Pianist Ignat Solzhenitsyn Presents Music at Amherst Nov. 9

October 26, 2001
Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.—Pianist Ignat Solzhenitsyn will present the second concert in the 2001-02 Music at Amherst Series on Friday, Nov. 9, at 8 p.m. in Buckley Recital Hall at Amherst College, playing an all-Beethoven program. Solzhenitsyn will perform the Elf neue Bagatellen, Op. 119; the Sonata in F minor, WoO 47, No. 2; the Sieben Bagatellen, Op. 33; the Sonata quasi una fantasia in E-flat major, Op. 27, No. 1; the Sechs Bagatellen, Op. 126; and the Sonata quasi una fantasia in C-sharp minor, Op. 27. There will be a brief intermission after the first three pieces.

Solzhenitsyn has toured extensively in Europe and the United States, performing with numerous major orchestras, including those in Boston, Chicago, Washington, Montreal, London, Paris and Sydney. An avid chamber musician, he has collaborated with the Emerson, Borodin, Brentano, St. Petersburg and Lydian String Quartets, under the baton of distinguished conductors such as Andre Previn, Mstislav Rostropovich, Charles Dutoit, Krzysztof Penderecki and James Conlon.

The Los Angeles Times said of a recent Mozart performance that Solzhenitsyn “made the thrills happen. He produced a reading that combined Zen-like spontaneity with sculptured execution that brought out all aspects of the piece... understating the work's well-known profile while highlighting its felicity and myriad details. It was at once simply delivered and filled with feeling.”

Admission to the concert is $20, senior citizens $16, and students $5. Tickets may be reserved by calling 413/542-2195 on weekday mornings. The Amherst College Concert Office has a Website at http://www.amherst.edu/~concerts.

Scrapple from the Apple Brings Classic New York Jazz to Amherst Nov. 1

October 26, 2001
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413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.—Scrapple from the Apple will present an evening of original compositions and jazz standards on Thursday, Nov. 1, at 8:30 p.m. at the Frontroom in the Keefe Campus Center at Amherst College. The show is free and open to the public, and refreshments will be provided.

Scrapple features Amherst College music professor Dana Gooley on piano, the college’s director of jazz studies Bruce Diehl on saxophones, Stephan Crump ’94, on bass, Dave Ballou on trumpet and John Hollenbeck on drums. Crump, Ballou and Hollenbeck are all based in New York City; Diehl and Gooley play in the Pioneer Valley.

Crump now has recorded two albums, Tuckahoe on the Accurate Record label, and Poems and Other Things on his own record label, Papillon Sounds. The New York Times wrote that in a recent performance Crump “laid down hard and infinitely subdivided jazz-funk patterns.” He has a Website at http://www.stephancrump.com. Drummer John Hollenbeck has a We site at http://www.johnhollenbeck.com and has many albums and recordings to his credit.

Rosanne Haggerty ’82 Receives MacArthur "Genius Award"

October 24, 2001
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AMHERST, Mass.—Rosanne Haggerty, a 1982 graduate and a trustee of Amherst College since 1990, has received one of this year’s 23 “genius awards” given by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and announced this morning. The prestigious $500,000 MacArthur Fellowships are unusual in that they are given to a wide range of artists, writers, scientists, academics and social activists, and that the recipients can do as they please with the grant.

Haggerty is the executive director of Common Ground, an organization that restores hotels and other residences in New York and makes them available to low-income and homeless people.

“Unlike many advocates” for the homeless, The New York Times wrote last year, “Ms. Haggerty is known as a canny pragmatist. Low-key but clear-eyed, described as having a laser-like focus but the ability to question herself and accept advice, Ms. Haggerty has worked successfully with both the Dinkins and Giuliani administrations to develop housing units.” Haggerty has been called “the Mother Theresa of Affordable Housing,” according to The Hartford Courant, which also reported that she said “poor or homeless people and families need not only a safe place to live, but also intensive and individualized support services for a substantial period of time. ‘There has to be a plan,’ she said. ‘Communities require an overall strategy for housing.’”

Originally from West Hartford, Conn., Haggerty majored in American studies at Amherst and was the editor of The Amherst Student. After Amherst she studied at Columbia University’s Graduate School for Architecture, Planning and Historic Preservation. She went to work at Covenant House, a Catholic relief agency in New York, and Brooklyn Catholic Charities. In 1990, learning that a decayed and abandoned hotel in Times Square had failed to sell at auction, Haggerty founded the Common Ground Community. It has grown from a single building to a city-wide organization that manages 1,300 housing units and employs 167 people, many of them residents.

