Posted on Oct 19, 2010

Cellist Sophie Shao has been described as a musician with a superior sense of style, great finesse and emotion. On Thursday, Oct. 28 at 8 p.m., Shao will perform in Memorial Chapel with Pei-Yao Wang, Daniel Phillips, Arnaud Sussmann and Eric Nowlin.

This group of Marlboro virtuosi and members of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center will present Ravel’s sonata for Violin and Cello (1922) and piano quintets by Schumann and Elgar.

Winner of a top prize in the 2001 Rostropovich Competition and a laureate of the 2002 XII Tchaikovsky Competition, Shao has wowed audiences since she was a child. At 11, she made her first appearance with the Houston Symphony. At 19, she received the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant.

A graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music and Yale University, she is on the faculty at the Bard Conservatory of Music and Vassar College. A native of Houston, she recently collaborated with film composer Howard Shore on his score for “The Betrayal,” resulting in a concerto commission for the 2011-2012 season.

Pianist Pei-Yao Wang returns for her eighth Series appearance. Born in Taipei, Taiwan, Wang was the youngest pianist, at 8, to receive the overall first prize in the Taiwan National Piano Competition. She has performed throughout the U.S., Canada, Europe and Asia. She holds a Master of Music degree from Yale and is a graduate of the Metropolitan Opera’s Lindemann Young Artists Program.

Violinist Daniel Phillips is an established chamber musician, solo artist and teacher. He is a founding member of the Orion String Quartet, which tours internationally and has residences at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and at the Mannes College of Music. A winner of the prestigious Young Concert Artists International Auditions in 1976, Phillips has performed as a soloist with many of the country's leading symphonies. He teaches at the Aaron Copland School of Music of Queens College.

Fellow violinist Arnaud Sussmann, winner of the Avery Fisher Career Grant in 2009, has impressed critics and audiences from New York to St. Petersburg. A laureate of the Hudson Valley Philharmonic String Competition, the Andrea Postacchini Competition in Italy and the Vatelot/Rampal Competition in Paris, Sussmann was chosen by Itzhak Perlman to be a Starling Fellow. Sussmann holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from The Julliard School. 

Eric Nowlin is a decorated violist, winning second prize in the 2006 Walter W. Naumburg Competition and first place in both the 2003 Irving M. Klein International String and the 2001 Julliard Viola Concerto competitions. A graduate of The Julliard School, Nowlin is an associate principal violist with the Toronto Symphony.

Concert tickets are free to the Union College community. For tickets and information, call 388-6080 or visit http://www.union.edu/ConcertSeries.

Posted on Oct 19, 2010

He conquered Rome. His oratorical skills are legendary. And for more than a century, his literary masterpieces, including "Commentarii de bello Gallico" ("Commentaries on the Gallic War") were a staple of high school Latin classrooms.

But before you could say veni, vidi, vici, the works of Julius Caesar, arguably the greatest general in Rome’s history, vanished from the classroom.

As anti-war sentiment raged during the Vietnam War, there was little appetite for a dictator who bragged about the invasion and conquest of Gaul, and the war against his fellow citizens.

Instead, scholars turned to Latin love poetry, casting off the imperialist with a simple message: Ave atque vale. (Hail and farewell.)

Now, Caesar is poised to make a triumphant return to the classroom.

“Caesar's imperialism and his usurpation of republican government are what make him timely today during our own so-called war on terror,” said Hans-Friedrich Mueller, the William D. Williams Professor of Classics at Union.

“How far should we go in protecting ourselves? Does domestic security require foreign intervention? Does it make sense to give up traditional rights and freedoms at home for the sake of security?”

Caesar’s re-emergence is just one of the topics to be discussed when dozens of scholars of  ancient Latin and Greek gather at Union for the annual meeting of the Classical Association of the Empire State.

Over three days beginning Thursday, Oct. 21, about 60 high school teachers and 15 college professors will address how the classical languages and civilizations are taught in New York.

