Headlines from the Fall 2005 Semester

Dean White Steps Down, Interim Dean Mirsepassi Takes Helm
Gallatin Professor David Moore to Serve as Interim Associate Dean

e. Frances White, dean of the Gallatin School from 1998 to 2005, has taken on a new role as vice provost for faculty affairs at NYU. White stepped down from her deanship at Gallatin on July 1, 2005, and her legacy of achievement at the School is remarkable. As dean, White developed a committed, strong, and diverse teaching faculty while simultaneously raising the expectation for faculty research and scholarship. Her emphasis on the quality of the student experience was a substantial advancement; she was the architect of initiatives to create a more coherent curriculum and to improve student services at the school. Her successes in fundraising are also worthy of note, as she recently exceeded the goal for Gallatin’s Campaign for NYU. In addition to her Gallatin responsibilities, White served as chair of the University Deans Council for the past three years. In her new position, White will manage policies relating to the recruitment, promotion, and retention of faculty and issues of diversity throughout the University.

White stated, “I have been honored to be the dean of Gallatin over the past seven years. It has been a privilege to work with some of the best teachers in the world, dedicated and caring staff and administrators who make it worth coming to work everyday, and a wonderfully creative and vibrant student body….This school is an extremely special place….I look forward to watching it grow even stronger and more vital in the coming years.”

White received her B.A. from Wheaton College and both her M.A. and Ph.D. from Boston University. She has been awarded fellowships from the Danforth Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities, among others. She has also been a Fulbright Senior Research Scholar in Sierra Leone and the Gambia. Before coming to NYU, she taught at Fourah Bay College of the University of Sierra Leone and at Hampshire College. Her awards include the Catherine T. and John D. MacArthur Chair in History (1985-1988) and the Letitia Brown Memorial Publication Prize for the best book on black women (1987). Her books include Sierra Leone’s Settler Women Traders (University of Michigan Press), Women in Sub-Saharan Africa (Indiana University Press); and Dark Continent of Our Bodies (Temple University Press).

The University has established a search committee, comprised of faculty, students, and administrators, to conduct a national search for the next dean of Gallatin. Ali Mirsepassi, who has served first as associate dean and then vice dean of Gallatin since 2001, has agreed to serve as interim dean until a new dean has been named.

“I am delighted and honored that the provost and members of the Gallatin faculty have put their confidence and trust in me, and I am grateful for the opportunity,” says Mirsepassi. “My main concern will be to work with faculty and staff to ensure a smooth and productive transition. I feel fortunate to have committed and visionary faculty colleagues as well as a talented administrative team to work with.”

Before joining Gallatin in 2002, Mirsepassi held several senior positions at Hampshire College, including special assistant to the president for assessment, dean of international and multicultural education, and associate dean of faculty. He received his bachelor's degree from the Faculty of Law and Political Science at Tehran University, and both his M.A. in international affairs and Ph.D. in sociology from American University. He is considered a leading scholar of Iranian intellectual history, and his research and publications on this subject matter have been acknowledged as important contributions to the field. A recipient of the 2001 Iranian Presidential Prize for Best Research of the Year for his book, Intellectual Discourse and Politics of Modernization: Negotiating Modernity in Iran (Cambridge University Press), he is also the author of Truth or Democracy (published in Iran and being translated into English), coeditor of Localizing Knowledge in a Globalizing World (Syracuse University Press), and editor of Beyond the Boundaries of the Old Geographies: Natives, Citizens, Exiles, and Cosmopolitans (in progress). Mirsepassi has received several awards and grants, including a major grant from the Ford Foundation in area studies, a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to lead a seminar on Political Islam, and a teaching award from Tehran University. He has also been published in such journals as Contemporary Sociology, Radical History, Social Text, and Nepantla, and is currently completing a book entitled Social Hope and Philosophical Despair.

