TheVolume 18, Number 17

May 23, 1997

T H E O B E R L I N C O L L E G E F A C U L T Y A N D S T A F F N E W S P A P E R

Faculty and Staff Notes 2 Last Faculty Meetings of the Year 7Spring R&D Grants Awarded 4 Langston School Children Visit Campus10Eight Retire from A&S Faculty 5 Award for Gardens and Grounds 11Lasser at the White House 7 Marxism Continues to Inform 12

INSIDE

With the General Faculty discussion and accep-tance of the College’s final long-range planning re-port on Tuesday (see “Faculty Meetings” inside),only two official discussions of the report remain onthe docket: one with the Board of Trustees during

its June 12-14 meeting and one with the Alumni Council Executive Boardat its June 20-22 meeting. In the fall faculty and administrative committeeswill take up specific ideas in the report for further discussion and action.

Mudd’s circulation desk supervisor may do cartwheels Monday.

Class of 1997 Includes Peggi IgnagniBy Carol Ganzel“Everyone knows about children’s tuition,” says Peggi Ignagni, “but I want-ed it for myself.”

Oberlin College offers tuition-remission scholarship aid to children of em-ployees—and a free course every semester to full-time employees. Ignagni,who is circulation desk supervisor in Mudd, has used the second of thesebenefits to take a course every semester since fall 1988. She will graduatewith the Class of 1997 and plans to march in Monday’s commencement.

“You might see me doing cartwheels,” she says. Unlike some of the stu-dent workers at the circulation desk who are her classmates, she notes, shedoes not have student loans to repay.

Ignagni came to Oberlin with an Associate Science degree from Oak-land Community College in Michigan—46 credit hours toward the 112Oberlin requires for graduation. The tuition benefit attracted her here;she read the catalog before she applied for a job. In April 1988 she “took

Continued on page 6

Mellon Grant to Bring Postdoc Fellows toCampus and Expand Emphasis onInternational and U.S. Ethnic StudiesThe Andrew W. Mellon Foundationhas awarded Oberlin $380,000 for anew postdoctoral-fellowship programin the humanities and social sciences.The program has two goals. One is togive recent Ph.D. recipients in the hu-manities and social sciences significantteaching experience and research op-portunities that will help prepare themfor regular faculty appointments. Theother is to release Oberlin faculty fromsome of their teaching responsibilitiesso that they can spend time developingcourses that emphasize U.S. ethnic-mi-nority experience or international con-tent. The project will bring four post-doctoral fellows to Oberlin for two-yearpositions over the next five years.

Clayton Koppes, dean of the Collegeof Arts and Sciences, will direct the pro-ject with advice from the College Facul-ty Council and the college EducationalPlans and Policies Committee.

“International subjects and ethnic-minority issues—and, potentially, therelationship of these two areas—arecentral to higher education today,” says

Koppes. “The presence of Mellon post-docs [at Oberlin] will enable us to en-hance significantly our treatment ofthese areas. I think new Ph.D.s will alsobenefit greatly from their involvementwith the Oberlin College community.”

“The Mellon Foundation has had aunique impact on liberal arts educationin the United States by targeting muchof its grant making to support innova-tion at colleges,” says David Love, asso-ciate vice president for research and de-velopment, whose office prepared thegrant proposal with Koppes and othermembers of the faculty. “The postdoc-toral program will help broaden thecurriculum in areas that are of great in-terest both to students and faculty.”

The program is open to several de-partments and programs in the hu-manities and social sciences, includingthose in African-American studies, an-thropology, art history, East Asianstudies, English, German and Russian,history, philosophy, politics, religion,Romance languages, sociology, and

By Larry HermanGraduating seniors Amy Durica, a dou-ble-degree voice and German-studiesmajor from Norfolk, Virginia, and JenniferNovak, a piano major from Omaha,have been awarded Fulbright scholar-ships for next year. Durica will teachEnglish and American studies at theVoltaire Gesantschule in Potsdam, Ger-

m a n y ,starting inSeptember.She will alsoenroll in theB e r l i nM u s i kHochschuleand studyvoice pri-v a t e l y .Novak willstudy Ger-

man pianorepertoireat the Würz-burg MusikHochschuleand partici-pate March1998 in theI n t e r -n a t i o n a lBach PianoCompeti-tion in Saar-brücken.After her year in Germany Novakwill study collaborative piano andchamber music with SamuelSanders at the Juilliard School.

Larry Herman is director of public rela-tions and career development in the con-servatory.

A student initiative could save the Col-lege 133,000 sheets of paper and morethan $10,000 next year.

Senior Devin Theriot-Orr, organi-zational senator from the OberlinStudent Cooperative Association tothe Student Senate, and sophomoreSadhu Johnston, recycling assistantin the Office of EnvironmentalHealth and Safety, are leading adrive to reduce the daily flood ofpaper in students’ mailboxes by im-plementing a weekly student mail-ing. The mailing, to be called OberlinShorts, would be the job of a studentworker, who would compile and ab-breviate messages from submittedannouncements. Oberlin Shortswould also exist as a web page onOberlin Online. The complete an-nouncements would be available inWilder Hall and electronically.

The plan would have no effect on fac-ulty and staff mailings, and certain ex-ceptions to the restrictions on studentmailings would be allowed: securityalerts, Fussers, and schedules for theOberlin Film Series, WOBC, and conser-vatory concerts would still go through.

The purposes of the plan, accordingto Theriot-Orr and Johnston’s Proposalto Reduce Waste and Create a More In-formed Student Body, are “to create amore informed student body by devel-oping a vehicle for the efficient distribu-tion of information to students” and “topush for the continuing realization ofOberlin College’s commitment to envi-ronmental responsibility.”

The students estimate that iftheir plan had been in place thisyear, 133,000 sheets of paper wouldhave been eliminated from studentmailboxes, and College departmentsand student organizations—whichinitiated the 72 mass student mail-ings of the year—would have collec-tively saved $10,380. An average all-student mailing costs Collegedepartments—academic or adminis-trative—and student organizations$130.

The proposal calls for a summer stu-dent worker in the Office of Environ-mental Health and Safety to work outdetails of the plan, including an educa-tional program for the beginning ofnext school year.

Student Proposal Could Save the CollegeMoney and Reduce Paper Use

Two Conservatory Students Head forGermany as Fulbright Scholars

Durica

Novak

Continued on page 4

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Stephen Aron,teacher of classicalguitar, has recordeda CD with his wife,soprano JoNell Aron,of turn-of-the-centu-ry songs in originalarrangements,Pleasant Moment:

Popular Songs from the Dawn of theCentury. The recording is scheduled forJune release on the Soundset label;Tuscany Publications will publish thearrangements. •With his recentlyacquired replica ofan 1824 fortepianoin the back of hisvan, pianist DavidBreitman, assis-tant professor ofhistorical perfor-mance, and baritone Sanford Sylvanare traveling the country, giving morethan 25 recitals of Franz Schubert’slieder on the occasion of Schubert’s200th birthday. Performances have in-cluded two programs at CarnegieRecital Hall in New York. The pair’smost recent recording—“L’horizonchimérique”: Songs and Piano Music ofFauré (their third for Elektra/None-such)—was nominated for a Grammyaward this year. • David Brockett,assistant professor of horn, appearedwith the Cleveland Orchestra playingWagner Tuba in Bruckner’s SeventhSymphony April 17-19, with Jahja Lingconducting. He also appeared with theBurning River Brass in a recital ofbrass and organ music at the Church ofthe Covenant in Cleveland April 21.The recital was recorded for later broad-cast on National Public Radio’s “Perfor-mance Today.” Earlier, David playedfor the National Touring Company pro-duction of How to Succeed in Businesswithout Really Trying during its run atCleveland’s Palace Theater. • In Feb-ruary Paul Cohen, teacher of saxo-phone, and his New Hudson Saxo-phone Quartet performed the revivalpremiere of Flagello’s Concerto Sinfoni-co with the Manhattan Philharmonia.

The work had been performed once in1985, then lost. Paul was instrumentalin preparing the reconstructed parts.Also in February Paul performedGomma, a new work for solo saxophoneby Swedish composer Magnus F.Andersson, as part of a contemporarymusic festival concert by theNorth/South Consonance in New YorkCity. To the Fore Publishers, Paul’spublishing company, recently pub-lished a lost work by Elie Siegmeister,Around New York, that was premieredat the 1939 World’s Fair. This seasonhis CD Vintage Saxophones Revisitedwas released. As part of the HenryCowell Centenary, Cohen performedCowell’s Hymn and Fuguing Tune #18(soprano and contrabass saxophones)at Lincoln Center. In April Paul per-formed the Creston Concerto with theRidgewood Concert Band and on thesame concert premiered a new versionof Fisher Tull’s Sarabande and Giguefor alto saxophone and percussion en-semble. In a concert by the Long IslandComposer’s Guild Paul premiered awork for clarinet and saxophone by LeoKraft, and performed works for saxo-phone and piano by Elie Siegmeisterand Steven Rosenhaus. In April he per-formed the alto saxophone solo in Rach-maninoff’s Symphonic Dances with theGreenwich Symphony. Paul, who isprincipal saxophonist with the orches-tra, was featured in interviews and ar-ticles in the Connecticut papers. He alsoplayed tenor saxophone with the GlennMiller Band in a series of April and Mayconcerts. In May he joined the NewSousa Band on a midwest tour; he isprincipal in the group, and plays sopra-no and alto. He also served as clinicianand adjudicator in two wind-ensemblefestivals, New York OnStage in NewYork City, and the Lake Erie Festival inCleveland. • Marcia Colish, Artz Pro-

fessor of History, lec-tured for the Me-dieval Institute atthe University ofNotre Dame March5. Her talk was “Re-envisioning the Mid-dle Ages: A Viewfrom Intellectual

History.” On March 14 she was a com-mentator in a panel, Medieval Debateson the Eternity of the World, at themeeting of the Medieval Association ofthe Pacific in Honolulu. Marcia chaireda May 9 session, Cantus and Theology,for which she was also a commentator,at the 32nd International Congress ofMedieval Studies at Western MichiganUniversity. She gave a paper,“Machiavelli’s Art of War: A Reconsid-eration,” May 16 at the Rocky Moun-tain Medieval and Renaissance Associ-ation meeting in Banff, Alberta. •Roger Copeland,professor of theater,delivered eight out-side lectures this se-mester: “Who Lostthe Arts: Why Amer-ica Has No NationalArts Policy as WeApproach the 21stCentury” at Arizona State UniversityApril 10 and at the University of Mary-land Humanities Forum, where hespoke as part of the Distinguished Lec-ture Series April 2; “Founding Mothers:

The Pioneers of Modern Dance” at theCreating Connections Festival in Glen-dale, Arizona, April 10; “Who Took theArt Out of Performance Art?,” which in-augurated a new lecture series on thecollaborative arts at Arizona State Uni-versity April 9; “The Theater of RichardForeman” at the Hartford Stage Com-pany in Hartford, Connecticut, April5—in conjunction with the world pre-miere there of a new play by Foreman,whom Roger calls “one of this country’sleading writers and directors”; “Pres-ence and Mediation: The Place of theBody in American Experimental The-ater” at the University of MarylandApril 2; “Merce Cunningham and theThinking Body” at the Laban Centre inLondon January 24; and “ComparativeApproaches to Arts Funding: The U.K.vs. the U.S.” at the Roehampton Insti-tute in London January 9. • Peter

Dominguez, asso-ciate professor ofdouble bass andjazz studies, touredGermany and Aus-tria in January asprincipal doublebassist with theAmerican Sinfoni-

etta. In March he organized 65 bassistsand 15 clinicians in the Richard DavisFoundation for Young Bassists annualconvention in Madison, Wisconsin.Peter was one of the musicians featuredin the clinicians’ concert. In June Peterwill coordinate and adjudicate the In-ternational Society of Bassists Interna-tional Jazz Bass Competition held atRice University. • On April 13 TammyDowley-Blackman, associate directorof admissions and coordinator of multi-cultural student recruitment, was aguest on Women of Color Speak Out, atelevision show produced with Channel 19and Meridia Hospital by GAP Produc-tions, a public-relations and marketingfirm owned by Alexandria JohnsonBoone, host of the show. Tammy talkedabout educational issues and OberlinCollege. On May 8 Tammy was in theToday Show live outdoor audience.Holding a sign with Oberlin’s name onit, she publicized the College in a briefinterview with Al Roker. • In AprilMonique Duphil,professor of piano,performed the Gi-nastera Piano Quin-tet with the RiosReyna String Quar-tet in Tucson, Saf-ford, and Scottsdale,Arizona. She alsoplayed a recital at Carnegie Hall withcellist David Primo and performed twoRavel concerts with the Caracas Sym-phony Orchestra under Akira Endothis month. This summer Monique andher husband, cellist Jay Humeston, willbe in residence at the Hakuba Cham-ber Music Festival in Japan and willspend August in Europe, performing 12concerts at five summer festivals. •

