The Bowdoin Orient

In a dance studio on the sixth floor of Memorial Hall, five strangers play theater games and make strange noises in a circle. It is here, in student-led theater troupe Beyond the Proscenium’s (BTP) fall show, “Circle Mirror Transformation,” that the audience is required to take off their shoes and suspend their belief as they are immersed in the lives of its minimal cast: a drama teacher, her husband, a divorced carpenter, a former actress and a high school junior.

Directed by Cordelia Orbach ’17, the show follows a theater class at a local community center in rural Vermont. Although the characters lead drastically different lives, their interactions with one another provide relatable snapshots of everyday life.

“Acting is an exercise in empathy. It’s about learning about other people and trying to know them and figure out what makes them tick,” Orbach said. “The world is big and we are just college students. But our lives are real and our struggles are felt, and that’s an important part of this show.” 

According to Orbach, the range of character experiences in the show produces an appreciation of the seemingly insignificant: the 16-year-old’s all-consuming desire to be the lead in the school play is felt as deeply as the loneliness of the divorced carpenter.

BTP was founded by Orbach and Sarah Guilbault ’18 in 2014 in an effort to bring student theater to non-traditional spaces on campus. The organization produces most shows in a three-week period, which Orbach said appeals to busy Bowdoin students who want to engage in on-campus theater but might not have time for a seven-week production.

With small cast sizes and intimate venues, BTP also prides itself in its ability to create unity among the cast as well as to break down the barrier between the audience and the actors. With just a yoga ball and a hula hoop for props, “Circle Mirror Transformation” is one of the group’s most personal shows yet. 

“Part of the mission of BTP is bringing the audience into the play instead of asking them to opt in,” Orbach said. 

According to Jamie Boucher ’19, who plays divorced carpenter Schultz in the show, the cast was able to tap into the messages of the play in order to overcome their greatest obstacle: finding the motivation to rehearse after an intense election week. 

Boucher noted that the universal themes of the show—loss and love, fear of death, importance of the individual, among others—were ultimately a comfort for the group. 

“It’s a valuable lesson that one can apply to rest of one’s life: everybody’s just human, just futsin’ around, trying really hard all the time,” Boucher said. “No one really knows what they’re doing, and so it’s a lesson to remind people that when it feels like the sky is falling down because Donald Trump has been elected—or even if it doesn’t, even if you’re celebrating—everyone only has two sets of eyeballs out of which they look at the world.”

“So much of theater is learning to be vulnerable and exploring parts of yourself that may really not be you, or parts that are more you than you realize,” added Rowan Staley ’18, who plays the drama teacher in the show. “It’s interesting to both be that person who’s acting and being vulnerable but then also playing someone who is being vulnerable and acting.”​

In a blend of contemporary songs inspired by the Maine coast, Lawrence Kaplan '72 will return to the Brunswick area tomorrow evening to perform his renowned folk ballads at the Maine Maritime Museum.

Kaplan, who calls himself a child of the folk revolution of the 1960s, got his start as a student at the College in the late '60s and '70s when he and other student musicians began a weekly coffeehouse in the basement of Appleton Hall called "The Bear Bottom."

The folk artist's music, which has been featured in festivals and clubs across the United States and Europe, centers around imagery of coastal and riparian life in the context of the anecdotal history that has shaped it.

"I'm very interested in the local history from the perspective of the individual," Kaplan said. "You live in a place and you try to learn about it. It's kept me focused."

It is this connection to place that Kaplan plans to draw on during his performance tomorrow evening—with a setlist featuring songs about the coastal regions of Maine, from Brunswick to Penobscot, as well as ballads about the experience of an autumn in New England.

"I love Maine ... there's something very peaceful about quiet time around this time of year—when you have time for yourself in Maine, or even just on Bowdoin's campus, which is to this day one of the most spectacular places to study—you make the time to do things you really love," Kaplan said.

It during his time at Bowdoin that Kaplan became immersed in the folk music scene, playing with his student band, "Ben Steel With His Bear Hands," and spending much of his free time picking his guitar in the chapel or Wentworth Hall, now Wentworth Servery in Thorne Hall. He went on to performing for passengers on the historic schooner "The Bowdoin" in Camden, Maine, writing songs that would be sung for decades to come.

For Kaplan, his return to the Maine coast is both a trip back in time as well as chance to give back to a place that he credits to shaping his musical style and future career.

"I don't look at it as much as a venue to sing at as much as a place to be back at," he said. "I'm old enough to come back and get soggy-eyed about the place. To me, it's just a chance to share stuff and bring back home songs that were inspired by the sensibility of living in Maine in an important time of my life. College is the most active, energetic, intellectually stimulating time."

A musician on the folk scene for almost fifty years now, Kaplan signed with Folk Legacy Records in 1993 and has released three CDs with the company since. His performance will take place at the Maine Maritime Museum tomorrow evening from 6:00 to 8:30 p.m. Admission is $12 for members of the museum and $15 for non-members.

Last semester in the basement of Gibson Hall, the student band Gibson 10 was formed. There they learned jazz music with each other, improvised together and formed the basis for their eclectic rock and jazz-influenced sound, which will premiere this evening in Smith Union as the opening act for electronic duo Louis the Child. 

Formerly performing under the name Cup of Poodles, the group became the opener for the fall concert when Tobi Omola ’19 was asked by eBoard to perform following the release of his single, “Need U.” Omola then enlisted the help of bandmates Ellis Laifer ’19, Dante Moussapour ’19, Jeb Polstein ’17, Zakir Bulmer ’19 and Jon Luke Tittman ’19. The group plans to perform a mix of originals and covers, with special attention to Omola’s original single as well as Laifer’s song, titled “Silent Companion.”

The group hopes that its performance will spark what it perceives to be a slowly blossoming music scene on campus. According to Moussapour, they’re optimistic that the music culture will expand to include more social events centered specifically on student band performances, rather than act as a supplement to preexisting social events. 

“One of the things that Bowdoin has unfortunately developed is this party atmosphere in which bands are shoved in a basement,” Moussapour said. “Performing live, especially when you’re watching your friends and fellow students perform live—it’s a nice experience. Let’s make live music at Bowdoin great again.”

“It might sound cheesy, but we want to inspire other people,” Tittman added. “At Bowdoin there are sports, which is such a dominant thing that people do and think about. There are a lot of great musicians that just don’t play as much or get enough recognition. So we want other people to engage in the music world and build a stronger music culture here at Bowdoin.” 

According to Tittman, the group’s diverse but cohesive taste in music has made for a distinct sound—even when performing classic pieces from the likes of the Beatles and James Brown. “We’re trying to utilize each instrumentalist’s skill in each song and to maximize our musical skill into something that will please the audience,” Moussapour said. 

Much of the music group’s magic is in the improvisation and diversity of sound—with Omola on trumpet, Polstein on drums, Bulmer on guitar, Moussapour on saxophone, Tittman on bass and Laifer on keyboard. With an even spread of vocals between the six, their collaborative dynamic is clear. 

“We’re much more into music as a process than a final product,” Tittman said. 

“But we’re still learning how to work together,” Laifer added. “It’s not been always harmonious. We don’t want to have one person dictate everything and it’s difficult to have your voice be heard but not be overpowering. We’re still trying to find the balance.” 

It’s a balance that undoubtedly comes with time, as the group will gain more experience performing, songwriting and collaborating with one another in the context of the campus music scene. But for now, the band is eagerly awaiting its performance this evening and its reception—what Laifer likes to call the “space between the final note and the reaction that the audience gives.”

“There’s just an energy that’s in the air that’s part of the experience,” Tittman said. “Being in a room with people who are playing music and having a good time and a bunch of people who are listening to music—it’s special in that way. It gives people joy.”

Gibson 10 will perform tonight at 10 p.m. in the David Saul Smith Union, followed by a concert by Louis the Child at 11 p.m.

Last night, the Bowdoin Music Collective (BMC) hosted its annual open mic night at Ladd House, which featured the usual slam poetry, singing and instrumentation. But according to BMC co-president Matt Leventhal ’17, this year is different as it’s the kick-off event for what the BMC hopes to be a year of revival of the music scene on campus. 

According to Leventhal, the student-directed club will focus specifically on cultivating an inclusive and diverse platform for musicians and music enthusiasts alike, partnering with various student organizations in an effort to appeal to a wide range of the student body. 

“Our club has been white male dominated for the last year or so and we’re trying to break that stereotype,” said Leventhal. “Anyone with even an interest in music, or if they want to form a band, or if they just want to be involved in event planning—everyone is welcome.” 

This inclusive energy was clear in the living room of Ladd, where a variety of singers, slam poets, bands and walk-ons took stage to a chorus of whoops and claps from the audience. Tobi Omola ’19, programming director and BMC representative for Ladd, said he was eager to host the event and show the campus community another dimension of the house. 

“As Ladd programming director, I also hope that it shows that Ladd isn’t only a party space,” he said. “This is a nice event where people can feel comfortable coming in and out—and it’s not the pub, it’s a homely environment.”

This concept of home is not unfamiliar to Leventhal, as he aims to instill a similar sense of belonging among what he hopes will become a burgeoning campus community of active musicians. 

“There’s so much that can be done to make people feel welcome and at home,” he said. “[Music] unites people. It’s another form of school spirit, in a way.” For him, it’s all about putting in what he calls the “leg work”: coordinating events, connecting artists and making things happen behind-the-scenes. 

“We have so much power here to make the music scene what we want, that I think the only limiting factor is people’s ability to commit time,” he said. “So I’m trying to take the load off of a lot of people who may or may not have free time to put into this, and sort of put in that time myself so all they have to do is show up and play.”

Leventhal has collaborated on planning a multitude of events with the Bowdoin Organic Garden, the Outing Club, Bowdoin Art Society and Peer Health in order to broaden the reach of the club. 

