Former Bulgarian Prime Minister Recalls Fall of Communism In Washington College Lecture

CHESTERTOWN – The Honorable Philip Dimitrov looms large in the modern history of Eastern Europe: He led the Bulgarian reform movement while his country was still under Communist rule, and subsequently became the first post-Communism Prime Minister of Bulgaria.

Former Prime Minister Dimitrov will recount those turbulent times when he presents “Religion and the Transition from Communism in Bulgaria and Eastern Europe” at Washington College’s Litrenta Lecture Hall on Monday, November 23, at 7 p.m.

The event is sponsored by the Goldstein Program in Public Affairs and its Institute for Religion, Politics, and Culture.

As the winds of change began sweeping over Europe’s Communist bloc countries in the waning years of the Cold War, Dimitrov was active in the Union of Democratic Forces (UDF), a broad coalition against continued rule by the Bulgarian Communist Party.

After the demise of the single-party Bulgarian Communist state in 1990, Dimitrov became Prime Minister of Bulgaria in 1991. During his term, the new government managed to make nascent democratic institutions work and started an ambitious set of political and economic reforms.

Under Dimitrov’s administration, observance of human rights became an irrevocable legal and ethical norm, and previous ethnic tensions and abuses were eliminated. Foreign policy focused on integration into Europe and the West.

The Institute for Religion, Politics, and Culture explores the role of religious belief in public life and is a vital part of the Louis L. Goldstein Program in Public Affairs, which was established in 1990 to encourage students to enter public service by introducing them to exemplary leaders, both in and out of government. The Goldstein Program has hosted journalists, political activists, foreign policy analysts, diplomats, military commanders and government officials of both national and international stature.

The Goldstein Program and the Institute sponsor lectures, symposia, visiting fellows, student participation in models and conferences, and other projects that bring students and faculty together with leaders experienced in developing public policy.

Litrenta Lecture Hall is located in the John S. Toll Science Center. Admission to “Religion and the Transition from Communism in Bulgaria and Eastern Europe” is free and open to the public.

Washington College Department Of Drama Presents 'Troy Women'

Karen Hartman play is adapted from Euripides’ ‘Trojan Women’

CHESTERTOWN – The Washington College Department of Drama will present “Troy Women,” Karen Hartman’s modern adaptation of Euripides’ “The Trojan Women,” at the Tawes Theatre on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, November 19-21, at 8 p.m.

A bold new take on Euripides’ 415 B.C. classic about the horrible costs of war, “Troy Women” deals with themes as resonant today as they were in the midst of the Peloponnesian War, when Euripides’ tragedy debuted.

The story of the fallen royalty of Troy is offset and illuminated by the chorus: five distinct women whose voices become increasingly unified as the tragedy mounts.

Hecuba and the women of Troy mourn and celebrate their city on the morning after its destruction. Together, they grieve the deaths of their husbands and children as they await their fates at the hands of their Greek captors.

With modern elements adapted into Euripides’ classic, Hartman’s “Troy Women” adaptation is a chilling, brutal, but accessible portrait of women during war.

Directed by Professor of Drama Tim Maloney, who appears in the play as Poseidon, the Washington College production of “Troy Women” also features Alyssa Velazquez as Athena, Polly Sommerfeld as Hecuba, David Smaus as Talthybius, Katie Muldowney as Cassandra, Maggie Kobik as Andromache, Joe Rittenhouse as Menelaus, and Emmy Landskroener as Helen.

Also appearing as women of Troy are Maggie Farrell, Marta Wesenberg, Alexi Lemper, Brittany Rankin and Connie Carpenter. The Greek soldiers are played by John Lesser, Kevin Lemos and Jim Lyons.

Tawes Theatre is located in the new Daniel Z. Gibson Center for the Arts. Admission to “Troy Women” is $3 for students, $5 general admission; for reservations and more information, call 410/778-7835 or e-mail drama_tickets@washcoll.edu.

College Calls For Nominations For President's Medal And Distinguished Service Awards

Deadline for Nominations December 2, 2009

CHESTERTOWN, MD, NOV. 12 – Baird Tipson, President of Washington College, today called for nominations for the annual President’s Medal and the President’s Distinguished Service Awards—to recognize employees, as well as community members and organizations, for meritorious service to Washington College and/or Chestertown and the greater Kent County community.

The College is accepting nominations until December 2, 2009. The award recipients will be honored at the College’s George Washington’s Birthday Convocation on February 19, 2010.

The President's Medal recognizes the accomplishments of an individual or an organization that has made significant contributions to the advancement of Washington College and/or the region. Previous recipients include: Richard Miller, Leslie Raymond, Ruth Briscoe, Nancy Dick, Chris Havemeyer, Jim Siemen, the Chestertown Volunteer Fire Department, the Kent Family Center, Tracey Davenport and Summer Days Math & Science Camp for Girls.

