Former General Wesley Clark and Andrew J. Bacevich to Discuss “Reinstating the National Draft” at Amherst College April 5

March 24, 2008
Contact: Emanuel Costache '09
Media Relations Intern
413/542-2321
Caroline Jenkins Hanna
Director of Media Relations

413/542-8417

audioPhotos and audio of this event

AMHERST, Mass.—Wesley K. Clark, 2004 presidential candidate and retired four-star U.S. Army General, and Andrew J. Bacevich, Boston University professor of international relations and former U.S. Army Colonel, will participate in a discussion titled “Reinstating the National Draft” at Amherst College on Saturday, April 5. The event, which will take place on campus at 1 p.m. in Johnson Chapel and will also include a book-signing at its conclusion, is part of the Amherst College Colloquium Series (ACCS) and is free and open to the public.  

Clark served 34 years as an officer in the U. S. Army. As a captain, he led an infantry unit in Vietnam, where he was seriously wounded. Over the next 30 years, he helped train, organize and equip the U.S. Army, participated in the negotiations which ended conflict in Bosnia and, in his final duty as Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, led the forces of 19 nations in a successful military campaign to end Serb ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. He is currently Chairman and CEO of Wesley K. Clark & Associates, a strategic advisory and consulting firm he started in 2004.  He is also Chairman of Rodman and Renshaw, an investment bank based in New York and London, and a Senior Fellow at UCLA’s Burkle Center for International Relations. He remains an avidly sought speaker and writer and serves as an MSNBC commentator on foreign policy and military affairs. In addition, he is a member of the boards of directors of several private and public companies.

Bacevich is professor of international relations at Boston University and former director of BU’s Center for International Relations. A graduate of West Point, he received his doctorate in American diplomatic history from Princeton University. Before joining the faculty of BU in 1998, he taught at West Point and Johns Hopkins University and served for over two decades in the U. S. Army. During his time in the service, he participated in tours in Vietnam and the Persian Gulf, achieving the rank of Colonel before retiring in the early 1990s. He is author of numerous books, including The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War (Oxford, 2005). On May 13, 2007, Bacevich’s son was killed in action by a suicide bomber south of Samarra in Salah Ad Din Province in Iraq. Two weeks later, his piece “I Lost My Son to a War I Oppose. We Were Both Doing Our Duty” appeared in The Washington Post.

Amherst’s ACCS explores pressing societal concerns in depth and features renowned speakers taking divergent positions. Each colloquium includes two days of lectures by the speakers and culminates in an open forum that is free to the general public. It is sponsored by the Office of the President at Amherst College.

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Economists Joseph E. Stiglitz ’64 and William Easterly to Discuss “Reducing Global Poverty” at Amherst College April 3

March 24, 2008
Contact: Emanuel Costache '09
Media Relations Intern
413/542-2321
Caroline Jenkins Hanna
Director of Media Relations

413/542-8417

audioPhotos and audio of this event

AMHERST, Mass.—Joseph E. Stiglitz ’64, winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in economics and professor of economics at Columbia University, and William Easterly, former research economist at the World Bank, will participate in a discussion titled “Reducing Global Poverty” at Amherst College on Thursday, April 3. The event, an open forum which will take place on campus at 7 p.m. in Converse Hall’s Cole Assembly Room, is part of the Amherst College Colloquium Series (ACCS) and is free and open to the public. A book-signing will follow.

A graduate of Amherst College, Stiglitz served as senior vice president and chief economist of the World Bank from 1997 to 2000. Before working at the World Bank, he was chair of the President's Council of Economic Advisors under President Bill Clinton. In 2001, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics for his analyses of markets with asymmetric information. The author of numerous books, including The Three Trillion Dollar War (Norton, 2008) with Linda Bilmes and Globalization and Its Discontents (Norton, 2002), Stiglitz is also the founder of the Initiative for Policy Dialogue, a think tank on international development based at Columbia University, and chairs the University of Manchester’s Brooks World Poverty Institute.

