Hannah Allerton '15 of New York City performs the monologue "The Daughter of Iran."

Shana Wallace '15 of Pleasantville, N.Y., performs the monologue "Scheherazade, the Storyteller."

Audrey Burns '17 of Topsham, Maine, performs "The Assassin and the Daughter of the Revolution."

Rebeccah Bassell '16 of Mechanicsville, Va., delivers the monologue "The Veil Thingy."

"The Poets and the Assassin: Daughters of Iran." a play by Reza Jalali and directed by Senior Lecturer in Theater Kati Vecsey, features �ֲ���ý students performing monologues that offer insight into the plight of women in Iran — women hidden by the traditional chador, unseen but seeing, silenced but rebellious, fighting for liberation, democracy and human rights. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

�ֲ���ý College offers a performance of The Poets and the Assassin, a play by Reza Jalali exploring the lives of women in Iran, at 5 p.m. Friday, March 6, in Gannett Theater, Pettigrew Hall, 305 College St.

Co-sponsored by the theater and dance department and the Office of Intercultural Education at �ֲ���ý, the performance is open to the public at no cost, but tickets are required. Please visit or call 207-786-6161.

The �ֲ���ý production is performed by five students and directed by Katalin Vecsey, senior lecturer in theater and vocal director for �ֲ���ý theatrical productions. A Q&A session follows the performance.

The production moves to Portland for a free performance at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, March 12, at SPACE Gallery, 538 Congress St. For more information, please call 207-828-5600.

The Poets and the Assassin uses five monologues to unveil the strengths and struggles of women in Iran as they strive to define their own identities within the strictures of that deeply conservative society.

“Although women in Iran have historically been in the forefront of the national struggle for liberation, democracy and human rights, and are among the most educated and progressive women in the Middle East, their stories of courage, resistance and survival — as well as the strength and character of the century-old women’s movement in Iran — are unknown to most in the West,” Jalali writes in an introduction to the play.

“Iranian women live contradictory and complex lives in an intensely traditional and patriarchal society,” he continues. “Their search for identity in a society that is ambiguous about the public role of its women speaks to their refusal to conform to subjugation in the name of tradition, culture and religion.”

The Poets and the Assassin, he says, “unveils the complex and contradictory plight of Iranian women caught in the battle between traditionalism and modernity, while challenging our assumptions about women in Iran and Islam.”

A Kurd from Iran, Jalali is a Muslim scholar, writer and educator who has taught at Bangor Theological Seminary and the University of Southern Maine, and who coordinates USM’s Office of Multicultural Student Affairs. His books include New Mainers (Tilbury House, 2009), Moon Watchers (Tilbury, 2010), and the self-published Homesick Mosque and Other Stories (2013).

Vecsey teaches advanced and introductory voice and speech courses, text analysis, stage dialects and voice-over techniques. She has served as a vocal director for academic and professional theater productions in the United States and her native Hungary. Her recent directing credits include Wasteland by Susan Felder, In the Next Room (or the vibrator play) by Sarah Ruhl and Collected Stories by Donald Margulies.

The �ֲ���ý student performers are seniors Hanna Allerton of New York City and Shana Wallace of Pleasantville, N.Y.; sophomores Audrey Burns of Topsham, Maine, and Tara Khanmalek Yazdi of Arlington, Va.; and junior Rebeccah Bassell of Mechanicsville, Va. Abigail Zwetchkenbaum, a senior from Providence, R.I., appears instead of Bassell in the SPACE Gallery performance.

Rebecca Herzig presents her professorship lecture on Dec. 2 (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Rebecca Herzig marks her appointment to an endowed professorship at �ֲ���ý with a lecture at 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, Dec. 2, in the Keck Classroom, Room G52 of Pettengill Hall, 4 Andrews Road (Alumni Walk).

The Christian A. Johnson Professor in Interdisciplinary Studies, Herzig offers a talk titled Knowledge Incarnate: Feminism, Science and the Problem of Suffering.

The lecture is open to the public at no cost. A reception follows immediately in Pettengill’s Perry Atrium. For more information, please call 207-786-8371.

Herzig is a historian of science whose research focuses on the relationships between technology, race and gender in the United States.