“Bowdoin can do so much better with making its music scene a social scene,” he said. “If we can make things happen, week after week, that are really student-oriented, my hope is that it will bring people together. The ideal is that suddenly [events] are popping up everywhere and we have a very vibrant social music scene.” 

The BMC has plans to host a Jazz Night on Thursday, September 29 at Jack Magee’s Pub and Grill. 

In a synthesis of modern dance disciplines, the College’s Department of Theater and Dance presents their annual Spring Dance Concert this weekend. Featuring a blend of introductory, intermediate and advanced level classes, the concert explores student individuality through the lens of repertory, choreography and improvisation.

“Dancing is always personal in the sense that we’re dealing with an essentially abstract art form,” said Paul Sarvis, chair of the theater and dance department. “But the forms are human beings, who obviously have biographies. When we work with the students, we’re building the dances around that particular collection of people in that moment of time.”

The production includes a variety of performance, including a student-produced screendance and an advanced-level repertory piece directed by Visiting Artist Laura Peterson.

“[Peterson] has a singular voice in the modern dance scene,” said Sarvis. “She’s working in a way that’s very rigorous and linear and demanding. You can sense a kind of polish and aesthetic sensibility that’s really distinct from the other courses and what typically goes on in the department.”

According to Sarvis, another unique facet of the show is simply the diversity of student performance background. Because Bowdoin does not currently offer a dance major, the department attracts a distinct blend of both experienced and inexperienced dancers.

“We’re not attracting people who want to pursue careers in dance,” said Sarvis. “The program is a balance between giving [the students] a novel experience and having some idea of audience in mind so that what serves the students is also interesting to watch… It’s delightful teaching the range of students who come to us, partly because Bowdoin attracts smart people and people who are curious.”

For several students, their preparation for the Spring Concert has provided an unlikely avenue to explore movement and art in both an academic and recreational light. Maddie Lemal-Brown ’18, a student in the introductory class Making Dances, noted that as a rugby player, her involvement in dance at Bowdoin has challenged the ways she views herself.

“It was an interesting transition into exploring my body in new ways, and it not just being a tool to go faster or be stronger,” Lemal-Brown said. “It’s really about what your body is, how many combinations can you use it for and not just using it for the same combination over and over.”“[Sarvis] said at the beginning of the course that this is ‘serious play,’” Lemal-Brown added.

“That resonated with me. Getting to run around and act like a kid but also allow your own creativity to come back and tying it into academics—it makes you think in a lot of different ways. You have the freedom to think the way you want to… It’s not just dance, it’s reflection on art—on what is art, what is movement and what is the body.”

For Morgan Mills ’16, who choreographed and is performing in a piece called “Dreamscape,” the concert is both a presentation of her semester’s work as well as space to return to an art form she practiced throughout her childhood.

“I never thought I would be able to choreograph my own dance,” she said. “The dance program here gives students the opportunity to learn and pick it up so quickly. I used to have a very set definition of what dance consists of, but that has been expanded so much since coming here.”

“What we aspire to, in the department and the College and I would even say in society as a whole, is the embrace of diversity within a common goal,” Sarvis said. “It’s really a matter of the personalities and establishing a feeling of fluidity and openness. I hope that the audience leaves with an empathetic energy from the dance, but also that they see the articulation of bodies in a way they haven’t before.”

With the recent results of this year’s Battle of the Bands and DJ Contest, coupled with the addition of house music producer Baauer, has brought student excitement for Ivies to an extreme level. Student band Duck Blind and student DJ Nadim Elhage, who are set to open for Waka Flocka Flame and Baauer, respectively, noted their excitement to open for the two anticipated acts. 

“Be ready to have fun,” said Nadim Elhage ‘16. “I’m going to play a lot of stuff that you’d want to dance to and then mix in music that you would want to have fun to. It’s engaging.”

Student bands Duck Blind, Pulse, Gotta Focus and Treefarm competed in the annual event to be the opening act for Ivies 2016. Pulse won second place and will play before Elhage’s set on Saturday. Duck Blind, featuring Harrison Carmichael ’17 on lead guitar, Kyle Losardo ’17 on rhythm guitar, vocals by Mike Paul ’17, Sam Azbel ’18 on bass and Stephen Melgar ’16 on drums, claimed victory and the opportunity to open for Waka Flocka Flame on Thursday night in Smith Union.

“It was cool opening for Logic last year, but I’m excited to be playing in Smith which I think will be a more fun environment to be playing in, especially with the hype around Waka,” said Carmichael.

Judged by Associate Professor of Music Vineet Shende, Senior Lecturer in Music Frank Mauceri and President Clayton Rose, Azbel described how different it was to appeal to the judges as opposed to playing just for students.

“We were kind of focusing on what the judges wanted to hear as opposed to what the students wanted to hear,” said Azbel. “We’re usually not nervous for shows, but we were definitely a little bit nervous about Battle of the Bands because we were playing for definitely some really knowledgeable judges.”

“The feedback you get from the judges is also just great,” added Paul. “They tell you all about the technical things you’re doing right and wrong.”

Carmichael, Losardo, Paul and Melgar have played together for three years. Azbel filled in for the band’s bassist last year and has become a permanent member of the band this year.Having won second place at Battle of the Bands last year, Carmichael said the band was hoping to win first this year.

“We’ve just been making a lot of time for practicing this past year,” said Carmichael. “I think we’ve just been very conscious about our song choice and making sure we have songs down that we really enjoy playing.”

Elhage, who has been DJing since his first year at Bowdoin, said his style has progressed to include fewer mainstream artists and more unexpected samples.

“I shy away from mainstream music because I feel like it loses the artistic touch that the music I listen to has,” Elhage said. “I want to stick to the style that [Baauer] has. I don’t want to be too radically different but have some surprises in there.”

Similarly, Duck Band has shifted from playing country music and has been finding a slightly different sound.

“We’re exploring our differences musically,” said Paul.  “I’d say we are all so different in the genres that we like, so we were kind of delving deeper into figuring out what we want to play.”

Transgender Latinx immigrant rights activist Bamby Salcedo visited Bowdoin on Monday for a film screening of “TransVisible: The Bamby Salcedo Story,” accompanied by a Q&A and luncheon the following day. As a part of the McKeen Center for the Common Good’s series of “What Matters” campus conversations, Salcedo discussed the intersectionality of pressing transgender, immigrant and Latinx issues within the context of her work as the founder of Los Angeles-based TransLatin@ Coalition.

Salcedo shared her experiences growing up in Guadalajara, Mexico, her subsequent immigration to the United States and her struggles with drug abuse, gang activity, prostitution and deportation once settling in L.A.

“We’re running away from our countries to find a better way of life, but then we get to this country and find ourselves in the same predicament,” Salcedo said. “We want to live our lives authentically, but a lot of times other people, and a lot of times our families, don’t even understand the process. A lot of it has to do with what societal structures have imposed onto what we believe.”

Salcedo, whose life changed direction after she sought help and a health education job at Bienestar Human Services, soon embraced her identity as an activist for translatinx rights, eventually founding the TransLatin@ Coalition and directing Angels of Change, a fundraiser to support health education, access and HIV prevention for trans youth. 

Despite the scarcity of transgender, gender-nonconforming and even immigrant students at Bowdoin, Salcedo’s visit still proved very relevant, as her audience found new ways to discuss both unfamiliar and deeply personal aspects of identity.

“There is that critique at Bowdoin about the real world versus the bubble,” said Karla Padron, a CFD postdoctoral fellow in gender, sexuality and women’s studies. “This is the type of event that creates a bridge and disrupts that bubble. It’s not just that they learn these terms, but students see what it looks like and how it’s experienced.”

Padron added that although many Bowdoin students are familiar with the issues of marginalized groups and the theoretical framework through which they’re often viewed, Salcedo’s visit was instrumental in bringing them to the forefront.

“Bowdoin students are very bright and when we talk about intersectionality, people understand that at an intellectual level,” Padron said. “But in terms of diversity of experience, because of age and socioeconomic status, it is difficult to see what it looks like. We need to create more visibility. We need more people like Bamby Salcedo to come to campus, and we need more conversations about how these theoretical terms apply in the real world and how the real world informs our theoretical world.”

The screening and Q&A in Kresge Auditorium was well-attended. However, many students noted a lack of white representation in the audience.

“I noticed that the audience was mostly students of color and students who have immigration as part of their family history,” Miguel Aviles ’16 said. “If this place is about all these experiences and learning about them and the world, then I feel like we should incorporate as many people as possible.”

Salcedo spoke to this idea. “I think to change the structures at this school, the first thing we need to do is open our minds and open our hearts,” Salcedo said. “For people who may be feeling isolated and excluded and not part of the whole, if I could just give them a piece of hope that their bodies, presence alone and existence mean everything. As long as they know that their presence is valuable, they will definitely create a better place for them and the others who come after them.”

The event was hosted by the Department of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies, the McKeen Center for the Common Good, the Women’s Resource Center for Sexual and Gender Diversity, the Student Center for Multicultural Life, Student Activities, the Student Activities Funding Committee, the Kurtz Funds, Latin American Student Organization, Residential Life, Quinby House and Howell House.

For writer and poet Jenny Zhang, being an artist means confronting issues that aren’t always comfortable. In its exploration of race and gender, Zhang’s work offers insight into the politics of identity through the lens of deeply personal, written experience. Yesterday evening, Bowdoin’s Asian Students Association (ASA) hosted Zhang, who is based in Brooklyn, for a reading and workshop in an effort to foster dialogue and increase awareness of the Asian-American experience.

“Being Asian in America… it’s like you’re a ghost,” Zhang added. “People don’t know anything about Asians in America, and when you get down to the nuances of all the different Asian- American groups, people know even less.”

Zhang, who is the published author of poetry collections, “Dear Jenny, We Are All Fine” and “HAGS,” is also a long-time contributor to online teenage magazine Rookie, where she writes about her experiences as a woman of color. 

