Eliza Karlin ’26 and her mother, the poet Monica Berlin. Berlin was the Richard P. and Sophia D. Henke Distinguished Professor of English at Knox College. Her poems and essays were published in several journals over the years including Bennington Review, The Cincinnati Review, Colorado Review and Midwestern Gothic.
Berlin authored two chapbooks—“Your Small Towns of Adult Sorrow and Melancholy” and “Maybe to Region”—along with two volumes of poetry in addition to “No Shape Bends the River So Long”: “Elsewhere, That Small” (2020) and “Nostalgia for a World Where We Can Live” (2018), which won the Crab Orchard Open Poetry Prize.
On an August morning last year, Kalamazoo College student Eliza Karlin ’26 pulled onto the highway outside Galesburg, Illinois, driving a silver Mini Cooper—just like the one her mom once had—and began a 4,800-mile journey along the Mississippi River.
For her mom, poet Monica Berlin, the same trip over a decade earlier—routed spontaneously with paper maps—provided inspiration and collaboration with her longtime colleague Beth Marzoni. Together, they coauthored Berlin’s first book, a volume of poetry titled No Shape Bends the River So Long, which won the 2013 New Measure Poetry Prize.
No Shape followed Berlin’s 2013 journey in a collaborative “we,” a voice that felt expansive and fluid, Karlin said. She would travel the same route carrying something heavier: Berlin died unexpectedly in November 2022, during Karlin’s first term at K—making hers a journey of grief, memory, self-discovery and enduring connection.
“I obviously didn’t know what to do when she died,” she said. “I took a leave of absence shortly thereafter. I remember thinking, ‘How would I ever be able to manage my grief?’ I thought that following in her footsteps would be one of the best ways to do that.”
Karlin’s trip became the foundation of her Senior Integrated Project (SIP), a poetry collection titled Bend the River Out of Shape No More, molded by travel, memory and a search for healing.
Mapping What Came Next
Karlin began planning the trip as a junior. Logistics required careful mapping, estimating mileage and costs, choosing stops and deciding whether to travel alone. Ultimately, she realized solitude mattered.
“While it may have been safer to do it with someone else, it was more impactful to do it by myself,” she said.
She woke up early, sought out unfamiliar food, and wandered through large cities such as Memphis, St. Louis, New Orleans and Minneapolis, and smaller towns including Cairo, Illinois; Natchez, Mississippi; and La Crosse, Wisconsin. The rhythm became steady: drive, listen, observe, write. She also created a soundtrack of albums she had never heard before.
“Memphis was Daft Punk,” she said. “The bottom of the river was Cat Stevens. The headwaters were Big Thief.”
Those sounds fused with place. Now, she said, the emotional contours of each region are linked to distinct sonic landscapes in her mom’s memory.
Her Mom as a Passenger
In a way, Karlin’s mom was by her side the whole time. The Mini Cooper’s passenger seat held 36 small jars, each containing some of Berlin’s ashes. During the 25-day trip, Karlin scattered them at different points along the river and wrote a poem after each stop.
“It wasn’t perfect, but it was really something to follow in her footsteps—to travel that distance by myself with her in my passenger seat, with her ashes,” Karlin said. “The whole experience helped so much. I feel like a completely different person after the trip. I feel stronger, braver, more … cool.”
Berlin had drafted much of No Shape while riding in a passenger seat. Karlin cherished the parallel.
“It was a two-person adventure for them,” she said. “The dominant pronoun became ‘we’ or ‘us’ during their trip. Mine was just ‘me’ or ‘I,’ but I was writing all the poems on the road. It felt like I was writing with her.”
Karlin wrote 42 of the 45 poems included in her SIP during the trip itself, often pulling over to walk, reflect and write. Her SIP opens with three deeply personal poems she wrote beforehand. These earlier poems, she said, served as grounding context for the ones that followed.
The rest unfolds as reflections on space, meditations on grief, portraits, odes and moments of clarity. Half share the title Ashen—a sequence of sonnets written after each ash-scattering ritual and modeled after Berlin’s final book, also a sonnet collection.
Across states and landscapes, Karlin found her internal landscape shifting, too. Some days she wrote five poems; other days, she wrote none. At one point early on, she noticed her tone becoming cynical.
“I realized I didn’t want to be cynical on this trip,” she said. “This was a beautiful opportunity to grieve my mother, find joy in the world, and move on.”
‘There Was So Much Love’
The trip held joy, sadness, anger, confusion and love. But as the miles passed, something in her softened. There were practical challenges as well. As a trans woman driving alone through parts of the American South, she expected to feel afraid. Instead, she found compassion.
“Even strangers had so much care,” she said. “There was so much love in the people I interacted with day to day. I thought that was beautiful.”
Together, the poems trace a young writer’s emotional landscape as she moves toward acceptance—not by leaving grief behind but by carrying it differently.
For Karlin, the project’s success is measured in feelings first: relief, transformation and gratitude. She also points to the stories she carries now and the ones she is still learning to tell.
“Storytelling is huge for me,” she said. “It can be anything. It can be poetry, improv theatre, even Dungeons and Dragons. And this trip helped further my storytelling ability.”
The ambitious trek was supported by a Hearst Foundation Undergraduate Research Fellowship, a grant administered through the Provost’s Office. Over the past three years, these fellowships have provided a total of $125,000 to assist 10 students annually in support of their research.
“I would like to say I’m grateful to all the people who supported me as a student, at K and elsewhere,” Karlin said. “It would have been impossible without them.”
Her SIP, she said, was fun, but also sacred, transformative, life-altering, irreplaceable and unattainable through anything but her educational journey at K.
“I have a more profound outlook on life because of it,” she said. “Going forward, I think it will guide me emotionally and personally. I grew up around a lot of poets, but I’ve liked interacting with the poets here even better. I saw a lot of pretentiousness when I was younger. Here, the experience has only felt real. I think that authenticity is a lot more about what poetry means and I love that.”
Lake Itasca, Minnesota, features the headwaters of the Mississippi River.
Chickasaw Heritage Park in Memphis, Tennessee.
Abraham’s Oak is a concrete sculpture at Memorial Park Cemetery in Memphis, Tennessee.
A sunset in Natchez, Mississippi.
An overlook of the Mississippi River valley in Iowa.
An Excerpt From Eliza’s SIP: Ashen (Final)
Friends of yours tell me stories of how you came to the Headwaters of the Old Man. You drove, solo, like me, through the night only to see the state government shut down & with it, the state park. Barricades couldn’t stop you. Your small self pushed them away, & drove through to the welcome center. A year later, you would go again with a friend & ask her, “Why are there so many people here?” I follow you, as I always will, & walk the same path & I have the same thought &, in addition “Why are there so many naked babies?” A man asks me to take his picture & I watch the others, working up courage to drop you off. & I realize, this place, this River is not my own. It belongs to the millions who have followed it, up & down, up & down, up & down. I release you one last time & I think “she’s gone” but know you never are.
