LOIS ROTH ENDOWMENT

We gave one award to of $1500 to Abigail Sebaly, Merce Cunningham dancer and Michigan graduate, to explore dance forms and dance education, then were persuaded to give a grant-in-aid of $750 to Joshua Coene, to support travel for his study of changes in penal policy and practice over the last four decades in New South Wales. New Commission director Dr. Joseph Hlubucek, Ph.D., in Chemistry from Sydney, brings to Canberra an impressive career in public service and business—he was Consul in San Francisco and Counselor for Education at the Embassy in Washington; taking charge in an anniversary year, he is leading celebrations of the Australian Fulbright Program’s 60th year, including one in Washington at which the Endowment was represented by Harriet Fulbright and the chair. We know Dr. Hlubucek well and are pleased to wish him the best in his new challenge.

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Joshua Coene’s History of Penal Change in New South Wales concerns the history of penal policy and practices In Australia 1970-2010.
He writes” “Most of my work is located in Sydney but there are other archives in New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory. In Cessnock I interviewed corrections officers I met earlier. Meanwhile I have copied material from the Department of Corrective Services in Sydney and at Silverwater Correctional Complex. My dissertation will compare changes in the prison systems in New South Wales with those in Pennsylvania over the last 30 years, as part of a broader effort to understand the changing nature of prison operations in the late 20th century.
“The records describe prison routines, segregation procedures, issues directly affecting the incarceration of Aboriginal prisoners, and classification. Cooma holds older materials from the 1960s but also documents from the 1980s which contain information on how the prison system changed after World War II, especially in relation to rehabilitative programs, the changing status of prisoners, prisoner rights, control units, and the roles of prison guards.
The University of Wollongong keeps the papers of George Peterson, a former parliamentarian in New South Wales who was active in penal reforms, as a major supporters of the Royal Commission looking into NSW Prisons in the 1970s; it had a profound impact on the restructuring and expansion of the prison system and its expansion. Peterson’s papers include correspondence with inmates. In Cessnock we talked about prison privatization, work routines, and inmate management.
“The material at the Department’s Head Office and Silverwater largely concerns changes in classification, industrial relations, and prisoner management systems.
All this has been made possible by the support of the Roth Endowment.”

After last year’s jump-start, we continued help to novelist Elizabeth Kostova and her foundation in Bulgaria (EKF), with support from the Ministry of Culture, the US embassy, the American Bulgarian Foundation, and private donors. The emerging democracy, after post-Cold War rebirth, has understood that its writers , helped to stretch across borders, can link the new nation to the world of international letters, with the cooperation of the Fulbright Commission and the American University. The emerging democracy, after post-Cold War rebirth, has understood that its writers, helped to stretch across borders, can link the nation to the world of international letters.

We are helping build two prizes, one for translation from English into Bulgaria—already given in 2008 and 2009, and a second from Bulgarian into English, for the near future. Dyankov Prize II ($2000), named for an iconic translator, was awarded at the Sofia BookFair in December 2009, to translators Iglika Vassileva for John Banville's The Sea and Yordan Kosturkov for Cynthia Ozick's The Widow of Stockholm. In parallel, June also saw the second annual workshop for writers in Sozopol. Mixing high-caliber faculty and writers of Bulgarian and English, the seminar showed writers, translators and publishers the advantages of international outreach, collegial sharing, personal interchange and constructive criticism. The 2009 call for participants was over-subscribed--only one in twelve was chosen. Other support has already reduced the need for our help, but we are alert to upstream issues—e.g., in 2009 we helped translate and publish Bulgaria’s first writing-craft textbook for Sozopol; it will find wide use in schools around the country. Further success: EKF in 2007 persuaded the Bulgarian English-language monthly Vagabond to publish fiction in every issue, noting EKF collaboration. While a strong sub-fund supports these projects, we welcome earmarked contributions.

