Joe Belmont Group Pays Tribute to Wes Montgomery at Amherst College Feb. 11

January 25, 2007
Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.—Amherst College jazz guitar instructor Joe Belmont will bring together the Amherst jazz faculty to perform “A Tribute to Wes Montgomery” at 7 p.m. on Sunday, Feb. 11, in Buckley Recital Hall in the Arms Music Building at Amherst College. Sponsored by the music department at Amherst, the performance is free and open to the public.

Belmont spent a year extensively learning and playing along with recordings of legendary jazz guitarist Wes Montgomery, and this show is the result. The tribute had its debut at the Iron Horse Music Hall in Northampton in November. The concert will feature Belmont on guitars, Paul Arslanian on piano, Dave Shapiro on bass, Claire Arenius on drums and special guest Bruce Diehl, director of jazz studies at Amherst, on saxophones.

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Amherst College Professor Martha Sandweiss is Selected for Bellagio Residency

January 24, 2007
Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.—Martha Sandweiss, a professor of American studies and history at Amherst College, has been selected by the Rockefeller Foundation as a scholarly resident in the social sciences at its Bellagio Study and Conference Center in Italy. Sandweiss will use the residency to work on her forthcoming book, “Passing Strange: The Secret Life of Clarence King,” about a pioneering 19th-century American geologist and explorer.

A member of the Amherst College faculty since 1989, Sandweiss was also the director of the Mead Art Museum from 1989 until 1997, and was formerly the curator of photographs at the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth, Texas. 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) and Print the Legend: Photography and the American West (2002), 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.

A Bellagio residency provides four weeks for critical thinking, disciplined work, individual reflection and collegial engagement, uninterrupted by the usual professional and personal demands. Sandweiss will be one of 47 residents this year, chosen from among 431 applicants, who come from 15 different countries and work in a variety of disciplines in the social sciences, physical sciences, humanities, creative arts and the non-profit sector. Detailed information about the Bellagio residency program can be found on the center’s Website.

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Poet Michael Collier to Read at Amherst College Feb. 15

January 24, 2007
Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.—Michael Collier, the poet laureate of Maryland from 2001 through 2004, will read at 8 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 15, in the Pruyne Lecture Hall (Fayerweather 115) at Amherst College. The reading is sponsored by the Creative Writing Center, and is free and open to the public. Refreshments will be served.

A native of Phoenix, Ariz., Collier has been praised by the Washington Post for his “elegant, accessible and closely observed poems.” He has written five books of poetry: The Clasp (1986), The Folded Heart (1989), The Neighbor (1995), The Ledge (2000) and Dark Wild Realm (2006). The Ledge was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.

The recipient of Guggenheim, National Endowment for the Arts, and Thomas Watson fellowships, Collier is currently a professor of English at the University of Maryland, where he serves as co-director of the creative writing program. He also served as the director of the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference at Middlebury College. He received a B.A. degree from Connecticut College and an M.F.A. from the University of Arizona.

The Amherst College Creative Writing Center sponsors a yearly reading series featuring both emerging and established authors. For more information, please call 413/542-8200.

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Amherst College Football Team Huddles for Habitat for Humanity

January 22, 2007
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AMHERST, Mass.—Members of the Amherst College football team are putting their shoulders into a different kind of workout this week: building a Habitat for Humanity home. The student athletes and their coaches will be spending their days, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., working at the Stanley Street site this week.

“These guys do lot of community service all year,” says E.J. Mills, the head football coach at Amherst. “Taylor Brown [’09, Boulder, Colo.,] has been working with Habitat and suggested that this might be a good job for the team.” The student athletes have returned early to campus to tackle the job, before spring semester classes begin next week.

Amherst College has provided the land for the construction of four new homes for low-income residents of the town of Amherst. Three acres of college land in Amherst were donated to the local chapter of the internationally active group that has brought capital, rather than charity, to the poor since 1976. Construction of the first home in Amherst began in the fall of 2006.

