 Weekly News for Faculty, Staff and Friends of the Worcester State College Community |
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WSC to Join Nation Wide Teach-In on Global
Peace Studies Scholar Michael T. Klare to Speak at WSC Acclaimed Author Tells of Two-Year Journey in Mali College to Host Celebration of Scholarship and Creativity Consortium Art Show - Opening Reception Feb. 6
WSC Chorale Says Send Your Loved One a
Weierman Investigates the Case of the Slave-Child, Med Get Your Tickets Today for First-Ever WSC Night at Hanover Theatre Singing Birthday Grams by WSC Chorale Members Upcoming WSC Baseball Camps and Clinics
George I. Alden Excellence in
Teaching Award - Edward Nuhfer to Address Faculty Development Workshop
Rodney Oudan (Business Administration and Economics) had his case study, Nestl New Product Development Company Case, published by Pearson Education Prentice Hall. The case study is published in a new textbook, Introduction to Marketing - The Works, authored by Dr. Michael Levens. The case study describes the controllable and uncontrollable elements that Nestl encountered in entering global markets for its brand of Nesfit (a thirst quencher with vitamins and minerals to replace lost energy) as well as the major sources of risks involved.
The opening
reception will take place on Sunday, February 15, 2009, from 3-5 p.m. at
Boston University 808 Gallery in conjunction with
The Boston Printmakers 2009 North American Biennial. Image by Van Ly.
For more info:
http://www.bostonprintmakers.org/07arches.htm
AROUND CAMPUS
Acclaimed Author Tells of Two-Year Journey in Mali
When Holloway found
herself in Mali as a 22-year-old Peace Corps volunteer in 1989, she met Monique,
a 24-year-old midwife. She quickly learned of Monique's value to her
village. Despite her 6th grade education, she obtained nine months of
medical training and served as not only the villages midwife, but its only
healthcare worker to over 1,400 people. This was a daunting task in a
place where women worked 16 to 17 hours in the fields every day and gave birth
to six to seven children, on average. Two out of five babies die there before
their fifth birthday. After helping her at the births of hundreds of
babies and working side-by-side with Monique weighing babies and watching and
assisting Monique consult with village women on how to keep their children
healthy despite bouts of malnutrition and malaria, they became very close. Holloway was impressed
by Monique's chutzpah. She was the first woman in the village to demand
a salary for her work. She was the first to question the practice of
genital cutting of little girls, said Holloway. After her Peace Corps
work was completed in 1991, Holloway and Monique kept in touch. Holloway
was also successful in bringing Monique to the U.S. for a visit, where she
enjoyed, popcorn, pizza, wearing pants and driving. After their visit
they kept in touch through letters and sending audio cassettes back and forth.
Holloway was sad to learn that Monique died in 1998 while giving birth to her
fifth child. Holloway returned to Mali and connected with her family,
conducting hours of interviews which evolved into her book. Since Monique's death,
her favorite cousin, Maxime Dembele, a village health worker, founded the rural
health clinic Cabinet de Soins Monique, or Clinique Monique. Profits
from Holloways book fund the clinic which aims to improve the health and
well-being of women, children and families in Mali, Wes Africa. For more information on
the clinic and Monique and the Mango rains, visit
www.moniquemangorains.com The event was sponsored
by Student Center/Student Activities, Disability Services, Counseling Office,
Women's Studies, and the Student Events Committee.
College to Host Celebration of Mark your calendar. Worcester State Colleges Celebration of Scholarship and Creativity is Wednesday April 29 from 3-7 p.m. This exhibit will showcase faculty and undergraduate and graduate student work produced during the 2008-09 academic year. We expect a wide variety of scholarship and creative work---posters, papers, books, book chapters, musical and theatrical performances, poetry readings, said Maureen Shamgochian, interim Vice President for Academic Affairs. The Student Centers Blue Lounge and North/South Auditorium will be the venues. The student art exhibit, which will be open then, will be in the first floor gallery of the Science and Technology building. The colleges trustees, foundation and alumni board members, and Worcester States neighbors will be invited to see the work of the college community. Faculty are invited to a reception from 6-7 p.m. in the Foster Room. This will give our faculty a chance to meet the colleges trustees, Shamgochian said. And for the trustees to meet them. Faculty will be asked to identify student projects and other work for this event. Direct questions about the event to Barbara Zang, bzang@worcester.edu. She is coordinating it for Academic Affairs. Look for further details about the Celebration of Scholarship and Creativity in upcoming editions of e-news.
