News & Events 09/2007

September 28, 2007
Contact: Katherine Duke '05
Writer/Editor
Stacey Schmeidel
Director of Public Affairs
413/542-2321

Editor's Note: Tonight's reading has been cancelled due to unforeseen circumstances.

AMHERST, Mass.—Author Yvette Christiansë will read from her work at 8 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 17, at Amherst Books (8 Main Street, Amherst, Mass.). Sponsored by the Amherst College Creative Writing Center, the event is open to the public at no charge.

In a starred review, Kirkus called South African poet Yvette Christiansë’s novel Unconfessed “a gorgeous, devastating song of freedom that will inevitably be compared to Toni Morrison’s Beloved.” The book was a finalist for 2007 Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for a distinguished first book of fiction, and Caroline Leavitt described it as a “stunningly intimate, heart-wrenching history of slave life in Africa.” Christiansë is an associate professor of literature and postcolonial studies at Fordham University.

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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September 28, 2007
Contact: Katherine Duke '05
Writer/Editor
Stacey Schmeidel
Director of Public Affairs
413/542-2321

AMHERST, Mass.—Ethan Clotfelter, assistant professor of biology at Amherst College, has received a grant of $244,541 from the National Science Foundation. The award will support three years of research on the effects of phytoestrogens on animals.

When animals ingest or are exposed to phytoestrogens, these naturally occurring plant compounds amplify the effects of the estrogens that the animals’ own bodies produce. The results are alternations in behavior, reproductive endocrinology and neurophysiology.

Clotfelter’s work will focus on fish, which are likely to experience phytoestrogen contamination from industrial and agricultural sources.

A member of the Amherst faculty since 2003, Clotfelter received a bachelor’s degree in biology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in zoology from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. His primary research concerns the behavioral ecology and physiology of animals, particularly of birds and fish.

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September 28, 2007
Contact: Emanuel Costache '09
Media Relations Intern
Stacey Schmeidel
Director of Public Affairs
413/542-2321

AMHERST, Mass.—Ann Fessler, professor of photography at Rhode Island School of Design and a specialist in installation art, will speak about her work at 4:30 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 4, in Pruyne Lecture Hall at Amherst College. Sponsored by the department of art and art history, Fessler’s talk is free and open to the public.

Fessler will speak about the development of her visual work, which includes photography and audio/visual installation, over the last 30 years. She will also discuss her acclaimed non-fiction book, The Girls Who Went Away (2006). In it, Fessler uncovers the history of the 1.5 million women who surrendered children for adoption in the several decades before Roe v. Wade—single pregnant women, caught in the middle and shunned by family and friends. They were expelled from schools and sent away to maternity homes to have their children alone, often treated with cold contempt by doctors, nurses and clergy. Of the book, the San Francisco Chronicle wrote: “A collection of deeply moving personal tales bolstered by solid sociological analysis—journalism of the first order.” An adoptee herself, Fessler begins and ends the book with the story of her own successful quest to find her birth mother.

In 2004 Fessler received a prestigious Radcliffe Fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University to complete her extensive, five-year research project for The Girls Who Went Away. She is also the recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Arts; the LEF Foundation, Boston; the Rhode Island Foundation; the Rhode Island Council for the Humanities; Art Matters, New York; and the Maryland State Arts Council.

Fessler received her M.F.A. in photography from the University of Kansas, her M.A. in media studies from Webster University in St. Louis and her B.A. in art from Ohio State University. Her work has been featured at the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore, the California Museum of Photography in Riverside, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art.

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September 28, 2007
Contact: Stacey Schmeidel
Director of Public Affairs
413/542-2321

AMHERST, Mass.—The Colloquium on the American Founding at Amherst College will host a number of lectures on Friday and Saturday, Sept. 28 and 29. The events are open to the public at no charge.

