Reunion 2023 Schedule

Stop by for registration, schedules of class activities, messages, information on the Amherst area and light refreshments. Telephone: (413) 542–2065.

All Black alumni and friends are invited to stop by this historic center throughout Reunion to spend time reconnecting with old friends and meeting new friends in our own dedicated "lounge" space!

Join Jane and Robert Keiter Family Executive Director Jane Wald for a walking exploration of the restoration of Emily Dickinson's Homestead. The Museum reopened in 2022 after its greatest restoration campaign yet. Learn about the forensic and documentary evidence that resulted in the period treatments seen today. Tours begin at 3:30 and 4:15 p.m. and run for 30 minutes each. Please sign up in advance.

All Black alumni and friends are invited to stop by this historic center throughout Reunion to spend time reconnecting with old friends and meeting new friends in our own dedicated "lounge" space! 

Stop by for registration, schedules of class activities, messages, information on the Amherst area and light refreshments. Telephone: (413) 542–2065.

Get inspired by the current exhibitions and collections in the Mead! Family-friendly activities will be available throughout Reunion to tap into visitors’ creativity and expand on artworks on view. Create a collage about the places, people and symbols important to you and your culture, inspired by Ndjeka Akunyili Crosby’s artwork Nyado: The Thing Around Her Neck, from God Made My Face: A Collective Portrait of James Baldwin. Imagine and draw the original buildings and spaces of objects featured in the exhibition Architectural Ghosts. Add some color to objects from the Mead’s permanent collection with coloring sheets created by Charissa Doerr ’20. Finally, feel free to show off your photography skills and share your masterpiece by tagging the Mead (@MeadArtMuseum) on social media. All materials provided; children must be accompanied by a caregiver. Museum visitation hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. (extended until 10 p.m. on Thursday).

In this lecture, Marc Edwards, Assistant Professor of Biology, will share how his research program works to develop a deep mechanistic understanding of how cells move and how the Edwards Laboratory aims to train the next generation of scientists. Professor Edwards was recently featured in an episode of "Between 2 Mammoths". Professor Edwards will chart the lessons he’s learned and the discoveries he’s made together with students during his time at Amherst College.

Psychological research suggests that parents play a critical role in teaching children about emotions and how to regulate them. Parents may react to children’s emotions in ways that are supportive and help them to understand and effectively regulate their emotions, or in ways that are unsupportive and communicate that emotions are not acceptable. How parents react to children’s emotions can then have downstream effects on children’s social adjustment and their risk for developing psychological disorders. In this talk, Julia McQuade, Chair and Associate Professor of Psychology, will present research from her lab at Amherst College that examines how parents influence the emotional development of children with attention-deficit / hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), who often experience challenges regulating their emotions. Her work suggests that, although parents do play an important role in shaping children’s emotional capacities, not all children respond to parent behaviors in the same way.

Tour the former U.S. Strategic Air Command (Northeast Command) nuclear communications bunker and learn of its history, led by Aaron Hayden, the College’s Capital Projects Manager and the unofficial authority on the history of the Bunker. The Bunker has served as the Amherst College Book Depository since its purchase by the College in 1992. Each tour is limited to 30 people. Please sign up in advance online or by phone at 413-542-2313. If space is available, you may sign up on-site at the Alumni House Reception Center (75 Churchill Street). Please note: You will need to provide your own transportation to and from the Bunker.

Join Museum Educator Fred Venne and Student Docents for a walk through the Beneski Museum of Natural History, which houses outstanding collections and exhibits that include vertebrate and invertebrate paleontology, minerals and other geologic specimens collected locally and from around the world since 1825. Particularly noteworthy is the world-famous dinosaur track collection. Bring your cameras.

Join Maria Timina, Curator of Russian and European Art, for a talk on the Amherst Center for Russian Culture’s exhibition "Fragments of Utopia: Photographs from the VKhUTEMAS Workshops." The VKhUTEMAS was one of the world’s leading centers for innovation in arts education based in Moscow in the 1920s. Its visionary pedagogy was rooted in the artistic theories and practices of the leaders of the avant-garde movement who taught there—among them Alexandra Exter, Ivan Kliun, El Lissitzky, Lubov Popova, Aleksandr Rodchenko, Vladimir Tatlin, and others. The lasting influence of the VKhUTEMAS on the development of modern art, design, and architecture is often compared to that of the Bauhaus. The Soviet school, however, was several times larger and yet is far less well-known. The Center's exhibition features photographs of student exercises and projects alongside artwork by their professors. Taken together, these works offer glimpses into the historic VKhUTEMAS—fragments of a lost utopia.

