Press Releases

Category: Press Releases

Lawrence University Psychologist Awarded Norwegian Marshall Fund Grant to Study Cross-Language Speech Perception

Lawrence University psychologist Terry Rew-Gottfried has been awarded a 10,000 kroner grant (approximately $1,500 U.S.) by the Norwegian Marshall Fund Committee to conduct research on cross-language differences in speech perception. The grant will help support his sabbatical research during April and May of 2005 in Trondheim, Norway.

Rew-Gottfried will pursue a two-part research project while in Norway. The first phase is an extension of earlier work he conducted in Denmark comparing Danish and English spectral and durational information in vowels. In collaboration with a Norwegian colleague, he will investigate differences in how Norwegian listeners, in comparison to Danes, perceive the vowel contrasts of their native and their second language.

The second part of his research will focus on determining whether the use of linguistic tones in Norwegian provides native speakers of that language with an advantage in learning the lexical tones of Mandarin Chinese. Mandarin Chinese uses phonemic tones that are primarily cued acoustically by contours of pitch. For example, the syllable ma means “mother,” “hemp,” “horse,” or “scold,” depending on whether the pitch is high-level, mid-rising, low-dipping or high-falling, respectively. Like Mandarin, Norwegian varies pitch contour in some words to indicate different meanings. While American English listeners have considerable difficulty in differentiating the phonemic tones of Mandarin, native Norwegian listeners may have less difficulty, given their native language’s use of linguistic tone to make phonemic distinctions.

Rew-Gottfried’s research is expected to address more broadly the question in psycholinguistics and second language learning of what factors help or hinder language learners in speaking and understanding a second language. Learners vary considerably, according to Rew-Gottfried, in their ability to achieve native-like competence in producing and perceiving speech sounds. The research has important implications for theories of speech processing across many different languages.

A member of the Lawrence psychology department since 1986, Rew-Gottfried has spent more than 20 years investigating the effect of second-language learning on listeners’ ability to identify and discriminate unfamiliar speech sounds, how acoustic characteristics of different languages differ with the context in which they are spoken as well as the relationship of musical ability and second-language learning.

He spent the fall 2001 academic term as a Fulbright Visiting Lecturer/Research Scholar at the English department of Aarhus University in Aarhus, Denmark, teaching the psychology of language and conducting collaborative research on the duration and rate effects on American English vowel identification by native Danish listeners.

Rew-Gottfried has also conducted research on memory, including eyewitness memory and the use of perceptual imagery in improving recall. He earned his Ph.D. in experimental psychology at the University of Minnesota.

Lawrence University Art Historian, Chemist Recognized for Teaching Excellence

Art historian Carol Lawton was cited with an unprecedented third teaching award and chemist Karen Nordell was recognized for her teaching prowess among junior faculty Sunday, June 13 at Lawrence University’s 155th commencement.

Lawton, professor of art history, received Lawrence’s Award for Excellence in Teaching, given annually to a faculty member for outstanding performance in the teaching process, including the quest to ensure students reach their full development as individuals, human beings and future leaders of society.

Nordell, assistant professor of chemistry, was presented the Young Teacher Award in recognition of demonstrated excellence in the classroom and the promise of continued growth.

The recipient of the college’s Young Teacher Award in 1982 and the Freshman Studies Teaching Award in 1998, Lawton is Lawrence’s only faculty member ever recognized with all three teaching honors.

A specialist in ancient Greek sculpture, Lawton joined the Lawrence art department in 1980. She has made numerous research trips to Greece to work with the American School of Classical Studies in Athens, where she is pursuing study on Greek and Roman votive reliefs excavated from the Athenian Agora, the center of civic activity of ancient Athens.

She is the author of the book, “Attic Document Reliefs of the Classical and Hellenistic Periods,” (Oxford University Press, 1995) and has received research fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the J. Paul Getty Trust. She serves as curator of Lawrence’s Ottilia Buerger Collection of ancient and Byzantine coins.

