News

WORCESTER, Mass. – Adriaan Peperzak, the Arthur J. Schmitt Chair of Philosophy and director of the Center for the Catholic Intellectual Tradition at Loyola University of Chicago, will give a talk titled “How Rational is the Heart? How Natural is Reason? How Universal is Faith?” on April 21 at 7 p.m. in the Rehm Library at the College of the Holy Cross. The talk is free and open to the public.

Peperzak’s lecture will focus on the distinct but related questions of whether our emotional life entails its own form of reasoning, whether there is an unconditioned natural reason, and whether reason is determined by the context of a faith tradition or a particular culture.

Much of Peperzak’s research in the history of philosophy has been dedicated to interpreting Hegel (six books and numerous articles), Emmanuel Levinas (two books and three others edited), and the classical tradition from Plato through Bonaventure to modern figures including Descartes, Heidegger, and Ricoeur. He has also produced several book-length works in ethics, social and political philosophy, metaphilosophy, and philosophy of religion. His current work is concentrated on the connections of philosophy with its metaphilosophical roots and to the situations from which it emerges.

The event is sponsored by the Center for Religion, Ethics and Culture.

WORCESTER, Mass. – The Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Art Gallery at the College of the Holy Cross will present PRECIPICE: Works from the Senior Concentration Seminar, from April 27 to May 27. An opening reception for artists will be held on April 27 from 5 to 6:30 p.m. at the Cantor Art Gallery.

Each spring semester the Cantor Art Gallery mounts an exhibition of work by graduating seniors enrolled in the Senior Concentration Seminar offered by the visual arts department/studio art Faculty. The two-semester course is designed to provide students the unique opportunity to work for extended periods of time, producing artwork that reflects their own vision and technical abilities. Instructor for the 2005-2006 Concentration Seminar is Cristi Rinklin, assistant professor of visual arts.

PRECIPICE includes works by graduating seniors: Jenna Cook, Matthew Dugan, Karyn Folino, Bethany Miczek, Leslie Mignin, Jason Schuster and Katherine Wood. Senior Concentration Seminar provides each student with a private studio space, opportunities to travel to exhibitions in the New England region, to meet with professional curators and artists and to have their work regularly reviewed by Holy Cross faculty and guest artists. The Senior Concentration Seminar culminates with the planning and execution of a group exhibition mounted in the Cantor Art Gallery under the guidance of the gallery staff and the visual arts faculty.

Gallery Information

The hours for the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Art Gallery are Monday to Friday, 10 a.m. – 5 p.m.; Saturday, 2 p.m. – 5 p.m. Located in O’Kane Hall, 1st Floor, College of the Holy Cross, 1 College Street, Worcester, Mass., 01610. Admission to the Gallery is free and open to the public.

The gallery will be closed to the public on May 13 and 20.

For additional information please contact the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Art Gallery at 508-793-3356 or visit the Gallery’s web site at: http://www.holycross.edu/departments/cantor/website/index.html.

WORCESTER, Mass. – Jacques Monet, S.J., visiting international Jesuit fellow at the College of the Holy Cross, will give a talk titled “The Catholic Church in Quebec: The Quieter Revolution” on April 10 at 7:30 p.m. in the College’s Rehm Library. The talk is free and open to the public.

In the early 1960s, the province of Quebec went through a period of rapid change and reform often referred to as the “Quiet Revolution.” In politics, business, commerce, cultural affairs, education and social services, Canada’s French and Catholic province, which was characterized by conservative ideology and traditional values became a modern, liberal society, secular, efficient, planned and well organized.

The increased role of the government touched each one of the Catholic Church’s institutions. The reactions of both clergy and laity — a quieter revolution — led to years of reassessment which some found to be generalized confusion, and others a most welcome renewal.

Fr. Monet is a specialist in Canadian constitutional and social history, as well as 19th-century French-Canadian nationalism, and Church history. He has been the director of the Canadian Institute of Jesuit Studies since 1988, and the director of the Archives of the Jesuit Fathers of Upper Canada since 1999. He served as president of Regis College, the theological college on the Upper Canadian Province of the Society of Jesus, and was a founding member of the Toronto School of Theology in the University of Toronto. He has published many scholarly articles in both official languages, and has also contributed to many books, including the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, and The Canadian Encyclopedia. His books include The Last Cannon Shot: A Study in French Canadian Nationalism (1969) and The Union of the Canadas (1985).

