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ROBERT EMMONS ROGERS

Professor Robert Emmons Rogers who will head up the work in literature for the coming year, is not only an experienced teacher but is a writer and thinker as well. As president of the Boston Drama League for some years he has given evidence of a deep and sincere interest in the drama and an understanding of the expressive values of literature which ensures in him a sympathetic point of view with our work.

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Professor Rogers took his A. B. and A. M. degrees at Harvard University, graduating in the class of 1909. After that he taught for a year in Williams College. During the following season he was engaged as assistant to Miss Maude Adams in producing Rostand's "Chantecler" at the Knickerbocker TheaAfter tre, New York City. The following year he worked as special writer and columnist on the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. a year abroad, he returned to New York as head of the dramatic In 1913 he joined the department of a literary agency. staff of the English department of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he has been for the past five years a member of the Faculty as Assistant Professor of English and History. He is the author of "Behind a Watteau Picture", a fantasy in verse, first produced at the Greenwich Village Theatre, New York, November, 1917, and since then played extensively by amateurs and little theatre groups over the country. his courses in October and continue Prof. Rogers will open Other members of the faculty will colthem through the year. laborate with Mr. Rogers and advise with the students in regard to the selection of literary works for intensive study for plat

form use.

Professor Rogers will give the following courses:

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in the history of the novel as an attempt to give the students some idea of the rich material for their professional work to be found in the novels of the last century by both English and American authors. The foundations and the background will be sufficient for the purpose of a cultural course, but the emphasis will be upon a critical study of the various forms and tempers of the novel, resulting from the author's individual genius, to bring out the characteristics, dramatic, lyrical, narrative, etc., which make the novel quite as suitable material for interpretation as the play or the poem. Students will be expected to do as much outside reading as their time will allow. Fully half the course will be given to the English novel, including a brief sketch of its origins and allied forms, followed by some consideration of the masters of the eighteenth century; Goldsmith, Fielding, Sterne, etc. Chief emphasis will naturally be placed on the great novelists of the nineteenth century; Scott, Jane Austen, Dickens, Thackeray, George Eliot, Trollope, Reade and Collins and lesser figures; then, if time allows, the modern writers, Meredith and Hardy, George Moore, Wells and Galsworthy, Conrad and Bennett will be discussed. Of the chief American novelists those most likely to be treated are Hawthorne, Mark Twain, W. D. Howells and Frank Norris, and some of the so-called "sectional" writers. If time allows and it seems advisable, a few lectures may be given to continental novelists such as Hugo, Balzac, Tolstoy, Dostoievsky, etc., but not at the expense of the basic work in the English-speaking novel.

THE LITERATURE OF OUR OWN GENERATION. Contemporary literature, that is, roughly speaking, the literature from 1890 to our own day, has a distinctive spirit of its own not to be found in 19th century writers. In England and on the Continent particularly, and to a less extent in America, the writers who have influenced so profoundly the present younger generation have developed a philosophy, a point of view and a style and method all their own, in the various fields, of drama, poetry, and prose fiction. The general public is slowly becoming aware of these writers and is beginning to read and wish to hear their works. This course is intended to familiarize the students with the best and most influential of these writers and their productions, in order that they may widen the scope of the material they use in their professional work and that they may present this material with a full understanding of its values.

The authors chosen will be those most notable in their own literature up to the outbreak of the war, such as: Shaw, Wells, Chesterton, Galsworthy, in England; Brieux, Anatole France, Rolland, in France; Nietzsche, Hauptmann, Sudermann, in Germany; D'Annunzio in Italy; Benavente and Ibenez in Spain; Dostoievsky, Andreev, Tolstoy, Chekhov in Russia; as well as the most interesting and stimulating of our American authors of the last twenty years. It is to be hoped that the students will become as familiar with the works of some of these writers as time will allow.

In securing Mrs. Clara Thornhill Hammond as director of children's work a long step has been taken toward making the Children's Department one of the most important in the School.

CLARA THORNHILL HAMMOND

Mrs. Hammond has taught classes of children in reading and expression for several years and has had wide experience in staging pageants and plays. For a number of summers she has been a councillor at the Gulick Camps in New Hampshire and knows all the outdoor life that children love. Love of nature and love of poetry are close kin and a teacher who loves the one should be able to create an interest in the other. This Mrs. Hammond aims to do through her classes in reading and story telling, children's plays and pageants in which the children will be stimulated to think and express themselves creatively in all sorts of ways.

