Kalamazoo College faculty members Binney Girdler and James Lewis have been promoted from associate professors to full professors.
Biology Professor Binney Girdler is one of two faculty members being promoted from associate professor to full professor.
Girdler, a biology professor, focuses her research on studying the structure and dynamics of terrestrial plant communities such as shoreline communities, grasslands and forests. She’s also interested in applied conservation biology, and develops relationships with area natural resource agencies and non-profit conservation groups to match her expertise and students with their research needs.
Girdler is a member of the Ecological Society of America and the Society for Conservation Biology. She has taught courses in environmental science, ecology and conservation, plant biology, population and community ecology, and senior seminars in environmental studies. She earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Virginia, a master’s degree from Yale University and a Ph.D. from Princeton University.
Lewis, a history professor, has taught courses in U.S. history, Native American history, American environmental history, Revolutionary America, the American frontier and Western history, the history of U.S. foreign relations, post-World War II America, American political culture, the trial in American history and a senior seminar in history. Lewis is a professional member of the American Historical Association, the Organization of American Historians and the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic. He has written books including:
History Professor James Lewis is one of two faculty members being promoted from associate professor to full professor.
“The Louisiana Purchase: Jefferson’s Noble Bargain?” (2003);
“John Quincy Adams: Policymaker for the Union” (2001);
“The American Union and the Problem of Neighborhood: The United States and the Collapse of the Spanish Empire, 1783-1829” (1998); and
“The Burr Conspiracy: Uncovering the Story of an Early American Crisis” due out this fall.
Lewis earned a bachelor’s degree in government and foreign affairs from the College of William and Mary, a master’s degree in history from the American University, and a Ph.D. in history from the University of Virginia.
“Both Dr. Girdler and Lewis are respected teachers and scholars in the best tradition of the liberal arts and sciences,” Kalamazoo College Provost Mickey McDonald said of the faculty members promoted. “This promotion recognizes their sustained excellence and the impact they have had and will continue to have on Kalamazoo College and our students.”
Can there be a better metonym for — or higher measure of — the virtues of courage and love than the word immigrant? It is a question posed by the new Upjohn Library Commons exhibit titled “Immigrants and International Students at Kalamazoo College.” That history is a long one at K, beginning in the 1860s and continuing today. College Archivist Lisa Murphy ’98 is responsible for the library’s main-floor displays, which she alters term to term. And hers was the idea for this spring’s. However, the execution — including the research, writing, design and installation, was accomplished by senior political science major Shelby Long. Long has worked in the College’s archives for three years doing multiple tasks but never, until now, a museum-quality exhibit. “I wanted to be sure she had that opportunity,” says Murphy, who admits she will sorely miss her colleague after June’s commencement. “Shelby did a wonderful job on this timely display.” Preparation and installation required a month, and the most difficult task was choosing the few students (from many possibilities) that the display would feature.
Among Long’s favorites is Nagai Kafu, who attended K in 1904-05. “He became one of the most prominent writers in Japan in the 1920s and ’30s,” said Long, “described by some as Japan’s Ernest Hemingway. Fans of his work still visit the house on Elm Street where he lived when he studied at K.” Asked what strikes her most about K’s immigrant and international students, Long says: “All their remarkable accomplishments after they left, in the U.S. and in their home countries.
Sam Song Bo
Those countries (in addition to Japan) included Burma, Poland, Latvia, Nigeria, Kenya, Iceland, Iran and China. Sam Song Bo left China to attend college in the United States (first McMinnville College in Oregon, then K in 1881-82). He decried the discrimination Chinese immigrants endured in the United States, writing about that injustice some dozen years after Chinese workers helped complete the building of the transcontinental railroad. One of the earliest immigrant students to attend K (although one could consider all Americans immigrants) was Martha den Bleyker, class of 1863. At the age of nine she and her family arrived in Kalamazoo from the Netherlands. They were soon thereafter quarantined from cholera in a shack outside the city limits. All but one brother recovered from the disease. Martha’s father went on to establish Kalamazoo as a premier celery growing region.