The talk is sponsored by the Center for Religion, Ethics and Culture.

WORCESTER, Mass. – The Holy Cross departments of theatre and music, supported by the Lilly Vocation Discernment Initiative, will present a rare opportunity to see an Arja prembon, or Balinese opera. Dr. I Wayan Dibia, visiting fellow in Balinese arts, has organized a New England tour of Adhipusengara, based on Sophocle’s Oedipus Rex. This performance will feature a cast of hugely accomplished musicians and performers of world renown, including I Wayan Dibia, Ni Made Wiratini, Ni Nyoman Manik Suryani, I Nengah Susila, Ni Made Pujawati, I Nyoman Saptanyana, and Ida Ayu Ari Candrawati.

The Arja will be performed at Holy Cross on April 19 at 8 p.m. in the Brooks Music Hall. The artists will conduct a seminar in Arja forms and techniques prior to the dance-opera at 4:30 p.m., also in Brooks Music Hall. Both events are free and open to the public.

Among the many genres of Balinese theatre, Arja — or classical Balinese dance-opera — is of particular importance due to its adaptability to the modern world and to international audiences and its status as the most popular genre of Balinese performing arts. As a genre, Arja has been revolutionary in representing the lives of ordinary men and women as being as complex as the loves of the nobility. According to Pak Dibia, Adhipusengara is about “the consequences of not believing in the power of God.” The evening will be a mesmerizing evocation of the island of Bali and its arts, which have become extremely influential in modern Western art.

Professor Lynn Kremer of the department of theatre says, “It’s sort of a miracle that we will be able to present this amazing production at Holy Cross. Because of our visiting fellow program and the illustrious people we’ve been able to attract to campus [Dibia and previous fellow Desak Made Suarti Laksmi], we have these strong connections that now make Holy Cross an expected venue for productions of this artistry and magnitude.”

With the great interest in Adhipusengara, the performance may be standing room only, so audience members are advised to arrive early.

Dibia is one of the world’s most distinguished performers, composers, and choreographers of Balinese music and dance. He received his Ph.D. from UCLA and has held a professorship in Balinese choreography at the prestigious National College of Indonesian Arts in Denpasar, Bali. He is the author of Kecak: The Balinese Vocal Change of Bali and the seminal text and guidebook, Balinese Dance, Drama, and Music. He is a member of the Bali Art Council and the Society of Indonesian Performing Arts. He has performed in a variety of international tours in Australia, Europe and the United States.

For more information about Adhipusengara, please contact Joe Mader at 508-793-3490.

WORCESTER, Mass. – Bob Wright, an alumnus of the College of the Holy Cross class of 1965, will receive an honorary degree and address this year’s graduates during the College’s Commencement ceremonies on Friday, May 26 at 10:30 a.m. on the campus.

Wright is chairman and CEO of NBC Universal, and vice chairman and executive officer of the General Electric Company. He has had one of the longest and most successful tenures of any media company chief executive. Under his leadership, NBC was transformed from a broadcast network into a global media powerhouse with leadership in broadcast network television, cable programming, station ownership, and television production. With the formation of NBC Universal (he became chairman and CEO in 2004, in conjunction with the combining of NBC and Vivendi Universal Entertainment), Wright heads one of the world’s fastest-growing and most-profitable media and entertainment companies.

A former Holy Cross trustee, Wright has been inducted into the Broadcasting and Cable Hall of Fame, and serves on the boards of the American Film Institute, Museum of Television and Radio, and the Motion Picture and Television Fund Corporation. He has worked closely with the Archdiocese of New York on raising support for inner-city Catholic schools and other projects. He is also co-founder (with his wife Suzanne) of Autism Speaks, an organization dedicated to raising awareness and funding to find answers to the causes of autism.