Pioneer Valley Habitat for Humanity, the local chapter of the national group, serves the Hampshire and Franklin County area. Pioneer Valley Habitat is an ecumenical housing ministry dedicated to building homes in partnership with families in need. By the end of 2006, Pioneer Valley Habitat will have built 22 homes in the Pioneer Valley, working with homeowner families who live in the homes that they helped build. Homeowner families buy their homes through no-profit, zero-interest mortgages. More information is available at Pioneer Valley Habitat's website.

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Jeremiah A. Wright To Celebrate the Life of Dr. Martin Luther King at Amherst College Feb. 9

January 19, 2007
Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.—The Rev. Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, the pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, will lead the annual interfaith service in celebration of the life of civil rights leader the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 9, in Johnson Chapel at Amherst College. The service will include music performed by Amherst College students, readings from King’s writings and an address by Wright, known as a stirring speaker. The public is invited to arrive early to listen to recorded speeches of King at 7:00 p.m. in Johnson Chapel.

Wright holds a Doctor of Ministry degree from United Theological Seminary, M.A. degrees from Howard University and the University of Chicago Divinity School, and seven honorary doctorate degrees. He has lectured at seminaries and universities and has represented Trinity and The United Church of Christ around the world.

Under Wright’s leadership, Trinity United Church of Christ adopted the motto “Unashamedly Black and Unapologetically Christian” and has set out since 1972 to make activism within and on behalf of the African-American community its mission. An outspoken community leader, Wright has been vocal in making once-taboo issues, such as AIDS, priorities in the African-American church. He combines political activism with dedication to the tradition of African-American sermonizing.

Wright has received many awards, including three presidential commendations. An accomplished musician and author, Wright has written three books: What Makes You So Strong? (1993), Africans Who Shaped Our Faith (1995) and What Can Happen When We Pray (2002). He is a co-author of When Black Men Stand Up for God: Reflections on the Million Man March (1996). He was once named one of Ebony’s top 15 preachers. In addition to national and international ministry, Wright serves on several boards of directors and committees. Married to the Rev. Ramah Reed Wright, Wright has five children and three grandchildren.

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Richard Rodriguez and Victor Davis Hanson To Discuss American Immigration at Amherst College Jan. 23

January 19, 2007
Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.—Two leading public intellectuals will discuss issues related to immigration in a public forum to be held at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 23, in the Cole Assembly Room at Amherst College. The panel, on “The Public Discourse of Immigration in the United States,” will feature renowned Mexican-American memoirist Richard Rodriguez and classicist and historian Victor Davis Hanson, a fellow at the Hoover Institution. The event is open to the public at no charge.

This panel is the second in a series of three free public discussions of timely issues being held at Amherst in January. The discussions, part of the Interterm Colloquia, are designed to connect intellectual theories and ideas to real-world issues. The third discussion, on public education, will take place Jan. 27.

Victor Davis Hanson is the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. A well-known scholar of ancient warfare and a commentator on modern warfare, he is a military historian, columnist, essayist and former classics professor. Educated at the University of California, Santa Cruz, the American School of Classical Studies and Stanford University, he lives and works on a farm near Selma, Calif., where he was born in 1953. He has served as a fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences in Stanford, Calif., a visiting professor of classics at Stanford University, an Alexander Onassis Fellow and the visiting Shifrin Chair of Military History at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis. Hanson is a recipient of the Eric Breindel Award for opinion journalism.

Hanson has written widely on Greek, agrarian and military history, as well as contemporary culture. He is perhaps best known for 2001 book, Carnage and Culture. His other books include Mexifornia: A State of Becoming (2003) and Ripples of Battle (2003).

Hanson has contributed essays to The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the International Herald Tribune and other publications. He has been interviewed often on National Public Radio, PBS and C-Span. He is a columnist for the National Review Online and serves on the editorial board of Arion, the Military History Quarterly and City Journal, as well as the board of the Claremont Institute.

