Wells College Announces First Art Exhibit of the Academic Year

Equestrian photographer Michael Marten exhibits his work through Nov. 5

The Wells College Art Department is pleased to announce that the horseracing photographs of Michael Marten will be the focus of its first exhibit of the 2004-2005 academic year. A selection of small and large format photos on stretched canvases will be on display in the String Room Gallery from October 6 - November 5, 2004. An opening reception will be held on Wednesday, October 6 from 7:00-9:00 pm in the Gallery; refreshments will be served and the artist will be present. The reception and exhibit are free and open to the public.

Michael Marten is a graduate of St. John’s University in Queens, NY, where he earned a B.F.A. in photography. His work takes him to racing venues worldwide, including Europe, Africa, Dubai, Great Britain, and across the United States. He is a nationally syndicated photographer with Horsephotos, Inc., which boasts such clients as The Daily Racing Form and the Houston Oilers. He is a two-time recipient of the Eclipse Award for Photography, presented in recognition of outstanding performances by horses and humans in Thoroughbred racing, and for outstanding coverage of the sport of horseracing. Marten currently resides in Del Mar, California.

String Room Gallery hours are Monday through Friday from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., Wednesday evenings from 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday from 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.  The Gallery has recently undergone renovations, including the installation of new tract lighting.

For more information about the show and art classes at Wells, please contact art professor and String Room Gallery director William Roberts at 315/364-3237, or visit the college’s website at www.wells.edu. More information about Michael Marten may also be found on horsephotos.com, a photo stock library dedicated exclusively to equine-related photographic images.

September, 2004

New Director of Book Arts Initiatives, Victor Hammer Fellow added to staff

The The Wells College Book Arts Center, home of the Wells College Press, offers distinctive educational opportunities for students who want to combine book arts with writing, photography, or illustration. Program expansion is currently underway to include new summer institutes and workshops for book artists.

“Our Book Arts Center is a gem among academic programs that encourages individual self-discovery and collaboration,” said Wells President Lisa Marsh Ryerson. “Each year it reaches new heights, and the Wells community takes pride in the work being produced by book arts students, faculty, and staff. The center is a bridge connecting Wells’ tradition of academic excellence and dedication to quality with the future.” 

To meet the increasing needs of students and the public, Terrence Chouinard, director of the Center, recently announced that Wells has hired two creative new staff members:

Sarah Roberts, who recently completed her two-year appointment as Wells’ third Victor Hammer Fellow, has been named director of book arts initiatives. She will develop and direct the summer book arts institutes, scheduled to begin in June 2005. She will also develop new grant opportunities and continue to teach. 

“I am very excited to be continuing my work at the Wells Book Arts Center,” says Sarah. “We are busy planning our inaugural series of summer classes, and we're working on other programs that will extend our educational mission to a larger community. I'm also looking for new ways for the Book Arts Center to work in partnership with other departments on campus.” 

Sarah earned her M.F.A. in English from the University of Iowa, where she gained extensive experience in the university’s Center for the Book. She received her B.A. (with honors) in English from the University of Washington, Seattle. While at Wells, her book-length poetry manuscript, Blue Ground, was selected as finalist in the National Poetry Series, and her letterpress work was shown at an exhibit at Union College that featured the work of contemporary women printers.

Margot Ecke joins the Wells staff as the fourth Victor Hammer Fellow. Margot received her  M.F.A. from the Rhode Island School of Design and her B.F.A. from Cornell. She received the Professional Printing Certificate from the Tamarind Institute at the University of New Mexico and completed her training by earning her Certificate in Bookbinding at the North Bennett Street School in Boston, the only full-time bench bookbinding program in North America. Margot held a residency at the Carolina Rediviva Library in Uppsala, Sweden, in the summer of 2004, where she studied medieval bookbinding structures.  She has taught at both the North Bennett Street School and the Rhode Island School of Design. 

“It has been a long time since I have had the facilities and resources necessary to work on my large scale projects,” says Margot. “I am excited about combining typesetting with my other formal training to create new work at Wells. The enthusiasm of the students and the rich focus on the book arts is remarkable.  I am looking forward to seeing the work they produce.”