President NancyDye has been invit-ed to address theCity Club of Cleve-land about educationissues July 11. TheCity Club Forum,broadcast over 180radio and television

stations in 40 states, is the oldest con-tinuous speakers’ series in the nation.Recent speakers include President BillClinton, Gerry Adams, MadeleineAlbright, Sarah Brady, and VladimirAshkenazy. • Joanne Erwin, assis-

tant professor ofmusic education,conducted the NorthOlmsted String Fes-tival April 25 with300 string studentsin grades 5 through12. Joanne is also aconsultant in an

evaluation of the secondary instrumen-tal-music program in Grosse Pointe,Michigan. • Gregory Fulkerson ’70,professor of violin,joined Lynne Ram-sey, teacher of viola,and pianist Eliza-beth Pastor for anall-Mozart concerton the Music fromStan Hywet seriesin Akron May 11. •Jeffrey Hamburger, Houck Profes-

sor in the Humani-ties, has received aGuggenheim Fel-lowship. He will doscholarly work onthe art of femalemonasticism in theHoly Roman Em-pire with a view to

preparing a major international loanexhibition devoted to the subject, to beheld in Germany sometime early in thenext millennium. “It will be the firstshow of its kind ever organized,” saysJeffrey, “and will involve about 200 ob-jects, some never previously exhibited.”Jeffrey proposed the show and will beleading the team of scholars preparingthe catalog. •Herbert Henke’53,professor of eurhyth-mics, spent March 2-18 at Tunghai Uni-versity in Taiwan asa consultant in auralskills. The ShansiAssociation spon-sored his trip. • Roderic Knight, pro-fessor of ethnomusicology, gave a pre-sentation, “World Music: Up Beat orDead Beat?,” at Denison UniversityMarch 19. The talk focused on the effec-tiveness of genres that mix the soundsof western popular or art music withtraditional music from the Mande ofWest Africa, the qawwali genre of Pak-istan, and the Australian dijeridoo. Rodillustrated his talk with recorded exam-

ples. • WendellLogan, professor ofAfrican-Americanmusic, NanetteYannuzzi Macias,assistant professorof art, and CarterMcAdams, associ-

Page 2 The Observer May 23, 1997

The Observer (ISSN 0193-368X), the faculty andstaff newspaper of Oberlin College, published 17times a year, is delivered to employees andmade available to students on campus. Copiesare mailed to retired employees, certain alumniand friends of the College, and paid subscribers.The editor welcomes off-campus readers butdoes not always provide background informa-tion for them: news that has already been re-ported in the Review (the student newspaper)or announced elsewhere may not be reportedfully or prominently in the Observer.

Editor: Linda Grashoff. Editorial assistant:Adam Shoemaker ’96.

Published by the Oberlin College Office ofCommunications, Alan Moran, director. Ad-dress: Office of Communications, 153 W. LorainSt., Oberlin, OH 44074-1023. E-mail:observer@oberlin.edu. Issued biweekly Au-gust 30 to December 6, 1996, and January 31 toMay 23, 1997. Periodicals postage paid at Ober-lin, Ohio, and at additional mailing offices. Year-ly subscriptions are $16.

Letters to the editor directly related to cam-pus events are welcome; those from employeesand students take precedence over those fromother correspondents. All letters are subject toediting; if time permits, the editor will consultwith the correspondent about changes.

All Oberlin College Office of Communica-tions publications include a minimum of 10 per-cent postconsumer waste. Discarded Observersmay be recycled with office paper.

POSTMASTER: Send address changesto The Observer, Oberlin College Devel-opment Resources, Bosworth Hall 4,50 W. Lorain St., Oberlin, OH 44074-1089.

Faculty and Staff Notes

Cont. on page 3

lems of time and the nature of reading.• In March Catherina Meints,

teacher of viola dagamba and baroquecello, performed inChicago on the violada gamba with oboistAlex Klein ’87. In areview of their per-formance—of ThePassion According

to St. Matthew by J. S. Bach—theChicago Tribune recognized their play-ing as providing outstanding obbligatosto the solo voices. • James Morris, as-sociate professor ofreligion, was inM a r r a k e c h ,Morocco, May 6-11,when he was theAmerican repre-sentative to thefifth annual SufiMawsimiyat, an in-ternational colloquium on the intellectu-al and spiritual heritage of the MasterIbn ’Arabi. Jim delivered a public lec-ture in Arabic and French, the Englishtitle of which was “The Reception of Ibn’Arabi in the New World: The Visibleand Invisible Process of Transmission.”On May 2 and 3 Jim contributed to theinternational colloquium on the philo-sophic thought of Henry Corbin orga-nized by the Centre national de larecherche scientifique and the Institutd’études iranniennes in Paris, lecturing

in French on Corbinin the Far West andthe reception ofCorbin’s thought inAmerica. • LynneRogers, assistantprofessor of musictheory, has receiveda grant from the

Paul Sacher Foundation, which holdsthe Stravinsky Archives. The grant willhelp pay her living expenses in Basel,Switzerland, from January throughApril 1999, when she will be at thearchives working with Stravinsky’ssketches and drafts for his late works.Lynne is seeking to uncover Stravinsky’smethods for creating and organizing har-monies in the works. • GeorgeSakakeeny, profes-sor of bassoon, hasreleased a recordingof the Villa-LobosDuo pour Hautboiset Bassonwith oboistAlex Klein ’87. Therecording is includedon a new CrystalRecords CD, International Double ReedSociety’s 25th Anniversary. Viennese com-poser Alexander Blechinger has written abassoon concerto for George. The 25-minute piece, Fagott Konzert, is scored forsolo bassoon with string orchestra, harp,and percussion. George will give the worldpremiere of the work, a major contributionto the bassoon repertoire, July 17 at theNew Hampshire Music Festival in Ply-mouth. Two more performances areplanned for the fall: October 1 in Vienna atthe Musikverien as part of the HarmoniaClassica series, and October 4 at the KievFestival. George will record the concertowith the Kiev Camerata for a disc to be re-

leased in 1998. •Haskell Thomson,professor of organ,played a concert to acapacity house onthe Trinity OrganRecital Series inAkron April 11. •The Journal of

Chemical Education published “TheThermodynamics of Drunk Driving,” by

Robert Thompson,professor of chem-istry, in its Mayissue. In the articleRob acknowledgesNorman Craig,Biggs Professor inthe Natural Sci-ences, for “extremely

helpful discussions of the solution–vapor–ethanol equilibrium and thermo-dynamics.” • Timothy Weiss, assistantprofessor of windconducting, conduct-ed the Cleveland In-stitute of Music’sNew Music Ensem-ble in concert April23. • Gene Young,Edgar DistinguishedVisiting Artist in

Conducting, con-ducted the OberlinContemporaryMusic Ensemble in aperformance of Dar-ius Milhaud’s Con-certo for Percussionand Creation of theWorld for the Cleve-

land Darius Milhaud Society at the Cleve-land Institute of Music March 3. • GroverZinn, Danforth Professor of Religion, ap-peared with the Vermeer Quartet in a per-formance of Franz Joseph Haydn’s SevenLast Words of Christ at the University ofChicago March 28. Zinn delivered one ofthe meditations ac-companying thequartet’s perfor-mance of Haydn’smusical interpreta-tion of the Crucifix-ion. Radio stationWFMT broadcastedthe concert.

May 23, 1997 The Observer Page 3

ate professor of theater and dance, haveeach received a $5000 Individual ArtistFellowship from the Ohio Arts Council.They are among 81 recipients of the1997 fellowships awarded to Ohioartists judged to possess exceptionaltalent, based on the quality of their pastwork. Wendell will use the award tocompose a cantata based on God’sTrombones, a collection of poetry byJames Weldon Johnson (1871-1938),composer of “Lift Every Voice andSing.” Wendell will compose his piecefor orchestra, solo singers, and choir.Nanette will continue her work on cur-rent projects, including one using videothat she will execute this summer.She’ll exhibit some of this work at HydeGallery in California in August. Carterhas many projects in mind and willchoose among them in the next fewmonths. • Miles Mauney, emeritusprofessor of fortepiano, was featured ina story published in the March 28Island Packet, a newspaper on HiltonHead Island. The article profiled fivepianists, Miles among them, who werescheduled to perform for an eventcalled Celebrity Keyboard at the West-in Resort Hotel April 1. Miles joinedOberlin in 1963 as an assistant profes-sor and retired to Hilton Head in 1985.• Scott McMillin, assistant professorof English, gave a paper May 8 at the

annual conferenceof the InternationalAssociation for Phi-losophy and Litera-ture. The essay,“Interpretation inthe Margins of thePreposterous,”dealt with prob-

Faculty & Staff . . .Continued from page 2

TransitionsNew EmployeesRalph Francis (Lorain CountyCommunity College A.A. 1982) is anofficer with the department of safetyand security. From 1974 to 1978 hewas in the U.S. Air Force, where hereceived many awards, including aCommendation Medal, an Outstand-ing Unit Award, a Good ConductMedal, and the Meritorious Serviceand Longevity Services Award. Heworked as a mall security officer from1979 to 1980 and for Inner-City Hos-pital Security from 1981 to 1990.Since 1990 Francis had been em-ployed by the state of Ohio as a secu-rity-officer specialist. In 1988 he com-pleted the Ohio Peace Officer BasicTraining Program at CuyahogaCounty Community College. His in-terests include spirituality, religions,environmentalism, aviculture, holis-tic health, psychology, photography,and quantum theory and thought.Francis lives with an Amazon parrotnamed Buddy-bird and enjoys read-ing and listening to music. He says helooks forward to “working with mem-bers of a diverse residential and acad-emic community.” Dennis Greive(Ohio State B.S. 1979) is manager ofgrounds. His professional interestsinclude horticulture, education, and,he says, parenting. His previous em-ployment includes work at the Smith-sonian Institution (1995-1997), theMaryland National Capital Park and

Planning Commission (1989-1995),and, earlier, ISS Landscape Manage-ment, in Tampa. A native of Medina,Ohio, Greive enjoys photography andgolf. He says he is looking forward to“making staff and students aware ofthe benefits of beautiful grounds.” Heand his wife, Bonnie, have two chil-dren, Elizabeth, 12, and Gregory, 10.Pradnya Martz (University of Bom-bay B.Arch., Uni-versity of Massa-chusetts, AmherstM.L.A. 1994) is ar-chitect /projectmanager with theOffice of Facilities,Planning, andConstruction. Herprofessional interests include render-ings, black and white sketches,graphic design, slide shows, urbandesign, and land use. Self-employedfrom 1994 to 1996, she did “anythingand everything related to design” forcontractors, architects, landscape ar-chitects, and artists. Since 1996 sheworked for Architectural Design Stu-dios in Medina. Martz received anOhio Arts Council Research Grantthrough the Oberlin Historical Im-provement Organization for design-ing a garden pavilion as part of alandscape master plan. Married toTodd Martz, she immigrated to theU.S. in 1991 and enjoys calligraphy,plants, philosophy, singing Indian

popular music, dance and music fromaround the world, long walks explor-ing Oberlin, biking, hiking, camping,and attending events at the College.She says she is looking forward to“walking to and from work on warm,sunny days.”

