Honors in FlorenceSpring, 2004

The inaugural year of the Florence Honors Program was by all accounts an enormous success. Twenty-six enthusiastic and accomplished students from the University of Michigan and the University of Wisconsin enrolled in the program at the Villa Corsi-Salviati, the center for the Michigan-Duke-Wisconsin Study Abroad Program in Sesto Fiorentino. Housed in this attractive living and learning environment, a 25-minute bus ride from the center of the city, students were involved in two courses, each of which was designed to inform the other. The first of these, led by Professor Michael Shank of Wisconsin, focused on Galileo as the consummate scientist of Renaissance Italy. “The City of Florence and the Idea of the Renaissance” was led by Professor Enoch Brater of Michigan, aided by Dr. Jodie Mariotti, the popular specialist in Renaisssance art who teaches at the villa during the academic year.

The special attraction of the program was the way it took advantage of being in Florence. Twice-weekly visits to principal sites in the historical center of the city were designed to augment and illustrate regular classroom sessions. These included on-site lectures held at major museums and architectural sites, as well as all-day excursions to Urbino, Assisi, Perugia, Siena and to the Medici villas in Tuscany. Professors Shank, Brater and Mariotti were vigorous and unstinting in providing scholarly commentary throughout. There was a great sense of camaraderie during the four-week session, and everyone left Florence in awe of just how much we were able to learn and experience in this challenging and exciting new program.

In the Villa Corsi-Salviatiby Liina M. Wallin

My site visit to the Honors in Florence Program at the Villa Corsi-Salviati during the last week of May confirmed my belief in the value of a study abroad program tailored to Honors students. Our first and second year students, along with Honors students from the University of Wisconsin, attended classes, studied, learned, and lived in a Renaissance villa on the outskirts of Florence. They had site visits to many of the museums, churches,

palazzi, and monuments in Florence. They also had day trips to sites in Tuscany. They watched the transit of Venus reflected on the floor of the Duomo. They followed the movements of the heavens through a telescope set up in the villa garden at night And, most of all, they learned about the Renaissance and one of its most influential representatives—Galileo. It was a short, intense four week experience which brought students from two excellent Honors Programs together into the classroom where they argued with and learned from one another. Their conversations lasted over meals and into the night.

Lunch at the Villa. Continued on Page 7

honors

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Fall 2004 Vol. 9

Honors in Florence. Faculty and Students.

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

LSA HONORS

DirectorStephen Darwall

Associate DirectorLiina M. Wallin

Assistant DirectorDonna Wessel Walker

Scholarship CoordinatorElleanor H. Crown

Program CoordinatorJohn C. Cantú

Graduation AuditorMary Plummer

Office ManagerVicki Davinich

ReceptionistJohn B. Morgan

Admissions AssistantJeanne Getty

Faculty AdvisorsMaria GonzalezSanthdevi JeyabalanMargaret LourieDeborah MahoneyRobert PachellaManuel Teodoro

Contact InformationLSA Honors Program1330 Mason Hall419 S. State St.Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1027Phone: 734-764-6274Fax: 734-763-6553Email: honors.alums@umich.edu

Websitehttp://www.umich.edu/honors

Regents of the UniversityDavid A. Brandon, Ann ArborLaurence B. Deitch, Bingham FarmsOlivia P. Maynard, GoodrichRebecca McGowan, Ann ArborAndrea Fischer Newman, Ann ArborAndrew C. Richner, Grosse Point ParkS. Martin Taylor, Grosse Point FarmsKatherine E. White, Ann ArborMary Sue Coleman, President, ex officio

The University of Michigan, as an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer, complies with all appli-cable federal and state laws regarding non-discrimi-nation and affirmative action, including Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. The University of Michigan is committed to a policy of non-discrimina-tion and equal opportunity for all persons regardless of race, sex, color, religion, creed, national origin or ancestry, age, marital status, sexual orientation, dis-ability, or Vietnam-era veteran status in employment, educational programs and activities, and admissions. Inquiries or complaints may be addressed to the University’s Director of Affirmative Action and Title IX/Section 504 Coordinator, 4005 Wolverine Tower, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-1281, (734) 763-0235; TTY (734) 647-1388. For other University of Michigan informa-tion call: (734) 764-1817.

HONORS PROGRAM AWARDSHonors alumni and friends have been very generous over the years and have provided funds to reward and support our students and teachers.