Her book Plucked: A History of Hair Removal in America, to be published by NYU Press in January 2015, examines techniques that Americans have used to remove their own hair, and the array of social forces — including beliefs about beauty and self-determination — that create expectations about hair and hair removal.

Herzig received a National Science Foundation grant in 2008 to support her research into cosmetic applications of studies of the human genome, including gene-based hair retardation.

In 2005, Herzig published Suffering for Science: Reason and Sacrifice in Modern America (Rutgers University Press), exploring the rise of an ethic of “self-sacrifice” in American science. The book describes how supposedly rational scientists came to embrace a culture of toil, danger and even lethal dismemberment.

Co-edited with Evelynn M. Hammonds, Herzig’s second book was The Nature of Difference: Sciences of Race in the United States from Jefferson to Genomics (The MIT Press, 2009). This collection addresses changing scientific studies of human variation.

Herzig is chair of the Program in Women and Gender Studies at �ֲ���ý, where she has taught for more than 15 years. She has won numerous awards for her work, including the college’s Kroepsch Award for Excellence in Teaching.

Herzig received her doctorate in the history and social study of science and technology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and her bachelor’s degree in American cultural and environmental studies from the University of California, Santa Cruz.

The Johnson Professorship, supported by an endowment established by the Christian A. Johnson Endeavor Foundation, recognizes a faculty member who has made transformative contributions to interdisciplinary studies.

On Sept. 15, faculty, students, family and friends filled Keck Classroom to celebrate Erica Rand’s appointment as the Whitehouse Professor of Art and Visual Culture and of Women and Gender Studies.

Whitehouse Professor Erica Rand smiles alongside Dean of the Faculty Matt Auer during an introduction from President Clayton Spencer at her Sept. 15 talk “Hips, Heft, and Fluff: Queer Experiments in Looking and Writing.” (Sarah Crosby/�ֲ���ý College)

Rand marked the occasion with a talk, “Hips, Heft, and Fluff: Queer Experiments in Looking and Writing,” followed by a reception in Perry Atrium.

In his introduction, Dean of the Faculty Matt Auer said Rand’s scholarship “explores the limits and possibilities of subversion,” often by elevating everyday phenomena, like Barbie dolls and figure skating, as worthy objects of analysis.

Frank and at times revealing, Rand’s talk explored her approach to writing and analysis as a scholar, feminist and queer- and femme-identified woman. Her terms “heft” and “fluff” refer to gendered, raced and sexuality-related biases in academia about worthy topics, methods and practitioners of cultural work.

During the question-and-answer portion, audience members probed further into Rand’s ideas, at times reflecting on their own relationships to writing and research.

While not offering, by design, any easy answers, Rand’s talk demonstrated the core values of the Whitehouse Chair, which recognizes a dedication to educational and moral excellence and respect for human dignity.

Rand connects with former student Grace Glasson ’14 at the reception in Perry Atrium. (Sarah Crosby/�ֲ���ý College)

Rand was officially appointed to the chair in 2012, along with five colleagues also receiving endowed professorships.

The Whitehouse Chair was established in 1985 with a gift to the endowment from David ’36 and Constance Whitehouse. Born and raised in Auburn, Maine, Whitehouse earned his M.B.A. from Harvard University after graduating from �ֲ���ý in 1936. He served in leadership positions at the Container Corporation of America throughout his entire career, retiring in 1980 as vice president. The Whitehouses passed away in the spring of 2000 and are survived by four adult children.

Rohina Malik performs “Unveiled.” (Sadaf Syed)

�ֲ���ý College presents playwright-actress Rohina Malik performing her critically acclaimed one-woman show Unveiled, portraying five Muslim women living in a post 9/11 world, at 7 p.m. Monday, Jan. 27, in Schaeffer Theatre, 305 College St.

The show is open to the public at no cost. For more information, please contact 207-786-8272 or multifaithchaplaincy@bates.edu.

Unveiled, written by Malik, uses women’s stories of racism, hate crimes, love, Islam, culture, language and life to reveal what it means to wear the veil. Directed by Ann Filmer, the play premiered in May 2009 at the 16th Street Theater in Illinois, where it sold out the entire run.