The Victor Hammer Fellowship was established in 1998 to honor Victor Hammer, a master craftsman in printing, bookbinding, calligraphy, typography, and punch cutting, who taught at Wells from 1939 to 1948. The two-year appointment consists of a residency at Wells and an apprenticeship at the Bixler Press and Letterfoundry in Skaneateles, NY. The purpose of the fellowship is to enhance the educational mission of the Wells Book Arts Center and increase awareness of the book arts as a field of study and practice, both at Wells and in the community at large. 

The Wells College Book Arts Center was established in 1993 to instruct in all areas of book arts and technologies. Students in book arts classes learn the history and philosophy of their craft as they develop hand skills in the fabrication of books. They gain international perspective on book arts with visits from accomplished lecturers, writers, and artists, and with field trips to the area's remarkable collection of libraries, presses, paper mills and binderies. Current classes teach design, typography, the evolution of letterforms, letterpress printing, bookbinding, and the history of the book.

For more information about the Wells College Book Arts Center and these new staff appointments, please contact Terrence Chouinard at 315/364-3420  or visit the Center’s website at aurora.wells.edu/~wbac/bookarts.

September, 2004

Dorothy Allison, author of “Bastard Out Of Carolina,” to lecture

Wells College is proud to announce that award-winning feminist author Dorothy Allison is this year’s Mildred Walker '26 Visiting Fiction Writer. Allison will visit the Aurora campus on October 4 and 5. She will speak on “Changing the World, One Story At A Time” at 7:00 pm on Monday, October 4 in Barler Recital Hall. The entire community is cordially invited to hear this renowned author share her own story and view on life. The talk is free, and will be followed by a book signing. 

Southern novelist, activist, feminist, and self-proclaimed born-again Californian, Dorothy Allison grew up in Greenville, South Carolina, the first child of a fifteen-year-old unwed mother who dropped out of seventh grade to work as a waitress. 

A survivor of neglect, sexual abuse, and extreme poverty, she escaped South Carolina and went on to win a National Merit Scholarship to attend Florida Presbyterian College. Later she enrolled at The New School in New York City where she worked on a degree in Anthropology. 

Allison joined a radical feminist collective in the early 1970s, giving her a pseudo-religion which helped her to grapple with her family’s shocking mix of hate, beatings, rage, rape, and love. She did not try to see her family until 1981, when she chose to return to her roots. She admits that her first book, a work of poetry, The Women Who Hate Me, (1983) "wouldn't have happened if I hadn't gotten over my own prejudices, and started talking to my mother and sisters again."

Her second book, Trash (1988), a collection of short stories originally published by small lesbian presses and alternative magazines, won two Lambda Literary Awards. 

Allison received mainstream critical acclaim when her first novel, the semi-autobiographical Bastard Out of Carolina, was named one of five finalists for the 1992 National Book Award. It went on to win both the Ferro-Grumley Award for Lesbian Fiction and the Bay Area Book Reviewers Award for fiction, and was made into a Showtime movie produced by Angelica Huston. 

“Dorothy Allison has a voice that rivets,” says Ednie Kaeh Garrison, visiting professor of Women’s Studies at Wells. “You want to sit glued to your seat and soak in all the wisdom and pain and love and passion, but you find yourself unable to sit still. You want to jump and dance and cry and laugh. I imagine this must be what listening to those great orators who inspired revolutions was like. Allison makes revolution irresistible.”

The Wells College Book Arts Center is preparing a hand-printed keepsake which will be available for sale following the reading. All proceeds will benefit the Women’s Studies Department at Wells.

Dorothy Allison's visit to Wells is sponsored by the Women's Studies Department,  the Mildred Walker '26 Visiting Fiction Writer fund, the Dean of the College, the Diversity Series, the Women's Resource Center, the Wells College Library, Social Sciences Division, the Psychology Department, and the Intercultural Programs and Services Office.

For more information about Dorothy Allison’s lecture at Wells College, please contact Ednie Kaeh Garrison at 315/364-3272 or visit the college’s website at www.wells.edu. More information about Dorothy Allison may also be found at www.dorothyallison.net.

