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Upcoming Events
Lunch Colloquium
MONDAY
March 25, 2019
Helen and Don O'Shea
VIEW WEBCAST ONLINE
Lunch Colloquium
March 25, 2019
Helen and Don O'Shea
EUEC Distinguished Awards and Heilbrun Fellowships
April 2, 2019
Governors Hall
Miller-Ward Alumni House
2:00 pm
SHETH LECTURE
April 8, 2019
Governors Hall
Miller-Ward Alumni House
11:30-1:00 pm
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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. Send email to the following link to contact members 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
Once again, we had a great Lunch Colloquium. For many of us it was our first exposure (at least consciously) to ekphrastic poetry. (If you don't know what that is, as many/most of us did not, be sure to read Brenda Bynum's article on the Lunch Colloquium below.) Liza Davis perfectly illustrated how a great teacher can open up a potentially difficult subject and make it interesting and relevant and compelling. At the end of Brenda's article is a link to a YouTube video of Natasha Trethewey reading some of the poems that Liza discussed. Even though Trethewey gives a short introduction to the series of poems, I don't think any of us could really get the meaning of that poetry without the understanding that we gained from Liza's talk. The video of the Lunch Colloquium will be available later. Don O'Shea is having to work some special magic with it as a technical glitch interrupted transmission during the talk.
This is one of our busiest periods of the year as we have several special events coming up in the next few weeks. Our next Lunch Colloquium will be a beautiful talk by Helen and Don O'Shea who will show the results of what more than a decade of extensive gardening can produce and will share some of their secrets. The next week will be our annual awards reception and recognition of new members and donors. This is a special time and I hope you will be able to attend to help our award winners celebrate their accomplishments and to welcome the new members who are able to attend.
The week after the reception is our Sheth Distinguished Lecture, another highlight of the year. It is an honor to have Professor Abdullahi An-Na'im speak, and, thanks to the generosity of the Sheths, there will be a lunch for all of those attending.
We are also offering three more Retirement Seminars to active faculty: Steve Nowicki later today, Jeff Pennell on March 28, and several of us talking about the Emeritus College on April 10.
It is always good to see what our members are up to. Please send me information on your activities. It can be very encouraging to our members who are not yet retired to know that they can look forward to being active in a variety of different ways.
New members are important for any organization and it is a delight to welcome so many this time. It is an honor for all of us to have faculty join who are not yet retired. Some are probably close to retirement and others can be years away. Please welcome our new members and assure those who are not yet retired that their life will be far from over when they retire!
I am very grateful to Gretchen Schulz, Ann Hartle, and Marge Crouse for help with editing and proofing.
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Lunch Colloquium--Monday, March 25
How Does Your Garden Grow?
The Luce Center
Room 130 11:30 - 1:00
Helen O'Shea, RN, PhD, Professor of Nursing Emerita, and
Don O'Shea, PhD, Professor of Physics Emeritus, Georgia Institute of Technology
Click here to read more below about this Lunch Colloquium
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Lunch Colloquium--Tuesday, March 12
The Poetry of Natasha Trethewey
Liza Davis, Director Emerita, University Honors Program, and Professor Emerita of English, Kennesaw State University
Click here to read more below about this Lunch Colloquium
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Awards and Honors Reception--Tuesday, April 2
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Sheth Distinguished Lecture--April 8
Our Sheth Distinguished Lecture is coming soon. Professor Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im, Charles Howard Candler Professor of Law, will give the lecture on April 8. Professor An-Na'im is also an associated professor in the Emory College of Arts and Sciences, and senior fellow of the Center for the Study of Law and Religion of Emory University. An internationally recognized scholar of Islam and human rights and human rights in cross-cultural perspectives, he teaches courses in international law, comparative law, human rights, and Islamic law. His research interests include constitutionalism in Islamic and African countries, secularism, and Islam and politics. He received an LLB (Honours) from the University of Khartoum (Sudan) in 1970, an LLB (Honours) and Diploma in Criminology from the University of Cambridge (England) in 1973, and a PhD (Law) from the University of Edinburgh (Scotland) in 1976.
The Sheth Lecture, made possible by a generous donation from Dr. Jagdish and Mrs. Madhu Sheth, will be in Governors Hall of the Miller-Ward Alumni House at 11:30 a.m. on April 8. A special feature of this lecture is that lunch is provided and so reservations are necessary. You may register by clicking here.
