Upcoming Events--
All on Zoom
Lunch Colloquium Hal Jacobs
July 8, 2020
Lunch Colloquium Sarah Higinbotham
July 13, 2020
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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 know it sounds repetitive, but it is certainly true that we have two great programs coming in the next two weeks. Note that our next program is on Wednesday next week in order to give you time to view our own private screening of
Lillian Smith: Breaking the Silence. We will then get to discuss it with the filmmaker Hal Jacobs and Brenda Bynum, who helped to narrate the documentary. What a special program! The following week we are going to be pushing Zoom technology to enable a readers' performance of the first two scenes of Hamlet, with the performance and the discussion both directed by Shakespearean scholar Sarah Higinbotham. We need volunteers for that. See the article below on how to sign up. This should be a fun endeavor for all.
For those of you who missed the sessions in the past two weeks, thanks to Lee Pasackow and Peter Sebel you can read about Daniel LaChance's talk on a fascinating bit of cold war American history and Ron Gould's talk about Paul Erdös, certainly an oddball genius.
I imagine most of our members, even those living well out of Georgia, heard about Georgia's disastrous June primary. Liza Davis gives us a view from the front lines and even though her polling place was not one of the ones in the headlines, what she had to go through as a poll worker was a grueling ordeal.
Last, but by no means least, we have more new members and newly retired members to celebrate. It is so great to have these members and I hope you will take an opportunity to welcome them, either in one of our Zoom meetings or by email if you know them.
I am very grateful to Gretchen Schulz, Ann Hartle, and Marge Crouse for help with editing and proofing.
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Lunch Colloquium--Wednesday, July 8
"Screening and Discussion of Lillian Smith: Breaking the Silence" Location: Wherever you are 11:30-1:00
Hal Jacobs, independent documentary filmmaker (with a little help from his friends)
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Lunch Colloquium--Monday, July 13
"Speak the Speech': Performing Hamlet" Location: Wherever you are 11:30-1:00
Sarah Higinbotham, Assistant Professor of English, Oxford College of Emory University
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Lunch Colloquium Report--Monday, June 15
"Mrs. Miller's Constitution: Civil Liberties and the Radical Right in Cold War America"
Daniel LaChance, Associate Professor, Andrew W. Mellon Faculty Fellow in Law and the Humanities, Department of History
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Lunch Colloquium Report--Monday, June 22
"The Oddball's Oddball: The Unusual Life of a Mathematical Genius"
Ronald J. Gould, Goodrich C. White Professor of Mathematics Emeritus
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COVID-19 Stories
Not all COVID-19 stories involve teaching. Liza Davis shares her experience about being an assistant manager of a polling location in the infamous Georgia June Primary.
Click here to read below about her experience
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New Members
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Walking the Campus with Dianne
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Lunch Colloquium - Wednesday, July 8
"Screening and Discussion of Lillian Smith: Breaking the Silence"
Hal Jacobs, independent documentary filmmaker (with a little help from his friends)
Hal Jacobs, whom many of us will remember from his years writing and developing written/video resources at Emory, now works with his son, Henry, making films. In 2019, they completed their first full-length project, a 50-minute documentary about Georgia author and activist Lillian Smith, who spoke out on the subject of racism well before the Civil Rights Movement took off in the late 1950s and who offered programs intended to address that racism, too.
The current pandemic has made it impossible for Hal to pursue the schedule of actual screenings and actual discussions of the work such as he had hoped to pursue, but we have happily introduced the substitutes he is making available into our schedule: a virtual screening (that our members may access from Sunday, July 5, through Saturday, July 11) and a virtual discussion (in a Zoom session on Wednesday, July 8, from 11:30 to 1:00). Brenda Bynum, who helped to narrate the documentary, will join Hal on the Director's Panel, as may others involved in its making and/or involved, as Brenda herself has been, with the study and celebration of Lillian Smith.
The following link to the film (and to a related reading list) will go live on Sunday, July 5 and stay live through Saturday, July 11:
About Hal Jacobs
Hal Jacobs has an MS in Communications from Georgia State University. He worked at Georgia State for 16 years, managing both publication and the website for the Decision Sciences Institute, a professional association of business school professors at the university. In 2002, he began more than 12 years of work at Emory, first as a freelance editor working on several university-wide commission reports, and then as a writer/content producer in Emory College. In 2014, he left Emory to become an independent documentary filmmaker, forming the company HJacobs Creative with his son, Henry, whose skills in film/photography, music, and editing complement his father's skills in writing and developing written/video resources for higher education.
