In a Letter to the Editor published in The Wellesley News edition of May 12, 1974, an individual by the name of R. Polly Sle championed the newly created term.

“I want to express my admiration and warm thanks to all those people who have worked so feverishly to make winter study at Wellesley in January, 1975 a reality, Wellesley’s first Winter Term promises to be a smashing success!

“The activities will be stimulating (if course titles are an accurate indication) and will provide students the opportunity to round out their education experience with some “fun” courses for a change.

“Moreover, Winter Term participants will learn what it is really like to live in a community. Some may say that we have all been doing that for some time now, but you are wrong. Winter Term will reveal to us the error of that myth. 

“Living together is one of the most important aspects of community life; and, as we all know, living arrangements have been worked out smoothly and to the satisfaction of everyone. The residents of Bates, Freeman and McAfee, who so cheerfully volunteered the use of their rooms, deserve a special thanks. Their enthusiastic cooperation has been a big help in the planning of Winter Term.

“With this success under our belts, we should plan to tackle bigger and better things. How about the residence contract? That definitely needs some revision — grants the student too many rights, we all know that power is dangerous in the hands of those who do not understand it. But that’s just a hint of what’s to come ….”

In the same edition of The Wellesley News, Ellen Myer expressed her disapproval of the Winter Term housing arrangements in a provocatively titled Letter to the Editor, “Winter term violates Rights of students.” In it she critiqued the policy that required all students staying on campus to reside in East Side dorms, forcing those already living there but not staying on campus over January, to completely move out.

“ … Obviously, the Winter Term we are being ‘offered,’ which claims the authorization of Academic Council, bears little resemblance to this proposal in terms of residence policy. Winter Term ’75 can succeed only if the college forces students who cannot or do not want to attend Winter Term to give up their rooms during January. This forced move entails a great deal of time spent packing, since the college will assume no liability for anything left in the rooms; and it requires such great amounts of time in the midst of final exams. Winter Term ’75 is not “voluntary and self-supporting,” as Academic Council mandated it should be.

“Whether or not Winter Term ’75 will occur remains to be seen. If it does, it will represent a gross inequity, a project built upon discrimination and exploitation, of which Wellesley can hardly be proud.”

Three years ago, when it seemed that wintersession might be cancelled permanently to allow time for the long-term construction of many buildings on campus, students and teachers rallied around the importance of the between-semester opportunity, but the program obviously took time to reach its current popularity. Perhaps we owe a debt of thanks to Myer that we get to keep our rooms throughout Wintersession.  

Image credit: Wellesley College Archives

Contact the editors responsible for this story: Phoebe Rebhorn and Hira Khan

In an article from Nov. 11, 1948’s edition, Marily Jacoby ’51 reported on election night events in the year Republican candidate Thomas E. Dewey lost in a shocking upset to Democrat candidate Harry S. Truman. Jacoby’s article highlights a long tradition of political engagement of Wellesley students. 

While Wellesley does not currently have a Republican chapter, that wasn’t the case back in 1948. Jacoby reported that “victory-hungry Republicans” filled Harvard’s Memorial Hall where it had two television sets and a huge map of the United States, for a joint event with Harvard’s Republican Club.

“Upon the map they expected to place many little elephants, each a symbol of Dewey’s conquest of one state. For those few states which they thought might treat Governor Dewey adversely, they had ready several small donkeys, Confederate flags, and blue stars. In retrospect, we wonder if the supply of donkeys ran out!”

“Around midnight when Truman’s victory became more apparent, several Democrats entered the hall, calling for an imminent change in celebrators. Wellesley Republicans returned to their dorms in the hope of hearing favorable radio reports. 

“Joyce Norton ’51, who wandered into a room from which the voice of a radio commentator was issuing, summarized their attitude. “I don’t understand,” she said. ‘What’s happening?’”

In the lead-up to the 1968 election, published in that year’s Halloween edition, Joane Curtis ’72 and Dorothy Devine ’69 covered a Boston Garden rally “Eleven Candidates for Peace” which had over 10,000 attendees. That year’s campaign was embroiled in the Civil Rights Movement, as well as the upswing in anti-Vietnam War protests, both key topics referenced at the event. 

“The first speaker, Richard Goodwin …reiterated the rhetoric … that the ‘older generation is cutting off the path to power, and that they are more anxious to preserve rather than serve their convictions.’

Oscar-winning actress Shirley MacLaine was also at the rally, advocating for a “revolutionary government out of revolutionary ideas.”

“There can no longer be one law for the rich, one law for the poor, one for the white, one law for the black… It’s time to tell it like it is. Politics alone won’t solve the problem,” she said.

Curtis and Devine observed that the crowd was largely quiet throughout the speeches and gave generously to the donation buckets for the “11 for Peace” campaign. 

“More powerful than anything McCarthy could say, however, was the emotion of those who listened,” they wrote.

Another election year that feels particularly significant to consider today is that of 2016, which had a special resonance for the Wellesley community when Hillary Clinton ’69 ran for the presidency. We reported on the increase in political engagement, particularly organizing following Donald Trump’s win over Clinton. 

Genae Matthew’s article, published on Dec. 2, 2016, covered a teach-in following the election, an important piece of not only how the community engages with presidential elections, but also in how we think and have thought about them. 

“‘How did we get here?’ Professor Brenna Greer asked the crowd. She began by arguing that “we’ve done a lot of forgetting. We either don’t know or we choose to forget our history, particularly in regard to race and racism.” 

“…She presented a number of factors which contributed to the rise of Donald Trump, among them the rise in consumerism and white nationalism inspired by the Obama presidency.