For the last five years, Honors has received a generous gift from the Lurie family to reward excellence in teaching by Graduate Student Instructors in Honors classes and sections. In the winter, 2004 the Lurie Teaching Awards went to Saul Alarcon Farfan (Natural Resources/Biology), Alan Kiste (Chemistry), Christopher Love (Comparative Literature/Great Books), Tricia McElroy (English/Great Books), and Kathryn Seidl (Classics/Classical Civilization). Each of the awardees was highly praised by students for intelligence and command of the field, attention to students’ needs and problems, stimulating lively intellectual exchange, and inspiring students to intellectual achievement. Honors hosted a luncheon for the winners and the faculty and students who nominated them in the spring.

Special awards to Honors seniors are part of our graduation ceremony each year. In April, 2003 we initiated a group of awards made possible by the Goldstein family, Ellen, Joseph, Laura Bassichis and Paul, all of whom attended our ceremony and assisted in the presentation. Named for distinguished UM alumni and associates, the Goldstein Prizes reward excellence in humanities, arts, natural sciences and mathematics, social sciences, public service, humanitarianism and teaching. This year’s group of outstanding students each graduated with Highest Honors.

The Robert Hayden Humanities Award winner was Ryan Tuan Vu, whose English Honors thesis on the topic of Greg Morrison’s The Invisibles brought enthusiastic comments from faculty it his department. He was described as “an intellectual who is always striving to understand the world around him and using all the intellectual resources at his disposal to do so.”

The Arthur Miller Arts Award went to Eric Y. Shieh, a joint degree student in Music Education and violin performance in the School of Music and Honors English in the College of Literature, Science and the Arts. Eric’s thesis advisor calls his thesis “the most mature work I have ever seen from a Michigan undergraduate.”

Physicist Steven Francis Chapman’s thesis research consisted of the construction and testing of a reactor-based positron beam to be used in nanotechnology research. His research mentors agree that he is among the best five students they have supervised in the last twenty-five years. Steven received the Jerome and Isabella Karle Award for Natural Sciences and Mathematics.

This year, for the second time, there were two social science students so outstanding that our committee could not choose between them. The two winners of the Marshall Sahlins Social Science Award were Elizabeth Y. Lin and John Canright Nelson. Elizabeth completed her Psychology concentration with a thesis analyzing eating disturbances in Asian and Caucasian women. John is a History concentrator whose thesis advisor has urged him to publish his thesis analyzing the history of the Seminole during the period of Spanish dominion.

The Gerald Ford Public Service Award winner, political science major Sumon Srinivas Dantiki, has compiled a distinguished record of both public service and scholarship. His thesis was described as “a rich and complex work which features a novel reconceptualization of humanitarian intervention.”

The Raoul Wallenberg Humanitarian Award was presented to Joey Fung, a psychology and economics concentrator. She has combined an impressive academic record with

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Kudosby Elleanor H. Crown

a commitment to humanitarian service that includes work with a number of agencies in the United States as well as two summers in a squatter community in Manila where she worked in a women’s shelter, a teenage rehabilitation center and a school for at-risk children.

Psychology concentrator Terri Jae Walters has been active for several years in educational programs for children in under-privileged schools, at-risk preschools, summer camps and domestic violence shelters. These experiences led to her thesis on the impact of violence on school readiness for preschool-aged children. She received the Sidney Fine Teaching Award and will join the ranks of teachers in the Teach for America Program.

Honors Alumni Prizes for outstanding achievement and service to the Honors Program and the university were presented to Zachary Adam Caple, Jessica Ann Grieser and Elizabeth Y. Lin. Zachary completed an Honors independent concentration in The Poetics of Science, Technology and Society. He served as an Honors student instructor for two terms during which he encouraged first-year students to explore their creativity. Jessica, a highly praised Honors English concentrator, has served as an Honors Campus Days leader and has been an articulate spokesperson for the Honors Program and the college. Elizabeth Lin (see above) contributed to the Honors Program as an orientation peer advisor and advisor coordinator and as an Honors Campus Days leader.