Their work focuses on arts, social justice, and the environment, and telling the stories of people whose voices need to be heard. The Lillian Smith documentary is their first full-length project. Previously they worked on a short documentary about Georgia weaver/entrepreneur/visionary Mary Hambidge, who founded the Hambidge Center for the Creative Arts and Sciences, the oldest artists' residency program in the Southeast. Their next feature-length project will look at an amazing prison education program, Common Good Atlanta, that brings an accredited liberal arts program to students behind bars.
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Lunch Colloquium - Wednesday, July 13
"'Speak the Speech': Performing Hamlet""
Sarah Higinbotham, Assistant Professor of English, Oxford College of Emory University Sarah Higinbotham, Shakespearean scholar/teacher from the Oxford campus, will direct volunteers among us in a Zoom "production" of the first two scenes in Hamlet, that is, a dramatic reading of the text. If you're feeling "playful" enough to participate, let Gretchen Schulz know (by sending an email to [email protected] by the end of the day on Monday, July 6). Sarah will consult with would-be performers about the casting in time for all to review their lines in preparation for the occasion. (And by the way, that will be gender-blind casting, so women needn't be restricted to enacting no one but Gertrude.) If performers also want to prepare by bedecking themselves with bits of costume or bringing props (a sword? a crown? a skull?), all the better.
After our reading, Sarah will lead a reflective discussion in which we think about how speaking the lines out loud (and hearing them so spoken) connects us to Shakespeare's language and thought. "Speak the speech, I pray you," Prince Hamlet directs his actor friends, "trippingly on the tongue." We look forward to the experience of hearing our actor friends do the same, and/or to the experience of being the actors ourselves
Sarah recommends that all of us, actors and audience alike, use the free Folger digital version of the text. With so many variations of the text available, it will be helpful if we're all looking at the same one.
Sarah Higinbotham received her BA from the University of Richmond, her MA from the University of Hawaii, and her PhD (in English) from Georgia State University. While earning her PhD, she taught college courses inside a Georgia State Prison. In 2014, she co-founded a nonprofit (Common Good Atlanta) that connects universities with prisons, work that is rooted in the belief that human dignity flourishes, and communities become stronger, when access to higher education is equitable. Common Good Atlanta offers accredited college courses in three Georgia prisons four days a week.
We should note that Hal Jacobs, whose program involving the screening and discussion of his film on Lillian Smith has been scheduled for the week before Sarah's program, on Wednesday, July 8, is now working on a film about Common Good Atlanta. And we should also note that Stacy Bell, another member of the Oxford College English Department with extensive experience teaching in prisons, is scheduled to offer us a program on doing just that on Monday, August 17, just after our EUEC summer break.
Before joining the Oxford faculty in 2017, Sarah taught Shakespeare and Milton at Georgia Tech for three years as a Marion L. Brittain Postdoctoral Fellow. She also was a Folger Shakespeare Library Residential Fellow in 2017 researching early modern juries, assize sermons, sentencing rubrics, judges' notebooks, and legal records. She studied paleography at the Folger in 2018 and rare book bindings at the University of Virginia's Rare Book School in 2019.
At Oxford, Sarah continues to study and teach Shakespeare and Milton and early modern literature, focusing on the intersections of literature and law. Besides writing about the violence of the law in early modern England and critical prison theory, she also writes about human rights in literature, as in her 2015 book from Oxford University Press, co-authored with Jonathan Todres, Human Rights in Children's Literature: Imagination and the Narrative of Law. And it won't surprise you to learn that Sarah works with students who are interested in criminal justice reform, facilitates undergraduate peer tutoring in Georgia's prisons, and oversees summer internships involving prison work, as well.