Martha den Bleyker
Martha was an anomaly in that most 19th-century immigrant students at K were men. That began to change after World War II. One example is Hilda Arzangoolian who traveled from Iran to study chemistry and mathematics at K in 1946-47. She spoke six languages and had studied English a mere six months before arriving at K. In addition to her academic pursuits, she played excellent tennis for the College’s team. You can learn more about the history of K’s immigrant and international students by traveling no further than the first floor of Upjohn Library Commons. Shelby Long remains very interested in archival work, and plans to earn to Master in Library Science degree. Lisa Murphy will be seeking a student to take Long’s place. “It’s wonderful work,” says Long. Interested students should write to Murphy at archives@kzoo.edu.
PBS will premiere Van Gogh’s Ear on Wednesday, December 14, (check local listings) and, if you watch, see if you can find David Kessler ’70. The documentary is based on a recent book by Bernadette Murphy, which reveals much that was unknown or contested about the life of the famous painter. Among those mysteries: the accurate story behind the self-mutilation of his ear. What did van Gogh really do on the fateful night of December 23, 1888, in the town of Arles in southern France?
Murphy, an independent researcher living in Provence, had long been intrigued by van Gogh’s story and spent seven years piecing together a meticulous picture of his life in Arles (1888-89); person by person, house by house, exploring closely his friends and his enemies. Her detective work uncovered definitive long-lost evidence, the key document of which she found with the help of David Kessler in the University of California-Berkeley’s Bancroft Library, where David works.
The show, part of PBS’s Secrets of the Dead series, will reveal exactly what happened the night of December 23, who was involved and how it ultimately shaped van Gogh’s remarkable art. It provides answers to the mystery that has divided art historians for decades and reveals the artist’s roller coaster of emotions and his mental health, placing his actions in proper context for the first time. In the San Francisco Bay area, the show will be air on KQED at 10 p.m.. “I hope you get a chance to watch,” said David. “I’m hoping I manage to stay up that late myself!”
Nora Naranjo Morse will deliver the annual Phi Beta Kappa lecture at Kalamazoo College on Tuesday, October 11, at 8 p.m. in the Mandelle Hall Olmsted Room. The event is free and open to the public. Morse Morse is a sculptor, writer, and producer of video films that look at the continuing social changes within Pueblo Indian culture. Her talk, “Numbe Wahgeh,” focuses on the historical treatment of the Pueblo people and history retold by indigenous peoples.
An artist best known for her work with clay and organic materials, she has been trained in the Pueblo clay work tradition of the Southwest. Her installation exhibits and large-scale public art speak to environmental, cultural, and social practice issues. Beyond New Mexico, her work can be seen at the Heard Museum in Phoenix, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, Washington, D.C.
She studied at the College of Santa Fe, where she received her B.A. degree in 1980, and is the recipient of an honorary degree from Skidmore College. In 2014 Naranjo Morse was awarded a Native Arts and Cultures Foundation Artist fellowship. She is the author of two books: a poetry collection, Mud Woman: Poems from the Clay, and a children’s book, Kaa Povi.
Morse will spend two days on K’s campus. In addition to her public lecture she will visit four classes and meet with various faculty and students.
Noriko Sugimori (left) and senior Christa Scheck, who is majoring in studio art and earning a minor in Japanese
Assistant Professor of Japanese Noriko Sugimori will use a three-year grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to contribute her research to the Oral History in the Liberal Arts (OHLA), a project of the Great Lakes Colleges Association (GLCA). In a collaboration that also involves the Japanese department at Albion College, Sugimori and her K students are producing the world’s first bilingual (Japanese and English) synchronizations of interviews Sugimori conducted that focus on the World War II memories of various Japanese individuals.
