Grad News Forum

As President Obama bestowed the Medal of Honor on Clinton Romesha for his valor in defending an isolated American outpost in Afghanistan from an overwhelming Taliban attack, he looked for lessons learned.

During his time on campus, author and CNN correspondent Jake Tapper ’91 will give a public lecture and be part of a panel discussion with photojournalist James Nachtwey ’70. (Courtesy of Ely Brown)

“One of them is that our troops should never, ever, be put in a position where they have to defend the indefensible,” Obama said at the White House ceremony for retired Staff Sgt. Romesha on Monday, February 11. Eight Americans died in the October 2009 battle for Combat Outpost Keating, one of the most vicious engagements of the war.

Romesha’s story and the stories of the other soldiers whose duty it was to defend the indefensible, including Capt. Stoney Portis MALS ’13, the last officer to command COP Keating, are told in a new book by CNN correspondent Jake Tapper ’91, The Outpost: An Untold Story of American Valor.

Tapper will return to Dartmouth on Tuesday, February 19, to join a panel discussion with photojournalist James Nachtwey ’70 and Portis at a lunch with students from the Graduate Studies Program and members of the Dartmouth Graduate Veterans Association. Nachtwey, an activist anti-war photojournalist, is the Roth Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Dartmouth.

B Troop, in the days following the battle to defend COP Keating, at Forward Operating Base Bostick in Kunar Province, Afghanistan. At far left, wearing a black hat, is Capt. Stoney Portis, MALS ’13. (Photo courtesy of Capt. Stoney Portis, MALS ’13)

At 4:30 p.m. Tapper will give a public lecture, “The Outpost: An Untold Story of American Valor,” at Filene Auditorium in Moore Hall. President Emeritus James Wright, a former Marine who taught Tapper in a first-year history class, will introduce his former student.

Wright has been waging a personal campaign to bring the real cost of the war in Afghanistan to the attention of the public and policymakers. In his recent book,Those Who Have Borne the Battle: A History of America’s Wars and Those Who Fought Them, he argues that the invisibility of modern war has made it too easy for politicians to expend American lives and treasure. Tapper’s book is important because it puts a human face on the war in Afghanistan, Wright says.

The John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding is sponsoring Tapper’s lecture. There will be a public book signing after the lecture.

Article by Bill Platt, courtesy of the Dartmouth Now

When Professor Donald E. Pease taught at Oxford more than a decade ago, he often strolled past the gothic buildings of the Oxford Union Society. But he didn’t imagine he would ever speak in the chambers that have hosted Albert Einstein, Mother Teresa, and Gandhi.

For the full article go to Dartmouth Now.

At its 2012 conference in Portland, Oregon, in October, the Association of Graduate Liberal Studies Programs (AGLSP) awarded its Annual Faculty Award to Senior Lecturer in the Masters of Arts in Liberal Studies Program, Klaus Milich, PhD. The AGLSP’s Faculty Award recognizes “outstanding faculty who exemplify the qualities of interdisciplinary, liberal teaching and who have participated significantly in teaching or advising students and/or have actively participated in other faculty service in a graduate liberal studies program.” Dr. Milich was recognized for his contributions to Dartmouth’s Masters of Arts in Liberal Studies (MALS) program, and for his work as an advisor for graduate students on campus.

“The AGLSP Prize is intended to recognize extraordinary commitment to mentoring and advising,” says MALS Chair Donald E. Pease, Jr. “From the time I recruited him to teach in the MALS Program in 1999, Klaus Milich has proven himself an exemplary scholar and teacher.” Dr. Milich teaches multiple courses for the MALS program— “Research Methods”, a course designed to help students understand and execute theoretical social science; “Diasporas and Migrations,” which focused on concept and theories related to mass-migration and diasporas across the globe; “Religion and Politics,” and “Theories of Postmodernism.” Dr. Milich also teaches courses in the Jewish Studies and Women’s and Gender Studies programs.

During his acceptance address at the AGLSP Conference, Dr. Milich spoke to the place of theory in graduate liberal studies. “It is of great importance to focus on the theorization of our topics,” said Dr. Milich, who’s own research is focused on analyzing and approaching the classic divide between the humanities and the sciences. “Our students come back from jobs to spend time reflecting. They’ve decided to take time to merge theory and their experiences. This is what graduate liberal studies can offer them.”

The AGLSP’s Faculty Award, however, recognizes more than in-class teaching ability. Indeed, it is Dr. Milich’s approach to advising his graduate students that has set him apart.

“In their annual evaluations, Klaus’s MALS students have praised Klaus for the patience he displays in guiding them through every stage of their thesis projects—from initial formulation to culminating revision,” Pease says. “His students have attested in particular to Professor Milich’s willingness to work late into the evening and over long week-ends to help them to meet deadlines and get over writing blocs. No one is more deserving of this national recognition for exemplary dedication to teaching and advising than Klaus Milich.”