Virginia Voss Memorial Scholarships are awarded each year to senior Honors women for excellence in writing. They pay tribute to the memory of the late Virginia Voss who graduated from Michigan in the 1950s and became College Editor of Mademoiselle Magazine. After her untimely death, the Voss family provided funds for the awards. This year, Voss Scholarships for academic writing were awarded to Sarah K. Docimo (Psychology), Kimberly Foster (History), Johanna Hanink (Classical Language and Literature), Anandhi Jeyabalan (Biology), Rachel Lewis (English), Karen Schwartz (Individualized Concentration in Religious Studies), and Jessica Szczygiel (Political Science). Kathryn Boudouris was awarded a scholarship for imaginative prose and Sarah Rubin won for poetry.

The Honors Program makes annual grants to outstanding Honors juniors. These include the Otto Graf Scholarship and Prizes and the Jack Meiland Prize. Otto Graf, German scholar and humanist, was Director of Honors for eighteen years. The awards given in his honor are made to students distinguished by their academic excellence and commitment. The work of Jack Meiland, Philosophy professor and Honors Director, was noted for its interdisciplinarity. The Meiland Award is made annually to the student whose studies best reflect his ideals of quality and breadth. Last year, Johanna Hanink was chosen as Jack Meiland Award recipient. Otto Graf Scholarships went to Brian Lobel (Political Science and Individualized Concentration in Performance and Social Identity) and Nathan Platte (History and Music). Sumon Dantiki was awarded the Otto Graf Prize.

Honors alumnus, Peter Benedek, gained so much from his year of study abroad at the London School of Economics that he has generously supported a number of Honors students to follow in his footsteps. Last year, Shashank Saxena attended LSE with the support of a Benedek Grant. For the summer session, Yue Ma and Vishal Shah received Benedek Grants and Anna Slemrod is looking forward to a full academic year at LSE with Benedek support.

National Awards

Barry M. Goldwater Scholarships are awarded for excellence in mathematics, natural science and engineering. University of Michigan Goldwater scholars selected in the spring of 2003 were Bethany Percha (Chemistry and Physics) and Christopher Hayward (Astronomy, Mathematics and Physics). The 2004 winners were Jacob Bourjailly (Astrophysics) and Daniel J. Schmidt (Chemical Engineering). Brittany Fox won the University of Michigan’s first Morris K. Udall Scholarship for students interested in careers related to the environment.

In 2003, Stephen Pannuto, English Honors graduate, won a Beinecke Brothers Memorial Scholarship for graduate study and this year added to that a Mellon Fellowship which he will take to the University of Chicago. Johanna Hanink and Christopher Parrott, both classicists, also won Mellon Fellowships. Johanna will be studying at the University of California, Berkeley this year and Christopher will attend Harvard.

Honors graduates working and studying abroad as 2004 Fulbright Scholars are Sumon Dantiki (Canada), Clarissa Howe (Germany) and Michael Varnum (Croatia).

This year, eleven National Science Foundation awards for graduate study were made to University of Michigan students or alumni. Among them are five Honors graduates, David John Baker (Philosophy of Science), Garth Heutel (Economics), Shaili Jain (Mathematics and Computer Science), Jesse Kass (Mathematics) and Jeremy Spoon (Anthropology).

Honors Program Awards continued from page 2

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Leadership in PoliticsFrom a speech delivered at the Honors Graduation Celebration.by Sumon S. Dantiki

Ideas in Honors is unique program, now in its second year, that lets a few seniors design and lead a small freshman seminar on a topic entirely of their choosing.

I’m a Political Science major, so I wanted to give my students a flavor of the subject. The title of my class was “Leadership in Politics,” and the first question of the course was pretty simple: “who were great leaders in American Politics?” We started off discussing Bill Clinton and George W. Bush and worked backwards through historical figures. At first, the classes were full of controversy; everyone had an opinion about the Lewinsky affair or weapons of mass destruction. I noticed though, that the further back we went in history, the more agreement there was. Everyone for example, was simply outraged at the cabinet’s financial scandals in the 1850s. How irresponsible of President Zachary Taylor’s administration. Nobody in my class will vote for the Whig Party candidate this November election.

And so I learned my first lesson: the easiest way to get people to agree is to ask them about something they don’t know anything about.

At the end of the semester, the class answered the second question: “how do we make ourselves better leaders?” The answers to this question were all over the place. I began to think that the students really hadn’t learned much in the class; there was no consensus on leadership in politics. Then, on the very last day of class, something unusual happened. The students petitioned me to keep meeting informally and keep discussing the issues at hand.

