Radcliffe fellows returned to Cambridge from all over the world to discuss their work during the Radcliffe Institute’s 10th anniversary symposium. And on every panel, they repeated a version of the same line: It was the best year of my life. I wouldn’t be where I am today without that year, those conversations. It’s the best place in the world to stretch yourself and your work. Can I come back?

The symposium held on October 8 and 9 featured former fellows from a variety of disciplines, including biology, computer science, film, fiction, history, law, painting, and photography. Listening to their conversations gave viewers a taste of the riches that fellows, students, faculty, and Schlesinger Library researchers experience at the Radcliffe Institute.

Introducing the event in the Radcliffe Gym, Radcliffe Institute Dean Barbara J. Grosz said, “In the blink of an eye, somewhat cosmically speaking, the Radcliffe Institute has taken its place among the world’s top institutes for advanced study. Its premier fellowship program is complemented by Academic Engagement Programs, which brings together faculty and students from different Harvard schools and departments to foster new intellectual ventures, and by the Schlesinger Library, which is well known as the premier repository of collections on women in America. The Radcliffe Institute, unique among its peers as a full-fledged school within a university, is demonstrating that an institute for advanced study can simultaneously provide a refuge for scholars and actively advance a university’s intellectual agenda.”

Gendered Choices in the Public and Private Spheres

Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Susan Faludi ’81, RI ’09 reflected on how Harvard has changed since she was an undergraduate. She quoted from a Crimson story about the Harvard Dames, a club for the wives of Harvard graduate students: “Members last night ate twelve kinds of cookies, drank pink punch from the club’s engraved silver punch bowl, and signed up for activities ranging from children’s parties to cosmopolitan evenings of armchair world travel.” The Dames got started, according to the club’s president, “to keep wives off their husbands’ backs during exam time.” These days, Faludi said, “A Harvard dame is more likely to be the one taking the exam.”

In spite of the progress women have made since that era, Faludi said on a deeper level women sense two great disappointments: that our entrance to the public world hasn’t changed the world, and that we have given up our special angle of vision. The quandary, she said, is this: “Do we change the world by being part of it or by insisting on a room of our own?”

Faludi drew a laugh when she pointed out that Radcliffe has fulfilled its original mission by becoming part of Harvard, but with the presidency of Drew Faust, “you could also say that Radcliffe has taken over Harvard.” Faludi said her hope is that Radcliffe, “by gaining the world by the river, has not ceased to be the refuge that’s been so important to so many of its daughters.”

Claudia Goldin RI ’06 discussed the life-cycle transitions that college men and women make from the time they enter college through retirement. “Each generation of college women built on the successes and the failures of previous generations,” she said. “They learned from their mothers, their aunts, their older sisters.”

Another speaker on this panel, Darlene Clark Hine RI ’04, pointed out that “the vast majority of black women . . .  in many regards are worse off now than they were in the decades before 1950.” High levels of unemployment and incarceration of black men and children has led to poverty levels for black women heads of household that are far higher than they were in the 1950s, Hine said. She ended her presentation by saying, “It is time for us to put all desires and ideals for progressive reform legislation on the table because black families and black women are in dire straits.”

Anthropologist Jean Comaroff RI ’03, who grew up in South Africa, talked about the dire situation in that country, where unemployment is above 50 percent, and rape and domestic abuse are widespread.

This panel was moderated by Robert J. Sampson, Radcliffe’s senior advisor in the social sciences.  

From One Genre to Another

Jeanne Jordan RI ’03 and Beverly McIver RI ’03 told how they met when they both arrived for fellowships at the Radcliffe Institute. Jordan—a documentary filmmaker who was editing a film she made with husband Steven Ascher, So Much So Fast, about a family’s struggle against ALS—was immediately drawn to McIver’s autobiographical paintings. “Jeanne would come into my studio and quietly stare at my paintings,” said McIver. “And she would say, They remind me of film stills.” Little did they know that this would be the beginning of a five-year-long (and counting) collaboration. Jordan and her husband are now completing a film about McIver and her developmentally challenged sister, titled Raising Renee.

