An Exciting Time at Notre Dame
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Opera ND Town Hall Meetings • Relay for Life • Caroline Chiu Vol. 7, No. 15 News for Notre Dame faculty and staff and their families April 8, 2010 S p e cial A rt S iss u e • D e B arto l O P e R f ormin g A rts C e nt e R 2 0 1 0 - 1 1 S e ason , pa g e S 4 - 5 John McGreevy, I.A. O’Shaughnessy Dean of the College kaity Fuja of Arts and Letters: An exciting time This past week Mark Beudert, director of Opera Notre Dame, reminded me that lyric theatre had humble beginnings on this campus over a century ago— signifying to me that Notre Dame has a long tradition of the arts. for the In fact it was not until the College developed its strategic plan in 2002 that there has been a concerted effort to ensure that the arts have a central place in the curriculum and culture for all at Notre Dame. ARTS In the plan Dean Mark Roche identified six priorities for the arts involv- ing: (1) space; (2) flourishing of student production in the arts; (3) center for creative computing; (4) initiative in the sacred arts; (5) internationalism and diversity, further exploration and integration of the at Notre Dame art of other cultures into our curriculum and on our campus; and (6) the Shakespeare initiative. As a credit to Dean Roche’s leadership, the mere Matt Cashore Matt mention of those six priorities calls to mind many different successes that the College has achieved toward fulfilling those priorities over the course of the last eight years. McGreevy A partial list of high points includes faculty shows at the country’s most prestigious galleries, a thriving Shakespeare program, a creative writing program that draws national atten- tion, awards for our faculty and students in industrial and graphic design, and the completion of the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center. Attempting to build on our successes, when I first started my tenure as dean in 2008, I drafted a document that outlined four aspirations that I have for the college. One of those aspirations was to increase the intensity and sophistication of our undergraduate education. This included, for instance, advancement in the arts in the undergraduate curriculum. How can our undergraduate curriculum better educate our undergraduates to be more disposed toward the arts? How can we give our students the arts habit that they will have for the rest of their lives? How can our graduates, as part of their intellectual, emotional and spiritual delight in the arts, return to their communities predisposed to patronize the arts, or to serve on their local art, symphony and museum boards? How can we prepare our undergraduates to express with greater facility more complicated ideas or concepts by using metaphors or images or scenes gleaned from the arts to navigate toward clearer communication and greater understanding? How can we provide even more opportunities for students to experiment in different art media, to struggle in ways that they do not encounter in any other medium, so as to deepen their own sensibilities and observations, and cultivate the maturation of their own distinctive voices? We will know that we have met our aspiration when our students demon- strate that the arts inform the way they interpret culture, articulate religious experience, reveal their dispositions, or contribute to the arts in their local communities as alumni. There is much work to do, but the openness exists and the spadework has kaity Fuja been done. In many ways it is indeed an exciting time for the arts at Notre Dame. Large photo: Susan Shields, center, staff assistant in University Relations, rehearses for Opera Notre Dame’s production of Offenbach’s “Les Contes d’Hoffman” (The Tales of Hoffman), which opens in the Decio Mainstage Theatre Thursday, April 22. Other staffers playing roles include Michael Ball, OIT; the ACE program’s Jennifer Borek and her children Herbert, Blake and Veronica; and Paulette Curtis, assistant dean in the Office of Under- graduate Studies. For more information on performance dates and times, see music listings on page 6. Inset: Participant Sadie Jenkins Inside » Supersize symphony Page 2 New campus map Page 3 Blithe Spirit Page 7 Caroline Chiu Page 8 2 | NDWorks | April 8, 2010 Food for Thought: Holocaustproject raises consciousness about hunger Whoever controls food Holocaust and the values that inform people,” Signer comments. With this controls the people students’ everyday lives. call to awareness, highlighting how Several years ago, while she was vis- global and local issues of food and BY BILL SCHMITT, NDWORKS iting the site of the Auschwitz concen- water supply can be tied to questions tration camp, Signer read the remnants of power and justice, malevolence and This