Matthew reported that Greer stressed how important identity politics and political correctness are in language, and the appropriation of political correctness was key for Trump supporters to legitimize their inflammatory rhetoric. 

“‘No one who has come of age in the United States is free of racial prejudice towards people of color,’ Greer argued.

A week after Trump was elected as president, Alexandria Otero reported on the Wellesley community’s response to the election. Karen Su ’19, Vice President and Women Colleges representative for Wellesley Students for Hillary, said she was hopeful that students could be more “activated” after the election. 

“‘They didn’t realize their stake in the election. Now they do, and they are activating that. They are angry, but angry in the sense that they are willing to be productive with that anger,’ Su said.

Contact the editor responsible for this story: Valida Pau

Wellesley students have an illustrious tradition of protest. Protest is a form of expression requiring courage of conviction and the ability to organize and mobilize in a manner that prompts, and even necessitates, community dialogue. I believe protest to be a uniquely meaningful form of expression because of the tangible engagement it requires from participants and observers alike. It re-transcribes what can feel like abstracted analysis into an unavoidably palpable reality. This is important because while current events may feel at times to merely be an intellectual exercise, they have a physical reality that those affected don’t get the luxury of ignoring. The abstracted value of these conversations can feel heightened when they are only taking place in online forums, especially anonymous ones such as Sidechat. 

While many community members may recall the anti-apartheid protests at Wellesley in the 90’s, there seems to be institutional amnesia regarding the more recent protests of the 2010’s.These include (but aren’t limited to) a sit-in outside administrative offices in Green Hall organized by the Wellesley Asian Action Movement (WAAM) in 2001 and a decades worth of follow up actions in protest of the systematic marginalization of Asian/Asian-American studies and representation at Wellesley. Many teachers and members of Wellesley Asian Alliance (WAA)  — those who were and continue to be  directly impacted — are keeping these memories alive, but why isn’t the community at large? 

Frankly, I believe that students’ well-founded concern of administrative rebuke due to protest has metastasized to a broader fear of any form of community action and dialogue, even discussion of protest. These past few years, I’ve seen protests, but I have witnessed a notable decline in willingness for open engagement. I don’t want to minimize the very real harms that many community members face including deportation, expulsion and financial ramifications, which can impact their entire lives. These risks are amplified for the most marginalized students, those who often have the most direct stake in these issues facing these harms disproportionately. Students are afraid to protest for good reason. 

I’ve found the lack of unimpeded dialogue around the genocide in Gaza to be the most jarring. Any attempts to initiate  or engage in discussion were promptly shut down by repressive responses both from admin and other students, invoking fear of legal action, academic sanctions or media frenzies. We keep trying. Yet, we keep failing to open these dialogues. The space between total agreement and outright rejection is expansive and underutilized. 

In my own corner of Wellesley, the News, I see potential for the paper to be a medium for bridging the gap between the closed door / private conversations that I witness and the actions that aren’t being taken. I want the paper to be an organization more representative of the Wellesley experience; I want it to be a reflection of what members of the community, especially students, think and care about. I invite you to my space — respond to this article; I know you have thoughts. 

In your own niches of this college, you have the agency to initiate these dialogues. As students, we have the right to take back our ability — from admin and from ourselves — to voice and advocate for what we truly believe in.

Olin’s Fire Arts club performed in the amphitheater outside Alumnae Hall. Following this performance, attendees returned inside to enjoy a catered meal, which included many staples of beloved foods and dishes from the Pacific Islands, including spam and rice wrapped in seaweed, and Suafa’i, a Samoan banana and coconut pudding. 

After everyone had finished their meals, performances started back up again, kicked off by a hula performed by PIA’s e-board. Hula is a traditional Native Hawaiian dance, which can serve as both storytelling and religious practice. In a 2022 article for National Geographic entitled “The surprising history of Hawai’i’s hula tradition,” Māpuana de Silva, a kuma hula (hula teacher), explained hula in their own words.

“Hula is our highest expression of who we are. It’s our language put into motion. The stories encompass not just our way of living, but our existence, our world,” de Silva said. 

Following this, Uesili Kuli ’26 performed the tau’olunga, a cultural Tongan dance. It evolved from a combination of the Samoan taualanga and the Tongan ula dances. In the Tongan language the word tau’olunga “connotes something high in space,” as described by Adrienne L. Kaeppler in her 1970 article, “Tongan Dance: A Study in Cultural Change.” The dance has also evolved in who typically performs it, but its costume and performance remain a significant event. Kuli’s performance of the Tau’olunga was particularly special to them because they are the only currently registered Tongan student at Wellesley. 

“It used to be a really special dance reserved for daughters of village chiefs. But nowadays, usually when a Tongan wife has to be married on her wedding day, she will dance it before the ceremony, kind of like this graduation into married life. Certain specific trademarks of the dance include the costume, which includes a teunga the costume or skirt that one is wearing, including the rope used to tie it, a kafa and then vesa, wristlets and anklets that you wear … it was especially important because when I think of celebration as a Tongan American, I’m thinking of the Tau’olunga and to be the only Tongan enrolled at Wellesley right now … when I think of celebration I’m thinking of that dance.”

Kuli explained that learning and practicing for her performance of the Tau’olunga was time consuming, and something she had to consider carefully before deciding to perform, because it is typically learned over a much longer period of time. 

“This is a dance meant to be learned over many months. Everything is important, [down to] the song that’s picked. Who you learn the dance from is important. But since I’m not on the island, and am here at Wellesley, learning it had to be condensed into maybe just under a month. And I felt conflict about whether reducing the time practicing was going to make it genuine or not. But with the encouragement of both my parents and my grandparents, they said, if you just work hard to perfect it, then it should be fine. … I made sure to practice really fervently because the nature of the dance is storytelling through these kinds of gesticulations with your hands, it’s really important that every detail is correct. Everything you’re saying is with your hands, your face and your body. So I would be at the back of the bus [to Boston] just practicing [by] myself, any spare time I had was dedicated to learning,” she said. 