Off-Campus Protestors Burn Flags Oct. 18

October 19, 2001
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AMHERST, Mass.—The Amherst Assembly for Patriotism, a new student group at Amherst College, held its first rally, at which more than 100 students, staff and faculty spoke out about the meaning of patriotism, on Thursday, Oct. 18, at 1 p.m. at the Keefe Campus Center.

As the assembly ended, at about 2 p.m., six to eight non-Amherst protestors arrived unexpectedly, handing out anti-war leaflets. They were not Amherst College students. They burned two flags and stepped on a third. After the flag-burning, which attracted considerable media attention, a half hour of discussion ensued between the Amherst College students at the rally and the outside protestors.

Amherst College Choral Society Family Weekend Concert Nov. 2

October 18, 2001
Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.—The Amherst College Choral Society will present its annual Family Weekend concert at 8:30 p.m. on Friday, November 2, at 8:30 pm in Buckley Recital Hall of the Arms Music Center on the Amherst College campus.

Mallorie Chernin, director, and Mollie Stone ”01, assistant director, will conduct the Concert Choir, Men’s Glee Club and Women’s Chorus.

Whitney Cox ’03 and Alison Kaufmann ’03 will lead the Madrigal Singers.

The choirs will perform music by Brahms, Ligetti, Whitacre, Martinu and others. The concert will conclude with traditional Amherst College songs.

Tickets are $6 for general admission; $3 for children under 12 and senior citizens. Tickets may be reserved by phoning Mallorie Chernin in the Choral Office at 413/542-2484. Tickets may also be purchased at the Alumni House during registration for Family Weekend. Any remaining tickets will be sold at the door.

Nancy Cartwright Will Speak on "The Myth of Universalism" Nov. 1 at Amherst College

October 18, 2001
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413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.—Philosopher and historian of science Nancy Cartwright, professor of philosophy at the London School of Economics, will talk about “The Myth of Universalism: Theories of Science and Theories of Justice” in the Cole Assembly Room in Converse Hall at Amherst College on Thursday, Nov. 1, at 4:30 p.m. Her talk, sponsored by the Department of Philosophy at Amherst College and the Forry Fund in Philosophy and Science as part of a series on “Science and Value,” will be free and open to the public. A reception in Converse Hall will follow.

Cartwright studies the history and philosophy of science, especially physics and economics, causal inference and objectivity in science. In a interview with The Philosopher’s Magazine after the publication of her most recent book, The Dappled World: A Study of the Boundaries of Science (1999), she said, “We have certain theories that are kind of ‘take-over’ theories: genetics, various kinds of quantum mechanics, the Darwinians’ approach to the social sciences, game theory in economics—people like take-over programmes because people tend to believe in unification, that there is going to be one theory that accounts for everything…These take-over theories get used when they ought not; they get funding when they ought not.”

Cartwright received a bachelor’s degree in mathematics at the University of Pittsburgh and a doctorate in philosophy at the University of Illinois at Chicago, with a thesis on “Philosophical Analysis of the Concept of Mixture in Quantum Mechanics.” She taught at the University of Maryland and Stanford University, and had visiting appointments at UCLA, Princeton, Pittsburgh, the California Institute of Technology and Oslo University. She also has held fellowships at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Berlin, the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research at Bielefeld and the Pittsburgh Center for the Philosophy of Science. Cartwright has been a professor in the Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method at the LSE since 1991, director of the LSE Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science since 1993 and professor of philosophy at the University of California at San Diego since 1998.

Cartwright’s other works include How the Laws of Physics Lie (1983) and Nature’s Capacities and Their Measurement (1989.) Among many honors, Cartwright is a Fellow of the British Academy and a MacArthur Fellow.

Michael Kimmel to Speak on "Men and Women in the New Millennium" at Amherst College Oct. 23

October 16, 2001
Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.— Sociologist Michael Kimmel, a pioneering writer about men and masculinity from a pro-feminist perspective, will speak about “Mars and Venus, or Planet Earth? Women and Men in the New Millenium,” on Tuesday, Oct. 23 at 7:30 p.m. in the Keefe Campus Center Front Room at Amherst College. He will discuss the changes in the relationship between men and women during the past forty years, addressing common problems in relationships and in the workplace, family and classroom. His talk and a reception will be free and open to the public.