September, 2004

FootHills Publishing hosts five published Wells poets

The Wells College Visiting Writer Series is pleased to announce that several members of the Wells community will present a group poetry reading. Two current students, two alumnae, and one faculty member will read at 7:00 pm on Thursday, September 30 in the Chapel in Main Building. Each has had their work printed by FootHills Publishing. The free reading will be followed by a reception with an opportunity to meet the poets; refreshments will be served.

The featured poets are:

Rene Battelle ’03. Rene will be reading from her chapbook entitled Pieces: A Journal of Dreams and Poems, a collection of some of her dreams alongside poems that were inspired by those dreams. Rene is currently living and working in Syracuse, and is at work on a collection of poems about her neighborhood.

Angela Dockwiller ’03. Angela is the author of Springfed chapbook #35. She will appear to read a selection from Stories from the 72nd Street Home for the Irrevocably Lost and Forgotten Agents of Destruction, a collection of dramatic monologues from her senior thesis. 

Susan "Susannah" Loiselle. Susannah lives in Locke, the mother of five children. She is a non-traditional student at Wells and enjoys writing, English and Book Arts classes. Susannah writes about Central New York life and aspects of this area in particular. Her poetry has been published in the Wells Chronicle, Play of Mind, author J. Robert Lennon's online site "Dispatches," and in The Healing Muse. The title of her chapbook is God Speaks To Me at the Salvation Army Thrift Store.

Jill Parsons ’05. Jill, originally from Albany, is currently a senior at Wells College majoring in Creative Writing and minoring in the Book Arts. Her FootHills Springfed chapbook, The Edge of an Awakening, was published December 2002. She is editor of two magazines, the Wells Chronicle and Play of Mind, which publishes works by undergraduate writers in New York State. Currently, she is writing her senior thesis, a collection of poems based on newspaper stories. 

Bruce Bennett, Professor of English at Wells College. Bruce has had several books and chapbooks published by FootHills, most recently Hey Diddle, Diddle (2001) and Funny Signals (2003). His new FootHills chapbook, Grief and Love, has just been published and will be available at the reading. Bennett’s manuscript Web-Watching is the winner of Bright Hill Press’s 2003 Chapbook Competition. The national award was presented in June 2004. 

Host for the evening’s reading will be Michael Czarnecki, founder and editor of FootHills Publishing. Michael is a poet, small press publisher and oral memoirist who lives in the Finger Lakes region and occasionally on the coast of Maine. He spends his time writing, editing, publishing, hiking, and sitting and observing.

FootHills Publishing was formed in 1986 for the purpose of getting into print the words of poets who find it hard to get their work out to the public other than at readings or in the occasional magazine. Since its founding, FootHills Publishing has released more than 100 chapbooks. All of FootHills’ books are now hand-stitched, and the company has a reputation for fine quality content and production. More information about FootHills Publishing may be found at their website: www. foothillspublishing.com.

This poetry reading and the Wells College Visiting Writer Series are made possible in part by a grant from the New York State Council on the Arts.  Poets and writers are invited to campus throughout the academic year to meet with students, present writing workshops, and read from their respective works.

For more information, please contact English professor Bruce Bennett at 315/364-3228 or visit the college’s website at www.wells.edu.

September, 2004

Wells College is pleased to welcome our new freshwomen to campus. These bright young women bring a variety of talents and smarts to the college
 

381	applications to the Class of 2008
88	students enrolled in the class
8	students related to alumnae
40	Henry Wells scholars
8	Girl Scouts
1	distinguished delegate at Rutgers’ Model United Nations Conference
84%	performed community service inhigh school
68%	held a leadership position in a school or community activity
1	self-employed owner of a general store
90%	attended public school
10%	attended private school
82%	held jobs during high school
54	students played a sport in high school
1	recipient of a American Forum for Global Studies scholarship to Beijing University
770	highest verbal SAT score
670	highest math SAT score
1	student published in “Celebrate! Young Poets Speak Out” magazine
41	students involved with music in high school
31	students involved with drama in high school
1	Relay For Life volunteer

September, 2004

Dr. Stanley Engerman will speak on slavery in the United States

Wells College welcomes Phi Beta Kappa visiting scholar Stanley L. Engerman to the Aurora campus. On Thursday, September 23 at 7:30 pm in the Art Exhibit Room, Macmillan Hall, Engerman will deliver an address entitled “Slavery and Its Aftermath in the United States.” The talk is free and the greater community is invited to hear this educator speak.

