Mountebanks, the student theater group, will present “A Night of the Absurd,” featuring Samuel Beckett’s “Krapp’s Last Tape” and “Footfalls” Friday, March 14 and Saturday, March 15 at 8 p.m. in Breazzano House.
The free performances will be directed by Mary Roberts ’09.
In “Krapp’s Last Tape,” a one-man show, Victor Cardinali ’08 plays an aged, failed writer who listens to a tape he recorded in his younger days. “Footfalls” introduces us to May, a haunted individual who converses with a lingering voice presumed to be her mother. Regina Chiuminatto ’09 takes on the role of May, with Keegan Peters ’08 as the mother’s voice.
Founded in 1912, Mountebanks is reputed to be the nation’s oldest continually running student drama organization. The name, dating to the 16th century, refers to “mount-on-bench,” describing a wandering traveler who, from a bench or platform, entertains his audience with stories, tricks and songs. Over the years, Union’s Mountebanks have often traveled from space to space, performing wherever they might find a spot.
For more information about the upcoming performances, contact Peters at petersk2@union.edu.
Union students teamed up with 10th grade English honors students from Schenectady High to discuss Khaled Hosseini’s “The Kite Runner” Tuesday at South College. Both groups shared their insights on the best-selling novel about the unlikely friendship between a wealthy boy and the son of his father's servant in Afghanistan.
Schenectady High School sophmore Julian Delgado responds to a small group discussion question about “The Kite Rubnner” Tuesday, March 11, 2008.
“Union students were charged with facilitating the discussions and keeping the questions on point,” said Katherine Lynes, assistant professor of English at Union. “The high school students benefited from the active participation in transferring what they learned in the classroom to a college experience."
“The Kite Runner” (2003) is the first novel by Afghan-American author Khaled Hosseini and the first novel published in English by an author from Afghanistan.
Union participants included Don Austin, AmeriCorps VISTA volunteer at the Kenney Center, Jyoti Bankapur ’09, Andrew Camden ’09, Sarah Conner ’10, Ivy Jiang ’10, Emma Labrot ’09, Maggie Levine ’09, Nicole McRuiz ’09, Caroline Tulp ’11 and Brad Wilhelm ’10. The two-hour discussion was coordinated by Angela Blair, assistant director of community outreach at the Kenney Community Center, and Tom McEvoy, associate dean of students and director of Minerva Programs. The event also included a lunch in Old Chapel and a talk by Alireza Jawanshir, a 26-year-old kite maker who recounted his experience emigrating from Afghanistan in 2001.
Hosseini’s book is this year’s selection for the Schenectady County Public Library’s annual “One County, One Book” community reading program. The book "provides a structure to explore the political, cultural and historical aspects of Afghanistan while fostering critical thinking and respect for cultural diversity,” said Karen Bradley, a librarian with the county, which has seen an increase in its Afghan population.
The Florestan Piano Trio: Richard Lester, cello; Anthony Marwood, violin; and Susan Tomes, piano, performs Saturday, March 15, 2008 at 8 p.m. in Memorial Chapel.
The Florestan Piano Trio will perform a classical program from Haydn, Brahms and Ives Saturday, March 15 at 8 p.m. in Memorial Chapel.
Winners of the Royal Philharmonic Society Award in 2000, this British group features Susan Tomes on piano, Anthony Marwood on violin and Richard Lester on cello. Their program will include Franz Joseph Haydn’s Piano Trio in D Major, Hob. XV: 24; Johannes Brahms’ Piano Trio in B Major, Op. 8; and Charles Ives’ Piano Trio (1911).
The group has played together for more than 12 years, performing at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Brussels Conservatoire, the Società del Quartetto in Milan and other major European venues. Last season they toured the United States and Italy. Each June, they play a four-day festival in Peasmarsh, East Sussex.
Saturday’s concert is free for the Union community, $20 for general admission and $8 for area students. For more information, visit: http://www.union.edu/ConcertSeries.
As a child, Michael Wakita’s grandmother saw racism at a Japanese internment camp in Lillooet, British Columbia, where her extended family of 14 lived in cramped and primitive quarters. But she also found humanity a few miles away, where a doctor provided her housing so that she could attend a local school during the week.
It was one of many lessons that Wakita took from his grandmother to create a poster –“Japanese Canadians: From Racism to Redress” – that he presented Tuesday in the Nott Memorial.
Mike Wakita ’10 researched “Japanese Canadians from Racism to Redress” for the Sophomore Research Seminar Poster Session Tuesday, March 11, 2008 in the Nott Memorial.
Wakita was one of 70 students in four sections of the Sophomore Research Seminar: “Japanese-American Internment in World War II (Andrew Morris, History); “Opium East and West” (Joyce Madancy, History); “Balancing Acts: Research in Gender, Work and Family" (David Cotter, Sociology); and “African American Protest Movements” (Melinda Lawson, History).