The child of Mexican immigrants to San Francisco, Richard Rodriguez is perhaps best known as the author of Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez (1982). His other books include Mexico’s Children (1990), Days of Obligation: An Argument With My Mexican Father (1992) and Brown: The Last Discovery of America (2002). An editor at Pacific News Service, Rodriguez has published articles in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the American Scholar, Time and other publications. He is a contributing editor for Harper’s Magazine, U.S. News & World Report and the Sunday Opinion section of the Los Angeles Times.

Rodriguez received a 1997 George Foster Peabody Award for his PBS NewsHour essays on American life. Other awards include the Frankel Medal from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the International Journalism Award from the World Affairs Council of California.

Rodriguez spoke Spanish until he enrolled in a Catholic school at age 6. As a youth in Sacramento, he delivered newspapers and worked as a gardener. Rodriguez received a B.A. degree from Stanford University, an M.A. degree from Columbia University and a Ph.D. in English Renaissance literature from the University of California, Berkeley, He attended the Warburg Institute in London on a Fulbright fellowship.

The talk by Davis and Rodriguez is part of a new program of Interterm Colloquia at Amherst College. New at the college this January, the Interterm Colloquia provide students with an opportunity to engage more deeply in interdisciplinary work while connecting intellectual theories and ideas to complex, real-world problems, and to explore pressing societal concerns in depth. Interterm at Amherst College is a three-week period during the January break when students are given the opportunity to take informal non-credit courses, work on a senior thesis, take part in an internship, participate in community service or take a course at one of the other Five College campuses.

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"Should 'No Child' be Left Behind?"; Wendy Puriefoy and William Howell Joined by Amherst Superintendent, Teacher for Open Forum

January 19, 2007
Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.—A panel of national school-reform advocates and Amherst school teachers and administrators will discuss “Should No Child be Left Behind?”at 7 p.m. on Saturday, Jan. 27, in the Cole Assembly Room in Converse Hall at Amherst College. The panel will feature Wendy Puriefoy, founding president of the Public Education Network; public policy theorist William Howell of the University of Chicago; Jere Hochman, superintendent of the Amherst Regional Public Schools; and Michael Morris, a 2000 Amherst College graduate who now teaches 5th and 6th grade at Fort River School in Amherst. The discussion, which will focus on issues of school choice and educational access, is open to the public at no charge.

Wendy Puriefoy is a nationally recognized expert on issues of school reform and civil society. Her activism in this area began in the 1970s, when she served as a special monitor of the court-ordered desegregation plan for Boston’s public schools. In 1991, she became the founding president of the Public Education Network. Under her leadership, PEN has grown into the nation’s largest network of community-based school reform organizations and a leading force behind systemic reform initiatives in school finance, governance, curriculum, parent involvement, libraries and student health. A frequent author and speaker on topics related to education, she also serves on a number of national committees and boards.

William Howell is an associate professor in the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago. Before coming to the Harris School, Howell taught in the government department at Harvard University. He also served as deputy director of the Program on Education Policy and Governance and has written on a variety of education policy initiatives, including school vouchers, charter schools and the No Child Left Behind Act. He is the co-author of The Education Gap: Vouchers and Urban Schools (2002) and the editor of Besieged: School Boards and the Future of Education Politics (2005). He has also written widely on the U.S. presidency. A frequent contributor to academic journals, Howell was named Harvard’s 2004-05 Distinguished Research Faculty Associate and C. Douglas Dillon Scholar.

Jere Hochman is the superintendent of the Amherst Regional Public School system and the author of Thinking About Middle Schools. Before coming to Amherst, he spent 31 years as a teacher, principal and superintendent in the St. Louis area, where he was closely involved with the city’s lauded desegregation plan.

