News & Events 08/2006

August 28, 2006
Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.—Susannah Heschel, the Eli Black Professor of Jewish Studies at Dartmouth College, will speak on “From Theory to Reality: Implications of Feminism for Judaism” at 3:15 p.m. on Wednesday, Sept. 6, in the McCaffrey Room in the Keefe Campus Center at Amherst College. Sponsored by the Willis D. Wood Fund and the department of religion at Amherst, Heschel’s talk is free and open to the public.

Heschel, whose scholarship focuses on Jewish-Christian relations in Germany during the 19th and 20th centuries, received her Ph.D. in religious studies from the University of Pennsylvania in 1989. Her publications include Abraham Geiger and the Jewish Jesus (1998), which won a National Jewish Book Award, and a forthcoming book, The Aryan Jesus: Christians, Nazis and the Bible. She has also edited several volumes, most recently Betrayal: German Churches and the Holocaust (1999, with Robert P. Ericksen) and Insider/Outsider: American Jews and Multiculturalism (1998, with David Biale and Michael Galchinsky). She also published a volume of her father’s writings, Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays of Abraham Joshua Heschel (1997), with a biographical introduction. Susannah Heschel has also written extensively on feminist issues related to Jewish studies and edited the collection On Being a Jewish Feminist (1983.)

Heschel has taught at Princeton University, the University of Cape Town and the University of Frankfort. She has been a fellow at the National Humanities Center, and has served since 1999 on the academic advisory committee of the research center of the U.S. Holocaust Museum. She spoke on Judaism and the environment at the 1992 Rio de Janeiro United Nations Earth Summit and at the 1994 Cairo United Nations conference on Population and Development. A frequent commentator on the News Hour with Jim Lehrer, Heschel also contributes to The Nation, Dissent, Commentary and Tikkun magazines.

In addition to her academic work, she has written and lectured frequently on Jewish issues, served for several years, with Michael Lerner and Cornel West, as the co-chairs of Tikkun, sits on the advisory board of Brit Tzedek v'Shalom and is an enthusiastic member of the National Council of Jewish Women.

###

August 28, 2006
Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.—Ilan Stavans, the Lewis-Sebring Professor in Latin American and Latino Culture and Five-College 40th Anniversary Professor at Amherst College is the author of The Disappearance: A Novella and Stories ($22.95, TriQuarterly/Northwestern University Press, Bloomington, 2006.) “The Disappearance” tells the story of a Belgian Jewish actor who plots his own kidnapping in order to denounce anti-Semitism in the Low Countries. “Xerox Man,” commissioned by the BBC, is about a book thief. “Morirse esta en hebreo” is a novella about the death of a Mexican patriarch at the time of the 2000 presidential election. A feature film based on the novella and produced by John Sayles will be released at the end of the year.

“Stavans beautifully demonstrates that the best way to suggest the extraordinary is through the ordinary,” according to a Boston Globe review. A Library Journal reviewer wrote, “The Mexican and European Jewish heritage of multilingual screenwriter, translator, critic and fiction writer Stavans is reflected not only in his plots but also in his obvious admiration for such writers as Isaac Bashevis Singer, whose three-volume Collected Stories he edited. This captivating book is highly recommended,” the reviewer concluded. Publishers Weekly noted “These provocative stories read almost like newspaper dispatches, conveying facts and stopping short of analysis. Fans of Stavans’s expansive body of work won’t be disappointed.”

A member of the Amherst faculty since 1993, Stavans is also author of Growing up Latino (1993) and The Hispanic Condition (1995), The Oxford Book of Jewish Stories (1998), On Borrowed Words (2001), The Poetry of Pablo Neruda (2003) and most recently Dictionary Days (2005.) He is the editor of the Norton Anthology of Latino Literature (2005.) Stavans has published the first dictionary of Spanglish, titled Spanglish: The Making of a New American Language (2003), and has debated in public the role language plays in public life and civic affairs for African Americans, Latinos and other immigrant groups. Stavans also published a selection of the interviews that he conducted on Conversations with Ilan Stavans on the WGBH (PBS) program La Plaza.

