News & Events 10/2007

October 31, 2007
Contact: Emanuel Costache '09
Media Relations Intern
413/542-2321
Caroline Jenkins
Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass. – Actors From The London Stage (AFTLS), the international touring theater company based at the University of Notre Dame, will perform Shakespeare’s Macbeth at Amherst College’s Holden Theatre on Tuesday, Nov. 6 and Wednesday, Nov. 7 at 8 p.m. Admission is free and open to the public, but seating is limited and will be available on a first-come, first-served basis only. (Please note there is no box office for this event.) The AFTLS performances are part of a weeklong residency at Amherst, during which the actors will perform on campus and visit literature and theater classes.

Now in its 32^nd year, AFTLS is one of the oldest touring Shakespeare theater companies in the world. The troupe is housed and the performances are workshopped in England, and the actors come from such prestigious companies as the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Royal National Theatre of Great Britain and Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre.

Under the auspices of the Marie P. DeBartolo Center for the Performing Arts at the University of Notre Dame, AFTLS takes up residency at 16 to 20 colleges and universities each year offering performances, workshops and classroom visits during each weeklong stay. The company is unique in that, though they have a number of directors involved along the way, the performances have no one director. There is, as Academic Director Peter Holland says, “no directorial concept to tower over the text of Shakespeare’s play.” Instead, the performance is a collaboration of a small group of actors.

The AFTLS events at Amherst are sponsored by the department of English and supported by the department of theater and dance and the Eastman Fund.

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October 31, 2007
Contact: Donna M. Abelli
Development and Marketing Manager
Emily Dickinson Museum
413/542-2195

AMHERST, Mass.—On Saturday, Nov. 10, the Emily Dickinson Museum will sponsor “First, Do No Harm: Preserving Your Family Papers,” a presentation by archivist Daria D’Arienzo. The program, which is free and open to the public, will begin at 2 p.m. at the Amherst Woman’s Club. (The Woman’s Club is located on the corner of Triangle and Main Streets in Amherst, just east of the museum.)

D’Arienzo, who is head of archives and special collections at Amherst College, will talk about the diaries, letters, photographs, newspaper clippings and other documents that chronicle family stories. She will outline essential preservation steps to ensure that no harm is done to these documents. She will also share the results of “evils”—including cardboard boxes, manila envelopes and metal paper clips—commonly used when housing family records.

Participants are encouraged to bring documents about which they have preservation concerns or questions. Refreshments will be served. For more information, please call 413/542-8429.

Daria D’Arienzo has worked at Amherst College since 1984. An active supporter of the Emily Dickinson Museum, she chaired the Homestead Advisory Committee for several years and now serves on the museum’s Educational Programming and Policy Committee.

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 Street in Amherst; its official Website is www.emilydickinsonmusuem.org. The museum is open Wednesdays and Saturdays from 12:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. (closed the Wednesday before Thanksgiving) through Dec. 8. The museum’s season ends on Dec. 8 with the annual Birthday Open House from 1 to 4 p.m.

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October 31, 2007
Contact: Sara Leonard
Concert and Production Manager
413/542-2195

AMHERST, Mass.—The Amherst College Symphony Orchestra, with Mark Lane Swanson, Music Director, will perform a full-length classical concert of Russian favorites at its Family Weekend concert on Saturday, Nov. 3 at 8:30 p.m. in Buckley Recital Hall in the Arms Music Center at Amherst College.

The program will open with Mussorgsky’s colorful “Night on Bald Mountain” made popular through its use in Walt Disney’s Fantasia, conducted by Daniel Curtis ’08. The concert continues with Rachmaninoff’s “Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini” with Timothy Cheng ’07 as piano soloist. After intermission, the concert will conclude with Tchaikovsky’s “Symphony No. 4 in F minor.”

Tickets may be purchased at the door for $6 and can be reserved in advance by contacting mlswanson@amherst.edu. Admission is free to Five College students with ID.

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October 31, 2007
Contact: Sara Leonard
Concert and Production Manager
413/542-2195

AMHERST, Mass.—The Amherst College Department of Music will present concerts by the Amherst College Choral Society, Amherst College Jazz Ensemble and Amherst College Symphony Orchestra in Buckley Recital Hall in the Arms Music Center on the Amherst campus Nov. 2 and 3. The Choral Society will perform at 8:30 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 2; the Jazz Ensemble at 4 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 3; and the Symphony Orchestra at 8:30 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 3.