Consortium Art Show to be
Displayed
The Fifth Annual Colleges of Worcester Consortium Art Exhibition will be on
display at ARTSWorcester
(Aurora Gallery) from February 6 through February 27, 2009.
An opening reception will be held on Friday, February 6 from 6 to 9 p.m. The
event is free and open to the public and will feature refreshments and music.
The show is a juried group exhibition culled from emerging student artists
within the Consortium and will include works in mixed media, photography, works
on paper, sculpture and painting. This exhibition, which began in 2005,
highlights the wealth of artistic talent that exists within the local higher
education community. Participating institutions are Anna Maria College,
Assumption College, Atlantic Union College, Becker College, Clark University,
College of the Holy Cross, Quinsigamond Community College, Worcester Polytechnic
Institute and Worcester State College.
Works for the show will be chosen by jurors Susan Stoops, curator of
contemporary art at the Worcester Art Museum and Antonio Fonseca, accomplished
artist and director of education at Sevengaits Studio School in Southbridge.
The ARTSWorcester Aurora Gallery (660 Main Street) is open Tuesdays and
Saturdays from 1 to 4 p.m. and Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays from 10 a.m.
to 4 p.m. Extended hours are available by appointment. The gallery is closed
Sunday and Monday.
WSC Chorale Says Send Your Loved One a
The Worcester State College Chorale, under the direction of Dr. Christie
Nigro, is now taking reservations to perform singing telegrams
throughout the greater
For a donation of $30 (on campus) or $45 (off campus), Chorale members will come
to your location at a pre-arranged time, present your loved one with a Valentine
card and a carnation, and perform two a capella love songs from their current
repertoire.
The group will deliver your message of love to any location within roughly a 15
mile radius of the college, says Dr. Nigro. Over the years, our singers have
performed in local homes, businesses and college dorm rooms and we've provided
the soundtrack for many romantic Valentine dinners.
Reservations for this very popular offering will be made on a first-come,
first-served basis. Professor Nigro says the annual fundraiser helps support the
Chorales international concert tours, including their upcoming trip to
The
A highly-polished, semi-professional a cappella choir, the Chorale has gained an
international reputation. The group has traveled world wide to destinations such
as the
In addition to their tours and campus performances, the Chorale also performs at
banquets, weddings, concerts, and various events throughout
Weierman Investigates the Case of the Slave-Child,
Med
With a background in American Studies, she finds that the world just doesn't fit
in neat little boxes. Her research requires sleuthing in literary history as
well as in legal documents, personal papers and museum collections.
At the moment, Weierman is trying to figure out what happened to Med, a
six-year-old slave brought to Boston by her New Orleans mistress in 1836.
In August of that year the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society learned that Med
was in the city on her mistress's family visit.
Massachusetts was a free state, and the status of slaves in transit had
not yet been settled by the courts.
To be against slavery in Boston during that time was to be an outsider and
unpopular. Mobs had broken up meetings of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society
the year before. Undaunted, the women went undercover to investigate the Med
situation.
They posed as recruiters for a Sunday school class, Weierman said. That got
them into the home for tea and conversation. Once there, they noted that Med, a
slave girl, was indeed in residence.
Armed with this evidence, the women went to a lawyer, who petitioned for a writ
of habeus corpus. A judge granted the writ, and the man who held little Med in
custody was brought up for trial.
The court had to decide the connection between geography and liberty, Weierman
said. Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court
ruled that slaves brought to the state by their owners were automatically free.
