Press Releases

APPLETON, WIS. — Prints, paintings, and patch boxes will be exhibited November 10 through December 17 in the Wriston Art Center galleries on the Lawrence University campus. An opening lecture by sculptor and printmaker Mark Iwinski will be held at 6:00 p.m. November 10 at the Wriston Art Center. A reception will follow. Both the lecture and reception are free and open to the public.

Iwinski, from Ithaca, N.Y., will exhibit Ghost Trees and Crosscuts: Interactions Between Forest and History in the Kohler Gallery. Using nature as both his inspiration and his source material Iwinski creates prints and sculptures intimately connected to his locale. Employing relief-printing techniques, he carves into the flat surface of stumps from cleared timber. Inking the surface, he creates relief prints that reflect both the natural growth rings of the trees and often star charts from the night skies above. Additionally, he often makes casts of the stumps and installs these ghostly shells in the gallery. The process is solitary and contemplative and the resulting pieces encourage viewers to find connections to both time and their impact on the earth.

Painter Gina Litherland of Cedarburg will exhibit Gina Litherland: Paintings in the Hoffmaster Gallery during the show. The precise and magical realism of Litherland’s works results in paintings that reflect dreams, the unconscious, and the implausible and haunting reveries of an imagination unfettered by logic. In an almost obsessive style reminiscent of early renaissance Netherlandish paintings, Litherland suggests poetic metaphors for the pleasures and perils of modern life. The painting techniques that Litherland employs in her work are traditional indirect oil painting techniques similar to those used by 15th century Sienese painters, combined with textural effects created by using various tools other than the paintbrush. These techniques allow Litherland to create a detailed, layered, and complex surface of images.

In the Leech Gallery will be Trifles from England, 18th Century Patch Boxes in the Permanent Collection. Often sold as souvenirs of famous places these small ceramic and metal containers originally held artificial “beauty spots” that middle and upper class women applied to cover small pox scars. The covers are decorated with delicate glaze drawings and paintings of familiar sights and buildings. These recently acquired 18th and 19th century patch boxes were donated by Mrs. Barbara Wriston.

The Wriston Art Center galleries are open Tuesday-Friday, 10:00 a.m.-4:00 p.m., Saturday-Sunday, noon-4:00 p.m. The galleries are closed on Mondays. For more information on this exhibition and other upcoming exhibitions at the Wriston Art Center, visit www.lawrence.edu/news/wriston or call 920-832-6621.

APPLETON, WIS. — A leading authority on America’s food industry examines animal agriculture and the cruelities the industry doesn’t want the public to know in an address at Lawrence University.

Erik Marcus presents “Taking Misery Off the Menu” Monday October 30 at 8 p.m. in Science Hall , Room 102. The event is free and open to the public.

The author of the 2005 book “Meat Market: Animals, Ethics and Money,” Marcus will challenge the assurances issued by the animal agriculture industry that claim it has animal interests at heart and that farming practices are decent and humane. He will discuss what he calls “cruel farming practices” employed by the industry and expose the strategies the industry uses to hide “brutalities” from the public.

In addition to “Meat Market,” Marcus is the author of “Vegan: The New Ethics of Eating,” a 1997 book that passionately advocates the widespread adoption of a plant based diet on health, ethical and ecological grounds. Marcus also publishes Vegan.com, a website devoted to animal protection and the vegan lifestyle and is the host of “Erik’s Diner,” a podcast talk show about food and farmed animals.

Marcus’ appearance is sponsored by the LU Vegetarians and Vegans, a student organization that promotes campus awareness and understanding of the vegetarian/vegan lifestyle for moral, environmental, ethical and health reasons.

APPLETON, WIS. — Former Lawrence University political scientist Christian Grose handicaps the 2006 midterm elections and the battle for control of the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate in a Lawrence University Science Hall Colloquium.

Grose, an assistant professor of political science at Vanderbilt University, presents “The 2006 Congressional Elections: Will the Republicans Lose Control?” Wednesday, Nov. 1 at 4:30 p.m. in Science Hall, Room 102. The event is free and open to the public.

Drawing upon his academic expertise as a political scientist and his personal experiences as a former congressional page, Grose will examine the effects such issues as the war in Iraq, the Mark Foley scandal, terrorism and international incidents, as well as district- and state-specific factors, that are most likely to influence the upcoming midterm elections, which he calls “one of the most volatile in more than a decade.”

