2000-2001 Revisited: September

BEAUCOUP DE BENFEY
Recent reviews and articles by Christopher Benfey, literary and cultural critic and MHC English professor, included a piece in the December 3 "Holiday Books" issue of the New York Times Book Review on best art-book buys for the holidays; a November 5 review in that same publication of a new biography of the legendary nineteenth-century American actress Charlotte Cushman; an exuberant piece in the December issue of Travel & Leisure, "Searching for Nirvana"--retracing the footsteps of Henry Adams through nineteenth-century Japan; and an appraisal of the short stories and novels of J. F. Powers in the Times Literary Supplement in October.

SMITH'S PRESIDENT NOT THE ONLY WOMEN'S COLLEGE LEADER POPULAR AT BROWN
The November-December issue of Brown University's alumni magazine features a profile of former MHC president Mary Woolley, whom the publication describes as a "social, political, and academic reformer."

Lipman Discussed Footbinding December 7


A woman with bound feet, 1918.

In conjunction with the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum's "micro exhibition" titled The Golden Lotus: Footbinding in China, Jonathan Lipman, MHC professor of history, delivered a gallery talk titled "Pretty in Pain: The Politics and Aesthetics of Chinese Footbinding" December 7. In 1892, an inventory was made of the items kept in a display cabinet that had been received by the College over the years from MHC missions around the world. Included in the so-called "Missionary Cabinet" was a group of tiny embroidered silk shoes made for Chinese women with bound feet. Some of these shoes were included in the exhibition, along with photographs, documents, and texts that illustrated and commented upon the controversial custom of footbinding in China.

Bandarage Documentary Exposes Mining Threat to Sri Lankan Village

Asoka Bandarage, professor and former chair of women's studies at MHC, produced a documentary film exposing a struggle being waged in a small village in the north-central province of Sri Lanka. Eppawala: An Urgent Appeal from Sri Lanka, was screened in December at MHC. It draws attention to a phosphate mining proposal by a multinational corporation, IMC Agrico (in which the United States and Japan are key partners), and the potential devastation to Eppawala, a thriving village situated on ample deposits of a unique phosphate variety used in fertilizer for cash crops such as tea. The proposal calls for the relocation of the 30,000 Eppawala villagers and would destroy the town. The program would also destroy an ancient and successful irrigation system, the ecology of the region, and archaeological sites. Bandarage's film provides a glimpse of the culture and history of the Eppawala region and reports on the protest movement that has developed in response to the mining proposal.

Concert Celebrated the Season

Mount Holyoke's 101st popular annual vespers concert featured nearly 10 percent of the student body, including members of the Mount Holyoke College Glee Club, Chamber Singers, Concert Choir, and English Handbell Choir. This year's concert theme was "All My Heart This Night Rejoices," and the program included a traditional candlelit processional and audience carols, as well as a string quartet, a student duet, and a dance performance. The concert was also performed in New York at St. Bartholomew's Church in New York City.

MHC Students Reconstructed a Town Tides and Government Took Away

Focusing on Cape Cod's Monomoy islands, once the site of a thriving fishing village and now a federally protected wildlife preserve, students in the community-based learning (CBL) course Nonfiction Writing: Writing Journalistic Narratives for Magazines and Books explored literary and journalistic techniques used to re-create a historical era and a specific maritime disaster. The course was taught during the fall 2000 semester by North Cairn, a lecturer in MHC's English department and the author of By Monomoy Island Light (Northeastern University Press, 2000). Cairn's students collectively researched Monomoy's once-thriving Whitewash Village, a nineteenth-century lighthouse, and the Wadena, a coal barge that ran aground in 1902 on its way from Norfolk to Boston during a northeast gale. Though Whitewash Village flourished as a harbor and fishing center throughout the mid-to-late 1800s, and as a summer community through the early twentieth century, the port was literally filled in by tides and drifting sand.