The ruling did not apply to fugitives. But it did have a broader impact. Judge
Shaw's decision was incorporated into the law of almost every free state and a
wave of freedom cases followed.
Thus little Med was a free child. She did not, however, have much of a chance to
enjoy her freedom. Less than two years after Judge Shaws ruling, she died in
the Samaritan Asylum for Colored Orphans.
The central focus of Wireman's work is what happened to Med during those two
years. A legal triumph seems a personal tragedy for one little girl. But was it?
Her 2009-10 sabbatical project is entitled The Case of the Slave-Child, Med:
The Geography of Freedom in Antebellum Boston. The research will entail work in
the archives of the Massachusetts Historical Society, the American Antiquarian
Society, the Schlesinger Library of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study
at Harvard University, the Boston Public Library and the Museum of African
American History.
I plan to let the sources determine the scope and structure of this book
project, said Weierman, who joined the Worcester State College faculty in 2000.
The book project itself got a boost from a 2008-09 mini-grant from the college.
Id
been invited to present a paper last summer at Transatlantic Women: Nineteenth
Century American Women Writers in Great Britain, Ireland and Europe, an
academic conference in Oxford, England, she said. The mini-grant made travel
to that conference possible.
As she prepared her conference paper on Lydia Maria Childs Political Thought in
the 1830s, she discovered Med.
Conference participants were enthusiastic about the case of Med, Weierman
said. Many had heard of her and had lots of questions. They suggested that
there might be a book project here.
The case of Med appeals not only to scholars but also to a wider range of
people.
I spoke with about 125 Worcester High School students last April in the
Humanities Scholars Collaborative, she said. This group got me really excited
about Med and the possibilities of more research about her.
In addition, the Boston Public Library invited her to present her Med
scholarship on Feb. 17 at 5:30 p.m. in the McKim Building in conjunction with
the library's exhibit Right and Wrong in Boston: The Boston Female Anti-Slavery
Society, which is open until March 31.
Of course, the story of Med is more than the story of what happened to a freed
slave child. Weierman hopes her sleuthing will flesh out the Boston Female
Anti-Slavery Society and its legal actions, the role of the Boston activist
black community during this time, the legal careers of the various lawyers and
judges involved in the case, and the coverage of the case not only in the
anti-slavery press, but also in the mainstream press in Louisiana and the
African American press.
I'm looking at this one event from various perspectives, she said. Its a
micro history.
To prepare for her sabbatical leave, Weierman is applying for grants to support
her archival research.
I'm an archival detective, and I need to make a specific case for why I want
access to a particular collection, she said. Having to articulate the project
to these various audiences is really valuable.
GET YOUR TICKETS TODAY
FOR FIRST EVER A
portion of all tickets sold will benefit WSC student scholarships.
UPCOMING BASEBALL CAMPS AND CLINICS Catchers Clinic Featuring Rich Gedman - February 20 for ages 9-18 Pitching & Hitting -1 Hr Sessions from Jan. 25-March 1 for Grades 1-12 14th Annual Hitting Clinic - February 16-17-18 for ages 8-18. 4th Annual All-Sports Camp - July 27-31 for ages 8-13
WSC IN THE NEWS
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Monday, February 2,
2009
THIS WEEK
W.Basketball vs.
M.Basketball vs.
Webcast: Solutions Thurs., Feb. 5
WSC National Teach-In
M.Basketball vs. Fri., Feb. 6
Consortium Art Show
COMING UP
Tues., Feb. 10
Michael T. Klare
Faculty Forum with
W.Basketball vs.
"The Power of One Voice - An Activist's Story" |
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What
began as service in the Peace Corps blossomed into an enduring friendship and
support of a cause to improve the health of women and children a world away.
Kris Holloway, the acclaimed author of Monique and the Mango Rains: Two
Years with a Midwife in Mali, told of her journey and her friendship as
part of the Worcester State College Diversity Lecture Series, last Tuesday. 
Karen
Woods Weierman (Languages and Literature) calls herself a stealth
historian. 
