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This issue of our newsletter is sent to members and friends of the Emory University Emeritus College (EUEC). I hope the newsletter will help keep you informed about our activities and help you feel connected with our members throughout the U.S. On the left are links to our website and links to contact either me or the EUEC office.
With best wishes,
Gray
Gray F. Crouse Director, EUEC
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 Message from the Director
In this newsletter is information about two of the highlights of EUEC's year: our annual awards and new members' reception and the Sheth Distinguished Lecture. One took place two weeks ago, and one takes place next week. If you missed the reception, you can read about it below and celebrate the accomplishments of our members and see the distinguished list of new members. There is still time to register for next week's Sheth Lecture and I hope you will be able to come. John Bugge and I met with Dennis Lockhart a few weeks ago, and are convinced he will be a superb speaker with a fascinating message.
Given the size of the audience, it seems as if there were not many of you who missed John Bugge's talk on The Canterbury Tales, but if you unfortunately did miss it, you can read about it below and also see the recording of John's talk and hear David Leinweber sing his own composition "Canterbury Road."
EUEC presents a series of Retirement Seminars aimed at faculty who are still active but perhaps beginning to think about some issues related to retirement. I have wanted to present some seminars on the topic of investing, because that is obviously an important topic for anyone hoping to be able to afford retirement, but finding people who are knowledgeable but not trying to sell you something has been difficult. I am very pleased that Klaas Baks will be talking on "Financing Your Retirement" on Thursday of this week. There has been very strong demand for this seminar, but there are still some seats available. Information and a registration link are in the article below. As a preview of coming attractions, two of our own members, Peter Sebel and Frank Gordon, will be giving a second seminar on investing in early May--more information about that will be coming later.
I am very grateful to John Bugge, Herb Benario, and Gretchen Schulz for help with proofing and editing.
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April 17--Sheth Distinguished Lecture
Creativity in Later LifeGovernors Hall Miller-Ward Alumni House 11:30-1:00
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Retirement Seminar April 13
Financing Your Retirement
April 13
2:00 p.m.
White Hall 207
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Faculty Activities
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A summary of the February 21 meeting of the University Faculty Council can be seen by clicking here. Among the agenda items were a report by our representative Holly York on the Emeritus College and the formation of a Faculty Club Task Force to report next month on a plan that would envision what the space could look like. A summary of the February 28 meeting of the University Senate can be seen by clicking here. Among the items discussed were reports on Emory's response to the travel and immigration executive order and President Sterk's Call to Action document. |
Walking the Campus with Dianne
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April 17--Sheth Distinguished Lecture
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Dennis Lockhart (left), President and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, speaks with then-Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke (center) at a meeting in 2012. HYOSUB SHIN, AJC.
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Dennis P. Lockhart, Former President and Chief Executive Officer, Federal Reserve Bank of AtlantaDennis P. Lockhart took office March 1, 2007, as the 14th president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. Until he retired in February, he served in this role, the person primarily responsible for all of the Bank's activities in the Sixth Federal Reserve District--which covers Alabama, Florida, and Georgia and parts of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Tennessee--activities involving monetary policy, bank supervision and regulation, and payment services. In addition, he served on the Federal Reserve's chief monetary policy body, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC).
A brief review of his resume suggests that Mr. Lockhart assumed the position he has just relinquished as perhaps the person best qualified for such a demanding and consequential position there has ever been.
After earning a B.A. in political science and economics from Stanford University in 1968 and a master's in international economics and American foreign policy from The Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in 1971, he spent 17 years with Citicorp/Citibank (now Citigroup), working both abroad (in Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Greece, and Iran) and at home, the latter term including Atlanta, where he spent 8 years as Citicorp's senior corporate officer and head of corporate banking for the Southeast.
In 1988, Mr. Lockhart moved to Heller Financial, long serving as president of Heller International Group, which had activities in commercial finance and investment in Europe, Latin America, and Asia, until he moved to the private equity firm Zephyr Management LP, to handle their activity in Africa and Latin America.
It was after he'd left Zephyr in 2003 and before he came back to Atlanta in 2007, that Mr. Lockhart decided to spend some time as Professor Lockhart, serving on the faculty of Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service and also serving, as an adjunct professor, at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies. And who knows? Perhaps now that he's left federal employ, we of the academy can tempt him back into our ranks again. At least we've persuaded him to offer us a lecture (and not just any lecture, but a "Sheth Lecture") on Monday, April 17.