From the stage at Dalton Theatre, the difference is unmistakable. As the lights come up, performers now stand beneath a brighter, more even glow that renders colors more vividly, eliminates harsh shadows, and radiates less heat. What audiences see as clarity and brilliance, actors and musicians feel as comfort and precision.
That transformation follows a $180,000 lighting upgrade at Dalton Theatre in the Light Fine Arts Building at Kalamazoo College, funded largely through the support of 11 grantors. With assistance from SLS Production Services, the College replaced outdated fixtures and controls with updated technology, providing brighter, more even illumination while reducing energy use and maintenance needs.
Associate Vice President for Facilities Management Susan Lindemann said the College anticipates annual energy savings of about 72,000 kilowatt-hours from the update—roughly what six U.S. households would use in a year. The cost savings are estimated at about $8,700 annually with electricity purchased at high voltage.
Beyond operational savings, the upgrade also enhances student learning opportunities by providing hands-on experience with current lighting technology while ensuring reliable theatre operations for a wide range of educational, cultural, community and College events.
Kalamazoo College President Jorge G. Gonzalez demonstrates the new lighting system in Dalton Theatre at the Light Fine Arts Building during a campus presentation celebrating the theatre’s $180,000 lighting upgrade.
K President Jorge G. Gonzalez marked the transition for faculty and staff during a lighthearted demonstration at a campus gathering, pushing buttons and flicking switches on a prop control panel while invoking the magic words of Lux Esto—the campus motto, meaning “be light”—to help activate the new system.
As the house lights dimmed on February 25, the updated lighting system made its public debut during Kalamazoo Choral Arts’ performance of Carmina Burana: Reimagined. Designed to enhance both performance quality and flexibility, the project reflects a collaborative effort between K and its many campus and community partners who rely on Dalton Theatre.
“Student organizations, outside events, admissions events, music concerts, choral concerts, and any event that occurs in Dalton Theatre will visibly notice a transformative experience,” said Lanny Potts, K’s James Stone Professor of Theatre and Artistic Director of Theatre.
A recipient of the National Lighting Design Award from the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Potts emphasized the importance of versatility in the design. That flexibility ensures the upgraded lighting system will support not only College music, theatre and student groups, but also a wide range of community organizations, including the Kalamazoo Junior Symphony Orchestra, the Gilmore, the Connecting Chords Music Festival, the Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra and Fontana Chamber Arts. Together, these partnerships help ensure Dalton Theatre continues to serve as a shared, high-quality performance space for the region.
“From performers to audience members, everyone has noticed the difference. The new lighting elevates an entire production,” said Director of Corporate and Foundation Relations Maria Newhouse. “Between the enhanced experience and the significant energy savings, we’re incredibly grateful to the grantors who made this project possible. We couldn’t have done it without their support.”
Americans are struggling to talk across political divides, but a classroom at Kalamazoo College recently became a laboratory for civil discourse. Political Science Associate Professor Justin Berry led what he describes as the best class he’s had the privilege of teaching: a senior seminar on political polarization that challenged students not just to study the problem but to actively engage with it.
“I teach a lot of the bigger kinds of classes—intro classes—on Congress and the presidency,” Berry said. “This was my first opportunity to teach a seminar-oriented class, and I was excited about the chance to design something new. I picked a topic that I thought was pertinent to what they’ve learned over their time in political science. It’s a topic that’s particularly relevant to the democracy they’re participating in today.”
Berry designed the course to give students the tools and experiences they need to model what he calls civil disagreement. Over the term, students examined the forces driving political polarization in the United States, from widening divides among elected officials and the public to the ways media and social media reinforce differences. They analyzed the most recent election cycle using various sources, and through dialogue and interviews, they practiced ways to communicate across these differences.
“I wanted to give them the space and the tools to engage in difficult conversations,” he said. “I wanted them to fundamentally disagree on ideas, concepts and values, and yet do so in a constructive, civil way, which I think is absent from our politics today.”
Berry also noted the delicate balance between creating a sense of safety while fostering genuine disagreement in a course of this nature.
“I want to engender an environment that’s intellectually, politically and socially safe, but at the same time, I don’t want it to be so safe that people aren’t actually sharing their true beliefs,” he said. “If everybody’s feeling happy and comfortable, we’re probably not engaging in a real political discussion because politics is conflictual.”
The class was able to achieve that balance, Berry said.
“There was enough overlap, commonality and trust in one another for us to engage in a meaningful conversation on a weekly basis,” Berry said. “Yet there was also enough disagreement to lead to a meaningful exchange. A student would have a strong opinion, attitude or concept, and people would push back and give different perspectives. I heard students say time and again that in their discussions, they changed an attitude or an opinion toward something and I thought that was great. That’s real conversation.”
Political Science Associate Professor Justin Berry teaches his polarization and civil discourse students.
The Assignment That Changed Perspectives
The centerpiece of the course was an intentional challenge: students had to interview someone with drastically different political views and write about their conversation. For many students, this meant stepping far outside their comfort zones. What they discovered often surprised them.
Lyrica Gee ’26 spoke with her uncle in Florida, whose politics differed sharply from her father’s despite their similar upbringings.
“I had gone home with some of the questions that we’ve been asking in class,” she said. “I talked to my dad about it and heard some of his answers about the way he was raised by his parents and their ideological lenses. Then, going into that interview with his brother, who ended up with a totally different political perspective, it was interesting to see how such a similar background landed them in these different situations.”
Libby McFarlen ’26 emphasized the humanizing effect of the face-to-face conversation she had.
“It’s so much easier to see what people think and dismiss it when it’s online,” she said. “But when you’re actually speaking to someone face-to-face, it personalizes those opinions. You realize that your opinions about people who disagree with you are attached to a real person, not to a statistic or someone on the other side of a phone screen.”
Berry mentioned two outcomes from the project that were especially noteworthy to him.
“I had one student who interviewed her dad, and she valued the experience so much that she wants to do it with all of her family members and record the conversations to trace her family’s political story,” he said. “I also had some students who assumed those they interviewed had very different beliefs, only to find false polarization once they had the conversation. Sometimes our assumptions are just false, and these things that we think divide us are our own misperceptions.”
Reagan Woods ’26 (left) talks with Lyrica Gee ’26.
Libby McFarlen ’26 leads a discussion.
Student-Led Learning Creates Community
For Reagan Woods ’26, the seminar did more than explore polarization; it gave students practical ways to understand and challenge it.