Kuli also explained that tau’olunga is a living practice that is evolving and changing overtime, with a notable period of change being the 1950.

“The biggest transition point for the Tau’olunga was around the 1950s when Queen Salote was ruling the island, she made it way less conservative. … The Tau’olunga as a dance used to be a way for girls to show off. Whereas in school your entire body was covered. But [in the dance]  usually your bare arms will show, below your knees will show. And so it was already more liberal than traditional conservative practices of Tonga. And then in the 1950s Queen Salote changed it further. She added that the girls could actually move during the dancing. When before it was completely standing still. But she was like, let the person perform storytelling,” Kuli said. 

She noted that she was grateful that the Lu’au had been able to celebrate and showcase a variety of different Pacific Island cultures, and to share her own Tongan culture in particular. 

“These are islands that don’t get talked about, they don’t even enter the conversation typically, when people are talking about Pacifica studies, because the main focal point is Hawaii. I was very grateful to have had the opportunity to share my own heritage and Pacific Islander education,” they said.

In thinking about the future of PIA Kuli explained her hope for improving and increasing education about the Pacific Islands.

“We have always been such a small minority, you could probably count on one or two hands how many Pacific Islander students are enrolled in one academic year, at a time. I think our main mission [as the PIA]  is always going to be to advocate for the education of Pacific Studies and culture at Wellesley, if not to just bring more Pacific Islanders into higher ed. And with that comes events centered around not just Hawaii, but reframing this to cover many islands, many different cultures. … Pacific Studies are absent from formal education and informal, frankly. … There needs to be more clarity regarding how the island people got to be, and why we live the way we do now,” Kuli said. 

Emma Lee ’24, one of the co-coordinators of WAA (a position analogous to president in the non-hierarchical org), explained that as the 10th anniversary came up org members were considering how to commemorate the event. Lee had been considering and proposing ideas to the Eboard since her sophomore year, many of which were drawn from her passion for history and knowledge she had gained from the major. 

“I wanted something to memorialize it. And as a history major, a really interesting way to do that is always through exhibitions or anything related to a museum. I feel like we have a lot of archives in particular that I would love to kind of resurrect, and show to the broader Wellesley community. We have archives that date back to when students were first protesting and demonstrating to get a full time Asian American advisor,” Lee said. 

Lee’s instinct for a historical angle for the event proved successful, as it allowed WAA members to draw on their extensive archives, including articles from The Wellesley News, and ensure the legacy of the effort put into AAS could be taught to a new generation of Wellesley students. 

In a pamphlet distributed at the event AAS was explained as an “interdisciplinary field that examines the lives, cultures and histories of people of AAPI descent living in the Americas. AAS as an academic field was born out of the movements for ethnic studies in the 1960s.” 

The exhibition began with a timeline of AAS at Wellesley. Drawing from decades of work by faculty and students to increase and support diversity both inside and outside of the classroom, the push for an AAS minor marked a turning point in 2001. Professor Elena Creef, who was hired in 1993 and is the only trained Asian Americanist faculty member, was denied tenure in 2001. This severely hindered opportunities for Wellesley students to be educated in AAS. The decision was a dismissal of the field at an administrative level and jeopardized its future at the college; not to mention the disregard for Creef’s immense popularity as a professor. This spurred Wellesley Asian Action Movement (WAAM) to organize a student protest of over 200 members. During this time, Wellesley had also been without a full-time Asian Advisor for two years, and the position offerings were so underfunded that they were barely able to attract any qualified applicants. Many Wellesley community members, especially students, saw this as a systemic denial of Asian voices, interests and concerns that ought be uplifted by the community beyond trivialized lip-service.

WAAM was eventually joined by Siblings Leading Action for Multiculturalism (SLAM), an org working for similar representation and support for Latine students. WAAM-SLAM’s collaboration was an essential moment in the history of the creation of AAS, as it drew students together and cemented the origins of solidarity that would allow for a collective push towards institutional recognition of ethnic studies. 

Protests and organizing continued for over a year, after which Wellesley implemented the Korean Language program, the South Asian Studies program and full time positions for a Dean of students of Asian descent and of Latine descent. 

But the work didn’t stop there. 13 years after its first wave of protests WAAM-SLAM II was formed, this time advocating ethnic studies more broadly, multicultural houses and, as an overview poster put it, “a redistribution of resources at Wellesley.” In 2014 the AAS minor was created. The exhibition highlighted not only the work of student activists in this achievement, but also the monumental efforts of faculty in the creation, organization and realization of the program. 

Lee explained that this tracks with a long history of thoughtful collaboration between WAA and professors, and that professors had an especially important role in the creation of the AAS minor. 

“Professor Kodera, of the religion department, was one of the founding members of WAA. And he’s also really helped shape the curriculum of Asian American Studies, along with Professor Yoon Lee, of the English department … [WAA doesn’t] know too much about how to create a minor. The professors know that. Back in the day, it took a lot of talking to the professors, getting their input, getting their letters and getting a paper trail from professors supporting us so that our own demands have some legitimacy, have some faculty support behind that. Something that’s really special about WAA is just how close we are with certain faculty members,” Lee said.  

She explained that WAA is a “student organizing group, run by students for students.” 