In 1985, Easterly began his 16-year tenure at the World Bank as an economist and senior advisor in the macroeconomics and growth division. He then worked at the Institute for International Economics and the Center for Global Development before taking on teaching at New York University, where he is professor of economics, and co-director of NYU’s Development Research Institute. He is also a non-resident fellow of the Center for Global Development in Washington, D.C., and visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution during the 2007-08 academic year. The author of The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good (Penguin, 2006) and The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists’ Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics (MIT, 2001), Easterly received his doctorate in economics at MIT.

Amherst’s ACCS explores pressing societal concerns in depth and features renowned speakers taking divergent positions. Each colloquium includes two days of lectures by the speakers and culminates in an open forum that is free to the general public. It is sponsored by the Office of the President at Amherst College.

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Greek Historian Paul Cartledge to Discuss “Herodotus: A Personal Odyssey” at Amherst College March 27

March 26, 2008
Contact: Emanuel Costache '09
Media Relations Intern
413/542-2321
Caroline Jenkins Hanna
Director of Media Relations

413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.—Paul Cartledge, professor of Greek history and fellow of Clare College at the University of Cambridge as well as visiting professor at New York University, will give a talk titled “Herodotus: A Personal Odyssey” in Amherst College’s Stirn Auditorium at 4:30 p.m. on Thursday, March 27. A reception will follow in the Rotherwas Room of the Mead Art Museum. Both the talk and reception are free and open to the public.

A prolific writer on the ancient Greek world, Cartledge’s most recent book is Thermopylae: The Battle That Changed the World (Vintage, 2006). In this book, Cartledge reveals a complex story of mainland Greece refusing to embrace the emerging free and democratic culture associated with Athens. In addition to his scholarly work, Cartledge was chief historical consultant for the BBC TV series The Greeks and the Channel 4 series The Spartans.

Cartledge’s lecture is sponsored by the Lurcy Fund, Five Colleges, Inc. and the Five College Classics Departments. For more information, visit the Amherst College Classics Department’s Web site at https://cms.amherst.edu/academiclife/departments/classics/classics_lectures.

Jazz@Schwemm’s Performance Series Livens Springtime at Amherst College

March 26, 2008
Contact: Sara Leonard
Concert and Production Manager
Amherst College

413/542-2195

AMHERST, Mass.The Amherst College Jazz Program announces three Jazz@Schwemm’s concerts to take place in April 2008. All concerts will be held in the Backroom at Schwemm’s Coffee House in the Keefe Campus Center at Amherst College from 9 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. on Tuesday nights.

On April 1, Amherst College student jazz combos Jazzdrive and Harry Potter and The Prisoners of Jazz Kaban will perform.

On April 8, the Eclectic Jazz Quartet, which features Amherst College Professor Dick Poccia, will perform with special guest Rob Faulkner on trumpet.

On April 15, Amherst College student jazz combos Black Coffee and Sea Biscuits will close out the spring 2008 Jazz@Schwemm’s season.

All performances are free and open to the public. The Jazz@Schwemm’s Series is sponsored by Jazz@Amherst, the Office of Student Activities and Schwemm’s Coffee House. For more information, contact Bruce Diehl, Director of Jazz Programs at 413/542-8308 or bpdiehl@amherst.edu.

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Author Stephen Yenser to Read His Work at Amherst College April 10

March 24, 2008
Contact: Caroline Jenkins Hanna
Director of Media Relations

413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.—Author Stephen Yenser will read from his work at 8 p.m. Thursday, April 10, in Pruyne Lecture Hall of Amherst College’s Fayerweather Hall. Sponsored by the Amherst College Creative Writing Center, the event is open to the public at no charge.

The poet Alan Williamson has said, “Stephen Yenser combines two qualities rarely found together: an extraordinary gift for verbal play and a bedrock seriousness about the emotional aims of poetry.” Yenser is celebrated as both a poet and a critic and is the author of two volumes of poetry, The Fire in All Things, which won a Walt Whitman Award, and the recent collection Blue Guide. The recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, Yenser is a professor of English and director of creative writing at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Every year, the Amherst College Creative Writing Center sponsors a reading series featuring both emerging and established authors. All events are wheelchair accessible and followed by refreshments. For more information, please call 413/542-8200.

