Faculty
The awesome post of national poet laureate does not exist in the United States as it does in Britain. In the absence of any such formal designation, the honorary president of the Poetry Society of America might be regarded as unofficially serving that function.
First conferred on Edwin Markham, whose most familiar poem is "The Man with the Hoe," the chair was then held by Robert Frost for 23 years until his death in 1963. Now, after ten years without an honorary president, the Poetry Society has elected Richard Eberhart '26, retired Professor of English and poet-in-residence at Dartmouth, to be the third American poet ever to hold that position of acclaim among poets.
Professor Eberhart, who held the Class of 1925 Professorship until his retirement in 1970, thus becomes the second alumnus to be accorded the poetry society's singular honor. Frost attended Dartmouth for one year as a member of the Class of 1896.
Author of 14 books of verse and verse drama, Professor Eberhart persisted in writing poetry through many lean years until the early 1950s when he began to achieve national recognition with the Poetry Society's award of its Shelley Memorial Prize. Since then he has received many honors, including the 1966 Pulitzer Prize for poetry for his book Richard Eberhart: SelectedPoems 1930-65, the 1962 Bollingen Prize from Yale University Library, and the Harriet Monroe Memorial Award.
His latest book. Fields of Grace (Oxford), was published this fall.
A generation removed from Professor Eberhart, Robert H. Siegel, Assistant Professor of English, is becoming widely recognized among the nation's younger poets. Over the past year, his works have been published in Poetry Magazine, Granite, ColoradoQuarterly, Poetry Northwest, and the Boston University Journal. The latter magazine published in a recent double issue three selections from a series of poems—satirical, biting and vivid commentary on the contemporary scene based on quotes from Revelationssoon to be published by the University Press of New England under the title, Morning After Apocalypse.
Meanwhile, still from the English Department, Prof. Peter A. Bien is the author of a critical evaluation, for Columbia Essays on Modern Writers, of the Greek writer Nikos Kazantzakis, whose works Professor Bien has earlier translated, including "The Last Temptation," "St. Francis" and "Report to Greco."
To create and coordinate a formal program of study of films as an art form and medium of expression, Maurice Rapf '35, veteran writer, director and producer of films in Hollywood and New York, has been appointed Director of Film Studies within the Drama Department. Although various aspects of film have been taught at Dartmouth for several years, offerings by either regular faculty or visiting professionals like Mr. Rapf himself, who has taught a winter course on film writing for five years, have heretofore been only loosely coordinated.
Recognizing that films today constitute an important, pervasive and creative communications force, President Kemeny has drawn on his Venture Fund to underwrite the three-year project to set up a film studies program. As explained by Prof. Errol Hill, chairman of the Drama Department, the program will be continued if at the end of three years the faculty has approved a curriculum and necessary support funds have been raised.
Mr. Rapf stressed that, in setting up the new area of concentration, the Drama Department is "not attempting to develop professional talent but rather will seek to use the excitement young people feel about movies as stimulus for creative and critical work, while also helping them gain an understanding of an important medium in our culture."
The film studies program will have offices and facilities on the top floor of Fairbanks North, where Blair Watson, Director of Instructional Services, will continue to serve as consultant.
Following his graduation from Dartmouth, Mr. Rapf went to Hollywood, where he became a screen writer for 12 years. Two of his best known films were Cinderella and Song of the South, both for Disney.
In 1951, he moved to New York and began writing, directing and producing documentaries, and in the past 20 years has done approximately 60 films for many of the major corporations in the United States and several government agencies. He has served in the past as film critic for Life and Family Circle magazines, and began teaching one term a year at Dartmouth in 1967 as a visiting lecturer. He also has taught at Brown University.
Even without a formal program, Dartmouth has long encouraged students in the field of film, and an impressive number of alumni are active in it. Among some of Dartmouth's better known practitioners are Joseph Loesy '29; the late Walter Wanger '15: Walter Bernstein and Joseph Dunforf. both '40; Jim Goldstone '53; Robert Rafelson '54; and Steve Geller '62, who did the screenplays for The Valid"Papers and Slaughterhouse Five.
Colin D. Campbell, Professor Economics, traveled recently to Switzerland, to attend the 25th anniversary meeting of the Mont pelerin Society, an international organization concerned with preserving individual freedom within the framework of the free market. In the same vein, as a member of the planning committee he attended a conference at the University of Virginia honoring the eminent Chicago economist, Milton Friedman. Subject of the conference was "Capitalism and Freedom: Problems and Prospects," and among the contributing participants was Prof. Edwin G. Dolan of Dartmouth who gave a paper entitled "A Harder Look at Alienation."
