When Gordon Sander ’72, BA ’73, began an artist residency at Risley Residential College in 2002, he was returning to familiar ground. The author, photographer, and journalist had come back to the Hill twice before to work on books and had a history of hiring Risleyites as assistants.
But this time would be different. Not only would Sander end up doubling his planned one-year stay, he’d also…
Need a present for the Cornellian on your list? This week, Cornellians lists titles on University history, traditions, songs, famous alums—even recipes! Here is a selection featuring Arts and Sciences faculty and alumni. Most of these books are available through the Cornell Store, as well as from other online outlets.
Cornell: A History, 1940–2015
Government professor Isaac Kramnick …
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Manuel Muñoz, Sporting an appreciative T-shirt at the recent conference honoring his mentor.
Manuel Muñoz, MFA ’98, is an acclaimed fiction writer and a professor of creative writing at the University of Arizona—and he recently won one of the nation’s most coveted honors, an $800,000 “genius grant” from the John T. and Catherine D. MacArthur Foundation.
But in his prose, Muñoz draws on roots a world away from academia: he grew up in a Mexican-American family of farm workers in…
There is in this world no such force as the force of a person determined to rise,” said author and activist W.E.B. Du Bois. “The human soul cannot be permanently chained.” These and many other inspirational words from Black leaders in a wide variety of fields are gathered in the latest self-improvement book from Joseph Holland ’78, MA ’79.
Titled Make Your Own History: Timeless Truths from…
Joe Wilensky/Cornell University
An outdoor showing of the classic Notorious, starring Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman.
"There’s a real joy in sitting with people and experiencing a film,” says Molly Ryan, director of Cornell Cinema. The chance to watch a movie the way its creators intended it to be seen—with other humans, on an oversized screen in a darkened room, uninterrupted—has long been a cornerstone of the Cinema’s mission.
Now, more than 50 years after its founding, the Hill’s beloved film organization…
Noël Heaney/Cornell University
Curator Tim DeVoogd keeps one of the brains in his office.
Don’t mind them; the eight brains on display in fluid-filled glass jars in Uris Hall have long since stopped being of use to their owners. These preserved organs are part of one of the University’s most famous—if, admittedly, a bit creepy—holdings: the Wilder Brain Collection.
The compilation of cerebra dates back to 1889 and its namesake, Burt Green Wilder, a former Civil War surgeon who was…
Mary Crawford, awaiting the nine-day voyage to France in 1914
“There has been a call for nurses and doctors to the Red Cross, for work abroad,” Mary Crawford 1904, MD 1907, wrote shortly after World War I began. “Tomorrow I’m going to find out if any women doctors need apply, and if so, what sort of work they’d be allowed to do. If only laboratory work, it doesn’t appeal, but if practical caring for the sick or injured, I’m getting on the list.”
When…
What do rapper Tone Loc’s platinum hit “Wild Thing,” the soulful tune “Time After Time” by ’80s pop queen Cyndi Lauper, and the soundtrack to the musical South Pacific have in common? They’re among the hundreds of thousands of songs whose rights now reside with a company helmed by a Cornellian.
Steve Salm ’93 has spearheaded the massive, headline-grabbing acquisitions of the rights to some of…
For their extraordinary contributions to human knowledge, 50 people associated with Cornell have won the Nobel Prize over the years—an august roster that includes alumni, former faculty, and several current professors. The Big Red laureates have primarily won in the categories of physics, chemistry, and physiology/medicine, but also in literature and economics; two have been honored with the…
Cheryl Engelhardt ’02 was in the midst of a meditation retreat when the nominees for the 2023 Grammy Awards were scheduled to be announced. A musician and composer, she was hopeful that her album The Passenger would be a contender in the category of New Age, Ambient, or Chant Albums.
Resisting the temptation to ditch the session—as it happened, a meditation on miracles—she turned off her phone…
As an author and professor best known for satirizing higher education, Julie Schumacher, MFA ’86, is often asked if she’s afraid to go to work. In fact, when the first book in her current trilogy was published, Schumacher’s husband—who, like her, teaches at the University of Minnesota—joked that he was glad they had different last names.
Schumacher has been lovingly-but-brutally roasting the…
(Rare and Manuscript Collections)
Students from Chinese diplomatic families in 1940.
Cornell’s Asian American Studies Program (AASP) has launched an oral history project—and it’s seeking alumni who are willing to share their stories. The goal: to explore not just the program’s genesis in the 1980s, but the on-campus experiences of students of Asian descent from the mid-20th century onward.
Led by history professor Derek Chang and supported through crowdfunding, the project…
Joe Wilensky / Cornell University
Moseley tickles the (antique) ivories at the center’s University Avenue home.
What do Sage Chapel’s massive pipe organ, a fortepiano from 1799, and a 1960s-era synthesizer have in common? In addition to their ability to produce music, they share the same interface: a keyboard.
These, and more than two dozen other keyboard-based instruments, form a selective-but-notable collection: the Cornell Center for Historical Keyboards, one of the world’s most significant resources…
Sreang "C" Hok/Cornell University
Student checking out books in the Mui Ho Fine Arts Library.
Take a vicarious trip back to campus with these books that unfold, at least in part, at your alma mater—either the real one, or a fictionalized and renamed incarnation that will still strike a familiar chord.
A number are bestsellers penned by critically acclaimed, award-winning authors and remain popular. While a few are out of print and may be harder to find, copies can generally be located…
S.E. Cupp alongside Joy Behar as a co-host on “The View”
On most Wednesdays, S.E. Cupp ’00 is in her Connecticut home, exchanging emails with her editors at CNN. The TV host and political commentator—an outspoken voice of practical conservatism on the network since 2013—is fleshing out what to cover on her next segment of “SE Cupp Unfiltered,” which she records on Thursdays.
“That’s a fun conversation,” Cupp says on a sunny day in rural Upstate NY,…
Joyce N. Boghosian
Speaking at a dinner for the museum in 2022
When Lisa Sasaki ’97 was tapped in March 2021 to serve as interim director of the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum, she knew she was taking on a daunting task.
The job was, as she puts it: “to build a museum that’s going to be around for as long as there’s an America.”
Of course, planning any museum from the ground up—not to mention one that will stand among the iconic…
You’ve heard the expression “it’s not rocket science”—meaning that the topic at hand is comparatively simple. But in his breakthrough 2020 book, Ozan Varol ’03—who contributed to two Mars Rover missions as an undergrad—rejects the idea that designing a voyage to the cosmos is inherently unfathomable to all but the most rarified experts.
Instead, in Think Like a Rocket Scientist: Simple…
Sreang Hok/Cornell University
Corey Earle teaches in spring 2023
While each Cornellians’ experience is unique—especially given the University’s multitude of schools, colleges, and majors—certain courses have stood out as legendary over the decades, some enriching the lives and minds of generations of alumni.
So we set out to compile a roundup of those particularly memorable offerings—admittedly, one that’s in no way comprehensive.
Some of the entries…
It started with Oscar the Grouch, the trashcan-dwelling curmudgeon of “Sesame Street”—followed by the 1970s series of public service ads featuring Woodsy Owl and his catchphrase, “Give a hoot! Don’t pollute!”
For Eve Ogden Schaub ’92, BA ’93, BFA ’93, the message stuck.
“I’ve always had an understanding that garbage was not a good thing—and a curiosity about it,” says Schaub. “Back in the…
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The course meets in Statler Auditorium—home to another iconic class, Intro to Wines.
The title of the behavioral economics course—“Better Decisions for Life, Love, and Money”—is unabashedly enticing, and Professor Robert Frank admits that his wife teases him about it. “It’s a shameless marketing gimmick that probably helped attract students,” he says—while noting that the name is actually pretty accurate.
Launched as a pilot project in 2018, the course offers life lessons from…
How many times have you uttered the name of a Cornell building—whether you lived, ate, took classes, or studied there—without knowing anything about the person it honors? Here’s a look at some of those memorable lives. (And be sure to check out part one!)
John McGraw
McGraw was a self-made millionaire lumber mogul with a deep reverence for classical education, though he himself never…
Rare and Manuscript Collections
One of the Newman Lab synchrotrons
Elementary particle physics research on the Hill began in the 1930s—but the field got a huge boost with the World War II-era invention of the synchrotron, a device that propels particles to extremely high energies through a narrow vacuum tube surrounded by magnets.
Newman Lab, home to Cornell’s first synchrotron, opened in 1948. Located on the northern edge of central campus behind Clark and…
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Kreynovich (left) and Carroll on a supply run
It was a Saturday morning in Kyiv in March 2023. Just days earlier, the Russian invasion had reached its grim one-year mark. Dillon Carroll ’20 and Mark Kreynovich ’20, BS ’19, were observing a different, though directly related milestone: the one-year anniversary of their arrival in Eastern Europe, in an impromptu effort to aid Ukrainians impacted by the conflict.
“There’s not one family that…
Jason Koski/Cornell University
Earle (left) with Ed Helms during the actor’s Convocation visit. Earle is holding Andy Bernard’s faux diploma from the set of “The Office,” which he received as a birthday gift from his brother, University Archivist Evan Earle ’02, MS ’14.
Who’s the greatest fictional Cornellian in the history of TV and film? That burning question will be answered this month (March 2023), as Big Red history expert Corey Earle ’07 conducts a bespoke March Madness tournament.
