed possible changes to how UCS and UFB elections are conducted, following a listening session this weekend to solicit input on the process. Chair of Student Activities Alex Song ’20 presented on strategies to increase voter turnout and to streamline the elections process, highlighting possible amendments to the length of the voting period and candidacy requirements as priorities. “We thought that increasing the voting period by another day is definitely feasible,” he said. He described a previous Herald article that showed that the University’s student voter turnout in

the 2018 UCS presidential elections was the second lowest turnout rate in the Ivy League. Song also mentioned the potential implementation of an online signature

gathering tool to replace the current system in which prospective candidates are required to collect hundreds of signatures on paper. Ricky Zhong ’23 said that paper signatures encourage

more discussion about a candidate’s goals, whereas Nishar emphasized the increased accessibility of online signature gathering for candidates with disabilities.

An electronic system “would increase the accessibility for the type of people that would be able to get these signatures and run for these positions,” she said.

VICTORIA YIN / HERALD

At their first general body meeting of the semester, UCS considered a proposal for a new diversity and inclusion chair position, and discussed potential changes to the spring elections process.

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THURSDAY, JANUARY 30, 2020

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | TODAY

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JANUARY S

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Super Bowl Pregame 11:30 A.M. Faculty Club

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Q U OTE OF TH E DAY

“Writing ‘You’ became my way of ... working out why I loved those perfect narratives so much, like, why did I want to watch ‘You’ve got Mail’ eight billion times?” —Caroline Kepnes ’98.5, author of “You” SEE YOU PAGE 1

SU NNY ST UDY SESSI ON CR O S SWO R D

DANIELLE EMERSON / HERALD

Cascading sunlight — a welcome sight in cold New England winter months — feeds leafy plants and illuminates a student’s shopping period study session in the Urban Environmental Lab.

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | COMMENTARY

THURSDAY, JANUARY 30, 2020

Leaving your comfort zone: the case for studying abroad BY QUENTIN THOMAS STAFF COLUMNIST Every semester, a new host of American students decide to leave their college campuses and study in another country. For the 2017-18 academic year, more than 340,000 students studied abroad. Last year, I was one of those students. I decided to try something new and learn while immersing myself in a new place, and my experience was overwhelmingly positive. I’m of the opinion that everyone can benefit from a semester or two spent abroad. Studying abroad can inspire personal growth and allow you to discover new passions. I acknowledge that there are several reasons — including academic, financial and medical factors — why one would not study abroad. And that’s perfectly fine. But I worry that others are dissuaded from embarking on such a transformative journey for spurious reasons, such as a fear of leaving their comfort zones. Furthermore, students may choose not to study abroad when they belong to demographic groups that are statistically less likely to study abroad. So I encourage students who are weighing their options not to deprive themselves of a potentially life-changing experience abroad. Studying abroad provides students with all of the benefits that can flow from leaving one’s comfort zone — from increased confidence to greater flexibility and resilience in confronting new circumstances. But the benefits of venturing somewhere new can be obscured by fear of leav-

ing the familiar behind, which can daunt students enough that they opt not to study abroad. When I went abroad to Cameroon last semester, I was definitely leaving my comfort zone. I knew very little about the country, and had never even travelled to Africa. Neverthless, studying abroad in Cameroon allowed me to grow as a person as I faced unique challenges that come with navigating a new country. I

turned to the United States. So while it’s much easier for someone to simply stay on campus with their friends and everything familiar than to move somewhere entirely new, it is worth choosing the challenge — because the benefits of going abroad may prove more fruitful than staying put in the long term. But students may feel personally excluded by their identities from studying abroad.