• English writer and philosopher Roger Scruton will lecture on “Faith and the Challenges of Secularism” at 4 p.m. Friday, Sept. 28, in Cole Assembly Room. This event is co-sponsored by the Newman Club.
• Scruton will discuss “Culture Counts: Faith and Feeling in a World Besieged,” on Saturday, Sept. 29, at 9:30 a.m. in the Babbott Room of the Octagon.
• Amy Wax, professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania, will speak on “Race, Wrongs and Remedies: Group Justice in the 21st Century” Saturday, Sept. 29, at 10:30 a.m. in the Babbott Room of the Octagon.
• Judge Diarmuid O’Scannlain of the Ninth Federal Circuit Court of Appeals will give a lecture on “Racial Preferences and the Schools in Seattle,” on Saturday, Sept. 29, at 2 p.m. in Lewis-Sebring Dining Hall.
• Chief Judge John Mercer Walker, Jr. of the Second Federal Circuit Court in New York will give a talk titled “Can the Judges Themselves Violate the Constitution --and Other Matters: A Conversation” on Saturday, Sept. 29, at 3 p.m. in Lewis-Sebring Dining Hall.

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September 24, 2007
Contact: Betsy Siersma
Visiting Curator
Mead Art Museum
413/542-2941
Stacey Schmeidel
Director of Public Affairs
413/542-2321

AMHERST, Mass.—The Amherst College campus community and interested individuals from the broader area community are invited to participate in creating nine large-scale public artworks on Friday, Sept. 28, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on the Valentine/Fayerweather Quad at Amherst College. The artworks—portraits of students, faculty and staff from Amherst College—have been generated by the college’s visiting artist-in-residence Wendy Ewald and guest artist Brett Cook, with participation from students in Ewald’s seminar The Practice of Collaborative Art, members of the campus community and the subjects of the portraits.

The Sept. 28 day of collaborative artmaking is a creative social event. A menu of local and organic food will be provided by the Amherst College Dining Services, and music will be provided by area musicians Chris Buono, D.J. Root and Amherst College students. Food and music will complement opportunities for creative expression in working on the portraits, as well as many chances for dialogue and community connection. There will also be materials for people to work in clay, with cameras and in sketchbooks, all with the intention of reflecting on and representing community and learning.

The project will culminate on Thursday, Nov. 29, when five 10-foot x 30-foot portrait triptychs will be mounted across the campus and an exhibition of one of the triptychs will open at the Mead Art Museum. The Mead exhibition will also include documentation of the collaborative process. The exhibition will run through January 20, 2008, and a catalogue will document and highlight the full experience.

Working collaboratively with communities represents a recent phenomenon, as it upends the notion of the artist working individually within a rarified context. Collaborating with “non-art-world” communities extends and expands the creative potential of artmaking, as it incorporates many different experiences, stories, points of view and ways of seeing. For Wendy Ewald and Brett Cook, it is a way of being as well as a way of working. The rewards of working in a participatory way hinge on generosity and reciprocity.

For more than 30 years photographer Wendy Ewald has taken an unusual artistic path, working with children and adults around the world, encouraging her students to become photographers and working as a “translator” of their images. Using creative collaboration as the basis of the artistic process, she has worked in communities in Labrador, Appalachia, Colombia, India, South Africa, Holland, Mexico, North Carolina and, most recently, Margate in England. Her artistic collaborations have been widely published and exhibited, and she has received recognition for her innovative creative practice, including a MacArthur Fellowship and major grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Andy Warhol Foundation and others. She is currently senior research associate for documentary studies at the Center for International Studies at Duke University, in Durham, N.C., as well as visiting artist in residence at Amherst College.