You can read a recent article about Dennis Lockhart in the AJC by clicking here. The Lecture and Lunch are made possible by a generous donation from Dr. Jagdish and Mrs. Madhu Sheth. The lecture will be in Governors Hall in the Miller-Ward Alumni House on April 17, 11:30-1:00. Click here to return to top
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Lunch Colloquium Aprille 3
Re-Inventing The Canterbury Tales: Hypertext and "The General Prologue"
John Bugge, Professor of English Emeritus "And pilgrimes were [we] alle" John Bugge Leads Our "Felaweshipe" through "The General Prologue" to The Canterbury Tales Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote The droghte of March hath perced to the roote, So priketh all Nature in hir corages Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages, And specially from every county's ende Of Atlanta to Emory they wende The verray parfit gentil frende to seke Who'd promised that he wolde to them speke. On Monday, April 3 (or Aprille 3), Professor of English Emeritus John Bugge offered the largest audience we've ever had for a Lunch Colloquium a talk entitled "Re-Inventing The Canterbury Tales: Hypertext and 'The General Prologue.'" But from the start, "pace the title," he argued that "Chaucer's Canterbury Tales do not, in fact, need much re-inventing [for a modern audience] at all." And why not? Because, he said, "they are in fact realized through a medieval aesthetic of reception that bears an uncanny resemblance to what contemporary information theory calls hypertext." For the Luddites among us who get hyper at lingo like "hypertext," he explained that the term actually refers to a phenomenon with which anyone who uses a computer is comfortable, though some of us might prefer to describe it with a term like "linkages." As the OED puts it, on "a computer terminal" "text . . . and graphics . . . are interconnected in such a way that a reader of the material . . . can discontinue reading one document at certain points in order to consult other related matter." All it takes is a click or two -- and we're enjoying "cross-referencing intertextuality." Or "linkages." John proceeded to argue (or let's say "pleasantly persuade us") that "cross-referencing intertextuality" is at the heart of Chaucer's masterwork--as it is, indeed, at the heart of most of the great literary works of that medieval time. Of course, in The Canterbury Tales (and the other works just referenced) "the links occur not in cyberspace, but in psychic space, in the minds of [the] readers." Authors then could rely "on habits of 'associative reading' among [their] audience," people well versed in "a range of the most popular works in both French and English, not to mention well-known passages from the Bible in English (and perhaps in some cases in Latin as well)." "Contemporary literary productions were understood to be linked to past literary monuments in what was already a mental network of intertexual correspondences. In the medieval aesthetic of reception, a good new text was never assumed to stand alone, but to be essentially hypertextual, laden with correspondences, echoes, references, allusions, and links to other, older, and more famous texts." As David Salomon, another scholar of the period, has put it: "'Instead of using a mouse to navigate text, the medieval reader used his cognitive process to navigate and "link" sections both of the texts in front of him and of texts with which he was already familiar' (p. 2)."  John used a series of passages from the portrait of the Prioress provided in "The General Prologue" to illustrate how elements of that portrait--and the language in which they're presented--would have prompted Chaucer's readers to "link" them (and her) with passages (and characters) from a range of well-known works. (And what a range it is--reaching from other medieval works like the Roman de la Rose back to Roman and Greek classics and, of course, the Bible.) Her very name (Madame Eglantine, not the saint's name one would expect), her table manners (exquisite manners described in exquisite detail by Chaucer-the-pilgrim-and-narrator, who is clearly more attracted to this not-very-nun-like nun than he ought to be), her physical features, top to toe (ditto--for "hardily, she was nat undergrowe"), and the "brooch" that hangs on her rosary, on which is written "Amor vincit omnia" (though the "Amor" she evokes isn't quite what someone praying ought to have in mind): given the multiplicity of "links" like those John cited, these passages would set Chaucer's readers into just the sort of psychic overdrive that hyperlinks on the internet help us to experience now--bringing memories (rather than reminders) of other relevant material to mind--and thereby helping Chaucer to make his many points (decidedly satiric points, in this case). Quod erat demonstrandum. Sadly, in the present time, authors cannot rely on readers well enough versed in multiple bodies of literature (and other current and classic texts--and in the range of world events such texts might reference) to be able to "link" material in one work with material from many other works, events from many other areas and ages. But happily, the "advance of information technology" can help us all to become good readers nonetheless--readers who can "get" what Chaucer's readers could "get" with no computer to hand--"correspondences, echoes, references, allusions," and so forth--by means of hypertext. Even those least comfortable with that concept, that mechanism, can quite easily learn to do this sort of reading that literary scholar Robert Scholes has described as "centrifugal reading," meaning (as John puts it) "moving out and away [from what's in the text in front of us] to a surrounding cultural matrix of texts." And those most comfortable with hypertext (and all things IT)? Those who've been "reared on the Internet, who know textual connectivity in their bones"? They are the ones primed to benefit the most from the fact that the Internet and the textual connectivity it allows is also in the process of allowing "the postmodern and medieval practices of reading . . . to converge" in ways that may so enrich the experience of reading that it will never go out of style (whatever happens to books themselves--a whole other tale--and maybe one we can get John to tackle next time). --Gretchen Schulz