“In graduate studies especially,” Dr. Milich tells us, “the student-instructor relationship ceases to be a hierarchical one. Instead, there must be a mutual interdependence between teacher and researcher. I consider my students to be young research scholars, who embark with me on new projects. They chart their course – I help them as I can.”

“Last year, Klaus was the first reader of my masters thesis,” says MALS grad and former Graduate Student Council President Wes Whitaker. “During the fall and winter terms, I met with Klaus and the other two students in colloquium—Ellen Anderson and Thomas Frohlich—on a weekly basis. At these meetings, portions of Ellen, Thomas and my theses were workshopped by Professor Milich. The feedback provided by Klaus and the other members of my colloquium not only strengthened the final draft of my thesis, but also greatly improved my academic writing.”

During his early years as a student, Dr. Milich studied economics, American Literary and Cultural Studies, German and English Literature. In the first stages of his career, Dr. Milich worked as a management consultant, and then went on to work for German public radio, and various international newspapers, for which he wrote and broadcasted essays, documentaries, interviews, and book reviews on literary, cultural, and social issues. Before coming to Dartmouth, Dr. Milich taught at the University of Frankfurt and Humboldt University Berlin. He has held visiting professorships and visiting scholar positions at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Keele University in Great Britain, and at the David Bruce Center for American Studies at University of California Irvine.

Up in Portland, MALS Director Wole Ojurongbe, himself a MALS graduate, read letter after letter from MALS students, who echoed these sentiments. “Before I met and worked with Dr. Milich, I would have described my life as largely content, settled, and unperturbed,” said 2011 graduate Mary Fratini, “but in my good fortune to meet someone who is equally passionate about his own consistently evolving research and committed to mentoring a new generation of thinkers and scholars, my life has become largely unsettled, consistently perturbed and, ultimately, infinitely more satisfying.”

Indeed, it was Dr. Milich’s commitment to his students, and his very real appreciation for academic research that showed through in Ojurongbe’s remarks and in our interview with him. “Our research,” he told us, “always means an exploration of what we have yet to know. It’s a work in progress. An instructor works with a student, so that both can learn the dual process of learning facts on the one hand, and learning how to continue learning on the other.”

Article and photo by Zach Williams 

Professor Pease, who chairs the Masters of Arts in Liberal Studies program at Dartmouth, has been awarded his field’s highest honor. The following is an exerpt from an article posted by the Dartmouth Now – please follow the link below to read the rest of the article. 

The legendary Donald E. Pease, one of Dartmouth’s best-known professors, has been awarded the 2012 Carl Bode-Norman Holmes Pearson Prize for Outstanding Contributions to American Studies.

Pease is the Ted and Helen Geisel Third Century Professor in the Humanities and chair of the Dartmouth Liberal Studies Program. The English professor is also the biographer of one of Dartmouth’s most famous alumni, Theodore Seuss Geisel, known to millions as Dr. Seuss.

The Bode-Pearson Prize, awarded annually by the American Studies Association, is one of the oldest and most prestigious awards in the field. Pease will receive the prize at the ASA’s annual meeting in San Juan, Puerto Rico, on November 16.

“In the important field of American Studies, many honors for scholarship and teaching are bestowed every year—but none compares with the Carl Bode-Norman Holmes Pearson Prize,” says Dean of the Faculty Michael Mastanduno.

“This distinction is reserved for singular individuals whose careers truly reflect a lifetime of achievement and service to the American Studies field,” says Mastanduno. “Don Pease is just such a scholar-teacher. I cannot imagine a more worthy recipient than Don, and on behalf of the entire Arts & Sciences faculty, we take great pride in his recognition.”

To read the rest of the article, please visit the Dartmouth Now. 

Desmond Webster

This October Desmond Webster, a student in the MALS program and a U.S. Navy Veteran, helped secure a $10,000 donation for the Claremont Food Pantry in Claremont, NH. The donation will help to buoy the Pantry through the winter months, as demand for their services rises with the costs of heating bills and holiday spending.

Webster is a member of the Dartmouth Graduate Veterans Association (DGVA), a group that’s been sponsoring an ongoing food drive for the Pantry. The DGVA has brought Graduate veterans together, to foster a sense of community and to reach out to the larger community, through projects like the food drive and volunteer efforts with the national PTSD center in White River Junction and Orion’s House in Newport.

“Ron Bucca (the DGVA’s operations chair) was really the leader on this thing,” Webster says. “He’s an exceptional listener, which makes him a great leader. He went down to Claremont and he listened. From what we heard, we decided that we could help in more ways.”

