Marian Miner Cook
Athenaeum

A distinctive
feature of social and
cultural life at CMC

 

Students, Faculty, and Staff: 
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Alumni and Parents:
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Mon, April 3, 2023
Dinner Program
Elizabeth Farfán-Santos

Elizabeth Farfán-Santos, medical anthropologist and author, will discuss her new book, Undocumented Motherhood: Conversations on Love, Trauma, and Border Crossing. The book is about Claudia Garcia who crossed the border because her toddler, Natalia, could not hear. Leaving behind everything she knew in Mexico and undertaking a dangerous journey, Claudia discovered that being undocumented would mean more than just an immigration status—it would be a way of living, of mothering, and of being discarded by even those institutions we count on to care.

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Elizabeth Farfán-Santos has a Ph.D. and M.A. in medical anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley. An accomplished researcher and scholar, Farfán-Santos is the author of two books, Black Bodies, Black Rights: The Politics of Quilombolismo in Contemporary Brazil and Undocumented Motherhood: Conversations on Love, Trauma, and Border Crossing, both published by the University of Texas Press. Her work has appeared in prestigious journals including Medical Anthropology: Cross-Cultural Studies in Health and Illness, Latino Studies, the Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, and Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine.

Recently, Farfán-Santos moved on from her position as associate professor with tenure at the University of Houston. Since then, she has collaborated with public health leaders within the Houston public health system, directed sessions on cultural humility for researchers in neurocognitive disorders, and is currently teaching sessions on medical anthropology and barriers to health access for marginalized and underserved communities at the UH College of Medicine.

Despite her long history of research and teaching, Farfán-Santos identifies primarily as a writer passionate about nonfiction and creative prose that blends multiple genres, including ethnography, memoir, essay, and poetry. She has published creative essays and poetry and brings together the researcher-anthropologist and creative writer in her new book, Undocumented Motherhood.

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Tue, April 4, 2023
Lunch Program
Angela Vossmeyer

The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank tells market participants that runs on banks exist even in the presence of deposit insurance. It’s frightening but true. And now, the Federal Reserve has to act to prevent a full-fledged banking crisis with collateral damage to Main Street. In this timely talk, Angela Vossmeyer, associate professor of economics at CMC, will address the recent banking turmoil, the policy responses that followed, draw parallels to previous crises, and examine if lessons have been learned or mistakes have been repeated.

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Angela Vossmeyer is an associate professor of economics at Claremont McKenna College and a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). Her research interests include: econometrics, Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC), simulation-based inference, financial economics, financial crises, and economic history. She was recently a visiting scholar at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System in the Division of Monetary Affairs.

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Tue, April 4, 2023
Dinner Program
Mark Skousen

The Scottish philosopher Adam Smith wrote The Wealth of Nations in 1776, much the same way Sir Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin developed their own scientific revolutions. In honor of the 300th anniversary of Adam Smith's birth, Mark Skousen, professor of economics at Chapman University, will describe this revolution and its impact on the global economy and government policy, identifying the ways in which Smith’s laissez-faire model has succeeded and failed in terms of free trade and globalization, balanced budgets, the growth of government, inflation and monetary policy, the business cycle, and environmental issues. He will also compare the Adam Smith invisible hand model with other competing schools of thought, including Keynesian and Marxist.

 
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Mark Skousen holds the Doti-Spogli Endowed Chair of Free Enterprise at Chapman University. He earned his Ph.D. in monetary economics at George Washington University. In 2018, he was awarded the Triple Crown in Economics for his work in theory, history, and education, after receiving "My Favorite Professor Award" at Chapman. He has taught at Columbia Business School, worked for the government (CIA), non-profits (president of FEE), and been a consultant to IBM.

He has written for the Wall Street Journal and a regular column for Forbes magazine. He is the author of over 25 books, including The Making of Modern Economics and The Maxims of Wall Street. He has been editor in chief of an award-winning investment newsletter, Forecasts & Strategies, since 1980. He produces “FreedomFest, the world’s largest gathering of free minds,” every July in Las Vegas.

