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University
Remembers September 11th
Faculty, staff, students and community
members remembered the tragic events of September 11, 2001 at
ceremonies held around campus.
On Friday, September 10 at 12:15p.m.
in the Memorial Courtyard, President Lois B. DeFleur laid a
wreath at the foot of the stone plaques engraved with the portraits
of the fifteen Binghamton University alumni
who perished.
The following day at 8:46a.m., University
police lowered the American flag outside the Couper Administration
Building to half-staff in observance of those who lost their
lives in the terrorist attacks. The chimes in the Library Tower
rang when the Twin Towers were hit and the two times they collapsed
at 8:46a.m., 9:03a.m., 9:59a.m. and 10:29a.m. and were silent
the rest of the day.
Student groups held commemorations
as well. Chabad House, Hillel/Jewish Student Union and the Jewish
Heritage Program sponsored a Mitzvah Marathon on Monday, September
13 outside the University Union to encourage students to pledge
or perform a mitzvah or good deed, such as donating blood, collecting
food for CHOW or volunteering at a favorite charity.
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Studio
B Renamed Christian P. Gruber Theater
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Formerly known as Studio B in the
Fine Arts Building, the Christian P. Gruber Theater
is a memorial to a great professor, administrator
and friend. |
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On Friday, September 10, faculty, staff, alumni,
students, retirees, and friends and family of the late Professor
Emeritus Christian "Pete" Gruber gathered to celebrate
the dedication of the Christian P. Gruber Theater in the Fine
Arts Building-Studio B.
Gruber, who died August 31, 2003, taught at Harpur
College and held several administrative positions from 1954
until retiring in 1983. In the 1990's, he participated in Harpur
College's General Education Mentoring Program. In 1995, Gruber
and his wife, Marilynn, endowed the Gruber Family Scholarship,
which rotates between an English and Theatre major each year.
President Lois B. DeFleur, Harpur College Dean
Jean-Pierre Mileur, Theatre Professors John E. Vestal and Don
Boros, and Harpur alumni Eugene Flood `57 and son, Christian
P. Gruber, Jr., Ph.D. `71 spoke at the ceremony about their
relationships with Gruber and the impact he left on Binghamton
University. Vestal started by expressing his honor to be the
first speaker at the theater newly renamed in memory of his
good friend and colleague.
Gruber's family enjoyed hearing
many touching, funny stories about Pete, especially
when he directed the Colonial Players in the 1950's. |
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President DeFleur spoke about Gruber's enthusiasm
and support of the University and how alumni she met while traveling
always spoke admirably about him. "I'm personally very
pleased and grateful that we can dedicate this theater in his
memory," she said and thanked the Gruber family and Theatre
Department for their hard work. "It's such a good testament
to Pete."
Dean Mileur read a letter from Alex Huppé
`69, son of the late Prof. Bernard Huppé and former chair
of the Harpur College Dean's Advisory Council that said, "It
is especially pleasing that the University is recognizing and
remembering one of Harpur's legendary faculty, Pete Gruber.
His humor sparkled and his kindness was evident in everything
he did."
Mileur said Gruber was one of the ivy league visionaries
who mark the formative years of Harpur College - people determined
to create a public college without social and economic exclusivity.
"Pete personified that ideal," he said, "learned
and unpretentious."
Flood shared his memories of acting in Harpur
College's first theatre group, The Colonial Players, and his
cast-mates excitement at learning that the new Professor Gruber
would be their faculty advisor. The audience laughed at Flood's
description of the Colonial Players' makeshift stage and Pete's
spirit and humor as their director.
Boros said a theater bearing Gruber's name is
the perfect testament to his life and career. "It's a studio
for students to experiment," he said. "Pete knew every
style and approach to theatre. He was curious and insatiable.
He was a visionary."
"This space brings together elements near
and dear to dad's heart," Chris Gruber said. He spoke about
his memories of seeing The Colonial Players' early productions
in Endicott as a six-year-old, and, at age eight, going with
his father to see the construction of Watters Theater at the
new campus in Vestal.
Later, at a reception in Studio A, Gruber's daughter,
Ilse, expressed her delight at the dedication ceremony. "I
could hear dad and how he'd be laughing, proud of the connections
he had. He would have enjoyed this!"
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Aldo Bernardo
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Many emeriti faculty spoke about their late friend
and colleague at a reception in Studio A following the dedication.
Vivian and Alfred Carlip |
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Prof. Aldo Bernardo said
he remembered Gruber's "enthusiasm to make sure theatre
went beyond the stage and was part of the humanities."
Prof. Alfred Carlip, pictured with his wife, Vivian,
said he remembered traveling to D.C. with 14 busses of students
for a political demonstration. "When we got back, Pete
was waiting for everyone with the most wonderful meal."
