I met Professor Watson 19 years ago. She did not seem interested when I told her I transferred from Harvard because K. C. Chang, my advisor there, told me that if I wanted to study anthropological archaeology in the West, I should study with Patty Jo Watson. What she did pay attention to were questions about where I would live, how I would get to school, and what courses I should take. She asked about my family in China and my field experience. She treated me as a young colleague rather than a foreign student who would take up so much of her time.

Watson began her career working in Iraq, Iran, and Turkey, but switched fields to become a pioneer and leading expert in New World cave archaeology. She began cave archaeology in 1963 when her husband, Professor Richard ‘Red’ Watson, President of the Cave Research Foundation, needed a social scientist to work with them. She remarks, “I was the only one they could get.” Thus began her work in portions of the 370-mile-long Mammoth Cave System in Mammoth Cave National Park, Kentucky.

Thirty years ago, cave archaeology in Eastern North America was not regarded as important. Professor Watson demonstrated that it is a significant source of information about prehistoric and historic people. Due to Watson’s work, by the 1980s, mainstream archaeologists recognized the importance of what ancient people left behind when they explored and used these caves 4000 years ago. They mined minerals from the many miles of Salts Cave and Mammoth Cave for medicinal and ceremonial purposes, and left evidence about their lives that Watson has used to reconstruct their subsistence, technology, and economic activity.

Beginning her career on the fringe when the archetypal archaeologist was male, Professor Watson altered the academic landscape of archaeology in many ways. She pioneered the importance of cave archaeology; initiated advances in ethnoarchaeolgy, related empirical studies of pre-industrial peoples to archaeological remains, and improved the academic situation for women. Watson believes “one way to make things better for women in academe is to do a really good job yourself by being a good role model.” Watson persuaded her department to hire other excellent archaeologists, women as well as men.” During the 1980s, she participated in an ad hoc women’s faculty group to improve the situation for women all over campus.

Since she started teaching at Washington University in 1969, she has served as the primary advisor for twenty Ph.D. students and five MA students. Her first PhD student is now Director of Collections at the Peabody Museum (Harvard), her second is Curator at the Florida Museum of Natural History, and others teach at the Universities of Virginia, Memphis, Kentucky, North Carolina-Charlotte, and in Istanbul. Graduate advising is time consuming work. She helped me to investigate the origins of early Chinese civilization. The project took five years, during which time Professor Watson visited all twenty-five sites and used her own research funds to invite Chinese archaeologists to our campus. She helps all her students in this way.

Sometimes this went beyond research. As I finished my dissertation fieldwork, the Tiananmen Square incident happened in China. My institute in Beijing refused permission for me to return to America.Solving this required patience. Professor Watson contacted the related offices to complete the paper work necessary for my return. When I brought my daughter, Wei Wei, to the states, my husband drove to Los Angles to pick us up. Before he left, Professor Watson sent him a check and a note “Please take Wei Wei to Disneyland.” When I took Wei Wei to meet Professor Watson, she had a gold ring for her as a gift. She told Wei Wei: “Welcome to the United States. When my husband and I were in Istanbul several years ago, we bought three gold rings there, one for each of us, and one for you.” I wasn’t sure that Wei Wei – who was very young then – understood, but I almost cried at this touching gesture.

I know my tears will come again when Professors Red and Patty Jo Watson retire this year. As an alumna and staff member, I am proud that we have these kinds of mentors, teachers, colleagues, and friends at Washington University. I could not have hoped to find any better. Still, the sunset glow on Professor Watson’s face as she leaves Washington University is not the end of her career. As surely as she steered that bus across the Kentucky cornfields, Professor Patty Jo Watson guided many young scholars to their destinations, not only in academia, but also in their professional and personal lives. And her influence will continue long after her own lifetime.

Jian Leng, Assistant Director
The Center for the Humanities

Many Mondays I get to spend the lunch hour with other St. Louisans delving into a wide variety of topics at the Monday Noon Series. As the coordinator of this Series for the Center for the Humanities at UM-St. Louis, I strive each semester to come up with a calendar full of innovative cultural programs suitable to our informal, intimate setting. Providing a chance for lots of audience interaction with the presenters is one of my primary goals.

Planning the Series is part of the pleasure—mine is the kind of position about which people would exclaim, “They pay me to have this much fun?” Some semesters we choose a specific theme and build programs around that unifying focus. In others, the programs are more eclectic and less tightly related to one another. The theme At Home with Nature was one close to my heart. It led us on a novel exploration of rural and natural settings, habitats, lifestyles, and challenges. Artists, historians, linguists, and environmentalists served as our guides. With this fall’s theme, ’Til the Well Runs Dry, I was pleased to put into action my belief that the humanities and arts comprise achievements and insights that are unique resources for shedding light on general human problems. The season’s presenters and audiences looked at what many experts identify as the number one problem facing the planet: the availability and quality of water. We surveyed the place and role of water in paintings, musical compositions, Missouri history, biodiversity, contemporary literature, international travel, and community life.

