2002: Fall College Row

• A Japanese "friendship" garden
• Waldorf and Plaza
• Faculty awards and activities
• Rocks in his socks
• Amherst editor retires
• From the Folger
• Verbatim

A Japanese “friendship” garden

Secluded behind Kirby Theater, through dark green cushions of moss, rough granite steps wind up a steep bank to a bamboo gate. They lead the eye and imagination to the top of a ravine that's been transformed—with coarse boulders, simple furniture and angular pines—into an exquisite Japanese garden. It's the latest improvement to the college grounds and a tribute to Amherst's historic ties to education in Japan—especially its 127-year-old association with the school that is now Doshisha University in Kyoto. Doshisha was founded in 1875 by Amherst graduate Joseph Hardy Neesima.

The $250,000 garden project, completed and dedicated in September, was supported by the gifts of Amherst friends and alumni, including many Japanese. The garden was designed by Shinichiro Abe of Zen Associates, Inc., an international landscape design firm in Sudbury, Mass.

One of the firm's best-known installations is the Peace Bell Garden at the United Nations headquarters in New York City. Abe noted in an interview that the Amherst project is the first that his company has ever designed for a college or university campus. Also, he said, it is one of only a few really “authentic” Japanese gardens that his group has created, because a true Japanese garden is a never-finished work that needs extensive ongoing maintenance and development, and most of his clients require low-maintenance designs. The spring candles that grow on the Japanese black pines, for instance, must be removed every year, and various plantings should be carefully pruned at frequent intervals. With attentive maintenance, and with time, Abe said, the garden should become more and more beautiful.

Prominent features of the garden include a water basin, a tall, 500-year-old stone Japanese lantern given to the college by Eiro Yamashita '61 of Tokyo, and rugged natural boulders taken from the woods of Shelburne and Conway, Mass. It took a 180-ton crane with a 125-foot boom to lower the massive rocks into place.

The garden has been named “Yushien,” which means, roughly, “garden of friendship.” And expressions of friendship marked its dedication on Monday, Sept. 23, when speakers including President Tom Gerety and President Eiji Hatta of Doshisha spoke to a sunlit gathering at the foot of the garden in the connector linking Webster Hall with Kirby. Gerety conferred an honorary doctor of humane letters degree upon Hatta, saying “hundreds of students and faculty from the schools [Amherst and Doshisha] have enjoyed opportunities for educational exchange. Today, Amherst is proud to be able to renew and strengthen these ties by honoring you . . . .”

In response, Hatta noted that the new garden “is a symbol of Japanese traditional culture being valued at Amherst College . . . a sign that we will continue to have an even more fruitful friendship.” The prime mover behind establishment of the garden, Ray A. Moore, professor of history and Asian languages and civilizations, spoke about the many historic connections between Amherst and Japan; and Michael C. Kiefer, the college's chief advancement officer, opened the ceremonies with welcoming remarks.

In an introduction in the printed program, designer Abe suggested that the garden with its steep steps climbing upward could symbolize the famous words that an Amherst graduate spoke to Japanese youth in the 1870s: “Boys be ambitious!” The admonition came from Willliam S. Clark (1848) after he organized a college in Sapporo that later became Hokkaido University. In our interview, Abe explained that “every kid in Japan grew up listening to those words.

“But you can interpret the garden any way you want,” he added cheerfully. “We don't need too much explanation, and it isn't for the designer to say!”

Photos: Frank Ward

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Waldorf and Plaza

“They're pretty much what I expected on the outside,” said Elena Roe '05, resident counselor for “the Waldorf,” one of two temporary housing units that have gone up south of Merrill Science Center, above the athletic fields. “They were just white buildings. They didn't have a lot of character.” Roe was happier with the inside of her new dorm (the other unit is nicknamed “the Plaza”). “The inside is very impressive,” she said. “The rooms are really light; the difference between the light in the rooms in the Waldorf and the Plaza and the light in the rooms in the Social Dorms is unbelievable.

“And,” she added, “the bathrooms are incredible. There are five stalls, really nice showers, and there's counter space around the sinks. I was really pleasantly surprised by that.”