In addition to the national picture, Grose also will spotlight several of the country’s most interesting and competitive Senate and House elections, including Wisconsin’s own 8th Congressional District race between Republican John Gard and Democrat Steve Kagen.

Grose joined the political science faculty at Vanderbilt last fall after having taught at Lawrence from 2002-05. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Duke University and his Ph.D. from the University of Rochester. His dissertation at Rochester, “Beyond the Vote,” received the 2004 Carl Albert award for the best dissertation published on legislative politics from the American Political Science Association.

He has written widely on the topics of presidential-legislative relations, congressional representation, race and politics, southern politics, and party switching in Congress. His current research examines the effect of “valence” attributes such as candidate charisma on legislative position-taking and electoral outcomes and is writing a book on racial representation and Congress.

APPLETON, WIS. — Jim Hahnenberg, project manager for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Superfund cleanup of PCBs in the Fox River, provides an update on the progress two years into the project in the second installment of Lawrence University’s four-part environmental studies lecture series “The Fox River Through Time.”

Hahnenberg presents the slide-illustrated address “Fox River PCB Cleanup” Thursday, Oct. 19 at 4:45 p.m. in Science Hall, Room 102 on the Lawrence campus. The event is free and open to the public.

The Lower Fox River, among the most highly industrialized rivers in the world, is the focus of the largest environmental sediment cleanup project ever undertaken in North America, involving the removal of 8.6 million cubic yards of PCB contaminated sediments. The river was contaminated by the discharge of approximately 345 tons of PCBs — polychlorinated biphenyls — between 1954 and 1971 by local paper mills that were recycling carbonless copy paper.

Dredging operations on the first phase of the project — on Little Lake Butte des Morts — began in September, 2004. The EPA estimates this initial phase of the cleanup will take six years of dredging to remove and dispose of one million cubic yards of contaminated sediment. The cleanup of the entire 39-mile waterway is expected to take up to 20 years at a total cost of $715 million.

Hahnenberg joined the EPA Superfund program as a remedial project manager in 1989 after spending nine years as an oil exploration geologist. In addition to the Fox River cleanup, he has worked on sediment projects on the Manistique, Kalamazoo and Pine Rivers in Michigan.

He earned a bachelor’s degree from Central Michigan University and a master’s degree in geology from Western Michigan University.

The “Fox River Through Time” environmental lecture series is sponsored by the Spoerl Lectureship in Science in Society. Established in 1999 by Milwaukee-Downer College graduate Barbara Gray Spoerl and her husband, Edward, the lectureship promotes interest and discussion on the role of science and technology in societies worldwide.

APPLETON, WIS. — Robert Shandley, director of film studies at Texas A & M University, examines filmmaker William Wyler’s ground-breaking attempt to shake the American film industry out of a post-World War II financial tailspin in the Lawrence University Main Hall Forum “How Rome Saved Hollywood.” Shandley’s address, Friday, Oct. 13 at 4:30 p.m. in Main Hall, Room 201, is free and open to the public.

Amidst a myriad of challenges — the growth of surburbia, the emergence of television programming, trade unions demanding pay hikes following wage freezes during the war, negative publicity caused by government investigations into political activities of movie industry employees — the major Hollywood film studios found themselves in financial straits following the end of the second World War.

Shandley argues that legendary director William Wyler tried to tackle all of those problems in one film, 1953’s “Roman Holiday.” Filmed on location, it was the first Hollywood studio film in which all production and post-production work was done outside of southern California. It earned 10 Academy Award nominations, including best picture and best director for Wyler.

Although few productions followed in the footsteps of Wyler and Paramount Studios, the film did become a model for reducing costs by filming abroad, using exotic locations that television could not match, providing employment to blacklisted professionals and appealing to Americans’ new sense of cosmopolitanism.

The presentation is part of Shandley’s forthcoming book, “Runaway Romances: Hollywood’s Postwar Tour of Europe.” He also is the author of the 2001 monograph “Rubble Films: German Cinema in the Shadow of the Third Reich.” A member of the Texas A & M faculty since 1995, Shandley earned a Ph.D. in German and comparative literature from the University of Minnesota.

APPLETON, WIS. — Minneapolis-based jazz pianist, composer, and Lawrence alumna Mary Louise Knutson ’88, performs with Lawrence Conservatory of Music faculty members Mark Urness, bass, and Dane Richeson, drums and percussion, during the Jazz Alumni Showcase 2006. The showcase takes place at 8:00 p.m. October 23 in Harper Hall, located in the Music-Drama Center on the Lawrence University campus. The concert is free and open to the public.

