Hampshire College

• Telling a Larger Story
• Literary Collaboration and Control
• Women Welders
• Project Changes Paper Purchasing Policy
• A Degree Well Earned
• Architecture Memories, Havana Interiors
• Art by Numbers

Telling a Larger Story

Whether locating individuals of mixed heritage, getting them to open up in front of a camera, or selecting 40 minutes from 105 hours of footage, Kitama Jackson-Seeger says he has never in his life worked so hard as he has on his Division III, a documentary video on racially mixed Americans.

He interviewed 65 people, ranging in age from six to 80 and living in different parts of the country, exploring commonalities and differences in experience across age and region. Some, he found through his own network of family, friends, and acquaintances. Others, he interviewed after they responded to a notice about the film that he posted on an Internet listserv.

The video grew out of his own experience; he is the child of a white mother and black (a term he prefers to African-American) father, with grandmothers who are also of mixed heritage, white and Japanese, and black and Chinese.

Jackson-Seeger, who grew up in Beacon, New York, as the grandson of legendary folk singer Pete Seeger, decided to make the film, in part, because “for me, being mixed has always been a great experience.” Last year, he attended a Five College conference on mixed heritage, which made him more conscious of formulating his own identity, but he wanted to tell a larger story than just his own.

“All persons of color in this country have to come to grips with what it means to be a person of color,” he said. “I am in the fortunate position that I could take a year to interview people and think about this issue and see how other people deal with it. I could learn about and express that through art, through the making of this film.

“I want people to see all these different faces and hear all these different experiences. A lot has been done about mixed marriages, but not much has been done about the products of those marriages, racially mixed people.”

Film professor Abraham Ravett chaired the Division III, with social science professor and Dean of the College Mike Ford also on the committee.

Jackson-Seeger already has a couple of PBS credits from an internship as an editing assistant on documentaries about American Roots Music last fall and on the Blues, airing this fall. This summer, he is working in the Fresh Air Fund’s Career Awareness Program at Camp Mariah, teaching children to make videos. This fall, he moves into a job as an assistant editor and production assistant with Means of Production, an independent film company in Brooklyn.

His eventual goal is to make feature films: “There are so many issues out there to be addressed, so many things I want to do films on.”

 Literary Collaboration and Control

Benjamin “Mako” Hill sees the humor in his senior thesis—he sits alone at a computer and writes about the importance of collaborative authorship. But, he’s been doing a lot of collaborative writing lately, too.

In addition to finishing his thesis, or “Division III” as it is called at Hampshire College, where he will graduate May 17, and working on graduate school applications, Hill is looking forward to three forthcoming publications: Mute, a magazine of art and technical issues, commissioned an article by him, “Software, Politics and Indymedia.” He co-authored “Quality and the Reliance on Individuals in Free Software Development,” which will be in the proceedings of the Third Annual Conference on Open-Source Software Engineering. And, he is second author of a chapter in Free/Open Source Software Development, perhaps the first academic book on free software.

The publications prove many of the points of Hill’s Hampshire thesis, which has a working title of “Literary Collaboration and Control.” He is working with people living in Britain, Rome, Australia and India, whose ages and experiences differ greatly from his, some of whom he met only after collaborating with them on writing projects.

“In the Division III, I’m looking at the nature of the relationship of collaboration to systematic control in writing,” Hill said. “You can have really amazing things when people come together and work together, but there are barriers—social conventions, legal mechanisms like copyrights, and issues of technical control.”

The Seattle, Washington, native has long been involved with the free software movement, which is based on sharing and extensive collaboration. That international community led him to collaborative writing projects and to creative analysis of what technology might make possible. Combined with his interests in literature, philosophy and politics, his ideas about shared software led naturally to similar ideas about shared authorship.

The Internet now makes possible simultaneous, collaborative creation and control of written work, but the existing conventions and legal barriers create systems of control that make full collaboration difficult. For example, Hill says, the only legal means for collective control of a written work are “works for hire,” in which the copyright is owned by an entity that did not produce it, or “joint authorship,” which requires all authors to make copyrightable contributions, an option he describes as “the legal equivalent of splitting the baby.”

Hill’s research for his project included studying the history of books and print culture, and his thesis includes numerous examples of when and how collaborative authorship did work beautifully, such as Chinese literature and the Talmud. He is also interested in the author/editor relationship, and the theory that, due to that relationship, many respected literary works might be more accurately described as works by two authors.

Hampshire professors on Hill’s Division III faculty committee are Professor of Communications James Miller (chair) and Associate Professor of History James Wald. Hill is also working with Stephen J. Harris in the English department at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and Amherst journalist and activist David Bollier.

