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Director (or send email to emeriti@emory.edu) Letters to the Editor Click on the above link to let us know what you think (or send email to emeriti@emory.edu)! |
Upcoming Events
December 4
PLEASE NOTE:
Extended Session
Start time 11:00 a.m.
Susan Socolow
and Holiday Celebration
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Contact Other Members
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find out about a travel destination or find other EUEC members who would like to travel with you, send an email to:
Find other members to get together for shared interests, whether it is forming a book club or a photography club, or getting together to take a hike. Send email to the following link to contact member who would like the same activity!
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This issue of our newsletter is sent to members and friends of the Emory University Emeritus College (EUEC). I hope the newsletter will help keep you informed about our activities and help you feel connected with our members throughout the U.S. On the left are links to our website and links to contact either me or the EUEC office.
With best wishes,
Gray
Gray F. Crouse Director, EUEC
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 Message from the Director
I hope all of you had a safe and good Thanksgiving holiday, whether it was celebrated by yourself or with friends or family. Those of us who were present can certainly celebrate the Lunch Colloquium given last week by Tawni Tidwell. If you were not able to be there, you can read the article below written by Gretchen Schulz. I continue to be amazed at the training and experiences that Tawni has already had and the accomplishments she has made. As just one example, I cannot imagine memorizing an entire book of anything, much less a multi-hundred-page 500-year-old medical text in Tibetan, and that was just part of her medical training!
Next week we move from Tibet to Latin America and will journey with EUEC Member Susan Socolow as she takes us on her development as a historian. We will then have our holiday party and I hope many of you will be able to join us.
Most of us knew Billy Frye, who died earlier this month. You can read below about his long connection with Emory and his work as an administrator.
I am very grateful to John Bugge, Herb Benario, and Gretchen Schulz for help with proofing and editing.
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Lunch Colloquium December 4
 Life, Luck, Language, and How I Became a Historian
The Luce Center Room 130 11:00-1:00 (Note the early start time)
Susan Socolow, PhD, Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor Emerita of Latin American History
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Lunch Colloquium November 20
Bridging Ancient Tibetan Medicine and Modern Western Science: Journeys in Becoming an Amchi Physician and Translating Knowledge Systems
Tawni Tidwell, TMD, Rangjung Tibetan Medicine, New-Fledged Doctor of Anthropology
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Holiday Party December 4
The main event of our traditional Holiday Party will be hearing Susan Socolow (while we enjoy some holiday cookies and beverages). We will also, as usual, be collecting toys to contribute to Toys for Tots. If you want to bring a toy to contribute to that effort, it would be most welcome.
Please note that the organization is seeking toys or gifts for "tots" up through the early teen years. They don't list suggestions for younger kids (thinking doing so might limit contributions to only those listed), but they do list some suggestions for older kids (since they know what might be most appreciated among those of that age group). They would also prefer that toys and gifts not be wrapped (to facilitate sorting and response to specific requests). Should you wish to contribute, please bring your item(s) on Monday and place it/them in the designated collection boxes or bags (in the downstairs lobby). Gretchen will deliver whatever we collect to a collection site after the Colloquium. FYI, here is some of the information copied from the Toys for Tots web site. At that site, there is also information about how you might donate money rather than toys or gifts-an option you might like to consider. We look forward to seeing you Monday.
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Q: Is there a list of toys available to guide me with my donation?
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Toys for Tots does not publish a list of appropriate toys to donate. If such a list were created, most would follow it, resulting in a limited selection of items to distribute in each community. We would rather our donors consider what might be an appropriate gift for their own child/relative, purchase the item, and donate to Toys for Tots.
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Q: Pre-teen/teens are groups for which shopping is especially difficult. Do you have any ideas?
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The Foundation does purchase supplemental toys/gifts for our campaign sites and focuses on these age groups. In the past, items purchased for these groups have included, but are not limited to: sporting equipment/bags/balls; books, backpacks, cosmetics, purses, watch/wallet gift sets, bath gift sets, board games, radio control cars/trucks, hand-held electronics, skateboards/helmets, curling irons, hair straighteners, and hair dryers.
