A New Speaker Series Courtesy Liberal Arts

In a March 2007 interview with Jeanette Fang for The Juilliard Journal, Mitchell Aboulafia, newly-minted Liberal Arts chair, outlined a few of his ideas for revitalizing the department. Among them was a plan  for the School to host seminars to spark students’ interest in different fields of study. That idea became reality on October 18, when the Liberal Arts Department launched its first speaker series, A New York City Kaleidoscope, with a talk by Carol Herselle Krinsky. An architectural historian at N.Y.U. and the author of Synagogues of Europe: Architecture, History, Meaning; Contemporary Native American Architecture; and Rockefeller Center, she discussed New York City architecture and taught those attending “How Midtown Manhattan was Created,” weaving together tales of industrial, economic, and social transformations.

Liberal Arts faculty member Greta Berman with Robert Zaller, whose talk, "The Glory Days of N.Y.C. Baseball," was part of a new speaker series. (Photo by Robin Radin)

A large crowd filled the back of the cafeteria on November 7 to hear the second speaker in the series, Dr. Robert Zaller, author and professor of history at Drexel University, wax nostalgic about “The Glory Days of N.Y.C. Baseball”—a topic near and dear to the hearts of so many New Yorkers. While eating hot dogs, peanuts, and Cracker Jacks, the crowd seemed more like children listening to a story by the fireside than harried New Yorkers. Hanging on every word and listening for their favorite heroes and villains, a crowd whose members spanned three generations relished the retelling of the tales of the loveably heartbreaking Brooklyn Dodgers after Branch Rickey and Jackie Robinson conquered the racist hiring practices of the major-league club owners and before the whole team “deserted” New York for Los Angeles; Bobby Thomson’s triumphant Giants, who famously “won the pennant”; and the “irresistible force that was the New York Yankees,” as Zaller described them. His narrative of a decade of New York-dominated professional baseball (the mid-’40s through the ’50s) was peppered with first-person accounts of mythic deeds. “I saw him [Willie Mays] catch a ball in right field once,” Zaller explained with the typical baseball-fan mixture of absolute knowledge and utter disbelief, “driving and tumbling toward the foul line, and throw a strike to Wes Westrum that nailed an astonished Brooklyn Dodger—it may have been Billy Cox—at home plate. That, ladies and gentlemen, was a humanly impossible play. But Willie made it.” After it was all over, the multidisciplinary audience filed out together into the chilly November day with baseball memories to keep them warm until spring training.

Liberal Arts faculty member Greta Berman, who organized the series, noted, “It is often difficult for Juilliard students, staff, and faculty to find the time in [their] busy schedules to get out of [their] own circumscribed areas,” and hopes that this series will give them an opportunity to do so. The worldview-broadening initiative—which starts this year by enriching the students’ (and more than a few faculty and staff members’) appreciation of the city the Juilliard community calls home—is organized by a committee of Liberal Arts faculty members led by Berman. The committee, which includes Lisa Andersen, Renée Baron, Anthony Lioi, and Ron Price, has selected a slate of scholars who specialize in different aspects of New York City for talks throughout the 2007-08 school year.

Krinsky’s and Zaller’s seminar topics, like those of the other talks scheduled for this year, were chosen, in part, because of the universality of their interest. Aboulafia, who echoed Berman’s sentiments about the lack of time available for the Juilliard community to come together at non-performance events, pointed out that “the goal of the speaker series is not only to inform, but to help build community”—a goal of the Liberal Arts Department in general. He hopes the seminar series will give students from each of the School’s divisions a chance to come together and share ideas.

So far, Berman says, the committee has been pleased with the community’s response. “The series has generated a great deal of excitement among students, faculty, and staff,” according to Berman, and the committee’s next task will be carrying this momentum through the coming years. Bolstered by its success, the members hope to expand the series. As topics for the next few years are considered, the committee looks for opportunities for this program to grow into a part of the liberal arts landscape at the School.

Peter Kwong, professor of Asian-American Studies at CUNY-Hunter College, will close the series for the fall semester on December 6 at 1 p.m. in Room 309 with a presentation titled “N.Y.C. Chinatown and Asian Immigration.” The spring semester will include seminars on African-American N.Y.C., New York ecology, and poetry. The talks are open to all Juilliard students, faculty, staff, and alumni.

Jennifer Fuschetti is production editor of this newspaper.