Julie Cassiday (2006-2008)

On May 3, 2006, Williams College President Morton Owen Schapiro has announced the appointment of Julie A. Cassiday, associate professor of Russian, as the college’s Gaudino Scholar.

“Since I’m primarily a teacher of foreign language and culture, I’m very interested in focusing my energies as Gaudino Scholar on questions that take students and faculty members outside of the sphere of U.S. domestic affairs” Cassiday said. “I hope to develop programs that demonstrate the need for our students to study languages other than English, so that they can begin to understand the concerns of those people who live in parts of the world traditionally understudied in the American academy, particularly Africa, Eurasia, and Latin America.

“Given that an ever greater number of our students spend some part of their junior year abroad, I’d like to explore the ways in which we can encourage students to integrate their studies in other countries into their academic experience at Williams. I’d also like to incorporate the performing arts–including theater, dance, film, and video–into the programs I’ll be developing, since not only does performance appeal to our students’ interests, but it also promotes the type of experiential learning that is Robert Gaudino’s legacy.”

At the time of her appointment, Cassiday was a member of the college’s Program in Comparative Literature, teaching courses on Russian language, literature, and culture, including the works of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky.