Press Releases

APPLETON, WIS. — A Pulitzer Prize-winning historian explores the stories behind a well-known 18th-century Puritan embroidery in a Lawrence University Phi Beta Kappa lecture.

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, 300th Anniversary University Professor at Harvard University, presents “The First, Second and Last Scenes of Mortality: A Textile Mystery,” Thursday, May 1 at 7 p.m. in Youngchild Hall 121. Ulrich also will conduct a question-and-answer session Friday, May 2 at 10 a.m. in Main Hall Strange Commons. Both events are free and open to the public.

A specialist in early American social history, women’s history and material culture, Ulrich will discuss a needlework stitched in 1783 by Prudence Punderson of Connecticut before her marriage that depicts three scenes of mortality: infancy, womanhood and death. Ulrich will challenge the conventional thinking that Punderson’s work merely reflected typical New England Puritan obsession with death, arguing the work is “a dynamic portrayal of political and personal conflict in an age of revolution.”

Ulrich, whose research focuses on the hidden lives of ordinary women who have enjoyed extraordinary lives, is the author of four books, including “Good Wives: Image and Reality in the Lives of Women in Early New England, 1650-1750” and “A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard,” which earned her the 1991 Pulitzer Prize for history and became the basis of a PBS documentary. Her most recent work, “Well-behaved Women Seldom Make History,” was published in 2007.

APPLETON — Five choirs comprising nearly 250 voices will join three guest soloists and the Lawrence Symphony Orchestra under the direction of David E. Becker in a performance of Carl Orff’s “Carmina Burana” Sunday, May 4 at 8 p.m. in the Lawrence Memorial Chapel, 510 E. College Ave., Appleton.

Tickets, at $10 for adults and $5 for senior citizens and students, are available at the Lawrence Box Office, 920-832-6749.

Headlining the concert are guest artists Stephen King, baritione, Steven Paul Spears, tenor and Tamara Wilson, soprano. The chorus will include Lawrence’s Concert Choir, Cantala women’s choir and Viking Chorale, as well as 35 members of the Lawrence Academy of Music Girl Choir chosen by audition and the 75-member, community-based White Heron Chorale.

A scenic cantata in five movements, “Carmina Burana” is based on 24 secular medieval poems written in Latin and old forms of German and French. The poems discuss topics ranging from drinking and gambling to the joys of spring. Orff’s musical setting is a popular work on orchestral programs and is often heard in films and commercials.

King, an award-winning singer, has performed engagements from China to Italy and throughout the United States. Highly regarded as a vocal teacher, he holds positions at the Shepherd School of Music of Rice University, the Houston Grand Opera Studio and the Aspen Music Festival.

Spears, assistant professor of music in Lawrence’s voice department since 2004, has sung roles in concerts, opera companies and festivals across the United States including the Aspen Music Festival, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and the Julliard Opera Theater.

Wilson, hailed for her voice of “steely beauty and great power” by the Houston Chronicle, won the 2005 Houston Grand Opera Eleanor McCollum Competition and was a finalist in the 2004 Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions. She currently performs with the Houston Grand Opera.

The White Heron Chorale, Lawrence Concert Choir and Viking Chorale are all led by Richard Bjella, director of choral studies at Lawrence. Phillip Swan, associate director of choral studies at Lawrence, conducts Cantala. Karen Bruno is the coordinator of the Academy of Music Girl Choir program.

APPLETON, WIS. — Lawrence University senior Katie Peacock had barely returned from a recent 10-day field study trip to Germany when she found out she will be heading back there, this time for a 10-month stay.

Peacock became the second Lawrence student this spring, and the eighth since 2001, to be named a 2008-09 Fulbright Scholar. She was awarded a $11,250 fellowship plus round-trip air fair that will send her to Germany in early September, where she will spend 10 months as a secondary school English teaching assistant. Peacock’s specific destination is yet to be determined.

A German and linguistics major at Lawrence, Peacock spent 10 days in Berlin during last month’s spring break as part of a class on the German city. The field study explored Berlin’s rich history and architecture through extensive daily walking tours. Shortly after returning to campus, she was notified she had been awarded a Fulbright Fellowship.

“I was estastic,” said Peacock of Bennington, Vt., after learning she had been named a Fulbright Scholar. “I love languages and wanted to teach and this seemed like a great opportunity to do that. Plus, it was a chance for me to go back to Germany.”

For Peacock, the difference between ecstasy and agony was literally only a matter of hours. When she first explored the Fulbright last October, she discovered the on-campus application deadline was the next day. With the help of some gentle pleading, she received a short extension, but still had to write essays, collect faculty recommendations and track down transcripts in the span of a weekend.

