Marian Miner Cook
Athenaeum

For this concert, Love is in the Ayres, Harriet Fraser, soprano, Jon Lee Keenan, tenor, and Jason Yoshida, lutenist, will join forte pianist Preethi de Silva, professor emerita of music at Scripps College, who is the ensemble’s founder-director.

Love is in the Ayres is comprised of songs, duets, and keyboard solos inspired by the elusive and enduring traits of love and commemorates the enduring legacy of William Shakespeare who died on April 23, 1616.  

Pavel Lion, a.k.a. Psoy Korolenko, is a Moscow based singer/songwriter, translator, scholar, and journalist. Sometimes referred to as a ''wandering scholar'' and an ''avant-bard," his multilingual one-person cabaret-esque show balances folk, klezmer music, free-style poetry, and intellectual comedy. 

Psoy writes and sings in English, Russian, Yiddish, and French. Performing since 2000, he has published one book of selected essays and song lyrics, ''The Hit Of The Century,” a book of selected essays ''Energosbyt,’’ and 15 CDs, some of them in collaboration with other musicians. 

Psoy is a member of the organizing committee for the Russian-American music festival JetLAG. He has been a guest of many other festivals and has been an artist-in-residence at the University of Michigan and Dickinson College. 

An insightful songwriter, Psoy is known for his keen and explorative vision of the art of translation, “transdaptation,” and what he calls Spell-Art—playing with foreign text, emphasizing linguistic distances, and meshing multilingual songs.

A partner at the St. Louis law firm of Armstrong Teasdale, Steven N. Cousins P’16 is lauded for his role in helping break down racial barriers for local African American lawyers in St. Louis. In 2014, he was recognized as an Inspiring St. Louisan by the St. Louis County Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). 

A member of Armstrong Teasdale’s Executive Committee, Cousins is founder of the firm’s Financial Restructuring, Reorganization, and Bankruptcy practice group. When Cousins was hired by Armstrong Teasdale in 1980, he became the firm’s first African American lawyer. He was named chair of the firm’s first bankruptcy practice in 1984 and became the first African American partner in 1987. Today, Cousins has a nationally recognized practice in the areas of bankruptcy, reorganization, and restructuring.

A graduate of Yale College and the University of Pennsylvania’s Law School, Cousins has been listed for more than 20 years in The Best Lawyers in America® for his work in bankruptcy and creditor-debtor rights law. He has also been named for many years as a Missouri/Kansas Super Lawyer. He is also listed in Black Enterprise Magazine as one of the country’s top five bankruptcy lawyers and received numerous awards including the 2013 Trailblazer Award from 100 Black Men of Metropolitan St. Louis.

A St. Louis native and former Ferguson resident, he is a great supporter of the St. Louis area and serves as volunteer, board member, and counsel for many local and regional organizations. 

Perry Link is Chancellorial Chair for Teaching Across Disciplines at the University of California, Riverside, and Professor emeritus of East Asian Studies at Princeton University. He has written or edited 20 books and numerous articles on modern Chinese language, literature, popular culture, intellectual history, and politics. Known as one of the West’s leading experts on China, its language, culture, and people, the Chinese government has banned him from travel to China since 1995. 

A multi-disciplinarian at heart, he embraces teaching and research topics across a variety of disciplines. He finds the recent tendency toward specialization in the humanities and social sciences as potentially worrisome. To illustrate, he asks: “China has an immense recorded history, a rich cultural tradition, a booming economy, a difficult political situation, a very complex society, a distinctive and varied language, an archeological record, the world's biggest population, and more. Which discipline can you do without if you want to understand ‘China’?”

Professor Link's Athenaeum talk is made possible by CMC's Gould Center for Humanistic Studies' Golo Mann Lecture Fund.

View Video: YouTube with Perry Link

Credited with the first published use of the term "neuroeconomics," Paul J. Zak is a vanguard in this new discipline. He organized and administers the first doctoral program in neuroeconomics and is the founding director of the Center for Neuroeconomics Studies and professor of economics, psychology, and management at Claremont Graduate University. Zak also serves as professor of neurology at Loma Linda University Medical Center. He has degrees in mathematics and economics from San Diego State University, a Ph.D. in economics from University of Pennsylvania, and post-doctoral training in neuroimaging from Harvard.

In 2004, Zak's lab discovered that the brain chemical oxytocin allows us to determine whom to trust and his research has shown that oxytocin is responsible for virtuous behaviors, working as the brain's "moral molecule." This knowledge is being used to understand the basis for civilization and modern economies, improve negotiations, and treat patients with neurologic and psychiatric disorders. Zak's work on oxytocin and relationships has earned him the nickname "Dr. Love" and his book The Moral Molecule: The Source of Love and Prosperity was published in 2012 and was a finalist for the Wellcome Trust Book Prize.

Zak's current work applies neuroscience to improve marketing and consumer experiences, and to build high performance organizations.