Contrary to last year’s report, mixed-media artist Thea Augustina Eck only carried out her project this year on the collision between the Danish, Greenlandic and Arctic cultures in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. Meanwhile alumna Heidi W. Durrow’s novel The Girl Who Fell From the Sky (Algonquin Books) was well-received by the Washington Post ( Feb 20,2010) The reviewer notes "the characters all struggle to make sense of a world they can't seem to belong in, racially or economically. And the structure of the novel, with each chapter told from a different character's viewpoint..has a quality that builds tension. Durrow's novel is an auspicious debut.”

To reduce costs in a year of financial uncertainty yet maintain our commitment to two grants, we reduced Finland’s to $1,000 each. Deborah Turner, a University of Washington PhD, received one for research on orally-based information practices in Finnish information institutions. The other went to photographer Mark McKnight for a project on Finland’s bee populations and honey-farmers.

We await the Rome Center’s proposal as to how our sub-fund might support programs of interest to us both. The sub-fund remains under $17,000; we have offered an annual contribution of $2000 for a joint project. Alternate possibilities in Italy have been proposed but for now we maintain our longstanding commitment to the Center for American Studies.

In 2005, we launched a program honoring the late Robin Winks of Yale and his NZ wife Avril. This year’s award went to Sarah Salman of Auckland for work on a PhD in sociology on American immigrant communities’ responses to 9/11, at the City University of New York. Sub-fund: in the first two years of the Winks award, impressed by candidate quality, we doubled our commitment of $1500; difficult times led us to return to a single grant. This year generous help from Avril Winks raised our sub-fund to $2725, a major step towards expansion. Alumni news: Bethany Edmunds (2008) is continuing at NYU in Visual Culture, stressing costume studies and textile conservation. Georgina White (2007), after her MA in Museum Studies at NYU, returned to NZ to work as Exhibition Developer at the Auckland Museum. Ben Steele (2007), after his Columbia MA in Anthropology on indigenous rights and treaty issues, became Second Secretary in the NZ Permanent Mission to the UN. Both 2006 laureates are in doctoral programs in literature, Michelle Menzies at Chicago and Hannah Gerrard at Pittsburgh.

Our single award ($1,500) went to Rolf Steier, Stanford MA, for his project Designing for Learning, addressing the role that mobile telephonic technologies play in children’s learning in public spaces.

Jack Nelson, 2010-11 grantee, writes from Norway: "I was humbled to receive the Roth Award and to learn more about Lois Roth, an incredible woman with wide-ranging interests and a passion or cross-cultural understanding, a role-model and inspiration for today's Fulbrighters.
"I am skiing a lot in the Oslo forest, but my work is going well. I was lucky to be able to attend the Climate Conference in Copenhagen in December as a membr of a Norwegian NGO delegation. I hope soon to be able to travel north to see how Norway's "Northern Strategy" is affecting sustainable community development in the Arctic. In the spring, I shall send you a report on the project and my expriences during this Fulbright year; I already know how much the Rioth grant has added to its quality."

Last year, the National Peace Foundation’s chair Sarah Harder, From Moscow, reported that complications with the Russian sponsors slowed down the program. Since our grant last year could not be utilized, she returned our check. We look forward to the resumption of this fine project and to future cooperation with great interest.

From Erika Larsen. 08.10
First, I wanted to extend a warm thank you for the generous grant toward the exhibition of my work on the Sámi Culture. I will have a solo exhibition opening June 2011 at the Gallivare museum in Sweden. This grant will be used in preparation for that. In the meantime I am also looking for other outlets to exhibit in the United States. (An abbreviated final report is excerpted below.)
Please visit her current website for additional information, video, and photographs.
http://www.erikalarsenphoto.com