Knutson has been called “one of the most exciting and innovative artists to happen to jazz piano in quite some time.” Her warm, inviting tone, lyrical approach to improvisation, and broad range of emotional expression, as well as her distinctive compositions, have brought her much recognition on the national jazz scene. An acclaimed composer, Knutson has won two awards from Billboard magazine for her compositions “How Will I Know?” and “Meridian.” In 2004, she received, from Lawrence University, the distinguished Nathan M. Pusey Alumni Achievement Award for significant contributions and achievements in a career field. In 2005, she was a top five finalist in the Kennedy Center’s Mary Lou Williams “Women in Jazz” Pianist Competition. Knutson has performed with such jazz greats as Dizzy Gillespie, Bobby McFerrin, Dianne Reeves, Slide Hampton, Richie Cole, Greg Abate, Von Freeman, and Peter Erskine. She has also performed with such musical acts as Michael Bolton, Trisha Yearwood, Donny Osmond, and Smoky Robinson, among others. For more information on Knutson and a sampling of her musical talents, visit www.marylouiseknutson.com.

APPLETON, WIS. — The former Japanese ambassador to the United States headlines a three-day conference Oct. 13-15 at Lawrence University that will explore current social issues as well as traditional Japanese culture.

Takakazu Kuriyama will be the first of three keynote speakers at the “Japan in Transition” conference. Ambassador Kuriyama will deliver the address “Japan and the United States: The Alliance in Evolution” Friday, Oct. 13 at 7:30 p.m. in the auditorium of the Wriston Art Center.

On Saturday, Oct. 14, Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi, professor of history at York University in Toronto, presents “A Sordid Squabble: The ‘Rape of Nanking’ in Sino Japanense Relations” at 7:30 p.m. in Science Hall, Room 102.

Michael Schneider, associate professor of history and co-director of the Center for Global Studies at Knox College, concludes the conference with “Does Every Princess Need a Prince?: Navigating Japan’s Imperial Succession Debate” Sunday, Oct. 15 at 10:45 a.m. in Science Hall, Room 102. All three lectures are free and open to the public.

Late last month, Shinzo Abe was easily elected Japan’s youngest postwar prime minister, succeeding Junichiro Koizumi. Abe, 52, was elected on a platform that looks to strengthen the U.S.-Japan alliance, improve relations with China and revise the country’s pacifist constitution to allow Japan’s military more flexibility in coming to the aid of an ally under attack or contributing to international peacekeeping operations.

“Japan is at a very interesting transitional time in its history, grappling with several important issues these days,” said Yoko Nagase, assistant professor of economics at Lawrence, who organized the conference. “We’re excited to have three distinguished speakers joining us for this conference to share their insights on these crucial topics facing Japanese leaders as well as Japanese society as a whole. While the United States and Japan have long shared a special relationship, much of Japanese culture remains a mystery to most Americans. Our speakers’ reflections will provide some valuable insights into one of our most important allies.

“I’m also hoping this conference will help sustain the momentum we’ve established for our Japanese program during the past five years,” Nagase added. “Thanks to a generous grant in 2001 from the Freeman Foundation, we’ve been able to raise significantly the Lawrence community’s interest in Japan, primarily through a series of trips by students and faculty to Japan. This conference can only help strengthen our Japanese presence on campus and hopefully in the greater Fox Cities community as well.”

In the conference’s opening address, Kuriyama will discuss how the rise in nationalism and a demographic shift of the country’s population from fewer children to more elderly citizens is impacting the Japanese view of foreign policy. He also will explain how globalization and multi-polarization are forcing adjustments to the U.S.- Japan alliance. According to Kuriyama, as a result of those two forces, the bilateral alliance alone does not protect Japan’s interests. Reconciliation with its neighbors and building a new regional order in the Asia-Pacific are becoming the priority issues for Japan’s foreign policy.

Kuriyama, whose father was a justice on Japan’s Supreme Court, enjoyed a distinguished foreign service career that spanned more than 40 years. His diplomatic appointments included serving as Japan’s vice minister for foreign affairs, ambassador to Malaysia, director general of the North American Affairs Bureau and counselor to the Embassy of Japan in Washington, D.C. In 1992 he was named ambassador to the United States, a position he held until 1996. Since leaving public service, he has taught courses on international relations at Tokyo’s Waseda University.

