David LowAnne Adelman ’83 is the co-author (with Karry Malawista and Catherine Anderson) of Wearing My Tutu to Analysis and Other Stories: Learning Psychodynamic Concepts from Life (Columbia University Press), a book that is certain to enliven psychodynamic theory for students, teachers, clinicians, and others eager to learn the ins and outs of practice. The authors share amusing, poignant, and sometimes difficult stories and reflections from their personal and professional lives as they invite readers to explore the complex underpinnings of the profession, along with analytical theory’s esoteric nature. The vehicle of the story is an integral part of psychodynamic practice…
In his remarkable sports book, Knocking on Heaven’s Door (University of Massachusetts Press), Marty Dobrow ’83 explores the “anguish of almost” as he examines the lives of six minor league baseball players who are so close to something they want so much, something they have always wanted, but something they still might not get. What links them together, aside from their common goal of wanting to play on a major league team, is that they are all represented by the same team of agents whose own aspirations parallel those of the players they represent. The book explores the contradictory culture…
In his new book, Paul on Mazursky (Wesleyan University Press), film scholar Sam Wasson ’03 talks to writer and director Paul Mazursky about his substantial career, which includes such memorable movies as Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, Harry and Tonto, An Unmarried Woman, Moscow on the Hudson, Down and Out in Beverly Hills and many more. His rich human comedies, grounded in pure emotion, are hard to classify and contain scenes that are simultaneously sincere and hilarious, realistic and romantic. His works represent Hollywood’s most sustained comic expression of the 1970s and 1980s but they have not really…
Sam Han ’06 has written Web 2.0 (Routledge), a highly accessible introductory text which examines crucial discussions and issues surrounding the changing nature of the World Wide Web. It puts Web 2.0 in context within the history of the Web and explores its position within emerging media technologies. The book discusses the connections between diverse media technologies including mobile smart phones, hand-held multimedia players, “netbooks” and electronic book readers such as the Amazon Kindle, all of which are made possible by the Web 2.0. The publication also considers new developments in mobile computing as it integrates various aspects of social…
Writer and journalist Alex Kotlowitz ’77, best known for his book There Are No Children Here, has co-produced a powerful new documentary, The Interrupters, directed by Steve James (Hoop Dreams), which was released in select theaters around the country in mid-August. Based on a 2008 New York Times magazine piece by Kotlowitz, the film follows the lives of three members (called “interrupters”) of the Chicago-based anti-violence organization CeaseFire, who risk their lives as the perform violence mediation on the streets of some of Chicago’s most dangerous neighborhoods. The film follows the three interrupters upclose on the street and in offices,…
Howard Shalwitz ’74, artistic director of the Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company in Washington, D.C., recently directed an acclaimed, re-mounted production of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Clybourne Park by Bruce Norris at the theater this summer. The play was first staged at Woolly Mammoth in 2010. In April, Shalwitz received two Helen Hayes Awards—Outstanding Director and Outstanding Resident Play—for the production. Norris’s two-act play, a provocative look at race, gentrification and real estate, takes place in a Chicago house, with Act 1 set in the 1950s and Act 2 in the 1990s. The work looks back to Lorraine Hansberry’s theater…
In her illuminating new book, Paradise Lust: Searching for the Garden of Eden (Grove Press), Brook Wilensky-Lanford ’99 traces the stories of various men who have sought over time to find the “real” Garden of Eden all over the globe, often in the most unlikely places, despite scientific advances and the advance of Darwin’s theory of evolution. This obsessive quest consumed Mesopotamian archaeologists, German Baptist ministers, British irrigation engineers, and the first president of Boston University, among many others. These relentless Eden seekers all started with the same brief Bible verses, but ended up at different spots on the planet,…
In the Wall Street Journal, Steve Dollar recently wrote a profile of jazz guitarist and composer Mary Halvorson ’02 (www.maryhalvorson.com) as she recorded tracks for her next ensemble album for the independent Firehouse 12 label, founded by cornetist and composer Taylor Ho Bynum ’98 and engineer Nick Lloyd. Dollar praises Halvorson as “one of the most exciting and original guitarists in jazz” and describes her “often mercurial sound. On a given song, Ms. Halvorson may play a clean, precise line with a tone that hovers like a raised eyebrow, then slip into a beguiling phrase with vintage resonance, then veer…
K. C. Chan ’79, Hong Kong’s secretary for financial services and the treasury, has been raising awareness Hong Kong’s role in the global financial marketplace. Chan was recently featured in an article in China Daily, where he talked about Hong Kong as a financial center and a good offshore market for Chinese and international investors, assuming a central role in the internationalization of the yuan. Chan said, “For me, Hong Kong’s strength is definitely international connectivity. We must make sure we build on that strength. … These days I think Hong Kong is still trailing behind New York and London,…
Ten years ago, Susan Petersen Avitzour ’76 lost her 18-year-old daughter Timora to leukemia, after a six-year struggle. In her new memoir, And Twice the Marrow of Her Bones (ZmanMa), Avitzour deals with a number of profound personal, philosophical, and spiritual questions which face many bereaved parents. Using both narrative and a personal and philosophical journal, she takes the reader up close to the long years of her daughter’s illness and into her own emotional, intellectual, and spiritual journey after her child’s death. She addresses topics that range from food to fun to forgiveness, from pain to purpose to prayer—and…
Kate Colby ’96 is the author of two new poetry collections. The first, Beauport (Litmus Press), gets its inspiration from the life of a whimsical decorator and designer Henry Davis Sleeper, the author’s memoires of her New England upbringing, and lithographs by Currier & Ives of the Victorian-era leisure class. Beauport was a seaside mansion, now called the Sleeper-McCann House, in Gloucester, Massachusetts, created about a century ago by Sleeper. In a review of the book on New Pages.com, Angela Veronica Wong writes: “These are poems of quiet beauty, wielding power through lovely simplicity. They wander through ideas and memories,…
Nomi Teutsch ’11 received a Faiths Act Fellowship from the Tony Blair Faith Foundation. This year-long, paid international fellowship brings together exceptional future leaders inspired by faith to serve as interfaith ambassadors for the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) with particular focus on malaria. Fellows build partnerships across faith lines in their home countries to show the world how faith can be a positive global force in the 21st century, and they work in local NGOs to mobilize communities to take part in malaria-focused, multi-faith action. Teutsch grew up in a vibrant, diverse neighborhood in Northwest Philadelphia. A progressive Jewish…