Peter Bedford, the John and Jane Wold Professor of Religious Studies, will talk about Christians in ancient Rome. Stacie Raucci, assistant professor of classics and Daniel Curley, associate professor of classics at Skidmore College, talk about representations of the ancient world in film and television.

There are also sessions centered on Greece with Tarik Wareh, assistant professor of classics and James Wells, visiting assistant professor of classics at Hamilton. Even Gilgamesh, the fifth king of Uruk, is represented in a presentation by Ladislaus Bolchazy, president of Bolchazy-Carducci, publishers of college and high school texts about the ancient world.

Mueller will lead a session at the conference on Caesar’s return.

Sessions are free and open to members of the Union community and the public. For a complete schedule, click here.

Posted on Oct 18, 2010

He conquered Rome. His oratorical skills are legendary. And for more than a century, his literary masterpieces, including Commentarii de bello Gallico ("Commentaries on the Gallic War") were a staple of high school Latin classrooms.

But before you could say veni, vidi, vici, the works of Julius Caesar, arguably the greatest general in Rome’s history, vanished from the classroom.

As the anti-war sentiment raged during the Vietnam War, there was little appetite for a dictator who bragged about the invasion and conquest of Gaul, and the war against his fellow citizens.

Instead, scholars turned to Latin love poetry, casting off the imperialist with a simple message: “Ave atque vale.”

Now, Caesar is poised to make a triumphant return to the classroom.

“Caesar's imperialism and his usurpation of republican government are what make him timely today during our own so-called war on terror,” said Hans-Friedrich Mueller, the William D. Williams Professor of Classics at Union.

“How far should we go in protecting ourselves? Does domestic security require foreign intervention? Does it make sense to give up traditional rights and freedoms at home for the sake of security?”

Caesar’s re-emergence is just one of the topics to be discussed when dozens of scholars of  ancient Latin and Greek gather at Union for the annual meeting of the Classical Association of the Empire State.

Over three days beginning Thursday, Oct. 21, about 60 high school teachers and 15 college professors will address how the classical languages and civilizations are taught in New York.

Peter Bedford, the John and Jane Wold Professor of Religious Studies, will talk about Christians in ancient Rome. Stacie Raucci, assistant professor of classics and Daniel Curley, associate professor of classics at Skidmore College, talk about representations of the ancient world in film and television.

There are also sessions centered on Greece with Tarik Wareh, assistant professor of classics and James Wells, visiting assistant professor of classics at Hamilton. Even Gilgamesh, the fifth king of Uruk, is represented in a presentation by Ladislaus Bolchazy, president of Bolchazy-Carducci, publishers of college and high school texts about the ancient world.

Sessions are free and open to members of the Union community and the public. For a complete schedule, click here.

It’s not a good time to be a fan of the classics. The New York State Board of Regents recently eliminated the Regents exam for Latin; one session at the conference is devoted to discussing the impact of the move. And on Oct. 1, SUNY-Albany officials announced that the school would eliminate admissions to its classics program, along with French, Italian, Russian and theater programs.

Both budget moves are seen as warning signs by supporters of the humanities that, as the sluggish economy lingers and students gravitate toward disciplines they believe have better career potential, the idea of “what it means to be a human being” will evaporate.

In the meantime, Caesar is enjoying his own revival. Shakespeare’s play chronicling his life is a staple in curricula taught to generations of high school English students, alongside “The Great Gatsby” and “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.”

But a generation of Latin teachers grew up without reading the works of Caesar, one of the authors who will now be included in the Advanced Placement Latin exam for high school students.

That’s welcome news for Mueller, who will lead a session at the conference on Caesar’s return.

“Apart from good grammar and a clear Latin style, Caesar’s conflicted legacy offers teachers and students an excellent laboratory for discussing important ethical, legal and constitutional issues because personal politics are not at stake in the outcome of events thousands of years in the past.”