My first reaction was that these students must be very, very lonely to voluntarily sacrifice an hour of their time on a Friday afternoon at 3, to talk about the exploits of “Old Rough and Ready” himself, President Zachary Taylor. I gradually realized though, that their request was not an act of desperation, nor was it really even about my class, my skills as a teacher or the academic credit. Rather, it was about consciously setting aside a time and space to reflect on important issues that were larger than themselves.

In a literal sense, the University of Michigan has provided all of us students with time and space: During late nights studying with friends at the library, volunteering through the campus service groups on the weekends, or just having coffee with friends at Cava Java, all of you here have had the opportunity to consider both the grand questions of the human condition and the more mundane but equally important ones of self-development. As Honors students, it is not in our nature to agree with the ideas of others, simply because we don’t know anything about them.

Ideas in Honors Courses, Instructors, and Comments from Students:

Investigations in Poetry – Zachary Caple

“This is a great seminar and I hope Honors will continue to offer it or something of this sort—just to relax and expand intellectual and poetic horizons. Awesome course and Zach did a great job.”

“Zach is wacky, smart, and fun. I would recommend this course to anyone who’s willing to dive into something they might not understand.”

Relativity and Quantum Physics – Walter Dulany

“Very interesting, exciting. Instructor was very

knowledgeable and receptive to questions.”

“Great instructor. Will definitely be a good professor, should he choose to be one. The class was well-taught and fun.”

Leadership in Politics – Sumon Dantiki

“Sumon was a great instructor, a really smart, funny guy. We had some very interesting discussions. A really great class.”

“He has a knack for choosing relevant and intelligent readings.”

Student Activism and Social Change at the University of Michigan – Rob Goodspeed

“Rob was excellent. He constantly amazes me with

Last year we asked for contributions to fund an exciting new program called “Ideas in Honors.” It has been an unqualified success. Two recent graduates who taught in the program last year have written about their experiences. Sumon Dantiki is currently in Quebec studying on a Fulbright Fellowship. Johanna Hanink is a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley.

Continued on Page 5

Honors 135 Soundbites

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Great Women in Great Booksby Johanna Hanink

When I returned to Michigan for my senior year and final semester last fall, the trials and travails of the first-year student were far from my mind. The dead-end hallways of Angell Hall no longer made for an embarrassing maze but instead an annoying obstacle when I was running late for class; LSA requirements were far enough behind

me that the only mandatory math problems looming on the horizon were in the form of GRE questions. As I wrote letter after letter

introducing myself to professors at potential graduate schools, I was preparing to say goodbye to those who had guided me over the last three years. Even though my thesis and seminar classes should have represented the culmination of my undergraduate career, I was consumed with figuring out where I would be and what I would be doing the following year. The opportunity given me to teach a section of Honors 135 was the perfect antidote to my chronic attitude of ‘what’s next’.

I designed my course to parallel loosely the staple of the freshman honors curriculum, Great Books 191. The first semester ‘great books’ represent the masterpieces of the ancient Greek classics. The following was the first paragraph of my course description: “The classics of Greek literature (excepting Sappho’s poems) may have been composed entirely by men, but those male authors created some of the world’s most vibrant, complex, and memorable fictional women. In this course, we will examine these female characters in depth, specifically relying on secondary sources (literary and visual) in order to investigate how different cultural imaginations have recreated and refashioned their literary legacies.” Over the seven weeks we spent together as a class, we examined, among others, the figure of Andromache in 17th century French drama and the concept of Helen in a short story by a ‘modern’ Greek author. Each student gave a short presentation on the fortuna of some character of her choice and the course culminated in a creative writing assignment.

I can only attest to my experiences on the ‘instructor’ end of

the class. The chance to spend time every week with a group of freshman students was one that I certainly would not have been afforded otherwise that semester. I found that a senior year can be a very selfish time and teaching helped keep me from focusing solely on what I needed to accomplish that semester and arrange for the next stage of my life. And, implementing a course I had designed myself helped me give definition to academic interests that had quietly developed over the last few years, but which I was only just beginning to recognize in myself. What’s more, the first year students raised questions that never would have occurred to me, challenged assumptions of mine that I hadn’t even realized were assumptions. They produced such artful final creative projects that I came to see the characters we had been studying over the last seven weeks and who had interested me over the last three-plus years in still yet a different light and with a further layer of complexity.

