Sidney Perkowitz

	Eddy von Mueller

On Wednesday, February 28, at 3:30, in the Luce Center, Room 130, EUEC Member Howard Kushner will be talking about his new book, On the Other Hand: Left Hand, Right Brain, Mental Disorder, and History.  It is a real treat for us to get to hear Howard because he is now at the Laboratory for Comparative Human Cognition, Department of Communication, at the University of California, San Diego.  For those of you who don't know him, Howard is the Nat C. Robertson Distinguished Professor Emeritus of the Center for the Study of Human Health at Emory.

Our annual Awards and Honors Reception and Recognition of Donors and New Members will be Thursday, April 5. 

Click here to read below about the reception

 

Click here to jump below to the list of our new, and newly retired, members

Holly York is our voting representative to the University Faculty Council and University Senate.  Below is her report of recent activities in those two bodies.  Her three-year term is ending this spring, and she also offers information and encouragement for members to stand for election as our representative.

Click here to read Holly's report

We will be hosting several retirement seminars for faculty who are beginning to consider various aspects of retirement. 

The first of these seminars is being given by EUEC Member Peter Sebel and will be on Thursday, February 22, at 3:00 p.m. in White Hall 112 with the title of "Can I Afford to Retire?"

The second will be on Thursday, March 22, at 4 p.m. in White Hall 110 and will have a panel of several EUEC Members with the title "The Emeritus College:  Who We Are and What We Have to Offer You."

We note the passing of member Roman Rutkowski and the wife of member Ron Johnson.

Click here to read more below

The Class and Labor Report on Faculty has been released in summary form to the University.  The Committee was co-chaired by Nadine Kaslow and Gray Crouse and made a number of recommendations on such issues as gender equality in terms of salary and diversity in faculty recruiting.  A recent Emory News story can be read by clicking here.  The Emory Wheel has also covered this story, with a front page article that can be read by clicking here, and two editorials:  one on January 30 and one on February 7.

Dwight A. McBride, Provost and Executive Vice President of Academic Affairs, Asa Griggs Candler Professor of African American Studies, and Distinguished Affiliated Professor of English

Provost Dwight A. McBride, a leading scholar in race and literary studies, currently is working on a volume about Phillis Wheatley, the 18th-century poet who was the first African-American to publish a book. He will share insights from that work with us today.

 

About Dwight McBride

 

McBride earned his M.A. and Ph.D. in English from the University of California, Los Angeles, and his undergraduate degree in English and African-American Studies at Princeton University.  He served as the chair of the department of African American Studies at Northwestern (2002 to 2007), was dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago (2007 to 2010), and in 2010 returned to Northwestern to serve as dean of the graduate school and associate provost for graduate education, as well as the Daniel Hale Williams Professor of African American Studies, English, and Performance Studies.  McBride came to Emory in July 2017 as Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs, Asa Griggs Candler Professor of African American Studies, and Distinguished Affiliated Professor of English.

 

McBride is the editor of James Baldwin Now (NYU Press, 1999) and co-editor of a special issue of Callaloo: A Journal of African-American and African Arts and Letters entitled "Plum Nelly: New Essays in Black Queer Studies" (2000). McBride's other works include Impossible Witnesses: Truth, Abolitionism, and Slave Testimony (NYU Press, 2002), Black Like Us: A Century of Lesbian, Gay and Bi-Sexual African American Fiction (Cleis Press, 2011), and Why I Hate Abercrombie and Fitch: Essays on Race and Sexuality (NYU Press, 2005).

 

McBride is a founding editor of James Baldwin Review (JBR), an interdisciplinary, open-access journal focusing on the life, writings, and legacies of James Baldwin.

 

McBride has also co-edited several collections and posthumous volumes, including A Melvin Dixon: Critical Reader (Mississippi University Press, 2006), Racial Blackness and the Discontinuity of Western Modernity (University of Illinois Press, 2013), and The Delectable Negro: Human Consumption and Homoeroticism within U.S. Slave Culture (NYU Press, 2014). He is currently at work on two new book manuscripts, tentatively titled "Phillis Wheatley and Her Critics: American Cultural Politics and the Persistence of White Supremacy" and "White Lies in the Republic: Race, Sexuality, and the Law."

 

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It is a particular pleasure to announce the recipients of this year's EUEC Distinguished Faculty Awards.  Many thanks to our Award and Honors Committee for their work in determining the winners of this year's Distinguished Faculty Awards.  The Committee is chaired by Jim Roark with members Donna Brogan and Jim Keller.  The recipients this year are:

• Katherine Mitchell, Senior Lecturer in Visual Arts, retired
• Marilynne McKay, Professor Emerita of Dermatology
• Nanette Wenger, Professor Emerita of Medicine

We will also honor the previously announced Heilbrun winners:

 

Heilbrun Distinguished Emeritus Fellowship

• Ron Gould, Goodrich C. White Professor Emeritus of Mathematics
• Larry Taulbee, Associate Professor Emeritus of Political Science

We will also recognize members who have joined in the past year and those who have donated to EUEC in the past year.

