As often happens when food and community blend together, the result is greater than its ingredients.  Such was the case at the third annual Edible Books Festival, held on the first floor of Ladd Library on April 12.

“The baking was memorable, but coming together with everyone, trying everyone’s different creations and just seeing how everyone interprets different books was a great experience — a celebration overall,” said Isabelle Job ’24 of Wenham, Mass.

(Theophil Syslo/�ֲ���ý College)

She and Jaden Witte-Schrock ’24 of Niwot, Colo., were part of a student team that created a cake inspired by Chekov. “I loved everyone coming together: staff, students, and professors,” said Witte-Schrock. “I really enjoyed that.”

In terms of its name, the Edible Books Festival doesn’t mince words: It invites the �ֲ���ý community to bake and cook dishes that play off the title or theme of a well-known book.

This year’s event drew 11 entries. Cheryl Lacey, director of �ֲ���ý Dining Services, has been a judge each year. “The creativity this year was off the charts, and there were some hilarious puns.” 

Here are three: 

1. “Lemony Crickets: A Series of Unfortunate Desserts,” inspired by Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, created by festival organizer Hannah Dawkins, a library assistant in access services.
2. “A Pear for Owen Cremini,” inspired by John Iriving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany, created by Grey McGloon, also a library assistant in access services.
3. “Tropical Can of Corn,” inspired by Henry Miller’s Tropic of Capricorn, created by Christine Murray, social science librarian. 

This year’s festival drew students from three language courses, including a seminar course taught by Lecturer in Japanese Keiko Konoeda, who created a dish based on their work exploring topics in Japanese literature and food. 

Konoeda suggested that her students participate as a group activity, and that appealed to Ellie Asada ’26, an economics major and Japanese minor from Honolulu. “We were reading poems and children’s books at the time, and this seemed like a perfect way to bond.”

The class drew inspiration from a Japanese children’s picture book based on a poem by Shuntaro Tanikawa, “They Have Died for Me,” which the students translated into English.

“The book is a poem about how animals — beef, fish, and pigs — have died for us, becoming food on our plates,” said Foy Ma ’25 of Beijing, a double major in philosophy and mathematics with a Japanese minor. “It’s a reminder to live gratefully.”

“The poem tells a universal message not specific to Japan,” Konoeda said. “But some may say the spirit of gratitude for the animals that give up their lives is culturally particular”: viewing humans and animals in life together, “unlike seeing humans having dominion over other creatures.”

The dish imitated the dish on the cover of the picture book, including a hamburger patty (“a very common “Western food” dish in Japan,” said Konoeda), atop which the class used ketchup to draw a picture of a cow, plus fried eggs, salmon sushi, and a rice ball.

From students in the German course “Adaptation,” taught by Associate Professor of German Raluca Cernahoschi, came a gingerbread based on the Heidi novels. 

Cernahoschi and her students spent the semester studying how various cultural products — books, movies, etc. — get adapted and reinvented for different cultural purposes, like a novel turned into a film or, for the Edible Books Festival, a Swiss children’s novel turned into a gingerbread house.

“One of the things we studied in the course is how even simple-seeming decisions related to Heidi products have a lot of implications,” said Cernahoschi. 

“This is a lesson in cultural adaptation but also in design,” she added. “As the students considered how to turn Heidi into something edible, they had to grapple with a series of such questions. How can words on a page be translated into food on a plate? What can they expect their audience to know about Heidi and respond to? How can the cultural specificity of the novels, 19th-century Switzerland, be transposed to a 21st-century Maine environment?”

Isabelle Job, Jaden Witte-Schrock, and classmates from their advanced Russian course, taught by Visiting Lecturer in Russian Cheryl Stephenson, created an entry based on Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya.

“We made a cake that has a tea blend in it with lemon, rose, lavender, and vanilla, and each of those flavors are associated with a character,” said Job, who is an art and visual culture major with a Russian minor. “And then we put motifs on top with the frosting, and so they all kind of corresponded with each other.”

Witte-Schrock, who is an economics major and Russian minor, said that infusing the cake — which earned the “most-creative” prize — with tea flavors was highly intentional: He and Job are officers of the �ֲ���ý Tea Club. “It was really fun playing with these different flavors. It also felt timely and bright with it being spring and us having flower motifs.”

“My favorite part?” responded Foy Ma when asked the question. “It’s not actually making the food. It’s actually enjoying everyone else’s food! People are really creative and they’re really talented.”

Three survivors of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi of Rwanda came to �ֲ���ý this week to openly discuss with students the trauma that’s been woven into their lives and their country’s history for three decades. 

The intimate discussions offered students a powerful opportunity “to be confronted with a lived experience that is foreign to them,” said Alexandre Dauge-Roth, professor of French and francophone studies, who welcomed the guests to campus for a three-day event, “Rwanda 30 Years After: Trauma Healing of Genocide Survivors and Intergenerational Trauma.”

Beginning on April 7, 1994, and lasting 100 days, members of the Hutu ethnic majority, incited by local authorities, militia, and the Rwandan army, murdered upwards of a million people, most exclusively from the Tutsi minority. The massacre left behind open mass graves, family members unable to find and bury their dead, mistrust across the country, and sadness that a land full of natural beauty could be stained with such horror.

“Rwanda is so beautiful, but after ’94, I thought, ‘How could it still be beautiful?’” shared Esther Mujawayo to a gathering of more than 50 students from three different classes held in Roger Williams Hall on Monday.

Dauge-Roth is an expert in the literary, cinematic, and testimonial representations of the 1994 genocide and an internationally recognized authority on how educators can effectively teach students about the genocide.

He said that when students “engage and interact with people who have experienced radically different forms of violence and who come from different cultural backgrounds, you can no longer project your values and your judgments. You have to start to really try to understand their perspectives, their aspirations, and sense of history as much as you can, as you engage in a transformative dialogue with them.”

Some of the dialogue surprised the students. Too often, victims are reduced to their sole status of survivor, viewed as passive and without agency, or unable to move beyond their trauma. But the three Rwandan guests, who all played key roles in the reconstruction of their community, sometimes laughed and told jokes as they demonstrated their resilience and continued love for their homeland and people.

“This is why we laugh a lot,” said Mujawayo of Essen, Germany, to students the next day in the course “The Politics of Memory,” taught by Professor of Politics Jim Richter. “We don’t want the killers, the death, to have the last word.”

Students dug deep into the two-way conversion, asking their guests — Mujawayo, joined by siblings Jean Bosco Rutagengwa of Amherst, N.H., and Chantal Kayitesi of Dedham, Mass., — how Tutsi survivors balanced the memory of their loved ones who were killed with the trauma that memory brought. 

Mujawayo, a psychotherapist and activist who has about the genocide, said they’ve tried to shield their children from the bad memories — while also continuing to retell the historic event so it never repeats. “But also, how do you find the right dosage, so that you don’t overwhelm them?” she asked in the gathering of three classes on Monday.

“We tried to shield them from hearing bad stuff,” added Rutagengwa, who helped to form (“Remember” in Kinyarwanda) an advocacy association for survivors’ rights and memory after the genocide. “But we also have made sure they know their history.”

Mujawayo used a metaphor to explain healing and storytelling: “Our story is stinking, but we use this smelling thing, this suffering, to tell a story. If you solely focus on the bad, you only have the stinking. But if you plant something good just next to it, you produce something good.” 

A manure pile is a stinking thing, she said, not a place where you want to gather and talk. Mujawayo suggested then to grow something around it, like banana trees, to make it more beautiful. “Grow your bananas,” she said. “Please don’t stay there, in the negativity. Grow something beautiful.”

Bora Lugunda ’25 of Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, asked the Rwandans how outsiders should best approach interviews with survivors to help document the history of the atrocity. 

“It’s not that hard,” Rutagengwa said. “Survivors want to tell their story. It’s good when they share the details, because it helps in the healing process.”

Associate Professor of History Patrick Otim, who next year while on sabbatical in East Africa will pursue research on survivors of the war in Uganda that took place between 1986 and 2008, appreciated this question — and the Rwandans’ responses. Otim said the three guests taught the students in his that historians have to be transparent — and also to conduct interviews with empathy and respect.

“The question for me as a historian is always: How do we treat historical actors like survivors of genocide? When we write history, we have to be respectful of their experiences and portray them in the most accurate way,” Otim said. “I wanted my students to learn how to work with or get information from survivors. This talk was a lesson in oral history.”

On Monday, as the trio talked with students from two French courses and one history course gathered in Roger Williams Hall, they detailed how they’ve lived with the trauma of living through the genocide in frank, raw terms.

They explained about the Gacaca courts (2002–2012), a system of restorative justice aimed at helping rebuild the country through public confessions and testimonies about the atrocity to put an end to decades of impunity and allow survivors to know the fate of their loved ones. 

Mujawayo, who lost her husband, parents, and hundreds of relatives in the genocide, said the open, public discussion about the details of the genocide helped many to find, if not forgiveness, a certain sense of accountability and closure as they were morning their deads.

“After my sister was killed, I at least knew where her body was thrown. So we could bury her in dignity,” she said. “It was not an easy process, finding the latrines where they threw them, but it gives some comfort to restore their dignity.”

After the genocide, Mujawayo helped found AVEGA () with 50 other widows to provide assistance to Tutsi and Hutu widows and children of the genocide. The approximate meaning of “agahozo” is “to dry your tears.”

Chantal Kayitesi, who lost her husband, parents, siblings, and relatives, pointed out that the children of the killers too have had a difficult path moving forward by having to accept their intimate connection to the genocide. While many Rwandans want all of their people to move forward, it’s vital to keep retelling the history, “so that it never happens again.” 

After the genocide, Kayitesi was also a founding member of AVEGA and has contributed to a collective testimony written by women survivors, Entendez-nous! (Hear Us). “There are always people who try to deny there was a genocide,” she said. “But it really happened.” 

In a culture with a deep tradition of oral history, Rutagengwa said that Rwandans have turned to writing down in detail the events of the genocide, so that they can make certain to pass on a true account of it. “We lost great people, but we didn’t want to lose them forever,” he said. “We needed to record who they were. So we made lists of the survivors.”

Dauge-Roth said many students were struck by the compromises that Tutsi survivors were asked to embrace in the reconciliation process, such as moving away from a punitive desire of implementing justice, embracing the restorative justice model of the Gacaca courts, and coping with the return of the vast majority of the perpetrators within their communities as necessary steps to work toward national unity. 

“This was a huge shift for most,” he said. “But they were also in a situation where there was no other choice for them and for the country. The vast majority of them accepted what was demanded from them for their own country and future generations in this historical context without precedent.”

After the visit, Lily Ritch ’25 of Cincinnati, Ohio, gave to Mujawayo and Kayitesi a hand-written thank-you note that read, in part: “This conversation was rough, and I am walking away with a deep respect and admiration for you. I am inspired by your ability to feel and recognize your trauma as a necessary step toward moving forward towards progress and future prevention.”

What if you had to give up a word you use every day? That’s what a group of �ֲ���ý student tutors were asked to do this fall as a way to consider how words — and the loss of words — influence our cultural identities. 

When Nancy Campbell came to �ֲ���ý in October to give the 2023 Otis Lecture on endangered languages, the poet also conducted a workshop with the college’s peer writing tutors to help them think more deeply about word choice and language.

The workshop exercise, in which the tutors were asked to give up a word, resonated strongly for Caroline Cassell ’24 of Woodstock, Vt., whose senior thesis in gender and sexuality studies is about the impact of language in the classroom.

“It’s easy to not pay attention to the impact of small choices and the impact they have on other people. However, language really shapes how we interact with one another. I think Nancy Campbell really speaks to that,” said Cassell, who is also majoring in sociology and theater.

Campbell, a poet, has traveled in and written extensively about the Arctic, including how indigenous communities in Arctic regions face challenges in maintaining their languages and cultural traditions. “The writing tutors wanted to hear about that,” said Bridget Fullerton, the director of student writing and a lecturer in humanities.

Campbell’s concern for endangered languages came out of the artist residency she held at a museum in Greenland in 2010, where she studied Greenlandic, which had just been added to UNESCO’S list of endangered languages. Following that experience, Campbell wrote The Library of Ice, a non-fiction book about her travels around Greenland and other glacial regions. This was followed by a book on global terms for winter weather, Fifty Words for Snow, which has been translated into 10 languages.

“In the Arctic, Indigenous languages are rich in traditional knowledge about the environment that can help us understand climate change,” Campbell said. “I was devastated to realize that not only the Arctic landscape and the human lives dependent on it are threatened by catastrophic climate change, but also the language.”

In her workshop with the peer tutors in the Student Writing and Language Center, Campbell brought her participatory art project The Polar Tombola, named after an Italian Christmas raffle.

After she developed the artistic exercise, in the mid-2010s Campbell took it on the road to events around the United Kingdom. During the tour, she gathered not just English words but Danish, Dutch, Farsi, Icelandic, Korean, and Spanish words, too. In 2017, Campbell published a selection of abandoned words in The Polar Tombola: A Book of Banished Words, an anthology featuring images of the hand-written words and poems on language loss. 

As she has done elsewhere, Campbell gave each �ֲ���ý student a Greenlandic word for them to try to use in their everyday lives — such as “akunagaa,” which means it is too late to begin, or unnuarpoq, which means there is no night any longer.

In exchange, she asked them to give up a word they felt was worth abandoning, a word they promised to never use again. Campbell hoped the exercise would generate a deep commitment, as well as an appreciation of the power of language.  

The students’ words were written on a white board, words such as “stupid,” “nevermind,” “sure,” “like,” “weird,” “normal,” and “crazy.” Campbell approached the workshop like a ritual, noting that the �ֲ���ý words will be included in the second volume of the Banished Words anthology. “When people donate words to me, I take my duties as custodian very seriously,” Campbell said. 

The �ֲ���ý peer tutors also took the participatory art project quite seriously, especially since it coincides perfectly with one of the goals of the tutor’s umbrella program, the center: the imperative to embrace language diversity, recognizing that honoring the variety of language and dialects used within the �ֲ���ý community is part of social justice work.

Aleisha Martinez Sandoval ’26 of Edinburg, Texas, appreciated the message inherent in The Polar Tombola: Be more mindful of the words, to be more concise, and to consider the effect they can have on people. She added that the center has been a good place to explore such ideas because it’s a supportive community, one that’s helped her become a better communicator.