“We’re always thinking about what are Wellesley campus’ needs, what are the students’ needs, and then we hope, plan, execute and deliver projects or events that help kind of move forward any agenda we have … One of the pinnacles of my career as co-coordinator of WAA this year and my Eboard this year was raising awareness about issues pertaining to Palestine, and pushing informational mediums, newspaper articles, infographics, resources to students on campus. We hosted action hours for Palestine, in which we help students write letters to representatives, make calls, write emails, etc.” Lee said. 

The event also featured short speeches from many of the professors, students and alums who had been instrumental in the creation of the AAS minor and WAA. There was a short archival video clip of students talking about the importance of the AAS minor during their protests over a decade ago. This moment came full circle with Lee talking about her own experience in AAS classes, and how much they had meant to her. She elaborated on this in her interview, saying:

“I saw Asian American psychology and it seemed like such a niche topic to me, I didn’t know that my own psychology could be so important to have a whole class dedicated to it … I remember one of those poignant moments was when the professor was talking about languages, and how language and affection is communicated very differently within culture. So he brought up the example, think about your immigrant parents, if you have immigrant parents, or if English is not their first language, if they say, I love you, when they hang up the phone, is that in English? Or is that in their native language? And then everyone in the room, we just went still … That’s an example of Asian American psychology, in the sense that we tend to, even in our language, hold a lot of value and [it] reflects a lot about our culture … it informs our personality and our psychology that impacts the way we behave. And that can impact the health outcomes, that can impact things like generational trauma, etc. That connection, just from the example of what your parents say, over the phone, showed me this untapped scholarship of Asian American facets of life … that, to me, was the first gateway into realizing oh, my God, my voice, my life, my experience actually matters. And they’re actually worth scholarship, and they’re worth being studied. And leaving the class, I felt like a lot of my own experience had been validated … a very broad impact of Asian American studies is that students learn things in these classes that they either take to the PhD level, they take to work in nonprofits, or they take to take back home, to open up these conversations about what they learned or to just inform their worldview,” Lee concluded. 

The event also featured student works from AAS classes, as well as a spotlight on the classes themselves, which covered topics from fiction, popular culture, psychology, food, politics of beauty, labor and immigration and experience via the lens of Asian American studies. Essays in the exhibition included: “Not Like Other Chinese Moms: the Story of My Mom and Her Lifelong Immigration,” by Emma Illidge ’24, “Pretty Ugly: An Examination of Lookism and Neoliberalism in South Korea,” by Emma Lee ’24, “Illusions of Authenticity: Unraveling Cinematic Orientalism in ‘My Geisha,’” by Ashley Kwok ’24, “The Transformation of ‘Chinatown:’ Asserting Agency and Subverting the Model Minority through Placemaking” by Milena Zhu ’26, “Found in Translation: Translating Japanese Tombstones and Recreating Histories” by Natalie Osako ’26, “Transnational Migration and its Effects on Identity” by Anisha Rao ’23 and “The Intersection of Queer and Asian American Identities,” by Brenda Zhang ’26.

Event posters, promotional materials and presenters continually highlighted the importance of the intersectional work of collective action and protest in the creation of the minor, and the work that is still to be done. This largely includes expanding institutional support for ethnic studies as a whole at every level. Notably, there are currently still no Indigenous Studies professors at Wellesley. Beyond education, the event also served as a call to action for the Wellesley community, with the Welcome poster and informational pamphlets concluding: 

“We are not done yet. We urge students to learn about the history of advocacy behind ethnic students, behind AAS and to continue the fight and memory … change is possible if we organize.”

Professor Marlow, who is chair of the department and specializes in teaching Islamic cultural studies and researching classical Arabic and Persian literature, presented first. Her book was published in Jan. 2023 by Cambridge University Press, and is entitled “Medieval Muslim Mirrors for Princes: An Anthology of Arabic, Persian and Turkish Political Advice.” Mirrors for princes, as Marlow described them, are literary texts designed to offer advice to the ruler (or ruler-to-be) from topics as varied as general health and wellbeing to political, ethical and practical advice. She defined them as discursive texts, in which they attempted to persuade the ruler in some way, and often were “eclectic” in their use of examples as a deliberate strategy to demonstrate the overwhelming evidence in favor of the argument. Marlow mentioned Machiavelli’s “The Prince” as an early model from a modern European context, as mirrors for princes are a widespread literary tradition across many cultures and linguistic communities. 

Marlow then went on to describe the layout of her book, as well as her process of elimination and refinement to incorporate elements of such a vast literary tradition into a singular work. The first part of her book is an introduction to the literature, including its reception, history and context. The second part is an anthology of nine different authors’ texts. Marlow explained that in writing the book she had four main areas to tackle. The first was the time period, which she chose to limit to the tenth-twelfth centuries (which scholars of Islamic history refer to as the middle or early middle period). Marlow explained that this allowed her to have many sources that engaged with similar events, allowing for more connections and greater intertextuality. This time period also saw the production of the first book length, thematically divided Islamic mirrors for princes, including some of the most celebrated.

Marlow explained that her choice to limit the time period covered in her book allowed her greater breadth in her choice of which authors and texts to focus on, and their geographic spread stretched from Spain to Central Asia. After selecting the time and texts, Marlow then considered themes and the question of translation and introductions to an English speaking audience. As a translator, Marlow found it important for the various sections to have “integrity,” which she described as an “organic coherence of the text [so as] to be apparent to the reader.” To maintain the coherence and integrity of the translated selections, she chose to use entire chapters or sections, and where different styles of writing were used (e.g. the insertion of poetry) she chose to retain all portions as “it was put there for a reason.” 