This panel on public education is part of a new program of Interterm Colloquia at Amherst College. New at the college this January, the Interterm Colloquia provide students with an opportunity to engage more deeply in interdisciplinary work while connecting intellectual theories and ideas to complex, real-world problems, and to explore pressing societal concerns in depth. Interterm at Amherst College is a three-week period during the January break when students are given the opportunity to take informal non-credit courses, work on a senior thesis, take part in an internship, participate in community service or take a course at one of the other Five College campuses.

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“Stray Dog Cabaret” Poetry at Amherst Center for Russian Culture Feb. 5

January 19, 2007
Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.—The Amherst Center for Russian Culture will host a reading of poems by Anna Akhmatova, Osip Mandelstam, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Marina Tsvetaeva and other Russian modernists at 4:30 p.m. on Monday, Feb. 5, at the Center for Russian Culture (second floor, Webster Hall) at Amherst College. The event will celebrate the publication of Paul Schmidt’s The Stray Dog Cabaret: A Book of Russian Poems (2006), co-edited by Catherine Ciepiela, professor of Russian at Amherst, and Honor Moore. Contemporary American poets April Bernard, Alexander Chee, Edwin Frank, Daniel Hall, James Maraniss, Honor Moore and Lloyd Schwartz will perform the parts of the Russian poets. Accompanied by cabaret-style music and refreshments, the performance is sponsored by the Center for Russian Culture and the Creative Writing Program at Amherst College.

Paul Schmidt (1934-1999) was a professor of Russian at the University of Texas at Austin. His translations included the plays of Anton Chekhov and the avant-garde writings of Velimir Khlebnikov. Schmidt also had a distinguished theater career, providing translations and performing in collaborations with the Wooster Group, Robert Wilson and Peter Sellars. He also worked with the director and composer Elizabeth Swados on a musical play using famous lyric poems and sequences from the great era of Russian modernism, set in a café – The Stray Dog—where artists and poets gathered. The translations he did for that production are the basis of the anthology The Stray Dog Cabaret. The book is a memorial to the time—beginning around 1906, and concluding after Stalin’s rise to power—when Alexander Blok and Anna Akhmatova created pellucid elegiac stanzas, Osip Mandelstam meditated on existential dilemmas, Vladimir Mayakosky exploded into radical free verse and Khlebnikov obliterated the line between prophecy and nonsense.

April Bernard is a poet, novelist and essayist. She has three collections of poems: Blackbird Bye Bye (which won the 1989 Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets), Psalms (1993) and Swan Electric (2002). Her novel Pirate Jenny appeared in 1990. She has been on the faculty of the MFA Writing Seminars at Bennington since 1996.

Alexander Chee has received numerous prizes for his short fiction and the Lambda Literary Award for his first novel, Edinburgh(2001). He is completing a second novel, Queen of the Night, about a 19th-century opera singer. He is currently a visiting writer at Amherst College.

Edwin Frank is a poet and the editor of the New York Review of Books series. Among other books, he has edited Writers Rediscover Literature’s Hidden Classics (2003), with contributions by John Updike, Arthur C. Danto, Toni Morrison, Francine Prose and others.

Daniel Hall is writer-in-residence at Amherst College and author of two books of poems, Hermit with Landscape, which was selected for the 1990 Yale Series of Younger Poets, and Strange Relation (1996). His new book of poems, Under Sleep, will be published this year by the University of Chicago Press.

James Maraniss is a professor of Spanish at Amherst College and the distinguished translator of the novels and essays of Cuban writer Antonio Benitez-Rojo. An authority on Pedro Calderón de la Barca, he wrote the libretto for Lew Spratlan’s Pulitzer Prize-winning opera, Life is a Dream (2000).

Honor Moore is the author of three collections of poems, Memoir (1988), Darling (2001) and Red Shoes (2005). She is also the author of The White Blackbird, a life of her grandmother, the painter Margaret Sargent, a New York Times Notable Book in 1996. Her play Mourning Pictures was produced on Broadway. She is currently completing The Bishop’s Daughter, a memoir of her father, Bishop Paul Moore. She teaches creative writing at the New School and Columbia University.