Changes in Titleand AppointmentOn April 24 Wendy Smith Huen’stitle changed from career advisor toassistant director of career services.She’s been at Oberlin since Septem-ber. Secretary IV Sandra Kolektransferred from the economics de-partment to the main library April28. She started her College employ-ment in the economics department inSeptember. On May 5 RhondaWorcester joined Development Re-sources as a departmental assistant.She had been an administrative as-sistant in the Office of Mail Servicesince 1987. Gail Johns transferredMay 21 from the registrar’s office,where she had been an administra-tive technician in student records, tothe Office of Student Accounts, whereshe is a loan clerk. Johns startedworking for the College in the devel-opment office in 1985 and spent al-most a year with the student unionbeginning in August 1995. On July 1Wendy Kozol will become assistantprofessor of women’s studies and his-tory. She had been a visiting assis-

tant professor of history from 1992-93through this school year. Kai Li, vis-iting lecturer in Chinese since 1989,will become the East Asian studiesfaculty-in-residence August 15.

DeparturesClient support analyst Don Hiltonleft the Houck Computing CenterApril 27; he started at the center in1992. May 14 was Kathy Mead’slast day as director of the OberlinFund. She joined Development andAlumni Affairs in 1994, when theOberlin Fund was called the annualfund. On May 15 Christine Kretiv,sports-medicine intern, left the Col-lege, and on June 15 Miguel Curl,head basketball coach and assistantsoccer coach, will leave. Kretiv andCurl had worked for the College sinceAugust. The end of the job assign-ment is coming up for these people onJune 30: Hiroko Hirakawa, visit-ing instructor of Japanese; DavidStradling, visiting assistant profes-sor of history; Jyotika Virdi, visit-ing assistant professor of women’sstudies; and Amy Wordelman, vis-iting assistant professor of religion.Hirakawa and Stradling were intheir positions a year; Virdi taughtthis semester; and Wordelman was avisiting instructor in religion the firstsemester of 1990-91 and a researchassociate in 1991-92 before returningto teach this school year.

Page 4 The Observer May 23, 1997

The College Faculty Research and De-velopment Committee has funded all11 requests received for spring grants-in-aid. Granted amounts range from$510 to $4000 and total $22,454.95.

Marc Blecher, professor of politics,will go to China this summer to contin-ue his research on worker’s politics. Hewill spend four weeks at Nankai Uni-versity in Jianjin, where he will meetwith his research assistants to resolvequestions about interviews they havebeen conducting. He will explore newissues and broaden the sample size byconducting a second round of inter-views himself. And he will launch a sur-vey project that makes use of Q-methodology, a quantitative approachdesigned to unearth discourses, ratherthan opinions, of workers’ politics inChina. Blecher will meet with a directorat an electric-pump corporation, hopingto further chances of arranging a stintof factory work during which he mightengage in participant observation. Hewill also consult with Chinese political-science colleagues on the Nankai facul-ty and spend a few days at the ChinaTrade Union Federation in Beijing. Hisproject is A World to Lose: ChineseWorkers and the State in Crisis.

Assistant Professor of East AsianStudies Pauline Chen’s project—From Eroticism to Romance: TheBirth of Chinese Love Poetry—ex-plores the birth of love poetry in theTang dynasty (618-907) from the con-ventional and erotic treatments ofwomen in poetry from earlier periods.Chen’s research investigates how thedevelopment of love poetry reflects ashift away from the conception ofwomen as mere sensual diversions to-wards a recognition that, in their abil-ity to inspire passionate feeling,women have the power to threaten so-cial order despite their lowly status.

Michael Fisher, professor of histo-ry, will extend his research on earlySouth Asian immigrants to Britain. Inhis project—Asian Seamen as Immi-grants into British Society, 1750-1850—Fisher will study the lowestsocio-economic class of Indian male im-migrants: Asian sailors who enteredBritish society despite official efforts toisolate them and send them back toIndia. His preliminary research indi-cates that many Indian seamen be-came included in British societythrough their marriage to Europeanwomen, and that the progeny of thesemarriages apparently merged intoBritish society. If his research substan-tiates the evidence, says Fisher, “itwould deeply question prevailing ideasboth that imperialism meant a one-wayimposition by European men over a‘feminine Orient’ and that English so-ciety was somehow ‘purely’ White atthis time.”

In her project, My Father’s War,Erika Leppman, visiting assistantprofessor of art, will work on a photo-based multimedia installation aboutfamily, public and private memory, andthe men who spent time in the WorldWar II internment camps of easternCanada. In the summer of 1940 over11,000 male refugees, prisoners anddisplaced persons of Austrian and Ger-man descent living in England, wereshipped to internment camps in Cana-da and Australia. Leppman’s research

will include trips to photograph andvideotape what remains of eight sites inCanada and to conduct interviews withsurviving internees and their children,including her father and siblings.

The project that David Miller, as-sociate professor of biology, will carryout is a continuation of ongoing re-search designed to demonstrate thatfinely ground rock powders can be avaluable source of mineral nutrients forplant growth. A variety of such powdershave been shown to increase nutrientcontent and yield of plants, stimulatemicrobial activity in composts, andstimulate a soil mold growing ongrowth media lacking specific micronu-trients. A key missing link in the re-search has been an accurate measure ofthe elemental composition of the differ-ent rock powders. The project, to be ex-ecuted with Peter Dahl, a geologistfrom Kent State University, will allowsuch an analysis to be done of two plantmacronutrient and six micronutrientelements.

For The Dartmoor Project—AnArtists’ Perambulation, RichardPovall, associate professor of computermusic and new media, will travel inJune to Dartmoor National Park inDevon County, England, for six weeksof research. The resulting artworks willopen to the public in 1999. Povall andhis collaborator, Oberlin-based visualartist Nancy Sinclair, will focus their re-search on the contemporary people,places, ecology, culture, and politicaland social boundaries of the 356-square-mile park, the largest andwildest area of open country in south-ern England. They will begin their re-search with a reenactment of the origi-nal perambulation of Dartmoor, carriedout by the Sheriff of Devon in 1240 todetermine the boundaries and note thesignificant physical features of the 50-mile circumference of the park. “Thefinished artworks,” says Povall, “arelikely to be quirky, personalized, uncon-ventional—neither documentary norsocial science but, instead, artists’ inter-pretations rooted in the essential hu-manity of the people and their place.”

Augusta Rohrbach, visiting assis-tant professor of English, will spend thesummer at Harvard University’sHoughton Library, where she will pur-sue materials related to her manuscript“Riddles of Identity: Slavery and theOrigins of Realism in the UnitedStates.” She expects with her researchto improve her argument that slavenarratives exerted significant pres-sures on white mainstream writers.“This research will help me repositionthe traditional view of how realism de-veloped in the United States,” saysRohrbach. “Rather than consider thegenre’s European roots, I examine theimpact of slavery and the slave narra-tives on the American literary scene. Byconsidering the relationship of the slavenarratives and the cause of slavery it-self as an important factor in the devel-opment of realism, this project offers in-sight on the development of realism instrictly American terms.”

The grant to Sarah Schuster, as-sociate professor of art, is to support aMay 1998 one-person exhibition inNew York. The show, at the CeresGallery on Broadway, will be of threemultipanel paintings that will deal

with notions of longing and desire.One of the paintings, “Flower Bed,”will cover 70 five-by-seven-inch woodpanels. Each of the other two paint-ings, “If I Had Wings” and “SlipCover,” will be executed on 60 panels,each five-by-five inches and six-by-sixinches, respectively. The grant willhelp pay for the material and an as-sistant to help build the panels.

Robert Thompson, professor ofchemistry, will look into solid-phaseextraction of explosives. Thompsonlearned on his recent sabbatical atthe FBI Laboratory that traces of ex-plosives from bombing sites are diffi-cult to detect because the residues arespread over a large area and are insmall amounts. The use of solid-phase extraction (SPE), which canconcentrate explosives from a largeamount of bomb debris into a smallvolume for analysis, is one possiblesolution to the problem. Thompson’sproject focuses on the preparationand testing of solid-phase sorbents(substances that take up and holdother substances by absorption or ad-sorption), that might better captureenergetic compounds. Thompson willcompare the recovery efficiency of hissorbents to that of commercial sor-bents now used for explosives-residues analysis.

With his project The IdentityDilemma, Class, and Intergenera-tional Dynamics in the Chinese-American Community of the 1920sBenson Tong, visiting assistant pro-fessor of history, will travel toarchival institutions in northern Cal-ifornia, including ones at StanfordUniversity and the University of Cal-ifornia at Berkeley, and the ChineseCulture Foundation of San Francisco.There he will examine the contrastsand shifts in cultural conflicts andpersonal identity between middle-class and working-class ChineseAmericans of the second generation.He will look for the internal and ex-ternal forces that shaped the work-ing-class consciousness, and examinethe degree to which continuity or dis-continuity between the first and sec-ond generations was more marked.Tong plans also to write an article onthe relationship between intergener-ational dynamics and personal iden-tity across class lines as the basis of alarger work on identity in the Chi-nese-American community of the1920s and early 1930s.

Funding for her project, Feedbackand Outreach for the Museum CD-ROM Catalogue, will enable JennyWilker, catalog editor for the AllenMemorial Art Museum (AMAM), totravel to the Louvre Museum, inParis, where she has been invited todemonstrate the AMAM CD-ROM toseveral hundred museum profession-als from around the world at theFourth International Conference onHypermedia and Interactivity in Mu-seums. The CD-ROM, Masterworksfor Learning: A College CollectionCatalogue, which Wilker producedwith Oberlin students, addresses twoaudiences: the international scholar-ly community and current andprospective Oberlin undergraduates.(Each student on campus will receivea copy of the CD-ROM in September.)

older Chinese workers about the 1950s,when pay was more equal, when shop-floor party officials actually workedharder for less pay than ordinary work-ers, and when working-class moralewas much higher than it is today—allfindings Marxism would also predict.

The last program was a talk by EricMann, director of the Los AngelesLabor/Community Strategy Center.Mann taught a module in Oberlin’s En-vironmental Studies Program and De-partment of Politics last spring. He hasbeen active in building several socialmovements. One kept General Motorsfrom shutting down its Van Nuys As-sembly Plant for 13 years. Anothersought to hold Texaco responsible forthe pollution and damage caused to apoor neighborhood by an explosion atone of its Los Angeles refineries. Mostrecently Mann has helped organize theLos Angeles Bus Riders’ Union, whichjust won a nationally reported lawsuit.The suit requires the Los Angeles Met-ropolitan Transit Authority to divertthe vast sums it is spending on subwayconstruction that serves a small num-ber of suburbanites to improving thebus system used by hundreds of thou-sands of Los Angeles’s poorest people.

Mann showed how Marxist analysisas well as the organizational strategiesand tactics of Lenin, Gramsci, and Maohelped him do his political work despitevast historical and geographic differ-ences, and despite the fact that the oth-ers were engaged in armed revolutionwhile he is not.

The range, energy, and coherence ofthe theoretical and practical work—and human experiences—described inthe Marxism and... series demon-strates prima facie that Marxism isalive at Oberlin and beyond, that it isgrowing out of and away from its longand problematic association with revo-lutionary state socialism, and that ishas the power to motivate and to assistcritical intellectuals and activists onmany fronts. Nurturing such criticalthinkers and doers is what Oberlin hasalways been about.

Marc Blecher is professor of politics andEast Asian studies.

Marxism . . .Continued from page 12

Postdocs . . .Continued from page 1women’s studies. In applying for theprogram, eligible departments and pro-grams will specify the classes or rangeof courses the postdoctoral fellow willteach; the faculty members to be par-tially released from their regular teach-ing duties as a result; and the ethnic-minority or international-contentcurriculum-development projects theywill undertake.

Fellows will teach one course eachsemester and devote the remainder oftheir time to research. They will teachintroductory, intermediate, and ad-vanced classes to gain experience withvarious levels of learners, enrollments,and curricula. Each fellow will bepaired with a faculty mentor of the hostdepartment.

Applications to host a postdoctoralfellow beginning fall 1998 will be avail-able at the Office of Sponsored Pro-grams this coming September 1 andwill be due later in the month.

Spring R&D Grants Fund Research on Worker’s Politics, LovePoetry, Rock Powders, and Explosives Residues

May 23, 1997 The Observer Page 5

They have taught their last classes, andsoon they will have graded their lastexams and read their last student papers.Eight members of the College of Arts andSciences are retiring this year. Last weekthe Observer asked seven of them—theeighth, Fernando Arrojo, is in Spain—tocome together for a photograph in RiceFaculty Lounge and to answer one ques-tion. The question was, “What will you re-member most happily about your time atOberlin?”