Kuriyama has ties to Lawrence that span more than 50 years. He attended Lawrence during the 1954-55 academic year as a special student in an overseas study program sponsored by the Japanese Foreign Ministry. He also spent five weeks in the fall of 2000 as Lawrence’s Stephen Edward Scarff Memorial Visiting Professor, team-teaching the course “The Postwar Japanese-American Relationship.” A graduate of the University of Tokyo, Kuriyama was awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws degree by Lawrence in 1993.

In the conference’s second address, Wakabayashi will examine the claims and counter claims of what occurred during the assault on Nanking, China by invading Japanese troops and the lasting impact the massacre has had on relations between the two countries for more than 60 years. He also will offer suggestions on how both sides can restore civility and reason to their dialogue.

The “Rape of Nanking,” in which tens of thousands were massacred and several thousand were raped, remained largely a non-issue after World War II for several reasons. The Chinese directed most of their wrath at fellow Chinese collaborators and class enemies as well at the United States during the Cold War, rather than at the Japanese people. In Japan, historians acknowledged that 42,000 Chinese soldiers and civilians were killed at Nanking — a figure and break-down that was largely accepted by Chinese officials.

That civility ended dramatically, however, in the 1980s, when a “sordid squabble” broke out between the two countries. The Chinese insisted that 340,000 innocent civilians, excluding soldiers, were massacred while the Japanese claimed any such mega-massacre was an “illusion.”

The “squabble” over Nanking is tied to ongoing tensions associated with Japan’s Yasukuni Shrine, the controversial Shinto shrine in Tokyo dedicated to the spirits of soldiers and others who died fighting on behalf of the Japanese emperor.

The Chinese view Nanking as their Auschwitz and consider Japanese atrocities akin to the Holocaust. Their victim toll is sacrosanct like that of the six million Jews and they consider official Japanese visits to Yasukuni Shrine as the equivalent to worshipping the graves of Hitler and Himmler.

Wakabayashi is the author of two books, “Japanese Loyalism Reconstrued” and “Anti-Foreignism and Western Learning in Early-Modern Japan.” He also served as editor of the books “Opium Regimes: China, Britain, and Japan, 1839-1952” and “Modern Japanese Thought.” He earned his Ph.D. from Princeton University.

Schneider will conclude the conference with an examination of how the intersecting issues of gender, politics, foreign policy and constitutional revision have all conspired to throw Japan into a national debate on imperial succession.

When the Crown Princess and Prince gave birth to a first-child daughter in 2001, it left Japan without a legally-mandated male successor to the throne beyond the reigning Crown Prince and launched a firestorm of controversy over imperial succession. While the subsequent birth in early September, 2006, of a male child to the Crown Prince’s brother and his wife provided a legal successor to the throne, it did little to quell the debate.

Among the most prominent solutions to resolve the succession quandary was a proposal, endorsed by then-Prime Minister Koizumi, that would allow female succession to the Japanese throne. That proposal has in turn fueled additional discussions over the role of women in Japanese national politics.

Schneider, a scholar on Japanese culture and history, joined the Knox faculty in 1992. He has written extensively on Japanese history and serves as an editor of the Journal of American East Asian Relations. He spent two years (2000-02) as a visiting scholar at Tokyo’s Waseda University and was interviewed by ABC News for a story on Japanese imperial families. He earned his Ph.D. in modern Japanese and international history from the University of Chicago.

In conjunction with the “Japan in Transition” conference, the exhibit “Asian Arts from Lawrence University’s Permanent Collection,” featuring Japanese and Chinese arts from the 17th to 20th centuries, including woodblock prints by noted 19th-century Japanese artist Ando Hiroshige, will be held in the Leech Gallery of the Wriston Art Center.

Support for Lawrence’s sponsorship of the conference was provided by the Kikkoman Foundation, the Japan Study, the Japan Foundation and the Henry Luce Foundation.

APPLETON, WIS. — A scholar of classical and modern Chinese literature examines the influence of Chinese literary traditions on the writings of Vietnamese revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh in a Lawrence University Main Hall Forum.

Jane Parish Yang, associate professor of Chinese at Lawrence, presents “Appropriating the Chinese Poetic Canon — Ho Chi Minh’s Prison Diary” Wednesday, Oct. 11 at 4:30 p.m. in Main Hall, Room 201. The event is free and open to the public.

