Lowe Named Bogliasco Fellow

A friendship, a love of Burroughs and a commitment to education have resulted in an interesting partnership between Burroughs and the Bogliasco Foundation.

Jim Harrison ’53 (on left) and George “Jerry” Bitting ’53 proposed the Burroughs Bogliasco Fellowship as a tribute to the teachers and the school that shaped their lives. The fellowship provides a JBS faculty member with the gift of one month of uninterrupted time, space and creative freedom to pursue a scholarly or artistic work at the Liguria Study Center for the Arts and Humanities in Bogliasco, Italy. 

“We agreed that the memories of our years at Burroughs were much more positive than any other educational experiences we had,” says Harrison. “In my case, that included Harvard, both undergraduate and graduate degrees, and later on, study  at the École Normale de Musique de Paris. But with all that, nothing matched Burroughs. … I most certainly learned much more at Burroughs than I learned at Harvard. Not just knowledge—that part is easy. But rather how to think and actually use the knowledge acquired.” 

In 1991, Harrison, then a professor of music at City University of New York—along with his wife, Marina, and several other artists and academics from Italy, Switzerland and the U.S.—founded the Bogliasco Foundation, whose sole purpose is the support of the Liguria Study Center (at left), a residential facility located between Genoa and Portofino on the Ligurian Coast. Since the study center opened its doors in 1996, more than 600 fellows from 40 countries have been in residence.

With a capacity for 16 individuals at a time, the center provides an intimate setting for creative and scholarly work in archaeology, architecture/landscape architecture, classics, dance, film/video, history, literature, music, philosophy, theater and the visual arts. Approved projects lead to the completion of an artistic, musical, literary or scholarly work, followed by publication, performance, exhibition or other public presentation.

Dr. Jim Lowe (Classics), the first recipient of the Burroughs Bogliasco Fellowship, will take up a 30- to 35-day residency at the Liguria Study Center in the spring of 2012. In his proposal for the fellowship, Lowe, a former college professor who joined the Burroughs faculty in 1989, explained that his research interests in the last decade have centered on the way the ancient world has been received by later cultures. During his residency, Lowe will examine the intersection of classical tragedy and “classical” Hollywood through an analysis of Edmund Goulding’s 1947 film noir Nightmare Alley and Sophocles’ iconic tragedy Oedipus Tyrannos. Of the opportunity to devote himself entirely to this work, Lowe says, “Research demands reserves of time, energy and intense focus that are in short supply during the academic year, when I am juggling four classes and a dozen or more college advisees; what’s needed is a place removed from the hustle and bustle of daily life. I cannot think of an atmosphere more congenial to scholarly devotion than the Liguria Study Center, where I can spend all day, every day, immersed in study and contemplation, where the vista of the sea and the crash of surf will be a deep inducement to pursue the life of the mind.”

The current plan provides for a Burroughs Bogliasco Fellow during the 2011-12, 2013-14 and 2015-16 school years. 

Fellows: Bogliasco Fellows are distinguished artists and scholars who have received many of the world’s highest honors and awards including:

• Five Pulitzer Prizes
• The O. Henry Award
• Two Emmy Awards

• Three Robert Frost Awards
• The Prix de Rome
• Two United States Poet Laureates
• Three National Book Awards
• Grammy Award, Best Classical Album
• Six MacArthur Foundation "Genius Awards"
• The Mozart Medal

Their work: The expectation is that work undertaken at the Liguria Study Center will lead to the completion of an artistic, musical, literary or scholarly work, followed by publication, performance, exhibition or other public presentation. Examples of completed projects include:

• Yves Dana, bronze sculptures, 1997
• Steven Stucky, “Concerto Mediterraneo for Guitar and Orchestra,” premiered by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, 1998
• David Del Tredici, “Gay Life,” a song cycle for baritone and orchestra, premiered by the San Francisco Symphony, 2001
• Anthony Hecht, The Darkness and the Light, poems, Alfred A. Knopf, 2001
• Ann Patchett, Bel Canto, novel, HarperCollins, 2001
• Richard Danielpour, “Margaret Garner,” opera, world premiere, Detroit Opera House, 2005
• Amy Bloom, Away, novel, Random House, 2007
• Richard Kalina, drawings, 2008

For more about the Bogliasco Foundation and the 
Liguria Study Center, visit bfny.org.