Colloquy - The Comics · PDF fileColloquy SPRING 2006 ... See-Yan Lin, MPA ’70, PhD...

A L U M N I Q UA RT E R LY

SPRING 2006

ColloquyThe graduate school of arts and sciences • harvard university

Novelist Dara HornCombines Scholarship and Fiction Writing

Using Cell Transfer toRegenerate Human Tissue and Organs

New Writing FromHarvard Faculty: EllenLanger, Jill Lepore, andE.O.Wilson

Alumni Books

Did the Samurai Have a Sense of Humor?THE PHENOMENON OF 18TH-CENTURY

JAPANESE COMIC BOOKS

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ColloquyA L U M N I Q UA RT E R LY

Theda Skocpoldean

Margot N. Gilladministrative dean

Paula Szocikdirector of publications and alumni relations

Susan Lumenelloeditor

Susan Gilberteditorial assistant

James Clyde Sellman, PhD ’93, historycopy editor

Sametz Blackstone Associatesdesign

Graduate School Alumni Association (GSAA) CouncilNaomi André, PhD ’96, musicReinier Beeuwkes, COL ’62, PhD ’70, division of medical sciencesThomas Davenport, PhD ’80, sociologyStacy Dick, AB ’78, PhD ’83, economicsA. Barr Dolan, AM ’74, applied sciencesRichard Ekman, AB ’66, PhD ’72, history of American civilizationJohn C.C. Fan, SM ’67, PhD ’72, applied sciencesDonald Farrar, AB ’54, PhD ’61, economicsNeil Fishman, SM ’92, applied sciencesKenneth Froewiss, AB ’67, PhD ’77, economicsHomer Hagedorn, PhD ’55, historyR. Stanton Hales, PhD ’70, mathematicsDavid Harnett, PhD ’70, historyGeorge Heilborn, AM ’58, physicsKaren J. Hladik, PhD ’84, business economicsMary Lee Ingbar, SB ’46, PhD ’53, economics, MPH ’56Andrew Jameson, PhD ’58, historyDaniel R. Johnson, AM ’82, East Asian history, AM ’84,

business economicsGopal Kadagathur, PhD ’69, applied sciencesAlan Kantrow, AB ’69, PhD ’79, history of American civilizationGyuri Karady, PhD ’80, applied sciences Robert E. Knight, PhD ’68, economicsFelipe Larraín, PhD ’85, economicsJill Levenson, PhD ’67, English and American literature and languageSee-Yan Lin, MPA ’70, PhD ’77, economicsSuzanne Folds McCullagh, PhD ’81, fine artsJohn J. Moon, AB ’89, PhD ’94, business economicsSandra O. Moose, PhD ’68, economics; chairF. Robert Naka, SD ’51, applied sciencesBetsy M. Ohlsson-Wilhelm, AB ’63, PhD ’69, medical sciencesMaury Peiperl, MBA ’86, PhD ’94, organizational behaviorM. Lee Pelton, PhD ’84, English and American

literature and languageNancy Ramage, PhD ’69, classical archaeologyJohn E. Rielly, PhD ’61, governmentAllen Sangines-Krause, PhD ’87, economicsCharles Schilke, AM ’82, history; ex officioSidney Spielvogel, AM ’46, economics, MBA ’49David Staines, PhD ’73, English and American literature

and languageMarianne Steiner, MEN ’78, SM ’78, applied mathematicsJohn Stuckey, PhD ’81, business economicsDennis Vaccaro, PhD ’78, division of medical sciences; ex officioDonald van Deventer, PhD ’77, economics; ex officioLee Zhang, AM ’01, medical sciencesGustavus Zimmerman, PhD ’80, physics; ex officio

The graduate school of arts and sciences • harvard university

Did the Samurai Have a Sense of Humor?Adam Kern, professor of Japanese literature,discusses the phenomenon of 18th-centuryJapanese comic books, written, for the most part,by samurai warriors.

New Faculty WritingExcerpts from new books by arts and sciencesfaculty: psychologist Ellen Langer, historian JillLepore, and biologist E.O.Wilson.

Inspired By LegendPhD candidate and novelist Dara Horn talks abouthow her studies in comparative literature informher latest novel, The World to Come.

Human RenewalHarvard bioengineer David Mooney transplantscells to regenerate damaged tissue and organs.He and his team may also be able to use thisground-breaking process in the brain, heart,and bones.

Alumni BooksRecently received books on blondes in film andfiction, the founding of ethology, the life of ourcosmos, and the ancient Celts, among other wide-ranging subjects.

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On the cover: The frontispiece and cover to the 3rd edition of Santo Kyoden’s Playboy,

Roasted à la Edo (1793) as reprinted in a facsimile edition by the publisher Kisho Fukuseikai

in the series Shinseiki 35 (1938). Courtesy of Adam Kern.

Correction: In the article “The Future is Here,” which appeared in the winter 2006 issue,

it was incorrectly noted that the field of molecular biology came to prominence 30 years

ago. It began approximately 50 years ago.

Colloquy Spring 20061

This past winter and spring have brought a profusion of opportunities for profes-sional development for our young scientists.As part of President Summers’ focus on building the life sciences at Harvard, GSAShas sponsored the Harvard Integrated Life Sciences (HILS) consortium. HILSbrings together 12 PhD programs, rangingfrom biophysics to immunology, to helpbridge disciplinary boundaries, encouragestudents to move around from lab to lab,and increase collegiality and networkingamong researchers.

Recently, HILS, the Office of CareerServices, and the Division of the MedicalSciences jointly launched a seminar seriesfor students in the life sciences. The series isbeing held at the Longwood Medical Areaand will cover important topics such astechniques for negotiating with principalinvestigators and lab colleagues, developinga science curriculum vitae or resumé, tipson obtaining a post-doctoral position, andhow to choose a lab that serves students’research interests.

The Office of Career Services alsopartnered with a new student group,“Harvard Graduate Women in Science and Engineering,” to initiate a career chatseries. Throughout the spring term, GSASalumnae in both academia and industryhave been returning to Harvard to discusstheir career paths and jobs with male andfemale graduate students. In addition, OCSprovides a dedicated counselor for one-to-one career counseling of graduate studentsin the sciences.

The Radcliffe Institute for AdvancedStudy offered a spring faculty panel on“Impediments to Change: Revisiting theWomen in Science Question,” which

looked at professional advancement in academia. The panel featured Harvard’sMahzarin Banaji, the Richard Clarke Cabot professor of social ethics; CharlesRosenberg, the Ernest E. Monrad professorin the social sciences; and Elizabeth S. Spelke, professor of psychology and co-director of Harvard’s Mind/Brain/Behavior Interfaculty Initiative.

On the life-sciences front, HILSsponsored two student-run symposia earlier this spring. PhD students in theBiological Sciences in Public Health and

Biological and Biomedical Sciences programs coordinated a Public HealthCareer Panel, while doctoral candidatesacross several science disciplines offered“Harnessing Biotechnology to ImproveHealth in Developing Countries.”

As most of you know, the years spentworking toward a graduate degree are busyones. Yet they must also be years in whichstudents prepare for the day when they take on the roles of employees, whether as faculty members, research scientists, orother professionals. Graduate school is a time when networks are forged, valuesare defined, and possibilities are envisionedfor the future.

GSAS has spent considerable timeand effort helping students improve theirteaching, but professional developmentneeds to address more than just pedagogicalskills. It should also hone skills for the jobsearch—such as crafting a first-rate CV andpreparing for interviews—and for definingcareer goals. We think you’ll agree thatincreasing our efforts in these areas is timewell spent.

Harvard Alumni Association Appointed DirectorsJohn E. Rielly • Donald van Deventer

GSAA Council Ex OfficioLawrence H. SummersPhD ’82, economicspresident of Harvard UniversityWilliam C. KirbyPhD ’81, historydean of the Faculty of Arts and SciencesTheda SkocpolPhD ’75, sociologydean of the Graduate School of Arts and SciencesMargot N. Gilladministrative dean of the Graduate School ofArts and SciencesMichael Shinagel PhD ’64, English and American literature and languagedean of Continuing Education and University ExtensionDonella RapierMBA ’92vice president for Alumni Affairs and DevelopmentJohn P. Reardon Jr.AB ’60executive director of the Harvard Alumni Association

The GSAA is the alumni association of HarvardUniversity’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.Governed by its Council, the GSAA represents andadvances the interests of alumni of the Graduate School bysponsoring alumni events and by publishing Colloquy fourtimes each year.