“I encourage students who are weighing their options not to deprive themselves of a potentially lifechanging experience abroad.”

also grew as a student, studying academic disciplines with which I’d had no prior experience. Additionally, I discovered a love for traveling and a desire to familiarize myself more with other parts of the world and different ways of life. My newfound appreciation of cultural diversity has broadened my worldview, enabling me to live a more intentional life. The growth that came with leaving my comfort zone allowed me to discover something I love, which has had a lasting impact on me even after I re-

Students from some demographic groups are statistically less likely to study abroad. For example, male students are less likely to study abroad than their female counterparts. In the 2016-2017 academic year, men represented less than one-third of American students who studied abroad. There is also a disparity between the percentage of white college students and nonwhite college students who study abroad. According to NAFSA: Association of Internation-

al Educators, white students accounted for 70 percent of all American students who studied abroad in the 2017-2018 academic year, even though they represented only 56 percent of all enrolled college students. Conversely, Black, Hispanic/Latinx and Native students were all underrepresented in study abroad participation compared to their overall percentage in the American college student population. I would not want anyone to choose not to study abroad just because the most typical study abroad student is technically a white woman, especially as a male student of color who greatly enjoyed his time abroad. Many other students of color who choose to study abroad have positive experiences: In a compilation of stories published in Essence, Black women shared how studying abroad in countries including France, China and Turkey changed their lives. Studying abroad is not an experience solely for people of a particular demographic; the experience is one that any- and everyone should have the opportunity to enjoy. To be clear, the goal of this column is not to bully uninterested students into studying abroad. I’m simply arguing that all people who are considering study abroad should feel empowered to take advantage of the opportunity of a lifetime.

Quentin Thomas ’21 can be reached at quentin_thomas@brown.edu. Please send responses to this opinion to letters@browndailyherald.com and op-eds to opinions@browndailyherald.com.

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THURSDAY, JANUARY 30, 2020

ARCTIC FROM PAGE 1 tal organizations, said Olivia Howe ’22, a class participant. While visiting these organizations, students talked to “professionals who were dealing with the consequences of climate change (and) weren’t very political about it. At Brown, I’m used to people getting really feisty about (climate change) and sometimes they get emotional beyond the point of making sense,” Howe said. Between class time, nightly reading, the creation of group presentations, lectures from visiting speakers and scientists, data collection and the occasional hike, students came away with firsthand experience and an enhanced understanding of the Arctic overall. “They got temperature and environmental data. They got to learn about how these had changed over time. They got awareness of how complex the Arc-

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | NEWS tic is and how much it is changing” Goldstein said. During the trip, Howe “learned that even if we stopped burning fossil fuels today, we can be pretty confident that degradation is going to continue.” “It made me realize it is important to adapt ... trade and that we face economic as well as environmental tradeoffs moving forward,” she added. What made the course “especially unique,” Goldstein explained, was students “learning and working in a community with people they had just met, with backgrounds different from their own — sometimes even speaking different languages.” The Nord students faced a language barrier when interacting with students from the University and Babson, Lynch said. Five of the students are Norweigan and one is Pakistani, she added. In her role as a teaching

assistant, Steiro, who is from Norway herself, helped Nord students “navigate the language barrier and American ways of teaching and learning,” while also providing “cultural guidance for the American and international students.” Additionally, because Babson is a business school, “Babson students were very economy-focused” said Michelle Motley ’22, a University student who participated in the class. This interdisciplinary aspect and the conversations sparked from students from different backgrounds were intrinsic to the design of the course, Lynch said. In selecting students for the course, “I tried to select the class that had balance in disciplines, ages, genders and backgrounds, … that was diverse but also well prepared for pretty intensive work,” she said. “A large part of the class was for them to learn

from each other across cultures and disciplines.” The application for the course included an essay outlining why they were interested in the class and describing both past coursework related to climate change and their history with experiential learning, Howe said. The course itself was intended to be “cost neutral for the students,” Lynch said. “We supported everying we could in terms of travel and food expenses,” with funding from the Institute at Brown for Environment & Soceity and a combination of grants. “The exception was that students had to pay Wintersession tuition, which is something I would like to change in the future,” she added. She said her ultimate goal is “for the course to present no financial barrier.” At the end of the course, students applied their learnings to specific Arctic countries, about which they made

7 group presentations. The three-person groups consisted of one student from each university. Both Goldstein and Lynch were impressed with the final presentations, which took a lot of work, Goldstein said. “It was like (the students) were consultants: They had to do a little work each day, put it together, analyze it … I learned a lot, but mostly from them. They did an amazing job. I think they should have a huge amount of pride.” “The final presentations blew me away,” Lynch added. “They were so well thought out and beautifully insightful.” When it comes to future plans, Lynch is optimistic about holding the course next year, with improvements based on student feedback. “I think I can certainly recommend it,” she said. “The students got so much out of it — from the course and from each other.”

