The Bowdoin Orient

An exhibit of work created by 17 seniors opens today in the Edwards Center for Art and Dance until today. There will be a reception tonight from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. 

Students worked on their pieces as part of Senior Studio, a course, which is designed to provide seniors with an opportunity to create their own individual body of work.

“All of a sudden, they’ve gone from having set structure and set assignments to really having to be their own driving force behind what they’re doing and why they’re doing it,” said Assistant Professor of Art Jackie Brown, who is leading the studio.

Throughout the semester, students developed their own works with the media of their choice. Students frequently critiqued each other’s work, and faculty were asked to give commentary on several pieces before their completion.

“[Each student], at the beginning of the semester, had a definite interest, and they had kind of honed in on that,” said Henry Austin ’16. “Then through the semester with critical feedback and conversations, they were able to open up and expound on some of those ideas that were very important to them.”

Students used a variety of media in the creation of their works, including projectors, suspended strings and old cars.

“All my work right now is surrounded by these objects that I found in a dump site in the woods nearby,” said Anna Reyes ’16. “[I was interested in] the strange role of me being kind of a rescuer for them but then also taking them out of their final resting place and that weird kind of tension.”

Not all students worked individually. Cody Stack ’16 and Hector Magana ’16 worked together on a series of works investigating experiences and concepts in nostalgia.

“I don’t think the challenge was me and Hector collaborating; it was actually taking the best of the two things that you do and making them work together,” said Stack. “I think we struck a really nice balance between Hector’s linguistic, photographic and pop culture knowledge and skills and how we relate that to the world around him and then some of the things I kind of aesthetically obsess about and the materials I like to play with.”

Many of the artists are excited about being able to display their own culminating work and to see the final projects of their peers.

“It’s been an incredible semester because the variety and breadth of the artwork that’s represented in this show is astounding,” said Austin. “It’s so much more valuable and so much more interesting if the people around you are approaching it and making work that is completely different, [work] you would never dream of making yourself. That’s been one of my favorite parts about this.”

According to a report from the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), professor salaries at Bowdoin, not adjusted for inflation, rose by 4 percent for full professors, 4.1 percent for associate professors and 5.9 percent for assistant professors. Within the NESCAC on average, salaries rose by 3.38 percent, 4.32 percent and 4.64 percent respectively. In comparison, overall salaries across the country rose by an inflation-adjusted average of 2.7 percent.

The College determines raises for its professors using its “4-5-6” policy. This policy bases raises on the raises given by other colleges in Bowdoin’s peer group—specifically, the salary increases based on the fourth-, fifth- and sixth-highest-paying institutions of the 18 schools. The Board of Trustees determines this comparison group each year.

Paying full professors an average of $138,400 per year, Bowdoin’s ranking in the NESCAC has remains the fifth-highest paying institution in the 11-school conference.

The AAUP attributes part of the national salary increases to a change in how faculty are classified—more and more schools are shifting full-time, tenure-track positions to part-time adjuncts, which are not included in the calculations.

“We are in an enviable position at Bowdoin where that is not a practice that we engage in,” said Dean for Academic Affairs Jen Scanlon. “We do certainly hire, we have some lecturers, we have some adjunct faculty, but for the most part our non-tenure-track faculty are visitors to the College, so they are replacing faculty members who are on sabbatical.”

As graduation approaches, some seniors already have the next year of their lives mapped out. This year’s fellowship winners will be traveling across the globe to pursue various personal interests, from home construction to Slavic languages, and, in most cases, to teach English.Of the 38 Bowdoin students who applied for Fulbright fellowships this year, 20 were named national finalists, and seven have been accepted thus far, all as English Teaching Assistants: seniors Kenny Cortum, Talia Cowen, David Jimenez, Bridget Kranz, Michelle Kruk and Anna Piotti and alumnus Mark Richter ’14. A number of applicants are still waiting to hear back, including all those who applied for study research grants. 

In addition, Tess Hamilton ’16 was awarded a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship and Caroline Martinez ’16 was awarded a grant from the Davis Projects for Peace organization to teach free leadership trainings to women in Ecuador. Will Danforth ’16 received a Princeton in Asia fellowship to work with the organization in Mongolia. Meg Freiberger ’16 was awarded a National Science Foundation research fellowship.

“The beauty is that there is such an array of national fellowships, so it’s not just one particular profile of a student who would look good for a national fellowships, there’s lots of different profiles,” said Director of Students Fellowships and Research Cindy Stocks. 

Several fellowship winners credited the approach of the Office of Student Fellowships and Research in developing their applications. 

“I’ve been through this numerous times, so when a student gives me a draft, I have the perspective of having seen years of earlier drafts and seeing who’s won and who hasn’t, so then I can help students think about what to they can tell their particular fellowships,” Stocks said.  The Fulbright Program, sponsored by the U.S. State Department, sends newly graduated students and alumni to teach English or conduct research abroad. Fulbright fellows act as representatives of American culture and foster international bonds. 

Applicants apply to a country they are interested in and are selected based upon two page-long essays—the Personal Statement and the Statement of Grant Purpose—as well as three recommendation letters.

Cortum will be traveling to Bulgaria as an English Teaching Assistant. He says that while teaching in Bulgaria, he hopes to be able to further his study of Bulgarian language and culture.“I’m a connoisseur of some sorts of Slavic languages; I collect them, if you can collect languages like Pokemon” said Cortum. 

He says his experiences learning Polish, Russian and Serbian will help him to understand the mistakes his students make learning English. 

