Posted on Jan 23, 2004

Daniel O.
Mosquera, assistant professor of Spanish
and Latin American Studies, has written an article, “Reconstituting Chocó: The Feast
of San Pacho and the Afro Question in Colombia,” to be published in Journal of Latin American Cultural
Studies (University of London, Carfax). This article is part of an ongoing project
examining popular religion, politics, and national identity in the
Afro-Colombian region of Chocó. The project includes a video documentary (to
have a public screening in the spring 2004) titled “San Pacho, para quién? [St.
Pacho, for Whom?].”

Posted on Jan 23, 2004

They're everywhere, it seems, those wireless networks that
allow us to use our laptops for checking e-mail, browsing the web and other
general network functions without being tied down by wires.

From Information Technology Services, comes this list of
wireless hotspots – indoors and out:

—   Schaffer Library
Basement, 1st floor, 2nd floor, 3rd floor and Special Collections

—   Schaffer Library
courtyard

—   Nott Memorial

—   Steinmetz 2nd floor

—   North S&E
N102 and N104 and surrounding engineering labs

—   Olin
Learning Center
and surrounding study rooms, Olin Auditorium

—   Reamer
Campus Center,
Dutch Hollow and a part of Upperclass Dining

—   Humanities
basement classrooms and seminar rooms
—   Raymond Coffee House
—   Abbe Hall 1st Floor
alumni space
—   Lamont House
—   South
College 1st floor
—   Fox 1st floor
lounge

—   Davidson 1st floor
lounge

—   Grant Hall 1st floor

—   Becker
Career Center

—   South S&E
1st floor Biology labs

—   South S&E
2nd floor Biology labs

—   South S&E
3rd floor Biology labs

—   Reamer 2nd floor
conference and seminar rooms

—   Reamer 3rd floor
conference and seminar room

—   Reamer 4th floor
conference and seminar room

—   Old Chapel
student space

—   Hale House, Everest
Lounge

Everyone must register before
using the wireless network. Students can register by going to http://wireless.union.edu/registration/reg_form.aspx.  Faculty and staff, please send e-mail to
wireless@union.edu or call Bob Babb at ext. 6667.

Posted on Jan 23, 2004

The opening reception for “Method
& Metaphor,” a selection of Old Master paintings from the private
collection of Seena and Arnold Davis, is Thursday,
Jan. 22, from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m., in the Nott Memorial's Mandeville
Gallery.

The exhibit runs through March 14.

The exhibit is a rich, visually
dazzling example of high medieval art that resounds with passion and color.

Some 45 years ago, the Davises began collecting paintings
for their home. In time, they narrowed their focus to 16th-century
European Old Masters and earlier. Currently, their collection numbers
approximately 250 paintings and drawings.

The Davis
collection also represents a rich repository of art history, academic research,
and good old-fashioned detective work. The Davises spent countless hours
tracing the “provenance, origins and attributions” of each new acquisition.
They plumbed the knowledge of art historians and museum curators here and
abroad and in that process, built an impressive library of their own.

This particular selection of works
provides a unique view of the role and attitude toward women in Renaissance and
Baroque Europe (c. 1400 to 1700). A number of small-scale works, intended for
domestic display, portray the duality of woman as virgin/seductress. This theme
fairly dominates the religious art of the time, especially with innumerable
images of the Virgin Mary.

These works also portrayed
cautionary tales or morality guides of what vices to avoid and what virtues to
emulate. The symbolism is conveyed in images (white lilies, red roses, etc.)
and colors so even the illiterate could comprehend the message. Such artwork
was also designed to encourage prayer and meditation in the home.

Conversely, the female nude was
associated with eroticism and created almost exclusively for an elite audience
of educated men, many in the upper ranks of the church hierarchy. However,
depiction of Christ's nudity symbolized his human vulnerability.

For more on the show, visit: http://www.union.edu/Gallery/Current.htm

Posted on Jan 23, 2004

Thomas P. Boland Jr., who joins
the College as the new Catholic chaplain, sees his position as “a form of
educational and pastoral ministry, the opportunity to help students grow in
their faith as well as to accompany them at this privileged and important stage
of their lives when they are exploring intellectual, social, personal and
spiritual questions.

“A religious program
on campus,” he said, “is important as a way of ministering to the whole person,
helping students integrate their academic lives with the rest of who they are
as persons.”

Boland, who teaches
part-time at Siena College,
will be full-time at Union after the end of this
academic year.

