Beloit College Magazine Fall 2000 Contents Departments From the President Fast News Letters Beloit Bookshelf The Last Word Features Underwater Archaeology Hearing the Meanings of Words Kerouac for Grown-Ups A Race to the Starting Line "Don't rain! Don't rain!" Taking Theatre to the Streets Beloit in Africa A Paintbrush at the Front Saving the Turtles Contact Us: Beloit College Magazine 700 College Street Beloit, WI 53511-5595 608-363-2215 | 608-363-2870 FAX: 608-363-2615 belmag@beloit.edu Beloit College Homepage Beloit College Publications Beloit College Calendar of Events

Beloit Bookshelf Indian Country, God’s Country — by Philip Burnham’74 Island Press Washington, D.C., 2000 Before Glacier National Park, the Blackfeet and the Kootenai lived freely in open country. Before Badlands National Park, the Oglala Sioux hunted buffalo across the forbidding landscape. In Indian Country, God’s Country, Mr. Burnham examines the relationship between the National Park Service and the original inhabitants of Mesa Verde, the Grand Canyon, Glacier, the Badlands, and Death Valley national parks. He unravels the interactions of history, tourism, commerce, spirituality, and possession as nine-tenths of the law, from the first meetings of white people and Native Americans to the current conditions of compromise and indecision within the National Park Service. His is a new and compelling description of issues rarely told. War Memorials — by Clint McCown, Professor of English Graywolf Press Saint Paul, Minn., 2000 As well as heading the College’s creative writing program, Prof. McCown is a novelist. In his latest book, War Memorials, he addresses the subject of conflict the Confederate battlefields, the skies of World War II, and the wars in the human heart when there are no other wars to fight. It is 1992, and Nolan Vann, the confused son of a life insurance salesman, has no real idea where he wants to be or what he wants to do. His former job lost, his marriage crumbling, his past dissolving, and his future uncertain, Nolan strives to sort out his life and keep on keeping on in a small Southern town. There, everyday life knits itself into a strange, sad, funny, (and entertaining) whole. Faculty email: Clint McCown - professor and chair, English Sisters in Pain: Battered Women Fight Back — by L. Elisabeth Beattie’76 and Mary Angela Shaughnessy SCN University Press of Kentucky Lexington, Ky., 2000 According to the authors, each year, more than four million violent acts against women occur in the United States. Recent statistics indicate that more than 50% of all women will experience some form of domestic violence during marriage, and one-third of those will be battered repeatedly every year. In 1995, Brereton Jones, governor of Kentucky, granted parole hearings to ten women convicted of killing, conspiring to kill, or assaulting their domestic partners because those women had been terribly abused before taking the actions that resulted in their arrests and convictions. The media called them the sisters in pain. Ms. Beattie and Sister Shaughnessy interviewed these women and learned their histories. Madame Deluxe — by Tenaya Darlington’94 Coffeehouse Press Minneapolis, Minn., 200 Tenaya Darlington is a former editor of the Beloit Fiction Journal. These days, she is moving on to different things—one is this new volume of poetry. Ms. Darlington’s fresh perspective and attitude startle the reader with confrontation, glitz, and zeal too complex to be only "feminist." In the persona of Madame Deluxe, Ms. Darlington thumbs her nose at society’s opinions, applying her weird and talented take on conventional (and unconventional) themes—scandal, scorn, weight, academics, drugs, dreams, lust, and death. Madame Deluxe is Tenaya Darlington’s debut anthology, aiming right to the heart and/or the jugular. The collection is, as they say, a hoot. Form, Function, and Context: Material Culture Studies in Scandinavian Archaeology — edited by Deborah Olausson’73 and HelleVandkilde Wallin & Dalholm Boktryckeri AB Lund, Sweden, 2000 Ms. Olausson (who majored in anthropology at Beloit College), and her colleague, Helle Vandkilde, collected 21 articles based on papers presented at a Nordic symposium in the autumn of 1997. The concept of context is key; the articles examine the design of an archaeological artifact and its crafter’s purpose in creating it, but also its place within the society that caused it to be created. These societies range from Norway in the mesolithic era to eastern Sweden in the Iron Age. Hungarian Photography—A Comparative History - by Michael Simon'80 The Hungarian Museum of Photography Kecskemet, Hungary, 2000 Beloit emeritus Professor Michael Simon's book on Hungarian photography is unique. It attempts the enormous task of examining Hungarian photography in the context of socio-economic and historic circumstances. The reader gains insight into not only the most significant Hungarian photographers and periods, but to the history of photography, the history of Hungary, the country's political background over the past 100 years, and the Hungarian soul. Professor Simon provides information about photography itself while comparing the genre to other fields of fine arts, and Hungarian photography to other nations' photography in front of the vivid canvas of world history. This is a book that ought to be translated into English. It is a pleasure for an English speaker to handle this publication even in its current Hungarian form - its tasteful layout provides aesthetic pleasure and the photos themselves tell a story worth learning.

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