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Amherst College Professor Ilán Stavans to Debut and Workshop New Play, The Disappearance, This Month

March 19, 2008
Contact: Caroline Jenkins Hanna
Director of Media Relations

413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.—Amherst College’s Ilán Stavans, the Lewis-Sebring Professor in Latin American and Latino Culture and Five-College Fortieth Anniversary Professor, will debut his newest work, a play titled The Disappearance, in workshop presentations at the Double Edge Theater in Ashfield, Mass., at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, March 20 to Saturday, March 22, and Thursday, March 27 to Saturday, March 29, with an additional matinee on March 22 at 2 p.m. Immediately following the performances, Stavans and the cast will discuss the production with the audience and take questions. Tickets are $15 for general admission and $12 for students and seniors; group rates are available.

The Disappearance—which will officially premier this fall in Los Angeles and then travel to New York, Boston and Warsaw, Poland, among other cities—is based on a short story of the same title written by Stavans. The piece revolves around a Belgian theater star, Maarten Soëtendrop, who is mysteriously kidnapped after he protests the renewal of anti-Semitism in Europe. The play as a whole relates to the necessity for the reinvention of Jewish life after the Holocaust, according to Stavans.

The Disappearance is a milestone in the Double Edge’s 26-year history, a unique exchange between founder/artistic director Stacy Klein and Stavans. (The collaboration will serve as the basis of an upcoming book co-authored by Klein and Stavans, On Theatre, to be published in 2009.) Said Stavans, who has written or edited several books and anthologies: “This the most challenging and rewarding artistic experiment [in which] I’ve ever been involved with people from another media.” The project will also break new ground for Double Edge artistically because it is a contemporary work, it incorporates film, and it is adapted from the work of a living writer.

The Disappearance will be the fourth installment of theater’s current performance cycle, The Garden of Intimacy and Desire, which questions the contradictions of responsibility and freedom, sexuality and domination, reality, dream and flight. The project has received prestigious awards from the Trust for Mutual Understanding, the Association of Performing Arts Presenters, the NEA, the Harold Grinspoon Foundation and the Ashfield Arts Council.

             

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Emily Dickinson Museum to Host Acclaimed Writer Galway Kinnell April 6

March 18, 2008
Contact: Donna M. Abelli
Development and Marketing Manager
The Emily Dickinson Museum

413/542-5084

AMHERST, Mass.—The Emily Dickinson Museum: The Homestead and The Evergreens presents acclaimed poet Galway Kinnell on Sunday, April 6, at 4 p.m. in Cole Assembly of Amherst College’s Converse Hall. The event is free and open to the public. Kinnell will read a selection of his favorite poems, including those by Emily Dickinson as well as some of his own work. A reception and book-signing will follow the program, which is part of “A little Madness in the Spring,” the museum’s local annual celebration of National Poetry Month in April.

Kinnell counts among his earliest influences the poetry of Emily Dickinson. After a tour in the U.S. Navy, Kinnell joined CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) as a field worker and spent much of the 1960s involved in the Civil Rights Movement. His many experiences with social activism during this time, including an arrest while participating in workplace integration in Louisiana, found their way into his collection Body Rags (1968) and especially The Book of Nightmares (1971), a book-length poem concerned with the Vietnam War. Additional works include Selected Poems (1980), for which he received both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award; A New Selected Poems (2000), a finalist for the National Book Award; and Strong Is Your Hold (2006). 

Kinnell’s honors include a MacArthur Fellowship, a Rockefeller Grant, the 1974 Shelley Prize of the Poetry Society of America and the 1975 Medal of Merit from National Institute of Arts and Letters. He has served as poet-in-residence at numerous colleges and universities and divides his time between Vermont and New York City, where he was the Erich Maria Remarque Professor of Creative Writing at New York University.

In addition to Kinnell’s reading, the Emily Dickinson Museum presents several other programs to extend the celebration of National Poetry Month through the end of April. Some include a reading and book-signing by author Christopher Benfey April 21, a discussion with Anne Flick of the Civil War in Dickinson’s poetry April 25 and a Kinsmen of the Shelf book group discussion of the Selected Poems of Robert Browning (a favorite of Dickinson’s) with guest discussion leader Cornelia Pearsall, associate professor of English at Smith College, April 27. More information about these and other programs is available at the museum’s Web site, www.emilydickinsonmuseum.org.