Brett Cook has exhibited in museums and galleries and has engaged in public projects since 1991. His public works, often ephemeral in nature, have been executed in the U.S. from California to Maine, and internationally in Brazil, Barbados and Mexico. Some have been commissioned by museums or pubic agencies, while others have been self-initiated interventions in abandoned spaces. Among his public projects is a collaboration in South Central Los Angeles addressing divinity, and the Development/Gentrification Project with 10 installations throughout Harlem. The work involves the participation of the subjects, giving people a voice and empowering marginalized communities. His work is currently on view in the exhibition Portraiture Now: Framing Memory at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C.

The Amherst College Collaborative Project is sponsored by the President’s Office, the Mead Art Museum, the Department of Art and Art History and the Center for Community Outreach.

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September 21, 2007
Contact: Sara Leonard
Concert Manager
413/542-2195
Stacey Schmeidel
Director of Public Affairs
413/542-2321

AMHERST, Mass. – The Mixed Choir of the “Estonia” Society will give a concert in Buckley Recital Hall in the Arms Music Center at Amherst College at 9 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 3. The choir will also give a concert at First Congregational Church in Amherst on Thursday, Oct. 4, at 7:30 p.m. The concert at Amherst College is open to the public at no charge. Tickets for the First Congregational Church performance are $10 for adults and $5 for students and children.

Originally established in 1912, the Mixed Choir of the “Estonia” Society was re-established in 1990 after Estonia’s “Singing Revolution” of 1987-1991. The choir has performed throughout Estonia, the Baltics and Europe to increasing acclaim, and has won gold and silver awards at choral competitions in Vienna, Scandinavia and the Baltics.

The Mixed Choir is made up of 50 female and male singers from across Estonia. Their repertoire includes major choral works of Mozart, Bach, Schubert and Mendelssohn, as well as traditional Estonian folk and religious genres and works by contemporary Baltic composers. At Amherst College they will give an exclusively Estonian program. At First Congregational Church the program will be almost exclusively Estonian.

For Amherst College concert information call the Concert Office at 413/542-2195. For First Congregational Church concert information or tickets call 413/253-3456.

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September 17, 2007
Contact: Stacey Schmeidel
Director of Public Affairs
413/542-2321

AMHERST, Mass.—Harvard physicist Eric Mazur will deliver Amherst College’s Phi Beta Kappa lecture, on “How the Mind Tricks Us: Visualizations and Visual Illusions,” at 8 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 4, in Lecture Hall 2 of the Merrill Science Center at Amherst College. The lecture and a reception that follows are open to the public at no charge.

Neurobiology and cognitive psychology have made great progress in understanding how the mind processes information—in particular, visual information. The knowledge we can gain from these fields has important implications for the presentation of visual information and student learning.

A member of the Harvard faculty since 1984, Eric Mazur holds appointments as Harvard College Professor, Gordon McKay Professor of Applied Physics and professor of physics. His research is in optical physics. He also devotes time to finding ways to improve science education. This research has led to the publication of Peer Instruction, a manual that offers methods for teaching large lecture classes interactively.

In 1988 Mazur received a National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator Award and, in 2001 he received the NSF Director’s Award for Distinguished Teaching Scholars. A fellow of the American Physical Society and its Centennial Lecturer in 1998-99, he has been a visiting professor or distinguished lecturer at the University of Leuven in Belgium, the National Taiwan University, Carnegie Mellon University, Hong Kong University and Vanderbilt University. He is the author of hundreds of scientific publications and serves on the editorial board of Journal of Science Education and Technology.

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September 17, 2007
Contact: Katherine Duke ’05
Writer/Editor
413/542-2321
Stacey Schmeidel
Director of Public Affairs
413/542-2321

AMHERST, Mass.—Author Sue Miller will read from her work at 8 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 26, in Pruyne Lecture Hall (Fayerweather 115) at Amherst College. Sponsored by the Amherst College Creative Writing Center, the event is open to the public at no charge.

Miller is the bestselling author of nine books of fiction, including The Good Mother and Inventing the Abbotts. Reviewing While I Was Gone, William H. Pritchard praised both the “patient, unfancy, locally rooted narration that has been Miller’s trademark” and Miller’s “commitment to rendering the weave and texture—above all, the tonality—of the everyday.” Miller’s forthcoming The Senator’s Wife offers another rich portrait of private lives; the book will be published early in 2008.