The origins of those interviews trace back to Sugimori’s doctoral work. She researched the relationship between imperial honorifics and the concept of lèse-majesté (the crime of violating the dignity of a reigning sovereign or state) in Japan prior and during World War II. For that work she talked with several score of Japanese civilians born before 1932. The interviews were powerful, and the people with whom she spoke often deeply wanted to share their stories.
After completing her doctorate Sugimori began an oral history project that focused on war memories. Audiotaping was the cutting edge technology when Sugimori first starting interviewing subjects. Later she adopted digital videotaping. And in 2010 she became aware of Oral History Metadata Synchronizer technology, which provides a platform to show simultaneous English translation of video recordings in Japanese.
“That changed everything,” said Sugimori. “I am videotaping people who were teenagers during the war who are giving untold accounts of their experiences. These tapes can convey a whole different message to future generations about the war, and this is considered a unique contribution to the linguistics field.”
The videos and simultaneous translations have pedagogical implications for K students of Japanese. “They get to see the interviewee’s facial expressions,” said Sugimori, “which provide much more information about what is being said in a cultural context. This goes way beyond trying to learn the language from only grammar exercises.”
Because simultaneous translation allows for a more flesh-and-blood and nuanced entry into a recorded interview, students gain a more comprehensive understanding of history. “Students learn much more than political history,” said Sugimori. “They also see, as well as hear, how people were affected by the political actors.”
Today, digital technologies are making oral histories very popular among the general public. Sugimori and K students are among the pioneers helping to make that happen.
Kierra Verdun ’18 (right) with her Historypin supervisor, Kerri Young, at the National World War I Museum (Kansas City, Mo.)
History major Kierra Verdun ’18 wasn’t planning on completing an internship this summer, but after speaking to her professor, Janelle Werner, the Marlene Crandell Francis Assistant Professor of History, about her post-grad plans, Kierra decided she needed some experience in digital history.
She found her opportunity to gain this experience at Historypin, an organization that promotes communities to digitally share their local history. “Historypin taps into ‘knowledge communities,’ which are communities that already have this local knowledge,” she says. “[The goal] is to put value into what they are already doing [and]… to bridge the gap between communities and the digital world.”
This summer Kierra has used primary sources from the National Archives to create an online archive on Historypin. She has also been involved in creating a World War I app that teachers and educators can use as a tool for finding and presenting digital archives in the classroom. Kierra recently attended a conference at the National World War I Museum in Kansas City, Mo., to present the app. “We did demos with the teachers and then reported back to developers with teachers’ comments and suggestions,” she says. The conference was a collaboration between the National Archives and the National Word War I Museum.
“History should be more accessible,” says Kierra. “That’s why I like Historypin. It’s presenting histories that are not often represented.” Her internship at Historypin has made her more confident in her ability to research and contribute, and she has also learned how digital history relates to community engagement. “I better understand what ‘public history’ is, and how it relates to community engagement and social justice,” she says. “Historypin has given me the tools to know how to get at the intersection of public history and social justice.”
Kierra will study abroad in Thailand this fall. After graduating from K, she hopes to pursue a graduate degree in public history.
Text by McKenna Bramble ’16. McKenna graduated from Kalamazoo College with a B.A. degree in psychology and currently works as the post-baccalaureate summer assistant in the College’s Center for Career and Professional Development. She enjoys writing and reading poetry, hanging out with friends and eating chocolate. In the fall she plans to apply to M.F.A. degree programs for poetry. This is one of a series of profiles she is writing about K students and their summer internships.
The Men’s Dorm before the fire. Bowen Hall is in the background at left
Like its century-in-the-future counterpart, the class of ’16 (1916!) faced its share of campus crises scattered among the quotidian rhythm of challenge, disorientation, hard work, fun and growth. You can discover these similarities (and differences) from a display created by archivist Lisa Murphy ’98 and currently on exhibit in Upjohn Library.