The Emily Dickinson Museum, comprising the Dickinson Homestead and The Evergreens, two historic house museums in Amherst, is devoted to the story and legacy of poet Emily Dickinson and her family. Both properties are 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), while 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, Mass. Hours are Wednesday through Sunday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., March through December, with extended hours, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., June through August.

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Amherst College Professor Lucia M. Suárez to Deliver Talk on Conflicts, Heartache and Love in Cuban Literature and Film April 10

March 20, 2008
Contact: Emanuel Costache '09
Media Relations Intern
413/542-2321
Caroline Jenkins Hanna
Director of Media Relations

413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.—Lucia M. Suárez, associate professor of Spanish, will give the annual Max and Etta Lazerowitz Lecture on “Ruins of Cuba: Memories of Havana,” a section of her book in progress, Looking for Cuba: Imagining a Nation, on Thursday, April 10, at 4:30 p.m. in Amherst College’s Alumni House. The talk will be followed by a reception for the author; both are free and open to the public.

Suárez’s book project began in 1991 when she visited Cuba for three months to interview Cuban women writers and to meet her paternal grandfather in preparation for her dissertation, which was to be about Cuba. At the time, however, Cuba and all issues Cuban were too controversial for exposure. So Suárez decided to change gears and write about Caribbean women writers in the diaspora—even though she has tirelessly read and taught about Cuba since. This year, she embarked on a personal, literary journey with her friend Ruth Behar. Together, they gathered autobiographical essays of Cubans living in multiple diasporas internationally. In the process of preparing this collaborative, forthcoming book, The Portable Island: Cubans at Home in the World, Suárez discovered that she was finally ready to write her own book about conflicts, heartache and love in Cuban literature and film. In particular, her research and writing look to the concept of ruin as a central unifying metaphor of Cuban experience. This is the work that will be presented on April 10.

At Amherst since 2006, Suárez regularly teaches courses in Spanish language, comparative Caribbean and diaspora films and literatures, Latino/a autobiography, testimonio and women’s writings. Her focus continues to be on issues of gender, memory, human rights, race, trauma, violence and human possibility.

The Lazerowitz Lectureship is awarded each year to support and encourage members of the Amherst College faculty in their scholarly work. The dean of the faculty, in conjunction with the Lecture Committee, selects the recipient, a member of the faculty below the rank of a full professor, who presents a lecture on his or her research.

The Max and Etta Lazerowitz Lectureship was established in 1985 to honor the parents of the late Morris Lazerowitz, professor emeritus of philosophy at Smith College.

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Philosopher Gary Watson to Discuss “The Trouble with Psychopaths” at Amherst College April 17

March 20, 2008
Contact: Caroline Jenkins Hanna
Director of Media Relations

413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.—Gary Watson, professor of philosophy at the University of California (UC), Riverside, will give a talk titled “The Trouble with Psychopaths” at 4:30 p.m. on Thursday, April 17, in Pruyne Lecture Hall at Amherst College’s Fayerweather Hall. Organized by the Amherst College Department of Philosophy and the fourth and final event of the Forry and Micken Fund in Philosophy and Science Lecture Series on the Philosophy and Science of Freedom, Watson’s talk is free and open to the public.

Watson’s interests center on issues in philosophy of mind and moral philosophy that arise from human agency. That interest is reflected not only in his writings on free will and moral responsibility but also, less obviously, in his work on virtue and character. He also teaches and works on political philosophy (especially liberalism), philosophical issues in race and gender and the philosophy of Nietzsche.

In addition to his work at UC Riverside, Watson has served on the faculty at UC Irvine. He has published a book, Free Will, and numerous reviews and scholarly articles, including “Free Agency,” “Skepticism about Weakness of Will,” “Kant on Happiness in the Moral Life” and “Virtues in Excess,” among others. He received a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from University of Washington and a doctorate in philosophy from Princeton University.

