News & Events 11/2007

November 19, 2007
Contact: Caroline Jenkins Hanna
Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417

Photos and audio of this event

AMHERST, Mass.—Former United Nations Ambassador John R. Bolton will deliver a lecture titled “Dealing with Rogue States After Iraq” at 8 p.m. in the Cole Assembly Room of Amherst College’s Converse Hall on Monday, Dec. 3. Sponsored by the Committee for the American Founding, the talk is free and open to the public.

Bolton currently serves as a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where his portfolio includes work with foreign policy and international organizations. Prior to arriving at AEI, Bolton served as the United States Permanent Representative to the U.N. from Aug. 1, 2005 to Dec. 9, 2006. From May 2001 to May 2005, he served as Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security.

Before his work with the Bush administration, Bolton spent many years in public service. Previous positions include assistant secretary for international organization affairs at the Department of State, 1989 to 1993; assistant attorney general at the Department of Justice, 1985 to 1989; assistant administrator for program and policy coordination at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), 1982 to 1983; and General Counsel at USAID, 1981 to 1982.

An attorney, Bolton also served as an associate and member of the Washington office of the Covington & Burling law firm from 1983 to 1985 after his public service at USAID. He graduated from Yale College in 1970 and received his law degree from Yale Law School in 1974, where he was editor of the Yale Law Journal.

Created by Hadley P. Arkes, the Edward Ney Professor in American Institutions (Political Science) at Amherst College, the Committee for the American Founding was started with the purpose of preserving at Amherst the teachings of the American Founders and Abraham Lincoln regarding “natural rights.” Among the broad topics for the committee has been the defense of the American regime, in foreign and military policy.

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November 30, 2007
Contact: Caroline Jenkins Hanna
Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417

** Editor’s Note: The December 9 event at the Mead has been canceled due to unforeseen circumstances. ** 

AMHERST, Mass.—The Mead Art Museum is now showing “Chuck Close Self-Portrait/Scribble/Etching Portfolio, 2000,” a presentation of more than 35 self-portrait prints made by the celebrated American artist Chuck Close over the past three decades. The exhibition, organized in conjunction with the Picker Art Gallery at Colgate University and the Colby College Museum of Art, is accompanied by a full-color catalogue featuring a new interview with the artist and an essay that sheds fresh light on Close’s creative process and methods of work.

The exhibition’s curator, Anne Monahan, will lead a public gallery talk at the Mead on Thursday, Dec. 6, at 4:30 p.m., which will be followed by a reception. One of the lenders to the exhibition, Paul J. Schupf, will discuss his experiences as a collector of Close’s prints with Mead director Elizabeth Barker on Sunday, Dec. 9, at 2 p.m. All are welcome to attend this public conversation at the museum, which will also be followed by a reception. Additional events related to the exhibition, to take place in the spring 2008 semester, will be announced in the new year.

Chuck Close, who once lived in the Pioneer Valley (he taught at the University of Massachusetts Amherst from 1965 to 1967), has been making self-portraits since the late 1960s. He bases these efforts on photographs that he takes of himself and then methodically, laboriously, repeatedly—and always inventively—translates into other media: paintings, drawings, textiles and prints.

Close’s investment in such processes forms the subject of his “Self-Portrait/Scribble/Etching Portfolio” of 2000, a set of prints made to illustrate the steps required to produce a single 12-color etching. As Close described his intentions for the project: “The best thing is if you can pull a rabbit out of a hat, and then stop and show somebody how you pull a rabbit out of a hat.” This exhibition explores the technique and subject of the 2000 portfolio, using it as a lens through which to examine the intersections and parallels that structure Close’s artistic ideas.

“Chuck Close Self-Portrait/Scribble/Etching Portfolio, 2000” has been made possible at the Mead Art Museum with generous support from the Hall and Kate Peterson Fund.

The Mead Art Museum is free, fully accessible and open to the public Tuesday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and Thursday until 9 p.m. To learn more, visit www.amherst.edu/mead or call 413/542-2335.