“I feel better and less confused and less sad if I can say something and share it with everyone,” she said. “Instead of harboring this shameful thing that made me feel lost or dark, I’ve converted it into this object that hopefully, when consumed by other people who have felt lost, can shed a tiny bit of light and do some tangible good.”

Zhang’s work and its synthesis of humor, sincerity and wit caught the attention of ASA board member Elina Zhang ’16 who then contacted the writer and invited her to campus for the reading.  

“Race can often be a white-and-black issue, and even this country is divided in that kind of binary,” Elina Zhang said. “Being Asian puts you in an interesting position—it makes you an ally for African-Americans, for Latinos, but we have our own challenges as well.”

According to Elina Zhang, Asian Week and its programming are an effort to both better engage those who don’t typically interact with Asian culture as well as provide a platform for those who do to further discuss and celebrate the Asian identity. 

“Beyond just the psychic relief of how important it is to have these events, there’s also a real need for certain groups to gain some visibility to be talked about and considered because there’s real suffering happening,” Jenny Zhang said. “Asian Week at Bowdoin is addressing a lot of that stuff, and I think that’s great.”

Despite the discomfort that often comes with addressing the convoluted aspects of identity, Jenny Zhang stressed the importance of it, as both a person and a writer, in order to better understand oneself. 

"No matter how you see yourself, if you’re a woman, if you’re a person of color, if you’re queer, trans—basically any kind of marginalized identity—there’s going to be a time when you’re going to have to encounter a vision of yourself that is prescribed and bound by one or more of those identity categories,” she said. “Maybe it’s not meaningful to say that you’re Asian American, but at some point, if you live long enough, that’s who you’re going to be seen as, and you’re going to be treated in a way that might not recognize the full extent and facets of who you are as a person.”

For Erik Liederbach ’19, who identifies as a cisgender, straight white man, Zhang’s workshop and reading proved insightful, despite his inability to relate at times.

“She wasn’t so much talking about whiteness as much as she was talking about her own experience with white people,” Liederbach said. “And, I think there’s something true to that. You don’t need to relate. You just need to listen and understand.”

“The gatekeepers of literature have always been white men,” Jenny Zhang said. “Those are also the people who have the privilege and ability to pursue something that has so little financial stability. You have to kind of catch up to that. There were a lot of times when I felt like it would be crazy for this Chinese immigrant to think that anyone would be interested in hearing what she had to say.”

At the intersection of art and community engagement, the McKeen Center’s Alternative Spring Break (ASB) trip, “Art as Empowerment,” explored the realities of arts education and involvement in New York City. Members of the trip looked at elite spaces like the Whitney Museum of American Art as well as a middle school in Brooklyn’s least gentrified neighborhood. 

Led by Maya Reyes ’16, the trip focused on educating participants so that they could continue with long term, sustainable service. The group spent the majority of the week exploring how museums and educators reach various underserved communities. 

“I don’t like the idea of going somewhere for a week, giving yourself a pat on the back, leaving and then never engaging with that community again,” Reyes said. “I wanted [the trip] to be primarily educational so that people on the trip could see themselves in a multitude of positions within the art world and for it to be an impactful experience so that they’ll engage with it later on in whatever community they’re in.”

The group visited a host of museums and educational centers throughout the trip, spending time at the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts, Sugar Hill, an affordable housing complex developed by Ellen Baxter ’75, and a gallery directed by Hallie Harrisburg ’90, among others. 

“We talked about how meaningful it is for people to claim a space with art and how art allows people to do that,” said trip member Blanche Froelich ’19. “It acknowledges that those communities have just as much to offer to us, or in my opinion, undeniably more than we have to offer to them.”

The group’s involvement with youth communities, especially those at risk, proved to be particularly insightful.

“It’s important that those means of expression are available to children of every class and race, and they aren’t really because of the funding shortages that exist within arts education,” said Reyes. “It was also important for us to explore the inequality in terms of representation. When you don’t have kids who are exploring art from an early age, they’re never going to become artists or go to museums because they don’t see that as belonging to them.”

“Bringing art to everybody is important because it allows people to realize that their culture is important and that they can understand art and create art that is of equal value to these pieces that have been in museums for centuries or are worth millions of dollars,” said William Schweller ’17, who also attended the trip. “It brings people together.”

Despite the group’s concentration in art and its representations in community engagement, several group members cited a game of pick-up basketball with local youth as one of the more meaningful moments of the trip. 

“I know that basketball isn’t art, but it sticks with you as a community that you may want to be a part of or advocate for in the future,” said Reyes. “Not because it’s so desolate or impoverished, but because you realize that, ‘Hey, there are normal kids here who like to do the same things that I do, but they don’t get the access to the same things I do.’”

“You get to inhabit a different space and learn about work that’s being done outside of the classroom that’s meaningful to a lot of people’s lives,” Reyes added.

For many, ASB trips are opportunities for week-long, intensive public service projects—projects that serve the underprivileged and also help students in their understanding of social and environmental issues. “Art as Empowerment” functioned as an educational trip with the hope of Bowdoin student involvement in the long term. 

“What’s most applicable is our students’ capacity to engage difference critically—to meet people who are unlike themselves and to recognize how they respond to encountering difference,” said Andrew Lardie, associate director for service and leadership at the McKeen Center. “Hopefully it will help students have a more nuanced understanding of what’s going on in their lives here and the life of the campus.”

For identical twins Heather and Felice Chan ’17, their first year at Bowdoin was accompanied by several common transitional experiences and some unconventional ones. It was their first time not having the same group of friends, living thousands of miles from their hometown of Hong Kong and notably, not sharing a bedroom. 

But for the Chan sisters, like many sibling pairs at Bowdoin, having a brother or sister on campus has made a profound impact on their academic and social experiences. Many siblings note that each other's presence on campus often alleviates transitional homesickness, provides an honest on-campus resource and, ultimately, provides a friend. 

"It's really given me someone to depend on, no matter what—as someone to study with or get meals with," Heather Chan said. 

Another set of identical twins, Coco and Tracey Faber ’16, were accepted, waitlisted and rejected from all of the same colleges but made the decision to continue their education together at Bowdoin. 

"We decided that we didn't have to go to different schools because going to college would be different enough," Tracey Faber said. 

"It's nice coming in and having someone who knows you and who you don't have to explain yourself to. You can just be with them," Coco Faber said.

Although the prospect of attending a small liberal arts college with a sibling was intimidating for some, others approached it with ambivalence and others still with enthusiasm. 

"There are a lot of people who are put off by the idea of going to school with their sibling. They want to have their own experience, and they don't want anything holding them back. But we got along well in our childhood—we still share a room at home," said Matt Netto '16, whose younger brother Mike '18 decided to attend Bowdoin after visiting his brother. 

“We've watched each other grow, and people change, and it's nice to be able to see each other change as time goes on,” said Mike Netto. 

Other younger siblings noted that visiting their older counterpart at Bowdoin while still in high school attracted them to Bowdoin. 

"I definitely came here because [Roya] goes here," said Dante Moussapour '19, whose sister, Roya '17, is currently abroad. "Her being abroad really let me find my own way and figure my own path, but I would definitely say that having a sibling on campus is a fundamental.”

“If I had to choose the three most impactful things first semester, the first two would be sleep and exercise and then having my sister on campus,” added Dante Moussapour. 

Sharing such a small campus is a common worry for many siblings; however, Kyle ’18 and Avery Wolfe ’19 have found that they rarely cross paths. 

“I wanted to let him have his own experience and his own school, and I wanted the same,” said Avery Wolfe. They get breakfast once a week to catch up but always know that they have each other there for support. “I feel like I have a mentor here on campus,” said Avery Wolfe. “I immediately had that, whereas other students had to find that.”

For other siblings, the intertwining of their lives has been difficult to navigate. Sisters Jae Yeon '18 and Jae Min Yoon ’19 share a class of nine people and recently worked together on the Bowdoin Theater Department's production of "Sondheim on Sondheim." Jae Min auditioned for her sister, who was a student director of the show. 

"My assistant director thought I was going to cry because I was so stressed," Jae Yeon Yoon said. "It's really different from sitting at your dinner table. All of a sudden, you're in class with them and seeing them in an academic setting trying to be smart."

The process of individualizing oneself within a diverse college setting is a common struggle amongst many first years. For siblings, and twins even more so, the task can prove even more daunting. 

The Fabers share a major, French and art classes and spots on the cross country team. The Chans live in the same room, both run for the track team and share clothes, friends and expenses. 

The Faber twins said that their lives at Bowdoin overlap significantly beyond just shared interests and activities. It's not uncommon for them to respond to each other's names, say hi to people they've never met and, if a sticky situation calls for it, play the part of the other twin. 

"It can be very unsettling," Tracey Faber said. "We are very visual, and we identify people by what they look like. So when you look like someone else, it's really hard to have a sense of someone as a separate individual if you associate all the qualities of them with the image of them...Sometimes I have days where I'm like, 'You know what? I can't do this today.' I just can't, and so I pretend."

The Chans likewise share many of the same interests and have gravitated towards the same friends and activities. 

“The biggest challenge is individualizing ourselves. I've grown up with a twin my whole life. I grew up with someone by my side who I could compete with. I don't know what it's like not being a twin” said Heather Chan.

Between constantly being mistaken for the other twin by professors and friends alike, the Fabers struggle to make decisions with and without the context of their twin. 

"It's hard sometimes because you feel like you have to make a choice between what you want to do naturally and the thing that you want to do because it will make you different from the other person," Nicole Faber added. "That's uncomfortable sometimes."

For siblings Tess '18 and Luke Trinka ’16, attending Bowdoin together has provided another lens through which to view not only the Bowdoin experience but also their own relationship and identities. 

"It's interesting how relationships are often so tied to place, and I think the extent to which the way we related to each other was a result of being in Oak Park, where we're from," said Luke Trinka. 