Run through Twitter polling, the contest pits 64 Cornell “alumni” against each other in four divisions: characters from comedy/romance and drama, each split into movies and…
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Isaac Kramnick at a sanatorium where he was treated for rheumatic fever.
"I never felt burdened by the hell that was my early life, or if I did, I repressed it,” Isaac Kramnick writes in his memoir. “Repression and denial, when they work, can be effective coping mechanisms, the backbone of resiliency.”
A renowned scholar of political thought and history, Kramnick, who passed away in December 2019, served on the Cornell faculty for more than 45 years.
At the…
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Richard Gottfried '68 speaking on the Assembly floor
When Richard Gottfried ’68 first joined the New York State Assembly, another Richard—Nixon—was in the White House. He’d go on to hold his seat continuously for 52 years, serving under nine governors. Retired in December 2022, Gottfried now boasts the all-time record for New York State legislative service—and is one of the longest-sitting politicians in U.S. history.
A progressive Democrat who…
Ever since John DeWitt Warner 1872 headed to Washington, D.C., in 1891 to serve as a representative from NYC, dozens of Cornellians have held seats in Congress, including five in the Senate and more than 50 in the House.
There are seven alumni in the 118th Congress. It is a modern Big Red high eclipsed only by the 112th Congress (2011–13), which included not only seven alums in the House, but…
Noël Heaney/Cornell University
Dombrowski displays one of his hundreds of TikToks.
"What’s This Shark?!” “The Largest Amphibians!” “My Favorite Chemical Exfoliant for Sensitive Skin.” “This Spider Is Crazy!” What do these videos have in common? They’re all TikToks by J.C. Dombrowski ’23, a leading social media personality with a global reach, boasting nearly 3 million followers on the platform.
With more than a quarter of a billion likes on TikTok, Dombrowski occupies an…
A husband and father on a supernatural journey to find his missing family. A sane man locked in a mental institution where a buffalo-headed monster terrorizes patients. A down-and-out janitor who learns he’s destined to join a group of paranormal researchers.
They’re just a few of the protagonists Victor LaValle ’94, BA ’95, has created in his more than two decades as a writer.
Having…
Rare and Manuscript Collections
The typical LaFeber lecture: a brief outline and no notes.
There is, perhaps, no Cornell faculty member more deserving of a festschrift than the late, legendary historian Walter LaFeber.
The German term—which translates as “feast writing”—refers to a collection of papers by multiple authors, written as a tribute to a noted scholar.
Typically created upon retirement and presented at a conference or symposium, it celebrates the academic’s long career…
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Ariel Cooper '15 at Buttermilk Falls in summer 2022
The first time I went to Ithaca, I was terrified. Fresh off of my junior year of high school, I was about to spend the next six weeks in a summer program, living and studying at the university I had always dreamed of attending.
The rolling hills covered in bright green trees seemed at once familiar and completely foreign. My parents, Cornellians themselves, were excited to show my siblings and…
Ryan Young/Cornell University
Sydney Moore makes a pass during team practice.
Sydney Moore ’24 came to volleyball relatively late, in her first year of high school. Her mom had been a college basketball star who played professionally, and Moore had naturally gravitated to the sport. Then a friend invited her to volleyball tryouts—and she immediately fell in love with it.
“I am a passionate player," says Moore, whose San Diego high school team was ranked first in the…
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Steve Hendricks (right) with Ruby's winemaker.
Wineries in New York and Oregon — including one owned by an A&S alumnus — have been tapped for this year’s Big Red celebration of the grape. Now in its fifth year, the annual Alumni Wine by Cornell Alumni Affairs collection comprises two offerings—one red, one white—by Cornellian-owned establishments, chosen from a field of candidates submitted the previous spring.
Continuing the…
What comes to mind when you think of Brooklyn? The bridge? Hipster culture? Perhaps a certain Major League Baseball team that decamped to L.A.—and the sore feelings that persist, more than six decades later?
How about straight-laced Protestants, a half-dozen or so generations off the Mayflower?
The latter—as surprising as it may seem—are at the center of a new cultural history by a pair of…
Noël Heaney/Cornell University
The Friendship Sandwich
In summer 2020, when much of the country was in lockdown, Natasha Pickowicz ’06 and Alison Leiby ’06 escaped their respective apartments in Brooklyn to meet at the beach, where they swam hard and worked up an appetite.
They then shared their favorite lunch: a simple sandwich of soft deli bread smeared with avocado, topped with a thin layer of turkey and cheese, and piled high with fresh greens…
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Moss in Geneva, Switzerland, where she spent her junior year
French literature major for a pre-law student—why?!” My loving but relentlessly pragmatic dad was actually one of many to question my major back when I was a sophomore in Arts & Sciences in the early ’90s.
This choice was a balance between practicality and passion—an evaluation that resurfaces during many of life’s chapters.
The pandemic, for example, has forced and inspired so many…
