Posted on Jan 7, 2008

Works by two Brooklyn-based sculptors – Wendy Klemperer and Steven Brower – are on display at the Burns Art Atrium in the Visual Fine Arts Building Jan. 28- March 7.

Klemperer’s sculptures are raw steel armatures that take horses, wolves and dogs as their subject matter, using the immediate energy and power of those natural forms to explore internal states.

“The sculptures are not ultimately about animals as anecdotes or records of an actual creature; they use the body language of animals to express an emotional state,” Klemperer notes.

A native of Boston, Klemperer received a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry from Harvard University before deciding to pursue art full time. She moved to New York City in 1980 and studied at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, receiving her B.F.A. in sculpture in 1983. In the early 1990s, she began welding and soon was concentrating on larger, outdoor sculpture, often collecting raw material from scrap yards and construction sites. She has exhibited her work throughout the United States. 

Brower’s work reflects on the process of making art and shows an interest in de-coding that practice. He remarks: “… one of my biggest concerns is with the act of making things, and making things myself, as a product of curiosity in, research of, and experimentation with, the world around me. As a result, I’ve made lots of things: models, machines, furniture, shoes, houses, tools, food, books, as well as all that ‘traditional’ artwork.”

Born in Washington, D.C., Brower came to New York in 1987. His work has been exhibited at Art Omi in Ghent, N.Y.; in New York City and Long Island galleries; at Williams, Bard and other colleges; and in Europe, Canada and New Zealand. He holds a BFA from Pratt (1991). He has lectured widely and curated numerous shows.

Klemperer and Brower will talk about their work Thursday, March 6 at 2:30 p.m. A reception will follow at 4:30 in the Arts Atrium.  

Posted on Jan 2, 2008

A book edited by Andrea Foroughi, assistant professor of History, has been published by Minnesota Historical Society Press (2007). “Go If You Think It Your Duty: A Minnesota Couple’s Civil War Letters,” chronicles the American Civil War through the eyes of husband and wife James Madison Bowler and Elizabeth Caleff Bowler, who shared hundreds of letters from 1861 to 1865 while James Bowler served in the Third Minnesota Volunteer Regiment.

William Finlay, associate professor of Theater and chairman of the Theater & Dance Department, recently inaugurated a guest artist series at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tenn. He spent a week teaching master classes in the Theatre Department.

Timothy Dunn, director of Fraternity and Sorority Affairs, recently attended the 2007 annual meeting of the Association for Fraternity Advisors (AFA) in Cincinnati, Ohio. The AFA is an international higher education association that provides resources and support for fraternity and sorority advising professionals who are working to create experiences that positively affect students, their campuses and their communities. This year’s AFA meeting was titled, “Our Envisioned Future.”

Posted on Jan 2, 2008

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has named Binyavanga Wainaina to its list of people around the world worth watching in 2008, along with U.S. Gen. David Petraeus, Spanish actor Javier Bardem, Fidel and Raul Castro, and other high-profile notables in the worlds of politics, business, the arts and athletics.

The Kenyan-born Wainaina is the final year of a three-year term as the College's writer-in-residence. The honor from the newspaper capped a year of accolades and recognition for Wainaina.

In the fall, Wainaina was a guest and speaker in the Partnership-with-Africa Conference, hosted by the German President Horst Koehlerin the Monastery “Eberbach” near Frankfurt, Germany. Other guests included the Asantehene (the king of the Asante in Ghana), English writer John le Carré, Somali writer Nurrudin Farah, German writer llija Trojanow and the presidents of Nigeria, South Africa, Sierra Leone, Tanzania and Germany.

Wainaina was also a guest speaker and panelist at the New Images of Africa Conference in Olso, Norway, hosted by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Other speakers included Swedish writer Henning Mankell, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the president of Sierra Leone, and Pumzile Mlambo-Ncguka, the vice president of South Africa. He also spent time in Marfa, Texas on a Lannan Foundation scholarship.