Influenced by his work, the federal government began publishing Gross Output (GO) every quarter along with GDP. It is the first macro statistic of the economy to be published quarterly since GDP was invented in the 1940s.

 
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Wed, April 5, 2023
Dinner Program
Mia Mask

African American westerns have a rich cinematic history and visual culture. Mia Mask, professor of film at Vassar College and author of Divas on Screen: Black Women in American Film,  examines the African American western hero within the larger context of film history by considering how Black westerns evolved and approached wide-ranging goals. Woody Strode’s 1950s transformation from football star to actor was the harbinger of hard-edged western heroes later played by Jim Brown and Fred Williamson. Sidney Poitier’s Buck and the Preacher provided a narrative helmed by a groundbreaking African American director and offered unconventionally rich roles for women.

Professor Mask's Athenaeum presentation is supported by CMC's Presidential Initiative on Anti-Racism and the Black Experience in America.

 
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Mia Mask is the Mary Riepma Ross Professor of Film at Vassar College. She is the author of Divas on Screen: Black Women in American Film

Mask edited the anthology Contemporary Black American Cinema, published by Routledge. She also published the jointly edited collection Poitier Revisited: Reconsidering a Black Icon in the Obama Age (Bloomsbury). Her newest book is Black Rodeo: A History of the African American Western.

Her cultural commentary has been featured on National Public Radio programs “Tell Me More,” “Marketplace” and “Morning Edition;” on Soledad O'Brien’s “Matter of Fact,” and in documentaries for the Smithsonian Channel, the Criterion Channel and CNN’s The Movies.

Professor Mask's Athenaeum presentation is supported by CMC's Presidential Initiative on Anti-Racism and the Black Experience in America.

 
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Thu, April 6, 2023
Lunch Program
Kyla Eastling ' 18

Kyla Easting '18, an assistant staff attorney at Planned Parenthood Federation of America, will discuss evolving reproductive rights strategies in the post-Dobbs era.

Ms. Eastling's CMC presentation is co-sponsored by the Salvatori Center at CMC.

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Kyla Easting '18 is an assistant staff attorney at Planned Parenthood Federation of America. At CMC, Eastling majored in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics with a Legal Studies sequence. After graduation, she enrolled in Yale Law School, where she was part of the Veterans Legal Services Clinic, with a focus on gender and racial equity in the military service academies and on securing benefits for veterans who served on Guam. She graduated from Yale Law School in 2021. Last year, she served as a Gruber Fellow in Global Justice and Women's Rights at the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project.

Ms. Eastling's CMC presentation is co-sponsored by the Salvatori Center at CMC.

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Thu, April 6, 2023
Dinner Program
Angie Cruz

Finding one's voice as a storyteller is one of the most important aspects of writing fiction. Angie Cruz, award-winning author of How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water and Dominicana, will discuss how she honed her storytelling voice in fiction and also how nurturing community has been both essential and productive in her writing practice.

Ms. Cruz’s Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the Center for Writing and Public Discourse and the Gould Center for Humanistic Studies, both at CMC.

Photo credit: Erika Morillo

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Angie Cruz is a novelist and editor. Her most recent novel is How Not To Drown in A Glass of Water (2022). Her novel Dominicana was shortlisted for The Women’s Prize, longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and The Aspen Words Literary Prize, a RUSA Notable book, and the winner of the ALA/YALSA Alex Award in fiction. It was named most anticipated/ best book in 2019 by Time, Newsweek, People, Oprah Magazine, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and Esquire. 

Cruz is the author of two other novels, Soledad and Let It Rain Coffee, and has been published in The Paris Review, VQR, Callaloo, Gulf Coast, and elsewhere. She's the founder and editor-in-chief of the award-winning literary journal Aster(ix). An associate professor at the University of Pittsburgh, she divides her time between Pittsburgh, New York, and Turin, Italy.

Ms. Cruz’s Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the Center for Writing and Public Discourse and the Gould Center for Humanistic Studies, both at CMC.