The Forry and Micken Fund in Philosophy and Science was established in 1983 by Carol Micken and John I. Forry ’66 to promote the study of philosophical issues arising out of new developments in the sciences, including mathematics, and issues in the philosophy and history of science.

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Philosopher David Owens to Discuss “Freedom and Practical Judgment” at Amherst College March 27

March 20, 2008
Contact: Caroline Jenkins Hanna
Director of Media Relations

413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.—David Owens, professor of philosophy at the University of Sheffield in the United Kingdom, will give a talk titled “Freedom and Practical Judgment” at 4:30 p.m. on Thursday, March 27, in Pruyne Lecture Hall at Amherst College. Organized by the Amherst College Department of Philosophy and part of the Forry and Micken Fund in Philosophy and Science Lecture Series on the Philosophy and Science of Freedom, Owens’s talk is free and open to the public.

Owens joined the University of Sheffield’s philosophy department in 1993, after holding several appointments at the University of Cambridge. During the 1996-97 academic year, he was a Fulbright Scholar at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. There he completed the first draft of a book which has since been published under the title Reason Without Freedom (Routledge 2000). This work focuses on the connection between the justification of belief and notions of freedom, responsibility, agency and control. Since then, he has published several articles expanding on the themes of the book, including “Scepticisms: Descartes and Hume,” “Epistemic Akrasia” and “Testimony and Assertion.”

In recent years, Owens’s interests have turned towards ethics. He has published a number of papers on promissory obligation, including “The Right and the Reasonable,” “A Simple Theory of Promising” and (forthcoming) “Duress, Deception and the Validity of a Promise.” He has also written on lying and on the nature of obligation. He was recently awarded a two-year Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship.

The Forry and Micken Fund in Philosophy and Science was established in 1983 by Carol Micken and John I. Forry ’66 to promote the study of philosophical issues arising out of new developments in the sciences, including mathematics, and issues in the philosophy and history of science.

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Love, Art, Scandal and the Hummingbird: Book Signing with Christopher Benfey April 21

March 19, 2008
Contact: Donna M. Abelli
Development and Marketing Manager
The Emily Dickinson Museum

413/542-5084

AMHERST, Mass.—Critic and essayist Christopher Benfey will share the alluring story of his newest book, A Summer of Hummingbirds: Love, Art, and Scandal in the Intersecting Worlds of Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Martin Johnson Heade, at the Emily Dickinson Museum on Monday, April 21, at 4 p.m. A book-signing and reception will follow the event, which is free and open to the public.

In A Summer of Hummingbirds, Benfey maps the intricate web of friendship, family and romance that connected Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe and Martin Johnson Heade. His complex tale of interconnection comes to an apex in Amherst, Mass., during the summer of 1882, a time when loyalties were betrayed and thoughts exchanged with the speed of a hummingbird’s wings. As infidelity and lust run rampant, the incendiary ghost of Lord Byron is evoked, and the characters of A Summer of Hummingbirds find themselves caught in the crossfire between the Calvinist world of decorum, restraint and judgment and a romantic, unconventional world in which nature prevails and freedom is all. Benfey unveils how, through the art of these great thinkers, the hummingbird became the symbol of an era, an image through which they could explore their controversial ideas of nature, religion, sexuality, family, time, exoticism and beauty—all of which would come to shape American thought.

Benfey is Mellon Professor of English at Mount Holyoke College and a prolific critic and essayist who writes for The New York Times Book Review, The New Republic, The New York Review of Books and the online magazine Slate. He has published three books set in the American Gilded Age: The Double Life of Stephen Crane, Degas in New Orleans and The Great Wave: Gilded Age Misfits, Japanese Eccentrics, and the Opening of Old Japan. He has held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Council of Learned Societies.

The Emily Dickinson Museum, comprising the Dickinson Homestead and The Evergreens, two historic house museums in Amherst, is devoted to the story and legacy of poet Emily Dickinson and her family. Both properties are 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), while 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, Mass. Hours are Wednesday through Sunday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., March through December, with extended hours, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., June through August.