spring Notre Dame continues of notes in which a Nazi administrator compassion, she said, the 2010 a 14-year-long tradition of raising the had quantified the minimum number Holocaust Project program will pres- campus’s consciousness about the Ho- of calories necessary daily to keep a ent films and lectures grouped around locaust. But the approach in 2010 will prisoner alive to do assigned tasks, plus the subject of food. be a little different, and it will literally replacement costs when an inmate faculty, staff and students will be offer “food for thought.” died of malnourishment. “I thought invited to consider questions like food The annual Holocaust Project, to myself, how could anyone sit down safety, nutrition, water contamination, begun by Rabbi Michael Signer, and calculate that without any sense of the pros and cons of our globalized the late Abrams Professor of Jewish feeling?” and corporate-controlled food supply, Thought and Culture, has always This led her to consider carefully impacts on the environment and held events highlighting the need for various instances of starvation in his- energy, the “local food” movement and individuals and societies to pursue tory and its use as a tool to eliminate other issues. justice and tolerance and to be on whole groups. “Whoever controls food for Thought events include guard against the genocidal inclina- the food source has power over the “Sustainability: The Key To Today’s tions that still imperil the world. Rabbi food Revolution,” a lecture by Marion At 3 p.m. friday, April 23, Peter Signer, who died in early 2009, sought Nestle, author of “food Politics: How Menzel and faith D’Aluisio of the to help students make the connection the food Industry Influences Nutri- Hungry Planet present “fOOD between the Holocaust and the human tion and Health,” which takes place THINK: A global Nutritional Survey family’s cry for solidarity. Food For thought Film Series at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, April 20, in the from Hungry Planet and What I eat” “It’s a universal theme, and it fits in Hesburgh Center Auditorium. in DeBartolo Hall Room 129. very well with what this University’s April 22 - 24 goal and purpose are,” says Betty Signer, the spouse of the late Rabbi, five films will be screened in conjunction withFood For thought, the 2010 who carries on the work of coordinat- Holocaust Project. Screenings take place in the Browning Cinema, DeBartolo ing the Holocaust Project. She says the Performing Arts Center. Tickets are $5 for faculty and staff, $4 for seniors 2010 program, Food For thought, and $3 for students. Contact the ticket office, 631-2800, to make reservations scheduled for April 20-24, taps into for One Water, which is free but ticketed. an even more expansive connection People Gotta Eat she has seen between the lessons of the No Impact Man (2009) around the globe, the film Double your contributions with matching funds 7 p.m. Thursday, April 22 also explores our changing Colin Beavan decides to relationship to water as it grows BY CAROL C. BRADLEY, NDWORKS completely eliminate his more scarce. Director Sanjeev personal impact on the Chatterjee is scheduled to be One in five people in St. Joseph County regularly visit local food pantries for assistance. environment for a year. present, and will participate In 2009, the United Way’s people Gotta eat campaign, spearheaded in a panel discussion following by the Notre Dame legal Aid Clinic’s Judy fox and Bruce l. green- Food, Inc. (2009) the film. berg, executive director of the family and Children’s Center, raised more 7 p.m. Friday, April 23 free but ticketed EXECUTIVE EDITOR than $300,000 for the food Bank of Northern Indiana and local food filmmaker Robert Kenner lifts Gail Hinchion Mancini pantries. the veil on our nation’s food Babette’s Feast (1987) This year, two MANAGING Editor industry. 9:30 p.m. Saturday, April 24 organizations and an Carol C. Bradley A woman flees the french civil anonymous donor have contributing editor the end of the Line (2009) war, landing in a small seacoast agreed to match up to William G. Schmitt 9:30 p.m. Friday, April 23 village in Denmark where she $125,000 in donations The first major documentary comes to work for two spinsters, to the People gotta eat graphic designeR film to reveal the impact of devout daughters of a puritan fund for contributions given through April 15. Kristina R. Craig, overfishing on our oceans. minister. Babette wins a lottery, Kreative Koncepts Pantry partners of People gotta eat include Catholic Charities, little and decides to create a real flower Catholic Church, la Casa de Amistad, the Salvation Army, Broad- COpy Editors One Water (2009) french dinner—causing the way Christian Parish UMC and St. Vincent DePaul. Brittany Collins 6:30 p.m.