“It was wild and I was freaking out a little bit, but everything worked out in the end,” said Peacock, who was inspired to apply for the fellowship by two Lawrence classmates who earned Fulbright fellowships to Germany in 2006 and 2007.

Her teaching assistantship will be Peacock’s fourth trip to Germany since 2004. In addition to the recent spring break visit, Peacock participated in a 16-week study-abroad program in Berlin in the fall of 2006 and spent a month at a language institute in Tubingen in southern Germany the summer following her high school graduation. Following her fellowship, Peacock hopes to pursue additional language study in graduate school.

“I eventually want to teach middle school or high school and help young people learn to love language as much as I do,” said Peacock, who is currently tutoring an Appleton seventh-grade student in German twice a week. “I want to see that transformation that takes place when someone learns a new language.”

Created by Congress in 1946 to foster mutual understanding among nations through educational and cultural exchanges, the Fulbright Program is the U.S. government’s premier scholarship program. Since its founding, it has supported opportunities for nearly 280,000 American students, scholars and other professionals in more than 155 countries. Fulbright alumni have become heads of state, judges, ambassadors, CEOs, university presidents, professors and teachers. Thirty-six Fulbright alumni have earned Nobel Prizes.

APPLETON, WIS. — For the third year in a row, a Lawrence University student has been awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to teach English abroad.

Nicki Dabney, a senior from Silver Spring, Md., has been named a 2008-09 Fulbright Scholar and awarded a $15,500 fellowship. Beginning August 1, Dabney will spend 11 months in Taiwan, teaching English and serving as a cultural advisor at either an elementary or middle school in Gaoxiong, a port city of 1.5 million people in southwest Taiwan.

She is the seventh Lawrence student named a Fulbright Scholar since 2001 by the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board.

Dabney, who will graduate in June with a bachelor’s degree in East Asian studies, government and Chinese language and literature, spent a semester in Beijing in the fall of 2006 while on the Associated Colleges in China study-abroad program. Her experiences with daily Chinese life on that program prompted her to look for an opportunity to return to the Far East.

“I wanted to go back to either mainland China or a Chinese-speaking region to improve my language skills,” said Dabney, who is fluent in Mandarin. “I applied for the Fulbright Fellowship thinking it would be a great way to combine my language and teaching skills. It worked out perfect. It’s going to be a good challenge, but I’m excited and looking forward to it.”

For the past four months, Dabney has been teaching Chinese to students at Green Bay’s Aldo Leopold Elementary School. She also serves as an English as a Second Language tutor for Japanese students participating in the Waseda program, a study-abroad partnership between Lawrence and Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan that brings 15-20 Waseda students to Lawrence for a year of thematic and language study. She spent last summer as an intern for the China Program at the Carter Center in Atlanta, Ga., translating Chinese articles, writing media reports and analyzing Chinese news articles.

When her Fulbright appointment ends, Dabney hopes to pursue graduate studies in Asian languages and cultures.

“I eventually want to put my language skills to use in anything that improves cooperation between the United States and China and promotes cross-cultural exchange and understanding,” Dabney said.

Created by Congress in 1946 to foster mutual understanding among nations through educational and cultural exchanges, the Fulbright Program has become the U.S. government’s premier scholarship program. Since its founding, the Fulbright Program has supported study, research and teaching opportunities for nearly 280,000 American students, scholars and other professionals in more than 155 countries. Fulbright alumni have become heads of state, judges, ambassadors, CEOs, university presidents, professors and teachers. Thirty-six Fulbright alumni have earned Nobel Prizes.

APPLETON, WIS. — The evidence for male circumcision as an effective health promotion and the questions raised by implementing a circumcision policy will be examined in Lawrence University’s Edward F. Mielke Lecture Series in Biomedical Ethics.

Robert Bailey, professor of epidemiology at the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health, presents “Male Circumcision: Genital Mutilation or Sound Public Health” Wednesday, April 23 at 7 p.m. in Lawrence’s Wriston Art Center auditorium. The event is free and open to the public.

According to Bailey, approximately 4,000 men and 4,500 women are infected with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa every day. While an effective vaccine against new infections is years away, male circumcision has been likened to a vaccine, proving about 60% effective in preventing new HIV infections in adult heterosexual men. Circumcision also has been found to protect against urinary tract infections, some sexually transmitted diseases, penile cancer and cervical cancer in female partners of circumcised men.

Three clinical trials have produced compelling results and the World Health Organization and several UN agencies have recommended male circumcision be made widely available in regions it is not widely practiced and HIV prevalence is high.