The experience of teaching Honors 135 was not one in which I imparted some great knowledge I had gained at Michigan on to my students. As we studied the course material together, the course became a way for me to evaluate both the distance I had come since I started in fall of 2000 but also, even more, to remind myself of how far I still had to go. And I realized that the occasional cynicism of the graduating senior was not what would take me there: seeing first-year students at the start of their undergraduate careers helped prepare me to approach my graduate one with more enthusiasm and excitement than I would have had otherwise. As much as Honors 135 was a final project tying together what I had learned, it served as a reminder that, despite the temptation to think I was the senior who knew everything, I too was really at the very beginning. So at the end of that, my final semester in Ann Arbor, I went to the final session of Great Books 191 to hear Professer H.D. Cameron’s legendary conclusion to the course and pep-talk to another generation of Michigan students. Listening to him address a few hundred freshman and inspired by the students I had met through Honors 135, I hoped that I could continue, as he had challenged everyone in the lecture hall, to continue through life with the ‘fresh’ eyes, mind, and intellectual spirit of a freshman.

the things he’s done on campus—from his leadership roles to his publications of “Inside the Daily.” I only hope that I can accomplish a quarter of what he has in his 4 years here. He is extremely knowledgeable, smart, and interesting. What a wealth of information he holds!”

Great Women in Great Books – Johanna Hanink

“An outstanding class. I’m very glad my advisor

recommended it. Very applicable material, particularly to Great Books 191. Low stress but high reward. Definitely worthwhile.”

Performance and Social Identity – Brian Lobel

“Great class. Instructor not afraid to challenge us with potentially offensive yet interesting and provoking material. Chose extremely good relevant material and led effective, intelligent discussion. Bringing in the actual authors was awesome!”

More Honors 135 Soundbites

Greetings from Ann Arbor! It is a pleasure to be able to write to you for the first time in these pages. The past year has seen an amazing array of activities and new ventures. And now, at the end of a summer of Orientation meetings with a remarkable class of entering students, we look forward to an even richer set of offerings in the coming year. One of the most important (and challenging!)

innovations last year was a new admissions process that had us reading mounds of applications, recommendations, and essays. (See article by Donna Wessel Walker.) The fruits were evident during Orientation, however, when we saw what an interesting group we have assembled. Let me tell you more, though, about what went on in the Program last year and what we are looking forward to this year.

The opening of the Perlman Honors Commons gave us a truly beautiful intellectual hub, a place where students and faculty meet, study, and come together for small group activities. I convened a biweekly interview/discussion there, called “Fresh Ideas”, that featured faculty and student guests with discussions ranging from a Supreme Court clerk’s perspective on the deliberative process in Gore v. Bush, to an internationally famous philosopher’s memories of her early career as a secretary, to fascinating presentations of thesis research by senior History and Psychology Honors Concentrators. Students also organized a wonderful series of events, including meetings with admissions officers from various professional schools.

Last year also saw the naming of our first ten Faculty Fellows, who are drawn from a wide range of fields and charged with involving themselves with students in creative and interesting ways. The results ranged from a seminar on censorship, to a trip with students to exhibits celebrating Detroit’s contributions to popular music (Motown and techno), to a session with the actor who had played Othello in the Guthrie Theater production of Shakespeare’s play that our students had also seen. Faculty Fellows often participated as well in the weekly Honors Roundtable lunches John Cantu and I hosted on Wednesdays in South Quad. And we continued our successful monthly “Lunch With Honors” again this year with guests like Bruno Simma of

the International Court of Justice in the Hague, William Schultz of Amnesty International USA, and Lynn Rivers, Honors alum and former member of the Congress from Michigan.

On the academic front, there were two especially important developments. Honors in the Liberal Arts, a new interdisciplinary program for third- and fourth-year students, which can be pursued either as a complement or as an alternative to an Honors Concentration (alongside a regular Concentration), was approved by the College and begins this Fall. And a substantial investment of new College monies made it possible to solicit proposals for new faculty-taught seminars for first- and second-year students. We received seventy-three (!) proposals of which we were able to fund six, which are being offered this year. Obviously, many LSA faculty want to be more involved with the Honors Program, and we will be looking for ways to make that happen.