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Q: Are there toys/gifts that are not accepted/distributed?
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Toys for Tots prefers not to accept realistic looking weapons and gifts with food. If donated, such items will NOT be distributed.
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Faculty Activities
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New Members
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We note the passing of Billy Frye
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Walking the Campus with Dianne
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Lunch Colloquium December 4
Life, Luck, Language, and How I Became a Historian Susan Socolow, Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor Emerita of Latin American History
In 2015, in response to widespread demand, Cambridge University Press released a second (and thoroughly updated) edition of Susan Socolow's much acclaimed text on Women of Colonial Latin America. We had thought we might persuade Susan to address that subject matter in her presentation to us, but instead she has decided to address the subject that has made it possible for her to do the work represented in that text and indeed in all of the texts she has written (not to mention how much it has enabled all of the fun she has had along the way).
That subject? Well, let's say that subject is habilidades lingüísticas, or compétences linguistiques, or Sprachkenntnisse, or abilità linguistiche.
¿Qué dice este? (you might well ask) or Que dit-il? or Was sagt das? or Che cosa dire? Of course, we rather imagine you can answer any and all of these questions. And we think you'll be as pleased as we are to know that Susan will be addressing the subject of linguistic competence and how (as her own experience has shown her) it can open professional (and social) doors well worth walking through, all over the world.
It can even help globalize holiday celebrations like the one we'll enjoy after Susan's presentation concludes. In the meantime, by way of prologue to the party, we hereby wish you all Feliz Navidad! or Joyeux Noël! or Fröhliche Weihnachten! or Buon Natale! or (and here's an All-American phrase) Whatever!
About Susan Socolow
EUEC Member Susan Socolow received an AB from Barnard College, Columbia University with a major in Latin American Studies and a minor in European history in 1962. An MA in Latin American History and Certificate from the Latin American Institute of Columbia University, Graduate Faculties of Arts and Sciences, followed in 1964. She was granted a PhD in Latin American History with a minor field in Latin American literature from Columbia University, Graduate Faculties of Arts and Sciences, in May 1973, awarded with distinction. She completed the stage de démographie historique, Laboratoire de Démographie Historique, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in the fall of 1983.
She is the author of The Merchants of Viceregal Buenos Aires: Family and Commerce; The Bureaucrats of Buenos Aires, 1769-1810: Amor Al Real Servicio; The Women of Colonial Latin America (2002); coeditor, Cities and Society in Colonial Latin America; coeditor, The Countryside in Colonial Latin America; editor, The Atlantic Staple Trade.
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Lunch Colloquium Monday November 20
Bridging Ancient Tibetan Medicine and Modern Western Science: Journeys in Becoming an Amchi Physician and Translating Knowledge Systems
Tawni Tidwell, TMD, Rangjung Tibetan Medicine, PhD, Anthropology
Members (and guests) who were able to attend the Lunch Colloquium on Monday, November 20, enjoyed a remarkable presentation by a remarkable woman whom we at Emory will (most assuredly) be forever proud to claim as one of "our own"--one who first connected with Emory after her freshman year at Stanford when she enrolled in our semester-in-Dharamsala program, one who connected again some years later when she was invited to serve as Assistant Director of that same program, and one who then decided to couple her study of Tibetan medicine with pursuit of a doctoral degree at Emory, a degree in Anthropology that she just completed two weeks ago (to much acclaim from all who worked with her during that process--including Mel Konner, who has passed along an article he wrote about her for the Wall Street Journal, an article in which he describes her as, you guessed it, "remarkable"). You can read that article by clicking here.