John W. Sommer, Assistant Professor of Geography who has done considerable work studying the process of change in rural areas at the outer edges of megalopolis, has received two grants totaling $30,000 from the Environmental Protection Agency to do research on and disseminate information about a model of the impact of cities on a river basin.
For the River Basin Model, Professor Sommer is putting together sets of data bases, intended to typify river basin cities and culled from 220 standard metropolitan statistical areas. This large and complex model already is being used in computer-based simulation games in both geography and urban studies .classes.
Professor Sommer, who was recently named to the Hanover Planning Board, has co-authored a book on trends in the spatial organization of society and their future implications entitled Futurescapes. Finishing touches on the book, to be published in March by Duxbury Press, were made at Dartmouth's Minary Center where the authors gathered for a week.
Another sign of the growing interchange between East and West through what once was called the Iron Curtain was the visit to Romania last month of Prof. Charles B. McLane '41 of the Government Department to visit five Dartmouth students participating in a pilot foreign study program last term at the University of Bucharest. Professor McLane, an authority on Soviet and East European affairs, reviewed the program with the five students and also talked with Romanian officials about the prospects for an exchange relationship between Dartmouth and the University of Bucharest.
A new book by Richard W. Sterling, Professor of Government, entitled Sharing the Globe: TheAge of Macropolitics, is now in production at Random House and is scheduled for publication next fall. In other recent activities by members of the Government Department, Laurence I. Radway gave a lecture at the Air Command and Staff College at Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama, on Congress, the Press and American Foreign Policy; Howard L. Erdman has written a study of politics in the Indian fertilizer industry, parts of which will be published in the Economic and PoliticalWeekly in Bombay; David A. Baldwin presented a paper on "Economic Power" at a symposium on power and influence sponsored by the State University of New York at Albany; and Donald W. McNemar participated in a panel on "Global Legal Reform" at a Washington, D. C., meeting of the American Political Science Association. Lynn M. Mather, a new member of the Government faculty last fall, presented a paper to the same meeting.
Michael A. Dorris, Instructor in Anthropology, director of the Native American Studies Program, and a Modoc Indian himself, is writing two chapters for a forthcoming publication. Handbook for North American Indians. Both chapters deal with Alaskan Athapaskan groups, among whom he did field work after graduate work at Yale.
Also in the area of upcoming publications, David D. Gregory, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, has learned that a book. The ChangingFaces of Rural Spain, containing a chapter by him, is scheduled to come off the press in February.
For the 160 MBA candidates taking Business Policy this past fall at Tuck School, Prof. James B. Quinn provided a personalized view from the pinnacle of American corporate life. As guest lecturer capping the term's work Professor Quinn introduced Thomas A. Murphy, vice chairman of the board of General Motors, who spoke on "Management Controls in a Decentralized World Wide Company."
To provide direct faculty guidanceities to both on- and off-campus education courses, the Education Department has made five appointments. Appointed for on-campus responsibilities are William E. Lingelbach, for ten years a teacher of English at Milton (Mass.) Academy, and former director of summer Upward Bound in Milton, who will supervise secondary school practice teaching; and Gordon M. Mather, a specialist in educational psychology and psycholinguistics from the University of California at Levine, who will work in elementary teacher preparation programs. Appointed to supervise Tucker interns off-campus are Ethel S. Ruymaker, from the faculty at California State College, Hayward; Geneva L. R. Lockerman, psychologist-counselor at Jersey City State College since 1970 and former Jersey City teacher; and Daniel A. Lindley Jr., a former Assistant Professor of Education at Dartmouth who is returning from the Chicago Circle campus of the University of Illinois where he was an associate professor.
Dr. Robert E. Gosselin, chairman of the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, and Prof. Roger P. Smith of the same department both participated last month (December) in the 26th annual postgraduate assembly in anesthesiology held in New York City by the New York State Society of Anesthesiologists. Dr. Gosselin, who has testified before Congress as an authority on pollutants, was chairman of a panel considering "Some Toxicologic Problems of Today's Environment," while Dr. Smith served as one of the panelists.
Herbert Faulkner West '22, Professor of Comparative Literature Emeritus who since retirement has also achieved success in a second career as a book collector and seller, has announced publication of a new book, Sunny Intervals, which he describes as a "bookman's miscellanea" of Frank Dobie, Robert Frost, and Henry Miller interest.
Of the book, published in 400 numbered and signed copies, Professor West writes in a foreword that it is "probably my last one dealing with books and collecting" and is "made up mainly of articles and forewords to my catalogues, primarily concerning first editions and book buying in London and other parts of England as well as the Bay Area in San Francisco. As they were well received on publication, I thought perhaps they should be preserved in hard covers for book lovers who might want them."
Richard Eberhart '26, honorary president of the Poetry Society of America.