Photo credit: Erika Morillo

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Mon, April 10, 2023
Dinner Program
Lingling Wei

Lingling Wei, chief China correspondent of The Wall Street Journal and co-author of Superpower Showdown, will talk about how Xi Jinping is reshaping and ring-fencing China's economy amid heightened competition with the U.S.

Ms. Wei's Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the Keck Center for International and Strategic Studies at CMC.

 
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Lingling Wei is the award-winning chief China correspondent for The Wall Street Journal and co-author of Superpower Showdown. She covers China's political economy, focusing on the intersection of business and politics. Born and raised in China, she has a M.A. in journalism from N.Y.U., got her start covering U.S. real estate, and has won many awards for her China coverage. In 2021, she's among a team of reporters and editors whose work was a Pulitzer Prize finalist.

Ms. Wei's Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the Keck Center for International and Strategic Studies at CMC.

 
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Tue, April 11, 2023
Dinner Program
David E. Tolchinsky P'20

How can genres like comedy and horror be tools for depicting mental health? When should we strive to be accurate in our mental health depictions? When does creative license trump accuracy? What are the ethics of representing trauma on screen? Using clips from various television and films such as Modern Love, Monster: The Jeffery Dahmer Story, the Babadook, Good Will Hunting, Two Distant Strangers, Jerrod Carmichael's Rothaniel, and No Crying at the Dinner Table, David E. Tolchinsky P’20, filmmaker and professor of Radio/Television/Film at Northwestern University, will discuss if and how film/television can help normalize mental health.

Photo credit: Stephen Lewis

 
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David E. Tolchinsky P'20 is a filmmaker and professor of Radio/Television/Film at Northwestern University. He co-founded and directed NU's MFA in Writing for Screen+Stage program, was chair of RTVF for 11 years, and recently co-founded and now directs the Pritzker Pucker Studio Lab for the Promotion of Mental Health via Cinematic Arts at Northwestern. 

His work, which spans comedy and darker fare, often involves trauma, memory, and mental illness. His short Cassandra, available on Alter, Apple, and Amazon, has won over 11 awards internationally and is currently being developed into a feature. He produced and scored the NYTimes Op-Doc Contaminated Memories, directed by Debra Tolchinsky, produced Creature Companion, directed by Melika Bass, and recently produced Shudder/AMC's feature Night's End, directed by Jennifer Reeder. He was recently invited by Psychology Today to start a blog, Screenology: pondering mental health and media. He's written screenplays for various Hollywood studios and has written and directed plays performed in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. He graduated from Yale (BA) and the USC School of Cinematic Arts (MFA).

Photo credit: Stephen Lewis

 
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Wed, April 12, 2023
Lunch Program
Isabel Vincent

Overture of Hope tells the tale of two British sisters in 1930s Europe, one a dowdy typist, the other a soon-to-be-famous romance novelist. Yet, both share a passion for opera, which takes them on frequent trips to Germany and Austria to see their favorite stars perform. But as clouds of war gather, the stars of Continental opera, many of whom are Jewish, face dark futures under the Nazis. Packed with original research and vividly told with suspense, hope, and wonder by award-winning New York Post investigative journalist Isabel Vincent, this singular tale reveals many new details of the seemingly naïve and oblivious Cook sisters’ surreptitious bravery, daring, and passionate commitment as the two mount a successful rescue mission that saves dozens of lives and preserves the opera they love for another generation.

Ms. Vincent's Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the Mgrublian Center for Human Rights at CMC.

Photo credit: Zandy Mangold

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Isabel Vincent, award-winning investigative journalist for the New York Post, is the author of the bestselling memoir, Dinner with Edward, the biography Gilded Lily: The making of One of the World’s Wealthiest Widows, the sex trafficking exposé Bodies and Souls, and See No Evil, an investigation into Latin America’s biggest kidnapping case. Her account of the Swiss bank accounts left dormant after the Nazi era, Hitler’s Silent Partners, won the Yad Vashem Award for Holocaust History. A native of Canada, Vincent covered South American drug cartels for the Globe and the Mail and later reported on conflicts in Kosovo and the civil war in Angola. For many years, she has reported on the madness, mayhem, and corruption of the New York City for the Post and a host of other publications.

