Mount Holyoke College - Llamarada Yearbook (South Hadley, MA)

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The Department of Italian Language and Literature is concerned not only with the intellectual values in life but with the emotional and artistic as well. We arc concerned with the development of the whole person and the relevance of knowledge to the life of the individual today. In our elementary language courses we try to give the student enough prepara- tion so that should she not continue after the first course, we hope she will have learned to read well, express herself ade- quately orally, and have a better under- standing of the people and culture of Italy. In the literature courses emphasis is placed on truth, on the understanding of a great personality or a masterpiece. We hope that through our literature courses the student will gain some notion of hu- manity and become better prepared to work out for herself a scale of human values. We try to contribute to her knowledge of what civilization has been, how it has changed, and what our inher- itance is. Valentine Giamatti The end of teaching is the desire, not only to acquaint students with the ideas and skills of this or that area of knowledge, along with its history, its role in human experience, its special refraction of the human condition, its current functions and future possibilities; there is also the desire, hopefully, to introduce students to the community of intellect, which is wonderfully free of national or regional bounda- ries. partisan politics, time, place, and fashion. In the process of learning, we always have to be concerned with the letter and the spirit. The drawbacks which we particularly experience are. I think, principally these: First of all. time. The process we wish to further is a gradual one; and human beings often put up quite a resistance to new ideas. A second drawback is the not so total prevalence of zestful intellectual curiosity. Grades constitute an- other drawback to the aims and desires inherent in our work, as they tend to encourage an attitude which is by definition far front these aims. Currently, the major drawback lies not in the academic system but rather in the anti-humanistic tenor of our times. If we permit a less than deeply absorbing interest, concern and fascination with the human being we help the levelling, hollowing and otherwise destructive elements which arc so prevalent and so rau- cous. Teaching and studying arc most singularly and directly involved with de- velopment of the individual human being who is still the most important creature on earth. In an era which downgrades the human being, we have only four years in which to work toward this realization. We may never be wholly rid of the aspects which stand in its way, but we might achieve another step in the realization of human potentialities. Edith A. Range 15

