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| Summer Edition | |
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| Summer Edition | |
BY ABIGAIL BESHKIN
Richard Sater, an adjunct faculty member at Ohio University, is joining professors from across the country this summer on the campus of Columbia University in New York City for an intensive seminar on "The American Playwright, 1920-1950," complete with field trips to the hottest revivals on Broadway.
Arriving in New York City at 1:15 a.m. on a recent Saturday, Sater was so excited to be at the center of the theater world that he put aside fatigue and that afternoon went to a matinee of the much-acclaimed revival of Eugene O'Neill's "The Iceman Cometh." Sater will see the play again with the class, and meet with lead actor Kevin Spacey after the show. The class will do the same with Columbia alumnus Brian Dennehy, star of "Death of a Salesman," the other hit Broadway revival.
Sater is one of 44 professors from colleges and universities across the country who have come to "recharge" at Columbia's National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Summer Seminars for College and University Teachers. Since 1973, the NEH has funded intensive summer seminars to give college teachers and independent scholars, like curators, the chance to devote themselves to studying and researching a topic with a group of peers and a leading expert in a particular field.
"These seminars give a boost to undergraduate teaching by providing professors the chance to do some independent work and get together with other academics to discuss a subject in a sustained way," said Columbia political scientist and China authority Andrew Nathan, who is teaching a seminar on "Cultural Difference and Values: Human Rights and the Challenge of Relativism."
"The participants recharge their batteries," Nathan said. "Now they have a chance to read and discuss and get a charge of energy and new ideas." He said that in selecting participants, NEH committees look for professors who spend most of their time teaching undergraduate classes.
Columbia has traditionally been a site of these seminars, and this year, the University is offering three of the 14 seminars taking place at universities nationwide, including Princeton, Harvard and Georgetown universities. "Columbia is one of the sites we use most often for summer seminars," said Roberta Heine, NEH public affairs director. "Columbia is very impressive and it always gets fabulous ratings from the Endowment's peer review panels."
The seminars were originally designed for faculty of colleges and universities without major research facilities. But today, the applicant pool has changed, since even professors in remote places can access much of the material they need on-line. Still, many participants still come from schools with limited library and research resources and want the chance to work hands-on at a major research institution. To many of these students, a university like Columbia in a city like New York is the perfect place to spend the summer.
"Participants may only be two hours away from a major research library, but that's as good as an interplanetary distance when you have a five-day-a-week teaching load," said Roger Bagnall, a Columbia classics professor who is leading a seminar on "Society and Culture in Ancient Roman Egypt."
Bagnall's class covers the period from the Roman conquest of Egypt in 30 C.E. until 640 C.E., and examines the political and social structures of the society, as well as its economy, culture and gender relationships.
Bagnall said Columbia is second only to Egypt as a place to study this period in ancient history. Butler Library holds one of the world's best papyrology and epigraphy collections. The collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum of Art and the American Numismatics Society also excel in relevant material for Egyptologists.
Students in Professor Emeritus Howard Stein's seminar on "The American Playwright, 1920-1950," will mine an entirely different set of resources. Many of the students come from places where they have relatively few chances to work directly with playwrights, directors and actors. Participants have come from Ohio University in Athens, Ohio; Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina; and Piedmont College in northeastern Georgia, and many say they are excited to be spending the summer in New York.
Besides the University library where participant Richard Sater says that for a change he will "physically be able to lay my hands on the books that I need," there is the University's Miller Theatre and enough Broadway and off-Broadway theaters to satisfy even the most avid enthusiasts.
Professor Stein plans to take his group of 15 to see "The Iceman Cometh" and Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman" on Broadway. Students will also have the rare opportunity to meet with Kevin Spacey from "The Iceman Cometh" and Tony-award winning actor Brian Dennehy who stars in "Death of a Salesman." The class will also attend the O'Neill Playwrights Festival in Waterford, Conn. to watch staged readings and rehearsals, and to visit the Monte Cristo Cottage, where O'Neill spent much of his childhood and young adult life in New London, Conn.
Said Sater, New York is "where O'Neill got his start, and he is the father of American theater." Sater also said he is eagerly anticipating his visit to the Monte Cristo Cottage. "There's something about being able to stand on the porch of a house that O'Neill stood on that to me is very exciting...seeing what he saw and standing in a place where he stood."
In Andrew Nathan's class, which focuses on human rights issues in Asia, participants will have access to the headquarters of some of the world's leading human rights organizations. Human Rights Watch, for instance, is based in New York City, and Amnesty International has its American headquarters here. Nathan also said his students will make use of SIPA's Center for the Study of Human Rights at Columbia.
Overall, said Stein, "the NEH seminars are a remarkable idea.It's easy to lose passion for material when you get bogged down. Often teachers come to these seminars and remember why they got into the field in the first place."