In presenting the award, Lawrence President Richard Warch cited Lawton’s faculty colleagues, who describe her teaching as “solid,” “demanding,” “tough-minded” and “characterized by an unremitting emphasis on precision and consistently high standards.”

“Art history majors credit you with igniting their passion for the subject and non majors relish the ways in which your courses broaden their educational horizons,” Warch said. “Your love of stone and how beautiful it can become in the hands of a Greek sculptor led you to carve out a niche for yourself in ancient art history. Your research with Greek and Roman votive reliefs emphasize not only the beauty of the objects themselves, but what the objects tell us about the culture, religion and politics of their period.”

A native of Oakland, Md., Lawton earned her bachelor’s degree in art history from Vassar College and her Ph.D. in art history from Princeton University.

Nordell, who joined the Lawrence chemistry department in 2000, is a specialist in materials chemistry, specifically nanoscale science, which focuses on the manipulation of matter at the smallest level, literally atom-by-atom.

In 2002, with the help of a grant from the Women’s Fund of the Community Foundation of the Fox Valley Region, Nordell co-founded the outreach program PRYSM — Partners Reaching Youth in Science and Math. The program matches women students at Lawrence who are majoring in one of the sciences or mathematics with eighth-grade girls from Appleton’s Roosevelt Middle School. The Lawrence students serve as mentors and role models to their younger counterparts, providing tutoring assistance, conducting experiences and leading occasional field trips of scientific interest.

Warch cited Nordell’s “infectious enthusiasm” and her “genuine interest in her students” in recognizing her.

“They {students} admire and appreciate the limitless energy and passion for teaching you bring to all you do, praise expressed not only by chemistry majors but by the scientifically challenged as well,” Warch said. “Through your work with Partners Reaching Youth in Science and Math, known to us as PRYSM, and Girls Exploring Math and Science,
referred to as GEMS, you, your students and your colleague Eugenie Hunsicker have provided important role models for young girls in their early encounters with these disciplines.”

A graduate of Appleton East High School, Nordell earned a bachelor’s degree in chemistry at Northwestern University and her Ph.D. in chemistry at Iowa State University.

Lawrence University Honors Two State Teachers as “Outstanding Educators”

Victor Akemann, an advanced biology teacher at Stevens Point Area Senior High (SPASH) and Karen Johnson-Zak, who teaches French at Gibraltar High School, will be honored as the 41st and 42nd recipients of Lawrence University’s Outstanding Teaching in Wisconsin Award Sunday, June 13 during the college’s 155th commencement. Both will receive a certificate, a citation and a monetary award.

Established in 1985, the teaching award recognizes Wisconsin secondary school teachers for education excellence. Recipients are nominated by Lawrence seniors who attended high school in Wisconsin. They are selected on their abilities to communicate effectively, create a sense of excitement in the classroom, motivate their students to pursue academic excellence while showing a genuine concern for them in as well as outside the classroom.

A former marine mammal scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who studied Dall’s porpoise in the north Pacific Ocean near Seattle, Akemann has taught advanced biology at SPASH since 1990.

In 1994, he co-founded Wisconsin’s first charter school — the Education for Sustainable Development Charter School (ESDCS) — a school-within-a-school at SPASH focusing on the interplay between the environment, the economy and social equality. Since the fall of 2002, he also has served as ESDCS’s program director.

Senior Allison Dietsche praised Akemann’s unbridled enthusiasm for his subject matter and commitment to working with individual students in nominating him for the teaching award.

“You always knew he was genuinely excited,” Dietsche said in her nomination letter. “He was animated in the classroom when he taught an always had awesome class projects planned. He made himself available early in the morning or after school and always made time for his students.

“He refueled my love for biology. If Mr. Akemann wasn’t the inspirational teacher that he is, I would not be as successful as I am today,” Dietsche added.

A member of numerous professional organizations, including the National Center for Science Education and the National Science Teachers Association Akemann was recognized in 2002 as Wisconsin’s outstanding biology teacher of the year by UW-Stevens Point. In 2003, Akemann was one of eight teachers honored from a national list of 78 nominations by the University of Minnesota with its outstanding science teacher of the year award.

