Smith
Alumnae do their Homework
 Several alumnae for the first reunion weekend, May 17 through
20, arrived with books full of highlighted sections and protruding
page markers, as well as lots of questions for faculty and
each other.
This year’s “Read with Us” book
discussions -- part of the Alumnae College Program coordinated
by the Alumnae Association as part of reunion on May 18
-- offered faculty-led presentations and conversations
about ten different books as well as three mini-classes
in Italian, landscape studies, and principles of investing.
Topics in the “Read with Us” segment
varied widely. Some addressed the complex paths to self-knowledge
demonstrated in Geraldine Brooks’ March, Margaret
Atwoood’s Alias Grace, and Joan Didion’s
The Year of Magical Thinking. Others looked at the human’s
race’s vulnerability from objects as massive as asteroids
(Surviving Armageddon by Bill McGuire) or as small
as the H5N1 avian influenza virus (John M. Barry’s The
Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in
History).
Alumnae enjoyed the opportunity to ask questions throughout
the presentations, from what might be the impact of a tsunami
created by a volcano in West Africa on the Atlantic Coast
(estimates range from a wave of 10-200 feet) to how prepared
we are for a flu pandemic (no one has a complete plan, and
there is only enough vaccine stockpiled for 75 million Americans).
The session on The Year of Magical Thinking,
led by Jennifer Walters, dean of religious life, developed
into a wide-ranging consideration of society’s discomfort
with extended grief, the effects of a loved one’s illness
and death on one’s sense of self, talking to the departed
for comfort and to keep them in our lives, and the relative
merits of Vanessa Redgrave’s performance in the current
play based on Ms. Didion’s book.
A and names of faculty presenters appears in
this year’s reunion brochure.
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