Sandoval grew up in a bilingual household speaking both English and Spanish, and intends to give up the Spanish word “es que,” which translates to “but” when it precedes “excuses for one’s own actions,” she said. “As I move on in my professional career, I want to be known as someone who is not afraid of making mistakes, learns from them, and uses those findings to better themselves.”

Taking part in The Polar Tombola art project wasn’t Cassell’s first time trying to drop certain words from their everyday language. Upon arriving at �ֲ���ý two years ago, Cassell decided to ditch the phrase “you guys” in an effort to use more gender-neutral language. The term, Cassell said, made a friend feel “really unseen, unheard, and uncomfortable.”

During The Polar Tombola participatory project, Cassell decided also to stop using the word “sure” because the word lacks enthusiasm and suggests hesitancy. “It was really great to have someone here who could speak to the power of the very small choices we make with words, something that might seem insignificant.”

After the Lewiston shootings on Oct. 25, Cassell decided to give up a third word: “Productive.” In the days after the tragedy, students were being asked when they’d dive back into their school work — when would they be “productive”? Living through that strange, horrible time made Cassell reflect on what it meant to be productive.

“Productive in our culture means go, go, go and work, work, work,” they said. “I wanted to reflect on how grief and rest and space also is producing something in ourselves.”

Of the center’s nearly 70 tutors, more than a third attended Campbell’s workshop. Campbell said she enjoyed the students’ robust debate that came out of the group exercise, such as questioning whether giving up the use of a word dulled its effect on you.

“Can you remove hate, for example, by eradicating the word?” Campbell posed. “If only!” The idea of giving up difficult and charged words prompted “very sophisticated questions from the students about censorship,” she said. “I felt we were coming to a group understanding of the frustrations encountered by those navigating language loss, whether through cultural change, or on an individual level in conditions such as aphasia.”

The question of using — or not using — explosive words is part of the work of �ֲ���ý student tutors as they help their fellow students learn how to use inclusive and respectful language in their writing. “Words matter deeply,” Fullerton said. “Bad things make us want to give up horrible words like violence and hate, but when we give them up, how do we talk about them and cope with the problem?”

In the peer-tutor model in place at �ֲ���ý and elsewhere, tutors are called upon to “carefully consider the words used in their peers’ writing,” said Fullerton, “even if those words are painful or unknown to the tutor — and must confront words that hurt or be curious about words that they don’t understand.”

�ֲ���ý tutors, Fullerton said, “hold their peers accountable, asking questions and being curious: Why this word? Why here? What do you mean? We would all do well to ask ourselves such questions on a regular basis.”

“Thank you all for coming to the library to do work — or eat books,” said Grey McGloon ’21, prompting a ripple of laughter through the crowd gathered for this year’s Edible Books Festival in Ladd Library.

This year’s festival, held April 7, filled three tables near the first-floor circulation desk, prompting Audrey Jennings ’25 of St. Louis to exclaim upon entering the library, “This is the best day ever!”

The festival’s recipe is simple: entrants need only create something edible, sweet or savory, that’s inspired by a book, fiction or nonfiction, to be judged in two categories, artistry and flavor.

Though Anton Chekhov never won a Nobel Prize, he now has an Edible Books top prize for artistry to his credit. After reading The Cherry Orchard this semester, an advanced Russian class paid tribute to the author by creating a chocolate cake with sour cherry compote, decorated with chocolate trees.

“It was our first time reading a full work of Russian literature,” said Grace Acton ’24 of Harvard, Mass. “Very exciting for us.” Lecturer in Russian Cheryl Stephenson baked the cake, and her students decorated it during their 8 a.m. session.

McGloon, a library assistant for access services, organized this year’s edition, and the judges were Cheryl Lacey, director of dining services; Laura Conforte, electronic resources and scholarly communications; Ellie Wolfe ’23 of Northampton, Mass., editor-in-chief of The �ֲ���ý Student.

Library Assistant Perrin Lumbert evoked Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray with The Picture of Durian Gray, which also won a top prize for creativity. It made quite the pungent impression — durian is a divisively popular fruit from Southeast Asia, known for its spiky outer shell and rich odor.

Surrounded by a gold-painted “frame” of lemon-yuzu-durian mini pound cakes, the Giuseppe Arcimboldo-esque portrait made from buttercream frosting, dried durian, lychees, M&Ms, an orange, strawberries, and marshmallows will live on, if only in memory.

Christine Murray, a social science librarian, took inspiration from Karl Ove Knausgaard’s six-volume autobiography, My Struggle, to create My Strudel, which won one of two top prizes for flavor. She admits that she did not struggle with her recipe. “I just followed a recipe that said ‘easy strudel,’ so it might not be a canonical interpretation.”

One of three different Lord of the Rings–inspired entries came from Academic Administrative Assistant Daphne Comeau, who created “The Shirecuterie” board, featuring puff pastry mimicking a hobbit-hole in a hillside of vegetables. 

“I made a whole hobbit-hole door with the Brie container and totally left it on my table on my way out this morning,” she said, but obviously it was delicious enough to secure the second top prize for flavor.

Two other Lord of the Rings entries were a map of Middle Earth made from naan, a soft Indian-style flatbread, by Library Assistant Jennifer Michel, and 11 donuts from the Italian Bakery, one “ring” short of a full dozen, presented by Krystie Wilfong, associate college librarian for collections and scholarly communications.

A dish of “tyrannymisu” came from Humanities Librarian Marianne Williams, inspired by On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder. McGloon contributed a Dune-inspired spiced bread “sandworm,” and sugar wafers and graduation cap cookies, from Assistant Director of Sponsored Programs and Research Compliance Theresa Bishop, were inspired by Educated by Tara Westover, 

Finally, from Caitlin Lampman, reference and outreach archivist who won a top prize last year for gingerbread men and mice (inspired by Of Mice and Men) came a sly entry: cheap store-bought sugar cookies, invoking The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck.

The frivolous, heavily sweet smell of icing was thick in the air of the George and Helen Ladd Library, somewhat in opposition to the usual essence of wood, books, and accumulated wisdom.

The reason? The Edible Books Festival had arrived. Atop tables scattered around the library lobby was an edible spread of tome-inspired treats, everything from a kale salad to a fruit creation to the old standby confection, cookies.

Grey McGloon ’21, a library assistant for access services, planned the festival, which included a recipe contest, to coincide with Edible Book Day, held each year on April 1.

The only rules were that contestants needed to submit an edible creation inspired by a book. With that, all the ingredients were in place for what McGloon hopes will be an annual event.

Creativity abounded, as participants not only brought in a feast of different foods, but also approached their themes differently. Some went for something punny, others created a dish that literally evoked the subject material, Others created a treat with a high-minded theme to provide food for thought.

In addition to the entries themselves, coffee, tea, and chair was provided by Dining Services, and a cake, emblazoned with “Edible Books,” was baked and presented to guests by the college librarian, Pat Schoknecht. 

Caitlin Lampman, reference and outreach archivist at Muskie Archives and Special Collection Library, showed her talent at “confictionery” with her display of gingerbread men (and mice) to celebrate John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men.

Lampman chose Steinbeck’s 1937 novella because it gave her “an opportunity to have some literal translation into a food item.” She used a cookie cutter to create the men, and hand-made the mice.

Her cookies won the culinary prowess award, but where there’s one mouse, there’s probably another — and a bigger one.

Inspired by the classic children’s book If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, Krystie Wilfong, the assistant college librarian for collections and scholarly communications, created a gigantic cookie shaped like a mouse’s head.

That was one of McGloon’s favorites. “I like the idea of a very large cookie. There’s something novel about it to me.”

Theresa Bishop, assistant director of sponsored programs and research compliance, took bagels from the popular Lisbon Street eatery Forage Market and decorated each with yawning faces; they sat to their inspiration, a copy of Caron Levis and LeUyen Pham’s children’s book, Stop That Yawn, which is part of Ladd Library’s Diverse BookFinder collection.

The simple gathering was “very nice,” said McGloon, particularly after “having to kind of stifle interactions between people” during pandemic restrictions. It felt good “to be able to encourage folks to gather and spend time with each other in this space.”

Wordplay abounded among the edible creations. McGloon said his favorite was “Kale Fire,” a spicy kale salad created by social science librarian Christine Murray and inspired by Vladimir Nabokov’s 1962 novel Pale Fire.

“The more creative people get, the more likely it is that we’re going to pull out some books that people have not seen before,” he said.

With an interdisciplinary flair, Marianne Williams, who is the college’s humanities librarian, went the STEM route with her fruit dish. Pineapple rings bristling with toothpicks topped with fruits and berries evoked the bad boy of the pandemic, the COVID-19 virus itself.

Hopefully, the virus that the dish depicts will remain just desserts.

Instead of an overall winner, second place, and third place, the contest offered two categories, creativity and culinary expertise, a nod to entrants’ different strengths, says McGloon. “I think it was just a good way to reward the different goals that people had been going for.”

The award for creativity went to Natalie Williamson, a controller in the college’s financial offices. She used Barack Obama’s memoir, A Promised Land, as foundational inspiration for her display of White Houses made from cookies and frosting.

“Incredibly impressive,” said McGloon, “without relying on cringeworthy wordplay!”

He was referring to his own entry, a loaf of bread “plugged” into a speaker, inspired by the sequel to Orson Scott Card’s 1986 science fiction novel Speaker for the Dead. Or, in McGloon’s case, “Speaker for the Bread.”

“I got a few groans from my coworkers for that,” he said.

Appetites whetted this year, McGloon anticipates an even bigger show next year. And if not tastier, then maybe funnier.

“I’ve had people basically say, ‘I’m going back to the kitchen. I’m gonna make a better pun this time!’”

Welcome to the 25th edition of Good Reads: The �ֲ���ý College Non-Required Reading List for Leisure Moments.

Begun in 1997 by now-retired director Sarah Emerson Potter ’77 as a gift for graduating seniors, Good Reads features recommendations from current and retired faculty and staff as well as alumni. Alison Keegan, in the Dean of the Faculty’s office, now edits the list.

Potter had long wanted to publish a summer reading list. One day, an encouraging conversation with fellow book lover Ann Harward, the late wife of then-President Don Harward, “gave me a kick in the pants to do it,” says Potter. “She was very supportive.”

Today’s submissions are all electronic, of course. Back in the day, Potter recalls how sociology professor Sawyer Sylvester, one of the earliest Good Reads contributors, would submit his titles with great formality — like a “Letter of Transit” in Casablanca — “on a single sheet of paper, trifold, printed off the computer, and always signed!”

Sylvester is a contributor again this year, as is another founding contributor, Anne Thompson, English professor emerita.

This year, the titles that have two or more recommendations are:

• A Long Petal of the Sea by Isabelle Allende
• Enter the Aardvark by Jess Anthony ‘96
• Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler
• The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah
• Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell
• The Dutch House by Ann Patchett
• The Overstory by Richard Powers 
• Caste by Isabel Wilkerson

Onward!

Áslaug Ásgeirsdóttir, Professor of Politics and Associate Dean of the Faculty

The Eighth Detective by Alex Pavesi. Tells the story of an editor working with an author on an old manuscript. Through conversations about the rules of mysteries, you begin to sense that there is a mystery within the story that slowly unfolds as you read.

Twilight of Democracy by Anne Applebaum. The author has had unique access to the world of conservative politicians in the United States, Britain and Poland. In telling the story of the changes in her conservative circles over the past 20 years, her argument about the twilight of democracy is compelling, even though the book is missing any discussion about the role of conservatives and their policy successes in these changes.

Drive your Plow over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk. Janina lives in a small Polish village where she spends her days translating poetry and taking care of near-by summer homes. Her neighbor turns up dead and soon the mystery deepens. Funny and tragic.

My Life as a Spy by Katherine Verderey. As an American anthropologist doing research in Romania in the 1970s and 1980s, Katherine Verderey was — unbeknownst to her — the subject of secret service surveillance until the collapse of communism in the late 1980s. Much later she gets access to her more than 2000-page file and begins to reflect on it and what it means to be surveilled.

Outline Trilogy (Outline, Transit, and Kudos) by Rachel Cusk. This trilogy tells the story of a female writer and her encounters with friends and strangers. The books simultaneously tell you enough of her encounters, but also leave you wanting more.

Split Tooth by Tanya Tagaq. A work of auto-fiction about a girl growing up in Nunavut mixes fact, fiction and myth. It is often hard to tell which is which. Filled with joy and heartbreak, where the last chapter still haunts me.

Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Perez looks at how various public policies (for example in education, health care, urban design) are suboptimal as they fail to account for gender. The book is well written with great examples.

Pamela Baker ’69, Helen A. Papaioanou Professor Emerita of Biological Sciences

One of the best books I read this year is Lisa Genova‘s new book Remember: The Science of Memory and the Art of Forgetting. It is her first non-fiction book and covers so much up to date information about neuroscience (her Ph.D. after all), yet still in her very readable, personable style. It is truly a work of science and art.

Another good one is This Magnificent Dappled Sea by David Brio. It covers a lot of the biology of transplantation, and finding the match for a present-day child with a blood disease reveals truths of Italy in World War II.

Completely different and very funny is a retelling of Pride and Prejudice in current America: Eligible by Curtis Sittenfeld.

Jonathan Cavallero, Associate Professor of Rhetoric, Film, and Screen Studies

Born a Crime by Trevor Noah has been listed by a number of others over the years. I don’t have much to add to what has already been said. It’s a great book and well worth the time.

Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination by Neal Gabler. It is difficult to fully capture the significance of Walt Disney to American cinema and animation generally, but Gabler does it. From animation techniques to the structure of labor in Hollywood studios and all points in between this book is an eye-opening history of the studio chieftain as well as the institution itself.

American Spy by Lauren Wilkinson. Some of the most interesting work in recent years focuses on characters from marginalized groups that work within and for institutions that marginalize them. Chinonye Chukwu’s film Clemency took on the issue and so does Wilkinson’s novel. Both are wonderful.

Jane Costlow, Clark A. Griffith Professor Emerita of Environmental Studies

An Unnecessary Woman by Rabih Alameddine. Amazing narrative about a woman in Beirut who defies all sorts of expectations. I loved the book for her, most of all — but also for its evocation of the city, in both war and peace. She’s a translator, and one of the pleasures of the book for me was settling into a world in which identity (both hers and the reader’s) expands across language, gender, era…

The Songlines by Bruce Chatwin. I’d never read this. Along with Robyn Davidson’s Tracks I spent several weeks imaginatively trekking through the Australian outback. I did in fact learn a lot from these authors about Australian aboriginals (and Australians’ treatments of them), but both books are as much about the authors themselves as about the places and people they encounter.

