Press Releases

APPLETON, WIS. — A poetic tale of love, passion and betrayal in Spain’s tumultuous 1920s is retold in four performances of Lawrence University’s production of “Blood Wedding,” a tragedy by Spanish playwright Federico Garcia Lorca.

The play will be performed Feb. 21-23 at 8 p.m. and Feb. 24 at 3 p.m. in Cloak Theatre of the Lawrence Music-Drama Center, 420 E. College Ave., Appleton. Tickets, at $10 for adults, $5 for students and senior citizens, are available at the Lawrence University Box Office, 920-832-6749.

Rich with symbolism, “Blood Wedding” weaves together music, dance and storytelling to reveal a marriage ceremony filled with jealousy and romance. Set in rural Andalusia just before the Spanish Civil War, the play examines themes of individualism vs. society, a woman’s role in society and death.

Lawrence’s production is only the second time the play will be performed using the new translation by Caridad Svich, an award-winning Latina playwright and translator whose works have been staged throughout the United States and abroad.

“Blood Wedding,” directed by Annette Thornton, postdoctoral fellow in theatre arts, is the second of three productions in the theatre department’s celebration of Spanish playwrights during the 2007-08 season.

APPLETON, WIS. — As the presidential primary season rolls on, how well do voters know the candidate for whom they intend to vote? Perhaps not as well as they think says a Lawrence University researcher who helped create a Web site to help voters identify the candidate that best aligns with their own views on the issues.

Since making its debut, MyElectionDecision.org has attracted more than 7,500 users from 27 countries — China, India, Iraq, Nigeria and Thailand among them — who have taken advantage of its interactive questionnaires to help match their views with candidates’ statements.

“People using this Web site have reported being surprised by the candidates they seem to support based on the issues alone,” said Lawrence University’s Rob Beck, a member of the team that created the site. “Many users have seen that their original choice of candidate was based more on personal characteristics and less on ideas.”

Launched in mid-October, and created by a team of Lawrence faculty and staff, in partnership with researchers from the University of California-Irvine, MyElectionDecision.org was aimed primarily at the Internet-obsessed Millennium Generation, but users have spanned all generations. It allows users to take a blind test without knowing which candidate said what, evaluate which issue statements they support, and then, with computer assistance weighing the preferences, find out which candidate most closely supports their own views.

“In an age of sound bites, we’re asking people to think more deeply about this election and what the candidates positions are on the issues,” said Beck. “What makes MyElectionDecision.org different is that it offers, and requires, a more thoughtful reading of the issues.”

Among five issues the Web site asks users to rank in importance on a one to five scale, the war in Iraq, energy, health care and the economy are all in a virtual dead heat for the lead, with the fifth, immigration, trailing only slightly.

The candidate statements used by MyElectionDecision.org are drawn largely from the official web sites of the various presidential candidates or in some cases from recent speeches to ensure they are both current and accurately capture what the candidate wishes to communicate to the public.

“As the primary races tighten,” Beck said, “I hope voters will finally see that there are substantive differences among the candidates’ positions.”

MyElectionDecision.org is one of several initiatives launched last fall in response to a challenge issued by President Jill Beck to the members of the Lawrence community to increase their political awareness and become more involved in participatory democracy.

Among them is a special seminar on political engagement and student activism that is being team-taught by President Beck, Rob Beck and William Skinner, director of institutional research.

Students in the class have surveyed more than 500 of their classmates to determine what issues are most important to college-age voters. Preliminary results indicate environmental issues, funding for K-12 education and arts, the war on terror, reproductive rights and civil liberties were among the most important to the students from a list of 15 issues.

The completed surveys will be analyzed and the most popular issues will be added to the MyElectionDecision.org questionnaires.

Lawrence senior Nathan Litt, 22, a government major from Sheboygan, was one of the students who conducted the on-campus survey. He said the experience of talking politics with his fellow students exposed him to much of the excitement that is building for the election.

“Young voters are becoming more engaged and turning out at the polls and candidates have to recognize the impact we’re having on the election,” said Litt, who was surprised to discover after taking the MyElectionDecision.org survey that the candidate who best matched his answers wasn’t the same one he planned to vote for. “I like the fact that the role of the young voter has increased.”