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Amherst Biology Professor Michael Hood Receives $690,000 NSF CAREER Award

March 18, 2008
Contact: Caroline Jenkins Hanna
Director of Media Relations

413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.—Amherst College’s Michael Hood, professor of biology, has received a prestigious Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The five-year, $690,000 prize will enable Hood to continue his research on disease transmission and genomics—studies that may one day better explain how common illnesses function.

“I am extremely pleased and flattered to have been recognized with this award,” said Hood. “Perhaps more importantly, though, I am excited for the research it will enable me to conduct.” Added Gregory S. Call, dean of the faculty at Amherst: “As Michael so aptly demonstrates, members of the college’s faculty are committed to cutting-edge scholarship and, when and wherever possible, to inspiring our students to contribute to it.” 

The funding will support a project of Hood’s exploring the fungus Microbrytrum, which, though harmless in humans, causes a common infectious disease in plants. Hood and his team of Amherst undergraduate students will let the anther smut, as it is called, progress in flowers in his lab and greenhouse and study the disease as it spreads from one plant to another. They will also examine its novel genomic properties and the evolution of its chromosome structure as it runs its course.

By observing the anther smut as it interacts with its host, said Hood, he and his team aim to develop a model for disease that can be applied to biologically similar human illnesses, such as sexually transmitted diseases. “This is a great way to painlessly shed some light some illnesses that cause quite a bit of misery among men and women today,” he explained. “It is also a wonderful opportunity to get Amherst undergraduates excited about careers in research and evolutionary biology.”

The NSF is an independent U.S. government agency responsible for promoting science and engineering through programs that invest over $3.3 billion per year in almost 20,000 research and education projects in science and engineering.

According to its Web site, the Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program supports “the early career-development activities of those teacher-scholars who most effectively integrate research and education within the context of the mission of their organization.” Such activities should build a firm foundation for a lifetime of integrated contributions to research and education.

Hood received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Virginia. He earned a doctorate from North Carolina State University and completed post-doctoral work at Duke University and the University of Virginia. He joined the Amherst faculty in 2006.

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Tags:  Michael Hood  NSF Award 

Emily Dickinson Museum Open for the 2008 Season

March 18, 2008
Contact: Donna M. Abelli
Development and Marketing Manager
The Emily Dickinson Museum

413/542-5084

AMHERST, Mass—The Emily Dickinson Museum: The Homestead and The Evergreens has opened for its 2008 season with expanded hours and exciting new programming. The museum, which is made up of two homes—the Homestead, where the poet was born and lived for 40 years, and The Evergreens, where Emily Dickinson’s brother Austin lived with his family—is open March through December from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., Wednesday through Sunday. June through August, the museum is open for special expanded hours, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Says Jane Wald, the museum’s executive director, “We see growing interest in Emily Dickinson’s extraordinary poetic legacy among both the general public and the arts and culture community. Last year, more than 10,500 visitors participated in museum tours and programs. These visitors have told us that their experiences offered new insights into Dickinson’s genius and the ground from which it sprung right here in Amherst. We want to make those experiences as available as possible.”

2008 brings many exciting developments at the Emily Dickinson Museum. In addition to continuing such popular programs as the museum’s Dickinson-inspired book club, The Kinsmen of the Shelf, a poetry discussion group and a mid-summer children’s circus, the museum will host its annual “Madness in the Spring” recognition of National Poetry Month. The latter will feature a reading and book-signing by renowned poet Galway Kinnell and the celebration of the release of essayist Christopher Benfey’s latest book, A Summer of Hummingbirds: Love, Art, and Scandal in the Intersecting Worlds of Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Martin Johnson Heade.

For a complete list of the Emily Dickinson Museum’s 2008 programming and special events, visit www.emilydickinsonmuseum.org. Admission fees range from $3 to $8. Discounts may apply, and there is no charge for children under 6. 

The Emily Dickinson Museum is devoted to the story and legacy of poet Emily Dickinson and her family. Both properties are 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. It is located at 280 Main Street in Amherst, Mass.