Kimmel, a professor of sociology at SUNY-Stony Brook, argues that gender differences result from institutional, gender-based inequalities, not biological or sex-role socialization. He has written numerous books, including Changing Men: New Directions in Research on Men and Masculinity (1987); Against the Tide: Pro-Feminist Men in the United States (1992), Manhood in America: A Cultural History (1996) and, most recently, The Gendered Society (2000). He edits the international journal Men and Masculinities, and testified for the U.S. Department of Justice in the cases for coeducation at the Virginia Military Institute and the Citadel. As spokesperson for the National Organization for Men Against Sexism, Kimmel has lectured throughout the country and organized workshops for men and women focused on promoting gender equality and preventing sexual harassment, acquaintance rape, sexual assault and pornography.

This presentation is part of a year-long series of events commemorating the 25th anniversary of coeducation at Amherst, and is sponsored by the Mellon Fund.

Amherst College Students Assemble for Patriotism Oct. 18

October 16, 2001
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AMHERST, Mass.—The Amherst Assembly for Patriotism, a new student group at Amherst College, will hold its first public rally, where students, staff and faculty will gather to speak out about what it means to them to be Americans, on Thursday, Oct. 18, at 1 p.m. at the Keefe Campus Center. The group’s founders are Michael Gerard Flood, a junior from Maynard, Mass., and Benjamin Baum, a junior from Plymouth, Mass.

Flood says, “in response to the recent national headlines about the flags in the town of Amherst and peace rallies at college campuses around the country, the Amherst Assembly for Patriotism, a non-partisan group, has come together to inform, celebrate and promote patriotism for the United States of America at Amherst College.”

Flood says “the Amherst Assembly for Patriotism hopes to bring speakers to Amherst, observe national holidays on campus and mobilize the college to patriotic causes.” He says itwill remain “entirely free from partisan politics.” “The Amherst Assembly for Patriotism seeks to inspire Amherst students,” Flood says, “to recognize the rich history, significant tradition and great liberties of our country.”

Colloquium on "Race, Religion and Nationalism" Oct. 26-27

October 15, 2001
Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.—Three authors and members of the Amherst College faculty will offer a colloquium on “Race, Religion and Nationalism: Three Books” on Friday, Oct. 26, and Saturday, Oct. 27, in the Cole Assembly Room, Converse Hall at Amherst College. The authors are David Blight, Class of ‘59 Professor of History and Black Studies; Eddie Glaude, Jr., Visiting Associate Professor of Religion; and Dale Peterson, Professor of English and Russian. Sponsored by the Willis D. Wood Fund, the Dean of Faculty at Amherst College, the Departments of Religion and Black Studies at Amherst College and African-American Religion: A Documentary History Project, the colloquium will be open to the public at no charge.

At 3:45 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 26, the first session will focus on Eddie S. Glaude, the author of Exodus! Religion, Race, and Nation in Early Nineteenth-Century America (2000). Commentators will be Professor Will B. Gravely (University of Denver) and Robert Gooding-Williams (Northwestern University). After this session a public reception will be held in the Converse Lobby at 6 p.m.

On Saturday, Oct. 27, from 9:30 to 11:30 a.m. a session will be devoted to David W. Blight’s Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American History (2001). Commentators will be Professor W. Fitzhugh Brundage (University of Florida) and Professor Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham (Harvard University).

The third and final session, on Saturday from 1:30 to 3:45 p.m., will focus on Dale E. Peterson’s Up From Bondage: The Literatures of Russian and African American Soul (2000). Commentators will be Professor Nancy Ruttenburg (New York University) and Valerie Smith (Princeton University).

Students and Activists Gather Oct. 18-19 To Discuss Reproductive Rights and Sexual Freedom

October 15, 2001
Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.—Students and community activists from Amherst College, Hampshire College, Mt. Holyoke College, Smith College, the University of Massachusetts and the surrounding communities will join thousands of other activists around the country on Thursday, Oct. 18, and on Friday, Oct. 19 for a series of events to discuss the national and international issues affecting reproductive rights and sexual freedom.