Graduate School Alumni AssociationByerly Hall 3008 Garden StreetCambridge, MA 02138-3654phone: 617-495-5591 • fax: [email protected] • www.gsas.harvard.edu

Colloquy on the WebThe current issue of Colloquy and recent back issues areavailable on the Web at www.gsas.harvard.edu/colloquy.

Letters to the EditorColloquy welcomes your letters.Write to: Colloquy, HarvardUniversity Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, ByerlyHall 300, 8 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138-3654; ore-mail [email protected].

Moving?Please send your Colloquy mailing label and your newaddress to Alumni Records, 124 Mt. Auburn Street, 4thFloor, Cambridge, MA 02138-3654.

Printed on recycled paper.

Colloquy is printed by Pride Printers, Inc.,Woburn, MA.

from the dean

Professional Development in the Sciences

Theda Skocpol PhD ’75, sociologyDean, Graduate School of Arts and SciencesVictor S.Thomas professor of government and sociology

Graduate school is a time when networks are

forged, when values are defined, and possibilities

are envisioned for the future.

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For Kern, an assistant professor of Japaneseliterature and a GSAS alumnus (PhD ’97,East Asian Languages and Civilizations),this discovery—and his entire career—developed from asking a few “whys?” and“what ifs?” of his instructors at theUniversity of Kyoto, where he took coursesafter receiving his master’s degree in EastAsian studies from Harvard.

But for this American-born,Minnesota-bred scholar, his fascination with Japanese culture goes back to his adolescence. Kern’s father was a physicianat the Mayo Clinic where he hosted a Japanese researcher named Dr.Hasegawa. Dr. Hasegawa and his familyeventually became close friends of theKerns with the two Japanese sons becoming“like brothers” to young Kern.

In high school, Kern wanted tobecome a foreign exchange student. Paris,his first choice, was full, but he was offereda spot in a Tokyo high school. He acceptedand ended up living with the Hasegawas,coming to view them almost as a secondfamily. He stayed in Tokyo for nearly two

years attending a high school there. Several years later, when he graduated from GSAS, the Hasegawas came all the wayfrom Japan to watch the ceremony inTercentenary Theater.

But it was at the University of Kyotothat Kern first came across kibyoshi—18th-century comic books for adults—in theEbara Collection within that university’sdepartment of literature.

“I’d never really seen anything likethem before. They’re clearly not intendedfor children, even though the visual idiom isthat of children’s comic books,” Kernrecalls. “I was very intrigued.” But evenwith his linguistic ability, he found thekibyoshi’s topical political and social allusions and inside jokes hard to penetrate.“It is a bit like someone from Mars 200years from now watching an episode of TheSimpsons, then trying to reconstructAmerican culture through only that. Thereare so many veiled references and self-reflexive jokes that are difficult to unpack,”he says.

Curious, he brought some of thebooks to his literature professor, who

Harvard University GSAS

| the sc iences

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SOME OF THE MOST INTERESTING DISCOVERIES COME WHEN SCHOLARS

LOOK INTO SUBJECTS THAT HAVE FALLEN INTO THE CRACKS BETWEEN

DISCIPL INES . IN THE C ASE OF ADAM KERN, THE DISCIPL INES WERE

JAPANESE ART AND LITERATURE, AND THE DISCOVERY WAS THE 18TH-

CENTURY COMIC BOOK.

BY SUSAN LUMENELLO

the humanit ies

Adam Kern’s book on historical Japanese comic

books, Manga in the Floating World, is forthcoming

from the Harvard University Asia Center. He

teaches courses on Japanese popular culture,

from kibyoshi up to contemporary manga and

anime, in the Department of East Asian Languages

and Civilizations.

D I D T H E S A M U R A I

offered no comment because, he said,kibyoshi were really art. So Kern broughtthe books to his art professor, who alsooffered no comment because, he said,kibyoshi were really literature.

Kern realized he was dealing with a “genre [that] has really fallen betweendisciplinary if not institutional cracks.”

Upon returning to Harvard to beginhis doctoral studies, Kern worked with JayRubin, the former Takashima professor ofJapanese humanities, and Ed Cranston,professor of Japanese literature, both of whom were familiar with kibyoshi.There was, however, some question initially from his advisors as to whether thestudy of comic books would lead to a scholarly future—but those questionshave since been put to rest.

AGAINST THE GRAINLiterature that incorporates visual elements—such as kibyoshi and their successors—has a long history in Japan. Kern speculatesthat one reason for that is the visual quality of Japanese writing. “With its reliance on Chinese characters and Japanesephonetic symbols, one has essentially a kind of cartoon,” says Kern. “It’s a streamlined representation of reality thatmixes images—or abstractions of images—with a different system of writing. I thinkthat the Japanese, if not other Asians usingChinese graphs, are predisposed towardcomic art as a mode of representation.”

Kibyoshi emerged as a leading formof popular culture during Japan’s Edo period, which lasted from the 17th to themid-19th centuries. It was the period

defined by the strict morality and socialhierarchy of Neo-Confucian philosophy,which the government sternly enforced.The period also introduced to the rest of theworld two icons that many Americansmight equate with traditional Japanese culture—the geisha and samurai.

The kibyoshi, on the other hand,often criticized or challenged the officialideology—and became wildly popular.

“The publication of kibyoshi ranagainst the grain of how the governmentwanted to imagine the period in which itappeared,” Kern says. “It challenged basicideological assumptions such as the Neo-

Confucianist concept of the twin paths ofswordsmanship and classic versification—which is to say the martial and literaryarts—that samurai should serve the state bybeing adept at swordplay and having a sharp poetic sensibility. Several kibyoshiparodied this ideological tenet.”

Other kibyoshi satirized the Neo-Confucianist belief that the human bodywas composed of certain natural elementslike fire and water. Comic storylines featured vivisection and glimpses into thehuman body that promoted the radicalWestern anatomical model, which was justbeing introduced into Japan.


A two-headed twin is pulled in two directions by rival lovers. From Santo Kyoden’s Unseamly Silverpiped

Swingers (Sogitsugi gingiseru, 1788).

continued on page 8

H A V E A S E N S E O F H U M O R ?a Harvard scholar explores the world of historical Japanese comic books

| the sc iencesnew writ ing by Harvard faculty

Colloquy regularly presents excerpts from newbooks written by Harvard faculty in the artsand sciences. In this issue, you’ll find recentwork by psychologist Ellen Langer, historian JillLepore, and biologist E.O.Wilson.—The editor

“Becoming Authentic”By Ellen J. LangerEllen J. Langer is a professor of psychology.

From On Becoming an Artist:Reinventing Yourself ThroughMindful Creativity. Copyright ©2005 Ellen Langer, PhD.Published by Random House,New York.

WHAT DO WE MEAN when we attributesomething to beginner’s luck, and why do some people seem to have beginner’sluck and not others? Is it luck or is there something else at work? If the phenomenon were reliable, that is, if somepeople really do have it, it could not reallybe luck. The very nature of luck or chanceis that it is random. Two possible explana-tions come to mind. The first and less interesting one is that there is really no suchthing as beginner’s luck. Sometimes beginners are successful, and just as oftenor as unpredictably they are not. When theyare, we explain it as beginner’s luck.

The second explanation takes as its startingpoint that there is such a thing as beginner’sluck, but it supposes that the results areanything but random. When we are worried about appearing incompetent, wefrequently get in our own way and becomestressed and self-conscious. When we beginsomething new—paint for the first time, tryhitting a golf ball, or write our first story—we usually have very low expectations forourselves, if we have any at all. Withoutundue concern for our performance asbeginners, we plunge in, letting the task,not problematic self-talk, lead us. At thebeginning, we may proceed more mindfullythan we will later, when we have come toexpect too much from ourselves. In thisway, beginner’s luck may be the result ofmindful engagement.