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Research of Amherst College Biology Professor Ethan Temeles Featured in Permanent Smithsonian Exhibit

March 18, 2008
Contact: Caroline Jenkins Hanna
Director of Media Relations

413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.—Scientists at the world-renowned Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History have chosen to feature the studies of Amherst College biology professor Ethan Temeles in an exhibition explaining co-adaptation in animals and plants. The exhibit, titled Butterflies + Plants: Partners in Evolution, is a permanent one and will likely remain in its current location for at least 20 years, according to museum administrators.

Based on the study of co-evolution, Partners in Evolution examines how organisms interact with one another and how they change from generation to generation because of those interactions. While an indoor garden of butterflies and plants is the central focus of the exhibition, a variety of organisms—from bats to beetles—and their interactions with plants are also featured.  Temeles’s work linking the evolution of the purple-throated carib hummingbird to the flowering plant it pollinates, two species of Heliconia, is among just a handful of research projects spotlighted.

“Charles Darwin was among the first to suggest that interactions between plants and their pollinators could result in reciprocal adaptation,” said Temeles. “To be able to study such reciprocal adaptation between plants and hummingbirds across a Caribbean archipelago and then to be featured in this exhibit are amazing experiences for me. I feel so fortunate as a scientist.”

Temeles received a bachelor’s degree in biological sciences from Cornell University and went on to earn a master’s in zoology from Louisiana State University. He completed his doctoral work at the University of California Davis and joined the Amherst faculty in 1994.

According to the organization’s Web site, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., is the most visited natural history museum in the world. Opened in 1910, the museum is dedicated to maintaining and preserving the world’s most extensive collection of natural history specimens and human artifacts. It also fosters critical scientific research as well as educational programs and exhibitions that present the work of its scientists and curators to the public.

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Poetry Scholar to Lecture on “Emily Dickinson and the Brownings: A Triad of Poets” March 25

March 18, 2008
Contact: Donna M. Abelli
Development and Marketing Manager
The Emily Dickinson Museum

413/542-5084

AMHERST, Mass.—The Emily Dickinson Museum’s “Replenishing the Shelves” lecture series continues with guest speaker Vincent Petronella on March 25 at 7 p.m. Petronella will deliver a talk titled “Emily Dickinson and the Brownings: A Triad of Poets” at the Amherst’s Woman’s Club on Triangle Street. There is no charge for this program, but donations are appreciated.

Dickinson’s admiration of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s work is well documented. Elizabeth Barrett’s poetry is considered by most scholars to be a significant inspiration for Dickinson who admired her not only as a great poet but also as a woman of achievement. Dickinson paid little attention to Robert Browning while Barrett was alive, but after Barrett’s passing from a long illness in 1861, Dickinson found a temporal sensibility in Browning’s poetry. Petronella will discuss the extraordinary lives of Dickinson, Barrett and Browning, who are considered by many to be three of the world’s greatest poets.

Petronella earned his doctorate in English from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and currently serves as professor emeritus of English at the University of Massachusetts Boston. He is a seminar leader and board member for Beacon Hill Seminars in Boston, where he teaches courses in Shakespeare, the poetry of the Brownings and John Keats, the fiction of Hawthorne and Melville and the plays of George Bernard Shaw. He is a past president of the Boston Browning Society.

“Replenishing the Shelves” is a Dickinson Museum initiative aimed at recreating the libraries of the Homestead and The Evergreens as accurately as possible. The effort is dedicated to and led by Polly Longsworth, a longtime Dickinson scholar and the first chair of the Emily Dickinson museum’s board of governors. “Restocking the Dickinson family library dovetails with the museum’s mission of preserving the legacy of the Dickinson family,” said Longsworth. “Few possessions meant so much to them. Even though it would be a lifetime challenge to read all the books Emily Dickinson read, we welcome the support of friends in the great project of reassembling on the shelves those she lived with.” For more information on “Replenishing the Shelves,” please visit the Dickinson Museum’s Web site, emilydickinsonmuseum.org, or call executive director Jane Wald (413/542-2154).

The Emily Dickinson Museum, comprising the Dickinson Homestead and The Evergreens, is devoted to the story and legacy of poet Emily Dickinson and her family. Both properties are 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), while 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. Hours are Wednesday through Sunday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., March through December, with extended hours, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., June through August.

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