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E Y E S I N T H E S K Y Stellar mentoring and an astronomical discovery T H E U N I V E R S I T Y O F N O R T H C A R O L I N A A T C H A P E L H I L L I N S I D E : B a s k e t b a l l M e m o i r • S o u t h e r n L i t C e n t r a l • R a n g o o n R e n d e z v o u s • G r e e k s G i v e B a c k S P R I N G • 2 0 0 6 a r t s & s c i e n c e s C A R O L I N A T H E C O L L E G E O F A R T S & S C I E N C E S • Bernadette Gray-Little Dean • William Andrews ’70MA, ’73 PhD Senior Associate Dean, Fine Arts and Humanities • Bruce Carney Senior Associate Dean, Sciences • Arne Kalleberg Senior Associate Dean, Social Sciences • Tammy McHale Senior Associate Dean, Finance and Planning • James W. May Senior Associate Dean, Program Development, Executive Director, Arts & Sciences Foundation • Bobbi Owen Senior Associate Dean, Undergraduate Education Arts & Sciences Foundation Board of Directors • James G. Kenan III ’68, Lexington, KY, Chair • Willard J. Overlock ’68, Greenwich, CT, Vice-Chair • Bernadette Gray-Little, Chapel Hill, NC, President • James W. May Jr., Chapel Hill, NC, Secretary • James L. Alexandre ’79, London • Derek S. Allison ’98, Charlotte, NC • Ivan V. Anderson Jr. ’61, Charleston, SC • William L. Andrews, ’70MA, ’73 PhD, Chapel Hill, NC • Vicki U. Craver ’92, Cos Cob, CT • Archie H. Davis ’64, Savannah, GA • Robin Richards Donohoe ’87, San Francisco, CA • Gail Fearing ’66, Chapel Hill, NC • Alan Feduccia, Chapel Hill, NC • David G. Frey ’64, ’67 JD, Grand Rapids, MI • Molly D. Froelich ‘83, Charlotte, NC • William T. Hobbs II ’85, Charlotte, NC • Lynn B. Janney ’70, Butler, MD • Matthew G. Kupec ’80, Chapel Hill, NC • Sallie A. McMillion ’59, Greensboro, NC • Catherine Bryson Moore ‘90, Santa Monica, CA • Paula R. Newsome ’77, Charlotte, NC • G. Kennedy Thompson ’73, Charlotte, NC • S. Thompson Tygart ’62, Jacksonville, FL • Thomas M. Uhlman, ’75 PhD, Murray Hill, NJ • Ralph Hanes Womble ’76, Winston-Salem, NC • Michael Zimmerman ’75, New York, NY Reaching for the stars Carolina is a stellar place to be these days, with many exciting developments in the College of Arts and Sciences. We take you into space in this issue of Carolina Arts & Sciences for a story on astronomy scholar and mentor Dan Reichart and undergraduate student Josh Haislip. Using our state-of-the-art telescope technology, Haislip, graduate student Melissa Nysewander and Reichart documented the oldest known explosion in the universe — the afterglow of a gamma ray burst, 12.8 billion years old. We also share news about the opening of the Southern African Large Telescope (SALT), the largest diameter telescope in the Southern Hemisphere, in which UNC is a partner. And we update you on the progress of the Carolina Physical Science Complex — the biggest construction project in the university’s history — as well as plans for our new Music Building, both of which are being funded by a combination of N.C. bond revenues and private funds. You’ll read more out-of-this-world news on the international front. For the third consecutive year, Carolina sent a higher percentage of students abroad than any other public research university, thanks in part to expanded scholarships for international studies made possible by private funds. Carolina alum Earl N. “Phil” Phillips (BSBA ’62) has pledged $5 million to the College to create The Phillips Ambassadors Program, the largest ever gift for study abroad scholarships. The endowment will provide support for up to 50 undergraduate students a year to study in Asia. In other international updates, we feature a story on the historic family ties of our new European Study Center in Winston House in the heart of London. Political science professor Andrew Reynolds takes us behind the scenes as he travels under the radar in Burma. Reynolds traces the complex road to democracy around the world. It’s been an amazing year for our English Department. Four creative writing faculty swept the top North Carolina literary awards. We continue to build on our strengths in Southern and African American literature with the hiring of Kenan Eminent Professor Minrose Gwin. This completes a star-power quartet of editors of The Literature of the American South: A Norton Anthology, now all under one roof at Carolina. You’ll also read about the first “Greek” professorship at Carolina and quite possibly in the country — gifted philosophy scholar C.D.C. “David” Reeve was named the Delta Kappa Epsilon Professor. Other Greek organizations have similar campaigns under way to fund distinguished professorships, including Phi Delta Theta and Delta Delta Delta. We share stories of our inspiring alumni — Ph.D. grad Beth Stevens, vice president of Disney’s Animal Kingdom, and undergraduate alum Jonathan Reckford, the new CEO of Habitat for Humanity International. Our current students continue to amaze us as well. In this issue you will meet our newest Marshall and Rhodes scholars and read the work of student poets in Michael Chitwood’s class. Finally, a special treat for “March madness”— an excerpt from English professor Fred Hobson’s new memoir, recalling his experience as a walk-on player for Carolina’s freshman basketball team in 1961. These and other achievements highlighted in the magazine would not be possible without the support of alumni and friends, for which we are thankful. They show us how to reach for the stars. Bernadette Gray-Little, Dean FROM THE DEAN F R O M T H E D E A N Carolina Arts & Sciences • Spring 2006 Photo by Will Owens F E AT U R E S 8 • Up Late With the Universe Stellar mentoring pays off with an unprecedented discovery for astronomer Dan Reichart and undergrad Josh Haislip 13 • Rangoon Under the Radar Political scientist Andy Reynolds traces the complex road to democracy in Burma 16 • Southern Lit Central Four leading anthology editors found their way to Carolina 20 • Greeks Give Back C.D.C. “David” Reeve is named the DKE professor, a first for UNC Cover photo: Professor Dan Reichart (left) and undergrad Josh Haislip gaze at the night sky atop the physics and astronomy department’s Morehead Observatory dome. (Photo by Steve Exum) CONTENTS CAROLINA ARTS & SCIENCES • SPRING 2006 • 1 13 8 16 TA BL E OF C ON T E N T S Carolina Arts & Sciences • Spring 2006 DE P A R T ME N T S inside front cover FROM THE DEAN Reaching for the stars 2 HIGH ACHIEVERS Creative writing faculty sweep top North Carolina literary awards, Andy Griffith goes to Washington, Time magazine recognizes heroes of global health, meet our Marshall and Rhodes scholars, and more 7 IN THE CLASSROOM Jocelyn Neal’s class is a window into rural American culture and history 22 HIGHLIGHTS Earl Phillips gives the largest ever gift to study abroad, Holocaust reparations support Jewish studies, the new Carolina Music Building breaks ground this year, Michael Piller’s next generation, and more 28 PROFILES Jonathan Reckford ’84 is Habitat for Humanity’s new CEO; Beth Stevens Ph.D. ’87 manages her own wild kingdom at Disney 30 COLLEGE BOOKSHELF English professor Fred Hobson recalls his days as a freshman “walk-on” for the Tar Heels, plus notes about new books from across the arts and sciences 32 FINAL POINT Poems from Michael Chitwood’s “Introduction to Poetry” class focus on “Where I’m From” former North Carolina poet laureate Fred Chappell); Shapiro won in 2002; and Michael Chitwood in 2003. Students may not know about the creative writing faculty’s award-winning history, but they do notice that their teachers are engaged and inspired about the art and craft of writing, Simpson said. “Our faculty’s passionate engagement, which comes from being deeply involved not only in their work but also in the affairs of the world of that work, puts real power and depth into classroom teaching,” he said. “And that’s our reason for being, what we’re all about.” A teacher in the program since 1982, Simpson has written both fiction and nonfiction and is a musician and songwriter. His books include Heart of the Country: A Novel of Southern Music, The Great Dismal: A Carolinian’s Swamp Memoir, The Mystery of Beautiful Nell Cropsey: A Nonfiction Novel, Into the Sound Country: A Carolinian’s Coastal Plain and Ghost Ship of Diamond Shoals: The Mystery of the Carroll A. Deering. Since 1986, he has been a member of the Tony Award-winning string band, The Red Clay Ramblers. Kenan writes both fiction and nonfiction. His 1992 collection of stories, Let the Dead Bury Their Dead, won a Lambda Literary Award in 1993. The collection was nominated for the Los Angeles Times Book Award for Fiction, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and among The New York Times Notable Books. Walking on Water: Black American Lives at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century was nominated for the Southern Book Award in 1999. Shapiro’s Tantalus in Love explores life, The state’s highest arts awards coming to creative writing at Carolina at the same time — it’s truly amazing and humbling, too. — Bland Simpson ( ) HIGH ACHIEVERS 2 • SPRING 2006 • CAROLINA ARTS & SCIENCES H I G H A C H I E V E R S Kudos for Creative Writing English faculty sweep literary honors By Kim Weaver Spurr ’88 One might be tempted to think that something’s in the water at Greenlaw. The English department’s creative writing faculty swept four top state literary honors in the month of November alone. Bland Simpson and Randall Kenan won North Carolina Awards, the state’s highest civilian honor, on Nov. 21. Just three days earlier, Alan Shapiro and Lawrence Naumoff received North Carolina Book Awards for poetry and fiction. “It’s not unusual to have someone garner a major prize in a given year. But the state’s highest arts awards coming to creative writing at Carolina at the same time — it’s truly amazing and humbling, too,” said Simpson, who is director of the creative writing program. “To say we’re thrilled is to engage in rampant understatement.” The North Carolina Awards, coordinated by the Department of Cultural Resources, recognize outstanding lifetime achievements in fine arts, science, literature and public service. Simpson received the award for fine arts and Kenan for literature. The North Carolina Literary and Historical Association presented the Roanoke- Chowan Award for Poetry to Shapiro for Tantalus in Love and the Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction to Naumoff for A Southern Tragedy, in Crimson and Yellow. At the book awards dinner, novelist and short story writer Jill McCorkle, a creative writing alumna, also was honored with the R. Hunt Parker Award for Literary Achievement. Creative writing faculty have an amazing track record when it comes to the state’s top poetry award; they’ve landed the Roanoke- Chowan Award five times in the last six years. UNC’s Margaret “Peggy” Rabb won in 2000; Michael McFee in 2001 (in a tie with jealousy, lust and romantic abandon. The New York Times Book Review called the book “touching and intelligent … and [an] eloquent testimony to the power of poetry.” Shapiro has written eight poetry collections plus works of criticism and two memoirs. The Dead Alive and Busy won the 2001 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award for emerging poets. Naumoff’s Southern Tragedy, a novel that sprung from the 1991 fatal chicken plant fire in Hamlet, N.C., captures the horror and pathos of a community tragedy and the economic downturn and mistrust that led to it. The work departs from the style of previous novels, which The New York Times has called “laugh-aloud funny.” Taller Women: A Cautionary Tale, was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year in 1992. His other novels are The Night of the Weeping Women, Rootie Kazootie, Silk Hope, NC and A Plan for Women. “What’s amazing to me is that our faculty are frequently out and about, reading and performing in major venues and festivals across the state and around the country — while publishing top flight work right along,” Simpson added. • LEFT to RIGHT: Bland Simpson (front), Alan Shapiro, Randall Kenan and Lawrence Naumoff. Photo by Steve Exum HIGH ACHIEVERS “HEROES OF GLOBAL HEALTH” HONORED BY TIME MAGAZINE • It all began when one undergraduate, Rye Barcott, traveled to Nairobi on a Burch Fellowship to learn firsthand about the challenges facing young people in Kibera, the largest slum in east Africa. He was stunned by the ethnic violence and poverty, but after talking with youth leaders there, saw a way for them to help themselves. Barcott continued to study Kibera for an undergraduate research project, and proposed the creation of a community-based nonprofit organization that would fund and develop recreational and health programs for youth there. Carolina for Kibera (CFK), co-founded in 2001 by Carolina students and Kibera youth leaders, was recognized in November by Time magazine at a New York City summit honoring 10 “Heroes of Global Health.” Actress Glenn Close introduced each honoree. With a budget of less than $100,000 a year, CFK administers four main projects: a youth sports organization sponsoring 200 soccer teams serving 5,000 boys and girls and engaging them in community service; a health clinic providing primary, obstetric and pediatric care; a program where girls address a range of challenges such as domestic violence, rape, HIV, early marriage and inadequate MARSHALL SCHOLAR BOUND FOR LONDON • Senior Jud Campbell turned curiosity about his family tree into published research, a law-firm job and a genealogy consulting business. We can’t wait to see what he will do with his 2006 Marshall Scholarship for graduate study in Great Britain. The mathematics and political science major from Blacksburg, Va., said he will pursue two master’s degrees in international relations and political theory at the London School of Economics, then consider law school and work in international law. “Eventually, I would like to enter politics, where I hope to make a positive difference in the lives of people in this country and throughout the world,” Campbell said. After publishing research on his family’s genealogy, Campbell won an undergraduate research fellowship and an international studies grant to research the roots of James Cole Mountflorence, a diplomat in Paris during the French Revolution. Campbell traveled to Nashville, Raleigh, Washington, Boston, Belfast, London and Paris for the research project. “History is invaluable in understanding our place in the world, who we are today, and where we can and ought to go tomorrow,” Campbell said. education; and a solid-waste and recycling program encouraging youth to collect, sell or re-use recyclable materials. Each year, a group of Carolina undergraduates and medical students volunteer with the organization in Kibera. “The secret to CFK’s success is participatory development and the understanding that residents of Kibera have the solutions to solve their own problems,” said Barcott, who graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 2001 with a degree in peace, war and defense. He is serving as a captain in the U.S. Marine Corps in Al Anbar Province, Iraq. Kim Chapman ’00, who chairs CFK’s board of directors, accepted the honor at the summit. On campus, CFK is based in the University Center for International Studies. The Burch Fellowship Program is made possible by a gift from alumnus Lucius Burch III. BELOW: Youth league soccer players in Kibera. CAROLINA ARTS & SCIENCES • SPRING 2006 • 3 RHODES SCHOLAR OUT OF THIS WORLD • Kate Harris checked off a long list of eye-popping achievements before she graduated from Carolina in December with a major in biology and a minor in geology. The aspiring astronaut and scientist from Georgetown, Ontario spent two weeks as the youngest researcher ever at the Mars Desert Research Station in Utah; explored Alaska, Antarctica, Malaysia and Mongolia; ran two marathons; bicycled across the United States; and won a full four-year Morehead Scholarship to UNC. In November, she added a Rhodes Scholarship to the list. The prestigious award for outstanding academic merit will finance her graduate study at Oxford University in Great Britain. “We have landed humans on the moon and deployed robots to other planets. I hope someday to explore those same extraterrestrial frontiers.” She has set her long-term sights on another trip — to outer space. “We have landed humans on the moon and deployed robots to other planets,” Harris said. “I hope someday to explore those same extraterrestrial frontiers.” Harris began exploring the night sky by telescope as a child. At UNC she founded SpaceTalk, a student group that presents astronauts and others as lecturers, hosts observatory sessions and gives educational talks at secondary schools. Since sophomore year, she worked on NASA-funded research in the microbial ecology lab of Andreas Teske, associate professor of marine sciences. Last year she conducted research on the polar ice cap in Antarctica, tested her samples at the Byrd Polar Research Center in Ohio and presented her findings at the Geological Society of America’s annual meeting in Salt Lake City. During her sophomore year, she led a 300-mile backpacking trip in Mongolia where she helped an environmental group observe native wild horses, track wolves and survey the wildlife population in the Gobi Desert. She was awarded an American Society for Microbiology undergraduate research fellowship and a NASA Alaska Space Grant scholarship for the summer of 2004, when she would traverse 200 miles of the Juneau Icefield on cross-country skis, studying glaciers along the way. GRADUATE STUDENT WINS FORD FOUNDATION FELLOWSHIP • Jennifer Taylor, a Ph.D. candidate in biology, won a Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship, one of only 35 awarded nationally, to support her groundbreaking work on skeletal support systems of crabs. The fellowship is given by the National Research Council of the National Academies. Crabs have a rigid external skeleton which must be shed in order to grow to a larger size, a process called molting, Taylor said. “My research shows that crabs actually alternate between the rigid skeleton and a hydrostatic skeleton, which is common in soft-bodied animals such as worms,” she said. “This is the first demonstration of an animal that switches between two different skeletons. It opens a lot of doors to our understanding of how skeletons function and evolve.” Taylor also received The Sequoyah Dissertation Fellowship and was invited for membership into the Royster Society of Fellows, both through the UNC Graduate School. Membership in the society is the highest honor awarded by the Graduate School. Society fellows act as ambassadors for graduate education both within and beyond the university. PUKKILA ELECTED FELLOW OF NATIONAL SCIENCE ASSOCIATION • Patricia Pukkila, the founding director of undergraduate research and an associate professor of biology, was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Pukkila was recognized for her work in genetics and her leadership in promoting undergraduate education and research. AAAS publishes the journal, Science, which has the largest paid circulation of any peer-reviewed general science journal in the world. The list of 2005 fellows appeared in the Oct. 28 issue. Pukkila joined the UNC faculty in 1979. She has received both a Tanner Award and a Bowman and Gordon Gray Associate professorship for excellence in undergraduate teaching. The Office of Undergraduate Research has helped to expand opportunities for active, mentored research experiences for undergraduates, both inside and outside the classroom. Pukkila’s research focuses on the genetic basis of chromosome behavior during meiosis — the type of cell division by which germ cells (eggs and sperm) are produced. Kate Harris (above), Patricia Pukkila (right) 4 • SPRING 2006 • CAROLINA ARTS & SCIENCES HIGH ACHIEVERS ( ) CAROLINA ARTS & SCIENCES • SPRING 2006 • 5 HIGH ACHIEVERS ANDY GRIFFITH GOES TO WASHINGTON • Aunt Bea would have been proud. Andy Griffith, the long-revered television star and a UNC alumnus, received the Presidential Medal of Freedom at a White House ceremony in November. “Already today I’ve met with the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, the Dalai Lama — and the Sheriff of Mayberry,” said President George W. Bush, drawing a laugh as he honored the Mt. Airy native who starred in “The Andy Griffith Show” and “Matlock.” “Andy Griffith first came to the people’s attention with his gift for storytelling,” said the President, “and his own life is a mighty fine story by itself.” Griffith graduated from UNC in 1949 with a B.A degree in music. He was president of the Glee Club and a member of the Carolina Playmakers and the music fraternity, Phi Mu Alpha. He gave his first public theatrical performance in Memorial Hall. He received his first taste of national attention as a comedian, recording monologues such as, “What It Was – Was Football,” a hilarious explanation of the gridiron game. That led to a 1953 appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” followed by a starring role in the hit Broadway play and subsequent film, “No Time for Sergeants.” “The Andy Griffith Show” ran for eight years and continues to entertain old fans and new ones in re-runs. Griffith never forgot his alma mater. He and his wife established the Andy and Cindi Griffith Scholarship in the departments of dramatic art and music in the College of Arts and Sciences. He served as the honorary chair of the committee that helped raise more than $5 million for the renovation of Memorial Hall. When the historic hall re-opened in September, Griffith received a Carolina Performing Arts Lifetime Achievement Award for his contribution to the arts and the university. In September, Griffith announced plans to donate his personal collection of manuscripts, recordings, footage and other memorabilia to the university’s Southern Historical Collection in Wilson Library. O’NEILL WINS BRITISH PRIZE IN MEDIEVAL STUDIES • English professor Patrick O’Neill was awarded the Sir Israel Gollancz Memorial Prize by the British Academy for his valuable contributions to medieval studies. The prize is one of the highest honors in the field. O’Neill was recognized for his 2001 book, King Alfred’s Old English Prose Translation of the First Fifty Psalms. He teaches medieval English and Celtic literature and studies the intellectual culture — especially Christian — of the British Isles in the period 600 to 1100 A.D. He is completing a book on cultural relations between early Ireland and Anglo-Saxon England. The British Academy, established in 1902, is the national academy for the humanities and social sciences. The Sir Israel Gollancz Memorial Prize was established in 1924 in memory of the first secretary of the academy, Israel Gollancz. COMPUTER SCIENTIST WINS PACKARD FELLOWSHIP • Marc Pollefeys, associate professor of computer science, was awarded a $625,000 Packard Fellowship in Science and Engineering. Funded by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the fellowships are designed to support innovative researchers early in their careers. Pollefeys’ work contributes to the area of three-dimensional graphic imaging. He plans to use the fellowship to develop algorithms that will enable camera networks to perform a multitude of observation tasks. A member of the UNC faculty since 2002, Pollefeys has published more than 80 scientific papers, helped to organize major conferences and workshops and is on the editorial board of IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, the main scientific journal in his area. Pollefeys is the third UNC recipient of a Packard Fellowship. H. Holden Thorp, Kenan professor of chemistry and department chair, received the award in 1991. James P. Morken, associate professor of chemistry, received the award in 1998. Andy Griffith as a UNC music student (at left) and performing as Sir Walter Raleigh (above center) in “The Lost Colony.” At Carolina, Griffith was president of the Glee Club. Photo courtesy of The N.C. Collection 6 • SPRING 2006 • CAROLINA ARTS & SCIENCES HIGH ACHIEVERS STEGMAN NAMED POLICY DIRECTOR FOR MACARTHUR FOUNDATION • Public Policy expert Michael A. Stegman has been tapped as the lead observer of domestic policy issues at the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, one of the nation’s 10 largest private philanthropic organizations. Stegman is directing the foundation’s Program on Human and Community Development. He translates policy trends and positions program strategies around the issues of affordable housing, community change, mental health, juvenile justice and public education. He also continues in his UNC positions as the Duncan MacRae ’09 and Rebecca Kyle MacRae professor of public policy, planning and business; chairman of the department of public policy; and director of the Center for Community Capitalism at the Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise. Affordable housing is an issue for which Stegman shares a passion and a long-term history. From 1993 to 1997, he served under President Bill Clinton as the assistant secretary for policy development and research at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). He was acting chief of staff at HUD from November 1996 through April 1997. In 1997, The National Journal named him “one of Washington’s 100 most influential decision-makers.” Stegman has written extensively on housing and community development policy and on financial services for the poor. BERGER WINS AWARD FOR BOOK ON WOMEN WITH HIV/AIDS • Michele Tracy Berger, an assistant professor of women’s studies, won a best book award from the American Political Science Association (APSA) for a book she wrote on women with HIV/AIDS. Berger’s book, Workable Sisterhood: The Political Journey of Stigmatized Women with HIV/AIDS, is based on a study of the lives of 16 women – former drug users and sex workers with HIV/AIDS – who became politically active in Detroit. The book explores the barriers of stigma in relation to political participation and demonstrates how stigma can be effectively challenged and redirected. The majority of the women in Berger’s book are African Americans and Latinas. Berger’s book was recognized by the APSA’s section on race, ethnicity and politics. UYENO WINS BEST STUDENT PAPER AWARD • Ted Uyeno, a Ph.D. candidate in biology, received the Best Student Paper Award in his field from the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology. His research on the mechanics of octopus beaks was honored by the Division of Invertebrate Zoology. Uyeno focuses his research on soft marine invertebrate organisms, ranging from large octopuses to sandworms commonly used during pier fishing to flatworms so tiny they live between grains of sand. Octopuses, and their relatives the squid and nautilus, are members of a class of mollusks known as cephalopods. All cephalopods have “beaks” that look like a parrot’s and are used for cracking, cutting and manipulating their food. Uyeno discovered that the beaks do not actually have articulating surfaces between them, but rather the joint is formed of muscle fibers arranged in a special way. “It turns out that octopuses can not only open and close their beaks, but they can swing them from side to side and move them forward and back,” he said. “Their beaks have an incredible range of motion that exceeds those of many articulated jaws.” Uyeno hooked up a machine that functions like a heartbeat monitor to measure the activity of the beak muscles during biting. He said these “muscle articulations” — a term he coined — may be present in the jaws of other “squishy” invertebrates and may one day be of use in human-engineered robotic manipulators. Michael Stegman Photo by Steve Exum Neal, whom I consider a national treasure, the study of country music is being elevated in ways that are long overdue.” Neal teaches music theory, analysis and popular music courses. Her “History of Country Music” class, which attracts undergraduates and graduate students alike, is designed for non-music majors though music majors are allowed to take it for degree credit. Its roots are in a very real sense her roots. In the mountains of northern New Mexico where she grew up “fiddling and playing piano,” the music had strong country flavor. While at Rice University in Texas, where she received a bachelor’s degree in music, she taught country dance classes to earn extra money. A chance question from one of her students triggered deeper thought about rhythm and meter in country music. At the Eastman School of Music, where she earned a Ph.D. in music theory, the basics of country music continued to fascinate her. She chose to focus her dissertation on structure in the songs of country music legend Jimmie Rodgers. For six years Neal has challenged students to understand how country music has influenced and been influenced by everything from politics, race, class and gender to Southern folk life, social movements and big business. She works to keep the course a fresh reflection of “what’s happening in our culture and world,” she said. In just one class, a discussion of the working-class roots of country music as celebrated in Garth Brooks’ “Friends in Low Places” moves seamlessly to the subject of domestic abuse in the Dixie Chicks’ “Goodbye Earl,” inverted gender roles as extolled by Shania Twain in “Man! I Feel Like A Woman,” and the widening of the genre’s appeal by merging traditional country with honky tonk, folk, pop and rock. Neal lectures and tests, of course. She gives assignments to attend area concerts; she invites musicians, songwriters and industry executives to teach for a day (Roger McGuinn from The Byrds visited this fall); and she collaborates with faculty from other parts of the university. She also takes a multimedia approach. In class, she projects statistics and photos on a giant screen and uses her laptop to play portions of songs under discussion. Working with UNC’s librarians, archivists and lawyers, Neal has arranged to make digital music from Carolina’s various collections readily available to her students. Now in the process of creating a virtual version of Music 44 for the Friday Center’s distance learning series, Neal is also preparing to write a country music textbook. “I want students to think of music as something other than background noise in their lives,” she said. “Some students will say flat out, ‘I just don’t like country music.’ That’s OK; they don’t have to like it. What I do hope they see at the end of the course is how this music is a window into a certain part of American culture and history, because that’s what this place, Carolina, is all about. It’s about providing a space to think and grow.” • Photo by Dan Sears CAROLINA ARTS & SCIENCES • SPRING 2006 • 7 IN THE CLASSROOM I N T H E C L A S S R O O M ABOVE: Music professor Jocelyn Neal (right) chats with a student after her “History of Country Music” class. Country Music 101 Course is a window into American culture and history By Lisa H. Towle As Tim Carter, David G. Frey distinguished professor of music, was acquainting himself with Chapel Hill in 2001 he was given a coda of sorts. Casual conversations with student-employees of local shops and restaurants invariably came round to the same question: “So do you know Jocelyn Neal?” That would be assistant professor Jocelyn Neal, a classically trained music theorist who had been teaching at Carolina since 1999. Within a year, she had drawn on her research, life experience, music industry connections and technology skills to create a first-of-its-kind course, the “History of Country Music.” Music 44 spoke to her passion: increasing understanding of the human experience as it relates to music. It pleased Carter to no end when he realized “a generation of students have the course in their hearts and souls.” Now, as chair of the music department, he’s even happier that the content, rigor and reach of the class make it unique. It’s not that other schools don’t offer popular music courses. Certainly they do; the market for them is huge. What differentiates Carolina is that it has dared to move away from what Carter terms the “Western art music canon” and encouraged the study of country music as its own genre. William Ferris, the Joel R. Williamson eminent professor of history and senior associate director of the Center for the Study of the American South, concurs: “Country music has global appeal, but I think it’s been under studied by the academy, primarily because historically it’s the voice of working class, white Americans. To its credit, UNC has always pushed the boundaries of academe. It pioneered Southern studies, for example. And now, thanks to the standout work of Jocelyn “Some students will say flat out, ‘I just don’t like country music.’ That’s OK; they don’t have to like it. What I do hope they see at the end of the course is how this music is a window into a certain part of American culture and history, because that’s what this place, Carolina, is all about. — Jocelyn Neal [ ] 8 • SPRING 2006 • CAROLINA ARTS & SCIENCES Up Late Professor Dan Reichart (foreground) and student Josh Haislip in the Morehead Planetarium and Science Center’s Star Theater. Photo by Steve Exum That’s when he said, ‘Who are you?’” Soon enough, though, he had trained the telescope on the odd burst in the sky. The rest has been well documented, making both Reichart and Haislip just a little famous. During a long night in Phillips Hall, Haislip, the one who knew how OSIRIS worked, made measurements from the images forwarded from Chile and called off the numbers. Reichart, who knew the physics, crunched the numbers. By dawn, they knew that either they’d made a colossal error, or the sun whose last moments they were watching had been around during the universe’s infancy and was the oldest explosion ever seen by humans. After their discovery was checked and refined by graduate student Melissa Nysewander and other students working with Reichart, and later confirmed by another group of scientists with more sophisticated equipment, there were press conferences and news stories. In an upcoming issue of the journal Nature, Haislip and Nysewander will be listed first and second among the authors of the paper announcing the discovery — a 20-year-old undergraduate in the lead scientist’s position. Reichart let his students enjoy the discovery, stepping away from the spotlight as much as he could, just as his own professors and mentors had done for him. This, his students say, is not at all out of character for him. CAROLINA ARTS & SCIENCES • SPRING 2006 • 9 continued That weekend, Josh Haislip remembers being asked by Dr. Reichart if he had “infinite free time.” The question might be an astrophysicists’ joke. It’s at least an idiomatic expression between one undergraduate student and his mentor, two people for whom, ironically, the work of documenting the enormity of time in the universe leaves little room for their own time. It’s a question that seemed all the more relevant as the weekend wore on, during which Haislip and his teacher, astrophysicist Daniel Reichart, would document the oldest known explosion in the universe; specifically the afterglow of a gamma ray burst, a ghostly red light 12.8 billion years old. It was a discovery that would make both men — the teacher and the student — briefly famous. It turned out that Haislip did have infinite free time that weekend, and so Reichart asked him to research the OSIRIS (Ohio State InfraRed Imaging/ Spectometer), an observing instrument mounted on the SOAR (Southern Observatory for Astrophysical Research) telescope in Chile. Carolina had just been granted access to the OSIRIS instrument, and Reichart figured it would be a good idea if they learned how to use it. This was not an unusual request. Reichart’s undergraduate researchers are part of his team, a group he expects can handle the rigors — intellectually and physi-cally — of conducting new and significant research. His is not a group for busy work leading nowhere. (“I don’t have time for creating make-work projects. This research is important and it has to be done, and I need their help.”) So he keeps the cell phone numbers of his student researchers so he can roust them up and over to Phillips Hall at any hour, whenever a telescope needs tending. On Sept. 3, Haislip received the call at 10 p.m. A NASA satellite that scans the sky for evidence of gamma ray bursts — a tell-tale sign of a star’s death — had just sent a text message to Reichart’s cell phone with news of an unusual burst, one Reichart initially thought they could use to test out Haislip’s new expertise with the OSIRIS system. “Dan asked me if I wanted to go over to Phillips and have a video conference with the resident astronomer at SOAR, and I said, ‘Sure,’” Haislip says. The trick was to convince the resident astronomer in Chile, Eduardo Cypriano, that the gamma ray burst was worth interrupting the telescope’s other missions. Reichart and Haislip flipped on the video conferencing equipment in Phillips Hall, and down on a very large screen in Chile, next to the various images of the heavens SOAR had been relaying to the control room, up popped the image of two men peering excitedly into the camera. “We both said, Hola!” Haislip says. “The astronomer looked at us and said something like, ‘Hi?’, and we asked him to interrupt the work of the telescope so we could use OSIRIS to observe the gamma ray burst. With the Universe Stellar mentoring pays off B Y D U N C A N M U R R E L L By dawn, they knew that either they’d made a colossal error, or the sun whose last moments they were watching had been around during the universe’s infancy and was the oldest explosion ever seen by humans. 10 • SPRING 2006 • CAROLINA ARTS & SCIENCES Reichart has not been able to entirely escape public notice. There is the issue of his young age — he’s 31 — and his youthful looks, which together make him an object of fascination. But he’s no boy wonder, no neophyte astrophysicist. His success, which includes being awarded a career grant by the National Science Foundation, is the product of steady work begun in high school, work that is both strenuous and fun. Sitting in his cluttered office surrounded by maps and reference books, Reichart makes no secret of the fact that he loves his work and that he thinks it’s cool. (“I do rapid response astronomy.”) Because he makes no secret of this, and because he has the ability to express his enthusiasm for astrophysics in small ways — the way he swings around to his computer to pull up a telescope image for a visitor, for instance — students have picked up the vibe, and that’s forever changed their education. He’s no boy wonder among scientists, but he may very well be a boy wonder among mentors. Reichart grew up in rural Pennsylvania, the child of a newspaper journalist and a high-school English teacher. He was always good at science and math, but he wanted to be a lawyer. But then came Carl Sagan’s public television series, “Cosmos,” and after that Reichart’s awareness of the planetary missions to Jupiter and Saturn, an interest stoked by the mission photographs his father would pull from the newspaper’s wire service machine and bring home to his son. And so Reichart developed an interest in astronomy, which he calls “the gateway drug of the sciences.” “It was accessible,” Reichart says. “All you needed was a telescope and a dark sky.” Photos and telescopes were nice, but it was at Penn State It often happens in science that one can trace the peculiarities and interests of one scientist down through a lineage beginning with that first teacher and continuing through teachers and post-doctoral collaborators and senior colleagues, all of them somehow connected to each other, an ancestry that constantly regenerates itself. Dan Reichart and Josh Haislip examine photos of the gamma ray burst in the Morehead Observatory lab. Photo by Steve Exum CAROLINA ARTS & SCIENCES • SPRING 2006 • 11 that Reichart found what he needed to transform his boyhood fascination into a field of scholarly study, and finally into a career: a professor who took an interest in his education. Peter Mészáros, an astrophysicist with expertise in theoretical high-energy astrophysics, saw potential in Reichart as an undergraduate and invited him to help chase gamma ray bursts — never as a gofer, but as a young man with an intellect and ability suited to real work. “It was really exciting to know that you were working on a real project,” Reichart says now. It often happens in science that one can trace the peculiarities and interests of one scientist down through a lineage beginning with that first teacher and continuing through teachers and post-doctoral collaborators and senior colleagues, all of them somehow connected to each other, an ancestry that constantly regenerates itself. And so it is that Reichart is now the professor chasing gamma ray bursts, and Haislip is the young undergraduate from a small rural town (Bear Grass, N.C.) making his stellar observations and already planning to study astrophysics in graduate school. Reichart sees nothing particularly difficult about juggling roles as a teacher, mentor, fundraiser, networker and researcher. These are natural parts of an astronomer’s job, or at least any job Reichart would want to have. (One is reminded of Carl Sagan, the wonder-struck professor describing the grand scope of the universe for all the young Dan Reicharts, a first teacher for millions.) Reichart’s research has won awards and attention, including having one of his early discoveries — that the most ancient gamma ray bursts could be detected on Earth, yielding information about the early composition of the universe — named one of the 10 “Breakthroughs of the Year” by Science magazine in 1999. And that was before documenting the oldest gamma ray burst known. Reichart has always enjoyed sharing his love for astronomy with students of all ages. He has won university teaching Super star gazing in Southern Hemisphere heavens Students and faculty will be able to detect distant stars, galaxies and quasars a billion times too faint to be seen with the unaided eye, thanks to Carolina’s partnership in a major new telescope in South Africa. The Southern African Large Telescope (SALT), the biggest diameter telescope in the Southern Hemisphere, was officially dedicated in Sutherland, South Africa, in November. The new facility complements two other telescopes in which Carolina is a major partner and user. The Southern Observatory for Astrophysical Research (SOAR) in Cerro Pachon, Chile, began operations in late 2004. UNC plays a large role as one of four partners in the $32 million SOAR project. In addition, UNC received two National Science Foundation grants in 2004 to build the six Panchromatic Robotic Optical Monitoring and Polarimetry Telescopes (PROMPT) at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, also in the Chilean Andes. Carolina is the lead partner on PROMPT, with multiple research collaborators. “Our partnerships with SALT in South Africa, as well as with other major telescopes in Chile, give UNC faculty, graduate students and undergraduates better access to the skies over the Southern Hemisphere than any other academic institution in the United States,” said Bruce Carney, senior associate dean for the sciences and Samuel Baron professor of astronomy. The construction and operation of SALT was made possible by the participation of 11 partners from South Africa, Poland, the United States, Germany, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. UNC contributed about $1 million to the project, through a combination of public and private funds. The entire project cost about $32 million. Reichart sees nothing particularly difficult about juggling roles as a teacher, mentor, fundraiser, networker and researcher. These are natural parts of an astronomer’s job, or at least any job Reichart would want to have. awards and has been leading groups of young, would-be astronomers to the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in West Virginia for weeklong observations and research since he was an 18-year-old freshman at Penn State. Now he’s working to link up a network of North Carolina universities and public schools with telescopes that he and his students are building in the Southern Hemisphere. The National Science Foundation recently awarded Reichart a prestigious early career development grant of $490,000. This and the NSF’s $912,000 grant to help UNC build six robotic telescopes in the Chilean Andes mountains for the study of gamma ray bursts is allowing the University to offer research time on these telescopes to students at universities and colleges across the state. The project will also involve North Carolina public school students through the educational program of the Morehead Planetarium and Science Center. As a result, high school students will soon be able to put themselves where Josh Haislip was on Sept. 3, peering at images of the new universe, making measurements, feeling part of something big. Haislip, who works at Morehead Planetarium helping to guide elementary school classes, has helped to create a user’s manual for the young students who will use the telescopes. As one might expect, Haislip has learned from his mentor that this is the sort of thing astronomers should do. “Dan once told me he doesn’t mind at all being asked to do things beyond the call of duty, like talking to crowds at the planetarium about the space shuttle,” Haislip says. “Dan likes outreach, and I kind of see myself doing the same thing someday.” And on it goes. • 12 • SPRING 2006 • CAROLINA ARTS & SCIENCES Science Complex Construction Caudill, Cumbie make $1 million challenge for new science facilities Chemistry alumni W. Lowry Caudill ’79 and Stephen Cumbie ’70 each have made a contingent pledge of $500,000 to challenge alumni and friends to contribute an additional $5.5 million for the new Carolina Physical Science Complex. It is the largest construction project in the university’s history. With $10.5 million in gifts and pledges in hand, the $5.5 million needed to complete the $16 million goal for Phase I of the project must be raised by August 2006. Caudill and Cumbie will match the first $1 million in gifts dollar for dollar. “The design of this new complex promotes collaboration, which is becoming more and more important in science,” said Caudill, executive chairman of Liquidia Technologies Inc. and retired president and co-founder of Magellan Laboratories Inc. in Research Triangle Park, N.C. “ Caudill and his wife Suzi ’80 honored long-time chemistry professor Royce Murray with a $3 million gift in 2004 to name the Royce Murray Quandrangle, the largest of the green spaces planned in heart of the complex. That gift also named the W. Lowry and Susan S. Caudill Laboratories. The state-of-the-art complex will blend in with UNC’s historic architecture, said Cumbie, president of NV Commercial Inc. in McLean, Va. The complex, which will house the departments of chemistry, computer science, mathematics, marine sciences, and physics and astronomy, will include the following: • Modern shared facilities — a collection of new buildings — each with special purposes and capabilities; • New chemistry plaza joining the W. Lowry and Susan S. Caudill Laboratories and Kenan Laboratories; • Rooftop observatory deck for astronomy students and faculty; • Laboratories with vibration-free space for electron microscopes, laser labs, teleconference rooms and special shielding to avoid electronic interference; • A new Institute for Advanced Materials, Nanoscience and Technology; • State-of-the-art lecture halls. “Phase I will bring us desperately needed, environmentally controlled space for our cutting-edge scientific instrumentation,” said Laurie E. McNeil, professor and chair of physics and astronomy. Patrick Eberlein, professor and chair of mathematics, said the math department will benefit in the short run with a new 4,500-square-foot fluids laboratory, shared with marine sciences. In the long run, the department will gain additional office space. “The fluids lab will do research on fluid behavior at all scales, from tidal waves, hurricanes and storm surges to fluid transport in the lungs, with applications to cystic fibrosis,” he said. “Additional office space in Phillips Hall will promote interdisciplinary contacts with other science departments at UNC.” Holden Thorp, faculty director of the fundraising campaign, said the Caudill/ Cumbie gift will help steer Phase I toward its completion date of fall 2006. “The synergy of public and private funds is critical to achieving these world-class facilities,” said Thorp, who also is a Kenan professor and chair of chemistry. The entire project, comprising Phase I and II, will rely on $22 million in private gifts and $84 million from a higher education bond referendum approved by N.C. citizens in 2000. Phase II is slated for completion in 2009. • To learn more about making a gift to the Carolina Physical Science Complex, contact Ramsey R. White, ramsey.white@unc.edu, (919) 843-4885. — By Kim Weaver Spurr ’88 The Carolina Physical Science Complex is the largest construction project in the university’s history. Photo by Katie Schwing ’06 CAROLINA ARTS & SCIENCES • SPRING 2006 • 13 The streets of Rangoon have an aura of disturbing beauty. There is nothing obviously amiss, but it is too quiet, evoking the calm before the storm. Pedestrians offer furtive glances that seem to say, “Don’t even think about trying to talk to me.” Here in Burma — or rather Myanmar — associating with a foreigner is dangerous. Telling an outsider about your dislike of the military junta or your support of Aung San Suu Kyi [pronounced Ahn Sun Soo Chee], the Nobel Prize-winning democratic activist, could land you in a cockroach-infested cell for seven years. I am a political scientist interested in tracing the complex road to democracy around the world. But here I feel like a character created by Graham Greene or George Orwell. The current regime is in no mood to issue an official visa to enable my meetings and workshops with democratic advocates and ethnic minorities, so I am here “under the radar,” traveling incognito as a “tourist.” Sometimes when I catch the eye of a Burmese man, I am suspicious he is a government spy assigned to track me for the duration of my stay. The cloak-and-dagger routine is draining. I begin each secret appointment by asking if we can speak freely. The stock answer is, “Presume we may be overheard, and proceed with suitable caution.” During phone conversations, names and places are alluded to, but never spelled out. My chief contact uses an e-mail nom de plume, transforming him from a Burmese Buddhist to a Californian surfer. I am told to encode outgoing e-mails on sensitive subjects. My meetings with opposition leaders are described as meals prepared by top chefs or their students; government spies are “mosquitoes.” — was assassinated in 1947. Fragile civilian administrations stumbled along for the next 15 years. Following a 1962 coup d’etat, the Army chief, General Ne Win, led the coun-try with an iron fist for the next 26 years. The pressure cooker blew in July 1988, with Ne Win’s sudden resignation and handover to his top military henchmen. By early August, student activists were leading mass non-violent demonstrations in the streets of Rangoon. The state responded viciously. Thousands were killed across the country, with tens of thousands arrested and tortured. As the charismatic daughter of the icon of nationhood, Suu Kyi was a perfect public face for the pro-democracy movement. Despite standing 5 feet 4 inches and weighing 100 pounds, at most, she had a commanding presence. Two weeks after the 1988 massacres, she addressed a half million people at the Shwe Dagon Pagoda. Less than a year later, she was placed under house arrest for the first time. Legislative elections finally took place in 1990, with the National League for Democracy winning a remarkable 80 percent of the seats. But the military junta ignored the results and unleashed a new reign of terror against opposition activists. Suu Kyi’s first incarceration lasted six years, until 1995. As the opposition movement slowly rebuilt itself, the military regime returned Suu Kyi to house arrest in 2000. Once restrictions on her were eased in 2002, she again traversed the country, inspiring adoring crowds. But in May 2003, government agents attacked Suu Kyi’s convoy as it traveled through remote northern Burma. More than 70 people were killed, and the bloodied activist was sent back to house arrest. She remains confined to this day. Every hotel dealing with foreigners has its share of staff who are state informers. Revealing too much to the friendly clerk can lead to deportation. Despite these obstacles, I manage to roam freely. My only real fright comes as I sit in the window of a tea shop, sipping the ultra sweet, condensed milk tea and eating deep-fried samosas. As I scrawl in my black moleskin notebook, a well-built middle-aged man watches intently. He beckons to the manager and they talk animatedly while glancing over at me. The manager retreats to the back of the café and picks up the phone, continuing to look my way. I quickly pay the bill and scurry away. For most of Burma’s 60 years of independence, the contours of politics have been blurry to locals and indecipherable to outsiders. General Aung Sang — Suu Kyi’s father and the founder of modern Burma RANGOON under the Radar S t o r y a n d p h o t o s b y A n d r e w R e y n o l d s abcdabcdabcdabcdabcdcdcdcd abcdabcdabcdabcdabcdcdcdcd abcdabcdabcabcdcdcdcd abcdabcdabcabcdcdcdcd Andy Reynolds, center, tries to blend in with the crowd at a soccer game in Burma. continued Spies record all activity within and outside of the Rangoon headquarters of the National League for Democracy, so we must meet in a secret location. Since its heyday in 1990, the NLD has endured a blitzkrieg of arrests, physical attacks and state ridicule. Today it is more a faith than a political party. The leadership vacuum is evident. When I ask about their views on controversial issues of engagement with the government, I am greeted with total silence. It soon becomes clear that there are disagreements about how to affect democratic change within the context of the current regime. The military rulers have a “roadmap” to democracy, which involves a referendum on a new constitution and multi-party elections sometime in the next couple of years, but their manipulation of the process is shameless. Current NLD officials are torn between having nothing to do with a rigged electoral process or laying low until elections can be held and then participating in whatever way they can. The most senior leaders repeat Suu Kyi’s adage that “the stance of the NLD is that any matter is negotiable.” The colors are vivid and luminous in Burma — green fields, bold blue murals, monks’ robes of burgundy and tangerine — but the human landscape remains muted. Daily life has a beautiful veneer, but it rests on a much less attractive foundation — much like the intricate and bright lacquered gifts that tourists buy to grace their sideboards. When you scratch the shiny surface, you quickly discover cheap bamboo. Just as in Winston Smith’s Oceania Orwell’s Winston Smith is desperate to be free of the Thought Police. My “Winston” works the night shift at my hotel and often serves me breakfast. He studied hotel management abroad, where free access to the media gave him a shocking picture of what was happening in his country. His family supports Suu Kyi strongly and bemoans the wretched economy that makes each day a struggle to put food on the table. Winston points at my Let’s Go travel guide and says, “Ah, do you know ‘the lady’ is in there?” I signal that I, too, admire Suu Kyi and dislike the regime. In a conspiratorial whisper, he tells me that it was once possible to drive discretely past the front of the house in which she has been imprisoned for 10 of the last 16 years. But the army has blocked off the stretch of University Avenue leading to her mansion. My new ally informs me, though, that from the Sedona Hotel across the lake, one can glimpse the back of her house. I take a taxi to the Sedona and smile at the soldiers milling around the entrance. As I stride across the lobby, I walk past a well-dressed Indonesian man encircled by reporters: It is Kofi Annan’s special representative, Ali Alatas — the most senior UN official to visit in years. He stands just 500 yards from Suu Kyi’s house. If she looks out her window when he leaves the hotel, she will see him. But of course they are not permitted to meet, and it is unlikely she even knows he is here. I take the elevator to the top floor of the hotel and wander down the corridor to look for a window facing the lake. I dart into an open room, only to startle two young Indian maids. I smile, gesturing that I only want to look at the view. in 1984, uncensored news is high contraband in Burma. The New Light of Myanmar and The Myanmar Times are sanitized tabloids. Some satellite TV is available, but it focuses on sports and on issues unrelated to Burma. Yahoo, Hotmail and AOL are all blocked, though the technologically-savvy manage to circumvent some Internet restrictions. Official pamphlets are published by the “Committee for Propaganda and Agitation to Intensify Patriotism.” While we are stuck in traffic, I am shocked to see a teen pull out a copy of Time magazine emblazoned with Suu Kyi’s face and the headline, “Will She Rule?” But then I notice that, while the copy looks new, the date on the cover is 1990. It is a 15-year-old time capsule of hope, belonging to a boy who wasn’t even born when Suu Kyi and the NLD received the largest popular mandate of any movement in Burma’s history. The cloak-and-dagger routine is draining. I begin each secret appointment by asking if we can speak freely. The stock answer is, “Presume we may be overheard, and proceed with suitable caution.” abcdabcdabcdabcdabcdcdcdcd abcdabcdabcdabcdabcdcdcdcd abcdabcdabcabcdcdcdcd abcdabcdabcabcdcdcdcd Crumbling colonial architecture on Pansodan Street in downtown Rangoon. 