“Polarization in past political science courses has been an undergirding theme that doesn’t get talked about,” she said. “It’s almost like the boogeyman—this unnamed force that drives our political differences and our current political economy. I like that we have a course where we can address it head-on and say, ‘This is what this is. Let’s name it. Let’s talk about it. Let’s dissect it.’”
The seminar’s structure was deliberately collaborative. Rather than traditional lectures, students led discussions, preparing activities and questions to engage their peers with weekly readings on topics such as media, geographic, and identity-based polarization. Woods described these readings as tools that could be kept in a tool belt, ready to use for class discussions, as well as outside the classroom.
“We have this tool belt full of theories, so what do we do with it now,” she asked. “Do we tackle polarization? Is this a problem we can fix? And while there is no one answer to that, I think it still got the gears turning. We can ask, ‘Is polarization an inevitable problem?’ Dr. Berry also mentioned that we’ve been more polarized before when we fought the Civil War and during the revolution, but we survived as a nation. This is not a hopeless cause, which I think was a hopeful message.”
Hollis Masterson ’26, who is pursuing majors in political science and history, appreciated how the seminar synthesized his undergraduate work.
“The interview assignment and leading class discussions were probably the most important to the classroom experience,” he said. “They offered a great sense of community and understanding among us about where our politics lie, our backgrounds, and that variability of where we all come from.”
Berry said the students embraced the student-led process.
“One thing I found really special about the class was how kind and gracious they were with one another,” he said. “In today’s world of social media and our phones, more often I’ll walk into a classroom, and students won’t be engaging with each other. But because they were developing the lesson plan, I would walk into class, and no one was on their phones—they’d be chatting about the reading they’d done. They posted questions on social media to poll other K students about their attitudes toward topics like political violence, and then they brought up the results in class. We would talk about the different responses in the community, so the conversations didn’t just end in the class; they kept flowing. That, for me, is a rare occurrence.”
The student-led approach created unexpected benefits. Masterson noted that the class brought together political science majors who had rarely shared a classroom before their senior year.
“It became this slow development of a community,” he said. “I wish we could have started this cohort sooner, but having the opportunity to tie everything together as a group made this one of the most valuable experiences of my education.”
Hollis Masterson ’26 (left) talks with Dymytri Hayda ’26.
Reagan Woods talks with Libby McFarlen.
From Skeptic to Scholar
Maddie Hanulcik ’26 had an experience with the course that reflects the transformative power it had.
“I was excited to take the senior seminar with my cohort, but to tell you the truth, I wasn’t excited about the topic,” she said. “We know that polarization exists, so I wondered whether we needed to make a whole class about it.”
Hanulcik’s perspective shifted drastically as the course progressed. What she initially dismissed as obvious became fascinating as she discovered the depth and breadth of polarization’s impact. The transformation was so complete that Hanulcik chose polarization as the focus of her Senior Integrated Project (SIP). Her project examines why Generation Z has significantly lower faith in democracy than Generation X and how the media influences this decline.
“If people don’t believe in democracy, that’s really scary,” Hanulcik said. “Even if a democracy is not functioning the way you want it to, it’s important to change it for the better instead of just abandoning it. We need to have things like civil discourse and a civil society to keep democracy alive.”
Lilly Cleland ’26 (left) and Maddie Hanulcik ’26
Senior Libby McFarlen (from left), Estrella Arana, Lilly Cleland, Maddie Hanulcik, Reagan Woods and Lyrica Gee talk with Associate Professor of Political Science Justin Berry.
Challenging Assumptions
Perhaps the course’s most powerful lesson was how small the actual policy differences could be between opposing sides.
“Despite the fact that ideologically and verbally we have all of these differences, when it comes down to policy, the difference between a moderate Republican and a moderate Democrat is maybe an inch wide,” Gee said. “The difference between voting for one person and voting for the other is sometimes just about how much you dislike the other team.”
Hanulcik, a self-described libertarian, was one of only two non-left-leaning individuals in a class of 20. Initially, that made her feel uneasy, but as class conversations progressed, she found common ground she hadn’t expected.
“People started asking me why I felt the way I did, and after explaining, they said, ‘Oh, I share almost every belief that you have. I just came to it in a different way in my head.’”
The experience helped Hanulcik recognize her own polarization.
“At the beginning of the class, I was polarized against people who were polarized,” she said. “But then I realized I have to have conversations and help them understand the dangers of polarization and what it can lead to.”
She came to see polarization not as a simple left-right divide but as a problem created by extremes on both sides.
“Most individuals here in the U.S. have a similar concept of good or bad,” she said. “Discourse is driven by the extreme ends of both parties, and folks are slowly pulled from the middle. At what point do we lose that extreme dialogue and start communicating with folks in the middle?”
McFarlen captured a common takeaway from the course: people on both sides of the aisle really aren’t as different as they think; they are just shaped by different environments and experiences.
“It doesn’t mean they are your enemies,” she said. “It just means that they think differently, and it’s important to try to understand why people think the way they do.”
Gee reflected on how social media algorithms and sensational journalism exacerbate division for entertainment and profit.
“We’re stoking this fire between the two sides to make it more entertaining,” Gee said. “The entertainment aspect is making us grow further apart because we are sitting in our anger rather than in any critical thinking.”
Associate Professor of Political Science Justin Berry
Seniors Maddie Hanulcik, Reagan Woods, Lyrica Gee, Lilly Cleland, Estrella Arana and Libby McFarlen listen to Associate Professor of Political Science Justin Berry.
Beyond the Classroom
The lessons students learned have already begun influencing how they engage with politics beyond the classroom. McFarlen said the course changed how she views political campaigns, making her more attentive to how candidates target different audiences and frame their messages.
For Masterson, the course sparked greater interest in state and local politics, where he said bipartisanship still occasionally exists. He’s applying to master’s programs at Tufts University, George Washington University, and three Australian universities, having fallen in love with Australian politics during study abroad.
Gee, who plans to pursue political journalism in Washington, D.C., sees the course as foundational to her future work.
“I always want to look toward educating others and helping them get through really complex bureaucratic systems,” she said. “Having some of these ideas in my head is going to be very helpful in understanding the complexities within people.”
Hanulcik plans to join the Peace Corps after graduation.
“I love being abroad,” she said. “I like moving all the time, and I like helping people in some way, shape or form. I want to live my life as a life of service.”
Libby McFarlen ’26
A Model for Democratic Citizenship
For Professor Berry, the course represents more than an academic exercise. It’s about preparing students for democratic citizenship in a fractured era.
“We have reached the point where we can no longer discuss politics with those with whom we disagree,” he said. “I wanted to provide students with a venue to grapple with difficult political questions and model how to engage in civil disagreement. It is a vital component of democratic citizenship, and it is not a skill we have effectively modeled for them.”