Aya Sanipe '05, the resident counselor in the Plaza this year, echoed Roe's initial impressions of the temporary housing units, necessitated by the large-scale dorm renovations the college began over the summer. “They're ugly on the outside, but I was really impressed with the inside,” Sanipe said, adding, “They're kind of a tourist attraction right now—people come in just to see what they look like.” Roe, who lived in James Hall as a first-year student, pointed out that moving from James to the temporary units, also known to students as “the mod pods,” “the mods,” or “the trailers,” was a step in the right direction. “The rooms in the Waldorf are bigger than the one-room doubles in North and South,” she explained, “and they're not much smaller than the ones in Appleton. But a lot of people are going to have to bunk their beds. There could be just one bookshelf in each room, instead of two. That doesn't leave a lot of room for creativity—or to put a butterfly chair in the room, for example.”

Greta Anderson '05, one of Roe's residents, agreed. “There's enough room to live comfortably, but not much more. And, as always, one room for more than one person can be a problem because of conflicting schedules and study habits.”

Although Sanipe was satisfied overall with the physical aspects of the temporary units, she had suggestions as well: “There aren't any hooks to hang towels on in the bathrooms,” she said. “Also, the doors to the rooms close and lock automatically, and I think a lot of people are going to
get locked out of their rooms by accident. The room is in an awkward shape, which means that the doors to the rooms can't be opened all the way.”

Jed Doty '05, a resident of the Plaza, seems to accept his place in the Amherst Room Draw pecking order. “The mods are not much to look at from the outside,” he said. “I think my mom was almost in tears when she saw them for the first time. But on the inside they're quite serviceable. Obviously we would all rather be in Hamilton or Hitchcock, but someone had to be Group 256 out of 259 [in Room Draw], and the mods could be a lot worse.”

Waldorf resident Robert Lane '05 pointed out that there are several surprising problems with the temporary housing units. He explained, “What I didn't expect was that my cell phone would get almost no coverage in the mods. I am planning to use my cell phone for most of my long distance calls.” Also, “The one thing which has gotten increasingly annoying is the location,” Lane added. “It really does take a long time to get almost anywhere on campus.”

Doty seconded him: “We are far away from Valentine, Frost and town. Luckily I have three of my four classes in either Merrill, which my dorm has a nice view of, or Seeley Mudd. I was also able to watch some of a soccer scrimmage over the weekend from a friend's room across the hall.”

Roe had a different take on the dorms' location. “Usually the sophomore class gets spread out all over campus,” she said. “We aren't as isolated as the dorms on the Hill. We're right next to the Social Dorms, close enough that Aya and I are considered part of the Social Dorm RC staff. We're also right next to the athletic fields, and the Campus Center is pretty close.” Waldorf resident Kristin Bradley '05 agreed.

“I think it will be fun living here,” she said. “We're close to the Social Dorms, but we're far enough away that we should be okay in terms of not having to deal with the problems the Social Dorms deal with a lot.”

“I think we will all turn into a pretty tight-knit group, given that we're all sophomores and that we live apart from the rest of the campus,” Sanipe said. Bradley agreed: “I think it will be a bonding experience to live there. We all got low picks in Room Draw, and I guess misery loves company. I'm happier with my housing situation than I thought I would be.”

Roe applauded Associate Dean of Students and Director of Residential Life Charri Boykin-East and the staff at Physical Plant. “Charri's put in so much effort. She's really done an amazing job,” she said. “Also, Physical Plant has done a fantastic job. They've been so helpful, so concerned with making sure that we have everything we need.”

“The two buildings aren't permanent structures,” Roe noted. “On the other hand, they will be a part of our campus for five years, and that's a long time. They're not the prettiest buildings, but I think the underlying message is a positive one that says a lot of good things about the school—that a conscious effort is being made to make the dorms better, and having the two temporary dorms is a necessary part of that process.”

“It's a good sign,” Sanipe said. “They're doing something to make a long-term solution to the housing issues at Amherst.”

