Benfey and Remmler to Take the Lead at the Weissman Center

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President Joanne Creighton has appointed Christopher Benfey, professor of English, and Karen Remmler, associate professor of German studies, codirectors of the Harriet L. and Paul M. Weissman Center for Leadership. They will begin their three-year term July 1, 2000.

Directors All (Left to right) Christopher Benfey, Lee Bowie, Karen Remmler, and Eva Paus at the Weissman Center for Leadership.

President Joanne Creighton has appointed Christopher Benfey, professor of English, and Karen Remmler, associate professor of German studies, codirectors of the Harriet L. and Paul M. Weissman Center for Leadership. They will begin their three-year term July 1, 2000. "We are all deeply indebted to Eva and Lee for their creative and energetic work in building so adeptly such a distinctive and vibrant center," says Creighton. "I know that Karen and Chris will continue this tradition of strong and visionary faculty leadership. I couldn't be more pleased with their appointment, and I look forward to working with them."

In preparation for taking on their new role, Benfey and Remmler will spend the next six months meeting with present codirectors Eva Paus and Lee Bowie, with the faculty advisory board, and with students and faculty currently involved with the center. They are determined to build on the strong foundation that Paus and Bowie, the founding directors, have achieved, say Benfey and Remmler. "We are eager to foster faculty development, promote student involvement with the center, enhance ties with alumnae, and tap into new resources."

The two faculty members bring diverse and complementary strengths to the Weissman Center. They share a background in the humanities and a commitment to developing wide-ranging and interdisciplinary approaches in research and teaching. Benfey has been involved in efforts to bring about greater cooperation among Mount Holyoke faculty engaged in issues in the Americas. Remmler's primary focus has been on current cultural issues in Germany, including the politics of memory and identity.

"I have great respect for Karen and Chris," says Eva Paus. "They are wonderful teachers and productive scholars; they have creative minds; they are great people; and they care about our institution. I am confident that they will provide genuine leadership for the Weissman Center in the coming years, solidifying its successful initiatives and charting new waters."

The Harriet L. and Paul M. Weissman Center for Leadership was created in May of this year through the generosity of Harriet Levine Weissman '58, trustee and national cochair of The Campaign for Mount Holyoke College, and her husband, Paul. Their support enabled the College's Speaking, Arguing, and Writing Program and the Center for Leadership and Public Interest Advocacy to merge into a center that advances students' abilities to become effective agents of change in their chosen professions and communities.

The Weissman Center collaborates with faculty, students, alumnae, student organizations, and College offices to advance initiatives that engage students critically with important problems; that foster their commitment to public and civic life; that build their abilities to analyze, argue, and promote their views; and that increase women's preparation to take action and bring about positive change.

Christopher Benfey

Emily Dickinson said, 'I dwell in Possibility.' That's my aim for the Weissman Center and for me," says Christopher Benfey. "Mount Holyoke has an extraordinarily talented faculty; Karen and I want to explore ways for it to work more productively together. We'd like to identify new or emerging fields that might galvanize our students and our faculty. This is a time of crisis and redefinition in the humanities and arts--an area in which Karen and I have a special interest and expertise. Lately, I've been very active as a journalist in those fields, and I'd like to find ways to increase the public profile of Mount Holyoke in the cultural world 'out there.' "

Benfey teaches courses in modern American literature and in American studies and has been a member of the MHC faculty since 1988. The author of two books on Emily Dickinson and of a biography of Stephen Crane, Benfey is a frequent contributor to many magazines and journals, including the New Republic, and the New York Times Book Review. His most recent book is Degas in New Orleans (1997).

Benfey has held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the American Council of Learned Societies. Benfey's current research concerns cultural exchange between Japan and New England during the
Gilded Age.

Karen Remmler

I returned from sabbatical this fall with a fresh look at the College and experienced first-hand the positive impact that the various components of the Weissman Center for Leadership have had on the curriculum and on the community at large," says Karen Remmler. "It seems like the perfect place to bring together local and global cultures, a task that I have been committed to in my teaching and research for years. I have always wanted to play a bigger role in coordinating, developing, and supporting the excellent work of colleagues, students, staff, and alumnae on campus and beyond. Like Chris, I especially relish the idea of drawing upon and building the strengths of the humanities and the arts and finding ways to support faculty initiatives across disciplines. How can we continue to widen the horizon of students globally without neglecting the application of this knowledge locally? I am particularly excited about working with Chris to seek answers to this question."

A member of the Mount Holyoke faculty since 1990, Karen Remmler teaches courses on all aspects of German culture, literature, and language (with a focus on the twentieth century), as well as classes in critical social thought, Jewish studies, and women's studies. She is the author of Waking the Dead: Correspondences between Walter Benjamin's Concept of Remembrance and Ingeborg Bachmann's "Ways of Dying" (1996) and is coeditor of Reemerging Jewish Culture in Germany: Life and Literature since 1989 (1994).

Remmler received the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Grant for research in Germany in 1994 and cotaught an NEH-sponsored summer institute on contemporary German culture in 1996 and 1998. She is currently working on two projects: an anthology of contemporary Jewish writing in Germany and a book titled Proper Burial: Sites of Memory and Identity in Post-Wall Berlin.


President Joanne Creighton has appointed Christopher Benfey, professor of English, and Karen Remmler, associate professor of German studies, codirectors of the Harriet L. and Paul M. Weissman Center for Leadership. They will begin their three-year term July 1, 2000.	Directors All (Left to right) Christopher Benfey, Lee Bowie, Karen Remmler, and Eva Paus at the Weissman Center for Leadership.