###

August 25, 2006
Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.—Carroll William Westfall, the Frank Montana Professor of Architecture at the University of Notre Dame, will give a talk titled “To Restore the American City: A Guide from the Past to the Present” at 8 p.m. on Monday, Sept. 11, in Pruyne Lecture Hall (Fayerweather 115) at Amherst College. The first lecture in the series sponsored by the Colloquium on the American Founding at Amherst, Westfall’s talk is free and open to the public.

Westfall’s early work, devoted to the Italian Renaissance and the consolidation in architecture of political authority and theological reform in the Catholic Church, resulted in scholarly articles and a book, In This Most Perfect Paradise (1974). He has since concentrated on the relationship between the history, theory and practice of architecture, especially the role of tradition in shaping the practice of the present to serve the future. A review of this interest is in his contribution to Architectural Principles in the Age of Historicism (1991), written with Robert Jan van Pelt. Westfall, whose current interests are in tradition and classicism in architecture and the American city and on the architect’s capacity to nourish the Christian faith, studies the history of the city with attention to the reciprocity between the political life and the urban and architectural elements that serve the needs of citizens.

Westfall was educated at the University of California (B.A., 1961) and at the University of Manchester (M.A., 1963) and Columbia University (Ph.D., 1967). After teaching at Amherst College (1967-72), the University of Illinois in Chicago and the University of Virginia, he joined the faculty of the Notre Dame in 1998 as Frank Montana Professor at the School of Architecture.

###

August 22, 2006
Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.—In recognition of Constitution Day, independent documentary filmmaker and media studies scholar Kembrew McLeod will present a multimedia program titled “Culture, Inc.: How Intellectual Property Erodes Freedom of Expression” at 7:30 p.m. on Monday, Sept. 18, in the Cole Assembly Room in Converse Hall at Amherst College. Cole Assembly Room is wheelchair accessible. Sponsored by the Amherst College President’s Office and presented by the Amherst College Library, the event is free and open to the public. A reception will follow.

McLeod is the author of Freedom of Expression®: Overzealous Copyright Bozos and other Enemies of Creativity (2005), which received the 2006 American Library Association Oboler Award for the best published scholarship in the area of intellectual freedom. A professor of communication studies at the University of Iowa, McLeod received his doctoral degree from the University of Massachusetts. He is known also for such “media pranks” as filing a trademark on the phrase “freedom of expression” in 1998 and auctioning his soul in a glass jar on eBay.

The presentation will explore the impact of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (1998) and intellectual property law in general, in such diverse areas as genetics, art and music, farming, academic research, publishing and teaching. McLeod is currently producing a documentary film of Freedom of Expression® (in conjunction with the Media Education Foundation in Northampton), which relates to copyright and free speech. He is also working on a feature length documentary film on the history of sound collage and sampling called Copyright Criminals: This is a Sampling Sport. McLeod will show brief excerpts from each film during his multimedia lecture.

###

August 21, 2006
Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.—William Miglore, a 2006 graduate of Amherst College, won second place for his Ray Bradbury collection in the first annual Collegiate Book-Collecting Championship, which honors winners from the three dozen colleges and universities that hold student book-collecting contests. He will receive $1,000; a trip to New York for the awards ceremony Saturday, Sept. 16, at the Grolier Club; a scholarship to the Rare Books School at the University of Virginia; and a $500 donation in his name to the Amherst College library. The Friends of the Amherst College Library presented the Frederick S. Lane ’36 Prize for Excellence in Book Collecting to Miglore in 2004 for his collection of association copies and in 2005 for his Truman Capote collection. In 2006 Miglore received the Lane Prize for an unprecedented third time for the Bradbury collection. “It’s hard for me to imagine what it was like before the Internet,” commented Miglore, who started collecting online at age 14 in 1996.

Daniel McKee of Cornell University took first place in the national Collegiate Book-Collecting Championship for his collection, “Educational Books from Japan’s Meiji Period (1868–1912),” and David Rando of Cornell won third place for his “Finnegans Wake Reference Books.”

A panel of judges, including a librarian, a bookseller and a collector, reviewed 44 collections from winners of campus competitions. The used and rare book marketplace Biblio.com, the San Francisco auction house PBA Galleries, the Los Angeles antiquarian booksellers Heritage Book Shop and the New York-based Grolier Club, the country’s most prestigious book-collecting society sponsor the contest. Next year, the competition will be open to students whose institutions don’t have their own contests. For more information, please visit the contest website.

