Zangrando to Coordinate New Liberal Studies Program

Joanna S. Zangrando

by Andrea Wise

Dr. Joanna S. Zangrando, associate professor of American studies, has been appointed faculty coordinator of the Lib- eral Studies program at Skidmore College by Dean of the Faculty Eric J. Weller.

In the newly created position, the equiva- lent of an academic department chairman- ship, Zangrando will coordinate all aspects of the college’s recently created liberal studies curriculum, which will be imple- mented fully in fall 1985.

The duties of the faculty coordinator will include: budget responsibilities, order- ing course materials, arranging for audio- visual equipment and guest speakers for the new all-college Liberal Studies courses, and coordination of the faculty who will be teaching those courses.

Zangrando, a faculty member since 1976, was chosen coordinator from among the 40 faculty members who will be teaching the Liberal Studies courses, Wel- ler said. In announcing her appointment, he noted Zangrando’s experience as a project reviewer and panelist for the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). As faculty coordinator of the Liberal Studies program, Weller said, Zangrando will take over project director- ship of a $148,000 grant from NEH which supports the new curriculum.

The new academic program — in plan- ning and development stages for two years — has been designed to meet student needs for a more broadly based liberal arts education. It is organized into three categories describing the educational pro- cess. “Foundation” will include the neces- sary work in expository writing and quan- titative reasoning; “Integration” will pro- vide students with course options in the Liberal Studies areas, and “Exploration” will cover requirements in the sciences, arts, foreign languages and non-Western cultures.

The core of the new curriculum is a freshman-level course known as Liberal Studies I, which will be taken by all first- year students. Team-taught by members of the Skidmore faculty, the course will provide a common educational experience for students, introducing them to major works from a variety of academic disciplines.

From the common course, students will move through three more Liberal Studies phases, each of which presents a range of course options, before selecting their major studies. Liberal Studies II will be a group of courses studying cultural traditions and social change, and Liberal Studies ITI will be a grouping of courses in the arts, critical analysis and aesthetic appreciation. Liberal Studies IV will be a series of courses examining interactions between scientific and technological development in society.

“The reasoning behind this new pro- gram” Zangrando said, “is that, for stud- ents entering college from different back- grounds, it is crucial that we provide coherence to their education. By focusing their attention on common concepts, ideas, writings and other creative works, we hope to enhance the intellectual climate of the college.”

Zangrando noted the new Liberal Studies program “is also an exciting endeavor for the Skidmore faculty, because it gives usa chance to treat somewhat familiar subjects in a new way and to explore new subjects and work in new ways with our peers.”

Zangrando, who will be team teaching Liberal Studies I with a number of faculty next fall, is a specialist in women’s history and a member of Skidmore’s ad hoc Women’s Studies Committee. With her husband, Robert, she has published a chapter on Eleanor Roosevelt and civil rights in a new book of essays, Without Precedent: The Life and Career of Eleanor Roosevelt.

INTELLECTUALS

Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, New York April 11-13, 1985

The conference will celebrate the 20th anniversary of the quarterly magazine SALMAGUNDI, founded by Professor of English Robert Boyers in 1965 and published at Skidmore College since 1969. Featured among the 18 distinguished participants will be: RENATA ADLER: Senior staff writer with The New Yorker, former N.Y. Times film critic, author of several novels, including Speedboat. CONOR CRUISE O'BRIEN: Author of many books on politics and literature; currently Visiting Hodder Professor at Dartmouth College; formerly, editor of the London Observer, and head of the U.N. mission to Katanga under Dag Hammarskjold. GEORGE STEINER: Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Geneva, Switzerland; author of Language and Silence, Antigones, After Babel, many other books. CHRISTOPHER LASCH: Professor of History at the University of Rochester; author of Culture of Narcissism, The Minimal Self, The New Radicalism in America, and other books. EDWARD SAID: Parr Professor of Literature at Columbia University; for some years a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization; author of Beginnings, Orientalism, and other books.

STANISLAW BARANCZAK: Dissident Polish poet and essayist; now

Professor of Polish Literature at Harvard University.

Topics will include: e The New Feminist Intellectual

e@ The Intellectual in the Post-Colonial World e C. Wright Mills and the Intellectual Legacy of the New Left

@ Orwell’s Challenge e Intellectuals in Latin America e The Responsibility of Intellectuals

® Melanie Klein: The Psychoanalyst as Intellectual

e@ What Was a New York Intellectual?

e The Dissident Polish Intellectual

e Kissinger: The Intellectual in Power

For further information contact: Professor Robert Boyers, Editor SALMAGUNDI

Skidmore College

Saratoga Springs, N.Y. 12866 (518) 584-5000, ext. 2302 or 2306

FDR: Pro- or Anti-Labor? Professor Wins Grant to Find Out

by Andrea Wise

Questions about the sincerity of Frank- lin D. Roosevelt’s “pro-labor” sympathies will be addressed in a grant-winning research project of Ronald Edsforth, assistant pro- fessor of American studies at Skidmore College.

A $1,000 award from the Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Foundation of Hyde Park will help Edsforth with a unique intellectual biography focused on FDR’s viewpoints on the whole subject of “work, workers and the labor movement.”

Since the early 1970s, “radical labor historians have questioned FDR’s pro- labor reputation,” according to Edsforth. “They point to his reluctant endorsement of the Wagner Act, which established the National Labor Relations Board, and to his World War II era policies limiting the power of rank and file workers, as evidence that Roosevelt was not the pro-labor/ pro- worker president of political legend.”

Edsforth’s research thus far has covered the late president’s earliest days in public service to his tenure as assistant secretary of the Navy under President Woodrow Wilson, a period that helped shape much of Roosevelt’s feelings on labor issues, said Edsforth. “His experience running Navy yards introduced him to the prob- lems of the industrial worker and the labor movement. His sympathetic reaction earned FDR high marks from labor leaders,” he added.

However, as Edsforth pointed out, a “distance” existed between FDR and labor leaders which prevented the relationship from becoming too close. “This is primarily due to Roosevelt’s patrician background,” he explained. “He had to be forced to get closer to various labor leaders, and he was a reluctant participant in negotiations with them. It is possible,” Edsforth said, “that Franklin Roosevelt never spoke toa ‘real’ worker, aside from the domestic help and caretakers employed by his family, until he was a young adult.”

Edsforth characterized the late president as “an enlightened upper class progressive. This differs somewhat from the so-called ‘pro-labor’ view of FDR, but does tend to refute the more recent anti-Roosevelt labor history.”

The study, which began as a paper written for a centennial observance of FDR’s birthday in 1980, earned its author a Skidmore faculty research grant last summer. When the project is completed, Edsforth hopes it will become his second book. His first book, titled A Second Industrial Revolution: The Transformation of Class Culture and Society in 20th- Century Flint, Michigan, is under consi- deration at Rutgers University Press. Eds- forth, who joined the Skidmore faculty two years ago, is a historian of business and labor and their effects on American culture.