The President’s Distinguished Service Awards recognize exceptional performance, leadership, and service by faculty and staff of Washington College. Last year’s recipients were: Vickie Anderson, Billie Dodge and Shirley Dorsey.

Nominations will be reviewed and evaluated by the President’s Awards Advisory Committee. Complete nomination information and criteria for the 2010 awards are available online at president.washcoll.edu.

Nomination Rules & Criteria

Individuals may be nominated in either or both award categories. Nominees will be considered for an award only in the category for which they have been nominated. Individuals serving on the Awards Advisory Committee are not eligible for nomination. Nominations in both categories are due by December 2, 2009. Nominations should include a cover sheet with the following information: (1) the name of the nominee; (2) the award for which the individual or organization is being nominated; and (3) the name of the nominator.

The President’s Medal

The recipient of the President’s Medal will be an individual or organization with an exemplary record of sustained and acknowledged contribution to the quality of life in Chestertown, Kent County, and/or at Washington College. The candidate's career or organization’s work should be distinguished by a dedication to the fulfillment of the ideals represented in the Washington College Mission Statement and by service to their fellow human beings. Particular emphasis will be placed on contributions that have had a wide-ranging positive influence on Chestertown and the Washington College community.

Eligibility: Any individual or organization may be nominated for the President's Medal. A nominee should have at least five years of demonstrated service.

Nomination Materials: A letter of nomination should be submitted, clearly indicating why the individual or organization should be so honored and how the individual or organization exemplifies the criteria for this award. A résumé, curriculum vitae, or brief background sketch of the nominee should accompany the nomination letter. At least two, but no more than three, seconding letters of nomination may accompany the nomination or may be sent under separate cover. In subsequent years, nominations submitted in the past two years will automatically be reconsidered; however, updated information is encouraged.

President’s Distinguished Service Awards

The President’s Distinguished Service Awards recognize exceptional performance, leadership, and service by an employee of Washington College. The recipient of this award will have a record of exemplary performance and distinctive contributions to the operation of an administrative, academic, research, or service unit on campus. He or she will have clearly demonstrated initiative toward the improvement of the College’s programs or campus activities and will have shown commitment to the campus community as a whole.

Eligibility: Any member of the faculty or staff who has been employed by Washington College for at least five years (in any of one or more capacities) may be nominated for a President’s Distinguished Service Award. No more than five awards will be given annually. The awards will be distributed equitably between salaried and hourly employees.

Nomination Materials: A letter of nomination should be submitted, clearly indicating why this individual should be so honored and how the individual exemplifies the criteria for this award. A résumé, curriculum vitae, or brief biographical sketch of the nominee should accompany the nomination letter. At least two, but no more than three, seconding letters of nomination may accompany the nomination or may be sent under separate cover. In subsequent years, nominations submitted in the past two years will automatically be reconsidered; however, updated information is encouraged.

Deadline for Nominations: The deadline for the receipt of nominations and supporting materials for both the President’s Medal and President’s Distinguished Service Awards is December 2, 2009. Nominations or supporting materials received after that date will not be considered.

Nominations should be sent to President’s Awards Advisory Committee, c/o President’s Office, Washington College, 300 Washington Avenue, Chestertown, MD 21620.

Poet Leslie Harrison To Present Reading At Washington College

CHESTERTOWN – Award-winning poet Leslie Harrison will present a reading at Washington College’s Rose O’Neill Literary House on Thursday, November 19, at 4:30 p.m.

Harrison’s "Displacement" was the 2008 Katherine Nason Bakeless winner in poetry from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. The work was published by Mariner Books, an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, in July 2009.

Harrison also has had poems and prose published in Poetry, Southwest Review, The New Republic, Barn Owl Review, Gulf Coast and elsewhere.

She holds graduate degrees from the Johns Hopkins University and the University of California, Irvine, where she completed her MFA in 2006. She has been a Tennessee Williams Scholar at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and a fellow at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference.

Harrison’s reading at Washington College is presented by the Sophie Kerr Committee. Admission is free and open to the public.

Scholar Explores Emerson, Photography in Rose O'Neill Literary House Talk

CHESTERTOWN – Sean Meehan, Assistant Professor of English at Washington College, will present “‘This is a Fragment of Me’: Emerson and the Poetics of Metonymy” at the Rose O’Neill Literary House on Tuesday, November 17, at 4 p.m.

Dr. Meehan began his scholarly focus on the American writer Ralph Waldo Emerson with a dissertation on photography in 19th-century American autobiography, completed at the University of Iowa.

Dr. Meehan recently published a book based on that dissertation, Mediating American Autobiography: Photography in Emerson, Thoreau, Douglass, and Whitman. His upcoming lecture on Emerson and metonymy is part of his current work-in-progress, a study of Emerson’s engagement with the practice and theory of education and an exploration of Emersonian ways of learning both from the past and for the future.