APPLETON, WIS. — Author Helen Boyd discusses the evolution of her marriage to a transgendered husband and the legal and personal issues they have encountered in an address and book reading at Lawrence University.

Boyd, who is spending Winter Term as a visiting professor in Lawrence’s gender studies department, presents “Transgender Couples, Queer Heterosexuals and Marriage Rights,” Monday, Feb. 18 at 7 p.m. in Science Hall, 102. A reception with the speaker prior to the address will be held at 6:30 p.m. in the Science Hall atrium. Both events are free and open to the public.

The presentation will examine the murky intersection of state marriage laws, the difficulties they pose to transgender couples and the possibility of states having to legally define the terms “man” and “woman.”

In her 2004 book “My Husband Betty,” Boyd details her relationship with Betty Crow, who crossdressed occasionally. Over time, her husband began to be seen as more female than male and so contemplated living full time as a woman. Boyd and Crow were legally married in Brooklyn, N.Y., although they now appear as a couple who can’t be legally married in most places.

Boyd also will read excerpts from her 2007 book “She’s Not the Man I Married,” in which she confronts the nature of marriage, passion and love. She shares observations on the ways relationships are gendered and how one copes — or not — with the emotional and sexual pressures that gender roles can bring to marriages and relationships. “My Husband Betty” was a Lambda Literary Award Finalist in 2005 and “She’s Not the Man I Married” was recently nominated for this year’s Lambda Literary awards.

A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of The City College of New York with degrees in literature and writing, Boyd is teaching “Introduction to Gender Studies” and “Transgender Lives” during her term at Lawrence.

APPLETON, WIS. — Implementing a market system for water could improve the quality and quantity of one of the world’s most important resources says Terry Anderson, executive director of the Property and Environment Research Center in Bozeman, Mont.

The second of three events planned in Lawrence University’s year-long series on entrepreneurial thinking, Anderson presents “Water, Water Everywhere, But Not a Drop to Sell” Monday, Feb. 18 at 4:30 p.m. in Science Hall 102. The event is free and open to the public.

A leading scholar of free market environmentalism, Anderson believes introducing the price mechanism into water policy could help alleviate the problem of water scarcity in areas of the United States by encouraging consumers to utilize the resource more carefully. The presentation will outline how water markets can work, examine the importance of clear and transferable water rights, provide evidence of current working water markets and suggest how water markets could be primed to do more, especially in the Great Lakes region.

A senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and author of the book “Water Markets: Priming the Invisible Pump,” Anderson has written extensively on economic and environmental topics. His work as co-author of the 1991 book “Free Market Environmentalism” was recognized with the Sir Antony Fisher International Memorial Award, which honors publications that have made the greatest contributions to the public understanding of the free society.

APPLETON, WIS. — For the second straight year, Lawrence University has been named to the President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll for exemplary service efforts and service to disadvantaged youth by the Corporation for National and Community Service.

“We are extremely pleased to be recognized for our community service efforts again this year and I continue to be amazed by the quality and depth of our work in the community not only by students, but by Lawrence faculty and staff,” said Jill Beck, Lawrence University president. “More and more often, community engagement is an extension of our classrooms and the result is a better learning experience and a better community.”

Launched in 2006, the Community Service Honor Roll is the highest federal recognition a school can achieve for its commitment to service-learning and civic engagement. Honorees for the award are chosen based on a series of selection factors including scope and innovativeness of service projects, percentage of student participation in service activities, incentives for service, and the extent to which the school offers academic service-learning courses.

In the past year, Lawrence, with an enrollment of 1,400, documented 6,000 service hours involving at least 650 students, including more than 50 students who performed at least 20 hours of service per week. Of that total, 1,430 service hours were devoted to the disadvantaged.