COURTESY OF MICHELLE MOTLEY

Students in ENVS 1225 embraced life on the tundra in Bodø, Norway during Wintersession after learning about how climate change is affecting life in the arctic circle.

YOU FROM PAGE 1 “I’ve always been drawn to those things that were culturally interesting as opposed to practical,” Kepnes said of her work for the celebrity-focused publication, which mainly catered to the teenage demographic. It was through her journalistic pursuits in New York as a self-proclaimed “ultimate lost soul” that Kepnes was able to receive experience equivalent to a master’s of fine arts, she said. But, after mastering how to write under strict deadlines in fast-paced environments while working for both Tiger Beat and Entertainment Weekly, Kepnes was ready to follow the dream she’d had since childhood: moving to California and pursuing creative writing. When she began writing “You,” Kepnes, a native New Englander, had just moved to Los Angeles. “‘You’ became an escape, a way for me to romanticize the New York that I found myself missing,” she said. Kepnes explored

many voices through her writing, but she found that her short stories and scripts always centered around romance, she said. “Though the idea of writing a novel always seemed daunting, I just started to think of ‘You’ as a really long short story,” Kepnes said. After a while, she was able to employ her veteran short story voice to “treat each chapter as its own little entity, each with a beginning, middle and end.” “Writing ‘You’ became my way of ... working out why I loved those perfect narratives so much,” Kepnes said. “Like, why did I want to watch ‘You’ve Got Mail’ eight billion times?” she wondered. “As a woman watching those things, unconsciously, you’re like, I could never be that (much) like an angel, so I wanted to write a story with real people,” she said. So, to write about real people, Kepnes started with herself. “Beck was an exaggerated version of the way I was back then, and I learned about her through reading my journals of my New

York life,” Kepnes confessed. “And Joe was this way of examining how hard people are on young women at that age.” Joe and Beck became toys that could question the halcyon relationships so prevalent in the pop culture that Kepnes was infatuated with, she said. After “You” premiered on Lifetime in 2018, New York Times reviewer Margaret Lyons noted that “‘You’ zips along, never dwelling in its least-believable moments long enough to ruin the ride, and never indulging in its romances too much that you lose sight of the toxicity and danger underlying all the bonds.” As the TV adaptation has popularized the characters in Kepnes’ novel, fans have begun to express their ambivalence toward Joe (Penn Badgley), Kepnes explained. “The deeper you go into someone’s head, the more it goes off the cliff of likability into relatability,” Kepnes contended, adding, “I think that empathy is inevitable when you begin to understand someone more

fully.” This uncertainty about Joe was echoed within Brown’s student body. “The show continues to teach you that no matter how smart, attractive and charming someone is, you never know who they are,” reflected Julianna Davis ’23. Joey Hernandez ’22 considered some viewers’ response to Joe’s character: “If this was any other appearance or demographic, then those people wouldn’t have thought the same way. They wouldn’t have sympathized with him. They would have just thought that ‘Oh, he’s just some criminal serial killer,’” he said. Despite their varying takeaways, both students said they will be watching season three. “I liked this idea of Joe just being a prince who takes it too far. While I was writing, I never thought of him as a serial killer,” Kepnes said of her imperfect hero. “I never quite know the character I’m writing until I’ve finished, and to see everyone playing with him in this way is the most excit-