Posted on Oct 18, 2010

Pilar Moyano, professor of Spanish and Latin American Studies, delivered a paper titled ¨De señoras nobles, esclavas y ¨gariyas¨: Clase social en la obra de las poetas de al-Andalus¨ at the Grupo de Estudios sobre la Mujer en España y las Américas, pre-1800 (Women in Spain and the Americas before 1800), hosted by Mount Holyoke College and UMass-Amherst in September.

Mechanical engineering professor Frank Wicks authored an article titled “Credit to the Bicycle” for the July issue of Mechanical Engineering, a membership publication of the American Society of Mechanical Engineering. The article by Wicks, a frequent contributor, notes the remarkable energy efficiency of the bicycle. He traces the technologies such as metal tubing, chains and sprockets, wire spoke wheels, and rubber tires that led to a practical bicycle, as well as how the bicycle provided vital technologies for the first motorcycles, automobiles and flying machines developed. The article also traces ever-expanding modifications for recreation, exercise and competitive sports, and the growing enthusiasm for bicycles as an alternative form of transportation to help solve environmental, resource and traffic challenges.

Scott LaBrake, senior lecturer of physics and astronomy and accelerator manager, and Maria Battaglia ’12 attended the 21^st international Conference on the Applications of Accelerator in Research and Industry (CAARI) in Fort Worth, Texas in August. LaBrake gave an invited talk on “Teaching Materials Analysis using PIXE at Union College,” which detailed the use of the department’s 1MV particle accelerator to study environmental pollution in atmospheric aerosols and liquid precipitation in New York state using the ion beam analysis technique of PIXE. Battaglia presented a poster detailing her research project, “Trace Elemental Composition and Concentration of Liquid Precipitation in New York Using PIXE,” which demonstrated seasonal variations in the elemental composition and concentration of rainwater and snow. LaBrake also submitted a paper at the conference that has been accepted for publication in a special edition of Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research B along with co-authors Michael Vineyard, the Frank and Marie Louise Bailey Professor of Physics and Astronomy, Battaglia, Chad Harrington ’11, Colin Gleason ’11, Katie Schuff ’12, Shivani Pathak ’10, Rob Moore ’12 and Colin Turley ’13.

Robert Sharlet, the Chauncey Winters Research Professor of Political Science, was the opening speaker at the memorial service for the late professor Robert C. Tucker at Princeton University earlier this month. Professor Tucker, a seminal scholar on Marx and on Russia, was Sharlet’s mentor when he taught at Indiana University, and later his colleague. Sharlet has also co-authored a tribute to Tucker’s career in Slavic Review, the major field journal. In addition, he is co-organizer of a roundtable discussion on Tucker’s scholarly work at a national conference to be held in Washington, D.C. in 2011.

Posted on Oct 14, 2010

Students advocated for greater campus sustainability Monday at Green Expo.

The event, held in the Reamer Campus Center, was a way to get more students involved in earth-friendly efforts, such as attending events, signing petitions and participating in groups like U Sustain and the Environmental Club.

“We want to increase awareness on sustainability,” said Eliza Duquette ’11 of Ozone House, “and try to initiate an alternative social atmosphere on campus.”

Members of Union’s Environmental Club provided information on single stream recycling and the perils of bottled water. Club member Meghan Haley-Quigley ’13 said the group will be holding several more green events, including its annual trash audit on Nov. 15 to coincide with America Recycles Day.  

Monday’s event was organized by the Education and Outreach Subcommittee of U Sustain, chaired by Shabana Hoosein ’11 and Professor Matt Manon of the Geology Department. As Hoosein told the Concordiensis this week, "The expo was important because it showed the campus the variety of environmental groups available."

Students, faculty and staff interested in making Union a greener place can also apply for a Presidential Green Grant. Proposals for the grants, which are up to $2,000, are due Oct. 22 and can be submitted to sustain@union.edu.