David LowIn his book The Buddha Walks Into a Bar …: A Guide to Life for a New Generation (Shambhala), Lodro Rinzler ’05 shows how Buddhist teachings can have a positive impact on every little nook and cranny of your life—whether you’re interested in being a Buddhist or not. These teachings can help inspire individuals to make a difference in themselves and in the world. The book explores the four dignities of Shambhala (the tiger, lion, garuda, and dragon) and the three yanas, or vehicles, of traditional Tibetan Buddhism. Rinzler writes in his book's introduction that the volume is “about taking…
Ariel Rubissow Okamoto ’81 is co-author (with Kathleen M. Wong) of the fascinating Natural History of San Francisco Bay (University of California Press), which also explores its human history and how each affects the other. While the bay is home to healthy eelgrass beds, young Dungeness crabs and sharks, and millions of waterbirds, it also is marked by oil tankers, laced with pollutants, and crowded with 46 cities. The guide explores a number of subjects relating to this unique body of water—including fish, birds and other wildlife, geography and geology, the history of human changes, ocean and climate cycles, endangered…
Mark Slobin, the Richard K. Winslow Professor of Music, is the co-editor of Emily's Songbook: Popular Music in 1850s Albany, published by A-R Editions, 2011. This publication is the first-ever facsimile edition of a “binder’s volume” a personal collection of sheet music, in this case that of a nineteenth-century young woman, Emily Esperanza McKissick of Albany, N.Y,, who must have actively used her volume with her friends and family and who became a long-lived music teacher.Essays by leading American-music specialists illuminate the general themes of this unique volume and also provide detailed information (with copious reference to period source materials)…
Nadja Aksamija, assistant professor of art history, is the co-author of the book, La Sala Bologna nei Palazzi Vaticani: Architettura, cartografia e potere nell’età di Gregorio XIIIpublished by Marsilio Editori, 2011. The Sala Bologna is one of the most inaccessible and fascinating spaces in the Vatican Palace, located between the Pope’s private apartments and the Secretariat of the Vatican State. Originally used for ceremonial purposes, it was built and decorated for the Jubilee of 1575 for the Bolognese pope Gregory XIII, Ugo Boncompagni, and precedes by five years the more famous Gallery of Maps in the Vatican Belvedere. It was conceived…
F.D. Reeve, professor of letters, emeritus, is the author of Nathaniel Purple, published by Voyage in 2012. A feud, a fire, an affair. Cows in the pasture, men at the lunch counter, violets in an old cream bottle. This is Vermont—passionate, pastoral, pungent, which forms a rich, vivid canvas for an intimate portrayal of village life. But human nature is a bit out of joint. Years of living on the “bony” land has led the village people to jealousies and forbidden couplings. Reeve draws us into his world through the sharp eyes of Nathaniel Purple, who, as the town’s librarian,…
The most recent work by Professor of Art David Schorr will be shown in February and March 2012 in the exhibition APOTHECARY (storehouse) at Davison Art Center. The show features more than 75 paintings of antique apothecary bottles that have been meticulously executed by Schorr in gouache and silverpoint on luxurious, colored Fabriano Roma papers. The exhibit opens at noon, Feb. 3. Schorr will speak at 5:30 p.m. and the gallery will be open until 7 p.m. that day. Schorr also will speak at 4:30 p.m. Feb. 22 in the Center for the Arts Hall. A 160-page full-color catalog accompanies…
Courage in the Moment: The Civil Rights Struggle, 1961–1964 (Dover Publications) is a remarkable book of photographs by Jim Wallace, accompanied by a written narrative by Paul Dickson ’61. While many mainstream Southern newspapers ignored the burgeoning civil rights movement in the early 1960s, student journalists from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill bravely ventured out every day to document protest marches and other demonstrations in their town. Jim Wallace was one of these students, and he took memorable photographs primarily during the watershed year of 1963. His pictures contain powerful scenes from a new American revolution, ranging…
Peder Zane ’84 has co-written a new book Design in Nature (Doubleday) with Professor Adrian Bejan of Duke University, which describes Bejan’s groundbreaking discovery, the constructal law, a principle of physics that governs all design and evolution in nature. The constructal law holds that all shape and structure emerges to facilitate flow. Rain drops, for example, coalesce and move together, generating rivulets, streams, and the mighty river basins of the world because this design allows them to move more easily. The question to ask is: Why does design arise at all? Why can't the water just seep through the ground?…
In Giving Women: Alliance and Exchange in Victorian Culture (Oxford University Press), Jill Rappoport ’00 explores the literary expression and cultural consequences of English women’s giving from the 1820s to the First World War. During a period when most women lacked property rights and professional opportunities, gift transactions allowed them to enter into economic negotiations of power as volatile and potentially profitable as those within the market systems that so frequently excluded or exploited them. Rappoport shows how female authors and fictional protagonists alike mobilized networks outside of marriage and the market by considering the dynamic action and reaction of…
Paul Halliday ’83, a professor of history n the University of Virginia's College of Arts and Sciences, recently received the Inner Temple Book Prize for his publication, Habeas Corpus: From England to Empire, published by Harvard University Press. He received the prize in December 2011 in London from Princess Anne, daughter of Queen Elizabeth II, in a ceremony at the Inner Temple, one of four unincorporated associations that have existed since the 14th century to recruit and train barristers. Presented every three years, the prize of £10,000 is awarded by the royally chartered Inner Temple and is intended to encourage…
Eve Abrams ’93 has written the text of a new book (with photographs by Shannon Brinkman) about Preservation Hall (Louisiana State University), a legendary music venue in New Orleans. Since the early 1960s, this building in the French Quarter has served as a sanctuary for the Crescent City’s rich and illustrious jazz heritage, a haven for players, and an incubator for successive generations of jazz musicians. Each night the venue fills to the rafters with devoted fans and curious tourists eager to hear live traditional jazz performed by both veteran musicians and up-and-coming players. The performance space is simple, and…
Franklin Sirmans ’91, the Terri and Michael Smooke Department Head and curator of contemporary art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art since 2010, was recently named artistic director of Prospect.3, which is scheduled to open in October 2013. Prospect.3 is the premiere international biennial of contemporary art in the United States, featuring creative work by artists from New Orleans and around the globe. Sirmans will establish Prospect.3’s thematic structure, select the participating artists and projects, and collaborate with the biennial’s staff to situate the projects in suitable venues. Prospect. 2, an exhibit of works by 27 avant-garde international…