Mirsepassi has asked Professor David Moore to serve as interim associate dean during this period of transition in Gallatin’s leadership. Moore has been on Gallatin’s faculty since 1982, and served as associate dean from 1999-2002. He took part in the planning that moved Gallatin toward school status, is involved with the school’s M.A. program, and was active in the creation of the Community Learning Initiative. As an educational anthropologist, Moore has conducted research on experiential learning and learning in the workplace for more than 25 years. He coauthored a book on that topic, Working Knowledge: Work-based Learning and Education Reform (RoutledgeFalmer), and was recently named Researcher of the Year by the National Society for Experiential Education.

Sinan Antoon Joins Faculty
Gallatin is pleased to announce that Assistant Professor Sinan Antoon joins its full-time faculty this fall. Antoon, an Iraqi-born poet, novelist, and filmmaker, will teach two courses: The Qur'an, an interdisciplinary seminar ; and Exile, a seminar for first-year students. His teaching interests include pre-modern Arabo-Islamic culture, classical and modern Arabic poetry, the Arabic novel, gender and sexuality, postcolonial theory, and contemporary Arab culture and politics.

Antoon is a Ph.D. candidate in Arabic and Islamic studies at Harvard University, where his fields of study include the Arabic language, Arabic literature, and Islamic history. He received his M.A. in Arab studies from the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University, and his B.A. in English literature from Baghdad University.

Professor Antoon previously taught Arabic literature in the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Languages and Literatures at Dartmouth College, and has served as an instructor of Arabic at Harvard University’s Center for Middle East Studies, and at The Arabic Summer School at Middlebury College, among others. In 2003, Antoon received the Mellon Dissertation Fellowship for Research in Original Sources in the Humanities for the project, "The Poetics of the Obscene: Ibn al-Hajjaj and Sukhf." His co-translation of Mahmud Darwish's poetry was nominated for the 2003 PEN Prize for translation. Antoon is a contributing editor to Banipal magazine, and senior editor and member of the steering committee for Arab Studies Journal. His articles on "Ibn al-Hajjaj" and "al-Suyuti" are slated for publication in the Encyclopedia of Erotic Literature (Routledge, 2006.)

Alumna Receives Van Lier Fellowship
Aspiring novelist and alumna Annapurna Potluri (BA ’01) has won a 2005-2006 Edward and Sally Van Lier Fellowship. The Van Lier Fellowship is a fund established at The New York Community Trust and administered by select arts organizations throughout New York City; Potluri received her fellowship in fiction writing through The Asian American Writers’ Workshop. The program is designed to assist emerging Asian American writers in developing their professional careers by connecting them to publishing professionals and established writers who offer feedback on manuscripts and advice on getting published. In addition, Van Lier fellows receive a year’s membership to The Asian American Writers' Workshop, and free enrollment in writing workshops, access to facilities, and a stipend for one year. Fellows have gone on to establish careers as serious writers, wining publishing contracts, literary awards, and critical recognition for their works.

Potluri has been paired with mentor Meera Nair (author of Video, Pantheon, 2002), who, coincidentally, is an adjunct professor at Gallatin. Potluri has also been fortunate to take a fiction workshop with Lara Stapelton (author of The Lowest Flame Before Nothing, Aunt Lute Books, 1998), and have one-on-one meetings with a literature professor, a literary agent, and a publisher. Potluri is most thankful that the fellowship has allowed her to make writing her foremost priority. The two main projects she is currently working on are getting her first book, A Day at Home, which is a collection of short stories, published, and writing her first novel, A Grammar of Oriental Languages. Her ultimate goal is to become a full-time writer, though she notes that she would also enjoy teaching writing or linguistics as well.

Potluri came to Gallatin in 1997 and pursued a concentration in linguistics and Romance languages, focusing on Italian, comparative literature, and writing. When asked why she chose Gallatin, she states, “I think that the practice of majoring [in one academic area] is counterproductive to the goals of a liberal arts education. I like that Gallatin attracts people mature enough and intellectually curious enough to be the architect of their own education.” She credits her Gallatin adviser, Bella Mirabella, with being “a continual source of support and advice” and recalls that Mirabella’s classes on Dante and the Bible and Pat Rock’s class on Shakespeare had a particular effect in shaping her education. While at NYU, Potluri also studied abroad in Florence, Italy for a semester, and was quite active in extracurricular pursuits: she was involved with NYU’s Washington Square News, Gallatin’s First Friday series, and the Gallatin Arts Festival. As a Gallatin Scholar, she traveled to China, Thailand, and Brazil with other Gallatin students.