Academic freedom today is in distress. Conservative state legislatures have passed bills eradicating tenure and banning the teaching of controversial topics. Disturbing anecdotes circulate about intolerant and censorious students. A growing administrative class stands accused of chilling the speech of faculty and students alike. In the background, increasing numbers of professors teach and research on short-term contracts, lacking the protections of tenure. In this lecture, Adam Sitze, the John E. Kirkpatrick 1951 Professor in Law, Jurisprudence and Social Thought, will consider these events and dynamics in relation to the history of academic theory more generally. At the core of this lecture will be a question: Are our received doctrines of academic freedom adequate to the crises we face today? And if not, how might we rethink and renew those doctrines so that academic freedom can endure into the future?

To kick off a weekend of Reunion programming, staff members from across the Mead’s various departments will be stationed in the galleries and ready to greet visiting alumni. Come for the friendly faces and conversation, and learn more about the exhibitions, the artworks and what’s going on at the museum. 

Screening of Richard Wilbur: Keeping the Difficult Balance

A 179-minute adaptation of the longer opus Richard Wilbur and the Things of This World, Keeping the Difficult Balance has won worldwide recognition in over a score of film festivals. The film’s two parts place particular focus on the effects of World War II on poet Richard Wilbur ’42’s worldview—and the transcendence of age and loss to create a vast and meaningful body of work. In both documentaries, visits with Wilbur are complemented with a wealth of photographs from his family albums and revealing glimpses into his home, studio and libraries in Cummington, Mass., as filmmaker and friend Ralph Hammann builds an elegiac portrait of an exemplary man who calls us to the best versions of ourselves. Join the filmmaker for a special screening of the film, which features Wilbur’s final readings of many of his poems and interviews with such luminaries as Brian Bedford, Stephen Sondheim, Rhina P. Espaillat, Dana Gioia, Donald Hall, Barry Moser, Austin Pendleton, John Simon, David Sofield, A.E. Stallings, William Blakemore, and biographers Robert Bagg ’57 and Mary Bagg.

All Black alumni and friends are invited to stop by this historic center throughout Reunion to spend time reconnecting with old friends and meeting new friends in our own dedicated "lounge" space!

Stop by for registration, schedules of class activities, messages, information on the Amherst area and light refreshments. Telephone: (413) 542–2065.

Join Jane and Robert Keiter Family Executive Director Jane Wald for a walking exploration of the restoration of Emily Dickinson's Homestead. The Museum reopened in 2022 after its greatest restoration campaign yet. Learn about the forensic and documentary evidence that resulted in the period treatments seen today. Tours begin at 9 and 9:45 a.m. and run for 30 minutes each. Please sign up in advance.

Tour the former U.S. Strategic Air Command (Northeast Command) nuclear communications bunker and learn of its history, led by Aaron Hayden, the College’s Capital Projects Manager and the unofficial authority on the history of the Bunker. The Bunker has served as the Amherst College Book Depository since its purchase by the College in 1992. Each tour is limited to 30 people. Please sign up in advance online or by phone at 413-542-2313. If space is available, you may sign up on-site at the Alumni House Reception Center (75 Churchill Street). Please note: You will need to provide your own transportation to and from the Bunker.

Though he feels he is no expert, Emmanuel Aronie ’68 has deep roots in Ukraine. Three of his grandparents were born there. His first trip to Ukraine was in 1989 as part of a 25-day curiosity tour of the Soviet Union. He lived in Ukraine for most of 1992, 1995 and 1999. Because of other seasonal visits, his passport is stamped “Ukraine” or “Ukr” more than 50 times. He has lived in Ukraine since Aug. 10, 2022. Among other things, he has been leading English-language seminars and participating in an English-language movie club. In this presentation, he plans to address three questions: 1. What is daily life like? 2. How do Ukrainians feel about all the aid they are receiving, humanitarian and military? 3. What is the endgame of the current war with Russia and beyond? Presented by the Class of 1968.

Get inspired by the current exhibitions and collections in the Mead! Family-friendly activities will be available throughout Reunion to tap into visitors’ creativity and expand on artworks on view: Create a collage about the places, people and symbols important to you and your culture inspired by Ndjeka Crosby's artwork “Nyado: A Thing Around Her Neck”, from God Made My Face: A Collective Portrait of James Baldwin. Imagine and draw the original buildings and spaces of objects featured in the exhibition Architectural Ghosts. Add some color to objects from the Mead’s permanent collection with coloring sheets created by Charissa Doer ’20. Finally, feel free to show off your photography skills and share your masterpiece by tagging the Mead (@MeadArtMuseum) on social media. All materials provided; children must be accompanied by a caregiver. Museum visitation hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.