Finally, as you can read in Liina Wallin’s article, last year also marked the beginning of our Honors in Florence Program, which enabled Michigan Honors students to join Honors students from Wisconsin along with two faculty (one from each institution) to spend four weeks studying art, literature, and science of the Renaissance at its very center.

As exciting as all that was, the next year looks even better: with new courses and new programs set to go and a fantastic set of events on tap. Let me give you just two examples. This fall will see a week-long visit by an extraordinary group of artists, including Obie-award-winning actress, Kathleen Chalfant, who will teach a course together and mount a series of exhibits, concerts, and discussions attempting to deal with the Israeli-Palestinian crisis on a human level through the arts. This will be a collaboration with the Residential College and a wonderful opportunity for our students. Then this spring, we will host James Gleick for three weeks. Gleick is the former science writer for The New York Times, who has written award-winning biographies of Richard Feynman and Isaac Newton, in addition to a well-known book on chaos theory. He is also the author of Faster: the Acceleration of Just About Everything, the book we are discussing at Honors Kickoff for entering students—which, come to think of it, is tomorrow. Gotta run. (Seriously though, there are some pretty exciting things going on in the Honors Program these days. If you ever want to catch the buzz, just come and join us.)

All best,

Stephen Darwall

From the Director:

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The Villa Corsi-Salviati dates from the Renaissance and was built as a country house. Although the grounds no longer contain orchards, vineyards, and fields, there are extensive gardens. The work in the gardens is orchestrated by Bruno Bruscagli who is well into his 80s and has been tending the colorful gardens for over 50 years. The grounds also include a manicured lawn area perfect for bocce, a boxwood maze, tennis courts, an outdoor stage, and seating under the trees. Nino Pivieri has been villa chef for 9 years. He and his staff turn out three luscious meals a day. Sometimes Helen Burroughs, the capable and experienced villa manager, puts on her pastry chef hat and bakes a truly outstanding confection. I will remember her fresh strawberry genoise fondly.

I will, however, remember the instructors and their courses for even longer. I was able to sit in on both Prof. Enoch Brater’s course on the City of Florence and the Idea of the Renaissance and Prof. Michael Shank’s course on Galileo. Prof. Brater’s course, with able collaboration from art historian Dr. Jodie Mariotti, examined how Florence exemplified the idea of the Renaissance through literature and the history, art and monuments of the city. Prof. Shank’s course on Galileo moved from the classroom to hands-on sky-watching experiences in the villa gardens, to the Duomo, to Pisa, and to the history of science library. The instructors’ enthusiasm for the topics at hand was infectious. Our students stated that the Honors in Florence experience was, for them, a time to learn and also to experience the ambiance of the one of the most beautiful and historic cities of the world. It was a great experience!

In the Villa Corsi-Salviati continued from page 1

“My life values have changed because of the Honors in Florence Program. I see how

different the world can be and the potential that lies in it.”

I came to Italy to study the Renaissance and I did so in a villa. How many students can

say that?”

“What was great about the course was the class and site combo. It was an experience

like no other”

“I viewed the planets and the moon with the telescope set up in the villa garden, and

I saw the transit of Venus on the Duomo floor – a once-in-a-lifetime experience!”

There is a Jewish museum in a Spanish city where there has not been a Jewish community since the 1492 Expulsion. I wanted to go there to find out why, not only to learn about it, but to live it.

The Honors Program enabled me to spend the second semester of my junior year in Spain, researching the museum’s development and the area’s history. I talked with museum administrators, visitors, and locals during my stay in the picturesque old city of Girona, located near the French border and about an hour from Barcelona. I became a regular in the museum library, where I could be found sifting through old newspaper clippings in English, Castellano, and Catalan, the regional language, any hour of the day the library was open (and sometimes when it wasn’t). I followed guided tours filled with everyone from Israeli hairdressers to French and German tourists around the building, asking people what struck them about the museum and Girona’s Jewish past.

Being in Spain was about more than just having access to the

museum’s resources, though – it was about living and breathing the culture and the community every morning when I woke up in my tiny rented room. It was about staying up until 2 a.m. and having incredible conversations in Spanish with a local university student whose perspectives as a part-Jewish youth added a dimension to my work I needed to be in Spain to get. There were people who wanted to know more about my work, visitors who were amazed to find that the narrow streets they walked on were not currently home to a Jewish community. They took me to lunch, invited me to come join them for a walk or for coffee, to ask me what I knew about why the Jewish presence they hoped to feel was marked only by echoes – tombstones, and an indent in a doorway where a mezuzah, a Jewish doorpost marker, once welcomed guests into a Jewish home.