The College will also bestow four other honorary degrees to the following individuals at Commencement:

Anne M. Burke, Appellate Court of Illinois, First District in Chicago. Judge Burke served for more than two years as interim chair of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops National Review Board, initiating and investigating studies into the root causes of clergy sexual abuse establishing guidelines and policies for effectively responding to this issue. Before her appointment to the Appellate Court, she was special counsel to the Governor for Child Welfare Services. This summer, Judge Burke will be appointed to a seat on the Illinois State Supreme Court, only the second woman to serve on the state’s high court.

Rev. Angelo D’Agostino, S.J. Founder and medical director of the Nyumbani home in Africa. Before joining the Jesuits in 1955, Fr. D’Agostino was a U.S. Air Force surgeon. During his novitiate, he became interested in psychiatry and, upon completing his training, practiced and taught psychiatry in Washington, D.C. He suspended his practice when the Society of Jesus asked for volunteers to work in Thailand with Indochinese refugees, and he directed a medical facility at a refugee camp there. For many years, he continued his refugee work as Coordinator of the Jesuit Refugee Service, establishing programs in Sudan, Ethiopia, Zaire and Tanzania. In Africa, while he was directing a retreat house, he saw first-hand the growing AIDS crisis and the number of HIV-infected children who were orphaned and suffering without even minimal services or care. In 1992, he founded Nyumbani (“home,” in Swahili) in Nairobi for abandoned children. Today, his work has grown to include a community-based outreach program providing services to thousands of HIV-infected children and their families; and the self-sustaining Nyumbani Village, a community serving orphans and elders who have been left behind by the “lost generation” of the AIDS pandemic.

Sister Carol Keehan. President and CEO of Catholic Health Association, the largest not-for-profit provider of health care services in the nation. Sr. Carol has worked in administrative and governance positions at hospitals sponsored by the Daughters of Charity for more than 35 years, and has held influential leadership roles in a variety of health care, insurance, and education organizations. She has served on many boards of directors, including the District of Columbia Hospital Association, Care First/Blue Cross of Maryland and the National Capital Area, and St. John’s University. She is past chair of the Florida State Human Rights Advocacy Commission, and served for 15 years as president and CEO of Providence Hospital, which includes Carroll Manor Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, in Washington, DC.  She earned a B.A. degree in nursing from St. Joseph’s College and an MBA from University of South Carolina.

David McCullough, author. Widely published biographer and historian, McCullough is the author of, among other books, 1776, John Adams, The Great Bridge, The Path between the Seas, Mornings on Horseback, Brave Companions, and Truman. None of his books has ever been out of print. He has twice received the most prestigious prizes in book publishing: the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, and has been called a “master of the art of narrative history.” In his crowded, productive career, McCullough has been an editor, essayist, teacher, lecturer, and familiar presence on public television — as host of Smithsonian World, The American Experience, and narrator of numerous documentaries including The Civil War and Napoleon.

WORCESTER, Mass. – Stephen J. Whitfield, the Max Richter Chair in American Civilization at Brandeis University, will give a talk titled “Religion and Culture in the New World: Why America was Different for Jews” on April 4 at 4:30 p.m. in the Rehm Library at the College of the Holy Cross. The talk is free and open to the public.

Whitfield, who is interested in the intersection of politics and ideas in 20th-century America, has taught at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Catholic University of Louvain, the Sorbonne (University of Paris IV), and the Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich. He is the author of eight books, including most recently A Death in the Delta: The Story of Emmett Till (1988), The Culture of the Cold War (1991, rev. and expanded ed. 1996) and In Search of American Jewish Culture (1999). Whitfield is also the editor of A Companion to 20th-Century America (2004).

The event is sponsored by the Center for Religion, Ethics and Culture as part of the Kraft-Hiatt lecture series. The Kraft-Hiatt Fund for Jewish-Christian Understanding supports campus and community-wide educational initiatives that foster understanding of Judaism and Jewish culture, and dialogue between Jews and Christians.

WORCESTER, Mass. – Thomas Kuehne, associate professor and Strassler Family Chair in the Study of Holocaust History at Clark University, will give a talk titled “Belonging and Genocide: A German Story, 1914-1945” on April 19 at 4 p.m. in the Rehm Library at the College of the Holy Cross. The talk is free and open to the public.