The Empire Trilogy: Troubles, The Siege of Krishnapur, and The Singapore Grip by J.G. Farrell. Farrell is brilliant and ruthless at skewering the stupidities and racism of British colonialists. Not just “colonialism” but individual participants in the system. Brilliant social satire, The Singapore Grip is Monty Python plus Tolstoy.

A Terrible Country by Keith Gessen. Young Russian-American goes to Moscow to live with his grandmother, who is very elderly and starting to get a bit confused (but still regularly beats him at anagrams). This is Gessen’s portrait of Moscow in the early 2000s; the relationship between the hero and his grandmother is beautifully described.

The Hiawatha by David Treuer. I am currently reading my way through anything and everything Treuer has written (now working on Rez Life, non-fiction/memoir about contemporary Indian lives). The Hiawatha is the story of several generations of an Ojibwe family resettled in Minneapolis: along with the heart-breaking story of a family that is not really surviving various acts of violence, the novel has descriptions of men at work — felling trees in the northern Minnesota forests, building the skyscrapers in downtown Minneapolis, fishing in a northern river — that are just amazing.

Grace Coulombe, Director of Math and Statistics Workshop and Lecturer in Quantitative Studies

Enter the Aardvark by Jessica Anthony ’96 and Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

Deborah Cutten, Academic Administrative Assistant

I think I’ve read more novels this year than in any other. Looking back on this list I note they were all thrillers and dark conspiracy stories that spoke to my own spirit during the pandemic. You would think I would have searched for uplifting and optimistic stories to cheer myself, but perhaps, real life didn’t look so bleak in comparison.

• Ice Hunt, Amazonia, and The Demon Crown: A Sigma Force Novel all by James Rollins
• The Blood Gospel: The Order of the Sanguines series by James Rollins and Rebecca Cantrell
• The Sancti Trilogy (The Sanctus, The Key, and The Tower) by Simon Toyne
• The Templar novels (The Last Templar, The Templar Salvation, and The Devil’s Elixir) by Raymond Khoury
• The Trench by Steve Alten
• And last but certainly not least, Enter the Aardvark by Jessica Anthony ’96

Karen Daigler, Director of Graduate and Professional School Advising, Center for Purposeful Work 

The Art of Inheriting Secrets by Barbara O’Neal. When Olivia Shaw’s mother dies, the sophisticated food editor is astonished to learn she’s inherited a centuries-old English estate — and a title to go with it. Raw with grief and reeling from the knowledge that her reserved mother hid something so momentous, Olivia leaves San Francisco and crosses the pond to unravel the mystery of a lifetime.

The Lost Girls of Devon by Barbara O’Neal. The Lost Girls of Devon follows the story of Zoe, her estranged mother Poppy, her grandmother Lilian and her daughter Isabel. When Zoe’s childhood best friend Diana goes missing, she and her daughter Isabel head to Devon from Santa Fe to try and find her.

Beneath Scarlet Sky by Mark Sullivan. This is about an Italian teenager’s courage and resilience during one of history’s darkest hours. He helps Jews escape over the Alps in an underground railroad. Not my usual, but I really enjoyed it.

This is How it Always Is by Laurie Frankel. This book is about parents forging uncharted waters in order to help their transgender children live happy, healthy lives in a society that still largely defines gender by what’s in your pants. Laurie Frankel takes those real-life experiences and puts them into a big-hearted story of family and secrets. Loved this book.

The Downstairs Girl by Stacey Lee. The Downstairs Girl is a powerful portrait of one plucky Chinese-American heroine living and working in the beginning of the Jim Crow south. She works by day as a maid for a wealthy socialite family while at night she writes an advice column for Southern women. She uses that platform to shed light on gender and racial discrimination. THAT does not always go over well.

28 Summers by Elin Hilderbrand. A decades-long, once-a-year, secret love affair.

The Way of Beauty by Camille Di Maio. The Way of Beauty is a charming, sweet and heartwarming historical women’s fiction novel that touches on many topics while bringing a piece of history to life here with Penn Station and blending the lives of two very strong women and the people connected to them. Loved the interesting compelling characters and reading about the women’s suffrage movement.

Carol Dilley, Professor of Dance

I am thoroughly enjoying The Final Revival of Opal and Nev by Dawnie Walton. The structure, the prose, the characters and the story just keep unfolding throughout.

For those who read in Spanish, Patria by Fernando Aramburu is an utterly gripping story of the intimacy of violence in the Basque region of Spain. They made an excellent TV miniseries as well.

Phil Dostie, Assistant in Instruction

The Story of Earth by Robert Hanzen. Brief, approachable, interesting and engaging this book covers our planet’s geological history from stardust to present.

Plant Propagation Principles and Practices by Hartmann and Kester. Its current ninth edition is rather expensive but older, used editions are available shipped to your door for less than $5.00. While it’s sometimes dry, it’s always informative. I find myself using it every spring as a reference for grafting or looking the best way to propagate my lilacs and forsythia.

Northeast Foraging by Leda Meredith. Full of pictures and information on where, when, and how to harvest some of the edible wild plants around you, this book is one of the best foraging references for our state.

The Parable series by Octavia Butler. The Parable of the Sower and The Parable of the Talents (Trigger waring depictions of rape, torture, and other forms of violence are written in these book). Published in 1993 and 1998 respectively, and set in the mid-2020s. These are the first two books in what was supposed to be a trilogy, unfortunately the author died before completing the works and getting to the end of the second is very much like having a captivating conversation with a friend suddenly cut short. They leave you wanting more and knowing you’ll never get it.

The level of insight and forethought that the author had for the writing of these two books allows her to paint a future that is a portrait of modern-day America with a twisted black shadow looming over it. Additionally, there are some pretty terrifying parallels in this storyline with our current politicians/political systems and, while I’m aware that the phrase did not originate with the 2016 candidate for president, I could feel myself blanching when reading certain lines from the book. If I didn’t already know that the man struggled with basic sentences I would have sworn he read Butler first in order to coopt her work. They’re well written, fast reads that captivate and terrify. They’re the written equivalent of driving by the after effects of a particularly violent car crash; you want to look away and yet you can’t. These two books are worth the read.

White Fragility by Robin Deangelo. Deangelo takes the difficult topics of race and accountability and presents them in an approachable manner.

How to be an Anti-Racist by Ibram X Kendi. The author explores the structural underpinnings of racism and helps the reader to find tools to recognize and address racist laws, behaviors, and societal norms, a good start into the subject.

Elizabeth Durand ’76

Invisible Girl by Lisa Jewell. A mystery full of twists and turns and changing points of view; keeps you off balance right up to the end.

Anxious People by Fredrik Backman. A book about idiots, love, ineptitude, and optimism. My favorite read of 2021.

Transcription by Kate Atkinson. Another one set in World War II, behind the scenes, so many times I get to the end of the book and the ending is all wrong. This is not one of those books.

The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel. I finished it and immediately had to read it again.

The Rose Code by Kate Quinn. More World War II. Young women from vastly different backgrounds end up at Bletchley Park working as code breakers. If Kate Quinn is the author, the book will end up on my “best” list.

Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt. I missed reading this one when it was a bestseller (and won the Pulitzer Prize) in the late 1990s. Utterly absorbing and appalling.

Band of Sisters by Lauren Willig. A naive group of Smith graduates head for France in 1917, while World War I is still very much in progress, to do good works among the civilians. Reality is much grimmer than they anticipated. Based on a true story and beautifully written.

Francis Eanes, Visiting Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies

• A Planet to Win: Why We Need a Green New Deal by Kate Aronoff
• Capital City: Gentrification & The Real Estate State by Samuel Stein
• The Geography of Risk: Epic Storms, Rushing Seas, and the Cost of America’s Coast by Gilbert Gaul
• Freedom Farmers: Agricultural Resistance and the Black Freedom Movement by Monica White

Melinda Emerson, retired colleague

The Wild Inside, Mortal Fall, The Weight of Night & Sharp Solitude by Christine Carbo. Novels set in and around Glacier National Park. If you like Paul Doiron’s books, you will enjoy these.

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins. The prequel to the Hunger Games Trilogy. It starts as 18-year-old Coriolanus Snow is preparing for his one shot at glory as a mentor in the Games.

Virgin River series by Robyn Carr. Much better than the Netflix series, based on the books.

Mrs. Sherlock Holmes by Brad Ricca. The first-ever narrative biography of this singular woman the press nicknamed after fiction’s greatest detective. Her poignant story reveals important clues about missing girls, the media, and the real truth of crime stories.

The Haunting of Brynn Wilder by Wendy Webb. This novel is partially a paranormal romance, partially a mystery, partially a woman trying to regroup after taking time off from being a professor of English lit to reset.

Under a Gilded Moon by Joy Jordan-Lake. This is historical fiction that features characters who actually lived and became a well-known part of American history. The time is the late 1800s and young George Washington Vanderbilt II has built Biltmore House in the Appalachian Mountains.

Time is A River by Mary Alice Munroe. This is an insightful novel that will sweep readers away to the seductive southern landscape. Recovering from breast cancer and reeling from her husband’s infidelity, Mia Landan flees her Charleston home to heal in the mountains near Asheville, N.C., where she seeks refuge in a neglected fish cabin owned by a fly-fishing instructor, Belle Carson.

Wesley the Owl: The remarkable Love story of An Owl and His Girl by Stacey O’Brien chronicles the author’s rescue of an abandoned barn owlet, from her efforts to resuscitate and raise the young owl after an injury that prevented it from returning to the wild through their nineteen years together, during which the author made key discoveries about owl behavior.

Above the Bay of Angels by Rhys Bowen. A single twist of fate puts a servant girl to work in Queen Victoria’s royal kitchen, setting off a suspenseful, historical mystery.

West with Giraffes by Lynda Rutledge. An emotional, rousing novel inspired by the incredible true story of two giraffes who made headlines and won the hearts of Depression-era America.

Nathan Faries, Assistant Professor of Asian Studies

John le Carré passed away late in 2020. All of his spy novels about British Intelligence are amazing — reportedly required reading for Soviet KGB recruits in the 1970s and ’80s. I would start with the George Smiley novels, and if you want to “cheat” and jump into the BBC adaptations (with Sir Alec Guinness as Smiley) —Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Smiley’s People— who would blame you? (Or watch Michelle Pfeiffer (sigh) and Sean Connery in The Russia House: “You are my country now.”) The books are more complete, naturally, but these filmed adaptations still capture the anti-jingoistic moral ambiguity of spy craft during the Cold War as le Carré envisioned it.

David Sedaris occasionally gets a little too sad for my moods to bear, but his essays are mostly hilarious and addictive. I recently re-read When You Are Engulfed in Flames and Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim. Check out his “Nuit of the Living Dead” or his perennial NPR reading of “Santaland Diaries” about his experience working as a Macy’s elf. The audiobooks are read by Sedaris himself, and his voice and cadence are part of the experience.

Max Brooks, Devolution: A Firsthand Account of the Rainier Sasquatch Massacre. As a big fan of Brooks’ World War Z (not the movie), I was compelled to read this “found-footage/fake-documentary” follow-up. In World War Z, Brooks is able to play with multiple genres and produce what is essentially a complex short-story anthology. Devolution is more linear and focused, but it is still a fun and compelling page-turner with all the X-Files–style pseudo-science in the background and a playful plot twist for a coda.

Dan Girling, Mail and Materials Handling Clerk, Post & Print

The Stand by Stephen King. In a year derailed by COVID, I found it a fitting time to read this classic from Stephen King. The story begins with a deadly form of influenza sweeping the world, but in the aftermath, the few survivors find themselves in a struggle between good and evil. While the Stand is in no way a guide on how to survive a pandemic, it does offer a thrilling story that will captivate you from beginning to end.

If It Bleeds by Stephen King. This is a collection of four stories. While I usually read Stephen King’s longer works, the variety here was a nice change of pace. The highlight for me was the story “The Life of Chuck” which retells the life of a man in three separate, uniquely designed sections.

The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates. Blending historical fiction with elements of fantasy, this novel takes place in 19th-century America, where a young man discovers he has teleportation abilities that allow him to free himself — and later others — from the bonds of slavery. The Water Dancer covers a bleak period in history, but the novel’s imaginative style and premise make it a story worth reading.

A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor by Hank Green. This book concludes the story that began with Hank Green’s first book, An Absolutely Remarkable Thing. After a mysterious being known only as Carl appears on Earth, the world questions whether they can trust it and what motivations Carl might have. I appreciate how these novels take an old science fiction idea and use it to explore modern concerns, such as our reliance on technology, misinformation on social media, and the influence of big corporations.

Phyllis Graber Jensen, Director of Photography and Video, �ֲ���ý Communications Office

Coming of Age in Mississippi by Anne Moody and The Resisters by Gish Jen. The hellish past and dystopian future: how two strong women struggle and prevail against their circumstances.

Meg Gresh, Assistant to the Dean of Faculty

• Verity by Colleen Hoover

Bruce Hall, Network Administrator, Information and Library Services

I used some of my pandemic reading to catch up on the history of the US founding. Based on that, I recommend 1787: The Grand Convention by Clinton Rossiter. The title is the first thing I learned: We call it the “Constitutional Convention,” they didn’t. The times were fluid and the result not pre-determined. Rossiter sets the scene with great detail, including the political situation that led to the meeting in Philadelphia. He includes biographies of all of the participants, even the minor ones. They and their world come alive as he puts them in context. He describes the economic interests and setting of each state. This includes the population divisions between free and slave within each state.

It is only after more than a third of the book, that you get to Philadelphia for the Grand Convention itself. About the middle third of the book is Rossiter’s account of the day by day debates. These make for compelling reading and are relevant to many issues we contend with today. The final third of the book covers not only the struggle for ratification but the early years of setting up the new government under the Constitution.

Indeed, some of my favorite parts were in his concluding chapter where Rossiter goes through important items that ‘completed’ the Constitution. For example, he ends in 1803 with Chief Justice John Marshall establishing the doctrine of judicial review in Marbury v. Madison. It is at this point that Rossiter says “…the Grand Convention stood at last adjourned.” Even that suggests that there is much more to study in later US history as the people of the United States through amendments, laws, and practices seek to “form a more perfect Union” and “establish Justice”.

Rossiter includes a detailed appendix of documents so that you can trace the development of the Constitution through multiple plans and proposals. You can even see the deficiencies of the Articles of Confederation that the Constitution was meant to correct. Curiously, Rossiter does not include “The Declaration of Independence” in his appendix of documents. You can remedy that by reading the �ֲ���ý Common Read book of a few years ago: Our Declaration by Danielle Allen.