###

August 21, 2006
Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.—Kevin Sweeney, a professor of American studies and history at Amherst College, and Evan Haefeli, professor of history at Columbia University, are the editors of Captive Histories: English, French, and Native Narratives of the 1704 Deerfield Raid ($22.95, 306 pp., University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst, 2006), a collection of original source material that tells the story—or the stories—of the 1704 French and Indian attack on Deerfield, Mass. Sweeney and Haefeli were also the authors of Captors and Captives: The 1704 French and Indian Raid on Deerfield(2003), a historical re-examination of the events from multiple points of view. Captives and Captors received an Award of Merit from the American Association for State and Local History in 2004.

In their new book, Sweeney and Haefeli have chosen texts that range from the famous, such as John Williams’ The Redeemed Captive, to the records of French soldiers and clerics, to less well-known Abenaki and Mohawk stories of the raid. Sweeney and Haefeli provide a general introduction, extensive annotations and notes. The texts are also assessed by two Native scholars, Taiaiake Alfred and Marge Bruchac, who was a Five College Fellow in the Program for Minority Scholars in Anthropology/Sociology at Amherst College in 2004-2005. The Abenaki and Mohawk narratives of the events offer readers an opportunity not only to compare captors’ and captives’ accounts of the same experiences, but also to compare Native oral traditions. Similarly, the memoirs of French military officers and an excerpt from the Jesuit Relations illuminate the motivations behind the attack and offer fresh insights into the complexities of French-Indian alliances.

Sweeney, a resident of Greenfield, Mass., has taught at Amherst since 1989. He received a B.A. from Williams College and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in history from Yale University.

###

August 21, 2006
Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.—Kenneth Bacon, Amherst College Class of ’66 and president of Refugees International, will speak to the incoming Class of 2010 at 6 p.m. on Monday, Aug. 28, in Johnson Chapel at Amherst College. Bacon will address issues of genocide in Darfur. The first annual Benjamin DeMott Lecture at Amherst College, his talk is directed toward first-year students at Amherst, and will relate to their summer reading. As space permits, the DeMott Lecture is free and open to the public.

In 2001, Bacon became the president of Refugees International, a 25-year-old organization that generates lifesaving humanitarian assistance and protection for displaced people, and works to end the conditions that create displacement. He previously served in the Clinton administration as the assistant secretary of defense for public affairs and Pentagon spokesman, as a reporter and editorial columnist at The Wall Street Journal, in the United States Army Reserve during the Vietnam War and as a legislative assistant to Senator Thomas J. McIntyre (R.-N.H.) He is a member of Population Action International, the Council on Foreign Relations and the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

After receiving a B.A. with honors in English from Amherst, Bacon earned M.B.A. and M.A. degrees in journalism from Columbia University. He has published articles and op-ed pieces on peacekeeping, displacement and other topics in The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, Newsday, The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, World Policy Journal and The Guardian.

###

August 18, 2006
Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.—Music at Amherst opens its 29th season of world-class chamber music with the Parker Quartet on Friday, Sept. 15, in Buckley Recital Hall in the Arms Music Building at Amherst College. Tickets for series subscriptions are on sale until Sept. 15. Five other programs are included in the series.

On Saturday, Oct. 14, at 8 p.m., cellist Pieter Wispelwey and pianist Dejan Lazic will perform a program of Beethoven sonatas.

On Saturday, Dec. 2, at 8 p.m., the Ying Quartet will present a program featuring the works of Smetana and Mozart, and also two works commissioned for the quartet.

On Sunday, Feb. 25, at 3 p.m., pianist Peter Serkin returns for his fourth Music at Amherst appearance.

On Saturday, March 3, at 8 p.m., world renowned musicians Leon Fleisher and Jaime Laredo collaborate in a special performance presented by the Adams Fund. (This performance is open only to series subscribers and Amherst College students.)

On Tuesday, March 13, at 8 p.m., the Music at Amherst season will close with a rare recital appearance by tenor William Burden, accompanied by pianist J.J. Penna.