November 21, 2007
Contact: Jane H. Wald
Executive Director
Emily Dickinson Museum
413/542-2154
Caroline Jenkins Hanna
Director of Media Relations
Amherst College
413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.—Biographer Polly Longsworth will deliver the 2007 Emily Dickinson Birthday Lecture and participate in a reception and booksigning Thursday, Dec. 6, at 4 p.m. at the Lord Jeffery Inn in Amherst. Longsworth’s talk, titled “‘Nothing but a Sword’: Austin and Mabel and the Publication of Emily Dickinson’s Poems,” will examine the publication history of Emily Dickinson’s work through the lens of her brother Austin’s long relationship with Mabel Loomis Todd, one of the first editors of Dickinson’s poems. The event is co-sponsored by the Emily Dickinson Museum and the Amherst College Archives and Special Collections and is free and open to the public.

Longsworth, who is known for her book Austin and Mabel: The Amherst Affair & Love Letters of Austin Dickinson and Mabel Loomis Todd (1984), will delineate the dramatic story of the posthumous publication of Emily Dickinson’s poetry by focusing on the following central question: Would Dickinson’s poetry have been published if Mabel Loomis Todd had not been involved? Todd, as Longsworth will discuss, was intimately connected to the Dickinson family through her 13-year affair with the poet’s brother, and their largely untold story pits pride against love and stars some fascinating personalities, including several publishers, numerous academics and critics and a couple of major educational institutions.

Longsworth herself is held in high regard for her insights into Emily Dickinson’s life. Author of several Dickinson-related books, she is currently at work on a single, comprehensive biography of the poet. In addition, she is an active supporter of the Emily Dickinson Museum and serves on its board of governors, of which she was also its first chair.

At 6 p.m., after the lecture and booksigning, a special birthday dinner will be held. The meal will feature readings and a special portrayal of David Peck Todd and Mabel Loomis Todd by actors Walter Carroll and Ann Maggs. Guests will be treated to multi-course dinner served in Victorian style with items such as salmon timbales, soup with noodle puffs and ice cream from Susan Huntington Dickinson’s famous entertainments of the mid-19th century. All proceeds from the dinner, which costs $50 per person, will support the work of the Emily Dickinson Museum. For more information, please contact Donna Abelli, development and marketing manager, at 413-542-5084 or dmabelli@emilydickinsonmuseum.org.

The Emily Dickinson Museum: The Dickinson Homestead and The Evergreens is devoted to the story and legacy of 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 (1830-1886), and The Evergreens was the 1856 home of the poet’s brother and sister-in-law, Austin and Susan Dickinson.

The museum is located at 280 Main Street in Amherst, Mass. The official museum Web site is www.emilydickinsonmuseum.org. Hours through Dec. 8 are Wednesdays and Saturdays from 12:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. (closed the Wednesday before Thanksgiving). The museum’s season ends on Saturday, Dec. 8, with the annual Birthday Open House from 1 to 4 p.m.

The Archives and Special Collections at Amherst College houses the college’s rare books, literary manuscripts, written materials of unique value and materials that relate to the college and its history. It houses one of the world’s largest collections of Emily Dickinson manuscripts and related material. Located on Level A of the Frost Library, the Archives and Special Collections is open Monday through Friday, from 9 a.m. to noon and from 1 to 4 p.m., year round.

The lecture is part of “Bookmarks: A Celebration of the Art of the Book,” a region-wide festival from September 2007 to January 2008 that brings 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 ten museums linked to the Pioneer Valley’s institutions of higher education. More information about Bookmarks and Museums10 can be found at www.museums10.org.

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November 30, 2007
Contact: Caroline Jenkins Hanna
Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.—Artist and filmmaker Jean-Marie Teno, a Copeland fellow at Amherst College, will present one of his short films along with several clips from his other works on Monday, Dec. 3 at 7:30 p.m. in Amherst College’s Merrill Science Center, Lecture Room 2. A reception and conversation with the artist will follow at the Mead Art Museum. All of the events are free and open to the public.

Teno was born in Cameroon and educated at the University of Valenciennes, France. A filmmaker whose works include documentary and fiction films, Teno often focuses on the post-colonial experience in Africa. Foregrounding the gaps between perception and perspective, his work reframes many of the standard perspectives developed by early documentary filmmakers who trained their anthropological gaze on Africa. His prize-winning documentary Le Malentendu Colonial, in particular, turns an anthropological eye on European society by offering a detailed critique of the German colonial adventure in Namibia.