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New Members
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Faculty Activities
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Member Bailey Francis and his wife died on February 24.
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Walking the Campus with Dianne
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Lunch Colloquium--Monday, March 25
How Does Your Garden Grow?
Helen O'Shea, RN, PhD, Professor of Nursing Emerita, and
Don O'Shea, PhD, Professor of Physics Emeritus, Georgia Institute of Technology
One block from the Emory Gate there is a forested garden that Helen and Don created over the past 15 years. It has been on the Druid Hills Homes and Gardens Tour and the Atlanta Botanical Garden Tour for Connoisseurs. This presentation describes the design, development, and maintenance of the garden by these two retired professors, one of whom became a Master Gardener after retirement. Topics covered will be the choice of plants and their plantings, successes and failures over time, and practices that they have developed over the years that should prove useful to anyone who maintains a garden or wants to start one. And they promise plenty of pictures of flowers, too.
About Helen O'Shea
Helen S. O'Shea is Professor Emerita of Nursing. She received her diploma in nursing from the Martins Ferry Hospital School of Nursing in 1958, her BSN and MS from the Ohio State University in 1961 and 1962 respectively, and her PhD from Georgia State University in 1980. She served as a faculty member and an administrator at the Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing at Emory University for 40 years. The primary focus of her scholarship was clinical teaching. She retired in August 2003 but continued to teach part time in the doctoral program and in the post-master's summer teaching institute until 2011. She is active in the Emeritus College service activities, is chair of the Pre-retirement Mentoring Committee, and has been an active DeKalb County Master Gardener since 2008. She received the Distinguished Emeritus Award from the Emeritus College in 2011 and the Unsung Heroine Award from the Emory Women's Center in 2013.
About Donald O'Shea
Donald C. O'Shea is Emeritus Professor in the School of Physics at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He received a BS in Physics from the University of Akron in 1960, an MS in Physics from Ohio State in 1963, and a PhD in Physics from Johns Hopkins in 1968. After postdoctoral work on laser spectroscopy at the Gordon McKay Laboratory at Harvard from 1968-1970, he joined the physics faculty at Georgia Tech. He has written or co-authored four textbooks on optics and lasers. The last, Designing Optics Using CODE V, was published last July. In 2000, he was president of SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering--and for 11 years was the editor of its flagship journal, Optical Engineering. In 1996, he was awarded the Esther Hoffman Beller Award by the Optical Society of America for "excellence in the field of optics education."
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Lunch Colloquium--Tuesday, March 12
The Poetry of Natasha Trethewey
Liza Davis, Director Emerita, University Honors Program, and Professor Emerita of English, Kennesaw State University
On Tuesday, March 12, the members of the Emeritus College who were lucky enough to attend the Lunch Colloquium that day heard Dr. Liza Davis, Director Emerita of the University Honors Program and Professor Emerita of English at Kennesaw State University, present a truly illuminating explication of several ekphrastic poems of former Emory professor and twice Poet Laureate of the United States, Natasha Tretheway.
Though a number of the distinguished attendees, including me, confessed to a lack of familiarity with the term "ekphrastic," I can now say that it refers to poems written in direct response to works of art in another medium - in this case, paintings and sculpture.
The poems discussed by Dr. Davis were from the collection entitled Thrall published next after Native Guard, which won the Pulitzer Prize for its author. They included "Miracle of the Black Leg" which Dr. Davis illustrated with pictures from the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries as well as a sequence of four poems written in response to Casta paintings produced in 18th century New Spain (or Mexico) that depicted the byzantine taxonomy of inter-ethnic mixing where Europeans, indigenous peoples, Africans, and the existing mixed-race population intermarried.
In introducing this exploration, Dr. Davis reminded us of Tretheway's own mixed-race heritage - her mother was black and her father was white - which certainly made the poet's deep interest in these historical representations even more immediate and resonant. As the poet said in an interview, "in so many ways there is a symbiotic relationship between blackness and whiteness. These classifications are codependent."
"The Miracle of the Black Leg" refers to the legend of Saints Cosmas and Damian, brothers who practiced medicine in the 3rd century seaport of Aegue, who saved a white verger's life by amputating his ulcerous leg and replacing it with the healthy leg of an Ethiopian who had recently died. Tretheway's poem is a detailed interpretation of the imagery in half a dozen depictions of this event, showing the donor both alive and dead in different versions:
How not to see it-
The men bound to one another, symbiotic -
one man rendered expendable, the other worthy
of this sacrifice? In version after version, even
when the Ethiopian isn't there, the leg is a stand-in,
a black modifier against the white body,
a piece cut off - as in the origin of the word comma:
caesura in a story that's still being written.