After graduation, Potluri went on to receive her M.Phil. in theoretical linguistics from the University of Cambridge in 2004, where she wrote her thesis on “The Applications of Universal Grammar on the Object-first Languages of the Amazon.” She recalls being interested in language since taking a Spanish class in middle school (she went on to also study French and German in high school); and refers to herself as an “obsessive reader” (recently she’s been reading one book about the Gnostic gospels, another on the Golden Ratio in mathematics, and another about the processes of the brain in moments of creativity). She started enjoying writing as a high school freshman, and that interest became a passion when she took a creative writing workshop in her junior year at Gallatin. Though it was the first and last creative writing class she took in college, it was the beginning of what she is now making into her career. A self-proclaimed “nerd,” Potluri is already looking towards next steps—before she completes this year’s fellowship, she is already applying for another—and writing every day.

Rosilyn Wilder Retires
After calling NYU a second home for 34 years, Gallatin professor Dr. Rosilyn Wilder retired at the end of the 2004-2005 academic year. Wilder first came to the University as a doctoral student and teacher in NYU’s School of Education, in Creative Experiences in the Related Arts. She then joined Gallatin’s staff as an adjunct professor in 1979, and through the years her Gallatin courses included: Creative Experiences in the Helping/Caring Professions; The Art of Play; Theatre of Revolt 1870-1914; and Creative Strategies in Life and Art, which she team taught with Dr. Robin Powell. Professor Jean Graybeal states, “It was always a joy to talk with Roz—her energy, creativity, and dedication to students were an inspiration to her colleagues and a real gift to Gallatin. We are already missing her.”

Wilder has published six books, most recently penning a memoir entitled A Creative Life—Even Under a Cloud. She also recently completed training with the Celebrant USA Foundation & Institute to become a Certified Celebrant, which makes her able to officiate at, compose, and perform personalized ceremonies for couples, individuals, and organizations. Wilder asserts that she continues to live by a credo expressed by Martin Buber, who wrote: “To be old is a glorious thing when one has not unlearned what it means to begin.” When asked what she will miss most about Gallatin she recounts that, in all her years of teaching and mentoring, “most important to me have been the wonderful advisees who have shared their dreams and growth with me. This is the heart of Gallatin.”

 

NYU Distinguished Teaching Award Bestowed Upon Gallatin Professor Michael Dinwiddie

Gallatin Professor and alumnus Michael Dinwiddie (BA ’80) was honored as one of three recipients of NYU’s Distinguished Teaching Award in 2005. The award recognizes high quality instruction and commitment to students. Distinguished Teaching Award winners are selected via an elaborate process that entails nominations from each of NYU’s schools and colleges and submissions to a University-wide committee made up of faculty, students, alumni, and administrators. “I work with amazing, supportive colleagues and professors, and to be singled out and nominated by them was such an honor,” says Dinwiddie, who credits his teaching methods to his mentor and Gallatin professor Laurin Raiken, with whom he worked closely when receiving his own undergraduate degree from Gallatin.

Dinwiddie, who went on to receive his M.F.A. in dramatic writing from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, has been a professor at Gallatin for seven years, teaching a range of courses from first-year seminars to upper-level and advanced writing classes, including: Migration and American Culture; Dramatizing History I and II; and Poets in Protest: Footsteps to Hip-Hop. Gallatin students have learned that, come registration time, Professor Dinwiddie’s classes fill up immediately, with substantial waiting lists. Former Gallatin Dean e. Frances White noted, “Michael has distinguished himself as a very inspirational and creative teacher at Gallatin. He is the kind of professor who nurtures and engages students, and makes his classroom—and the extended Gallatin classroom—a space in which they do their best work.”