Dr. Stanley L. Engerman is the John H. Munro Professor of Economics and Professor of History at the University of Rochester. He is past president of the Economic History Association, and an award-winning writer. Engerman co-wrote “Time On The Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery,” which was awarded the Bancroft Prize in American History. He is co-editor of The Cambridge Economic History of the United States and the forthcoming The Cambridge World History of Slavery.

Engerman received his B.S. and M.B.A. degrees from New York University, and his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University. He joined the faculty at the University of Rochester in 1963, and was named John H. Munro Professor of Economics and Professor of History in 1984. He was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and has been a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. He currently serves on the editorial boards of Slavery and Abolition; Explorations in Economic History; and The Encyclopedia of World Trade Since 1450. 

The Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar Program makes available each year twelve or more distinguished scholars who visit 100 colleges and universities with Phi Beta Kappa chapters. They spend two days on each campus, meeting informally with students and faculty members, taking part in classroom discussions, and giving a public lecture to the entire academic community. The purpose of the program is to contribute to the intellectual life of the institution by making possible an exchange of ideas between the visiting scholars and the resident faculty and students.  Founded in 1776, Phi Beta Kappa is the nation’s oldest national honor society. It has chapters at 270 colleges and universities, and over 500,000 members.

For more information about Stanley Engerman’s lecture at Wells College, please contact Professor Beatrice Farnsworth at 315/364-3239. More information about Phi Beta Kappa may be found on their website at www.pbk.org.

September, 2004

Dr. Virginia M. Scott of Vanderbilt University addresses students, faculty

Vanderbilt University comes to Wells College this fall. Dr. Virginia M. Scott, a leader in foreign language methodology and second language acquisition, will speak on Monday, September 27 at 4:30 pm in the Art Exhibit Room, Macmillan Hall. Her lecture, “From Foreign Language Education to the Trenches: Theories and Realities,” addresses second language acquisition theories and how they may or may not play themselves out in the classroom setting. The talk is free and all are invited to attend.

Dr. Virginia M. Scott is an associate professor of French and applied linguistics, and chair of the Department of French and Italian, at Vanderbilt University. Her childhood in France, Denmark, Madagascar, and Kenya set the stage for her interest in second language acquistion and foreign language pedagogy. Since her 1988 arrival at Vanderbilt, she has been director of the French language program, served as director of the Vanderbilt-in-France program four times, and twice been chair of the Department of French and Italian. She is currently on research leave for the 2004-05 academic year.

Scott earned a B.A. in French and education from Eckerd College, an M.A. in French with a minor in German from Florida State University, and a Ph.D. in French with a specialization in applied linguistics from Emory University. She is the author of numerous publications, including “Cloze Windows and Aesthetic Discoveries: Opening Visions for Teaching Literature” (forthcoming in The French Review, December 2004).

This lecture is sponsored by the Wells College Foreign Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Department, the Educational Studies Program, and the Dean of the College. For more information about Virginia Scott’s lecture at Wells College, please contact Professor Amy Staples at 315/364-3258.

September, 2004

John Hoppenthaler will read from his work; meet with students

The Wells College Visiting Writer Series is pleased to welcome poet John Hoppenthaler to the Aurora campus. Hoppenthaler will read from his work at 7:30 pm on Wednesday, October 6 in the Art Exhibit Room, Macmillan Hall. The free reading will be followed by a reception with an opportunity to meet the speaker; refreshments will be served.

Mr. Hoppenthaler's poems have appeared in numerous literary magazines, including Ploughshares, The Southern Review, New Letters, 5 AM, Tar River Poetry, The Bloomsbury Review, and Chelsea. He is the author of a book of poetry, Lives of Water, and serves as poetry editor of the journal Kestrel. He has recently taught creative writing at Manhattanville College, the West Virginia Writers' Workshop, and at the Chautauqua Institution in western New York.