If this Colloquium has inspired you to learn more about Chaucer, there is an enormous amount of information at these two websites:
Notes:
Those present at John's talk (either really present or virtually present, by means of the webcast) were delighted by the musical introduction to the program provided by David Leinweber, a history professor from the Oxford campus of Emory and an accomplished professional musician, who played (acoustic guitar) and sang a ballad of his own composition called "Canterbury Road." The ballad is the first song on an album he recorded in 2014, Canterbury Road and Other Songs of British History, and both the song alone and the album as a whole are readily available through online sources like iTunes and Amazon.com. (Note the hypertext links!) If you want to listen for free, the Lunch Colloquium video of his performance is reasonably good and starts at about the 4 1/2 minute mark of the recording, which is available by clicking on the video link of the EUEC home page.
We also want to remind emeriti and their families and friends that enacted versions of some of the funniest tales from The Canterbury Tales may be seen at the Atlanta Shakespeare Tavern on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday evenings through April (make that Aprille) 26. The Suzi-Bass-recommended show has been described as "a medieval romp through boisterous and bawdy olde England." And our own Marilynne McKay, a pretty reliable judge herself, has described it as "funny as hell." If you'd like to see it, check out the full information available on the Tavern web site.
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EUEC Awards and New Members Reception March 27
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Michael Elliott and Ron Schuchard
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The reception on March 27 was a great celebration of the best of EUEC--a time to celebrate the accomplishments of our members and to welcome new members. We are grateful to OLLI for providing space for the reception. Jeffrey Alejandro, the new Program Manager at OLLI, welcomed us and encouraged our members to teach at OLLI. The program began with the presentation of the 2016 Heilbrun Distinguished Fellowship to Ron Schuchard by Michael Elliott, Interim Dean of Emory College (shown above). We had the privilege of hearing Ron talk about his work on Eliot last December, and there is no question that he is an exceedingly deserving recipient of the fellowship.  Lynn Zimmerman, Senior Vice Provost for Academic Affairs, and the person to whom EUEC reports, brought greetings. We are extremely fortunate to have her wise leadership in the Office of the Provost. She is a great supporter of EUEC. She is also the person to whom Emory Continuing Education and OLLI report and is a strong advocate for EUEC participation in OLLI. The next part of the program was the presentation of EUEC awards. Every year, it is amazing to hear how active and involved our members continue to be after formal retirement from the University. Pictures of the presentations are shown below, but the text of the citations will be included in the next few issues of the newsletter. Gretchen Schulz nominated Sidney Kasfir for a Distinguished Faculty Award, and was planning to present the award, but was ill and not able to attend. Katherine Mitchell presented the award in her absence:
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Sidney Kasfir and Katherine Mitchell
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John Bugge presented a Distinguished Faculty Award to Steve Nowicki:
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| John Bugge and Steve Nowicki
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Jon Gunnemann nominated Russ Richey for a Distinguished Faculty Award. Russ is currently living in Durham, NC and was not able to be present. However, he was in Atlanta earlier in the month and came to the Luce Center so he and Jon could record the presentation. Thus Russ was present, virtually, for the award:
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| Russ Richey and Jon Gunnemann
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John Bugge nominated Ron Schuchard for a Distinguished Faculty Award, so Ron was a double recipient at the reception:
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John Bugge and Ron Schuchard
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Helen O'Shea presented Marianne Scharbo-DeHaan with the Distinguished Faculty Service Award:
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Helen O'Shea and Marianne Scharbo-DeHaan
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A final highlight was the recognition of our new members and of those members who have made donations to EUEC in the past year. We celebrated 34 new members for the past year and 134 donors. A complete list of new members and donors may be seen by clicking here, as well as a list of those members who died in the last year. Click here to return to top
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EUEC Distinguished Faculty Award--Sidney Kasfir