Each year, the Copeland Colloquium brings a group of visiting scholars and artists to Amherst College. 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 this year’s Copeland Colloquium. Five international artists, working in a broad spectrum of mediums, are now in residence for both semesters of the academic year. Two of the other Copeland Fellows made presentations earlier this year, while the remaining two will discuss their work on the first Mondays of February and March. Teno is being sponsored as a fellow by Amherst’s William R. Keenan, Jr. Professor of Black Studies and English, Rhonda Cobham-Sander, Professor Leah Hewitt and Senior Lecturer Helen von Schmidt.

November 19, 2007
Contact: Caroline Jenkins Hanna
Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.—Amherst College’s Mead Art Museum will celebrate the opening of “Amherst College Portraits: A Community Collaboration” with a walking tour and reception with artists Wendy Ewald and Brett Cook on Thursday, Nov. 29. The tour will start at the Mead at 3:45 p.m., and the reception will take place from 6 to 8 p.m., also at the Mead. Both are free and open to the public.

“Amherst College Portraits” is an exhibition made up of six 12 ½-foot-by-30-foot portrait triptychs mounted across the Amherst College campus and at the Mead. The artworks themselves—each of which portrays a student, staff member and faculty member—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 and Western Massachusetts community and the subjects of the portraits.

A map and audio devices will be available at the museum for self-guided tours of the banners on campus. The Amherst College Portraits Web site provides context for the project and features the work of the seminar students. The exhibition will remain on display until Jan. 20, 2008.

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 and the Center for International Studies at Duke University, 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 from California to Maine, and in Brazil, Barbados and Mexico. Some have been commissioned by museums or public agencies while others have been self-initiated interventions in abandoned spaces. Among his public projects are a collaboration in South Central Los Angeles addressing divinity and the Development/Gentrification Project, with ten 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, Washington, D.C.

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. For more information, visit the museum’s Web site, www.amherst.edu/mead, or call 413/542-2335.

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

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November 16, 2007
Contact: Caroline Jenkins Hanna
Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.—In response to increasing interest in the Amherst College Museum of Natural History, the organization has announced it will remain open to the public during the college’s Thanksgiving vacation Friday, Nov. 23, through Sunday, Nov. 25. It will be open each day from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.

“This is a first for the museum, and stems from our desire to serve the community during that holiday week,” said Steve Sauter, the education coordinator. “So many people living in the area have family visiting and wish to do something educational and fun, so we thought this would be a great opportunity to attract more visitors to the museum.” “Admission is free,” he added, “and museum staff will be available.”

Housed with the college’s geology department in the Earth Sciences and Natural History Museum Building, the museum contains the collections of the old Pratt Museum. The natural history collections at Amherst include vertebrate and invertebrate paleontology, minerals and other geologic specimens and anthropological material acquired through expeditions, exchanges, donations and purchases from the 1830s to the present. The collection mirrors the changing interests of the Amherst faculty and the history of scientific inquiry. Much comes from the Connecticut Valley, but much also comes from Africa, Asia and South and Central America, where early Amherst graduates traveled as missionaries or explorers.

The entrance floor features a variety of displays on vertebrate evolution and extinction, including free standing fossil skeletons of a mammoth, mastodon, dire wolf, saber-toothed cat, Irish elk and cave bear. Fossils from Amherst College expeditions to Patagonia and the American West are exhibited, as are recently extinct birds such as the moa and the ivory billed woodpecker. The second floor demonstrates the occurrence of geological phenomena in the Connecticut River Valley—including mountain building and glaciation—and is the home to a display of local animal and plant fossils and a small exhibit on human evolution and teeth. Finally, the ground floor displays the world’s largest collection of dinosaur tracks (primarily from the Connecticut River Valley), skulls of a Tyrannosaurus rex and a Triceratops and a diorama with a model showing what some of our local dinosaur species might have looked like. There is also a cast of a dinosaur track “book” that visitors can handle.