Of Lives of Water, poet David St. John wrote: “There is such measured composure and quiet wisdom to the poems of John Hoppenthaler’s powerful debut collection... that their resonance and beauty stay with us long after their reading.” Lives of Water will be available for purchase in the college bookstore before the reading.

While on campus, Mr. Hoppenthaler will also participate in classes and conduct a poetry-writing workshop; a display of his work will be on exhibit in the Long Library.

Mr. Hoppenthaler’s reading and the Wells College Visiting Writer Series are made possible in part by a grant from the New York State Council on the Arts.  Poets and writers are invited to campus throughout the academic year to meet with students, present writing workshops, and read from their respective works.

For more information about John Hoppenthaler and the Visiting Writers Series at Wells College, please contact English professor Bruce Bennett at 315/364-3228.

September, 2004

Eight new scholars arrive in Aurora to share their expertise with students

Wells College’s Vice President for Academic Affairs Ellen Hall is pleased to announce new full-time faculty appointments for the 2004-05 academic year:

Dr. Nadia Al-Bagdadi joins the Wells community as a visiting scholar this fall. She is a specialist in Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies of the modern period, who has studied and taught both in the Middle East (Egypt and Lebanon) and Europe. Currently, she is Visiting Professor at the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary where she teaches in the History Department and the Sociology and Social Anthropology Department. Dr. Al-Bagdadi's appointment at Wells is made possible thanks to the assistance of the Council for Independent Colleges (CIC) and Understanding Contemporary Islam (American University of Beirut).

Raúl Delgado-Rodriguez, visiting assistant professor of foreign languages, literatures and cultures, earned his B.A. from Brandeis University and M.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard University (comparative literature). His language fields are German, Russian, and Spanish; his specializations are in late 18th, 19th, and early 20th century literature. Professor Delgado-Rodriguez has taught at Hablespaña Language Institute, Bentley College, Harvard University, Universität Mannheim, and in the Brandeis Summer Program at Augsburg University.  Professor Delgado-Rodriquez will teach German and Spanish courses.

Deborah A. Gagnon, visiting assistant professor of psychology, received her B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. from the University of Buffalo (SUNY). Her graduate work focused on cognitive (experimental) psychology, and her research interests include speech perception and spoken word recognition and spoken word production. She has taught at Temple University, Widener University, and the University of Buffalo. Professor Gagnon has been a technical consultant for the Armstrong Aerospace Medical Research Laboratory, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Her most recent position before coming to Wells was assistant director for programs and director, digital library and information technologies, in the Olin Library at Cornell University. 

Jill S.H. Hill has accepted a tenure track appointment in psychology. She earned her B.A. and M.A. from Loyola College in Maryland and is completing her Ph.D., which will be awarded by the University of Oklahoma. Her research interest is culturally competent approaches to psychological assessment with emphasis on personality assessment of American Indian adults. She has taught at San Diego State University, University of California at Irvine, University of Oklahoma, and Loyola College. Professor Hill's desire to serve typically under-served and marginalized populations and communities motivated her to pursue her studies in the counseling psychology field. 

Raymond Joseph Hoffmann is the college's Robert D. and Henrietta T. Campbell '12 Professor of Religion. Previously he was a visiting professor of religion at Wells. He earned his B.A. and M.A. from Florida State University, M.T.S. from Harvard University, Th.M. from the Harvard Divinity School, and D.Phil. from the University of Oxford. His areas of specialization are religions of late antiquity; early Christianity; early medieval studies; and interdisciplinary studies in history, literature, and religious thought. He has taught at the American University of Beirut, Westminster College (Oxford), and Africa University in Zimbabwe, among others. 

Ethel King-McKenzie, assistant professor of education (tenure track), earned her B.Ed. from the University of the West Indies (Jamaica) and her M.A. and Ph.D. from Louisiana State University. She has taught at Ashland University and Louisiana State University in the areas of curriculum and instruction and theory. Other areas where she has received advanced training and has scholarly interests include social studies and qualitative research methods. Professor King-McKenzie's dissertation, Jamaican Women Educators: Two Life Histories, is grounded in ethnographic, autobiographic, multicultural, and oral history. 