Ms. Vincent's Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the Mgrublian Center for Human Rights at CMC.

Photo credit: Zandy Mangold

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Wed, April 12, 2023
Dinner Program
Richard Sander

In October 2022, the Supreme Court heard challenges to the admissions systems at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina. Most legal observers expect the Court will make a broad ruling substantially restricting the use of race as an admissions factor in American higher education. If this happens, how will universities and state legislatures react? How will this affect minority student outcomes and the national debates on race? These and other related questions will be examined by prominent scholar on affirmative action, Richard Sander, an economist and a Distinguished Professor of Law at UCLA.

(This event was originally scheduled for March 21, 2023.)

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Richard Sander, holds the Jesse Dukeminier Professorship in Law at UCLA. An economist and law professor, he has taught at UCLA since 1989 and also serves at the director of the UCLA-RAND Center for Law and Public Policy.

Most of Sander's work draws on both law and social science to understand problems of social inequality and evaluate social policies. He is the author of two books: Moving Toward Integration (Harvard, 2018), which attempts to explain the complex evolution of housing segregation in America, the effects of fair housing laws, and the paths to desegregation; and Mismatch (Basic Books, 2012), which examines the paradoxical and often counterproductive effects of many current affirmative action policies in higher education, suggests a better path to diversity, and describes the barriers to reform.

An unpaid, informal advisor to the plaintiffs in the Harvard/UNC cases during the early stages of those cases, Sander also collaborates with judges and scholars to study innovative ways to simplify litigation and to evaluate the results of reforms —an approach that has gained a good deal of traction in recent years.

(This event was originally scheduled for March 21, 2023.)

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Thu, April 13, 2023
Dinner Program
Jacob Soll

Free Market thought is one of the most powerful and controversial ideas. Surprisingly, nobody has ever written a complex history of its origins. That is until Jacob Soll, University Professor and professor of philosophy, history, and accounting at the University of Southern California, did. He  discovered that there were very diverse ideas about what free markets meant and where they came from. Indeed, rather than being a modern idea, the basic modern premise that markets work all on their own with no government planning, has its roots in ancient Roman agrarian theory. Soll will discuss the surprising origins, challenges, and future of market and economic thought.

 
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Jacob Soll is University Professor and professor of philosophy, history, and accounting at the University of Southern California.

He received a D.E.A. from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, France, and a Ph.D. from Magdalene College, Cambridge University.

He has taught at Cambridge University, Princeton University, Rutgers University, and the European University Institute in Fiesole, Italy.

Soll has been awarded numerous prestigious prizes including two NEH Fellowships, the Jacques Barzun Prize from the American Philosophical Society, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and, in 2011, the MacArthur “Genius Prize” Fellowship.

He is the author of four books and numerous academic and newspaper and magazine articles in outlets such as the NYT, Politico, Le Monde, the WSJ and others.

His last book, The Reckoning: Financial Accountability and the Rise and Fall of Nations, was a global bestseller.

 
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Fri, April 14, 2023
Lunch Program
Vincent Michelot

France and the United States share many values and ideals and have a long history as one another’s “oldest allies. Yet one cannot ignore the things have also divided them: an entrenched tradition of anti-Americanism in France; the American clichés of “Old Europe” and of the French republic as supposedly hostile to religion or unable to move beyond its colonial past in America. One also sees differences in scale and institutions in the funding of higher education, art, or research. Vincent Michelot, Attaché for Higher Education at the French Embassy in the US and director of Campus France USA, will explore the different ways in which France can overcome the obstacles of scale, history, and language in implementing an innovative cultural and educational policy in the United States.

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Vincent Michelot is a professor of American Politics at Sciences Po Lyon. He currently serves as Attaché for Higher Education at the French Embassy in the United States and as director of Campus France USA. A Fulbright scholar and administrator, Michelot has over 30 years’ experience in international education and transatlantic exchanges. An accomplished scholar, he has served as the director of Science Po, Lyon, and has written and commented widely on French and American politics.

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Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum

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