An incredibly vital member of the Gallatin community, Dinwiddie also serves on Gallatin’s curriculum committee and on the Interdisciplinary Arts committee. For years he has helped students organize and present their work in the annual Gallatin Arts Festival, and he often takes part in extracurricular school events such as Black History Month activities and alumni programming. Many Gallatin community members agree that part of what makes Dinwiddie such a popular teacher is his skill as an adviser. As Gallatin gathered letters of support for Dinwiddie’s nomination for the award, numerous students wrote in, many of them declaring that they attributed their successes at NYU to his guidance. One student stated, “I was only able to have one official class with Professor Dinwiddie, but I always included him on my ‘extended advisers’ list. He is a faculty member who is always willing to lend a helping hand, whether if it’s in dealing with a particular class, an extracurricular activity or just one of life’s struggles.”

Dinwiddie’s teaching interests include cultural studies, African American theatre history, dramatic writing, filmmaking, and ragtime music. A dramatist whose works have been produced in New York, regional, and educational theatre, he has been playwright-in-residence at Michigan State University and St. Louis University, and taught writing courses at the College of New Rochelle, Florida A&M University, SUNY Stony Brook, California State University at San Bernardino, and Universidad de Palermo in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He spent a year at Touchstone Pictures as a Walt Disney Fellow and worked as a staff writer on ABC-TV’s Hangin’ with Mr. Cooper. In 1994 he was a Sundance finalist, and in 1995, he was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Playwriting.

Put succinctly in a statement by one of his colleagues, “Michael Dinwiddie embodies what is best about Gallatin.”


Alumnus Raphael Parker Riding Across the U.S. and Asia to Raise Awareness For Women’s Rights

by Josh Korwin (BA ’04)

For Raphael Parker, two wheels, six months, and 10,000 miles are the key ingredients in an epic recipe for women’s rights and self discovery

Many of us would love to make the world a better place. Raphael Parker (BA ’03), armed with little more than a bicycle, a handful of supplies, a digital camera, and a blog, is doing it.

The Tour for Equality (www.tourforequality.org)—a daunting, six-month bicycle ride through 10,000 miles of the United States and Southeast Asia to promote women’s rights—started out as little more than a daydream and a domain name. Parker, a recent Gallatin alumnus, came up with the idea after joining a 1,250-mile bike trip (a “political vacation,” as he calls it) down the East Coast, traveling from New York City to Palm Beach, Florida in a group effort to register voters for the 2004 presidential election. His experience during this Ride for Change was life altering. Parker had found a way to blend his love for experiencing the outdoors by bicycle with his passion for motivating positive change through political action. Because the Ride for Change had been such an influential campaign, both with individuals who became registered to vote and with those who participated in the ride, Parker was convinced that a similar method could be applied towards practically any cause. But his next trek as an adventurer-activist would be on a much grander scale, and this time he wanted to organize it all on his own. Parker recounts:

Riding a loaded-down bicycle elicits a tremendous amount of interest. People were always approaching me and asking where I was from, what I was doing and why. And I mean all types of people. Tough guys, soccer moms and dads, kids, teens…. And it was relatively easy—I studied rhetoric—to leverage their curiosity into respect for me. And once they respected me, it was easy to get them registered [to vote]. A lot of people ignored [the political TV commercials], but they registered when I came through.

With some time on his hands before he was to begin attending law school, Parker made it his primary concern to orchestrate and execute a second bike-ride campaign for a positive purpose. At first, though, he was a true “rebel without a cause”; he had yet to choose a specific world problem that he wanted to address:

I started looking at various causes, and I kept skipping over women's rights….when I had skipped over it for the umpteenth time I realized that I was skipping it without giving it any real attention. And I wondered why. So I looked into it and realized that I was perpetuating the very problem that women's rights groups struggle with! Men tend to think that women's rights have to do with women. But in reality, it is often a response to the behavior and attitudes of men that create an inequality for women. For example, it doesn't make sense for women to have an anti-rape discussion if men are not brought into the dialogue. Men have a role and a responsibility in the field of women's rights. Yet I, like many men, thought that women's issues were for women.