On Thursday, Oct. 18, a “National Young Women’s Day of Action,” sponsored by the National Abortion Rights Action League, there will be a march at 5:30 p.m. starting from the Haigis Mall at the University to the Amherst Town Common. From 6:30 until 7:30 p.m. there will be a Flame-to-Fire Vigil to honor all women who have experienced violence. (In case of bad weather, this vigil will take place at the Octagon of Amherst College.)

On Friday, Oct. 19, beginning at 8 p.m., there will be a gallery show and an open-mike event at the upper Robert Crown Center of Hampshire College. This event will include displays by local artists, music, poetry and other artistic endeavors. Also at the gallery, local and national feminist and human rights organizations will make information available. Organizers say that the goal of these events is to create a safe space for all women, especially young women, to become more educated about tangible issues that affect their lives, and have their voices heard regarding these important matters.

For more information contact Min Kim, the Five-College organizer for the Massachusetts National Abortion Rights Action League (MassNARAL) at 413/542-4286.

Tags:  news releases  activism 

The Amati Quartet Presents Music at Amherst Oct. 26

October 10, 2001
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413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.—The Amati Quartet opens the 2001-02 Music at Amherst Series on Friday, Oct. 26, at 8 p.m. in Buckley Recital Hall at Amherst College. The Swiss string quartet will perform Schubert’s “Quartettsatz,” Janacek’s “Intimate Letters” quartet and Dvorak’s “American” Quartet Op. 96.

The Amati Quartet, which includes Willy Zimmermann, Katarzyna Nawrotek, Nicolas Corti and Claudius Hermann, was formed in 1981 in Switzerland. Shortly thereafter the quartet received numerous prestigious awards, among them the Premier Grand Prix of the International Competition of Evian in 1982, the Arts Prize of the City of Zurich in 1983 and the First Prize of the Karl Klinger Competition in Munich in 1986. Besides performing the classical and romantic repertoire, the quartet gives special attention to the music of the 20th century. They have been heard in major concert halls throughout Europe, as well as in the United States, mostly recently in a highly-claimed performance at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall in New York.

The Amati Quartet has performed with the Alban Berg Quartet and the Amadeus Quartet. Krysztian Zimerman, Kurt Widmer, Bruno Giuranna, Karl Engel, Bruno Canino and Walter Levin, first violinist of the LaSalle Quartet, have been among its collaborators.

The New York Times wrote that a 1999 concert at the Frick Museum was “a memorably passionate, daring yet precisely achieved performance.” Die Berliner Morgenpost calls the Amati "without question a first-rate quartet. It makes music with emotional decisiveness and passionate energy, and above all it strives to remain true to the works, instead of bending the works to fit it."” Admission to the concert is $20, senior citizens $16, and students $5. Tickets may be reserved by calling 413/542-2195 on weekday mornings. The Amherst College Concert Office has a Website at http://www.amherst.edu/~concerts/.

Freeman Dyson Will Speak on “Technology and Social Justice” Oct. 25

October 10, 2001
Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.—Physicist and writer Freeman Dyson, professor emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, will talk about “Technology and Social Justice” in the Cole Assembly Room in Converse Hall at Amherst College on Thursday, Oct. 25, at 4:30 p.m. The talk, sponsored by the Department of Philosophy at Amherst College and the Forry Fund in Philosophy and Science as part of a series on “Science and Value,” will be free and open to the public. A reception in Converse Hall will follow.

Freeman Dyson was born in England and educated at Cambridge University, and has been a fellow at Cambridge, Cornell, and the University of Birmingham. He served with the Royal Air Force in the Second World War, an unusual role for a Gandhian pacifist. He continues to work for nuclear disarmament. He also worked at the General Atomic Division of general Dynamics Corporation designing a nuclear reactor, and in 1958 he was involved in the “Orion Project,” an effort to build nuclear-powered spaceships. He remains interested in the possibilities of space travel and extraterrestrial intelligence.

Dyson’s many books include Disturbing the Universe (1979), Weapons and Hope (1984), Origins of Life (1985) and Infinite in All Directions (1988). In his most recent book, The Sun, the Genome & the Internet : Tools of Scientific Revolutions (1999) Dyson argues for an ethical conscience to use technology to foster social justice.

Disturbing the Universe, a “scientific autobiography,” was nominated for the American Book Award. The New Yorker wrote of this book: “Everywhere enriched by the work of poets, it stands as the deepest and most readable account of the personal choices, influences, and interior guides of a productive scientist yet to see print.” The New York Times, in a review of Infinite in All Directions, wrote, “He is concerned about the future of mankind, both in the short term and in the very remote future. He puzzles over the meaning of life, the purpose of the universe and the nature of God. In short, he is a philosopher in the broadest sense.”