Among the initiatives for which Lawrence was recognized was ArtsBridge America, an arts-based outreach program that partners Lawrence students with area K-12 teachers to create unique interdisciplinary projects; the Lawrence Assistance Reaching Youth (LARY) Buddies, a mentoring program for at-risk elementary students; The Volunteers in Tutoring at Lawrence (VITAL) program, which matches students with Fox Valley K-12 students who need help in a wide variety of academic subjects, and the local chapter of A Better Chance program in which Lawrence students serve as tutors and mentors for high school boys who come out of difficult urban environments to live in Appleton and attend local schools.

“College students are tackling the toughest problems in America, demonstrating their compassion, commitment, and creativity by serving as mentors, tutors, health workers and even engineers,” said David Eisner, chief executive officer of CNCS. “They represent a renewed spirit of civic engagement fostered by outstanding leadership on caring campuses.”

“There is no question that the universities and colleges who have made an effort to participate and win the Honor Roll award are themselves being rewarded,” said David Ward, president of the American Council on Education. “Earning this distinction is not easy. But now each of these schools will be able to wear this award like a badge of honor.”

The Corporation for National and Community Service is a federal agency that improves lives, strengthens communities, and fosters civic engagement through service and volunteering. The Corporation administers Senior Corps, AmeriCorps and Learn and Serve America, a program that supports service-learning in schools, institutions of higher education and community-based organizations.

APPLETON, WIS. — Patience and persistence will be keys to successfully navigating the mix of cooperative and competitive elements facing the U.S.-China relationship in the future says a scholar on Chinese foreign policy and East Asian security

In the second installment of Lawrence University’s 2008 Povolny International Studies Lecture Series, Phillip Saunders presents “Strategic Dimensions of U.S.-China Relations,” Wednesday, Feb. 13 at 7 p.m. in Science Hall, 102. The event is free and open to the public.

Saunders, a senior research fellow at the National Defense University’s Institute for National Strategic Studies in Washington, D.C., believes bilateral tensions between the United States and China are likely to increase significantly in the next few years. His presentation will examine several of the strategic challenges China poses to the United States, among them the potential for domestic crises, its nuclear modernization and the Taiwan situation.

According to Saunders, effective pursuit of U.S. interests in dealing with China are compromised by different priorities within the government as well as the trade offs faced between short-term policy goals and long-term strategies.

“Leadership, vision and patience will be necessary for the United States to take full advantage of the benefits that cooperation with China offers while successfully meeting the strategic challenges China poses to U.S. interests,” says Saunders.

Prior to joining the INSS, Saunders spent four years at the Monterey Institute of International Studies as the director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program. He also has taught courses on Chinese politics and foreign policy and conducted research on East Asian security issues for the Council on Foreign Relations, the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations and for the Pentagon while an officer in the United States Air Force.

Richard Bush, a 1969 Lawrence graduate and director of the Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution, will conclude the series Monday, Feb. 25 with the address “The Taiwan Strait Issue and U.S.-China Relations.”

The “U.S.-China Relations” lecture series is sponsored by the Mojmir Povolny Lectureship in International Studies. Named in honor of long-time Lawrence government professor Mojmir Povolny, the lectureship promotes interest and discussion on issues of moral significance and ethical dimensions.

APPLETON, WIS. — One of the most complex, important and rapidly changing bilateral relationships of the 21st century — the United States and China — will be the focus of Lawrence University’s 2008 Povolny International Studies Lecture Series.

Peter Hays Gries, associate professor and director of the Newman Institute for U.S.-China Security at the University of Oklahoma, opens the three-part series Wednesday, Feb. 6 at 7 p.m. in Science Hall, 102 with the address “Chinese Nationalism and Anti-Japanese Sentiment.” All lectures in the series are free and open to the public.

Gries will examine the factors behind a growing Chinese hostility toward Japan despite expanding economic relations between the two countries. Emboldened by a quarter century of economic growth, most Chinese no longer fear Japan and long-suppressed anger for the Japanese has resurfaced.

According to Gries, the “victor narrative” of China championed by Mao Tse-tung from the 1950s through the 1980s, has been challenged by a new “victim narrative” focusing on Chinese suffering during the 20th century, much of it at the hands of the Japanese, including atrocities like the “Rape of Nanking” during World War II.