Realizing the potential he had to make a difference, Parker decided to spread the two-wheeled gospel of gender equality across the entire United States. Having already seen the entire East Coast by bicycle, he planned his second journey to extend from one end of the country to the other, finishing in San Francisco. For most people, this might be enough; but most people are not Raphael Parker. Parker chose to end the U.S. leg of his tour in California so that he could take a trans-Pacific flight to Thailand and begin the Asian portion of the ride.

Juggling the organization and planning of this massive undertaking alongside studying for the LSATs, applying to law schools, and working three part-time jobs, Parker managed to assemble a Tour for Equality team and gather sponsors, including Shimano, SanDisk, and Shutterfly. By March of 2005 he was on his way, leaving from Ohio and heading towards the West Coast. Parker completed most of the cross-country journey alone, occasionally meeting with other touring enthusiasts along the ride. Even with all of his hard work and planning, Parker found it very difficult to adjust during the first few days. A turning point came, however, when he reached a town with a familiar name:

The first week and a half of riding was absolutely brutal. The terrain was very steep and it was freezing outside and I was camping, so I woke up every morning stiff with cold and fatigue…. I was fixated on how much further I would have to go to be done—which anyone can tell you is the most negative kind of thinking when on a long trip….Then, I was riding through, of all places, Gallatin, Tennessee, and the sun came out and it got so warm that I stripped down to a t-shirt. Suddenly there were restaurants and people (Gallatin is a suburb of Nashville), and that was the moment that the trip became fun…. I was just beginning to have the time of my life.

Parker made his way across the entire country, stopping along the way to teach about women’s issues at schools and community centers, sleeping wherever he could pitch a tent. He was occasionally able to rely on the kindness of strangers, some of whom gave him food, shelter, and even Internet access once they knew of his Tour. The U.S. portion of the adventure ended in June, and Parker left San Francisco to meet his close friend Jacob Richardson in Tokyo Airport for a connecting flight to Bangkok, Thailand, where they began the Asian leg of the Tour for Equality. Riding throughout Asia, due to the terrain, distance, international borders, and language barrier, proved to be far more difficult than Parker’s journey throughout the U.S. But with some of the countries of Southeast Asia being notorious for gender inequality, violence towards women, human trafficking, and the underage sex trade, Parker felt that it was the ideal location for the impact of his message to truly be felt. In June, July, and August, Parker and Richardson made their way through Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Laos, spreading their message and learning first-hand how daily life exists in these countries. (The Associated Press recently caught up with the pair in Cambodia.)

The Tour for Equality has helped to forge new connections along the path to international gender equality. Parker has brought regions, countries, and sexes closer together in an unprecedented manner. And along the way, he’s learned a thing or two about himself and his role in the world. Parker returns to NYU for the fall 2005 semester, this time to attend law school. There is no question that we can expect great things from him.


First Semester of Operations a Success for Gallatin Peer Advising Center

Since its inception, the Gallatin Office of Academic Advising has made a consistent effort to improve and expand its resources to accommodate the needs of Gallatin students. In the 2004-2005 academic year, the office announced the addition of gPAC, the Gallatin Peer Advising Center. Started in January 2005, gPAC provides Gallatin students with peer support and advisement. By incorporating gPAC into the Gallatin community, the Office of Academic Advising acquired a new staff, as well as a new perspective.

gPAC student advisers work as a team to provide a space where students can get help, ask questions, and find resources and information about Gallatin and New York City. gPAC advisers are highly involved students who view the Center as a means of connection and communication between Gallatin students and the administrative offices—for example, student advisers have made particular efforts to assist other students in navigating Gallatin’s unique academic curriculum.

gPAC is currently composed of 12-15 student advisers who work under the supervision of Gallatin’s auxiliary advisers, Patrick McCreery and Vanessa Manko, and Gallatin’s Director of Advising, John Lang. Together, the administrators and peer advisers have created a stronger and more holistic Office of Academic Advising, as the addition of the gPAC advisers has provided the staff with crucial information—directly from the student perspective. gPAC member Sumoha Jani states, “Many of us applied to be a part of gPAC because we were all looking to add to the Gallatin community in a positive way....in our first year we discovered that it is often easier and less intimidating for students to go to their peers to ask questions.”