ing experience of my writing career,” she added. 40 million users watched the first season of “You” during its first four weeks on Netflix, according to The Hollywood Reporter. In a Jan. 21 letter to shareholders, Netflix estimated that the show’s second season, which debuted in December, would be viewed by 54 million households within the first four weeks of its premiere. When asked about what inspired her to diversify the romance genre through the brutal and macabre, Kepnes relayed the words of Hannibal Lecter in “The Silence of the Lambs”: “‘We begin by coveting what we see every day.’” The quote “reminds me of how nasty, relentless and unfixable things can be, and that sometimes that’s okay.” As for her future plans, Kepnes says she has already written a third book and secured a fourth book deal for the “You” series, and she expressed that she will continue to celebrate and savor every part of the writing process.

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | NEWS

THURSDAY, JANUARY 30, 2020

ARTS & CULTURE

RISD Museum collection expands with 33 gifted works from collectors Historical, modern works from two-time donors incorporated into current displays BY PREETI GANESH SENIOR STAFF WRITER In December, the Rhode Island School of Design Museum was gifted 33 works of art from collector Avo Samuelian and his husband Manuel Gonzalez, in addition to the 33 works previously given by the couple in 2017. According to the museum’s press release, the collection will include works by both historical and contemporary artists. Samuelian and Gonzalez are based in New York and also previously gifted artwork to the Whitney Museum. Their gift “brought in a number of British artists, some of whom we already had like Jim Lambie and Karla Black, but Avo had examples of their works from different periods than works that we had,” said Dominic Molon, the Richard Brown Baker curator of contemporary art at the RISD Museum. The collection includes pieces by “artists who are really important to the story of contemporary British art,” Molon said. The donated collection also features works by young, emerging “artists whose careers are still developing,” he said, which he hopes can “shift an understanding of where art is.” “Being able to introduce either emerging artists or expand on the historical collection of RISD is a wonderful opportunity,” Samuelian and Gonzalez said in a statement included in a RISD museum press release. “We are looking forward (to) developing this ongoing conversation to further our art historical education and help RISD achieve

PREETI GANESH / HERALD

Avo Samuelian and Manuel Gonzalez hope their contributions will further art historical education at RISD for students’ benefit. expand on their permanent collection.” “greater opportunity for there to be a make appointments to see specific and artists. “If I need inspiration for Judi Roaman, another New York greater impact for (Samuelian’s) gift pieces. a class from a specific culture or time based collector, encouraged Samuelian and certainly he has been very pleased,” RISD is the third largest art muse- period, I can access the wide range of and Gonzalez to donate to the RISD he added. “So many of the works that um attached to an educational facility, works available at the museum” said Museum. “(Roaman) was impressed by he’s given us have been able to be quick- said Sarah O’Brien MFA ’20, a gradTamia Jackson RISD ’21. how there’s such a strong relationship ly incorporated into exhibitions,” Molon uate assistant at the RISD Museum. Some of these new acquisitions will between the museum and the school, said. To interact with the works not on The museum’s convenient location be featured in the Gelman Gallery this and the way that students use the col- display, faculty can bring their classes gives students from RISD and Brown April, along with other works gifted to lection,” Molon said. There would be a into viewing rooms and students can the chance to explore different genres the museum in the last five to six years.

Race, the Classics, and Democratic Theory - (POLS 1825G/CLAS 1825)

Why do so?

Friday 3:00 - 5:30 Page-Robinson 402 NOTE: Meeting time can be changed after Week 2 meeting Instructor: Ferris Lupino ferris_lupino@brown.edu Counts for WRIT and DIAP credit

Many black political thinkers turn to ancient cultural narratives and concepts to arm contemporary struggles. Many of these very same concepts have been used to justify anti-black assumptions. To ponder this puzzle, this course will explore a series of black ‘classical receptions’ in which authors —including W.E.B. Du Bois, Ralph Ellison, and James Baldwin—take up key classical concepts and enrich and extend them in their critiques of the US racial order. We will discuss this approach as well as the broader implications it has for democratic theory.

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