Kuehne is interested in synthesizing new approaches to the history of mass violence. His recent research deals with the social and cultural history of the Nazi war and its place in the 20th century. His forthcoming book focuses on the myth of comradeship and its impact on the actions and experiences of German Word War II soldiers. Comradeship served as the social cement in the German military as well as in the German nation. It held together a variety of practices and emotions as diverse as aggression and altruism. Comradeship combined male bonding through criminal means with in-group “humanity,” and it was the model of a shame culture, deeply anchored in German 20th century society.

The event is sponsored by the Center for Religion, Ethics and Culture as part of the Kraft-Hiatt lecture series. The Kraft-Hiatt Fund for Jewish-Christian Understanding supports campus and community-wide educational initiatives that foster understanding of Judaism and Jewish culture, and dialogue between Jews and Christians.

WORCESTER, Mass. – E.J. McAdams ’93, the executive director of New York City’s Audubon society, will give a talk titled “Hawking Urban Nature: Creativity and Conservation in New York City” on April 10 at 4:30 p.m. in Dinand Library’s Levis Browsing Room at the College of the Holy Cross. The talk is free and open to the public.

McAdams will begin his talk with his views on the current contention that traditional environmentalism is dead; discuss the media-darling red-tail hawk, “Pale Male,” as an example of how creative modern responses can shape current conservation efforts; discuss the arc of his career from studying nature poetry at Holy Cross to being a park ranger to rising through New York City’s Audubon, which seeks to preserve the city’s natural habitats; and highlight a range of urban environmental projects that hinge on unusual partnerships before opening up the floor for questions.

McAdams believes that design is the conservation tool of the future, and has tried to forge partnerships with architects and designers to solve bird conservation problems. Formerly, he worked for the City of New York/Parks and Recreation as an urban park ranger, where he reintroduced eastern screech owls to Central Park. McAdams is also a published poet and essayist. His fascination with nature grew out of his interest in poetry, which was fostered at Holy Cross by Robert Cording, professor of English.

The event is sponsored by the environmental studies program.

WORCESTER, Mass. – As part of the College of the Holy Cross Visiting Writers Lecture Series, the following writers will give readings during the 2006 spring semester. All readings are free and open to the public. This series is sponsored by the College’s Creative Writing Program.

March 30
Ron Hansen
7:30 p.m., Rehm Library

Ron Hansen was born in Omaha, Neb., and educated at Creighton University, the University of Iowa’s Writers Workshop, and at Stanford University, where he held a Wallace Stegner Creative Writing Fellowship. His first published novel was Desperadoes, which was followed by The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Mariette in Ecstasy, Atticus, and Hitler’s Niece. In Nebraska he collected stories that previously appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Esquire, Harper’s Magazine, The Paris Review, and other quarterlies. He has also published a children’s book, The Shadowmaker, and edited two anthologies of short fiction, You Don’t Know What Love Is and You’ve Got to Read This. Hansen’s most recent novel is Isn’t It Romantic? He also recently published A Stay Against Confusion: Essays on Faith and Fiction. He has received fellowships from the Michigan Society of Fellows, the National Endowment for the Arts, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, and the Lyndhurst Foundation, and was presented with an Award in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. Hansen has taught fiction and screenwriting at such institutions as Stanford, Michigan, Cornell, Iowa, Arizona, and is now the Gerard Manley Hopkins, S.J. Professor in the Arts and Humanities at Santa Clara, where he earned an M.A. in spirituality in 1995.

April 6
Le Thi Diem Thuy
7:30 p.m., Levis Browsing Room, Dinand Library

Lê thi diem thúy is a writer and solo performance artist. Born in southern Vietnam and raised in southern California, she often explores in her work the role of the body as the site of memory. lê is the author of the debut novel, The Gangster We Are All Looking For. Her prose and poetry have appeared in The Massachusetts Review, Harper’s Magazine, Muae and The Best American Essays as well as in the anthologies Killing the Buddha: A Heretic’s Bible, The Very Inside, Half & Half, and Watermark. Her solo performance works Red Fiery Summer, the bodies between us, and Carte Postale have been presented at — among other venues — the Whitney Museum of American Art at Philip Morris, the International Women Playwrights’ Festival in Galway, Ireland, the New World Theater at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and the Marfa Theater Company in Marfa, Texas. She has been awarded residencies from the Headlands Center For The Arts, the GAEA Foundation, and the Lannan Foundation and fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute For Advanced Study and the Guggenheim Foundation. She is currently Elizabeth Drew Professor in the department of English Language and Literature at Smith College.