14 • SPRING 2006 • CAROLINA ARTS & SCIENCES Suu Kyi lives about 15 minutes from downtown Rangoon, on the southeastern shore of Inya Lake. The neighborhood hosts some of the most luxurious government and diplomatic residences in Burma. To the northeast of the house is the lakeside promenade in front of the hotel. A sentry sits in his box along the Kaba Aye Paya Road, just out of view of the promenade. As I scan the scene, ominous black storm clouds dump thick sheets of rain on lovers who scurry under large tin umbrellas along the promenade. I hurriedly snap photos of the house. Suddenly, the floor manager strides through the open door, takes one look at me and my camera, and aggressively inquires, “What are you doing? What is your name?” Sounding like a Monty Python character, I hurry past him, muttering, “Beautiful lake… lovely pagoda…what a view!” I bustle toward the elevator, hoping he has not called down to the soldiers at the gate, who are kind enough to summon me a taxi as I scurry from the hotel. Aung San Suu Kyi hasn’t seen her two sons for a decade and her husband died in 1999; she lives with two helpers, her cousin and aunt. The only person who visits is her doctor, a former political prisoner who is allowed to come monthly as long as he avoids talking about politics. Those who know report that Suu Kyi’s long days are spent meditating, reading and tending a rose garden. She has no television, but listens four hours a day to the radio. She has sold off much of the furniture in her house to pay for basic needs. Suu Kyi has purposely left the paint to peel and the repairs to wait. This is one place in Burma where the veneer matches the reality. The immediate chances of dramatic political change in Burma do not look promising. Democratic activists are searching desperately for any chink in the government’s road-map plans which might begin a transition to something more palatable. The two most crucial aspects of the new constitution, they say, will be the procedures provided for transition and for amendments. One could imagine, for example, a majority in parliament, built over time among democrats and reform-minded soldiers. Another glimmer of hope is generational change among Burmese military leaders. Some international observers believe the next military generation has slightly more education and international exposure than current leaders. The new generation is keen to get rich quick and realize they can go only so far without engaging the global economy. Real change rests with the NLD and its allies winning a significant share of parliamentary seats in elections. Quiet speculation about the short-term political future is the game of choice in Rangoon’s tea shops. Some expect the regime to wrap up the national convention in short order, hold a referendum in spring of 2006, and then release Aung San Suu Kyi just before the general election that follows. Others doubt whether she would be released before an election. Buddhist students of Burmese martial arts are taught to wait until they are struck three times before responding. If the junta’s first strike against the pro-democracy movement was the massacre of 1988, and the second was the attack on Suu Kyi’s convoy in 2003, will the next clenched fist elicit an uprising far greater than that in 1988? Or do the demoralized democrats have scant appetite for seeing the blood of their remaining friends and relatives on the streets again? Despite its economic isolation, Burma dominates the world production of teak. The dark wood is beautiful and strong, providing the economic backbone of this frail nation. Millions of Burmese see democracy in a similar light, but hope that it will come more quickly than the 80 years it takes for a teak tree to mature to the point of usefulness. • Andrew Reynolds is an associate professor of political science who teaches, researches and writes about democratization around the world. He has served as a consultant on electoral and constitutional issues for Afghanistan, Angola, Burma, Fiji, Guyana, Indonesia, Iraq, Jordan, Kenya, Liberia, Netherlands, Netherlands Antilles, Northern Ireland, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Yemen and Zimbabwe. These excerpts are from a longer article about his visit to Burma last summer. The colors are vivid and luminous in Burma — green fields, bold blue murals, monks’ robes of burgundy and tangerine — but the human landscape remains muted. abcdabcdabcabcdcdcdcd abcdabcdabcdabcdabcdcdcdcd abcdabcdabcdabcdabcdcdcdcd abcdabcdabcabcdcdcdcd Monks line up for lunch at their monastery about two hours north of Rangoon. CAROLINA ARTS & SCIENCES • SPRING 2006 • 15 William Andrews was at a most un-Southern place when publisher W.W. Norton approached him in 1994 about editing its first anthology of Southern literature. The setting: a Jamaican restaurant in Palo Alto, Calif. Andrews, then an English professor at the University of Kansas, was enjoying a fellowship at Stanford University. “I’m sure various Southernists would have turned over in their graves,” Andrews said of the unholy West Coast beginning that led to the birth in 1998 of The Literature of the American South: A Norton Anthology. Not to worry. Norton had picked a general editor with deep Southern roots and credentials: A native of Richmond, Memphis and Atlanta, with a master’s and Ph.D. in English from Carolina, Andrews was already a heavyweight in the Southern lit field and the leading specialist in the country on slave narratives. He happily agreed to lead the effort to assemble the first chronological anthology of Southern literature in 30 years, and set about selecting his co-editors — carefully. He wanted the compendium to be distinct from its predecessors. It should be primarily focused on writers of the 20th century, he thought, and it should reflect the diversity of the South — across lines of color, gender and class, embracing both urban and agrarian cultures. Andrews turned to Carolina for one of his three co-editors — Fred Hobson — and found Trudier Harris at Emory University and Minrose Gwin at the University of New Mexico. All were well known scholars of Southern and African American literature with unique strengths and perspectives to bring to the task at hand. Unlike the editorial boards of previous Southern anthologies, this one would include men and women, black and white. And, like Andrews, they were all Southerners. By the time the book was published, Andrews and Harris had joined Hobson at Carolina, creating a critical mass of Southern specialists in Chapel Hill. Already there were: Joseph Flora, co-editor of The Companion to Southern Literature; Laurence Avery, whose work focuses on African American drama and the playwright Paul Green; William Harmon, a poet and editor of multiple editions of A Handbook to Literature; Julius Raper, a specialist on Ellen Glasgow and 20th century Southern literature; James Coleman and Lee Greene, specialists in African American drama and fiction; and Linda Wagner-Martin, a scholar of 20th century literature, including William Faulkner. Louis Rubin, the legendary Southern literary scholar and teacher, had retired from UNC in 1989, but remained in Chapel Hill at Algonquin Books, where he was discovering and publishing new Southern writers. Seven years after the anthology came off the press, Gwin completed the Norton circle at Chapel Hill this fall by joining the UNC faculty as the Kenan Eminent professor of Southern literature. “Minrose Gwin’s appointment is further proof, if any more is needed, that — with our special collections in Wilson Library, and the Center for the Study of the American South — Chapel Hill is the most important center in the country for the study of Southern literature,” said James Thompson, professor and chair of the department of English. William Ferris, the Joel R. Williamson eminent professor of history and a leading voice on Southern music and culture, calls the four anthology editors “icons in the field of Southern studies.” “To have all four of these Southern literature giants teaching in the classroom, speaking in public and publishing their work within one department in one university is unheard of,” said Ferris, senior associate director of the Center for the Study of the American South. “You cannot be in the field of Southern studies and not admire and use their work, because they essentially are the field.” A brisk November morning draws the Norton co-editors together for a magazine photo shoot outside the Rare Book Collection in Wilson Library. It’s apparent that they are congenial colleagues, as the photographer instructs them to take on poses both stately and casual. Harris has been charged with holding the anthology, with its striking red cover featuring a 1946 painting by Nell Choate Jones called “Georgia Red Clay.” There is laughter and joking, and a “crick” in Harris’ right foot. Carolina’s Norton quartet readily agrees that working on the anthology was a good experience. Together they combed through 400 years of Southern literary history, from the early 1600s to contemporary times, bringing together the works of nearly 90 diverse American writers, such as Thomas Jefferson, Frederick Douglass, Mark Twain, Zora Neale Hurston, Ralph Ellison and William Faulkner. Andrews edited the first and last sections of the book, “Beginnings to 1880” and “Vernacular Traditions.” Hobson took on “The New South, 1880-1940,” and Harris and Gwin tackled the largest section of the book, “The Contemporary South.” The anthology closes with “The Foundations of the Earth,” a short story by award-winning writer, Randall Kenan, who also ended up at Carolina, as an associate professor of creative writing in Greenlaw (See page 2). Norton Anthology editors now teach under one roof B y K i m W e a v e r S p u r r ’ 8 8 • P h o t o s b y S t e v e E x u m Southern Lit Central Southern 16 • SPRING 2006 • CAROLINA ARTS & SCIENCES continued SouthernMinrose Gwin Trudier Harris Fred Hobson William Andrews CAROLINA ARTS & SCIENCES • SPRING 2006 • 17 Rubin — the Algonquin publisher, English professor emeritus and editor of an earlier anthology, The Literary South (1979) — praised the Norton anthology for the “breadth of its approach and the vigor and incisiveness of its commentary.” Andrews is particularly proud of the anthology’s first-of-a-kind audio companion, a CD containing 26 examples of spirituals, gospel, blues, ballads, sermons and stories. One of his favorite pieces on the CD is a song that UNC folklorist Dan Patterson told him about called “Factory Girl.” The ballad, recorded in 1962, tells the story of a mill worker who fantasizes about marrying her boss as a way out of factory life. “It’s absolutely haunting,” Andrews said. “It represents a powerfully moving side of the Southern experience, of white women working in the cotton mills from the time they were children.” “I always say that I didn’t choose African American literature, it chose me,” said Andrews, who is now the E. Maynard Adams professor of literature and senior associate dean for the fine arts and humanities. “I think it was partly because of being brought up in the segregated South. My access to African American life, to black people in general, was very limited. There was a lingering curiosity and interest and concern about, what was that world of black experience that I knew so little about? “When I got to graduate school and began to have a chance to read black writers, it was the ones from the South who interested me most,” he said. He has since written or edited about 40 books. His first, The Literary Career of Charles W. Chesnutt (1980), deals with a seminal figure in the development of African American and Southern fiction. Andrews’ newest book, The North Carolina Roots of African American Literature (2006), showcases some of the best work of eight influential black writers from North Carolina during the 19th and early 20th centuries. He has served as general editor of Wisconsin Studies in Autobiography (University of Wisconsin Press), which includes some 40 studies of the autobiographical writings of slaves, refugees, immigrants and others. Andrews’ most innovative project is an online library of some 280 North American slave narratives — the largest such collection of stories and illustrations — now available free to the public through a partnership with UNC’s Academic Affairs Library and the National Endowment for the Humanities. (http://docsouth.unc.edu/) One of the most widely read narratives, Harriet Jacobs’ 1861 autobiography, “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl,” tells how she lived in a crawl space in her grandmother’s house for seven years before escaping north to freedom. “Our online versions of these rare original texts are the next best thing to holding the books in your hand,” Andrews said. Trudier Harris grew up as the sixth of nine children born in Tuscaloosa, Ala., to Terrell and Unareed Harris. She received her M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from The Ohio State University and taught at the College of William and Mary for six years, before joining the UNC faculty in 1979. She left Carolina for Emory University for a brief period in 1993, before returning in 1996. She is one of the most widely read scholars of African American literature, focusing primarily on 20th century African American writers and on folklore. Now the J. Carlyle Sitterson Professor of English, she is the author or editor/co-editor of 22 books, including From Mammies to Militants: Domestics in Black American Literature (1982), Black Women in the Fiction of James Baldwin (which received the 1987 College Language Association’s Creative Scholarship Award), Fiction and Folklore: The Novels of Toni Morrison (1991) and Saints, Sinners, Saviors: Strong Black Women in African American Literature (2001). Harris and Andrews partnered together on another collection, The Oxford Companion to African American Literature (which won an Editor’s Choice Award from Booklist magazine in 1997). She calls 1996-1998 “my big fat book years.” Harris also has been recognized repeatedly as an outstanding teacher, most recently with the 2005 Board of Governors’ Award for Teaching Excellence — the top teaching prize given at UNC. “She is the most spellbinding lecturer I have ever seen among American literature scholars,” says Hobson, one of the Norton editors. What’s her secret? “You make a commitment to never bore your students or yourself,” said Harris, who also serves as English department associate chair. “So you sing when you can’t sing; I recite poetry. You try to create an environment where students say, ‘I can’t wait to go to her class again.’ You make sure that you get across that you’re excited about the information.” Harris tells her own story in the 2003 memoir, Summer Snow: Reflections from a Black Daughter of the South. “It has taken me a long time to arrive at a basic fact of my existence: I am a Southerner. For a black person to claim the South … is about as rare as snow falling in Tuscaloosa during dog days,” she writes in the book’s title essay. Her new book is entitled, The Scary Mason-Dixon Line: African American Writers and Literatu18 • SPRING 2006 • CAROLINA ARTS & SCIENCES Literatu CAROLINA ARTS & SCIENCES • SPRING 2006 • 19 the South (under contract to LSU Press.) “African American writers, no matter where they are born in the United States, do not truly consider themselves writers until they have written about the South,” Harris said. “There’s a stamp of certification on the mountain of the South that these writers can’t go over. They have to tunnel through it.” Louis Rubin has high praise for Fred Hobson, his former student, whom he calls “a first-rate literary critic.” “Fred writes fluently and gracefully,” said Rubin. “He has a sense of the literary imagination and how it functions, which is all too rare among scholars.” Hobson is an expert in Southern literature and intellectual history, autobiography and 20th century American fiction. He grew up in Yadkin County, N.C. As an undergraduate at UNC, he was drawn to writers like H.L. Mencken; as a scholar, he has written extensively about Mencken. “I came across a couple of essays by Mencken as a student; one of them in particular: ‘The Sahara of the Bozart,’” said Hobson, who received his undergraduate and Ph.D. degrees from Carolina. “It was a vicious attack on the South, and I thought, with some reason. I was something of a Southern iconoclast myself, and my interest in Mencken was in him exposing the flaws of Southern life.” Now Lineberger Professor in the Humanities at Carolina, Hobson has been co-editing The Southern Literary Journal (co-founded by Rubin and Hugh Holman) for the past 15 years. The author of seven books (including three award-winning volumes) and editor or general editor of dozens of others, Hobson has a recent collection of essays that feature some autobiographical works. In The Silencing of Emily Mullen and Other Essays (2005), a story about Hobson’s great-grandmother inspired the book’s title essay. At a family reunion 20 years ago, a great aunt asked him if he knew that his maternal great-grandmother, Emily Mullen Gregory, had committed suicide about 1880 by jumping down a well. Hobson decided to track down the story, poring through census records, family letters, academic records and old newspapers on microfilm. “I finally confirmed that she indeed had committed suicide, but ‘Why?’ was the big question,” he said. “I got into the area of the male medical establishment’s complete lack of understanding of women’s health in the 19th century.” Hobson’s new memoir, Off the Rim: Basketball and Other Religions in a Carolina Childhood (spring 2006), is an account of his life-long affair with basketball, particularly the Tar Heels. (See page 30). He played on UNC’s freshmen team in 1961-62. “The book is about a lot of other things, too — politics, race and the changing South through the ’60s and ’70s,” he said. Gwin was recruited to Carolina from Purdue University, where she had been teaching since 2002. Born in Mississippi with a Ph.D. from the University of Tennessee, she had taught for much of her career outside of the South. Her research and teaching focus on Southern literature, women’s literature and theories of space and gender, trauma studies, African American literature, autobiography and creative writing. She is the author or editor/co-editor of eight books, including her most recent scholarly work, The Woman in the Red Dress: Gender, Space and Reading (2002). Her 1990 book, The Feminine and Faulkner: Reading (Beyond) Sexual Differences, was the first book-length reading of Faulkner to employ feminist theory. Black and White Women of the Old South: The Peculiar Sisterhood in American Literature (1985) was a Choice Outstanding Academic Book. She edited A Woman’s Civil War, the diary of Cornelia McDonald (1992), and it was selected as one of the best 100 books on the Civil War. When Gwin made her first presentation to faculty and students in UNC’s English department, Andrews said she illustrated not only her abilities as a scholar, but her flair for teaching, too. “I don’t know which was better, the lecture itself or the discussion afterward,” he said. Gwin’s 2004 memoir, Wishing for Snow, is a portrait and a tribute to her mother, Erin Clayton Pitner, a brilliant poet who suffered from mental illness. She weaves the story of her relationship with her mother, and her mother’s mental deterioration and eventual death from ovarian cancer, by sifting through her mother’s poetry, letters, recipes, traffic tickets, newspaper clippings, medical reports and childhood diary. “I managed to gain access to her diary when she was 9 years old. In the diary, she was always wishing for snow,” she said. “The term also comes to apply to me as the daughter-writer who also wishes for snow, and the plenitude of a mother who wasn’t there in some ways — and was there in some ways.” Gwin is excited about working with Hobson as co-editor of The Southern Literary Journal. “It puts me in touch with a deeper base of scholarship going on in Southern studies,” she said. The Literature of the American South: A Norton Anthology may have been conceived on foreign soil, but general editor Andrews is delighted to have the Norton quartet now at home at Carolina, where they belong. “I had the best in the business working with me on the anthology,” he said. • Carolina’s Norton quartet readily agrees that working on the anthology was a good experience. Together they combed through 400 years of Southern literary history, from the early 1600s to contemporary times, bringing together the works of nearly 90 diverse American writers, such as Thomas Jefferson, Frederick Douglass, Mark Twain, Zora Neale Hurston, Ralph Ellison and William Faulkner. 