It’s a story with many artistic levels: paintings that originated as photographs inspire moving pictures and offer insight into a family’s internal life. But it’s not the only genre-bending work that has resulted from a year at the Institute, as was revealed in a panel titled “From One Genre to Another,” moderated by Leah Price RI ’07, a senior advisor in the humanities at Radcliffe.

Panelist Tarik O’Regan RI ’05 said he came to Radcliffe to adapt an Orson Welles radio play—itself an adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness—into an opera. That work is in development with both American Opera Projects in New York and OperaGenesis in London. Now, O’Regan finds himself adapting three love poems by the fourteenth-century poet and scholar Petrarch—from his Il Canzionere, inspired by his unrequited love for a woman named Laura—into a piece of music that harks back to the music of Petrarch’s day.

The audience got a peek at another genre-crossing collaboration that’s now in the works. Human rights lawyer Hauwa Ibrahim RI ’09 and filmmaker Anne Makepeace RI ’09 are exploring the possibility of a documentary that follows Ibrahim as she navigates the Sharia-based court system of her home country, Nigeria.

Fiction Writing

Three of the world’s leading fiction writers engaged in a spirited discussion led by moderator Homi Bhabha RI ’05, a former faculty advisor to the Radcliffe Institute. After he observed that panelists Geraldine Brooks RI ’06, Gish Jen RI ’02, and Claire Messud RI ’05 write book reviews and journalism and teach, while also writing novels, Brooks said, “I think you left out perhaps the principal preoccupation of the three of us, that we parent and we write.” The audience responded with laughter and applause, and a lively conversation ensued about how women manage to write and parent at the same time. Jen said, tongue in cheek, “The real secret is that we simply neglect our children,” adding that, “we spend a lot of time trying to distinguish between benign neglect and malign neglect.”

Messud told a story that illustrated why she’s unwilling to talk about her work-in-progress. When her editor asked what she was working on, Messud outlined her plans, and the editor responded by asking whether she was sure she wanted to pursue that project. Because this response temporarily halted her work on the novel, Messud said she decided to keep mum on the topic thereafter. 

In response to a question from the audience, about whether there’s such a thing as a Radcliffe Institute novel, Messud said, “I think it’s rather like an heirloom tomato. . . . Whatever it turns out to look like, it’s something that has been grown in a particularly fertile soil, in a particularly privileged way.”

Photos: Homi K. Bhabha and Gish Jen; Stuart Shieber; Geraldine Brooks; Anne Makepeace and Hauwa Ibrahim; Linda Hamilton Krieger -- credit Tony Rinaldo

On Sickness and Health

James Haber RI ’09 led the first panel on Friday, which gave the audience a sampling of recent developments in biomedical research and ended with a moving presentation by an artist.

Susan Lindquist RI ’08 said that turning scientific discoveries into new treatments for disease is an expensive, lengthy process, which has urged some academic scientists to work more closely with industry to translate basic science into therapies. Her laboratory discovered that cancer cells switch on a gene that normally helps cells survive stress. “They take advantage of our stress response to save themselves,” she said. Now her lab is screening for chemical compounds that target the stress response signal as potential cancer treatments—something she would not have imagined herself doing several years ago as a basic scientist.

Christine Mummery RI ’08 gave attendees a crash course in stem cells and their potential to create replacement tissues and organs. She described the recent breakthrough that allows scientists to transform adult cells into stem cells that can become any kind of tissue; in one slide, Mummery showed how her lab turned cells from skin into beating heart cells. But while stem cells show a great deal of potential, she said they will certainly have limitations.

