Spera Archives | Page 6 of 6 | News from Hope College

True North

The lone crow on the lone pole where the weathervane used to whirl insinuates my need for misdirection. He is an arrow of skittish attention, of scant intention: the cock and hop, the flick and caw toward anything on the wind. Now angling east, now south by southwest, he designates with beak then disagreeing tail… Continue Reading →

The Play’s the Thing

Diversity and fresh starts were hallmarks of two of Professor Rich Perez’s 2017 projects. Summer took him to Chicago to direct the UrbanTheatre Company’s production of Richard Montoya’s Water & Power; Perez and Montoya updated the script to shift the gritty drama’s setting from Los Angeles to Chicago, with turns of phrase and cultural references… Continue Reading →

Performing Debussy as a Scholarly Pursuit

Dr. Andrew “Drew” Le completed his second CD in October 2017, performing all 12 piano études by French composer Claude Debussy, and it was an all-Hope production. The album was recorded — in one day — in the college’s gleaming new Jack H. Miller Center for Musical Arts, performed on the 9-foot Steinway Model D… Continue Reading →

21st-Century Graffiti, with a 19th-Century Twist

Dr. Heidi Kraus remembers precisely the moment it happened. “When I was a young kid, I traveled to France,” recalls Kraus. “I remember walking into the Grand Gallery in the Louvre, where all the large-format paintings are. There was one painting in particular, ‘The Coronation of Napoleon’ by Jacques-Louis David. It’s basically life-sized and it… Continue Reading →

Student-Faculty Research

Honored repeatedly in 2017 for the quality of its undergraduate research program, Hope College is a magnet for students who want to dive into genuine scholarly work as undergraduates. Mentored collaborative research happens year-round — during the fall and spring semesters, in specialized May Term and June Term courses, and during the summer. Hope’s program… Continue Reading →

On the Eve of Shakespeare

How might the playwrights of the Reformation and pre-Reformation eras — even the great Bard of Avon himself, William Shakespeare — have reacted to seeing their works dissected and reviewed online? Dr. John Cox doesn’t know, of course — but he could make an educated guess. An internationally respected Shakespeare scholar and former president of… Continue Reading →

Common Ground for Luther and an 11th Century Hindu Leader

The year 2017: It marked the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther’s 95 Theses. It also marked the 1,000th year, tradition holds, since the birth of Ramanuja, one of the most influential Hindu thinkers. To Dr. Rakesh Peter Dass, these coinciding mile-markers presented an opportunity to explore one of his favorite topics — the interaction of… Continue Reading →

One Archbishop, Two Funerals

In the years following Martin Luther’s posting of his 95 Theses, a wave of Protestant conversion swept through many German cities. Why, then, did the residents of Cologne remain predominantly Catholic? To this day, this remains a mystery to historians, including Dr. Janis Gibbs, who has pursued the answer for years. Long after completing her… Continue Reading →

Jeremiah and Lamentations Through 16th-Century Eyes

Hope College church historian Dr. Jeff Tyler has spent the past 10 years in conversation with Reformation writers. As the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation approached, he combed through books, lectures, sermons and other texts by nearly 50 Reformation thinkers to assemble an anthology of Protestant Reformers’ comments on the Old Testament books of… Continue Reading →

Hope College Dune Research Group

When wind blasts dunes on Lake Michigan’s east coast, complicated windflows develop on the side away from the wind — producing turbulent eddies like those around Hope geologist Dr. Edward Hansen (right) and whirlwinds like the one swirling around an ultrasonic anemometer (at left, behind Hope mathematician Dr. Brian Yurk) in fall 2017 on the… Continue Reading →