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• ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ Call them alpha professors. Not to mention beta, gamma and delta professors as well. In a first for Carolina and quite possibly the entire collegiate world, two fraternities have raised enough money to endow distinguished professorships in the College of Arts and Sciences. The Chapel Hill chapters of Delta Kappa Epsilon and Phi Delta Theta each have collected more than the $666,000 needed to qualify for matching state grants of $334,000 and fund two $1 million faculty professorships. One of the professorships has already been filled while the recipient of the other professorship will be named by July. A sorority also has now joined in the growing Greek fundraising drive to help Carolina lure and retain outstanding faculty. Following the example set by the two fraternities, the Delta Delta Delta sorority kicked off its professorship campaign last spring. Edward “Tee” Baur, a 1968 UNC graduate and DKE alumnus, got the ball rolling six years ago when he proposed that fraternities and sororities start funding professorships. Serving on the UNC Board of Visitors, he was seeking a way to show that fraternities and sororities care about academics. “I believe that there is a lot to be learned from the Greek system,” said Baur, a retired businessman and former executive at Duke-Weeks Realty in St. Louis. “I kept struggling with how to create a very palpable linkage between the Greek system and the administration.” Hitting on the idea of the professorships, Baur launched the Delta Kappa Epsilon professorship campaign in May 2000 and contributed the first $100,000 to the fund. Over the next five years, the pioneering fundraising drive raised about $825,000 in gifts and pledges from 71 donors, including another $100,000 donation by Baur. Last summer Carolina named philosophy scholar C.D.C. “David” Reeve as the inaugural Delta Kappa Epsilon Distinguished Professor. Reeve, a gifted scholar who joined the UNC philosophy department in 2001, focuses on ancient Greek philosophy, ethics, metaphysics, moral psychology, history of philosophy and the philosophy of sex and love. Earning raves from students as “an elegant and engaging” teacher, he regularly packs lecture halls with enthused students, including many DKE’s. He won the 2006 Tanner Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, one of the highest teaching honors awarded by the university. Born and raised in Ireland, the 57- year-old Reeve has also gained international recognition as one of the most distinguished and original scholars in ancient philosophy. He’s written numerous acclaimed articles and major books, including the most recent Love’s Confusions (Harvard University Press, 2005). One scholar called Reeve’s book, Philosopher-Kings, “the best book there is on Plato’s Republic.” Another work, Substantial Knowledge, is considered required reading for the understanding of Aristotle’s metaphysics. But the award of the distinguished professorship still took him by surprise. “It’s a great honor,” said Reeve. “Having an endowed chair, particularly at a major university, is a rare accolade. I’m very gratified by the university’s recognition of my work.” Inspired by Delta Kappa Epsilon’s success, Phi Delta Theta embarked on its professorship campaign in 2001. Under the leadership of Shoffner “Shoff” Allison, a 1998 Carolina graduate, the Phi Delts have raised $722,000 in gifts and pledges from 231 donors, including a lead gift of $100,000 from Garnett Smith of Naples, Fla. Named in honor of the late Matthew Mason, an honorary Phi Delt “brother,” the new faculty chair will be known as the Phi Delta Theta/ Matthew Mason Distinguished Professorship. “Matthew Mason was the glue and the bond that tied Phi Delt together for the last 60 years,” said Allison, president of Hawthorne Capital in Charlotte. “The idea of supporting Carolina faculty at the highest level and recognizing Matthew Mason was an easy sell.” Delta Delta Delta then followed suit last year, becoming the first sorority to start its own professorship campaign. Led by Becky Cobey, a 1975 Carolina graduate who lives in Greenwich, Conn., the Tri Delts have privately raised $160,000 in gifts and pledges from eight donors so far and aim to “go public” with the campaign this year. “I think all the Greek professorships are a good idea, and I feel confident that the Tri Delts will wholeheartedly support this effort,” said Cobey, a member of the UNC Board of Visitors and the Women’s Leadership Council. In addition, three other fraternities and sororities are weighing similar academic fundraising efforts for Carolina. Greek alumni eventually hope to sign up as many as 10 or 12 of the university’s more than two dozen fraternities and sororities for Greek professorship campaigns. “I’d like to get six in the near term,” said Baur, who’s still heavily involved. “I will continue to beat the drum.” • CAROLINA ARTS & SCIENCES • SPRING 2006 • 21 “It’s a great honor. Having an endowed chair, particularly at a major university, is a rare accolade. I’m very gratified by the university’s recognition of my work.” HIGHLIGHTS H I G H L I G H T S 22 • SPRING 2006 • CAROLINA ARTS & SCIENCES Distinguished Professorship to honor beloved teacher and scholar Teacher, scholar, mentor, friend, anchor, and leader — these are the words former students use to describe Richard “Dick” Richardson, political science professor emeritus and former UNC provost. The Richard J. Richardson Distinguished Professorship in Political Science has been established to recognize the beloved professor and administrator’s four decades of service to Carolina. When fully funded, the professorship in the College of Arts and Sciences will be used to recruit or retain an outstanding teacher/ scholar in American politics. Faculty support is the top funding priority for the College in the university’s Carolina First fundraising campaign. Tom Uhlman (M.S. ’71, Ph.D. ’75) was one of Richardson’s first doctoral students and has made a lead gift of $120,000 to the professorship. Uhlman recalled that during difficult times as a graduate student, Richardson’s door was always open. “My most trying circumstance was discovering that the dissertation topic I had been pursuing for nearly a year was already being written by another student at Johns Hopkins,” said Uhlman, managing partner of New Venture Partners LLC in Murray Hill, N.J. “I was shattered and turned to Dick for advice and counsel. The ultimate result was a dissertation that won the prize as the best U.S. doctoral thesis in the field of law — ironically the same prize that Dick had won for his thesis.” Former student Darlene Walker Redman (Ph.D. ’73) said Richardson is fond of saying that the best job in the university is teaching, even after having been political science department chair and provost. “With his great sense of fun, quick wit and wonderful storytelling ability, he delighted students in the classroom,” said Redman of N. Darlene Walker & Associates ABOVE: Dick Richardson mentoring students. LEFT: The former political science professor at home in the classroom. BELOW: Richardson with his granddaughter, Ava Leigh Loeffler, a future Tar Heel. LLP in Houston, Texas. “He was the quintessential professor and his subject was life.” Richardson joined the Carolina faculty in 1969 and won a number of top teaching awards. He served as provost from 1995 to 2000. In November 2005, the UNC Board of Trustees presented Richardson with the prestigious William R. Davie Award, recognizing his extraordinary service to the university. It is the highest honor bestowed by the trustees. • To support the Richardson professorship, contact Kim Goodstein in the Arts and Sciences Foundation at (919)843-3919, mail to: kim.goodstein@unc.edu. The Richard J. Richardson Distinguished Professorship in Political Science has been established to recognize the beloved professor and administrator’s four decades of service to Carolina. [ ] CAROLINA ARTS & SCIENCES • WINTER 2006 • 29 $5 million gift creates Phillips Ambassador scholarships By Claire Cusick HIGHLIGHTS CAROLINA ARTS & SCIENCES • SPRING 23 Earl N. “Phil” Phillips, Jr. (BSBA ’62) has pledged $5 million to create the Phillips Ambassadors Program in the College of Arts and Sciences. This pledge represents the largest gift to the university earmarked for study abroad programs. The endowment fund aims to provide scholarships for up to 50 undergraduates per year to participate in College-approved summer or full semester study abroad programs in Asia, with preference given to China and India. A quarter of the scholarships will be reserved for qualified undergraduate business majors and minors. Recipients, named Phillips Ambassadors, will be selected by a committee chaired by the director of study abroad and including representatives from the College of Arts and Sciences and UNC’s Kenan-Flagler Business School. This program augments Carolina’s long-standing leadership in providing international experiences for its undergraduates. Almost 37 percent of Chapel Hill students study abroad before receiving their degrees, a higher percentage than any other major public research university in the United States, according to the latest report by the Institute of International Education. “We are grateful to Phil Phillips for this gift, which will significantly expand study abroad opportunities for our students and for his long-time leadership and support of international studies at Carolina,” said Bernadette Gray-Little, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. “Private funds for scholarships are critical so that all UNC students have the opportunity to have meaningful international experiences as preparation for leadership in a global society.” The gift is only the latest contribution to international studies by Phillips, former United States Ambassador to the Eastern Caribbean and successful High Point businessman. In 1992, he established the Earl N. Phillips, Jr. Professorship in International Studies to help attract outstanding undergraduate teachers. He served as International Executive in Residence at the Kenan-Flagler Business School in 2003-2004. He received Kenan-Flagler’s Global Leadership Award in 2001 and the university’s William R. Davie Award in 1995. Phillips has more than 35 years of international business experience. He retired in 2000 as chairman and CEO of GE Capital First Factors Corporation, a High Point asset-based lending company he co-founded in 1972. Phillips also served as head of Phillips Interests, Inc. and Showplace, real estate and home furnishings showroom management companies, both key components of the International Home Furnishings Market headquartered in High Point. Phillips said he hopes his gift will allow UNC undergraduate students to explore other countries. “International travel is one of life’s great educational experiences,” he said. He credits his parents with providing him with this opportunity when they traveled the world when he was a teenager. “That opened my eyes to the world, and I have been traveling and exploring ever since,” he said. “I want Carolina undergraduates to experience that same thing.” Phillips’ family has embraced his international interests. His daughter, Courtney Phillips Hyder ’96, spent a semester at sea while a Carolina undergraduate, and his son, Jordan Phillips ’04 participated in a study abroad program in Spain and now works for a venture firm in Hong Kong. Phillips also credits Kenan Institute Director John D. Kasarda, who encouraged Phillips — while a member of UNC’s Board of Trustees — to visit Asia. As a businessman, Phillips said he immediately saw a booming market for goods and services as well as investment opportunities based on the region’s position as a low-cost supplier to the rest of the world. “The 21st century belongs to Asia,” Phillips said. “Hopefully, this gift will stimulate students to spend their study abroad experiences focused on the future — Asia.” Phillips served two terms as chairman of UNC’s Board of Trustees and served as a member of the UNC Endowment Board for 16 years. The North Carolina General Assembly appointed him to a four-year term on the Board of Governors overseeing the 16 campuses of the UNC system. In 1999-2000, Phillips chaired the North Carolina Citizens for Business and Industry and was co-chair of North Carolinians for Educational Opportunity 2000, which led and promoted the successful $3.2 billion referendum for capital improvements at UNC system schools and the state’s community colleges. • ABOVE: Alumnus Phil Phillips This pledge represents the largest gift to the university earmarked for study [ abroad programs. ] 24 • SPRING 2006 • CAROLINA ARTS & SCIENCES HIGHLIGHTS Sonja’s Story: Holocaust reparation funds support Jewish studies professorship By Dee Reid Sonja van der Horst was still a teen when the Nazis invaded Poland, executed her father and sister, sent her mother to die at a concentration camp, and began the systematic elimination of 18,000 Jews in her hometown. She survived the Holocaust by assuming false identities and working under Nazi watch in German labor camps. After the war, Sonja and her husband, Johannes (Hans) van der Horst, immigrated to the United States and spent their lives supporting organizations that promote public education, civil rights, religious freedom and Jewish culture. Hans, a chemical engineer who was fluent in seven languages, died in 1978. Last fall, Sonja, nearly 82, learned that she had a brain tumor. It was time to decide what more she could do with the Holocaust reparation funds she had collected and invested since the early 1960s. She wanted to establish a distinguished professorship at Carolina to be filled by an expert in Jewish history and culture, enhancing knowledge of the culture that Hitler had tried to destroy. In January, as Sonja’s illness was advancing, her grown children acted quickly to fulfill her wish. Charles van der Horst, a professor of medicine at Carolina; Roger van der Horst, an education editor at The News and Observer in Raleigh; alumna Jacqueline van der Horst Sergent ’82 MPH, a health promotion coordinator at the Granville Vance District Health Department in Oxford, N.C.; and Tatjana Schwendinger, chief administrative judge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in St. Louis, established the JMA and Sonja van der Horst Distinguished Professorship in Jewish Studies in honor of their parents. The family’s gift qualifies for matching funds from the state endowment trust funds. UNC’s College of Arts and Sciences will conduct a search to fill the position with a scholar whose teaching and research will contribute to the work of the Carolina Center for Jewish Studies. “My parents were always interested in public education and religious and racial tolerance,” said Charles van der Horst. “It is fitting to honor them through this distinguished professorship at the Carolina Center for Jewish Studies, where the teaching and study of Jewish history and culture is flourishing at a leading public university committed to providing a first-rate education to a diverse student body.” “We’re deeply moved that the family has chosen to honor Hans and Sonja van der Horst in this manner,” said Jonathan Hess, director of the Carolina Center for Jewish Studies, established in 2003. “Close to 1,000 undergraduates enroll in Jewish studies courses at Carolina each year, and student interest in Jewish history and culture is clearly on the rise. The Van der Horst Professorship will enable us to recruit another leader in the field to teach at UNC, bringing us closer to our goal of creating a Jewish studies program with national prominence.” Sonja van der Horst was born Chaya Eichenbaum Teichholz on Dec. 16, 1923 in Tarnopol, Poland. The Nazis entered the town on July 2, 1941 and killed 5,000 Jews in one week alone. After her family was destroyed, Chaya hid under a series of false identities, the last being Sonja Tarasowa. She eventually boarded a train carrying non- Jewish workers to labor sites in Germany, where she worked at a coal mine, a lumber yard and a farm. At the end of the war, she served as a translator for the English forces. Johannes Martinus Arnold van der Horst was born Sept. 22, 1918 in the Netherlands. He fought the Nazis in the Dutch Army and served as a scout with the U.S. armed forces invasion of southern France in 1944. At the end of the war, he worked for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration and met Sonja when he took Russian lessons from her. In the summer of 1945, the Soviets began the forced repatriation of displaced persons to their countries of origin. English friends agreed to hide Sonja. When she told Hans her story, he asked her to marry him. Sonja and Hans were wed in the Netherlands that year and left for the United States in 1952, eventually settling in Olean, N.Y. • To learn more about Sonja and Hans van der Horst and the Carolina Center for Jewish Studies, see www.sonjavanderhorst.org and ccjs.unc.edu. ABOVE: Sonja and Hans van der Horst at their wedding, Oct. 11, 1945. “Close to 1,000 undergraduates enroll in Jewish studies courses at Carolina each year, and student interest in Jewish history and culture is clearly on the rise. The Van der Horst Professorship will enable us to recruit another leader in the field to teach at UNC, bringing us closer to our goal of creating a Jewish studies program with national prominence.” [ — Jonathan Hess ] Music Building breaks ground this year Herbert Hoover was in the White House and Frank Porter Graham presided over the university when the music department moved to its current home in Hill Hall in 1930. The student population has increased nine-fold since then. Music majors have tripled in the last decade, and the public now flocks to more than 100 performances a year in Hill Hall. With demand for teaching, learning and performance space greater than ever, it is past time for a new music facility. University trustees have approved plans for the Carolina Music Building, with an official groundbreaking set for later this year. The new, 100,000 square-foot building will be constructed in two phases, with the first part funded by $19.8 million in revenues from state higher-education bonds and $4 million in private gifts to be raised through the College of Arts & Sciences. The building is designed by Michael Dennis and Associates of Boston, whose portfolio includes major facilities at the University of California at Santa Barbara, Syracuse University and Carnegie Mellon University, and the new performing-arts complex at Emory University. Plans for the new Music Building call for a three-story traditional red brick structure to anchor the new Arts Common at the northwest entrance to campus, replacing Abernethy Hall and the Swain parking lot. Phase 1a will create a U-shaped building surrounding a courtyard and will provide studios, classrooms and a rehearsal room large enough for an orchestra and The Marching Tar Heels. Phase 1b will add a concert hall, classrooms and small rehearsal rooms. Unlike existing facilities in Memorial Hall, Gerrard Hall and the historical PlayMakers Theatre, the new Music Building will include a 650-seat concert hall with adjustable acoustical treatment, appropriate for a range of performances from solo recitals to a full symphony orchestra. The structure will also include a new recital organ, replacing the one that was installed in Hill Hall in the 1930s. Hill Hall was originally constructed in 1907 as the campus library. When Wilson Library was completed in 1929, the music department moved into the old library space. A combination of state funds and a major gift from John Sprunt Hill, class of 1889, supported the addition of an auditorium and organ. By 1956, Hill Hall had become so crowded that the university erected barrack-type structures south of the building, which was expanded again in 1963. Carolina’s music library, the most extensive collection in the South, was housed in the basement of Hill Hall until 2003, when concerns about moisture resulted in a move to Wilson Library. Once the new Music Building is complete, the next phase will involve demolishing the 1960s addition to Hill Hall, restoring the original structure and extending it for a new library of music and fine arts. At that point, one of the nation’s finest music collections will be returned to its newly renovated historic home in Hill Hall. • To learn more about making a gift to the Carolina Music Building, contact Emily Stevens, emily.stevens@unc.edu, (919) 843-5285. HIGHLIGHTS $3.9 million awarded for “nano” cancer research The National Cancer Institute has awarded UNC $3.9 million to establish an interdisciplinary center to harness developments in nanotechnology, a process using microscopic particles to improve cancer diagnostics, imaging and therapy, and to create new jobs in North Carolina. The Carolina Center of Cancer Nanotechnology Excellence, based in the Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, will involve a range of medical and science faculty, including three in the College of Arts and Sciences: • Joseph DeSimone, William R. Kenan Jr. distinguished professor of chemistry and chemical engineering at UNC and N.C. State University, is developing “smart” nanoparticles designed to deliver drugs to targeted cell types in the body. • Otto Zhou, Lyle Jones distinguished professor of physics and materials science, is developing a medical X-ray imaging methodology based on pulsed nanofibers, designed to provide earlier detection of tumors. • J. Michael Ramsey, Minnie N. Goldby distinguished professor of chemistry, is working on “nanofluidics” devices, perhaps more easily understood as “labs on a chip.” Using this technology, a machine the size of a playing card would be able to analyze one drop of blood and have almost instantaneous results on a vast array of blood measurements. CAROLINA ARTS & SCIENCES • SPRING 2006 • 25 26 • SPRING 2006 • CAROLINA ARTS & SCIENCES HIGHLIGHTS Undergraduates interested in exploring Christian traditions and their varied influences on culture and society throughout history can choose a new interdisciplinary academic minor in the College. The minor in Christianity and Culture is thought to be the first of its kind at a public university. Michael Piller’s next generation Hollywood lost an artistic force and Carolina an alumnus and friend with the death in November of writer/producer Michael Piller. He was best known for creating more than 500 hours of compelling stories for “Star Trek,” the most successful franchise in television history. Piller ended a battle with cancer at age 57, but his legacy carries on through UNC’s writing for the screen and stage program, which he helped to launch with a $500,000 gift. The College has established the Michael Piller Distinguished Professorship Fund in his memory to attract outstanding mentors for future generations. “Michael had more integrity than just about anyone I have ever met,” said Rick Berman, executive producer of the Star Trek series. “His passion for writing and his ability to recognize and nurture talent in others never faltered.” Piller was born in Port Chester, N.Y., and graduated from Carolina in 1970 with a bachelor’s degree in radio, television and motion pictures. “I saw the world change around me through the most creative environment you could ever ask for,” he said of his undergraduate days in Chapel Hill. “I had the experience of being introduced to an extraordinarily wide section of people, many of whom have shown up in my work in alien disguises. He started out as a broadcast journalist and won two Emmy Awards for his work at CBS affiliate, WBBM-TV in Chicago. Unhappy in the news business, he moved to Los Angeles and began writing and producing for television including, “Cagney and Lacey,” “Simon and Simon” and “Miami Vice.” In 1989 he boarded the Starship Enterprise early in the third season of “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” eventually be-coming head writer and executive producer of the series, which aired until 1994. Piller co-created, produced and syndicated “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine” from 1992 to 1995, and “Star Trek Voyager” from 1994 to 1996. He also wrote the 1998 film, “Star Trek: Insurrection,” the ninth movie in the Star Trek series. In 1999, he and his son Shawn formed a production company, Piller2, responsible for the TV show, “The Dead Zone,” (based on the Stephen King novel), which debuted in 2002 and remains on the air. “Because Michael gave a start to, and mentored, many of today’s top TV writers, it is only fitting that we create this professorship in his name so that those of us here can continue his legacy,” said David Sontag, the Wesley Wallace distinguished professor and director of the writing for the screen and stage program. • Donations may be made to the Michael Piller Distinguished Professorship through the Arts and Sciences Foundation, 134 E. Franklin St., Chapel Hill, N.C. 27514. “Our curriculum is designed not to influence or change students’ religious faith or practice, but to enhance their knowledge of the role of Christianity over time,” said Christian Smith, co-director of the minor and Stuart Chapin distinguished professor of sociology. To complete requirements for the minor, students must choose five courses from more than 40 offerings, including an introductory survey course; a course in ancient, medieval or early modern Christianity; and a course on Christianity in the modern world. Classes must be taken from at least two different departments, and students may receive permission to count other relevant classes, A new minor in Christianity and Culture ABOVE: Michael Piller, wearing his Carolina cap on a Hollywood set. “I saw the world change around me through the most creative environment you could ever ask for. I had the experience of being introduced to an extraordinarily wide section of people, many of whom have shown up in my work in alien disguises.” [ — Michael Piller ] HIGHLIGHTS CAROLINA ARTS & SCIENCES • SPRING 2006 • 27 London center has historic ties The College’s new international hub in London has historic ties to Great Britain and Carolina. Purchased in September, the European Study Center in Winston House is the first academic facility owned by UNC abroad. The $5 million center is being financed with private funds, including a $1 million lead gift from alumnus James H. Winston ’55 and his wife Mary, of Jacksonville, Fla., to name the building in honor of the Winston family and their deep connections to Carolina and England. The European Study Center in Winston House will serve the Honors Program in London and be open to students, faculty, programs and alumni from all parts of the university. The 4,400 square-foot building is located at Bedford Square — the oldest remaining complete Georgian garden square in the city — in historic Bloomsbury, a neighborhood that has long been associated with literature, art and learning. Beginning with Patrick Henry Winston in 1844, six generations of the family have been Carolina students and leaders. Robert Watson Winston, class of 1879, was an attorney, judge, historian and author who wrote extensively on national and international affairs. His son, Robert Watson Winston, Jr. (Jim Winston’s father) was captain of the football team and a track star at Carolina. He graduated in 1912, studied at the Sorbonne and served in France during World War I; the family established a distinguished professorship in his honor at Carolina in 1986. George Tayloe Winston served as university president from 1891 to 1895, an important period of growth when the faculty doubled in size and the student body nearly tripled. James Horner Winston, class of 1904, was the first Carolina student to win the prestigious Rhodes Scholarship to study at Oxford University in Great Britain. And of course it is his namesake whose gift launched the purchase of the London building, which will now serve future generations of Tar Heels. “The Winston Family has been involved for many generations with our great university, and we are pleased to play a small part in its future global expansion beginning with the European Study Center,” Jim Winston ’55 said. The family continues to be engaged in university affairs. Jim Winston has served on the Board of Visitors, the General Alumni Association and the Arts and Sciences Foundation Board. His son, James Winston, Jr., a psychologist practicing in Miami, graduated from Carolina with a B.A. in 1981 and a Ph.D. in 1991. He also received a master’s degree from Oxford University. ABOVE: Robert Watson Winston (class of 1879), second from right, and his children, from left: James Horner Winston (class of 1904), Amy Winston Carr, Robert Watson Winston, Jr. (class of 1912) and Gertrude Winston Webb. Charles Winston ’53 (Jim’s brother) has served as a member of the university’s Board of Visitors and as chair of the General Alumni Association and the N.C. Educational Foundation. He and his wife, Flo, have also served on the Arts and Sciences Foundation Board. In 2004, the university awarded him the William Richardson Davie Award for extraordinary service. His son, Robert Watson Winston III, class of 1984, serves on the university’s Board of Trustees. The European Study Center in Winston House is in the heart of London, convenient to the British Museum and Library and to King’s College London, where UNC recently launched a multi-level exchange program for undergraduates, graduate students and faculty. About $3.2 million has been raised for the center so far, as part of the Carolina First fundraising campaign. • independent study and study abroad. A Distinguished Speaker Series will bring renowned scholars to campus each year to speak on topics related to the influences of Christianity on society and society on Christianity. The curriculum draws on the strengths of UNC faculty in many disciplines, including: art history, classics, philosophy, political science, religious studies and sociology. Smith