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"I came to Sápmi and more specifically northern Sweden to live and learn from families of Sámi reindeer herders. Sámi are the indigenous people living in the Arctic Circle region of northern Scandinavia and it is the largest area in the world with an ancestral way of life based on the seasonal migrations of the animals. Sámi are by tradition reindeer herders and have lived a nomadic lifestyle based on the reindeer migration. They can own and sell wildlife in Scandinavia. By possessing a livelihood that is dependent on their surroundings, the Sámi are acutely aware of the changes in nature. Their spoken language, despite being derived from the Finno-Uralic roots, has transformed and is considered an Arctic language rich in its ability to explain the natural world.
I am a storyteller. Here my imagery engages, on a daily basis, the lives of these people. I am creating photographs, film footage and written journals of my time here. My filming explores the Sámi’s symbiotic relationship with the environment, illustrates their existence in today’s world and continues to seek the mystery and beauty which fueled past generations providing sustenance for the modern Sámi today. I am trying to learn their language and gain an understanding of how their work in reindeer husbandry operates in today’s modern society.

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In 2009, Dr. Yildim Onur, a young economic historian from the fine Middle East Technical University, will teach at SUNY Binghamton. The idea launched by Myriam Hallock in memory of her late Turkophile husband came to fruition in 2008. Dr. Umit Cizre of Bilkent University (Ankara), one of Turkey’s top political scientists, spent her spring at Binghamton, after an inaugural lecture at the Levin Center in New York City, then moved to Princeton and again to the Wilson Center in Washington. SUNY is slowly developing a graduate dimension in Turkish and Eastern Mediterranean Studies, to cap the presence of over 2000 Turkish undergraduates added over the last eight years. This unique program idea will result in double degrees for all graduates after 4 years on both campuses. American students begin study in Turkey in 2009.

In Philadelphia, the 2009 MLA Award for Literary Translation went to Adnan Haydar (University of Arkansas) and Michael Beard (University of North Dakota) for their translation an early work by the famous Syrian poet Adonis (Ali Ahmad Sa'id) in the collection entitled Mihyar of Damascus, His Songs (Aghânî Mihyâr al-Dimashqî) BOA Editions: Rochester NY, 2008. Adonis, born in in 1930, is a widely respected Arab poet, a shaping force in poetry ever since he helped found the Beirut publication SHI'R (Poetry) in 1956. This collection was published in 1961 and, as the translators note, it imagines an alter ego for Mihyar of Daylam, an 11th-century Iranian, living to the west in Damascus. The earlier Mihyar was "a rebellious voice within the political and religious culture, making him one of those who stood far enough outside the tradition to ensure its dynamism."

Forty-one translations competed this year, a new high. The selection committee, for the second time reaching beyond Western literature, was sufficiently impressed to name an honorable mention: The Song of Everlasting Sorrow: A Novel of Shanghai by Wang Anyi (Columbia University Press, 2008), translated by Michael Berry and Susan Chan Egan of the University of Santa Barbara). Wang Anyi teaches Chinese literature at Fudan University; she lives in Shanghai. Michael Berry teaces modern Chinese cultural studies at the University of California in Santa Barbara; Ms. Egan is an independent scholar living in Santa Barbara.

The 2009 award went to Mohammad Ghanoonparvar for his unusual book Translating the Garden (UTexas Press), coupling the difficult work of Shahrokh Meskoob, (Dialogue in the Garden) with a companion essay on translation. AIIS head Franklin Lewis of the University of Chnicago reports: “With its two balanced parts, . . . it is self-reflective on many levels. It sets before us a multivalenced portrait of Iranian-ness, of exile and transportation, of the craft and art of translation, and the recovery of the prelapsarian, pre-exilic state.”

Other news:
Twice-laureate Dick Davis will make one of the keynote presentations at this year’s annual meetings of the MLA, the sessions of which will be oriented to the broad problem of translation. This is welcome news, a sign that our commitment to the vital need for better translation keeps good company and that the present microscopic percentage of US publications translated from other cultures may soon rise.