The talk will focus on a manuscript Ho titled “Prison Diary,” which consists of 133 poems he wrote between August, 1942 and September, 1943 while he was imprisoned in China on suspicion of being a Japanese spy.

After leaving Vietnam at the age of 21, Ho lived abroad for more than 30 years. During his travels, he learned to write in English, French, Russian and modern Chinese. But in prison, Ho chose classical Chinese poetic form, which he had learned as a child from his father, over his native Vietnamese and the other foreign languages. By using a verse form typically associated with expressing the beauties of nature, Ho shifted the focus of the poems from an appreciation of nature to the prisoner within — his discomforts, his thirst for freedom and justice and his determined will to survive.

In traditional China, poetry was viewed as revealing the author’s true feelings and experiences as opposed to a fictional creation. By using a poetic style, Ho’s diary contains a retrospective element usually lacking in a regular prose diary.

Yang, a translator of modern Chinese fiction, joined the Lawrence faculty in 1991. Among her latest translations is “Tall One and Short One: Children’s Stories,” which was published last October in Taipei, Taiwan. She earned her Ph.D. in Chinese at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

APPLETON, WIS. — The Lawrence University Conservatory of Music presents its first-ever Conservatory Kaleidoscope concert at 8:00 p.m. Saturday, October 21 at the Fox Cities Performing Arts Center, downtown Appleton. Tickets for the concert are $12 for adults and $7 for senior citizens and students. Tickets are available at both the Lawrence University Box Office, 920-832-6749, and the Fox Cities Performing Arts Center Box Office, 920-730-3760.

The concert will showcase most of the university’s 365 music majors as well as young musicians from the Lawrence Academy of Music in a theatrical 75-minute show, performed in a continuous single set with no intermission. There will also be art displays in the lobby of the Performing Arts Center by Lawrence University student artists as well as local school children who are participating in ArtsBridge America, an arts and education outreach program that offers hands-on experiences in the arts to school-age children, placing university students in kindergarten through high school classrooms as instructors and teaching-artists.

“The Conservatory has grown dramatically over the past two decades, and we offer hundreds of public concerts and recitals each year. It’s impossible for anyone, even those of us working at Lawrence, to attend all of them. The Kaleidoscope concert presents a broad mix of Conservatory offerings in one concert,” said Fred Sturm, director of jazz and improvisational music at Lawrence University. “So many folks attending our Lawrence musical performances have expressed interest in a ‘sampler’ program featuring multiple facets of the Conservatory’s offerings. Kaleidoscope is a public platform in which most of our musical groups can strut their stuff in a single performance.”

The concert will feature 16 different student groups performing “in the round” utilizing the main stage, orchestra pit, eight side balconies, main floor, and upper balcony of the Performing Arts Center. “Kaleidoscope is a three ring musical circus in a slam-bang sequence of events. You won’t have time to applaud between selections, for as one group finishes, another will begin. You’ll be turning your head north, south, east, and west to watch groups on stage, in the orchestra pit, on the eight left and right side balconies, and behind you in the grand balcony above. It makes for a theatrical high-tech performance in the round, the likes of which we’ve never previously staged at Lawrence,” Sturm said.

Designed to both entertain and educate the public, the Kaleidoscope program will appeal to families and first-time concert attendees as well as regular Lawrence audience members. Accessible classical repertoire, musical theater, opera, jazz, and world music will be presented by six Lawrence large ensembles, eight chamber groups, a solo guitarist, and six hands

performing on a single grand piano.

“Our ensemble conductors and faculty coaches have selected music that’s entertaining, accessible, and educational. It’s music that speaks to first-time concertgoers and general audiences, particularly families that love to experience live music together,” Sturm said.

Significant works spanning music history by Gabrieli, Verdi, Rachmaninoff, Debussy, Hindemith, and Bernstein will be joined with selections by American blues artist Charles Calhoun and contemporary Broadway composer Rupert Holmes. World music by Argentine Tanguero Astor Piazzolla, Brazilian samba master Anibal Augusto Sardinha, the Bulgarian Mystery Voices, and Cuban bata drummers will also be featured.

University President Jill Beck will present the opening welcome and Dean of the Conservatory Robert Thayer will conduct the full Kaleidoscope cast in “Make Our Garden Grow,” the finale from Leonard Bernstein’s Candide.

The Kaleidoscope concert is sponsored by The Boldt Company. Lawrence University is deeply grateful to The Boldt Company for its generous support of this unique community arts showcase.