—Rebecca Binder '02
Photo: Frank Ward

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Faculty awards and activities

Scoring points: Viking helmets were the headgear chosen by this team of three Amherst professors and a colleague October 10 when they entered—and won—the annual trivia bee held to raise money for local schools. Yes, in the front is George S. Greenstein, Sidney Dillon Professor of Astronomy, backed up, from the left, by Richard Blatchly, professor of chemistry at Keene State College, and Catherine and Lyle McGeoch, Amherst professors of computer science. The group was sponsored by Minuteman Pest Control. It outscored 22 other teams by answering correctly that “Li” is the world's most common surname. Blatchly is the husband of Patricia O'Hara, the college's Thalheimer Professor of Chemistry.

Hadley P. Arkes, Edward N. Ney Professor in American Institutions (Political Science), was invited to be present at President Bush's signing of the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act on August 5. The bill, which developed from legislation first proposed by Arkes in 1988, preserves the lives of infants that survive the process of abortion. Arkes helped shape the bill and led testimony for it in Congress. Arkes also is author of a new book, Natural Rights & The Right to Choose (Cambridge University Press, 2002).

David W. Blight, Class of 1959 Professor of History and Black Studies and author of the prize-winning book Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (Harvard University Press, 2001), is author of a new volume, Beyond the Battlefield: Race, Memory and the American Civil War (University of Massachusetts Press, 2002).

Sculptor and artist-in-residence Francis Cape gave a talk, “Making Art in Fast Forward: From 1402 to 2002 in 271/2 Years,” in Fayerweather Hall in April. Cape produces cabinets and woodwork that are aesthetically pleasing but not meant to be used. He has built an international reputation since turning to sculpture following his training in woodcarving. Ken Johnson reviewed Cape's work for The New York Times last year, writing, “An expert woodworker, [he] builds mock cabinets and architectural structures that operate in the overlap between Pop and Minimalism.”

John T. Cheney was named to the Samuel A. Hitchcock Professorship in Mineralogy and Geology, a chair established in 1847 by Samuel A. Hitchcock of Brimfield, Mass., to endow a professorship of natural theology and geology, a designation that was changed in 1889 to professorship of mineralogy and geology. Cheney, a member of the faculty since 1975, specializes in metamorphic petrology and geochemistry.

Fredric L. Cheyette, professor of history, has received three prominent awards for Ermengard of Narbonne and the World of the Troubadours (Cornell University Press, 2001). The account of the 12th-century Viscountess Ermengard earned Cheyette the Society for French Historical Studies' David Pinkney Prize for the outstanding book in French history published in 2001, the 2001-02 Eugene M. Kayden Book Award granted by the University of Colorado at Boulder for the best book in the humanities published by an American university press, and an honorable mention (history) from the Association of American Publishers Awards Program.

Lawrence R. Douglas, associate professor of law, jurisprudence and social thought, asserts in his book, The Memory of Judgment: Making Law and History in the Trials of the Holocaust (Yale University Press, 2001), that trials following brutalities such as the Holocaust must take on the nature of show trials. Douglas examines the first Nuremberg trial, as well as the Israeli trials of Adolf Eichmann and Ivan Demjanuk, the French trial of Klaus Barbie, and the Canadian proceedings against Ernst Zundel, from a fresh perspective. He argues that in extreme cases, legal proceedings in the form of show trials accomplish both justice and a broader social purpose to “serve the interests of history and memory.” Douglas was featured in the top story of the July 20, 2002 “Arts and Ideas” section of The New York Times, and was interviewed July 25 by National Public Radio's Susan Stamberg on “All Things Considered.” The political journal Theory and Event, edited in part by Thomas L. Dumm, professor of political science, released a special issue following last year's September 11 attacks and the subsequent war in Afghanistan. The 17-piece collection features writings by many prominent intellectuals, including Arno Mayer, Sheldon Wolin, Judith Butler, and Sankaran Krishna. They examine a variety of perspectives and issues surrounding these historic events, from the meaning of jihad and the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon within the context of a push for hegemony among Arabs, to a discussion of the concepts of war and evil as expressed by the United States.

