Knox in the News

From the Register-Mail:

Senior music majors and student music ensembles will present a series of free, public recitals and performances this month at Knox College’s Kresge Recital Hall.

They are John Eisemann, voice, at 7 p.m., Friday; Nicole Andersen and Mike Oelkers, voice, at 1 p.m., Saturday Jen Milius and Margaret Wehr, voice, at 4 p.m., Saturday; Sarah Kurian, voice, and Yumi Kusunoki, trombone, at 2 p.m., Sunday; and Corey Heppner, guitar, at 7:30 p.m. May 29.

Individual and ensemble student recitals also will be at 4 p.m. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, May 25, 26 and 27.

From WGIL radio:

Knox College will award honorary degrees to the chairman and CEO of Caterpillar, a poet, and a member of the White House staff during its Commencement exercises June 5.

Caterpillar chief Jim Owens, poet Kwame Dawes, and White House director Tina Tchen will be awarded honorary doctorates for their contributions to their professions. Tina Tchen will deliver the Commencement Address to the graduates.

“These individuals have distinguished themselves in their personal and professional lives. Each of them can be a role model for Knox graduates,” said Knox President Roger L. Taylor. “I am looking forward to calling them honorary alumni of Knox College.”

Knox will award Owens and Tchen the honorary degree Doctor of Laws. Knox will award Dawes the degree honorary Doctor of Humane Letters.

From the Register-Mail:

Do Your Part Inc., an organization of students from the Knox College Department of History’s “Museums, Monuments and Memories” course, will present the exhibit “The Second World War: A World Transformed,” as part of the course.

“The Second World War: A World Transformed” will be open to the public at 4 p.m. May 27 at Knox’s  Ford Center for the Fine Arts and run through 6 p.m. June 7. The exhibit can be viewed during the center’s normal business hours, from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m.

Told from the vantage point of multiple individuals — including multiple Knox alumni — the exhibit explores World War II’s role as an internationally transformative event. The exhibit makes extensive use of oral histories collected by students this spring, and aims to offer a well-rounded account of the war from a multi-national perspective.
Exhibit attendees will see a multimedia experience, chat with students in period clothing and expand their knowledge of this global conflict.

From the Register-Mail:

The Knox College Department of Theatre and Dance presents “The Serpent” by Jean-Claude van Itallie, at 7:30 p.m., Wednesday through Saturday, May 19-22, in Studio Theatre at the Ford Center for the Fine Arts.

Described as a “ceremony” by its author, “The Serpent” is a work of experimental theater that explores the book of Genesis by comparing it to the modern experience. It was developed in 1968 by van Itallie in collaboration with Joseph Chaikin and The Open Theatre.

“We are giving a post-modern interpretation to a play, written more than 40 years ago, that is already well known in the world of contemporary improvisational theater,” said director Jeff Grace, visiting assistant professor of theater.

According to Grace, the actors uses a technique in the play known as “transformational acting.”

“None of the actors has a name or an assigned character to portray,” Grace said. “Sometimes they step into roles, and other times they are playing themselves.

From the Register-Mail:

Our second day in Swansea, Wales, I stood in 5 Cwndonkin Drive, in the bedroom of the house. In that room, Welsh poet Dylan Thomas was born on Oct. 27, 1914. His life, after emerging from that room, is considered by many as a life of depression, drinking and exquisite writing.

After studying Thomas for 10 weeks as a part of a class with Knox College, those of us who went on the journey to Wales were able to see a bit further inside his head. We saw the sea that influenced him. We saw the places where he lived and traveled, and learned about his obsessions with the grey haze of Wales and his endless thoughts on the end of life.

We went to Wales over spring break in mid-March; 40 students from Knox College as well as English professor Robin Metz and theater professor Liz Carlin-Metz. We went to step into Thomas’s life and learn the importance of place in writing. Stepping off the plane, we could not have imagined what lay before us: Welsh cakes, tiny white lambs, the harsh and lovely Welsh accent, a scientology castle and the path of Thomas’s life.

From the Register-Mail:

Three graduating seniors at Knox College have been awarded Fulbright Fellowships for international teaching and study.

Jessa Dahl, a history and Asian studies major from Luverne, Minnesota, will travel to Japan to study the lives of women who resided there during the 1850s and 1860s, a tumultuous period in Japanese history. Karin Rudd, an elementary education major from Lynnwood, Washington, will go to India to teach English. Tasha Coryell, a creative writing major from Saint Paul, Minnesota, will teach English in Austria.

They are the 28th, 29th and 30th Knox College students to receive a Fulbright Fellowship. Since 1999, 18 Knox students have been selected for the honor.

Dahl has been engaged in a yearlong College Honors research project that examines the Bakumatsu Period, from 1853 to 1868, when Japan began forming outside relationships with other parts of the world.

Rudd, a dance minor at Knox, intends to use dance “as a medium to communicate with people” while teaching in India.

She was among 15 Knox students and three faculty members who traveled to Anhui, China, in December 2008 to teach English to undergraduates at Anhui University.

Coryell, who has minors in German and gender and women’s studies, studied in Florence, Italy, in fall 2008. She was part of a group from Knox that traveled to Wales this year in conjunction with a course on famed Welsh writer Dylan Thomas, and she also has spent time in the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany.