Separating the Girls from the Boys—Author Explores How Consumer Culture Defines Identities

CHESTERTOWN, MD—Just who decided girls should wear pink, boys blue? In a talk at Washington College, author and scholar Jo Paoletti will share answers to that question and more. Based on research from her recently published book, Pink and Blue: Telling the Boys from the Girls in America, Paoletti’s presentation will examine how consumer culture—from cartoons to fashion—shapes and defines the sexes in the United States, and how changing concepts of sexual identity, in turn, shape the culture.

The talk, which is free and open to the public, will take place Wednesday, September 26, at 5 p.m. in Hynson Lounge of Hodson Hall on the Washington College campus, 300 Washington Avenue.  A reception with the author will follow. The event is sponsored by the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, the Department of History, the Gender Studies Program, and Phi Beta Kappa.  

Paoletti, an Associate Professor in the American Studies Department at the University of Maryland, holds degrees in apparel design and textiles and has tracked the changes in children’s clothing—and the meaning behind those changes—for three decades.  “It’s really a story of what happened to neutral clothing,” she explained in an article in Smithsonian in 2011, noting that both girls and boys once wore dainty white dresses up to age 6. “What was once a matter of practicality—you dress your baby in white dresses and diapers; white cotton can be bleached—became a matter of ‘Oh my God, if I dress my baby in the wrong thing, they’ll grow up perverted.’ ”

For more on the speaker: http://terpconnect.umd.edu/~jpaol/.

Scholar Presents Fresh, Intimate Look at the Drama Behind Lincoln's Decision to Free the Slaves

CHESTERTOWN, MD— This month marks the 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s announcing the Emancipation Proclamation. In a much-anticipated new book, historian Louis Masur chronicles the little-known political forces and behind-the-scenes intrigues that shaped – and nearly derailed – the most momentous decision that an American president has ever made.

Masur will share the little-known story of Lincoln’s backstage drama in a free public lecture Thursday, September 27, at Washington College. The talk will take place at 5:30 p.m. in Hynson Lounge on the main campus, 300 Washington Avenue, Chestertown, and will be followed by a book signing. It is sponsored by the College’s C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience.

Lincoln’s Hundred Days: The Emancipation Proclamation and the War for the Union has just been published by Harvard University Press. The book reveals the political, moral and personal concerns that plagued Abraham Lincoln in the 100 days between September 22, 1862, when he first presented a formal draft of the Emancipation Proclamation to his cabinet, and New Year’s Day 1863, when he signed a much-altered final version of the executive order.

“Masur takes a pivotal moment in time and opens it up like a master watchmaker, revealing the intricate, hidden mechanisms, the tensions and balances, concealed within that turning point of American history,” said Adam Goodheart, the Starr Center’s Hodson Trust-Griswold director. “Lincoln’s Hundred Days is a finely wrought and important book.”           

Masur, who is Professor of American Studies and History at Rutgers University, was previously the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor in American Institutions and Values at Trinity College. His earlier books have covered topics as diverse as capital punishment, baseball’s first World Series and Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run” album. Masur’s essays and reviews have appeared in the New York Times, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, and Los Angeles Times.

CBS Correspondent Chip Reid to Discuss Interplay of Politics, Religion and Culture April 13

CHESTERTOWN, MD—During a 24-year career in network television news, journalist Chip Reid, now National Correspondent for CBS News, has covered everything from wars and wildfires to political campaigns and the White House. On Friday evening, April 13, he will visit Washington College to share what his reporting has taught him about how politics, religion and culture mix in American life.

Hosted by the College’s Institute for Religion, Politics and Culture, Reid will speak at 4:30 p.m. in Hynson Lounge, Hodson Hall, on the College campus, 300 Washington Avenue. The event, titled “The Intersection of Politics, Religion and Culture: A Contemporary View,” is free and open to the public.

Reid has worked for three major networks (ABC, NBC and CBS) and two local news stations in Washington, D.C. (WJLA and WTTG) since switching careers from law to TV news in 1988. While with NBC, he covered 9/11, the war in Iraq and the war on terror. He reported from Ground Zero and spent seven weeks embedded with a unit of U.S. Marines entering Baghdad. He also covered Congress, including the Clinton impeachment, and the Gore-Bush presidential contest.