This schedule is subject to change; latest information can be obtained from the Amherst College Concert Website at www.amherst.edu/~concerts, or by calling the Concert Office at 413/542-2195. Season subscriptions are available until Friday, Sept. 15, for $100-$125 ($85-$110 for seniors, and $30-$50 for students). For more information and brochures call the Concert Office at 413/542-2195.

###

August 16, 2006
Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.—Nasser Hussain, assistant professor of law, jurisprudence and social thought, and Austin Sarat, the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College, have written an essay titled “The Literary Life of Clemency: Pardon Tales in the Contemporary United States” in TriQuarterly 124, the most recent issue of the international journal of writing, art and cultural inquiry published at Northwestern University.

Hussain and Sarat examine the writings of three state governors—the elected officials in this country who enjoy the “sovereign prerogative” in their power to pardon criminals lawfully tried, convicted and sentenced—who justified in their narratives their seeming “disregard of settled law.” In 2003 Illinois governor George Ryan commuted 164 death sentences and delivered a 22-page, hour-long speech he titled “I Must Act.” Twenty years after he left the governor’s office in California, Edmund G. (Pat) Brown published a memoir, Public Justice, Private Mercy (1989), that examined his conflicting treatment of various clemency pleas. An earlier governor of Ohio, Michael DiSalle, had written The Power of Life or Death (1965), in which he expressed the agonies of such decisions.

The governors’ literary efforts seek “some rhetorical trope that connects what is in the end a personal choice with larger cultural and political values,” Hussain and Sarat say “In the face of clemency’s lawful lawlessness and its seemingly anomalous place in a constitutional democracy,” they conclude, “contemporary pardon tales provide some semblance of order.”

Hussain, who received a B.A. degree from Yale University (1988), has both an M.A. (1990) and a Ph.D. (1995) from the University of California at Berkeley. Before coming to Amherst in 1994, Hussain was a fellow with the Harvard University Society of Fellows. His 2003 book, The Jurisprudence of Emergency, analyzed the historical uses of a host of emergency powers, ranging from the suspension of habeas corpus to the use of military tribunals.

Sarat, who has taught at Amherst since 1974, is author, co-author or editor of more than 50 books, including When the State Kills and Law, Violence, and the Possibility of Justice. He was the co-author of Something to Believe In: Politics, Professionalism and Cause Lawyering (2004) and co-editor of From Lynch Mobs to the Killing State (2006) and Law on the Screen (2004). His most recent book is Mercy on Trial: What It Means to Stop an Execution (2006). His teaching has been featured in The New York Times and on the NBC Today Show. Sarat was the co-recipient of the 2004 Reginald Heber Smith Award given biennially to honor the best scholarship on “the subject of equal access to justice,” and has served as president of the Law and Society Association and of the Association for the Study of Law, Culture, and the Humanities.

###

August 4, 2006
Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.—The Emily Dickinson Museum: The Homestead and The Evergreens has announced that its Board of Governors has adopted a new master plan that will serve as the long-range planning tool for the restoration and improvement of the museum site.

The master plan was initiated in November 2004, a year after the Homestead and The Evergreens, the two adjacent historic houses closely associated with poet Emily Dickinson, merged into a single museum. “Previously owned and operated separately, the reorganization allowed the museum’s new Board of Governors to consider the long-term future of the combined site from a fresh—but truly historic—perspective,” explained Jane Wald, the museum’s executive director. The museum commissioned preservation architect M. Jeffrey Baker, of the Albany, N.Y., firm Mesick Cohen Wilson Baker, LLP, to prepare a master plan based on careful review of its buildings, grounds, historic documents and other related material. The result is a comprehensive blueprint for restoration and care of the Homestead and The Evergreens and for their shared landscape. It also provides options for additional space to accommodate the program requirements of the increasing number of visitors anticipated in coming years.

The plan emerges from the board’s strategic vision for the museum. “We want to employ the assets of Dickinson’s literary legacy and her family’s property to widen the circle of those who encounter the power of her poetry,” states board chair Polly Longsworth. “Home was so important to Dickinson, as a concept, as a place. Careful stewardship of her home, which formed the core from which she explored ‘circumference’ (one of her key images), helps orient the museum’s countless visitors within her experience.”