Dorothy and Norman Burns |
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Ruth and Saul Levin |
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Prof. Norman Burns, pictured with his wife, Dorothy
called Pete a "gentleman" and said he never
saw him angry or even irritated. "Pete was not political.
He was very engaged and tried to bring people together."
Prof. Saul Levin, pictured with his wife, Ruth,
said "Pete was the very first person I met on campus. He
was so kind. He was interested in whatever we could do to advance
our knowledge."
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| Harpur
Professor's Book Marks Conjuncture of Cultural Studies and World-Systems
Analysis
Lee is both a professor and an
alumnus. He earned his MA in 1989 and his PhD in
1994, both in Sociology at Binghamton. |
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Richard E. Lee has worn many hats since coming
to Binghamton University in 1987. Now Director of Graduate Studies
in Sociology, he is also Deputy Director of the Fernand Braudel
Center and when I asked him about his new book, Life and
Times of Cultural Studies: The Politics and Transformation of
the Structures of Knowledge, he was quick to indicate that
it comes out of a long-term research agenda in world-systems
analysis.
As he explained, "world-systems analysis
has generally been concerned with the economic and political
milieus of production and distribution and coercion and decision
making. But that does not make up the totality of our existential
reality. There’s something else. We have sort of beat around
the bush about it as the 'social' or 'cultural' and it has been
very hard to conceptualize what I’ve called the third arena
in the same terms that we use in our analyses of the unique
economic and political structures and processes we recognize
over the past 500 years, but not before." However, Lee
goes on, "over the past decade or so, at the Fernand Braudel
Center, we have identified the basic long-term structure of
this third arena as the separation of facts and values that
is not only mental but reproduced in the organization of the
disciplines of knowledge formation and in the departments of
universities--the "two cultures" of the sciences and
the humanities and more recently the social sciences somewhere
in between. We’ve begun to think of it in terms of cognition
and intentionality. In other words, how we see the world and
what that allows us to imagine we can do in the world."
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Click the book for purchase information. |
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Life and Times of Cultural Studies, then,
is not a book of cultural studies, as in working class culture.
It is a detailed investigation of the conditions of the emergence,
the development, and the significance and impact of a knowledge
movement called "cultural studies". It is in that
sense a story, but it is also an intervention in two ways: on
the one hand, of an activist social science exercising the social
agency of the scholar; and on the other hand, presenting a concrete
example of a methodological solution to the dilemma of choosing
between a chronological and particularistic history or a generalizing
mode of analysis that does not take time, and therefore historical
construction, into consideration. Thus, beyond the politics
of knowledge formation, the underlying subject matter is not
only epistemological, but the book itself is an intervention
in the epistemological crisis of our time.
The argument set out in the first part of the
book is that cultural studies was the product of the conjuncture
of the short term of world events (Hungarian Revolution, Khrushchev's
Secret Speech, Suez crisis) and the medium-term (150 years)
of the development of literary/social criticism, among left
intellectuals in Britain in the mid-1950s. Rejecting the politically
suspect (East Bloc) base-superstructure model as well as (Western)
impersonal and ahistorical quantitative methods, "practitioners
began reading the social text." The second part of the
book examines the trajectory of the work undertaken at the primary
institutional base of the cultural studies project at the Centre
for Contemporary Cultural Studies since its founding in the
early 1960s at the University of Birmingham, and its eventual
export.
The last part of the book begins with a close
analysis of post-1945 developments on a global scale. Then,
the last chapter, according to Lee, "casts the forgoing
analysis in the long term--500 years of history of the modern
world-system--arguing that the basic structure of knowledge
of the modern world was established by the beginning of the
16th century and was based on a new and unique division
between facts and values. This was not true of the medieval
structures of knowledge where it would have been inconceivable
to think of something being real without a value attached to
it, or something having a value without being considered a reality
of life.
Asked what lay ahead, Lee said that he has a new
manuscript, edited with Immanuel Wallerstein, coming out this
year from Paradigm press "that looks at the structures
of knowledge over the long term and their current crisis, the
crisis of the two cultures," continuing a line of research
that has obviously been very fruitful.
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| He
won! Micha Liberman `95 Captures Emmy
Micha Liberman `95 and his wife,
Elyssa, are all smiles after he won an Emmy for
his work as music editor of the HBO show Deadwood. |
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Harpur College alumnus Micha Liberman `95 won
the Emmy Award in the category of Outstanding Sound Editing
in a Series for the HBO program Deadwood at the Creative
Arts, Engineering and Interactive Television Awards, on September
12.
Deadwood was nominated for more Emmys than any other
show, but Liberman got the only win. "I wasn't nervous
because I just didn't think we'd win," he said of the series'
string of nightlong near-misses.