Lloyd Schwartz is Frederick S. Troy Professor of English at The University of Massachusetts Boston, classical music editor of The Boston Phoenix and a regular commentator for NPR’s Fresh Air. His most recent book of poems is Cairo Traffic (2000), and he is currently co-editing the collected works of Elizabeth Bishop for the Library of America. He is the recipient of a Pulitzer Prize for his music criticism.

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Broadway Bombshell City of Angels at Amherst College Feb. 1, 2 and 3

January 12, 2007
Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.—The Amherst College Department of Music will present the 1990 Broadway hit City of Angels at 8 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 1, Friday, Feb. 2 and Saturday, Feb. 3, in Buckley Recital Hall in the Arms Music Center at Amherst College. General admission tickets are $12, $7 and $4, but the show is free to Amherst College students. Reservations are recommended, and are available online at cityofangels@amherst.edu.

Written by Broadway legends Cy Coleman and Larry Gelbart, City of Angels, a musical comedy in the film noir style, features a stunning, jazz-inspired score. The plot follows Stone, a hard-boiled detective in the Sam Spade style, hot on the trail of an absent heiress. But the story turns on its head when we enter the world of Stine, a frazzled novelist trying to adapt his creation of Stone into a screenplay. The show is a visual feast that bounces between two glitzy worlds of intrigue: the black-and-white, 1940s detective-novel universe of Stone and the glamorous, colorized contemporary Hollywood of Stine, who struggles to maintain his artistic vision in the face of a conniving producer. Angels won six Tony Awards, including Best Musical in 1990, and continues to receive critical praise as what The New York Times calls a “tough period satire with stylistic perfection.”

The Interterm musical has become an annual tradition at Amherst College, with past performances of Candide (2006), La Cage aux Folles (2005) and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (2004). Mark Lane Swanson, director of instrumental music at Amherst, endorses the program’s commitment to putting on shows with artistic depth and a strong ethical message. “I want to choose shows that are an education,” Swanson says, and he hopes that City of Angels, with its focus on preserving one’s self respect and creative integrity, will hit a strong chord with college students.

The Five College student cast is directed by A. Scott Parry, with musical direction by Swanson. As in past years the Amherst College Orchestra will be in the “pit.” This production is funded by the Amherst College Department of Music and the Association of Amherst Students.

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Artist Richard Yarde To Speak on “Visionary Anatomies” at Amherst College Feb. 8

January 12, 2007
Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.—Northampton artist Richard Yarde will speak at 4:30 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 8, in Stirn Auditorium at Amherst College, with a reception to follow in the Mead Art Museum. Yarde is one of the artists featured in “Visionary Anatomies,” an exhibition at the Mead created by the National Academy of Sciences and organized for travel by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service. The exhibit continues at the museum through Sunday, March 18.

A professor of fine art at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Yarde creates intensely personal, large scale works in watercolor, a notoriously unforgiving medium that does not easily lend itself to his scale or subject matter. The New York Times praises Yarde for his “expressive concentration and restraint and his virtuosic control of a difficult medium.” His work has been exhibited in Boston, New York and Washington, D.C. and is part of the permanent collections at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C. and the Museums of Fine Art in Boston and Houston.

“Visionary Anatomies” showcases the work of 11 contemporary artists inspired by human anatomical imagery to express aesthetic, social and cultural ideas. The exhibition of 18 works represents a wide range of media, artistic styles and schools of thought that actively exist in the art world today. The artists featured in the exhibition include Yarde, Stefanie Bürkle, Katherine Du Tiel, Tatiana Garmendia, Joy Garnett, Connie Imboden, Predrag Pajdic, Katherine Sherwood, Frederick Sommer, Mike and Doug Starn and the group (art)n. The talk is free and open to the public.