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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September 17, 2007
Contact: Sara Leonard
Concert Manager
413/542-2195
Stacey Schmeidel
Director of Public Affairs
413/542-2321

AMHERST, Mass. – Senegalese Kora player Youssoupha Sidibe will give a concert in Buckley Recital Hall in the Arms Music Center at Amherst College at 8 p.m. on Sunday, Sept. 23. The event is open to the public at no charge. Seating is by general admission.

Youssoupha Sidibe’s musical career began more than 20 years ago in Senegal, West Africa. He was trained at the National Music Conservatory of Senegal, where he learned to play the Kora, an indigenous harp. Today, Youssoupha’s music fuses traditional West African sounds with the Sufi devotional chanting of the Senegalese Baay Faal community. The angelic sounds of the Kora soulfully carry Youssoupha’s heartrending devotional lyrics and serve to invoke the divine through Sufi sound.

Since his arrival on the international music circuit, Youssoupha has recorded, performed, and collaborated with artists including Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, India.Arie, Charles Neville and Matisyahu. His album, Youth, recorded in collaboration with Matisyahu, has gone gold and was nominated in January 2007 for a Grammy Award for best reggae album of the year.

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September 13, 2007
Contact: Donna M. Abelli
Development and Marketing Manager
The Emily Dickinson Museum
413/542-5084
Stacey Schmeidel
Director of Public Affairs
413/542-2321

AMHERST, Mass.—On Saturday, Sept. 29, from 6 a.m. until approximately midnight, the Emily Dickinson Museum will host its third marathon reading of all 1,789 poems by Emily Dickinson. For the first time, the Poetry Marathon will travel from the Dickinson Homestead into town. The Amherst Town Hall, Frost Library at Amherst College and the Fiber Art Center will all host part of the marathon. This event is free and open to the public.

Each year the marathon attracts poets, writers, journalists, children, college students, families, teachers, poetry lovers and the curious. All are welcome to stay for the 18+ hours or drop in to listen for some of their favorite poems. Anyone who wishes to read Dickinson’s poetry during the marathon is especially encouraged to attend, but listeners are also welcome.

The event will take place rain or shine. For information on how you can participate as a reader in the marathon, please visit www.emilydickinsonmuseum.org/events or e-mail csdickinson@emilydickinsonmuseum.org.

The marathon begins at 6 a.m. at the Emily Dickinson Museum, and continues there until 9 a.m. From 9 a.m. to noon, the marathon takes place at the Amherst Town Hall, located at the corner of Main Street and Boltwood Avenue. The marathon then continues at Amherst College’s Frost Library from noon to 3 p.m. and returns to the Emily Dickinson Museum from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. The ambitious event progresses to the Fiber Art Center, located at 79 South Pleasant St., from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. and resumes at the Emily Dickinson Museum at 9 p.m. until it ends.

This program is part of “BookMarks: A Celebration of the Art of the Book,” a region-wide festival from September 2007 to January 2008 that will bring to life the Pioneer Valley’s great literary traditions through film, family events, lectures and readings.

This initiative is sponsored by the Emily Dickinson Museum and Museums10, a partnership of 10 museums and friends (including Amherst College’s Frost Library, the Mead Art Museum and the Museum of Natural History) within the Pioneer Valley. More information about “BookMarks” is available on the Museums10 Website, www.museums10.org.

The Emily Dickinson Museum: The Dickinson Homestead and The Evergreens is devoted to the story and legacy of poet Emily Dickinson and her family. Owned by the trustees of Amherst College, the museum is overseen by a separate board of governors charged with raising its operating and capital funds. The Dickinson Homestead was the birthplace and residence of the poet Emily Dickinson (1830-1886). The Evergreens was the 1856 home of the poet’s brother and sister-in-law, Austin and Susan Dickinson.