Wakita’s grandparents were in the camp as children, his grandmother from 1942 to 1951, his grandfather from 1942 to 1949. The families were close, and the two married as adults after they left the camp. His grandfather passed away before Wakita was born. His grandmother runs a general store in western British Columbia.
“I spoke with her a lot,” said Wakita, a student in Morris’ seminar section, about preparing for his topic. “Her first memory of the camp was as a 9-year-old on her first train ride,” he recalls. “She thought she was going to a picnic.”
Instead, she found a tiny building of two-by-fours and plywood that offered little protection from the harsh elements. “B.C. has terrible winters,” said Wakita, a native of Kitimat, about 500 miles north of Vancouver. “It sounded miserable.”
Wakita found that Japanese Canadians, like their counterparts in the United States, had a strong loyalty to their adopted homeland despite the racially motivated treatment they endured. About 21,000 Japanese Canadians went to Canada’s internment camps, mostly in British Columbia, during and after World War II, Wakita said. In the Redress of 1988, the Canadian government apologized and offered compensation.
Wakita found preparing his topic “a lot different than the usual problem solving” he does for his coursework in Mechanical Engineering. "There's so much information between primary and secondary sources," he said.
The Sophomore Research Seminar introduces students to independent research – library skills, constructing an argument and providing evidence to back it up, said Madancy. Tuesday’s session also served as a checkpoint of sorts, allowing students to test and defend their arguments as they prepare their final papers.
“These posters give students another way to visualize the outline of their argument,” Madancy noted.
Among the other students who presented at the Nott Memorial Tuesday:
Environmental studies major Brian Cooke ’10 of Mashpee, Mass. researched the “Role & Reactions of Students in the Late Civil Rights Years” for the Sophomore Research Seminar Poster Session Tuesday, March 11, 2008 in the Nott Memorial.
Brian Cooke ’10, Environmental Studies major
Cooke, of Mashpee, Mass., researched the “Role and Reactions of Students in the Late Civil Rights Years” for Prof. Lawson’s class. He studied written and oral histories of black and white students who participated in student sit-ins from 1960 to 1964 to protest segregation in Greensboro, N.C., Albany, Ga., and throughout Mississippi. “It was interesting to search out the primary sources for my research and see what they revealed about the reactions during that period,” Cooke said. He showed that although black and white students both believed the sit-ins accomplished something, many of the black students still held strong resentments about the white students’ participation.
Psychology and theater major Kiki Lightbourn ’10 of Miami, Fla. researched “Resisting the Harlem Renaissance” for the Sophomore Research Seminar Poster Session Tuesday, March 11, 2008 in the Nott Memorial.
Kiki Lightbourn ’10, Psychology and Theater major
Lightbourn, of Miami, studied black poets during the Harlem Renaissance for Prof. Lawson’s class on the “African American Protest Movement.” She found that black women poets were not discriminated against for their race, but because of the subject matter they chose. In her poster, “Resisting the Harlem Renaissance,” Lightbourn illustrated that black women poets, including Jessie Fauset, Zora Neale Hurston, Gwendolyn Bennett and Georgia Douglass Johnson, preferred to write about love and nature instead of black pride and the struggle for equality, as did such male counterparts as Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes and W.E.B. Dubois.
Sara Mark ’10 of Needham, Mass. researched “Race & Drugs” for the Sophomore Research Seminar Poster Session Tuesday, March 11, 2008 in the Nott Memorial.
Sara Mark ’10, Anthropology major
Mark, of Needham, Mass. presented a poster on “Race and Drugs” as part of Prof. Madancy’s class on “Opium East and West.” She argued that race was the most significant factor in Congress passing harsher laws for opium and crack cocaine offenses. She compared perceptions of opium users in the late 19th century to those of crack cocaine users a century later. Crackdowns on both groups, she said, were motivated largely by white individuals’ fears of minorities. Mark found the topic appealing because of her interest in the problem of racial profiling and the suppression of African Americans. Of the course, she said, “Once I got into the research, I found so many interesting things that I wouldn’t have had the chance to learn in a traditional lecture course. Prof. Madancy walked us through the research and how to do citations. We learned the subject and how to do research at the same time.”
Psychology major Katie Smidt ’10 of Andover, Mass. researched “School, Sex and Substances” including the prevalence of alcohol and drug use as well as sexual intercourse among students whose mothers were not at home after school. Her research was presente
Katie Smidt ’10, Psychology major
Smidt, of Andover, Mass., researched “School, Sex and Substances” as part of Prof. Cotter’s class on “Balancing Acts: Research in Gender, Work and Family.” She focused on the prevalence of alcohol and drug use and sex among students whose mothers were not at home after school and also considered math grades for this population. She found a correlation between students whose mothers were not home after school and an increased use of alcohol and drugs and sexual activity. Surprisingly, however, it was the students whose parents were home after school who reported lower math grades. “The students whose parents weren’t home exhibited more independence,” Smidt said. “Those whose parents were home tended to help them with their homework. So when it came time to take the tests, they weren’t able to perform well without parental assistance.”