Those of us who heard Tawni Tidwell speak on the subject that's been at the heart of her doctoral work, "Bridging Ancient Tibetan Medicine and Modern Western Science," emerged from the experience understanding why the word "remarkable" is indeed the perfect word to describe her and the work she's been doing (and will be continuing to do in a post-doc in Vienna that she'll begin in the new year). For one thing, she hasn't just been studying Tibetan medicine; she has been training to become an amchi, a traditional Tibetan physician. And as Mel notes in his WSJ article, she is in fact "the first Westerner to be certified in Tibetan medicine among Tibetan peers, by Tibetan teachers, in the Tibetan language." In pursuit of that degree, she spent years abroad, some at the Dalai Lama's Tibetan medical institute in northern India, Men-Tsee-Khang, and some in eastern Tibet, at the biggest institute of Tibetan Medicine in the world, part of Qinghai University, doing coursework and practicing (during an internship in gastrointestinal disorders and cancers), as well as conducting research on diagnosis of cancer funded by grants from the NSF and the Wenner-Grenn Foundation.
In her talk to us--as in the dissertation she wrote after her return to Atlanta--Tawni focused on "the sensory entrainment processes central to Tibetan medical pedagogy that produces the Tibetan physician as embodied diagnostic tool." She described how "thousands of hours of memorization and oral recitation of root canonical texts written in poetic, metaphorical, and trickster modalities" did indeed transform her into just such an "embodied diagnostic tool" as an amchi must be, able to "detect deviations from health baselines and trajectories of illness" and able to prescribe treatments, most often drawn from the vast "materia medica" Tibetans have collected and processed down through the centuries and are collecting and processing still. Hearing Tawni recite great swathes of the texts she memorized (and more than memorized--imbibed, ingested, became) was itself (here I go again) remarkable.
And of course, as "the first Westerner to be certified in Tibetan medicine," Tawni is not only the "embodied diagnostic tool" that any amchi must be; she is also an embodiment of the very "bridge" between the culture of the amchi and the culture of the modern Western medical researcher and practitioner that she--and many others on both sides of the cultural divide--are building (and studying as they go). It was heartening to hear that medical people from both traditions are increasingly open to the wisdom one another's traditions can provide (not least Tawni's father, a pediatric surgeon whose original skepticism about his daughter's Eastern bent has long since given way to fascination and respect). And, given the scourge that cancer has been for all of us for so long, it was especially heartening to hear that cancer treatment that draws on both modalities is proving more efficacious than treatment narrower in scope. Tawni acknowledged that much more research needs to be done to better establish that efficacy, but she also directed our attention to an article she co-authored with Susan Bauer-Wu (whom you may remember from her time at Emory during which she helped create the Emory Collaborative for Contemplative Studies and helped teach Tibetan monastics in the Emory-Tibet Science Initiative) and multiple others--an article that's most persuasive about the promise of remission of and even cure for cancer that Tibetan approaches can provide. That article, entitled "Tibetan Medicine for Cancer: An Overview and Review of Case Studies," can be found online at http://ict.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/09/09/1534735414549624.
The stories represented in these case studies are nothing short of . . . well, yes, I must say it again . . . remarkable. And I think it's also safe to say that the continuing story of Tawni Tidwell's contributions to the integration of Eastern and Western medicine will be the same. Watch this space for updates on the so-impressive saga of one of "our own" that we hope to be able to offer as the years (and achievements) go by.
--Gretchen Schulz
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New Members
New members are the lifeblood of any organization. Please make a special effort to welcome them to EUEC!