Since then, Malik has brought Unveiled to such theaters across the country as the Victory Gardens Theater in Chicago, the Next Theater in Evanston, Ill., and the Brava Theater in San Francisco.

“[This] hugely talented writer-actress is a remarkable new theatrical voice in Chicago,” wrote Chris Jones of the Chicago Tribune. “In her rich, upbeat and very enjoyable 70-minute collection of five character studies of Muslim women in modern-day America, Malik gives voice to characters from whom we hear far too little in the theater.”

Malik is a Chicago-based playwright, actress and performance artist. She was born of South Asian heritage and raised in London. She is a resident playwright at Chicago Dramatists, an artistic associate at the 16th Street Theater and was one of four writers in the inaugural group of the Playwrights Unit at the renowned Goodman Theater.

Her other plays include Yasmina’s Necklace and The Mecca Tales, both developed and presented in staged readings at Goodman Theater.

The �ֲ���ý performance is sponsored by the Multifaith Chaplaincy; the Office of Intercultural Education; the departments of theater, religious studies, women and gender studies, English, politics, anthropology and sociology; the Harward Center for Community Partnerships; and the social sciences division.

�ֲ���ý is known for nurturing student initiative. If you can make a case for your idea, the college will do its best to help you give it life. The �ֲ���ý independent study program epitomizes that ideal.

An independent study may allow a student to dig deeply into a topic central to his or her major, or to explore a related side road. For others, independent studies afford the opportunity to unravel a question that has always tantalized them, but that they’ve never had time to go after.

Short Term, with its single-topic focus, is prime time for independent studies. Forty �ֲ���ý students conducted such projects in 2013, with topics as diverse as the classification of whale songs, coaching college basketball and the history of an Irish battalion that fought the U.S. in the Mexican-American War.

Meet three of those 40 students.

Angeleque Hartt ’14, Bronx, N.Y.

• Project: Synthesis of Ashitabaol A
• Major: Biochemistry
• More about Angelica keiskei:
• Faculty adviser: Jennifer Koviach-Côté, chemistry

Native to Japan, ashitaba is a food plant long credited with substantial health benefits. In 2010, researchers discovered ashitabaol A, a compound in ashitaba whose antioxidant properties could be effective against such diseases as diabetes and some cancers. Hartt is working with chemistry professor Koviach-Côté to find a way to synthesize the compound, a process with great pharmaceutical potential. Hartt is building “the foundation of the molecule,” on which other structures will be built, says Koviach-Côté. “Honestly, it’s trial and error,” Hartt adds. “You find what works, you stick with that and you try something else to move you to the next step.”

Blake Shafer ’13, Haverford, Pa.

• Project: Independent Study in Business Chinese
• Majors: Chinese and economics

• Resource: Business Chinese For Success: Real Cases from Real Companies (Peking University Press, 2005)
• Faculty adviser: Li-Ping Miao, Chinese

Shafer learned his first Chinese from an aunt who worked for the State Department. But his interest in Chinese languages and culture really ignited through a Fall Semester Abroad program in China. For the independent study, he and classmate Tyler White worked with Business Chinese For Success, based on case studies of international companies active in the Chinese market and Chinese companies successful globally. “I’m a huge proponent of independent studies,” says Shafer. “It’s all about interest in the topic. Everyone who’s in it is wholly invested.”

Alexandra Desjardin ’14, Auburn, Maine

• Project: Hegemony Cricket: A Feminist Exploration
• Major: Women and gender studies
• URL:
• Faculty adviser: Rebecca Herzig, women and gender studies

Publishing on tumblr, Desjardin runs a social media clearinghouse designed to show the relevance of feminism, gender and justice to all people. She reposts and comments on news or cultural items on topics ranging from drug use at college to the thoughts of a gay Boy Scouts of America employee to the film Bully — topics, she says, “that are not necessarily stereotypical feminist issues. I put justice into the definition of feminism. I think a feminist is a person who seeks justice.”

Silvia Dominguez, an interdisciplinary scholar who researches the welfare of women, children and minority populations, offers the talk Getting Ahead: Social Mobility, Public Housing and Immigrant Networks at 4:15 p.m. Thursday, May 9, in Room G52, Pettengill Hall, 4 Andrews Road (Alumni Walk).