The Amherst College Choral Society will begin the weekend with performances by the Concert Choir, Women’s Chorus and Men’s Glee Club, directed by Mallorie Chernin and assistant director Suraj Gopal ’07, as well as the Madrigal singers, directed by Andrea Kahn ’08 and Elly Jessop ’08. The evening’s program will include works of Schubert, Wolf, Viadana, De Cormier, Papoulis and more. The program will end with Amherst College’s rousing traditional songs.

The Amherst College Jazz Ensemble, under the direction of Bruce Diehl, will perform straight-ahead swing, bop-oriented selections and tunes representing the current trends in jazz by Count Basie, Les Hooper, John Coltrane and more.

The Amherst College Symphony Orchestra will finish off the weekend’s musical offerings with an evening concert that will begin with Mussorgsky’s colorful “Night on Bald Mountain,” conducted by Daniel Curtis ’08. The concert will continue with Rachmaninoff’s “Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini” (Timothy Cheng ’07, piano soloist), directed by Mark Lane Swanson, and conclude with Tchaikovsky’s fiery “Symphony No. 4 in F minor.”

Tickets for each concert will be available at the door one hour prior to the start of the performance. Tickets for the choral concert are available to the general public for $6 and to senior citizens, Amherst College students and children under 12 for $3. Choral tickets may be reserved in advance by calling 413/542-2484 or emailing mchernin@amherst.edu. Tickets for the Jazz concert are available to the general public for $6, to senior citizens for $3 and to Five College students at no charge. Jazz tickets may be reserved in advance by calling the concert office at 413/542-2195. Orchestra concert tickets are available to the general public for $6 and are free to Five College students with ID. Tickets for orchestra may be reserved in advance by e-mailing mlswanson@amherst.edu.

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October 23, 2007
Contact: Sara Leonard
Concert and Production Manager
413/542-2195

AMHERST, Mass.—The Music at Amherst Concert Series welcomes pianist Ignat Solzhenitsyn for a performance on Saturday, Nov. 10 at 8 p.m. in Buckley Recital Hall in the Arms Music Center at Amherst College. Tickets will be available for purchase through the Amherst College Concert Office beginning Monday, Oct. 29.

Solzhenitsyn, son of Russian Nobel Prize-winning author and historian Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, is recognized as one of today’s most gifted artists and enjoys an active career as a conductor and pianist. His lyrical and poignant interpretations of classical music have won him critical acclaim throughout the world. In addition to serving as music director of the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, Solzhenitsyn has given numerous recitals in major musical centers such as London, Milan, Zurich, Moscow, Tokyo and Sydney. At Amherst, he will perform an all-Brahms program.

The Music at Amherst Series will include three additional concerts this season. On Saturday, Feb. 9, Leon Fleisher will perform a piano concert of dance-themed music; on Thursday, March 13, the Florestan Trio will perform works by Brahms, Haydn and Juon; and on Saturday, April 12, tenor Joseph Kaiser will close the 2007-08 season with a solo recital.

Tickets are available to the general public for $25. Tickets for senior citizens and Amherst College employees are $20, student tickets are $10 and Amherst College student tickets are $6. Tickets for each concert go on sale two weeks prior to the date of the performance and may be purchased in advance by calling the concert office at 413/542-2195.

October 24, 2007
Contact: Emanuel Costache '09
Media Relations Intern
413/542-2321
Caroline Jenkins
Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.—Donald Worster, Hall Distinguished Professor of American History at the University of Kansas, will deliver the annual Hugh Hawkins lecture, titled “On John Muir’sTrail: Nature in an Age of Liberal Principles,” on Thursday, Nov. 15, at 4:30p.m. in Pruyne Lecture Hall at Amherst College. Sponsored by the department of history and Dean of the Faculty, the lecture is free and open to the public.

Worster’s talk will explore the connections between the movement to protect the environment and the culture of modern liberal democracy, and will focus in large part on Muir, the influential reformer and founder of the Sierra Club. Worster is author of many books on American environmental history and related topics, including the Bancroft Prize winner Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s. His latest, A River Running West: The Life of John Wesley Powell, has won the acclaim of critics and historians alike.

Primarily interested in the emerging field of environmental history, Worster studies the changing perception of nature and the rise of conservation and environmentalism. He also has strong interests in comparative history (especially U.S. and Canada), in American regionalism (particularly the West), in agriculture and in science and technology.

The annual Hawkins Lecture honors Hugh Hawkins, professor emeritus of history and American studies. A distinguished scholar of American higher education, the American South, and of cultural and intellectual history, Hawkins retired in 2000 after teaching for more than 40 years at Amherst, where he helped build both the history and American studies departments.

October 23, 2007
Contact: Sara Leonard
Concert and Production Manager
413/542-2195

AMHERST, Mass.—The Zedashe Ensemble, from the medieval walled city of Sighnaghi in Eastern Georgia, will perform in Buckley Recital Hall in the Arms Music Center at Amherst College on Monday, Oct. 29 at 3 p.m. The concert is free and open to the public; seating is by general admission.

Mountainous Caucasus Georgia, situated on historic crossroads on the eastern shore of the Black Sea, has one of the world’s most ancient and arresting three-part-harmony-singing traditions. The music features a dark, sonorous vocal quality and startling, unexpected harmonies. Directed by Ketevan Mindorashvili, Zedashe was founded in the mid-1990s to sing repertoire largely lost during the Communist era. With four male and three female singers, Zedashe is one of the few mixed-gender performing ensembles in Georgia today. Their repertoire includes ancient three-part harmony chants from the Orthodox Christian liturgy, as well as the full range of folk song genres including field songs, love songs, historical ballads, war dance songs and ritual circle dances. The latter are sometimes accompanied by the chunir (Svan bowed lute), panduri (Kakhetian lute), chonguri (Gurian lute), doli (drum), chiboni (goat-skin bagpipes) and accordion.

The Zedashe Ensemble’s singers are joined by two virtuosic solo dancers, Eka Taralashvili and Erekli Kanchurashvili, who demonstrate the intricate footwork and gestures of varied traditional Georgian dance styles, both lyric and martial.

The group’s name is taken from the special earthenware jugs—zedashes—that were buried under the family home for the purpose of making wine. The wine made in zedashes was especially for the veneration of ancestors and the tapping of the zedashe every year carried great ritual significance.

For further information, contact the Amherst College Concert Office at 413/542-2195 or visit http://www.villageharmony.org/Zedashe2007.

October 23, 2007
Contact: Sara Leonard
Concert and Production Manager
413/542-2195

AMHERST, Mass.—The Music at Amherst Concert Series will present the Brentano String Quartet on Friday, Oct. 26, at 8 p.m. in Buckley Recital Hall in the Arms Music Center at Amherst College. Tickets are currently available for purchase through the Amherst College Concert Office.

The Brentano Quartet is returning to Music at Amherst after acclaimed performances all over the world. The quartet has enjoyed successful tours in the United States, Canada, Europe, Japan and Australia at venues including Carnegie Hall, the Library of Congress, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, the Kozerthaus in Vienna, Suntory Hall in Tokyo and the Sydney Opera House. At Amherst, they will perform Haydn’s String Quartet in D major, Op. 76, No. 5; Bartok’s String Quartet No. 6; and Beethoven’s String Quartet in E-flat major, Op. 127.

The Music at Amherst Series will include four additional concerts this season. On Saturday, Nov. 10, Ignat Solzhenitsyn will perform an all-Brahms piano program; Saturday, Feb. 9, Leon Fleisher will perform a piano concert of dance-themed music; Thursday, March 13, the Florestan Trio will perform works by Brahms, Haydn, and Juon; and Saturday, April 12, tenor Joseph Kaiser will close the 2007-08 season.

Tickets are available to the general public for $25. Tickets for senior citizens and Amherst College employees are $20, student tickets are $10 and Amherst College students tickets are $6. Tickets may be purchased at the door or in advance by calling 413/542-2195.

October 19, 2007
Contact: Emanuel Costache '09
Media Relations Intern
413/542-2321
Caroline Jenkins
Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.—Peter D. Crowley, professor of geology at Amherst College, will present an original research study titled “Crystallographic Fabrics of the Martin Bridge Limestone, Wallowa Mountains: An Electron-Backscattered Diffraction Study” at the upcoming 119^th annual meeting of the Geological Society of America (GSA). More than 6,300 geoscientists are expected to attend the conference, which will take place Oct. 27 to 31 in Denver.

Crowley’s research focuses on the Wallowa Terrane, part of the Blue Mountains region of Oregon, Idaho and Washington. By studying the metamorphism and deformation of the Martin Bridge limestone in this area of the Pacific Northwest, Crowley hopes to better understand the nature of the events surrounding the amalgamation of the Blue Mountain terrain.

