FIRST-YEAR JOURNEY

New students are “imagining America”

The students’ journey began with internet-based discussions during the summer that focused, in part, on the Lafayette community’s reactions—and their own—to the book In the Shadow of No Towers by Art Spiegelman. Their assigned reading materials also included an excerpt from President Bush’s 2003 State of the Union Address, in which he speaks about America’s security challenges and articulates the case for U.S. actions following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and a rendition of American artist Faith Ringgold’s print “Freedom Flag Story #1: On Tuesday Morning.” The artwork conveys that America’s sense of, and commitment to, freedom will not be compromised by 9/11.

The students also viewed a documentary film on DVD, created by Lafayette students and faculty, that illuminates the diversity of views about Spiegelman’s controversial book within the campus community. In the book—a graphic memoir, or comic—Spiegelman “presents a highly personalized, political, and confessional diary of his experience of September 11 and its aftermath [expressing] his feelings of dislocation, grief, anxiety, and outrage over the horror of the attacks—and the subsequent ‘hijacking’ of the event by the Bush administration to serve what he believes is a misguided and immoral political agenda,” Amazon.com says.

“Our decision to use In the Shadow of No Towers was made after much deliberation among faculty and students,” says Gladstone A. Hutchinson, dean of studies. “We thought the book, when companioned with other presentations of information around the same topic, would best further the College’s ambition to convey to new students Lafayette’s character as a place of serious intellectual purpose and one with a commitment to cultivating in students civic purpose and the values of a strong civil society.”

The documentary, entitled Towers of Shadow & Light, conveys powerfully that “Lafayette affirms students’ rights to be welcome participants, regardless of their viewpoints, in our community’s important discussions,” Hutchinson says. The film includes discussions, interviews, and reactions to Spiegelman’s book by dozens of Lafayette students, faculty, and staff. It was produced by Ed Kerns, Clapp Professor of Art, and Andy Smith, assistant professor of English and chair of American studies. Students in Smith’s course on documentary film participated in making the DVD.

Students discussed the summer readings and documentary during the three-day New Student Orientation in August before classes opened. Kerns delivered the convocation address, and Spiegelman gave a keynote presentation on graphic art and comics as genres for framing and conveying ideas. The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Maus, Spiegelman is included in Time magazine’s list of the “world’s 100 most influential people” (April 18, 2005).

Both last year and this year, Lafayette’s first-year program is serving as a pilot for more than 60 colleges and universities in the national consortium Imagining America: Artists and Scholars in Public Life, whose member institutions are committed to public scholarship—defined as the joining of serious intellectual endeavor with a commitment to public practice and public consequence—in the arts, humanities, and design. Hutchinson made a presentation on the program at Imagining America’s national conference this fall.

Rafaela Malavé ’09 (left) and fellow first-year students discuss the common summer reading assignments during New Student Orientation.

Throughout the first-year experience, the visual arts are facilitating and sustaining intellectual dialogue.

On Sept. 11, filmmaker Lou Reda screened his Emmy-nominated History Channel documentary The Day the Towers Fell with images and reflections of photographers and journalists who raced to the twin towers’ destruction as it unfolded.

Gallery exhibitions in the Williams Visual Arts Building focus on struggles with national identity and human security issues in post-communist Russia, modern-day Taiwan, and rural Southern German towns generations removed from the Holocaust.

In the spring, Joel Meyerowitz, the only photographer granted unimpeded access to Ground Zero after the 9/11 attacks, will deliver a keynote talk and bring his exhibit After September 11: Images from Ground Zero, which has completed a 60-nation tour, to Skillman Library. Jose Tano ’06 and Allan Amanik ’06 will curate an exhibition in Farinon College Center examining how graphic art and comics reflect the changing character of America’s identity through time.

Last year the performing arts played the role of catalyzing intellectual exchange in the first-year experience. Among other activities, students collaborated with artist Sekou Sundiata on his latest creative endeavor, The America Project. The students made two presentations on their work, one of them at Imagining America’s 2004 national conference. Sundiata presented the performance component of The America Project, entitled “The 51st (Dream) State,” on campus in April.

“W. E. B. DuBois, as quoted in Animating Democracy: The Artistic Imagination as a Force in Civil Dialogue, speaks perfectly to the intellectual spirit of our ambition when he states, ‘Begin with art, because art tries to take us outside ourselves. It is a matter of trying to create an atmosphere and context so conversation can flow back and forth and we can be influenced by each other,’” Hutchinson says.