News & Events 09/2003

September 30, 2003
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AMHERST, Mass.- In his new book, The Jurisprudence of Emergency ($59.50, 192 pp., University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 2003), Nasser Hussain analyzes the historical uses of a host of emergency powers, ranging from the suspension of habeas corpus to the use of military tribunals. Hussain is an assistant professor of law, jurisprudence and social thought at Amherst College.

Focusing on the relationship between "emergency" and the law to develop a subtle new theory of those moments in which the normative rule of law is suspended, Hussain begins by examining British colonial rule in India from the late 18th to the early 20th century. He argues that the interaction of competing ideologies-liberty and government by law versus the colonizer's insistence on a regime of conquest-exemplifies a conflict central to all Western legal systems: between the universal, rational operation of law on the one hand and the absolute sovereignty of the state on the other. In this new light, the colonies could be seen as influential agents in the interpretation and delineation of Western ideas and practices.

Hussain graduated from Yale University and has both an M.A. and a Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley. Before coming to Amherst, he was a fellow with the Harvard University Society of Fellows.

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September 30, 2003
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413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.- The poet and biographer Honor Moore will read from her work at 8 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 29, in Porter Lounge in Converse Hall at Amherst College. The event, sponsored by the Amherst College Creative Writing Center, is free and open to the public. Refreshments will be served.

Moore has published two collections of poetry, Memoir and Darling, and The White Blackbird, a biography of her grandmother, the painter Margarett Sargent. In her poetry, Moore explores such topics as longing and death with a visual precision: a woman's hair is the color of raw wood; a dead friend is remembered by how he placed objects in a room; two lovers "fall together like answers." The Boston Review has described Moore's poetry as "blunt and brave," and praised her "unique ability to infuse her poems with real body heat, emotional electricity, and the divine grief at the center of desire."

Moore's poems have appeared in many publications, including The Paris Review, Ploughshares, Open City, Conjunctions and American Poetry Review. Her essays have appeared in such publications as The New Yorker and The New York Times.

The Amherst College Creative Writing Center puts on a yearly reading series featuring both emerging and established authors; its Website is at www.amherst.edu/~cwc.

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September 23, 2003
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AMHERST, Mass.-The Clements Center for Southwest Studies at Southern Methodist University has given the 2002 William P. Clements Prize to Martha A. Sandweiss, professor of American studies and history at Amherst College, for Print the Legend: Photography and the American West, a cultural history of photography in the American West during the 19th century that tracks how the new medium of photography created and shaped popular understanding of the region.

The Clements Prize is given annually to the best non-fiction work about southwestern America. The prize committee noted that in Sandweiss's "richly illustrated new book, she tells the intertwined stories of photography and the American West-a new medium and a new place that came of age together in the nineteenth century." Michael Kammen, in Reviews in American History, wrote, "Sandweiss has given us a truly remarkable book, written with clarity and grace, and superbly illustrated with many unfamiliar images and shrewd juxtapositions of photographs and the more fanciful lithographs that embellished them."

A member of the Amherst College faculty since 1989, Sandweiss was also the director of the Mead Art Museum from 1989 until 1997, and formerly the curator of photographs at the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth, Tex. She received her Ph.D., M.Phil. and M.A. degrees in history from Yale University, and a B.A. from Radcliffe College. She is the author of Laura Gilpin: An Enduring Grace (1986), co-author of Eyewitness to War: Prints and Daguerreotypes of the Mexican War, 1846-1848 (1989), editor of Photography in Nineteenth-Century America (1991), co-editor of The Oxford History of the American West (1994) and a contributor to numerous volumes on the art and photography of the American West.

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September 23, 2003
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AMHERST, Mass.-Natasha Staller, associate professor of fine arts at Amherst College and author of A Sum of Destructions: Picasso's Cultures and the Creation of Cubism, was a finalist for the Charles Rufus Morey Book Award, which honors an especially distinguished book in the history of art, of any period, in any language. Staller's book is a study of the historical and cultural antecedents that the dominant painter of the 20th century recreated. The book is the first study of "the degree to which revolutionary Cubism was saturated with Picasso's past."

A Sum of Destructions portrays Picasso as a thoroughly modern artist on a resolutely traditional quest: "Struggling to make sense of experience," Staller writes, "to make meaning, to make beauty-even as he redefined what was beautiful-goes to the core of what it means to be human."

Staller, educated at Wellesley College (A.B.) and Harvard University (Ph.D.), has taught at Amherst since 1992, after teaching at Princeton University and the University of Chicago. She has had fellowships at Harvard (Society of Fellows), Yale (Getty Fellowship/ Whitney Humanities Center), the University of Pennsylvania (Mellon Fellowship) and Radcliffe College (Bunting Institute.) Working on The Sum of Destructions for more than 20 years, Staller has lectured on Picasso's cultural heritage in museums and universities, and published parts of the book in Arts Magazine, Art Bulletin, Art History and the catalog of Picasso: The Early Years (1997), an exhibition at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

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September 23, 2003
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413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.-Anne-Marie Slaughter, the John J. McCloy '16 Professor of American Institutions and International Relations at Amherst College and dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, will deliver a lecture on "A New World Order: Part I," on Thursday, Oct. 16, at 4:30 p.m. in Stirn Auditorium at Amherst College. The event will be free and open to the public.