The class of 1916 graduated 38 members (four with bachelor of science degrees, 34 with bachelor of arts degrees). The students matriculated in 1912. At that time all classes were held in Bowen Hall, located near what is today the east loading dock of the Hicks Center. Bowen housed the library as well. Male students lived in the appropriately (albeit unimaginatively) named “Men’s Dorm.” It was located near today’s Hoben Hall. Women students resided in “Ladies Hall,” located approximately in the center of a triangle whose vertices would one day be Stetson Chapel, Mandelle Hall and Dewing Hall. None of those three vertices existed then. And none of those 1916 landmarks (Bowen, Men’s Dorm, Ladies Hall) exist today.
Despite being 100 years apart, the academic calendar is roughly the same: mid-September to mid-June, though divided back then into two semesters rather than three trimesters. Fourteen faculty worked at K in 1916; three were women.
Ancestor to Day of Gracious Living?
According to Murphy, freshmen and sophomores 100 years ago tended to do things as one group, juniors and seniors a second. As freshmen, the class of ’16 distinguished itself in the annual sophomore-versus-freshmen tug-of-war over Mirror Lake, a shallow mucky pond near Arcadia Creek and the Amtrak train tracks. According to a small Kalamazoo Gazette article (headline: FRESHMEN DRAG 15 CLASSMEN THROUGH CHILLY LAKE WATERS), the first-years made short work of the sophomores and pulled them across the entire pond.
Back then juniors and seniors enjoyed an annual picnic at West Lake. The class of ’16 had a chance to attend a senior-only picnic at Gull Lake (see photo, with President Stetson on the far right). Perhaps these events are ancestors to the Day of Gracious Living, which the class of 2016 experienced annually for four years.
Students confined to the Men’s Dorm take some air
All classes endure challenges. The graduates of 1916 faced smallpox and a serious dorm fire during their four years. In early April of 1913 a junior named Ernest Piper was diagnosed with smallpox. The Gazette headline read: SMALLPOX APPEARS AT COLLEGE “DORM” WEDNESDAY EVENING: Dr. Stetson Orders All Students to be Vaccinated at Once: Glee Club Members Are Scared. Piper had been on a recent trip with the Glee Club. For a few days, the College was “campused,” which meant students stayed in their rooms with the exception of their vaccination appointments. A doctor’s written verification of vaccination (and antibody production) was required to resume classes and other activities. One such verification is on display in the library, with two dates (April 3 and April 30) corresponding (respectively) to vaccination and efficacy (presence of antibodies presumably).
President Stetson took some heat for not banishing Piper to an infectious diseases sanatorium. None existed in Kalamazoo, and the closest one outside the city Stetson considered deplorable. So he stood his ground. It turned out Piper’s was a mild case, as was the only other case, that of a faculty member. The incident occurred before the age of antibiotics and less than four years prior to the influenza pandemics of 1918-19, which killed an estimated 675,000 Americans. Infectious disease was fearsome.
In the class’s senior year, on March 17, 1916, the Kalamazoo College Oratorical Association of Kalamazoo sponsored a debate between K and Hope College. The topic: “That Congress should adopt a literary test as a further means of restricting European immigration.” K had to argue the affirmative; Hope the negative. The debate occurred of St. Patrick’s Day. No record of who won.
The Men’s Dorm the morning after the fire
Coincidentally, that very night, a midnight blaze destroyed the fourth floor of the Men’s Dorm. All 48 residents of the building made it out; those on the lower floors had some time to salvage belongings, but the students on the third and fourth floors were fortunate to escape with their lives. In a scene right out of Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman movie, the bell from the dorm’s tower fell through the floors, narrowly missing one student who had just fled his room. Wrote The Index (March 21, 1916): “A very narrow escape was experienced by Paul Butler when the old bell, which had hung in the tower for more than fifty years and is well known to every alumnus, crashed through the roof and down to the third floor. Butler had just left his room when the mass of metal tore an opening in the floor over which he had recently passed.” Eat your heart out, Tim Burton…though, perhaps, the proximity of place and timing were embellished in the telling.