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The methods of the School of Expression, adapted to the needs of children, will be used in all the work of the department. Naturalness, spontaneity, simplicity, sincerity, freedom and grace of movement are the ends sought.

Mrs. Hammond is a graduate of the School of Expression having taken her General Culture Diploma in 1909 and her Teacher's Diploma in 1922. She taught two years in Hollins College, Virginia, and one year in Henderson-Brown College in Arkadelphia, Arkansas. She wrote and staged the Centennial Pageant for Lamar County, Texas, in 1921 with a cast of six hundred people. While pursuing these various occupations Mrs. Hammond has been working steadily toward her A.B. degree which she expects to take in another year.

The children's classes will open the middle of September. The special Children's Department circular will be sent on request.

It will be a fine thing when the School of Expression is able to give to each teacher the freedom of a sabbatical year with full pay. At present that is not possible and a teacher who feels the need of rest and change with opportunity for study and self-improvement, must find it through the exercise of his own initiative. This Professor Fallis, on account of health and family considerations, feels it necessary to do at this time. The School authorities realize that if any teacher ever earned a vacation through devoted work and faithful service Professor Fallis has earned it. Upon his insistent request leave of absence for the coming year has been reluctantly granted him with the hope and expectation that at its close Professor Fallis will resume his work at the school.

The return of Professor Fallis will in nowise interfere with the work which Miss Sands will do. Both teachers are needed at the School of Expression. With a fine professional sense of artistic work Professor Fallis has expressed his appreciation of Miss Sands' abilities in the following terms:

"It is a great satisfaction to me to learn of the selection of Miss Dorothy Sands as head of dramatic production at the School of Expression. It would be hard to find a more capable teacher and one who has such artistic finish in her own work. I have seen Miss Sands act; rarely does one see such power of emotional abandonment as she posessses. I am delighted to know that she will be in the School."

The School of Expression is destined to occupy a leading and unique place among educational institutions and it is upon the teachers it has trained such teachers as Professor Fallis and Florence Lutz and others—that it must depend for the maintaining of its artistic values and educational standards.

TWO STUDENTS AND A PLAY

Mr. Domis Plugge has accepted a position as "lead" in a stock company playing this summer in Glens Falls, N. Y. The first play will be given July 14. Martha H. Abbott, a student of the School of Expression, is director of the company.

Mr. Plugge was a member of this year's graduating class, receiving the Dramatic Artist's diploma. He was instructor in "make-up" in the Dramatic Term this year, and also played leading parts in several plays presented during the Term.

The School of Expression is a School for the study of the arts of speech and the interpretation of literature through vocal expression.

Literature, in the School of Expression, is studied from two points of view. It is studied extensively through collateral readings and the comparative study of authors and epochs. It is studied intensively through vocal interpretation of the works themselves, through the reading of lyrics, the acting of plays and scenes, and the application of the principles of Vocal Expression to platform art.

Vocal Expression implies a creative act of the mind at the time of expression. That is what we mean when we speak of it as a living art. The spoken word is the real word. The written word is but the symbol. It is through the modulations of the voice, that the essential content of a literary work is expressed. Vocal expression furnishes the ultimate test of the degree of assimilation on the part of the student of a work of literary art.

Detailed description of the regular courses of study in voice, training of the body, pantomimic training, vocal interpretation of literature, forms and epochs of literature, philosophy of expression, platform art, dramatic art, public speaking and methods of teaching will be found in the Annual Catalogue. Special courses in literature and the drama are given each year.

Some of the special courses to be given in 1922-1923 are: The "Modern Novel" and the "Literature of Our Own Generation" by Professor Robert Emmons Rogers; "Modern Poetry" by Miss Ethel Priscilla Potter; "Play Production," "18th Century Comedy" and "Modern Drama" by Miss Dorothy Sands; "Current History" by President Lindsay, and special courses in narrative poetry, titles to be announced.

Advanced work in voice, pantomimic training and methods of teaching will be given by the Dean.

Special work for public school teachers in reading, phonetics, play production and story telling with special reference to the needs of grade and high school teachers of English is given on Saturday mornings.

Evening studio recitals are given each week during the Regular Year, and plays are staged at frequent intervals before both studio and outside audiences.

Special lectures and readings are given from time to time by well known authors, artists and teachers. Among those

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