In her presentation, Linda Hamilton Krieger RI ’05 turned the audience’s attention from the possibilities of science to the social and legal problems it can create. The rise of genomics has raised concerns about how to protect genetic privacy and use of genetic information by employers and insurers. Krieger said that the recent passage of the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA) might seem like a moment to celebrate, but in fact the legislation “is deeply, deeply flawed and is likely to prove more symbolic than substantive in its ability to protect us.” She described how the legislation is limited to certain situations and types of information and pointed out that a global market of entrepreneurs is looking for ways to buy, sell, and mine health information. Ineffective legislation, Krieger argued, only creates an “illusion of privacy.”

Installation artist and photographer Shimon Attie RI ’07 powerfully demonstrated how art can address the psychosocial aspects of trauma and recovery. He presented images from a recent installation about a Welsh village, Aberfan, that experienced the devastating loss of nearly all of its children in a man-made disaster four decades ago. With stark images of townspeople striking poses evocative of their respective roles in the village, he referenced the media scrutiny that has kept the village from recovering, while emphasizing the iconography of a Welsh village.

The Digital Revolution and Academic Life

“Thirty years ago, library infrastructure was dominated by shelves, measuring tape, typewriters, and also by very well-read, well-educated women,” said Marilyn Dunn. Today, she said, library infrastructures are talked about in terms of cyberinfrastructures, which capitalize on advances in information technology—integrating hardware, software, data, networks, services, and tools—but they must still maintain their miles and miles of bookshelves and materials.

Dunn said the Schlesinger Library, like other libraries, finds itself operating in a hybrid environment that supports both traditional paper media and electronic information. It faces a double mandate going forward: eliminating its paper backlog of materials that await processing while continuing at the forefront of digital collecting, whether through archiving the blogs of underrepresented minority women or devising ways to store e-mail. In short, Dunn said, the library must meet future scholars’ “expectations that materials will be available to them in the format they prefer.”

Other panelists also addressed issues of access. Stuart Shieber RI ’07 compared the scholarly communications system to the recording industry and suggested ways in which dissemination could be improved, using arXive, a database developed by Paul Ginsparg RI ’09. Suzanne Preston Blier RI ’06 demonstrated the great potential of geographic information systems like AfricaMap, which is also open-source and multidisciplinary.

The panel, moderated by Nancy F. Cott, director of Radcliffe’s Schlesinger Library, closed with a demonstration by Dmitri Tymoczko RI ’07. Tymoczko, a composer and music theorist, uses technology to analyze what it is, exactly, that makes music sound good. His book on the subject, titled The Geometry of Consonance, is forthcoming from Oxford University Press.

Photos: Darlene Clark Hine; Christine Mummery; Beverly McIver; Harvey V. Fineberg and Susan S. Wallach; Tarik O'Regan -- credit Tony Rinaldo

Reflections 10 Years Later
  
In the symposium’s final panel, moderator Barbara J. Grosz asked several people involved in the creation of the Radcliffe Institute to share the dreams they had 10 years ago for the Institute, where they think Radcliffe is now, and where the Institute might go in its next 10 years. Neil L. Rudenstine, who was president of Harvard when the Institute was founded, said, “It really has been everything we could conceivably have hoped for and in fact I think it has gone further than any of us could have imagined.”

Mary Maples Dunn RI ’02, who served as acting dean of the Radcliffe Institute before Drew Faust arrived, joined the panel via video, since she couldn’t be there in person. She recalled a private, possibly secret, meeting in Vermont, when Rudenstine asked if she would be willing to consider leading the Institute while a search was conducted for the first regularly appointed dean. “I said yes immediately,” she reported.

Nancy-Beth Gordon Sheerr, who was chair of the Radcliffe College Board of Trustees when the Institute was formed, said, “How does the Radcliffe Institute today compare to our vision then? I can sum it up in two phrases: Dream come true. Exceeded our expectations.” Looking ahead, she said she’s glad to see Radcliffe’s Academic Engagement Programs—which includes faculty-led initiatives such as Exploratory and Advanced Seminars and public lectures and conferences—as a distinguishing feature of the Radcliffe Institute.