Walking across the stage to receive the award was the culmination
of a long journey for Liberman, who has owned his own music
studio since 2001 and apprenticed for some well-connected Hollywood
composers since graduating from Harpur College.
"The top level education, as well as access
to all kinds of opportunities at Binghamton like BTV, WHRW,
the orchestra, and the community theater groups prepared me
for the various skills required to achieve success in Hollywood,"
Liberman said.
"It's kind of surreal," he said of the
award, which now sits on his mantle at home.
The Creative Arts, Engineering and Interactive
Television Awards, known as the "technical Emmys,"
will be broadcast on the "E" Network at 8:00 EST on
Saturday, September 18.
Liberman is currently working on both the second
season of Deadwood and the movie The Woods, a
horror story set in 1965 at a girls' boarding school. To learn
more about Micha's career in music, follow this link to the
August 2004 Harpur Hotline: http://harpur.binghamton.edu/hotline/aug04/#emmy
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| Harpur
Student Dives Into Underwater Archaeology
Professor Charles Cobb, Head's
research advisor, praised Head for pushing her research
beyond traditional methods. "We've only had
to point her in the right direction, and she's taken
off," he said. "It's particularly gratifying
that Harpur College is able to support undergraduates
in their research and make these opportunities possible. |
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While most college students spent the summer in
shorts, Erin Head '04, an anthropology major from Moravia, NY,
donned a scuba diving suit and dug for prehistoric tools buried
beneath the Hudson River and Atlantic Ocean.
An Undergraduate Research Award allowed the Harpur
senior to experience the emerging field of underwater archaeology
and be among the first to discover pre-historic tools in the
Hudson River Bay and New Jersey coast areas.
Head's research advisor,
Professor Charles Cobb, who specializes in the archaeology of
Eastern North America, said the work she participated in this
summer is a small part of a much larger effort around the globe
to explore archaeological sites that were once along the coast
or low-lying areas near the ocean.
"We have known
for a long time that a significant portion of the prehistoric
past has been covered by rising sea levels following the end
of the Pleistocene era," Cobb said. "However, not
until relatively recently has the exploration technology reached
a point where people can systematically look for and explore
sites under water. This has literally led to an explosion in
our knowledge about adaptation to coastal and riverine resources."
Head employed techniques
by archaeologists, except "everything was underwater,"
she said. The Undergraduate Research Award helped Head pay
for renting the necessary equipment for diving into waters near
Croton-on-Hudson, NY and Sandy Hook, NJ.
Head's interest in
archaeology began when she took Professor Randall McGuire’s
popular "Buried Cities, Lost Tribes" class simply
out of curiosity. She originally planned to become an English
teacher, but found McGuire’s course so fascinating that she
changed her major and career plans after only a few weeks. "I
just knew I wanted to be an archaeologist."
With this same certainty,
Head decided to pursue underwater archaeology. "I heard
something about a grad student coming here to do his dissertation
on underwater archaeology and thought, 'I can do that,'"
recalls Head, who took a scuba diving certification course on
campus and started looking for research opportunities of her
own.
The more courses she
took, the more Head knew for sure she had picked the perfect
major. She vividly remembers the day Professor Anne Stahl passed
around her personal collection of ancient stone tools in her
"Stone Age Archaeology" class and felt the thrill
of touching something truly ancient. "I couldn't believe
she was letting me hold a 5,000 year old stone tool!"
Less than a year later,
Head felt an even bigger thrill when she discovered remnants
of Stone Age tools on her own while diving at Croton Point Park
in Westchester. Thousands of years ago, what is now under water
was likely a thriving settlement where fresh fish and ample
fresh water sustained a population of hunters and gatherers.
"Underwater archaeologists
do everything that a regular archaeologist does," Head
said. The divers taped off 5 x 5 meter grids, dug through the
sand with metal scoops, sifted the sand through sieves, and
brought whatever they found to the surface for closer inspection.
In six weeks, they found over 100 artifacts.
The biggest challenge
of working underwater, Head discovered, was not the cold or
the scuba apparatus, but the lack of visibility. "At Croton,
it was pitch black," she said, "I'd put my hand close
to my face and couldn't even see it."
Head said the most
amazing part of her experience was contemplating what life was
like 10,000 years ago. "We take it for granted that we
can open a drawer, take out a knife, and just cut something,"
Head said. "Stone age people had to not only make the knife
themselves, but develop the whole concept of cutting something."
Head grew up on a dairy farm, so working outdoors
is nothing new to her. She will graduate in December and plans
on spending a few years in the Peace Corps before heading to
graduate school for underwater archaeology.
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| Alumni
and friends, mark your calendar for the best campus event of
the year...
