Posted on May 24, 2000

Shaul Bakhash, professor of history at George Mason University and an authority on modern Iran, will deliver a talk titled “Iran: John Locke and Liberalism in an Islamic Republic” on Wednesday, May 24, at 8 p.m. in Union College's Memorial Chapel.

The lecture, part of the Frederic E. Miller Lecture Series in Honor of Anwar Sadat, is free and open to the public.

Bakhash specializes in Iran, modern Middle East and modern Islamic political thought.

He is author of Iran: Monarchy, Bureaucracy and Reform Under the Oajars, 1858-1896, The Politics of Oil and Revolution in Iran and Reign of the Ayotollahs: Iran and the Islamic Revolution.

He frequently writes for The New York Review of Books. His articles have appeared in The New York Times, the Washington Post, and the New Republic.

He worked for many years as a journalist in Iran, writing for Tehran-based Kayhan Newspapers as well as the London Times, Financial Times and The Economist.

He taught at Princeton University, and has been a Guggenheim Fellow. He has been awarded fellowships at the Institute of Advanced Study at Princeton, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and the National Humanities Center.

His current research deals with Islam and political sensibility.

Posted on May 19, 2000

Bob Dylan turns 59 on Wednesday, May 24, and some people
are celebrating.

Though the singer-songwriter won’t be there, the party
goes from 8:30 to 11 p.m. in Old Chapel. Musician and journalist Mike Eck
will host an evening of food, song and spoken word in honor of Dylan.

The party is sponsored by the Coffeehouse and the
Rathskeller.

Posted on May 19, 2000

India's internationally-renowned Bala Troupe will
perform a concert of South Indian classical music and dance on Friday, May
19, at 8 p.m. in the Nott Memorial.

The performance is free to members of the Union
community; there is a suggested $10 donation for others.

Lakshmi, daughter of the legendary Bharata Natyam dancer
Balasaraswati, leads the Bala Troupe. Other members include Lakshmi (dance
and vocal), Aniruddha (dance, vocal, and dance master), Susan Twoohy
(vocal), Douglas Knight (mrdangam barrel-drum), and T. Viswanathan (vocal
and flute).

College-age Aniruddha has become known for his uncanny
resemblance, in his dancing, to his famous grandmother, Balasaraswati,
called India's greatest dancer.

The Balasaraswati family, whose dancing extends seven
generations back to the court of Tanjore, received the Martha Graham
Award. Dr. T. Viswanathan, who teaches at Wesleyan University, has
garnered the highest awards for musical achievement in India — including
the prestigious Sangeeta Bhushanam — as well as grants from Fulbright,
the Ford Foundation, and being named a “National Heritage
Fellow” by the National Endowment for the Arts.

The Bala Troupe's visit to campus will mesmerize the
audience with the rich language of Bharata Natyam, both in its abstract
design, based on rhythmic and melodic principles of Indian music, and in
its narrative branch, which springs from Indian mythology and religion.

The concert is sponsored by Performing Arts, the
Anthropology Department, the History Department, International Programs
and UNITAS.

Posted on May 19, 2000

The Chronicle is available on
the Web each Thursday during academic terms, usually by late morning.

Also, you can fill out the form to subscribe to through
e-mail.

Posted on May 19, 2000

Michelle Chilcoat, assistant
professor of French, has published an article, “The Legacy of
Enlightenment Brain Sex” in the journal The Eighteenth Century
(Volume 41, No.1, 2000). Also, she is presenting a paper titled
“Francois Ozon's 'Sitcom' and the Treatment of
Homosexuality” at the “Rhetoric of the Other” conference at
the University of Quebec in Montreal.

David Gerhan, professor and
head of public services at Schaffer Library, has published “When
Quantitative Analysis Lies Behind a Reference Question” in the Winter
1999 issue of Reference and User Services Quarterly, the principal
professional journal for reference librarians. The article addresses the
specialized retrieval challenge that academic reference librarians face:
students' coursework-related needs for statistical data.

Yana Hashamova, assistant
professor of Russian, gave a talk, “Imagining Russia: Glory, Majesty,
Honor?” recently at the Symposium on Russia After Yeltsin at the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. For more information, see http://www.uiuc.edu/unit/reec/symposium00.htm.
Also, her paper “Winnie: The Woman Who Is Not-All? Beckett's 'Happy
days'” is to appear in a collection titled Literature and
Psychoanalysis (Instituto Superior de Psicologia Aplicada: Lisbon,
2000, Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Literature and
Psychoanalysis).

Robert Hislope, assistant
professor of political science, is contributing a chapter to an edited
volume, Evolutionary Theory and Ethnic Politics, to be published by
Praeger. He delivered a paper, “Explaining Post-Communist Ethnic
Conflict: Patterns and Theories,” at the 58th Annual Meeting of the
Midwest Political Science Association in Chicago recently. Also, he was
awarded a grant by the National Research Council to study cross-border
Albanian networks (legal and illegal) in Macedonia and the impact this has
on Macedonian stability and regional security. He will travel to Macedonia
in November.