Vassar Today

So Much to Do

April may be the busiest month of the year on the Vassar campus. Lectures, conferences, exhibits, readings, plays, and concerts crowd the schedule. Here is a small sampling from this year’s April calendar.

Asian American Conference
A board of nine students headed by co-chairs Delia Chung Hom ’00 and Ken Wong ’00 planned the second Vassar College Asian American Conference, themed “Movement Without Direction: The Refocusing of the Asian American Vision.”

Prominent Asian American scholars such as Shirley Hune, associate dean and professor of urban planning at UCLA’s School of Public Policy and Social Research; Karin Aguilar-San Juan, visiting professor of sociology at Macalester College and editor of the anthology The State of Asian America: Activism and Resistance in the 1990s; and Gary Okihiro, director of the Asian American studies program at Columbia University and author of Margins and Mainstreams: Asians in American History and Culture, were keynote speakers. Workshops on Asian American literature, affirmative action, campus organizing, coalition building, and immigration and social policy were on the agenda.

Sudan Studies Association
Vassar hosted the 19th Annual Conference of the Sudan Studies Association. “Africa’s Sudanic Core at the Millennium,” was the theme of the conference, organized by Constance Berkley, Vassar lecturer in Africana Studies and founder of the Sudan Studies Association. Tayib Salih, a well-known and highly regarded Sudanese author, was the featured speaker at the event, which is annually attended by scholars from institutions in the Sudan and across the U.S.

Hudson River Undergraduate Mathematics Conference
Peter Hilton, Distinguished Professor of Mathematics Emeritus at the State University of New York at Binghamton and Distinguished Professor of Mathematics at the University of Central Florida, was the keynote speaker for the seventh annual Hudson River Undergraduate Mathematics Conference. The annual event “is designed primarily for undergraduate students of mathematics and strives to provide them with the experience of attending and/or presenting at a professional mathematics meeting,” wrote Benjamin Lotto, associate professor of mathematics and HRUMC steering committee co-chair. The event is held each spring at varying institutions in the Hudson River area.

And More
Jules Feiffer, cartoonist, novelist, and playwright, presented this year’s Annual Alex Kreiger ’95 Memorial Lecture, with slides of his work. His talk was entitled, “My Life and Funny Times.” Poet Elizabeth Spires ’74 gave the annual William Gifford Poetry Reading. Artist Catherine Murphy delivered the annual Agnes Rindge Claflin lecture.

The Vassar College Opera Workshop performed The Fairy Queen, with music by Purcell. Philaletheis Society presented Lost in Yonkers by Neil Simon, Blue Window by Craig Lucas, and Night Mother by Marsha Norman. “I Won’t Grow Up Day” (for children), Parents Weekend, Spring Convocation, and Founder’s Day were also on the schedule.