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Full Text | E Y E S I N T H E S K Y Stellar mentoring and an astronomical discovery T H E U N I V E R S I T Y O F N O R T H C A R O L I N A A T C H A P E L H I L L I N S I D E : B a s k e t b a l l M e m o i r • S o u t h e r n L i t C e n t r a l • R a n g o o n R e n d e z v o u s • G r e e k s G i v e B a c k S P R I N G • 2 0 0 6 a r t s & s c i e n c e s C A R O L I N A T H E C O L L E G E O F A R T S & S C I E N C E S • Bernadette Gray-Little Dean • William Andrews ’70MA, ’73 PhD Senior Associate Dean, Fine Arts and Humanities • Bruce Carney Senior Associate Dean, Sciences • Arne Kalleberg Senior Associate Dean, Social Sciences • Tammy McHale Senior Associate Dean, Finance and Planning • James W. May Senior Associate Dean, Program Development, Executive Director, Arts & Sciences Foundation • Bobbi Owen Senior Associate Dean, Undergraduate Education Arts & Sciences Foundation Board of Directors • James G. Kenan III ’68, Lexington, KY, Chair • Willard J. Overlock ’68, Greenwich, CT, Vice-Chair • Bernadette Gray-Little, Chapel Hill, NC, President • James W. May Jr., Chapel Hill, NC, Secretary • James L. Alexandre ’79, London • Derek S. Allison ’98, Charlotte, NC • Ivan V. Anderson Jr. ’61, Charleston, SC • William L. Andrews, ’70MA, ’73 PhD, Chapel Hill, NC • Vicki U. Craver ’92, Cos Cob, CT • Archie H. Davis ’64, Savannah, GA • Robin Richards Donohoe ’87, San Francisco, CA • Gail Fearing ’66, Chapel Hill, NC • Alan Feduccia, Chapel Hill, NC • David G. Frey ’64, ’67 JD, Grand Rapids, MI • Molly D. Froelich ‘83, Charlotte, NC • William T. Hobbs II ’85, Charlotte, NC • Lynn B. Janney ’70, Butler, MD • Matthew G. Kupec ’80, Chapel Hill, NC • Sallie A. McMillion ’59, Greensboro, NC • Catherine Bryson Moore ‘90, Santa Monica, CA • Paula R. Newsome ’77, Charlotte, NC • G. Kennedy Thompson ’73, Charlotte, NC • S. Thompson Tygart ’62, Jacksonville, FL • Thomas M. Uhlman, ’75 PhD, Murray Hill, NJ • Ralph Hanes Womble ’76, Winston-Salem, NC • Michael Zimmerman ’75, New York, NY Reaching for the stars Carolina is a stellar place to be these days, with many exciting developments in the College of Arts and Sciences. We take you into space in this issue of Carolina Arts & Sciences for a story on astronomy scholar and mentor Dan Reichart and undergraduate student Josh Haislip. Using our state-of-the-art telescope technology, Haislip, graduate student Melissa Nysewander and Reichart documented the oldest known explosion in the universe — the afterglow of a gamma ray burst, 12.8 billion years old. We also share news about the opening of the Southern African Large Telescope (SALT), the largest diameter telescope in the Southern Hemisphere, in which UNC is a partner. And we update you on the progress of the Carolina Physical Science Complex — the biggest construction project in the university’s history — as well as plans for our new Music Building, both of which are being funded by a combination of N.C. bond revenues and private funds. You’ll read more out-of-this-world news on the international front. For the third consecutive year, Carolina sent a higher percentage of students abroad than any other public research university, thanks in part to expanded scholarships for international studies made possible by private funds. Carolina alum Earl N. “Phil” Phillips (BSBA ’62) has pledged $5 million to the College to create The Phillips Ambassadors Program, the largest ever gift for study abroad scholarships. The endowment will provide support for up to 50 undergraduate students a year to study in Asia. In other international updates, we feature a story on the historic family ties of our new European Study Center in Winston House in the heart of London. Political science professor Andrew Reynolds takes us behind the scenes as he travels under the radar in Burma. Reynolds traces the complex road to democracy around the world. It’s been an amazing year for our English Department. Four creative writing faculty swept the top North Carolina literary awards. We continue to build on our strengths in Southern and African American literature with the hiring of Kenan Eminent Professor Minrose Gwin. This completes a star-power quartet of editors of The Literature of the American South: A Norton Anthology, now all under one roof at Carolina. You’ll also read about the first “Greek” professorship at Carolina and quite possibly in the country — gifted philosophy scholar C.D.C. “David” Reeve was named the Delta Kappa Epsilon Professor. Other Greek organizations have similar campaigns under way to fund distinguished professorships, including Phi Delta Theta and Delta Delta Delta. We share stories of our inspiring alumni — Ph.D. grad Beth Stevens, vice president of Disney’s Animal Kingdom, and undergraduate alum Jonathan Reckford, the new CEO of Habitat for Humanity International. Our current students continue to amaze us as well. In this issue you will meet our newest Marshall and Rhodes scholars and read the work of student poets in Michael Chitwood’s class. Finally, a special treat for “March madness”— an excerpt from English professor Fred Hobson’s new memoir, recalling his experience as a walk-on player for Carolina’s freshman basketball team in 1961. These and other achievements highlighted in the magazine would not be possible without the support of alumni and friends, for which we are thankful. They show us how to reach for the stars. Bernadette Gray-Little, Dean FROM THE DEAN F R O M T H E D E A N Carolina Arts & Sciences • Spring 2006 Photo by Will Owens F E AT U R E S 8 • Up Late With the Universe Stellar mentoring pays off with an unprecedented discovery for astronomer Dan Reichart and undergrad Josh Haislip 13 • Rangoon Under the Radar Political scientist Andy Reynolds traces the complex road to democracy in Burma 16 • Southern Lit Central Four leading anthology editors found their way to Carolina 20 • Greeks Give Back C.D.C. “David” Reeve is named the DKE professor, a first for UNC Cover photo: Professor Dan Reichart (left) and undergrad Josh Haislip gaze at the night sky atop the physics and astronomy department’s Morehead Observatory dome. (Photo by Steve Exum) CONTENTS CAROLINA ARTS & SCIENCES • SPRING 2006 • 1 13 8 16 TA BL E OF C ON T E N T S Carolina Arts & Sciences • Spring 2006 DE P A R T ME N T S inside front cover FROM THE DEAN Reaching for the stars 2 HIGH ACHIEVERS Creative writing faculty sweep top North Carolina literary awards, Andy Griffith goes to Washington, Time magazine recognizes heroes of global health, meet our Marshall and Rhodes scholars, and more 7 IN THE CLASSROOM Jocelyn Neal’s class is a window into rural American culture and history 22 HIGHLIGHTS Earl Phillips gives the largest ever gift to study abroad, Holocaust reparations support Jewish studies, the new Carolina Music Building breaks ground this year, Michael Piller’s next generation, and more 28 PROFILES Jonathan Reckford ’84 is Habitat for Humanity’s new CEO; Beth Stevens Ph.D. ’87 manages her own wild kingdom at Disney 30 COLLEGE BOOKSHELF English professor Fred Hobson recalls his days as a freshman “walk-on” for the Tar Heels, plus notes about new books from across the arts and sciences 32 FINAL POINT Poems from Michael Chitwood’s “Introduction to Poetry” class focus on “Where I’m From” former North Carolina poet laureate Fred Chappell); Shapiro won in 2002; and Michael Chitwood in 2003. Students may not know about the creative writing faculty’s award-winning history, but they do notice that their teachers are engaged and inspired about the art and craft of writing, Simpson said. “Our faculty’s passionate engagement, which comes from being deeply involved not only in their work but also in the affairs of the world of that work, puts real power and depth into classroom teaching,” he said. “And that’s our reason for being, what we’re all about.” A teacher in the program since 1982, Simpson has written both fiction and nonfiction and is a musician and songwriter. His books include Heart of the Country: A Novel of Southern Music, The Great Dismal: A Carolinian’s Swamp Memoir, The Mystery of Beautiful Nell Cropsey: A Nonfiction Novel, Into the Sound Country: A Carolinian’s Coastal Plain and Ghost Ship of Diamond Shoals: The Mystery of the Carroll A. Deering. Since 1986, he has been a member of the Tony Award-winning string band, The Red Clay Ramblers. Kenan writes both fiction and nonfiction. His 1992 collection of stories, Let the Dead Bury Their Dead, won a Lambda Literary Award in 1993. The collection was nominated for the Los Angeles Times Book Award for Fiction, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and among The New York Times Notable Books. Walking on Water: Black American Lives at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century was nominated for the Southern Book Award in 1999. Shapiro’s Tantalus in Love explores life, The state’s highest arts awards coming to creative writing at Carolina at the same time — it’s truly amazing and humbling, too. — Bland Simpson ( ) HIGH ACHIEVERS 2 • SPRING 2006 • CAROLINA ARTS & SCIENCES H I G H A C H I E V E R S Kudos for Creative Writing English faculty sweep literary honors By Kim Weaver Spurr ’88 One might be tempted to think that something’s in the water at Greenlaw. The English department’s creative writing faculty swept four top state literary honors in the month of November alone. Bland Simpson and Randall Kenan won North Carolina Awards, the state’s highest civilian honor, on Nov. 21. Just three days earlier, Alan Shapiro and Lawrence Naumoff received North Carolina Book Awards for poetry and fiction. “It’s not unusual to have someone garner a major prize in a given year. But the state’s highest arts awards coming to creative writing at Carolina at the same time — it’s truly amazing and humbling, too,” said Simpson, who is director of the creative writing program. “To say we’re thrilled is to engage in rampant understatement.” The North Carolina Awards, coordinated by the Department of Cultural Resources, recognize outstanding lifetime achievements in fine arts, science, literature and public service. Simpson received the award for fine arts and Kenan for literature. The North Carolina Literary and Historical Association presented the Roanoke- Chowan Award for Poetry to Shapiro for Tantalus in Love and the Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction to Naumoff for A Southern Tragedy, in Crimson and Yellow. At the book awards dinner, novelist and short story writer Jill McCorkle, a creative writing alumna, also was honored with the R. Hunt Parker Award for Literary Achievement. Creative writing faculty have an amazing track record when it comes to the state’s top poetry award; they’ve landed the Roanoke- Chowan Award five times in the last six years. UNC’s Margaret “Peggy” Rabb won in 2000; Michael McFee in 2001 (in a tie with jealousy, lust and romantic abandon. The New York Times Book Review called the book “touching and intelligent … and [an] eloquent testimony to the power of poetry.” Shapiro has written eight poetry collections plus works of criticism and two memoirs. The Dead Alive and Busy won the 2001 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award for emerging poets. Naumoff’s Southern Tragedy, a novel that sprung from the 1991 fatal chicken plant fire in Hamlet, N.C., captures the horror and pathos of a community tragedy and the economic downturn and mistrust that led to it. The work departs from the style of previous novels, which The New York Times has called “laugh-aloud funny.” Taller Women: A Cautionary Tale, was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year in 1992. His other novels are The Night of the Weeping Women, Rootie Kazootie, Silk Hope, NC and A Plan for Women. “What’s amazing to me is that our faculty are frequently out and about, reading and performing in major venues and festivals across the state and around the country — while publishing top flight work right along,” Simpson added. • LEFT to RIGHT: Bland Simpson (front), Alan Shapiro, Randall Kenan and Lawrence Naumoff. Photo by Steve Exum HIGH ACHIEVERS “HEROES OF GLOBAL HEALTH” HONORED BY TIME MAGAZINE • It all began when one undergraduate, Rye Barcott, traveled to Nairobi on a Burch Fellowship to learn firsthand about the challenges facing young people in Kibera, the largest slum in east Africa. He was stunned by the ethnic violence and poverty, but after talking with youth leaders there, saw a way for them to help themselves. Barcott continued to study Kibera for an undergraduate research project, and proposed the creation of a community-based nonprofit organization that would fund and develop recreational and health programs for youth there. Carolina for Kibera (CFK), co-founded in 2001 by Carolina students and Kibera youth leaders, was recognized in November by Time magazine at a New York City summit honoring 10 “Heroes of Global Health.” Actress Glenn Close introduced each honoree. With a budget of less than $100,000 a year, CFK administers four main projects: a youth sports organization sponsoring 200 soccer teams serving 5,000 boys and girls and engaging them in community service; a health clinic providing primary, obstetric and pediatric care; a program where girls address a range of challenges such as domestic violence, rape, HIV, early marriage and inadequate MARSHALL SCHOLAR BOUND FOR LONDON • Senior Jud Campbell turned curiosity about his family tree into published research, a law-firm job and a genealogy consulting business. We can’t wait to see what he will do with his 2006 Marshall Scholarship for graduate study in Great Britain. The mathematics and political science major from Blacksburg, Va., said he will pursue two master’s degrees in international relations and political theory at the London School of Economics, then consider law school and work in international law. “Eventually, I would like to enter politics, where I hope to make a positive difference in the lives of people in this country and throughout the world,” Campbell said. After publishing research on his family’s genealogy, Campbell won an undergraduate research fellowship and an international studies grant to research the roots of James Cole Mountflorence, a diplomat in Paris during the French Revolution. Campbell traveled to Nashville, Raleigh, Washington, Boston, Belfast, London and Paris for the research project. “History is invaluable in understanding our place in the world, who we are today, and where we can and ought to go tomorrow,” Campbell said. education; and a solid-waste and recycling program encouraging youth to collect, sell or re-use recyclable materials. Each year, a group of Carolina undergraduates and medical students volunteer with the organization in Kibera. “The secret to CFK’s success is participatory development and the understanding that residents of Kibera have the solutions to solve their own problems,” said Barcott, who graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 2001 with a degree in peace, war and defense. He is serving as a captain in the U.S. Marine Corps in Al Anbar Province, Iraq. Kim Chapman ’00, who chairs CFK’s board of directors, accepted the honor at the summit. On campus, CFK is based in the University Center for International Studies. The Burch Fellowship Program is made possible by a gift from alumnus Lucius Burch III. BELOW: Youth league soccer players in Kibera. CAROLINA ARTS & SCIENCES • SPRING 2006 • 3 RHODES SCHOLAR OUT OF THIS WORLD • Kate Harris checked off a long list of eye-popping achievements before she graduated from Carolina in December with a major in biology and a minor in geology. The aspiring astronaut and scientist from Georgetown, Ontario spent two weeks as the youngest researcher ever at the Mars Desert Research Station in Utah; explored Alaska, Antarctica, Malaysia and Mongolia; ran two marathons; bicycled across the United States; and won a full four-year Morehead Scholarship to UNC. In November, she added a Rhodes Scholarship to the list. The prestigious award for outstanding academic merit will finance her graduate study at Oxford University in Great Britain. “We have landed humans on the moon and deployed robots to other planets. I hope someday to explore those same extraterrestrial frontiers.” She has set her long-term sights on another trip — to outer space. “We have landed humans on the moon and deployed robots to other planets,” Harris said. “I hope someday to explore those same extraterrestrial frontiers.” Harris began exploring the night sky by telescope as a child. At UNC she founded SpaceTalk, a student group that presents astronauts and others as lecturers, hosts observatory sessions and gives educational talks at secondary schools. Since sophomore year, she worked on NASA-funded research in the microbial ecology lab of Andreas Teske, associate professor of marine sciences. Last year she conducted research on the polar ice cap in Antarctica, tested her samples at the Byrd Polar Research Center in Ohio and presented her findings at the Geological Society of America’s annual meeting in Salt Lake City. During her sophomore year, she led a 300-mile backpacking trip in Mongolia where she helped an environmental group observe native wild horses, track wolves and survey the wildlife population in the Gobi Desert. She was awarded an American Society for Microbiology undergraduate research fellowship and a NASA Alaska Space Grant scholarship for the summer of 2004, when she would traverse 200 miles of the Juneau Icefield on cross-country skis, studying glaciers along the way. GRADUATE STUDENT WINS FORD FOUNDATION FELLOWSHIP • Jennifer Taylor, a Ph.D. candidate in biology, won a Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship, one of only 35 awarded nationally, to support her groundbreaking work on skeletal support systems of crabs. The fellowship is given by the National Research Council of the National Academies. Crabs have a rigid external skeleton which must be shed in order to grow to a larger size, a process called molting, Taylor said. “My research shows that crabs actually alternate between the rigid skeleton and a hydrostatic skeleton, which is common in soft-bodied animals such as worms,” she said. “This is the first demonstration of an animal that switches between two different skeletons. It opens a lot of doors to our understanding of how skeletons function and evolve.” Taylor also received The Sequoyah Dissertation Fellowship and was invited for membership into the Royster Society of Fellows, both through the UNC Graduate School. Membership in the society is the highest honor awarded by the Graduate School. Society fellows act as ambassadors for graduate education both within and beyond the university. PUKKILA ELECTED FELLOW OF NATIONAL SCIENCE ASSOCIATION • Patricia Pukkila, the founding director of undergraduate research and an associate professor of biology, was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Pukkila was recognized for her work in genetics and her leadership in promoting undergraduate education and research. AAAS publishes the journal, Science, which has the largest paid circulation of any peer-reviewed general science journal in the world. The list of 2005 fellows appeared in the Oct. 28 issue. Pukkila joined the UNC faculty in 1979. She has received both a Tanner Award and a Bowman and Gordon Gray Associate professorship for excellence in undergraduate teaching. The Office of Undergraduate Research has helped to expand opportunities for active, mentored research experiences for undergraduates, both inside and outside the classroom. Pukkila’s research focuses on the genetic basis of chromosome behavior during meiosis — the type of cell division by which germ cells (eggs and sperm) are produced. Kate Harris (above), Patricia Pukkila (right) 4 • SPRING 2006 • CAROLINA ARTS & SCIENCES HIGH ACHIEVERS ( ) CAROLINA ARTS & SCIENCES • SPRING 2006 • 5 HIGH ACHIEVERS ANDY GRIFFITH GOES TO WASHINGTON • Aunt Bea would have been proud. Andy Griffith, the long-revered television star and a UNC alumnus, received the Presidential Medal of Freedom at a White House ceremony in November. “Already today I’ve met with the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, the Dalai Lama — and the Sheriff of Mayberry,” said President George W. Bush, drawing a laugh as he honored the Mt. Airy native who starred in “The Andy Griffith Show” and “Matlock.” “Andy Griffith first came to the people’s attention with his gift for storytelling,” said the President, “and his own life is a mighty fine story by itself.” Griffith graduated from UNC in 1949 with a B.A degree in music. He was president of the Glee Club and a member of the Carolina Playmakers and the music fraternity, Phi Mu Alpha. He gave his first public theatrical performance in Memorial Hall. He received his first taste of national attention as a comedian, recording monologues such as, “What It Was – Was Football,” a hilarious explanation of the gridiron game. That led to a 1953 appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” followed by a starring role in the hit Broadway play and subsequent film, “No Time for Sergeants.” “The Andy Griffith Show” ran for eight years and continues to entertain old fans and new ones in re-runs. Griffith never forgot his alma mater. He and his wife established the Andy and Cindi Griffith Scholarship in the departments of dramatic art and music in the College of Arts and Sciences. He served as the honorary chair of the committee that helped raise more than $5 million for the renovation of Memorial Hall. When the historic hall re-opened in September, Griffith received a Carolina Performing Arts Lifetime Achievement Award for his contribution to the arts and the university. In September, Griffith announced plans to donate his personal collection of manuscripts, recordings, footage and other memorabilia to the university’s Southern Historical Collection in Wilson Library. O’NEILL WINS BRITISH PRIZE IN MEDIEVAL STUDIES • English professor Patrick O’Neill was awarded the Sir Israel Gollancz Memorial Prize by the British Academy for his valuable contributions to medieval studies. The prize is one of the highest honors in the field. O’Neill was recognized for his 2001 book, King Alfred’s Old English Prose Translation of the First Fifty Psalms. He teaches medieval English and Celtic literature and studies the intellectual culture — especially Christian — of the British Isles in the period 600 to 1100 A.D. He is completing a book on cultural relations between early Ireland and Anglo-Saxon England. The British Academy, established in 1902, is the national academy for the humanities and social sciences. The Sir Israel Gollancz Memorial Prize was established in 1924 in memory of the first secretary of the academy, Israel Gollancz. COMPUTER SCIENTIST WINS PACKARD FELLOWSHIP • Marc Pollefeys, associate professor of computer science, was awarded a $625,000 Packard Fellowship in Science and Engineering. Funded by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the fellowships are designed to support innovative researchers early in their careers. Pollefeys’ work contributes to the area of three-dimensional graphic imaging. He plans to use the fellowship to develop algorithms that will enable camera networks to perform a multitude of observation tasks. A member of the UNC faculty since 2002, Pollefeys has published more than 80 scientific papers, helped to organize major conferences and workshops and is on the editorial board of IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, the main scientific journal in his area. Pollefeys is the third UNC recipient of a Packard Fellowship. H. Holden Thorp, Kenan professor of chemistry and department chair, received the award in 1991. James P. Morken, associate professor of chemistry, received the award in 1998. Andy Griffith as a UNC music student (at left) and performing as Sir Walter Raleigh (above center) in “The Lost Colony.” At Carolina, Griffith was president of the Glee Club. Photo courtesy of The N.C. Collection 6 • SPRING 2006 • CAROLINA ARTS & SCIENCES HIGH ACHIEVERS STEGMAN NAMED POLICY DIRECTOR FOR MACARTHUR FOUNDATION • Public Policy expert Michael A. Stegman has been tapped as the lead observer of domestic policy issues at the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, one of the nation’s 10 largest private philanthropic organizations. Stegman is directing the foundation’s Program on Human and Community Development. He translates policy trends and positions program strategies around the issues of affordable housing, community change, mental health, juvenile justice and public education. He also continues in his UNC positions as the Duncan MacRae ’09 and Rebecca Kyle MacRae professor of public policy, planning and business; chairman of the department of public policy; and director of the Center for Community Capitalism at the Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise. Affordable housing is an issue for which Stegman shares a passion and a long-term history. From 1993 to 1997, he served under President Bill Clinton as the assistant secretary for policy development and research at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). He was acting chief of staff at HUD from November 1996 through April 1997. In 1997, The National Journal named him “one of Washington’s 100 most influential decision-makers.” Stegman has written extensively on housing and community development policy and on financial services for the poor. BERGER WINS AWARD FOR BOOK ON WOMEN WITH HIV/AIDS • Michele Tracy Berger, an assistant professor of women’s studies, won a best book award from the American Political Science Association (APSA) for a book she wrote on women with HIV/AIDS. Berger’s book, Workable Sisterhood: The Political Journey of Stigmatized Women with HIV/AIDS, is based on a study of the lives of 16 women – former drug users and sex workers with HIV/AIDS – who became politically active in Detroit. The book explores the barriers of stigma in relation to political participation and demonstrates how stigma can be effectively challenged and redirected. The majority of the women in Berger’s book are African Americans and Latinas. Berger’s book was recognized by the APSA’s section on race, ethnicity and politics. UYENO WINS BEST STUDENT PAPER AWARD • Ted Uyeno, a Ph.D. candidate in biology, received the Best Student Paper Award in his field from the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology. His research on the mechanics of octopus beaks was honored by the Division of Invertebrate Zoology. Uyeno focuses his research on soft marine invertebrate organisms, ranging from large octopuses to sandworms commonly used during pier fishing to flatworms so tiny they live between grains of sand. Octopuses, and their relatives the squid and nautilus, are members of a class of mollusks known as cephalopods. All cephalopods have “beaks” that look like a parrot’s and are used for cracking, cutting and manipulating their food. Uyeno discovered that the beaks do not actually have articulating surfaces between them, but rather the joint is formed of muscle fibers arranged in a special way. “It turns out that octopuses can not only open and close their beaks, but they can swing them from side to side and move them forward and back,” he said. “Their beaks have an incredible range of motion that exceeds those of many articulated jaws.” Uyeno hooked up a machine that functions like a heartbeat monitor to measure the activity of the beak muscles during biting. He said these “muscle articulations” — a term he coined — may be present in the jaws of other “squishy” invertebrates and may one day be of use in human-engineered robotic manipulators. Michael Stegman Photo by Steve Exum Neal, whom I consider a national treasure, the study of country music is being elevated in ways that are long overdue.” Neal teaches music theory, analysis and popular music courses. Her “History of Country Music” class, which attracts undergraduates and graduate students alike, is designed for non-music majors though music majors are allowed to take it for degree credit. Its roots are in a very real sense her roots. In the mountains of northern New Mexico where she grew up “fiddling and playing piano,” the music had strong country flavor. While at Rice University in Texas, where she received a bachelor’s degree in music, she taught country dance classes to earn extra money. A chance question from one of her students triggered deeper thought about rhythm and meter in country music. At the Eastman School of Music, where she earned a Ph.D. in music theory, the basics of country music continued to fascinate her. She chose to focus her dissertation on structure in the songs of country music legend Jimmie Rodgers. For six years Neal has challenged students to understand how country music has influenced and been influenced by everything from politics, race, class and gender to Southern folk life, social movements and big business. She works to keep the course a fresh reflection of “what’s happening in our culture and world,” she said. In just one class, a discussion of the working-class roots of country music as celebrated in Garth Brooks’ “Friends in Low Places” moves seamlessly to the subject of domestic abuse in the Dixie Chicks’ “Goodbye Earl,” inverted gender roles as extolled by Shania Twain in “Man! I Feel Like A Woman,” and the widening of the genre’s appeal by merging traditional country with honky tonk, folk, pop and rock. Neal lectures and tests, of course. She gives assignments to attend area concerts; she invites musicians, songwriters and industry executives to teach for a day (Roger McGuinn from The Byrds visited this fall); and she collaborates with faculty from other parts of the university. She also takes a multimedia approach. In class, she projects statistics and photos on a giant screen and uses her laptop to play portions of songs under discussion. Working with UNC’s librarians, archivists and lawyers, Neal has arranged to make digital music from Carolina’s various collections readily available to her students. Now in the process of creating a virtual version of Music 44 for the Friday Center’s distance learning series, Neal is also preparing to write a country music textbook. “I want students to think of music as something other than background noise in their lives,” she said. “Some students will say flat out, ‘I just don’t like country music.’ That’s OK; they don’t have to like it. What I do hope they see at the end of the course is how this music is a window into a certain part of American culture and history, because that’s what this place, Carolina, is all about. It’s about providing a space to think and grow.” • Photo by Dan Sears CAROLINA ARTS & SCIENCES • SPRING 2006 • 7 IN THE CLASSROOM I N T H E C L A S S R O O M ABOVE: Music professor Jocelyn Neal (right) chats with a student after her “History of Country Music” class. Country Music 101 Course is a window into American culture and history By Lisa H. Towle As Tim Carter, David G. Frey distinguished professor of music, was acquainting himself with Chapel Hill in 2001 he was given a coda of sorts. Casual conversations with student-employees of local shops and restaurants invariably came round to the same question: “So do you know Jocelyn Neal?” That would be assistant professor Jocelyn Neal, a classically trained music theorist who had been teaching at Carolina since 1999. Within a year, she had drawn on her research, life experience, music industry connections and technology skills to create a first-of-its-kind course, the “History of Country Music.” Music 44 spoke to her passion: increasing understanding of the human experience as it relates to music. It pleased Carter to no end when he realized “a generation of students have the course in their hearts and souls.” Now, as chair of the music department, he’s even happier that the content, rigor and reach of the class make it unique. It’s not that other schools don’t offer popular music courses. Certainly they do; the market for them is huge. What differentiates Carolina is that it has dared to move away from what Carter terms the “Western art music canon” and encouraged the study of country music as its own genre. William Ferris, the Joel R. Williamson eminent professor of history and senior associate director of the Center for the Study of the American South, concurs: “Country music has global appeal, but I think it’s been under studied by the academy, primarily because historically it’s the voice of working class, white Americans. To its credit, UNC has always pushed the boundaries of academe. It pioneered Southern studies, for example. And now, thanks to the standout work of Jocelyn “Some students will say flat out, ‘I just don’t like country music.’ That’s OK; they don’t have to like it. What I do hope they see at the end of the course is how this music is a window into a certain part of American culture and history, because that’s what this place, Carolina, is all about. — Jocelyn Neal [ ] 8 • SPRING 2006 • CAROLINA ARTS & SCIENCES Up Late Professor Dan Reichart (foreground) and student Josh Haislip in the Morehead Planetarium and Science Center’s Star Theater. Photo by Steve Exum That’s when he said, ‘Who are you?’” Soon enough, though, he had trained the telescope on the odd burst in the sky. The rest has been well documented, making both Reichart and Haislip just a little famous. During a long night in Phillips Hall, Haislip, the one who knew how OSIRIS worked, made measurements from the images forwarded from Chile and called off the numbers. Reichart, who knew the physics, crunched the numbers. By dawn, they knew that either they’d made a colossal error, or the sun whose last moments they were watching had been around during the universe’s infancy and was the oldest explosion ever seen by humans. After their discovery was checked and refined by graduate student Melissa Nysewander and other students working with Reichart, and later confirmed by another group of scientists with more sophisticated equipment, there were press conferences and news stories. In an upcoming issue of the journal Nature, Haislip and Nysewander will be listed first and second among the authors of the paper announcing the discovery — a 20-year-old undergraduate in the lead scientist’s position. Reichart let his students enjoy the discovery, stepping away from the spotlight as much as he could, just as his own professors and mentors had done for him. This, his students say, is not at all out of character for him. CAROLINA ARTS & SCIENCES • SPRING 2006 • 9 continued That weekend, Josh Haislip remembers being asked by Dr. Reichart if he had “infinite free time.” The question might be an astrophysicists’ joke. It’s at least an idiomatic expression between one undergraduate student and his mentor, two people for whom, ironically, the work of documenting the enormity of time in the universe leaves little room for their own time. It’s a question that seemed all the more relevant as the weekend wore on, during which Haislip and his teacher, astrophysicist Daniel Reichart, would document the oldest known explosion in the universe; specifically the afterglow of a gamma ray burst, a ghostly red light 12.8 billion years old. It was a discovery that would make both men — the teacher and the student — briefly famous. It turned out that Haislip did have infinite free time that weekend, and so Reichart asked him to research the OSIRIS (Ohio State InfraRed Imaging/ Spectometer), an observing instrument mounted on the SOAR (Southern Observatory for Astrophysical Research) telescope in Chile. Carolina had just been granted access to the OSIRIS instrument, and Reichart figured it would be a good idea if they learned how to use it. This was not an unusual request. Reichart’s undergraduate researchers are part of his team, a group he expects can handle the rigors — intellectually and physi-cally — of conducting new and significant research. His is not a group for busy work leading nowhere. (“I don’t have time for creating make-work projects. This research is important and it has to be done, and I need their help.”) So he keeps the cell phone numbers of his student researchers so he can roust them up and over to Phillips Hall at any hour, whenever a telescope needs tending. On Sept. 3, Haislip received the call at 10 p.m. A NASA satellite that scans the sky for evidence of gamma ray bursts — a tell-tale sign of a star’s death — had just sent a text message to Reichart’s cell phone with news of an unusual burst, one Reichart initially thought they could use to test out Haislip’s new expertise with the OSIRIS system. “Dan asked me if I wanted to go over to Phillips and have a video conference with the resident astronomer at SOAR, and I said, ‘Sure,’” Haislip says. The trick was to convince the resident astronomer in Chile, Eduardo Cypriano, that the gamma ray burst was worth interrupting the telescope’s other missions. Reichart and Haislip flipped on the video conferencing equipment in Phillips Hall, and down on a very large screen in Chile, next to the various images of the heavens SOAR had been relaying to the control room, up popped the image of two men peering excitedly into the camera. “We both said, Hola!” Haislip says. “The astronomer looked at us and said something like, ‘Hi?’, and we asked him to interrupt the work of the telescope so we could use OSIRIS to observe the gamma ray burst. With the Universe Stellar mentoring pays off B Y D U N C A N M U R R E L L By dawn, they knew that either they’d made a colossal error, or the sun whose last moments they were watching had been around during the universe’s infancy and was the oldest explosion ever seen by humans. 10 • SPRING 2006 • CAROLINA ARTS & SCIENCES Reichart has not been able to entirely escape public notice. There is the issue of his young age — he’s 31 — and his youthful looks, which together make him an object of fascination. But he’s no boy wonder, no neophyte astrophysicist. His success, which includes being awarded a career grant by the National Science Foundation, is the product of steady work begun in high school, work that is both strenuous and fun. Sitting in his cluttered office surrounded by maps and reference books, Reichart makes no secret of the fact that he loves his work and that he thinks it’s cool. (“I do rapid response astronomy.”) Because he makes no secret of this, and because he has the ability to express his enthusiasm for astrophysics in small ways — the way he swings around to his computer to pull up a telescope image for a visitor, for instance — students have picked up the vibe, and that’s forever changed their education. He’s no boy wonder among scientists, but he may very well be a boy wonder among mentors. Reichart grew up in rural Pennsylvania, the child of a newspaper journalist and a high-school English teacher. He was always good at science and math, but he wanted to be a lawyer. But then came Carl Sagan’s public television series, “Cosmos,” and after that Reichart’s awareness of the planetary missions to Jupiter and Saturn, an interest stoked by the mission photographs his father would pull from the newspaper’s wire service machine and bring home to his son. And so Reichart developed an interest in astronomy, which he calls “the gateway drug of the sciences.” “It was accessible,” Reichart says. “All you needed was a telescope and a dark sky.” Photos and telescopes were nice, but it was at Penn State It often happens in science that one can trace the peculiarities and interests of one scientist down through a lineage beginning with that first teacher and continuing through teachers and post-doctoral collaborators and senior colleagues, all of them somehow connected to each other, an ancestry that constantly regenerates itself. Dan Reichart and Josh Haislip examine photos of the gamma ray burst in the Morehead Observatory lab. Photo by Steve Exum CAROLINA ARTS & SCIENCES • SPRING 2006 • 11 that Reichart found what he needed to transform his boyhood fascination into a field of scholarly study, and finally into a career: a professor who took an interest in his education. Peter Mészáros, an astrophysicist with expertise in theoretical high-energy astrophysics, saw potential in Reichart as an undergraduate and invited him to help chase gamma ray bursts — never as a gofer, but as a young man with an intellect and ability suited to real work. “It was really exciting to know that you were working on a real project,” Reichart says now. It often happens in science that one can trace the peculiarities and interests of one scientist down through a lineage beginning with that first teacher and continuing through teachers and post-doctoral collaborators and senior colleagues, all of them somehow connected to each other, an ancestry that constantly regenerates itself. And so it is that Reichart is now the professor chasing gamma ray bursts, and Haislip is the young undergraduate from a small rural town (Bear Grass, N.C.) making his stellar observations and already planning to study astrophysics in graduate school. Reichart sees nothing particularly difficult about juggling roles as a teacher, mentor, fundraiser, networker and researcher. These are natural parts of an astronomer’s job, or at least any job Reichart would want to have. (One is reminded of Carl Sagan, the wonder-struck professor describing the grand scope of the universe for all the young Dan Reicharts, a first teacher for millions.) Reichart’s research has won awards and attention, including having one of his early discoveries — that the most ancient gamma ray bursts could be detected on Earth, yielding information about the early composition of the universe — named one of the 10 “Breakthroughs of the Year” by Science magazine in 1999. And that was before documenting the oldest gamma ray burst known. Reichart has always enjoyed sharing his love for astronomy with students of all ages. He has won university teaching Super star gazing in Southern Hemisphere heavens Students and faculty will be able to detect distant stars, galaxies and quasars a billion times too faint to be seen with the unaided eye, thanks to Carolina’s partnership in a major new telescope in South Africa. The Southern African Large Telescope (SALT), the biggest diameter telescope in the Southern Hemisphere, was officially dedicated in Sutherland, South Africa, in November. The new facility complements two other telescopes in which Carolina is a major partner and user. The Southern Observatory for Astrophysical Research (SOAR) in Cerro Pachon, Chile, began operations in late 2004. UNC plays a large role as one of four partners in the $32 million SOAR project. In addition, UNC received two National Science Foundation grants in 2004 to build the six Panchromatic Robotic Optical Monitoring and Polarimetry Telescopes (PROMPT) at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, also in the Chilean Andes. Carolina is the lead partner on PROMPT, with multiple research collaborators. “Our partnerships with SALT in South Africa, as well as with other major telescopes in Chile, give UNC faculty, graduate students and undergraduates better access to the skies over the Southern Hemisphere than any other academic institution in the United States,” said Bruce Carney, senior associate dean for the sciences and Samuel Baron professor of astronomy. The construction and operation of SALT was made possible by the participation of 11 partners from South Africa, Poland, the United States, Germany, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. UNC contributed about $1 million to the project, through a combination of public and private funds. The entire project cost about $32 million. Reichart sees nothing particularly difficult about juggling roles as a teacher, mentor, fundraiser, networker and researcher. These are natural parts of an astronomer’s job, or at least any job Reichart would want to have. awards and has been leading groups of young, would-be astronomers to the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in West Virginia for weeklong observations and research since he was an 18-year-old freshman at Penn State. Now he’s working to link up a network of North Carolina universities and public schools with telescopes that he and his students are building in the Southern Hemisphere. The National Science Foundation recently awarded Reichart a prestigious early career development grant of $490,000. This and the NSF’s $912,000 grant to help UNC build six robotic telescopes in the Chilean Andes mountains for the study of gamma ray bursts is allowing the University to offer research time on these telescopes to students at universities and colleges across the state. The project will also involve North Carolina public school students through the educational program of the Morehead Planetarium and Science Center. As a result, high school students will soon be able to put themselves where Josh Haislip was on Sept. 3, peering at images of the new universe, making measurements, feeling part of something big. Haislip, who works at Morehead Planetarium helping to guide elementary school classes, has helped to create a user’s manual for the young students who will use the telescopes. As one might expect, Haislip has learned from his mentor that this is the sort of thing astronomers should do. “Dan once told me he doesn’t mind at all being asked to do things beyond the call of duty, like talking to crowds at the planetarium about the space shuttle,” Haislip says. “Dan likes outreach, and I kind of see myself doing the same thing someday.” And on it goes. • 12 • SPRING 2006 • CAROLINA ARTS & SCIENCES Science Complex Construction Caudill, Cumbie make $1 million challenge for new science facilities Chemistry alumni W. Lowry Caudill ’79 and Stephen Cumbie ’70 each have made a contingent pledge of $500,000 to challenge alumni and friends to contribute an additional $5.5 million for the new Carolina Physical Science Complex. It is the largest construction project in the university’s history. With $10.5 million in gifts and pledges in hand, the $5.5 million needed to complete the $16 million goal for Phase I of the project must be raised by August 2006. Caudill and Cumbie will match the first $1 million in gifts dollar for dollar. “The design of this new complex promotes collaboration, which is becoming more and more important in science,” said Caudill, executive chairman of Liquidia Technologies Inc. and retired president and co-founder of Magellan Laboratories Inc. in Research Triangle Park, N.C. “ Caudill and his wife Suzi ’80 honored long-time chemistry professor Royce Murray with a $3 million gift in 2004 to name the Royce Murray Quandrangle, the largest of the green spaces planned in heart of the complex. That gift also named the W. Lowry and Susan S. Caudill Laboratories. The state-of-the-art complex will blend in with UNC’s historic architecture, said Cumbie, president of NV Commercial Inc. in McLean, Va. The complex, which will house the departments of chemistry, computer science, mathematics, marine sciences, and physics and astronomy, will include the following: • Modern shared facilities — a collection of new buildings — each with special purposes and capabilities; • New chemistry plaza joining the W. Lowry and Susan S. Caudill Laboratories and Kenan Laboratories; • Rooftop observatory deck for astronomy students and faculty; • Laboratories with vibration-free space for electron microscopes, laser labs, teleconference rooms and special shielding to avoid electronic interference; • A new Institute for Advanced Materials, Nanoscience and Technology; • State-of-the-art lecture halls. “Phase I will bring us desperately needed, environmentally controlled space for our cutting-edge scientific instrumentation,” said Laurie E. McNeil, professor and chair of physics and astronomy. Patrick Eberlein, professor and chair of mathematics, said the math department will benefit in the short run with a new 4,500-square-foot fluids laboratory, shared with marine sciences. In the long run, the department will gain additional office space. “The fluids lab will do research on fluid behavior at all scales, from tidal waves, hurricanes and storm surges to fluid transport in the lungs, with applications to cystic fibrosis,” he said. “Additional office space in Phillips Hall will promote interdisciplinary contacts with other science departments at UNC.” Holden Thorp, faculty director of the fundraising campaign, said the Caudill/ Cumbie gift will help steer Phase I toward its completion date of fall 2006. “The synergy of public and private funds is critical to achieving these world-class facilities,” said Thorp, who also is a Kenan professor and chair of chemistry. The entire project, comprising Phase I and II, will rely on $22 million in private gifts and $84 million from a higher education bond referendum approved by N.C. citizens in 2000. Phase II is slated for completion in 2009. • To learn more about making a gift to the Carolina Physical Science Complex, contact Ramsey R. White, ramsey.white@unc.edu, (919) 843-4885. — By Kim Weaver Spurr ’88 The Carolina Physical Science Complex is the largest construction project in the university’s history. Photo by Katie Schwing ’06 CAROLINA ARTS & SCIENCES • SPRING 2006 • 13 The streets of Rangoon have an aura of disturbing beauty. There is nothing obviously amiss, but it is too quiet, evoking the calm before the storm. Pedestrians offer furtive glances that seem to say, “Don’t even think about trying to talk to me.” Here in Burma — or rather Myanmar — associating with a foreigner is dangerous. Telling an outsider about your dislike of the military junta or your support of Aung San Suu Kyi [pronounced Ahn Sun Soo Chee], the Nobel Prize-winning democratic activist, could land you in a cockroach-infested cell for seven years. I am a political scientist interested in tracing the complex road to democracy around the world. But here I feel like a character created by Graham Greene or George Orwell. The current regime is in no mood to issue an official visa to enable my meetings and workshops with democratic advocates and ethnic minorities, so I am here “under the radar,” traveling incognito as a “tourist.” Sometimes when I catch the eye of a Burmese man, I am suspicious he is a government spy assigned to track me for the duration of my stay. The cloak-and-dagger routine is draining. I begin each secret appointment by asking if we can speak freely. The stock answer is, “Presume we may be overheard, and proceed with suitable caution.” During phone conversations, names and places are alluded to, but never spelled out. My chief contact uses an e-mail nom de plume, transforming him from a Burmese Buddhist to a Californian surfer. I am told to encode outgoing e-mails on sensitive subjects. My meetings with opposition leaders are described as meals prepared by top chefs or their students; government spies are “mosquitoes.” — was assassinated in 1947. Fragile civilian administrations stumbled along for the next 15 years. Following a 1962 coup d’etat, the Army chief, General Ne Win, led the coun-try with an iron fist for the next 26 years. The pressure cooker blew in July 1988, with Ne Win’s sudden resignation and handover to his top military henchmen. By early August, student activists were leading mass non-violent demonstrations in the streets of Rangoon. The state responded viciously. Thousands were killed across the country, with tens of thousands arrested and tortured. As the charismatic daughter of the icon of nationhood, Suu Kyi was a perfect public face for the pro-democracy movement. Despite standing 5 feet 4 inches and weighing 100 pounds, at most, she had a commanding presence. Two weeks after the 1988 massacres, she addressed a half million people at the Shwe Dagon Pagoda. Less than a year later, she was placed under house arrest for the first time. Legislative elections finally took place in 1990, with the National League for Democracy winning a remarkable 80 percent of the seats. But the military junta ignored the results and unleashed a new reign of terror against opposition activists. Suu Kyi’s first incarceration lasted six years, until 1995. As the opposition movement slowly rebuilt itself, the military regime returned Suu Kyi to house arrest in 2000. Once restrictions on her were eased in 2002, she again traversed the country, inspiring adoring crowds. But in May 2003, government agents attacked Suu Kyi’s convoy as it traveled through remote northern Burma. More than 70 people were killed, and the bloodied activist was sent back to house arrest. She remains confined to this day. Every hotel dealing with foreigners has its share of staff who are state informers. Revealing too much to the friendly clerk can lead to deportation. Despite these obstacles, I manage to roam freely. My only real fright comes as I sit in the window of a tea shop, sipping the ultra sweet, condensed milk tea and eating deep-fried samosas. As I scrawl in my black moleskin notebook, a well-built middle-aged man watches intently. He beckons to the manager and they talk animatedly while glancing over at me. The manager retreats to the back of the café and picks up the phone, continuing to look my way. I quickly pay the bill and scurry away. For most of Burma’s 60 years of independence, the contours of politics have been blurry to locals and indecipherable to outsiders. General Aung Sang — Suu Kyi’s father and the founder of modern Burma RANGOON under the Radar S t o r y a n d p h o t o s b y A n d r e w R e y n o l d s abcdabcdabcdabcdabcdcdcdcd abcdabcdabcdabcdabcdcdcdcd abcdabcdabcabcdcdcdcd abcdabcdabcabcdcdcdcd Andy Reynolds, center, tries to blend in with the crowd at a soccer game in Burma. continued Spies record all activity within and outside of the Rangoon headquarters of the National League for Democracy, so we must meet in a secret location. Since its heyday in 1990, the NLD has endured a blitzkrieg of arrests, physical attacks and state ridicule. Today it is more a faith than a political party. The leadership vacuum is evident. When I ask about their views on controversial issues of engagement with the government, I am greeted with total silence. It soon becomes clear that there are disagreements about how to affect democratic change within the context of the current regime. The military rulers have a “roadmap” to democracy, which involves a referendum on a new constitution and multi-party elections sometime in the next couple of years, but their manipulation of the process is shameless. Current NLD officials are torn between having nothing to do with a rigged electoral process or laying low until elections can be held and then participating in whatever way they can. The most senior leaders repeat Suu Kyi’s adage that “the stance of the NLD is that any matter is negotiable.” The colors are vivid and luminous in Burma — green fields, bold blue murals, monks’ robes of burgundy and tangerine — but the human landscape remains muted. Daily life has a beautiful veneer, but it rests on a much less attractive foundation — much like the intricate and bright lacquered gifts that tourists buy to grace their sideboards. When you scratch the shiny surface, you quickly discover cheap bamboo. Just as in Winston Smith’s Oceania Orwell’s Winston Smith is desperate to be free of the Thought Police. My “Winston” works the night shift at my hotel and often serves me breakfast. He studied hotel management abroad, where free access to the media gave him a shocking picture of what was happening in his country. His family supports Suu Kyi strongly and bemoans the wretched economy that makes each day a struggle to put food on the table. Winston points at my Let’s Go travel guide and says, “Ah, do you know ‘the lady’ is in there?” I signal that I, too, admire Suu Kyi and dislike the regime. In a conspiratorial whisper, he tells me that it was once possible to drive discretely past the front of the house in which she has been imprisoned for 10 of the last 16 years. But the army has blocked off the stretch of University Avenue leading to her mansion. My new ally informs me, though, that from the Sedona Hotel across the lake, one can glimpse the back of her house. I take a taxi to the Sedona and smile at the soldiers milling around the entrance. As I stride across the lobby, I walk past a well-dressed Indonesian man encircled by reporters: It is Kofi Annan’s special representative, Ali Alatas — the most senior UN official to visit in years. He stands just 500 yards from Suu Kyi’s house. If she looks out her window when he leaves the hotel, she will see him. But of course they are not permitted to meet, and it is unlikely she even knows he is here. I take the elevator to the top floor of the hotel and wander down the corridor to look for a window facing the lake. I dart into an open room, only to startle two young Indian maids. I smile, gesturing that I only want to look at the view. in 1984, uncensored news is high contraband in Burma. The New Light of Myanmar and The Myanmar Times are sanitized tabloids. Some satellite TV is available, but it focuses on sports and on issues unrelated to Burma. Yahoo, Hotmail and AOL are all blocked, though the technologically-savvy manage to circumvent some Internet restrictions. Official pamphlets are published by the “Committee for Propaganda and Agitation to Intensify Patriotism.” While we are stuck in traffic, I am shocked to see a teen pull out a copy of Time magazine emblazoned with Suu Kyi’s face and the headline, “Will She Rule?” But then I notice that, while the copy looks new, the date on the cover is 1990. It is a 15-year-old time capsule of hope, belonging to a boy who wasn’t even born when Suu Kyi and the NLD received the largest popular mandate of any movement in Burma’s history. The cloak-and-dagger routine is draining. I begin each secret appointment by asking if we can speak freely. The stock answer is, “Presume we may be overheard, and proceed with suitable caution.” abcdabcdabcdabcdabcdcdcdcd abcdabcdabcdabcdabcdcdcdcd abcdabcdabcabcdcdcdcd abcdabcdabcabcdcdcdcd Crumbling colonial architecture on Pansodan Street in downtown Rangoon. 