The second portion of the lecture was dedicated to Professor Shukla-Bhatt’s book “Hinduism: The Basics” which was published in March of 2023 by Routledge. Shukla-Bhatt described this book as a “long time in coming,” but from its conception she faced a two-part dilemma with her book. Her first query was in relation to the fact that there are already many great introductions to Hinduism, and she wondered what she could say that was new. For her second issue she explained that, “what we call Hinduism is one of the oldest religions in the world, internally it’s so diverse that scholars agree it’s difficult to categorize.” She linked this with a greater theory posited by Jonathan Z. Smith in his book “Imagining Religion” where he claims that religion as a distinct unit is the creation of academia. 

Shukla-Bhatt expanded on this theory by considering that there is no essentialized form of any religion that can be presented as a whole, instead she sees it as dynamic or an ongoing process, which was especially important in her consideration of Hinduism, which has more than 3500 years of history. The name given to the religion can also be misleading, as it doesn’t come from a founder or core concept. Shukla-Bhatt explained that the term “Hindu” derived from Persian is in reference to the Sindu river (located in modern-day Pakistan), and that the region east of the river was known as “Hindu.” Because of this she decided to instead talk about Hindu religious culture, as she finds “Hinduism” to be a bounded category, whereas Hindu religious culture has greater capacity to encompass the change, diversity and agency she hopes to capture. 

“How do you create a system out of a geographic location, that is something that I have tried to explain in the book. To get to the basics of such a complex and diverse system, because it is so diverse, you will not have Hindus uniformly following any single thing. Because of this diversity, coming to its basics is a complex task, you can only talk about those broadly accepted elements that are manifested in various religious currents in different ways. The one thing that captures the spirit of this conference is that rather than a single god or a single religious ideal, is the idea that the cosmos in itself is sacred. And there are sacred forces or energies that prevail in the cosmos and tapping into how to harness the power of the sacred into one’s own life is something that you can find very broadly in all disconnects,” Shukla-Bhatt said. 

She noted that in understanding Hindu religious culture, it is often divided into two categories, “great” (male priestly elite) and “popular” (everyone else). Shukla-Bhatt described these traditions as not parallel but always intersecting, and then took the concept further to think about them as in constant interaction, where information and practice is exchanged mutually between both categories. 

“Oftentimes the elite tradition gets preference, and that tradition is described as mainstream. What I have tried to do in my work is to mainstream those aspects that are followed by a larger number of people … the leader is always a small faction of the society, but they are always in conversation with one another. So I have tried to describe and record those aspects which are in conversation,” Shukla-Bhatt said. 

She described three principle ways in which Hindus from diverse strata engage with traditions, texts, social and moral norms (dharma) and customs, and practices (arts, worship, festivals). She explained that texts serve as sources of spiritual concepts that shape worldviews, but unlike many other religions there is no central text, there are hundreds. For social norms and customs Shukla-Bhatt covered societal organization, which includes caste (jati) and gender as well as ethical norms. She noted that this chapter of her book took her the most time, as it’s usually the topic people are most interested in but also have the most misconceptions about. She explained that she didn’t want to “shy away” from problems within the system, but she also wanted to be careful as depictions are often distinct from the “on the ground” reality. In her discussion of practices, Shukla-Bhatt focused especially on food, which was something of a “personal choice.” 

“Many textual based elite accounts didn’t give voice to my mothers and grandmothers and that was something I wanted to honor,” Shukla-Bhatt said, “The way we look at religion gives us the kind of religion we are going to see … There is a parallel of practice, but the agency is dispersed. Agency is not concentrated in just one place. Authority is one thing, but authenticity of practice is another thing. So only a few people have the authority, but the authenticity of practice, everybody has.”

Shukla-Bhatt described her grandmother’s role as a religious leader. At festival times, she was responsible for preparing the food and decorating, and she explained that the food is a central part of how these festivals are practiced and experienced. 

“Even just looking at that plate [of food] was inspiring, because it looked auspicious. And therefore, the sense of sacred which is talked about in so many high sounding terms in Sanskrit texts is right there in front of you on a plate prepared by your grandmother … most people are not going to be always thinking about high sounding ideas like liberation or things like that, for them religion means woven into festivals to thinking of certain deities, but to the memories of those things, since childhood, they are woven with the flavors and aromas of the kind of things that your grandmother cooked or the men in the house prepared for the rest of the people to enjoy. And that is also a vibrant part of a religious tradition … what I have done in the book is rather than talking generally I have created characters … through specific characters, it becomes more accessible, because you’re telling the story of people as a lived experience, rather than just describing them in abstract terms,” Shukla-Bhatt concluded. 

Following the presentations, the audience followed up with a round of questions. A year out from publication, both professors identified that although during the writing process they went back and forth over small details, they are both now looking forward to their next projects. 

Samara Mellis ’27 a student administrative assistant for the religion department described the event as a “big success” and noted how much she enjoyed the more relaxed style of the series lectures. 

“I always really enjoy them. I thought it went very smoothly. They’re meant to be informal and casual events because I think the professors don’t want to have it be like this stressful ‘we’re giving a talk’ thing. I always really like the … living room style lectures,” Mellis said, “It’s nice to see faculty outside of the more pedagogical environment, in a more casual setting. It’s nice to hear people talk about the work they’ve done because I feel like they work on it for so long and they don’t get to talk about a lot of the time.”

“Night Market is the biggest event that TCO hosts. It’s basically a recreation of a Taiwanese Street Market, which is really fundamental to Taiwan’s nightlife. And we recreated that in Tishman Commons … We have games and performances, and lots of free food, and also vendors who sell any of their creations or other things,” she said.  