Before starting his teaching career, Akemann spent two years with the Sigurd Olson Environmental Institute in Ashland as a producer of nationally-syndicated radio news programs on ecological issues.

Originally from Milwaukee, Akemann earned his bachelor’s degree in biology at Northland College and will complete his master’s degree in education at UW-Stevens Point this summer.

Johnson-Zak, a graduate of Gibraltar High School herself, began her 33-year teaching career at Farnsworth Junior High School in Sheboygan before returning to her alma mater, where she has served as a one-person French department since 1973.

Shortly after returning to Gibraltar, she began organizing “immersion” field trips to France, leading as many as 50 students on some excursions to Paris and other locales where students would spend a week or more living with French host families.

“Karen Johnson-Zak is the epitome of what I consider an excellent teacher to be,” wrote Lawrence senior and 1999 Gibraltar graduate Nate Jacobs in nominating his former teacher for the award. “Her abilities in effectively teaching French perfectly balance serious study and fun, making the often tedious process of learning complicated verb conjugations and pronunciation pass without extreme difficulty.

“Mrs. Johnson-Zak’s influence on my life cannot be measured,” Jacobs added. “Without her positive teaching style, I would never have appreciated, or ventured to partake in, many of the international experiences I have had.”

Born and raised in her current hometown of Sister Bay, Johnson-Zak earned a bachelor of science degree in education from UW-Oshkosh. She is a member of the National Association of Teachers of French and the Wisconsin Association of Foreign Language Teachers.

Retiring Band Director Robert Levy Recognized for 25 Years of Service at Lawrence University Commencement

The highlights from a career spanning a quarter of a century in the Lawrence University Conservatory of Music are too numerous for retiring Professor of Music Robert Levy to narrow down to just a precious few.

But the award-winning trumpet performer, conductor, teacher, composer and recording artist admits to at least one soft spot in his heart.

“I still get goose bumps when a brand new work arrives and I’m opening that package for the first time knowing that pretty shortly I’ll be exploring new musical ground,” said Levy, known to many as Lawrence’s “new music man” for his passion for original and innovative works.

Levy will be honored Sunday (6/13) with professor emeritus status and awarded an honorary master of arts degree, ad eundem, during Lawrence’s 155th commencement.

Since joining the Lawrence Conservatory of Music faculty in 1979 as director of bands — he originally led just the wind ensemble, but shortly thereafter added a symphonic band to the conservatory’s ensemble line-up — Levy has conducted more than 130 concerts and worked with more than 900 student musicians. He has premiered more than 100 works during his career, many written expressly for him. In 1986, Downbeat magazine honored his ensemble with its “best symphonic band performance” award.

“I appreciate all the efforts and hard work of the students with the music-making we shared in together,” said Levy. “That’s what I’ll miss the most.”

“When Bob isn’t thinking about his beloved baseball Giants — he even had a dog named ‘Willie’ — he’s composing, commissioning, conducting, performing, practicing, teaching, eating, sleeping and drinking music,” said Fred Sturm, director of jazz and improvisational music at Lawrence, who was in his second year as a conservatory faculty member when Levy joined the college.

“He’s a non-stop juggler with plates forever in the air, performing one program, rehearsing another to be played next month, booking a third that’s six months away and commissioning or composing yet another to be premiered next year. He’s an advocate for new music and the composers creating it, tirelessly carrying the same torch that his wind ensemble predecessor Fred Schroeder passed to him 25 years ago. He is a loyal and dedicated teacher who truly loves his students.”

As a trumpet soloist, chamber musician, clinician or guest conductor, Levy has performed throughout the United States, including Carnegie Hall five times, as well as at concerts in Australia, Canada, China, Haiti, Jamaica and Portugal. He’s released 30 recordings on 10 labels, including 1994’s “Blackberry Winter: Songs by Alex Wilder.”

