2005 Fall Newsletter.pub - Brockport

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PAGE 8 So, that’s what a tenured full professor in the History Department at SUNY Brockport does in the decade or so before he retires. He teaches superbly. He shares in the governance of his department, his institution, and his community. He continues to hone and perfect his craft. He shares his knowledge and his wisdom with an ever-broader popular audience. He engages his community in serious discussion of sensitive issues. And he exemplifies for his students, his colleagues, and the broader audience, the power of the Liberally Educated mind at work. A proud graduate of one of America’s best private liberal arts colleges, he has devoted much of his professional life to replicating here, at one of America’s best public liberal arts Colleges, the tradition that molded him as a Grinnell undergraduate. He has done what can be done to provide to the next generation the benefits our generation has derived from the wise and dedicated leadership of men and women like Lynn and Anne Parsons who bring passion, reason, wisdom, dedication to the awesome task of passing on to our posterity the extraordinary gifts our predecessors have won for us. Dr. Lynn Hudson Parsons, an exceptional human being: A fine teacher A stimulating and provocative colleague A productive scholar A social critic An engaged intellectual A friend. It has been a privilege over some 30 years to have worked with him and to have learned from him. We wish him well in his next adventure. And we want him to know that we appreciate what he has done for us. And that we will miss him. May 2005 Graduation Al Heilman, one of 89 Aug. ’04-May ’05 BS/BA graduates, is congratulated by Dr. Jenny Lloyd. Fourteen MA students also graduated. by Lynn H. Parsons TIME LIN ES Synnestvedt Lecture Professor Annette Gordon-Reed delivered the annual Synnestvedt Lecture to a packed house in the New York Room on April 7. Her topic was “The Hemings Family in Slavery and Freedom.” Gordon- Reed’s book Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy (University Press of Virginia 1997) dealt with the controversial issue of the alleged relationship between Jefferson and Sally Hemings, one of his several hundred slaves. Ms. Gordon-Reed approached the issue, not as a historian, but as an attorney. She is a member of the faculty of the New York Law School in Manhattan and is a graduate of Harvard Law School, where she served on the board of the Harvard Law Review. As such, she discussed the legal distinction between “evidence” and “proof,” and argued that while there was at that time no clear “proof” of the relationship one way or the other, that white male historians and biographers almost unanimously dismissed the evidence supporting the relationship, while historians and biographers who were not white or not male tended to take it more seriously. Not long after the publication of her book, DNA testing between descendents of the Jefferson and Hemings families shifted the burden of proof from those who have previously defended the relationship to those who have dismissed it. In her lecture, Professor Gordon-Reed discussed the fall-out from the DNA revelations, its impact on the white descendents of Thomas Jefferson, and her own experiences in the public arena debating the issue with both proponents and critics. A lively and amusing Q and A session followed, ranging from issues affecting the historical profession itself to the implications of the recent revelations concerning the late segregationist Senator Strom Thurmond’s fathering of a child through a liaison with the young black woman in the 1930s. Professor Gordon-Reed has recently collaborated with Vernon Jordan in his autobiography Vernon Can Read, and is working on a biography of Sally Hemings.
V O L U ME 17, ISSUE 1 PAGE 9 Student and Faculty Exchanges with National University of Ireland in Maynooth by Steve Ireland This fall, SUNY Brockport will send six students to study at the National University of Ireland in Maynooth. Two of these are among our best History majors: Jessica Taft, a Delta College student, and Angela Henlyshyn, of the Honors program. A generous gift from one of our graduates allowed us to provide each of these students with a $500 scholarship. Their semester abroad is a key part of our developing relationship with the Maynooth History Department. Another is faculty exchange. This past summer Steve and Susan Ireland spent a delightful week at Maynooth where the chair of the Department, Professor Vincent Comerford, and his wife Phil, entertained them like visiting royalty: dinner in an early eleventh century castle, a visit to Cashil, a walk through the ruins of a twelfth century Carthusian monestary, a tour of Tipperary, all mixed in with a series of meetings with key people in the Maynooth History Department and Office of International Education (OIE). This September, a representative of the OIE, Ms Aoife Keogh, will spend a few days on our campus talking to students and faculty about study abroad in Ireland. Then, in the first week in November, Dr. Colm Lennon, a distinguished teacherscholar from Maynooth, will visit us for a week. He will meet with students, get to know our faculty members, and deliver a scholarly lecture on Thursday November 3. He has published extensively on Irish history and on the history of Dublin with special emphasis on the late middle ages and early modern era. Alumni in the area are invited to the lecture. Let us know if you plan to attend and we will make an effort to introduce you to Dr Lennon. Previously, in fall 2004, Professor Comerford and his wife Phil spent a week at Brockport during which he delivered a public lecture on the question of constructing Irish national identity. In spring 2005 Brockport Provost Timothy Flanagan and his wife Nancy traveled to Maynooth where Tim delivered a paper on comparative prison systems. Alumni News Ikraam Abdu-Noor (BA 1998), who is completing his PhD in Arabic Studies and Anthropology at Yale, has published “Sunset in the Gardens of al-Andalus” in the online journal Nebula (www.nobleworld.biz). Ikraam’s research deals with Moroccan Andalusian music in its historical and poetic dimensions. John Antoski (BS 1988) is K-12 Social Studies Coordinator in the Burnt Hills-Ballston Lake Central Schools near Saratoga Springs, having previously spent 12 years as a middle school social studies teacher. At Brockport he especially enjoyed Dr. Kathy Kutolowski’s classes and because of her spent more time on Jacksonian Democracy than his fellow teachers. He thanks her for her “positive influence upon me as well as my teaching methods over the years.” Adam Chamberlain (BS 2005), a double major in History and Political Science, has been accepted into the doctoral programs in Political Science at both Penn State and UNC- Chapel Hill, and has chosen to attend the latter. Scott Farrell (BS 1989), an attorney in Florida, declared his candidacy for the US Congress, 11 th District, in March 2005 on the Democratic ticket. For more see www.farrell4congress.com. Scott was also married to Stephanie “Sam” Nagel on the beach in Sarasota FL on 7 May 2005. Joel Freedman (MA 1997) teaches US History, American Government and Introduction to Sociology as an adjunct instructor in social sciences at Finger Lakes Community College in Canandaigua NY. He would enjoy hearing from classmates and can be reached at: 329 N. Main Street, Canandaigua NY, 14424, 585-394-6059. Frances Hanley (BA 1971) retired in June 2004 after 32.5 years as an elementary teacher in the Auburn School District. Her son Tim is completing his Business Administration degree at SUNY Geneseo and her husband Jim of 33 years has an insurance agency in their hometown of Auburn NY. Barry Jones (BS 1974, MSEd 1981), dual certified in History and Mathematics, has taught mathematics at Lyndonville Central School since 1976, and is in his 24 th year as an adjunct math instructor at SUNY Brockport. He has also given occasional guest lectures on WW2 to high school American history classes. He and his wife Anne, of 30 years, live in Medina and have three children: Sarah, a 2000 graduate of St. John Fisher in biology, Theresa, a 2003 graduate of Brockport and currently in Brockport’s MA in English program, and Ben, a Senior at Fredonia majoring in Music Business. Teresa loves Brockport as
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2005 Fall Newsletter.pub - Brockport

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