Jeffrey Michael Rebudal, visiting assistant professor of dance, earned his B.A. from the University of Hawaii-Manoa and his M.A. from American University. He is a founding member of the critically acclaimed Seán Curran Company and has spent the last seven years performing around the world. He has taught at the University of Oklahoma, Connecticut College, Wesleyan University, New York University, University of Hawaii, and The American University. His teaching and performance areas include modern dance, ballet, street funk (hip-hop), Philippine and hula dance, and choreography. As a Filipino-American dance artist, Professor Rebudal's choreographic and scholarly work continues the exploration of the relationship between Filipino folk and postmodern dance movement while addressing Asian/Asian-American contemporary issues. Professor Rebudal will replace Jeanne Goddard who is on sabbatical for a year.

Jaclyn L. Schnurr, assistant professor of biology (tenure track), earned her B.S. from Cornell University and Ph.D. from Idaho State University (biology with a concentration in ecology). She has taught at Sheldon Jackson College (Alaska) and Idaho State University. Professor Schnurr was a post-doctoral associate at the Savannah River Ecology Lab and has received grants from the National Science Foundation, Bullitt Foundation, and Murdock Foundation, among others.



September, 2004

New JSTOR Connection Expands Campus Research Capabilities

The Louis Jefferson Long Library at Wells College has recently become a participating JSTOR library, giving members of the college community easy access to numerous core scholarly journals in a wide array of disciplines, many of which previously could not be accessed at Wells. Users now have access to over 107,000 digitized publications and nearly 16 million pages of information in a searchable database. 

“JSTOR widens our reach tremendously,” says head librarian Jeri Vargo. “Many students have already learned about it, and the faculty and staff members who are using it are very excited. JSTOR eliminates the need for time-consuming inter-library searches and loans. You can print the articles on your own computer if you want a hard copy. JSTOR also alleviates library storage issues.”

JSTOR is an acronym for Journal Storage. It helps libraries manage journal storage challenges and provides access to a range of scholarly resources well beyond most individual colleges’ budgetary means. The JSTOR database is unique because the complete archives of hundreds of scholarly journals have been digitized, starting with the very first issues, many of which date from the 1800s. New titles and fields are being added regularly, and issues are never “out.” They are always accessible and in pristine condition. The capacity for searching across disciplines opens up new possibilities for scholarship and research. 

JSTOR was originally conceived and funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and work began in the early 1990s when 750,000 journal pages were digitized and entered in a database. In 1995, JSTOR became an independent, not-for-profit organization. Today, college and universities across the country use its services. Its servers are located at Princeton University, the University of Michigan, and in Manchester, UK. 

The organization’s mission is “to help the scholarly community take advantage of advances in information technology. Our initial focus is the creation and maintenance of a trusted digital archive of the full back run of academic journals. Through the development and maintenance of this searchable, interdisciplinary collection, our objective is to help all participants in the scholarly community… to be more productive, while simultaneously reducing system-wide costs and increasing convenience.” 

More information may be found online at www.JSTOR.org. Jeri says, “JSTOR offers a level of scholarly richness we have not previously experienced. Wells is most fortunate to have access to such a database.”

September, 2004

Earlier Articles in Wells College News:
 

		Dec., 2002	March,1998
		Nov., 2002	Feb.,1998
		Oct., 2002	Jan.,1998
		Sept., 2002	Dec.,1997
		Aug., 2002	Nov.,1997
	Sept., 2004	Sept.,2001.-May.,2002	Oct.,1997
	May-Aug., 2004	Sept.,2000.-May.,2001	Sept.,1997
	April., 2004	Sept. 1999-Aug.,2000	July - Aug., 1997
	March, 2004	August,1999	May - June,1997
	Jan.-Feb., 2004	May,1999	March - April,1997
	Nov., 2003	April,1999	Feb.,1997
	Oct., 2003	Feb.-March, 1999	Nov. - Dec.,1996
	Sept., 2003	Jan.,1999	Oct.r,1996
	Summer, 2003	Fall,1998	Sept.,1996
	May, 2003	Aug.,1998	June - Aug.,1996
	April, 2003	June -July, 1998	May,1996
	March, 2003	May,1998	April,1996
	Jan.-Feb., 2003	April,1998	Feb - March, 1996

Last updated 10/26/2004