Jeffrey B. Ferguson, assistant professor of black studies and American studies, presented the college's annual Max and Etta Lazerowitz Lecture in April. Ferguson's topic, “Satire in the Bedroom: George Schuyler's Racial Transgressions,” followed the life of Schuyler, the mid-20th-century radical black journalist. Ferguson discussed Schuyler's political extremes, which ranged from socialism to conservatism. Ferguson is currently working on a critical biography of Schuyler. The Lazerowitz Lectureship is awarded annually by the dean of the faculty and the faculty's lecture committee to a colleague below the rank of full professor, to support and encourage that person in his or her scholarly work.

Judith E. Frank, professor of English, read from the manuscript of her first novel, Crybaby Butch, in Converse Hall in February. The reading was sponsored by the Creative Writing Center. Frank has published short stories in other voices and The Massachusetts Review, and was awarded the fiction prize of the Astraea Foundation's Emerging Lesbian Writer's Fund in 2000. Frank also wrote a book, Common Ground: Eighteenth-Century English Satiric Fiction and the Poor.

Jonathan R. Friedman, assistant professor of physics, received a $40,000, two-year Sloan Research Fellowship from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The grant recognizes Friedman as an outstanding young researcher whose work promises to make fundamental contributions to science. It will support his ongoing research in quantum physics. Friedman's most recent experiments have focused on the quantum properties of small, single-molecule magnets.

Alexander George, professor of philosophy, and Daniel J. Velleman, professor of mathematics, are co-authors of Philosophies of Mathematics (Blackwell Publishers, 2001). In their preface George and Velleman write that they have “found few if any contemporary works that introduce and carefully develop the philosophies, the mathematical projects, and their complex interconnections.” The work emphasizes living philosophy over the history of the field, and it details inherent paths of thought in mathematical philosophy, logicism, intuitionism and finitism.

Heidi Gilpin '84, assistant professor of German, gave a talk on contemporary and international new media and performance projects at the Mead Art Museum on April 2 as a participant in the museum's “First Tuesday” series. Gilpin has received international recognition for her work on cultural studies in performance, concentrating on issues of bodily practice, critical theory, technology and architecture. She returned to Amherst in 2000 following appointments at the University of Hong Kong and at the University of California at Riverside, and she holds a position as the dramaturge for Ballet Frankfurt and choreographer William Forsythe in Frankfurt, Germany.

Parts of the Amherst campus were transformed into an art installation by DeWitt Godfrey, assistant professor of fine arts. “Amherst Drawings” consisted of white lines similar to those found on athletic fields, painted onto the campus grass. Godfrey, in his own words, used “the language and process of mapping, surveying—not to measure the elevations of the landscape but to actually plot the contours and surfaces.” The lines were most prominent around the Octagon, north of Williston Hall, and spreading down the hill toward Route 116.

The college received a $140,000 grant from the National Science Foundation in support of Assistant Professor of Biology Caroline E. Goutte's research project, “RUE: The Role of APH-1 and APH-2 in Notch-Mediated Cell Interactions in C. Elegans.” She says the research is “geared toward understanding how cellular communication is mediated during the development of a multicellular animal.” The University of Illinois Press has published a new edition of Emily C. Jordan Folger Professor of English and American Studies Allen Guttmann's The Olympics: A History of the Modern Games. The first edition of the book received a prize from the International Olympic Committee for its history and interpretation of the Olympics from 1896 to 1988. The new edition updates Guttmann's analysis through the 2000 Sydney Olympics. The International Encyclopedia of Women and Sports, which Guttmann co-edited, was cited by Choice as one of its “Books of the Year.”

Work being done by James Hagadorn, assistant professor of geology, was cited in the July 29, 2002 issue of U. S. News & World Report in an article, “A Theory Evolves,” which discussed new ways of thinking about evolution. The report says that while scientists have confirmed nearly all of Darwin's theories, evolution also works in ways that Darwin did not anticipate.

Visiting Writers Daniel Hall and Claire Messud were named 2002 Guggenheim Fellows, along with Visiting Lecturer in English Elisabeth Subrin. They were honored as three of 184 fellowship recipients from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Recipients of the prestigious fellowships are chosen on the criteria of notable past work and promise for the future. The grants are intended to support the recipients' work during sabbaticals, with no strings attached.