As you will know, the EUEC Faculty Award of Distinction is intended to recognize University faculty (and EUEC members) who have made "[s]ignificant professional contributions since retirement to Emory University or its affiliated institutions as well as contributions to local, state, regional, national, or international communities or professional organizations that reflect the 'spirit of Emory.'" I would suggest that the c.v. detailing the work Sidney Kasfir has done since her 2011 retirement as Professor of African Art History offers incontrovertible evidence that her "professional contributions" have continued to be just as they were before her retirement--and that is as "significant" in quantity as in quality. There have been books, of course. In 2011, she co-edited Central Nigeria Unmasked: Arts of the Benue River Valley--and provided four essays for the volume, as well, a volume that won the prestigious Arnold Rubin Book Award of the Arts Council of the African Studies Association in 2014. In 2013, she co-edited African Art and Agency in the Workshop--and provided three essays for that volume. She also provided essays for two major collections of scholarly material in the field, one for The Oxford Handbook of Modern African History (2013) and one for A Companion to Modern African Art (also 2013). And in 2012, she provided a piece on "Buganda's Troubled Past" for a special issue of the refereed journal African Arts. During this same period (the first two to three years following her retirement), she wrote numerous catalog essays, encyclopedia entries, reviews of others' work, and commentaries. And this is not to mention (though, given their importance as indicators of Sidney's reputation, I will mention) the many presentations she's been invited to offer at major conferences and the many lectures (and lecture series) she's been invited to offer at major institutions (universities and museums) both here and abroad. A list of such conference presentations and lectures from the last three years identifies their venues as centers of art scholarship in the States (like Princeton University and Dartmouth College and the art institutes of Baltimore and Detroit), in the U.K. (like the Pitt Rivers Museum of Oxford University and the Courtauld Institute in London), and in Africa (like the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, and the Uganda Museum and Goethe Centre of Uganda). The papers she gave at the latter two venues were part of a major project on African Modernism being administered by Germany's Universität Bayreuth (and funded by the Volkswagen Foundation), a project for which Sidney has agreed to serve as one of two senior advisors. The two Fulbright Specialist Grants Sidney was awarded in the last several years have also supported her advisory work in Africa, work she was asked to do by Makerere University of Uganda (in the fall of 2012) and the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (in the spring of 2016), both institutions that wanted, and needed, someone as qualified as she to help them shape new programming for the African art schools they house. And this may be the place to mention the Heilbrun Grant (from Emory) that has allowed Sidney to pursue another Nigerian project, this one involving research that will eventually yield a book on the period in the earlier 20th century when members of the British colonial government managed to collect innumerable examples of Nigerian art and send them to museums in Oxford and London. Before she can do that book, Sidney will have to do the revised edition of Contemporary African Art she has just agreed to undertake at the request of Thames and Hudson (pre-eminent art book publishers in London). And she'll also have to get a still more recent undertaking well underway--namely, editorial efforts on behalf of START, a brand-new e-journal of East African arts and culture. Then she'll be able to turn her attention to completion of the Heilbrun-funded work with a manuscript that should be ready for publication in 2018. Of course, if Sidney Kasfir were anyone but Sidney Kasfir, the Sidney Kasfir whose c.v. of work she has done since retirement is so impressive, one might be tempted to dismiss this talk of work she intends to do as irrelevant to the question of her qualifications for a Faculty Award of Distinction. After all, intentions don't always produce results. But in Sidney's case, it's pretty clear they do. A woman who has done as much as she's done already--while raising a family and, more recently, running a Kenyan farm where "maurading lions" are constantly killing the cows--this woman can and will do everything her c.v. has assigned to 2017 and 2018, by which time she'll have a comparable list of things she'll do in 2019 and beyond. I think an Award of Distinction is the least we can and should do to honor someone whose professional life has thus been burgeoning rather than diminishing since she "retired." --Gretchen Schulz Click here to return to top
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Faculty Activities
Perry Sprawls, PhD, FACR, FAAPM, FIOMP
Distinguished Emeritus Professor, Emory University
On March 31, EUEC Member Perry Sprawls was presented with the 2017 Clemson Alumni Distinguished Service Award, which is the association's highest honor for a Clemson graduate. "Perry Sprawls sets an extraordinary example of what a Clemson graduate can accomplish," remarked Clemson University President James P. Clements. "He is a pioneer and leader in his career, he is a dedicated public servant who gives back tirelessly to his community and communities around the world, and he is a loyal and devoted Clemson supporter. We are exceedingly proud to call him part of the Clemson family." The complete announcement can be read by clicking here. The article on the Clemson website can be seen by clicking here. A video of Perry talking about the award can be seen by clicking here.