The museum stands where Girona’s Jewish community once stood. Street names have changed and some of the people strolling down the café-speckled streets didn’t even know a synagogue was at one time part of the area’s landscape. I was

Jewish Gironaby Karen Schwartz

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Students

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New admissions process yields stronger class

For the entering class of 2004, we used a more holistic review process than in the past. This year we admitted a smaller percentage of students merely on test scores and grades. Taking advantage of UM’s newly-expanded application, we were able to read more student writing, and more recommendations for each application than ever before.

The results are gratifying. The entering class of 2004 was smaller (by design) than in recent years, with 491 students. They are academically very strong, with the median range GPA of 3.8-4.0, and median range SAT I scores of 1390-1480. Michigan residents comprise 53.7% of the class, the smallest in-state majority we’ve had in years. Out-of-state students represent five foreign countries and 31 states. The students are more diverse than before in a number of measures: geography, socio-economic status and family background as well as race. The class is evenly divided between men and women. We’re looking forward to the next four years!

“Beyond the Stigma: Palestine/Israel/USA Through Art”October 11-16, 2004: A series of special events

The Honors Program and the Residential College will be the co-hosts for a very special series of events the week of 11-16 October 2004. A team of visiting artists (music, theater, film, photography, poetry) will join with UM faculty and local academics to explore the Palestinian/Israeli conflict through the lenses of the performing arts. According to the artistic team, “while we are well aware that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of the most explosive issues of our time, we are hopeful that, by seeing that conflict through the lens of the arts, we can move beyond labels, slogans, blame, and, yes, the stigma to see ‘the other’ as fully human. We do not propose to find a solution to this conflict, but to arrive at a deeper understanding of its human dimensions.”

The week’s events will include public conversations, poetry readings, film showings, a photography exhibit, and a special evening of readings accompanied by piano jazz. There will also be a mini-course held during the week, supplementing the public events with discussions and workshops with the visiting artists. Students in the mini-course will have a syllabus of texts to read and films to watch before the team arrives, and will produce a reflective piece after the week is over, either in written or artistic form.

The visiting team is led by a core team of four artists: Henry Chalfant, a documentary film maker; Kathleen Chalfant, an actress on stage, screen, and television; Liz Magnes, a jazz pianist and music educator; and Raphael Magnes, a photographer. The artistic team also includes Anan Ameri, the cultural arts director for the Dearborn-based Arab-American community group, ACCESS; Suheir Hamad, an activist and poet (author of Born Palestinian, Born Black); Betty Shemiah, playwright; Annemarie Jacir, film-maker. Janet Shier in the Residential College will be the course coordinator for the mini-course, and our own Steve Darwall will facilitate the public discussions. This promises to be an exciting week.

Freshman Book and Kick-Off for Fall 04

Again this summer we sent a book to all our incoming students. This year’s selection is Faster: the Acceleration of Just about Everything by James Gleick. We knew that Faster would resonate with our freshmen, since so many of them describe in their admissions essays the increasing pressures of our ever-faster culture.

We are using the book in several ways during the coming year. First, this year’s Honors Kick-Off began with the book. Students gathered in the morning for a formal welcome by our Director, Steve Darwall. Four speakers then gave brief reflections on the book: Professor Tim McKay (Physics)

Professor Kelly Askew (Anthropology and

CAAS); alumnus Peter Schweitzer (J. Walter Thompson); and alumna and former Congresswoman Lynn Rivers. Students then broke into small discussion groups led by Honors faculty, staff, and student leaders. Kick-Off Day continued with lunch in the Union Ballroom with entertainment by an Honors student band, and concluded with a campus scavenger hunt led by Honors RAs. The day was an enormous success, and has generated more positive responses to the frosh book than we’ve ever had.

Our second use of Faster will come in Winter term 2005, when James Gleick, a journalist who has written about Isaac Newton, chaos theory, and the physicist Richard Feynman, will come to campus as a DeRoy visiting professor. Gleick’s visit will provide a capstone experience to the frosh book and involve other students in the Program as well. Gleick will be on campus for several weeks, teaching and giving public talks.