Wilder was one of Levy’s favorite composers and he considered him a personal friend and mentor. In addition to conducting several concerts of Wilder’s music, Levy is completing work on a documentary about Wilder, who died in 1980, featuring colleagues who knew and worked with him.

A native of New York City, Levy began his teaching and conducting career at Henderson State College in Arkansas. He spent eight years as director of wind ensemble and trumpet instructor at St. Mary’s College of Maryland before joining the Lawrence faculty. He earned his bachelor’s degree in music from Ithaca College and holds a master’s degree in music education from North Texas State University. In addition, he has completed all the course work toward a doctor of musical arts degree at the University of Iowa.

Journalism Excellence, Philanthropic Generosity, Literary Scholarship and Human Rights Activism Recognized at Lawrence University’s 155th Commencement

For the 25th — and final — time, Lawrence University President Richard Warch will lead the procession of seniors and honored guests to the stage where he’ll award honorary doctorates, confer bachelor’s degrees and congratulate students for completing their undergraduate education Sunday, June 13 during the college’s 155th commencement. Graduation ceremonies begin at 10:30 a.m. on the Main Hall green.

Warch will retire as Lawrence’s second-longest serving president at the end of the month. He is currently the longest-standing president of any college or university in Wisconsin and believed to be one of only 20 current presidents in the country who have served their present institutions for 20 years or more.

An expected 303 seniors, Lawrence’s largest graduating class since 1977, will receive bachelor of arts and/or music degrees. In addition, Lawrence will award honorary doctorate degrees to John Carroll, editor of the Los Angeles Times, Jonathan Fanton, president of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Stanley Fish, dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois-Chicago and Samantha Power, lecturer in public policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Also, Professor of Music Robert Levy, who is retiring after 25 years as director of bands at Lawrence, will receive professor emeritus status and awarded an honorary master of arts degree, ad eundem.

A baccalaureate service, featuring Daniel Taylor, Hiram A. Jones Professor of Classics delivering the address “Making Connections,” will be held Saturday, June 12 at 11 a.m. in the Lawrence Memorial Chapel.

All four honorary doctorate degree recipients, along with President Warch, Lawrence Board of Trustees Chair Jeffrey Riester and student representative Andrea Hendrickson, a senior from Tillamook, Ore., will address the graduates during commencement. Both the baccalaureate service and commencement ceremony are free and open to the public.

Carroll, whose distinguished journalism career spans more than 40 years and includes seven Pulitzer Prizes, will receive an honorary doctor of laws degree. Named editor of the Los Angeles Times in 2001, he helped the paper earn five Pulitzers earlier this year, the second most ever won by a newspaper in a single year. The New York Times was awarded seven Pulitzer’s in 2002 for its coverage of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

After beginning his career as a reporter for the Providence Journal in Rhode Island, Carroll was drafted into the Army and served in Alaska, writing for the base’s newspaper. He joined the Baltimore Sun as a reporter in the late 1960s, covering the Vietnam War and the Nixon administration. He became the subject of a front page story in The New York Times after having his press credentials suspended for writing a story detailing U.S. plans to abandon Khe Sanh. Without his knowledge, the Army had imposed an embargo on news coverage of Khe Sanh. Following protests from media colleagues and a Congressional investigation, the Army restored Carroll’s credentials.

He spent seven years as a city editor and metropolitan editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer before being named editor of the Lexington Herald-Leader in Kentucky. Carroll returned to the Baltimore Sun as its editor in 1991, guiding it to Pulitzer Prizes in 1997 and ‘98 before taking editorial leadership of the Los Angeles Times.

Fanton, who will receive a honorary doctor of laws degree, has served as president of the Chicago-based MacArthur Foundation since September 1, 1999. With assets of nearly $4.3 billion, MacArthur is one of the nation’s 15 largest foundations and annually awards grants domestically and internationally of more than $180 million in support of public education, community development, system reform in mental health and juvenile justice, human rights, biodiversity preservation, reproductive health and international peace and security. It also supports public radio and television and the making of independent documentaries as well as support for exceptionally creative individuals through its famed “genius grant” Fellows program.