"After she made the decision, I thought it would be a really cool opportunity to deepen a relationship with a sibling outside of a home space, and I think that's largely what's happened.”Inside the new context of the Bowdoin bubble and out of the comfort of home, their relationship was tested in new ways. “That's where relationships can take on a new texture and depth—when you're outside of a familiar environment,” said Luke Trinka. 

No matter sister, brother or twin, Bowdoin siblings often cherish the chance to share their college experience with a family member. 

"When you have certain experiences at Bowdoin, they acquire a certain meaning here,” Luke Trinka said. “But then you leave school, and some of that meaning gets stripped of its color… It's nice to have someone else who gets it.”

In a rendition that speaks to the college experience, the College’s Theater and Dance Department premiered a take on Shakespeare’s “Love’s Labour’s Lost” yesterday. It boasts an array of performers, including the Polar Bear Dance Swing Club, students and even professors.

 Directed by Assistant Professor of Theater Abigail Killeen, the sixteenth-century play has been adapted to a 1960s collegiate setting and follows a group of fraternity brothers who, in the pursuit of their studies, decided to abandon the idea of love. In the story’s unfolding, however, the young men find themselves enamored, once again, with a group of women in a sorority. 

“On the surface it feels pretty light and farcical but in several places it also has a heaviness to it. That’s the idea of “Love’s Labour’s Lost”—it’s not a traditional romantic comedy,” said Aaron Kitch, associate professor of English, who acts in the play. “Even in the sonnets that are read aloud, that are supposed to be exaggerations and overly enthusiastic expressions of love, you can still hear some moments of deep insight, and I think that’s pretty incredible to have both things going on at the same time.”

Alongside Kitch, Professor of English and Cinema Studies Aviva Briefel acts as a professor in the show, an experience that—despite hitting close to home—has still proved challenging. 

“Anytime you’re teaching something to someone there’s a certain performance to it,” Briefel said. “Not that I’m being fake or pretending to be someone else, but in order to keep people interested, in order to keep myself interested and in order to keep the material alive, I think it involves a certain degree of acting. What’s different about acting in a play is that you’re taking on a different character, and that’s what’s been really new for me.”

Briefel notes that working under Killeen’s direction has provided a unique experience to learn  about teaching from the other side. She admires Killeen’s energy, organization and ways of motivating students.

In its incorporation of various student groups and professors, the production of “Love’s Labour’s Lost” has provided a community of collaboration. Most notable, said Kitch, is the opportunity to work with students on a common ground and outside the scope of academia. 

“It’s been an absolute pleasure to watch [the students] in action,” Kitch said. “It’s humbling. It’s a chance to interact with students in a meaningful way outside of the classroom. The nice thing about Bowdoin is that all the professors wear different hats and get to interact with the students in different forums.”

Katie Randall ’16, co-president of the Bowdoin Polar Bears Swing Dance Club and a dancer in the show, said that the air of inclusivity among all cast members has been a focal point in the production of the show. 

“There was always a possibility that it would end up being dancers versus actors and director,” said Randall. “But we’ve been able to really weave it in and now it really does feel like a whole community of cast. And putting it in the ’60s makes it a lot more accessible—most of the time we don’t even have to act...There’s a lot of joy in it.”

Chosen by Killeen in remembrance of the 400-year anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, “Love’s Labour’s Lost” promises to resound with Bowdoin students in its exploration of the universal themes of Shakespeare in the context of a modern world.

“We have the benefit of 400 years of production to consider what worked and what didn’t work,” Killeen said. “The goal is, fill the text with life again for a contemporary audience. And I believe we’ve succeeded in that. I can’t presume to know what the playwright would have thought, but I try to work with him in mind, hoping that he would be pleased with what we’ve done.”

It was while sitting next to a young girl with a facial deformity at an ice cream shop that author R.J. Palacio found inspiration for the #1 New York Times Bestseller “Wonder.” What felt at the time like an uncomfortable instance of parenting (Palacio bolted from the shop as her three year old son, frightened by the girl’s craniofacial difference, began to cry) soon became the impetus behind the fictional young adult novel that follows the experiences of Auggie, a boy entering fifth grade with a facial difference.

“What I wish I’d done was turn to that little girl and started a conversation and let my son know that there was nothing to be afraid of,” Palacio said. “As I left the scene, I was so afraid that his tears would hurt her feelings, but it never occurred to me that my leaving was just making things worse. I just started thinking about what it must be like for that girl, for her parents, to face a world everyday that doesn’t know how to face you back.”

Palacio, who delivered a talk on Wednesday to a packed Kresge Auditorium, never expected her writing to receive the widespread praise that it has. Recipient of the 2014 Maine Student Book Award, among others, “Wonder” has become a literary mainstay in elementary and middle school classrooms across the country.

Brought to the College by Bowdoin’s literary and arts magazine, The Quill in coordination with the Education Department, Palacio also worked with an upper-level Bowdoin Education class called Educating All Students.

“For our education students in particular who are looking to go and work in schools, this is a really critical piece of it—to be thinking about how students who many have different learning needs and physical needs are incorporated and become successful learners in a school setting,” Program Placement and Outreach Coordinator of the Education Department Sarah Chingos said. “All students deserve to have a safe classroom environment, so part of it is to open conversation, about how we create a safe space for all learners.”

Although the book centers around the realities of living with a facial difference, its implications extend beyond the realms of noticeable or physical insecurity, making it a relatable and widely celebrated piece.

“I think my writing of ‘Wonder’ was my way of trying to get kids to see that the answer to every dilemma in life should always err on the side of kindness,” Palacio said. “If everybody goes by the golden rule, if everybody tries to be a little kinder than is necessary, I really do believe the world would be a better place.” 

Despite the novel’s popularity among the elementary and middle school demographic, its themes are universal in their scope, making “Wonder” still relevant to a college audience. Sold in England and other countries as adult fiction, the novel has sparked the Choose Kind movement, a campaign dedicated to raising awareness about the importance of empathy and tolerance.

“Even if they’re cliche, that doesn’t mean [themes of growing up] aren’t important,” Quill member Clay Starr ’19 said. “Just because something isn’t nuanced or technical, that doesn’t take away from the message it gives.”

Although the book centers around the realities of living with a facial difference, its implications extend beyond the realms of noticeable or physical insecurity, making it a relatable and widely celebrated piece.

“It’s a book about a child with a facial difference, but it’s also a book about being an outsider. It’s a book about not fitting in,” Palacio said. “[Auggie’s] difference is a very obvious one that the whole world can see immediately, but there are other characters in the book that tell a story of their own as well. Every character has something they wish they could change, or that makes them feel different. It’s a book about exploring differences and how to overcome those differences, tolerance, kindness.”

In a series of disjointed narratives concerning the female experience, “The Vagina Monologues” is set to spark the dialogue at Bowdoin about what it means to be a woman, how to deconstruct the stigma around the word “vagina” and, ultimately, empower women through diversity of experience. 

At Bowdoin, this year’s annual performance of the play is sponsored by the College’s chapter of V-Day, a global organization dedicated to combating violence against women and girls worldwide. 

“The Vagina Monologues” has not been met without criticism, however, its performance having been discontinued at Mount Holyoke College and Wellesley College for being exclusive in its representations of womanhood.

“I think that’s a very real critique,” co-director Erin McKissick ’16 said. “I’m very comfortable directing this play and having issues with it. If you’re going to direct a show and think it’s perfect and be totally immune to criticism, that’s not a very thoughtful way to go about it.”

Written by feminist Eve Ensler in 1996, “The Vagina Monologues” is a play that, through the exploration of a variety of female experiences—from the often undiscussed topic of pubic hair to the very real phenomenon of sexual assault—aims to provide a venue for honest discourse.

Although the play has evolved in recent years to include the experiences of transgender women and women of color, it’s still regarded by some as a vestige of second-wave, upper-middle-class white feminism—a breed of feminism that, by glossing over intersectional identities of race, ethnicity, race and class, also assumes the idea of womanhood as one intrinsically linked to the biological marker of having a vagina. 

“We’ve focused a lot on getting people to think critically about the show and whose stories are being told and whose stories are being left out,” McKissick said. “If you want to read the monologues as all being told from the perspective of a white woman, that wouldn’t be that hard, but at the same time there are plenty of monologues that could also be read from someone else’s perspective… most of these are fairly race and class neutral. I don’t think it’s a perfect script, but I don’t agree with the idea that it only represents one way of being a woman. It shows a pretty wide range of sexual experiences.”

In addition to receiving criticism for equating femininity with having a vagina, “The Vagina Monologues” has also been critiqued by Bowdoin students in recent years for acting as a replacement for feminist political action. Although the play does open up a certain dialogue about women’s rights, critics argue that it has not incited much more than that at Bowdoin. 

“I think there’s an acknowledgement that it’s pretty outdated and has elements of exclusivity,” said Uma Blanchard ’17, who co-wrote an op-ed on the show last year for the Orient. “While I do think it’s an empowering thing to participate in, I wouldn’t call it political action. We can’t substitute it for a whole other aspect of political work that we aren’t doing. It just needs to be acknowledged that it’s not enough.”

“I think it’s definitely just one small part of all the work that’s happening on campus,” associate director of Gender Violence Prevention and Education Lisa Peterson said. “There’s always room for more work.” 

In an effort to cultivate a more inclusive voice, colleges such as Wellesley and Mount Holyoke have replaced the traditional performance of “The Vagina Monologues” with their own spin-offs, collecting and displaying the stories of students and community members instead. While this weekend’s performance has been adapted to include an introduction that draws upon stories from the Bowdoin community, there remains controversy over whether the play should be traditionally performed or revised to more strongly feature the voices of the student body.

“You’re still going to be missing a lot of stories,” Associate Director of the play Leah Alper ’17 said. “There isn’t an easy solution to this. It’s important to perform [“The Vagina Monologues”] because they connect people all around the world. That connection is important for us to keep and to realize that this is a fight that goes well beyond Bowdoin.” 