This year’s Night Market attendees were given a small booklet upon arrival where they could get stamps as they completed certain activities, and if they got all the stamps they qualified for the raffle drawing. The booklet served a dual purpose in highlighting activities that might otherwise be missed and also ensuring those with limited capacity (such as the provided dinner) were visited only once. 

Lee described planning for the night as extensive, but rewarding to see it all come together. 

“As a 19 member e-board we have a lot of volunteers helping us day-of … And although the event itself is only three hours, there’s a lot of planning that goes into it ahead of time. Volunteers for game booths and for distributing food often come from our general members and also kind of horizontally around across [other] Asian orgs … Prep usually starts right around when we get back for winter break, if not before. In terms of booking the venue and timeline of that day, it’s as early as the summer before that school year begins. It’s definitely an extensive project. But I would say it’s really fruitful, the feeling of accomplishing an event of that scale,” she said.  

Lee explained that a big part of the process for planning the event and even considering future iterations has been thinking about how turnout and participation for bigger scale events at Wellesley has changed in the wake of the pandemic. Lee worked hard to publicize the event thoroughly so it can be maintained as an important Wellesley tradition, including specifically reaching out to professors to encourage them and their families to attend. 

This year’s Night Market saw an impressive turnout of 450, with consistent numbers throughout the duration of the event, which had been a concern for Lee as there were performances happening throughout the night and she wanted to ensure all of them had an audience. In the future, Lee hopes to see the event expand, but notes that it is difficult to organize on top of her other responsibilities. 

“I imagine the [Night] Market being bigger, having food trucks and more outside guests coming … I really think it’s a good opportunity for younger children to come play games and be exposed to Taiwanese culture. And so if more local families could be exposed, that’d be awesome. These are all big dreams, though. Because I will say that it’s really hard to balance the role with schoolwork … It can be difficult to work towards establishing an event that will be really fruitful, but knowing that it could possibly take away from the work that you’re doing academically … I would love to come visit [after I graduate]. I feel like it would be really interesting to see how those traditions progressed, post my Wellesley experience,” she said. 

Despite the work involved, Lee noted how invaluable cultural orgs and their events are to the Wellesley community, including for those who don’t belong to the cultural group being celebrated or discussed, which is something she has experienced personally. 

“I’m actually Korean. I’m not Taiwanese … and so I get a lot of questions about why I’m in TCO and if I’ve lived in Taiwan before or if I can speak Chinese. I think I’m a little bit of a testament to say that a lot of cultural orgs here can be really inviting to other ethnicities outside of their central ethnicity that the org is about,” Lee said. “And throughout those orgs, you can totally find community through event planning and eating food together and talking about certain cultural topics … Even though event planning can be hard and extensive and long, it gives me an opportunity to get closer with my org and feel like I really accomplished something for a mission that I liked or something that I care about.” 

“I’m serious, India, I’ve basically turned this class into my major,” my childhood friend, Nora, said with only mild notes of panic over my blasé attitude. With such a rave review from Nora, whom I idolize a very normal amount, my decision was practically made for me. Introduction to Book Studies, here I come.

Little did I know that a class I took on a whim and a prayer (it is famously difficult to obtain a spot) would have such a profound impact on my time at Wellesley. I should have taken Nora more seriously. Although I had already been at Wellesley for a year, Book Studies (aka Book Arts) inspired me to cultivate roots in the community. 

After being introduced to the studio and creating our sketchbooks, we were immediately flung into zines.  I know I wasn’t the only one  thinking, “What the hell is a zine?” Zines (short for maga-zine) are small pamphlets folded from a single piece of paper, made to be produced in large quantities and characterized by their informal nature.

 Alison Piepmeier articulates the bookform with greater clarity in her 2009 book “Girl Zines.” She says, “Zines are quirky, individualized booklets filled with diatribes, reworkings of pop culture iconography, and all variety of personal and political narratives. They are self-produced and anti-corporate. Their production, philosophy, and aesthetic are anti-professional.” Particularly salient is zines’ popular use within marginalized communities as a means of self-exploration and self-expression.

Piepmeier argues that “zines created by girls and women … are sites where girls and women construct identities, communities, and explanatory narratives from the materials that comprise their cultural moment.”

Immediately, this wasn’t what I had expected. I have always loved books and reading, a  common refrain from my childhood being, “India, put the book down.” I was questioning what a “book” even was. What is a book’s importance? What does it mean to create one? Who owns it? What do we consider – and not consider – a book? Why? The class did what all great education should — it forced me to confront the foundations of my knowledge. 

Zines were just the beginning. Professor Ruffin underpinned the course by emphasizing  our natural surroundings. Part of the takeaway for me was in the physicality I was bearing witness to, previously unrecognized— the texture and manipulation of the materials we used with their context in the natural world of Wellesley and beyond. 

Professor Ruffin took great care to introduce us to our community, not solely as witnesses, but as active participants. We made and indigo-dyed paper with visiting artist Mika Obayashi, and toured special collections, the edible ecosystem and the Knapp Center (which quickly became my second home). We were introduced to the Paulson Ecology of Place Initiative, which “inspires … students … to engage with their natural environment and develop a sense of place.” These opportunities were not only part of the course, but were presented as resources to enrich our connections within and to Wellesley in a way that made me feel enveloped within the community. 

This deepened my knowledge of and respect for what comes together to create a book. Gratitude was not only a project theme, but a value with which Professor Ruffin imbued the course. Themes of gratitude and community were not theoretical aspirations, but real practices. 

