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| Graduate Student and Alumni News Marie Cieri, a Ph.D student in the department of geography, recently signed a contract with St. Martin's Press for a book entitled Activists Speak Out: Reflections on the Pursuit of Change in America. From 1994-1997, Cieri and co-editor Claire Peeps interviewed dozens of progressive social activists working throughout the country in the fields of civil rights, the environment, women's issues, gay and lesbian rights, health, youth, education, immigration, crime prevention and community building, labor, Native American land and religious rights, freedom of expression and the arts. The resulting book will contain edited transcripts of 15 of these interviews, revealing how and why these exceptional individuals have struggled for social change. The book also will contain Cieri's introductory essay and a preface by a well known activist leader (soon to be named). Activists Speak Out will be approximately 300 pages long and will be issued simultanously in hard and soft covers. Publication is set for Fall 2000. This past December, Letters Not About Love (1998), a feature-length documentary by Jacki Ochs (Associate Producer Marie Cieri), had its New York premiere at The Museum of Modern Art. Letters Not About Love is structured around a five-year correspondence (1988-93) between two noted poets, American Lyn Hejinian and Russian Arkadii Dragomoshchenko. The filmmaker initiated the exchange by giving both writers a list of ordinary words (e.g., "home," "book," "violence," neighbor") and asking them, in each letter, to reflect on one of them -- its conventional meaning, as well as what it means to them. According to the Cleveland Plain Dealer, "By the end of this film, a deep intimacy has been established between the poets, between their cultures, and between film and audience." And performance artist/ composer Laurie Anderson has written: "Letters Not About Love" is a gorgeous meditation on the mysteries of language and place...Ochs has created a fascinating double portrait of the United States and Russia....a truly beautiful and original film. "Letters Not About Love" has won several awards including Best Documentary Feature of 1998 from the South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin, TX. For Cieri, it is the first feature-length film she has been involved in producing. Tetsushi Fujita writes: I hope all of you enjoyed your visiting Pittsburgh, presenting paper(s), as well as attending sessions. I enjoyed of course, but, sightseeing the city better than the conference :-) I went to the Station Square, a shopping-bussiness-hotel complex using a site of former railroad station, to study a case of cultural/post-modern geography or consumption of space/space of consumption (in real sense!) I found there some buildings and memorial monuments which reflect the heritage of railroad station as well as iron city of Pittsburgh. I also climbed up the hilltop by the incline, found a barge which conveyed coal on the river (I imagined this as the real landscape of industrial city of Pittsburgh!), tried to understand Andy Warhol's arts of space, and saw a Heinz' tomato ketchup factory. I took lots of photos and scanned them onto my computer. If you are interested, please visit: http://satellite.hoops.ne.jp/en/pitts/stationsq.html Barbara Hildebrant writes: I am working at Educational Testing Service (ETS) in Princeton as the resident geographer. My main work is with AP Human Geography, a new addition to the AP program. The first administration of the test will be Spring 2001. I also work with NAEP geography, and will be working on the revisions to the PRAXIS geography section in the next year. It seems I am "in the air" much of the time, travelling to committee meetings, scoring, teacher's conferences, and the like. In my "spare time", on planes, in hotel rooms, weekends I am home, I am frantically trying to complete my dissertation by the end of the year. Let's just say it is a real struggle! Wendy Mitteager writes: I am working with Karl Nordstrom, studying coastal geomorphology. We just finished a research project where we analyzed surveys distributed to four NJ high schools, attempting to assess their perception of the coastal environment and the importance of dunes. Now I am working on my proposal, dealing with human influences on geomorphic processes. Melina Patterson writes: The Rutgers Council of AAUP Chapters has awarded me the Norman F. Washburne Distinguished Service Award for 2000 for "distinguished service to Rutgers University, to the AAUP, or to the community." The Administration's lawyer for labor negotiations is receiving one too. I'm hoping for a plaque and looking forward to the food and drink; union parties are good parties. Actually, I am so pleased that I am forced to confront how vulnerable I am to expressions of appreciation; it is so easy to forget that weakness in graduate school. Bansuri Taneja (MA '99) writes: A chance to brag!!! More importantly to stay in touch with people I am really missing... Spent six months after graduation freelancing on various projects - including one on the environmental impacts of large dams in India (part of the World Commission on Dams mandate), and one on the process of preparation of the Bioidiversity law in India, which will grow into recommendations to the 5th Conference of the Parties on the Convention on Biological Diversity. I am now working full time on a UNDP/GEF funded project, which is preparing a strategy and action plan for India at a micro-level. I assist in co-ordinating the subsantive bits and the processes that go into this Action Plan. I have decided against studying further in the immediate future... meaning that PhDs are on hold, basically. I am enjoying learning from millions of peoples' experiences by listening and working together. |
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