The master plan recommends restoring the interiors of both Dickinson homes to represent more accurately what the poet and her family knew when they occupied the houses. Examples of specific treatments include refurbishing the poet’s bedroom, where she composed her verse late into the night, and reconstructing the glass conservatory where she tended exotic plants in winter.

Another of the important projects in the plan involves rehabilitation of the 19th-century groundscape so loved by the poet that it was a vital presence in her poems. “Each member of the Dickinson family had a particular interest in nature, horticulture or landscape design,” said Wald. “The gradual change in the property’s character from the working gardens on the Homestead side to the carefully designed park on the Evergreens side reflected these interdependent interests.” The master plan proposes to protect historic landscape features while re-creating a Dickinson-era planting scheme.

Recommendations range from replacement of the overgrown hemlock hedge fronting the property to potential reconstruction of the property’s barn. This would fill out a major interpretive element of family life on the three-acre estate, as well as provide much-needed space to accommodate visitor services and programs, collections storage and exhibits.

The museum’s board anticipates that execution of the full master plan, estimated at $13 million in today’s dollars, will be phased as the extensive fund-raising required will permit. “The plan gives us a lot to think about and choose from in the years ahead,” said Longsworth. “We hope that Dickinson admirers across the country and around the world will want to be a part of the museum’s exciting future.”

Announcement of the master plan comes on the heels of a successful completion of an initial $705,000 campaign. Spurred by a matching grant of $200,000 secured with the help of Rep. John Olver from the Save America’s Treasures program of the National Park Service, the museum’s board quietly raised the required match for the federal grant. A master plan was one of several objectives of the campaign, which also funded the exterior restoration of the Dickinson Homestead, completed in 2004, and secured funds for critical infrastructure improvements.

The next steps for the museum are to address urgent infrastructure concerns: aging electrical wiring at the Homestead, fire security and water infiltration in the cellars of both houses. The work is currently underway, and scheduled for completion in the summer of 2007.

“Once completed,” Wald said, “our upgraded mechanical systems and water control measures will vastly improve our ability to care properly for the Dickinson houses and collections. They’ll be the foundation for progress toward our ultimate restoration goals, so that every visitor can experience Dickinson’s legacy in the family homes she knew.”

The Emily Dickinson Museum: The Homestead and The Evergreens is owned by the Trustees of Amherst College. For more information about the museum, please call 413/542-8161 or visit the Website at www.emilydickinsonmuseum.org.

###

August 4, 2006
Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.—The Emily Dickinson Museum: The Homestead and The Evergreens has announced that its Board of Governors has promoted Jane H. Wald to executive director, effective July 1. Formerly director of resources and collections, she has been with the museum since the Dickinson Homestead and The Evergreens, two historic houses associated with the poet Emily Dickinson, merged in 2003. Wald’s promotion represents a slight shift in the museum’s administrative structure and comes on the heels of the announcement by the board of the successful conclusion of its capital campaign and the completion of its master plan. Wald will continue her oversight of resources and collections while assuming new challenges of securing greater funding for the museum’s growing needs and implementing the initiatives outlined in the master plan.

Wald has served since 2004 as the museum’s co-director with Cindy Dickinson, director of programming and interpretation. Dickinson will continue in her role of developing and guiding the museum’s expanding array of tours and programs for the public.

Wald graduated from Bryn Mawr College, studied historical archaeology at the College of William and Mary and received a graduate degree in American history from Princeton University. Prior to her tenure at the Emily Dickinson Museum, Wald served as assistant director of development and marketing at Old Sturbridge Village and director of The Evergreens, under the Martha Dickinson Bianchi Trust. Upon the merger of the Homestead and The Evergreens in 2003, she became the museum’s associate director.

The Emily Dickinson Museum: The Homestead and The Evergreens is owned by the Trustees of Amherst College. For more information about the museum, please call 413/542-8161 or visit the Emily Dickinson Museum’s website.

###

August 31, 2006
Contact:
Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.—Beginning Wednesday, Sept. 6, students, faculty and staff at Amherst College will have two fewer reasons to drive an inefficient private car on campus: a pair of brand-new Toyota Priuses, offered by Zipcar, the country’s largest car-sharing company. The gas-electric hybrid vehicles will reduce air pollution, decrease the number of cars on campus, reduce parking demand and provide convenient low-cost access to vehicles for students without cars.