A rapport quickly formed due to the collaborative nature of the course. My friend group was founded on relationships I made in that class — instigated by a particularly stylish hat I wore and an ill-advised initiative to watch Twilight as a class. One day, after over seventy minutes spent locked in with the fumes of the paper-making studio, suggestions for the next round of paper were becoming increasingly frivolous. String had been done. We wanted something unique, something we could truly call our own. What could belong to us more than ourselves? Five minutes later we were stifling giggles as we trimmed tiny clippings of our hair to add to the pulp. Creativity must push the bounds of acceptability. As the paper dried, so too did our laughter. What had we done? Were we geniuses … or something much worse? Also, ew. 

Although we later denied the occurrence of any such event, the paper-making incident, as it shall henceforth be known, remains a highlight of my time in the class. The memories of giggles became important because they were the result of the joy and delight that can be found in creation, especially shared. Our experience making paper was one of many we had working with our hands to produce something tangible. The act of physical creation is not only special in its relative rarity (at least in my life) but in the way it grounds you — to yourself, and the process. We had gotten to know each other and our environment, so physical creation evolved from a solitary labor of love to a communal one, love of our work and each other.

Jarrard is a Scholar of Biblical Studies with a focus on the Hebrew Bible.  He began the lecture by describing his evolution as a scholar, beginning in his hometown, Richmond, Virginia, which was described as having the “distinct dishonor of being the capital of the confederacy.” The town, which is full of (confederate) monuments, shaped his thinking about the importance and meaning of these structures. His upcoming book is driven by a desire to explore how monuments in the ancient world affected the writers of the Bible, as he explained, “how do monuments affect the way we think about the past and the way we transmit these stories?”

He highlighted how those who study or engage with the Bible often attempt to parse out the history from the law, but he sees them as inseparable elements. He explained that the legal code of the Bible is almost inconceivable without Exodus, which follows a long history of monuments that explicitly link history with law — “laws and decrees tend to be commemorative … and also mark specific events.” Jarrard argued that the Bible mimics the events of the monuments around the writers of time, lacking adequate resources to construct physical monuments of their own, Biblical writers constructed a textual monument. 

The exploration and discussion of these monuments is vital to his book, but many of them are owned by or located in European museums, and to obtain even a photograph for use requires an exorbitant fee. Jarrard noted that his “ability to understand monuments relies on using exploits of colonial activity,” and he wondered how to reckon with this for his book.

“I can’t divorce my project from [its] ethical implications … the objects I study are only available because of exploitation of the Middle East, which was often justified using the Bible [itself],” Jarrard continued, “My work is paradoxically grounded in postcolonial theory … I try to separate the work I’m doing from monetarily incentivizing museums to hold onto objects of contested origin … [I want to] push against what I think of as orientalist impulses which want to cleave the Bible from its context in the Middle East.”

Jarrard and de Veer worked together to develop a new way for these monuments to be presented in the book, and settled on de Veer (who has artistic background and experience) drawing the monuments. De Veer explained in their portion of the lecture that this had the added benefit of increasing legibility, as monuments are often large, damaged and old.

Before coming into this role, de Veer had taken several classes with Jarrard, and the two have developed a close relationship. But de Veer explained that, “this is the first time that I’ve really been able to incorporate my academic interest of religious studies with my art.”

The process of creating the drawings was labor intensive, especially at the beginning as Jarrard and de Veer worked together to craft a unique style, with de Veer sometimes creating as many as ten different versions of a drawing. Although tedious at times, de Veer explains how much they have enjoyed the undertaking. 

“It has been really inspiring, because it just shows that you don’t have to do the predetermined thing. You can go outside of the box and think about reparative and critical thinking that goes beyond the norms of what academia has instilled,” de Veer said. 

The lecture was well received and one of the Student Administrative Assistants for the religion department, Ella Kromm ’24, commented on how much she enjoyed the lecture.

“Both of them did a really great job presenting …and making it so people could understand, even if they weren’t coming from the background of a religion major or Biblical Studies,” continuing, she said, “[de Veer’s] artistic talent, and their ability to recreate these monuments … it was so beautifully intricate, all the details that they were able to incorporate.” 

De Veer also noted how the research process has brought them back to Wellesley, and has encouraged them to think about the College’s place as a community within this scholarship.

“He [Jarrard] did a bunch of research on a piece that the Davis Museum owns. He looked at the provenance of it, because it didn’t have any record … It stirs the thinking process about where, even at [a small institution like] Wellesley, we stand in the colonial ramifications of looting and the diasporic element of what comes after that,” they said, continuing, “ … I think that it’s something that I’ll carry with me, the spirit of pressing back against that convention of what academics and what scholars are supposed to do and what they’re supposed to look like.”

On Friday, Feb. 16 at 4:30 p.m. Lo, who is an associate professor of the practice of Asian and Middle Eastern studies and international comparative studies at Duke University, presented a lecture and conversation on his book as part of the Middle Eastern Studies’ Jay R. Schochet Cultural Event Series. The event was organized in collaboration with Comparative Literary Studies, and the departments of Africana Studies, History and Religion. 

Lo began his lecture with an overview of Omar ibn Said’s life, who was born in 1770 in modern day Senegal, and spent many years of his education in the Futa Toro region (today located in northern Senegal), as well as the former West African state of Bundu. Raised a Muslim, Omar was educated as an Islamic scholar for over 25 years, specifically within Sufism, a mystic Islamic practice which was predominant in West Africa at the time. In addition to his religion, Omar’s education and upbringing were also importantly defined by the cultures he grew up in and around, including not only his own Fulbe community, but also others such as the Mandinka and the Wolof, as outlined in Lo and Ernst’s book. 

