Academy Launches New Relationship with City of Cambridge;
Cultural Critic Gerald Early to Discuss African-Americans in Film
Wednesday, February
12, 2003 - The American Academy of Arts and Sciences launched a
new relationship with the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts, at an event on
February 12, 2003. The Academy plans to invite individuals from neighboring
schools on an annual basis to participate in scholarly exchange programs.
Working with mayor Michael A. Sullivan (D-Cambridge), the Academy
anticipates a new level of interaction with the schools in Cambridge.
"We have an
extraordinary institution of international fame in our backyard. This new
relationship between the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the
Cambridge Public Schools will provide the faculty and students of Cambridge
with wonderful opportunities and I am grateful for this collaboration," said
Mayor Michael A. Sullivan.
"The Academy enjoys
existing relationships with such universities and institutions as Boston
University, Tufts University, Harvard University, Brandeis University,
Wellesley College, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Boston Public
Library and the Boston Athenaeum. We welcome this opportunity to strengthen our
relationship with the schools of Cambridge," said Patricia Meyer Spacks,
President of the American Academy.
Education has long
been a focus of attention and research for the Academy. Following the lead of
its founder John Adams, who said, "Wisdom and knowledge… diffused
generally among the body of the people [is] necessary for the preservation of
their rights and liberties," the Academy has engaged in pioneering work on
education - from primary schooling to post-graduate study - throughout its
history.
The American Academy
was founded in 1780 "to cultivate every art and science which may tend to
advance the interest, honor, dignity, and happiness of a free, independent, and
virtuous people." The current membership of over 3,700 Fellows and 600 Foreign
Honorary Members includes more than 150 Nobel laureates and 50 Pulitzer Prize
winners. Drawing on the wide-ranging expertise of its membership, the Academy
conducts thoughtful, innovative, non-partisan studies on international
security, social policy, education, and the humanities.
The event, the
American Academy's 1867th Stated Meeting, featured cultural critic Gerald Early,
the Merle Kling Professor of Modern Letters at Washington University in St.
Louis, discussing "Art, Race, and the Coldest War: The Image of the African
American Soldier in Three Hollywood Korean War Films."
Early is the Merle
Kling Professor of Modern Letters, a professor of English and of African and
Afro-American studies, and the director of the International Writers Center at
Washington University in St. Louis. One of the most distinguished writers on
American culture, he is editor of several volumes, including The Sammy
Davis, Jr., Reader (2001) and The Muhammad Ali Reader (1998). He
is also the author of The Culture of Bruising: Essays on Prizefighting,
Literature, and Modern American Culture, which won the 1994 National
Book Critics Circle Award for criticism. A consultant for the Ken Burns
baseball and jazz documentaries aired on PBS, Early's work also has appeared in
the Atlantic Monthly, the Hungry Mind Review, the New Republic,
and Harper's and he has been a frequent commentator for National Public
Radio's "Fresh Air." A Fellow of the American Academy since 1997, he
currently serves as a Councilor and as a member of the Committee on the
Academy's Initiative for Humanities and Culture.
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