What’s certain is that local neighbors volunteered to house the newly homeless students, providing clothing and book replacements as well. Lots of homework, even some assignments not due for months, were claimed to have been lost in the blaze.
The night of St. Patrick’s Day was bitter cold. You can see the frozen ice from the water used to douse the flames in the after-photo of the before-and-after sequence. The College declared the fourth floor a loss, and refurbished the building as a three-story structure.
No matter what it may have seemed, not all about the four years was crisis–the same as with the class of 2016. The 1916 baseball team won the conference championship, as would its future descendant 100 years later. The basketball team placed first as well. And 1916 was the year the Kalamazoo College Student Senate formed. Ironically, 100 years later, 2015-16 was the College’s first year since 1916 without a student government.
Kalamazoo College’s African studies program invites everyone to the public lecture, “African Languages as Literary Medium: Prospects and Challenges.” Dr. Abdou Ngom (Cheik Anta Diop University, Senegal) will deliver the address on Wednesday, May 11, at 4:30 p.m. in the Mandelle Hall Olmsted Room. The event is free and open to the public.
“The lecture addresses the distribution of indigenous languages in Africa, the negative impact of colonization on the promotion of indigenous languages, and the difficult choice made by governments regarding their official languages,” said Ngom. Ngom will discuss the controversial issue of the literary medium for African writers, especially the relationships between language and cultural identity. “The matter of authenticity and language (indigenous or non-indigenous) involves very difficult and interesting questions,” he said. For example, is literature written in European languages authentic African literature? Should any literature written by an African scholar be considered African literature? What type of readership do African writers have in mind when writing literature and why? What are the main challenges posed by African literature written in indigenous languages? How does literature written in foreign languages affect African indigenous languages? “The lecture,” said Joseph Bangura, associate professor of history and director of the African studies program, “seeks to address these questions.”
A workshop on human rights (April 14-16) at Kalamazoo College will offer the opportunity for some of the world’s leading scholars to discuss their work among themselves and an audience that includes students, faculty and the general public. The workshop is titled “Seventy Years After Nuremberg: Genocide and Human Rights in Comparative Perspective.”
“Seventy years after the end of the Second World War and the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials of 1945-46 is a particularly appropriate time to reflect on genocide and responses to genocide in the 20th and 21st centuries,” said workshop organizer David Barclay, the Margaret and Roger Scholten Professor of International Studies. “Although the study of genocide, the Holocaust, international human right and related issues has become an essential component of academic scholarship and civic education, the current anniversary of the first war-crimes trials after World War II offers important opportunities to reflect comparatively, and in a focused way, on these vital matters.”
The workshop begins on Thursday evening, April 14, with a keynote address by Daniel Chirot (University of Washington) titled “No End in Sight: Why Mass Political Murder Continues to Occur.” Friday morning’s session focuses on genocide prior to the Second World War (and before the invention of the word), locating the phenomenon of genocide in the larger context of global history from the 19th to the 21st centuries. The session includes new scholarship concerning the Armenian genocide and new work detailing colonialism and genocide in Africa. Friday afternoon features two sessions on recent discussions of the Holocaust.
The workshop will conclude on Saturday morning with a consideration of other examples of 20th-century genocide, responses to genocide, and genocide and the protection of international human rights. Public participation and discussion will be encouraged. The event occurs in the Mandelle Hall Olmsted Room and is free to the public. In addition to Chirot and Barclay, among the other scholars featured are Joseph Bangura, Kalamazoo College; Carter Dougherty ’92, Bloomberg News; John Dugas, Kalamazoo College; Hilary Earl, Nipissing University, Canada; Amy Elman, Kalamazoo College; Geoffrey J. Giles, University of Florida; Lesley Klaff Sheffield Hallam University, United Kingdom; Paul Gordon Lauren, University of Montana; Wendy Lower, Claremont McKenna College; Samuel Moyn, Harvard Law School; James Nafziger, Willamette University and American Society of Comparative Law; Raffael Scheck, Colby College; and Ronald Suny, University of Michigan.