After the college purchased two hybrid college fleet vehicles last year in an effort to reduce carbon emissions, Jim Brassord, the director of facilities management and planning at Amherst, decided that only hybrid Zipcars made sense. “We will add more Zipcars if the response is as enthusiastic as we expect from the environmentally and financially savvy Amherst College community,” says Brassord. The hybrid Priuses, which also feature XM Satellite Radio, will be conveniently parked in front of the Keefe Campus Center.

Amherst is one of three colleges nationwide that offers Zipcar access to all students aged 18 or older. Twenty-four hours a day and up to a year in advance, Zipcar members will be able to reserve a car online or by telephone. To become a member, a student, faculty member or staff member must complete an online application. Once approved by the company, he or she will receive a “Zipcard” that provides automated access to unlock and drive any Zipcar. A separate gas card is in the car’s visor. The company pays for gas, and the expense is built into the rental cost. The hourly rate for a car is $7; the daily rate is $55.

Starting with 22 cars in 1999, Zipcar now has 1,700, and estimates that each Zipcar eliminates the need for more than 20 privately owned vehicles. With more than 65,000 members and 1,700 vehicles nationwide, Zipcar estimates that it has taken 20,000 vehicles “off the road.”

Amherst College is committed to the practice of sustainability: meeting its needs for energy while preserving the ecological, social and economic systems which we all rely upon. In steps both great and small, the college tries to reduce the amount of energy consumed and the impact on the environment.

In order to burn fewer fossil fuels in college vehicles and to reduce carbon emissions, Amherst already has two hybrid vehicles in its pool. Amherst has replaced large passenger vans with mini-vans that use less gas. All heavy equipment has been converted to “bio-diesel,” a clean-burning fuel derived from agricultural products.

Even in the construction of buildings, Amherst is thinking about sustainability. Whenever possible—as when some of the oldest campus structures, North and South College, Morris Pratt and Morrow Dormitories, Appleton and Williston Hall and Charles Pratt, the geology building which is being converted to a dormitory, needed extensive modernization—existing structures are preserved and rebuilt from the inside out.

###

August 31, 2006
Contact:
Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.—John Deutch, Amherst College Class of ’60 and the former director of the CIA, will speak on “America’s Energy Future” at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 12, in Cole Assembly Room in Converse Hall at Amherst College. Sponsored by the Victor S. Johnson 1882-1943 Lectureship Fund, Deutch’s talk is free and open to the public.

An institute professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Deutch has been a member of the M.I.T. faculty since 1970. He has published technical papers in physical chemistry, technology, energy, international security and public policy issues, and served in significant government and academic posts throughout his career. In May 1995, Deutch was sworn in as director of Central Intelligence, a position he held until December 1996. Earlier, Deutch had served as the deputy secretary of defense and undersecretary of defense for acquisitions and technology, and in the U.S. Department of Energy.

Deutch has served on the President’s Nuclear Safety Oversight Committee (1980-81), the President’s Commission on Strategic Forces (1983), the White House Science Council (1985-89), the President’s Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology (1997-2001), the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board (1990-93), the President’s Commission on Aviation Safety and Security (1996), the Commission on Reducing and Protecting Government Secrecy (1996) and as chairman of the Commission to Assess the Organization of the Federal Government to Combat the Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction (1998-99).

Deutch has received fellowships and honors from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1978), the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (Research Fellow 1967-69) and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation (Memorial Fellow 1974-75). He has received Public Service Medals from the Department of Energy (1980), the Department of State (1980), the Department of Defense (1994 and 1995), the Department of the Army (1995), the Department of the Navy (1995), the Department of the Air Force (1995) and the Coast Guard (1995). He has also received the Central Intelligence Distinguished Intelligence Medal (1996) and the Intelligence Community Distinguished Intelligence Medal (1996).