“The Plot”By Jill LeporeJill Lepore is a professor of history.

From New York Burning: Liberty,Slavery, and Conspiracy inEighteenth-Century Manhattan.Copyright © 2005 by Jill Lepore.Published by Alfred A. Knopf,New York.

OF THE 152 ENSLAVED and free blackNew Yorkers arrested in the spring andsummer of 1741, 80—more than half—

confessed to conspiring to destroy the city. (And one more man confessed who had never been arrested.) From those confessions, prosecutors pieced together a composite of what happened at [John]Hughson’s [where conspirators gathered].As [attorney] Daniel Horsmanden was keento point out, the confessions agreed both“minutely in the Circumstances of thisConspiracy”—the “Great Feast” atChristmas, the tablecloth, the rum punch,the veal—and broadly, in “the principalThings aimed at, the burning the Town andassassinating the Inhabitants.”

It made for an effective prosecution.In his closing argument in the conspiracy’sfirst trial, attorney William Smith offeredthe jury a summary of this “most horridconspiracy”:

Gentlemen,No Scheme more monstrous could havebeen invented; nor can any Thing bethought of more foolish, than theMotives that induced these Wretches toenter into it!…That the White Menshou’d be all killed, and the Womenbecome a Prey to the rapacious Lust ofthese Villains! That these Slaves shouldthereby establish themselves in Peace andFreedom in the plunder’d Wealth of theirslaughter’d Masters! ’Tis hard to saywhether the Wickedness or the Folly ofthis Design is the Greater: And had it not been in Part executed before it

beginner’s luck, the realslaves of new york, and the high arboreal life

Harvard University GSAS4

was discovered; we should with greatDifficulty have been persuaded to believeit possible, that such a wicked and foolishPlot could be contrived by any Creaturesin Human Shape.

It was horrid. It was monstrous. It waswicked. It was inhuman. But it was alsohackneyed.

“Rain Forest Canopy”By E.O.WilsonE.O.Wilson is the Pellegrino university professor emeritus.

From Nature Revealed: SelectedWritings, 1949–2006.Copyright © 2006 E.O.Wilson.Published by Johns HopkinsUniversity Press, Baltimore, Md.

THE TROPICAL RAIN FOREST I hadentered was a shadowed world broken bybeams and nuances of greenish sunlight. I had come home to my favorite habitat, theone before which naturalists stand in awe.

alumni notes

I was on Barro Colorado, an island inGatún Lake halfway along the PanamaCanal. My visit rekindled a simile that hadcome to mind in other places and othertimes: Seen on foot, a rain forest is like thenave of a cathedral, a thing of reverentialbeauty yet with much of its splendor out ofreach in the towers and illuminatedclerestories high above.

There was no lack of life around meon the ground. It teemed in the patchworkof light and dark. My attention was pulledto eye level and downward by the closenessof plants and animals in the soil and under-growth. But I remained aware of a whollydifferent world a hundred feet above, where brilliant sunlight drenched sprays ofvegetation and Babylonian gardens, anerrant wind soughed throughout the day,and legions of birds, insects, and other animals specialized for high arboreal lifeflew and leaped back and forth. This high layer is the powerhouse of the forest,where more than 90 percent of photosyn-thesis takes place and, in the fullest sense,life begins.


AnthropologyDorothy H. Bracey, PhD ’67, is the authorof Exploring Law and Culture (Waveland Press,2006.) She was the 2005 recipient of theG.O.W. Mueller Award, given by the Academyof Criminal Justice Sciences for outstandingcontributions to international criminal justice.

Applied SciencesJulian Bussgang, PhD ’55, and his wife FayBussgang, EdD ’63, GSA ’97, special students program, had their latest work oftranslation, The Last Eyewitnesses: Children of theHolocaust Speak, vol. 2 (with Simon Cygielski),published in 2005 by Northwestern UniversityPress.The Bussgangs also annotated the book,which was edited by Jakub Gutenbaum andAgnieszka Latala.The Bussgangs translated thisand the first volume of personal accounts ofHolocaust survivors from the Polish.

English and American Literatureand LanguageJames Dawes, PhD ’98, GSA ’01 (JuniorFellows Program), was granted tenure status as associate professor at the MacalesterCollege Department of English. He has beenteaching at Macalester since 2001. Dawes isthe author of The Language of War: Literatureand Culture in the US from the Civil War ThroughWorld War II (2002).

Fine ArtsCarl Chiarenza, PhD ’73, published twobooks of photography in 2005. Solitudes(Lodima Press) features photographs of collages, as does The Peace Warriors of TwoThousand and Three (Nazraeli Press).Chiarenza’s photographs are represented inthe collections of institutions such as NewYork’s Museum of Modern Art, Washington’sNational Museum of American Art, andHouston’s Museum of Fine Arts.

HistoryRichard N. Frye, PhD ’46, GSA ’49 (JuniorFellows Program), reports that he receivedthe Khwarizmi International Award forAchievements in Oriental History from theIranian Research Organization for Science andTechnology at a ceremony held last Februaryin Tehran, Iran. He also recently delivered lectures in Persian at four universities. Frye isprofessor of Iranian emeritus at Harvard.continued on page 11

The opening page of A Journal of the Proceedings in the Detection of The Conspiracy,

1744, dedicated to the trial of the slave rebellion on which Jill Lepore’s book

New York Burning is based.

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BENJAMIN ZISKIND, a recently divorced tele-vision writer, is feeling bored and a littledepressed. One night his sister, realizing heneeds to get out of the house, suggests thathe attend an opening reception at a local artgallery. So he goes, mainly to humor her,and spends most of the evening wanderingabout, floating through one desultory conversation after another. At one point hefinds himself alone in a back hallway whereone small painting hangs unguarded. When he moves in for a closer look he’s astonished to discover it’s a painting thatonce belonged to his family. In a moment ofuncharacteristic impulsiveness, he yanks itoff the wall and flees into the night.

So begins The World to Comeby Dara Horn, a brilliant exploration of family, cultural identity, loss, and renewal.Using the real-life theft of a Marc Chagallpainting from a Jewish art gallery as a pointof departure, author Dara Horn spans the20th century and carries the reader from impoverished Soviet-era Russian villages tothe jungles of war-time Vietnam to thestreets of today’s New York City.

Horn is a 28-year-old PhD candidatein Harvard’s Department of ComparativeLiterature, where she’s at work on her dissertation, “‘Morals of the Story’ in Hebrew and Yiddish Literature: A Definition of Narrative Demand,” whichpresents a theory of values or beliefs as a structural element in fiction.

Horn’s first novel, In the Image,written when she was 24, was a coming-of-age story described by the San Francisco Chronicle as “a stunning andabsorbing first novel.” The World to Come demonstrates a complexity, humor, intellectual power, and humane wisdomthat earns her a place among America’smost exciting young novelists.

Colloquy spoke with Horn by phone whileshe was on tour to promote the book.

Why were you compelled to write this particular story?

dara horn: A lot of the motivation camefrom my academic work. Nowadays, thereare few people who can read Yiddish orwho study it, so I feel an obligation to sharethe culture with people who wouldn’t otherwise have any access to it.

Isaac Bashevis Singer was asked in an interviewwhy he wrote in Yiddish, and he said, “So thedeparted souls will have something new toread.” Have you considered writing in Yiddish?

dh: It would be difficult, because it’s mysecond language. There are people whowrite in something other than their first

language, but they almost always live in anenvironment where they use it every day.

Like Joseph Conrad.

dh: And Nabokov, who wrote brilliantly inEnglish, but was living in the United States.I don’t hear Yiddish spoken daily, so I don’tthink I’d feel comfortable trying to write init—or that I’d write as well. Singer himselfstruggled with this.