The lecture concludes the series City, Neighborhood and Society: Social Science Approaches to Urban Issues. This series has been sponsored by the Department of Sociology with support from the Program in Environmental Studies, the Division of the Social Sciences, the Office of Intercultural Education and the Office of the Special Assistant to the President for Diversity and Inclusion.

Additional support for specific speakers in the series has been provided by the Harward Center for Community Partnerships, the departments of politics, anthropology and history, the Program in Women and Gender Studies, and OUTFront.

For more information, please call 207-786-8296.

Dominguez is an associate professor in the department of sociology and human services at Northeastern University. She is also a faculty fellow at the Urban Health Research Institute, the Gender and Sexuality Program and the Brudnick Center for the Study of Conflict and Violence at Northeastern.

A forensically trained psychotherapist, Dominguez is affiliated with Massachusetts General Hospital’s Division on Global Psychiatry. She helped developed the 2009 National Mental Health Policy for the Republic of Liberia.

A Ford Foundation and Woodrow Wilson fellow, she chairs the Latino Section of the American Sociological Association and has been recognized by the United States Census Bureau as an ethnography expert on low-income populations. She holds degrees in sociology, psychology, forensic social work and social welfare policy.

Clay Baldo ’13 explains a Chinese political poster during the Mount David Summit. Photograph by Michael Bradley/�ֲ���ý College College.

It’s common knowledge here in the U.S. that the Chinese government’s involvement in arts and entertainment is, shall we say, much more hands-on than Americans are used to.

Presented during the Mount David Summit by their adviser, Assistant Professor of Chinese Xing Fan, three seniors described thesis projects that illustrated intriguing examples of such state involvement.

Clay Baldo of Santa Fe, N.M., talked about mid-20th century propaganda posters and the communist Chinese government’s shifting intentions for them. Baldo’s focus was the contrast between agitative and integrative propaganda — in musical terms, “Power to the People” vs. “Get Together.”

Of equal concern in mid-century China was the time-honored propaganda technique of holding up scapegoats, such as the Gang of Four, as a way of putting a face on politically odorous tendencies. The “Smash the Gang of Four” campaign in the 1970s, said Baldo, “is my favorite, because I hate the Gang of Four.”

Moving from Mao’s rise to dominance through the Cultural Revolution and beyond, Baldo’s poster gallery segued from scenarios of sanctioned worker violence against class enemies to pictures of harmonious collaboration in attractive landscapes. (Writers in attendance at the presentation were especially gratified by depictions of the pen as a weapon just as efficacious as a spear or shovel.) He noted that while the Chinese government still uses something like propaganda posters, nowadays they are more likely to caution against littering.

Eleanor Anaclerio of Winnetka, Ill., a double major in art and Chinese, talked about the high-profile dissident artist Ai Weiwei. Anaclerio’s own artwork seemed to have some oblique bearing on her presentation: She is also a photographer whose camera obscura images explore notions of public and private space as they seem to bring �ֲ���ý campus scenes into student bedrooms.

Anaclerio argued that in a more liberal social-political context, Ai Weiwei could be doing what he does now and yet would not be seen as a dissident. Instead, the political climate in China has made him a dissident, she said, “but he hasn’t shied away from it at all.”

What impressed her particularly about this intrepid conceptual artist, she said, is his ability to create a community around him wherever he is, whether it was New York in the go-go 1980s or on the Internet today — where Ai Weiwei has pitched his big tent because the Chinese authorities won’t let him leave the country.

Anaclerio pointed to Ai’s 2010-11 Sunflower Seeds exhibition at the Tate Modern, comprising 100 million handmade porcelain “seeds” spread on the gallery floor. “Those seeds individually can’t do much,” she said. “But when there are so many of them together, even when you walk on them, you hardly displace any.”

Maura Maloney of Ellicott City, Md., chose the toughest row to hoe, subjecting herself to hours of dating shows from Chinese television, sans subtitles, to learn about female roles in Chinese society. Maloney studied episodes of the reality shows If You Are the One and Take Me Out, both based on a British show.

The shows are elaborate affairs in which male contestants use videos to make their case to a platoon of women, who can accept or reject the prospects by showing indicator lights. The shows, she said, “reflect the collective anxieties of Chinese singles” — a fraught arena in particular for women, who under Mao Zedong gained a kind of nominal gender equality that, Maloney explained, was more about making political points than advancing women’s real interests.