After receiving a B.A. in history and economics from Amherst College, Deutch earned the B.S. degree in chemical engineering and a Ph.D. in physical chemistry from M.I.T. He holds honorary degrees from Amherst College, University of Lowell and Northeastern University. He serves as director for the following publicly held companies: Citigroup, Cummins, Raytheon and Schlumberger Ltd. He is a trustee of Resources for the Future, the Urban Institute and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

###

August 31, 2006
Contact:
Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.—The Mead Art Museum at Amherst College will present “George Bellows: A Ringside Seat” from Sept. 5 through Dec. 10. In conjunction with this exhibition, the Archives and Special Collections at the Amherst College Library will host “George Bellows: A Family Festival.” These exhibitions are devoted to the early 20th-century American artist George Wesley Bellows (1882-1925). His remarkable oeuvre offers a ringside seat into his life as it represents an intrinsic synthesis between the artist, his choice of subjects and his particular vehicles for expression.

The Mead will host several events in conjunction with these exhibitions.

• Marianne Doezema, Florence Finch Abbott Director at the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, will give a talk at 4:30 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 14, in Stirn Auditorium, titled “Realism and Resonance: The Urban Landscape in George Bellows’ Art.” A reception will follow at the Archives and Special Collections at the Robert Frost Library.
  
• At 1 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 27, in the Fairchild Gallery, Trinkett Clark, the curator of American art at the Mead, and Daria D’Arienzo, the head of archives and special collections at the Robert Frost Library, will give a talk on “George Bellows and His Circle of Friends.”
  
• At 1 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 10, in the Fairchild Gallery, Billy T. McBride, coach of football and women’s basketball at Amherst, will give a talk titled “Through the Ropes,” about boxing and the Bellows images.

All events are free and open to the public.

Born in Columbus, Ohio, Bellows studied with the painter Robert Henri in New York. A leading force in the New York art world, Henri encouraged his students to render their urban environment with candor and bravura, depicting both the grit and the glory of their surroundings. Whether he worked on canvas or on paper, Bellows captured the world he inhabited with honesty and integrity. His choice of unconventional subjects chronicled the changing social fabric of America and linked the artist with his contemporaries; for their straightforward portrayals of everyday life, these artists were dubbed the “Ashcan School” by some of their harsher critics.

Throughout his life Bellows rendered family and friends with great candor and sympathy; his poignant portraits reveal an intimate side to the artist that is both compassionate and humorous. Many of his most striking portraits were of his wife, Emma, and their two daughters, Anne and Jean.
Bellows found inspiration in his surroundings and depicted the verdant, pastoral countryside in various seasons and volatile climates.

Bellows was an athlete of some note, having played baseball for a semi-professional baseball team before concentrating on his artistic prowess, and recorded athletic events; boxing became an ideal theme as it allowed him to show the power and grace of the human form as he underscored the spectacle of the sport with the drama and energy that emanated from the ring.

Perhaps the most revolutionary of Bellows’ contributions was his willingness to explore the new urban environment, celebrating the commonplace in all of its grit and glory. He embraced subjects that had social punch, such as the hardscrabble life of the slum dweller, the unorthodox prayer meetings of the religious fanatic Billy Sunday, and the atrocities of the first World War indeed, the war provided compelling fodder for a potent and graphic series of paintings and lithographs produced in 1918.

Bellows’ paintings display a vibrant palette and lively, expressionistic brushwork, while his drawings and prints demonstrate his proficiency as a draftsman and printmaker. His incisive scenes of life in the urban tenement provide passionate vignettes that probe social injustices, the agonies of war and other socio-political issues.

Amherst College and the Mead Art Museum are fortunate to possess extensive holdings of work by George Bellows, including his personal papers and memorabilia which are housed in the Archives and Special Collections at the Amherst College Library. Using material from both of these rich resources, and augmented with loans from nearby museums and collections, “George Bellows: A Ringside Seat” consists of four themes that Bellows explored in his work: Sights and Sounds (the artist’s rural and urban surroundings); Through the Ropes (sporting images, particularly in the boxing ring); The Changing World (social and political issues); and The Artist’s Circle (portraits of family and friends, along with material selected by Daria D’Arienzo, head of archives and special collections at Amherst). The exhibition, publication and related events are supported by the Charles Morgan Fund and the Hall and Kate Peterson Fund.