Prix Coindreau for 2009 will go to Serge Chauivin for his translations of Colson Whitehead’s Apex and The Colossus of New York (Gallimard). Presentation will take place at the Hotel de Massa in Paris on 14 December. Last year’s award went to France Camus-Pichon in November for her translations of Charles D’Ambrosio’s Orphans and The Dead Fish Museum in a packed ceremony at Catherine Martin-Zay’s famous bookshop Les Temps Modernes in Orleans. The presence of her editor representing the publishiong houser Albin Michel was a symbol of the growing respect for the Coindreau Prize in France. The French Committee hopes for more support, as this award grows in outreach and importance, because the weak dollar has reduced our contribution’s value by one third.

This year's award goes to Johanna Magin, who knew that French was to be her lifelong passion the moment she set foot on French soil. As an undergraduate at the University of Chicago she was lucky enough to study abroad three times in Paris. On the last leg of her final study abroad program, she decided to pursue a PhD in French literature. Since then, she has been a part of Columbia University’s French Department, where she recently defended her Master’s thesis on Blaise Pascal under the direction of Pierre Force. After a dynamic and rewarding first year of teaching Elementary French to a group of exceptional Columbia undergraduates, she is currently looking forward to teaching the Department’s Intermediate French series. She firmly believes that showing up with passion and exuberance is the key to bringing any group of students alive. In every class, she tries to make room for spontaneity and improvisation based on the students’ particular interests while gently nudging them to consider issues just beyond their present reach. When she is not reading, writing, speaking, or teaching French, she is learning Japanese.
After earning her PhD, she hopes to teach French literature at the university level. In her off-hours, she tutors New York City schoolchildren in French. Her dissertation will focus on the role philosophy in 16th- and 17th-century France.

The Jeanne Varney Pleasants Award of the French Department, Columbia University, was raised to $1000, thanks to a generous contribution by Dr. Elizabeth Blake. This permitted the awarding last year of two prizes of $500 each, to Aleksandra Perisic and Casiana Ionita, who in this year’s teaching have again surpassed expectations. Laureates are scattered around the world: Erin Curren has left Colby college and is perhaps involved in theater now. Matthew Udkovich's appointment as a lecturer at Yeshiva University has been renewed for the next two years. Jason Earle's thesis defense is scheduled for Fall 2010; he has a one-year visiting assistant professorship at Bard College for 2010-11. Mallika Keister is still studying in Paris. Matthew Bridge will defend his thesis, then start law school (at Columbia?) this fall. Cathy Leung will be returning as an adjunct to the French department and have more time for her thesis. After a stellar job teaching intermediate courses in 2009-2010, both Alexandra Perisic and Casiana Ionita will be teaching intermediate and conversation courses.

Both awards have been delayed this year by the transition of Administrations and will be awarded in the spring of 2010. In FY 2008, after a two-year gap, the Lois Roth Award for Cultural Diplomacy in the field came back to life and was joined by the Ilchman-Richardson Award for domestic support staff, honoring the late Alice S. Ilchman and John Richardson, former directors of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA). The twinned prizes of $1500 bring unique private recognition to excellence in American cultural diplomacy. Under the leadership of outgoing director Goli Ameri, graduate of an American school in Tehran and frequent visitor to Lois Roth’s Iran-America Society, the professional staff, for the Roth award, chose foreign-service officer Deborah Jones for her work in Uzbekistan, with honorable mention to Victoria Sloan (Kazakhistan). The Ilchman-Richardson Award, originaed six years ago by then-diector Patricia Harrison as the Ilchman Award to honor ECA Budget Director David Whitten, carried no stipend. With Endowment funding, the renamed 2008 prize ($1500) went to the much-admired veteran Robert Persiko for two decades as chief of ECA youth programs. All laureates received copies of the chair’s The First Resort of Kings.

Both prizes are supported by sub-funds. The Roth Award, now in its 21st year, has passed $20,000, while the newer Ilchman-Richardson award is supported by two funds totaling $40,000, with generous help from the Ilchman family and from John Richardson over the years.