Dr. Meehan was awarded the Ralph Waldo Emerson Memorial Association Fellowship for 2005-2006 from Houghton Library, Harvard University. He published an article based on research he did at Houghton in Emerson Society Papers (2006), “Living Learning: Lessons from Emerson’s School.”

In addition to teaching the courses “Emerson and Whitman” and “American Environmental Writing,” Dr. Meehan teaches “Literature and Composition” and is the Director of Writing for Washington College.

Dr. Meehan’s presentation is part of the Rose O’Neill Literary House’s recently relaunched “Tea and Talk” series, which highlights the work of authors and scholars on the faculty and staff of Washington College.

The series will continue in Spring 2010 with presentations by Associate Professor of Political Science and International Studies Christine Wade, Assistant Professor of Drama Michele Volansky, and Vassar College Professor Emeritus of History (and Washington College Trustee) Benjamin Kohl.

Admission to “‘This is a Fragment of Me’: Emerson and the Poetics of Metonymy” is free and open to the public. For more information, call 410/778-7899 or visit lithouse.washcoll.edu.

Whitbeck, Washington College Alumnus-Turned-TV Correspondent, Presents 'Amazing Race: Latin America'

CHESTERTOWN – Harris Whitbeck, a member of Washington College’s Class of 1987 and now the host of a popular TV program, will give a presentation on his show, “The Amazing Race on the Discovery Channel: Latin America,” at Washington College’s Litrenta Lecture Hall on Thursday, November 12, at 7:30 p.m.

The event is sponsored by the Goldstein Program in Public Affairs.

“The Amazing Race on the Discovery Channel: Latin America” is a reality television game show produced by the Discovery Channel in association with Disney.

The program features 11 teams of two in a race across Latin America to win $250,000.

Prior to his current television assignment, Whitbeck was an international correspondent for CNN.

The Louis L. Goldstein Program in Public Affairs was established in 1990 to encourage students to enter public service by introducing them to exemplary leaders, both in and out of government. The Goldstein Program has hosted journalists, political activists, foreign policy analysts, diplomats, military commanders and government officials of both national and international stature.

The Goldstein Program sponsors lectures, symposia, visiting fellows, student participation in models and conferences, and other projects that bring students and faculty together with leaders experienced in developing public policy.

Litrenta Lecture Hall is located in the John S. Toll Science Center. Admission to “The Amazing Race on the Discovery Channel: Latin America” is free and open to the public.

Award-Winning Novelist Debra Spark To Present Reading At Washington College

CHESTERTOWN – Award-winning novelist Debra Spark will read from her fiction at Washington College’s Sophie Kerr Room on Thursday, November 12, at 4:30 p.m.

Spark is the author of the novels Coconuts for the Saint and The Ghost of Bridgetown and editor of the anthology Twenty Under Thirty: Best Stories by America’s New Young Writers.

Spark’s thoughts on the craft of writing have been collected in Curious Attractions: Essays on Fiction Writing.

Her short fiction, essays, articles and book reviews have appeared in Esquire, Ploughshares, Epoch, Agni, Gingko Tree Review, narrativemagazine.com, The New York Times, New England Travel and Life, Food and Wine, Yankee, Down East, The Washington Post and The San Francisco Chronicle, among other places.

She has been the recipient of several awards including a Pushcart Prize and the John Zacharis/Ploughshares Award for Best First Book.

Spark currently teaches at Colby College and in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. Her latest novel, Good for the Jews, has been published this fall by University of Michigan Press.

The Sophie Kerr Room is located in Miller Library. Admission to the reading is free and open to the public.

Civil Rights Activist Charlie Cobb, Jr. Visits Washington College

CHESTERTOWN – Renowned journalist, activist and author Charles E. Cobb, Jr., a guiding force in the 1960s struggle for civil rights, visited Washington College on Tuesday, November 3rd to present a talk titled “From Freedom Summer to Barack Obama” at the college’s Casey Academic Center Forum.

Cobb’s lecture and book signing was sponsored by the C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience, the Black Studies Program, and the Office of Multicultural Affairs.

Now renowned as a distinguished and award-winning journalist, Cobb spent his early years on the frontline of the Civil Rights Movement. From 1962 to 1967 he worked as a field secretary for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in the Mississippi Delta and was a major architect of the Freedom School program that became a crucial part of the famous 1964 Freedom Summer.

Mr. Cobb is the author of On the Road to Freedom: A Guided Tour of the Civil Rights Trail (Algonquin Books, 2008), a firsthand account of the movement told through in-depth exploration of the churches, courthouses, and public squares in which activists challenged centuries of racial discrimination.

A founding member of the National Association of Black Journalists, Cobb began his journalism career in 1974 as a reporter for WHUR Radio in Washington, D.C. In 1976 he joined the staff of National Public Radio as a foreign affairs reporter, bringing to that network its first regular coverage of Africa.