In the spring semester of 2005, gPAC created The Student Handbook, the first manual for students that incorporates the student experience into Gallatin literature. In addition, the Center assembled the Gallatin Cross-Registration Guide, which outlines the procedures for registering in the various academic departments at NYU. As students themselves, gPAC members are keenly aware of the issues that Gallatin students face; they have personally encountered NYU’s policies and procedures and are trained to address these matters appropriately.

gPAC has also introduced several workshops and panels through “The What’s Next? Series,” a program dedicated to showing students how to make their Gallatin education work for them post-college. In gPAC’s first semester of operations, “The What’s Next? Series” included three workshops: a program on internships, a program on grants and scholarships, and a panel on graduate school options that featured Gallatin alumni speakers. Panelists included Ancris Munoz (BA ’01), Erin Weaver (BA ’00), Laureen Ojalvo (BA ’02) and Gary Rosen (BA ’95), and the discussion allowed current Gallatin students to learn more about life after Gallatin and the variety of experiences open to them in higher education and the working world.

From answering prospective students’ questions, to printing resource publications, to supporting academic programs, gPAC has already proved to be a valuable and accessible part of the Gallatin community. The Center has made great strides in its first semester and is looking towards plans for the future, especially towards expanding its projects, programs, and popularity at Gallatin by getting other students motivated and involved. Put best by gPAC member Daniel Ketchum: “The main reason I enjoy being on gPAC is that I have the opportunity to meet, and in some cases, work with, Gallatin students who I would never have come into contact with any other way. It's always a pleasure to share my ideas and experiences and take in someone else's.”


Alumnus and Gallatin adjunct professor Yale Strom (MA ’84) has released a new book, A Wandering Feast: A Journey through the Jewish Culture of Eastern Europe (Jossey-Bass).
The book is a travel memoir/coming-of-age true story based upon his first trip to the former East Bloc countries in 1981, and it is filled with photos, transcribed music, recipes of Jewish and regional dishes, and oral histories of Holocaust survivors. The initial field research he completed for the book helped him to write his Gallatin master’s thesis.

 

Alumni in the News :

 

Molly Felder’s (BA ’02, MA ’05) manuscript, Something Different, recently won the Walker Percy Literary Award at the New Orleans Writers’ Conference. Felder is also teaching two composition courses at the University of Alabama at Huntsville, and a developmental writing course at a local community college near Huntsville.

Simon Fortin’s (MA ’05) second play, Some Exhibition—which was his thesis project at Gallatin—was presented in August as a staged reading at The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Massachusetts, in conjunction with the Williamstown Theatre Festival, under the direction of Roger Rees. A comedy, Some Exhibition chronicles the tribulations surrounding the making of Jacques-Louis David’s famed painting, The Coronation of Napoleon and Josephine.

Peter Gizzi (BA ’86), an award-winning poet and professor of English at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for 2005. He is one of 186 artists, scholars, and scientists from the United States and Canada selected for the award by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. The purpose of the Guggenheim Fellowship program is to help provide fellows with blocks of time in which they can work with as much creative freedom as possible; Gizzi intends to use his award to take a year off from teaching and focus on completing a volume of poetry.

Melanie Hoopes’s (MA ’03) fourth solo show, WEIGHT, was performed at the Magnet Theater in August as part of The New York International Fringe Festival. Hoopes developed the show out of her master's thesis at Gallatin, which was focused on using theater in the primary prevention of eating disorders. (Hoopes’ concentration was in performance, education and food studies.) She wrote WEIGHT after interviewing 50 women weighing between 70 and 1,000 pounds. Although the characters in the play are of different ages, races, economic backgrounds and sizes, they are united in their struggle to find a home within their own skin.

Francis Palazzolo (MA ’00) recently received a Challenge America Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Palazzolo has had much success is exhibiting his art in venues throughout New York City, and he is currently involved in a project to adapt Tom McEviley’s The Shape of Ancient Thought into a documentary.