 

The Reception will be Thursday, April 5, 2:00 - 4:00 p.m. in the Governors Hall of the Miller-Ward Alumni House. 

 

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Frankenstein:  How A Monster Became an Icon

 

Sidney Perkowitz, Candler Professor of Physics Emeritus, and Eddy von Mueller, Former Senior Lecturer, Department of Film and Media Studies

I went into the most recent Lunch Colloquium with a lot of questions like: How did an 18-year-old write a book like Frankenstein?  Was there a Georgia Tech extension in the UK in the 19th century for courses on electrical engineering and science, and was it associated with Oxford or Cambridge?  Perhaps she served on the Institutional Review Board of Guy's Hospital?  Was the book about a search for immortality?  Why do we call the monster Frankenstein when the doctor was (Victor) Frankenstein? How did we get from the book plot to the movie versions?

 

And, of course, not all these questions were answered.  But a lot more was addressed during this presentation by Sidney Perkowitz, emeritus professor of physics, and Eddy von Mueller, a film maker, independent scholar, and former lecturer in Emory Film Studies. They had just edited and both contributed chapters to the recent book Frankenstein, How a Monster Became an Icon, The Science and Enduring Allure of Mary Shelley's Creation, which celebrates the bicentennial of her book.

 

Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin was born in 1797, eloped with Percy Bysshe Shelley, yes, the great English poet, in 1814, began to write the novel Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus in 1816 at age 18, and published it in 1818 anonymously.  Quite a feat for a young woman living in the UK in the early 19th century.  Perhaps, but that would pay no heed to her highly intellectual parents, Mary Wollstonecraft, who died soon after her birth but influenced her greatly through writings like A Vindication of the Rights of Women, and William Godwin, political philosopher, who home schooled her, nor to her friends like Lord Byron.

 

The variations and interpretations of the story have mushroomed over the centuries.  Is the story in the book anything like that in the stage plays that were then adapted for the screen?  The first stage play was in 1823 in London, written by Richard Brimley Peake.   How does one go from the book to the stage and to the movie Frankenstein, where Boris Karloff plays the monster in 1931, and then to the Mel Brooks comedy, Young Frankenstein, in 1974 with Gene Wilder as a relative of the "original" Dr. Frankenstein and Peter Boyle as the monster, to Kenneth Branagh's rendition, Mary Shelly's Frankenstein, 1994, which more closely hews to the original story and stars Robert De Niro as the monster and Branagh as Baron Frankenstein?  For one thing, the Shelley book does not name the Doctor's creature a monster, but a being.  The being does surgically originate from dead body parts cleverly sewn together by Dr. Frankenstein and infused with life by electrical current.  The being is eight feet tall, lives for years after his creation, is decidedly ugly, and (driven by the rejection he suffers as a consequence of his looks) becomes a murderer.  It took mass media in the 20th century to flesh out the being, now termed a monster, his ugliness made even uglier with many horror trappings including bolts through his neck.  Shelley's being was intelligent and loquacious, whereas Karloff's was stupid and speechless.

 

Shelley uses the subtitle of the novel to juxtapose Frankenstein and Prometheus, and to emphasize (and raise questions about) the God-like creative qualities in scientists. In considering such questions, Perkowitz touched on the ethics of scientific exploration, enumerating scientific discoveries over the past six decades from the discovery of the genetic code in DNA, to the complete sequencing of the human genome, the identification of important sequences in cell replication currently being exploited in the treatment of cancer, to Crispr, a  genetic engineering technique.  It has been quite a ride.  It seemed almost preordained that cloning Dolly, the sheep, would have to occur in the UK given the history of Frankenstein.  But why is any discussion of recombinant DNA research so sensitive a topic?  One author related it to the "Frankenstein Factor." One component of this factor is our fear of high-technology research as against low-technology, and secondly the fear that involves the research changing our nature or controlling human behavior.   It is of interest that cloning by itself involves no Darwinian principles, since one is only duplicating, not reproducing to improve the species.  However, the ability to improve the species with Crispr techniques, especially when used on sperm, eggs, or embryos, seems to return attention to evolution, albeit not the natural variety, by improving the species, and in this case reproduction carries it forth.  Now the fantasies of the 19th century are being realized in modern medicine: the doctors play the role of scientists and the patients benefit from the transplants, curative surgery, and medicines--and become by analogy the being, but without the attitude (hopefully).

 

Eddy Von Mueller spoke of the profound effect the book has had on the creative arts especially in mass media and popular culture.  He related the effect it has had over the past 200 years in the theater, television, the internet, and the movies--with emphasis on the movies mentioned above.  He spoke to the fact that audiences are capable of appreciating the story in the tradition of a gothic novel, as extremely (melo)dramatic, but also as comedy.  In some versions of the story the creature becomes a pseudo-celebrity with worse suffering than his creator and hugely sympathetic in craving love and acceptance.  This love for the monster has incited many creative directors to promote children's toys, games, comic strips, comic books, and other commercial products such as print and movie cartoons.  Indeed, the name Frankenstein has become a part of our everyday language, such as in the phrase "the Frankenstein Factor" mentioned above. The book and what it has spawned obviously occupy a pivotal role in the science fiction literature as you might imagine.  And the translations with the cultural spin-offs have created a global brand.