“I hope that people walk away from it feeling like if they have a story about their sexuality or their life as a woman or their vagina that they thought was weird or unusual or not OK, that they would feel like their story has a place—that it can be told and it’s OK,” McKissick said. “Whatever their experience was, they’re not abnormal for having it and they shouldn’t be ashamed of it.”

Inspired by the Old Master paintings of the 1500s, modern artist, Elise Ansel, found a vision for “Distant Mirrors.” The collection of abstract paintings and drawings is exhibited at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art. In collaboration with Hanetha Vete-Congolo, associate professor of romance languages and literatures, the exhibit is the final installment in the Studies in Beauty Initiative, a humanities cluster aimed to address questions of beauty and ethics. 

Ansel, a resident of Portland, Maine, joined Vete-Congolo on Thursday to discuss the feminist and humanistic themes of her exhibit, which will run through April 17.“I’m trying to take these paintings that were initially created from a male point of view and filter them through this idea of a more feminine perspective,” Ansel said. “There’s a subtext that the initial work bears issues having to do with racism, sexism and classism. The contemporary artist trying to rework it is trying to address those issues. In my case, I might be reacting against sexism, but at the same time acknowledging the beauty of the original painting.”

Ansel’s work is a recreation of Denis Calvaert’s “Annunciation,” a late Renaissance rendering of the biblical angel, Gabriel, telling the Virgin Mary she would carry Jesus. Drawing from this image, Ansel questions gender roles, privilege and the politics of race in her abstract recreations—while still recognizing the merit in the original piece.

“What [Ansel] brings to the fore is our relation with these former centuries in the way they passed on to us these values that govern us today,” Vete-Congolo said. “It’s this dialogue between things that initially appear to be dichotomic, or even opposed, but in the end find common ground and come up with something completely new.”

Initially inspired by James Joyce’s novel “Ulysses”—a modern interpretation of Homer’s “Odyssey”—Ansel reworks Calvaert’s piece to depict what she calls “the female experience.”“I feel that sometimes for women to succeed, they have to act like men,” Ansel said. “That’s a route that women can choose and that can give them some degree of the success that’s been available for men. But if you choose not to go that path, if you choose to really celebrate those things about yourself that are distinctly female and distinctly feminine, not least of which is the ability to bear children, it’s a very poignant thing to celebrate how wonderful it is—this whole range of experience you can have.”

In choosing to reimagine a work that, by way of its incorporation of biblical themes, also makes a comment on the role of women in 16th century European society, “Distant Mirrors” does exactly what its name would imply. It provides a parallel to the original work that is still independent in its message.

“This painting that I’m working from really is about spiritual experience. I’m interested in what the female experience is in that and celebrating it—and in a way that’s not just accommodating the male point of view of it,” Ansel said. “For me, it’s a more dynamic explosion than a quietly submissive acceptance. What you feel, what you think, what you say and what you write—that’s more important than how somebody else pictures you. And I think that’s what my work is about, while at the same time celebrating some of these pictures because they’re amazing.”

It’s at the intersection of what Ansel describes as the inwardly felt and outwardly constructed female experience that “Distant Mirrors” incorporates the notion of beauty, a facet integral to not only the Studies in Beauty Initiative but also, Vete-Congolo said, the female identity. 

“We’re dealing with ethics and we’re dealing with beauty. Beauty is so critical in our everyday life,” Vete-Congolo said. “We do everything on the basis of beauty, whether we determine an action or thought beautiful. Whatever it is, you’re going to be guided by your outlook on beauty and that outlook on beauty gets you automatically to questions of ethics.”

For Ansel, much of her work is in the questioning of these ideals—of beauty and womanhood, among others—while simultaneously constructing a female narrative that is altogether her own.

“We can’t uncritically accept these definitions of beauty and ethics. They need to be thought about. They need to deconstructed,” Ansel said. “Is it ethical to put forth an image of beauty that...discounts 90 percent of what [women] are about? Is there a way to find a definition of beauty that is celebratory of the whole person and also of many cultures?”

Joachim Homann, curator of the exhibit, notes that although the collection is modern in style and theme, it still bears reverence to traditional and classical works. He said that he hopes this aspect will draw students to the show.

“It’s not enough to just continue traditions of the past and take pride in the long legacy of the Museum, which has been collecting art for 200 years,” Homann said. “Throughout the decades, perspectives and priorities have always changed and we need to identify what our collection means to contemporary audiences, how it relates to the experience of our students and what questions we have to ask.”

​“Everybody finds their own way, but the point is that you want everyone to have the option to do it the way that’s specific to whoever they are...that’s the heart of this whole thing: ascribing new meanings and new ways of defining people and defining experience in a way that, hopefully, is more inclusive.”

Bowdoin’s student-led theater troupe, the Curtain Callers, was less than enthused when told they would be performing their rendition of “Sweeney Todd” in Chase Barn. With a small stage, only two doors and no backstage or wings, the mid-nineteenth century barn is not the traditional venue for a musical as grand as “Sweeney Todd.” But Max Middleton ’16, co-director of the musical and an actor in the show, predicts that the space will lend to an intimacy between the actors and the audience.

“It ended up being a blessing in disguise, because it feels like a horror movie could take place in that space,” Middleton said. “It’s going to be a really close experience. By nature of performing in Chase Barn, it’s going to be a cast of 15, a pit orchestra of four and an audience of 50, and that is as small as Sweeney could get.” 

Co-directed by Middleton and Cordelia Zars ’16, “Sweeney Todd” is the first full-fledged musical that the Curtain Callers have performed since their rendition of “The Rocky Horror Show” in the spring of 2014. 

The two directors were drawn to the idea of putting on a show that, although sinister in theme, would excite and engage their audience. 

“It’s a pretty dark show,” lead actor Lucas Shaw ’16 said. “Bowdoin hasn’t really done a very dark, intense piece before… I’m really excited to interact with the audience and make them feel afraid.”

“There has been an increased interest in musical theater on campus over the past couple of years,” Middleton said. “I thought a really good show to get the community excited as a whole would be ‘Sweeney Todd,’ because everyone loves ‘Sweeney Todd.’ It’s hard and it’s difficult and it’s weird and gritty and it’s just a wonderful show.”  

With its complex music scores and disturbing content, the plot follows a barber named Sweeney Todd, wrongfully exiled from 19th century London by a judge who was after Todd’s wife. The story resumes 15 years later, when Sweeney returns to exact revenge on the judge by conniving with a local baker who is short of fresh meat for her pies. 

“It’s gonna be a little creepy and hopefully it’s a little scary. And then it’s also a funny, sick show. It’s a really weird piece,” Middleton said. “You can expect people to be putting in some really phenomenal performances. There’s some singing going on in the show that’s some of the best I’ve heard during my time at Bowdoin theater in general.”

The directorial team, composed of Middleton and Zars, met with Professor of Music and Director of the Bowdoin Chamber Choir Robert Greenlee during an independent study to learn how to give vocal direction with Sweeney Todd’s difficult musical score. 

“It’s very difficult music, so it doesn’t go where you would expect it to and often times it’s pretty dissonant,” Shaw said. “The acting, for me, is actually the easier part. I thought it would be much harder because it’s such an intense, deep character.”

Amber Barksdale ’18, who plays Mrs. Lovett, the local baker, has struggled with stepping into the shoes of a character who is so unlike herself.

“I’ve never played a person who is totally okay with killing people… it was weird to actually think like someone who is completely and totally fine putting humans into food that they’re also feeding to other humans,” Barksdale said. “It’s super creepy to think about, when you really stop and think about it. There are a lot of complex pieces that go into those emotions.” 

But it’s the intensity of the characters and the intimacy that Chase Barn provides that promise to make it an exciting show, Middleton says. 

“I am really excited to see how actors interplay with the audience,” Middleton said. “Because when you’re directing, you become so familiar with the lines and material that we forget what lines are funny. We forget what lines are scary. And then when we perform it to an audience, actors remember why they’re doing it. I’m really excited to see how the show that we’ve created and the audience interplay with each other.” 

“My parents have never known what it’s like outside a city basically. Like [for me] coming into Brunswick, Maine with all the trees and different colors… It definitely creates two different worlds,” Chow said.  

Chow, like roughly 10 percent of students in the class of 2019, is a first-generation college student. That percentage has been fairly consistent for the first year class over the past five years.

In many ways, “first-gen” students face typical challenges: managing school and work, sleep and stress, friends and health. Some, however, face obstacles other students will never have to deal with, like the lull on the other end of the line when trying to explain Bowdoin to their parents.

“My family didn't even know Bowdoin existed,” said Diamond Walker ’17, who grew up in the Bronx. “I don't even think they understand what a liberal arts school means.”

Even though he was born and raised relatively close to campus in Portland, Maine, Mohamed Nur ’19 said some aspects of college—like the social scene—are entirely foreign to his family.

“My parents, they know Bowdoin, but in a very superficial kind of way. They know it’s a college, they know after four years I’ll get a degree,” he said.

.pullquote:before { content: " "; display: block; width: 100%; border-top: 10px solid black; margin-bottom: 0.2em; } .pullquote:after{ content: " "; display: block; width: 100%px; border-top: 1px solid black; margin-top: 0.2em; margin-bottom: 0.7em; } .pullquote{ font-size:1.5em; font-weight:bold; line-height: 1.1; margin: .7em 0; width: 100%; }

Many first-generation students spoke of the difficulty of explaining the details of their lives at the College to their parents.  

Anu Asaolu ’19 said that her Nigerian mother has a hard time seeing college as more than just an academic pursuit.

“Every time I call my mom, she’s just like, ‘Remember, you’re here to learn,’” said Asaolu. “Yeah, college is about learning, but it’s really hard to explain that it’s also about developing yourself and really finding out who you are.”

When Asaolu got a concussion while playing rugby this fall, her mother told her she should join a science club instead. Asaolu is interested in a career in medicine.