�ֲ���ý economics professor Maggie Maurer-Fazio, a China specialist, asked Maloney about state censorship on the shows, in view of another Chinese program that drew official ire because viewer voting, à la American Idol, was deemed too participatory. Censorship exists, Maloney replied, but is less political than moral, responding to women portraying themselves as sexual beings and expressing untoward interest in money.

Agency, Maloney found, is the key to contentment. The women she observed didn’t want to have traditional qualities of character like gentleness and domesticity imposed on them — but were willing to assume those qualities if it was their choice. “I hear the same thing from my students,” said a member of the audience, a professor of women’s studies from Clark University.

Another listener asked if Maloney’s project had inspired her to watch American dating shows. No, said Maloney, who spent much of February watching 16 hours of the Chinese shows. “I think that would kill me.”

Margaret Rotundo, Maine state representative and director of special initiatives at �ֲ���ý’ Harward Center.

Note to readers: The panel discussion “Women in Public Leadership” scheduled for Tuesday, March 19, has been postponed because of weather.

This Women’s History Month event, in which eight women known as Maine leaders will discuss the rewards and challenges of their work, has been rescheduled for one week hence — 7 p.m. Tuesday, March 26, in the Muskie Archives, 70 Campus Ave.

�ֲ���ý Trustee Laura Young.

Admission is open to the public at no cost. For more information, please call 207-786-8376. The event is sponsored by the Office of Intercultural Education at �ֲ���ý and the student organizations Women of Color and the Women’s Advocacy Group.

The panel moderator is �ֲ���ý Trustee Laura Young. Panelists include policy expert Mary Cathcart, state Sen. Margaret Craven, historian Sylvia Kraemer, state Rep. Kim Olsen, Children’s Discovery Museum founder Julie O’Brien, state Rep. Margaret Rotundo and Maine Academy of Modern Music board member Martha Sterling-Golden.

Young is the vice president of philanthropy for the Maine Community Foundation. She worked previously as senior vice president and director of corporate philanthropic initiatives at Demont & Associates, a Portland firm providing philanthropic counsel and related services to nonprofit organizations.

Prior to moving to Maine in 1995, Young worked in Washington, D.C., at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and as a staff member for George Mitchell during his time as U.S. Senate majority leader. In 2009, Laura was appointed to the Board of Trustees of her alma mater, �ֲ���ý College.

Policy expert Mary Cathcart.

Cathcart is a senior policy associate in the University of Maine’s Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center. She leads the Maine NEW Leadership program, a nonpartisan summer program for Maine college women interested in careers in government and politics. She received the Women, Work and Community’s Merle Nelson Women Making a Difference Award in 2011.

An advocate for domestic violence awareness and prevention, Cathcart chaired the U.S. Commission on Child and Family Wellness. She serves on, and is a past chair of, the New England Board of Higher Education.

Chosen as a state representative in 2002, Craven was elected to the Maine Senate in 2008 and again in 2012. In addition to her political work, Craven is a respite coordinator and group home administrator.

Craven was born into an impoverished family of 11 in Ireland and came to the U.S. in the 1963 at age 17. After moving to Maine, she earned a high school diploma, bachelor’s and master’s degrees, and began work with senior citizens and people with disabilities.

Now an independent policy researcher living in Portland, Kraemer previously taught history at Vassar College, Southern Methodist University, George Mason University, Colby College and the University of Maine at Orono.

In 1983, NASA recruited her to serve as the civil space program’s chief historian. Ten years later, she was appointed to the federal Senior Executive Service, and shifted her focus at NASA to national space policy coordination and development.

Historian Sylvia Kraemer.

O’Brien founded the Children’s Discovery Museum in Augusta and served as its executive director. She served in the Legislature for eight years, becoming known as a strong advocate for children and families. She belonged to the commission overseeing the merger of the departments of behavioral health and of health and human services. As co-chair of the Committee on Children and Families, she made nearly 100 recommendations for the working of the new department.

