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ARTS AND SCIENCES IN BRIEF

Dittrick receives world's largest historical birth control device collection

Case's Dittrick Medical History Center has become home to a major collection tracing the development of contraceptive technology from ancient times to the present.

With more than 650 artifacts and 150 books and ephemera from around the world, the Percy Skuy Collection on the History of Contraception is the largest assemblage of its kind. As a traveling exhibition, it has been displayed at medical meetings from Singapore to Switzerland. James Edmonson, chief curator at the Dittrick, first saw the collection at a Medical Museum Association meeting in Toronto in 1998, but never imagined it would one day reside at Case.

James Edmonson, left, chief curator at the Dittrick Medical History Center, introduces Percy Skuy, collector.

Percy Skuy is the former CEO of Ortho Pharmaceutical (now Janssen-Ortho), a Canadian pharmaceutical company specializing in women's health. A "born saver," as he puts it, he assembled the collection over a period of 40 years, always with the goal of illustrating "the motives and myths of contraceptive practices."

The artifacts in the collection include amulets and folk medicines of varying efficacy, as well as a panoply of devices developed in modern times. Taken together, they tell a story that often combines, in Skuy's words, ingenuity and naïveté.

"Throughout history," he remarks in a catalogue of the collection, "people have employed a vast range of contraceptive practices that, however incredible and ineffective they may seem, were always used with good intention and in good faith."

In 2000, when Skuy began to look for a permanent home for the collection, his search brought him to the Dittrick, established in 1898 as a part of the Cleveland Medical Library Association and one of the five leading medical museums in the United States.

Edmonson promptly assembled a group of College faculty members, including Jonathan Sadowsky and Renée Sentilles (history), Athena Vrettos (English), and Dorothy Miller (Center for Women), to suggest ways in which the collection might promote research and learning in the College and across the university. Edmonson also outlined how the Dittrick would care for and present the collection. After extended consideration, Skuy recommended that Janssen-Ortho donate the Skuy Collection to Case. A formal presentation was held at the Dittrick in early March.

Later this spring, a museum advisory committee of representatives from the faculty and the Cleveland community will work with Edmonson to design a permanent exhibition for the collection. There are also plans for an international symposium and a virtual exhibition online.

Artifacts from the collection are currently on display in the Dittrick. The library is open Monday through Friday 8:30 am to 7 pm; Saturday 9 am to 5 pm; and Sunday 1 to 6 pm.

Humanities Week explores homelands and security

In mid-March, the Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities hosted Humanities Week 2005: "Homelands and Security." The event featured artists, playwrights, filmmakers, and scholars who reflected on the meaning of home, homeland, identity, and belonging.

The keynote speaker for the week was Art Spiegelman, one of today's most influential comic book artists and illustrators and the Pulitzer Prize-winning creator of the Holocaust narrative Maus: A Survivor's Tale. Spiegelman delivered his talk, "Comix 101: In the Shadow of No Towers," to a crowd of almost 600 people at the Cleveland Institute of Art. In addition, Ranjana Khanna, Humanities Week Visiting Scholar and associate professor of English and women's studies at Duke University, delivered a series of lectures on the concept of asylum.

Also featured in Humanities Week's public lecture series were artist Yolanda López ("The Virgin of Guadalupe and Her Impact as a Role Model"); Stephanie Coontz, professor of history and family studies at Evergreen State College ("Courting Disaster: The Past and Future of Marriage and the Family"); and Charles Cantalupo, a poet, filmmaker, and professor of English, comparative literature, and African studies at Penn State. Cantalupo gave a poetry reading and screened his latest documentary film, "Against All Odds." The López lecture was co-sponsored by the Center for Women, and the Coontz lecture by the College Scholars Program.

The theme of next year's Humanities Week, and of the Baker-Nord Seminar for Fall 2005, will be "Children and Childhoods." The Seminar program, which awards fellowships to Case faculty and to visiting scholars and artists, sponsors a series of discussions each fall intended to open new avenues for research and creative work in the humanities.

Protasiewicz awarded NSF "creativity grant"

John Protasiewicz

John Protasiewicz, professor of chemistry, has received a special two-year, unsolicited grant from the National Science Foundation. Such awards provide continuing support to researchers whose NSFfunded projects have already yielded significant results. The purpose, according to the agency, is to "offer the most creative investigators an extended opportunity to attack adventurous, 'high risk' opportunities in the same general research area."

With this support, Protasiewicz plans to build on his prior work in designing new forms of plastics or polymers. Most research in this field, he explains, "is based on organic chemistry and thus involves mostly the elements carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and sometimes sulfur. We believe there is a lot of potential for the 100 or so other elements of the periodic table to be utilized for these interesting materials." Such materials may lead to startling innovations in electronics, such as a television screen so flexible it could be rolled up and put in a pocket.

Grant supports play to be written for MFA students

The Case/Cleveland Play House Master of Fine Arts (MFA) Professional Actor Training Program has been selected as one of only five recipients of a Playwright in Residence Grant, awarded by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Theatre Communications Group to support a playwright and a newly created production.

With this grant, nationally recognized playwright and Pulitzer Prize nominee Heather McDonald has been commissioned to write a play that will be produced by the Cleveland Play House and performed by students in Case's incoming MFA class in Spring 2007.

Mark Alan Gordon, associate director of the Case/Cleveland Play House MFA program, applied for the grant and will be collaborating with McDonald. Following the play's opening in Cleveland, the production will travel to New York City along with the four other NEA/TCGfunded productions.

"It is a remarkable achievement for an MFA partnership program that is only nine years old to gain this kind of national recognition," said Ron Wilson, chair of the theater arts program in Case's department of theater and dance.

Thompson appointed Armington Professor

Lee Thompson, associate professor in the department of psychology, has been appointed the Armington Associate Professor for 2005-07. Thompson is internationally known for her research on how the genetic code is translated into complex behavior at the level of brain function.

The Armington Professor is to be a "member of the tenured faculty of the College whose professional activity and personal character support teaching, research, and programs intended to encourage the development of qualities of individual initiative tempered with appropriate concern for the rights of others."

Thompson is currently co-director of the SAGES pilot program and a member of the College's executive committee.

Earlier this year, she served on the search committee for the founding chair of the department of cognitive science. She has also served on a variety of other College, university, and faculty senate committees over the years.

In 2002, Thompson was the recipient of the Mortar Board Top Prof Award. Since joining the Case faculty in 1987 as a visiting assistant professor, she has taught a wide range of undergraduate and graduate courses in her department.

"All of us at Case have benefited from Lee's dedication to her work, her commitment to her students and colleagues, and her willingness to give of herself to promote the university's mission," said Mark Turner, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.