The results speak for themselves. What began as a required senior seminar became what multiple students described as their favorite class at K. In a moment defined by division, the course offered a glimmer of hope, proof that with curiosity, respect, and honesty, real conversation is not only possible; it’s transformative.
When Americans think about the Revolution, they often picture the Boston Tea Party, the Siege of Yorktown, the signing of the Declaration of Independence, and the famous men who shaped these iconic events. Charlene Boyer Lewis ’87, the Larry J. Bell ’80 Distinguished Chair in American History, reminds us that the American Revolution wasn’t just fought by generals and statesmen; it unfolded in kitchens, camps, farms, and city streets, where women’s decisions, labor, and political thought shaped the outcome of the war. For Women’s History Month, Boyer Lewis reflects on how women across racial, economic, and political lines experienced and contributed to the founding of our Republic—their influence still shaping the nation 250 years later.
Q: How should we rethink the role of women in the American Revolution?
Boyer Lewis: Women at the time did not have access to formal leadership or political roles. However, the American Revolution didn’t just happen with “those guys in Philadelphia” or the men fighting on the battlefield. A revolution is essentially a civil war, so there is no real distinction between the homefront and the battlefront. Roughly a third of the colonists were Loyalists, a third Patriots, and a third what historians call disaffected—they hadn’t really chosen a side. During the war and the period leading up to it, women were often calculating and making choices about their allegiance based on what was best for their families. Yes, there were some women who were making choices based on political ideology—Mercy Otis Warren, the poet and playwright; Martha Washington; Abigail Adams, writing to John Adams to “remember the ladies.” Mrs. Benedict Arnold, whom I write about, started as a Loyalist flirt, then became a Patriot bride, and then became a very strident Loyalist when she and her husband committed treason. But most women were choosing whether to be a Patriot or a Loyalist based on which side their families were taking and what would be best for their families, their community, and their neighbors. As the British and Patriot forces moved around, women would often shift their loyalties to whichever troop had occupation at the time.
Once the Revolution started in 1775 and 1776, women had to choose sides, just like men did, and women very much understood that they were moving from being subjects in a monarchy to citizens in a republic. They understood the stakes.
Q: In what concrete ways did women participate in the Revolution, both before the fighting began and during the war itself?
Boyer Lewis: Most women spent the years leading up to the Revolution involved in the protests and boycotts against tea and British imported goods. The boycotts would not have been successful otherwise; you needed women to forego purchasing those items for their households. They were eschewing imported silk, cotton, and linen; they were gathering to share each other’s spinning wheels and looms to make homespun fabric, and they were conscious that in doing so, they were taking a stance against English oppression. Some of them said they felt nationalistic while they were doing it.
Charlene Boyer Lewis ’87 is the Larry J. Bell ’80 Distinguished Chair in American History at Kalamazoo College.
A bronze sculpture of Abigail Adams by Meredith Bergmann at the Boston Women’s Memorial on Commonwealth Avenue Mall.
As the war started, women weren’t removed from warfare. When you live on a rural farm near a battlefield, the violence is going to come right into your home or your surrounding area. Women in these situations served multiple purposes for armies, bringing water, serving as laundresses and cooks, and taking care of wounded and sick men in their homes. Along with these really basic services to the army, they also provided sexual services to soldiers. That was, frankly, a really effective way for women to make money.
Women were also an important part of the army encampments, known as camp followers. Many had no choice but to follow their husbands, fathers, or brothers serving in the army, as they could not afford to stay at home, so they were feeding, laundering, and tending to sick men in the encampments. George Washington complained regularly that all these women, children, and literal baggage made it difficult to move an army quickly. But he also recognized their importance, and the women were provided half rations.
There are a handful of women that we know of who disguised themselves as men. A woman named Deborah Sampson was an ardent Patriot who wanted to go and fight. She cut her hair, bound her breasts, and fought in the Continental Army for a couple of years. Despite being wounded several times, it wasn’t discovered that she was a woman until she fell ill with fever and was found out by a doctor when he undressed her. He was shocked because everybody knew this soldier as Robert Shurtleff. Of course, they kicked her out immediately when they realized she was a woman. She received an honorable discharge, and 30 years later, she applied to Congress for a pension, like any other Continental Army soldier. Congress sent Paul Revere to Massachusetts to interview her, and he found her case deserving. So, she became the first woman to receive a military pension in American history.
Most women experienced the Revolution from afar. They kept the farms going, kept the newspapers in print. Women ran taverns. They ran shops. They were picking up for the men and learning all sorts of skills. Abigail Adams actually made more money for the farm than when John Adams was running it. There are many letters back and forth between wives and their husbands about logistics, like, when should I sell the corn? When do I plant? They start with lots of questions, and over time, the women become more and more confident. Instead of saying, when do I do this? They say, “Oh, I sold all the corn last month.” They now know how to take care of it.
But there was a scary side to this independence. In any war, troops often use violence to subdue a population, so women were sexually assaulted; they were physically abused. Women watched in terror while their houses were turned topsy-turvy as soldiers looked for money, weapons, clothing—anything to sell—because soldiers were allowed to come in and pilfer. Women lived with that terror every day during this war, and it’s clear many of them suffered later from trauma. This is what I mean by no separation between the homefront and the battlefront: there was no safe homefront. The battlefront was everywhere. You could walk the street and be hassled by a soldier. You could walk the street and be questioned at bayonet point as to which side you are on.
Women also smuggled things over lines using the fact that they were women and not combatants. Women were very good spies because soldiers were often hesitant to accost women and say, “What’s on your person?” So, women often tucked things under their dresses. We know of one story where two women were walking the Philadelphia line, going from British into Patriot territory, and soldiers thought they were pregnant, but under their alleged bellies were leather shoes, leather belts, and some food.
Q: How did the Revolution unfold differently for Black and Native American women?
Boyer Lewis: We tend to think of slavery as a southern phenomenon, but at the time of the Revolution, there were enslaved people in every single one of the 13 Colonies. It was the British who first offered freedom to enslaved people, and they offered it very early on. It wasn’t altruistic; they understood this was good strategy, offering freedom to those enslaved under Patriot masters. Thousands took that offer, and the number of Black Loyalists was tremendous. Whenever the British came near a Patriot farm or homestead, enslaved women fled, and they would take their children with them to look for freedom behind British lines. Many ended up in different parts of the British Empire—Canada, for instance, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia—and the British gave them farms there. Some of them ended up in England. Tragically, when the British started running out of supplies, some of these women were sold into slavery in the Caribbean, which is basically a death sentence. The Americans also eventually offered freedom and land to enslaved men who joined them, so many Black men fought valiantly for the Continental Army, in the hopes of surviving the war and owning their own land.
