Periclean Award-winning scholars delight

Each May, the annual Periclean Awards are presented during the spring induction ceremony for Skidmore?s oldest honor society. They handsomely represent the College?s ?homegrown way of honoring the work of our best students,? as President Philip Glotzbach put it at this year?s ceremony, which took place May 16.

The award-winners?coming from disciplines as diverse as religion and philosophy, biology and studio art, English, music, and dance?delighted a large Filene Recital Hall audience with details of their research and findings, delivered with intensity that illuminated even the finer and more esoteric points.

Back: Satchell Moore, Courtney Mattison, Adam Epstein Front: Michelle Suk, Abigail Whitaker

Dapper in a big green bowtie, Adam Epstein promised to deliver ?just the highlights? of his highly complex paper, ?The Word in the West: The Anglophonic Sikh Diaspora.? The ?word? is the Siri Guru Granth Sahib, a big book of guru-given scriptures sacred to 25 million Sikhs worldwide. Its 1,430 pages of centuries-old spiritual guidance are weathering modern times in part, Epstein found, by moving onto the Internet. There, instead of each day?s verse being selected by the traditional method of letting the a copy of the big book (housed in the Golden Temple in Amritsar, Punjab, India) fall randomly open to a particular verse, cybersites like sikhnet.com can electronically extract spiritual readings from a much wider selection of pages. Technology is now ?working in the service of the Guru Granth,? Epstein concluded, adding, ?the guru is alive?and online too.?

Well before the Periclean ceremony, Courtney Mattison?s biologically inspired ceramics had attracted numerous viewers to the Dana Science Center atrium exhibition of her senior project, ?Fragile Beauty: An Artistic Exploration of Our Endangered Coral Reef Ecosystems.? Mattison, a self-determined major in marine biology and ceramic sculpture, studied and photographed sea corals and other marine life, then reinterpreted them in ceramics. Her Periclean presentation included photographs from Australia and Costa Rica along with resulting artworks blending elements of beauty and biology. For instance, an overhead shot of a leatherback turtle?s wing-like flipper tracks in the sand was followed by the image?s reincarnation as a bent-wing-shaped ceramic sculpture whose upper surface echoes the turtle?s distinctive shell patterning while its spiky exterior symbolizes the dangers of the turtle?s world; other works showed real turtle eggs photographed in their nests as well as semi-abstract ceramic sweeps of nests cradling pearl-like eggs. For more about Mattison?s work, go to her web site or check out the ?Skidmore Q&A? in Scope Online.

It?s a daunting task to find new terrain to cover in the crowded field of Shakespeare studies, but English major Abigail Whitaker managed it. Her senior thesis, ?Rhetoric, Sex, and the Ethics of Feminine Priority: Another Look at Several Female Characters in
Shakespeare?s Comedies,? focused on five plays: The Merchant of Venice, Much Ado About Nothing, As You Like It, Twelfth Night, and Measure for Measure. Written between 1697 and 1703 as medieval tradition gave way to Renaissance change, the plays reflect the precarious position of the era?s marriageable young women in language that variously supports and undermines the culture?s stereotypes and traditions. For instance, Juliet was not allowed to choose her husband and once married, she literally became his property. As Whitaker points out, ?men viewed a woman?s chastity as a property asset on a par with a potential wife?s financial dowry.? The original angle Whitaker researched lay in how Shakespeare?s rebellious heroines? use of language constituted ?a threat to patriarchy and tradition,? their words ?affirming their individuality in spite of restrictive Renaissance stereotypes.?

The visual and audio highlights from dancer/choreographer Michelle Suk and composer Satchel Moore, collaborators on ?Swan Song,? Suk?s senior dance capstone concert, included a video clip of her contemporary reimagining of that famous moment in classical ballet?Act II of Swan Lake?when handsome prince meets bewitched swan princess. In the video, Skidmore student dancers performed its spare, modern-dance vocabulary, akin to Trisha Brown?s and Merce Cunningham?s, in front of a powerful video background of color-washed streetscapes and double exposures by Sean Mattison ?08. To create the bold new score, Moore sliced out sound samples from 43 sources (from Tchaikovsky to Billy Joe Royal?s ?Down in the Boondocks?), electronically warping, stretching, and deepening them as he ?tuned it down and darkened it to match Michelle?s vision.? For instance, the lush orchestration of an Eartha Kit recording morphed into a rhythmic, pulsing, tympanic wall of sound shot through with bright bolts of piano chords. ?It?s important to recontextualize,? said Moore. ?We have to remember what came before us before we can create something new.? ~Barbara Melville