Since joining CBS in 2007, he has reported on John McCain’s campaign and served as Chief White House Correspondent covering the Obama Administration. He was named National Correspondent in June 2011.

A native of Wilmington, Reid graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a degree in psychology from Vassar College in 1977. He earned a master’s in Public Affairs from Princeton and a law degree from Columbia before moving to Washington, D.C. to practice law. He started his broadcast career as a field producer for ABC News.

Former Top Banking Executive Lance Weaver to Speak April 10 on Why Leadership Matters

CHESTERTOWN, MD—Lance Weaver, the former Vice Chairman of MBNA Corporation who oversaw Bank of America’s international and North American credit card operations before retiring in 2008, will speak April 10 at Washington College. His talk, on “Why Leadership Matters,” will take place at 5 p.m. in Hynson Lounge, Hodson Hall, on the College campus, 300 Washington Avenue.

Weaver’s retirement from Bank of America, which purchased MBNA in January 2006, capped a long career in the banking industry that also included stints at Wells Fargo, and Citibank and a decade on the Board of MasterCard.

As an executive vice chairman and the chief administrative officer of MBNA, he was instrumental in taking the corporation public in 1991 and growing it to employ 25,000 people worldwide. His responsibilities there included corporate affairs, law, government relations, real estate, facility management, personnel, security, compensation and benefits, career development, investor relations, media relations, and planning. Mr. Weaver also served as president of the MBNA Foundation and managed all the company’s community relations activities.

Today, he serves as a consultant to a wide range of companies including VISA, TSYS and The Kessler Group.

A graduate of Georgetown University, Mr. Weaver is a past member of that school’s Board of Directors and has also served as one of its Trustees. He also served as Board Chair of the Tower Hill School in Wilmington, Delaware, and recently taught an honors course in business ethics at University of Delaware.

Naval Academy's John Beckman to Explore the Social and Cultural Role of American Fun

CHESTERTOWN, MD— American history gives us one good brawl after another: Native Americans fighting Pilgrims; pirates bullying merchants; Patriots bloodying Redcoats’ noses; and scruffy young hotheads – from Kentucky backwoodsmen to Occupy Wall Street protesters – declaring war on elites that wanted them to fall into line.

In a February 13 presentation at Washington College, United States Naval Academy professor John Beckman will share a very different perspective on U.S. history by chronicling the ways that Americans have had fun – sometimes outrageous, even life-threatening fun. Sponsored by the C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience and co-sponsored by the Sophie Kerr Committee, Beckman’s talk, “American Fun,” is free and open to the public, and will begin at 5:00 pm in the college’s Hynson Lounge, Hodson Hall.

According to Beckman, shared fun has often brought adversaries into harmony and made even the scariest social differences exciting. To adapt Jefferson’s famous phrase, perhaps sharing “the pursuit of happiness” does more to hold society together than we know.

“While it’s often said that a joke explained cannot be funny, John Beckman’s take on history proves otherwise,” says Adam Goodheart, Hodson Trust-Griswold Director of the Starr Center. “In any case, this is sure to be a rollickingly fun event.”

John Beckman is an associate professor of English at the United States Naval Academy, and has taught novel-writing workshops at The Writer’s Center. His first novel, The Winter Zoo (Henry Holt), was a New York Times Notable Book of 2002. Kirkus Reviews praised the book as “potent and deeply disturbing…the work of a most ambitious and unquestionably gifted writer.” Beckman’s stories and essays have appeared in Book Magazine, McSweeney’s Quarterly, the Wallace Stevens Journal, and the Washington Post.

Vanderbilt Professor and Author to Explore Racial "Passing" in America Thursday, February 2

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CHESTERTOWN, MD— One of the most persistent of the myths that Americans tell themselves about race is that the line between black and white is a matter of genetics rather than choice. But new scholarship is chipping away at this assumption, revealing how men and women, and sometimes entire families, have consciously stepped across the color line.

In a February 2 presentation at Washington College, law professor and historian Daniel Sharfstein will delve into the dramatic stories of three black families who responded to times of great racial upheaval by seizing opportunities to reinvent themselves as white. Among the author’s astonishing discoveries is an antebellum Southern family that – after covertly crossing the line from black to white – became wealthy sugar planters, slaveholders, and ardent Confederates.