“It’s really hard explaining that [rugby] is what I want to do, that this is what makes me happy,” she said. “‘Get your degree,’ that’s my mom’s entire goaI.”

Christina Moreland ’17 recalled avoiding telling her parents that the transition to college was difficult, as she felt they wouldn’t be able to relate.

“The nuances of how to be a college student were not something I was explaining… I would kind just leave things out and just be like, ‘Yeah, everything is great, I love everything. I’m doing really well,’” she said. “I think some of that comes from not being able to say, ‘Yeah, the first semester of college is hard’ and have them connect with that.”

Many students expressed concern that if they shared the full details of their Bowdoin experiences, their families would worry unnecessarily.

“When I cough, I cough away from the phone. So [my mom] isn’t super worried about me,” Chow said.

Other first-generation students found it easier to stop communicating their Bowdoin experience altogether.

Michelle Kruk ’16 said she rarely calls home.

“A lot of those conversations can be frustrating because it’s a lot of [my parents] dumping whatever is happening at home onto me and then not allowing me to dump what’s going on here to them, and even if I do dump that, they don’t understand it,” she said. “If I have to explain to you a thousand times what I’m majoring in or what I’m minoring in or what classes I’m taking, it just over time gets really repetitive and I don’t want to answer those questions any more.”

There is no such thing as a typical first-generation student. The label is not necessarily indicative of wealth, nor is it representative of race, hometown or socioeconomic status. In other words, the only thing first-generation students are guaranteed to have in common is the definition of the term itself: that neither parent holds a two or four year degree from a college or university.

Kenny Cortum ’16 is a first generation student from Iowa. He has blond hair, pale skin and wears rectangular glasses.

“It’s hard to be a first-generation student and look like I’m part of the one percent,” he explained. “I’ve actually had trouble connecting with other first-generation students here because I don’t look first-generation.”

Despite not looking like many of his first-gen peers, Cortum said his background affected his academic experience.  

“One of my most distinct memories was when my neighbors across the hall would send their parents their essays to have them look over them, which I thought was kind of unfair,” he said. “I had to really look at these differences and find a way to adjust to make Bowdoin work for me the same way they’re making Bowdoin work with their parents. I had to do it without my parents.”

The academic transition to Bowdoin varies widely among first-generation students, as it does among all first years. Students who attended private schools or strong public high schools often felt well-prepared for college, while students who attended less privileged schools often found academics more difficult, especially in their first year.

"I came to college for academics, first and foremost, and I deserve the best out of my experience like anybody else," said Walker, whose public high school in the Bronx offered few advanced classes and was frequently subject to budget cuts. "I know I could do better, but I'm doing a lot with what I have so far. It's hard to be compared to students who've been challenged like this for years and this is my first time confronting stuff like this."

Walker believes her status as a first-generation student makes her time at the College even more valuable.

“My grades are everything right now,” she said. “To be honest, I don't have anything else. I don't have money. I don't have family with connections. All I have is my education.”

Shawn Bayrd ’19, who grew up in Brunswick, explained that he didn’t fully grasp the prestige of a Bowdoin education until after he got his acceptance letter. While he feels like he fits in academically, Bayrd said he still notices instances where he feels like an outsider because of his status as a first-gen student.

“Since my parents didn't go to college, they don't have this academic standpoint on the world… When I talk to people who have parents who went to get their PhDs or are high in their fields, I've noticed that the kids are also very aware of what's going on around them,” he said. “I haven't gotten the home aspect where we talk about what's going on in the world.”

Bayrd attended Brunswick High School and worked alongside his mom at Thorne Hall in his junior year of high school.

“It was awful. I hated Bowdoin kids because if you're not a student you don't get treated as well,” he said. “One of my jobs was to put the coffee pots in the machines and turn it on so it would filter through. And there was this whole crowd around the coffee thing waiting for the coffee and I was just standing there with the pots waiting for them to move and they were like, ‘Are you gonna make more coffee?’ I'm like, ‘Yes, I will if you fucking move.’”

While intellectual support is one privilege of being raised by college-educated parents, financial stability is another, more widely-recognized advantage. According to data collected by the National Information Center for Higher Education Policymaking and Analysis there is a $26,700 median difference in yearly earnings between those with a high school diploma versus a bachelor's degree.

“Because my parents didn’t go to college, finances are always an issue,” said Zac Watson ’16. “So I actually moved in by myself. My parents weren’t here to help me move in. And that was kind of—it was very different. Everyone’s parents help them move in on the first day. And it was just me here. I had to go to the mail center, get all my boxes, move in, get to the Field House.”

Watson said he still feels different because of his financial status at times.  

“It was the social aspect that I really noticed,” he said. “Friends want to go to Quebec for Fall Break or something, and it’s like, ‘I can’t do that. I support myself.’”

“People said ‘Oh yeah, we went to Europe for a trip or we went to somewhere like Hawaii,’’’ recalled Chow. “A lot of [first-generation students] can’t afford trips like that... Having us talk about our summers is like ‘I worked this summer.’”

Most first-generation students expressed that, while their first-generation status impacted their social life, it also didn’t preclude them from forming friendships with non-first-generation students.

“Despite seeing that there are a lot of differences, I can still be friends with all these other people with a lot of privilege,” said Chow. “I can still connect with them in ways and have a lot of fun with them.”

For many students, the first-gen label often takes a backseat to other, more salient aspects of their identity.

"It's been very hard for me to explain my first-gen experience because until last semester, actually, I haven't really had one," Walker explained. "My experience has always been curtained by being black. If anyone asked me what it was like [to be first-gen], I'd talk about what it was like to be black here."

“You don’t wear your first-generation identity on your sleeve, nobody can really tell. And so there’s many other transitional issues that students here face that are more physical, that I think are prioritized for students,” said Kruk. “Like I’m more concerned about being a woman of color than being first-gen, because that’s what impacts me first.”

For other students, national identity plays a role. Camille Farradas ’19 attended a competitive private high school in Miami where many students were of Cuban descent, like her. She said she sees her identity as a first-generation student as inextricably tied to her Cuban background, because college wasn’t an option for her parents in communist Cuba.  

“Part of being Cuban in particular is that I couldn’t grow up where I was supposed to grow up,” she said. “Part of [going to college] is rebuilding our family from nothing.”

Given the diverse individual experiences of first-generation students, it can be difficult to provide resources to support the entire group. At the same time, first-generation students typically experience more difficulties than non-first-generation students. Nationally, the graduation rate for these students from private institutions is 70 percent, while only 57 percent who attend public institutions graduate. Data on the graduation rate of Bowdoin’s first-generation students was unavailable. 

Bowdoin provides some programming attempts to support first-generation students by bringing them together at the first-generation multicultural retreat, which takes place every fall.

“It [is] really an opportunity to bring first-generation students and students of color off campus after they’ve been at Bowdoin for about a month and kind of get them a safe space off campus to talk about any issues they might have,” said Director for Multicultural Life Benjamin Harris.

He added that the retreat was also a good way to connect first years with upperclassmen role models.

“The first-generation multicultural retreat…was an amazing bonding opportunity,” said Simone Rumph ’19. “Whether it be first-gen, or having struggles with economy, or being multiracial, coming from different backgrounds. It’s just a bond that is there.”

At the same time, the retreat conflates the labels of first-generation and multicultural. And while some first-generation students find support through affinity groups like the African American Society (Af-Am) or the Latin American Student Organization (LASO), connecting with first-gen peers can be more difficult for students who are first-generation college students but are not a racial or ethnic minority.

Cortum recalls feeling isolated when he went on the retreat as a first year.

“There was only one other who was as pale as I was and I felt like we were kind of alienated at first,” he said.

Bowdoin also hosts a couple of dinners a semester aimed specifically at first-generation students. Learning to utilize these resources can be an adjustment too.

"As a first-gen, I think it’s very easy to say—for most of us—that throughout our lives we’ve been doing things on our own," Chow said. “So coming to college, one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned is that it’s okay to reach out for help. It’s okay to use resources around you.”

Though Chow’s parents are thousands of miles away, he managed to find support from connecting with upper class role models.

“People seem like they’re doing alright, but they’re also going through a lot. [For] me realizing, ‘Hey, you know, someone’s been through this,’” he said. “It’s okay to feel that way.”

Born in China, Chow moved to inner-city Los Angeles when he was five. He lived with his family in Chinatown, speaking Cantonese with his parents and working at his godfather's Korean restaurant. Every weekday morning, he would leave his neighborhood to attend Bravo Medical Magnet, a predominately Hispanic magnet high school in East LA where 82 percent the students were socioeconomically disadvantaged.

Hy Khong

Bayrd’s after school job in high school was working at Thorne Dining Hall, alongside his mother. Though he attended Brunswick High School, he didn’t strongly consider attending Bowdoin until he received his acceptance letter. "I'm a first-generation student, so my mom and my dad didn't know colleges," he said. "I was not aware that Bowdoin was a good school. Like I knew it was a kind of good school, and then I got my acceptance letter and started researching it and I was like… ‘14.9% acceptance rate? I didn't even know that.’”

Hy Khong

When describing something as "chi chi" at Bowdoin, Camille Farradas '19 is often met with puzzled looks. "It just means cute, like small or quaint. Like, you're chi chi," she explained. Born and raised in a mostly Cuban community in Miami, Farradas explained that “it was a bit of a shock coming here.” Despite this, Farradas said her transition to Bowdoin has been relatively easy. Education is important in her family; her parents were forced to flee Cuba in the 1960s and never got the opportunity to go to college. In order to pay for her and her sisters’ education, Farradas’ father, created and licensed a patent for a piece of trucking machinery. “Going to college is about validating what they’ve done,” she said.