In the sequence of four Casta poems called "Taxonomy," the poet continues her agenda of making very specific references to small details in the paintings from which she draws larger implications on their meaning.
How not to see in this gesture
the mind of the colony?
And later she underscores the sad absurdity of the "colony's" taxonomic obsession with its promise of
blood alchemy - three easy steps
to purity:
from a Spaniard and an Indian,
a mestizo;
from a mestizo and a Spaniard,
a castizo;
from a castizo and a Spaniard,
The mixtures referred to above are:
Mestizo = Spaniard + Indian;
Castizo = Mestizo + Spaniard.
Below these two in the taxonomy of the time were an additional 14 categories listed in order of descending desirability with
"Ahi te estas " or "There you are" at the bottom.
In the final poem in the "Taxonomy" sequence, Trethewey describes "The Book of Castas" thus:
Guidebook to the colony,
record of each crossed birth,
it is the typology of taint,
of stain: blemish: sullying spot:
that which can be purified
that which cannot - Canaan's
black fate. How like a dirty joke
it seems: what do you call
that space between
the dark geographies of sex?
Call it the taint--as in
T'aint one and t'aint the other --
We owe so much to the thoughtful and rigorous care with which Dr. Davis found and paired the paintings with the poems they inspired so that we could see for ourselves those gestures that revealed the "mind of the colony." Access to the Casta paintings and the depictions of the Miracle of the Black Leg was essential to a full appreciation of the power of the poems and the poet's moving exegesis of what she saw in them. Indeed, without the visual feast Dr. Davis supplied, I fear I might have found the work impenetrable as opposed to gaining the insight and understanding she made possible and abundant. Enhanced by her comprehensive knowledge of the subject and her clear and concise delivery, the experience was revelatory.
--Brenda Bynum
Those of us fortunate enough to hear Liza explain these poems will certainly better appreciate hearing Trethewey read the sequence of four Casta poems called "Taxonomy," which is available on YouTube by clicking this link.
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Awards and Honors Reception--Tuesday, April 2
EUEC Distinguished Faculty Awards It is a particular pleasure to announce the recipients of this year's EUEC Distinguished Faculty Awards. Many thanks to our Awards 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, Jim Keller, and Marianne Scharbo-DeHaan. The recipients this year are: - Ron Gould, Goodrich C. White Professor Emeritus of Mathematics
- Corinne A. Kratz, Emory Director African Critical Inquiry Program and Professor Emerita of Anthropology and African Studies
Heilbrun Distinguished Emeritus Fellowship We will also honor the Heilbrun winners: - Ann Hartle, Professor Emerita of Philosophy
- John C. Lucchesi, Asa G. Candler Professor Emeritus of Biology
New Members and Donors
We will also recognize members who have joined in the past year and those who have donated to EUEC in the past year. This is a large and fantastic group and we hope many of you will be present to celebrate them! The Reception will be Tuesday, April 2, 2:00 - 4:00 pm, in the Governors Hall of the Miller-Ward Alumni House. |
New Members
New members are the lifeblood of any organization. Please make a special effort to welcome them to EUEC!
Patrick Noonan, PhD, Professor Emeritus in the Practice of Information Systems and Operations Management
Willie James Parks, MD, Professor Emeritus of Pediatrics
Members in Transition
Dave Koch, PhD, Professor Pathology & Laboratory Medicine
Gabriela Oprea, MD, Associate Professor, Department of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine
Sharon Strocchia, PhD, Professor of History
Barbara Strock, PhD, Senior Lecturer and Director of Undergraduate Studies in Psychology
Ling Yue, MD, MSc, Assistant Professor, Emory Vaccine Center, Yerkes National Primate Research Center
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Faculty Activities
Ronald Schuchard Goodrich C. White Professor of English Emeritus
Of this latest volume in Ron Schuchard's massive work, Johns Hopkins University Press states:
The postwar years of this volume represent one of the richest and most rewarding periods of Eliot's career. Following receipt of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1948, he was in constant demand to lecture, broadcast, contribute to periodicals, and receive honorary degrees and recognition from numerous European, American, and British universities and societies. These activities produced a great variety of unpublished, uncollected, and unrecorded addresses, speeches, and tributes, together with ten major literary essays that have become part of Eliot's permanent canon, from "Milton II" to "The Three Voices of Poetry." A film version of Murder in the Cathedral and the publication and production of two new plays, The Cocktail Party and The Confidential Clerk, generated new essays on the relation of poetry, drama, and the theater, leading to the canonical "Poetry and Drama." Of central concern in the volume is the relation of religion, education, and culture, and the responsibility of the man of letters for reconstructing that relation after the devastations of war, a concern developed in Notes towards the Definition of Culture and expanded in the previously unpublished "Die Idee einer europäischen Gesellschaft" [The Idea of a European Society].
