From the Hill

Colby Magazine Volume 99 Issue 2 Summer 2010 Article 9 July 2010 From the Hill Alexandra Desaulniers Colby College Lauren Pongan Colby College Emily Fleming Colby College Stephen Collins Colby College Barbara Walsh See next page for additional authors Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.colby.edu/colbymagazine Recommended Citation Desaulniers, Alexandra; Pongan, Lauren; Fleming, Emily; Collins, Stephen; Walsh, Barbara; and Jacobs, Ruth (2010) "From the Hill," Colby Magazine: Vol. 99 : Iss. 2 , Article 9. Available at: https://digitalcommons.colby.edu/colbymagazine/vol99/iss2/9 This Contents is brought to you for free and open access by the Colby College Archives at Digital Commons @ Colby. It has been accepted for inclusion in Colby Magazine by an authorized editor of Digital Commons @ Colby. From the Hill Authors Alexandra Desaulniers, Lauren Pongan, Emily Fleming, Stephen Collins, Barbara Walsh, and Ruth Jacobs This contents is available in Colby Magazine: https://digitalcommons.colby.edu/colbymagazine/vol99/iss2/9 Q&A NIKKY-GUNINDER K. SINGH, PROFESSOR OF RELIGIOUS STUDIES AND EAST ASIAN STUDIES, ON THE AMONG WOMEN PROGRAM, REVISITING INDIA, AND WHY WOMEN ARE PLAYING AN ESSENTIAL ROLE AS WE SEEK GLOBAL STABILITY ALEXANDRA DESAulniers ’11 INTERVIEW JASON MCKIBBEN PHOTO Nikky-Guninder K. Singh, Colby’s Crawford Family Professor of Religion, drastically, so to make sure these women know about computers and sci- was academic leader for a recent scholars’ tour, “Bangladesh and India: ence as well as giving them ethical, moral values is important so that they Beyond Caste and Poverty,” part of the Among Women tour series. can become good leaders in the future. She spoke with Colby about the Among Women tours and her group’s experiences in South Asia. What other type of work does the Among Women program promote? We are making interactions and relationships to make a difference. We all What is Among Women, and how did you become involved? returned to our own homes and universities with our memories and sto- Among Women is an international dialogue that developed out of the ries from the tour, and we’re taking what we’ve seen there and incorporat- Seven Sister colleges: Barnard, Bryn Mawr, Mount Holyoke, Radcliffe, ing it here. Our group learned about the situations women face every day Smith, Vassar, and Wellesley. Betsy Byrd at Smith College had this vision over there, and now we’re learning how we can help from here. We visited that if women from different parts of the world got together, just sat a sort of home for acid-burn victims, still a traditional punishment, and around a table, you could think together and bring a change in the world. our group is now working to bring a victim of acid violence to the United The Among Women program started two or three years ago, and this States and help them go to college here. latest tour to India and Bangladesh was the third; the first was to Jordan and the second to South Africa. I became involved because I graduated Why is the program so important? from Wellesley, the host of the program this year. I acted as the academic It inspires us. We sometimes think it’s only big things that one could or leader for the tour, organizing the combination of visiting the country with should do, but even the small things help, especially when you come back discussions with women in leadership positions in politics, economics, and continue to converse with one another. The memories, the experi- education, the arts. We were a group of thirty-four women—graduates ences we made through the tour are very important. I think it was one of from these Seven Sister colleges, from twenty-five to eighty years old— the feminist scholars who coined “the future of memory.” It’s all about getting together to see another part of the world and learn how we might women making memories and experiences together and building our own help make a difference there. stronger future. You grew up in India? How has the country changed since you left Why women? to pursue your education in the U.S.? If you want global stability, you need women. I witnessed on the tour that I did grow up in India, in a tiny area there. We were so disconnected from idea becoming a reality. Women getting involved, becoming a part of the everything. Coming to the United States for college was like bringing in globalizing world. Talking, sharing, learning, and making the world stable, a whole new world. Now every place has the Internet and e-mail and cell better. You see history; you see the results of promoting and including phones. It changed so fast and has really