“If you had asked me that question be-fore May 12, I would have responded, ‘theacademic year 1992-93, when both Chris(our son) and I were members of the De-partment of Mathematics and occupiedadjacent offices on the second floor ofKing,’” answered George Andrews, De-laney Professor of Mathematics. “Howev-er, now I must report that the event that Iwill remember most happily about myyears here is the wonderful retirementdinner arranged for me by my depart-mental colleagues. The warmth and love Ifelt that evening, May 12, will always bean extremely happy memory.” (See “An-drews at the Board.”)

“I think the time I’ll remember mosthappily,” said Jere Bruner, associateprofessor of politics, “is when my wife,Katharina, and I and our daughter,Ziska, lived in Harkness. We lived therefor 11 years and made some wonderful

friends. That was from 1972 to 1983.”Stuart Friebert, professor of creative

writing, said the things he would remem-ber most happily were “too many toname,” then added, “just the privilege it’sbeen—how lucky we are to have this lifeand all the dear people—what a place.”

“The Oberlin students, who made mywork easy, and my colleagues, who madeit fun,” was the response from DewyGanzel, professor of English.

First answering, “No one particularthing,” Nathan Greenberg, professor ofclassics, had a second thought: “What Iliked was the first day of class—when youstill had all your illusions.”

“I will remember most happily,” saidJoseph Snider, professor of physics, “threethings: first, my sharing with students asense of the beauty and mystery of the uni-verse, and of how its underlying nature canbe at least partially understood throughthe concepts, apparatus, and techniques ofphysics; second, the particular occasions inoffice, lab, and observatory when togetherwe learned something new about the uni-verse; and third, the changes in myself thatthe richness and challenge of these years atOberlin have brought about.” (See “Look-ing Back and Looking Ahead.”)

“Probably the friends I made soon aftergetting here, many with whom I’m stillclose,” answered Ira Steinberg, professorof philosophy.

Several of the soon-to-be-emeritus pro-fessors stayed in the faculty lounge afterthe photo had been taken, and reminisced.Ganzel and Greenberg rememberedteaching eight classes a year when theyfirst came to Oberlin; Steinberg said thecourse load had dropped to six by the timehe started.

Ganzel drew sympathy from the oth-ers when he said he taught eight o’clockclasses six days a week for five years. Thegroup seemed to temper its commisera-tion, though, when many recalled the goodold days of students’ showing up for eighto’clock classes. “Now nine o’clock is a prob-lem,” they said, shaking their heads, atleast figuratively.

They remembered when the mathe-matics department was in Peters Hall,and when Steinberg’s office was where thebowling alley is now. They rememberedwhen classes met in College houses,Ganzel recalling one house with black wal-nut floors an inch and a half thick. They re-membered the stir on campus in 1964,when Leadership in a Small Town, by for-mer Oberlin professor Aaron Wildavsky(now deceased), was published—namingnames.

When Ganzel remembered he still hadpapers to grade, the group broke up, itsmembers appearing glad to have had an-other chance to congregate as professors,but eager to move on.

Joseph Snider beganteaching at Oberlin in1969; George Andrews ’54in 1962; NathanGreenberg in 1956; DeweyGanzel in 1958; JereBruner in 1967; StuartFriebert in 1961; and IraSteinberg in 1961.Fernando Arrojo, not pic-tured, began in 1976. AliceChalifoux is retiring fromthe conservatory asteacher of harp this year.She began teaching atOberlin in 1971. See “Fac-ulty Meetings” for a fewmore words about her re-tirement.

8 Members of the A&S Faculty End Their Teaching Careers

By Joseph SniderThe measurement of the shift in fre-quency of electromagnetic radiation thatis produced by the earth’s and sun’s grav-ity was a central preoccupation of my lifeboth before and during my time at Ober-lin. It gave me great satisfaction to beable to build a solar telescope and associ-ated apparatus here, with the help of stu-dents, to test one of the three original pre-dictions of Einstein’s theory of generalrelativity. Out of that work came aunique portable spectrometer, whichstudents helped me build and transportto Kitt Peak and Mount Wilson Obser-vatories. With it we were able to measurethe solar rotation rate and study oscilla-tions of small areas of the sun’s surface.

My greatest enjoyment in researchhas come from making apparatus I canunderstand and control, then using it tomeasure some physical quantity notknown before. I think of this as probingan actual external world and learningsomething about it that is independentof us and valid for all time. How excitingit is to be the first person in the world toknow something about that world!

Yet I have gradually realized that mymost significant contribution at Oberlinwould be to help students understandwhat is known, rather than to discovernew things.From the start of an academ-ic career there is constant tension be-tween the demands of making originalcontributions to one’s field, whose quanti-ty rather than quality often carries mostweight, and the equally insistent de-mands of preparation and presentationassociated with teaching. Perhaps ourcompetitive, publicity-driven, commercialsociety is responsible for this atmosphere,or perhaps its origin lies within each of us.One consequence of such a climate is that,without realizing it, we deny ourselvesand our colleagues much of the sense ofachievement that is rightfully ours as weengage in our classroom teaching.

I look back with great pleasure onmy years of teaching. It has been a priv-ilege to introduce others to beautiful,powerful concepts as well as to experi-mental apparatus and techniques.

In recent years my interests and out-look have been changing. The historyand philosophy of science have becomemore attractive to me. In another direc-tion, I have become increasingly interest-ed in contributing to the improvement ofprecollege science education. Some of myefforts so far have been teaching in a Na-tional Science Foundation (NSF) pro-gram held at Mills College for people whohad given up their former careers to be-come high-school science teachers; in-venting a simple device that shows howthe sun appears to move across the skyat any time of year, now being producedcommercially for use in the classroom;and teaching a two-week summercourse in astronomy for high-schoolteachers at the College of the Atlantic.

Perhaps I can help in small ways toimprove our appallingly poor system ofprecollege science education. The longestand most significant phase of my life isending, but a new one is just beginning.

Joseph Snider, professor of physics, isretiring this year. This piece is an editedexcerpt of remarks he delivered at his re-cent retirement celebration. The entiremanuscript is an electronic link fromthis issue of the Observer.

Looking Back andLooking Ahead

It looks extremely rocky for Oberlin Math this day;

Our senior ranks depleted since one fewer wants to stay—

So when Quenell announced his leave and Boschand Walsh did the same,

A pallor wreathed the features of the teachers whoremained.

Those straggling few got up to go, leaving there the rest

With the hope that springs eternal within the human breast.

For they thought: “If only Andrews wouldreplace that motley horde,

We’d be OK a few more days, with Andrews at the board.”

Now Sam preceded Andrews and likewise so hadVance,

In the role of Department Chairman, a job full ofromance.

And on that pair of faces a knowing expression sat:

“Surely you realize, George, that retirement’s where it’s at.”

But George worked on in King there, to thehappiness of all,

With a smile, a quip, a helpful tip, as he would amble down the hall.

And when the dawn had risen and we saw what

had occurred,There was Andrews with his integrals and

committee work so absurd.

And from the gladdened multitude went up ajoyous yell—

It rumbled in the mountaintops, it rattled in the dell;

It struck upon the hillside and hit a wondrous chord;

For Andrews, mighty Andrews, was coming to the board.

There was ease in George’s manner as he stepped into his place,

There was pride in George’s bearing and a smile on George’s face;

And when responding to the cheers, he flashed a big grin forward.

No student in the class could doubt ’twasAndrews at the board.

Some sixty eyes were on him as he rubbed his hands with chalk,

And thirty tongues were wagging when he startedin to talk;

Then when the first equation he did at last begin to solve,

A hush grew over the classroom, as they observedhis calm resolve.

At once a well-graphed sphere came hurtling

through the airAnd Andrews stood computing its tangent plane

with care.Close by a nerdy freshman scratched his

unwashed head;“What’s the value of that factor?” “Minus one,”

George Andrews said.

With a smile of Christian charity GeorgeAndrews’s visage shone;

He stilled the rising tumult, he made the class move on;

He signaled to his students and once more thequestions flew

About graphs of conic sections—you know, curves of degree two.

Oh, somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright,

The band is playing somewhere and somewhere hearts are light;

And somewhere colleagues are laughing andstudents are inspired.

But there is no joy in Obieville—Professor Andrews has retired.

Susan Colley is professor of mathemat-ics. This poem is part of the memory ofhis retirement dinner that Delaney Pro-fessor of Mathematics George Andrewswill remember. See “8 Members of theFaculty End Their Teaching Careers.”

Andrews at the BoardBy Susan Colley

(with gratitude and profuse apologies to Ernest Lawrence Thayer)

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Page 6 The Observer May 23, 1997

By Betty GabrielliSome 630 students are expected to par-ticipate in Oberlin’s 1997 commence-ment ceremony, which will feature anaddress by Minnesota State SenatorAllan Spear ’58, at 9 a.m. Monday, May26, on Tappan Square. The ceremonywill be held in the Heisman Field Houseif it rains; tickets will not be required.

Of those graduating, 504 will re-ceive the B.A. degree; 34 both the B.A.and B.Mus. degrees; one an M.A. de-gree; 76 a B.Mus. degree; one anM.M.T. degree; one an M.M. in Histor-ical Performance degree; and four anM.M. in Opera Theater degree. Threewill receive Performance Diplomas,and six will receive Artist Diplomas.

Among the students marching in theprocession will be Clevelander EdwardBuatois. His family tree includes 28Oberlin graduates whose matriculationspans five generations dating back to theCivil War. His great-great grandparentsare Joel Partridge, Class of 1864, andAurelia Chapman, Class of 1865.

Honorary-degree recipients includemolecular biologist and biophysicistPhilip Hanawalt ’54 and Canadian so-prano Edith Wiens ’75. Oberlin Chief ofPolice Robert “BJ” Jones will receivethe Award for Distinguished Commu-nity Service. Journalist Carl Rowan ’47

will receive the Alumni Medal duringthe weekend.

Some 5000 visitors will converge onOberlin during the commencementand reunion weekend, Friday, May 23through Sunday, May 26. Highlightsinclude a 10th-anniversary gala of theGrand Piano Extravaganza at 8 p.m.Friday; a three-evening performance ofShow Stoppers—A Broadway Revueat 8:00 p.m. Friday, Saturday, andSunday; music from all eras performedby Oberlin’s renowned a capella groupsat 9 p.m. Saturday; a tribute to 1996Pulitzer Prize-winning composerGeorge Walker ’41 at 4 p.m. Sunday;and the Campus Illumination andBand Concert at 9 p.m. Sunday.

Other activities include symposia,demonstrations, and concerts. Tourswill be given of the James F. “Bill” LongPyle Road Nature Preserve, the FrankLloyd Wright House, the College’sConservatory of Music, and AllenMemorial Art Museum, as well as ofcampus gardens and the town’s his-toric homes.

A complete schedule and ticket in-formation may be obtained from the of-fice of the Oberlin Alumni Association.

Betty Gabrielli is senior staff writer inthe Office of Communications.

Commencement 1997: Here Are the Facts and Figures

Anticipating the September rededica-tion of Peters Hall—and extra Collegevisitors at commencement time—Col-lege Archives has put together in thefirst-floor open area of the main libraryan exhibition to commemorate the1887 dedication of the landmark build-ing. Items on display show the varieduses of Peters Hall as campus space be-tween 1900 and 1960. They also showthe prolonged struggle to save PetersHall as a central campus building andthe enduring presence of Peters Hall asan image and symbol of Oberlin Col-lege.

“This is an Oberlin story of manyfriends coming together and of an insti-tution preventing the vandalization ofits own history,” says Archivist RolandBaumann, who directed the exhibitionproject with staff support from Assis-tant Archivist Ken Grossi, secretaryTammy Martin, and junior SarahWilliams.

Most of the documents and objects in

the exhibit are from the holdings of theOberlin College Archives, but severalCollege departments and individualsas well as outside organizations con-tributed objects, and several othershelped mount the exhibit.