I have read 72 of the 85 Federalist Papers written in 1787 and 1788 by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay in support of the ratification of the Constitution in New York. Considering that they were written as part of a public political debate, they are remarkably frank. Madison observes in No. 51 that “ambition must be made to counteract ambition.”

Hamilton warns in No. 6 that people are “ambitious, vindictive, and rapacious”. I’m sure they would be ready to survey our politics now as well. Balancing this somewhat bleak, if clear-eyed, view, Madison in No. 55 also says that there is “sufficient virtue…for self-government”. While some things under the Constitution did not turn out the way they expected or desired, their incisive study also bears directly on many of the issues of today.

Joe Hall, Associate Professor of History

The Overstory by Richard Powers. It’s not my favorite novel, but I loved what Powers did with shifting the focus away from people to also include trees. I learned a lot about trees (Powers did some great homework), but I also appreciated the ways that he showed us how people are connected to trees in ways that we, with our shorter, faster lives, often fail to recognize.

Considering that Maine is the country’s most forested state, one could do worse than to think in new ways about our numerous neighbors.

Tyler Harper, Program in Environmental Studies

The Bear by Andrew Krivak. An elegantly-written and poignant novel about the Earth getting along just fine without us.

Tender is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica. A brutal but thought-provoking satire about the moral and environmental perils of factory farming.

Bill Hiss ’66, retired colleague

Improbable Voices: The History of the World Since 1450 Seen from 26 Unusual Perspectives by Derek Anderson ’85. Derek is a �ֲ���ý alum and history teacher at a high school in California. His 700-page book is a marvel, written over 8 years, and scrupulously footnoted. Playfully, he follows the logic of the alphabet to explain world history, choosing 26 individuals from a Portuguese explorer in the 1400s to a still-living woman environmental scientist.

His 26 portraits are of people who were not historically famous but achieved something that shaped modern history. His “Exhibit A,” for example, a Portuguese explorer named Albuquerque, figured out how to use adjustable triangular sails to sail against the wind, and thus explore the southern coast of Africa and then around to India, where he was later a governor for Portugal, establishing the patterns of European colonial empires.

Crisis in the Red Zone: The Story of the Deadliest Ebola Outbreak in History, and of the Outbreaks to Come by Richard Preston. Ebola only a hint of the future, as the title suggests.

Empty Mansions by Bill Dedman and Paul Clark Newell Jr. Huguette Clark was an heiress who, though not ill, spent her last 20 years in a hospital room in New York, triggering a monumental lawsuit over her $300 million estate. Her family was a classic American story of immense riches put to bizarre uses.

Sixty Miles from Contentment: Traveling the 19^th Century American Interior by M.H. Dunlop. Many foreigners wanted to see the American frontier and went to great trouble and some danger to get there. There were also some wonderful cultural clashes: upscale British visitors expected to hire servants, but no American was willing to work as a servant, even while taking on frightful labor for other ends.

The Pioneers by David McCullough. McCullough is one of our fine story- teller historians, and this book no exception: the settling of Ohio when it was utter wilderness to arriving whites.

Liberty Men and Great Proprietors: The Revolutionary Settlement on the Maine Frontier, 1760-1820 by Alan Taylor. In some ways, a parallel book for Maine to The Pioneers and Sixty Miles from Contentment. In the years surrounding the American Revolution, largely poor settlers, often Revolutionary War veterans promised land for their service, came to Maine for what they expected to be free land, if they settled and improved it. But the “Great Proprietors”, including a fellow named Bowdoin, had immense land grants from the King, and wanted these settlers to buy the land. Sixty years of threats and intimidation from both sides.

The Storm on Our Shores: One Island, Two Soldiers and the Forgotten Battle of World War II by Mark Obmascik. Few places are less habitable than the Aleutians. When one of the most distant islands was invaded by the Japanese, the American military decided they needed to retake it. The book is the account of a Japanese but American-trained physician who got drafted into the Japanese medical corps while home to get married and see his parents, and then sent on this invasion. He was killed by an American soldier who found and kept his touching diary, and decades later tracked down his descendants to return it.

In Search of England by H.V. Morton. Morton was an early British travel writer who wrote a number of books about different parts of Britain. His books sold well: this one, published in 1927, saw 11 printings in five years. He was a charming and elegant writer, entranced by medieval cathedrals and villages, and regarding almost everything else that happened in Britain after the invention of the steam engine as regrettable. Like his In Search of Scotland, fascinating to read about places we may know from a century later.

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles. A minor Russian nobleman is sentenced by a Revolutionary court to spend the rest of his life in an elegant hotel in Moscow. Wonderfully told novel, with a riveting collection of oddballs and survivors flowing into the hotel.

The Shipping News by Annie Proulx. Fiction masterpiece.

Emily Kane, Professor of Sociology

Here are some things I read this year that have particularly stuck with me for various reasons:

• Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler
• Apeirogon by Colum McCann
• You Can’t Stop the Revolution: Community Disorder and Social Ties in Post-Ferguson America by Andrea Boyles

Alison Keegan, Administrative Assistant and Supervisor of Academic Administrative Services, Office of the Dean of the Faculty

The Book of Longings by Sue Monk Kidd. Imagine Jesus had a wife and her name was Ana. She’s rebellious, independent, and brilliant, bent on defying the expectations placed on women. This gorgeous, imaginative, and creative reimagining of what we know of Jesus, but through the eyes of Ana, is a stunning reflection of women’s longing, silencing, and awakening, and was the first of two best books I read in 2020-2021.

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab. Few books touch me and are unforgettable in the ways that this book did and is. To say that I didn’t want this to end is an understatement and I found it difficult to imagine reading anything in the future that is as beautiful and striking storytelling as this book. This is a book about a girl, a boy, a devil, and the stories that get told, repeated, and remembered. This is a tale of power dynamics and imbalances and what humans are willing to do to not feel trapped and alone.

This is all about a young girl who lives her life for herself, who lives her life in spite of the odds, who lives her life in hopes someone will recall her from memory. The second-best book I read in 2020–21.

Where the Forest Meets the Stars by Glendy Vanderah. Magical, whimsical, debut novel. I was charmed by this story of two neighbors, each dealing with their past and its effects, and a young girl claiming to be an alien, who brings them together in her quest for 5 miracles. Without giving anything else away, simply put, this is a beautiful story of friendship, family, and recovering from past wounds to move forward to present healing.

The Sun Down Motel by Simone St. James. I couldn’t read this book at night because the creep factor was way too high…then I couldn’t put it down in the daylight. Perfect summer twisty dark pleasure.

The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah. Kristin Hannah does it again. She has this incredible talent for making the landscapes of her novels every bit as much a character as the people within. In this case, it’s Texas, 1934 during the Dust Bowl/Great Depression era. This is a book about a woman’s choice to fight for the land she loves or go west in search of a better life. I found myself nearly choking on the descriptions of the dust storms, and the suffocating feeling of the gritty, grainy sand at every turn of page. Not an uplifting book by any means, but a beautiful, real novel of courage and the indomitable spirit we are capable of when all other hope is lost.

John Kelsey, Professor Emeritus of Psychology

I just finished reading The Code Breaker by Walter Isaacson about Jennifer Doudna (our graduation speaker when we last had such things) and the research on CRISPR that led to her Nobel Prize in 2019. Isaacson does an excellent job of explaining the relevant biology at a lay level and revealing the personalities behind the intense West Coast/East Coast competition to discover how this gene-splicing technique (CRISPR), evolved by bacteria over millions of years, can be used to treat human disease, including COVID-19. An absolutely fascinating detective story.

I immensely enjoyed The Mirror and the Light which completed the trilogy by Hilary Mantel about Thomas Cromwell (Henry VIII’s advisor and shaker). Wolf Hall, the first of the trilogy, remains my favorite book of the last several years, and although the latest is longer with some unnecessary digressions, it is also lovely and a marvelous comment on class, religion, and power in pre-Elizabethan England. Her writing is just a joy for me to read.

Although I have not been a big fan of Tana French, I enjoyed her recent The Searcher: A Novel about an American who recently immigrated to rural Ireland to find a new life. In contrast to her other books, this one focuses more on character development and culture than on a mystery (although there is, of course, a mysterious disappearance). I could easily imagine having a beer with the protagonists.

Grace Kendall, Director of Design Services, �ֲ���ý Communications

Lakota America: A New History of Indigenous Power by Pekka Hämäläinen. Billed as a more complete history of the Lakota nation, this book sets out to share a history in which the Lakota, and the “seven council fires” — distinct bands within the nation — are less victims of an all- consuming colonizing power and more a powerhouse making purposeful and measured political decisions. It delves into how the Sioux shaped the political landscape in their region(s) both before and after the arrival of white colonizing forces, and it includes a lot of info about inter-nation relations between the Sioux and other indigenous nations as well as between the Sioux and the British, French, and (later) Americans.

It is a very dense read, and there are aspects of it that are still confusing. (I don’t think Hämäläinen does a great job explaining Sioux vs. Lakota / Nakota / Dakota, for example, and how the seven bands fit within that structure.) But it’s the most complete history of an indigenous nation that I’ve read. Even still, folks will notice that it’s very male-centric. That may be because the documents available for research, often having been curated by men, focused on other men, but it’s not something that Hämäläinen addresses, so that’s worth noting and being aware of as you go in.

A Certain Hunger by Chelsea G. Summers. There’s no way around it, so let’s start by saying this novel is about cannibalism. The story is fabulously written, and Summers does a really great job expressing the joy that food critic Dorothy Daniels gets from her work — both official and “off the books.” Although it’s an odd road to get there, the book is about a woman deciding, reluctantly at times, that she’s better than the men around her, and her journey to embrace that. Its satirical view of foodie culture is super entertaining to read, and although the main character is a psychopath…she’s an entertaining one. The subject matter may be dark, but this story was ultimately one of the funnest reads of 2020 for me. Whether that says more about me or 2020, I do not know.

The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones. This book was my first introduction to writer Stephen Graham Jones, and I’m so glad to have a new favorite author to add to the mix! It’s a sort of sci-fi/horror story that follows four Blackfeet men as they grow up and are forced to come to terms with an event in their past that has unleashed a supernatural entity bent on revenge.

The Mercies by Kiran Millwood Hargrave. I previously had never learned about the witch trials in northeastern Norway in the early 17th century. The Mercies is a novelization of one such rash of trials, taking place in the village of Vardø. I loved the book for its following of female stories, especially its focus on a village-wide tragedy that required women to step up in new ways in order to ensure the village’s survival. When some didn’t want to step back into their former roles, they were the target of derision and labeled as witches. The Mercies is an interesting story following women who chafe at their traditional roles and the kinds of fallout that results, which is something that still resonates, 400 years later.

Sharks in the Time of Saviors by Kawai Strong Washburn. This is a really interesting story about the pressure that comes with greatness. Main character Nainoa is marked for supernatural things at the age of seven when, having fallen from a boat, he is delivered safely to his mother’s arms in the jaws of a shark. As he grows up and develops unexplained abilities, it’s clear to his family he’s been blessed by the gods. With the pressure to use his abilities to help his family escape poverty, and the wedge it drives between him and his siblings, what could be a larger-than-life sci-fi story ends up a personal tale about family, heritage, and responsibility. Beautifully done.

Cheryl Lacey, Director of Dining Services

• Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell
• The Lonely City by Olivia Laing
• The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander The Murmur of Bees by Sofia Segovia Afterlife by Julia Alvarez
• The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett White Rage by Carol Anderson 
• Sigh, Gone by Phuc Tran
• Shakespeare in A Divided America by James Shapiro

Peter Lasagna, Head Men’s Lacrosse Coach

I would like to submit Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler for this summer’s Good Read’s list. Recommended by our son and an author I have enjoyed before, I found this book to be one of the most masterfully crafted and compelling (at times terrifying) of my entire reading life. Images remain that will remain forever. It also describes a place, and life that is not hard to imagine existing right around the corner….

Daniel Lindahl, Senior Database and Oracle Application Server Administrator, Information and Library Services

This year, I read Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents and I couldn’t not share. I’d imagine you’ll get multiple notes on this. Wilkerson, who is a �ֲ���ý honorary degree recipient and former Commencement speaker, is a remarkable writer. In Caste, she unfolds the framework of inequity at the heart of the history of our nation and enumerates the core pillars of the social contract that allows and enforces it.

Her explication of a structure that codifies and in fact depends upon a strict system of caste, largely parallel to the caste system of India, is clear and personal in a balance of clinical examination and very personal, very real accounts of the lives it has forged. So powerful was my connection to the work that I found understanding of pieces of my own childhood, of my own life, that I only now realize that I had never understood, or had understood in an entirely different context.

Kathy Low, Professor of Psychology

• Stormy Weather by Paulette Jiles
• Yellow House by Sarah Broom
• Deacon King Kong by James McBride
• A Gentleman’s Murder by Christopher Huang
• Night Boat to Tangier by Kevin Barry
• Snow by John Banville
• Sweetland by Michael Crummey
• The City We Became by NK Jemison
• Drive Your Own Plow Over the Bones by Olga Tokarczuk
• Florida by Lauren Groff
• Why Fish Don’t Exist by Lulu Miller
• The Friend by Sigrid Nunez
• Washington Black by Esi Edugyan
• The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich
• The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel
• The Dutch House by Ann Patchett
• The Dazzle of Day by Molly Gloss

Judy Marden ’66, retired colleague

Last year’s Good Reads showed that Richard Powers‘ The Overstory was widely read by the extended �ֲ���ý Community. Re-reading it led me to also re-read Annie Proulx’s Barkskins, and find new significance in this comprehensive history of the development of the logging industry in the US and its influence on settlement by Europeans, effect on indigenous peoples in the Americas and New Zealand, and predictions for the future of humanoids. Highly recommended as we contemplate the future, with its relentless extinctions.

Spring bird migrants are here, and nesting has begun. Three great reference books to peruse in addition to the regular field guides and apps are Sibley’s What it’s Like to be a Bird (if they make it to their first breeding season, songbirds in general have about a 50 percent chance of surviving each year), Julie Zickefoose’s Baby Birds, an Artist Looks in the Nest, and Peter Vickery‘s Birds of Maine, edited by our own Barbara St. John Vickery ’83.