Current Newsby Donna Wessel Walker

We want to hear from you!We are redesigning the Alumni section of our website to include news and updates on Honors graduates. We would like to know what you have been doing since you graduated from LSA Honors. Please take a moment to fill out this survey and return it to us.

Title (Mr./Mrs./Ms./Dr.) ________________________________________________________________________

Name _______________________________________________________________________________________

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11

One Bite at a Time:The Life of an Honors Alumnaby Gabrielle Civil

With joy and trepidation in my heart, I walked into my Honors advisor’s office and told her: Comparative Literature, English and French were all too important for me to pick out even two. I just had to triple major! For today’s IB, AP overachiever with her quadruple and quintuple possibilities, a triple major might seem easy as breathing. In 1992, however, a triple major was for the gifted, crazy, or most likely both. As a second semester first year black girl from Detroit, I was unsure of how my advisor would respond.

In my hand was a precise four-year plan of each term with projections for a year abroad and writing both a creative and a critical honors thesis. On top of these calculations, I had drawn an elephant with one of my mother’s favorite expressions coming out of its trunk. “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.” Elleanor Crown, my unflappable advisor, looked at my illustration, emitted a slight chuckle and said, “Well, Gabrielle, this is quite a plan. How about adding some math to that? You need to be well rounded . . .” At the moment when my imagination was at its most expansive—and thus most vulnerable—the Honors Program not only gave me support, but pushed me to go even further. With strong time management, clear long term planning, and strong support from family, faculty and advisors, I achieved my goals, and successfully graduated from UM in four years with Highest Distinction, three majors, two theses (High Honors in both) and a year abroad. (Clearly, I also kept my modesty—but I never did take math.)

This fulsome, cheerful, voracious (and mildly compulsive) quality of life has been a staple of my post-Honors existence. In Honors, I never was nor wanted to be just one thing. Both black and a woman, artist and intellectual, I have always been challenged to envision and stretch the parameters of my given

life. My participation in the brilliant, brainy and kooky world of Honors well prepared me for the joys and rigors of my current rock star life. In 2000, I received my Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from New York University and became a very busy,

full-fledged academic / artist / community arts educator.As an Assistant Professor of English at the College of St. Catherine in St. Paul, Minnesota, the largest

Catholic women’s college in the nation, I teach literature and writing, poetics and politics;

I get to innovate courses on International Black Women’s Literature, Reading Race, Gender, Writing and Technology, as well as teach traditional introductions. This work inspires and resonates with my poetry, conceptual and performance art. In the fall, I will premiere “Birthday,” a new work, at the Yari Yari Pembari International Conference on Black Women Writers and

Globalization in New York City. Also closely tied is my community work: mentoring junior

high students of color, creating “black women happenings,” reviewing arts grants, and working

with a Minneapolis community center to plan and implement a poetry project.

And this is all just a start! Currently revising a critical translation of an obscured Haitian woman poet, and compiling a manuscript of poetry / performance art text, I am still very much at the start of my career. To a certain extent, having so many interests has slowed down my full emergence in any one. For me, though, these fields are necessarily inextricable. As I did years ago, I believe in the possibility of excellence through interconnection. Because of my amazing experiences envisioning and enacting a rich and synthetic life, I know that I can make my mark. Almost ten years after Honors, I still have high goals and I still am eating the elephant, one bite at a time.

able to ask Girona passersby what they thought of the city renovating the Jewish Quarter, to find out how people really felt about the increased tourist presence and the museum’s establishment.

I left for Spain ready to find a large, well-funded museum offering a clear and moving message to the public. I was armed with everything I’d read on memory and tragedy, on museums and identity. I arrived to find instead a different type of project – a small yet complex museum struggling to find the funding to expand, a multi-faceted cultural crossroads resulting from the attempted integration of a variety of local, national, and international interests.

I was there to watch the busloads of tourists come through, and I was there when the museum closed and everyone went home. Living in Girona and being able to return to the museum day after day, to be part of that environment, meant my senior thesis was more than just a well-researched paper on a topic that interested me. It was a synthesis of what I’d read and what I’d lived – the story of a museum that no longer seemed like it had turned up in the most unlikely of places.

Jewish Girona continued from page 7

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