Hy Khong

Walker tried to challenge herself in high school, taking all five of the AP classes that her high school, the Bronx Center for Science and Mathematics, offered. Due to budget cuts, after school programs and academic support were rarely available to Walker and her high school classmates. But Walker persisted in her education, traveling across the city every Saturday to learn math, writing and critical reading skills with a program called Sponsors for Education Opportunities. "That program changed my life and is the reason I am at Bowdoin today," Walker said.

Hy Khong

Moreland grew up in rural Vermont, but didn’t hear about Bowdoin until a college fair during the summer before her senior year of high school. She was attracted to Bowdoin for its small class sizes and sense of community. “I think a good amount of my friends probably don’t know I’m first-gen, not because I’m not telling them, but just because it hasn’t come up in any particular way,” she said. An English and sociology major with an education minor, Moreland is also a leader in Residential Life at Bowdoin and said she hopes to work in either teaching or higher education access after college.

Hy Khong

Raised by her single mother, Rumph fell in love with Bowdoin after visiting for the Explore program during the fall of her senior year in high school. She credits the Questbridge program—which gave her a full scholarship—with making Bowdoin a possibility for her. “As a little kid even, my mom told me ‘you have to work hard in school, because we can’t afford college and I want you to go because I never was able to.’’ she said. ”So I’m absolutely 100 percent proud to be a first generation student.”

Hy Khong

Though Nur’s family is just 45 minutes away in Portland, he said there’s still a lot about Bowdoin—and college in general—they don’t understand. “The whole social aspect of collegiate life I don’t think they really understand,” he said.

Hy Khong

Kruk said that her transition to Bowdoin was initially easy, because she was so excited to be here. It was only after Winter Break of her first year that she started to feel the disconnect between her life at home and the life she had built for herself at school. She explained that she wishes her parents could experience Bowdoin the way many others do. “These moments, like having your family come with you to a football game, are experiences I will never have,” she said. Her family plans to visit for the first time in May of this year, to watch her graduate.

Hy Khong

Watson attended the Academic Magnet High School, one of the top public high schools in the nation. While he said he felt academically prepared for Bowdoin, Watson noticed economic differences between himself and other Bowdoin students, but didn’t necessarily attribute this to being a first-generation college student. “I didn’t even really know what first-gen was until I started taking like a sociology class here,” he said. Watson credited his first-year floor, which was chem-free and housed several first-generation students, with making his transition easier. “I’m actually still really tight, and really close friends with them, today. And I think they face some similar hardships,” he said.

Hy Khong

For Asaolu, starting high school was more than just navigating a new school. A recent immigrant from Nigeria, Asaolu transitioned to American high school while acclimating to a new country, building a new life in Minnesota with her family for the promise of an American public education. Like many of her peers, Asaolu has struggled to balance academics and extracurricular interests—for her, rugby. "I already knew what life without education could be like and I didn’t want that," she said. "I really didn’t have to like dig deep to find [motivation] because I knew without education there are not so many options."

Hy Khong

Though Cortum completed a one-year exchange program in Poland before coming to the College, he said he still found the transition to Bowdoin difficult, in part because of the cultural differences between New England and the Midwest. While he ultimately overcame these differences, Cortum said he now finds a gap between himself and his Bowdoin experiences and his family back home. “I feel like being a first generation student has kind of sundered me with my family. Because my family is not composed of academics. But more composed of simple farmer-like people,” he said.

When children’s author and two-time Newbery Medal-winning author Lois Lowry spoke at Bowdoin on Monday night, she opened by sharing an email correspondence initiated several years ago by a young girl named Megan. After a brief back-and-forth exchange, Megan swiftly concluded with an email bereft of punctuation, writing, “Okay I do not like this book and you do not have to take my advice but I absolutely hate this book oh and PS never ever send me anything ever again and not with love.”

Lowry, who was invited by The Quill, Bowdoin’s literary and arts magazine, shared these emails, along with stories about her childhood, career and the intersections between the two, with a crowded Kresge Auditorium. Megan’s emails detail what the young girl deemed to be inappropriate subject matter in Lowry’s book series “Anastasia”—namely, the protagonist having a crush on her female gym teacher. 

However, Lowry’s response was not one of hostility, or even disregard. She has kept this email as a sort of reminder of the significance of her craft and why she continues to write. 

“Certainly she was a little bit rude… but I don’t care. I love this kid,” Lowry said. “I love that she, at 10 years old, is reading a book and thinking about a book, worrying about a book, even objecting to a book. As she gets older those things that she has been taught about will not go away. Because kids at that age are often deeply affected by what they read.”

In a winding narrative of her life story, Lowry intertwined personal anecdotes, beginning with her childhood, with their parallels in the subject matter of her subsequent novels. She told of her first novel, “Autumn Street,” which was inspired by her life as a child in Pennsylvania. The self-proclaimed favorite of all her works, the story draws heavily from Lowry’s own experiences, such as her first day of school. 

“When I entered that first grade room very timidly, a teacher named Lois McDonald leaned down to greet me and told me to sit at a desk and look at some books,” Lowry said. “And I remember looking around the room that was filled with books and the feeling of being part of a book-filled life, as I’ve been ever since.” 

It was moments like these that became the driving force behind many of Lowry’s novels. She recalled an occasion from an early age in which her mother read to her “The Yearling,” a best-selling novel of the 1940s. 

“I remember that the last sentence of the chapter was, ‘He was filled with hate for all death, and pity for all aloneness.’ It was when she read the end of that chapter that my mother began to cry, and it wasn’t until I was grown that I realized she was weeping not so much for the boy, but for herself and for what the book said to her own situation. She was a woman with three small children, alone, with a husband on an island in the Pacific. But it was that awareness—I was a very literate child who had read everything that came my way, but this was the first time that a book struck me as very, very special.”

Gathering from observations from her youth, Lowry has developed a style that, at times, integrates harsh or uncomfortable realities with the familiar comfort of childhood. “I don’t think there’s any value in avoiding tough topics with kids who live in a tough world. Fiction is a way, oddly, of rehearsing life,” Lowry said. “One of my children was killed in an accident some years ago and I remember people asking me how I got through that. One of my answers was that all my life I had read, and each time I had read something about loss I had learned to deal with it. And I think that’s what we do… it’s valuable for readers to know that one can talk about such things and that such feelings are normal. Sometimes a book is a very comfortable way to think about such things.”

It was clear that for several readers, this was what they appreciated most about Lowry’s work. In her exploration of real issues, such as death and sexuality, Lowry’s stories make conventionally taboo topics accessible to young readers.

“When I read ‘The Giver,’ I respected the fact that even though it was geared toward a younger audience, she was able to discuss important things,” said Victoria Lowrie ’18, editor-in-chief of The Quill. “Often it feels like in young adult books they try to gloss over the more important issues. She’s not afraid to delve into them and make you feel like you have an opinion and you’re able to think.”

“She said, ‘Whatever form they take, all stories are about reconciliation in one form or another.’ I wrote that down when I got home and put it on my wall,” said Carly Berlin ’18. “Because I think what she means is not just that stories end in happy endings. Characters have to grapple with something—maybe it’s a past version of themselves, another relationship they have or a time period that they exist in. Stories are always encompassing that sort of tension. I want to keep thinking about that.”

Lowry concluded the talk with another email, this one sent by a more appreciative reader. The message, sent by an adolescent boy struggling with issues of sexuality and conformity in a conservative household, read, “Your book inspires me so much to be me, to be who I am and not what people want me to be, and I feel that’s a very strong message in your book—to not let everything be black and white, but to be colorful, to be different and to question everything, even if that means going against society’s norms. I know someone out there who I’ve never met cares about my well-being. Thank you.”

“It was a reminder, as all these emails are, of how profoundly affecting a book can be for a kid at a particular time in his or her life,” Lowry said. 

It was the idea of destiny that Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and screenwriter Richard Russo explored in his essay entitled “The Identity Thief,” which he shared with a packed Kresge Auditorium on Wednesday evening. In a story of self-discovery, he wove together seven segments to tell the process by which he became a novelist and screenwriter. Originally from Gloversville, New York, Russo spun a narrative that included denying his roots only for him to return to them again. 

“When asked, I would say I was from upstate New York,” Russo said. “Not Gloversville. It was a deft move to avoid embarrassment.”

During graduate school at the University of Arizona, after a professor’s harsh critique of his manuscript, Russo began to find his voice. The only silver lining of prose otherwise “inert on a page,” the professor told him, was a 40-page section about a small town in upstate New York.It wasn’t until years later, while Russo was beginning work on his debut novel, “Mohawk,” that he returned to his hometown of Gloversville, reworking those 40 pages from his failed graduate school manuscript into the story’s setting. 

“It wasn’t exactly good, those 40 pages, but it was mine,” Russo said. “Discovering who I was as a writer might be the final piece of the puzzle but [it] also sent me back to the beginning…I figured, if myself isn’t good enough, so be it.”

Within its anecdotal sections, humorous at parts and poignant at others, the essay was rife with advice for those pursuing any type of creative avenue. 

“Trying to match up material that is truly yours—trying to find it, first of all and to match it up with a self that maybe doesn’t even exist yet, is delving into a couple of mysteries that are kind of on parallel tracks. They’re not always right beside each other where you can look from one to the next,” Russo explained. “I had been working diligently before I started to succeed, and I was getting technically better. Because I was getting technically better, it seemed to me that I was really far along. But if they’re parallel tracks, and you’re so close in terms of technique that you can almost reach out and touch the finish line, what you’re not seeing is just how far behind you are in that other parallel track. Often it comes down to character—there’s something about yourself that you haven’t recognized yet.”

Russo also exhorted his listeners to persevere and be genuine in their writing.“On the face, it seems incredibly simple but sometimes for all kinds of reasons, it just isn’t,” Russo said. “It’s like admitting, ‘Who do I love? What do I love?’ All of that gets confused with that other voice in your head which says, ‘Who should I love? What should I love?’ Trying to figure all that out at the same time you’re trying to learn the basic skills of storytelling is, more than anything else, what causes people to bail.”