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Lunch Colloquium Report--Monday, June 15
"Mrs. Miller's Constitution: Civil Liberties and the Radical Right in Cold War America"
Daniel LaChance, Associate Professor, Andrew W. Mellon Faculty Fellow in Law and the Humanities, Department of History In our Zoom Colloquium on Monday, June 15, we heard from Daniel LaChance, a scholar working at the intersection of American legal and cultural history, a research focus that enables him to deal with how lay people imagine the law and how their views influence the evolution of the law. In his first book, Executing Freedom: The Cultural Life of Capital Punishment in the United States (University of Chicago Press, 2016), he examined the decline of the American death penalty in the years following World War II, its revival in the 1970s, and its subsequent use over the past forty years. In it, he argues that shifting ideas about the nature of freedom reshaped the dominant meaning of capital punishment in America. In work he is doing now, he is examining shifting ideas about government paternalism and civil rights, particularly rights related to the First Amendment. In tracing the development of views in this area, he pointed out that the Red Scare court cases of WWI were related to beliefs about freedom of speech at that time.. It was then believed that the government had the authority to restrict speech. By the 1960s, people thought differently, and the Supreme Court ruled that unless speech incited violence, free speech was permitted. From 1910-1960, the Court was slowly moving from one interpretation of the First Amendment to quite another. But then there was the period of McCarthyism, when views took a decided step backwards. Some Americans were OK with restricting speech. Teaching the doctrines of communism, for instance, was a violation of the Smith Act. But squelching such freedom of speech was seen as suspect, too, a sign of government bureaucracies ushering in an age of despotism. The fringe right, opposed to the policies of the New Deal, which they saw as a form of collectivism, were newly alarmed by the connections between a too intrusive government and psychologists and psychiatrists who might insist speech (and actions) marked people as mad and consign them to mental institutions. Daniel outlined a fascinating story from the period that was not widely publicized throughout the country. Lucille Miller, a married mother of four in Bethel, VT, was a strong anti-communist, connected to a national network. The Millers were anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists, and like others in that network, they thought the peacetime draft was an unconstitutional act that violated the 13th amendment. Mrs. Miller wrote letters to men who were appealing their draft notices to inform them that she would take their cases to the Supreme Court. Given those letters and other right-wing writings, she was arrested.. She refused an attorney. The prosecutor declared that she was mentally ill and needed to be evaluated. At her competency hearing, her neighbors testified that she was a caring mother. They argued that the fact that she may have held extreme views did not mean she was insane. The judge ruled that the neighbors were not experts and did not take their testimony into consideration. He advised her to obtain expert witnesses. She refused, stating she did not recognize the validity of the court. A week later, federal marshals came to arrest her. Her husband, standing at the door with his gun, denied them entry. The state police threw tear gas into the home and the couple surrendered. She was forcibly taken to a mental hospital in Washington, DC. The Millers activated their right wing network claiming that psychiatrists were working with the government, using their powers to lock people up who opposed liberalism. The pressure was too much for the government. Miller was released after 30 days; a psychiatrist said she was competent to stand trial. Miller raised funds and hired a lawyer to try to turn her case into a First Amendment case. The jury convicted her and sentenced her to one year in prison. The judge suspended the sentence. Her husband served one year in prison on a firearms charge. They appealed that, but the Supreme Court refused to hear the case. A few years later, there was a new panic on the right. In the territory of Alaska, there was no mental hospital. People who needed care were sent to Oregon. The AK Health Act was passed that allowed the government to sell land and use the proceeds to build a hospital in Alaska. Right-wing groups were concerned that the hospital would turn into a gulag where the government could stash those they wished out of the way by declaring them mentally ill.. They claimed the definition of mental competence was too broad and that any personality quirk could lead to hospitalization. They were successful in altering the legislation to better define the issues involved in commitment to mental institutions. As Daniel explained, while people in such right-wing groups were often dismissed as crackpots at the time, these conservative activists were interpreting and channeling feelings of insecurity about the sanctity of the mind that were widespread in American culture. In subsequent decades, others would grow wary of government paternalism and embrace a more libertarian and procedural understanding of rights. This idea of rights would eclipse an alternative vision of them as a tool for pursuing collective, egalitarian ends. To our growing body of explanations about how communitarian possibilities for rights were "lost" or "tamed" in the middle of the twentieth century, we might add anxieties about the fragility of the individual mind, which the cultural life of the Cold War drove to unprecedented levels. The talk concluded with a lively Q&A. What are the chances government might become enlightened government again-and be accepted as such so it might advance change for the better? Daniel posited that social change needs to be couched in populism. If it comes from elitists, the change will not succeed. More recently we have seen that various social media platforms have given academics a more public face, showing that they aren't out of touch with what is going on in society. Expertise and competence could re-emerge as forces for good, trusted to be so, but not in the framework of "I'm the teacher and you're the student." --Lee Pasackow
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Lunch Colloquium Report--Monday, June 22