Sponsored by the C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience, Sharfstein’s talk, “The Invisible Line: A Secret History of Race in America,” is free and open to the public, and will begin at 5:00 pm in the college’s Hynson Lounge, Hodson Hall. A book signing will follow the presentation. The talk is co-sponsored by the Black Studies Program, the Office of Multicultural Affairs and the Institute for Religion, Politics, and Culture.

Sharfstein’s recent book, The Invisible Line: Three American Families and the Secret Journey from Black to White (Penguin, 2011), has been lauded far and wide as a masterpiece, a work that, in the words of writer Melissa Fay Greene, “overthrows nearly everything Americans thought they knew about race.”

Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Annette Gordon-Reed called The Invisible Line “a must read for all who are interested in the construction of race in the United States,” and the Boston Globe praised its “you-are-there” approach to history as “spellbinding.” The New York Times lauded Sharfstein’s “astonishingly detailed rendering of the variety and complexity of racial experience.’’

Sharfstein is an associate professor of law at Vanderbilt University. A graduate of Harvard College and Yale Law School, he has held fellowships from Harvard University, New York University, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. His articles and reviews have appeared in the Yale Law Journal, the New York Times, The Economist, the Washington Post, and other publications.

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Founded in 1782 under the patronage of George Washington, Washington College is a private, independent college of liberal arts and sciences located in colonial Chestertown on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. The College’s C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience is dedicated to fostering innovative approaches to the American past and present. Through educational programs, scholarship and public outreach, and a special focus on written history, the Starr Center seeks to bridge the divide between the academic world and the public at large. For more information on the Center, visit http://starrcenter.washcoll.edu.

Visiting Neuro-Economist to Explain What Really Motivates Our Financial Decisions

CHESTERTOWN, MD—As economic concerns and debt continue to dog the U.S., and European leaders work to avert financial catastrophes in their own countries, it seems more important than ever to understand just how people make monetary decisions—at home, in business, and in government. Are we even capable of reasonable decisions in the midst of so many temptations to misspend?

Economist Daniel Houser will offer some answers from the field of neuroeconomics when he delivers a talk titled “Temptation and Self-Control” on Tuesday, November 29 at Washington College. The talk, which is free and open to the public, will take place at 4:30 p.m. in Hynson Lounge, Hodson Hall, on the College campus (300 Washington Avenue).

“Temptation and the need for self-control are ubiquitous features of human lives, and can play an important role in the way we make economic decisions,” says Houser, Chair of the Department of Economics at George Mason University and a faculty member of its Center for the Study of Neuroeconomics. His talk will explore the ways temptation influences not only our purchases but also our productivity at work, and will discuss strategies for improved self-control.

The event is co-sponsored by the Washington College Department of Psychology, the Omicron Delta Epsilon International Honor Society in Economics, the Washington College Chapter of Sigma Xi and the Daniel Z. Gibson-John A Wagner Visitor Fund. For more information, http://www.washcoll.edu.

With "Big Girls Don't Cry," Author Examines 2008 Election from a Feminist Perspective

CHESTERTOWN, MD—In the fresh eyes of political observer Rebecca Traister, the presidential election of 2008 not only brought the first African American president in U.S. history into office, but also marked a sea change for women in American politics. Traister, author of Big Girls Don’t Cry: The Election that Changed Everything for American Women, will be at Washington College Tuesday, Nov. 15 to explain the how and why of the new landscape left in the wake of Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin and Michelle Obama after the last ballot was counted.

Traister’s talk, “Big Girls Don’t Cry: Women, Politics and the Media,” will take place at 5:30 in Hynson Lounge on the College campus, 300 Washington Avenue. Sponsored by the Louis L. Goldstein Program in Public Affairs, the event is free and open to the public.

On her web site (www.rebeccatraister.com), Traister recalls a few of the significant events that are chronicled more fully in her book: Hillary Clinton becoming the first woman in the nation’s history to win a state presidential primary; GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin concluding a nationally broadcast debate by reaching for her newborn son, and First Lady Michelle Obama moving her family into a White House built in part by slaves.

“These are not small things,” says Traister. “These are changes that have piled up fast, creating a world that our grandmothers could barely have dreamed of, that many of our mothers thought they’d never live to see.”