Before joining the MacArthur Foundation, Fanton served as president of New York City’s New School University (formerly known as New School for Social Research) from 1982-99. As president, he led the integration and enhancement of the seven divisions of the university, the expansion of the Greenwich Village campus and development campaigns that increased the university’s endowment from $8 million to more than $80 million.

During his presidency, the New School merged with the Mannes College of Music, established a drama school in partnership with the Actor’s Studio, merged with the World Policy Institute, added a jazz and contemporary music program, a teacher education program, a creative writing program and an architecture department at Parsons School of Design.

Fanton began his career teaching American history at his alma mater, Yale University, where he earned his bachelor’s degree and Ph.D. He served as a special assistant to Yale President Kingman Brewster from 1970-73 and as associate provost from 1976-78. He then moved to the University of Chicago, where he spent the next four years as vice president for planning and also taught American history.

A board member of Human Rights Watch, the largest U.S.-based human rights organization and the Chicago Historical Society, Fanton is the author of “The University and Civil Society, Volumes I and II” and co-edited the books “John Brown: Great Lives Observed” and “The Manhattan Project: A Documentary Introduction to the Atomic Age.”

Fish will receive a doctor of humane letters. Considered one of America’s most distinguished scholars of English literature, law and literary theory, particularly the subjectivity of textual interpretation, he has served as a dean and distinguished professor of English, criminal justice and political science at UIC since 1999.

During an academic career spanning more than 40 years, Fish has held numerous major positions, including the Kenan Professor of English at Johns Hopkins University (1974-85) and the Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor of English and Law at Duke University (1985-98). A USA Today article described Fish as “an erudite scholar who capably makes difficult subjects understandable… a brilliant original critic of the culture at large.”

Fish as written nearly a dozen books, among them “John Skelton’s Poetry,” “Surprised by Sin: The Reader in Paradise Lost,” the second edition of which received the Hanford Book Award in 1998, “Self-Consuming Artifacts,” which was nominated for a the National Book Award in 1972 and “There’s No Such Thing as Free Speech, and It’s a Good Thing, Too,” which earned the 1994 PEN/Spielvogel-Diamonstein Award. In the past 30 years, more than 200 articles, books, dissertations and review articles have been devoted to his work.

Fish is a frequent guest on shows ranging from the “MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour” to CNN’s “Firing Line” to “Hardball with Chris Matthews.” In 2003, the Chicago Tribune named him its “Chicagoan of the Year” for culture.

A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, Fish earned his Ph.D. from Yale University and began his teaching career in the English department at the University of California-Berkeley.

Power, a human-rights activist, lawyer, scholar and award-winning author, will receive an honorary doctor of humane letters degree. Her recent book, “A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide,” which examines U.S. responses to genocide in the 20th century, was awarded the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction, the 2003 National Book Critics Circle Award for general non-fiction and the Council on Foreign Relations’ Arthur Ross Prize for the best book in U.S. foreign policy.

She also co-edited the 2000 book, “Realizing Human Rights: Moving from Inspiration to Impact,” a collection of essays by leading activists, policy makers and critics who reflect upon 50 years of attempts to improve respect for human rights.

In 1998, she founded Harvard’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, which trains future leaders for careers in public service with a focus on the most dangerous human rights challenges, including genocide, mass atrocity, state failure and the ethics and politics of military intervention. She served as the Carr Center’s executive director until 2002.

A native of Ireland who moved to the United States when she was nine, Power covered the war in the former Yugoslavia from 1993-96 as a reporter for U.S. News & World Report, the Boston Globe and the London-based news magazine The Economist. A graduate of Yale University and Harvard Law School, she is currently working on a book on the causes and consequences of historical amnesia in American foreign policy.

LU’s Gina Bloom Named Solmsen Fellow, Awarded Huntington Fellowship to Complete Book

Lawrence University’s Gina Bloom has been awarded a pair of fellowships worth $44,000 from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Huntington Library in San Marino, Calif., in support of her research on 16th- and 17th-century conceptions of the human voice and representations of boyhood.