brought the world so close. women. Women from all over the world are coming together, exchanging Globalism is a reality and it’s changing that part of the world so quickly. ideas, and inspiring one another. It’s really dynamic. How is the Among Women program working to make the world a Will you stay connected with the Among Women program and particu- more globalized society? larly with this group of 34 women? These were women meeting women and thinking together how we can Absolutely! We’re constantly e-mailing. We’re all really together. There’s a learn from one another, creating conversations across the world. One of whole pool of photographs, thousands, and we relive every moment we our first meetings was with a Smith alum who had returned to India after had there. We are all sharing how we’re working now, too. If anyone reads another Among Women tour and is now starting a university [the Asian a good book or sees a good movie or has thoughts about the project, we University for Women], the first of its kind for women, just women. It’s e-mail. It’s been really wonderful. bringing women from all different parts of the world—Israel, Palestine, Cambodia, Pakistan—... together so they can be educated and learn to live with one another. It’s really wonderful. They’re learning science, too. We are becoming a global society, and that part of the world is changing 24 COLBY / SUMMER 2010 Nikky Singh, Colby’s Crawford Family Professor of Religion and a Wellesley alumna, with students following her return from a tour of India on which she led other alumnae from the Seven Sister colleges. The international program encourages empowerment of women and solutions to global problems. How have you incorporated your experience in your work at Colby this Would you suggest your students travel in order to have these first- spring? hand experiences? The tour changed me so much. It really opened my eyes. I teach a course Yes, I would definitely suggest that my students go to India and really on South Asian women writers, and I talk about authors and film directors meet women there. Go experience that. No matter what you hear or read who’ve made films about the slums in Mumbai or the red light district or learn, you’ll see something different, you’ll experience it differently. In there. Going to see that had a profound impression on me. To hear the our own world, everything is so familiar, and we really take what we know women there tell their stories, firsthand. It was so sad to hear how they’ve for granted. Unless we encounter the unfamiliar we really don’t even think lost their womanhood; they’ve lost their lives. But there’s hope, too. They about our own lives. I mean, I grew up there, but it’s only through going are fighting for a better life, and there are groups like the Among Women elsewhere, coming here to study and then returning with the tour, that we tours going and learning from and about these women, learning how to learn, make memories, and keep those alive in order to learn more. help. That’s what I’m bringing back to my classrooms. The hope. You can read about women in these slums, in the red light district, about how they’ve lost their identity, but to go and see how people are changing and the hope and the smiles that exist, it’s really reassuring. You see the worst, but also the best. COLBY / SUMMER 2010 25 26 COLBY / SUMMER 2010 Derby Dames ALUMNAE JOIN THE ROLLING RANKS OF A HARD-HITTING, ALL-WOMEN’S SPORT LAUREN PONGAn ’09 STORY JASON MCKIBBEN PHOTOS Inside the Portland Expo the emcee dons skates, a flowing skirt, fairy wings, and a cerulean wig as she introduces the two battling roller derby teams—Harrisburg Area Roller Derby (HARD) and Portland Maine’s own Port Authorities. When the emcee summons “The Rehabiliskater,” 37-year- old redhead Lisa DeHahn Jade ’95 skates to the front of the pack and waves to the cheering home crowd. The back of her navy-and-white jersey reads “REHAB.” Players choose derby names as a rite of passage, and “The Rehabiliskater” is a play on Jade’s former job as a substance-abuse counselor. (She’s now a mental health counselor in a Maine correctional center.) What ensues is a fast-paced circling of the track, punctuated by whistles, resets—and hard hits. The gist of the sport is four blockers from each team circle in a pack as the jammer tries to catch up from behind and break through to the front, earning points by lapping an opposing play- er. As a jammer, “basically you’re the quarterback of the team,” explained Lena “Whiskey Ginger” Barouh ’07, who skates with the Seattle Tilted Thunder Rail Birds.

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