Big Girls Don’t Cry has been praised for revealing important new lessons from the 2008 election. Author Anne Lamott described Traister as “the most brilliant voice on feminism in this country, and said of the book, “I couldn't believe how much Ms. Traister captured and illuminated a story with which I had thought I was so well versed: the 2008 election. She told it as if for the first time.”

A reviewer for Publishers Weekly said Traister “bludgeons conventional political wisdom by trenchantly exposing Palin’s strange triangulation of mainstream feminism, Clinton’s need to appear vulnerable in order to appeal to women, and the precarious position of black women—some of whom were conflicted between supporting candidates who mirrored their gender or their race … Traister does a fine job in showing that progress does not proceed in straight lines, and, sometimes, it’s the unlikeliest of individuals who initiate real change.”

For more information on the event, visit http://www.washcoll.edu/.

Expert on Latin America Offers Outlook for Security Among “Guns, Gangs and Cartels”

CHESTERTOWN, MD—Howard J. Wiarda, one of the nation's most respected and influential scholars on Latin America and U.S. policy in the region, will speak Thursday, October 20 at Washington College on the topic of “Guns, Gangs and Cartels: Hemispheric Security in the New Millennium.” His talk will take place at 5 p.m. in Hynson Lounge, Hodson Hall, on the College campus, 300 Washington Avenue.

Presented by the Louis L. Goldstein ’35 Program in Public Affairs, the event is free and open to the public.

Wiarda is the Dean Rusk Professor of International Relations at the University of Georgia and founding head of the university’s Department of International Affairs. He also serves as a senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a senior scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center. For nearly a quarter century he has divided his time among the academic, policy, and think-tank worlds. Among his many prestigious posts, he has been visiting scholar/research associate at the Center for International Affairs at Harvard University; founding director of the Center for Hemispheric Studies at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research; course chairman at the Foreign Service Institute of the Department of State; lead consultant to the National Bipartisan (Kissinger) Commission on Central America; and Thornton D. Hooper Fellow in International Security Affairs at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.

A prolific author, Wiarda has written or edited more than 70 books, including American Foreign Policy (HarperCollins, 1996), Development on the Periphery (Rowman & Littlefield, 2006), European Politics in the Age of Globalization (Harcourt, 2001), Latin American Politics and Development, (6th ed., Westview, 2006), and Political Development in Emerging Nations (Wadsworth, 2004). He also is the author of more than 300 articles, book chapters, op-eds, and congressional testimonies. A graduate of the University of Michigan, he holds M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Florida and an M.S. degree from the National Defense University.

For more information visit www.washcoll.edu.

Indonesian Scholar to Discuss the State of Islam and Democracy in his Nation, September 21

CHESTERTOWN, MD — A professor of international relations from Indonesia will share his thoughts about religion and democracy in his country on Wednesday, September 21 at Washington College. The lecture by Dr. Mohammad Mohtar Masoed, titled "Islam, Democracy and Indonesia," will take place at 7:30 p.m. in Hynson Lounge on the College campus, 300 Washington Avenue. It is free and open to the public.
With approximately 240.3 million people, Indonesia is the world's fourth-most populous nation and home to the world's largest Muslim population. The Indonesian government is organized as a democratic republic and provides constitutional guarantees of religious freedom for the six religions it recognizes: Islam (86.1 percent of the population), Protestantism (5.7 percent), Catholicism (3 percent), Hinduism (1.8 percent), Buddhism (about 1 percent), and Confucianism (less than percent).
Dr. Masoed teaches at Gadja Mada University, Indonesia's largest and oldest university, located in the province of Yogyyakarte—the center of Javanese culture and learning. He is Director of the University's Center for Peace and Security Studies. Since 2004, he has served on the board of directors of "Indonesian Community for Democracy," an organization that runs one-year "Democracy Schools" in eight provinces throughout Indonesia to help young political activists prepare for leadership in a multi-party democracy. Earlier this year, he organized the "School-Based Conflict Management" to teach high school students how to deal with social problems and to help eliminate the root causes of religious fundamentalism.
Dr. Masoed earned his B.A. in International Relations from Gadjah Mada University in 1975, and earned both a master's and a doctorate in political science from Ohio State University. He has authored or co-authored numerous books and written dozens of articles on political and economic issues for professional journals and conferences.
He will spend a week in Chestertown visiting classes and meeting with students as a guest of the College's Institute for Religion Politics and Culture (IRPC) and its Program in Islamic, Turkish and Near Eastern Studies.
In mid October, as part of the same program, the IRPC will sponsor a "Conference on the Arab Spring" in Paris, bringing experts from eight international universities to the French capital to discuss such issues as the roles played by women and social media in the uprisings and the cooperative actions of Muslims and non-Muslims. And on October 24, former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf will visit the Washington College campus and deliver a talk. For more information: http://irpc.washcoll.edu/