Assistant Professor of Physics David Sumner Hall's project, “Tunable interaction in a 87RB Bose-Einstein condensate,” has won support from the Research Corporation, which has given it a $39,768 Cottrell College Science Award. Hall, a 1991 Amherst graduate, will use the award to study interactions between ultracold atoms and molecules in a Bose-Einstein condensate. His work looks into the seminal properties of atoms, allowing scientists to better understand “interatomic potentials.”

The college has named Professor of Geology Tekla A. Harms to the Andrew W. Mellon Professorship in the Sciences. Established in 1974 by a grant from the Mellon Foundation to aid “the continuing process of curriculum revision and revitalization,” the professorship rotates triennially. Harms, who has taught at the college since 1987, specializes in the study of tectonics, structural geology, and radiolaria micropaleontology.

The National Science Foundation has named Robert C. Hilborn, Amanda and Lisa Cross Professor of Physics and the associate dean of the faculty, to a three-year appointment on its Advisory Committee for the Mathematical and Physical Sciences Directorate. The organization supports research in physics, chemistry, mathematics, astronomy and materials science. The advisory committee is made up of individuals who command respect on the national scene for their work in research, technology, education and science policy formation.

Margaret Hunt, professor of history and women's and gender studies, has been elected a fellow of the Royal Historical Society. The British society has promoted the scholarly study of the past since the group's inception in 1868. Original contribution to historical scholarship is one of the criteria for membership.

Allen Kropf, Julian H. Gibbs Professor in the Natural and Mathematical Sciences (Chemistry), Emeritus, worked recently as science consultant for the newly published American Heritage Student Science Dictionary. Kropf was recruited for the job by a former student, Vali Tamm '89, editor of the dictionary project at Houghton Mifflin. The 376-page book gives definitions of more than 4,500 scientific terms and includes 175 special notes on scientific concepts.

Professor of Political Science Uday Singh Mehta is one of 11 scholars chosen to receive a fellowship from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. Mehta will research “Constitutional Configurations of the Past: A Comparative Study of India, Israel, South Africa, and the U.S.” with his fellowship grant, which can total up to $100,000 over a one- to two-year period. Mehta's study will consider how constitutions reflect the relationship between the past of a country and its imagined future; it will also examine constitutional design concerning equality and recognition in modern politics.

Ray A. Moore, professor of history and Asian languages and civilizations, co-authored the recently released book Partners for Democracy: Crafting the New Japanese State under MacArthur (Oxford University Press, 2002), along with Donald L. Robinson, professor of government and American studies at Smith College. The book discusses Japan's difficult but successful move from a defeated military power to a vibrant constitutional democracy, and applies the Japanese example of nation building to contemporary nations including Afghanistan.

Professor of English and Russian Dale E. Peterson was named to the Eliza J. Clark Folger Professorship, established in 1930 by bequest of Henry C. Folger, Class of 1879. Peterson has taught at Amherst since 1969 and is the author of Up from Bondage: The Literatures of Russian and African American Soul (Duke University Press, 2000) and The Clement Vision: Poetic Realism in Turgenev and James (Kennicat Press, 1975), and many scholarly articles.

David B. Reck, professor of music and Asian languages and civilizations, performed four concerts on the veena at the 2001-02 Madras Music and Dance Festival in Chennai, India, last December and January. Reck was the first American ever invited to play the veena at the festival. He also participated in a University of Madras conference, presenting a paper on “Scale Systems of Southeast Asia,” and chaired a conference on Music Notation in Indian Music at the Brhaddhvani Center for Research and Study of Musics of the World.

Karen Sanchez-Eppler, professor of American studies and English, spent six months in Spain last spring as the recipient of a Fulbright Scholar Award. She taught courses at the University of Malaga on 19th- and 20th-century American literature and ethnicity and lectured on 19th-century American poetry and feminist studies at several universities.

