October 11, 2024

Alumni & Faculty News for October 2024

If you’re a Prescott College Alumni or current/past Faculty or Staff member and would like to be featured in the next update, click here.

Andrea Lewis ’06
Andrea and a friend of her created a GoFundMe for friends and family dealing with the aftermath of Helene. She is also going to Asheville with supplies, but they need help with funds. Consider donating here.

Maxi Matuschka (’74)
Maxi’s poster, “Vote For Yourself,” has recently been acquired by The Museum of the City of New York. Maxi created this poster during the 1992 election with W.H.A.M.!, an activist group located in NYC, before pink ribbons represented breast cancer. Her poster caught the attention of the New York Times editors in 1993, and they published her iconic photograph, “Beauty out Damage” on their Sunday Magazine Cover, which helped launch the breast cancer awareness movement.

Alex Martin ’09
Alex and Yotaka’s downtown Phoenix restaurant, Mr. Baan’s Bar and Mookata, was recently named among the best in a New York Times article. Brian Gallagher wrote in the article, “Three things to know: You will need an appetite. You will be better off with a big group. And you will want cocktails.” Read more about AZ Central’s cover of the restaurant here.

Prescott College Faculty Members Mary Poole and Meitamei Olol Dapash Recent Publication
This book presents a groundbreaking approach to writing the history of an Indigenous East African community by prioritizing their own historical knowledge and cultural insights. It explores the detrimental effects of a colonized historical narrative on Maasailand and highlights how a decolonized perspective can fuel land justice movements. By adopting a Maasai viewpoint, the book challenges prevailing narratives in African history and reveals the untold stories of colonial violence, the myths surrounding Kenyan independence, and the ongoing neocolonial exploitation of Maasailand. It argues that Maasai pastoralism, which respects the rights of nature and wildlife, opposes capitalist land and resource exploitation, shaping current conflicts over Maasai identity and self-representation. You can purchase a copy here.

Prescott College Faculty Emeritus Mark Riegner Recent Publication
Dr. Mark Riegner, Faculty Emeritus, Environmental Studies, recently had a chapter published in an edited collection by Humans and Nature Press. The multi-volume box set is titled Elementals (2024), which explores the four earthly elements. Mark’s contribution, “The Many Faces of Water,” appears in the water volume and is a phenomenological study of the rhythmic dynamics of water movement. He draws from his own observations as well as from the insights of Theodor Schwenk’s marvelous book Sensitive Chaos: The Creation of Flowing Forms in Water and Air (1976; Schoken Books, NY). Mark also describes his experience as a student of British sculptor John
Wilkes, who discovered unique flow patterns in water and went on to invent and design Flowforms, which are sculptured basins that generate rhythmical movements in flowing water. Prescott College alumni who have taken Mark’s popular course “Form and Pattern in Nature” will find these themes familiar! With permission of the publisher, the chapter is available on the Nature Institute’s author website (note: Dr. Craig Holdrege, a PhD Program PC alumnus, is Director of the Institute). Here is the link: https://www.natureinstitute.org/about/mark-riegner

The chapter is also available on Mark’s ResearchGate website.