Other enslaved women and their families took advantage of the chaos of war to run away. Historians estimate that 25,000 to 30,000 enslaved Africans chose to run, usually north, to cities like Philadelphia or Boston, where it was easy to slip in and not be noticed.
Enslaved people were also hearing the Patriots’ language of liberty, independence, and equality, and were writing petitions, or having white allies write petitions on their behalf, petitioning legislatures in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island to abolish slavery, arguing that it was oppositional to what the Patriots advocated. Many Patriots understood that slavery was antithetical—Massachusetts, for instance, abolished slavery immediately. Vermont, the first new state after the Revolution, did not allow slavery. So, the voices of these enslaved women were having an impact.
There’s a marvelous poet named Phyllis Wheatley, who was owned by a Massachusetts family, and they taught her English, Greek and Latin. She gets published during the Revolution, and she writes poetry to George Washington and to some of the other Continental Army officers. She’s a very ardent Patriot, and George Washington actually writes her back, complimenting her on her genius. He even invites her to visit camp.
But Black women also experienced the most violence during the war. When soldiers came to a homestead, farm, or town house, and there was an enslaved or even a free Black servant, they were the ones most likely to be abused or dragged into helping the army. When white families were running short of food, they would feed their own family first over their enslaved people, so Black women experienced starvation more than white women did.
Just like white women, Black women and Native American women were taking stances and choosing sides. Molly Brant, an Iroquois woman, was a highly influential Loyalist among her tribe. She ended up getting a sizeable pension from the British government for her efforts during the Revolution.
Q. What did the Revolution change—or not—about women’s role in political life?
Boyer Lewis: Ultimately, these changes were very temporary. When the men returned, the women didn’t want to keep running the farm, the store, or the tavern, and they gave back that responsibility. However, they were still aware of themselves as political beings and very much engaged in the political conversations of the time. You can look at letters, and it’s clear that women gained more confidence in the household, and there’s probably a more equal sense of give and take with their husbands.
But while the Patriot revolutionaries got rid of a lot of British laws that they decided were too oppressive, too tyrannical, they never questioned the inferiority of women. They never questioned the law, which is known as coverture, that establishes how, upon marriage, a woman legally ceases to exist and is subsumed by her husband’s identity. As I mentioned earlier, Abigail Adams argues to John Adams in an incredibly famous letter, “Remember the ladies.” She says, “Remember, all men will be tyrants if they could.” She’s asking him to remove coverture in the Declaration of Independence, using the language of the Revolution. John Adams writes back to her, “As to your extraordinary code of laws, I cannot but laugh.” Coverture remains untouched after the war.
Yet one huge impact of the Revolution is the idea that, if women were political beings and had political thoughts, what role would they play in this new republic? Women will be acknowledged as citizens. They’ll be counted in the census, counted for the House of Representatives, and taxed as citizens, but they’re not going to be given any political rights.
So, a group of progressive-minded men and progressive-thinking women crafted a role in the 1780s and 1790s for women that was known as Republican Motherhood, and this is how women were meant to contribute. They were going to raise good, virtuous citizens—meaning boys—who would continue to sacrifice their private interests for the good of the Republic. Women—middle- and upper-class women—saw Republican Motherhood as a way to act politically.
One important outcome of Republican Motherhood is that it demanded that women be educated. This led to a huge surge in women’s education in the coming decades. This idea that women have equal intellect and should be educated to serve the Republic is tremendous. There’s no going back.
The young women who then go to school in the early 1800s will be the ones who lead the women’s rights movement in the 1840s—Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, all are the beneficiaries of this notion of Republican Motherhood. Elizabeth Cady Stanton at Seneca Falls in 1848 rewrites the Declaration of Independence in terms of women’s independence, and where Thomas Jefferson referenced the tyranny of King George, Elizabeth Cady Stanton referenced the tyranny of men over women. It’s a marvelous full-circle moment. The American Revolution didn’t change women’s lives that dramatically, but by 1848 they’re going to use the language of the Declaration of Independence to call for their rights.
Q: How does expanding the story of the Revolution reshape our understanding of who made our republic possible and what it takes to sustain it?
Boyer Lewis: In 1787, Elizabeth Willing Powel, a prominent social figure and friend of the Washingtons, asked Benjamin Franklin, “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” And he famously replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.”
If we want to tell a story as inclusive as possible about the American Revolution, we have to center women’s experiences equally with men’s experiences. Where was this Revolution fought? It was fought everywhere, in every single city, in every town, on every farm. The women were shaping the Revolution as much as any man with a musket or as much as any founding father who signed his name to the Declaration of Independence.
Women’s participation in boycotts became just as important as Patrick Henry standing up and saying, “Give me liberty or give me death.” They were protesting the Stamp Act, the Sugar Act, and the Townshend Acts. They were writing to newspapers. They were forming organizations to collect money for the Continental Army. Women were the ones who kept the farms and shops running. Without them, there would have been nothing left to fight for—and no republic to keep.
Charlene M. Boyer Lewis is a professor of history at Kalamazoo College. She is the author of Ladies and Gentlemen on Display: Planter Society at the Virginia Springs, 1790-1860 and Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte: An American Aristocrat in the Early Republic. Her current project is a biography of Margaret Shippen Arnold titled Traitor, Wife: Peggy Shippen Arnold and Revolutionary America, forthcoming from Norton in 2027.
When first-year students arrive at Kalamazoo College, many carry with them the same questions: Will I fit in? Will I find my people? Can I handle what college throws at me? For those who begin their college experience with K’s LandSea outdoor pre-orientation program, national data suggest the answers are increasingly “yes.”
According to the 2025 Outdoor Orientation Benchmarking Survey (TOOBS), LandSea continues to stand out among peer institutions nationwide for helping students build communication skills, perspective-taking and problem-solving. The survey ranked K’s program first nationally in several leader-trust metrics and in resilience, which measures students’ increased confidence in handling difficult situations after participating. Research shows these qualities help students persist academically and socially throughout their education.
For LandSea and Outdoor Programs Director Jory Horner, the results are affirming.
“It’s gratifying,” Horner said. “We put a lot of time and energy into this program, especially into leader training, and it’s nice to see that investment showing up in meaningful ways for both participants and leaders.”
Not Just for ‘Outdoor People’
Held each year before first-year orientation, the optional LandSea pre-orientation program includes hiking, camping, paddling, rock climbing and nights under the stars. But Horner dispels the idea that the program is only for seasoned outdoor enthusiasts.
“Most of the students who come on LandSea aren’t outdoorsy people at all,” he said. “We have students who have never slept outside before.”