Migrations, a novel by Charlotte McConaghy. A haunting futuristic story of a woman who tracks the rapidly disappearing ArcticTerns from the Arctic to the Antarctic. I simply had to read it, since my friend Andrew Stowe ’06 did exactly that with his Watson Fellowship after he graduated.

The Library Book by Susan Orlean. The story of the devastating fire at the Los Angeles Central Library — and much more. Did you know that the temperature at which book paper catches fire and burns is 451 degrees Fahrenheit — and that is why Ray Bradbury’s book from 1951, Fahrenheit 451, has that title? I’m reading that classic now, for the first time…it is especially relevant in these days of history erasure and culture-canceling.

Tom McGuinness, Director of Institutional Research, Analysis, and Planning

I didn’t read any books that I truly loved during the past year, but I’ll highlight a couple that I really enjoyed. The first is Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America by Ijeoma Oluo, whose voice I really enjoy. It includes an excellent chapter on higher education, in which she explores her conflicted feelings about appreciating higher education as a pathway to a better life but also recognizing its embedded racism. The second is The Guest List by Lucy Foley. This novel is an engaging (though somewhat ridiculous) whodunit set at a wedding on a remote island off the coast of Ireland.

Meghan Metzger ’07, former colleague

If Women Rose Rooted: A Life-changing Journey to Authenticity and Belonging by Sharon Blackie. A spectacular book that has impacted my own path and growth in profound ways.

Kevin Michaud, Campus Safety Officer

I would like to recommend the following book which I could not put down once I started to read it: North River Depot, A Novel about the United States First Operational Nuclear Weapons Storage Site by John C. Garbinski.

I love the novel approach to telling this story which is based entirely on facts involving the establishment of this site in Caribou, Maine on land which the United States Government had purchased in part from my Grandparents in 1950.

This book details the history of one installation in particular and its historical contribution to the nation’s security. These distinctive contributions remained a TOP Secret for more than 40 years. This is a story of loyalty, integrity and pride. What these men did, what they had to do, and why their story has never been told until now, is the theme of this book.

Christine Murray, Social Science Librarian

• Owls of the Eastern Ice: A Quest to Find and Save the World’s Largest Owl by Jonathan C. Slaght
• The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson

Hoi Ning Ngai, Associate Director, Center for Purposeful Work

Young Adult: 

• Fable, Namesake by Adrienne Young
• Tweet Cute by Emma Lord

Other:

• Think Again by Adam Grant
• Minor Feelings by Cathy Park Hong

Kerry O’Brien, Assistant Dean of the Faculty

The Dutch House by Ann Patchett. My favorite book of the year. This is an amazing novel about sibling devotion, things that could have been, and unimaginable decisions that have ramifications for years. It’s cast as a fairy tale complete with an evil stepmother and a heartless father, but there are many twists and turns. It’s about obsession, memory, why it’s so hard to let go of the things that have been lost to us, and what we gain in the wake of what we lose.

A Long Petal of the Sea by Isabel Allende. The undercurrent to this novel is life under fascism (a theme of much of Allende’s work), but it follows the lives of two people flung together at the end of the Spanish Civil War. They escape to France and are evacuated on Pablo Neruda’s refugee ship to Chile, which transported thousands of Spanish exiles to Latin America. In Chile they build a new life, only to be met with the Pinochet regime and the complicit Church. It’s a political story told through the lives of compelling individuals and families over a long arc of time and generations.

Spying on the South: An Odyssey across the American Divide by Tony Horwitz. The late, brilliant Tony Horwitz was a journalist-historian whose books are smart and also hilarious. His M.O. was to infiltrate communities and relive historic events (c.f., Confederates in the Attic and Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before) to get at the core of historical questions. In this book, he retraces the steps of Frederick Law Olmsted who, before he became the most famous American landscape architect (Central Park, Boston’s Emerald Necklace), was dispatched by The New York Times in the 1850s to investigate what life was life in the Deep South, as slavery was becoming a burning issue across the country. Horwitz follows the journeys Olmsted made, reflecting on FLO’s observations and reporting on his own view of the modern South, with a throughline of race, class, and geography. It is a fascinating book in these divided times.

Carole Parker, Library Assistant for Acquisitions

• Heavy and Long Division by Kiese Laymon
• A Long Petal of the Sea by Isabel Allende
• So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo
• The Devil in Silver by Victor LaValle (thanks, Therí Pickens!)
• A Stranger in the Kingdom by Howard Mosher
• A Promised Land by Barack Obama
• The Cutting Season and Bluebird, Bluebird by Attica Locke
• Fear of the Dark by Walter Mosley

Mary Pols, Media Relations Specialist, �ֲ���ý Communciations Office

For memoir, don’t miss Michelle Zauner‘s Crying in H Mart, the story of her difficult but delightful Korean mother, her life growing up in Oregon and visiting her mother’s family in South Korea regularly, and her mother’s battle against cancer. Zauner is an indie musician and the founder of Japanese Breakfast, but the book is never about her quest to make it in the music world; this is about trying to grapple with family, her own Korean-American identity and grief. Crying in H Mart takes off from Zauner’s popular essay of the same name that appeared in The New Yorker in 2018.

Notes on a Silencing by Lacy Crawford is powerful, but be warned it tackles a difficult subject head on. When Crawford was a teenager at St. Paul’s boarding school, she was violently sexually assaulted by a pair of older students. This is her story of being shut down and shamed by virtually everyone at the school, surviving and coming to terms with the privilege afforded her rapists and the misogyny directed at her. This is the kind of book that reveals the institutional sins of not-so-distant past and makes you want to fight for change.

A lot of people have likely already read this one, because it was a Maine Public read earlier this year (and on a lot of 2020 Best of lists) but Portland resident Lily King‘s novel Writers & Lovers is a subtle but firmly feminist novel about the creative process, romantic choices, waitressing to foot the bills while undertaking creative endeavors — in this case, writing a novel — and it is wonderful. I’ve shared this title with about a half dozen friends, all of them very different kinds of readers, and each of them has loved it.

Sea Wife by Amity Gaige is a fantastic summer read. A wife grudgingly agrees to her Trump-voting husband’s request that she and their kids join him on a year-long sea voyage on a sailboat. There’s suspense, a great portrait of a fraying marriage, and totally transporting settings.

Finally, a very recent release, The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz. Perfect for writers, those who love them and those who might want to understand them better. The main character is Jacob Finch Bonner, a once-promising novelist, now washed up and teaching at a low-res, low-self-esteem MFA program in Vermont, part time. (He added that Finch for flash, fyi.) A new student, Evan Parker, brags about his unfinished novel and how its plot is so good it can’t possibly fail when it is eventually published. A few years later, Jacob discovers something that makes that plot very tempting to him. No book about writing should be this much of a page turner, but this one is that and relentlessly entertaining and smart.

Sarah Potter ’77, Bookstore Director Emerita

Chickens, Gin, and a Maine Friendship: The Correspondence of E.B White and Edmund Ware Smith by E.B. White and Edmund Ware Smith.

Ahhh, I do love E.B. White! Throughout the late ’50s and ’60s, these two writer-farmers exchanged humorous and lively letters. Here White reflects on Smith’s new henhouse: “The domestic egg is the beginning of your doom…first the henhouse, then the egg, then the grain bill, then the full corn in the ear, and the bulldozer to break trail for the grain truck…That first egg, so deceptively beautiful, so germinal! I bought this place because it had a good anchorage for a boat. One day I noticed it had a barn. Now I don’t even have a boat.”

Continuing the theme of farming life in Maine, I read Lost Paradise: A Boyhood on a Maine Coast Farm by R.P.T. Coffin, poet/author, Pulitzer-prize winner, Bowdoin professor. I was charmed by his recollection of Harpswell/Brunswick life in the early 1900s. His story could easily have been my grandparents’ tale of growing up in Downeast Maine. Reading this book prompted me to find Coffin’s beautiful headstone at Cranberry Horn Cemetery in Cundy’s Harbor (in January!). Coffin family roots are broad and deep in this part of Maine.

I was surprised by another good read, Bad Beaver Tales: Love and Life in Downeast Maine by midwife, writer and beaver-trapper Carol Leonard. She was just the hilarious storyteller I needed this past year.

Of course, I read and loved Louise Penny‘s annual Armand Gamache mystery, this one called All the Devils are Here. Not her best, in my view, but it was still a great read.

And finally, I have just finished The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah. This compelling novel paints a vivid picture of the devastation of the Dust Bowl. 

Jack Pribram, Professor Emeritus of Physics and Astronomy

How to Tame a Fox (and Build a Dog): Visionary Scientists and a Siberian Tale of Jump-Started Evolution by Lee Alan Dugatkin and Lyudmila Trut. In the late 1950s the scientist Dmitri Belyaev had the idea that if dogs came from wild wolves, maybe dogs might also come from passive wild foxes. Lyudmila Trut offered to go to a farm in Siberia to raise silver foxes and annually mate the passive ones. By the sixth and later generations some would change colors, ‘bark’ and behave much like dogs. Trut and others still work on this. She is now in her late 80s. Working in the Soviet Union and Russia caused problems off and on.

Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past by David Reich. It’s only been a dozen years or so that ancient DNA could be obtained from bones going back over tens of thousands of years, not only of Neanderthals, but recently discovered Denisovans. One big surprise was that so many humans did not always stay in one place; there were large populations moving. People going from India to Europe; people going to East Asia; people going from Siberia to America; and so on. Maps and charts for each chapter makes it possible to get a clear sense of the complexity of what was happening.

Darby Ray, Director of the Harward Center for Community Partnerships 

I highly recommend Argentine author Mariana Enríquez‘s 2016 short story collection The Things We Lost in the Fire (the English translation, by Meghan McDowell, is beautiful). Enríquez creates rich, haunting universes within each story.

Stephanie Pridgeon, Department of Spanish

I recommend Thrown in the Throat by Benjamin Garcia. An amazing first book by a queer Latinx poet whose way with words I cannot adequately describe. You could spend your summer in one poem.

Erica Rand, Program in Gender and Sexuality Studies

My guilty pleasure during the first half of the pandemic was reading Tana French‘s crime mystery novels, which I thoroughly enjoyed. In other genres and for quite different reasons, both Lily King‘s Euphoria and Isabel Wilkerson‘s Caste made an impression.

Kirk Read, Professor of French and Francophone Studies

Indeed, I’ve read a lot more this year and offer some suggestions from various spheres and journeys.

Isabel Wilkerson’s book Caste is on the bookshelves of many friends and talking heads that I listen to and watch and I highly recommend it. As with many works striving to wake us up to systemic racism, it is a retelling of American history with a new lense that helps make the scales fall from one’s eyes. When the Nazis went looking for a plan to segregate and exterminate, the monster they came to for a model was the United States. I’m still left with questions about what the legacy of privilege and entitlement means in this scheme, but it was a page turner.

I went down a rabbit hole with Walt Whitman whom I had not read in too long. My editions of his works had turned to cornflakes. My way in was Mark Doty‘s What is the Grass: Walt Whitman in My Life which is a poet and teacher’s rumination of all that this poet has meant to him professionally and personally. Inspiring. Whitman’s queerness is so beautiful, ebullient, and multi-faceted. Shifting between Doty, Whitman’s works and the Justin Kaplan biography (Walt Whitman: A Life) was a joy.

Recruited once again for a theatrical endeavor, I was prompted to research into Dominican culture in the Bronx (the play is Heidi Schreck‘s Grand Concourse — that being the borough’s main drag); Jewish life in the same neighborhood; and an education in schizophrenia and other mental illnesses which plague my very colorful character.

And so, Angie Ruiz‘s Dominicana tells a vivid story of several generations of Dominicans living and migrating between the DR and NYC; E.L. Doctorow‘s World’s Fair, is a beautiful, tender retelling of a Jewish boy’s life in the light and shadow of the 1939 World’s Fair on the cusp of World War II — as a man reading this through a boy’s retelling, I found it remarkably touching and insightful; and one of my favorite books by far: Sandy Allen‘s A Kind of Mirraculas Paradise: a True Story About Schizophrenia, wherein the author tells of their uncle’s tormented journey through a life with schizophrenia and how it repelled, challenged, and enlightened a family—their uncle sent them a manuscript which Allen then blends with their own perspective, augmented with interviews and research. I emerged from that book transformed in the way I think about “craziness” and mental illness. They are also a deeply committed sourdough bread maker with imaginable.

And circling back to Heidi Schreck, I cannot recommend her Pulitzer Prize Winning play, What the Constitution Means To Me, enough. It is also streaming and is simply amazing. Both this and Grand Concourse deal with reckoning and forgiveness with flawed families, governments, and well- meaning communities of all stripes who do not always triumph.

From my more academic shelf, I’m rereading Albert Camus‘ Le Premier Homme which I am just loving. Again, as with Doctorow, the voice of a sensitive boy’s experience (here in a very poor family in Algiers pre- independence) is stunning. The work was unpublished upon his untimely death in a car accident and was pieced together with some notations. Those who only know L’Etranger (The Stranger) from high school lit or French class will be surprised. Yes, it’s better in French, but it’s called The First Man. I am rereading all of Frantz Fanon‘s works, which as with so many amazing writers on race and colonialism from the past, come back with great urgency and wisdom in light of the year we have endured. Many know of this psychiatrist from Martinique who worked extensively in Algeria for The Wretched of the Earth. There is much more to recommend.

Tiffany Salter, Visiting Assistant Professor of English and Rhetoric, Film, and Screen Studies

I think, like many, I read more for pleasure this year. Here are some of the best since the last Good Reads came out. We Are Watching Eliza Bright by A.E. Osworth. A gripping thriller about a woman working in the male- dominated video games industry and the “fans” who punish her for speaking out against workplace harassment. If you followed “Gamer Gate” at all, this is a book for you.

All You Can Ever Know by Nicole Chung. A wonderful memoir about growing up as a Korean American adopted by white parents.

My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite. A strangely fun quick read about cleaning up after family mess.

Sansei and Sensibility by Karen Tei Yamashita. Short stories from over Yamashita’s long career primarily as a novelist. It is fun to see how her style has evolved through the years. The second half features contemporary takes based on each of Jane Austen’s novels featuring Japanese American characters.

Enter the Aardvark by Jess Anthony ’96. What a wild and fun ride from one of �ֲ���ý’ very own professors!

If summer means epic fantasy to you, then I recommend these by Ken Liu: The Grace of Kings, The Wall of Storms, and the third one in this series (The Dandelion Dynasty), will be out November 2021, The Veiled Throne.

The Name of the Wind and The Wise Man’s Fear by Patrick Rothfuss.