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HUMANITIES AND LANGUAGES HUMANITIES ART Prof. Dorothy M. Cop well Prof. Marian Hayes Assoc. Prof. Leonard A DcLonga Asst. Prof. Jean C. Harris Visiting Asst. Prof. Ellen P Conant Mr. lames P. Hendricks Miss Sheila J. McNally Miss Susan W. M angam Punngton Lecturer David Talbot-Ricc CLASSICS Assoc. Prof Betty N. Quinn Awl. Prof A Dargan Jones Mi» Jean Pearson INGUSH Prof. Joseph McCi Bottkol Prof. C. Marianne Brock Prof. Alan V. McGee Prof. Sydney K McLean Prof. Ben L. Reid Prof. Nadine Shepardson Prof. Jean Sudrann ASSOC. Prof. Joyce M. Horner .Assoc. Prof. Marjorie R. Kaufman Assoc. Prof. Constance M. Saintongc AM- Prof. Oliver E. Allyn Asst. Prof. Anne T. Dovlc Asst Prof. James D. Ellis Avst. Prof. Virginia R. Ellis Asst Prof Anthony E. Farnham Asst. Prof. Elizabeth A Green Asst. Prof. A. Dargan Jones Asst. Prof. Elsa Ncttels Assl. Prof. Charles H Olmsted Asst. Prof. Adeline P. Potter Asst. Prof. Phyllis P. Smith Mr. Eric W. Kurtz Mrs Marcia V. Reccer Visiting Instructor Mrs. Doris B Kelly FRENCH Prof. Ruth J. Dean Prof. Paul F. Sam tonge Assoc. Prof Edith S Rostas Asst Prof. William S. Bell Asst. Prof. Margaret I Switten Miss Josephe R Castellani Miss Simone Dcitz Miss Anne S. Kimbcll Grad. Asst. Brigitte Coste GERMAN Prof. Edith A. Runge Assoc. Prof. Sidonie L. Cassirer Visiting Asst Prof. Willy Schumann Mrs Eocltraot P Barrett Miss Ingeborg Pillat Mrs. I.isbcth Schafer Asst. Mrs. Minnie I.obl Asst. Mrs. Elsie Sell I.ang. Doris B. M. Gruber Lang. Use Rosenkranz ITAUAN Prof. Valentine Giumatti Visiting Prof. Michele Cantarella Mrs. Iole F. Magri l-ang. M. Gloria Osseila MLSIC Prof. Ruth E. Douglass Prof. David J. Holden Assoc. Prof. Irving R. F.isley Asst. Prof. Ronald Hodges Asst. Prof. Helen Olheim Asst. Prof Myrtle Pegier Mr. Aram Bedrossun Mrs. Carol B. Buckle Mr. Wilfred Burkle Miss Marilyn Crittenson Mr. Lktrello Alexander Mrs Helen B. H.i cn Sirs Carlyle Hodges Mr. John Lyncs Miss Beilina Roulicr Reader Mrs. Charles Smith Mr. Robert L Stalfanson. Conductor of the College Orchestra RUSSIAN Assoc. Prof. Miriam T. Sajkovic Mr David T. Edsall Mrs. Maria K. TatistschefT SPANISH Assoc. Prof. Concha de Albornoz Asst. Prof. Joan E Cinrli Grad. Asst. Maria C. Thomson I-ang. Mabel Lernoud I-ang. Aida L. Mendoza In the humanities—the group of studies, including languages. literature, art. and music—you will find that the emphasis is on learning, on the process itself. This marks, perhaps, the fundamental difference between the approach of the sciences and that of the humanities. A noted—and very wise—art historian. Frwin Panofsky. has described that essential difference of emphasis in this way: In endowing static records with dynamic life, instead of reducing transitory events to static laws, the humanities conflict with, hut compliment the natural sciences. We arc asking you to say good-bye to the certain very pleasant, very comforta- ble. very reassuring methods and “truths. Don't come to us for The Answer. The Answer to it all is precisely what we do not have. We can ask you all sorts of interesting questions that you have never thought of for yourselves, we can provide you with some information you are not aware of. and point out to you further sources of information. Hut say to us True or False. Right or Wrong and you arc apt to be confronted with a qualifying shoulder-shrug and yet another question. The world of humanities can make the possibilities available to you—not by teaching you the answer or deducing and demonstrating incontrovertible laws— but rather by the process of learning by the formulation of questions which endow those sialic records of which Panofsky speaks with a dynamic life. Humanism says Panofsky. is an attitude based on both the insistence on human values and the acceptance of human limitations. Asking questions is. in itself. I suppose a way of life, of doing what William Blake urged every man to do—cleansing the windows of perception—of becoming aware of what it means to be—quite simply—a hu- man being. Jean M. Sudrann

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The place to sec exciting, significant drama « significant plays are being perfornicd-probaWy Be rim or Par. possibly London or New York, probably not South Hadley. The £Tcc to decide What plays are significant and exciting or to w ,, them, is anywhere—Mount Holyoke, even. critic at college strut the plumes and feathers of todays hits. am g the bones of today's failures. Spreading out from here andstretch.ng as far as the historical eye can sec. range the dramas of the past, the perspective of such a scholar is occasionally distorted by hyperopia—a fixation on the distant mountains—it is a far less fata disease that the myopia which knows no past at all. Another remarkable feature of ivory towers, one of value to drama- tist as well as critic, is that their windows arc always ojxn and their doors arc never locked. True, and sadly so. the routine of tower activities often leaves the student little time for gazing from win- dows. let alone taking strolls or vacations. Still, there is a freedom from certain distractions which others must face. The great drama of the present will only find its way to Mount Holyoke by chance of occasional invitation, but its critics and contributors will find their way from Mount Holyoke by purpose and design. They will have left the tower to tramp upon the earth, but they will always remember the view from above. James D. Ellis Art history, like all academic subjects which involve the study of man’s achievements, is by no means an exclusive discipline. To some people, it is of interest primarily because of the record which it provides of the values and aspirations of cultures both similar to and different from our own. To others, its value lies in its investigation of the work of art as a primary object, its expressive power and its relation to the technique which produced it. The best teaching of art history which I have encountered, and which 1 attempt to emulate, uses no specific method, but presents the work of art from a variety of viewpoints. It seems to me that diversity of approach is very significant, be- cause the work of art has as many meanings as there arc people interested in it. Thus, art history may be somewhat more flexible as a discipline than other Hu- manities, but I imagine that this is in part due to its comparative youth as an area of study. In any case, the flexibility of the discipline makes art history for me both the most demanding and the most challenging field of the Humanities. Jean Harris 16