The Magazine of the Graduate Center, The City University of New York | Winter 2012 | Winter York of New City University The Center, Magazine of the Graduate The Art of 365 folio Krugman on the Great Recession | David S. Reynolds’s Mightier Than the Sword TABLE OF CONTENTS FEATURES 50 YEARS AT THE CENTER 7 Looking back at moments of progress and peril in the Graduate Center’s first half century, adapted from Fifty Years at the Center: A History of the Graduate School and University Center of the City DEPARTMENTS University of New York from 1961 to 2011. AT 365 .................................................... 2 9 News of public programs and other ART OF 365 highlight events at the Graduate We pass it in the hallways, eat our lunch beneath it, and stop sometimes Center to marvel at the rich and varied collection of art that can be found throughout the Graduate Center, from Frank Stella’s vast mixed-media SCIENCE NOTES ............................ 17 work that looms over the Dining Commons to the delicate Nancy A special section on recent discoveries Graves sculpture (on the cover) at the entrance to the president’s office. by scientists of the Graduate Center doctoral programs 20 HONORS............................................. 27 WHAT WENT WRONG? Awards, prizes, and other distinctions Peter Beinart’s interview with Nobel laureate economist and New York for faculty and students Times columnist Paul Krugman focuses on the Great Recession—how we got into it and why we still linger close by. BOOKS ................................................. 28 A listing, with brief descriptions, of recently published faculty books ALUMNI............................................... 31 MIGHTIER THAN THE SWORD 24 Brief reports of where our alumni are and what they are doing This excerpt from the book by Distinguished Professor David S. Reynolds makes a powerful case for the pivotal role of Harriet Beecher Stowe and her book, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, in igniting the Civil War. FOLIO is a publication of the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. © 2012. The Graduate Center | The City University of New York | Winter 2012 Visit our website: www.gc.cuny.edu folio Send comments and questions to: FOLIO WILLIAM P. K ELLY IRA S. MOTHNER BARRY DISMAN Office of Public Affairs and Publications President Editor, Folio Director of Graphic Design The Graduate Center 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY, 10016 RAYMOND C. SOLDAVIN JENNIE KAUFMAN DONALD CHERRY Vice President for Copy Editor Graphic Designer Send letters to the editor by email to: Institutional Advancement [email protected] Contributing Writers: ALEX E. IRKLIEVSKI JANE E. HOUSE Graphic Designer Cover: Nancy Graves, Howling and Hissing, 1992 JACKIE GLASTHAL Director of Publications RACHEL RAMIREZ Aluminum with baked enamel, an abacus ELIZABETH FRASER 29.5 × 28.5 × 20 inches Editorial Support On loan from the Nancy Graves Foundation Inc., New York, NY Photo: Richard Alcorn MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT Milestone anniversaries, like the Graduate Center’s fiftieth, prompt a kind of double vision. We look back at events that shaped our past and look ahead to goals that will shape our future. As I reflect on our past half century, I’m struck by the prescience of people like Mina Rees, our founding president, and Albert Bowker, the CUNY chancellor whose vision has had such profound influence on the Graduate Center’s evolution. One of the first issues Bowker faced when he took office was how CUNY’s new Ph.D. programs were to be organized. He recognized PHOTO: PETER WALDVOGEL that, if political concerns were paramount, he should allow the CUNY colleges to become free-standing universities, each with a full set of doctoral programs. A seemingly more efficient route would concentrate each area of doctoral study at a different college by, for example, locating all foreign language and literature programs at Hunter College and all science programs at City College. This measure, however, would leave a scientist at Hunter without doctoral students and an English scholar at City in a As we hit the fifty-year similar position. Happily, Bowker opted for a collaborative approach and adopted mark, we celebrate the the consortium model that Mina Rees had introduced, two years earlier, at CUNY’s fledgling doctoral division. He called for a wisdom of the consortium consortium in which the very best faculty from each of the CUNY and chart a new course colleges would come together and create a world-class doctoral faculty, significantly stronger than any individual college might for collaborative scholarship. produce. As we hit the fifty-year mark, we celebrate the wisdom of this model of collaborative scholarship. Further, we extend it by mounting a new initiative we are calling the Advanced Research Collaborative. This effort will reformulate the Graduate Center’s mission as a hybrid enterprise. While we will continue to provide superb doctoral education, we will give equal emphasis to research, bringing scholars from the CUNY colleges to the Graduate Center to participate in seminars that