Sharon Saunders, Associate College Librarian for Systems and Bibliographic Services

Why Buddhism is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment by Robert Wright. Don’t be put off by the title of this book. It looks at things we have learned from evolutionary biology/evolutionary psychology to help explain why the mind works the way it does. It finds parallels in the Buddhist teaching of the three marks of existence:

impermanence, suffering, no-self (e.g., all we experience is impermanent, denying this creates suffering, thinking there is a separate self in charge — telling our bodies what to do and our minds what to think — also creates suffering). It then offers techniques for recognizing the workings of the mind instead of being caught up in the workings of the mind.

Hunt, Gather, Parent: What Ancient Cultures Can Teach Us About the Lost Art of Raising Happy, Helpful Little Humans by Michaeleen Doucleff. A very interesting and easy-reading book that puts our Western way of child- rearing into perspective.

Paula Schlax, Department of Biochemistry and Chemistry

I strongly recommend A World on The Wing: The Global Odyssey of Migratory Birds by Scott Weidensaul. How does a bird adapt to make an 18,000-mile round trip journey? Fly 6,000 miles over about eight days, non-stop? How do the birds know where to go? What happens when their stopover places are being developed by humans? How is global climate change influencing the migration patterns?

Johanna Seltzer ’03, Senior Associate Dean of Admission and Director of Special Projects

Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle by Amelia Nagoski and Emily Nagoski. Particularly timely for an intense period in our lives!

Especially relevant for women, working women, working mothers. Emily (a faculty member at Smith) has a great way of bringing in scientific knowledge and research to make her advice evidence-based, but digestible. The book is funny, practical, and good — and typically, I really hate self-help books!

The Road from Coorain by Jill Ker Conway. A lovely autobiography of Conway’s upbringing in Australia. Escapist and relatable, at the same time. It’s a wonderful, easy read about a young person, coming into her own as an intellectual, a leader, and a woman.

Anthony Shostak, Education Curator, �ֲ���ý College Museum of Art

Democrat to Deplorable: Why Nine Million Obama Voters Ditched the Democrats and Embraced Donald Trump by Jack Murphy. If you don’t understand how a liberal can be a conservative voter, this book might help you understand some of the many complex reasons, in a format that feels like conversations with neighbors.

Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All by Michael Shellenberger. Written by a former professional activist, this book invites one to rethink their settled thinking on environmentalist strategy, policy, and initiatives.

Clayton Spencer, President

Go, Went, Gone by Jenny Erpenbeck. Set in contemporary Berlin, it is the story of a university professor who is a bit at loose ends when he retires after a long career and how he stumbles into finding meaning in his new life by engaging with a group of African refugees who have landed in Berlin. The writing is spare and sublime. The underlying story is powerfully humanistic.

One of the best books I have read this year.

Kika Stump, Learning Assessment Specialist, Office of Institutional Research, Analysis, and Planning

I’ve been reading some great YA to keep up with the teenager in the house: Black Enough: Stories of Being Young and Black in America, edited by Ibi Zoboi; Kira Kira by Cynthia Kadohata; and Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson.

On my own list, (nonfiction) As We Have Always Done by Leanne Bettasamosake Simpson has kept me going while, (fiction) Washington Black by Esi Edugyan was a powerful adventure novel.

Sawyer Sylvester, Professor Emeritus of Sociology

The Joy of Walking by Suzy Crips is a collection of comments on their walks by well-known figures in English literature.

The Twilight of Democracy by Anne Applebaum is a sobering account of the rise of the modern despotic state.

For two accounts of that highly intelligent (and occasionally playful) ocean dweller, I recommend Octopus: The Ocean’s Intelligent Invertebrate by Mather, Anderson, and Wood, and The Soul of an Octopus by Sy Montgomery.

The Black Mozart, le Chevalier Saint George by Walter E. Smith is about “a great fencer, a composer, conductor, virtuoso, an artful equestrian, an exceptional marksman, an elegant dancer, an accomplished man of his time….” (1739–1799).

Legacy of the Sacred Harp by Chloe Webb is an account of a personal quest of the author for a link between her extended family and the Southern tradition of American shape note singing.

The Louvre by James Gardner is a political history, from fortress to palace of the world’s most famous museum.

Bill Bryson’s The Body is an engaging and immensely literate account of human anatomy and physiology.

Daniel Silva’s The Order is probably the best of his Gabriel Allon mysteries so far.

Finally, Henry Beston’s Herbs and the Earth is an account, both historical and personal, of his and our relationship to the world of herbs. One should also enjoy the woodcuts by John Hudson Benson.

Anne Thompson, Professor Emerita of English and Euterpe B. Dukakis Professor Emerita of Classical and Medieval Studies

Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell. A novel about Shakespeare and his family. It’s a fiction, but some basic aspects of it are true: Shakespeare did have three children, two of whom, Judith and Hamnet, were twins. Hamnet died at 11, for unknown reasons.

O’Farrell imagines the relationship between Hamnet’s death in 1596 and the writing of Hamlet, circa 1600. His wife, about whom we know very little, is wonderfully portrayed as an uneducated but gifted and insightful healer with much of the book seen through her eyes. I couldn’t put it down.

Stephanie Wade, Lecturer in Humanities and Assistant Director of Writing

• The Overstory by Richard Powers
• There, There by Tommy Orange
• On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong

Dick Wagner, Professor Emeritus of Psychology

Jill Lepore‘s These Truths is the most enlightening and best written US history I’ve ever read. It’s long but well worth the effort. Tells you things and provides contexts the standard history books “forgot” to mention.

William Wallace, Lecturer in Education

Elizabeth Kolbert‘s new book, Under A White Sky: The Nature of The Future. She was our Otis Lecturer a few years ago after she won a Pulitzer Prize for The Sixth Extinction. Elizabeth makes complex science understandable, urgent, and enjoyable to read. She’s wonderful!

Each week this fall, we’ll introduce new �ֲ���ý professors who have tenure-track positions on the faculty.

This year’s nine tenure appointments are in the disciplines of art and visual culture, classical and medieval studies, economics, English, environmental studies, dance, politics (two appointments), and psychology.

This week we introduce the seventh of our nine new faculty members, Katie Adkison.

Name: Katie Adkison

Title: Assistant Professor of English

Degrees from: University of California, Santa Barbara, Ph.D. in English; Colorado State University, M.A. in English literature, B.A. in English education

Her work: Adkison studies the role of an individual’s spoken voice in early modern English literature — what the actual feeling of speaking means and conveys, especially in terms of power structures.

In Adkison’s scholarship, voice becomes a “kind of embodied sensation. Not literally a sixth sense, but something more akin to sensing knowledge than to just a tool of communication.”

Her dissertation: “The Sense of Speech: Voice and Sovereignty in Early Modern Tragedy,” describes the relationship between early modern theories of sovereignty and the phenomenology of the voice in Elizabethan and Jacobean tragedy.

For example: In the opening scene of King Lear, the titular monarch decides to divide his kingdom based on how much his three daughters say they love him. His first two daughters make elaborate but insincere declarations of love.

Lear then turns to his third daughter, Cordelia, and asks, “What can you say to draw a third more opulent than your sisters?” Cordelia, who does truly love the king, responds, “Nothing, my Lord.” She continues:

Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave
My heart into my mouth: I love your majesty
According to my bond; nor more nor less…. (1.1.91-93)

In referring to her own voice, Cordelia is trying to tell her father “something about politics and about love that his love test is failing to understand,” says Adkison. She’s saying that “love and politics are not mathematical equations. You can’t give more love through your voice the way that you can give more money or more of something tangible.”

The opening scene is a kernel in the larger lesson of the play. Cordelia, in effect, is vocalizing the fact that her vocalization can’t do what her father wants it to do — it can’t be reduced to words. “She’s saying, ‘There’s more to love here, just as there’s more to language in the very voice I’m speaking through.’”

The scene sets the stage for the tragedy. “Lear wants words to equal inheritance, a kingdom, power.” Cordelia wants no part of it. “And so it ends, with death, tears, and so much pain,” says Adkison.

Iambic sortameter: In King Lear’s opening scene, Shakespeare uses a jarring version of iambic pentameter for some of Cordelia’s lines. “The rhythm is off,” says Adkison, noting that the Bard sometimes “uses an extra syllable, 11 instead of the usual 10 — or even a whole extra two-syllable iamb — in some lines.”

Shakespeare did that often, she explains, usually to draw attention to something. “If the rhythm is off, you are supposed to feel it as an audience member.”

We can’t know the intentions of the author now or 500 years later. But the meaning is there, regardless. That’s magic to me.

Adkison recalls the moment that “something felt off in one of the lines. And so I started counting syllables, the way you’re supposed to when something feels off.” The extra syllable “had to be purposeful. It’s too perfect not to be.”

In Cordelia’s 11-syllable lines, there is “something that literally can’t be divided up. The rhythm of the lines is as out of step with her father’s demands as her inability to speak her love is. She’s really talking about vocal rhythm and the experience of voice to explain what’s going on.”

A beautiful thing: “The beautiful thing about how literature thinks about language is that we can’t know the intentions of the author now or 500 years later,” Adkison says. “But the meaning is there, regardless. There’s always something new to be parsed and to be found. That’s magic to me.”

Classroom magic: Sometimes, magical classroom moments happen when a teacher allows a discussion to go off the straight rails.

Last winter, at the University of California, Santa Barbara, Adkison was teaching Thomas More’s Utopia. A student asked, “Is anyone watching The Good Place?” referring to the NBC fantasy comedy about a utopian, but problematic, afterlife.

Rather than guide the discussion back to the 16th century, Adkison took a moment to connect the dots. She noted the etymology of the word “utopia” and how it “can mean ‘the good place’ or ‘no place’ or ‘the good place that cannot exist’ or something along those lines.”

Eager for wordplay, Adkison’s students jumped at the chance to connect More’s Utopia to The Good Place, which led to a “conversation about the way that the show uses and problematizes the notion of a utopia in such interesting ways.”

Then she guided the students back to how More imagined what a good life looked like in his Utopia. “The text is infamously sticky about how one constructs a good life, what it means to live the good life, and all the problems that are wrapped up in that text.”

And a course is born: All of that left Adkison “wanting so badly to teach a class on utopia.” And if you look at utopia, “you have to teach the second half of the class on dystopias because it seems to be true that a good place for some frequently comes to mean a bad place for others.”

“College students are special because they will think with you — taking on the agency of research and thinking of their learning as their own.”

And, voilà! This spring, Adkison will teach such a course on utopian and dystopian fiction, from More’s Utopia and Margaret Cavendish’s The Blazing World to George Orwell’s 1984 and the first of N.K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy. “I’m hoping we’ll end with the first season of The Good Place and try and end on a funny note — even if it’s not necessarily optimistic in all of the ways one wants it to be.”

Why �ֲ���ý? “I was so excited when I visited �ֲ���ý to see how much collaboration happens between departments and between students and faculty. Collaborative research structures the idea of the undergraduate thesis that all students write here.”

Why college? “College students are special because they will think with you — taking on the agency of research and thinking of their learning as their own.”

Finding her path: “At my core, I have always known I wanted to be a teacher,” Adkison says.

“I thought I would be a high school English teacher for the rest of my life. But my path to graduate work was one I found late in the stages of my own bachelor’s degree, when I was taking education courses alongside literature courses. I realized I had more questions about the literature. I couldn’t be done.”

It was the Tuesday after Commencement, and Jane Costlow paced around her Hedge Hall office, up to her elbows in books, boxes, papers, and assorted memorabilia. The college’s Clark A. Griffith Professor of Environmental Studies was nearing the end of her 34-year �ֲ���ý career, and the only thing left was to pack up and move out.

The scene is repeated each year, of course, but more often recently with the retirement of the baby boom generation of faculty members.

Costlow tosses some papers into a recycling bin outside of her Hedge Hall office. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

I’d seen historian Michael Jones and his wife, Judy Head, empty his Pettengill Hall office. I’d listened to poet Rob Farnsworth speak of plans for his beloved books piled high in Hathorn Hall. I’d learned how historians Dennis Grafflin and John Cole went door to door on their Pettengill corridor, asking colleagues to adopt tomes they themselves couldn’t take home.

“Don’t worry,” said the student, who had picked up a book. “Your old friends will make new friends.”

And I’d heard how my husband, historian Hilmar Jensen, had regretfully placed 200 of his volumes in boxes labeled “free books” in the lobby of Perry Atrium. All were eventually claimed. Pausing one day to unload a final armful, he remarked to an observant student, “This feels like saying goodbye to old friends.”

“Don’t worry,” said the student, who had picked up a book. “Your old friends will make new friends.”

For the generation of scholars and teachers who have painstakingly collected books by the hundreds, even thousands, the task of retiring and closing up an on-campus shop presents various emotional and practical challenges, not the least of which is, “What do I do with all those books?”

Costlow pauses for a moment with a stack of books she’s packing in her office. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

That vexing question, along with other rites of passage faced by baby boomers emptying the scholarly bench, planted the original seed for my interest in documenting the last year of somebody — anybody’s — teaching at �ֲ���ý.

In August 2019, Jane Costlow gamely stepped into that role. There could have been no more willing, insightful, nor patient subject.

When her classroom teaching career stopped abruptly and early, in March 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, she gracefully transitioned to remote teaching. When the semester ended (Costlow did not teach during Short Term), she spent long hours in her Hedge office, clearing the space for her replacement, a recent Ph.D. who will move in when he arrives on the �ֲ���ý campus sometime this summer.

Costlow met that young scholar at a symposium last year, and she knows he will teach courses on climate change and fiction; to that end, she’s left an assortment of books and other materials that she hopes he’ll find useful, including a folder of papers about Lewiston and Auburn.

Costlow and her husband, David Das, discuss packing strategies during one of her moving sessions. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Costlow begins a yearlong sabbatical this August, after which she will officially retire in August 2021. And she leaves at a particularly difficult time as �ֲ���ý — administrators, faculty, staff, and students — confront the challenges of COVID-19 and the nation’s greater-than-ever awareness of systemic racism in U.S. society. “I really feel for people,” she said, knowing that she will no longer be an active participant in the coming struggles.

The pattern of sabbaticals, she said, “provides an incredible luxury that we have as academics to take periodic time off — having a kind of Sabbath in your life. That actually gives us a little bit of practice at shifting gears, so it’s not completely unfamiliar to no longer have the demands of teaching.”

What’s different now, she said, is no longer being driven by a need to complete this project or fulfill that obligation or stand for promotion.

Costlow began her office move-out in April by first reviewing its entire contents, deciding what to save, what to dispose of, and what to try to pass on to others. Some of her discoveries — such as two folders of correspondence — delighted her.

Costlow reviews the 34 years worth of accumulated files in her office filing cabinet. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

“Rather than pitching those things, I actually wanted to go through them,” she said. She read the approximately 100 letters, some of which she had written, others written to her.

She found an initial note from a young female graduate student, Jehanne Gheith (now an associate professor at Duke), writing her dissertation at Stanford on the Russian writer Evgeniia Tur, one of a number of women writers from the 19th century whose work and significance for cultural history has been retrieved by scholars over the past three decades, says Costlow.

“I was the only person, certainly in English, maybe in the world at that point, who had written anything about this woman writer. So Jehanne reached out to me, and we have since become very dear friends. It was cool to find the inaugural letter of our friendship.”

In undertaking that office audit, she rediscovered a younger version of herself: a new scholar emerging from graduate school.

Other surprises included a few missives from her late colleague, French professor Dick Williamson, a “hugely important person in the early years of my life at �ֲ���ý,” and a series of thank-you notes written by two other departed faculty colleagues when they were deans, Carl Benton Straub and Jim Carignan ’61, thanking her for moderating a panel or serving on a committee.

Costlow holds a grading ledger from 1999. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

In undertaking that office audit, she rediscovered a younger version of herself: a new scholar emerging from graduate school, at Yale, “a really wonderful graduate program, but one with a very traditional curriculum and entirely male faculty, which had been pretty much my experience as an undergraduate, as well,” she said; and then arriving at �ֲ���ý “interested in questions of women’s writing, feminist criticism, and different ways of thinking about cultural legacy and whose voices are heard.”

As she looked at all the books she’d acquired, all that she’d read, and what she’d written — unpublished and published — and conversations she’d had with others, she was struck by how much had changed over four decades.

In particular, she thought of the number of women who are faculty now and their positions within the academy, and the waves of various attempts to fundamentally open up and change curricula and syllabi. “I found myself looking back at the examples of how I have tried to do that, and the people that I’d worked with and leaned on.”

“Be gone slavery of the kitchen.”  Costlow holds a  reproduction of a 1931 poster by Soviet painter Grigory Mikhailovich Shegal. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

She leafed through documents from a seminar she’d participated in when �ֲ���ý was developing courses for its new women’s studies program, decades ago, her mind on the past and the present.

“Right at this moment, I feel just how enormous the rock is that so many different people are trying to push up the hill of fundamental change,” she said — people “working to bring all kinds of diverse voices and perspectives into the classroom and the academy.”

“You sometimes wonder: Where is the arc of the universe heading?”

But then she has a troubling realization. “My high school experience in rural North Carolina was my most diverse educational experience as a student — everything got whiter (and much more male)” as she went on to college (Duke) and graduate school.

In high school, Costlow had African American teachers in math, and chemistry, and in homeroom. “I particularly would love to be able to find out if they’re still around, to thank them for the work that they did.”

As her mind flashes to the past and back to present, Costlow now is on the edge of tears. “It’s that moment where you’re thinking back over your career and how much has changed” — and how much hasn’t. “You sometimes wonder: Where is the arc of the universe heading?”

Jane Costlow on changes in higher education. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

And all those books. Some she already handed off to students at the end of the fall semester or as they stopped in to say goodbye before departing suddenly in mid-March. With the help of the building’s academic administrative assistant, Jeanne Beliveau, Costlow has distributed more volumes to students. Still others will go into boxes to be picked up by students as freebies.

Costlow has also arranged to send boxes of books of American nature writing to her friends and colleagues in the English department at Turgenev State University in Orel, Russia, with whom she’s had great interactions over the course of 30 years. “Who knows what students will pick up and read in the future to get a broad sense of not just the American classics, but of diverse voices on the natural world?”

A pile of titles Costlow has selected for her successor sits on one of her office shelves. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

She mentioned a friend, Professor Emeritus of History Dennis Grafflin, who is assembling his own archive of the teaching books of �ֲ���ý faculty as they retire. She gave him her copy of The Brothers Karamazov, falling apart, filled with notes and Post-its. “I think it’s a fabulous idea,” she said. “There is something really precious about all of those marks that you leave in a book.”

What will she miss most — or least — about �ֲ���ý? That’s ironic, she said, since the campus has already emptied, and she’s already longing for all kinds of things: “The salad bar in the Den for those days when I don’t bring anything from home; talking to colleagues; or surprising moments with students; the energy of 20-year-olds.”

She will miss “the focused attention to writing and being able to engage with students about writing because I love thinking about what makes good writing.”

She’ll miss encounters with all sorts of colleagues, some in Ladd Library, others in Beliveau’s office in Hedge. “I’ll miss that a great deal, just being able to go down and chat with her for three minutes and maybe run into David Commiskey [professor of philosophy] or somebody else in Hedge.”

What she won’t miss: “those days when everybody is low-energy, including me, but somehow I have to crank it up to try to get the students going.” She will not miss teaching at 2:40 in the afternoon. “I always found that an impossible time to teach. I guess it’s my body rhythm.”

She will not miss grading. She will not miss having to sit down with a stack of papers and contemplate “how it’s humanly possible for me to get through these papers and help students with their writing.”

But she will miss “the focused attention to writing and being able to engage with students about writing because I love thinking about what makes good writing. I’m always happy to talk with students, and a fair amount of what we do in a class is talk about what makes this work, what makes it powerful? Or why doesn’t this communicate with us?”

Costlow shares a moment with Academic Administrative Assistant Jeanne Beliveau in Beliveau’s Hedge Hall office at the start of the fall 2019 semester. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College).

Although she’ll miss her colleagues, she will not miss their departmental meetings. “The wonderful kinds of conversations that you can have with people are the ones that are sometimes extemporaneous and unpredictable.” And faculty meetings? She views them as “a necessary evil,” although “there are times that faculty meetings are where we get to say really important things to each other — that’s at least as important now as it’s ever been.”

Nor will she miss multitasking. But there are probably ways she will continue to multitask in retirement because, after all, “it’s a constant in modern life, but it’s horrible.”

“There’s this paradox: being in a super busy job, then these moments when the beauty of the campus takes your breath away.”

Then, she’ll miss her time alone on the �ֲ���ý campus, particularly those years when she worked in Hathorn Hall and would walk from Campus Avenue up the central path on the Historic Quad to her office. “How beautiful it was, these moments of quiet,” she said. “It’s the counterweight to multitasking. I love working at a place where you have to walk around to get to different places.”

It can be a healthy work environment, she said, one that allowed her time for reflection and an opportunity to admire the landscaping designed by now-retired Bill Bergevin and others. “There’s this paradox: being in a super busy job, then these moments when the beauty of the campus takes your breath away.”

And finally, she will really miss the chance to travel with students, something that she has already missed this year, as have many of her colleagues. “I’m being optimistic,” Costlow said, but she imagines she will continue to travel to Russia and other countries that she has not yet visited. “But in all likelihood, I won’t travel with students, and I’ll miss that.”

A Russian keepsake awaits packing. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

She anticipates her future with hope and pleasure, imagining it as a continuance of, not an end to, the last 35 years of her life at �ֲ���ý.

She loves to read and write. She stays in touch with friends and colleagues in Russia. She maintains connections in Lewiston and Auburn “with groups of people that I love talking with.” She’s been part of a book group for 25 years that continues to meet on Zoom during COVID-19.

One thing’s for sure: “I just want to slow myself down. And the pandemic is oddly good for that.”

“I love this community. And I’ve been restrained in the extent to which I’ve had time to give to the community because of how all-consuming �ֲ���ý can become. So I’m looking forward to having a little bit more time to give there, although a lot of people warn you as you approach retirement, not to get yourself committed to too many different things at the beginning. That seems like really good advice.”

Because of the coronavirus, some of the things she had imagined doing at the beginning of her sabbatical — such as taking a road trip to see family and friends in Virginia and North Carolina — are no longer possible, at least for the immediate future.

But one thing’s for sure: “I just want to slow myself down. And the pandemic is oddly good for that.” She has “deep, heavy, intense academic” projects that she’s working on, but she’ll take a break from those. “I kind of want to drift for a while, quite frankly,” she said. “Read whatever comes to mind. Go for walks. Garden.”

Her neighbor gave her some sourdough starter, so Costlow, a longtime baker, is growing her repertoire. And she’s returned to the piano, an instrument she played often while growing up. “It was symbolic,” she said, to clear the papers, library books, and COVID-19 masks from the piano to make space for the sheet music that has allowed her to get slowly back into Bach’s “Two- and Three-Part Inventions.”

Mostly, she says, to the extent that it’s currently possible, she wants to go on really long walks. She and her husband, David Das, assistant director for the Center for Global Education, do a lot of walking together. And she walks, socially distanced, with friends. But there’s something about solitary walking that she truly likes, and there are some great places, including conservation lands, in her neighborhood.

Costlow pauses to consider how to move these framed 1950 aerial photographs of Shackleford Banks from her office to home. “They’re images of a place I love – a really wild, undeveloped island you can only get to by boat. But they’re also images of islands that ‘drift’ — they get reshaped by water and storms. They remind me of climate change and sea level rise. How much longer will they be there?” (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

“I am not going out to exercise,” she said, taking guidance from Thoreau in his essay “Walking,” in which he talked about the mindfulness that should come with a good, long walk — famously saying, “I am alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit.”

Mind and body together on a walk — “I’ve done a little bit of that, which is really kind of wonderful,” Costlow said, describing a long exchange of looks she had with a chipmunk. “But we don’t do that when we live lives where we internalize our clocks so intensely, and you have to go on to your next meeting. One doesn’t do that. And it’s really not healthy.”

If anyone can start out on a long walk, and do it well, Jane Costlow can. Here’s to her continued good health.

“I’m being overcome with waves of nostalgia, so I can’t do this for too long,” wrote Jane Costlow in response to a recent request to round up photographs of her 26 years of taking �ֲ���ý students to Russia. “So many amazing and wonderful students and adventures.”

Though today she is the Clark A. Griffith Professor of Environmental Studies, now in her 34th and final year of teaching at �ֲ���ý, Costlow’s academic training is in Russian literature and culture, and she first traveled in the then–Soviet Union during graduate school in the 1980s.

And since joining the �ֲ���ý faculty, she has led students to Russia on 10 separate occasions, the first in 1988 and the last in 2014.

+Costlow in Russia

Costlow poses with her students in 2006 in front of the “coachman’s cottage” on Tolstoy’s estate, Yasnaya Polyana, near Tula. The folk ensemble had just performed. (Courtesy Jane Costlow)

Fascinated by Russian history, culture, politics, people, and language, Costlow cannot imagine her life as a teacher or scholar without those experiences in Russia. “You wouldn’t be a marine biologist and not go to the ocean. [Professor of Geology] Dyk Eusden ’80 does not do geology sitting in his office in Carnegie. If you’re someone who’s interested in another culture that happens to be a living culture, you go there.”

Jane Costlow on why Russia calls to her. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

We recently spoke to Costlow about her experiences teaching and researching in Russia.

Why has teaching in Russia been important to you?

Teaching in Russia allowed me to immerse my students and myself in discovering a place that’s unlike all places— and it’s constantly changing.

True, you can learn a lot about a place that isn’t Lewiston, Maine, when you’re in Lewiston — you can study the history, language, art, and film. The revolution in technology has facilitated that. You can watch the news, you can read today’s papers, and you can read blogs, the equivalent of a kind of Russian Reddit.

But to actually go there and experience it is really diving into the pool. I’ve loved rediscovering the place when you’re introducing it to students. And so in that introduction, in that transaction, you discover new things yourself.

Which is not to say that there aren’t really tough things about going with a bunch of undergraduates to any place, and maybe particular things about Russia. Still, I’ve always loved the informality of teaching while you’re abroad.

Costlow, photographed with a mug of kvas (which is also the word on the barrel) by Peter Olson ’92 during the 1988 Short Term. (Peter Olson’92)

What are the particular difficulties of taking students to Russia?

First, there’s the visa, and with Russia, the application process is complicated. It’s not just a “get your ticket and board the plane” kind of thing.

But beyond that, there’s a sort of paradox of Russian development. On the one hand, it’s a modern, “European” country, although whether or not it’s European has always been one of the central questions of Russian identity. Moscow is enormously well-resourced now and seems not that different, quite frankly, from London or Paris or Berlin.

But once you get outside of Moscow, the levels of development can be quite different, and certainly different from what many, if not most of our students, are used to. Over the years, I felt like I needed to make sure that they understood that there were going to be certain kinds of amenities that they’re used to that they probably were not going to find.

That could include not being able to get the things that they want to eat. And Russians live in tiny little apartments. You discover that you’re in a homestay where it’s a two-room apartment with three generations — and you’re the one who’s gotten the bedroom.

This is no longer the case, but students had to deal with the inaccessibility of ATM machines or public facilities or levels of cleanliness. It’s not France. I felt like I always wanted to be clear to our students about that.

But I’ll also say the students have, by and large, been really game. They’ve been troupers. If anything, the rumors about Russia are far worse than the realities, so I think that there’s probably been a self-selection process for going to a place like Russia. Did I mention negotiating Russian trains?

Jane Costlow, our professor in Moscow, stands on the walkway over the Moscow River near the Kremlin at Zaryad’e Park in June 2018. (David Das)

Tell us about the 1988 visa incident.

Three or four days before we were set to leave for my very first Short Term in the Soviet Union, the packet of passports and visas arrived. All the students’ visas were there — but mine had been denied.

This was 1988, just my second year on the �ֲ���ý faculty and the first time that I was going back to the Soviet Union after I’d been there as a graduate student. When my visa was denied, I assumed — to the extent that one assumes that there’s actually a reason for any of this — that some bureaucrat didn’t like something in my file. Carl Straub and Jim Carignan ’61 [then dean of the faculty and dean of the college, respectively] contacted Sen. Bill Cohen’s office — he was vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee at the time — and they were able to get me a visa.

I sometimes think that if I hadn’t gotten it, what would have happened? It was the first time I had taken students to Orel, where I would go many times later, and it’s where all of �ֲ���ý’ Russian teaching assistants have since come from.