Can you talk about how your scholarship influenced the novel? For instance, one writer you’ve studied is Pinchas Kahanovich,whose pen name was Der Nister or “TheHidden One.”

dh: Der Nister’s last work was a novel intrilogy form called The Family Mashber.Two volumes were published. The thirdwas done and ready to be published whenthe Soviet secret police came to arrest him.Later, his wife reported that they asked himto hand over his manuscript. And heresponded, “Forgive me, gentlemen; I didnot write those manuscripts for you. I havethem in a safe place.” I recreated that scenein my book.

Woven throughout The World to Come is theidea that every situation—even a crisis orcatastrophe—contains the possibility of creation as well as loss.

dh: I relate stories of Russian Jewish writers who chose to write in Yiddishbecause they were committed to reachingthat particular audience. And they paid for this choice with their lives—becauseStalin was trying to eliminate a culture by murdering Jewish writers and artists. I realized what has been destroyed in a way


a col loquy

i n s p i r e d b y L E G E N DGSAS STUDENT DARA HORN DRAWS ON JEWISH CULTURAL HISTORY

FOR HER LATEST NOVEL

BY CHARLES COE

PhD candidate Dara Horn says that literature can

“answer basic questions about what it means to be

a human being.”

Bren

dan

Schu

lman

that someone working outside my fieldcould not. So I saw the creative possibilitiesthat existed for recovering some of whathad been lost. Jewish culture has been onthe brink of destruction so many times, inso many situations; the challenge hasalways been to find creative ways to preserve the tradition—to reinvent itself withnew stories.

But not all those stories have happy endings.

dh: No. Nor do all the stories in my book.We like to think that people get their justdesserts in the end—for example, that timewill tell the value of an artist’s work. Butthe truth is that destruction often succeeds.What lasts isn’t necessarily what’s best. Asscholars and people who care about art andthe ideas art addresses, it’s incumbent on usto be aware of that.

What’s the source of the novel’s strong spiritual element?

dh: I was inspired by a legend in theTalmud about what happens to peoplebefore they’re born. Supposedly, while inthe womb we’re taught all the secrets of theworld. But just before we enter the world

someone puts a finger to our lips (which iswhy we have clefts below our noses) andsays, “Don’t tell the secrets.” So we forgeteverything; we’re born with a blank slate.

Which takes us back to the book’s centraltheme—that we each have a responsibility tocreate our own lives—to create the world.

dh: And that responsibility is both a burdenand an opportunity.

This book moves through so many realms—family dynamics, politics, history, painting,literature, poetry, and mythology. Did youintend to take in that much territory, or didthe story simply demand to stretch out?

dh: What motivates me as a writer is thesearch for connections between things. I carry a notebook to write down whateverI notice that strikes me as interesting. I wascommuting between Cambridge and NewYork City during the period around 9/11,so I took notes about that. I took notesabout some time I spent as a tourist inVietnam, and about the theft of the Chagall painting, which I’d read about inthe newspaper. And I knew that I wanted to weave in a lot about the history of particular writers and artists.

So writing this novel was a bit like piecing a puzzle together.

dh: Yes. And I started out knowing I hadall these pieces to work with; the challengewas tying them together.

How have people outside the Jewish commu-nity responded to the book?

dh: It’s gotten a very positive receptionfrom the general press, and from readerswho have no connection to the Jewish community. I was asked recently if Yiddishliterature has anything to say to people who aren’t Jewish. I answered with anotherquestion: Does British literature have anything to say to people who aren’t British?

We read fiction because we’reintrigued by how different other people’slives are from our own, and along the waywe rediscover how much we ultimatelyhave in common. We look to literature toanswer basic questions about what it meansto be a human being.

Charles Coe is a poet and author. He lives in Cambridge.


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Marc Chagall’s Study for “Over Vitebsk” (above) was stolen from New York’s Jewish Museum in 2001 and later discovered in Kansas.

The painting was returned to its owner in Russia in 2002. Dara Horn based her new novel partly on the journey of this painting.


“Kibyoshi is somewhat analogous toJonathan Swift’s satires, except rather thanbeing written in novel form, it was writtenin children’s comic book form,” Kern says.“Kibyoshi became one of the ways to couchthese attacks against the Neo-Confucianideology and the government in gags andhumor and cartoons.”

Because Japanese writing usesChinese characters, pronunciation guideswere often included in literary works,including kibyoshi. However, kibyoshiauthors used these guides to score politicalpoints. In one early 19th-century comicbook, the Chinese phrase indicated, “discussions among China, Japan, and theWest.” The Japanese guide, per the cleverkibyoshi author, translated the phrase as“incomprehensible chatter,” deriding thenations’ diplomatic efforts.

This was one way in which kibyoshiauthors couched their satires. Unlike thehumorous fiction of a more modern era,kibyoshi could not feature the names of

government officials or well-known peopleto issue overt political and social critiques.“If authors named names, they’d have beenexecuted,” Kern says.

But kibyoshi writers pushed theenvelope. The best example of a politicalcomic book, according to Kern, was one called The Thousand-Armed Goddessof Mercy.

“In this story, a character namedTamura swindles the Goddess of Mercy outof her property at a ratio of eight to one,and in real life, a regent named Tanumahad devalued currency by one-eighth. Thiswas biting satire of the day,” Kern says.“Japanese at the time would have read it asa clear allegory.”

THE CRACKDOWN BEGINSInitially, the Edo government tolerated thepublication of kibyoshi, but after about a decade—in which kibyoshi sold widely—a crackdown began around 1790 and continued to the end of the Edo period,when kibyoshi basically disappeared.

The crackdown came because of Japan’s“crisis of legitimacy.” “The Japanese beganto realize they couldn’t simply ignore theWest any more,” says Kern. “The govern-ment [also] had this economic crisis on itshands. The Neo-Confucian ideology ofhaving four different classes was out ofwhack with the economic reality of the day.”

The merchants, occupying the lowestend of the social scale, a notch aboveuntouchables, were about the richest people in the country—and becoming richer as the “crisis of legitimacy” led to an opening of trade to the West. Samurai,on the other hand, were socially at the topbut had the least money, and manyrenounced their samurai status to becomemerchants. “So it wasn’t just a question oflegitimacy vis à vis the West,” says Kern.“It was also a crisis of legitimacy vis à visinternal class, economics, and politics.”

The crackdown was directed at thebest-selling kibyoshi authors. One was locked in manacles under house arrest for50 days and had half of his property confiscated. The most famous author,Santo Kyoden, was made to publiclyrecant. “Kyoden’s father was also broughtbefore the inquisition of the governmentand chastised for having bestowed upon hisson studio space in the family home,” Kernsays. “Kyoden’s publisher, a titan of publishing in Edo, had half of his propertyand that of his publishing house confiscatedfor good measure.

“Another writer was summoned toappear before a tribunal but begged offwith ill health. He was dead within a matter of days and there were rumorsthat he had committed ritual disembowel-ment so that he wouldn’t have to justifyhimself for writing kibyoshi. Other famouswriters did not get by unscathed. Nanpowas essentially forced out of popular liter-ature, and Kisanji was involuntarily madeto ‘volunteer’ to leave the city,” he adds.

Ironically, some of the very officialswho publicly condemned kibyoshi as harmful to Japan’s national interests alsowrote and illustrated kibyoshi under pseudonyms.

| the sc iencesthe humanit ies

continued from page 3

A panel from a popular kibyoshi, The Pillow Book of Facts Derived From Fiction (Uso kara deta makoto no sôshi,

1797), written by Santô Kyôden and illustrated by Kitao Shigemasa.


In fact, many kibyoshi authors wrote pseu-donymously because they were samurai whodid not wish to sacrifice their social privilegeby participating in a so-called commoneractivity—selling satirical comic books.

“These [kibyoshi authors] tended to belower-level samurai, many of whom identified themselves with commoner culture, although in a Neo-Confucian view ofsocial hierarchy, they would have been at thetop of the heap,” Kern explains.

“But they felt somehow disenfran-chised within the political and ideologicalsystem. They were talented people who feltthey wanted to make a contribution to society but couldn’t because of the rank intowhich they were born. One way of revoltingagainst this situation, at least symbolically,was by writing kibyoshi.”

A METAPHORICAL PLAYBOYKern’s favorite kibyoshi is Playboy, Roastedà la Edo (excerpted on the this page).