For some, the experience can feel intimidating at first. Yet that discomfort often becomes one of the program’s most powerful teaching tools.
“One of the things TOOBS measures is a student’s ability to face challenges after the trip,” Horner said. “That’s something we’ve scored highly on for many years.”
The numbers reflect what students themselves describe when they return to campus.
“We hear students say things like, ‘I just got back from LandSea, and I did more than I thought I could,’” Horner said. “They’ll say, ‘There’s no test that’s going to scare me now.’ That mindset carries over into academics and everything else.”
Participants live and travel in small groups, typically of eight to 10 students, working together for 18 days in the Adirondack Mountains. There’s also a shorter six-day option at Camp Merrie Woode in Kalamazoo for students who want more creature comforts. In both experiences, students cook meals together, navigate trails, problem-solve and manage daily challenges as a unit alongside people they have just met.
“You’re learning how to live closely with a small group, how to communicate and how to handle differences,” Horner said. “These are the same skills students need when they’re back on campus.”
Measuring What Matters—After the Dust Settles
TOOBS is sent to students at about 25 participating colleges each year, around six weeks into the fall term—after classes have begun, friendships have formed, and the realities of college life have set in. K has participated since about 2012, placing LandSea within an ongoing national conversation about how experiential education supports student transition.
The survey uses a “proxy pretest” approach, asking students to think back on how they perceived their skills, confidence, and perspectives before LandSea and then assess how those changed afterward. The method, developed and presented through research connected to the University of New Hampshire and scholar Brent J. Bell, aims to measure growth rather than surface-level enthusiasm.
“That timing is really important,” Horner said. “If you ask students about a program like this right when they finish it, they’re riding the high of the experience. TOOBS lets that afterglow wear off and asks them to reflect once they’ve had time to compare LandSea to everything else they’re experiencing at college.”
‘Finding My People’
Research connected to TOOBS consistently shows that students’ biggest fear entering college is not academic rigor, but whether they will fit in and find a sense of belonging. By the time LandSea students arrive on campus for orientation, many already have a core group they recognize, trust and feel comfortable with during the first challenging weeks.
The outcomes measured by TOOBS align closely with internal data collected by K’s Office of Institutional Research. An analysis comparing LandSea participants and non-participants between 2012 and 2022 revealed consistently higher outcomes for those who completed the program. LandSea participants showed higher retention rates, greater persistence to graduation, and higher cumulative GPAs than their peers.
Tess Peters ’29 was among the LandSea Adirondacks participants last fall.
Bea Putman ’26 was among the LandSea Kalamazoo leaders last fall.
Although LandSea is designed for incoming students, Director Jory Horner emphasizes that its success rests heavily on student leaders.The LandSea program includes activities such as hiking, camping, paddling and rock climbing.
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“For us, that’s really validating,” Horner said. “It confirms that the things we’re focusing on—belonging, trust, confidence—actually matter in measurable ways.”
LandSea Leaders Make it Possible
Although LandSea is designed for incoming students, Horner emphasizes that its success rests heavily on student leaders.
“They give an incredible amount of time,” he said. “They’re balancing classes, jobs and other commitments, and then they dedicate weeks to training in leadership, wilderness medicine and emergency response.”
Many leaders are drawn not by the outdoors, but by the chance to help others.
“The number one reason they give is, ‘I wanted to help ease the transition to K for the next incoming class,’” Horner said. “They take that responsibility seriously.”
And as LandSea continues to earn national recognition, Horner sees the results not as a conclusion but as affirmation.
“Our goal has always been to help students start college feeling capable, connected and supported,” he said. “Seeing those outcomes reflected in the data makes all of us really proud.”
In a waiting room at a liposuction clinic, four women sit with their thoughts, their bodies, and their personal histories. What unfolds is The Most Massive Woman Wins, the next production by the Festival Playhouse at Kalamazoo College.
It’s a play that confronts body image, misogyny and the personal costs of trying to fit into a society obsessed with women’s appearances. Written by Madeleine George and directed by Milan Levy ’23, the show will run at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, February 26 to Saturday, February 28, with a 2 p.m. matinee on Sunday, March 1. Tickets are available at festivalplayhouse.ludus.com.
Since graduating from K, Levy has built a directing résumé that includes codirecting Smart People with Face Off Theatre Company, Kalamazoo’s Black-owned theatre company, in fall 2024. When Professor of Theatre Arts Lanny Potts reached out about the opportunity to direct at Levy’s alma mater, they immediately said yes. For Levy—who also serves the College as a program coordinator in the Office of Student Activities—this show is deeply personal.
“Being someone who grew up a plus size woman, I saw so much of myself and the insecurities I’ve held, spoken through the words of these women,” Levy said. “I wanted to explore this play for myself, and everyone who would connect to this story.”
Victoria (Gracie) Burnham ’27 (from left), Shay Kruse ’28, Helen Stoy ’26 and Sofia Gross ’29 are among the student actors in “The Most Massive Woman Wins” slated for February 26–March 1 at the Festival Playhouse.
The play unfolds as a series of monologues and scenes that move between the clinic’s waiting room and the women’s memories of schoolyards, workplaces and relationships. Each character has arrived at the same door, having traveled a completely different path to reach it.
Liliana Stout ’26 plays Sabine, a Ph.D. student and committed feminist who wrestles with an internal conflict between her politics and her desire for intimacy, driving much of the play’s emotional tension. Stout describes the character as deeply angry and in constant dialogue with herself.
“She can’t overcome the loneliness, and she has to find a way to balance being the deeply moral, feminist person that she is while wanting the love that she hasn’t found,” Stout said.
Two casts will perform in the production, with Stout being the only actor to take the stage each night. Stout noted that the ensemble spans the full range of K class years, from a first-year student to seniors, and at least one cast member is performing on stage for the first time. The other actors include:
Gracie Burnham ’27 and Emily Reese ’27 who portray Rennie, a teenager consumed by an eating disorder, trying to gain the love and acceptance of her mother.
Sofia Gross ’29 and Shay Kruse ’28 who play Carly, a loving mother who believes her hard work will ensure her daughter doesn’t end up the way her and her mother did. What happens when this belief is challenged?
Helen Stoy ’26 and Zoee Perez ’26 who act as Cel, a woman who struggles with self-harm and needs the help of others to keep her grounded.
The play is set in the 1990s, but both Levy and Stout say its concerns feel urgently modern, as medications promising rapid weight loss dominate public conversation and the media continues to project narrow definitions of beauty.
“We’re returning to the 90s in a way,” Levy said. “People are now using Ozempic and GLP-1s to lose weight. It’s all about looking skinny but that doesn’t equate to healthy. Expecting us all to have the same body or work towards it, is putting an impossible standard.”
