|
November 22, 2002
Front-Page
News
We Lead A front-page
piece in the November 12 New York Times listed Mount Holyoke
as a leader in efforts to help students connect across racial
and ethnic lines, along with other institutions including Occidental,
Brown, Carnegie Mellon, Harvard, Haverford, Stanford, Swarthmore,
the University of Michigan, and the University of Maryland. The
article focused on efforts to foster increased diversity at Dartmouth.
Under Review
A review by President Joanne V. Creighton of I'll Take
You There, by Joyce Carol Oates, and The Seven Sisters,
by Margaret Drabble, appeared in the November 17 issue of the
Chicago Tribune. While Oates and Drabble "are not
writers whom one ordinarily associates together," both have
"for different reasons," Creighton writes, "sometimes
unfairly been categorized and dismissed as 'popular' writers."
The president, who has written books on both authors, warns that
"neither [writer] should be underestimated. Both are accomplished
novelists and erudite women of letters. Deeply informed by literary
and intellectual traditions as well as by contemporary culture,
their works of fiction are complex propositions about the nature
of personality." Creighton found Oates's and Drabbles's new
novels "not only highly readable, surprisingly, they have
a lot in common," she writes. Both are fairly short first-person
narratives with female narrators who are grappling with their
sense of identity and relationships with others. "With humor,
compassion and ironic detachment, Margaret Drabble has created
a memorable portrait of an older woman who is constructing a new
life with renewed energy and increased self-knowledge," Creighton
writes in the review's conclusion. "So, too, does Joyce Carol
Oates create a vivid portrait of a young woman who is impelled
forward by 'ceaseless yearning, ceaseless seeking and ceaseless
dissatisfaction.' Both novels gain considerable psychological
resonance from their authors' keen appreciation of the complex
dynamics of female identity."
Test Results
Vice President for Enrollment and College Relations Jane Brown
was interviewed last week on WFCR, the National Public Radio affiliate
for western New England, in a report on the College's five-year
study of the effects of its SAT-optional admission policy. Interviewed
by the station's news director, Bob Paquette, Brown outlined some
of the concerns about standardized testing that led the College
to make submission of SAT scores optional for a five-year period.
The report noted that the study is funded by a grant from The
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
The
counter is
1,232
|