Staff and faculty who collaboratedon the work in some way include MidgeBrittingham, executive director of theAlumni Association; Geoffrey Blodgett,Danforth Professor of History; SamCarrier, associate professor of psycholo-gy; Jane Dawkins, director of publicprograms; Leo Evans, assistant direc-tor of facilities planning; JosephGargasz, assistant preparator at theAllen Memorial Art Museum; MichaelHolubar, preparator at the AllenMemorial Art Museum; Rick Sherlock,art director in the Office of Communi-cations; Joseph Snider, professor ofphysics; Betty Walden, administrativeassistant in the Division of Operations;and Betsy Wieseman, acting director ofthe Allen Memorial Art Museum.

Exhibit about Peters Hall Celebrates110 Years of the Building’s History

Junior Kristen Sandstrom stops at the Peters Hall exhibit in the mainlibrary. Peters Hall was named for Richard G. Peters, a former Oberlinacademy student and a Michigan timber baron who underwrote muchof the original construction. To protect the items from excessive illumi-nation, the exhibit will come down June 9, but Archives staff will re-mount it in September. A brochure accompanies the exhibition.

a big pay cut” from the paralegal po-sition she had in Cleveland to becomean administrative assistant in the ca-reer-development office. The follow-ing September she enrolled as a spe-cial student in a French coursetaught by Associate Professor Nelsonde Jesus. After assuring herself thatshe could do both course and jobwork, she applied for admission tothe College and was accepted. DeJesus was a “huge help,” she says, infiguring out a schedule for filling therequirements both for her Frenchmajor and for graduation, one courseat a time.

All her courses taught “stuff I’minterested in—nothing painful,” shesays. Otherwise, she might not havepersisted through the nine years ittook to earn her degree. Lunch hours

Peggi Ignani . . .Continued from page 1

are supposed to be a break fromwork, but she often spent them inclasses that were “much more in-tense” than her paid work. Prepar-ing for classes was intense, also; forsome she read a novel a week—inFrench—and wrote papers. She alsoattended evening study groups.

“It really makes you manage yourtime,” and she says it took two yearsbefore she learned to do that. “I triedto do everything at first—to read allthe books on reserve and see all thefilms at French House.”

Ignagni earned her three winter-term credits in five Januarys, study-ing saxophone and fencing, amongother subjects. To meet the quanti-tative-proficiency requirement shetook statistics, where some of herfellow students admitted to not hav-ing studied mathematics in three orfour years. For her, it was more like15 years, but she ended up liking the

RelativeDegrees

Graduating Monday with circu-lation-desk supervisor PeggiIgnagni are two children of em-ployees: Maria Black, daughterof reference assistant HelenBlack, and Matthew Losneck,son of secretary to the presidentLinda Losneck. Sarah Nelson,daughter of Professor of Elec-tronic and Computer MusicGary Lee Nelson, graduated inDecember.—CG

course. Her other courses includedItalian and psychology. Ignagni ma-triculated before the College estab-lished its present distribution re-quirement—nine hours in each ofthe three divisions—but she’s comeclose to meeting it. She found shegained confidence with each suc-cessfully completed course, so thatthis semester she ventured to takegeology, a heretofore “unknown in-terest.” Her confidence carries overto her library job, encouraging her“to investigate things I don’t knowabout.”

She’ll use her geology on her nexttrip to a national park, she says, andshe’s already used her Italian: lastsummer she and her husband, An-thony, visited his relatives in a re-mote Italian village. Utility, howev-er, is not the chief value of herstudies. Rather, it is “personal en-richment,” she says. Earning her

Oberlin degree has “made me an in-teresting person to myself.”

Carol Ganzel is emerita editor of theObserver.

“We’re crazed,” said administrative assistant Twila Conley (far right)Monday as the Alumni Association office was in overdrive makingpreparations for commencement–reunion weekend. She, KimKosonovich, and Kathy Ward, also administrative assistants, weremadly assembling packets for reunioning alumni. Margaret Erikson,director of on-campus activities, took a phone call in the thick of it.

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Ending with her poem “Stopping byCox on a Salary Evening,” Susan Col-ley, professor of mathematics, delivereda report of recent College Faculty Coun-cil actions—largely salary decisions—May 13 at the last meeting for theschool year of the College Faculty. Thepoem, which drew enthusiastic ap-plause, is linked to the electronic ver-sion of this issue of the Observer.

Clayton Koppes, dean of the college,read an admissions and financial-aidreport prepared by Director of Admis-sions Debra Chermonte, informationfrom which is reported elsewhere inthis issue. In the report Chermontethanked the faculty for their participa-tion in the admissions process.

“Many of you have taken time out ofyour schedules to talk with families inour lobby, write letters, place phonecalls, and even travel to a variety of ad-mitted student events around thecountry,” she said. “Your support hasadded tremendously to the success ofthis admissions cycle.”

The main item on the College Fac-ulty agenda was a motion to establisha concentration in International Stud-ies. As chair of the Educational Plansand Policies Committee (EPPC)Suzanne Gay, associate dean of thecollege, made the motion, whichpassed by voice vote. Earlier in themeeting Robert Geitz, professor ofcomputer science, moved to divide themotion so that the college could con-sider independently whether to estab-lish the structure of a concentrationand whether to advance internationalstudies in the curriculum. The motionto divide failed by voice vote. A concen-tration, as opposed to a major or a

minor, will allow multidisciplinary in-terest on the part of the student. TheConcentration Oversight Committeewill be administratively less cumber-some than a department: it will haveadvisory and curricular functions likea department, but not personnel andbudgetary functions, Gay said. Ober-lin already offers a well-stocked collec-tion of pertinent courses across thecurriculum, said several members ofthe faculty who were on the subcom-mittee to look into the concentration.The EPPC will review the internation-al-studies concentration at the end ofthree years.

Conservatory FacultyChange ProceduresThe Conservatory Faculty also metMay 13 for its last meeting of theyear. Michael Manderen, director ofconservatory admissions, gave a briefreport, the information in which is re-ported elsewhere in this issue.

In her report on recent Conserva-tory Faculty Council action KarenWolff, dean of the conservatory, re-ported on several searches for newfaculty, on-going and completed. Shealso outlined the system for salary in-crease used by the council this spring.Wolff presented a motion from thecouncil that members of the facultywith the title of teacher be given vot-ing privileges in Conservatory Facul-ty as well as divisional and depart-mental meetings. The motion passedby voice vote.

Chair of the Educational PoliciesCommittee Kathryn Stuart, associatedean of the conservatory, broughtseveral motions to the faculty. The

first, which passed with amend-ments, acknowledges that students“must occasionally be absent fromcampus for professional reasons” andspells out how teacher and studentshould handle such absences andmake-up work. A motion to changethe composition of jurors for the finalround of the concerto competitionfailed. The change would have re-duced the number of jurors to four(from seven) and used outside judgesas the three voting jurors. A minorprocedural change in the concertocompetition rules passed; the changedescribes how the possible number ofopportunities for student soloists toperform with orchestra will be an-nounced.

General Faculty AcceptsDocument after DiscussionBy voice vote the General Faculty(GF) voted May 20 to accept the finalreport on the Oberlin College plan-ning process.

The motion, read by Daniel Mer-rill, professor of philosophy was:

“The General Faculty of OberlinCollege accepts with appreciation thereport, Broad Directions for Oberlin’sFuture.

“The General Faculty urges theadministration and faculty commit-tees to develop appropriate and time-ly strategies for realizing the goalslaid out in the summary report.”

A motion to amend the motion byeliminating the second paragraphfailed.

Earlier in the meeting Richard“Dick” Michaels, professor of athleticsand physical education, read a memo-

rial minute for the late Barbara“Bonnie” Calmer, emeritus associateprofessor of physical education.

The make-up of GF standing com-mittees was accepted by voice voteafter Root Director of Libraries RayEnglish pointed out an oversight. Asa result of English’s comment, thename of John Bucher, director of com-puting, will be added to the member-ship list of the Educational Technolo-gy Committee, on which Bucherserves ex officio.

Clayton Koppes, dean of the Col-lege of Arts and Sciences, delivered asalute, in the form of short biogra-phies, to the eight members of thearts and sciences faculty who taughttheir last classes during the 1996-97school year. (See “8 Members of theA&S Faculty End Their Teaching Ca-reers.”) Karen Wolff, dean of the con-servatory, read a brief tribute to retir-ing Teacher of Harp Alice Chalifoux.Students and former students ofChalifoux gave a concert in her honorlast week, Wolff said, at which$23,000 was raised to buy a new harpfor the conservatory.

Danforth Professor of ReligionGrover Zinn, chair of the Long RangePlanning Committee moved a changein committee membership to add thedeans of the conservatory and the col-lege. The motion passed by unani-mous voice vote.

Charters for eight new student or-ganizations were approved by notbeing removed from the table.

The faculty adjourned to the Rice-King buildings courtyard for refresh-ments in honor of their retiring col-leagues.

May 23, 1997 The Observer Page 7

By Carol LasserOn April 29 I attended, by invitationfrom the First Lady, a lecture at theWhite House by Carl Sferrazza Antho-ny, “Jacqueline Kennedy: How aTimeless Woman Shaped a ModernRole.” The invitation had surprisedme; I’m not an FOB (Friend of Bill’s),and couldn’t even imagine what towear! But the visit seemed an unusu-al opportunity, and I promised manyOberlinians a report. So here it is.

Hillary Rodham Clinton gave an el-egant and eloquent introduction to thespeaker, demonstrating her charm, wit,and sense of humor. TheFirst Lady reflected on theimportance of the activism ofFirst Ladies. She cited themodel provided by EleanorRoosevelt (with whom, she said,she had spoken the day before)and reminded the guests that theremarkable Gilbert Stuart por-trait of George Washington thathung next to the East Room lecternfrom which she was speaking hadbeen saved from British destructionby Dolley Madison (who, she said, hadalso been investigated by Congress).

Anthony, who has written two bookson First Ladies, praised Mrs. Clinton’sapproach to her public role before turn-ing to his main topic. His book on

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, As WeRemember Her, a collection of apprecia-tive memories of the former First Lady,was just released by HarperCollins.

The lecture was followed by a recep-tion in the State Dining Room, whereabout 150 guests had the opportunity tospeak with the First Lady and Antho-ny. I shook the First Lady’s hand, andthanked her for the public visibility shehad brought to the First Ladies and toAmerican history; Mrs. Clin-ton responded bynoting

thatshe and Presi-

dent Bill Clinton are veryinterested in history, and had just

hosted filmmaker Ken Burns to talkabout his recent production on ThomasJefferson. Other guests included well-known historians Arthur Schlesinger,Nancy Cott, Mary Beth Norton, Betty

Boyd Caroli ’60, and Edith Mayo, whohad served as curator of the FirstLadies exhibits at the Smithsonian;journalists Helen Thomas andCokie Roberts; Sena-tors Claiborne Pelland George McGovern;and several mem-bers of the KennedyWhite House staff,most notably LetitiaB a l d r i d g e ,Mrs. Kennedy’s so-cial secretary. Severalother rooms in the East Wing—withtheir elegant decor and preciouspaintings—were open for viewingduring the reception.

At the conclusion of the recep-tion, guests were given copies ofAnthony’s book, and strolled outthrough the East Gardens into aperfect Washington evening.

Why was I invited? I had beenadded to the guest list by a friend of

Anthony’s, Meredith Burch, who hadonce asked me to serve as a scholarlyexpert for a video production on FirstLadies for which she was seeking sup-port and funding. Burch is a fascinatingperson who was a member of the WhiteHouse staff under President JohnKennedy, and is now an independentproducer.

I regret that while I had the oppor-tunity to speak with her, I did not askMrs. Clinton to help restore fundinglevels for the National Endowment for

the Humanities to demonstrate herlove of history. Ialso regret that Idid not ask theFirst Lady whatshe thought of herhusband’s signingthe Welfare ReformAct, which, I think,was a victory for theRepublicans, who can

now pit the working poor, who sufferthrough this bill, against former andpresent welfare recipients (adults, andparticularly children) who will be sub-stantially hurt by this new approach toending welfare without ending poverty.

Indeed, at the close of the evening, asthe string quartet of the Marine Bandplayed a medley from Les Miserables, Ithought of the contradictions of historyand politics. And if you’re still wonder-ing, I wore what I call my bar mitzvahdress: a two-piece outfit with a longtunic and almost ankle-length knife-pleat skirt in neutral brown/green—with a tasteful scarf.