“Mako's done some very daring work,” said Miller. “He's tried to show how, historically, most writing has a collaborative nature. Then, an individualistic, ‘Romantic’ notion of authorship took hold, and was given special legal status through copyright.

“He also looks at how most software is designed to constrain collaboration and block modification. His counter examples—the ones he would like to see become influential—are open source computer code and software collectives, and the ‘commons’ movement, of which David Bollier is a leading figure. This is a wonderful Division III, not least because it brought together such a diverse committee.”

To read more about Hill’s Division III>>
To read more about his other work>>

 'Don't Let Them Sit on the Bench: Women Welders Past, Present and Future'
When Megan Kenney enrolled in a noncredit fabrication workshop for women just for fun during her first year at Hampshire College, she had no idea it would shape her future to such a large degree. Four years later, the Manchester, Vermont, native, who will graduate on May 17, is completing her final academic project on the history of women welders.

“I had never done any welding, or worked with power tools of any kind before college, and I just fell in love with it,” she said. “It was a whole new way to get my creative energy out. I felt empowered.”

Throughout college, Kenney continued to work in the Dorothy and Jerome Lemelson Center for Design at Hampshire, a design and fabrication resource available to all members of the campus community. She also spent a semester working at Arcosanti, an architectural community in Arizona, where she further honed her welding and construction skills.

Her Division III research paper—140 pages in draft form that only promises to get longer—is titled “Don’t Let Them Sit on the Bench: Women Welders Past, Present and Future.” In it, Kenney takes a cross-disciplinary approach, blending history, economics, and sociology.

The paper begins with Rosie the Riveter and the active recruitment of women welders during World War II, examines social forces pushing women back into traditional roles during the 1950s, explores the impact of progressive social movements during the sixties and seventies, and analyzes why so few women today are employed in the skilled trades, including welding. In her conclusion, Kenney visualizes possibilities for women in poverty to improve their lives through the skilled trades.

Researching and writing the paper, along with her own love of welding, has led Kenney to serious consideration of a career teaching shop, possibly at the middle school level. Petite and soft-spoken, she thinks her presence as a female shop teacher might challenge some stereotypes for students at middle school age. She is getting practical experience as a teaching assistant in the same fabrication workshop at Hampshire in which she discovered welding.

In addition to her paper, Kenney’s Division III includes welding two metal frame benches, working in the Lemelson Center, that she plans to give to Hampshire when she graduates. She has asked the college to consider putting them in two spots on campus that are special to her. One spot overlooks Mt. Norwottuck and is near the college’s financial aid office, where she has held a work-study job, and the other is near the Lemelson Center.

The faculty committee overseeing Kenney’s Division III is economics professor Laurie Nisonoff (chair), literature professor Lise Sanders, with whom Kenney has studied feminist theory, and Robin MacEwan, who teaches the Lemelson women’s fabrication course.

“I feel like my project speaks to why people should come to Hampshire,” said Kenney. “It enabled me to combine my academic interests in research, writing, and teaching with my love of welding.”
 

 Div III Results in New Paper Purchasing Policy for Hampshire College
GOING TO 100 PERCENT POST-CONSUMER RECYCLED PAPER

To support her Hampshire College senior thesis, “The Effect of Post-Consumer Content on Paper Jamming and Malfunction in Printers and Convenience Copiers,” science student and May graduate Vanessa Gravenstine field-tested her ideas using printers and copiers in campus offices. Working with offices that agreed to be part of her study, she distributed various brands and kinds of paper, then compiled and analyzed statistics related to their performance in campus machines for one month.

Her findings—which showed no overall difference in paper jamming, efficiency or cleanliness, and only minor cost differences if any—countered fears that 100 percent post-consumer waste recycled paper causes a higher rate of jamming and malfunction, is cost prohibitive and less clean to use. As a result, Hampshire (which currently uses 30 percent post-consumer waste recycled paper) has announced that it will purchase 100 percent post-consumer waste, 100 percent chlorine free recycled paper for general use in copiers and printers campus wide, effective July 1.

College officials say Gravenstine’s research and leadership is a good example of student work having an impact beyond the classroom, with results that also fit well with the college’s Sustainable Campus Plan. The project, with its emphasis on positive change, exemplifies the Hampshire motto: “To know is not enough.”

“It is not often that a student—or any investigator—gets to see their research become policy so quickly, if at all,” said Brian Schultz, associate professor of ecology and entomology, who chaired the faculty committee for Gravenstine’s project.