The Emily Dickinson museum is located at 280 Main St. in Amherst, Mass., and the official museum Website is at www.emilydickinsonmusuem.org. Hours for September through October are Wednesday through Sunday, 12:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m.; for November through December 8, hours are Wednesday and Saturday, 12:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. The museum will host extended hours to 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 4, and will be closed the Wednesday before Thanksgiving.

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September 10, 2007
Contact: Stacey Schmeidel
Director of Public Affairs
413/542-2321

AMHERST, Mass.—Author Mark Costello will read from his work at 8 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 19, in Pruyne Lecture Hall at Amherst College. Sponsored by the Amherst College Creative Writing Center, the event is open to the public at no charge.

The co-author, with David Foster Wallace, of Signifying Rappers: Rap and Race in the Urban Present, Mark Costello wrote his first novel, Bag Men, under the pseudonym John Flood while working as a federal prosecutor. But he was nominated as himself for a National Book Award for Big If, his story about a Secret Service agent, politics and paranoia. Writing for The New York Times, Jay McInerney called Big If “a dazzling performance….With this second novel, Costello enters the big leagues of American fiction.”

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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September 10, 2007
Contact: Stacey Schmeidel
Director of Public Affairs
413/542-2321

AMHERST, Mass.—To mark the 200^th anniversary of the establishment of official diplomatic relations between the United States and Russia, the Center for Russian Culture at Amherst College will host a dramatic presentation by actor and scriptwriter Jim Cooke.

The event will take place at 3 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 23, in the Center for Russian Culture (Webster Hall, second floor) at Amherst College. A reception will follow. The event is open to the public at no charge.

The program will take the form of a dramatic dialogue between Adams’ biographer, Dr. Lynn Parsons, and contemporary professional actor and scriptwriter Jim Cooke. Cooke has portrayed such figures from the past as Calvin Coolidge, Daniel Webster and William Lloyd Garrison.

The Amherst College Center for Russian Culture was established through the generous gift of Thomas P. Whitney ’37. The center is made up of what is generally considered to be the world’s largest private holding of Russian books, manuscripts, newspapers and periodicals.

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September 4, 2007
Contact: EmanuelCostache
Public Affairs Intern
413/542-2321
Stacey Schmeidel
Director of Public Affairs
413/542-2321

New Center for Community Engagement Will Open with Sept. 8 Panels on Education, Affordable Housing, Healthy Communities, America’s Prison System

AMHERST, Mass.—To celebrate the opening of the new Center for Community Engagement, Amherst College will host four panel discussions—on America’s prison system, public education, affordable housing and healthy communities—on Saturday, Sept. 8. Featuring national and local leaders, the discussions will take place at 11:45 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. in locations across campus. The events are open to the public at no charge.

A full schedule is below, and biographical information about the panelists follows.

– 11:45 a.m., Pruyne Lecture Hall (Fayerweather 115), “Pathways to College: Feeding the K-16 Pipeline.” Panelists are Wendy Kohler, executive director of program development, Amherst Regional Public Schools; Mike Morris ’00, 5^th/6^th-grade teacher, Fort River School, Amherst; and Rhonda Cobham-Sander, professor of English and black studies at Amherst College.

– 11:45 a.m., Cole Assembly Room, Converse Hall, “Inside-Out: Educating America’s Prisoners.” Panelists are Phil Scraton, professor of criminology and social justice at the Institute of Criminology and Social Justice, Queen’s University, Belfast; and Kristin Bumiller, professor of political science and women’s and gender studies at Amherst College.

– 2:30 p.m., Cole Assembly Room, Converse Hall, “Affordable Housing: Transforming People, Buildings and Communities.” Panelists are Rosanne Haggerty ’82, founder and president, Common Ground; and MJ Adams, executive director, Pioneer Valley Habitat for Humanity. Scott Laidlaw, director of community outreach at Amherst College, will moderate the panel.