Boland said he recognizes that
while a lot of undergraduates may not necessarily embrace or regularly practice
a religious tradition while in college, the presence of a religious ministry is
nonetheless vital to campus life. “There are times, as we saw recently [with
the deaths of Craig LeDuc '05 and Kyle Schrade ‘06], when students are looking
for spiritual meaning to life's challenges,” he said. “At its core, the role of campus ministry is
to help students discern their life's meaning and direction–‘who am I, and
where am I going?'”

A native of White Plains, he earned his
bachelor's degree in political science from Holy Cross, and his master's in
divinity from Harvard University. He is a Ph.D. candidate in theology at Boston College, writing his dissertation
on the development of Catholic social teaching on the death penalty. When not at Union or Siena, he also serves as assistant director of New Yorkers Against the Death Penalty,
working with its executive director, David Kaczynski, husband of Associate
Professor of Philosophy Linda E. Patrik.

After earning his undergraduate
degree, he joined the Jesuit Volunteer Corps and lived in San Antonio, serving an
inner-city parish and elementary school with a large Mexican-American
population.

While working toward his
master's, he was on the staff of a Cambridge, Mass.,
homeless shelter.

Boland began with the College at
the end of last term, meeting students at the Sunday evening Mass at nearby St. John's Church. He helped conduct the LeDuc and Schrade
memorial service earlier this month with colleagues Viki Brooks-McDonald,
campus Protestant minister and interfaith chaplain, and Bonnie Cramer, Hillel
program assistant.

His on-campus hours are all day
Wednesday, Thursday morning, and Sunday evening, with Mass at 7:30 p.m. at St. John's followed by a social hour in the Everest Lounge of Hale House. His office is in the basement of Silliman
Hall. He can be reached at ext. 6087 or
on email at bolandt@union.edu.

Posted on Jan 23, 2004

“We give lip service to college
service,” says Terry Weiner in explaining the
title of his upcoming faculty colloquium.

Weiner, professor of political
science and chair of the department, will speak on “Lip Service: Rethinking the
Role of Citizenship in the Liberal Arts
College,” on Tuesday, Jan. 27, at 11:30 a.m. in Old Chapel.

“We've lost the role of college
service and citizenship,” Weiner said of liberal arts colleges nationally,
adding that service has become a “devalued function” at most colleges.

“There is little effort to
evaluate or reward college service in the way we do scholarship and teaching,”
he says. “[As a result], faculty members are unwilling to play the service
roles that are important in a self-governing community of a liberal arts college.”

Weiner, who last fall was invested
as Chauncey H. Winters Professor in
Comparative Social Analysis, adds that colleges should also evaluate and
reward faculty who serve the outside community in their fields.

Weiner recalls his time in graduate
school, when students who considered a career at a liberal arts college, were “frowned
upon.” University faculty thought their liberal arts counterparts spent too
much time on service – advising, committees, peer review – and not enough on
scholarship and research that brings resources to the institution.

Times have changed, Weiner says. The
university approach, with its pursuit of resources, has trickled down to
liberal arts colleges. “Trying to narrow the role of faculty … has taken us
away from what it means to be a liberal arts college and made us more like a
large research university.”

Weiner's research is based on the
literature of college service – reports by professional societies, articles by
scholars, reports by foundations – which he will share at Wednesday's talk.

Weiner has the distinction of chairing two academic departments at
Union, the Department of Sociology and Anthropology
(1978-1986) and the Department of Political Science (currently). After
receiving his undergraduate degree in sociology and history from the University
of Illinois at Chicago,
he went on to earn his master's degree and Ph.D. in sociology from the University
of North Carolina.

He joined the Union faculty in
1974 and has developed courses in such areas as health care politics, the
sociology of medicine, political sociology, and issues in American education.
He also has published in the major journals of political science and sociology
and health, including the Journal of Politics, the American Journal
of Sociology, and the American Journal of Public Health.

He was associate dean of the
faculty for seven years and acting dean of the faculty for one year; he started
the College's M.A.T. program and, as dean and department chair, has increased
the presence of women on the faculty. Among his community positions, he has
been a member of the Niskayuna School Board since 1990 (currently serving as
president), a member of the board of trustees of Wildwood
School and Family Corp., chair of
the board of the Early Childhood
Education Center,
and an advisor to Schenectady Association for Retarded Children and DARE (Drug
Abuse Resistance Education).

A buffet lunch will follow the
talk at 12:30 p.m. in Hale House
Dining Room.