Bailey will discuss several important questions raised by moving from research findings to policy implementation, including: will circumcision be acceptable to people in communities where it is not commonly practiced or will those who do get circumcised be stigmatized or discriminated against?; if circumcision is promoted as an effective HIV prevention measure, will men engage in higher risk sexual behaviors than they did before they were circumcised?; and will men use circumcision as an excuse not to use condoms, making it more difficult for women to negotiate safe sex?

The author or co-author of six books, Bailey serves as a consultant on matters relating to national and international health and disease prevention for the World Health Organization, UNAIDS and UNICEF, among others. A specialist on issues of peoples’ health in Africa, he is leading efforts with the Kenya Ministry of Health funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to provide circumcision and counseling services for HIV prevention in western Kenya.

Bailey’s appearance is supported by the Edward F. Mielke Lectureship in Ethics in Medicine, Science and Society. The lectureship was established in 1985 by the Mielke Family Foundation in memory of Dr. Edward F. Mielke, a leading member of the Appleton medical community and the founder of the Appleton Medical Center.

APPLETON, WIS. — Music historian Susan McClary presents “The Dragon Cart: The Femme-Fatale in 17th-Century French Opera” Wednesday, April 16 at 6 p.m. in Lawrence University’s Harper Hall. A reception with the speaker will follow the presentation, which is free and open to the public.

McClary, professor of musicology at UCLA, will discuss two operas — Jean-Baptiste Lully’s “Armide” and Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s “Medee” — in which sorceresses literally fly away at the end of the work, rather than be held accountable by society for their crimes. The talk will examine the conditions that allowed those works to defy the usual narrative and ideological conventions of the time, where plot tensions typically were resolved and the social order was restored.

A scholar of cultural criticism and critical theory of music, McClary has written widely on feminism and gender issues. In her 1991 book “Feminine Endings,” she examines cultural constructions of gender, sexuality and the body in musical works ranging from early 17th-century opera to the songs of Madonna. She also is the author of “Conventional Wisdom,” an exploration of the ways shared musical practices transmit social knowledge.

McClary, who earned her Ph.D. at Harvard University, was a 1995 recipient of the prestigious $500,000 MacArthur Fellowship, the so-called “genius grant” and is a former chair of the board of directors for the American Council of Learned Societies.

Her appearance is supported by the William A. Chaney Lectureship in the Humanities.

APPLETON, WIS. — In an edgy portrayal of blossoming romance in the seedy nightlife of late-1920s Berlin, Lawrence University Student Musical Productions presents the Tony award-winning musical “Cabaret.”

The musical will be performed April 17-19 at 8 p.m. in Cloak Theatre of the Lawrence Music-Drama Center, 420 E. College Ave., Appleton. Tickets, at $10 for adults and $5 for students and senior citizens, are available at the Lawrence University Box Office, 920-832-6749.

Set at the dawn of Hitler’s rise to power, the musical reveals a tumultuous political atmosphere and the decadence of Berlin’s Kit Kat Klub cabaret. The growing influence of the Nazi regime is viewed through the eyes of a young American writer, Cliff Bradshaw, whose love affair with one of the show’s dancers, Sally Bowles, becomes increasingly threatened.

Directed by senior David Hanzal, the production features sophomore Chad Bay as Bradshaw, senior Danielle Cartun as Bowles and sophomore Nikko Benson as the emcee, the Kit Kat Klub’s master of ceremonies of the Kit Kat Klub.

The original 1966 version of “Carabet” was honored with 10 Tony Awards, including best musical and best composer and lyricist.

APPLETON, WIS. — With the help of special 3-D glasses, planetary scientist Nick Schneider offers a unique look at the solar system in a slide-illustrated address at Lawrence University.

Schneider, associate professor of astrophysical and planetary sciences at the University of Colorado, presents “The Solar System in 3-D and the Latest News from Saturn” Monday, April 14 at 7 p.m. in Youngchild Hall 121. The event is free and open to the public.

Through a special collection of three-dimensional images, Schneider will reveal the inner workings of the major planets and most of their moons in our solar system, providing the sensation of actually visiting these distant objects. Schneider also will discuss the latest discoveries of Saturn, its rings and moons made by the Cassini spacecraft, which is currently orbiting the planet.

Schneider, whose research focuses on the escaping atmospheres of planets and moons, is a member of Colorado’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics and the author of the astronomy textbook “The Cosmic Perspective.” A native of Appleton, he is the son of Lawrence professor emeritus of English Ben Schneider.

His visit is sponsored by the Shapley Lectureship program of the American Astronomical Society. The lecture series honors Harlow Shapley, a pioneering American astronomer whose research helped place our solar system within the context of the galaxy and the universe.