In addition to conducting the research and writing the paper, Gravenstine also produced a set of educational materials that can be used on other campuses to address similar environmental issues, including a PowerPoint presentation and a comic book that provides analytical information in a fun format.

“Not only has Vanessa convinced Hampshire to change its purchasing policies, but the ‘comic book’ on recycled paper should be a very useful tool in organizing students and others to run similar campaigns at other institutions,” said Robert Rakoff, professor of politics and environmental studies, who was also on Gravenstine’s faculty committee. “This multidisciplinary, applied research project combined a well-designed experiment, analysis of the economic structure and environmental impacts of a major industry, and effective political action.”

Gravenstine, who is from New York City, plans to attend graduate school in ecological studies and then work for a nonprofit. She graduates from Hampshire on May 17.

 A Degree Well Earned

In his native Russia, Andrei Kovalenko worked in a factory, packaging oxygen for medical use. Six years ago, at age 32, with his wife and two children, he immigrated into the United States, settling in Springfield, Massachusetts, where he got a job in a cable factory making wire.

To improve his language skills, Kovalenko enrolled in English as a second language at Springfield Technical Community College. He laughs now at how "brutally naive" his writings were, "really raw," but imagination and storytelling ability shone so brightly through papers he wrote that teachers urged him to think about further study.

In the back of his mind, he had always been drawn to film. The only program at STCC that even remotely touched on film was telecommunications, so he enrolled in it. Within a year he knew he wanted to pursue his passion for film and began to look around for a college with a strong program. One of his professors suggested Hampshire, located within driving distance and with a film program considered among the nation's finest.

"It was the one, you know," Kovalenko reflected. "It was a good day for me when I got the acceptance letter." He deferred his acceptance for a full year, then enrolled in Hampshire. "The college gave me money, not the whole amount, but with loans and everything I was able to enter. If it wasn't for financial aid, I wouldn't be here."

Kovalenko has had a number of good days since the one on which his Hampshire acceptance letter arrived, among them the birth of a third child and, this past December, the attainment of U.S. citizenship.

His Hampshire Division III project, an animated film titled A Word, deals with his feelings about America, the beauty he sees in its founding values and his concern about some of its current international policies.

Chris Perry, a visiting professor in computer animation who is on leave from Pixar Animation Studios, chaired Kovalenko's Division III faculty committee. "Andrei's work is so thoughtful, so precisely produced," Perry said. "He has a remarkable command of the tools and a sincere, intellectual passion for communicating his unique perspective through film.

"It amazed me when I learned he was both a full-time student and a full-time factory worker because his class projects never appeared rushed. In fact, they were frequently the most refined and carefully considered pieces in the class."

All through college, Kovalenko kept his job in the cable factory, working nights and flexible hours. Now ready to begin another new chapter, he hopes to quickly find a position in computer graphics or digital animation. He would like to direct a film someday, and said, "That doesn't seem realistic right now, but who knows?

"It seems unbelievable to be graduating," he added. "That will be a good day."

Film professor Abraham Ravett, Kovalenko's advisor and chair of his Division II, also served on his Div III committee. "His filmmaking, video, and digital animation work at Hampshire has been quite impressive, but I'm astounded by his tenacity, hard work, and drive," said Ravett. "In his mid-thirties, he learned a new language, adjusted to a totally new environment, and continues to persevere in order to achieve his career goals."

A substantial number of students at Hampshire now combine film and computer animation in their work. Although Kovalenko's Division III animated film is not available online, group work by him and his classmates in one of Perry's courses, a film titled Displacement, can be viewed online.

Architecture Memories, Havana Interiors

Hampshire College student Julia Wadsworth’s Division III project, “Architecture Memories, Havana Interiors,” pairs urban documentary photography with social science.

In January 2002, Wadsworth was among a group of students who accompanied Hampshire photography professor Jacqueline Hayden to Cuba, where they completed the first systematic visual documentation of Old Havana in the city’s history, an archive they presented to the Office of the Historian.

Wadsworth found the vivid colors and textures so appealing that she wanted more time to photograph them. She also found herself wanting to know more about cultural, economic, and political realities of Cuba than she could observe in a month. She returned to Havana last fall through Hampshire’s semester in Cuba program, one of few, perhaps the only, U.S. study abroad program that allows for study with Cuban artists and intellectuals in settings outside of government-sanctioned programs.

Wadsworth photographed homes and neighborhoods, interviewing residents about change over time. She found that people spoke more openly when reflecting on space and environment; in this indirect way she learned a great deal about day-to-day life in Cuba.