"The Oddball's Oddball: The Unusual Life of a Mathematical Genius"
Ronald J. Gould, Goodrich C. White Professor of Mathematics Emeritus The Lunch Colloquium on June 22nd (a Zoom session, of course) was given by our very own math genius and active EUEC member, Ron Gould, Goodrich C. White Professor Emeritus in the Emory University Department of Mathematics. He gave us insight into the life and work of one of his long-term friends and collaborators, Paul Erdös, the Oddball's Oddball. Ron's presentation approached Erdös from the points of view of a historian, psychologist, and mathematician. He first delved into the early life of Erdös. Both his sisters died of scarlet fever around the time of his birth in 1913, and as he grew up, he experienced the rise of anti-Semitism in Hungary. Luckily, he left the country for the States in the late 30s. He lived an unusual peripatetic life, moving from the home of one academic mathematician to another, caring nothing for money or possessions, only for the beauty of mathematics. He had a great sense of humor. My favorite Erdös quote from Ron's lecture was what he said when asked whether he felt strange teaching at a Catholic school; he replied "No, but I find it strange how many plus signs they had displayed." Paul Erdös published many papers on mathematics, making important contributions to Graph Ramsey Theory, Number Theory, Combinatorics, Geometry, and Probability. Apart from being a prolific researcher, he single-handedly changed the approach to mathematical research, from mathematicians working solo and producing single author papers to mathematicians forming social groups that discuss and solve problems and publish in a collaborative manner. In fact, nowadays, mathematicians may identify themselves by their "Erdös number," a number that measures their "distance" from publishing a paper with him. Example: Erdös 1, if you co-authored a paper with him. Erdös 2, if you did not publish a paper with Paul, but you did publish one with a co-author of Paul's, and so on.  Ron closed his fascinating lecture by recounting anecdotes about his friendship with Paul Erdös, a relationship that lasted many years, right through the last time he saw him when he came to Atlanta to accept an honorary degree from Emory in 1995 and spent his time on the platform of dignitaries doing math in the little notebook he always had handy for that purpose. We thank Ron for an exceptional portrait of an exceptional man. --Peter Sebel
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New Members
New members are the lifeblood of any organization. Please make a special effort to welcome them to EUEC!
Amy Aidman, PhD, Senior Lecturer Emerita in Film and Media Studies 
Amy Aidman received a BA in Journalism and Mass Communication from the University of Florida, an MA in Telecommunication Arts from the University of Michigan, and a PhD in Communications Research from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She began her career in the broadcasting and film industry and later held positions in non-profit organizations before becoming a university educator and administrator. She served as Associate Dean of the College of Media at the University of Illinois, and came to Emory in 2008 as a Senior Research Fellow at the Center on Myth and Ritual in American Life. Professor Aidman joined the faculty of the Department of Film and Media Studies in 2010, was instrumental in creating the Media Studies degrees, and was Director of Undergraduate Studies for Media Studies. She served as Interim Department Chair of the Department of Film and Media Studies in 2014-2015. Her research focuses on media and children, youth, and families; critical media literacy; cultural and political aspects of electronic screen media; prosocial potential of electronic screen media; and cross-cultural and global issues in communications research. Professor Aidman has strengthened Emory's community connection by partnering with Kids Video Connection, an Atlanta non-profit, focusing on teaching video production and media literacy to youth. From Professor Aidman: We, as leaders in education, seek, generate and communicate evidence and model critical interpretation in our roles as teachers, mentors and researchers. During crises, such as Covid-19, using the most reliable information, we strive to imagine paths forward via an ongoing conversation that builds on disciplined inquiry. This imagining is a process that can guide, uplift and inspire not only our students and ourselves but can potentially ripple out to wider circles. Our training and practices encourage flexibility of thinking and a disposition to open-mindedness. These qualities of mind ground the hope and aspiration necessary to support the work of creating a healthier and more just world for coming generations. Jocelyne Bachevalier, PhD, Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor Emerita of Psychology
Professor Bachevalier received her first PhD from the University of Paris in 1975 and her second PhD from the University of Montreal in 1981. She was appointed to the Emory faculty in 2004 as Professor of Psychology and Core Scientist at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center. Professor Bachevalier investigates the neural substrates underlying the development of learning and memory functions and the regulation of socioemotional behaviors in non-human primates. Professor Bachevalier was named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and was awarded the Karen Gale Memorial Lectureship for Outstanding Women in Neuroscience. From Professor Bachevalier: We are going through very difficult times, but through the many excellent years I have spent at Emory, I learned that the Emory community is very strong and that we will join together to recover and strive again.
Anna Leo, MFA, Associate Professor Emerita of Dance
Professor Leo received her MFA from The Ohio State University in 1992. She was appointed to the Emory faculty in 1993 as Assistant Professor of Dance. Professor Leo's primary research was in choreography, and she also investigated the intersection between yoga practice and dance technique. Professor Leo received an Excellence in Teaching Award from the Emory College Center for Teaching and Curriculum and a Center for Creativity and Arts Faculty Award.
From Professor Leo: Emory provided a fertile climate in which I could reinvent and rediscover myself time and time again. I look forward to watching the continued growth of the Dance Program and wish all of my friends and colleagues in the university continued success.