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New Members
New members are the lifeblood of any organization. Please make a special effort to welcome them to EUEC! Paul M. Plotsky, PhD, Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences James L. Sutherland, MD, Assistant Professor Emeritus of Pediatrics Click here to return to top
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Retirement Seminar April 13
Financing Your Retirement
Klaas Baks, Professor in the Practice of Finance, Goizueta Business School, and Executive Director, Center for Alternative InvestmentsA recent report suggested that 32 percent of faculty considered choosing investments as their biggest gap in financial literacy, 33% considered themselves as "beginners" in investing, and 54% were concerned about outliving their investments. If you fall into any of those categories, this seminar will be for you! Maximizing the returns on the money that one has invested is a concern of everyone. Contributions to Emory's 403(b) savings plan will likely make up the bulk of most faculty's investing. Putting money into the 403(b) plan might seem simple, but it is not. In Emory's plans, there are something like 110 different funds spread across three different companies (Fidelity, TIAA, and Vanguard) from which Emory faculty can select. How can anyone choose the best option among those? This plethora of funds spread over three companies, in fact, is the basis of various lawsuits against universities for their savings plans; see https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/08/18/retirement-plan-lawsuits-could-be-just-beginning for example. Emory is one of the universities being sued. There was an article in The Emory Wheel last year about that suit (http://emorywheel.com/emory-sued-over-retirement-plan-fees/) with a link to the filing against Emory (http://emorywheel.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/emory.pdf). The plaintiffs argue that the large number of investment possibilities tends to increase fund fees, and thus substantially lower investment returns. For this seminar, we are extremely fortunate to have the opportunity to get guidance in the best investment strategies from one of our own experts. Klaas Baks is Professor in the Practice of Finance, Goizueta Business School, and Executive Director, Center for Alternative Investments. His research and teaching focus on issues in alternative investments, entrepreneurial finance, and investment management, and he has published papers in numerous academic and business journals, as well as the Wall Street Journal. He teaches courses in private equity, venture capital, and entrepreneurial finance at Emory and has been recognized by students and alumni with four teaching awards, including Emory University's highest award for teaching excellence, the Emory Williams Distinguished Teaching Award, and the Marc F. Adler Prize for Teaching Excellence awarded by alumni. You can read more about him at: http://goizueta.emory.edu/faculty/academic_areas/finance/baks_klaas.html. Klaas will talk about investing, tax strategies, and whether your money will last long enough. His talk will take place on Thursday, April 13 at 2 p.m. in White Hall 207.
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Walking the campus with Dianne
With the recent severe weather, our last photo was probably a popular safe spot on campus! If you didn't already figure out where we were, it was the tunnel(s) that run underneath the hospital, Clifton Road, and Clinic C, and end at the Rehab Center. The photo below was taken a few years ago -- I've learned they've spruced up parts of the walls a bit with exercise tips, information about nature and sights in Georgia, as well as healthy food ideas. You can click here for more information:
 Let's go outside for our next walk....and hope we don't get caught in a spring shower!
The next location is a place that was recently shown to me by one of our Emeritus members. I had no idea this pleasant little space existed ....
Where will you find this on the Emory campus? 
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Emory University Emeritus College The Luce Center
825 Houston Mill Road NE #206 Atlanta, GA 30329 |
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