Carol Lasser is associate professor ofhistory.

Carol Lasser Goes to the White House; Shakes First Lady’s Hand

Faculty MeetingsPoetry and Debate Mark the Last Faculty Meetings of the Year;General Faculty Accepts Long-Range-Planning Document

Page 8 The Observer May 23, 1997

McNair and Mellon Faculty-Student Research Projects, Summer 1997Area of Interest Research Title Faculty Member Student and Class Year

McNair Music Education Kodaly Based Curriculum Development Joanne Erwin Aisha Ahmed ’98 Sociology Comparative Study of European and American Youth Culture Daphne John Melissa Calivis ’98 Politics Societal Facts in Constitutional Theory and Law Ronald Kahn Susan Dennehy ’99Expository Writing Developing Rhetorical Flexibility in College Writing (and Beyond) Leonard Podis Nkem Dike ’99Biology Cultural Practices for Non-pesticidal Control of Cucumber Beetles Yolanda Cruz Amie Ely ’99

and Squash Bugs and David Miller and Sarah Schupbach ’00African American Studies Society and Politics in Africa James Millette Nneka Emenyonu ’99English Explorations in Transcendentalism Scott McMillin Charna Kieber ’98Sociology Generation X, Family and the Work–Family Nexus Daphne John Shayla Mitchell ’99African American Studies Slavery and Freedom in the Western Hemisphere James Millette Adeola Oshodi ’99Education Active Learning on the Fourth Grade Proficiency Test Gloria White Sarresa Richardson ’99Biology Molecular Genetic Analysis of the Protein Switch Controlling Muscle Contraction Taylor Allen Kathyrn Roberts ’99Expository Writing Rhetoric and Composition in a SocioLinguisitic Context Leonard Podis Samantha Sansevere ’98Art Weaving through the Genres of Installation and Performance Nanette Macias Prentiss Slaughter ’98Chemistry Catalytic Properties of Hemoglobins & Myoglobins William Fuchsman Jessica Taylor ’99German Terrorism and Literature in Germany of the 1970s Steven Huff Jamie Trnka ’98Politics Social Science, Social Facts, and the Rights of Subordinated Groups Ronald Kahn Abel Zamora ’98

Mellon African American Studies African American History and Literature Adrienne Jones Jada Eccleston ’98Sociology The Mexican and Mexican-American Struggle: A History of A Lost People William Norris Gloria Gonzalez ’98African American Studies The Effects of Public Policy on Public Education in Mississippi, 1619–Present Adrienne Jones Nakisha Heard ’98English Black Literary Imagination: Beyond and Within Experience Augusta Rohrbach Kiese Laymon ’98English The Struggle for Position— Katherine Linehan Vayram Nyadroh ’98

Women in African Literature, and African Writers, Defying LabelsEnglish Depiction of Social Differences in the Black Communities of Toni Morrison Phyllis Gorfain Rashida Phillips ’99Women’s Studies So the Silence is Broken: Speaking out on Self-Definition and Community Anna Agathangelou Nicole Pierce ’99History and Sociology Latino Identity in Northern New Mexico Steven Volk Isabella Quintana ’99

and William NorrisAfrican American Studies African Religion and Spiritism in Puerto Rican Culture James Millette Richard Santiago ’99 Romance Languages Technology in Education Nelson de Jesus Claudia von Vacano ’98

The College has awarded 17 intern-ships to Oberlin students under thesecond year of the three-year RonaldE. McNair Post-BaccalaureateAchievement Program, and 10 fel-lowships to students under the first

year of the renewed Mellon MinorityUndergraduate Fellowship Program.Both programs sponsor summer-re-search collaboration between stu-dents and faculty and aim to encour-age the students’ later enrolling in

Ph.D. programs and then enteringresearch, teaching, or other careersthat require the doctorate. (SeeObservers of September 28, 1995,February 2, 1989, and May 10, 1996.)McNair collaboration emphasizes

the student as an intern with a facul-ty researcher while the Mellonsstress student-initiated researchwith faculty mentors. See the chartbelow for who’s working with whomthis summer.

Students and Faculty Pair Up for McNair and Mellon Summer Projects

12 Faculty Members Receive Support from McGregor-OresmanScholar Program for Student Researchers and Teaching AssistantsWith $75,000 received in a grant fromthe McGregor Fund, matched by Don-ald Oresman ’46, the College has creat-ed a new program to promote close in-tellectual collaboration between facultyand students. During the coming sum-mer and/or academic year 12 membersof the Oberlin faculty will receive fromthe McGregor-Oresman Scholar Pro-gram support for student researchersand teaching assistants. Additionalcompetitions for the student positionswill occur over the next three academicyears as part of the four-year project.

With McGregor-Oresman supportthis summer Albert Borroni, visitingassistant professor of neuroscience, willlead a research project in which a stu-dent will help him develop a better un-derstanding of the role of the hip-pocampus in learning and memory. Inthe fall a teaching assistant will devel-op the web page for Borroni’s learningand memory course and help set up ex-periments for the course’s lab.

Sam Carrier, associate professor ofpsychology, will have the research help ofa student this summer and next academ-ic year as he develops the informationtechnology for an archaeological excava-tion in Poggio Colla, Italy, that is codirect-ed by Susan Kane, associate professor ofart. Meanwhile, Kane will have a studentassistant develop a database and recordthe physical characteristics of ceramic ar-tifacts excavated during the 1995, 1996,and 1997 field sessions at the site.

The 1997-98 academic-year projectof Gary Kornblith, associate professorof history, to develop a World Wide Website (www.oberlin.edu/~EOG) on thehistory of Oberlin, College and town,will have production help from a stu-dent under the McGregor-Oresmanprogram. Over the summer and duringnext school year Augusta Rohrbach,visiting assistant professor of English,will have a student assistant collect andanalyze data on the development of re-alism in the U.S. The assistant will alsoprepare an index for materials that ap-peared in the Liberator, the longest-running abolitionist paper.

Next school year, with a McGregor-Oresman student, researcher JamesTanaka, associate professor of psychol-ogy, will design and prepare an exper-iment to investigate factors involved inface recognition; a student will helpRobert Warner, Longman Professor ofNatural Science, to calculate the totalprobability for two atomic nuclei tochange into other nuclei when theycollide with each other; and a studentworking with David Young, LongmanProfessor of English, will provide pro-duction help during the publication oftwo poetry books by the Oberlin Col-lege Press.

Benjamin Schiff, professor of poli-tics, will have a teaching assistant thissummer to help develop a reading listand research bibliography for a newseminar he will teach this fall on the in-

ternational politics of the environment.Ann Cooper Albright, associate profes-sor of theater and dance, will have ateaching assistant this summer to helpdevelop a new course on queer theoryand performance. Albright will intro-duce the course, which will be cross-list-ed in women’s studies and theater anddance, in the fall.

A fall teaching assistant will helpDaniel Styer, associate professor ofphysics, lead discussions and reviewproblem sets and other assignments fortwo single-credit classes for general au-diences, Einstein and Relativity andThe Strange World of Quantum Me-chanics.

The next McGregor-Oresman pro-gram application deadline—for sup-port during the spring 1998 semes-ter—is fall 1997. Applications will bedue in spring 1998 for student re-searchers and teaching assistants forsummer 1998 and academic year1998-99. Awards are open to facultyin the conservatory and the college.Any full-time undergraduate Oberlinstudent is eligible for selection in theprogram; faculty applicants identifytheir own suitably qualified studentassistants. While the research orteaching projects receiving awardsare of central interest to the facultymentor, they also meet the intellec-tual needs of the student.

For more information on Oresman’sgift, see the Observer of May 25, 1995.

Catherine Leaf Chappel ’91 has re-ceived a National Science Founda-tion (NSF) Minority Award tostudy for her Ph.D. degree in lin-

guistics atS t a n f o r dUniversity.C u r r e n t l ycompletingher master’sdegree inlinguisticsat the Uni-versity ofCal i forniaat Davis,she expects

to focus during her doctoral studieson nonstandard dialects of Eng-lish, including Black English, someHispanic dialects, and Creole. AnEnglish major at Oberlin, Chappelminored in dance; after graduationshe taught English for three and ahalf years to high-school studentsand fifth graders in Kentucky andCalifornia.

Oberlin alumni receiving honor-able mention in the NSF regularfellowship competition this yearare Noah Fierer ’95, to study ecolo-gy; Seth Findley ’84, biochemistry;Michael Heithaus ’95, ecology;Marcus Schneider ’94, social/other;Valarie Simon ’96, zoology; andMargaret Zerriffi ’95, political sci-ence.

Alumna ReceivesNSF Award

Chappel

May 23, 1997 The Observer Page 9

Eighth Blackbird Wins Coleman CompetitionBy Larry HermanThe mixed chamber ensemble eighthblackbird, whose members are re-cent graduates and a current studentof the conservatory, has been award-ed top honors in the 51st AnnualColeman Chamber Ensemble Com-petition, held in Pasadena April 26.Eighth blackbird took the Coleman-Barstow Award for Woodwinds andBrass, which carries a $3500 cashaward.

Members of eighth blackbird areMolly Barth ’96, flute; Michael Maca-ferri ’95, clarinet; Matthew Albert’96, violin; Nicholas Photinos ’96,cello; Lisa Kaplan ’97, piano; andMatthew Duvall ’95, percussion.Their coaches have been TimothyWeiss, assistant professor of windconducting, and Gene Young, EdgarDistinguished Visiting Artist in Con-ducting.

One of the nation’s major chamberensemble competitions, the ColemanCompetition is open nationally tochamber ensembles whose averageage does not exceed 25. Fourteen en-sembles from throughout the U.S.were invited to compete in the finalsfor a total of $11,200 in prizes. TheLos Angeles Times review of eighthblackbird’s performance of Schön-berg’s Chamber Symphony in the

April 27 Winners Concert said,“these players showed an unremit-ting intensity in the intricate kineticlandscape and a professionally as-sured technique in the most demand-ing situations.”

Oberlin’s Die Räuber TromboneQuartet was also invited to play inthis year’s Coleman Competition.Members of the quartet are C.Michael Palmer ’97, bass trombone;Philip Brown ’97, tenor trombone;Paul Fleischman ’98, tenor trom-bone; and Ka-Yiu Ho ’99, bass trom-bone. Their trip to Pasadena wasfunded in part by the Getzen Compa-ny and by Milton Stevens ’64, princi-pal trombonist of the National Sym-phony.

Last year the conservatory’s MiròQuartet took the Coleman’s top prizefor strings, the Coleman-BarstowAward. Mirò and eighth blackbirdalso swept the top prizes in lastyear’s Fischoff National ChamberMusic Competition. It was the firsttime in the history of the Fischoffthat the two top winning ensembleswere based at the same school.

Eighth blackbird is an instrumen-tal sextet that specializes in perform-ing works written in the 20th centu-ry. Their uncommon grouping ofinstruments is known as a Pierrot

Sextet, referring to Arnold Schön-berg’s suite for chamber ensembleand voice, Pierrot Lunaire. The addi-tion of percussion to the core quintetof that work (flute, clarinet, violin,cello, and piano) completes the in-strumentation of eighth blackbird.Members perform as a whole and insmaller combinations—quintet,quartet, trio, duo, and solo. Eighthblackbird was formed in fall 1994. InJanuary 1996 the group recordedProfessor of African American MusicWendell Logan’s piece for sextet, Mo-ments, for an as-yet-unreleased CDof Logan’s works.

The ensemble has commissionedworks from composers BurtonHatheway, Visiting Assistant Profes-sor of Composition and Music TheoryPieter Snapper, Thomas Albert, andAlan Tormey. Future plans include agraduate residency in chambermusic for the fall and a recording forthe CRS label. Eighth blackbird per-formed in a recital by the ChicagoComposers’ Consortium featuringworks by Bernard Rands in Decem-ber 1996, and plans to give its ownfull recital in Chicago this November.

The name eighth blackbird refersto the eighth stanza of the poem“Thirteen Ways of Looking at aBlackbird,” by Wallace Stevens..

Percussion andOrgan StudentsRecognizedDavid Schotzko, a first-year percussionstudent, has been named an AvedisZildjian Percussion Scholar by theAvedis Zildjian Company. The award isgiven to a promising freshman percus-sionist based on the recommendationsof percussion teachers and ensembleconductors at leading music schools. Hereceived a $1000 check from the Zild-jian Company and a pair of Zildjiancymbals. Schotzko, from Aitkin, Min-nesota, is a student of Michael Rosen,professor of percussion. Schotzko per-forms with the Oberlin Orchestra andWind Ensemble, and has played fre-quently with the Heartland SymphonyOrchestra in Brainard, Minnesota. Heis also an accomplished set drummerand has performed as a freelance musi-cian throughout northern Minnesota.

Damin Spritzer, a senior organmajor from LaCenter, Washington,won first prize in the local AmericanGuild of Organists (AGO) Young ArtistsCompetition sponsored by the Cleve-land Chapter of the AGO April 12. Shestudies with Professor of Organ HaskellThomson. Spritzer received a cash prizeof $650, and will compete at the nextlevel during the Region V Convention inEvansville, Indiana, June 21. She plansto take graduate work in organ at theEastman School of Music this fall.—L.H.

OJE Makes‘Outstanding’ImpressionThe Oberlin Jazz Ensemble (OJE), di-rected by Wendell Logan, professor ofAfrican-American music, was recog-nized with several awards after they per-formed at the Tri-C JazzFest at Cleve-land’s Cuyahoga Community CollegeApril 18. OJE was named OutstandingBand, and Logan Outstanding Director.

Several of the band’s members werealso given Outstanding Soloist and Out-standing Instrumentalist awards; theywere: first-year student Allan Baker,piano; junior Greg Glassman andsophomores Kevin Louis and FarnellNewton, trumpet; first-year studentTom Bencivengo, sophomore JermaineLockhart, and sophomore Burny Pels-majer, saxophone; junior JonathanArons and sophomore Andy Chappell,trombone; first-year student JasonBrown, drums; sophomore Zack Pride,bass; and junior Joe Friedman, guitar.

OJE also participated in the April12 Ohio State Jazz Festival, where theband received another Outstandingrating from the judges.—L.H.

Junior Claudia von Vacano Awarded Rockefeller FellowshipClaudia von Vacano, a junior fromAlexandria, Virginia, has received oneof the 25 fellowships awarded this yearby the Rockefeller Brothers Fund to mi-nority students seeking to enter theteaching profession. Fellows receive upto $18,100 beginning in their junioryears and continuing until they beginpublic-school teaching. They receive$2500 stipends for the summer be-tween their junior and senior years andstipends of between $9000 and $12,000while in graduate school. They may re-

ceive $1200 annually during their firstthree years of teaching to offset educa-tion-related loan repayments.

Oberlin is one of 25 schools chosen bythe foundation to participate in the pro-gram. Choices were based, according toa foundation press release, on theschools’ “record of commitment to theeducation of minorities” and their “stat-ed goal [to improve] teaching in the pub-lic schools.”

This summer von Vacano will workon two projects related to her Rocke-

feller fellowship. With Lorain Countypublic-school children in the At-RiskAcademic Program coordinated byBooker Peek, associate professor ofAfrican-American studies, she willtutor students and, if funding is avail-able, take them on field trips. Throughthe Center for Service and Learningshe will help adults who are learningEnglish as a second language work to-ward their General Education Diplo-mas (GEDs). The GED class meets inan Elyria factory.

Nelson de Jesus, associate professorof French, is von Vacano’s mentor forthe fellowship. Mentors provide guid-ance and advice during the fellows’ se-nior year, especially in choosing a grad-uate-education program.

Besides the Rockefeller, von Vacanohas been awarded a Mellon MinorityFellowship (see “Faculty and StudentsPair Up for McNair and Mellon Sum-mer Projects”) and a Middlebury Col-lege–Mellon Foundation internship

Continued on page 10

Page 10 The Observer May 23, 1997

(see“Middlebury Project to BenefitOberlin Students and Faculty”).

Von Vacano hopes her Rockefellerfellowship will offer opportunities tofurther explore her personal interest inhelping more people from working-class backgrounds attend private col-leges and universities. One of her goalsis to help reverse what she believes is adisturbing trend—private institutions’recent turn away from need-blind ad-missions.

The triple-honoree is used to work-ing for causes. Her full-page résumé in-cludes descriptions of volunteer workteaching battered children from theinner city of Washington, D.C. (sum-mer 1993); teaching homeless childrenin Bolivia, where she was born andraised (summer 1994); and traveling toNicaragua to assess the progress of arotating loan of the Oberlin StudentCooperative Association (Winter Term1997). From 1992 to 1996 she was aninstructional assistant for the Arling-ton (Virginia) Public Schools, first parttime in the English as a Second Lan-guage program, then full time in spe-cial education.

A transfer student from the ParsonsSchool of Design and the New Schoolfor Social Research, von Vacano is dou-ble majoring at Oberlin in Spanish andart, and minoring in Third StreamComputing.

She combined her artistic talentwith her sense of social justice whenshe entered the 1991 Amnesty Inter-national poster competition. (She tookfirst place in the nationwide contest forher poster for women’s rights.) Shecombined her artistic talent with herteaching ability to reach the Bolivianhomeless children in 1994.

“I developed course work that . . . in-cluded the fundamentals of drawingand encouraged the students to exploretheir emotions and their memories,”she wrote in the personal statementthat helped secure the Rockefeller Fel-lowship. “It became a cleansing processby which the children expressed theircreative energy and received loving at-tention.”

More recently von Vacano hasadded verbal expression to her artisticinterests. In 1995 Semiotext(e) Presspublished an autobiographical piece ofhers in an anthology of women’s writ-ings. Aided by what she is learningthrough her computer-science minorshe is now exploring multimedia art.

Martina Davis, a junior from Chica-go whose Rockefeller mentor wouldhave been Rudd Crawford, associateprofessor of mathematics, and MicheleHines, a junior from Severn, Maryland,whose mentor would have been JoanneErwin, assistant professor of music ed-ucation, were semifinalists in the com-petition.

Rockefeller . . .Continued from page 9

Middlebury Project to Benefit Oberlin Students and FacultyTwo Oberlin students have beenawarded internships under Middle-bury College’s Project 2001. The projecttrains and compensates student in-terns to help technical specialists sup-port faculty members’ language-tech-nology projects.

This summer junior Spanish majorClaudia von Vacano and first-year stu-dent Motofumi Tohda will attend a two-week intensive workshop on multime-dia technology at Middlebury’s Center

for Educa-tional Tech-nology. Inthe fall theywill serve asupervisedinternshipon the Ober-lin campusunder thedirection offour facultymembersand the lan-guage-labi n t e r n .

They will develop multimedia materi-als, and/or deliver technology-enabledcurriculum materials.

The workshop is funded by Middle-

bury and the Mellon Foundation, andOberlin College will receive a mini-grant to support the academic-year in-ternships.

Working with Ana Cara, professor ofSpanish, next year von Vacano will givetechnical support to a project in retriev-ing folklore, which incorporates cultur-al materials used in Cara’s course onSouth American folklore. The multime-dia project includes photographs andrelated texts with corresponding musicand dance from various traditions. Col-laborating with Nelson de Jesus, asso-ciate professor of French, von Vacanowill create a hypertextual reading ofFrench literary history from the MiddleAges to the French Revolution.

Tohda will work with Davida Gavioli,director of the language lab and lecturerin Italian, next year to develop the Ital-ian web page at Oberlin, which includeslanguage exercises for the Italian 101and 102 classes. With Gavioli he will alsodevelop video segments for the currentItalian textbook. He will collaborate withAnn Sherif, associate professor of EastAsian studies, to develop two web pro-jects for the Japanese curriculum. In thefirst project he will work with Sherif andother faculty in East Asian studies to cre-ate a web site for syllabi, faculty infor-

mation, and teaching materials. In thesecond project he will work with stu-dents to create personal web pages inJapanese. The students will use the webpages to introduce themselves to theirhost family( s h o u l dthey studyabroad ) ,pen pals,and otherJapanese-speakingstudents inthe OhioFive Con-sortium. Hewill workwith Sherifto developinteractivesoftware for a Japanese television pro-gram used in the intermediate and ad-vanced language classes.

Tohda and von Vacano will also helptrain students to use instructional tech-nology for future projects. MichaelHeller, lab intern at the Cooper Inter-national Learning Center in PetersHall, will supervise both students withadvice, counsel, support, and additionaltechnological knowledge.

von Vacano

Tohda

Board of Trustees Elects Harry Stang ’59, Expert in Labor LawHarry Stang ’59 has been elected to theOberlin College Board of Trustees. ThePacific Palisades, California, resident isa partner in the international law firmBryan Cave LLP.

A government major at Oberlin,Stang earned his law degree at Stan-ford University. The term of his boardservice is 1997-2003.

He is a member of his firm’s execu-tive committee and the national leader

of the firm’s Labor and EmploymentClient Service Group. He has chairedthe Labor Section of the Beverly HillsBar Association, and served on the ex-ecutive committee of the Los AngelesCounty Bar Association’s Labor Sec-tion.

He has also been a member of vari-ous committees of the Labor Section ofthe American Bar Association and theLabor Lawyers’ Advisory Committee.

Oberlin’s newest trustee has lec-tured nationally and published severalarticles on labor-management matters.

He is a member of the Founders ofthe Los Angeles Music Center, the cen-ter’s Fraternity of Friends supportgroup and the John Frederick OberlinSociety.

Stang is married to Marta ChaffeeStang, an artist. The couple has twodaughters, Aandrea ’90 and Alana.

The Observerwill resume

publication with the firstissue of the 1997-98

school yearAugust 29.

What Will They Be When They Grow Up?OC Staff Helps Langston 6th-Graders Explore CareersOffice of Communications staff writerAnita Buckmaster talked about mediacareers with members of Becky Bealand Mickey Walzer’s Langston MiddleSchool sixth-grade class Tuesday, May13. The students toured the Oberlincampus and talked with several Col-lege staffers about the work they do. Be-sides Buckmaster, they spokewith Diana Roose, assistantto the president; Julia Nieves,assistant dean of student lifeand services; and HilaryGreer, community servicescoordinator at the Center forService and Learning.

Three of the students’parents who are College em-ployees—Keith James, di-rector of safety and security;John Appley, project directorin the Office of Communica-tions; and Nusha Martynuk,associate professor ofdance—accompanied thegroup and talked about theirwork at the College, too.

The Oberlin public-schoolstudents are participating innine weeks of school-to-workactivities with the help of Mid-dle School Explore, an initia-tive of the Lorain CountySchool-to-Work System, itselfpart of a national program to

prepare youth for successful entry intothe workplace. The students were thesecond group from Langston to visit theCollege through a partnership betweenthe Oberlin College Center for Serviceand Learning and the Lorain County-based Center for Leadership and Edu-cation, which administers the School-to-

Work System.The sixth-grade visitors now will de-

velop a presentation highlighting whatthey learned during their exploration.This coming Wednesday the studentswill present their findings at a banquetfor parents and community partners,including Oberlin College.

Anita Buckmaster, top row far left, John Appley, top row far right, and NushaMartynuk, middle row, far right, are some of the College employees who talkedwith these Langston School sixth-graders about their work at the College. Hi-lary Greer, right of Buckmaster, squired the kids around campus.

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Andy Evans Accepts Laurels for OberlinOberlin College has received theArthur Ross Award in the categoryLandscape Architect/Gardener. Theaward honors the College for “turn-ing to horticulture, the ancient in-strument for giving life to the com-munity, in embellishing the town ofOberlin and the Oberlin campus.”Oberlin’s former director of groundsand land planning, Edward Thomp-

son, nominated the College for theaward.

Andy Evans, vice president for fi-nance, accepted the honor—be-stowed by Classical America, a soci-ety that encourages the classicaltradition in art—during a May 5 cer-emony at the National Academy Mu-seum in Manhattan. The honoredguest who presented the award was

Lady Soames, daughter of WinstonChurchill.

At the reception that followed thepresentation Evans met Thompsonand introduced him to the other hon-ored guests as “the creator of Ober-lin’s landscape transformation.”Thompson is now the arboretummanager at Haverford College.