14 • SPRING 2006 • CAROLINA ARTS & SCIENCES Suu Kyi lives about 15 minutes from downtown Rangoon, on the southeastern shore of Inya Lake. The neighborhood hosts some of the most luxurious government and diplomatic residences in Burma. To the northeast of the house is the lakeside promenade in front of the hotel. A sentry sits in his box along the Kaba Aye Paya Road, just out of view of the promenade. As I scan the scene, ominous black storm clouds dump thick sheets of rain on lovers who scurry under large tin umbrellas along the promenade. I hurriedly snap photos of the house. Suddenly, the floor manager strides through the open door, takes one look at me and my camera, and aggressively inquires, “What are you doing? What is your name?” Sounding like a Monty Python character, I hurry past him, muttering, “Beautiful lake… lovely pagoda…what a view!” I bustle toward the elevator, hoping he has not called down to the soldiers at the gate, who are kind enough to summon me a taxi as I scurry from the hotel. Aung San Suu Kyi hasn’t seen her two sons for a decade and her husband died in 1999; she lives with two helpers, her cousin and aunt. The only person who visits is her doctor, a former political prisoner who is allowed to come monthly as long as he avoids talking about politics. Those who know report that Suu Kyi’s long days are spent meditating, reading and tending a rose garden. She has no television, but listens four hours a day to the radio. She has sold off much of the furniture in her house to pay for basic needs. Suu Kyi has purposely left the paint to peel and the repairs to wait. This is one place in Burma where the veneer matches the reality. The immediate chances of dramatic political change in Burma do not look promising. Democratic activists are searching desperately for any chink in the government’s road-map plans which might begin a transition to something more palatable. The two most crucial aspects of the new constitution, they say, will be the procedures provided for transition and for amendments. One could imagine, for example, a majority in parliament, built over time among democrats and reform-minded soldiers. Another glimmer of hope is generational change among Burmese military leaders. Some international observers believe the next military generation has slightly more education and international exposure than current leaders. The new generation is keen to get rich quick and realize they can go only so far without engaging the global economy. Real change rests with the NLD and its allies winning a significant share of parliamentary seats in elections. Quiet speculation about the short-term political future is the game of choice in Rangoon’s tea shops. Some expect the regime to wrap up the national convention in short order, hold a referendum in spring of 2006, and then release Aung San Suu Kyi just before the general election that follows. Others doubt whether she would be released before an election. Buddhist students of Burmese martial arts are taught to wait until they are struck three times before responding. If the junta’s first strike against the pro-democracy movement was the massacre of 1988, and the second was the attack on Suu Kyi’s convoy in 2003, will the next clenched fist elicit an uprising far greater than that in 1988? Or do the demoralized democrats have scant appetite for seeing the blood of their remaining friends and relatives on the streets again? Despite its economic isolation, Burma dominates the world production of teak. The dark wood is beautiful and strong, providing the economic backbone of this frail nation. Millions of Burmese see democracy in a similar light, but hope that it will come more quickly than the 80 years it takes for a teak tree to mature to the point of usefulness. • Andrew Reynolds is an associate professor of political science who teaches, researches and writes about democratization around the world. He has served as a consultant on electoral and constitutional issues for Afghanistan, Angola, Burma, Fiji, Guyana, Indonesia, Iraq, Jordan, Kenya, Liberia, Netherlands, Netherlands Antilles, Northern Ireland, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Yemen and Zimbabwe. These excerpts are from a longer article about his visit to Burma last summer. The colors are vivid and luminous in Burma — green fields, bold blue murals, monks’ robes of burgundy and tangerine — but the human landscape remains muted. abcdabcdabcabcdcdcdcd abcdabcdabcdabcdabcdcdcdcd abcdabcdabcdabcdabcdcdcdcd abcdabcdabcabcdcdcdcd Monks line up for lunch at their monastery about two hours north of Rangoon. CAROLINA ARTS & SCIENCES • SPRING 2006 • 15 William Andrews was at a most un-Southern place when publisher W.W. Norton approached him in 1994 about editing its first anthology of Southern literature. The setting: a Jamaican restaurant in Palo Alto, Calif. Andrews, then an English professor at the University of Kansas, was enjoying a fellowship at Stanford University. “I’m sure various Southernists would have turned over in their graves,” Andrews said of the unholy West Coast beginning that led to the birth in 1998 of The Literature of the American South: A Norton Anthology. Not to worry. Norton had picked a general editor with deep Southern roots and credentials: A native of Richmond, Memphis and Atlanta, with a master’s and Ph.D. in English from Carolina, Andrews was already a heavyweight in the Southern lit field and the leading specialist in the country on slave narratives. He happily agreed to lead the effort to assemble the first chronological anthology of Southern literature in 30 years, and set about selecting his co-editors — carefully. He wanted the compendium to be distinct from its predecessors. It should be primarily focused on writers of the 20th century, he thought, and it should reflect the diversity of the South — across lines of color, gender and class, embracing both urban and agrarian cultures. Andrews turned to Carolina for one of his three co-editors — Fred Hobson — and found Trudier Harris at Emory University and Minrose Gwin at the University of New Mexico. All were well known scholars of Southern and African American literature with unique strengths and perspectives to bring to the task at hand. Unlike the editorial boards of previous Southern anthologies, this one would include men and women, black and white. And, like Andrews, they were all Southerners. By the time the book was published, Andrews and Harris had joined Hobson at Carolina, creating a critical mass of Southern specialists in Chapel Hill. Already there were: Joseph Flora, co-editor of The Companion to Southern Literature; Laurence Avery, whose work focuses on African American drama and the playwright Paul Green; William Harmon, a poet and editor of multiple editions of A Handbook to Literature; Julius Raper, a specialist on Ellen Glasgow and 20th century Southern literature; James Coleman and Lee Greene, specialists in African American drama and fiction; and Linda Wagner-Martin, a scholar of 20th century literature, including William Faulkner. Louis Rubin, the legendary Southern literary scholar and teacher, had retired from UNC in 1989, but remained in Chapel Hill at Algonquin Books, where he was discovering and publishing new Southern writers. Seven years after the anthology came off the press, Gwin completed the Norton circle at Chapel Hill this fall by joining the UNC faculty as the Kenan Eminent professor of Southern literature. “Minrose Gwin’s appointment is further proof, if any more is needed, that — with our special collections in Wilson Library, and the Center for the Study of the American South — Chapel Hill is the most important center in the country for the study of Southern literature,” said James Thompson, professor and chair of the department of English. William Ferris, the Joel R. Williamson eminent professor of history and a leading voice on Southern music and culture, calls the four anthology editors “icons in the field of Southern studies.” “To have all four of these Southern literature giants teaching in the classroom, speaking in public and publishing their work within one department in one university is unheard of,” said Ferris, senior associate director of the Center for the Study of the American South. “You cannot be in the field of Southern studies and not admire and use their work, because they essentially are the field.” A brisk November morning draws the Norton co-editors together for a magazine photo shoot outside the Rare Book Collection in Wilson Library. It’s apparent that they are congenial colleagues, as the photographer instructs them to take on poses both stately and casual. Harris has been charged with holding the anthology, with its striking red cover featuring a 1946 painting by Nell Choate Jones called “Georgia Red Clay.” There is laughter and joking, and a “crick” in Harris’ right foot. Carolina’s Norton quartet readily agrees that working on the anthology was a good experience. Together they combed through 400 years of Southern literary history, from the early 1600s to contemporary times, bringing together the works of nearly 90 diverse American writers, such as Thomas Jefferson, Frederick Douglass, Mark Twain, Zora Neale Hurston, Ralph Ellison and William Faulkner. Andrews edited the first and last sections of the book, “Beginnings to 1880” and “Vernacular Traditions.” Hobson took on “The New South, 1880-1940,” and Harris and Gwin tackled the largest section of the book, “The Contemporary South.” The anthology closes with “The Foundations of the Earth,” a short story by award-winning writer, Randall Kenan, who also ended up at Carolina, as an associate professor of creative writing in Greenlaw (See page 2). Norton Anthology editors now teach under one roof B y K i m W e a v e r S p u r r ’ 8 8 • P h o t o s b y S t e v e E x u m Southern Lit Central Southern 16 • SPRING 2006 • CAROLINA ARTS & SCIENCES continued SouthernMinrose Gwin Trudier Harris Fred Hobson William Andrews CAROLINA ARTS & SCIENCES • SPRING 2006 • 17 Rubin — the Algonquin publisher, English professor emeritus and editor of an earlier anthology, The Literary South (1979) — praised the Norton anthology for the “breadth of its approach and the vigor and incisiveness of its commentary.” Andrews is particularly proud of the anthology’s first-of-a-kind audio companion, a CD containing 26 examples of spirituals, gospel, blues, ballads, sermons and stories. One of his favorite pieces on the CD is a song that UNC folklorist Dan Patterson told him about called “Factory Girl.” The ballad, recorded in 1962, tells the story of a mill worker who fantasizes about marrying her boss as a way out of factory life. “It’s absolutely haunting,” Andrews said. “It represents a powerfully moving side of the Southern experience, of white women working in the cotton mills from the time they were children.” “I always say that I didn’t choose African American literature, it chose me,” said Andrews, who is now the E. Maynard Adams professor of literature and senior associate dean for the fine arts and humanities. “I think it was partly because of being brought up in the segregated South. My access to African American life, to black people in general, was very limited. There was a lingering curiosity and interest and concern about, what was that world of black experience that I knew so little about? “When I got to graduate school and began to have a chance to read black writers, it was the ones from the South who interested me most,” he said. He has since written or edited about 40 books. His first, The Literary Career of Charles W. Chesnutt (1980), deals with a seminal figure in the development of African American and Southern fiction. Andrews’ newest book, The North Carolina Roots of African American Literature (2006), showcases some of the best work of eight influential black writers from North Carolina during the 19th and early 20th centuries. He has served as general editor of Wisconsin Studies in Autobiography (University of Wisconsin Press), which includes some 40 studies of the autobiographical writings of slaves, refugees, immigrants and others. Andrews’ most innovative project is an online library of some 280 North American slave narratives — the largest such collection of stories and illustrations — now available free to the public through a partnership with UNC’s Academic Affairs Library and the National Endowment for the Humanities. (http://docsouth.unc.edu/) One of the most widely read narratives, Harriet Jacobs’ 1861 autobiography, “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl,” tells how she lived in a crawl space in her grandmother’s house for seven years before escaping north to freedom. “Our online versions of these rare original texts are the next best thing to holding the books in your hand,” Andrews said. Trudier Harris grew up as the sixth of nine children born in Tuscaloosa, Ala., to Terrell and Unareed Harris. She received her M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from The Ohio State University and taught at the College of William and Mary for six years, before joining the UNC faculty in 1979. She left Carolina for Emory University for a brief period in 1993, before returning in 1996. She is one of the most widely read scholars of African American literature, focusing primarily on 20th century African American writers and on folklore. Now the J. Carlyle Sitterson Professor of English, she is the author or editor/co-editor of 22 books, including From Mammies to Militants: Domestics in Black American Literature (1982), Black Women in the Fiction of James Baldwin (which received the 1987 College Language Association’s Creative Scholarship Award), Fiction and Folklore: The Novels of Toni Morrison (1991) and Saints, Sinners, Saviors: Strong Black Women in African American Literature (2001). Harris and Andrews partnered together on another collection, The Oxford Companion to African American Literature (which won an Editor’s Choice Award from Booklist magazine in 1997). She calls 1996-1998 “my big fat book years.” Harris also has been recognized repeatedly as an outstanding teacher, most recently with the 2005 Board of Governors’ Award for Teaching Excellence — the top teaching prize given at UNC. “She is the most spellbinding lecturer I have ever seen among American literature scholars,” says Hobson, one of the Norton editors. What’s her secret? “You make a commitment to never bore your students or yourself,” said Harris, who also serves as English department associate chair. “So you sing when you can’t sing; I recite poetry. You try to create an environment where students say, ‘I can’t wait to go to her class again.’ You make sure that you get across that you’re excited about the information.” Harris tells her own story in the 2003 memoir, Summer Snow: Reflections from a Black Daughter of the South. “It has taken me a long time to arrive at a basic fact of my existence: I am a Southerner. For a black person to claim the South … is about as rare as snow falling in Tuscaloosa during dog days,” she writes in the book’s title essay. Her new book is entitled, The Scary Mason-Dixon Line: African American Writers and Literatu18 • SPRING 2006 • CAROLINA ARTS & SCIENCES Literatu CAROLINA ARTS & SCIENCES • SPRING 2006 • 19 the South (under contract to LSU Press.) “African American writers, no matter where they are born in the United States, do not truly consider themselves writers until they have written about the South,” Harris said. “There’s a stamp of certification on the mountain of the South that these writers can’t go over. They have to tunnel through it.” Louis Rubin has high praise for Fred Hobson, his former student, whom he calls “a first-rate literary critic.” “Fred writes fluently and gracefully,” said Rubin. “He has a sense of the literary imagination and how it functions, which is all too rare among scholars.” Hobson is an expert in Southern literature and intellectual history, autobiography and 20th century American fiction. He grew up in Yadkin County, N.C. As an undergraduate at UNC, he was drawn to writers like H.L. Mencken; as a scholar, he has written extensively about Mencken. “I came across a couple of essays by Mencken as a student; one of them in particular: ‘The Sahara of the Bozart,’” said Hobson, who received his undergraduate and Ph.D. degrees from Carolina. “It was a vicious attack on the South, and I thought, with some reason. I was something of a Southern iconoclast myself, and my interest in Mencken was in him exposing the flaws of Southern life.” Now Lineberger Professor in the Humanities at Carolina, Hobson has been co-editing The Southern Literary Journal (co-founded by Rubin and Hugh Holman) for the past 15 years. The author of seven books (including three award-winning volumes) and editor or general editor of dozens of others, Hobson has a recent collection of essays that feature some autobiographical works. In The Silencing of Emily Mullen and Other Essays (2005), a story about Hobson’s great-grandmother inspired the book’s title essay. At a family reunion 20 years ago, a great aunt asked him if he knew that his maternal great-grandmother, Emily Mullen Gregory, had committed suicide about 1880 by jumping down a well. Hobson decided to track down the story, poring through census records, family letters, academic records and old newspapers on microfilm. “I finally confirmed that she indeed had committed suicide, but ‘Why?’ was the big question,” he said. “I got into the area of the male medical establishment’s complete lack of understanding of women’s health in the 19th century.” Hobson’s new memoir, Off the Rim: Basketball and Other Religions in a Carolina Childhood (spring 2006), is an account of his life-long affair with basketball, particularly the Tar Heels. (See page 30). He played on UNC’s freshmen team in 1961-62. “The book is about a lot of other things, too — politics, race and the changing South through the ’60s and ’70s,” he said. Gwin was recruited to Carolina from Purdue University, where she had been teaching since 2002. Born in Mississippi with a Ph.D. from the University of Tennessee, she had taught for much of her career outside of the South. Her research and teaching focus on Southern literature, women’s literature and theories of space and gender, trauma studies, African American literature, autobiography and creative writing. She is the author or editor/co-editor of eight books, including her most recent scholarly work, The Woman in the Red Dress: Gender, Space and Reading (2002). Her 1990 book, The Feminine and Faulkner: Reading (Beyond) Sexual Differences, was the first book-length reading of Faulkner to employ feminist theory. Black and White Women of the Old South: The Peculiar Sisterhood in American Literature (1985) was a Choice Outstanding Academic Book. She edited A Woman’s Civil War, the diary of Cornelia McDonald (1992), and it was selected as one of the best 100 books on the Civil War. When Gwin made her first presentation to faculty and students in UNC’s English department, Andrews said she illustrated not only her abilities as a scholar, but her flair for teaching, too. “I don’t know which was better, the lecture itself or the discussion afterward,” he said. Gwin’s 2004 memoir, Wishing for Snow, is a portrait and a tribute to her mother, Erin Clayton Pitner, a brilliant poet who suffered from mental illness. She weaves the story of her relationship with her mother, and her mother’s mental deterioration and eventual death from ovarian cancer, by sifting through her mother’s poetry, letters, recipes, traffic tickets, newspaper clippings, medical reports and childhood diary. “I managed to gain access to her diary when she was 9 years old. In the diary, she was always wishing for snow,” she said. “The term also comes to apply to me as the daughter-writer who also wishes for snow, and the plenitude of a mother who wasn’t there in some ways — and was there in some ways.” Gwin is excited about working with Hobson as co-editor of The Southern Literary Journal. “It puts me in touch with a deeper base of scholarship going on in Southern studies,” she said. The Literature of the American South: A Norton Anthology may have been conceived on foreign soil, but general editor Andrews is delighted to have the Norton quartet now at home at Carolina, where they belong. “I had the best in the business working with me on the anthology,” he said. • Carolina’s Norton quartet readily agrees that working on the anthology was a good experience. Together they combed through 400 years of Southern literary history, from the early 1600s to contemporary times, bringing together the works of nearly 90 diverse American writers, such as Thomas Jefferson, Frederick Douglass, Mark Twain, Zora Neale Hurston, Ralph Ellison and William Faulkner. 