“The emergence of a deep-rooted and popular anti-Japanese enmity in China today does not bode well for 21st Century Sino-Japanese relations,” said Gries. “As a result, Japanese increasingly fear China’s rise and possible future retribution for Japan’s wartime aggressions. The possibility of a Sino-Japanese arms race is increasingly real.”

Gries’ scholarship focuses on nationalism, China’s domestic politics and foreign policy and the political psychology of international affairs. He is the author of the book “China’s New Nationalism” and co-edited “State and Society in 21st-Century China.” He was appointed the Harold J. & Ruth Newman Chair in U.S.-China Issues at the University of Oklahoma in 2006 after five years in the political science department at the University of Colorado.

Other scheduled speakers and topics for this year’s series are:

• Feb. 13 — “Strategic Dimensions of U.S.-China Relations,” Phillip Saunders, senior research fellow at the Institute for National Strategic Studies

• Feb. 25 — “The Taiwan Strait Issue and U.S.-China Relations,” Richard Bush ’69, director of the Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution.

The “U.S.-China Relations” lecture series is sponsored by the Mojmir Povolny Lectureship in International Studies. Named in honor of long-time Lawrence government professor Mojmir Povolny, the lectureship promotes interest and discussion on issues of moral significance and ethical dimensions.

APPLETON, WIS. — British-born author, award-winning journalist and noted conservative political blogger Andrew Sullivan examines the U.S. political landscape Tuesday, Feb. 5 in a Lawrence University convocation.

Sullivan presents “American Politics: A View from Home and Abroad” at 11:10 a.m. in the Lawrence Memorial Chapel, 510 E. College Ave., Appleton. Sullivan also will conduct a question-and-answer session at 2 p.m. in the Coffeehouse of the Lawrence Memorial Union. Both events are free and open to the public.

A senior editor at The Atlantic and a columnist for The Sunday Times of London, Sullivan was among the first mainstream journalists to experiment with blogging. Known for its insights on current events and people in the news, Sullivan’s blog, “The Daily Dish” on the homepage of The Atlantic.com, has become one of the country’s most widely read political blogs, helping establish Sullivan as one of America’s most influential intellectuals.

Sullivan has written three books, including “The Conservative Soul: How We Lost It, How to Get It Back.” Published in 2006, it traces the shift in political conservatism from a narrowly defined political philosophy to a concept dominated by religious fundamentalism.

His first book, 1995’s “Virtually Normal: An Argument About Homosexuality,” examined gay rights from four perspectives — prohibitionist, liberationist, conservative and liberal. In his second book, “Love Undetectable: Notes on Friendship, Sex, and Survival,” Sullivan presented a series of essays on the deep connections between homosexuality and friendship.

Educated at Oxford and Harvard universities, Sullivan began his journalism career as an intern at The New Republic magazine while still a student. In 1987, he was appointed an associate editor at TNR, the youngest in the magazine’s history, and four years later was named its editor-in-chief.

Under Sullivan’s editorship, The New Republic earned a reputation as one of the nation’s most lively and controversial journals of opinion, addressing issues of race relations and gay rights. AdWeek recognized Sullivan with its Editor-of-the-Year Award in 1996.

During his career, Sullivan also has written for The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Time, Esquire, and The New York Times Magazine. He has appeared frequently on “The Chris Matthews Show” and NPR’s “Talk of the Nation” as well as many other public affairs programs, among them “Meet the Press,” “Nightline” and “Face the Nation.”

APPLETON, WIS. — Lawrence University’s Black Organization of Students will host the seventh annual Celebration of Black Heritage dinner and program Saturday, Feb. 2 at 6 p.m. in the Buchanan Kiewit Recreation Center gymnasium. The theme for this year’s event is “Coming From Where I’m From: Celebrating the African Diaspora at Lawrence.”

The event includes an ethnic dinner, followed by a program featuring poetry readings, singing and traditional dances from Africa and Jamaica performed by students. Members of BOS also will share stories of their personal experiences.

Tickets, at $10 for adults, $5 for children 12 and under, are available at the Lawrence University Box Office, 920-832-6749. Tickets also will be sold at the door for $12 the night of the event. For more information, contact the Lawrence University Diversity Center, 920-832-7051.