– 2:30 p.m., Pruyne Lecture Hall (Fayerweather 115), “Planning for Healthy Communities.” Panelists are Tom Wolff, founder, Healthy Communities Massachusetts; Betty Medina Lichtenstein, executive director, Enlace de Familias; and Carleen Basler, assistant professor of American studies and sociology at Amherst College.

Kristin Bumiller teaches an Amherst College class that enrolls an equal number of Amherst College students and residents of the Hampshire County House of Corrections. She has been a member of the Amherst College faculty since 1989.

In addition to his ongoing research and teaching at Queen’s University, Belfast, Phil Scraton is the author of nearly a dozen books on criminal investigations, disaster analysis and the criminalization and marginalization of youth. His new book, Power, Conflict and Criminalisation, will be published by Routledge in 2007.

Wendy Kohler manages all grants development for Amherst Public Schools and supervises district-wide programs. She also supervises the public schools’ cooperation with Amherst’s town agencies, the colleges and the university.

Mike Morris ’00 is director of the Pipeline Project, a joint academic enrichment program between Amherst College and Amherst Public Schools. Last year, the Pipeline Project brought 60 students from modest backgrounds to Amherst College twice a week for tutoring and exposure to art, music and culture. The project also encourages parent participation and includes a summer program.

In addition to serving on the Amherst College faculty, Rhonda Cobham-Sander is the special assistant to the president for diversity at Amherst College. She regularly teaches courses in African-American and Caribbean fiction and poetry.

A life trustee of Amherst College, Rosanne Haggerty ’82 established Common Ground in New York City to solve homelessness by moving people out of shelters and into homes while providing support for employment and health care. Her work with Common Ground earned her a prestigious MacArthur “genius grant.” Common Ground now has expanded to include programs in New York’s Hudson Valley and Connecticut.

Under the direction of MJ Adams the Pioneer Valley Habitat for Humanity is in the second year of a four-year partnership with Amherst College. The college has donated three acres of land where four homes will be built, one each year. Students, faculty and staff have and will continue to provide volunteer labor for the project; the first home will be finished later this calendar year, and a wall-raising will be held at the second home on Saturday, Sept. 8.

Tom Wolff has more than 30 years’ experience as a consultant on coalition building and community development across North America. He founded Healthy Communities Massachusetts in 1994 as a statewide network aimed at supporting community development efforts across the commonwealth.

Betty Medina Lichtenstein is executive director of Enlace de Familias, a community organization in Holyoke whose mission is to support families in ways that reflect the diversity of individual families. She is also founder of the Holyoke Community Charter School.

A member of the Amherst College faculty since 2003, Carleen Basler teaches and conducts research on topics related to race and ethnicity, Latin identity, social stratification, immigration and social movements. Most of her published works center on Mexican and Mexican-American ethnic and political identity.

Amherst College’s Center for Community Engagement was established to encourage the integration of ideals and action by involving hundreds of Amherst College students in community service through linked curricular and co-curricular programs. The center was established with a seven-year investment by the Argosy Foundation, led by John Abele ’59.

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September 6, 2007
Contact: Stacey Schmeidel
Director of Public Affairs
413/542-2321

AMHERST, Mass.—Amherst College students, faculty and staff will come together for 24 hours—for a full day and night—of work at Amherst College’s first two Habitat for Humanity homes.

The 24-hour build party will begin at 9 a.m. Friday, Sept. 7, and conclude at 9 a.m. Saturday, Sept. 8, with the raising of a wall at Amherst College’s second Habitat home.

Dubbed “24 at 24,” the event will be held at 24 Stanley Street in Amherst, the site of Amherst College’s Habitat for Humanity homes.