“The story is of Enjiro, a wealthy butugly son of a merchant who decides that his best chance of becoming a ladies’ man is tostage a series of publicity stunts to make it look as though women are throwing them-selves at his feet,” Kern explains. “So he hires a famous geisha to grovel publiclybefore him. He hires a beautiful courtesan to pretend to elope with him. He hires thugs tobeat him up. He hires all sorts of people tomake it look like he’s a great playboy.

“Inevitably, all these publicity stuntsbackfire and Enjiro ends up getting stuckwith needles, sunburned, and beaten up. Buthe’s so taken with this romantic vision of himself as a playboy that the more pain he has to endure, the harder he tries.

“In the end, Enjiro finally ends up being ableto marry the beautiful courtesan, althoughfor unexpected reasons. Enjiro eventuallyrenounces his low-down ways and commis-sions a comic book to be written about hisstory as a cautionary tale. That, of course,becomes the story we read.”

Playboy is a metaphor for the striving of Edo’s nouveau riche for the spoilsof the aristocracy, Kern says. Although it’snot one of the more pointed political satires,some scholars believe that the model forEnjiro was an Edo fire marshal who wasinvolved in a scandal with a courtesan, headds. The larger satire, however, lampoonsthose samurai who, having renounced theirsocial position for cash, think that money canbuy social respectability.

Narrative: Here is Enjiro, only son of the tycoonowner of the D. Bauchery Shop. Twentyish, withoutever having contracted poverty or any other disease, thank you very much, Enjiro is congenitallypredisposed toward sensual pursuits. How heenvies those who, in the playbooks of romantic ballads he reads, kill themselves for love, likeTamakiya Itahachi or Ukiyo Inosuke. “Why, for alifetime of memories, I’d kill myself too!” Havinggot this preposterous idea into his head, Enjiroschemes perilous schemes.

Enjiro: What fun to end up like these guys—they must’ve been born under a lucky star!

Narrative: Enjiro befriends the likes of theneighborhood’s prodigal son Kitari Kinosuke and adoctor of Flatterology named Warui Shian,and conspires with them on how to become aninfamous playboy.

Enjiro: There’s got to be a way to make ascandalous name for myself!

Kinosuke: The first thing a playboy needs toknow is that romance begins with schmaltzyballads, so you should master the following:Pheasants, Hades, Saké Cup, Hourly Drinks,Kindred Moon, Three Birds, Triple Futon, DoubleCrest, Four Sleeves, Attendant Girl, Harbor Rocks,Flowery Clouds, Morning Glories, Six PoeticImmortals, Komachi, Henjo, Kuronushi, Narihira,Yasuhide, Shiraito, Solitary Suicide, Slicing a Finger,

Tattoo, Love Letter, Mandarin Orange, Houseleek,Thirteen Bells, Reflecting Water, Rice Boats,Evening Primrose, Parting, Lingering Leaves,Temporary Pillow, Summer Clothes, Spring Nights,Autumn Evenings, Gleaming Mirror, Midnight Bell,Hazy Moon, Vernal Mists, Scattered Birds, River of Burning Passion.... There are many, many others, though these should do for now. Ouch,my jaw aches!

Narrative: Enjiro hears that tattoos elicit illicitaffairs, so he immediately has his arms coveredwith the names of twenty or thirty fictitious lovers,all the way down to the crooks of his fingers.Enduring the agony, he rejoices: “Here’s the ‘till-death-do-us-part’ spot!”

Kinosuke: It’ll look suspicious if some tattoosaren’t erased, so we’ll burn a few off later with moxa.*

Enjiro: Who’d’ve thought becoming a playboywould smart so much!

*According to Kern’s forthcoming book Manga in the

Floating World, “Two principal methods for removing

tattoos were advocated in the Yoshiwara [a district in

Edo, now Tokyo] at the time: burning them off with

the bowl of a tobacco pipe, or burning them off with

moxibustion…the cauterization of any of the body’s vital

points with a cone-shaped concoction of gauze and

medicinal herbs.”

From Playboy, Roasted à la EdoWritten by Santo Kyoden. Illustrated by Kitao Masanobu. Published in 1785.

continued on page 11


the natura l sc iences

A new approach for transplanting cellsshows promise for regenerating injured anddiseased tissues and whole organs.

Such biological engineering, whichonce excited the medical community, hasbeen fraught with the difficulties of keeping transplanted cells alive and gettingthem to integrate with a host’s body.Researchers at Harvard’s Division ofEngineering and Applied Sciences may havesolved these problems.

“We transplant the cells on a scaffoldthat keeps them alive, then directs them toleave in a controlled manner and migrateinto the surrounding tissue,” explainsDavid Mooney, the Gordon McKay professor of bioengineering. “This is thefirst time that has been done.”

The strategy successfully heals lacer-ated muscles in mice, but the potentialexists for applying it to a wide variety of situations in humans, includingtreatment of muscular dystrophy, heart disease, and some brain disorders, and toregenerate bone.

“We don’t know yet whether the specific materials and approach we used[will] work in humans,” Mooney says.“However, I think the basic concept is

a very powerful one that will likely haveapplication in humans in some form. Wedemonstrated the concept with muscle, andthis could be useful to treat wounds and,perhaps some day, muscular dystrophy.

“In addition, it could be very usefulin transplantation of cells to the heart totreat coronary artery diseases, to transplantcells that promote blood vessel formation, to transplant cells to the brain to treat various neurological conditions, and totransplant cells to promote bone generation.”

STRIKING RESULTS Cells can be transplanted by injecting a fluidcontaining them directly into the body.Typically, many of these cells die and fewget incorporated into the injured tissue to help it regenerate. Mooney and his colleagues tried this with wounded mice,and, as expected, saw only a slightimprovement in muscle regeneration.

Another way to transplant cells is toattach them to a scaffold that is surgicallyimplanted. Many more cells survive, butthey typically form a separate structure thatdoesn’t integrate itself well into the surrounding tissue. Using a scaffold insome of the experimental mice did not lead

to active migration out of the scaffold andinto the surrounding tissue, so no improve-ment in regeneration occurred.

To get around these problems,Mooney’s team “glued” the cells to a scaffoldthat contained nutrients to keep them alivelonger than is usual in direct injection. Theglue consisted of sticky molecules that thecells could attach to. This assisted theirmovement into the tissue, and drugs wereadded to activate the cells and coax them toleave the scaffold.

The results were striking. “Deliveryof cells on scaffolds that promoted bothactivation and migration led to extensiverepopulation of host muscle tissue andincreased the regeneration of muscle fibersat the wound,” Mooney notes. “If we only had one or the other signal—sticky molecules or drugs—we didn’t get any significant regeneration.”

Mooney started these experiments at the University of Michigan, where he gotthe idea of copying spaces where stem cells normally live. These consist of special niches in our bodies where the environmentkeeps such cells alive but prevents themfrom developing into more specialized cellsuntil they move away from these homes.

Harvard bioengineer transplants cells to regenerate damagedtissue and organs

Harvard News Office / Jon Chase

Human Renewal

Cell transfer could be useful to treat coronary artery diseases, to promote bone generation, and to treat

various neurological conditions. Bioengineering professor David Mooney is pictured here with a magnified

image of a lacerated muscle projected on the screen behind him.

BY WILLIAM J. CROMIE, HARVARD NEWS OFFICE

| the sc iencesthe humanit ies


PsychologyMichael Wertheimer,PhD ’52, reports thatTransaction Publishers (Rutgers University)recently published his Max Wertheimer andGestalt Theory, co-authored with post-doctoralresearch associate D. Brett King. The book isan intellectual biography of Wertheimer’sfather. Michael Wertheimer is professor emeritus of psychology at the University ofColorado in Boulder.

In MemoriamJames Robert Hightower, PhD ’46, EastAsian languages and civilizations, died January8, 2006, in Germany. He was 90. He was a professor of Chinese literature at Harvard.During World War II, he served in the Army’sMilitary Intelligence Division at the Pentagon,where he worked on the team that brokeJapanese military codes headed by Harvard’sEdwin O. Reischauer. At Harvard, Hightowerserved as associate director of the Harvard-Yenching Institute and director of theAmerican Institute for Asiatic Studies. In the1960s, he chaired Harvard’s Committee onEast Asian Studies and Department of FarEastern Languages. A memorial service is being planned at Harvard.