“Letter of Gratitude” from the foreign language department at the Turgenev State University of Orel, which declares its “profound gratitude to Dr. Jane T. Costlow, Professor at �ֲ���ý College (USA), for her love of Russian literature and nature; her interest in the Orel region; her many years of collaboration with our institution; contact between �ֲ���ý students and the students of Turgenev State University of Orel which she made possible; and the creation of the position of Russian Teacher Assistant at �ֲ���ý College, a position which our graduates have occupied regularly, one after the other. We hope for a continuation of our productive cooperation and wish Jane T. Costlow success, health and well-being.”

Why did you choose Orel?

I had visited there and developed friendships there in 1984–85, when I had a fellowship in Leningrad. Orel is a small city south of Moscow in the so-called Black Earth, agricultural part of Russia. And it’s where the Russian writer Ivan Turgenev, who I had written my dissertation on, was from.

In those days, it was quite unusual to get out beyond either Moscow or Leningrad. The Soviets were quite adept at restricting people’s movement beyond the capital cities. But I had asked permission to go to Orel. I found it fascinating. When I was organizing our 1988 trip, the British company helping us said they could arrange for us to go to Orel.

This was the first time I had been back since 1985. Gorbachev was in power, so things were already beginning to change a little bit. It was breathtaking for somebody who had wondered, only three years before, “How are the lives of my friends going to get any better?” In Moscow, you could see that the pictures of Leon Trotsky — for decades considered an enemy of the people — were back up on the wall. Trotsky was back in the Museum of the History of Communism!

But when the people on the street in Moscow who wanted to talk to us heard that I was taking these students to Orel, they looked at me aghast and said, “Oh my God, how can you go to Orel? There’s nothing to eat there!”

�ֲ���ý students learn to make pelmeni — Russian dumplings that consist of a filling wrapped in thin, unleavened dough — in a restaurant kitchen as part of a cultural program. (Courtesy of Jane Costlow)

Once you arrived, what was the reality like?

There may have been less to eat for some people in Orel than there was in Moscow, and that was part of the Soviet provisioning system. But the hospitality that we received was amazing.

And it started with getting off the train at 4 in the morning and arriving at a motel, where they had tea and cookies and other snacks waiting for us. The people in Orel were extraordinary: thoughtful organization, terrific teachers. And, as my interest became more and more directed towards environmental issues, my relationships with these people became more and more important.

I met Joseph Solomonovich Keselman, an English teacher at the university, who’s still a very dear friend and has taught every single group of students that I’ve taken. And Marina Shimchenok became my on-the-ground contact; she got what I was interested in. She would set up a visit to a dairy farm, or a farm that was in the process of being converted from a collective farm to a privately owned joint-stock operation.

Or we would go to a local national park or a place that made recycled toilet paper. She worked with me over the years as the Short Term became more environmentally focused.

Costlow picnicking in the town of Bolkhov in 1990 with her longtime friend and on-the-ground contact in Orel, Marina Shimchenok, who organized travel for Costlow and her students. (Courtesy Jane Costlow)

What were your goals in taking students to Russia, and how did they change over time as your scholarly focus shifted?

With the exception of 2003, when we traveled to focus more on environmental issues in multiple places, students have always had to take some language no matter what their majors. It was always absolutely key to my understanding of what it means to travel in another country that you at least try to learn a little bit of the language of the country.

My goal for the students is to develop the kind of deeper cultural understanding and growth that you get from being in a place where you’re confronted with living with a family, where you’re humbled by what you don’t know and by the paradoxes and challenging things in other people’s lives.

I’ve always wanted my students to develop friendships with Russians. Maybe that’s still a holdover from the Soviet era of sister-city projects, meeting the so-called enemy, and discovering how much you have in common and what potential that holds for making the world a better place to live.

Costlow’s students participate in a 2006 cleanup effort in Orel. (Courtesy of Jane Costlow)

Did your experiences change significantly after the collapse of the USSR in 1991?

The 1990s were a nightmare economically in Russia, so in 1993, we went to St. Petersburg, which by then had been renamed, with a group of students and only for two weeks, rather than Orel.

That was not a particularly successful trip. The teachers were not as good, and I also think that Russians’ lives were such a mess at that point that it was extremely difficult for them. That was also a period in which there was the sense of criminality. People worried about being endangered on the street, although that was never an issue for us.

And by 2000, you started to see the Putin transformation: people’s apartments were getting better and lives were stabilizing. Public spaces were becoming cleaner. There was the understanding that Putin had delivered some of that.

Was there a particular experience that stands out for you? High or low?

The low point is easy: Short Term 1999, when a student developed acute appendicitis and needed to have an appendectomy.

We were in Orel, and fortunately I had friends who had friends who were able to get us connected to the best surgeon and the best hospital and to get the medication that we needed, because none of that could be taken for granted at that point.

We had great support from Steve Sawyer [then head of the college’s off-campus study office] and from the student’s amazing parents. All’s well that ends well, and she did fine. But I actually had to stay in Russia with her while my husband, David, who was visiting with our two children, took the group to St. Petersburg and got everybody home. I stayed in Orel for the better part of a week until she had mended enough that we could get on the plane.

Post-appendicitis surgery memento: �ֲ���ý student Erica McIninch poses with her Russian doctor. (Courtesy Jane Costlow)

The high point?

There are so many of them that it’s really hard to say. They mostly involve students’ connections to their peers in Russia.

In 2006, we visited Optina Pustyn, a monastery in one of the great religious cultural centers of Russia. We’d spent the night at a house for pilgrims and then visited a women’s convent that was where Tolstoy’s sister had been a nun. And one of our students, Sami Karmout, a wonderful young man from Palestine who had to travel without a passport, saw a French Orthodox monk he knew from home.

I remember sitting outside the monastery with a group of three or four students after we’d been there for several hours, just kind of wandering around, very quietly, letting the monks go about their daily lives. We talked about what religion meant to us and what our spiritual lives were. It was a conversation made possible by that trip, and I really treasured it.

Sometimes, riding on the bus somewhere, you’d strike up a conversation with somebody over the backseat about politics or philosophy. I have a really wonderful memory of a student talking about how listening to Bruce Springsteen in Russia was helping him understand the backwoods of, kind of, depressed industrial Russia.

Costlow and some of her students, aka The Babushkas, at Optina Pustyn, a monastery that has been enormously important for Russian culture, in 2014. (Courtesy of Jane Costlow)

Things stick in your mind. In 1990 Corey Harris ’91, who’s gone on to an amazing musical career, was on my 1990 Short Term. He struck me as somebody who was an aural learner, and he picked up Russian really quickly. In those days, Soviet citizens could not have foreigners staying at their houses, so we stayed in this little motel on the edge of town.

And as far as Corey was concerned, we were served far too many beets. In Russian, the word for maybe is “mozhet byt.” Corey took to saying “mozhet, beets?” when we sat down to any meal, meaning “maybe we’ll have beets, oh goodie!” And sure enough, there would be beets, and there would be both laughs and groans.

Costlow horseback riding in the Orel region in 2014, at the Zlynskii Stud Farm, a stable that dates back to pre-revolutionary Russia. (Courtesy of Jane Costlow)

You had hoped to take �ֲ���ý students to Russia this year, for one last time. Even before the pandemic, you chose not to.

It would have been a wonderful way to end my teaching career. It would have been better than Zoom!

I ultimately decided against it because Marina, who had set everything up in the past, died quite unexpectedly two years ago. I had reached out to people in Orel — there’s actually one of our former teaching assistants who’s essentially taken over Marina’s business — and she was game for trying, but I had this feeling that it was probably better just not to do it.

Any study abroad travel that you undertake with students involves a massive amount of work. In my “no longer spring chicken” status, and especially without Marina there, I wondered if I’d be able to pull it off.

Any final thoughts about the study abroad experience?

There has been a deep decline in foreign language study at American colleges and universities. Recognizing that national reality, I hope �ֲ���ý finds a way to have a serious discussion about its importance and role in a liberal arts education.

On paper, and on balance sheets, these small classes look really expensive. We do not have, and never have had, a language requirement, and I’m not necessarily advocating one. But the study of a foreign language, in my experience and in the experience of many students, is transformational.

Costlow in 2006 with her students in front of the 18th-century Peterhof Palace, home of Peter the Great. (Courtesy of Jane Costlow)

We’re headed into — we are in — rough economic waters. And I don’t know how they’re going to handle that. But the faculty, in terms of being in charge of the curriculum, needs to ask, “What does it mean to be a college that attends to global forces if you don’t train your students seriously to speak a language other than the language that they’re born with?”

But you know, I’m an old language teacher and I would say, “More rather than less” when it comes to the study of language. It’s what I’ve done, and I think I’ve had an impact on people’s lives. I’ve taken probably a couple hundred students to Russia, and it’s really one of the things that I’m most proud of. I certainly hope the college can continue to support that kind of transformative learning.

The contrast in titles alone ought to tell you something.

On the one hand, there’s The Seagull, Anton Chekhov’s late 19th-century play, a tale of art and romance, striving and frustration, ripe with unexpressed thought and feeling.

And on the other, there’s the response: a stripped-down, soul-baring, fourth-wall-breaking 2013 play by Aaron Posner: Stupid F**king Bird.

Tim Dugan, assistant professor of theater, first saw the latter a few years ago in a production directed by Posner, at Philadelphia’s Arden Theatre (which the playwright also co-founded).

Director Tim Dugan, assistant professor of theater, prepares for the play’s March 4 dress rehearsal in Schaeffer Theatre. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

“I was immediately blown away,” says Dugan. “I was like, ‘I really want to direct this someday.’” And someday is now, as Dugan is directing the play’s �ֲ���ý premiere, .

Bird, Dugan says, “is very funny. The wit, the irreverence, the human folly — kind of like Chekhov — make it funny. Audiences tend to laugh a lot at these characters who are striving for something that is unattainable, because I think we see ourselves in that.”

How will this play speak to your students?

Four of the seven characters are younger, in their early 20s, and so it’s perfectly aged for our students. Also, the stakes and urgency of the scenes for these young people in the play are enormous. It’s really something you can sink your teeth into as an actor. It’s a great challenge.

Posner wrote something in his script acknowledgments that I was drawn to. He hails “all the fierce, fervent young artists who seem to be connecting with the passions, fears, frustrations, needs, hopes, and longings of the young artists of this play. Chekhov was really onto something! Keep striving. Keep discovering. Make better things! Make things better!”

Sukanya Shukla ‘20 portrays Nina. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

That, to me, is huge. For our students, I feel like this is an inspired call, and I want them to embrace this, because we all know, right now, the world is a challenging place.

This, to me, breathes life into hope and into that idea of making things better. He’s talking to young artists who will effect change, and that is a great entry point and connection to students today.

Why did The Seagull need a contemporary adaptation? Or did it?

I think it did. There’s a challenge in doing Chekhov today — it does feel a little musty at times. From what I’ve read about Posner, he loved Chekhov’s play. It was very inspirational to him, a play about a young playwright trying to find a voice and footing in this creative world. I mean, it is really hard to find success as an artist.

David Garcia ‘20, playing the character Dev, performs a duet with Becca Kraft ‘20 as Mash. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

So, I think there was a part of Posner that always felt attracted to that play, but then he was also frustrated and upset by boring productions or certain interpretations of it. What he has done is to bring The Seagull into the 21st century. It has breathed new life into people’s awareness of Chekhov.

Do we need to know The Seagull to appreciate Posner’s play?

If you haven’t read The Seagull, you will totally follow this play. If you have read The Seagull, there are a lot of delightful nods to Chekhov, and you’ll just enjoy it all the more.

This is a raw, gutsy play, and that’s what Posner’s known for. And he’s taken Uncle Vanya and Three Sisters by Chekhov and done similar plays.

The cast gathers for a 60th birthday celebration. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Posner started out adapting novels for theater, quite reverentially, and that was his thing. And then he found, through Chekhov especially, this sort of adaptation that’s more irreverent — he talks about even subverting or perverting the plays.

So something that I’ve been hanging my hat on as a director is this idea that this play is not an adaptation. It’s built on the bones of Chekhov’s Seagull, but it really is Posner’s own play.

Success vs. failure as an artist is a major theme in both these plays.

Bird is about an aspiring theater artist named Con. He is rampaging against the status quo and striving for new forms.

His mother, Emma, is a famous actress who represents traditional theater and movies, and Con thinks all that is a lot of crap. It’s really his unresolved issues with his mother that fuel that.

It just so happens that his mother is together with a very celebrated writer named Trigorin, who is a rock star of the literary and screenwriting worlds. So they are a power-celebrity couple, and that’s just another poke at Con for his inability to measure up.

Stine Carroll ’20 portrays Emma Arkadina and Matthew Engles ’20 is Doyle Trigorin. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

But at the heart of it, this is a play about love and unrequited love. There’s a quartet of unrequited lovers happening throughout the play, and that’s very much inspired by The Seagull.

So Posner is working similar themes as Chekhov, but he moved the action into our time, and streamlined the cast and the plot, and added music. What else has he changed?

In both plays there’s a huge meta-theatrical level — these are plays about a theater artist and actors and actresses. But what Posner does, right from the first line, is to break the fourth wall. Every character has a moment where they get to acknowledge and interact with the audience.

Sukanya Shukla ‘20, as Nina, “breaks the fourth wall” and addresses the audience. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

The characters know they’re in a play. And they’re asking for the audience’s help in their particular situations, so they’re asking questions of the audience.

So every performance could be a little different, because we don’t know what the audience is going to say, which is exciting.

Sounds like Posner is actually wielding the kind of breakthrough that Con and Konstantin, in The Seagull, aspire to.

There’s an image of Chekhov on the wall at one point, and Con says, “Thank you and f**k you” — he reveres and tears down at the same time, and that’s the nature of this play.

And that’s why it’s great for an actor. It’s a great challenge, but you are out there airing all of the subtexts you have about how you feel. So big emotions, big stakes, big energy.

Max Younger ‘22 plays Conrad as a portrait of Anton Chekhov is projected in the background. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Whereas what Chekhov introduced and what made him so important in theatrical history was that he was the first playwright to really build a lot of inner life into his characters.

Two years ago, for your directing debut at �ֲ���ý, you did Angels in America. One of your actors was Kirk Read, professor of French and francophone studies, who played the infamous Roy Cohn. And now he’s back for Bird.

Professor of French and Francophone Studies Kirk Read as Dr. Eugene Sorn. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Which is great. He’s playing Sorn, the older brother who is a doctor, turning 60, and he has lived life on the sideline. He’s really fascinated by these young people who are feeling all of these big feelings. He has some wonderful direct-address monologues with the audience. It’s been delightful having him onboard again.