In conjunction with the Mead’s exhibition, the Archives and Special Collections at the Amherst College Library will host a satellite exhibition titled “George Bellows: A Family Festival.” Curated by Daria D’Arienzo, head of Archives and Special Collections at Amherst, this exhibition will feature material drawn from the George Wesley Bellows Papers and The Charles H. Morgan Papers on George Wesley Bellows in the Amherst College Library. “George Bellows: A Family Festival” will present an insightful perspective into Bellows’ life. Though famous as an artist, Bellows did not create an “artistic persona,” but remained true to himself. His engaging personality is reflected in this exhibition through memorabilia from the artist’s youth, scrapbooks, family photographs, manuscript letters between Bellows and his circle of family and friends and the creative work of the Bellows daughters (especially their childhood magazines, The Enjoyer and The Storyteller). This exhibition will offer an intimate view into the life of Bellows and his immediate and extended family, including friends and colleagues, and explore their role in the evolution of the artist’s career. Together, these two exhibitions provide a remarkable opportunity to learn more about George Bellows and his inspirations.

The Mead Art Museum is open Tuesday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and Thursday evenings until 9 p.m. Additional information is available on the museum’s Website, or by calling the museum at 413/542-2335. The Amherst College Archives and Special Collections, located in the Robert Frost Library, are open Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. until noon and from 1 to 4 p.m. Admission and all events are free and open to the public.

###

August 28, 2006
Contact:
Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.—At Amherst College 35 first-year students, 10 student trip leaders, and two trip coordinators will take part in an intense three-day, three-night trip, staying in a community center in the heart of Holyoke, where they will participate in service activities, presentations and in interactive workshops that raise awareness about community empowerment, poverty and institutional racism. These trips are the first chance that students have to begin building relationships with non-profit organizations, community organizers and activists and educators in the Pioneer Valley. On Friday, Sept. 1, all 45 trip leaders and participants, with Amherst College Outreach Office staff Scott Laidlaw, Karen M. Lee and Maggie Mattaini ’09 and Jen Roberge ’07, the student trip coordinators, will work on a farm run by Nuestras Raices, an organization dedicated to community development in Holyoke, through projects relating to food, agriculture and the environment.

Each afternoon, small groups of students will head to a variety of sites in the Holyoke area—such as the YMCA, the Food Bank Farm, Soldiers’ Home, Habitat for Humanity, Girls Inc., Providence Ministries and Nuestras Raices—to learn about the organization and do service work in the community. For example, among other work, they will be building houses, painting murals, harvesting vegetables, sorting through donations at a food pantry and hosting an ice cream social for war veterans.

The trip aims to introduce new students to Holyoke as an example of a dynamic community coming together and working creatively to address its problems. Within the context of Holyoke, students will engage in dialogue about the relationship of college students with communities in need and explore how students can be involved in these communities with mutual respect, commitment and beneficence.

Fifteen miles south of Amherst, Holyoke was the first planned city in the U.S. and once a thriving industrial center. The city experienced a major economic downturn between 1945 and the 1970s due to deindustrialization. Along with the closure of factories and mills came significant job losses and major economic and social hardships. According to a census in 2000, Holyoke is one of the poorest cities in Massachusetts, and the median household income is $30,441.

In the summer Amherst College received a philanthropic investment of more than $13 million from the Argosy Foundation to establish a Center for Community Engagement, which, says Anthony W. Marx, the president of the college, “will encourage the integration of ideals and action by drawing hundreds of Amherst students into community service through linked curricular and co-curricular programs. Amherst aims to graduate thoughtful and active citizens—men and women who not only care deeply about the pressing problems facing our society today, but also have the skills, experience and determination to create positive change in their communities.” Noting Amherst’s long history of support for a range of nonprofits in the Pioneer Valley, Marx added, “We are all enthusiastic at the prospect of strengthening Amherst's partnerships with organizations serving our community and of forging new relationships with nonprofits further afield. Our students are eager to learn from those who have dedicated their lives to serving others.”

Last year, one in four Amherst students volunteered locally as mentors or tutors to children in area public schools, at domestic-violence prevention programs, hospitals and other valuable community organizations.

In addition to the work, community members and student leaders will facilitate interactive discussions, workshops and panels on such subjects such as equality in education, youth empowerment and the cycle of poverty.

###