Omar was sold into slavery in 1807, at age 37, after the outbreak of war. Initially sold in Charleston, South Carolina’s slave market, he fled and was jailed in 1810 in Fayetteville, North Carolina where he was eventually sold to a very wealthy plantation owner, James Owen, whom he stayed with until his death in 1863, just a few months after the Emancipation Proclamation. 

Throughout his lecture and in his book, Lo drew attention to what he labeled “problematic elements” of Omar’s autobiography, as well as his other works, the most notable being that Omar was enslaved while writing these documents. His writings were also often used as “proof” of Omar’s conversion to Christianity, part of a broader narrative praising the “benevolence” of slavery, and the moral righteousness of the Christian religion.

“We really never heard Omar’s voice. He was never allowed to be read, or to be heard, because he was a slave,” explained Lo. “Booker T. Washington told us a slave cannot write, not because he cannot physically write, but because the free person cannot access the content of the written document [authored] by enslaved people.”

Lo outlined Omar’s obvious reluctance to author an autobiography as another issue. Omar opens his work under protest, which is immediately followed by many blank pages, before he resumes, again protesting, “I cannot write my life.” As Omar himself noted, he had forgotten much of his native language, as well as Arabic; in addition to this, his works have been subject to systemic misinterpretation, which has been elaborated on to craft a false narrative of who he was.

“This elite of enslavers, missionary groups, American scholars, they showed interest in his writing, so they encouraged him to write. But at the same time, they were not interested in the content of his writing. They [had] already decided that whatever he wrote would be used to glorify the institution of slavery, and to claim that he was a good Christian, a former Muslim [who] convert[ed] to Christianity. So this tension between the desire to objectify Omar and the inability to read amongst writing created this fictional Omar,” Lo said. 

While researching and writing the book, Lo was struck by the depth and severity of the misinformation surrounding Omar’s life and work. He noted the way false narratives can build upon each other, creating what seems to be a well-supported conclusion, that isn’t actually based in fact. 

“You can just see these holes in this discourse in the narrative, systematic fictional creation of what becomes the truth, understanding and when you go through it weaves through these layers of stories you found, empty at the bottom, purely fictional lies. That was really my personal take away from the whole thing,” Lo said. 

Lo and Ernst identify Omar’s pieces as belonging to a body of work they term “impossible documents.” In addition to being enslaved, Omar was also at the end of his life while writing his autobiography, and noted his worsening health. All of these reasons contribute to the immense difficulty of interpreting and understanding Omar’s works, especially for a broader audience, which is part of what Lo and Ernst worked to tackle in their book.

“We are the intermediaries here to make the document archives legible to the general public. And that was our objective from day one, from the beginning of the journey. It also was a daunting challenge, because Omar was a deeply knowledgeable person and trained in West African cultural ritual backgrounds as well as in Islamic Sufi tradition. So this also creates some challenge to a Westerner to understand and appreciate this culture,” Lo said.  

In his lecture, Lo outlined the careful way he and Ernst worked to approach these impossible documents and the “techniques that we use[d] to liberate us from our ignorance of inability to understand this impossible text.”

As part of their attempt to restore Omar’s voice and narrative Lo and Ernst delved into aspects of Omar’s culture and community previously overlooked as essential context for understanding his life and his writings. 

“We go into the orality, the oral based wisdom of West African culture as a way to segue into understanding Omar the Muslim scholar. So, we look at orality among many different groups. For example, writing in this culture is not the only way of knowing, as Omar’s clansman, Amadou Hampâté Bâ, would say. Writing is something but knowledge is something else. Writing is the ship of knowledge, but it is not knowledge itself,” Lo said. 

Lo pointed out that in Omar’s culture “to be silent is superior to speaking… the more you know the more you can expect to be silent,” which is essential context for reports of Omar’s quiet demeanor, and even his own reluctance to write. 

Despite his work to recover Omar’s voice, Lo made sure to emphasize the importance of not empowering Omar with agency he didn’t possess.

“We should always remember that he was an enslaved person… In that particular institution of slavery were slaves and masters. We have to recognize that or we won’t appreciate the certain tendencies of oppressive regimes, as well as the extent to which people were victimized. We can only do that if we avoid this equalizing notion of agency to each group.”

Part of the work of Lo and Ernst’s book is to extrapolate the knowledge obtained from Omar’s life and writings into how we understand American history, which remains intimately connected with the present day. Omar’s work is especially important in informing modern notions of race and racism, as well as movements promoting racial equality.

“All these religious traditions, they came to America with free people, oppressive people, enslaved people, immigrants, and so on. And there is nothing more original [to America] when we apply historical framing than Arabic or Islam, because most enslaved Africans came from what we call the West Africa Senegambia region, which was generally Muslim-dominated. We have a lot of evidence that a huge percentage of those enslaved were Muslim. Arabic also came with them…So in that context, Arabic is as original in this country as any other language. And it is also a carrier of American cultural tradition. That is the argument we’re trying to make here, to open the door for ways in which we can [re]imagine belonging and longing within this country,” Lo said, adding, “All these racial justice movements really are rooted in these historical junctures. So we’re hoping all these things will make our intellectual debate more interesting, more informative. And hopefully, it will also guide our social policy discourse for the betterment of society.” 

As a professor, Lo carries these takeaways with him into the classroom, not only in teaching the facts of Omar’s life, but using the example of how his works have been interpreted and misinterpreted as a lesson in the meanings and goals of scholarship and the production of knowledge. 

“It’s extremely important as we educate students, more than [teaching that] education is a process of not only knowing, but we also give priority to the ethical foundation of knowledge itself, which was really lacking with the great explosion of research in the Enlightenment. It’s very important for us to think about ways of knowledge and what it is, and what are the foundations to avoid repeating this type of narrative that has no foundation at all,” Lo said.