Cowen leaves for South Korea in July, where she will complete orientation and start teaching English. Currently, the South Korean education system is shifting its focus from memorization to critical thinking. Cowen describes her own learning style as “at the intersection of both” methods and is excited to witness that transition. 

“[Teaching in South Korea is] a total break from anything I’ve done here,” Cowen said. “I think the liberal arts education, the model of being exposed to many different things, prepares you for the shock of going somewhere totally different.”

Jimenez was accepted to the Romanian program. He says his interest in the country began in middle school with a book his uncle wrote about the country. “I remember reading through it, kind of captivating me a bit in eighth or ninth grade,” said Jimenez.

Kranz will be teaching English at a high school in Slovakia. For Kranz, the allure of Slovakia is deeply rooted in its political history. She is looking forward to seeing how Slovakia, which gained its independence in 1993, is handling itself politically and economically after being occupied by the Germans and the Soviets and being part of Czechoslovakia, where the Slovaks were a minority with little opportunity to self-determine.

A visual arts major, Kranz hopes to use her time in Slovakia to start working towards her goal of bringing art experiences to children in rural areas. “Because I’m only helping teach 15 hours a week, I’m hoping that I’ll either be able to start or help with a pre-existing community or after school art program,” Kranz said.

The Watson Fellowship is awarded “to college graduates of exceptional promise to engage in a year of independent learning and travel abroad, in pursuit of an approved project of unique personal significance,” according to its website. 

Using the fellowship, Hamilton intends to study how people live “in harmony with the surrounding landscape” all over the world. She intends to visit Iceland, Scotland, Mongolia, Tamarin and Portugal to examine the different ways which people build their homes. For example, Mongolia has supported many nomadic peoples in the past. However, desertification caused by Ulaanbaatar, the country’s major city, has made nomadic life more difficult and Hamilton intends to study how this increasing desertification has influenced local home building.

Professors Kristen Ghodsee and Margaret Boyle each received an honorable mention for their respective research books last week. 

The Association for Women in Slavic Studies recognized Ghodsee’s book “The Left Side of History: World War II and the Unfilled Promise of Communism,” as an honorable mention for the Heldt Prize for Best Book in Slavic and East European Women’s Studies. Ghodsee’s book examines communist sympathisers during World War II.

Boyle’s book, “Unruly Women: Performance, Penitence, and Punishment in Early Modern Spain,” received an honorable mention from The Society for the Study of Early Modern Women’s Best Book on Women and Gender for 2014. The book follows the lives of incarcerated women in Early Modern Spain.

Both professors based their books on prior research. Ghodsee, a professor of gender and women’s studies, researches communism in the Eastern European Bloc. Boyle, an assistant professor of romance languages and literatures, has been interested in Early Modern Spain since her undergraduate work at Reed College.

Boyle recommends her book to undergraduates because of the primary source materials within it.

 “You can look past the history that I’ve put together and look at what I think is very exciting, which is getting access to first person accounts of the creation of these jails,” she said. 

Both professors also teach courses at Bowdoin expanding on the material discussed in the books.

For students intrigued by “Left Side,” Ghodsee teaches two classes which relate to her book: “Radical Families, Radical Politics” and “Gender and Sexuality in Contemporary Eastern Europe.”

“These courses focus on the operations of power, the intersections of race, gender and class and the popular mythologies about contemporary capitalism and its political alternatives,” Ghodsee said.

Boyle regularly teaches classes studying early modern literature, such as “Don Quixote,” as well as Spanish language classes. In the past, she has led seminars in the Spanish department, where she continued her emphasis on women in the early modern era. 

“If you have professors that you like or admire, take the time to read their books,” Ghodsee said. “In addition to teaching, we are also scholars producing knowledge in our disciplines, and our excitement for our research infuses our enthusiasm in the classroom.”

Ghodsee began writing “The Left Side of History” after a man set himself on fire a block away from her while visiting Eastern Europe in March of 2013.

“I wrote ‘The Left Side of History’ by mistake” said Ghodsee in an email to the Orient. “The smell of burning human flesh spurred me to put fingers to the keyboard.” 

“Unruly Women” examines the treatment of incarcerated women in Spain during the early modern era.

“I started out the project in the archives wanting to learn what it meant for women to be friends...and then one of the things I ended up learning about, or running into, were all these documents about the first jails and Magdalene houses created for women,” Boyle said in a phone interview with the Orient.

Boyle has been guided by colleagues and editors since she began dissertation on Early Modern Spain and received support for her book.

“Getting through the editing and revisions process and being optimistic about it all coming together...it’s exciting to finally see it out,” she said.

Ghodsee recommends her book to any Bowdoin student tired of apathy and hipster irony. In it, she follows the political idealism of a Bulgarian peasant girl and an Oxford student fighting to build a better world. She contrasts the idealism present in her book with modern literature.

“These young people believed they could build a better world, and fought, and sometimes died, for those ideals,” Ghodsee said. “Right now, popular young adult literature posits a bleak dystopian future, but I think we need young people to start imagining utopias.  My book is maybe the academic equivalent of Disney’s Tomorrowland.”

Correction (November 1, 2015 at 10:20 a.m.): The article previously miswrote the name of the Heldt Prize for Best Book in Slavic and East European Women's Studies. It is the Heldt Prize for Best Book in Slavic and East European Women's Studies, not Heldt Prize for Best Book in Slavic and Eastern Studies. Eastern Bloc was also misspelled. It is Eastern Bloc not Eastern Block.