Click the logo above
for detailed information on reunions
for the classes of 1999, 1994, 1979 and 1954, a schedule
for the weekend, a list of who's attending,
how to get involved, and
so much more!
Don't miss Homecoming 2004 - it's a tradition
worth coming back for.
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Harpur
Friends & Family
In response to
your much-appreciated feedback, the Harpur Hotline has developed
a regular feature of alumni news. Please
send us anything you want: publications, promotions, marriages,
babies, graduations, retirements, etc. Many thanks to everyone
who shared their stories! Here's what some of your fellow Harpur
alumni and friends are doing:
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1963: Joel
Kellman and his wife, Joy, are delighted by the
arrival of their fourth grandchild (and their first grandson).
The Kellmans have two daughters and live in Atherton, CA. |
1969: In June 2004, Helene
"Lanie" Bergman was appointed Site Coordinator
of the Bensonhurst Extension Center of Bramson ORT College.
In this capacity, she functions as provost/dean, responsible
for the entire campus, from recruiting to academic to administrative
to facilities maintenance. Bergman said, "Our student body
consists largely of immigrants and listening to the melange
of languages in the hall is truly amazing. Many of the students
have impressive education and experience in their native countries.
They are ambitious, hard-working and eager to fit into their
new home -- they remind me of my own immigrant grandparents."
Bergman is also adjunct faculty in undergraduate business at
Touro College and graduate education at NYIT. In addition, she
is a partner in MIIL Corp., an educational technology company
specializing in software and hardware to promote enhanced learning.
Bergman said she she's been divorced about four years, and both
of her daughters are in college, so she is starting to have
some free time to explore old and new interests and would love
to hear from old friends and classmates at helenebergman@hotmail.com.
1972: Judy Matthews is proud
to share the news that her son, Zachary Becker, was married
last December to Amy Martin and they live in Houston. Becker
is a police officer and recently published his first article
in the September issue of PI Magazine. Becker's late
father was Stuart Becker `71. Matthews, who
is a senior publicist for the PBS television series, Antiques
Roadshow, was featured in the Winter
2003 Binghamton Alumni Journal.
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1973: Shelley Haven
will exhibit her paintings in the group show, "Abstraction"
at Concepto Gallery, 613 Vanderbilt Avenue, Brooklyn. The
gallery is open Thursday - Sunday, 1:00p.m. - 7:00p.m. and
the show ends October 2, 2004. Call 646-431-2115 for more
information. Haven is a well-known artist of watercolors,
oil paintings, etchings and monocolors. Pictured at right
is her oil on panel, "Ellis Hollow." |
1984: Jeffrey B. Gold is
pleased announce the formation of Gold, Stewart, Kravatz &
Stone LLP, a litigation law firm. The firm's address is 1025
Old Country Road, Suite 301, Westbury NY 11590, Tel: (516) 512-6333.
Gold also serves as a Commissioner of Nassau County's Assessment
Review Commission. He lives in Bellmore New York, with his wife
June, 12-year-old daughter, Danielle, and eight-year-old son,
Douglas. Gold would love to hear from old friends and classmates
(especially those that own, manage or work for insurance companies)
at jgold@goldstewart.com.
1999: Jeremy Klaff and
Seth Mates `00 (see below) have an made an independent
movie, now in the post-production stages, called Play House
II. "It's a campy comedy/horror movie about people
going to a play house and dying one by one," said Mates,
who directed the film and said Klaff had the starring role.
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2000: Seth Mates (pictured
left) wrote a very touching story about his friendship with
Paul Battaglia `00, who died in the World
Trade Center on September 11, 2001, for the Inland Valley
Daily Bulletin where he works as assistant news editor.
(Read the
article here.) Mates has been living in Los Angeles
and is in the process of moving back East where he will
work for a newspaper in Middleton, NY. "California's
been great, and also helped me realize that the world of
media is where I belong, not the world of entertainment,"
he said. "And since I can do media anywhere (as opposed
to having to be in CA for entertainment), I'd rather be
closer to home." Mates can be reached at SethMates@aol.com. |
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| Shop
Harpur Online
| 
Harpur students Hye Jin
Oh `05, Erica Weinstein `07 and Stephina Dansoh `06 kick
back in Harpur gear. |
Shop the campus bookstore from
the comfort of your PC or Mac. Want to pick up a copy of the
new Harpur history book The Cornerstone? Visit The
Campus Bookstore.
For
more Harpur College merchandise, such as hats, shirts and window
stickers, contact the bookstore at 607-777-2745.
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Harpur
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Harpur College of Arts and Sciences Development Team encourages
alumni, students, faculty and friends to identify with Harpur
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and programs that connect them to the college. We facilitate
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