Author: vermontnews

A fire is in progress at Torrey Hall on the University of Vermont campus. The fire has been contained, and the Burlington Fire Department is actively working to fully extinguish it. The fire began at 8:10 and was caused by the soldering of copper material on the roof as part of a renovation of the building taking place this summer.

No injuries have been reported.

The building houses two classrooms. No classes were being held in the building over the summer.

The Pringle Herbarium is housed in Torrey Hall, with two-thirds of the collection located on the third floor. With 300,000 samples, it is the third largest herbarium in New England and the largest Vermont flora collection in the world. The status of the collection is unknown at this point and it will not be possible to conduct a full assessment until after Burlington Fire Department releases the building.

The building also houses the Zaddock Thompson Zoological Collection on the second floor. The status of this collection is also unknown.

Aside from the two classrooms, the building is used primarily for research by UVM’s Biology Department and Plant Biology Department. The building contains offices for both departments. As a precaution, the university is beginning to work with academic deans and university’s Campus Planning Department to find alternative space for the building’s occupants.

Torrey Hall was built in 1863. The building is on the National Register of Historic Places.

Source: UVM News

In the fall of his freshman year, Gabriel Martin ‘18 was excited to learn about plants. “I just wanted to walk the woods and identify every plant I saw. And then I sat in my first systematics class and I thought: ‘well that’s out the window.’ There’s a lot—a lot—to know.”

Three years later, he’s making progress. A plant biology major, Martin has a work-study job in UVM’s Pringle Herbarium photographing and barcoding plants for the herbarium’s expanding online catalog. On this summer day, Martin is working with specimens from the geranium family, some of which were collected in Tunisia before the First World War. “I’m also a history minor,” he says, “It’s cool to connect the locations and times of the collection to world events.” He holds up one of the old sheets. “This is from 1910 and it makes me feel connected to that time.”

Martin has a growing interest in ethnobotany and the medical applications of plants. He’s considering going to graduate school to pursue a career in herbal medicine. He laughs and smiles at how far he has come. “At first I wasn’t going to go to college. My guidance counselor kind of talked—really tricked—me into it,” he says. “Basically, my high school wouldn’t let me graduate unless I applied to college. So I was like ‘alright I guess I’ll do it.’” Now he loves UVM, he says, and credits his advisor, professor of plant biology Jean Harris, with guiding him well. “She always helps me out, makes sure I’m in the classes I need,” he says. “She’s an excellent teacher and all-around good person. If you’ve got a problem with Jean, you got a problem with me.”

Gabriel Martin places another dried geranium under the bright glare of a lightbox and snaps the camera. A high-resolution image appears on his computer screen and he turns to the next sheet. “I love to learn. And that’s a life-long commitment,” he says. “I can’t wait to be an old guy running around the woods, looking at plants. I’ll know a lot then, if not everything.”

Source: UVM News

When describing ethnic identity in America, John Gennari suggests you picture a pinball machine. “We all say we come from somewhere, we have these family backgrounds. But then we mix it up. We’re in a pinball machine, we’re bouncing around. The balls are all scattering all over the place all the time.”

Gennari, an associate professor of English and critical race & ethnic studies at UVM, has spent decades researching and analyzing Italian American and African American cultures and practices separately, but he drops himself right into the middle of a whirling, swirling cultural pinball game in Flavor and Soul: Italian America at Its African American Edge (University of Chicago Press, 2017).

Gennari’s book explores the “cultural edge” between these two ethnic groups, a complicated place where identities overlap, intertwine, and clash throughout American history. He takes an energetic dance through connections in music, food, sports, and film, and examines ideas about gender and family, with a dash of his own experiences growing up in an Italian American household.

Take, for example, the place where Flavor and Soul begins: a case study of “Ol’ Blue Eyes” Frank Sinatra, an icon for Italians and, as Gennari details, young, black men like hip-hop mogul Puff Daddy, who dubbed himself “The Black Sinatra.” “The word ‘respect’ is central to all of this, and it resonates with why it is that young rappers take on Sinatra as an icon. There’s this idea of the ethnic outsiders becoming the ultimate insiders, these guys who are able to navigate the world of the street and the schoolyard and get elevated into the world of popular culture,” says Gennari.

This shared affinity for Sinatra is just one example of what Gennari calls black-Italian “mutual emulation” in the 20th Century, a time when both groups were searching for a way in. Another contact zone, which Gennari explores in a chapter called “Sideline Shtick,” is in college basketball in the 1980s. The number of Italian-American coaches and broadcasters increased at the same time as the number of black players on the court. “You don’t hear broadcasters saying much about ethnicity, but people see that there’s an ethnic presence and story there. [Italians and blacks] are now in people’s living rooms.” 

Beyond these cultures’ influence on each other, the book also considers the ways in which “Afro-Italian sensibility has nourished and vitalized American culture,” adding flavor and soul to the melting pot through self-expression.

For those who grew up watching the Sesame Street crew “celebrate differences,” it may be a foreign notion to consider cultural intersections. Gennari says this old-school model of multiculturalism is insufficient. “We’ll move conversations and the lived experience of race and ethnicity forward the more that we get explorations of edges and overlaps and contact zones.”

Sure, the places where ethnic groups meet aren’t always proverbial multicultural potlucks (Flavor and Soul does detail times when Italian Americans and African Americans have dangerously, even violently, clashed). But Gennari argues understanding our edges is a key part of understanding our identity. “We need to recognize that we’re all American, but all Americans are multiple. They have multiple identities, and those identities are changing all the time.”

Source: UVM News