The fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina will be commemorated at the College of Saint Elizabeth on Wednesday, October 6, 2010, with the appearance of poet Patricia Smith whose recent collection, Blood Dazzler, chronicles the human, emotional, and physical toll exacted by that catastrophe. The book was a finalist for the 2008 National Book Award and was one of the National Public Radio’s (NPR) Top Books of 2008. Smith will read from this latest book along with her other works and will follow with a book signing. The event, which will take place at 7 p.m.in the Dolan Performance Hall in Annunciation Center on campus, is free and open to the public.

Smith’s appearance is sponsored by the CSE Poets and Writers Fund and the Lectures and Concerts Committee. For more information, call 973-290-4413.

In a review, South Carolina poet laureate Marjory Wentworth wrote, “Blood Dazzler is the narrative of a shameful tragedy, but it is lyrical and beautiful, like a hymn we want to sing over and over until it lives in our collective memory.”

Smith’s previous book, Teahouse of the Almighty, was a National Poetry Series selection and winner of the first Hurston/Wright Award in Poetry. Her other poetry books are Close to Death, Life According to Motown, and Big Towns, Big Talk. Her work has been published in Poetry, The Paris Review, TriQuarterly, and other literary journals/anthologies, and performed around the world, including Carnegie Hall and the Sorbonne in Paris.

Smith is a winner of four National Poetry Slam individual championships, the most in the competition’s history. She has been featured on HBO’s Def Poetry Jam. She currently teaches in the Stonecoast Master of Fine Arts program at the University of Southern Maine and is a professor of creative writing at the City University of New York/College of Staten Island.

Sponsored by the Sisters of Charity of Saint Elizabeth, Convent Station, New Jersey, the College of Saint Elizabeth enrolls more than 2,100 full- and part-time students in 25 undergraduate, 10 graduate and one doctoral degree programs. For information on other activities or programs, visit the College of Saint Elizabeth web site at www.cse.edu.

College of Saint Elizabeth to Host Open House, October 3, 2010

On Sunday, October 3, 2010, the Women’s College of CSE, 2 Convent Road, Morristown, N.J. will host an Open House for prospective undergraduate students and their families from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m.

The Open House begins with information sessions hosted by College organizations and staff, where prospective students and their families will learn about the CSE experience. In addition, attendees may take a tour of the campus to visit classrooms, residence halls, and other facilities. After the tour, students will have the opportunity to speak with members of the campus. For more information about the CSE Open House, please call 1-800-210-7900 or visit http://www.cse.edu/.

The College of Saint Elizabeth is an independent, four-year liberal arts college for women, located on 200 acres within Morris County, New Jersey. It is the oldest women’s college in New Jersey and the first Catholic college in the United States to award degrees to women. In addition, CSE offers undergraduate programs for non-traditionally aged adults, both men and women, as well as a comprehensive graduate program. The College offers a diverse array of academic majors, minors, and several certification programs.

Sponsored by the Sisters of Charity of Saint Elizabeth, Convent Station, New Jersey, the College of Saint Elizabeth enrolls more than 2,100 full- and part-time students in more than 25 undergraduate, 10 graduate and one doctoral degree programs. For information on other activities or programs, visit the College of Saint Elizabeth web site at http://www.cse.edu/.

CSE Opens Fourth Season of Exhibitions with a Look at Robes as Art

The Therese A. Maloney Art Gallery at the College of Saint Elizabeth begins its fourth year of exhibitions with Robes, which reveals how artists use cloaks, robes, enveloping dresses and costumes to investigate the concepts of identity, symbolism, power, prestige, poverty, transformation, and metaphor associated with the notion of a covering for the body. The exhibition, which is free and open to the public, runs from Sept. 2 to Oct. 10, 2010. The gallery is located in the Annunciation Center on the CSE campus at 2 Convent Road, Morristown.

The exhibition features actual robes as well as paintings, prints, sculptures, collage works, photographs and DVD films in a variety of styles and materials by well-known and emerging artists. Works by artists such as Laura Cantor, Bronx, N.Y., Valerie Constantino, Tucson, Ariz., Adel Gorgy. Baldwin Harbor, N.Y., Susan Holford, Denville, JoAnna Johnson, Austin, Texas, Patricia Malarcher, Englewood, Maria Mijares, Plainfield, Nancy Ori, Berkeley Heights, Carl Rattner, New York, Babs Reingold, Bayonne, Nell Sonnemann and Rodney Thompson, Redding, Calif., are included.

The public is invited also to enjoy an evening of art and music on Wednesday, Sept. 15, beginning at 7:30 in the Dolan Performance Hall in Annunciation Center downstairs from the gallery, which will be open before and after the concert. The performance features the members of the CSE music faculty and some of their friends: John A. Kizzie; Kristine Oddsen Lamb and the Eclectic Consort; Jee Sun Lee, Suji Kim, and Sohyun Ahn. Vincent J. Rufino and Jarred Tafaro will play a variety of traditional and more contemporary music. The concert is free and open to the public.

The Therese A. Maloney Art Gallery, which opened in September 2007, is dedicated to presenting exhibitions that coordinate with the curricula and events on the CSE campus. Virginia Fabbri Butera, Ph.D., the gallery’s director and curator, has been curating art exhibitions for more than 30 years for museums and galleries such as the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Toledo Museum of Art, and the Yale University Art Gallery. She has curated 16 exhibitions for the Maloney Art Gallery since it opened. Her areas of expertise are in 19th, 20th and 21st century American and European art.

The gallery is open, free of charge, to the public Tuesday through Thursday from 1 to 7 p.m. and Friday, Saturday and Monday from 1 to 5 p.m. It is closed Sundays, major holidays and college vacations. For more information about the gallery, visit maloneyartgallery.cse.edu.

Sponsored by the Sisters of Charity of Saint Elizabeth, Convent Station, New Jersey, the College of Saint Elizabeth enrolls more than 2,100 full- and part-time students in 25 undergraduate, 10 graduate and one doctoral degree programs. For information on other activities or programs, visit the College of Saint Elizabeth website at www.cse.edu.