That was the spark that led Webster to seek larger financial donations. After months of effort supporting the food drive—driving other students to Price Chopper and collecting fresh food to bring to Claremont in a timely fashion—he started targeting individuals in the larger Dartmouth community with the means to help out. The $10,000 he secured came from a single donor, who has asked to remain anonymous. “We have a very different pool up here in Hanover than they do down in Claremont. We’re trying to make sure people remember that towns just a few more miles out are still struggling, that they need some help.”

“I’ve been so impressed by the members of the graduate community who have already helped out,” he continued. “Everyone’s been so giving with their time and with donations—once people know what’s going on, they go out of their way to help.”

Webster is a student in the MALS program, with a concentration in creative writing. He believes that his work with Claremont is exemplary of the benefits of pursuing a liberal studies degree with an interdisciplinary framework. “MALS is such a fluid program, it puts the impetus on its students to take the initiative. It doesn’t promise you a formulaic education—pursue a specific degree, take specific courses, get a specific job. It liberates its students to tackle problems in new ways. The real world is interdisciplinary, and our students’ approach fits that model.”

Born in Houston and raised in Columbus, Ohio, Webster did his undergraduate work at Rice University, where he earned a degree in Political Science and participated in the ROTC program. After graduation, he spent six years in the U.S. Navy, serving with the Pacific Fleet in San Diego, California and Seoul, South Korea. For his MALS thesis, Webster is writing a full-length screenplay, a murder-mystery.

“I think that students benefit by taking up initiatives like this,” he says. “Putting yourself out there, listening to people, trying to help—those things let you break out of your patterns, and that helps tremendously, whether you’re studying the effects of globalization or whether you’re trying to write a novel.”

The DGVA food drive will continue through the winter months. There is a box outside of the MALS office on the first floor of Wentworth Hall, and students and community members are encouraged to leave donations there for the group to pick up. Webster also asked us to mention that he’s still happy to drive people to get groceries or other donations if they don’t have access to a vehicle—he can be reached at Desmond.B.Webster.GR@dartmouth.edu.

And for more information on the Dartmouth Graduate Veterans Association, including information on the upcoming Military Ball, visit their website.

by Zach Williams 

The Graduate Forum is please to announce the new Media Production Intern: Zach Williams.

Zach is a first year MALS student in the General Studies tract. He was brought up in Massachusetts, leaving the state to go to college in Ithaca, upstate New York. There he majored in History and minored in Anthropology, graduating in 2010. In the years between finishing college and enrolling at Dartmouth he split his time between Oregon and Hawaii working in forestry preservation. In Oregon he was a wild land fire fighter, and in Hawaii he was in reforesting to reverse the damage done by ranching. Outside of his classes he is currently planning to raise ducks and cultivate a vegetable and fruit garden.

As the Media Production Zach has a wide-ranging portfolio of responsibilities. These include taking pictures and writing articles for the Dartmouth Grad News Forum. As the position implies, he is responsible for many of the media aspects of the Graduate Office, for instance maintaining the website and the social media, including Facebook and twitter.

Zach is looking to use his position to communicate the achievements of Graduate students at Dartmouth both in and outside the scope of academia. This includes the many awards, publications and conference attendances that Dartmouth students make each year, alongside community involvement in the Upper Valley and the wider community in New Hampshire and Vermont. For Zach, the Graduate News Forum is the perfect place to showcase the many achievements of Dartmouth students.

If you have any ideas for articles or want to see a student highlighted, please feel free to contact Zach at: Zachary.Williams.GR@dartmouth.edu.

Article and photo: Dan Durcan

A month into their organizational life, the Graduate Veterans Association (GVA) has already started to coordinate community-service initiatives.

The GVA is running a food drive to support the Claremont Soup Kitchen, which is located only a few exits south of Hanover on Interstate 91. With the hope of bolstering the Kitchen’s low supply, the group has worked with MALS Departmental Representative, Keely Badger, to get the word out to the graduate community. The GVA is taking food and household items to Claremont once a week, bringing the Kitchen donations made by Dartmouth students. The groups are now reaching out to all of the graduate departments.

“It’s an easy way to make a big difference in someone’s life,” says the GVA’s President, Ron Bucca. “And it’s right in Dartmouth’s backyard.”

Claremont, New Hampshire, was once a manufacturing town, but as the industry in the area declined, the town’s economic composition changed. The Kitchen opened up in 1983, started by Jan Bunnell and an early group of volunteers. Over 25 years later, Jan’s still there.

When you meet Jan, you know that she truly cares about helping people. “We have a lot of homelessness in Claremont,” she says. “People couch-cruise, going house to house every week or so. It’s not that they want to live this way – trust me they don’t want to live like that.”