Slaughter, a highly regarded expert on international law, previously served as director of graduate and international legal studies at the Harvard Law School and was founder and faculty director of the Harvard Colloquium on International Affairs. She has taught at the University of Chicago Law School, where she was a professor of law and international relations. Her teaching and research have focused on global governance, the politics of international tribunals, and interdisciplinary analyses of international legal issues. An author or co-editor of four books and more than 50 articles, and a frequent commentator in the media, Slaughter is president of the American Society of International Law and has worked to establish jurisdiction principles for war crimes. Educated at Princeton University, Oxford University and Harvard Law School, Slaughter has received numerous honors for her work.

The John J. McCloy '16 Professorship was established at Amherst College in 1983 to honor John J. McCloy and his outstanding career of service and accomplishment in American politics and international diplomacy. Slaughter will deliver the second McCloy lecture in the spring. Slaughter's visit is hosted by Beth Yarbrough, Willard Long Thorp Professor of Economics at Amherst College.

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September 22, 2003
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AMHERST, Mass.- John Rager, a professor of computer science at Amherst College, has been awarded a Fulbright Scholar grant to lecture in Chisinau, Moldova during the 2003-04 academic year, according to the United States Department of State and the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board.

Rager will teach artificial intelligence, programming languages, and computer graphics at the Academia de Studii Economice in Moldova. In addition, he will lecture at various other academic institutions in Moldova.

Rager is one of approximately 800 U.S. faculty and professionals who will travel abroad to some 140 countries for the 2003-04 academic year through the Fulbright Scholar Program. Established in 1946 under legislation introduced by the late Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas, the program's purpose is to build mutual understanding between the people of the United States and other countries.

The Fulbright Program, America's flagship international educational exchange activity, is sponsored by the U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. Over its 57 years of existence, thousands of U.S. faculty and professionals have studied, taught or done research abroad, and thousands of their counterparts from other countries have engaged in similar activities in the U.S. They are among more than 250,000 American and foreign university students, K-12 teachers and university faculty and professionals who have participated in one of the several Fulbright exchange programs.

Recipients of Fulbright Scholar awards are selected on the basis of academic or professional achievement and because they have demonstrated extraordinary leadership potential in their fields.

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September 22, 2003
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AMHERST, Mass.- Luke Swarthout '04 has been elected vice-chair and treasurer of the United States Public Interest Research Group (USPIRG), the national lobbying arm of the state PIRGs. Swarthout, a history major at Amherst, is the son of Lorne Swarthout and Joan Richter of New York City.

A member of the Amherst College chapter of the Massachusetts Public Interest Research Group (MASSPIRG) since his freshman year, Swarthout was elected to chair the National Student Forum of USPIRG in April. His local, statewide, national and international lobbying efforts include attendance at the 2001 and 2002 Annual General Meeting of British Petroleum in London, where he urged the oil company not to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. He currently is working on project aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions in Massachusetts. "I'm honored by my election as Vice-Chair of USPIRG," Swarthout says, "but my focus remains squarely on organizing students at Amherst College and across the state of Massachusetts around public interest issues such as poverty and the environment."

MASSPIRG was founded in 1972 by students at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and has a 30-year history of environmental advocacy. Over the past three years Amherst College MASSPIRG students have registered hundreds of Amherst students to vote, raised thousands of dollars for local hunger and homelessness efforts and pulled hundreds of bags of garbage from local rivers, lakes and streams.

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September 22, 2003
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413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.-Painter Joseph Ablow, artist in residence at Amherst College, will speak in the Pruyne Lecture Hall (115 Fayerweather) at the college on Thursday, October 2, at 4:30 p.m. A reception will follow. The artist's talk marks the opening of "Joseph Ablow: A Retrospective," which will be on display in the Eli Marsh Gallery in Fayerweather Hall from Oct. 2 until Nov. 2.

Ablow, represented by the Pucker Gallery in Boston (www.puckergallery.com), was born in Salem, Mass. After receiving a B.A. from Bennington College and an A.M. degree from Harvard University, Ablow studied painting at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. He continued his instruction in painting with Oskar Kokoschka and Ben Shahn, among others. In addition to his work as a painter, Ablow has been a professor at Boston University for 35 years and has written many academic articles on art in the 20th century.

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September 16, 2003
Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417

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September 16, 2003
Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.- The poet Jay Wright, described by John Hollander as "a brilliant and original poet" and in the Boston Review as "an unsung wonder of American poetry," will read from his work at 8 p.m. on Monday, Sept. 29, at Amherst Books, 8 Main Street in Amherst (413/256-1547). The event, co-sponsored by the Amherst College Creative Writing Center, is free and open to the public. Refreshments will be served.