View Video: YouTube with Paul Zak

Food for Thought: Podcast with Paul Zak

Aaron Wolf is an actor, writer, director, and CEO of Howling Wolf Productions. He graduated with honors from the Tisch School of Film and Television at NYU, and has written, directed, and starred in numerous television and film projects, among them award-winning shorts, including TheLD, Fourth Time’s the Charm, Imagine Reality, and Guest House starring Michael Gross. He recently completed his first feature documentary Restoring Tomorrow  and is wrapping up a festival tour with HWP's latest award-winning film, The Walk, which Wolf wrote, directed, and in which he co-stars with Oscar and Emmy nominee Peter Riegert. 

Mr. Wolf's Athenaeum talk is co-sponsored by Hillel of the Claremont Colleges.

The Mexican Suitcase is actually a treasure trove of 4,500 35 mm negatives from the Spanish Civil War of the late '30s. Lost for over 60 years, the negatives were discovered in a suitcase in Mexico City in 2007.

Capturing harrowing images of war, and of ordinary people living in the Spanish towns and countryside held by the anti-Franco forces during the Spanish Civil War, the photographs are by Robert Capa, Gerda Taro, and David Seymour (known as Chim). These three photographers, who lived in Paris, worked in Spain, and published internationally, laid the foundation for modern war photography. Their work has long been considered some of the most innovative and passionate coverage of the Spanish Civil War.

Cynthia Young is the curator of the Robert Capa Archive at the International Center of Photography in New York City. She recently curated Capa in Color, which looked at Robert Capa’s color photography for the first time; a retrospective of Chim, We Went Back: Photographs from Europe, 1933-1956 by Chim; and in 2010 The Mexican Suitcase: The Rediscovered Negatives of the Spanish Civil War by Capa, Chim and Taro. All three exhibitions have traveled and continue to travel throughout Europe, Mexico, and Brazil. Her Athenaeum talk will explore the research process and discoveries of the Mexican Suitcase.

Fifteen prints and ten facsimiles from the Mexican Suitcase collection will be on exhibit at the Athenaeum starting in late March. 

Ms. Young's Athenaeum talk and the exhibit are co-sponsored by the Athenaeum, the Rick and Susan Sontag Center for Collaborative Creativity, and the Mellon Presidential Roundtable on Creativity Grant.

Photo credit: Chim, [Two Republican soldiers holding a painting being inventoried at Las Descalzas convent, Madrid], October-November 1936; Estate of Chim, David Seymour/Magnum Photos; www.davidseymour.com

(Text adapted from npr.org and icp.org)

View Video: YouTube with Cynthia Young

Julian Feeley is a CMC senior studying philosophy, politics, and economics. He is a long time student of classical piano, most recently under the tutelage of Dr. Hao Huang of the Scripps Joint Music Department. A regular at campus student recitals, this is Julian’s first solo recital of college, and he is very excited to perform for the Claremont community.

View Video: YouTube with Julian Feeley '16

Atina Grossmann teaches modern European and German history, and women's and gender studies at The Cooper Union in New York City. A graduate of the City College of New York (B.A) and Rutgers University (M.A, Ph.D), she has held fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, German Marshall Fund, American Council of Learned Societies, Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, and the American Academy in Berlin, as well as guest professorships at the Humboldt University Berlin and the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena.

Her scholarly books include Reforming Sex: The German Movement for Birth Control and Abortion Reform, 1920-1950 (1995); Crimes of War: Guilt and Denial in the Twentieth Century (co-editor with Bartov and Nolan, 2002), and When Biology Became Destiny: Women in Weimar and Nazi Germany (co-editor with Renate Bridenthal and Marion Kaplan, 1984), and Jews, Germans, and Allies: Close Encounters in Occupied Germany, 1945-1949 (2007).

Her current research focuses on the WWII Jewish refugee experience in the Soviet Union, especially in Central Asia and on the relief and rescue efforts centered in Iran and India that worked to keep this small group of Jewish-Polish survivors alive. Her research on these "transnational" Jewish refugee stories" also explores the marginalization of this "Asiatic" Holocaust experience in both history and memory culture, its inscriptions and omissions in cultural memory during and after the war, as well as its potential role in the more recent and highly politicized "globalization” of Holocaust memory, in both the western and nonwestern world.

Professor Grossmann's Athenaeum talk is co-sponsored by the Mgrublian Center for Human Rights at CMC.

Read more about Atina Grossmann...

(Text adapted from Cooper Union websites.)

Joseph R. Martinetto ‘84 is the senior executive vice president and chief financial officer of the Charles Schwab Corporation. In this role, is responsible for the core financial functions of financial planning & analysis, treasury, the controllership, investor relations and corporate real estate. He is also responsible for corporate development and strategy, technology services, operations, information security and Schwab Bank. Martinetto joined Schwab in 1997 as senior vice president and treasurer and rose to became the company’s chief financial officer in 2007.

Prior to joining Schwab, Martinetto was senior assistant treasurer at Transamerica Corporation and senior vice president of Transamerica Finance Corporation. He oversaw the asset/liability management function for Transamerica, and also managed the derivative and foreign exchange activities, capital and liquidity planning, and rating agency relationships.