Submit Alumni Notes to: Colloquy, Harvard University

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Byerly Hall

300, 8 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138-3654;

or e-mail your news to [email protected].

Please include your telephone number or e-mail

address. Alumni Notes are subject to editing for

length and clarity.

alumni notescontinued from page 5

Kibyoshi vanished in the early decades ofthe 19th century. The crackdown in whichleading kibyoshi authors were routinelyharassed led in part to the art form’s demise.But Kern thinks that the Kansei Reforms ofthe 1790s, in which austerity measuresagainst government spending and privatecommerce were rigidly enforced, movedJapan into a more somber mood.

As decades went on, comic literaturecontinued to be produced in the form of“funnybooks” and “the multivolume,” butthe sophisticated political humor and slywit of the kibyoshi were lost. “The difference between the kibyoshi and the funnybook is comparable to the differencebetween Woody Allen and the ThreeStooges,” Kern says.

Few present-day Westerners haveever encountered a kibyoshi, but most arefamiliar with the wildly popular mangacomics. Although they only became well-known in the United States during the1980s and ’90s, manga—which translatesas “impromptu sketches”—first beganappearing in comic-strip form in Japanesenewspapers as long ago as the 1880s.

Whether kibyoshi were the originalmanga is a matter of scholarly debate. Theterm manga goes back to the famouskibyoshi author Santo Kyoden, and Kern’sown book is titled Manga from the FloatingWorld (the “floating world” being the Edo artistic community and the relateddemimonde, including Kabuki theater, thegeisha system, and the kibyoshi itself).

Yet important differences existbetween the two forms, Kern says. For one,the intricate political and social commen-tary and jokes have, 200 years later, givenway to storylines that feature gratuitous sex and violence. Says Kern bluntly: “A lot of modern manga is tripe.”

As with any art form, of course,high-quality examples exist amid the dreck.This is particularly so with the novel-lengthmanga. One such example, says Kern, isAsaki yume mishi, a retelling of The Tale of Genji, one of the first novels of world literature. The works of another author,Yoshihiro Tatsumi, “have a dark vision[and] are critical of modern Japanese existence,” Kern says.

Manga and kibyoshi also have differentvisual styles. “Modern manga is very cinematographic because it looks at itscharacters from the point of view of thecamera,” Kern points out. “It zooms in andpans out. It presents one character walkingacross the room in several frames. The visual idiom of kibyoshi is that of theKabuki theater. Also, the manga has manypanels like a western comic book. Kibyoshi tends to be one panel per page. So there’s a different pace to the story telling.”

continued from page 9

“We thought we could mimic some aspectsof these special living spaces in synthetic scaffolds that degrade andbecome absorbed by the body after the cellsmove away,” Mooney explains. It worked.

By “we,” he means Elliot Hill, a member of his Michigan team, andTanyarut (Joy) Boontheekul, a graduatestudent who followed Mooney to Harvard.The three published their results in the Feb.21 issue of Proceedings of the NationalAcademy of Sciences.

With this success behind him,Mooney will next explore how much function the new approach can restore todamaged muscles.

He will also be collaborating withresearchers at Harvard and its affiliatedteaching hospitals to investigate how useful the new system will be in repairingother wounded and diseased parts of the human body.

William J. Cromie is the science writer for the Harvard

News Office.This article was originally published in the

Harvard Gazette.


on and of f campus

NEWS AND NOTES

BOOK AWARD TO HARVARD HUMANITIES SCHOLARMarjorie Garber, the William R. Kenan Jr. professor of English andAmerican literature and language, and of visual and environmental studies, won the 2005 Christian Gauss Award for her book ShakespeareAfter All: A Guide to the Complete Plays.The annual award is given by thePhi Beta Kappa Society for books of literary scholarship or criticism. Based on Garber’s popular lecture course, the book offers re-readings of all 38 of Shakespeare’s plays.

GSAS ALUMNUS TO CHAIR COUNCIL OF ECONOMIC ADVISERSEdward Lazear, PhD ’74, economics, was sworn in as chair of the Councilof Economic Advisers in March. Lazear was appointed by President Bushto lead the panel that counsels the White House on economic affairs.Lazear is the Jack Steele Parker professor of human resources, manage-ment, and economics at Stanford University’s Graduate School ofBusiness and a fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution.

Doris Kearns Goodwin

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a ALUMNA GOODWIN GARNERS HISTORY PRIZEDoris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals, her best-selling account of Abraham Lincoln and the former political foes who became members of his cabinet, won the Lincoln Prize for an out-standing work about the president and/or the Civil War. Goodwin, PhD ’68, government, whosebook was also a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist, will receive $50,000. Goodwin wona Pulitzer Prize in 1995 for No Ordinary Time, her biography of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt.

ALUMNUS TO RUN LARGEST AUTHORS ORGANIZATIONRoy Blount Jr., AM ’64, English and American literature and language, was elected president of the Authors Guild in March.The guild is the United States’ largest and oldest society of publishedauthors. Blount is the author of 19 books, most recently Feet on the Street: Rambles Around New Orleans.

Professor Marjorie Garber

Har

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Edward Lazear

Stan

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Roy Blount Jr.

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Charlotte I. Loeb

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IF YOU’RE IN CAMBRIDGE…As always, the University has an enormous range of exhibitions on view, including the following.

“Cervantes at Houghton Library” presents some of Houghton’s holdings of Cervantes andis in belated celebration of the 400th anniversary of the 1605 publication of Don Quixote.ThroughMay 26.Amy Lowell Room and Chaucer Case, Houghton Library, Harvard Yard. (617) 495-2440.

“Imazighen! Beauty and Artisanship in Berber Life” highlights jewelry, textiles, pottery,and other objects of daily life of a culture rich in beauty and spirituality. Through June 2006.Peabody Museum, 11 Divinity Ave. (617) 496-1027, www.peabody.harvard.edu.

“Tempo, Tempo! The Bauhaus Photomontages of Marianne Brandt” is a pioneeringexhibition of over 30 montages that offer visually dynamic investigations of technology,gender roles, and entertainment culture.Through May 21. Busch-Reisinger Museum, 32 QuincySt. (617) 495-9400, www.artmuseums.harvard.edu.

“American Watercolors and Pastels, 1875–1950” showcases works by John Singer Sargent, Winslow Homer, John La Farge, J.A.M. Whistler, and Edward Hopper, as well as many others, for the first time since 1936. (April 8–June 25). 32 Quincy St. (617) 495-9400,www.artmuseums.harvard.edu.

—Compiled by Susan Lumenello

FORMER DUDLEY HOUSE CO-MASTER CHARLOTTE I. LOEB HAS DIEDFormer co-master of Dudley House and member of the Dudley House Senior Common Room,Charlotte I. Loeb, died at her home in Cambridge on February 8. She was 84.

Mrs. Loeb, known as Lotje to her many friends at Harvard, was co-master of Dudley Housewith her husband Arthur Loeb, a senior lecturer and honorary associate in the Department ofVisual and Environmental Studies, from 1982 to 1988. During that time, Dudley House was thenon-residential student center for undergraduates living off-campus and GSAS students whochose to affiliate with the House (Dudley did not officially become the GSAS student center until 1991).

Lotje loved the students at Dudley House and remained supportive of their activities as amember of the Senior Common Room, attending many events, especially dinners and arts events.Always a great support to the staff and masters of Dudley House, Lotje inspired us with herenthusiasm, compassion, and tenacity. A memorial service is being planned; contact DudleyHouse (617-495-2255) for details.—Susan Zawalich, Dudley House Administrator

USING HARVARD LIBRARIES University alumni generally can obtain specific library privileges.According to the College Library, the nature and the basis of these privileges varies according to degree or affiliation and according to the library that you wish to use. It’s suggested that alumni begin with Widener Library. For contact information for the Harvard libraries,visit http://lib.harvard.edu/libraries/.