Visitors are invited to open drawers on the first and second floors to view specimens from the museum’s various collections. They are also invited to explore minerals and meteorites from the local area and around the world on display in cases in the corridor that runs between the museum and the geology department.

Regular hours at the Amherst College Museum of Natural History are Tuesday through Sunday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.

For more information, go to the museum’s Web site: http://www.amherst.edu/museumofnaturalhistory/.

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AMHERST, Mass.—The Emily Dickinson Museum will host its annual open house on Saturday, Dec. 8, from 1 to 4 p.m. in honor of the 177^th birthday of its namesake, who was born Dec. 10, 1830. The “At Home” celebration, which is free and open to the public, will once again feature self-guided tours of the Homestead (the poet’s birthplace and home), and The Evergreens (the home next door of her brother Austin’s family). Throughout the afternoon, visitors will be able to sample Dickinsonian refreshments, listen to poetry readings and make a bookmark to take home in honor of BookMarks, the Museums10 celebration of the art of the book. The first 177 visitors will receive a rose, courtesy of an anonymous donor.

At the Homestead, a special booksigning for the new publication, “Wider than the Sky”: Essays and Meditations on the Healing Power of Emily Dickinson, will begin at 2 p.m. The book, edited by Cynthia MacKenzie and Barbara Dana, was inspired by the editors’ own uses of Dickinson’s poetry to heal after loss and features essays by 17 contributors, including Dickinson scholars Ellen Louise Hart, Polly Longsworth and Martha Nell Smith; poets Cynthia Hogue and Gregory Orr; and therapist Marion Woodman. Both Dana, an actor and an award-winning author of books for children and young adults, and MacKenzie, a professor of English at the University of Regina in Regina, Canada, will be at the museum Dec. 8 to sign books and talk informally about the volume’s essays.

From 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. at the Evergreens, Steven Howland and Tim Van Egmond will perform traditional 19^th-century folk music on fiddle and hammered dulcimer. Howland has been playing the fiddle since he discovered traditional New England-style music and dance in the early 1980’s. Having expanded his style to include Irish, Cape Breton and Appalachian fiddle music, he is a regular caller at dances throughout the region. Van Egmond is a similarly accomplished hammered dulcimer player; as a member of the contradance band Swallowtail, he has performed nationwide, including appearances on National Public Radio’s A Prairie Home Companion and at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History. He is also a member of the folk singing duo Yankee Notions and a solo performer of music and stories.

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 Emily Dickinson Museum is located at 280 Main Street in Amherst, Mass. The official museum Web site is www.emilydickinsonmuseum.org. Hours through Dec. 5 are Wednesdays and Saturdays from 12:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. (closed the Wednesday before Thanksgiving). The museum will have special holiday hours Wednesday, Dec. 26, through Sunday, Dec. 30, from noon to 4 p.m. The museum will otherwise be closed from Dec. 9, 2007 until March 1, 2008.

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November 20, 2007
Contact: Molly Brown
Robert Frost Library
413/542-5028
Caroline Jenkin Hanna
Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.—A collection of photographs by Steve Horn ’72 is currently on display in the gallery of the Robert Frost Library at Amherst College. These images are also featured in Horn’s book, Pictures Without Borders: Bosnia Revisited. The exhibition will remain on display in the gallery until the end of January 2008.

Taken in Bosnia in 1970 and upon a return visit in 2003, Horn’s photographs illustrate the innocence of a country under the Communist regime followed by the triumph of the human spirit in the aftermath of civil war. His compelling photographs are an evocative portrait of a country and a people who have endured grievous hardships and found the will not only to survive, but to live.

The photographic display is being sponsored by Amherst’s Office of the President and is free and open to the public.

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November 20, 2007
Contact: Caroline Jenkins Hanna
Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.—French filmmaker Christian Delage will show his movie Nuremberg: The Nazis Facing Their Crimes and answer questions about the film at Amherst College on Friday, Nov. 30. The viewing, which will take place at 4 p.m. in Pruyne Lecture Hall (Fayerweather 115), is free and open to the public.

“Nuremberg” is a condensed version of the Nuremburg Trials, composed of restored courtroom footage shot under the supervision of filmmaker John Ford. It tells the story of the Holocaust while simultaneously examining how reproduced images affect the writing of history. Narrated by actor Christopher Plummer, the film premiered at the New York Jewish Film Festival at Lincoln Center in January 2007.