The Kitchen runs four different programs: an evening meal, a food pantry to provide groceries to help during the lean times, home delivery for housebound seniors, and a BackPack program, which is designed to make sure children and teens have enough food to eat over the weekend. But as government grants and private donations fall off sharply, the Kitchen is finding it tough to meet the growing need.

“When I started here two years ago, these stacks went to the ceiling,” says David Lacoy, a Kitchen volunteer. We’re in the basement of a building on Central Street in Claremont – the ceilings are about eight feet high. Now the stacks of donations rise to about the knee.

In response, the GVA and GSC have organized a drive to help the Kitchen in their mission to help the people of Claremont, and they’re calling on all graduate students to continue to donate through the spring. Right now, there is a box for donations located in the MALS office on the ground floor in Wentworth Hall. As other departmental representatives are notified, look for boxes in other spaces – until then, the box in Wentworth is open to all. The Soup Kitchen accepts all kinds of food, basic kitchen appliances and utensils, clothing, and furniture. While all donations are welcome, items like peanut butter, cereal, fresh fruits and vegetables and healthy sources of protein are especially appreciated. If you’d like to donate any fresh, time-sensitive items, you can contact GVA members Ron Bucca or Mike Rodriguez.

The GVA and the GSC thanks the Dartmouth students who have already contributed and is appreciative of whatever students can give in the future. With the summer months coming up, children who rely heavily on school lunches will need other options. Jan and the staff of the Kitchen asked that we say thanks for them, too.

By Zachary Williams

About twenty graduate students from various disciplines gathered for an intimate lunch at the cozy Montgomery House last Wednesday with author Tobias Wolff who, until recently, was in residence at Dartmouth as a Montgomery Fellow. Wolff is the well-known writer of the memoirs This Boy’s Life and In Pharaoh’s Army, as well as several novels and short stories. After a childhood of traveling around the United States with his single mother, Mr. Wolff earned his bachelor’s degree at Oxford University and his master’s from Stanford University, where he is currently the Ward W. and Priscilla B. Woods Professor of English. He spoke with students about everything from writing to politics to his childhood, and his penchant for storytelling was evident throughout the afternoon.

Students asked Wolff questions about his success as a writer and about his thoughts on the craft in general. “Writing is hard for me,” he admitted, adding that to avoid distraction he wrote for years in an empty cellar room with no windows.  He also pointed out that in a world filling up with diversions like Twitter, Facebook, and cell phones, achieving full concentration is one of the biggest challenges facing writers today.

When asked how he was able to succeed in such a competitive field, Wolff replied that the key is to not worry about others. “Someone always did it better, younger,” he mused. “Just strive to be better than you were the last time, every time you write.” He spoke also on the value of writing workshops, but warned that while we should learn to use criticisms to improve what we are trying to do, it is equally important to learn to ignore certain voices. If a writer tries to make each and every reader happy, Wolff said, his or her job becomes impossible; the real competition and most important readers are writers themselves. He went on to say that many of the decisions writers make—how to begin or end a story, which characters to include, etc.—are determined by instinct. Most often, Wolff said, writers actually discover their stories in the process of writing them. “We can only explain the decisions afterward,” he added.

Mr. Wolff not only gave advice, but he also regaled his audience with the true stories behind some of his works—including a bank robbery, a car wreck, a hunting trip gone wrong, and scenes from his tour in Vietnam. The fact that so many of his pieces are drawn from real-life experience highlights what creative writing students at Dartmouth and everywhere hear again and again: start with what you know. Students can only hope to have as rich a store of authentic adventures as Tobias Wolff.

by Chris Abell
photo by Erin E. O’Flaherty

When Random House published Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax in 1971, Newsweek magazine called it “a hard-sell ecological allegory.” The book received a lukewarm reception from the public initially, as English Professor Donald E. Pease, the Ted and Helen Geisel Third Century Professor in the Humanities, explains in this video and in his Seuss biography, Theodor SEUSS Geisel (Oxford University Press, 2010).

“Some of Dr. Seuss’s most loyal fans expressed their disappointment at the way the tale’s message supplanted Dr. Seuss’s zaniness for its own sake,” Pease wrote. “The book did not get onto the best-seller lists until the environmental movement picked it up.”

Vist the Dartmouth Now to read the full story.

With its emphasis on enabling students to pursue their personal academic interests within the framework of a rigorous graduate program, the College’s Master of Arts in Liberal Studies program attracts students from a diverse range of backgrounds. The program, founded in 1970, focuses on the importance of interdisciplinary studies and flexibility within graduate education, according to English professor and MALS chair Donald Pease.

To learn more about Datmouth’s MALS program, read the article recently published in The Dartmouth.