 

We sometimes hear the phrase ""turtles all the way down"" in reference to the foundation of the universe.  Well, over the past 200 years with regard to this book and how this story has been interpreted, it has been metaphors all the way up.  The thematic comparisons that surround this plot and the associated images have grown and grown and will continue to grow. The talk was informative, stimulating, expansive, global, and a real tour de force; it is difficult to describe the talk in this short synopsis and do it full justice. You had to be there!   However, you might go back and read the original story, certainly buy and read the book edited by Perkowitz and Von Mueller, and perhaps read the article by Jill Lepore, "It's Still Alive: Two Hundred Years of 'Frankenstein,'" in this week's New Yorker, February 12 & 19. 

 

--James Keller

 

Note:  The video recording of this Lunch Colloquium is now available on our website at http://www.emory.edu/emeritus/programs/videos/index.html 

  

News from the Faculty Council and University Senate

 

President Claire Sterk opened both the January 16 meeting of the Faculty Council and the January 23 meeting of the Senate with an address in which she cited figures from the Pew Research Center that indicated a sharp increase in negative attitudes toward higher education, particularly among Republicans, of whom 58 per cent indicated that colleges and universities have a negative effect on the country. While other group breakdowns of attitude were not as dramatic, they still showed an alarming downward trend regarding confidence in these institutions. President Sterk issued a request for participants from among Faculty Council members to engage in a small group discussion of strategies for engaging conversations about public confidence in higher education, the value of an Emory education, talking to others with opposing views, and related questions. (The first meeting will be held in February and I am pleased to be among the participants. -Holly York)

 

The Faculty Council agenda continued with a reminder about the Distinguished Faculty Lecture to be held February 6 from 4 to 6 pm in Cox Hall Ballroom. The honoree is Carol Anderson, Charles Howard Candler Professor and Chair of African American Studies. Her lecture is titled "White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide."

 

Also on the agenda were reports from the Learning Outcomes Assessment Committee and the Commission on Racial and Social Justice. The latter was instituted in response to student demands following protest demonstrations during the 2016 presidential election. The Commission addressed the specific demand of changes to academic policy, but members are unsure of how to further their work because of ongoing difficulty in persuading student representatives to attend their meetings.

 

At the Senate meeting, there was a report from the Honorary Degree Nominating Committee. The nominees have been selected for submission to President Sterk but will not be made public until the final selection has been made.

 

Plans are underway for a PATH connection to enhance bicycle and pedestrian connectivity on Emory property.

 

Addressing ongoing concerns about the difficulty faculty and staff have in obtaining appointments with Emory physicians in a timely manner, representatives from Emory Clinic reminded us of the phone number dedicated to fast access for faculty and staff: 404.778.EVIP. This number is especially helpful in getting appointments with primary care physicians, but it may be less so for certain sub-specialties.

 

 

 

Since I am approaching the end of my three-year term, I would encourage other members to consider serving as our University Senate/ University Faculty Council representative. This is a great opportunity to serve as a vital communication link between our members and the University. It is interesting and rewarding to keep up with what's going on, and it uniquely positions one to enhance the visibility of the Emeritus College while promoting our interests.

 

The time commitment is not onerous. Each body meets once a month during the academic year in the Jones Room of Woodruff Library: Faculty Council from 3:15 to 5:00 the third Tuesday of the month and the Senate from 3:15 to 5:00 on the fourth Tuesday. Occasionally one might be asked to make a presentation about some aspect of his or her group. Last year a main topic of study for Faculty Council was communication structure within and among the various schools. Following my brief presentation on that specific topic, I was invited to return at a later date, and I then gave a more detailed introduction to other aspects of the Emeritus College.

 

If you have questions about running for this position, please don't hesitate to ask me.

 

 

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EUEC Member Roman Rutkowski passed away on January 28 after a prolonged illness.  He earned a BS in Bacteriology from Rutgers University, an MA in Biochemistry from Columbia University, and a PhD at Ohio State University.  After twenty years in the Army Medical Service Corps, he became Associate Professor of Chemistry at Georgia State and then was hired as Associate Professor of Clinical Chemistry in the Department of Pathology with assignment as a Clinical chemist in the clinical Laboratory at Grady Memorial Hospital.  He retired as Professor Emeritus of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine in 2013.  His complete obituary can be read by clicking here.


Susan Johnson, wife of EUEC Member Ron Johnson for 57 years until her death, passed away on January 17.  She earned a BS in Chemistry from the University of Minnesota, and then a PhD in Chemistry from Northwestern University, where she met and married Ron Johnson, a fellow chemistry graduate student.  Upon her move to Atlanta in 1961 when Ron accepted a position at Emory in Chemistry, Susan became the first woman to teach freshman chemistry at Georgia Tech, where she taught and did postdoctoral research for three years.  After staying home for ten years to raise their two daughters, Susan held a variety of part-time positions in the Emory Chemistry Department for a period of 25 years.  Her complete obituary, including information about her important roles as a figure skating judge, can be read by clicking here.

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