John Barth Reading to Open Book Festival

CHESTERTOWN, MD—Acclaimed novelist John Barth kicks off the third annual Chestertown Book Festival on Friday, Sept. 9, at 7 p.m. at Washington College with a reading from his new manu­script, Every Third Thought: A Novel in Five Seasons, from Counterpoint Press. The reading will take place in Hynson Lounge, on the College campus (300 Washington Avenue), with a reception and book signing to follow.

Sponsored by the College's Rose O’Neill Literary House and The Chestertown Book Festival, the reading is free and open to the public. For more information: http://www.chestertownbookfestival.com/, and http://lithouse.washcoll.edu/.

Social Historian Coontz Revisits and Updates The Feminine Mystique in Sept. 13 Visit to Campus

CHESTERTOWN, MD—Would Don and Betty Draper’s marriage have had a better chance today than in the decidedly unliberated 1960s depicted in the hit TV series Mad Men? The nation’s preeminent expert on the state of marital bliss in America, social historian Stephanie Coontz, will be on the Washington College campus Tuesday, September 13 to argue an emphatic “Yes.” A fan of Mad Men, Coontz recommends it as “a much-needed lesson on the devastating costs of a way of life that still evokes misplaced nostalgia.”

In a talk titled “Mad Men, Working Girls, and Desperate Housewives: Women, Men, and Marriage in the Early 1960s,” Coontz will discuss why social changes since the 60s have been good for families and good for the institution of marriage. Her presentation will begin at 5:30 p.m. in Hynson Lounge, inside Hodson Hall on the College campus, 300 Washington Avenue. A book signing will follow.

Coontz’s recently published A Strange Stirring: The Feminine Mystique and American Women at the Dawn of the 1960s (Basic Books, 2011) pulls author Betty Friedan “down from heaven and up from hell,” in the words of the New York Times, challenging both conservative and liberal myths about the impact of her controversial book The Feminine Mystique. Described as “an inventive biography of a book,” A Strange Stirring is based on interviews with some 200 men and women (mostly women) who read Friedan's book when it was first published in 1963, and found their lives changed in response. Dubbed “better than the original” by the Huffington Post, Coontz’s book reveals how a generation of women came to realize their dissatisfaction with domestic life reflected not a personal inadequacy but rather a social and political injustice.

In addition, Coontz examines women’s changing status from the 1920s through the 1950s, compares the dilemmas of working-class and middle-class women, white and black, in the early 1960s, and illuminates the new mystiques and new possibilities facing men and women today. “We still haven’t fully figured out how to combine a loving family life with a rewarding work life,” Coontz writes in A Strange Stirring. “But The Feminine Mystique reminds us of the price women pay when we retreat from trying to resolve these dilemmas or fail to involve men in our attempts.”

Coontz, who teaches history and family studies at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wa., has devoted her career to the study of gender relations, families, and child development. She is Co-Chair and Director of Public Education at the nonpartisan Council on Contemporary Families, which is based at the University of Illinois, Chicago, and has testified about her research before the House Select Committee on Children, Youth and Families. Her previous book, Marriage: A History (Viking), was named one of the best books of 2005 by the Washington Post.

A former “marriage consultant” to Ladies Home Journal, she also has written for countless other publications, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Salon, the Washington Post, and Newsweek. Recent national TV and radio appearances include interviews on NPR’s “Fresh Air”, C-SPAN, Oprah, the Today Show, and The Colbert Report.

Coontz’s talk is cosponsored by the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Department of History, Gender Studies Program, C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience, and the William James Forum. For more information, visit www.washcoll.edu.