will advance their work. We will engage postdoctoral fellows from throughout the world in this initiative, create a robust visiting faculty program, and fund fellowships for advanced students. As we take the Graduate Center in this new direction, we will be extending the vision of Albert Bowker, who recognized the critical influence of research in the life of a university. We will create the ground for scholarship that not only will move the Graduate Center and CUNY forward but will also address the challenges that the world will face in the next fifty years. William P. Kelly President The Graduate Center THE GRADUATE CENTER | The City University of New York 1 AT 365 A highlight of A World of Music at GC, the fall was “The with New Music from Songs of Richard Hundley: A Cele- Throughout the World bration,” with a cast of D.M.A. singers The Graduate Center continues to thrive as a mu- performing works sical hub with a wide variety of free or low-cost of the renowned concerts for music fans. These events, in the composer. acoustically rich Elebash Recital Hall, bring atten- Live@365, a pub- tion to the D.M.A./Ph.D. program in music, lic program devoted which prepares students for many fields and sub- to new forms of fields of music scholarship and performance. world music that The midday Music in Midtown series, organ- was introduced this ized in 2007 by Associate Professor Norman Carey, fall, draws attention director of the Doctor of Musical Arts (D.M.A.) to the ethnomusi- program in performance, offered an exciting sched- cology concentra- PHOTO: SIRIN SAMMAN ule of concerts. The spring lineup featured, among tion within the Bringing music of the Middle East to Elebash Hall was the CUNY Middle Eastern Ensemble, others, composer/pianist John Musto and soprano Graduate Center’s an interdisciplinary troupe of student and faculty musicians, plus one professional. Amy Burton, whose program included a selection doctoral program in of Musto’s songs; violinist Heesun Shin, who music. Curated by Isabel Soffer, the former pro- Camões, often regarded as the greatest poet in the joined other chamber musicians in the D.M.A. gramming director of the World Music Institute, Portuguese language. Also vital to its formation are program, playing works by Beethoven and Janácek; the inaugural season of six Live@365 events fea- the modinha, or sentimental love song, and North and the Prometheus Chamber Ensemble, featuring tures celebrated musicians from Africa, Australasia, African and Brazilian instrumentation and dance violinist Eric Lewis and pianist Norman Carey Europe, and the Middle East. music. The twelve-string Portuguese guitar, which playing Brahms. In an unusual concert on September 27, Malian is integral to fado, evolved from an African lute car- The CUNY Middle Eastern Ensemble (MEE), musician Ballaké Sissoko on the kora, a twenty- ried by Congolese slaves to Brazil in the fifteenth established in 2008 under the direction of Ozan one-string lute-harp, partnered with French musi- century; the instrument then made a return trip to cian Vincent Segal Portugal in somewhat altered form. In another case on the cello. Simi- of reverse migration, Brazilian immigrants influ- larly, on October enced fado’s development when they brought 18, singer and African dance music, especially the fofa and lundu, guitarist António to Portugal in the early 1800s. Fado’s popularity Zambujo provided was widespread among Lisbon’s urban poor in the a thrilling evening nineteenth century, while the bourgeoisie thought of fado, the most it disreputable, like the tango. How times have widely recognized changed! music of Portugal. —JEH His voice expressed an astonishing range of darker emo- tions—loneliness, melancholy, long- ing for a lost past— but in this “new PHOTO: MIKE DI VITO voice of fado,” Singers from the D.M.A. program celebrated the songs of composer Richard Hundley (center). there was also some humor and joy, es- Aksoy, ended the spring season with a concert of pecially in the interplay with the three string play- Middle Eastern folk music and song, which ended ers accompanying him on his U.S. debut tour: up with at least one audience member dancing on Ricardo Cruz on the double bass, Luis Guerreiro stage. The musicians included graduate students in on the twelve-string Portuguese guitar, and Jon Luz ethnomusicology, composition, jazz performance, on the cavaquinho, a small four-stringed instru- comparative literature, physics, Middle Eastern ment in the guitar family. studies, and history; members of the faculty in com- Fado has had a fascinating trajectory from the puter sciences, music, and anthropology; and one fifteenth century to its present-day form. Accord- professional musician. Also frequently performing ing to Philip Van Vleck in NatGeo Music, fado “is PHOTO: SIRIN SAMMAN in Elebash Recital Hall are the CUNY Contempo- first and foremost music for voice and guitar” and A high point of the new series Live@365, featuring rary Music Ensemble (CME), the NYC Al-Andalus its “thematic soul” lies in poetry that dates to the music from throughout the world, was the singing of Ensemble, and the GC Composers’ Alliance.