Her photographs include interiors and exteriors, ranging from occupied apartments to deteriorating, abandoned houses. They raise as many questions as they answer. “I’m not content just looking at things. I see them and I want to know what happened,” said Wadsworth. “So much of life in Cuba feels ambiguous. I wanted people to draw conclusions for themselves from details as simple as a bicycle propped in a corner or paint peeling off walls.”

Her Div III includes a gallery show and an artist’s book, plus extensive reading, both nonfiction and fiction, about Cuba. For her show, she is creating Palmer Plate prints of selected photographs, with sepia tones on cream paper replicating the feel of etchings.

Professor Hayden is chairing Wadsworth’s faculty committee, with politics professor Carollee Bengelsdorf providing social science guidance. Book artist Amaryllis Siniosssoglou helped her develop skills necessary to create her artist’s book, which contains photos and narratives about each house. Deb Gorlin, co-director of the college’s writing program, has worked with her on the narratives, and Wadsworth said that learning editing skills, “what to include, what not to include,” is an important part of the project.

Following graduation, the Cleveland native will move to New York, and plans to continue working on her Cuba project. Havana’s Office of the Historian has inquired about the possibility of her doing a show there based on her Hampshire Division III. If that can be arranged, it would be particularly meaningful, as few American artists have had exhibitions in Cuba. Her mentor, Jacqueline Hayden, was the first to have a show in the Museo de Arts Decorativas, during January 2002. This past March, seven-and-a-half-foot ink jet prints from Hayden’s Figure Model Series were shown in the Grand Foyer of the Havana International Conference Center.

 Habitual Cathexis: An Encyclopedic Box Project

Andrea White sees connections everywhere, and they show up aplenty in her final project.

After four years of helping friends hang their Div III shows, the Philadelphia native thinks of the college gallery as much more than space waiting to be filled and wanted to use it “to address the Hampshire community.” She had noticed that students frequently wander into exhibitions from two nearby locations, the campus mailroom, 15 feet from the gallery door, and the library, just up a short flight of stairs.

Her reflections on the gallery and what she jokingly calls her “scientific, obsessive interest in information acquisition and organization” led to a Div III, “Habitual Cathexis: An Encyclopedic Box Project,” that creatively combines photography, collage, art history, a new take on the mail art movement of the 1960s, word play, statistical probability, and random collaboration with other Hampshire students.

First, she turned to the library where, she said, she became obsessed with the Oxford English Dictionary and the poetics of language. Then, she added together the digits of 1,680 student mailboxes until each cooked down to a single number. (For mailbox 1680, one plus six plus eight plus zero equaled 15, which became one plus five, or six.) Eventually, every mailbox number added up to “one” through “nine.”

White created nine different forms of small photography and art projects for the nine mailing groups—a total of 1,680 art objects. Each included directions on how to assist with the project, and was connected by string to a shipping tag bearing a quote from the OED about that mailing group’s number. She sent these out in random mailings.

Group one, for example, got a double-sided, transparent-paper pocket. One side held a collage on a square photographic negative, with the emulsion melted into oddly beautiful golden hues. These came with directions to create something, fill the other pocket and return it. The tagged quote read, “the equation…being to establish a ‘ONE-to-ONE’ correspondence between the two integral spaces.”

Group six was no doubt startled to receive, out of the blue, a blank frame waiting to be filled, attached to a tag bearing the quote “____ was as dead now as ____ would be when they lowered ____ SIX feet under.”

White photographed every object prior to mailing, and made a book of the 1,680 photos. As items returned, she replaced the original photo with one of the new creation and its arrival date.

“It’s funny how ritualistic the whole thing became,” she said.

She got back 150 items and, knowing some mailboxes are not in use, estimated a six to ten percent return rate. Many of the returned items contained political statements about current events as the respondents’ contributions to the project. Her show will include graphs of boxes she decided were empty, “the pseudoscientific portion” of the project, a riff on experimental poetry created by blacking out words within text.

“I keep detailed records. It’s the terms of my engagement with art,” she explained. “Obsessive cataloging becomes a form of playfulness.”

She plans to incorporate even those items mailbox owners threw away: “I went dumpster diving and have a trashcan full.”

White became interested in “points of creativity within a small section within tiny parameters” while taking a course called “The Collector” with photography and film professor Robert Seydel and art history professor Sura Levine. Seydel, chair, and Levine became her Div III committee.

For White, the Div III has involved massive amounts of research, creation, and record keeping, plus staging a gallery show. She compared its endurance demands, “the level and ambition to which you can take work,” to her high school experience rowing crew, in terms of “the furthest I’ve ever pushed myself mentally and physically.”

Her future plans include graduate school and work either in film art direction and production design or as a curator.