Widener Library

Miguel de Cervantes

Libr

ary

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alumni books

PATTERNS OF BEHAVIORKonrad Lorenz, Niko Tinbergen, and The Foundingof Ethology

By Richard W. Burkhardt

Jr.,AB ’66, PhD ’72,

history of science

University of Chicago

Press, 2005, 636 pp.

The two main figures in the field of ethology—the biological study of animal and, by extension,human behavior—were two Nobel laureateswho had rather differing ideas about their subject and the role of science in society. Morespecifically, during World War II, Lorenz supported National Socialism while Tinbergenvehemently opposed it (he was imprisoned ina detention camp). Burkhardt, a professor ofhistory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, recounts the story of how the discipline was shaped by the personal and professional relationship between its mostnotable proponents.

EPIC OF EVOLUTIONSeven Ages of the Cosmos

By Eric Chaisson, PhD ’72,

astronomy

Columbia University Press,

2006, 478 pp.

Written for the general reader, astronomerChaisson’s latest book tracks an approximately4-billion-year journey, from the origin of theuniverse (the particle epoch) and the develop-ment of elements (the chemical epoch) to theappearance of humans (the cultural epoch).The author holds research professorships inthe departments of physics, astronomy, andeducation at Tufts University, where he directsthe Wright Center for Science Education. Hisprevious books include Cosmic Evolution: TheRise of Complexity in Nature (2001).

THE PHILOSOPHER AND THE DRUIDSA Journey Among the Ancient Celts

By Philip Freeman,

PhD ’94, classical philology

Simon & Schuster, 2006,

221 pp.

In this book, the philosopher in question is Posidonius, a first-century Greek who wrote about his remarkable journey to theCeltic lands of western Europe, including hisencounters with Celtic priests, the Druids.Using writings of and about Posidonius’s travels, Freeman reveals that the Celts werequite the opposite of the outback barbariansthe legends often describe. Rather, they devel-oped a “sophisticated and advanced culture”that existed throughout Europe, as far east asItaly and Austria. Freeman is the Qualley professor of classics at Luther College (Iowa).

THREE BHAKTI VOICESMirabai, Surdas, and Kabir in Their Time and Ours

By John Stratton Hawley,

PhD ’77, study of religion

Oxford University Press,

2005, 439 pp.

This is a close reading of the works and legends of three devotional poets of northernIndia who wrote in the 15th and 16th centuries and whose work is becomingknown—approximately 500 years later—around the world. Mirabai, the female of thetrio, wrote with an “ecstatic devotion toKrishna,” writes Hawley. Surdas, the mostnotable of the three was a poet “of unusuallywide range,” and Kabir wrote in a “grippingfirst-person persona.” Hawley is the AnnWhitney Olin professor of religion atColumbia University.

WHY AIR FORCES FAILThe Anatomy of DefeatEdited by Robin Higham,AB ’50, PhD ’57, history,

and Stephen J. Harris, University Press of Kentucky,

2006, 424 pp.

The contributors, including military historianHigham, analyze defeats of various air forces,from the Luftwaffe and Imperial Japanese airforce to American, Middle Eastern, andEuropean failures. A variety of cultural,political, and technical causes lay behind thestrategic failures of air power. Higham is a professor of military history emeritus at


recent ly received


Kansas State University and the author ofmany books, including 100 Years of Air Powerand Aviation (2003).

GLOBAL VALUES 101A Short Course

Edited by Kate Holbrook,

MTS ’01;Ann S. Kim; Brian

Palmer,AB ’86, PhD ’00,

social anthropology; and

Anna Portnoy

Beacon Press, 2006,

256 pp.

This book is based on the popular Harvardclass “Religion 1529,” which was taught in2004 by GSAS alumnus Palmer. He and his co-editors (and former teaching fellows) havecompiled the interviews that the studentsthemselves conducted with visitors, includingsuch intellectual luminaries as economist JulietSchor, writer Katha Pollitt, historian HowardZinn, and ethicist Peter Singer. Palmer currentlyteaches at the University of Uppsala (Sweden).

THE CASE FOR GOLIATHHow America Acts as the World’s Government inthe 21st Century

By Michael Mandelbaum,

PhD ’75, government

Public Affairs, 2006,

296 pp.

“If America is a Goliath,” Mandelbaum writesin his introduction, “it is a benign one…And no David has stepped forward to confront the United States.” Despite the global criticism the United States receives for the use of itsnearly unbridled power, Mandelbaum offersthe thesis that other nations benefit fromAmerican power in terms of security andfinancial support. The author is the Christian A. Herter professor of American foreign policy at Johns Hopkins University. His previous books include The Meaning of Sports:Why Americans Watch Baseball, Football,

and Basketball and What They See When They Do (2004) and The Ideas That Conquered theWorld: Peace, Democracy, and Free Markets in the21st Century (2002).

THE REDEMPTIVE SELFStories Americans Live By

By Dan P. McAdams,

PhD ’79, psychology and

social relations

Oxford University Press,

2006, 432 pp.

Americans enjoy a good tale of redemption—triumph over one’s inner shortcomings ordemons. Indeed, writes McAdams, many classic American narratives, such as the arrivalof the Puritans, rely upon this trajectory toreveal a collective belief that Americans are “blessed.” Not all Americans can findredemption in their life stories, however.

This volume looks at how identity isbound up with our chosen autobiographies.The author, a psychologist, is the CharlesDeering McCormick professor of teachingexcellence at Northwestern University, wherehe directs the Foley Center for the Study ofLives.

A CLOUD ACROSS THE PACIFICEssays on the Clash Between Chinese and WesternPolitical Theories Today

By Thomas A. Metzger,

PhD ’67, East Asian

languages and civilizations

Chinese University Press,

2005, 816 pp.

This essay collection focuses on what theauthor terms a “mutual perception of irrationality and immorality” that existsbetween the United States and China. Clashesexist between the two nations over manyareas but primarily over politics. Metzgerlooks to both Chinese and Western politicalphilosophers of the past century for solutions.

The author is a senior fellow at StanfordUniversity’s Hoover Institution and a professorof history emeritus at the University ofCalifornia at San Diego.

THE GRANDThe Colorado River in the Grand Canyon:A Photo JourneyBy Steve Miller, AM ’70, anthropology

Wilderness Press, 2005, 192 pp.

A former academic, Miller is the founder of a rafting business that takes visitors throughthe Grand Canyon. These gorgeous photos,shot from the river level up, take readers onthe 277-mile Canyon journey; text describesthe environmental significance of the various caverns, creeks, and narrows along the way.

THE LOGIC OF SUFFICIENCYBy Thomas Princen,

MPA ’83, PhD ’88, political

economy and government

MIT Press, 2005, 424 pp.

With our overuse of limited natural resourcesand reckless consumption patterns, humansare undermining the life-support systems of allspecies, including our own, Princen writes.The principle of sufficiency—an alternative to the more-frequently adopted model of efficiency—has been largely ignored by policy-makers and others, but it should not be, heargues. An associate professor of naturalresource and environmental policy at theUniversity of Michigan, Princen offers exam-ples of how sufficiency—“seeking enoughwhen more is possible”—can be applied tovarious industries across cultures. He is thelead editor of Confronting Consumption (2002).continued on next page

There’s no present like the future…Establish a charitable remainder unitrust for yourself today,and touch the lives of countless Harvard students in the future.

Gift Planning. Give Wisely.For more information, contact the Office of Gift Planning.

617-495-5040 • 800-VERITAS (ask for the Office of Gift Planning)www.post.harvard.edu/pgo • Email: [email protected]


recent ly received

continued from previous page

HOLLYWOOD’S WESTThe American Frontier in Film,Television,and History

Edited by Peter C. Rollins,

AB ’63, PhD ’71, history

of American civilization,

and John E. O’Connor

University Press of

Kentucky, 2005, 373 pp.

In this volume editors of the journal Film &History explore the idea of the American Westin cinematic and television history. Essays lookat early Hollywood films such as Cimarron, thepopularity of characters like the Lone Ranger,and newer, legend-defying works such as LoneStar and Unforgiven. Rollins is the Regents professor of English and American studies andof film studies at Oklahoma State University.

SERFDOM, SOCIETY, AND THE ARTSIN IMPERIAL RUSSIAThe Pleasure and the Power

By Richard Stites,

PhD ’68, history

Yale University Press,

2005, 586 pp.

This panoramic cultural history of 19th-century Russia reveals a rich era of theater,music, painting, and literature in the social andpolitical setting of the waning days of serfdom. It was a period in which “realism” in the arts was flourishing, paradoxically, along-side a growing cultural nationalism. Stites is a professor of history at Georgetown University.

PILGRIMAGE AND THE JEWSBy David M. Gitlitz,

PhD ’68, Romance

languages and literatures,

and Linda Kay Davidson

Praeger, 2006, 312 pp.

The common perception of a religious pilgrimage is of Muslims trekking to Mecca orCatholics visiting Lourdes. In fact, write theauthors, from Judaism’s beginnings, Jewish pilgrims have made spiritual journeys.This account describes a wide range of important sites—ancient holy places in Africaand Europe, former concentration camps andHolocaust memorials, and even festivals in theUnited States. Husband and wife, Gitlitz andDavidson teach at the University of RhodeIsland and have coauthored several books,including Pilgrimage, from the Ganges to Graceland:An Encyclopedia (2002).

I’M NO ANGELThe Blonde in Fiction and Film

By Ellen Tremper, PhD ’69,

English and American

literature and language

University of Virginia

Press, 2006, 288 pp.

The first use of the word “blonde” to mean a female with light hair, writes Tremper, datesback to 1822.The author goes back nearly thatfar (to Thackeray’s Vanity Fair) in her examinationof the long-lived stereotypes of the oversexedcreature of limited intelligence and its flipside,the “ice princess.” She also looks at the statusof the blonde in today’s culture. Tremper is a professor of English at Brooklyn College,City University of New York, and the author of “Who Lived at Alfoxton?”: Virginia Woolf andEnglish Romanticism.

Authors: GSAS alumni who have published

a general-interest book within the past year and

would like it to be considered for inclusion in Alumni

Books should send a copy of the book to: Colloquy,

Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences,

Byerly Hall 300, 8 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA

02138-3654. Questions? E-mail [email protected].


| the sc ienceson developmenton development

Alumnus Makes Arrangements for Future ScholarsBy Ann Hall

When Myron A. Schwager, PhD ’71, music,resolved to make a gift to Harvard, herecalled a conversation from 25 years ago. “During the early 1980s, I had taken a sabbatical from my teaching duties tostudy baroque opera in Venice. While there,I traveled to Rome to visit with one of myHarvard professors, Nino Pirrotta,”Schwager says. “I mentioned to him that I had applied for a grant and was disappointed that I hadn’t received thefunds to supplement my University halfsalary while in Italy.” Pirrotta, himself a scholar of baroque opera, sympathizedwith Schwager and offered encouragement,reminding him that his work was important.

Later, Pirrotta wrote to Schwager topraise his former student’s revival andreconstruction, after approximately 300years, of a Francesco Cavalli opera staged at the Wadsworth Atheneum inConnecticut, and again to commend himfor an article on a Venetian theatre published in Early Music. “Nino was verygracious,” Schwager says.

Last year, Schwager and his wifeSusan sought to repay his teacher’s kindness by setting up a charitable remainderunitrust to amplify the Nino and LeaPirrotta Fund. Established in 1983 byfriends and colleagues of Pirrotta—then the Walter W. Naumburg professor of music emeritus—on the occasion of his 75th birthday, the fund directs grants

toward doctoral students in the Depart-ment of Music for research visits to domestic or foreign libraries, archives, orresearch facilities.

“It seemed natural for me to supple-ment the Pirrotta Fund,” says Schwager. “I admired Nino not only as a scholar butalso as a musician and a person. I take greatpleasure in supporting an enterprise thatexists to send scholars abroad, especiallyone providing resources for them to pursuetheir research without having to worryabout the cost.”

While at Harvard, Schwager pursuedhistorical and theoretical studies, writinghis dissertation on Beethoven’s practice of

rearranging his own chamber works forvarious media. His interest in baroqueopera, he says, was inspired by the graduateclass that Pirrotta taught, and it continuedto evolve after Schwager received his PhD.

In 1970, Schwager accepted a full-time teaching position at the College of theHoly Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts,and, four years later, moved on to the HarttSchool at the University of Hartford,Connecticut. He remained at Hartt as a fullprofessor and chair of the Department ofMusic History until his retirement in 1992.He remains active as a professional violon-cellist and may be heard as continuo celliston a recent CD of Carlo Tessarini’s, La Stravaganza.

A charitable remainder unitrust enables a donor to contribute to Harvard whileretaining an income for life or a term of years. Beneficiaries secure a fixed percentage of the underlying value of thetrust, as revalued annually; if the trustgrows, so does the income. On the death ofthe last income beneficiary or at the conclusion of a set term of years, the trustterminates and Harvard receives the principal to benefit a purpose chosen by the donor.

A unitrust offers flexibility in furnishing income for donors, their families, or other beneficiaries. At the sametime, donors gain a charitable income taxdeduction, supplement their retirementincome with long-term growth potential,and profit from the performance of theHarvard University endowment, which has consistently ranked in the top five percent of institutional investors for thepast decade.

“The trust works both ways: Mywife and I benefit, and Harvard benefits—that’s the beauty of it,” says Schwager.“Since the endowment has such an out-standing record, no one loses in thisarrangement. Everyone’s a winner.”

Ann Hall is a senior writer in Alumni Affairs and

Development Communications.

The trust works both ways: My wife andI benefit, and Harvard benefits. That’sthe beauty of it. Everyone’s a winner.

For more information about charitable remainder

unitrusts or other planned gift options, contact Doug

Nannene in the Office of Gift Planning at 617-496-

3205.To learn about additional giving opportunities in

the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, call Marne

Perreault, director of GSAS Giving, at 617-495-1629.

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Wednesday, April 20, 2006 | Philadelphia, PennsylvaniaDavid Blackbourn, the Coolidge professor of history, will speak on “Have Germans Faced Up to Their History in the20th Century?”

Thursday and Friday,April 27 and 28, 2006Cambridge, MassachusettsAcademic Career Options Panels (April 27) will feature GSASalumni who teach and conduct research. Nonacademic CareerPanels (April 28) will feature GSAS alumni discussing theircareers in the arts, consulting, biotechnology, and other fields.Contact the Office of Career Services at 617-495-2595 or go to www.ocs.fas.harvard.edu for more information.

Wednesday, May 3, 2006 | San Francisco, CaliforniaJeffry Frieden, the Stanfield professor of international peace,will speak on “The Fall and Rise of Global Capitalism in the20th Century.”

Wednesday, May 10, 2006 | Chicago, Illinois Paul Peterson, the Henry Lee Shattuck professor of govern-ment, will speak on “The Perilous State of the American School:What Needs to Be Done.”

From the Harvard Alumni Association

Harvard@Home allows alumni to experience some of the exciting research, teaching, and publicaddresses making news at Harvard University today—right from their desktop. Recent programsinclude “International Relations: New Approaches in a Complex World,” “An Evening with Yo-Yo Ma,” and “Innovations and Reflections: Harvard’s Class of1954.” For a complete list of programs or more information, go to www.athome.harvard.edu/.

Travel/Study Programs engage alumni in the intellectual and the social life of the University through international and domestic travel. Upcomingtrips include Greater Yellowstone (May 27–June 2) and Colonial and Ancient Treasures of Peru (June 10–23). Questions? Visit www.haa.harvard.edu/travel, call 800-422-1636, or e-mail [email protected].

Crimson Compass is the online Harvard alumni advi-sory network whose purpose is to help both studentsand alumni chart meaningful paths.You can either updatean existing Crimson Compass profile or create a new oneby visiting http://post.harvard.edu. E-mail [email protected] or call 617-496-0559 with questions.

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