Evans also met and talked at the

reception with William McNaught’68, a Master of Arts graduate who isthe director of the American Muse-um in England.

Before leaving, Evans noticed thebook that the museum store dis-played prominently in the front win-dow: Fra Angelico at San Marco, Pro-fessor of Art William Hood’s 1993work.

Ed Thompson considers the gardens in front of the Oberlin College Inn among his best work. The flower beds were between episodes ofglory last week, but the flowering fruit trees couldn’t have been more luxuriant.

How the Class of 2001 Looks from HereAs of May 13 Oberlin’s total enrollmenttarget of 800 had been exceeded—at 816.The College of Arts and Sciences had re-ceived enrollment deposits from 625 first-year, 37 transfer, and 42 double-degreestudents. The new Conservatory ofMusic class was larger than expected(112) and accounts for a significant por-tion of the overage beyond the under-graduate enrollment target. The classwill continue to grow in the weeks ahead,helping to compensate for anticipatedlosses over the summer months, says Di-rector of Admissions Debra Chermonte.

Oberlin has admitted 62 percent ofthe first-year candidates who applied tothe College of Arts and Sciences, com-pared to 65 percent in 1996. The selectionrate has moved from 72 percent to 62 per-cent over the course of the past two ad-missions cycles.

“The selection may rise slightly if wefind it necessary to add a few to the classfrom the wait list to counteract the ‘sum-mer melt,’” says Chermonte.

The conservatory’s admission rate is30 percent, the lowest since 1973, saysDirector of Conservatory AdmissionsMichael Manderen. The yield rate hasalso improved: just over 50 percent. Ithad hovered between 43 and 47 percent

over the last 10 years. Most impressive,says Manderen, is that the conservatoryhas achieved the best coverage acrossprogram areas.

“In certain areas where we can’t counton meeting the mark—like oboe, bas-soon, and organ—we’ve hit it and ex-ceeded. That’s cause for celebration.” Thenumber of new organ students—five—isthe highest in 10 years; that achieve-ment, says Manderen, was “doable, butonly if fortune smiled greatly.”

The new class (in both divisions) con-tains 138 students of color, compared to132 a year ago—44 African Americans,33 Latinos, 54 Asian Americans, andseven Native Americans. Twenty-oneinternational students plan to join thenew Arts and Sciences class and 30 in-ternationals have enrolled in the con-servatory.

“We will continue to focus on the di-versity element of the class in the weeksahead,” says Chermonte. Many of thestudents of color and foreign studentswho have been offered admission haveyet to respond.

The quality of the enrolling class asindicated by SAT I results is compara-ble to a year ago—669 Verbal and 640Math.

The Florence J. Gould Foundation has given $25,000 to fund a three-weekstudy tour in which Oberlin conservatory students will study the historicalharpsichords and organs of France.

The January 1998 tour will include primary stops in Paris, Toulouse, andStrasbourg and trips to Lyons and Poitiers.

Throughout the itinerary, 10 students and two faculty members will havethe opportunity to play important historical French organs and harpsi-chords; learn about the instruments’ construction, sound, and context; andgain a better understanding of the historical and cultural environment thatgenerated the music they are studying. Students will have access to excep-tional instruments in collectors’ homes, museums, churches, and instru-ment-building workshops. The rich educational and cultural experience willenhance the Americans’ understanding and performance of French music,as well as lay the groundwork for future cooperation between dedicated mu-sicians in the two countries.

Lisa Crawford, professor of harpsichord, will direct the project. Crawfordorganized a similar study tour in 1996 with Dominique Serve, a French or-ganist knowledgeable about historical French instruments. Serve accompa-nied the 1996 group and will provide similar assistance in 1998.

“After the 1996 trip we realized that in the short two weeks we were inFrance, we had musical and cultural experiences which few people are for-tunate enough to have in a whole lifetime,” says Crawford. “I’m thrilled thatwe will be able to give another group of students a similar opportunity,thanks to the Gould Foundation.”

The Florence J. Gould Foundation Grants Program provides support toU.S. and French nonprofit, tax-exempt organizations to promote Franco-American friendship and understanding.—L.H.

$25,000 Gould Foundation Grant WillPermit Three-Week Winter Term Tour

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May 23, 1997 The Observer Page 12

Observations

This past fall faculty colleagues Anna Agath-angelou, Chris Howell, Sonia Kruks,Francesco Melfi, James Millette, and I got to-

gether to share our concerns about Marxism. Each ofus has been profoundly influenced as scholars,teachers, and citizens by the fundamentals of Marx-ist theory: its way of analyzing the world based onthe organization of production, its attention to classdivisions, the links it draws between ideas and ma-terial forces, its insistence on the inseparable con-nection between theory and practice, and its libera-tory message. These values have found reflection inour professional work as scholars and teachers, ourpolitical activities as citizens involved in labor,women’s, and national-liberation movements, andour personal lives.

Lately, Marxism, both as theory and as politicalpractice, has been in crisis. State socialism, whichclaimed Marxism as its theoretical basis, has beengiving way to capitalism. In capitalist countries, theright has been advancing almost everywhere, bury-ing Marxist critiques of the corrosive and alienatingeffects of the market, the deadening of the humanspirit by the acceleration and barrenness of work,and the inhuman and inhumane inequalities be-tween those who have to sell their labor and thosewho buy it.

As if the triumphalism of the right were not dis-heartening enough, Marxism has also found itselfunder attack on the left, from postmodern theoriesthat dismiss it as a Eurocentric modernist narrativeprivileging class over race, gender, nation, and ethnic-ity. This noun concerned us, as citizens whose ownpolitics draws inspiration from Marxist analysis andaspirations, as scholars who continue to find Marxismuseful in fashioning our inquiries, and as teacherswho fear that our students’ intellectual and civic edu-cation is impoverished by blithe and ideological dis-missal of a venerable and potentially valuable body oftheory and practice.

Marxist theory has, to be sure, been a vibrant andpopular part of the Oberlin curriculum. But coursework is an insufficient and, in some respects, an in-appropriate way to convey to students how some-thing as controversial as Marxism had profoundlyaffected us and could possibly affect them if they sochose. To this end we conceived a series of four pub-lic programs for the spring semester, titled Marxismand.... Their purpose was to let us share with thecampus some of the ways in which Marxism has con-tributed to our work as scholars, teachers, and citi-zens, and even how it has shaped our developmentas human beings.

The programs, held on four evenings in King 106,attracted large audiences. Associ-ate Professor Harlan Wilson,Chair of the Department of Poli-tics, moderated and introduced thefirst forum February 27.

“These forums have been set upto show what it is like to live Marx-ism, to incorporate Marxist ideasinto one’s life and work,” he said.“For Marxism is more than amethod, an approach, or even atheory. It is a form of intellectualand political practice that can havefundamental influence on how yousee the world and do your work. Ina society which, as you know, is un-usually hostile to any suggestion ofthe influence of Marx or Marxism,it takes courage to announce pub-licly the importance of that influ-ence in one’s work.”

Fortunately, Oberlin still takesacademic freedom seriouslyenough that none of us felt particu-

larly intrepid. Indeed, Oberlin, with its historical com-mitment to “Learning and Labor,” seems to us an es-pecially appropriate place in which to explore the is-sues raised by Marxism.

The subject that evening was Marxism and Femi-nism. Danforth Professor of Politics Sonia Kruksbegan by explaining how Marxism helps her under-stand many of the roots of patriarchy.

“Though Marxism does not offer us a total expla-nation of the subordination of women, I cannot imag-ine a society in which capitalist relations would con-tinue to flourish and in which forms of subordinationby gender—or, for that matter, race or ethnicity—would cease to exist. Capitalism requires the multi-plication of relations of subordination.”

Specifically, she said, capitalism subordinateswomen by paying them less than men in the labormarket, extracting profits from them indirectlythrough their unpaid household labor, commodifyingtheir bodies for men’s sexual pleasure, encouragingwomen’s self-alienation for this purpose, and exclud-ing women from equal participation in the publicsphere, including political life. For Kruks, feminismhas fragmented into what Wilson termed various“feminisms,” each focusing on one of these forms of op-pression. Marxism, with its emphasis on the inter-connections of different aspects of oppression and sub-ordination, helps her by providing an overarchingframework to tie these separate strands together.

Visiting Instructor in Women’s Studies and Poli-tics Agathangelou spoke about the ways in whichMarxist theory helps her understand ethnic conflict inCyprus, a central concern not only of her research but,as a Cypriot, also her personal life. By highlighting theglobal economic roots of the competition betweenGreeks and Turks, it provides a way to refute the com-mon view that the conflict is nothing more than a dis-pute between uncivilized nationalists. She noted thatthe earliest stages of capitalist accumulation depend-ed heavily on extracting surpluses from women andsubordinate races. Finally, Agathangelou spoke aboutthe ways in which feminist struggles in specific local-ities such as Cyprus reflected human resistance to theglobal structures analyzed by Marx.

On March 25 the subject was Marxism, race,and nation. Professor of African AmericanStudies James Millette argued that though

New World slavery is generally perceived as the ex-pression of the oppression of one racial group by an-other, race alone does not explain the phenomenon.The class struggles in France, in the context of theFrench Revolution, created the operational spacewithin which the Haitian Revolution could occur.

Only then could racial antipathy between blacks andwhites drive the revolution in St. Domingue (Haitiafter 1804) to its logical conclusion. The emergence ofthis new racial reality, characterized by its own classcontradictions, led to the emergence of Haiti, a nationstate with its own peculiar sociological mix: a largeblack underclass dominated by a self-perpetuatingaristocracy of blacks and coloreds.

In short, Millette argued, Haiti provides one of thebest examples of the Marxist theory of revolution atwork, even though the Haitian revolutionaries did notconsciously apply Marxist theory. Millette also assertedthat history has taught that all racial and nationalstruggles must inevitably confront the question of class.

Assistant Professor of Judaic and Near EasternStudies Francesco Melfi complementedMillette’s presentation by offering an autobio-

graphical account. Why would an Italian Catholicfrom a lower-middle class background be attractedboth to Marxism and to Jewish Studies? He spoke elo-quently about his family’s struggles against fascism,and how the Italian Communist Party, as the coun-try’s leading antifascist organization, drew them toMarxism. Antonio Gramsci, a brilliant Marxist wholanguished in a fascist prison for most of his brief, ru-ined adult life, became a personal hero.

Meanwhile Professor Melfi began to be interestedin Jews when, as a young churchgoer, he learned thatJesus was a rabbi. As he began to mature intellectu-ally, his doubts about Christianity, the appeal ofMarxism, and Italy’s vexed relationship to the rest ofEurope culminated in an increasingly critical ap-proach to the Enlightenment. Since Jews were partic-ipants in the Enlightenment but also its black sheep,Professor Melfi began to understand the history ofEastern European Jews as a window on the Enlight-enment’s contradictions.

For example, the Jewish Sabbath stood as a pro-found challenge to the logic of modernity and capital-ism, which sought to rationalize life and extend workeverywhere. Echoing a theme suggested by Kruksand Agathangelou, Melfi uses Marxism to broadenthe historical and analytical context for approachingJewish Studies, rejecting the standard approach to itas a self-contained arena.

On April 8 Assistant Professor of Politics StephenCrowley and I spoke on Marxism and state socialism,trying to convey how a Marxist approach helps himunderstand the former USSR and helps me under-stand China. Based on research reported in his newlypublished book Hot Coal, Cold Steel, Crowley showedhow Marxism can explain the puzzle of why heavilysubsidized Russian miners would welcome the mar-

ket. Like Marx, they saw it ideallyas a place where equal exchangetakes place; it would, they naivelythought, get them a fair day’s pay,while also undermining corrup-tion. (Marx’s preoccupation, bycontrast, was to show systemati-cally why capitalist markets do notoperate in this ideal manner.)Crowley also described in grizzlydetail the economic ruin that capi-talist “shock therapy” brought toRussia, a crisis that Marxismwould predict.

I spoke about my new researchproject on Chinese workers, inwhich I have found that the adop-tion of capitalist forms such aspiece-rate wages have producedadaptations on the shop floor simi-lar to those that American workershave developed for decades. I con-trasted this with statements from

Marxism and . . .By Marc Blecher

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