In 2005, Amherst became the first college in the country to donate land, as well as labor, to Habitat for Humanity. Over the next several years, four Habitat for Humanity homes will be built on the land. Amherst College students, faculty and staff will take the lead in the project, working with other volunteers and the Pioneer Valley chapter of Habitat for Humanity.

The 24-hour build party is part of two days of events celebrating the opening of Amherst College’s new Center for Community Engagement. Amherst College’s Center for Community Engagement was established to encourage the integration of ideals and action by involving hundreds of Amherst College students in community service through linked curricular and co-curricular programs. The center was established with a seven-year investment by the Argosy Foundation, led by John Abele ’59.

For a full schedule of weekend events, go to www.amherst.edu/openingcce.

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September 4, 2007
Contact: Donna M. Abelli
Development and Marketing Manager
The Emily Dickinson Museum
413/542-5084
Stacey Schmeidel
Director of Public Affairs
413/542-2321

Emily Dickinson Museum Debuts Exhibition as Part of Bookmarks, a Region–Wide Celebration of the Book; Lecture by Karen A. Dandurand Sept. 15

AMHERST, Mass.— The Emily Dickinson Museum presents “My Verse is alive,” a new exhibit exploring the intriguing posthumous publication of Dickinson’s poetry, from Saturday, Sept. 15, through Saturday, Dec. 8, at the Dickinson Homestead. The exhibit is open to all visitors free of charge during the museum’s regular hours.

To mark the opening of the exhibition, Karen A. Dandurand, associate professor of English at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, will present a free talk, “Re-envisioning Dickinson’s 19^th-Century Audience,” on Saturday, Sept. 15, at 11 a.m. at the Dickinson Homestead. Dandurand was the first to identify several Dickinson poems published anonymously in newspapers during her lifetime.

The exhibit takes its title from Emily Dickinson’s 1862 query to author and activist Thomas Wentworth Higginson: “Are you too deeply occupied to say if my Verse is alive?” With documents and family artifacts, the exhibit traces the creation of Emily Dickinson’s literary reputation through the competing efforts and loyalties of family members and intimates in the first 50 years after the poet’s death. “My Verse is alive” explores the tangled private and public motives of several figures closely associated with Emily Dickinson as they struggled for control of her poetic legacy. The roles of her siblings Lavinia and Austin, sister-in-law Susan and niece Martha will be examined, as well as that of Lavinia’s friend and Austin’s mistress Mabel Loomis Todd, a central figure in achieving initial publication of Dickinson’s poetry.

“My Verse is alive” has been designed by Michael A. Hanke, of Design Division, Inc., Amherst, Mass., which produces exhibitions for museums, visitor centers and galleries in both private and public institutions. Design Division’s previous work includes exhibition development for the Mashantucket Pequot Museum in Ledyard, Conn. and for the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum in Hyde Park, N.Y.

Curated by Cindy Dickinson, director of interpretation and programming at the Emily Dickinson Museum, the exhibition is part of “BookMarks: A Celebration of the Art of the Book,” a region-wide festival from September 2007 to January 2008 that will bring to life the Pioneer Valley’s great literary traditions through film, family events, lectures and readings. This initiative is sponsored by the Emily Dickinson Museum and Museums10, a partnership of 10 museums and friends (including Amherst College’s Frost Library, the Mead Art Museum and the Museum of Natural History) within the Pioneer Valley. More information about “BookMarks” is available on the Museums10 Website, www.museums10.org.

“My Verse is alive” has been made possible through the generous support of the Amherst College Friends of the Library and the May H. Morris and Albert M. Morris 1913 Fund.

The Emily Dickinson Museum is located at 280 Main St. in Amherst, Mass., and the official museum Website is at www.emilydickinsonmusuem.org. Hours for September through October are Wednesday through Sunday, 12:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m.; for November through December 8, hours are Wednesday and Saturday, 12:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. The museum will hold extended hours to 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 4, and will be closed the Wednesday before Thanksgiving.

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