From 1984 until 1996, Martinetto worked at First Interstate Bancorp in a variety of positions, including several years in treasury as vice president and manager of long-term funding.

Martinetto has a Bachelor of Arts degree in mathematics and economics from Claremont McKenna College and a Master of Business Administration degree from the University of California, Berkeley.  

Joseph Martinetto ’84 is a guest of the RDS Distinguished Speaker Series.

View Video: YouTube with Joseph Martinetto '84

Heather Marlowe is a performer/playwright who has been on stage as an actress/performer, dancer, and musician since 2007. She has studied theater and performance with Kristin Linklater, Gabrielle Roth, and at Berkeley Repertory and American Conservatory Theater. Her work has been most recently seen at The Costume Shop at American Conservatory Theater, Porchlight Storytelling Series, Bawdy Storytelling Series, W. Kamau Bell’s Solo Performance Workshop, Under Saint Marks, and Boxcar Theatre. 

A sharp-witted and autobiographical story about the aftermath of being drugged and raped while attending San Francisco’s annual Bay to Breakers event, Marlowe’s piece has generated considerable local and national attention for the issues it raises about how rape cases are handled. 

THE HAZE (2012) is currently on tour at college campuses across the country.

Ms. Harlowe's performance at the Athenaeum is co-sponsored by the PSR.

Gastón Espinosa is the Arthur V. Stoughton Professor of Religion at Claremont McKenna College and co-editor of the Columbia University Press Series in Religion and Politics. Espinosa served as president of La Comunidad of Hispanic Scholars of Religion at the American Academy of Religion. He has been named an NEH Fellow at the NHC Institute for Advanced Studies (Raleigh-Durham) and the 2016-2017 William E. Simon Fellow in Religion and Public Life in the department of politics at Princeton University. He is the author/editor of eight books, including Latino Pentecostals in America: Faith and Politics in Action (Harvard, 2014); Religion, Race, and Barack Obama's New Democratic Pluralism (Routledge, 2012); Religion and the American Presidency: George Washington to George W. Bush (Columbia, 2009); Mexican American Religions: Spirituality, Activism and Culture (Duke, 2008); and U.S. Latino Religions and Civic Activism in the United States (Oxford, 2005). He has also directed three national surveys on U.S. Latino religions and politics in 2000, 2008, and 2012, surveying more than 7,000 Latinos.

Espinosa's talk will also address the candidates' religious and racial-ethnic upbringing, personal views on religion and race as well select party platform related issues. He will also share survey and poll findings about how the American electorate is leaning this election season based on race, religion, generation, and gender.

Espinosa is currently researching and writing about Latino religions and politics in American public life and the spiritual impulse of the Mexican-American civil rights movement.

View Video: YouTube with Gaston Espinosa

 

Elizabeth J. Perry is the Henry Rosovsky Professor of Government at Harvard University and director of the Harvard-Yenching Institute, an independent foundation whose mission is to advance higher education in Asia. Her current research focuses on cultural governance and the politics of higher education in modern and contemporary China.

Perry is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship. Perry sits on the editorial boards of over a dozen major scholarly journals, holds honorary professorships at eight Chinese universities, and has served as the president of the Association for Asian Studies.

Her most recent books include Mao's Invisible Hand: Political Foundations Of Adaptive Governance In China (Harvard, 2011); Anyuan: Mining China's Revolutionary Tradition (Berkeley, 2012); and [in Chinese] What Is The Best Kind Of History? (Zhejiang, 2015)

Professor Perry’s Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the Keck Center for International and Strategic Studies.

With Republicans now shut out of all statewide offices, in the minority in both houses of the legislature, and occupying only 14 of the state’s 53 House districts, California has become one of the nation’s most solidly blue states. Yet, it has not always been this way - California had a Republican governor only five years ago. Moreover, as California Democrats face a number of challenges, including divisions on some issues and emerging battles to replace older leaders in the state’s top elected offices, the political landscape may be primed to shift. How will the nation’s grassroots voter unrest affect California? Will it present a challenge to California’s blue state governance model? What does the future hold for California’s Republican Party?

Cynthia Bryant is the executive director of the California Republican Party and the former deputy chief of staff and director of planning and research for  former Governor Schwarzenegger. She has also been the vice-president of the California Charter School Association and the policy director for the Senate Republican Caucus. Bryant is a graduate of Lewis and Clark College and the University of California Hastings College of Law.

Ms. Bryant’s talk is sponsored by the Rose Institute of State and Local Government.

The panelists include Emily Rollins ‘92, partner at Deloitte, Hilda Echeverria, partner at Ernst & Young, and Maryellen Galuchie, managing director at Grant Thornton. Together, they have over 60 years of experience providing financial services to clients large and small in various industries, including technology, media, venture capital, and more. 

Find out how they navigated their career paths and what advice they would give their younger selves if only they could.