Assistant Professor of Psychology Catherine Sanderson and Nancy Cantor of the University of Illinois are co-authors of a study that was published in the December 2001 issue of the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. The study, “The Association of Intimacy Goals and Marital Satisfaction,” examined the relationship between intimacy goals within a marriage and the satisfaction of that marriage. The study concluded that understanding the reality of one's spouse may be less important to a successful marriage than seeing him or her in an idealized way. Sanderson also co-authored a study published in the February issue of the same journal, along with Princeton University's John M. Darley and Candace S. Messinger. “'I'm Not as Thin as You Think I am': The Development and Consequences of Feeling Discrepant From the Thinness Norm” suggests that what is important to a woman is how thin she perceives other women to be. A woman who felt that she was not at the same standard of thinness and attractiveness as those around her, Sanderson wrote, is more likely to develop symptoms of anorexia and bulimia.

A new book by Natasha Staller, associate professor of fine arts, titled A Sum of Destructions: Picasso's Cultures and the Creation of Cubism (Yale University Press, 2002), examines the manner in which Picasso's past and its cultural and histor-ical contexts affected the evolution of his signature Cubism. Staller describes how Picasso's work responded to the cultures that inspired him, ranging from his childhood in provincial Spain to his experiences in conservative art academies, to what Staller describes as “the romance of popular culture,” to the defeat of the African Moor, which, Staller writes, Picasso interpreted as the modernization of Spain. In her lavishly illustrated volume she uses seldom-considered material from Picasso's life to reconcile him as a modern artist attempting to make sense of his own experience.

Ilan Stavans, Lewis-Sebring Professor in Latin American and Latino Culture, is the author of an article in last Fall's Michigan Quarterly Review in which he defends his previous review for The Times Literary Supplement, where he asserted that the best translations of Jorge Luis Borges's work “might have superseded the original in quality.” Stavans's view incensed many readers for whom Borges represents a pillar of Hispanic literary culture. In the Michigan journal, Stavans wrote, “Literature has no owner: Once it is out and about, it is less the property of the author than of any and all readers.” Stavans stresses that Borges was himself a skilled translator, and posits that translation makes a work a part of global culture, available to all.

Ronald S. Tiersky, Joseph B. Eastman '04 Professor of Political Science, is editor of Euro-Skepticism: A Reader (Rowan & Littlefield, 2001). The anthology, which explores dissenting attitudes toward European integration, culls perspectives on the goals of that integration from a variety of sources, including speeches and essays. In the reader, Tiersky airs the “Europe of the Nations” view, headlined by Margaret Thatcher and Charles de Gaulle, along with writings from Charles Pasqua, Jean-Pierre Chevènement, the contemporary thinking of Michael Portillo and Noel Malcolm, and interviews with notable figures on the far right of the political spectrum, including Jean-Marie Le Pen.

Rocks in his socks

In Amherst's early missionary days, gifts from alumni often were souvenirs sent back to campus from foreign lands. We get a picture of this prolific activity from The Visitor's Guide to the Public Rooms and Cabinets of Amherst College, published in 1862 and written by Charles H. Hitchcock, curator of the Woods Cabinet in the Octagon. Among the hundreds of items displayed in the museum's “Missionary Collection” were such items as a piece of mosaic from a pavement at Carthage, plaster from the interior of a house in Pompeii, cement from the top of the pyramid of Gizeh and lava from Vesuvius.

Many of the materials from that collection are now in the college's Pratt Museum of Natural History. Some are still used for study. For example, one substance that today's geology students analyze is the precipitate in an ancient Roman water pipe that a missionary collected.

In the Visitor's Guide, Hitchcock noted the difficulty that Amherst evangelists had in making off with their relics. One of them, the Rev. Justin Perkins (Class of 1829), a missionary to Persia for 36 years, went to extreme lengths to gather his.

“In one instance,” Hitchcock reported, “Dr. Perkins brought on a fever by his efforts to obtain specimens from the top of one of the peaks of the Ararat range; and when other means of packing specimens failed, on a journey upon horseback of seven hundred miles, he used one or two pairs of pantaloons and other parts of his wardrobe for the purpose; and they came hither thus freighted.”

Illustration: Rick Peterson
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