Lary C. Walker, PhD, Marie and E.R. Snelling Associate Professor Emeritus of Neurology
Lary C. Walker received his PhD from Tulane University, followed by postdoctoral research at Emory and Johns Hopkins. Prior to coming to Emory, he was on the faculty in the Department of Pathology at Hopkins, where he studied β-amyloid pathology in Alzheimer's disease and animal models of neurodegenerative disorders. In 1995 he moved to Parke-Davis/Warner-Lambert in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he initiated studies of the prion-like induction of Aβ-amyloidosis in transgenic mouse models of Alzheimer's disease. In 2003 Lary returned to Emory, where his research has been directed toward understanding the mechanisms by which the Alzheimer-associated proteins Ab and tau form pathogenic assemblies in vivo, how these agents spread in the brain, and the causes and consequences of vascular amyloidosis in the aging brain.
William Lieppe, MD, Assistant Professor of Medicine
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COVID-19 Stories
Patricia E. (Liza) Davis Professor Emerita of English, Kennesaw State University
I arrived at the polling place at 5:15 a.m. on Tuesday, June 9, wearing the special painter's mask my stepson had sent and looking like a beached manatee with a bad hairdo. This was my second election as a poll worker, and first as an assistant manager, so I was excited but trepidatious. Even after 12 hours of training, I knew that any number of things might go wrong with the new voting system. The day began inauspiciously: Everyone arrived on time except the gentleman scheduled to let us into the polling place, the North Druid Hills High School library. A caretaker for his colicky infant grandson, who hadn't fallen asleep until 4:00 a.m., he had naturally overslept, finally arriving at 6:05. Although we had put the voting machines, batteries, and printers in place the night before, we weren't allowed to open or make them operational until election morning. With less than an hour before voters would arrive, our skeleton crew of six frantically set to work, following strict protocols. We removed the plastic ties sealing each machine and checked them against our numbered list; we climbed under tables to negotiate an array of wires and plug everything in properly; we struggled with the intricacies of preparing the behemoth scanner, with some seals to remove and others to leave in place. None of us had been adequately trained for this process--more intricate than it sounds here--but we were a resourceful bunch and had the poll open by 7:05 a.m. To our surprise and relief, the day went reasonably smoothly, with no long lines or malfunctioning machines--not the story at other polling places. Hiccups came with voters who were erroneously listed as having received their absentee ballots or who had received them but decided to vote in person and arrived without their blank ballots. These folks had to vote provisionally. In each case, our manager was required to call the county's board of elections to confirm none had already voted and ask each voter to sign an affidavit. In addition, our voters, with one exception, were uniformly polite and cooperative. About 2:00 in the afternoon, I began to feel that the day would never end, but as we inched closer to 7:00 p.m., I eagerly anticipated a quick close-out and return home by 8:30. Not to be--other polling places across metro Atlanta still had long lines at 7:00 p.m., so we were told to stay open until 9:00. With a collective groan, we slumped back into our chairs. Our last voter arrived at 7:05 p.m., but we weren't given the green light to close the poll until 8:30. If the process of preparing to open that morning was complex, closing out was byzantine. For example, once the poll pads and voting machines were back in their cases, we had to replace the seals we had removed that morning with numbered seals of a different color, every one of which had to be recorded on a special form. Removing and counting the ballots and securing the scanner (more and sundry seals to account for) proved even more challenging. Finally, the monitors and administrative clerks in our group were able to depart, but the manager and we two assistant managers stayed an additional hour and a half to fill out a bevy of forms and follow all protocols to return the paper ballots and poll pads to the elections office on Memorial Drive--that night. Since both the manager and one assistant manager had to complete this task, I was relieved when my counterpart agreed to make the trip. After 17 hours in the library (windowless, by the way), I finally made it home.
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Walking the Campus with Dianne
The chairs discovered on our last walk can be found at the new Emory Student Center at 605 Asbury Circle (we've visited this building before, just after construction was completed). All of the chairs, tables and benches along the patios and sitting areas of this building are ultra modern and futuristic looking. I've sat on a couple of them and was pleased to find they are quite comfy. If you get a chance, try them out and let me know what you think.
Below, I've included photos of more chairs you may see when visiting the Student Center.
 
Where to next? This recently developed place is slightly off campus but is definitely part of Emory. The space has had a short life thus far, opening for a brief period of time before the pandemic hit. I'm not sure when it will re-open, but I'm looking forward to a better look inside when its doors are unlocked.
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Emory University Emeritus College The Luce Center
825 Houston Mill Road NE #206 Atlanta, GA 30329 |
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