Students' "big dig" experience leads to publication--Senior art history majors Kat Conners, Riki Krotscheck, and Allegra Valberg spent the summer at an archaeological dig in Kryas Vrisi, Greece, and their preliminary research will be published in Hesperia, the journal of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Greece. Results from the Ohio State University-sponsored program will also be presented (perhaps by the students themselves!) at the Archaeological Institute of America's annual conference in December.
All three women worked at the site of ancient Isthmia, one of four locations at which the Olympic Games were held in ancient times. Krotscheck worked on dating the site's highlight, a Roman bath that holds the largest monochrome mosaic in Greece. By analyzing the shape and composition of pottery found nearby, she helped date the building within a thirty-year period.
Valberg studied the composition of more than 150 walls, sorting out the various phases of construction in the "east field" area at Isthmia. Conners worked in the east field too, and also used digital images to create maps used to record archaeological findings throughout the site.
For more details about the dig, visit this World Wide Web site: http://www.acs.ohio-state.edu/history/isthmia/isthmia.html.
African expedition--Ann Jones, lecturer in English, nationally recognized expert on violence against women, and award-winning travel writer/photographer, recently spent six months driving from London to Nairobi in an army surplus Land Rover. The purpose of the "Looking for Lovedu" expedition is to find a little-known Bantu tribe ruled by women. While on the journey, she did photo-feature articles for magazines, dispatched weekly stories and photos to America Online, and captured footage for National Geographic TV. She's heading back this October with an Australian colleague to pick up where she left off, driving a circuitous route from Nairobi to Cape Town. On this leg of her epic trip, she plans to work on a series of radio programs for the BBC and write another series of dispatches online, this time for Mungo Park, an adventure magazine by Microsoft.
Student to publish poetry anthology--Lydia Okutoro '98 is compiling an anthology to be published by Simon & Schuster in 1997. Comprised of eight themes, Quiet Storm will include about eighty poems written mostly by black women students, with the majority of poems written by Americans. The anthology also features young male poets and poetry from other countries such as Canada, Jamaica, Haiti, and Somalia.
Okutoro, a poet from a very young age, was born in Nigeria and has been in the United States since she was nine. She attended St. Paul's School in New Hampshire, where she encountered a tradition of compiling writings and artwork by that school's students and alumni of color. She decided to take the idea to a much larger scale and placed an announcement in Essence magazine asking for submissions. She also gathered poetry and spread word of her anthology through the Internet. An English and African American/African studies double major, Okutoro plans to continue her success in publishing and writing after she graduates.
What's new with you?--Please send news for "New & Notable" to Emily Weir, Office of Communications, or email eweir@mtholyoke.edu.
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