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ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ • ΦΔΘ • ΔΔΔ • ΔΚΕ Call them alpha professors. Not to mention beta, gamma and delta professors as well. In a first for Carolina and quite possibly the entire collegiate world, two fraternities have raised enough money to endow distinguished professorships in the College of Arts and Sciences. The Chapel Hill chapters of Delta Kappa Epsilon and Phi Delta Theta each have collected more than the $666,000 needed to qualify for matching state grants of $334,000 and fund two $1 million faculty professorships. One of the professorships has already been filled while the recipient of the other professorship will be named by July. A sorority also has now joined in the growing Greek fundraising drive to help Carolina lure and retain outstanding faculty. Following the example set by the two fraternities, the Delta Delta Delta sorority kicked off its professorship campaign last spring. Edward “Tee” Baur, a 1968 UNC graduate and DKE alumnus, got the ball rolling six years ago when he proposed that fraternities and sororities start funding professorships. Serving on the UNC Board of Visitors, he was seeking a way to show that fraternities and sororities care about academics. “I believe that there is a lot to be learned from the Greek system,” said Baur, a retired businessman and former executive at Duke-Weeks Realty in St. Louis. “I kept struggling with how to create a very palpable linkage between the Greek system and the administration.” Hitting on the idea of the professorships, Baur launched the Delta Kappa Epsilon professorship campaign in May 2000 and contributed the first $100,000 to the fund. Over the next five years, the pioneering fundraising drive raised about $825,000 in gifts and pledges from 71 donors, including another $100,000 donation by Baur. Last summer Carolina named philosophy scholar C.D.C. “David” Reeve as the inaugural Delta Kappa Epsilon Distinguished Professor. Reeve, a gifted scholar who joined the UNC philosophy department in 2001, focuses on ancient Greek philosophy, ethics, metaphysics, moral psychology, history of philosophy and the philosophy of sex and love. Earning raves from students as “an elegant and engaging” teacher, he regularly packs lecture halls with enthused students, including many DKE’s. He won the 2006 Tanner Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, one of the highest teaching honors awarded by the university. Born and raised in Ireland, the 57- year-old Reeve has also gained international recognition as one of the most distinguished and original scholars in ancient philosophy. He’s written numerous acclaimed articles and major books, including the most recent Love’s Confusions (Harvard University Press, 2005). One scholar called Reeve’s book, Philosopher-Kings, “the best book there is on Plato’s Republic.” Another work, Substantial Knowledge, is considered required reading for the understanding of Aristotle’s metaphysics. But the award of the distinguished professorship still took him by surprise. “It’s a great honor,” said Reeve. “Having an endowed chair, particularly at a major university, is a rare accolade. I’m very gratified by the university’s recognition of my work.” Inspired by Delta Kappa Epsilon’s success, Phi Delta Theta embarked on its professorship campaign in 2001. Under the leadership of Shoffner “Shoff” Allison, a 1998 Carolina graduate, the Phi Delts have raised $722,000 in gifts and pledges from 231 donors, including a lead gift of $100,000 from Garnett Smith of Naples, Fla. Named in honor of the late Matthew Mason, an honorary Phi Delt “brother,” the new faculty chair will be known as the Phi Delta Theta/ Matthew Mason Distinguished Professorship. “Matthew Mason was the glue and the bond that tied Phi Delt together for the last 60 years,” said Allison, president of Hawthorne Capital in Charlotte. “The idea of supporting Carolina faculty at the highest level and recognizing Matthew Mason was an easy sell.” Delta Delta Delta then followed suit last year, becoming the first sorority to start its own professorship campaign. Led by Becky Cobey, a 1975 Carolina graduate who lives in Greenwich, Conn., the Tri Delts have privately raised $160,000 in gifts and pledges from eight donors so far and aim to “go public” with the campaign this year. “I think all the Greek professorships are a good idea, and I feel confident that the Tri Delts will wholeheartedly support this effort,” said Cobey, a member of the UNC Board of Visitors and the Women’s Leadership Council. In addition, three other fraternities and sororities are weighing similar academic fundraising efforts for Carolina. Greek alumni eventually hope to sign up as many as 10 or 12 of the university’s more than two dozen fraternities and sororities for Greek professorship campaigns. “I’d like to get six in the near term,” said Baur, who’s still heavily involved. “I will continue to beat the drum.” • CAROLINA ARTS & SCIENCES • SPRING 2006 • 21 “It’s a great honor. Having an endowed chair, particularly at a major university, is a rare accolade. I’m very gratified by the university’s recognition of my work.” HIGHLIGHTS H I G H L I G H T S 22 • SPRING 2006 • CAROLINA ARTS & SCIENCES Distinguished Professorship to honor beloved teacher and scholar Teacher, scholar, mentor, friend, anchor, and leader — these are the words former students use to describe Richard “Dick” Richardson, political science professor emeritus and former UNC provost. The Richard J. Richardson Distinguished Professorship in Political Science has been established to recognize the beloved professor and administrator’s four decades of service to Carolina. When fully funded, the professorship in the College of Arts and Sciences will be used to recruit or retain an outstanding teacher/ scholar in American politics. Faculty support is the top funding priority for the College in the university’s Carolina First fundraising campaign. Tom Uhlman (M.S. ’71, Ph.D. ’75) was one of Richardson’s first doctoral students and has made a lead gift of $120,000 to the professorship. Uhlman recalled that during difficult times as a graduate student, Richardson’s door was always open. “My most trying circumstance was discovering that the dissertation topic I had been pursuing for nearly a year was already being written by another student at Johns Hopkins,” said Uhlman, managing partner of New Venture Partners LLC in Murray Hill, N.J. “I was shattered and turned to Dick for advice and counsel. The ultimate result was a dissertation that won the prize as the best U.S. doctoral thesis in the field of law — ironically the same prize that Dick had won for his thesis.” Former student Darlene Walker Redman (Ph.D. ’73) said Richardson is fond of saying that the best job in the university is teaching, even after having been political science department chair and provost. “With his great sense of fun, quick wit and wonderful storytelling ability, he delighted students in the classroom,” said Redman of N. Darlene Walker & Associates ABOVE: Dick Richardson mentoring students. LEFT: The former political science professor at home in the classroom. BELOW: Richardson with his granddaughter, Ava Leigh Loeffler, a future Tar Heel. LLP in Houston, Texas. “He was the quintessential professor and his subject was life.” Richardson joined the Carolina faculty in 1969 and won a number of top teaching awards. He served as provost from 1995 to 2000. In November 2005, the UNC Board of Trustees presented Richardson with the prestigious William R. Davie Award, recognizing his extraordinary service to the university. It is the highest honor bestowed by the trustees. • To support the Richardson professorship, contact Kim Goodstein in the Arts and Sciences Foundation at (919)843-3919, mail to: kim.goodstein@unc.edu. The Richard J. Richardson Distinguished Professorship in Political Science has been established to recognize the beloved professor and administrator’s four decades of service to Carolina. [ ] CAROLINA ARTS & SCIENCES • WINTER 2006 • 29 $5 million gift creates Phillips Ambassador scholarships By Claire Cusick HIGHLIGHTS CAROLINA ARTS & SCIENCES • SPRING 23 Earl N. “Phil” Phillips, Jr. (BSBA ’62) has pledged $5 million to create the Phillips Ambassadors Program in the College of Arts and Sciences. This pledge represents the largest gift to the university earmarked for study abroad programs. The endowment fund aims to provide scholarships for up to 50 undergraduates per year to participate in College-approved summer or full semester study abroad programs in Asia, with preference given to China and India. A quarter of the scholarships will be reserved for qualified undergraduate business majors and minors. Recipients, named Phillips Ambassadors, will be selected by a committee chaired by the director of study abroad and including representatives from the College of Arts and Sciences and UNC’s Kenan-Flagler Business School. This program augments Carolina’s long-standing leadership in providing international experiences for its undergraduates. Almost 37 percent of Chapel Hill students study abroad before receiving their degrees, a higher percentage than any other major public research university in the United States, according to the latest report by the Institute of International Education. “We are grateful to Phil Phillips for this gift, which will significantly expand study abroad opportunities for our students and for his long-time leadership and support of international studies at Carolina,” said Bernadette Gray-Little, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. “Private funds for scholarships are critical so that all UNC students have the opportunity to have meaningful international experiences as preparation for leadership in a global society.” The gift is only the latest contribution to international studies by Phillips, former United States Ambassador to the Eastern Caribbean and successful High Point businessman. In 1992, he established the Earl N. Phillips, Jr. Professorship in International Studies to help attract outstanding undergraduate teachers. He served as International Executive in Residence at the Kenan-Flagler Business School in 2003-2004. He received Kenan-Flagler’s Global Leadership Award in 2001 and the university’s William R. Davie Award in 1995. Phillips has more than 35 years of international business experience. He retired in 2000 as chairman and CEO of GE Capital First Factors Corporation, a High Point asset-based lending company he co-founded in 1972. Phillips also served as head of Phillips Interests, Inc. and Showplace, real estate and home furnishings showroom management companies, both key components of the International Home Furnishings Market headquartered in High Point. Phillips said he hopes his gift will allow UNC undergraduate students to explore other countries. “International travel is one of life’s great educational experiences,” he said. He credits his parents with providing him with this opportunity when they traveled the world when he was a teenager. “That opened my eyes to the world, and I have been traveling and exploring ever since,” he said. “I want Carolina undergraduates to experience that same thing.” Phillips’ family has embraced his international interests. His daughter, Courtney Phillips Hyder ’96, spent a semester at sea while a Carolina undergraduate, and his son, Jordan Phillips ’04 participated in a study abroad program in Spain and now works for a venture firm in Hong Kong. Phillips also credits Kenan Institute Director John D. Kasarda, who encouraged Phillips — while a member of UNC’s Board of Trustees — to visit Asia. As a businessman, Phillips said he immediately saw a booming market for goods and services as well as investment opportunities based on the region’s position as a low-cost supplier to the rest of the world. “The 21st century belongs to Asia,” Phillips said. “Hopefully, this gift will stimulate students to spend their study abroad experiences focused on the future — Asia.” Phillips served two terms as chairman of UNC’s Board of Trustees and served as a member of the UNC Endowment Board for 16 years. The North Carolina General Assembly appointed him to a four-year term on the Board of Governors overseeing the 16 campuses of the UNC system. In 1999-2000, Phillips chaired the North Carolina Citizens for Business and Industry and was co-chair of North Carolinians for Educational Opportunity 2000, which led and promoted the successful $3.2 billion referendum for capital improvements at UNC system schools and the state’s community colleges. • ABOVE: Alumnus Phil Phillips This pledge represents the largest gift to the university earmarked for study [ abroad programs. ] 24 • SPRING 2006 • CAROLINA ARTS & SCIENCES HIGHLIGHTS Sonja’s Story: Holocaust reparation funds support Jewish studies professorship By Dee Reid Sonja van der Horst was still a teen when the Nazis invaded Poland, executed her father and sister, sent her mother to die at a concentration camp, and began the systematic elimination of 18,000 Jews in her hometown. She survived the Holocaust by assuming false identities and working under Nazi watch in German labor camps. After the war, Sonja and her husband, Johannes (Hans) van der Horst, immigrated to the United States and spent their lives supporting organizations that promote public education, civil rights, religious freedom and Jewish culture. Hans, a chemical engineer who was fluent in seven languages, died in 1978. Last fall, Sonja, nearly 82, learned that she had a brain tumor. It was time to decide what more she could do with the Holocaust reparation funds she had collected and invested since the early 1960s. She wanted to establish a distinguished professorship at Carolina to be filled by an expert in Jewish history and culture, enhancing knowledge of the culture that Hitler had tried to destroy. In January, as Sonja’s illness was advancing, her grown children acted quickly to fulfill her wish. Charles van der Horst, a professor of medicine at Carolina; Roger van der Horst, an education editor at The News and Observer in Raleigh; alumna Jacqueline van der Horst Sergent ’82 MPH, a health promotion coordinator at the Granville Vance District Health Department in Oxford, N.C.; and Tatjana Schwendinger, chief administrative judge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in St. Louis, established the JMA and Sonja van der Horst Distinguished Professorship in Jewish Studies in honor of their parents. The family’s gift qualifies for matching funds from the state endowment trust funds. UNC’s College of Arts and Sciences will conduct a search to fill the position with a scholar whose teaching and research will contribute to the work of the Carolina Center for Jewish Studies. “My parents were always interested in public education and religious and racial tolerance,” said Charles van der Horst. “It is fitting to honor them through this distinguished professorship at the Carolina Center for Jewish Studies, where the teaching and study of Jewish history and culture is flourishing at a leading public university committed to providing a first-rate education to a diverse student body.” “We’re deeply moved that the family has chosen to honor Hans and Sonja van der Horst in this manner,” said Jonathan Hess, director of the Carolina Center for Jewish Studies, established in 2003. “Close to 1,000 undergraduates enroll in Jewish studies courses at Carolina each year, and student interest in Jewish history and culture is clearly on the rise. The Van der Horst Professorship will enable us to recruit another leader in the field to teach at UNC, bringing us closer to our goal of creating a Jewish studies program with national prominence.” Sonja van der Horst was born Chaya Eichenbaum Teichholz on Dec. 16, 1923 in Tarnopol, Poland. The Nazis entered the town on July 2, 1941 and killed 5,000 Jews in one week alone. After her family was destroyed, Chaya hid under a series of false identities, the last being Sonja Tarasowa. She eventually boarded a train carrying non- Jewish workers to labor sites in Germany, where she worked at a coal mine, a lumber yard and a farm. At the end of the war, she served as a translator for the English forces. Johannes Martinus Arnold van der Horst was born Sept. 22, 1918 in the Netherlands. He fought the Nazis in the Dutch Army and served as a scout with the U.S. armed forces invasion of southern France in 1944. At the end of the war, he worked for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration and met Sonja when he took Russian lessons from her. In the summer of 1945, the Soviets began the forced repatriation of displaced persons to their countries of origin. English friends agreed to hide Sonja. When she told Hans her story, he asked her to marry him. Sonja and Hans were wed in the Netherlands that year and left for the United States in 1952, eventually settling in Olean, N.Y. • To learn more about Sonja and Hans van der Horst and the Carolina Center for Jewish Studies, see www.sonjavanderhorst.org and ccjs.unc.edu. ABOVE: Sonja and Hans van der Horst at their wedding, Oct. 11, 1945. “Close to 1,000 undergraduates enroll in Jewish studies courses at Carolina each year, and student interest in Jewish history and culture is clearly on the rise. The Van der Horst Professorship will enable us to recruit another leader in the field to teach at UNC, bringing us closer to our goal of creating a Jewish studies program with national prominence.” [ — Jonathan Hess ] Music Building breaks ground this year Herbert Hoover was in the White House and Frank Porter Graham presided over the university when the music department moved to its current home in Hill Hall in 1930. The student population has increased nine-fold since then. Music majors have tripled in the last decade, and the public now flocks to more than 100 performances a year in Hill Hall. With demand for teaching, learning and performance space greater than ever, it is past time for a new music facility. University trustees have approved plans for the Carolina Music Building, with an official groundbreaking set for later this year. The new, 100,000 square-foot building will be constructed in two phases, with the first part funded by $19.8 million in revenues from state higher-education bonds and $4 million in private gifts to be raised through the College of Arts & Sciences. The building is designed by Michael Dennis and Associates of Boston, whose portfolio includes major facilities at the University of California at Santa Barbara, Syracuse University and Carnegie Mellon University, and the new performing-arts complex at Emory University. Plans for the new Music Building call for a three-story traditional red brick structure to anchor the new Arts Common at the northwest entrance to campus, replacing Abernethy Hall and the Swain parking lot. Phase 1a will create a U-shaped building surrounding a courtyard and will provide studios, classrooms and a rehearsal room large enough for an orchestra and The Marching Tar Heels. Phase 1b will add a concert hall, classrooms and small rehearsal rooms. Unlike existing facilities in Memorial Hall, Gerrard Hall and the historical PlayMakers Theatre, the new Music Building will include a 650-seat concert hall with adjustable acoustical treatment, appropriate for a range of performances from solo recitals to a full symphony orchestra. The structure will also include a new recital organ, replacing the one that was installed in Hill Hall in the 1930s. Hill Hall was originally constructed in 1907 as the campus library. When Wilson Library was completed in 1929, the music department moved into the old library space. A combination of state funds and a major gift from John Sprunt Hill, class of 1889, supported the addition of an auditorium and organ. By 1956, Hill Hall had become so crowded that the university erected barrack-type structures south of the building, which was expanded again in 1963. Carolina’s music library, the most extensive collection in the South, was housed in the basement of Hill Hall until 2003, when concerns about moisture resulted in a move to Wilson Library. Once the new Music Building is complete, the next phase will involve demolishing the 1960s addition to Hill Hall, restoring the original structure and extending it for a new library of music and fine arts. At that point, one of the nation’s finest music collections will be returned to its newly renovated historic home in Hill Hall. • To learn more about making a gift to the Carolina Music Building, contact Emily Stevens, emily.stevens@unc.edu, (919) 843-5285. HIGHLIGHTS $3.9 million awarded for “nano” cancer research The National Cancer Institute has awarded UNC $3.9 million to establish an interdisciplinary center to harness developments in nanotechnology, a process using microscopic particles to improve cancer diagnostics, imaging and therapy, and to create new jobs in North Carolina. The Carolina Center of Cancer Nanotechnology Excellence, based in the Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, will involve a range of medical and science faculty, including three in the College of Arts and Sciences: • Joseph DeSimone, William R. Kenan Jr. distinguished professor of chemistry and chemical engineering at UNC and N.C. State University, is developing “smart” nanoparticles designed to deliver drugs to targeted cell types in the body. • Otto Zhou, Lyle Jones distinguished professor of physics and materials science, is developing a medical X-ray imaging methodology based on pulsed nanofibers, designed to provide earlier detection of tumors. • J. Michael Ramsey, Minnie N. Goldby distinguished professor of chemistry, is working on “nanofluidics” devices, perhaps more easily understood as “labs on a chip.” Using this technology, a machine the size of a playing card would be able to analyze one drop of blood and have almost instantaneous results on a vast array of blood measurements. CAROLINA ARTS & SCIENCES • SPRING 2006 • 25 26 • SPRING 2006 • CAROLINA ARTS & SCIENCES HIGHLIGHTS Undergraduates interested in exploring Christian traditions and their varied influences on culture and society throughout history can choose a new interdisciplinary academic minor in the College. The minor in Christianity and Culture is thought to be the first of its kind at a public university. Michael Piller’s next generation Hollywood lost an artistic force and Carolina an alumnus and friend with the death in November of writer/producer Michael Piller. He was best known for creating more than 500 hours of compelling stories for “Star Trek,” the most successful franchise in television history. Piller ended a battle with cancer at age 57, but his legacy carries on through UNC’s writing for the screen and stage program, which he helped to launch with a $500,000 gift. The College has established the Michael Piller Distinguished Professorship Fund in his memory to attract outstanding mentors for future generations. “Michael had more integrity than just about anyone I have ever met,” said Rick Berman, executive producer of the Star Trek series. “His passion for writing and his ability to recognize and nurture talent in others never faltered.” Piller was born in Port Chester, N.Y., and graduated from Carolina in 1970 with a bachelor’s degree in radio, television and motion pictures. “I saw the world change around me through the most creative environment you could ever ask for,” he said of his undergraduate days in Chapel Hill. “I had the experience of being introduced to an extraordinarily wide section of people, many of whom have shown up in my work in alien disguises. He started out as a broadcast journalist and won two Emmy Awards for his work at CBS affiliate, WBBM-TV in Chicago. Unhappy in the news business, he moved to Los Angeles and began writing and producing for television including, “Cagney and Lacey,” “Simon and Simon” and “Miami Vice.” In 1989 he boarded the Starship Enterprise early in the third season of “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” eventually be-coming head writer and executive producer of the series, which aired until 1994. Piller co-created, produced and syndicated “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine” from 1992 to 1995, and “Star Trek Voyager” from 1994 to 1996. He also wrote the 1998 film, “Star Trek: Insurrection,” the ninth movie in the Star Trek series. In 1999, he and his son Shawn formed a production company, Piller2, responsible for the TV show, “The Dead Zone,” (based on the Stephen King novel), which debuted in 2002 and remains on the air. “Because Michael gave a start to, and mentored, many of today’s top TV writers, it is only fitting that we create this professorship in his name so that those of us here can continue his legacy,” said David Sontag, the Wesley Wallace distinguished professor and director of the writing for the screen and stage program. • Donations may be made to the Michael Piller Distinguished Professorship through the Arts and Sciences Foundation, 134 E. Franklin St., Chapel Hill, N.C. 27514. “Our curriculum is designed not to influence or change students’ religious faith or practice, but to enhance their knowledge of the role of Christianity over time,” said Christian Smith, co-director of the minor and Stuart Chapin distinguished professor of sociology. To complete requirements for the minor, students must choose five courses from more than 40 offerings, including an introductory survey course; a course in ancient, medieval or early modern Christianity; and a course on Christianity in the modern world. Classes must be taken from at least two different departments, and students may receive permission to count other relevant classes, A new minor in Christianity and Culture ABOVE: Michael Piller, wearing his Carolina cap on a Hollywood set. “I saw the world change around me through the most creative environment you could ever ask for. I had the experience of being introduced to an extraordinarily wide section of people, many of whom have shown up in my work in alien disguises.” [ — Michael Piller ] HIGHLIGHTS CAROLINA ARTS & SCIENCES • SPRING 2006 • 27 London center has historic ties The College’s new international hub in London has historic ties to Great Britain and Carolina. Purchased in September, the European Study Center in Winston House is the first academic facility owned by UNC abroad. The $5 million center is being financed with private funds, including a $1 million lead gift from alumnus James H. Winston ’55 and his wife Mary, of Jacksonville, Fla., to name the building in honor of the Winston family and their deep connections to Carolina and England. The European Study Center in Winston House will serve the Honors Program in London and be open to students, faculty, programs and alumni from all parts of the university. The 4,400 square-foot building is located at Bedford Square — the oldest remaining complete Georgian garden square in the city — in historic Bloomsbury, a neighborhood that has long been associated with literature, art and learning. Beginning with Patrick Henry Winston in 1844, six generations of the family have been Carolina students and leaders. Robert Watson Winston, class of 1879, was an attorney, judge, historian and author who wrote extensively on national and international affairs. His son, Robert Watson Winston, Jr. (Jim Winston’s father) was captain of the football team and a track star at Carolina. He graduated in 1912, studied at the Sorbonne and served in France during World War I; the family established a distinguished professorship in his honor at Carolina in 1986. George Tayloe Winston served as university president from 1891 to 1895, an important period of growth when the faculty doubled in size and the student body nearly tripled. James Horner Winston, class of 1904, was the first Carolina student to win the prestigious Rhodes Scholarship to study at Oxford University in Great Britain. And of course it is his namesake whose gift launched the purchase of the London building, which will now serve future generations of Tar Heels. “The Winston Family has been involved for many generations with our great university, and we are pleased to play a small part in its future global expansion beginning with the European Study Center,” Jim Winston ’55 said. The family continues to be engaged in university affairs. Jim Winston has served on the Board of Visitors, the General Alumni Association and the Arts and Sciences Foundation Board. His son, James Winston, Jr., a psychologist practicing in Miami, graduated from Carolina with a B.A. in 1981 and a Ph.D. in 1991. He also received a master’s degree from Oxford University. ABOVE: Robert Watson Winston (class of 1879), second from right, and his children, from left: James Horner Winston (class of 1904), Amy Winston Carr, Robert Watson Winston, Jr. (class of 1912) and Gertrude Winston Webb. Charles Winston ’53 (Jim’s brother) has served as a member of the university’s Board of Visitors and as chair of the General Alumni Association and the N.C. Educational Foundation. He and his wife, Flo, have also served on the Arts and Sciences Foundation Board. In 2004, the university awarded him the William Richardson Davie Award for extraordinary service. His son, Robert Watson Winston III, class of 1984, serves on the university’s Board of Trustees. The European Study Center in Winston House is in the heart of London, convenient to the British Museum and Library and to King’s College London, where UNC recently launched a multi-level exchange program for undergraduates, graduate students and faculty. About $3.2 million has been raised for the center so far, as part of the Carolina First fundraising campaign. • independent study and study abroad. A Distinguished Speaker Series will bring renowned scholars to campus each year to speak on topics related to the influences of Christianity on society and society on Christianity. The curriculum draws on the strengths of UNC faculty in many disciplines, including: art history, classics, philosophy, political science, religious studies and sociology. Smith |
OCLC number | 65216324 |