I especially enjoy the opportunity to showcase St. Louis talent, getting to know, as our audience does, some of the city’s finest writers, artists, historians, musicians, naturalists, and philosophers. Yet the Series also features appearances by interesting Missourians from beyond the metropolitan area, such as Ozarks storyteller Mitch Jayne, and an occasional out-of-state guest, like young Montana sculptor Tracy Linder.

Our especially friendly audience members contribute to the distinctive atmosphere of the Monday Series. This is a place where a retired high school English teacher and a chemist on her lunch hour, a young history student and an office clerk may all exchange thoughts and reactions after a slide talk on The Aesthetics of Water by a philosopher or a bit of fiddle playing by a musician who described the role of music in the lives of early Scots/Irish settlers. The campus MetroLink station, the daylight scheduling of the Series, and the disability access to the building all contribute to the diversity of backgrounds and ages in the audience. Thanks to the generosity of our sponsors (the Regional Arts Commission, Missouri Arts Council, Arts & Education Fund, and The Monsanto Fund), we are able to offer the programs at no charge. Particularly gratifying are exchanges I get to have with audience members who e-mail or call to discuss something we have done at the Series—to recommend a follow-up book or suggest a presenter for the future they would like to hear from. Diane Touliatos, Director of the UM-St. Louis Center for the Humanities, and I are always glad to welcome newcomers to become part of these lunchtime events. Bring a sandwich and we will supply the coffee, lemonade, and cookies to go with it.

Our winter/spring season begins January 26. So far, plans for the new season include a re-examination on the 50th anniversary of Edward R. Murrow’s influential CBS exposé of the activities of Senator Joseph McCarthy. An art historian treats us to an illustrated talk on the work of African-American artist Carrie Mae Weems, after which we can walk with the speaker over to Gallery 210 for viewing a new exhibition of Weems’s work. There will be a performance with discussion by award-winning classical guitarist Dave Black. In recognition of National Foreign Language Week (March 1), professors and students deliver short readings from classic texts in French, Spanish, German, and Japanese, adding interpretation and commentary. Two social work experts talk with us about Mexican-U.S. cross-border community volunteer projects. The State Archivist plans to share what he has learned from doing the St. Louis Civil Courts Records project, which has uncovered a number of previously unknown antebellum slave freedom suits. Not forgetting the importance of water issues, we will spend an hour with Captain Jeff McFadden, whose love and deep knowledge of the Missouri River are legend among fans of the riverboat tours he offers. And now it’s time I started thinking about the Fall 2004 season....

Karen Lucas is the Coordinator of the Monday Noon Series and Associate Director of the University of Missouri-St. Louis Center for the Humanities. For more information and a schedule for the Monday Noon Series, visit www.umsl.edu/~cfh, or call (314) 516-5699.

Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written.

—Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854)

With the support of the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, The Center for the Humanities announces its second annual Faculty Book Celebration, which will be held on Thursday, December 4, 2003, at 4pm at the Women's Building on the Washington University Hilltop campus.

Dr. William H. Danforth, chancellor emeritus and vice chairman of the Board of Trustees of Washington University in St. Louis, will join us and give opening remarks. Our 2003 Celebrating Our Books, Recognizing Our Authors features two faculty authors who will read briefly from their recent books, discuss their work, and take questions from the audience.

Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought, by Pascal Boyer, Henry Luce Professor of Individual and Collective Memory in Arts and Sciences

Many of us have endless questions about faith, spirituality, and the place of religious thinking in the world. But one central question- perhaps the central question - about religion has remained strangely inacessible: Why do we have it at all?

The Century of Women: Representations of Women in Eighteenth-Century Italian Public Discourse, by Rebecca Messbarger, Associate Professor, Department of Romance Languages

By uncovering the characteristics of the expansive discourse about women among Italian Enlightenment thinkers, as well as the counter-discourse women authors produced to assert their own authority over construction sof femininity and the public sphere, this study reconceives eighteenth-century Italian culture and rectifies misconceptions about Italy's position and influence within the literary republic of the Enlightenment Republic of Letters.

The Faculty Book Celebration colloquium will focus on books by scholars from across the disciplines of the arts and sciences, acknowledging our colleagues' passion for their subjects, celebrating their encounters with the act and art of writing. Come to this provocative exchange of ideas that crosses disciplines and boundaries. You will be inspired!

The Washington University Campus Bookstore will display the authors' books, all of which will be available for purchase, and all authors who present will be available to sign their books after the colloquium. The entire St. Louis community is invited as well as the Washington University community. Please call 935-5576 for more information!