An Outsized Impact

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I first read Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God in high school with my English teacher, Linda Gold. Standing in front of the classroom, she spoke, as she often did, in a hushed voice that required us to lean in close to catch what she was saying about the text. Looking back, there was something particularly fitting about examining Hurston’s work in this way — because Hurston calls for a special kind of leaning in.

When I joined the College five years ago, I was excited to find out that Hurston went to Barnard. One of the first articles I read in the Magazine was “The Barnard Effect,” in which writer Kira Goldenberg ’07 wrote about the trailblazing alums who’ve had “an outsized impact on their chosen fields.” In the piece, Edwidge Danticat ’90 said that it was writers who attended Barnard, like Zora Neale Hurston ’28, that “made writing seem much more attainable as a career for me.”

If anything is certain, it is that Hurston has had an outsized impact on Barnard and the generations of students — and faculty — who followed in her footsteps.

Starting this year, the College is celebrating the centennial of Hurston’s arrival on campus as a student in 1925. In this issue, we feature tributes from acclaimed writers, faculty, artists, and scholars who speak eloquently about what Hurston meant to them. We also share a 1946 profile of Hurston from our archives, in which she talks about her “Block-Mother” plan to help women in Harlem who work outside the home with their childcare needs and her desire to bring African faculty to the United States to teach music and dance.

In these pages, you’ll find that Hurston comes up organically a number of times: Professor Monica L. Miller, who is guest curating the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s next exhibition at the Costume Institute, is structuring the show around Hurston’s 1934 essay “Characteristics of Negro Expression,” and in a Q&A with Danticat, she discusses how Hurston drew her to Barnard. (Hurston comes up 66 times in the Magazine’s archives as well.)

I encourage you all to visit Zoracentennial.barnard.edu to learn more about the events, workshops, and panels paying tribute to Hurston that will be held in the months and years to come. As Rebecca L. Walkowitz, Barnard’s provost and dean of the faculty, told us, “Celebrating her legacy allows us to recover the history of Black students at Barnard, highlight the contributions of Black women writers and artists to the history and future of the Harlem Renaissance, and elevate Barnard’s ongoing commitment to the creative arts.”

There is so much to dig into in this issue. In our feature on the beautiful new Francine A. LeFrak Foundation Center for Well-Being, you can read about the full breadth of the center’s programs, resources, and facilities, coupled with photography that showcases this incredible community hub. Don’t miss the piece on architect Carol Loewenson ’76, ’79GSAPP, who discusses the process of designing the state-of-the-art center within historic Barnard Hall.

Lastly, I want to thank Jeanine Tesori ’83, who welcomed me into her studio to chat about her latest opera, Grounded, and her fascinating career trajectory as well as her passion for writing music and teaching composition. Throughout our conversation, she underscored something that’s so critical: No matter how far along you are in your career, the joy is in being a lifelong learner — a belief that is shared by so many Barnard women.