Dalia Judovitz National Endowment of the Humanities Professor Emerita of French
Dalia has been busy in her retirement. Her latest book is Georges de La Tour and the Enigma of the Visible (New York: Fordham University Press, 2018). She has published a number of articles in refereed journals and has presented several refereed conference papers, including:
"The 'Objective' Character of Art: Duchamp's Fountain," Ostracon Journal of Criticism and Issues, Issue 3, Marcel Duchamp's Fountain 1917: Centenary Celebration (October 2017), 64-79.
"Marcel Duchamp: War, Trauma, and The Question of Art," Dada & Surrealism, Special Issue on "Dada, War and Peace," No. 22 (2018): 1-19
"Duchamp's Temporal Machinations and the Postmodern," "Dada Futures," International Conference at University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, February, 2018
"Skulls, Mirrors and the 'Vanity' of Painting in Georges de La Tour, Renaissance Society of America, New Orleans, March 2018
"Georges de La Tour: The Sacred Image in Question," Modern Languages Association, Chicago, Jan. 2019
She has also given two invited papers, the latter just over a week ago in Seoul, South Korea:
"Georges de La Tour and the Enigma of the Visible," Columbia Society for the Humanities, Columbia University, September 2018
Brenda Bynum Senior Lecturer Emerita, Department of Theater Studies
Brenda notes that "Night Streetcars" is Cary Bynum's most recent book of poetry, but the evening will have earlier poems as well.
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In Memoriam
Linda Carroll Francis passed away with her beloved husband Paul Bailey Francis on February 24, 2019 in their Atlanta, GA home. EUEC Member Paul Bailey Francis, MD, was born on December 17, 1943 in LaFollette, TN. On his website, seventyyearsinthecoalmines.org/ he writes:
I am Paul Bailey Francis, Jr., great grandson of Philip Francis. My family lived in LaFollette, TN. I received BS and MD degrees from the University of Tennessee. My post-graduate medical education in internal medicine and pulmonology were at Strong Memorial Hospital of the University of Rochester in New York and Parkland Memorial Hospital of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School at Dallas. In the middle of this training was a 2-year tour of duty with the US Navy, where I was stationed at the Naval Hospital, NAS, Pensacola, FL. I began my career in 1974 in Atlanta, GA, as the Chief, Pulmonary Disease, at the Atlanta Veterans Administration (now Department of Veterans Affairs) Medical Center and an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Emory University School of Medicine. After a 25-year career in academic and later, administrative, medicine, I retired at the end of 1999 as the Chief of Staff at the Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center (Atlanta) with the title of Professor Emeritus at Emory. I have been active in genealogy and family history since 1997. My wife, Linda, and I live in Atlanta.
Bailey Francis
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Walking the Campus with Dianne
The old/new building Dr. Benario and I visited in our last photo is the old Pitts Library Building that was recently re-opened as the new Convocation Hall. The building is indeed old/new inside and out -- many old features were either restored or reinstalled. Dr. B and I were treated to a private tour through a good portion of the building; however, we didn't get a chance to view any private offices! Ah, perhaps next time. At any rate, the building is beautiful, filled with marble and wood, as well as new technology. The photos below: top left - lounge area just outside the President's office; center top - history wall in a meeting room; top right - technology wall and marble stairwell; lower left - community room; lower right - portion of entrance atrium; bottom - Dr. Benario seated in opposite view of community room. The building is lovely and my photos do not do it justice, so you should definitely plan a visit.
The weather is finally getting a bit warmer so let's take a walk outdoors! This place has a rather pleasant looking courtyard and unlike the photo, is usually filled with students.
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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