For Stout, the play is an invitation to empathy rather than judgment. She hopes audiences leave with a more generous understanding of why people arrive at decisions around changing their bodies.
“It’s easy to stop and judge someone for doing something like plastic surgery or liposuction and say they’re lazy, or taking the easy way out, or that they just don’t love themselves,” she said. “I hope watching the show encourages people to take a moment to pause and instead find a way to understand what they’re going through and show them love instead.”
Levy wants audiences, especially those who have felt the pressures these characters embody, to feel seen.
“I want this show to give voice to the things people never felt they could share or say out loud,” they said.
As International Women’s Day approaches, Kalamazoo College will host a landmark conference titled Resisting Harm, Building the Future: Beyond Borders and Binaries from Friday, March 6 to Sunday, March 8, at the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership, 205 Monroe St.
The three-day gathering unites activists, scholars and community organizers from around the world to explore critical issues of gender justice, environmental activism and liberation movements. Through panel discussions, workshops and collaborative planning sessions, participants will examine how communities can respond to systems of harm while building pathways toward collective liberation.
Attendees may register online for any or all of the sessions scheduled from 7:30 a.m.–8 p.m. Friday, 7:45 a.m.–8 p.m. Saturday, and 8:30 a.m.–1 p.m. Sunday. The public is welcome.
Friday’s programming opens with a panel titled Acting with Love in Systems of Harm, featuring speakers who will discuss interventions of care and hope that challenge rape culture, misogyny and policing. The afternoon session, Beyond Binaries, explores gender outside rigid norms through contexts including immigration, technology and sexuality.
Among the presenters are Aqdas Aftab from Loyola University Chicago, Wazhmah Osman from Temple University, and Frances Vicioso from OutFront Kalamazoo, alongside academic researchers and therapeutic practitioners working at the intersection of intimacy, healing and social justice.
Saturday’s schedule tackles environmental and technological justice along with an examination of the climate crisis. The panel We All Live on this Earth will demonstrate connections between land, gender, violence, capitalism and race, offering concrete ideas for action. Later in the day, speakers will address knowledge access, censorship, media literacy, and the role of artificial intelligence in shaping contemporary life.
The conference also spotlights grassroots organizing strategies. Saturday afternoon’s Organizing for Action panel features Bochra Triki, a Tunisian feminist and LGBTQ activist; Shona Espinoza from Food Not Bombs Kalamazoo; and other community organizers sharing lessons from on-the-ground activism.
A standout session titled How Do We Care for Each Other? on Saturday morning will bring together Black polyamory activist Chanée Jackson Kendall; researcher Os Keyes from the University of Massachusetts, Lowell; and sexual educator Roma de las Heras Gómez to reimagine relationships, love and care networks outside of state structures.
The conference concludes Sunday morning with a planning and discussion session focused on takeaways and next steps, followed by a student-led action project. The final component underscores the event’s commitment to translating dialogue into meaningful community engagement.
All panels and meals will take place at the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership, with breakfast, lunch and evening appetizers provided each day. The workshops scheduled for Friday and Saturday afternoons offer hands-on opportunities for participants to develop skills and strategies for social change work.
The conference represents a collaborative effort to move beyond traditional academic conferences, creating space for practitioners, activists and scholars to learn from one another while building networks of solidarity and support.
For more information about the Resisting Harm, Building the Future: Beyond Borders and Binaries conference, contact Arcus Associate Director Coco Canders at CoCo.Canders@kzoo.edu.
International Women’s Day Conference presenter Frances Vicioso
International Women’s Day Conference presenter Os Keyes
Emily Dalecki ’26, Morgan Paye ’26, Dorothy H. Heyl Professor of Chemistry Regina Stevens-Truss and Anoushka Soares ’26 worked together in the Stevens-Truss lab last summer.
Stevens-Truss and student Ava Apolo ’25 point to Apolo’s photo in a display highlighting that year’s Senior Integrated Project students in Stevens-Truss’ lab.
Some people spend years searching for their calling. For Regina Stevens-Truss, the Dorothy H. Heyl Professor of Chemistry at Kalamazoo College, finding her calling was different.
“I’m not sure that it was a matter of finding what I wanted to do,” she said. “It was more like destiny. I have always loved science and math!”
That destiny has taken her on a remarkable journey. She’s gone from a 14-year-old immigrant—arriving in Brooklyn, N.Y., with limited English—to a nationally recognized biochemistry educator who has spent 26 years inspiring students at K. And career success is why the United Nations is celebrating women like Stevens-Truss today, February 11, the International Day of Women and Girls in Science.
According to the U.N., a significant gender gap has persisted throughout the years at all levels of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) disciplines all over the world. Even though women have made tremendous progress toward increasing their participation in higher education, they are still underrepresented in these fields. The U.N.’s hope is that role models like Stevens-Truss will continue inspiring young women to stay with STEM—in academics and their professions—for years to come.
The ‘Wait, What’ Kid
Born in Panama, Stevens-Truss arrived in the United States in 1974 with an insatiable curiosity that often tested her father’s patience.
“I was that kid who wanted to know ‘Why? How?’” Stevens-Truss said. “My dad would say to me in Spanish all the time, ‘Cállate, Regina,’ because I would always ask why. Yes, I was that ‘wait, what?’ kid in school.”
Her transition to the U.S., though, wasn’t easy. Placed in eighth grade despite limited English proficiency, Stevens-Truss faced isolation as a self-described scrawny Black Latina in 1970s Brooklyn.
“I got picked on a lot and had very few friends,” Stevens-Truss said.
But what could have derailed her education became her anchor.
“What grounded me was school, and in particular my math classes.”
Those early teachers, none of whom looked like her, saw something special and encouraged her learning. When her family moved to New Jersey, she found community among her white classmates at Cherry Hill West High School.
“Those were hard years because I was an outcast yet again,” Stevens-Truss said. “I only had three Black friends. My friend groups were all white women, and they helped keep me in science and math because we all loved these subjects. We were taking these classes together, we lived near each other, and I belonged.”
Finding Her Path
At Rutgers University, Stevens-Truss initially pursued medicine—like many first-generation students—to fulfill family expectations. Later, a turning point came at the University of Toledo while she was working as a part-time research technician for Richard Hudson ’61.
Stevens-Truss stands with Kaleb Brownlow ’01, the first SIP student she had in her tenure at K.
Dalecki shared her portrait of Stevens-Truss during a Fun Friday activity last summer in which students painted their principal investigators.
Hudson was a K chemistry alumnus who would later become her Ph.D. advisor. One day he walked into the lab with unexpected news and said, “Regina, you need to go do something else.” Thinking she was being fired, Stevens-Truss asked why. His response changed her life: “Because I can tell you’re bored. You need to go get a Ph.D.”