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A class reunion nametag shows Vivian’s K photo from 1931 above a more recent photo taken around the time of her 104th birthday.
In response to a prompt (called “Truths”) in an old class reunion questionnaire Vivian Mitchell Prindl ’35 wrote: “One is lucky if she learns to accept what comes. Life is much more pleasant if one has a contented frame of mind.”
More pleasant, indeed, and perhaps much longer. Vivian celebrated her 104th birthday this year and is quite likely K’s oldest living alumna. She matriculated to K from Detroit in 1931, two years into the Great Depression. She ended up earning her bachelor’s degree from New York State University College at Plattsburg, but she always considered herself a member of K’s class of 1935. “I enjoyed Kalamazoo College very much,” she said in a recent interview with archivist Lisa Murphy ’98. “Lemuel F. Smith taught chemistry. He was a very genial person. If anybody was late they had to bring him a candy bar, so once a semester the entire class would come late and bring him a candy bar.”
She shared many other memories, some somber. In the questionnaire Vivian wrote, “Allan Hoben was president when I first attended K. I remember the sadness we all felt when we learned of his terminal illness. The last time he spoke at Chapel, every student attended.”
There were lighter moments. Dancing to records in the sun room of Trowbridge Hall was one she confided to Lisa. Vivian also shared fondness Professors Mulder (English), Harper (sociology) and Dunbar (history). “Professor Praeger [biology] was from County Down in Ireland,” said Vivian. “He felt like he knew me because my father was from County Antrim.”
Vivian had been to business college for a year before she came to K, and that paid off, literally, because she knew how to type. Campus jobs in the dining room (a wellspring for many students) paid 25 cents an hour. But because Vivian could type she was hired by the business office at 30 cents an hour. Everyone who lived on campus, even students who had scholarships, had to work, according to Vivian. It was the Depression. “We didn’t think about not having money because no one had money.” She remembers companies shut down, men out of work, and soup kitchens.
Weekend fun usually meant hikes or walks–things you could do that didn’t cost money. Like those extemporaneous dances in the Trowbridge sun room. “I danced with a boy I dated a couple of years,” said Vivian. And there was the “beau parlor” in Trowbridge. “If you were entertaining you could go to a small room as long as you kept the door open,” Vivian added. “These were the years before blue jeans, so we dressed up. If we were leaving campus to go downtown we were told to wear hat and gloves.”
Vivian also had a key part in the annual Christmas Carol Service. That event called for someone to play the Spirit of Christmas, and the red dress for the part was pretty tiny. “I was small enough to fit into it so I was chosen as the Spirit.”
Vivian married Frank Prindl, and they had two children. Vivian also enjoyed a long teaching career in schools in Kentucky, Michigan, Florida and in Bonn, Germany. After retirement she continued to teach on a volunteer basis. And she traveled widely, especially to England and Mexico, but she also has visited South America, Indonesia, the Philippines and Africa.
K in the early 1930s sounds like a very different place, and yet, Vivian’s life (still going strong) suggests that K cultivated curiosity, independence and a yen for travel and adventure then as much as now.
Nora Naranjo Morse will deliver the annual Phi Beta Kappa lecture at Kalamazoo College on Tuesday, October 11, at 8 p.m. in the Mandelle Hall Olmsted Room. The event is free and open to the public. Morse Morse is a sculptor, writer, and producer of video films that look at the continuing social changes within Pueblo Indian culture. Her talk, “Numbe Wahgeh,” focuses on the historical treatment of the Pueblo people and history retold by indigenous peoples.