Among many honors, in 1996 Dyson received the Rockefeller University’s Lewis Thomas Prize, which honors scientists for their artistic achievements. He also received the 2000 Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion.

Amherst College Choral Society Homecoming Concert Oct. 20

October 10, 2001
Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.—The Amherst College Choral Society will present its annual Homecoming Weekend concert at 8:30 p.m. on Saturday, October 20, at 8:30 pm in Buckley Recital Hall of the Arms Music Center on the Amherst College campus.

Mallorie Chernin, director, and Mollie Stone ”01, assistant director, will conduct the Concert Choir, Men’s Glee Club and Women’s Chorus.

Whitney Cox ’03 and Alison Kaufmann ’03 will lead the Madrigal Singers.

The choirs will perform music by Brahms, Ligetti, Whitacre, Martinu and others. The concert will conclude with traditional Amherst College songs.

Tickets are $6 for general admission; $3 for children under 12 and senior citizens. Tickets may be reserved by phoning Mallorie Chernin in the Choral Office at 413/542-2484. Tickets may also be purchased at the Alumni House during registration for Family Weekend. Any remaining tickets will be sold at the door.

Poet Susan Wheeler to Read Oct. 18

October 10, 2001
Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417

Poet Susan Wheeler will read from her work at 8 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 18, in Porter Lounge on the third floor of Converse Hall. The event, sponsored by the Creative Writing Center, is free and open to the public.

Wheeler is the author of several books of poetry, including the recent Source Codes as well as Smokes and Bag 'o' Diamonds. Her awards include fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and the New York Foundation for the Arts, and her work has appeared in the Scribner anthology Best American Poetry, as well as in The Paris Review, New American Writing, Talisman, The New Yorker and other journals. On the graduate faculty in creative writing at the New School, she also teaches at Princeton University.

The Yale Review writes, “Her personae are slippery as soap in the shower, her narratives are discontinuous, her juxtapositions are sometimes inexplicable even in retrospect, and her range of reference is catholic, so that hymns, cartoons, fairy tales, slogans, and literary classics collide as in a pileup on a foggy freeway.”

The Amherst College Creative Writing Center puts on a yearly reading series featuring both emerging and established authors. Future events in the Fall of 2001 include readings by Judith Frank, Constance Congdon and Andrea Barrett. See the Center's Web site,www.amherst.edu/~cwc, for more information.

2001 Nobel Economics Laureate To Speak Oct. 17

October 10, 2001
Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.—Joseph E. Stiglitz, the John J. McCloy ’16 Professor of American Institutions and International Relations at Amherst College and professor of economics at the graduate schools of both business and international relations at Columbia University, will deliver a lecture on “A Tale of Two Countries: Russia and China’s Transition to a Market Economy” on Wednesday, Oct. 17 at 4:30 p.m. in the Cole Assembly Room in Converse Hall at Amherst. Stiglitz, a 1964 graduate of Amherst, is the 2001 recipient of the Nobel prize in economic science. His talk will be free and open to the public.

Stiglitz served as chief economist and senior vice president, development economics, at the World Bank from 1997 until 2000. The New York Times in 1999 called him “the most outspoken critic of the practices that the big industrial nations favor in their relations with the developing world,” and quoted his observation that there is an “intellectual gap between what we know and what is still practiced” in the bank’s thinking on sustaining growth in developing nations. The chair of the Council of Economic Advisers in the Clinton administration, Stiglitz has taught at Stanford, Princeton and Yale and All Souls College, Oxford.

Stiglitz is a leading scholar of the economics of the public sector. He helped revive interest in the economics of technical change and other factors that contribute to long-run increases in productivity and living standards. As an academic economist in the ’70s, Stiglitz helped create “the economics of information,” an approach that observes that markets fail to work perfectly because participants have less-than-perfect information. Without good information, for instance, foreign investors will not invest in a developing nation, no matter how high it sets its interest rates.

In 1979, the American Economic Association awarded Stiglitz its biennial John Bates Clark Award, given to the economist under 40 who has made the most significant contributions to economics. He has been elected a fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Econometric Society.

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. Stiglitz’s visit is hosted by the Amherst College Department of Economics.