He was right.
“I love learning, and when it gets stagnant, I get bored,” Stevens-Truss said.
That restless curiosity that made her the “wait, what?” kid still drives her today, pushing her to constantly find new ways to reach students.
The Biochemistry Connection
What captivates Stevens-Truss about biochemistry now is the intersection where chemistry illuminates biology.
“Living systems are so complex and yet work so well that I, still to this day, find it exhilarating to learn about them,” she said. “My chemistry classes felt like work, and my biology classes made no sense to me. It’s always been awesome when I could connect my chemistry knowledge to biological phenomena—hence the reason I consider myself a medicinal biochemist. I love to understand living systems through how chemical changes impact them.”
This philosophy permeates her teaching. Ask her biochemistry students, and they’ll tell you she constantly pushes them to ask how and why—the same questions that defined her childhood. Her current research focuses on ESKAPE pathogens, as she and her lab students study how antimicrobial peptides and hybrid compounds—developed in the K labs of Kurt D. Kaufman Associate Professor of Chemistry Dwight Williams and Associate Professor of Chemistry Blake Tresca—work against dangerous bacteria like E. coli and S. aureus.
Twenty-Six Years at K
Hudson had more career advice for Stevens-Truss when she was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Michigan.
“Richard called the lab one day and said to me, ‘Regina, I have the job for you: teaching chemistry at Kalamazoo College.’”
Her response was, “Kalama what?”
That was 26 years ago. What keeps her engaged after more than two decades? The students.
“Their curiosity amazes me, and their true interest in knowing makes me want to know and keeps me questioning and finding out,” Stevens-Truss said. “They make me laugh daily.”
“Being selected for this award was incredibly humbling,” she said. “It also helped validate my career.”
That commitment to student success has taken many forms. In 2016, she received K’s highest teaching honor, the Florence J. Lucasse Lectureship for Excellence in Teaching. In 2018, she was named the College’s director of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Inclusive Excellence grant, awarded to K’s science division. She’s also been a faculty leader for Sisters in Science, a student organization that visits local schools to encourage young women to pursue science; and Sukuma, a peer-based study group for students of color in the sciences.
A Message for the Next Generation
When she was asked what message she hoped her students would carry forward, Stevens-Truss didn’t hesitate, though she acknowledged it might sound clichéd.
“Truly, follow your dreams,” she said. “Don’t let naysayers tell you that you don’t belong and that you can’t.”
She encourages students to ask themselves key questions: How did you get here? Why do you want to be here? Who inspires you? Who gives you the brutal truth? Who supports you when you’re down?
“Answers to these questions will help keep you on track,” she said.
Her advice for finding your passion is simple yet profound.
“The thing that you go to bed at night thinking about, the one that gets you up in the morning ready to go do it, is your passion and what you should do. Make a career out of that and you’ll be happy.”
It’s advice that comes from experience. Stevens-Truss never stopped being that curious kid who wanted to know why and how. She just found a way to build a life and help hundreds of students build theirs around asking those questions.
As she puts it, “Figuring out how and why something changed, to this day, brings me joy, so I think being a scientist is what I was made to be.”
Kalamazoo College will sound as vibrant as it feels this month, with two campus music ensembles inviting audiences to shake off the winter chill through music inspired by movement, mood and color.
Academy Street Winds
The Academy Street Winds will present a dance-themed concert featuring waltzes, a tango, a malambo, and more at 4 p.m. on Sunday, February 15, at Dalton Theatre. Winter Dances will feature a title piece by Brian Balmages, the celebrated work Satiric Dances by Norman Dello Joio, and other selections that capture the emotions and motions of movement. Admission is free; donations are appreciated.
The ensemble is a beloved creative outlet for woodwind, brass and percussion musicians, bringing together both students and community members to expand the group’s sound and capabilities.Adjunct Assistant Professor of Music Greg Bassett serves as the group’s director.
Kalamazoo College Jazz Band
The Kalamazoo College Jazz Band, directed by Visiting Instructor of Music Sandra Shaw, will present Colour My World at 7 p.m. on Friday, February 20, at Dalton Theatre. Admission is free; donations are appreciated.
The concert will begin with Chicago’s Colour My World. It will continue with tunes that describe different colors to add visual stimulation and evoke specific emotions and feelings while reflecting shared experiences. Listeners are encouraged to dance if the music inspires them during the show.
For more information about both performances, contact the Department of Music at 269.337.7070 or Susan.Lawrence@kzoo.edu.
The Kalamazoo College Jazz Band will be one of the ensembles performing this month.
Kalamazoo College’s Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership is transforming Black History Month into an immersive celebration of culture. This February, the center presents a dynamic lineup that moves beyond traditional lectures, inviting students and community members to engage with Black history through hip-hop’s revolutionary power, the decolonizing practice of poetry, gospel music’s role in resistance movements, and the liberating language of dance.
The series kicks off at 6 p.m. on Thursday, February 5, with author Michael “Manny Faces” Conforti discussing his book Hip Hop Can Save America!: Inspiration for the Nation from a Culture of Innovation. Conforti examines how hip hop extends far beyond music to represent a powerful force for social, economic and cultural transformation.
The conversation continues at 4 p.m. Saturday, February 7, with “Hip Hop Can Save America,” featuring Conforti, Kandace Lavender and Associate Professor of Music Beau Bothwell. This event explores culture-forward approaches to defending democracy through inspiring presentations and dialogue about hip-hop’s past, present and future role in advancing justice and equity. The evening concludes with a cypher/jam session and dinner.
At 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, February 19, poet and educator Denise Miller facilitates “Reading Black SoulTelling,” a community workshop exploring Black poetry as a decolonizing practice. Miller, author of A Ligature for Black Bodies and Art of Fact Director at the Institute for Public Scholarship, leads participants in a communal reflection on how poetry exposes oppression and recovers Black language and personhood. Dinner will be served.
At 6 p.m. on Monday, February 23, the Face Off Theatre Company will present excerpts from Mahalia: A Gospel Musical. This curated performance and dialogue experience integrates spoken words, poetry and contemporary dance to invite reflections on faith, Black resistance and art’s role in social justice movements.
The series concludes at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, February 26, with “Movement as Liberation,” led by Heather Mitchell, founder of the Justice Moves dance company. This embodied experience blends somatic movement, West African drum and dance, and community connection, allowing participants to reconnect with their bodies as sites of resilience and joy. The evening closes with a community dance circle, performance and reception.
All events are free and open to the public. For more information, contact Arcus Associate Director Coco Canders at CoCo.Canders@kzoo.edu.