Of Transfigurations, a book that collects all seven of Wright's previous volumes of poetry, Peter O'Leary writes, "I haven't felt so ennobled as a reader by a book of poetry since I started reading the genre. This book is utterly essential." Wright has defied characterization by experimenting with voices, languages, cultures and forms. Writing in The New York Times Book Review, Hollander described Wright's poetry as "powerfully concerned with roots-cultural, intellectual and spiritual." Wright says he has worked to record "my developing black African-American life in the United States, but I also saw that I had the beginning of forms to express lives that transcended that particular life." Transfigurations might be understood as an expression of that transcendence.

A resident of Vermont, Wright has received many awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, a MacArthur Fellowship, and the Fellowship of the Academy of American poets.

The Amherst College Creative Writing Center holds a yearly reading series featuring both emerging and established authors. See the Center's Website at www.amherst.edu/~cwc for more information.

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September 3, 2003
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413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.- A technical problem forced the cancellation of the August 30 Mars viewing, so the Amherst College Observatory will be open for viewing the red planet, still remarkably close to earth, on Saturday evening, Sept.6, if the skies are clear. No reservations are necessary, and admission is free. The observatory opens at 9 p.m., although Mars itself will not be visible before about 10:30 p.m. The Observatory is located off Snell St., near Woodside Ave. (www.amherst.edu/about_amh/visit/map/)

This viewing is sponsored by the Amherst Astronomy Association, which holds public viewings at the Amherst College Observatory every clear Saturday night except during winter. The association has a Website at www.amastro.org.

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September 2, 2003
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413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.- In his new book, The Poetry of Pablo Neruda ($40, 800 pp., Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 2003), Ilan Stavans has assembled a comprehensive dual-language collection of work by the man Gabriel García Márquez has called "the greatest poet of the twentieth century-in any language." Stavans, the Lewis-Sebring Professor of Latin American and Latino Culture (Spanish) at Amherst, observes the historical greatness of the Chilean Nobel laureate. He writes in his introduction, "Almost every significant event of the twentieth century palpitates in Neruda's poems." Yet this "biblical prophet of sorts, the voice of the voiceless," was also a lyricist of earthly love and daily life, "watchful of the disturbances of life," Stavans writes. The Poetry of Pablo Neruda is Stavans's attempt to present "an image of Neruda's entire poetic arc."

Born Neftali Basoalto, Neruda adopted his pen name in fear of his family's disapproval, and yet by the age of 25 he was already famous for Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair, which remains his most beloved volume. During the next 50 years, a seemingly boundless metaphorical language linked his romantic fantasies and the fierce moral and political compass-exemplified in books such as Canto General-that made him an adamant champion of the dignity of ordinary men and women.

Edited and with an introduction by Stavans, this is the most comprehensive single-volume collection of this prolific poet's work in English. Stavans has collected the finest translations of nearly 600 poems by Neruda and joined them to specially commissioned new translations that attest to Neruda's still-resounding presence in American letters.

Stavans, founder of Hopscotch: A Cultural Review, is the author of On Borrowed Words: A Memoir of Language, The Hispanic Condition and The Riddle of Cantinflas, and the editor of The Oxford Book of Jewish Stories and The Essential Ilan Stavans, among other books. He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Latino Literature Prize, among many honors, and is currently completing The Norton Anthology of Latino Literature. His work has been translated into half a dozen languages.

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September 2, 2003
Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.- Author Sabina Murray, whose most recent book, The Caprices, won the 2003 PEN/Faulkner award for fiction, will read from her work on Monday, Sept. 22 at 8 p.m. at Amherst Books, 8 Main Street in Amherst (413/256-1547). The event, co-sponsored by the Amherst College Creative Writing Center, is free and open to the public. Refreshments will be served.

The Caprices, a collection of short stories based on the Pacific Campaign, "turns the bombed-out and broken setting of World War II into a theater for humankind, where both weakness and grace are writ at large," wrote The Washington Post. "Think of war as the hostile pebble thrown into the peaceful pond," Murray said in an interview. "I'm writing about the ripples." She succeeds brilliantly, according to novelist Claire Messud, who praised the book's "fierce intensity" in The New York Times Book Review: "Dark and unflinching, these brimming, sometimes jagged stories endure powerfully in the reader's memory as they reach across continents and time with precision and-in the heart of darkness-a measure of grace."

Raised in Australia and the Philippines, Murray is a former Bunting Fellow at Harvard University and currently teaches in the MFA program at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She is the author of the novel, Slow Burn, and the screenplay for Beautiful Country, a film to be released in 2004. Her stories have appeared in Ploughshares, Ontario Review, New England Review and other magazines.

The Amherst College Creative Writing Center puts on a yearly reading series featuring both emerging and established authors. See the center's website at www.amherst.edu/~cwc for more information.

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