Susan S. Wallach, who also served on the Radcliffe College Board of Trustees, said that the trustees discussed creating a time capsule setting forth their hopes and dreams for the new Institute. As it happened, the time capsule was never created, but she wrote an entry anyway, which she read to the audience. “While much of what I wished for in 2000 has become a reality,” she said, “much of what actually transpired was far beyond my imagining at the time. For example, our first dean became the president of Harvard in 2007, eight years after the Institute’s founding.”

Wallach went on to say “Radcliffe has, since its founding, been a pioneering center for interdisciplinary experimentation at Harvard.” She said that the Institute has been “in the forefront of a movement across the University toward faculty diversity,” and has led the University in incorporating practicing artists into its community of scholars.

Looking to the future, Wallach said, “I feel that Radcliffe is now poised to move to a new level of impact with the Academic Engagement Programs that Dean Grosz introduced this year. This initiative is intended to enrich both Radcliffe and the larger University by leveraging the Institute’s ability to foster faculty collaborations. It will offer students more intimate opportunities to engage with the Institute’s scholars and will initiate programs to increase understanding of issues by the public—including public policy makers.”

The final speaker on the panel, Harvey V. Fineberg, who was Harvard’s provost during the formation of the Institute, said that Radcliffe’s transformation over the past 10 years “has been not just a fulfillment of the original aspirations, but an acceleration, an intensification, and an amplification of those original aspirations.” He lauded the Institute’s emphasis on the creative arts and its success in bringing people together from across the University. “Radcliffe is not only a critical part of Harvard . . . but is also in the vanguard and a force for transforming the University. . . . Radcliffe less became a part of Harvard, than Harvard has been moving to become more like Radcliffe.”

Winding up his remarks, Fineberg gave a rousing summation of Radcliffe’s possible future: “Insofar as it deepens its role in interdisciplinary and collaborative work and provides a beacon not only to leading faculty but increasingly to students from the many faculties across Harvard, Radcliffe can continue and intensify its role as the neutral meeting place for Harvard University, for intellectual exchange, for personal growth, and for defining new collaborative fields of endeavor.”

Related Exhibitions

Several exhibitions are displayed in Radcliffe Yard to mark the Institute’s 10th anniversary, including a selection of travel diaries and correspondence, To Know the Whole World: Women’s Travel Writing from 1819 to 1972, at the Schlesinger Library. In Byerly Hall, the Schlesinger Library has mounted A Case for Women: Gender in the Law. It highlights some of the strengths of the library collections, focusing on legal issues surrounding citizenship, the body, economies of power, and educational rights. The exhibit runs through February 16, 2010.

During the two-day celebration, facets of Radcliffe’s Academic Engagement Programs could be seen in two displays in the Radcliffe Gym: posters showing fellows and Harvard undergraduates who have participated in the Radcliffe Research Partnership program and posters of Radcliffe’s gender conferences and science symposia.

In Agassiz House, a selection of books were displayed that were published during the past 10 years, for which the authors conducted research at the Schlesinger Library.

Stock-Pile

The small space in Radcliffe Yard that’s been used for more than five years as a parking lot and staging area during the renovation of Radcliffe buildings was transformed into an installation called Stock-Pile for Radcliffe’s 10th anniversary celebration. The piece was designed by Chris Reed, the principal and founder of Stoss Landscape Urbanism, a Boston-based strategic design and planning practice. Reed is also a design critic at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and an adjunct associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Design.

Stock-Pile features stone, aggregate, sand, and soil, arranged in simple piles on a north-south grid, and two piles are planted with ferns. Over time, the piles, which are subject to the elements, will gently degrade.

Photos: Barbara J. Grosz, Harvey V. Fineberg, Nancy-Beth Gordon Sheerr, Susan S. Wallach, and Neil L. Rudenstine; "Stock-Pile" -- credit Tony Rinaldo

Contributors to this coverage were Ivelisse Estrada, Pat Harrison, and Courtney Humphries.