Cornel West to Speak on Race Matters

Chestertown, MD, February 23, 2001 — Dr. Cornel West, Harvard Professor of Afro-American Studies, will speak on the subject of race in contemporary American politics, economy and culture on Thursday, March 1, 2001 at 5:00 p.m. in the Gibson Fine Arts Center, Tawes Theatre at Washington College. The event is free and the public is invited to attend.

Dr. West is the author of Race Matters (Vintage Books, 1994) and Beyond Eurocentrism and Multiculturalism, winner of the American Book Award. A scholar, theologian and activist, Dr. West brings a bold, passionate voice and unique perspectives to American's ongoing racial debate. The New York Times has said of his writing: "A compelling blend of philosophy, sociology and political commentary... One can only applaud the ferocious moral vision and astute intellect on display in these pages."

For further information, contact the Campus Events Coordinator at 410-778-7849.

Hemenway to Discuss Hurston, Harlem Renaissance at Washington College

Chestertown, MD, February 16, 2001 — Robert Hemenway, chancellor of the University of Kansas, will speak Monday, February 26, 2001 on "The Small Literary Magazines of Zora Neale Hurston and the Harlem Renaissance." The talk will be held at 4:30 p.m. in the Sophie Kerr Room of Washington College's Miller Library. Sponsored by the Sophie Kerr Committee, the talk is free and open to the public.

Hemenway is nationally recognized for his biography of African-American novelist, anthropologist and folklorist Zora Neale Hurston, Zora Neale Hurston: A Literary Biography. With an introduction by novelist Alice Walker, the biography won a number of awards and was listed by The New York Times among its "Best Books of 1978." In 1991, a reprinting was included as a Quality Paperback Book Club selection.

Born in Sioux City, Iowa, and raised in Iowa and Nebraska, Hemenway received his bachelor's degree from the University of Nebraska at Omaha and his doctorate in English from Kent State University in Ohio at age 24. He has served as chancellor of the University of Kansas since 1995.

Author Richard Ben Cramer to Speak at Convocation

Chestertown, MD, February 16, 2001 — Washington College will honor Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Ben Cramer at the annual George Washington's Birthday Convocation on Saturday, February 17, 2001 at 2:00 p.m. in the College's Gibson Performing Arts Center, Tawes Theatre. Cramer will receive an honorary Doctor of Letters from the College.

Author of the recent best-selling biography Joe Dimaggio: The Hero's Life (Simon & Schuster, 2000), Cramer is a dogged journalist whose writing is as incisive as it is empathetic. Born in Rochester, NY, he studied journalism at Johns Hopkins and Columbia University before taking his first job with the (Baltimore) Sun in 1971. In 1976, Cramer went to work for The Philadelphia Inquirer, becoming an overseas correspondent and earning the Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the Middle East and Arab-Israeli conflict. Since 1984, Cramer has worked as a freelance writer and researcher probing America's cultural icons and political life. His 1992 bestseller, What It Takes: The Way to the White House, has been hailed by critics as the best book ever written on American politics.

The George Washington's Birthday Convocation is held annually in February to honor Washington College's founding patron. This year's event will open with an invocation and benediction by Dr. Gary Schiff, an avocational Hebrew cantor and lecturer in the College's Department of Philosophy and Religion. The ceremony also will honor students inducted into the Omicron Delta Kappa national honor society. A reception and book signing will be held in the Tawes Gallery immediately following the Convocation. The event is free and open to the public. For further information call 410-778-7849.

Sophie Kerr Winner Receives $135,000 Advance for First Book

Chestertown, MD, February 12, 2001 — Christine Lincoln '00, winner of the 2000 Sophie Kerr Prize, the largest undergraduate literary prize in the nation, has received a $135,000 advance from Pantheon, a division of Random House Publishers, for her first collection of short stories.

"I think they're superb," said literary agent Sara Chalfant of the Wylie Agency in New York concerning Lincoln's stories. "They're in the glorious tradition of Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Morrison and the early Alice walker. They are luminous."

Several publishing houses bid on Lincoln's collection, but she chose Pantheon because of editor Erroll McDonald.

"I felt like his vision of the book was closest to my vision," Lincoln said. "He said, 'You're an African American woman, this is your voice.'"

The collection will include stories that Lincoln submitted last year to the Sophie Kerr Committee as well as others written after graduation. The book is slated for a fall 2001 release.

Novelist Donald Antrim to Read February 19

Chestertown, MD, February 9, 2001 — Novelist Donald Antrim, author of The Verificationist, The Hundred Brothers and Elect Mr. Robinson for a Better World, will read from his works Monday, February 19, 2001, at 8:00 p.m. in the Sophie Kerr Room of Washington College's Miller Library. The event is free and open to the public.

Esquire magazine recently observed of Antrim's fiction: "Not since the late Donald Barthelme have we had such a pitch-perfect surrealizing of domestic American life." Praised for his "gloriously unhinged" writing style, Antrim graduated with a degree in English from Brown University in 1981 before moving into a career in literary management, publishing, editing and copywriting. His first novel, Elect Mr. Robinson for a Better World, was published in 1993 by Viking/Penguin and excerpted in Harper's and Paris Review.

Antrim's second novel, The Hundred Brothers, was completed in 1996 and excerpted in The New Yorker later that year. After the publication of The Hundred Brothers, Antrim was lauded by Time magazine as one of "Fictions' New Fab Four." Antrim's latest novel, The Verificationist, was published by Knopf in February 2000.

Oliver Sacks to Speak on Creativity and the Brain

Chestertown, MD, February 7, 2001 — Oliver Sacks, neurologist and best-selling author ofThe Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, will speak on "Creativity and the Brain" Wednesday, March 21, 2001 at 4:30 p.m. in Washington College's Gibson Performing Arts Center, Tawes Theatre. A book signing in the Casey Academic Center Gallery will follow the presentation.

Sacks is best known for his explorations of the borderlands of neurological experience, examining the ways in which the whole person adapts to different neurological dysfunctions. His 1985 bestseller, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, brought his unique work to the public eye, with a collection of case histories that demonstrated the extremes of brain dysfunction and the human struggle to overcome psychological fate. Sacks' earlier work on the victims of an epidemic of sleeping sickness, Awakenings, became the inspiration for the 1990 Hollywood movie of the same name starring Robert De Niro and Robin Williams.

Born in London, Sacks obtained his medical degree from Oxford University in 1958. He moved to the United States in the early 1960s and has lived in New York City since 1965, where he is a clinical professor of neurology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and a consultant neurologist to the Little Sisters of the Poor and Beth Abraham Hospital. His recent books include An Anthropologist on Mars (Knopf, 1995) and The Island of the Colorblind (Knopf, 1996).

The presentation is part of the Second Annual Jesse Ball duPont Behavioral Neuroscience Speaker Series sponsored by the Jesse Ball duPont Fund, the Gibson-Wagner Fund, the Washington College Department of Psychology and the Washington College Chapter of the Sigma Xi Scientific Research Society. The event is free and open to the public.