Peter S. Sebel, MBBS, PhD, MBA, Professor Emeritus of Anesthesiology
In 1987, I was recruited from the University of London (England, not Ontario!) to the Department of Anesthesiology, Emory University School of Medicine, as a tenured Associate Professor with a mission to increase clinical research productivity. My research interest over the years focused on brain function monitoring to measure the depth of anesthesia, indirect memory function during anesthesia, and the pharmacology of opioids and other drugs used during anesthesia. I was promoted to full Professor after 4 years, and I suppose that I am one of the few to graduate from Emory whilst a tenured full Professor (I did the Executive MBA at the Goizueta Business School in 1998). Apart from my research interests and clinical practice, I became gradually more involved in administration, being Chief of Anesthesiology at Grady (1994 to 1996), Deputy Chair for Clinical Services (1997 to 2001), and Vice Chair (2001 to 2011). In 2011, I resigned my administrative position and changed to part-time status with a plan to gradually decrease my clinical work load until retirement from Emory in August 2017, after 30 years of service. However, I have not stopped working. During my MBA, I developed a better understanding of investment strategies, specifically option trading, and I am now the managing partner of a hedge fund that concentrates on option trading as an alternative asset investment with a very low correlation to the broad stock market. My wife and I love to travel, and retirement gives us extensive opportunities to explore the world, as well as to spend time at our mountain house in Highlands, North Carolina, where we enjoy the wonderful hiking and the escape from the Atlanta summers. |
Faculty Activities
Andrew W. Mellon Professor Emeritus of Politics and History
EUEC Member Harvey Klehr writes:
The 100th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution has led to a spate of conference presentations and lectures. In October I spoke at Christopher Newport University on "Alger Hiss Is Still Guilty" and to a Road Scholar seminar in Washington on "Soviet Atomic Espionage." In November I delivered a talk on "Jews and Soviet Espionage" to a YIVO Conference in New York and a lecture on the crimes of communism to the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation in DC.
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In Memoriam
From Emory News:
Billy E. Frye, a respected scholar, educator, and administrator who helped guide Emory during years of rapid campus and program development as the University's first provost, and later as interim president and then chancellor, died Nov. 14 near Clarkesville, Georgia. He was 84.
Born in Clarkesville, Georgia, near the North Carolina border, Frye earned his bachelor's degree from Piedmont College before coming to Emory for graduate school, receiving one of the Biology Department's first doctorates.
He joined the faculty of the University of Virginia, then began a 25-year career at the University of Michigan, where he arrived as an assistant professor of zoology and departed as vice president for academic affairs and the school's first provost.
Frye (54G, 56PhD) returned to Emory in 1986 when then-President James T. Laney appointed him dean of the graduate school and vice president for research. Two years later, he was named Emory's first provost and vice president for academic affairs.
The complete article on Billy Frye and his career at Emory may be read by clicking here.
From Gray Crouse:
I first met Billy Frye even before he began his appointment at Emory. He came as Dean of the Graduate School and even though he was no longer research active in Biology, his tenure home was appropriately to be in Biology. Thus he met with Biology faculty and we approved his appointment as Professor of Biology. When Billy arrived at Emory, he realized that graduate training in the biological sciences was fragmented, with the Biology Department and each of the Basic Health Science Departments in the School of Medicine having its own graduate program. I worked with him and representatives of the various Medical School Departments on formation of what is now the Graduate Division of Biological and Biomedical Sciences (GDBBS). He was able to get significant funding to establish the GDBBS as a strong and integrated program of research and education across the University, now consisting of more than 300 faculty and 8 programs with a total of 400 graduate students. I was later on a committee he established to explore the concept and future of the digital library. Although the digital library as we discussed it has still not been fully implemented, it is probably closest to realization in the biological and biomedical sciences. As just one example, I was recently in the Health Sciences Library and found that there are almost no journals that are still received in print.
Billy Frye was a visionary leader and a very honest and straightforward person. He served Emory well and I am very grateful to have known and worked with him.
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Walking the Campus with Dianne
If you didn't figure it out, our last stop was a spot that's almost hidden and can be quite precarious, but if you are able, try to navigate the stairs of the Source Route that descends into the Baker Woodland behind the Michael C. Carlos Museum. It's part of an environmental sculpture installed in the 1970s. At the bottom of the stairs -- it's quiet, pretty, and serene with a babbling creek and nature surrounding you. As I mentioned, it's also the area where the Tibetan mandala de-construction closing ceremony takes place. I've provided a photo of that ceremony below, along with a couple of additional photos of the area. Also, here's a link to a short video offering more information on the installation.
As we all know, Emeriti members have left their mark on many areas of the campus. How about for the next few issues of this newsletter, we focus on places of our campus where you can visually see something of our Emeritus members. Below is one of many examples from one such individual.
Where will you find this on the Emory campus?
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Emory University Emeritus College The Luce Center
825 Houston Mill Road NE #206 Atlanta, GA 30329 |
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