Bloom, assistant professor of English, was one of three recipients of a prestigious $40,000 Solmsen Fellowship and will spend the 2004-05 academic year as a scholar-in-residence at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Institute for Research in the Humanities. She was selected from a pool of 21 international applicants for the fellowship, which recognizes scholars who are working on literary and historical studies of the European Classical, Medieval and Renaissance periods.

“Professor Bloom’s fellowship appointment is a coup,” said David Sorkin, director of the Institute for Research in the Humanities and professor of history at UW Madison. “There were applications for this year’s Solmsen Fellowship from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and France. The applicants are all sort of a ‘who’s who’ of younger scholars working in the European tradition from antiquity to 1700.”

In addition to Bloom, this year’s other two Solmsen Fellowships were awarded to professors at the University of Arizona and Great Britain’s Cambridge University.

Bloom will spend her Solmsen residency conducting research for her book, “Playing Boys: Youth and Masculinity on the Early Modern Stage.” In the book, Bloom examines representations of boyhood in 16th-and 17th-century dramas. She focuses especially on boys at play — setting pranks, throwing dice, catching bugs, among others — and the way play was thought to prepare boys for adult manhood.

A $4,000 fellowship from the Huntington Library, home to a collection of rare books with an extensive concentration in the Renaissance, will support writing and research efforts this summer for Bloom to complete her first book, “Choreographing Voice: Agency and the Staging of Gender in Early Modern England.”

“Choreographing Voice” examines how early modern writers, especially dramatists like Shakespeare, understood the workings of the human voice — how it was produced by speakers and heard by listeners. Focusing on the ways writers represent the voice in stage plays, medical texts, song books and religious sermons, Bloom challenges perspectives on “voice” in modern feminist thought, offering an alternative view of the relationship between gender, speaking and power.

“The resources provided by these fellowships will help me make a significant contribution to scholarship on the early modern period,” said Bloom. “At the Huntington, I’ll have the privilege to examine texts that cannot be read anywhere else in the world. The Solmsen offers me the luxury of an extended period of time to research and write as well as the opportunity to work through ideas with some of the best scholars in the field.”

A specialist in English Renaissance literature, especially drama, and gender studies, Bloom joined the Lawrence English department faculty in 2001. She earned her Ph.D. in English from the University of Michigan.

Reinterpreting the Past: Lawrence University’s Courtney Doucette Heading to Russia as Fulbright Scholar

Courtney Doucette got bit by the history bug as a fourth grader and has never been able to shake the infection. Twelve years later, the Lawrence University senior is still more interested in nurturing her long-term curiosity than she is in finding a cure.

To that end, Doucette soon will embark on a 10-month study of Russian history at the European University in St. Petersburg, Russia, courtesy of a $23,000 grant from the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board. Doucette was recently selected as a 2004-05 Fulbright Scholar from among more than 5,000 applicants. This is the second straight year and the third time in the past four years that a Lawrence student has been awarded a Fulbright Fellowship.

Beginning in late August, Doucette will undertake research at European University on the impact of political regimes on the way we understand the past. She also will work outside of academia to explore the way ordinary citizens regard history after the “official” view of the past is significantly changed.

“Since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russians have had to question what really happened in their country while the Communist regime was in power,” said Doucette, a history and Russian double major from Racine. “There is now strong evidence suggesting events of the Soviet era played out differently than the Party claimed. The new political regime’s power is partly based on its ability to disprove the Communist Party’s view of history, so there is a need to radically reinterpret and rewrite history in Russia.”

During a semi-nomadic childhood — Doucette’s family moved 13 times while she was growing up and she lived with a Japanese family for a year in Okinawa as a participant in the Rotary Youth Exchange Program — she constantly tried to make sense of her ever-changing world the way a historian would.

“I learned to ask questions about the history of my surroundings,” said Doucette, a founding member and former president of Lawrence’s Russian and East European Club.

While in Russia, Doucette intends to explore the impact the Soviet regime had on the content of Russian history books and the ways the post-Soviet regime has rewritten these texts. In addition, and outside the formality of the European University, Doucette will examine ways personal experiences and oral histories challenge the officially sanctioned interpretations of the past.

In addressing the second question, Doucette plans to observe what today’s youngest generation of Russians are learning about their history through observation sessions at primary and secondary schools. She also plans to become involved with Memorial, a non-profit organization in St. Petersburg that chronicles the experiences of victims of Stalinism.

“Part of my interest in Russian history and culture stems from my interest in the process of writing history,” said Doucette, who previously spent time in Russia while on an off-campus study program in Krasnodar in 2001. “Contemporary Russia provides an ideal context for me to investigate this process. As a Fulbright Scholar, I’ll be able to improve my Russian skills, gain valuable experience with Russian archival sources and form connections with professional Russian scholars.

“Living in Russia is going to provide great opportunities to explore fundamental questions about how academics and non-academics make sense of the past,” Doucette added.

Following her year abroad, Doucette plans to return to the States to pursue graduate studies in Russian history with the hope of eventually teaching Russian history at the collegiate level.

“My future goals are clearly a product of my past and of the way my past has shaped my method of making sense of the world,” said Doucette.

The Fulbright Program was created by Congress in 1946 to foster mutual understanding among nations through educational and cultural exchanges. Arkansas Senator J. William Fulbright, who sponsored the legislation, saw it as a step toward building an alternative to armed conflict.

Since its inception, the Fulbright Program has become the U.S. government’s premier scholarship program. It has supported more than 260,000 American students, artists and other professionals opportunities for study, research and international competence in more than 150 countries.

Harvard Scholar Discusses Merits of Medieval “Art” in Lawrence University Address

Harvard University scholar Jeffrey Hamburger shares his perspective on the debate of whether the Middle Ages produced “art works” or merely “images” in a William A. Chaney Lecture at Lawrence University.

Hamburger presents, “The Medieval Work of Art: Wherein the ‘Work’? Wherein the ‘Art’?,” Thursday, May 27 at 6:30 p.m. in the Wriston Art Center auditorium. The event is free and open to the public.

A specialist in medieval art of the High and later Middle Ages, especially medieval manuscript illumination and iconography, Hamburger believes the argument need not be merely a choice between image vs. art, craft vs. artistry or manual vs. liberal arts. He will discuss some of the ways in which medieval images offer a statement over and against the texts which claim to speak for them.

Focusing on some of the archetypal works of art of the Middle Ages — the temple, tabernacle and Ark of the Covenant — Hamburger will examine the ways in which those images could be used to address issues of authorship, authority and artistic invention.

A native of London, England, Hamburger joined the department of history of art and architecture at Harvard as a full professor in 2000. He previously taught at the University of Toronto and spent 11 years on the faculty at Oberlin College.

A Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America, Hamburger is the author of five books, including the award-winning “Nuns as Artists: The Visual Culture of a Medieval Convent” and “The Visual and the Visionary: Art and Female Spirituality in Late Medieval Germany.”

Hoft-March, Sarnecki Named Full Professors, Clark, Miller Granted Tenure

Eilene Hoft-March and Judy Sarnecki, members of the Lawrence University French department, have been promoted to the rank of full professor while Jeffrey Clark and Brigetta Miller have been promoted to associate professor and granted tenured appointments by the college’s Board of Trustees.

Hoft-March joined the Lawrence faculty in 1988. A specialist in modern French novels and autobiographies, her scholarship also includes literature about children and the Holocaust. In addition to the French department, Hoft-March also teaches courses for the gender studies major. She was a recipient of Lawrence’s Outstanding Young Teacher Award in 1991 and received the college’s Freshman Studies Teaching Award in 1997. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of California-Berkeley.

A member of the Lawrence faculty since 1985, Sarnecki’s research interests focus on 20th-century French cinema and literature, women authors and gender issues. She served as editor of and contributor to the recently published book, “Subversive Subjects: Reading Marguerite Yourcenar” (2004 Fairleigh Dickinson Press), a collection of essays on the acclaimed French novelist. In 1996, Sarnecki founded Lawrence’s Francophone Seminar in Dakar, Senegal, a 10-week program on Western African culture. She earned her doctorate in French from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Clark, a fluvial geomorphologist specializing in the study of how human activity alters the characteristics of rivers, joined the Lawrence geology department in 1998. He has conducted more than a dozen research trips to Puerto Rico, where he has worked with the International Institute of Tropical Forestry and is currently involved with on-going student research on the impact on Apple Creek on Appleton’s north side as the area shifts from agricultural use to residential development. He was cited in 2001 with Lawrence’s Outstanding Young Teacher Award. Clark earned his Ph.D. from John Hopkins University.

Miller, a native of Tigerton and a 1989 graduate of Lawrence, returned to her alma mater in 1996 as a member of the conservatory of music faculty. A flutist by training, Miller is the conservatory’s director of music education, specializing in music methodology for early childhood. A member of the Stockbridge-Munsee tribe, Miller is in the process of completing a book of Native American lullabies that have been shared generationally through oral tradition but never written in standard musical notation. She earned a graduate degree in music education with a Kodaly emphasis from Silver Lake College.

“An American Place:” Noted Environmental Historian Closes Lawrence University 2003-04 Convocation Series

Lawrence University will recognize award-winning author and historian William Cronon with an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree Tuesday May 25 during the annual Honors Convocation, which closes the 2003-04 series.

Cronon, whose scholarship combines the disciplines of history, geography and environmental studies, will deliver the address “The Portage: History and Memory in the Making of an American Place” at 11:10 a.m. in the Lawrence Memorial Chapel. He also will conduct a question-and-answer session at 2 p.m. in the Lawrence Memorial Union. Both events are free and open to the public.

The author of two books and editor several others, Cronon, 49, has earned critical acclaim for his writing and research on the ways human communities modify the landscapes in which they live and how people in turn are affected by changing geological, climatological and ecological conditions.

His first book, “Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England,” which explored the changes the New England landscape underwent as control of the region shifted from Native Americans to European colonists, was awarded 1984’s Francis Parkman Prize of the Society of American Historians.

His second book, 1991’s “Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West,” an examination of Chicago’s relationship to its rural hinterland during the latter half of the 19th century, earned Cronon the Chicago Tribune’s Heartland Prize for the best literary work of non-fiction, the Bancroft Prize for the best work of American history and was one of three nominees for the Pulitzer Prize in history.

In addition, “Nature’s Metropolis” was recognized with the George Perkins Marsh Prize from the American Society for Environmental History and the Charles A. Weyerhaeuser Award from the Forest History Society for the best book of environmental and conservation history.

The Frederick Jackson Turner and Vilas Research Professor of History, Geography and Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Cronon is currently working on a local history of Frederick Turner’s hometown, Portage, Wis., in which he is exploring ways to integrate environmental and social historical methods with non-traditional narrative literary forms. He is also completing an anthology of first person accounts of past landscapes of the United States and the lives people have lived on them entitled “Working on Life on the American Land: A Commonplace Book.”

Cronon joined the UW-Madison faculty in 1992 after spending more than a decade teaching at Yale University in his hometown of New Haven, Conn. Among numerous academic awards he’s received, Cronon was named a Rhodes Scholar and a Danforth Fellow in 1976, received a $500,000 “genius grant” from the MacArthur Foundation in 1985 and was named the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1995. In addition to UW-Madison, where he earned his bachelor’s degree in history and English, Cronon holds advanced degrees Oxford University in Britith urban and economic history and from Yale in American history.

His professional affiliations include serving on the Board of Curators for the Wisconsin Historical Society, the Governing Council of The Wilderness Society and the editorial boards of Environmental History and the Journal of Historical Geography.