April 20
Bill Roorbach
7:30 p.m., Rehm Library
This event has been cancelled.

Bill Roorbach is the author of Temple Stream, which has won the Maine Literary Award for best nonfiction book of the year. His fiction includes Big Bend, short stories, and The Smallest Color, a novel. Roorbach’s nonfiction works include A Place on Water, with Robert Kimber and Wesley McNair, Into Woods, Summers with Juliet, and The Art of Truth, an anthology of literary memoirs, personal essays and literary journalism which he edited. His work has appeared in The Atlantic, Harper’s Magazine, Granta and others. He is a visiting professor in the English department and the Jenks Chair in Contemporary American Letters at Holy Cross.

April 27
Leila Philip and Bob Cording with selected students
7:30 p.m., Levis Browsing Room, Dinand Library

A member of the Holy Cross faculty since 2003, Leila Philip is the author of The Road Through Miyana, a memoir of her apprenticeship to a master potter in Japan that won the PEN 1990 Martha Albrand Citation for Nonfiction, and the award-winning A Family Place, the story of her ancestral Hudson River home which mixes history, natural history, and autobiography as it examines our sense of home, and Hidden Dialogue: A Discussion Between Women in Japan and the United States. She has received numerous awards for her writing, including fellowships from the National Foundation for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Association of University Women. Her essays have been anthologized widely and she has published articles and essay nationally in major newspapers and magazines.

Cording has published four collections of poetry, including Life-List, which won the Ohio State University Press/Journal award, in 1987; What Binds Us To This World; Heavy Grace; and Against Consolation. He also has contributed more than 300 poems to magazines such as The Nation, Image, Georgia Review, Kenyon Review, New England Review, Poetry, DoubleTake, Orion, Paris Review and the New Yorker. Cording’s work has appeared in several anthologies, including The Best Spiritual Writing of 2000, 2001, 2002 and 2004; the Pushcart Anthology, 2002; and Godine’s Poets of the New Century. He has received a number of awards and grants, including a previous fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and fellowships from the Connecticut Commission on the Arts and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. In 1992, he was poet in residence at the Frost Place in Franconia, N.H. He is the James N. and Sarah L. O’Reilly Barrett Endowed Chair in Creative Writing at Holy Cross.

WORCESTER, Mass. – The College of the Holy Cross will hold its annual Easter Egg Hunt, for children ages 12 and younger, on Saturday, April 8 at 10 a.m. The free event will take place in the Field House.

The Easter Bunny will be available to pose for photos with the children.

This event is sponsored by the Student Ambassadors Developing External Relations (S.A.D.E.R.) and the Office of Student Affairs.

WORCESTER, Mass. – Widely acclaimed pianist Sarah Grunstein will give a recital on March 28 at 8 p.m. in the Brooks Concert Hall at the College of the Holy Cross. Titled “Sarah Grunstein and Friends: The Intimate World of Robert Schumann,” the program is in celebration of the 150th anniversary of Schumann’s death. The event is free and open to the public.

Presented by the Holy Cross Chamber Players, guest artists will include Sylvia Schmitz-Burgard, assistant professor of German, and mezzo-soprano Jennifer Ashe, lecturer in the department of music.

The program will include Schumann’s song cycle “Liederkreis” Op. 39 (Ashe and Grunstein), a poetry reading of Eichendorff’s poems (on which Schumann’s cycle is based) by Schmitz-Burgard, and solo works of Schumann (Grunstein) including “Carnaval.”

The event will be an unusual one, as it will include not only the song cycle but a poetry reading. Such “soirees,” combining genres for piano, voice, and poetry (ideal for the intimacy of the 19th century salon) were very much a part of Schumann’s world.