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. Admission and all events are free and open to the public.

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Andrew Bacevich and Ronald Steel To Discuss Contemporary Issues of American Empire Jan. 21 at Amherst College

January 11, 2007
Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.— Historians Andrew Bacevich and Ronald Steel will discuss “Contemporary Issues of American Empire” at 7:30 p.m. on Sunday, Jan. 21, in the Cole Assembly Room in Converse Hall at Amherst College. The discussion will be moderated by Cullen Murphy ’74, editor-at-large for Vanity Fair. The event is open to the public at no charge.

The word “empire” is back in fashion in characterizing America’s current role in the world. The question is being asked around the world, even in the U.S.: Is America the latest in a long line of dominant powers, or is America’s dominance unique?

This is the first in a series of three open discussions of timely issues—one on the American empire, another on immigration and a third on public education—being held at Amherst College in January.

Bacevich is the author of American Empire: The Realities and Consequences of U.S. Diplomacy (2004), The Imperial Tense: Problems and Prospects of American Empire (2003) and most recently The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War (2005). A professor of international relations at Boston University and a graduate of the U. S. Military Academy, Bacevich received his Ph.D. in American diplomatic history from Princeton University. His essays and reviews have appeared in a wide variety of scholarly and general interest publications, including The Wilson Quarterly, The National Interest, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The Nation, The American Conservative and The New Republic. His op-eds have appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times and USA Today, among other newspapers.

Ronald Steel is the author of many works that examine American relations with other nations, and particularly with Europe. Pax Americana (1967), The End of Alliance (1964) and Temptations of a Superpower (1995) analyze the forces that have governed American foreign relations since World War
II. Imperialists and Other Heroes (1971), Walter Lippmann and the American Century (1980) and In Love With Night: The American Romance with Robert Kennedy (2000) are biographical studies of key individuals in American society and politics. Steel’s primary field of interest is American foreign policy, and includes history and political science as well as sociology, psychology, economics and political anthropology.

Amherst’s Interterm Colloquia feature public talks on timely issues. Mexican-American journalist Richard Rodriguez and classicist and historian Victor Davis Hanson will consider immigration on Tuesday, Jan. 23.

Public school advocate Wendy Puriefoy and educational theorist William Howell will take on public education on Saturday, Jan. 27.

Free and open to the public, each of these events is part of an Interterm Colloquium at Amherst College. New at the college this January, the Interterm Colloquia provide students with an opportunity to engage more deeply in interdisciplinary work while connecting intellectual theories and ideas to complex, real-world problems, and to explore pressing societal concerns in depth. Interterm at Amherst College is a three-week period during the January break when students are given the opportunity to take informal non-credit courses, work on a senior thesis, take part in an internship, participate in community service or take a course at one of the other Five College campuses.

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Amherst College Professor Ilan Stavans’s New Film To Premiere at Festival in New York Jan. 10

January 2, 2007
Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.—The film of a novella by Ilan Stavans, the Lewis-Sebring Professor in Latin American and Latino Culture and Five College 40th Anniversary Professor at Amherst College, will have its United States premiere at the 16th annual New York Jewish Film Festival on Wednesday, Jan. 10, at 3 p.m. at the Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center on 165 West 65th St. (Additional screenings will be held at the Jewish Museum, on Fifth Avenue at 92nd St.) Directed by Alejandro Springall, Morirse esta en Hebreao (My Mexican Shivah) is a dramatic comedy about family and friends in Mexico City who are mourning the passing of their beloved patriarch. The film is co-produced by John Sayles and Maggie Renzi with a score by the Klezmatics. The New York Jewish Film Festival is presented by The Jewish Museum and the Film Society of Lincoln Center.