In 2008 the National Association of Black Journalists honored Cobb’s work by inducting him into their Hall of Fame. View “From Freedom Summer to Barack Obama” event photos.

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About the Starr Center
The C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience explores our nation’s history – and particularly the legacy of its Founding era – in innovative ways. Through educational programs, scholarship, and public outreach, and especially by supporting and fostering the art of written history, the Starr Center seeks to bridge the divide between past and present, and between the academic world and the public at large. From its base in the circa-1746 Custom House along Chestertown’s colonial waterfront, the Center also serves as a portal onto a world of opportunities for Washington College students. Its guiding principle is that now more than ever, a wider understanding of our shared past is fundamental to the continuing success of America’s democratic experiment. For more information on the Center, visit http://starrcenter.washcoll.edu.

Former NEH Chair Bruce Cole To Speak At Washington College

Chestertown – Bruce Cole, former chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and current president and CEO of the American Revolution Center, gave a presentation at Washington College’s Casey Academic Center Forum on Monday, November 9, at 5 p.m.

In his talk, “My Provenance: From Aunt Gertrude to Sydney Freedberg,” Cole related his experiences as a lifelong devotee of Renaissance art and his work as the head of the NEH. The retrospective narrative touched on the influences, experiences and exposure to art that shaped Cole’s sensibilities from an early age. The mentors who cultivated his passion for art – from his aunt during his boyhood years to the great Renaissance art historian Sydney Freedberg during years of academic training – are recalled with fondness and gratitude.

Cole is one of America’s preeminent Renaissance art scholars. For two years he was the William E. Suida Fellow at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence. He is a corresponding member of the Accademia Senese degli Intronati, the oldest learned society in Europe, and a founder and former co-president of the Association for Art History.

As chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, Cole launched “We the People,” an initiative to encourage the teaching, study and understanding of American history and culture. Under Cole’s leadership the NEH's budget increased for research, preservation, education and public programs on American history and culture and for the study of culture in other lands and in earlier civilizations.

Cole came to the Endowment in December 2001 from Indiana University in Bloomington, where he was Distinguished Professor of Art History and Professor of Comparative Literature. Appointed by President George W. Bush, Cole was chosen for a second term in 2005, a reappointment unanimously approved by the U.S. Senate.

In November 2008 President Bush awarded Cole the Presidential Citizens Medal “for his work to strengthen our national memory and ensure that our country’s heritage is passed on to future generations.”

The medal is one of the highest honors the President can confer upon a civilian, second only to the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Earlier in 2008, Cole was decorated Knight of the Grand Cross, the highest honor of the Republic of Italy.

In 2009 Cole became president and CEO of the American Revolution Center, which will have its headquarters in Philadelphia near Independence Hall. The American Revolution Center will establish the first national museum to commemorate the entire story of the American Revolution and its enduring legacy. The Center’s museum will display a distinguished collection of objects, artifacts and manuscripts from the American Revolution era, and will offer programming, lectures, symposia and interactive learning for teachers, students and the general public.

Cole’s appearance at Washington College is co-sponsored by the C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience, the Friends of the Miller Library, the Department of Art and Art History, and the Washington College Academy of Lifelong Learning.

Admission to “My Provenance: From Aunt Gertrude to Sydney Freedberg” is free and open to the public.

Prof. John Conkling Profiled in Washington Post

WC's own John Conkling is one of four professors profiled in the cover story of this week's Washington Post Magazine. You can read the article at this link:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/23/AR2009102302137.html

Congratulations, Dr. Conkling!

Poet Taije Silverman Presents Reading At Washington College

Chestertown – Award-winning poet Taije Silverman will present a reading at Washington College’s Rose O’Neill Literary House on Wednesday, November 11, at 4:30 p.m.

Taije Silverman’s poems have appeared in Poetry, Shenandoah, Ploughshares, Five Points, Massachusetts Review, Prairie Schooner and other journals. The recipient of the 2005–2007 Emory University Creative Writing Fellowship, as well as residencies from the MacDowell Colony and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, she is now Assistant Visiting Professor at Ursinus College, outside of Philadelphia.

Silverman’s first collection of poems, Houses Are Fields, was published by LSU Press in 2009, and selected as the debut book in the Sea Cliff Series. Thrice nominated for the Pushchart Prize, she has received the Anais Nin Award from the Academy of American Poets.

Silverman’s reading at Washington College is presented by the Sophie Kerr Committee. Admission is free and open to the public.

WC's Bryan Matthews on "Retention Matters" in Inside Higher Ed

WC's Bryan Matthews has a great op-ed piece, "Retention Matters," published in "Inside Higher Ed." You can read it at this link:

http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2009/11/02/matthews

Congratulations, Dr. Matthews!