“As Schumann’s creativity was deeply inspired by literature, I am delighted that my colleagues, Professors Schmitz-Burgard and Ashe, will join with me in presenting a Schumann evening of music and poetry at Holy Cross,” Grunstein said.

Grunstein is an assistant professor of music at Holy Cross. Praised by The New York Times as “a versatile, expressive pianist who combines a penetrating musical intelligence with the technical proficiency to realize her ideas,” she performs internationally as a concert artist. She achieved particular acclaim for her performances in London, New York, and Sydney of Bach’s complete “Well-Tempered Clavier” during the celebration of the Bach Tercentenary, with her all-Bach recital at London’s Purcell Room leading to an invitation to perform at Kensington Palace before His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales.

Born in Sydney, her career has included concerts in the United States, Austria, Hungary, Italy, the United Kingdom, and her homeland. Grunstein received the doctor of musical arts degree from The Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and bachelor and master of music degrees from the Juilliard School where she held a teaching fellowship for four years following graduation. Grunstein has also taught at the Manhattan School of Music, the City University of New York, Fordham University, the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, and the Victorian College of the Arts.

She is a former student of renowned teachers Sascha Gorodnitzki and Herbert Stessin at the Juilliard School, Nancy Salas at the Sydney Conservatorium, Lev Natochenny, now at the Frankfurt Hochschule für Musik, Malcolm Bilson at Cornell University, and Greville Rothon, assistant to Claudio Arrau.

Grunstein’s performances have been frequently broadcast by WQXR (New York) and by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Her doctoral dissertation, which explores Chopin’s improvisatory style from the perspective of the Bach circle, was nominated for the Barry S. Brook Dissertation Award.

Grunstein is a winner of the Queen Elizabeth II Silver Jubilee Award for Young Australians.  Last year she performed a series of three recitals at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall and returned to her homeland to give concerts and master-classes in Perth, Queensland, Melbourne and Sydney.  In the words of one review, “From the first note, Sarah Grunstein commanded the theatre . . . Sarah Grunstein beguiled her audience into complete contemplative stillness . . . a towering and authoritative presence on stage . . . cool meticulous Bach followed by hot-blooded tempestuous Schumann . . . a stunning virtuoso.”

WORCESTER, Mass. – Renee Laverdiere, a junior at the College of the Holy Cross from Eliot, Maine, has won a Goldwater Scholarship, one of only 323 undergraduates nationally to receive the award from the Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Foundation. This year’s scholars were selected on the basis of academic merit from more than 1,000 mathematics, science, and engineering students who were nominated by the faculties of colleges and universities nationwide.

The one- and two-year scholarships will cover the cost of tuition, fees, books, and room and board up to a maximum of $7,500 per year.

Laverdiere is majoring in mathematics with a philosophy minor. She has been a Dana Scholar the past two years, is a member of the Pi Mu Epsilon math honor society, the Phi Sigma Tau philosophy honor society, and the College Honors Program. This summer, she will participate in the College’s undergraduate research program, working full time with Professor Thomas Cecil in differential geometry. She will conduct independent research in matrix groups from algebraic and geometric perspectives as a foundation for work in Lie sphere geometry.

Her career objective is to receive a Ph.D. and teach on the college level. “I very much would like to teach at a college like Holy Cross, where there’s a small community and close student-faculty relationships,” she says. “I want to work directly with students as well as conduct research.” Her interests and activities on campus reflect that desire: she has been a mathematics teaching assistant in the Passport Program, a calculus tutor, an orientation leader during Gateways, a Manresa retreat leader, and student coordinator in the Lilly Endowment-funded journaling and reflection program.

She is a graduate of Marshwood High School in South Berwick, Maine, where she was valedictorian.

The Goldwater Foundation is a federally endowed agency established in 1986. The foundation’s Scholarship Program honoring Senator Barry M. Goldwater was designed to foster and encourage outstanding students to pursue careers in the fields of mathematics, the natural sciences, and engineering. The Goldwater Scholarship is the premier undergraduate award of its type in these fields.