Delage teaches at the Université de Paris-VIII and the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris. His publications include L’Historien et le film (Gallimard, 2004), co-authored with Vincent Guigueno, and La Vérité par l’image: De Nuremburg au process Milosevic (Denoel, 2006).

The event is sponsored by the Amherst College Department of Law, Jurisprudence and Social Thought and the Lurcy Lecture Fund.

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November 20, 2007
Contact: Sara Leonard
Concert and Production Manager
413/542-2195

 AMHERST, Mass.—The Amherst College Jazz Ensemble, under the direction of Bruce Diehl, will perform their winter concert Friday, Dec. 7 at 8 p.m. in Buckley Recital Hall in the Arms Music Center at Amherst College.

In addition to holiday tunes by Stan Kenton and jazz favorites by artists including Woody Herman and Les Hooper, the performance will feature the works of Amherst College professor and composer, Eric Sawyer, and Jeff Holmes, composer, conductor, professor and director of UMass’s African-American Music and Jazz Studies program.

This concert is open to the public at no charge. Seating is by general admission.

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November 20, 2007
Contact: Sara Leonard
Concert and Production Manager
413/542-2195

AMHERST, Mass.—The Amherst College Symphony Orchestra, led by Music Director Mark Lane Swanson, will present the fairy tale opera favorite Hansel und Gretel by Englebert Humperdinck on Saturday, Dec. 8 at 8 p.m. in Buckley Recital Hall in the Arms Music Center at Amherst College.

Hansel und Gretel tells the familiar story of two disobedient children sent into the woods by their mother. There they encounter frightening apparitions, are guarded in sleep by 14 angels and outwit a witch who plans to turn them into gingerbread as she as done to so many children before them.

The opera will be performed in concert with two acts and an intermission. It will be sung in German with supertitles and projections throughout. The cast will feature University of Massachusetts voice professor Janna Baty (as the Witch and Mother), Amherst College alumna Julia Fox ’07 (Gretel) and Amherst College students Alison Wahl ’08 (Hansel), Marshall Nannes ’09 (Father) and Todd Fruth ’08 (Sandman). Complimentary gingerbread cookies and candy canes will be served at a reception following the concert.

Tickets are available to the public for $5 and can be reserved in advance by contacting mlswanson@amherst.edu. Admission is free to Five College students with ID.

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November 19, 2007
Contact: Caroline Jenkins Hanna
Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.—Paul Rice, founding president and CEO of TransFair USA, the only Fair Trade certification organization in the United States today, will deliver a lecture titled “Harnessing Markets for Social Change: The Case for Fair Trade” at 8 p.m. Monday, Nov. 26, in the Pruyne Lecture Hall (Fayerweather 115) at Amherst College. The event is free and open to the public.

Since launching the Fair Trade-certified label eight years ago, Rice and TransFair have established Fair Trade as the fastest-growing segment of the $19 billion coffee industry. To date, TransFair has developed business partnerships with over 400 U.S. coffee companies (including such leading brands as Starbucks, P&G, Green Mountain and Dunkin’ Donuts), launched Fair Trade coffee into 30,000 retail outlets nationwide, certified over 75 million pounds of Fair Trade coffee and generated over $60 million in additional income for workers on small coffee farms around the world. At present, TransFair is rapidly expanding Fair Trade certification into tea, chocolate, rice, sugar, bananas and other fresh fruits. Fair Trade certification has helped open the American market to over 1.2 million family farm workers around the world who are now getting a fair price for their harvests and making dramatic gains in their living standards.

Prior to launching TransFair, Rice worked for 11 years as a rural development specialist in the mountainous Segovias region of Nicaragua, where he founded and led a highly successful organic coffee export cooperative called PRODECOOP. In 2000, he received the prestigious international Ashoka Fellowship for his pioneering work as a social entrepreneur in the Fair Trade movement. He was also honored by the Klaus Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship as one of the world’s top 40 Social Entrepreneurs in 2002. More recently, in January 2004 and 2005, he spoke on Fair Trade at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Rice has authored several publications, including “Sustainable Coffee at the Crossroads” (Consumer Choice Council, 1999), which analyzes the emerging U.S. market for sustainable coffee. Rice holds economics and political science degrees from Yale University and an M.B.A. from the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley.

His talk is sponsored by the Amherst College President’s Office. 

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November 15, 2007
Contact: Mallorie Chernin
Director of Choral Music
413/542-2484
Caroline Jenkins Hanna
Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.—The annual Amherst College Christmas Vespers service will be held on Sunday, Dec. 2, at 4 and 7:30 p.m. in Johnson Chapel. The “Festival of Lessons and Carols,” as it is called, is sponsored by the Amherst College Christian Fellowship, the Newman Club, the Protestant and Roman Catholic Religious Advisors and the Amherst College Choral Society. Admission to Christmas Vespers is free; the public is invited to attend.

Mallorie Chernin, director of choral music at Amherst, will direct the Amherst College Choral Society with assistance from Suraj Gopal ’07. Elly Jessop ’08 and Ben Vincent ’09 will direct the Amherst College Madrigal Singers. Other musicians will include organist James Maes, trumpeters Douglas Purcell and Benjamin Abelson ’08 and the Amherst College Flute Choir. Featured is guest choir Carmina, a children’s chorus from the Czech Republic.

The Choral Society will perform music of Handl, Desamours, Bach, Britten, Whalum and others. Members of the college community will read lessons from scripture. The congregation will be asked to join in the singing of traditional carols and the “Hallelujah Chorus” from Handel’s Messiah.

Admission is free and open to the public, and no tickets are required.

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November 5, 2007
Contact: Caroline Jenkins Hanna
Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.—Amherst College is pleased to announce that Megan Morey has accepted the position of chief advancement officer (CAO). Morey, who currently serves as director of leadership giving at Williams College, will assume her new role at Amherst in early December.

“I have been impressed by Megan’s vision and leadership, as well as by her nearly 20 years of fund-raising experience in higher education,” said President Anthony W. Marx. “She brings with her a real passion and appreciation for the value of a liberal arts education today and for an academic environment steeped in tradition. I am truly thrilled at the prospect of working with her in the months and years to come.”

As CAO, Morey will provide leadership and direction for Amherst’s newly invigorated advancement efforts and will design and implement a fund-raising program that responds to the college’s ambitious plans for renewal and growth—plans that include a campaign initiative currently in its formative phase. She will also work to identify, cultivate and attract future volunteer leadership and help foster the alumni body’s engagement in the life of the college.

“Amherst’s compelling vision and ambition, combined with a very talented and experienced staff, make this a most exciting opportunity,” she said.

At Williams, Morey helms a staff of 23 that includes donor relations, development research, the 25th and 50th reunion programs, special events and a team of senior development officers. She serves in a strategic leadership role for the $400 million Williams Campaign—which she helped launch in 2003—and collaborates with the senior staff of the college to define and prioritize fund-raising objectives. As a direct result of her efforts, Williams has raised more than $20 million in gifts during the past four years.

Prior to her tenure at the school, Morey served as director of the annual fund, senior development officer and associate director of development at the University of Redlands. She also held positions at Barton College, Denison University and Ohio Wesleyan University, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in economics management and French and began her career.

November 8, 2007
Contact: Katherine Duke '05
Writer/Editor
413/542-2321
Caroline Jenkins Hanna
Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417

** Editor’s Note: The original text of this release listed the time of the reading as 6 p.m. It is actually 8 p.m. We regret any confusion this has caused.

Amherst, Mass.—Authors Nalini Jones and Shauna Seliy will read from their respective debut works of fiction at 8 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 14, 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.

Jones’ What You Call Winter is a collection of inter-connected stories set in a Catholic suburb of Mumbai. Brad Leithauser has praised it for “the familiar virtues for which we keep returning to short stories: empathy, breadth, the joys in paced concealment and revelation.” Seliy’s When We Get There, is an elegiac coming-of-age novel set in the Pennsylvania coal country of the 1970’s. Alexander Chee has called it “an exhilarating first novel about what is love and what is not love … [W]ith it, Seliy shows herself to be one of our country’s best new writers.”

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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