Research has revealed that the intrusion of magma into this limestone area changed the limestone to marble. Crowley’s studies have shown that the lattice orientation of the mineral crystals in the marble gives clues about the deformation of the limestone and whether that process occurred before or after the limestone was transformed into marble. By examining the minerals formed in such a geological event, Crowley has been able to infer the temperature and pressure that metamorphosed the limestone. In addition, he has been able to map the orientation, or the arrangement, of minerals using the electron-backscattering diffraction method and concluded that the limestone was deformed before it was transformed into marble. He will discuss this and all of his findings at the GSA meeting at the end of the month.

A member of the Amherst College faculty since 1986, Crowley regularly teaches courses in structural geology and geophysics. He was chair of the geology department from 1995 to 1998 and director of Amherst’s Museum of Natural History from 2002 to 2007.

AMHERST, Mass.—Musician Zeina Nasr ’06, a Copeland Fellow at Amherst College, will workshop three of her four original compositions during an interactive performance at 7:30 p.m. at the Mead Art Museum at Amherst College, Monday, Nov. 5. The second in a series of Copeland Fellow events on the theme of “Art and Identity in the Global Community,” the activity is free and open to the public.

Nasr, a composer, will sing her melodies a cappella or accompany herself on piano. She will invite audience members to listen to each song as collaborators would and offer any creative insight they may have in the form of a casual discussion. “I’d like to know what they’re hearing—whether the song evokes a certain style, implies potential instrumentation, is perhaps complete as is, needs restructuring, is confusing, etc.,” she explained. “Often a song becomes impenetrable or difficult to understand after having worked on it for too long. I need fresh ears.”

Nasr graduated from Amherst in 2006 with two summa cum laude theses—one in English and one in theater and dance. She is currently based in Lebanon, the country of her birth. As a Copeland Fellow, she is studying voice in preparation for a degree program in composition and spending her time at Amherst interacting with other established artists in the colloquium, addressing cross-disciplinary interests in literature, film, theater and music.

Her performance is sponsored by Amherst’s Heidi Gilpin, associate professor of German, and Wendy Woodson, professor of theater and dance.

Each year, the Copeland Colloquium brings a group of visiting scholars and artists to Amherst as fellows. This year’s colloquium theme, “Art and Identity in the Global Community,” was proposed by a group of faculty as the outcome of cross-disciplinary discussions on “the ways in which artists and scholars are revising notions of community identity as well as aesthetic conventions in response to new developments in media and migration.” Faculty representing seven different academic departments and the Mead Art Museum joined to become sponsors and organizers of the colloquium and brought five international artists, working in a broad spectrum of media, to Amherst to work in residence for both semesters of the academic year.

October 15, 2007
Contact: Caroline Jenkins
Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.—Javier Corrales, associate professor of political science at Amherst College, and Steven G. Rivkin, professor of economics, have received a $100,000 grant from the Ford Foundation and a $35,000 grant from the Tinker Foundation to support a multi-year study of community-managed schools in Central America. Corrales and Rivkin will study what has been a 10-year experiment of state-supported, parent-run public schools in rural areas of Honduras and Guatemala.

With the support of Daniel Altschuler ’04, Corrales and Rivkin have created a survey to quantify the effects this program has both on teachers and parents. “What we want to know,” said Corrales, “is can this work and how does it affect the parents…Does this get parents to be more civic, more involved in their communities?” The grant money will support a team of professionals as they collect data from these rural communities this fall.

Begun more than 10 years ago in Nicaragua and El Salvador as an experiment in governance and education with initial funding from the World Bank, community-managed school programs have since been implemented in Honduras and Guatemala. Corrales selected Honduras and Guatemala because in these countries, the programs are in more rural communities where very few social institutions—such a public schools or post offices—have been put in place until now.

The Ford Foundation is an independent, nonprofit, nongovernmental grant-making organization that has, for 70 years, committed funding to innovative people and institutions worldwide. The Tinker Foundation is also an independent, nonprofit, nongovernmental organization that has for nearly 50 years provided both field and research grants in support of projects in Latin America, Spain, Portugal and most recently Antarctica.

Founded in 1821, Amherst is widely considered to be one of the nation’s leading liberal arts colleges, enrolling more than 1,600 undergraduates from every state and nearly 40 other countries.

October 15, 2007
Contact: Caroline Jenkins
Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.—Elizabeth Vladeck, American lawyer and labor organizer, will deliver a lecture titled “Workers’ Rights and Union Organizing in Putin’s Russia: A First-Hand Account” at Amherst College on Tuesday, Oct. 23. The talk, which is free and open to the public, will take place at 7:30 p.m. in the Amherst Center for Russian Culture in Webster Hall.