Set in Polanco, a Jewish quarter of Mexico City, and spoken in Spanish, Yiddish and Hebrew, My Mexican Shivah illustrates how the death of a man results in the celebration of his life. According to Jewish belief, from the moment a Jew is born, he or she is accompanied by two angels: the angel of light and the angel of darkness. With the passing of Moishe, his family and friends gather to sit shivah, the seven-day Jewish mourning ritual. The spirit angels Aleph and Bet, divine accountants, examine the mourners’ actions and conversations about the deceased to decide which angel will accompany Moishe’s soul to the afterlife. The odds are against Moishe. Family dysfunction aside, his friends are attending for their own motives. Mourners include a Catholic ex-lover, an Orthodox ex-convict grandson and a troupe of mariachi musicians. And to make matters worse, while performing his duties, a member of the sacred funeral society Chevra Kadisha is milking the family for all they’re worth, charging for kosher food, slippers and other shivah goods.

Springall has produced such films as Cronos (directed by Guillermo del Toro, 1992), Dollar Mambo (directed by Paul Leduc, 1993), Someone Else’s America (directed by Goran Paskaljevic, 1994) and the TV series En Gudalajara Fue (1994). He directed the TV series Jalisco: Tiempo de Decisiones, which won First Prize at the Latin American Biennale three times in a row, and De Tripas, Corazon (directed by Antonio Urrutia, 1995), which was nominated for an Academy Award. In 1996 he founded Springall Pictures, his production company, and made his directorial debut with Santitos (1999), which has received 17 major international awards. Springall provided production services in Mexico for Frida, directed by Julie Taymor. In 2002, Springall produced Casa de los Babys, directed by John Sayles. My Mexican Shivah was completed in August 2006.

Read more information about the film and Alejandro Springall.

Stavans’s novella was published in The Disappearance: A Novella and Stories (2006). A member of the Amherst faculty since 1993, Stavans is also author of The Hispanic Condition (1995), The Oxford Book of Jewish Stories (1998), On Borrowed Words (2001), The Poetry of Pablo Neruda (2003) and Dictionary Days (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. He is the editor of the forthcoming Norton Anthology of Latino Literature.

Featuring two world, nine United States and nine New York premieres, the New York Jewish Film Festival, running through Thursday, Jan. 25, will present 31 productions illuminating the rich diversity of the international Jewish experience from Canada, Belgium, France, Germany, Great Britain, Israel, Mexico, The Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Russia, Sweden, Switzerland and the United States. Dramas, documentaries, shorts and comedies including films concerned with art, women, families and alternative families are among the festival offerings. A number of the filmmakers will be in New York during the festival to discuss their films. For ticket information call the Jewish Museum at 212/423-3337 or 212/875-5600 or visit www.thejewishmuseum.org or www.flimlinc.com.

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Six Leading American Intellectuals Take On Three Important Public Issues at Amherst College Jan. 21, 23 and 27

January 2, 2007
Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.—Six major American public intellectuals will take part in a series of three open discussions of the American Empire, immigration and public education at Amherst College in January.

Historians Andrew Bacevich and Ronald Steel will discuss American Empire at 7:30 p.m. on Sunday, Jan. 21, in the Cole Assembly Room in Converse Hall.

Mexican-American journalist Richard Rodriguez and classicist and historian Victor Davis Hanson will consider immigration at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 23, in the Cole Assembly Room in Converse Hall.

Public school advocate Wendy Puriefoy and educational theorist William Howell will take on public education at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, Jan. 27, in the Cole Assembly Room in Converse Hall.

Free and open to the public, each of these events will culminate an Interterm Colloquium at Amherst College. New at the college this January, the Interterm Colloquia provide students with an opportunity to engage more deeply in interdisciplinary work, while connecting intellectual theories and ideas to complex, real-world problems, and to explore pressing societal concerns in depth. Interterm at Amherst College is a three-week period during the January break where students are given the opportunity to: take informal non-credit courses, work on a senior thesis, take part in an internship or take a course at one of the other Five College campuses.

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