Last summer, Wainaina was a guest contributor to Vanity Fair’s special issue devoted to Africa and wrote an essay for Harper's. He was a finalist for a National Magazine Award, the magazine industry’s highest honor. Wainaina was nominated in the Fiction category, which honors the quality of a publication’s literary selections. Wainaina’s piece, “Ships in High Transit,” was selected as part of the entry for The Virginia Quarterly Review. His story had already won the literary journal’s top short fiction prize for 2006.

Last January, Wainaina’s satirical piece for Granta, “How to Write about Africa,” became one of the literary magazine’s most widely reprinted stories. It included advice on the collection of stereotypes and clichés authors could fall back on when writing about his homeland.

Wainaina, who won the won the prestigious Caine Prize for African Writing in 2002, is teaching three classes at Union this term, including Contemporary African Fiction.

To read about Wainaina and the others on the list of people around the world worth watching in 2008, click here (registration may be required).

Posted on Jan 2, 2008

It seems only appropriate that Timothy Dunn, Union’s new director of Fraternity and Sorority Affairs, began his career with Greek groups as a result of talking with a fraternity brother.

“Fraternities and sororities are about having lifelong relationships, building real bonds among brothers and sisters,” he says.

Dunn earned a bachelor’s degree in speech communications at Northeastern State University in Oklahoma and went on to get a law degree from the University of Oklahoma, where he was a member of Kappa Alpha Psi. He was working in social services in California when his KAPsi brother hired him as an assistant director of residential life at the University of Hartford. In that position, he began co-advising for Greek organizations.

“Greek advising gave me a great understanding of the challenges faced on the academic side when dealing with problems created by an unhealthy Greek system, which is why I worked so hard to make it healthy and an asset to the university,” said Dunn, who also was an adjunct professor of ethics.

A native of Abilene, Texas, Dunn had a brief stint as an advisor to fraternities at the University of Georgia before settling into the close-knit Union community in the fall. 

Speaking recently from his office on the fourth floor of Reamer Campus Center, Dunn reflected that he faces “a lot of the same challenges I’ve seen before. One is to broadcast the positive aspects of the Greek experience to the campus. The only thing people see is the quite visible social life, but there are lots of good things going on.”

Greek life at Union dates to 1825, with the founding of the nation’s first fraternity, Kappa Alpha. Over the next few years, two more fraternities were founded; Sigma Phi, which is still active, and Delta Phi. They comprised the well-known Union triad.

Currently, about a third of all Union students belong to Union's 12 fraternities and five sororities.

“I want them to be one unified Greek community,” Dunn said. Recently, members of the three governing bodies volunteered together on the Habitat House on Barrett Street, and “to my knowledge, it was the first joint community council endeavor,” he said.

He aims to formalize several aspects of the Greek system, including the accreditation process, annual awards and recognition ceremonies, and academic success and rehabilitation programs. He would like to enhance new member education as well as membership recruitment and retention efforts.

“Lifelong relationships are among the core values that the organization builds,” Dunn says. “At their core, Greek organizations stand for the very principles that our country was founded on – brotherhood, service to the community and living lives of integrity.”

Posted on Jan 2, 2008

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has named Binyavanga Wainaina to its list of people around the world worth watching in 2008.

The Kenyan-born Wainaina is the final year of a three-year term as the College's Writer-in-Residence.

Last summer, Wainaina was a guest contributor to Vanity Fair’s special issue devoted to Africa and  wrote an essay for Harper's.

He was also a finalist for a National Magazine Award, the magazine industry’s highest honor.

In 2002, he won the prestigious Caine Prize for African Writing for his short story, “Discovering Home,” and The Independent, a newspaper in the United Kingdom, named him one of the 50 best artists in Africa.

To read about Wainaina and the others on the list of people around the world worth watching in 2008, click here (registration may be required).