Category Archives: Events

Bill Diodato Comes to Williston for Photographers’ Lecture Series

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Commercial and fine art photographer Bill Diodato will be the next speaker in the Photographers’ Lecture Series and will visit The Williston Northampton School on Tuesday, February 19, 2013, 6:30 p.m.

Diodato will teach the Advanced Photography class and give a lecture, which is open to the public, at 6:30 p.m. in the Dodge Room of the Reed Campus Center.

According to his website, Bill Diodato, a native of New England, launched his career in New York in 1990 after completing the program at Hallmark School of Photography in Turners Falls. Since then, he has developed a career as an acclaimed commercial and fine-art photographer.He has photographed for magazines including Allure, Marie Claire, Glamour, Self, New York Times Magazine, Travel & Leisure, and Interview. His commercial clients include Hollister, Clinique, Clairol, John Frieda, Biore, Victoria’s Secret, Cole Haan, Niemann Marcus, Saks Fifth Avenue, and Bloomingdales.

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Posted in: Arts, Events, Photographers' Lecture Series, Williston Northampton News

Teaching Democracy

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What is the best way to study American constitutional history?  How do we make our students passionate about documents that are almost 250 years old?

Peter Gunn, a member of the Williston faculty since 1986, teaches the spectrum of American history and economics classes.  An inspiring and enthusiastic teacher, Peter’s lectures teach students to question something that is much too often taken for granted: the democracy that is our nation’s foundation.  In his classes, students question, debate, and strengthen their opinions about the American constitution.

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Posted in: Academics, Events, Reed Campus Center, Special Programs, Upper School, Williston Northampton News

Smith Professor as Keynote for MLK Day Ceremony

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Smith College Assistant Professor of Afro-American studies, Professor Daphne Lamothe, will be the keynote speaker at this year’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Day ceremony.   Professor Lamothe is the parent of two Williston students.

A member of Smith’s faculty since 2004, Professor Lamothe teaches classes on African-American literature, 1746 to 1900 and the Harlem Renaissance.  According to the Smith website, she plans to teach Introduction to Black Culture and Literatures of African American Migration in the future.

Professor Lamothe received her B.A. from Yale University and her Ph.D. in English from the University of California Berkley.  Her book, Inventing the New Negro: Narrative, Culture, and Ethnography, was published in 2008 by University of Pennsylvania Press.

Lee D. Baker, the dean of academic affairs at Duke University, reviewed Inventing the Negro calling it brave and thoughtful.  “Daphne Lamothe has brought together history of science, literary criticism, and the analysis of a seasoned scholar of the New Negro movement in a way that simply has never been done before,” he said.

The lecture will take place at 8:30 a.m. on Monday, January 21 in the Williston gymnasium.  The event is not open to the public.

Posted in: Events, Special Programs, Visiting Speakers, Williston Northampton News

“I’m Not A Superhero,” says Luma Mufleh

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“If you had one wish in the world what would it be?”

Luma Mufleh’s grandmother used to ask her this when she was a child.  Mufleh’s response was usually a new toy or soccer cleats.  Then she would ask the same of her grandmother.  “Her answer was always the same,” said Mufleh.  “’I wish everyone in the world would have clean drinking water.’”

Speaking in the third annual Sara Wattles Perry ’77 Lecture, Mufleh told the story of her privileged childhood growing up in Amman, Jordan; hitting rock bottom twice after her parents cut her off financially; and how a wrong turn led to the first private school in America dedicated to the education of refugee children.

“I made a wrong turn.”
On what seemed like a normal day in Clarkston, Georgia, Mufleh made a wrong turn and encountered five boys playing soccer in a parking lot.  She watched them and remembered the pickup games she had played with her brothers in Jordan.

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Posted in: Events, Middle School, Special Programs, Upper School, Visiting Speakers, Williston Northampton News

Anita Shreve: A Lecture and Confession

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Anita Shreve had a confession. Over dinner, prepared by the school’s dining staff at the Head of School’s house, Shreve confessed that she almost couldn’t eat. She always felt nervous before a talk, she said, and was about walk to the Reed Campus Center to lecture on her first novel, Eden Close, and her most recent one, the tentatively titled After All.

Shreve has written 17 novels—including The Weight of Water, The Pilot’s Wife, and The Last Time They Met—and has received the PEN/L. L. Winship Award and the New England Book Award for fiction. But, as she confided to small group of faculty at dinner, presenting a public lecture still made her anxious.

By the time Shreve stepped before the wood-paneled podium in the Dodge Room an hour later, though, for the second in the 2012 Writers’ Lecture Series, any pre-talk jitters had melted away, replaced instead with an insightful, often amusing, look at the life of a writer.

“The thing to me that’s so important is the actual pleasure of writing,” she said. “You are creating a universe that takes you out of your normal universe. It’s a fabulous place to be.”

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Posted in: Events, Middle School, Upper School, Visiting Speakers, Williston Northampton News, Writers' Workshop Series