The first installation in a series of three, Russo’s visit to Bowdoin occurred as part of the English Department’s Visiting Writers Series, which aims to bring esteemed writers to campus in an effort to provide students with a lens through which to view the world of professional writing as well as their own work.

“To hear a novelist read from his own work, there’s no substitute for that,” Associate Professor of English and Chair of the English Department Aaron Kitch said. “Because he also gives you insights into his characters, style and plots. To see the personality behind the words is memorable. Whenever I hear an author read his or her own work and then go back to that work, I read it differently. ”

After receiving his Master of Fine Arts degree in Creative Writing and a Ph.D. in American Literature at the University of Arizona, Russo remained in academia with stints at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Pennsylvania State Altoona and Colby College. He eventually retired from teaching to write full-time. He published four novels before “Empire Falls” in 2001, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction a year later. 

“I think anyone who’s ever tried to write anything would relate to what he said. I really like his writing, but also I could put a face to the name of this author whose work I’ve been reading in class,” Katie Morse-Gagne ‘19 said. “I think reading his work will mean a lot more to me now that I’ve heard him talk about his own voice as a writer as well as his personal life and how those fit together.”

Professor of English and organizer of the series Brock Clarke believes the event was not only beneficial for exposing students to Russo’s writing, but also for making the prospect of being a writer more accessible.

“It’s always useful for students, in part, to demystify the process,” Clarke said. “I think we have an unhealthy tendency to lionize other writers—to think of them as these creatures who are unlike us—and when we see them first-hand…it doesn’t mean we’re disappointed in them, it just means that what they do seems like something we might be able to do also.”

McKee Photography and Kaempfer Art Grant recipients presented their summer projects at the visual art department’s first annual PechaKucha night, an event designed for the artists to display their work to the Bowdoin community. Developed in Tokyo as an avenue for designers to meet and discuss their work, PechaKucha nights have now been held in over 800 cities around the world.

The artists’ presentations were constrained to 400 seconds in totality, consisting of 20 slides with 20 seconds to speak about each.

“It’s practical and kind of pedagogical; practical in the sense that we do have a number of them to get through, but at the same time it’s a really useful format to think about how to talk about your work,” Associate Professor of Art and Chair of the Art Department Michael Kolster said.Compiled over the summer, the projects allowed students to focus on a subject and approach it individually. Grant recipients said that they faced the most difficulty in just that: working independently and without the cushion of the Bowdoin community. 

Visual arts major Hy Khong ’16, whose photographic work explores Asian American identity, notes that it was this struggle that prompted the greatest learning experience.

“The biggest thing I learned was that if I looked at something and my initial response was that I like it, that I should just stick with it,” Khong said. “I shouldn’t second-guess myself but trust that what I like is what I like and that’s a genuine depiction of myself. And that’s what I want for my art. I want people to be able to see it and see that this is a part of me.”

The question of identity was a common thread throughout the projects, prompting students to look both internally and outwardly to explore their art. 

“I couldn’t just take pictures of pretty things anymore,” Khong said. “I had to look at things through this lens of what it means to me personally—how do I represent these feelings and this confliction of an Asian identity and an American identity, and how do I represent that visually?”

Rachel Zheng ‘16, a Kaempfer Grant recipient, explored issues of both gender and racial identity in her installation art inspired by the California Light and Space movement, using material and immaterial mediums to create an almost meditative experience for the viewer.

“This movement particularly was thinking about technology and what it could do to harm the human existence,” Zheng said. “These artists are mostly white men, and being an aspiring artist and being a woman of color, I thought a lot about how I could incorporate my identity into the work and how that could relate to a wider audience, and even if that is possible in this minimalist mode of art making.”

For others, the opportunity to create art over the summer induced more technical and stylistic artistic growth. McKee Grant recipient Nevan Swanson ’18 spent a portion of his summer assisting photographer Abelardo Morell ’71 in his studio in Paris, France before venturing to Baja, California to complete the remainder of his project. 

Centered around the idea of the familiar, Swanson’s work utilized both film and digital photography to explore locations around Baja.

“I have one photograph of two people in a grocery store at 9:50 at night and it’s very intimate,” Swanson said. “But it’s that intimacy that lends to ambiguity in that it could be anywhere. It’s just a normal picture—not so much created overtly but rather exploring the familiar. I think I learned most importantly about finding the fascination in the normal moments that in one respect could be thought of as benign but are intrinsically powerful.”

Established in 2003 in honor of former Bowdoin photography professor John McKee, the McKee Fund for Photography aims to augment the photography offerings of the visual arts department beyond the budgetary expense restrictions. The McKee Fund awarded eight students grants this summer, while the Kaempfer Fund gave four. Initially endowed for the purpose of providing art supplies to students of demonstrated financial need, the Kaempfer Fund was able to support independent summer projects this year that weren’t necessarily photographic.

Students submitted proposals for their projects in April, articulating the kinds of work and questions they wanted to explore and how they planned to do so. Applicants submitted a proposal as well as examples of previous work and a faculty recommendation.

The time and space to share and discuss one another’s work at PechaKucha night provided a valuable outlet for the grant recipients to formally conclude their projects, and also served as potential fodder for future artistic endeavors.

“The opportunity to talk about it and give it a story or narrative can be really illuminating, not just to anyone who might be listening to it, but actually to the person trying to put together the talk,” Kolster said. “We start to understand and learn more about our relationship to and our ideas about them. And, more and more ideas for further work can be generated out of that process as a result.”

Grant recipients also enjoyed the ability to connect with the audience and their peers through their work. 

“It’s important for artists to talk about their work because it gives it some sort of purpose,” Zheng said. “Art is very personal sometimes and if you can’t relate it to issues of identity or social, environmental or cultural, or anything we need to talk about as a society, there is no purpose. It creates a disconnect between the artist and the viewer, and art is supposed to bridge that disconnect.”

Hy Khong ’16 is the photo editor for the Orient.

In an array of magazine clippings, photographs, photoglyphs, prints, collages, poems and audio, artist and poet Mark Melnicove presents “Word Art Collaborations.” This exhibit is now on display in the Hawthorne-Longfellow Library. Spanning the past 40 years of his life as an artist in Maine, the collection not only offers a distinct perspective of Melnicove’s evolution as an artist, but also illustrates the ability of text to contain meaning beyond literal translation.

“In the show, I’m emphasizing the intersection of art and literature, where the collection contains pure works of art and pure works of literature,” Melnicove said. “The intersection between the two has always been a focus of my work.”

The exhibit is composed mostly of what Melnicove calls “word art”—a synthesis of modified texts and images, torn apart or put together to create meaning beyond the original intent of their publication.

“It represents mine and other artists’ efforts to expand the notion of typography and text to make it more visual than we normally think about it,” Melnicove said. “When most people read a book they don’t think of it as a visual object. They try to read for meaning. What we’re doing is recognizing first that all text is visual, it’s not just words on a page.”

When Melnicove moved to Maine in 1977, he joined a community of writers and artists that not only shaped his creative content but also provided a means with which to collaborate. Since then, Melnicove has worked with artists such as Bern Porter, Carlo Pittore, Lee Sharkey, Grace Paley—all prominent figures in the Maine art community. The exhibit features Melnicove’s individual work as well as those pieces produced in partnership with fellow artists and writers.

Preparations for the exhibit began 11 years ago, when Melnicove began to work with Richard Lindemann, the former director of the Bowdoin Library’s George J. Mitchell Department of Special Collections and Archives, to preserve his original work.

Caroline Moseley, the acting director of the George J. Mitchell Department of Special Collections and Archives, noted that the library was drawn to the collection for its innovative approach towards art and literature.

“The way special collections works is by collecting around the strengths and the academic interests of the College,” Moseley said. “This collection ties in and makes for a really interesting way of looking at art and literature of a more avant-garde kind. It’s literature, it’s poetry, it’s photography, it’s word art. It’s different ways of looking at things and trying to shake things up a bit and get your message across in a different way. It’s very visually provocative.”

Divided into 21 sections, the exhibit is not arranged chronologically, but thematically by the medium that’s used within each chapter. With underlying themes of social and environmental justice woven throughout, the show uses a variety of word art mediums to convey a message.“I have always been interested in making the world a better place,” Melnicove said. “This often involves working with, rather than against, nature. I want a just and peaceful world and have seen how art and literature can motivate people and systems to change...Experiencing word art is a sensual experience that stimulates and motivates the mind and changes our perceptions of the world.”

The show also includes unconventional art forms, such as mails art, or words gleaned from junk mail and then highlighted to bear extracted meanings, and what Melnicove calls “photoglyphs” or photographs of words as they appear on signs, windows and various other surfaces. 

The culmination of the show even includes art made by Melnicove’s students at Falmouth High School, where he teaches literature, creative writing and permaculture.“Students tend to both ask important questions and demand substantial, meaningful answers,” Melnicove said. “This comes out in their word art. Students represent the future; they represent [and embody] hope.”

This engagement with high school students is translated into the overall goals of the exhibit, which Moseley mentions extends from Bowdoin students to members of the Brunswick community. 

“Maine is off the beaten track, and I like that. I’m interested not just in Maine art but art that exists on the margins of society at large,” Melnicove said. “Maine is not New York but there’s something that can be done here that can’t be done in New York. Obviously, our closeness to nature has something to do with that. Every region produces art in response to the region itself.”

Through its connections with Maine and the College, the exhibit aims to inspire by extending the innovation of Melnicove’s work to the community at large.

“I hope that people can just spend time with the exhibit and that maybe it will stimulate them to be creative themselves in different ways,” Moseley said. “It is about the creative impulse and getting a message across and the different and effective ways of doing that. Even if it’s just one or two people that look at that exhibit and think, ‘Wow, I want to try to do things differently’ or ‘I really want to take a class in that,’ that’s a great effect.”

“Word Art Collaborations” will be open for viewing on the second floor of the Hawthorne-Longfellow Library until the end of the semester.