In 2005, O’Brien became executive director of the Maine Republican Party, a position she held for three years. She has also served as the president of the Maine chapter of the National Association for the Mentally Ill, and was recently honored as the recipient of the first “Presidential Award” given by the chapter. She serves on the advisory board for Maine NEW Leadership.

Olsen was elected as a Maine state representative for House District 64 and was appointed to serve on the Marine Resources Committee for the 125th Legislature. A building contractor and carpenter, she works with her husband in their business, Olsen Custom Builders. She has also worked as an educational technician in special education and as a manager and guide for a Maine whitewater rafting company.

State Rep. Kim Olsen.

Rotundo was elected to the Maine State Senate in 2000 and in 2008 was elected to the House of Representatives. She chairs the Appropriations Committee, overseeing the state’s $6.3 billion biennial budget. She has sponsored legislation that has created greater public access to government information; a cleaner environment; greater educational opportunities; and better services for veterans and the elderly.

In 1995 she helped found the Center for Service-Learning at �ֲ���ý, now called the Harward Center for Community Partnerships, which facilitates service opportunities for �ֲ���ý students in Lewiston and Auburn. She is director of special initiatives at the center.

Sterling-Golden serves on the board of the Maine Academy of Modern Music and on the advisory boards of NEW Leadership Maine and Emerge Maine. She is a past president of the Women’s Campaign School at Yale University, a selective global leadership program sponsored in part by the Yale Law School. She is a past elected representative to the Maine Democratic State Committee.

A native of the Upper Kennebec Valley region, she was a working folk and rock musician for a decade before becoming, she says, a responsible member of society.

When I set out to talk to Erica Rand about her new book, Red Nails, Black Skates, I knew that other interviews and reviews focused on the book’s thematic contents — figure skating and Rand’s own experiences as an adult skater immersed in the sport she’d tried out as a child.

But I was more interested in the scholar than the skates.

A participant as well as scholar of culture, Rand often injects personal experiences into her work. Here, skating in Falmouth, she bends back her leg for a catch-foot spiral, a move she describes in Red Nails, Black Skates. Photograph by Mike Bradley/�ֲ���ý College.

Red Nails, Black Skates (Duke University Press, 2012) is something of a crash course in Rand’s area of cultural criticism, specifically the overt and insidious ways that gender and sexuality, as well as race and class, shape all of our identities and experiences.

That begs the question — in my case a series of questions — about the intertwined personal, scholarly and pedagogical commitments that influence cultural critics like Rand, the college’s Whitehouse Professor of Art and Visual Culture and of Women and Gender Studies.

In other words, how does she approach writing and teaching about something as both amorphous and intimate as culture?

“We participate in culture,” says Rand. “I want to show how we are participating in culture by modeling a critic who also looks critically at her own investments and the things she studies.”

Asked about her intended audience, Rand replies, “I envisioned the book being for a wide range of people. First of all, I have to admit I really wanted skaters to read it. I’m always interested in having my writing be accessible within and outside academics.

“Although I wanted to say hard and complicated things, I wanted to say it in an accessible way,” she says.

One such strategy was to divide the book into a series of short essays, allowing readers to encounter the ideas at their own pace.

Whether writing about a cultural phenomenon or teaching one of her courses here at �ֲ���ý, Rand encourages her audience to recognize how they, too, perform and respond to gender.

Nothing about figure skates is more obvious than their “gender coding” by color, Rand writes, which was popularized by Sonja Henie, seen here in Boston in the 1930s. Photo courtesy of the Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

In her course Women, Gender, Visual Culture, which she is teaching this semester, Rand asks her students to “understand that it is not as if some people over there have a gender story. Everyone has a gender story.”

That said, she’s not interested in “busting open all kinds of gender notions and throwing them all out.”

She explains that some people find pleasure in traditional expressions of femininity, herself included, and masculinity. What’s important, however, is that those expressions not be the result of restrictive stereotypes.

That self-awareness permeates Rand’s writing. For her, it says something about what she calls “the politics of academic work and the politics of criticism.”

As a scholar, Rand recognizes that she participates in the cultural phenomena she studies and is not shy about putting her personal perspectives front and center.

“People all have a personal stake in what they are studying and working on. They may tell you about it or they may not tell you about it. But I don’t believe, not only with popular culture but in any critical or academic endeavor, that there is a critic at some elevated level looking down.”