Vladeck is one of a very small number of Americans to have done sustained, in-country work with Russian trade unions and worker organizations over the tumultuous period since the fall of the Soviet Union, having worked both for local trade union groups in the town of Kaliningrad and for a national labor rights nongovernmental organization that works with unions all over the country. Because of her work in Kaliningrad organizing port workers, she was even recently refused a renewal of her Russian visa—an incident which was the subject of an article by reporter Peter Finn in The Washington Post. Using this, her other experiences in the nation and the lens of the U.S. labor movement as a way into the conversation about union organizing in modern-day Russia, she will offer a few stories about today’s workers and her own thoughts about the past, present and future of Russian labor.

The talk is sponsored by the Georges Lurcy Lecture Series Fund and The Virginia and David S. Pennock ’60 Russian Culture Fund.

AMHERST, Mass.—Caroline Jenkins Hanna, former director of media relations at Colgate University, has been named director of media relations at Amherst College. Her appointment became effective Oct. 8.

In the position Hanna will direct Amherst’s media relations program and work with local, regional and national media. She will also provide leadership in creating a new communications strategy for the college.

At Colgate, Hanna served as assistant and associate director of media relations before accepting the position of director of media relations. Before that, she served as a media relations specialist at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., and an associate editor at Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management.

Hanna holds a B.A. in English from St. Lawrence University, as well as an M.S. in magazine journalism from Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Public Communications.

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AMHERST, Mass.—Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, will critique the United States’ counterterrorism efforts in a lecture at Amherst College Tuesday, Oct. 23. His talk, titled “Why the Current Approach to Fighting Terrorism is Making Us Less Safe,” will take place at 8 p.m. in Pruyne Lecture Hall (Room 115 of Fayerweather Hall) and is free and open to the public.

Roth began his tenure as executive director of Human Rights Watch—which investigates, reports on and seeks to curb human rights abuses in some 70 countries—in 1993. Since then he has conducted human rights investigations around the globe, devoting special attention to issues of justice and accountability for gross abuses of human rights, standards governing military conduct in time of war, the human rights policies of the United States and the United Nations and the human rights responsibilities of multinational businesses. He has written more than 80 articles and chapters on a range of human rights topics and has been quoted in numerous high-profile publications, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, International Herald Tribune and The New York Review of Books. He also regularly appears in the major media and speaks to audiences around the world.

Prior to becoming executive director at Human Rights Watch, Roth held the position of deputy director from 1987 to 1993. Before that, he was a federal prosecutor for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York and the Iran-Contra investigation in Washington. He also worked in private practice as a litigator.

A graduate of Yale Law School and Brown University, Roth was drawn to the human rights cause in part by his father’s experience fleeing Nazi Germany in 1938. He began working on human rights after the declaration of martial law in Poland in 1981, and soon also became deeply engaged in fighting military repression in Haiti. In his 14 years as executive director of Human Rights Watch, the organization has quadrupled in size while greatly expanding its geographic reach and adding special programs devoted to refugees, children’s rights, international justice, AIDS, gay and lesbian rights, human rights emergencies, terrorism and counterterrorism and the human rights responsibilities of multinational corporations.

Roth’s talk is sponsored by the Victor S. Johnson 1882-1943 Lectureship Fund and the Amherst College President’s Office.

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AMHERST, Mass.—Marcy Wheeler, well-known political blogger and a 1990 graduate of Amherst College, will discuss her work as a print and Web journalist Thursday, Oct. 18, in Pruyne Lecture Hall (Fayerweather 115) at her alma mater. The talk, which is free and open to the public, is scheduled for 8 p.m.

Blogging under the pseudonym “emptywheel,” Wheeler wrote must-read commentary about national politics and the media on the renowned Websites Daily Kos, Firedoglake and The Huffington Post, among others, before starting her own blog titled The Next Hurrah. During the trial of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, she gained fame for blogging case testimony live from the courtroom alongside other regular press-accredited bloggers and reporters. This January she went on to publish “Anatomy of Deceit,” a short primer on The United States v. Libby, as well as the U.S. government’s justification for the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the Iraq war. Since its publication, the book has been cited in several articles about the Libby scandal and has even been praised by former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, the husband of Valerie E. Wilson (Valerie Plame).

Wheeler currently lives in Michigan, where she works as a business consultant and continues to write for her own blog and many others. In addition to her degree from Amherst, she holds a doctorate from University of Michigan in comparative literature.

Wheeler’s talk is being sponsored by Amherst’s English Department and the Creative Writing Center.