“One of [Fulleda’s] plays has been previously translated to French and German and maybe Italian but never to English, even though it has been performed in the U.S. in Spanish. So I started with telling him I would be happy and interested to translate [Ruandi] to English, that was a few years ago, which he was thrilled about, without really knowing what I was getting myself into,” Lisenby said.

Working to translate “Ruandi” was Lisenby’s first experience in literary translation. The play has been performed in the U.S. and Europe in French, German and Spanish. Lisenby hopes his English translation will eventually lead to its being performed for English-speaking audiences. He has spoken with Chris McCoy, associate professor of theatre, and Nathan Wyman, professor of theatre, regarding the William Jewell College Theatre Department doing developmental readings of his translation so the play can become stageable.

Translating a literary work comes with a particular set of challenges. Lisenby states that no work has an innate translation. There is a range of possibilities when attempting to interpret a work in a language other than the one in which it was originally written.  

“Part of what makes a text a literary text as opposed to a non-literary text is the possibilities for interpretation of that text, that literary texts lend themselves to multiple interpretations. You can’t necessarily produce the same possibilities for interpretation because any given word has a constellation of connotations in a language and a so-called ‘equivalent’ in another language has a different constellation of connotations in that language,” Lisenby said.

Lisenby attempts to approach works he is translating by first understanding the socio-cultural context in which they were originally written. Literature can be read and interpreted in different ways depending on cultural perspectives, but Lisenby works to translate words or phrases that reflect the writer’s experience when the work was written.

In “Ruandi,” the titular main character is a 12-year-old Cuban slave boy who escapes from the plantation to a “palenque,” a slave community in the Spanish Caribbean. While the play takes place in the 1840s, it was written by Fulleda in the 1970s in Cuba under the Castro regime. Lisenby states that he has to take into account the culture in which Fulleda was writing “Ruandi” and what certain words or phrases likely meant in that context. Reading the play in the 1970s, under “the most repressive decade for freedom of expression since the 1959 Castro revolution,” can create an entirely different interpretation of the work than what the author intended.

“This play comes out addressing issues of racial inequalities in late 20th century Cuba through a filter of historical fiction. In translating the play, I have to think about how certain words and terms and scenes should be rendered given the cultural politics of the original writing of the play,” said Lisenby.

Many students have at one point or another read a translated text. Lisenby believes that these works allow monolingual speakers to engage with different cultures and realize that the world operates and functions in many languages.

“Different languages aren’t just different ways to describe the world. Different languages are different ways to experience the world. Experiencing the world in a different language is not just experiencing the same thing with different words. It is a different experience,” he said.

Lisenby’s translation of “The Lagoon” by Cuban writer Abilio Estévez will appear in the June queer issue of the magazine Words Without Borders and will be his second published translation. He has been a fan of Estévez’s writing for many years. He stumbled upon the short story in an anthology of LGBTQ+ Cuban fiction and found it “deeply captivating.”

Lisenby is focusing on seeing his English translation of “Ruandi” being published for theatre. He will be searching for another project after that, which might be a Cuban novel or short story collection over the next few years. For more information on the impact of translation and how languages shape how the world is experienced, Lisenby recommends a New York Times article about the first woman to translate “The Odyssey” and an episode of the National Public Radio (NPR)  podcast “Hidden Brain.”

Photo by Talia Zook.

“Towards the end of the [art history] class, the teacher started showing impressionism and post-impressionism, which I was familiar with. But this art historian had gone on and on about how this [painting] is at the Musée d’Orsay, and this one’s in the Louvre and this one’s in New York. I kept thinking, ‘Someday I’ll go to New York, someday I’ll go to France and I’ll get to see these things,’” Nore said.

At the conclusion of her six weeks on the University of Kansas campus, Nore traveled with a friend to Chicago with plans to visit the Art Institute of Chicago. As she walked through the galleries Nore happened into the room that displayed “Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte” by Georges Seurat, a post-impressionist painter. Nore turned around to see Toulouse-Latrec’s “At the Moulin Rouge” and Van Gogh’s “Bedroom at Arles.” She was so emotionally overwhelmed with actually seeing the paintings that she had learned about in class that she worried the museum guards would think she was on drugs.

“And when I saw these things I was overcome by emotion, and I sat down and started crying. I would spin around and I’d look at the other one and start crying again. I kept twirling, I was having an epiphany of a major size about how art had the capacity to change life, to change people. I learned what an aesthetic experience was and how it’s more than just mental, it is body, soul and spirit,” said Nore.

“Sunday Afternoon at the Island of La Grand Jatte,” Georges Seurat (photo courtesy of overstockart.com)

It was this epiphany that sparked in Nore the decision to become an artist. Upon graduating high school in 1970, Nore traveled from her small Nebraska hometown to Kansas City to attend the Kansas City Art Institute (KCAI). She decided to major in painting and printmaking while also taking art history and ceramics classes. Nore completed her undergraduate degrees in 1974, but eventually went back to school to receive her masters in ceramic sculpture and a masters of fine art in ceramics and art history from Texas Woman’s University.

While attending KCAI, Nore was able to complete the required number of hours to teach grades K-12. She taught at inner city schools in Kansas City, Mo. before becoming a faculty member at Park University. Nore became the chair of the department and remained at Park for three years. During that time, she had her son Joel and decided with her husband to move to England for a year in order for him to take advantage of a career opportunity.

“While I was [in England], I got to travel and see all the art history all across Great Britain,” Nore said. “I took slides and ending up with just thousands of slides that I brought back and used [in the classes I taught] all the way up to the point where I switched to digital.”

These slides can be seen in the piece “Adieu Art History” currently on display in the Stocksdale Gallery.

Upon arriving back in the U.S., Nore learned of an opening in the art department at William Jewell College. The department was looking for a candidate to teach painting, printmaking and art history and to run the Stocksdale Gallery. Nore remembers having a vivid dream of brick buildings on a hill and meeting someone that reminded her of her father. When Nore arrived on campus soon afterwards, she realized that the buildings matched those in her dream and that the older gentleman she had spoken with was actually Donald Johnson, then chair of the art department. Nore was offered the job later that day and has been a faculty member for 30 years.

Nore knew from very early in her life that she wanted to become a teacher.

“When I was a sophomore my dad had a conversation [with me], a come-to-Jesus moment, where he asked me ‘What are you going to do when you get out of school?’ and I said back ‘teaching,’” Nore said. “But KCAI didn’t offer teaching credits and within a month of making that decision, KCAI teamed up with Park University so that KCAI kids could take their education hours and student-teaching through Park.”

Nore remains very grateful and humble that she has been able to pursue the passions she had when she was younger. She believes that it is extremely rare for someone to know what they want to do and be able to do that as a career. For Nore, the students that she has worked with have made her decision to teach completely worthwhile. Nore recounts that the art history minor she created has propelled students to graduate studies in art history and how teaching students to mat and frame their own work has led them to careers in galleries.

“It’s extremely rare that something you loved to do back when you were 19 years old can be what your vocation has been now that you’re 66,” Nore said. “It’s really an amazing thing.”

Nore has known that despite her passion to teach that she would forever continue to create art. She has called herself a “teaching artist” who regularly works on her own artistic projects while also being a full-time faculty member.

Nore’s retrospective show “Nano Nore: 5 ½ Decades of Art” is currently open in the Stocksdale Gallery on the top floor of Brown Hall. It chronicles Nore’s artistic life from sixth grade to the present. Drawings and paintings from Nore’s years in high school and college flow into different series from parts of her life, including multiple trips to Norway and three series of woodcut prints. Displayed at the center of the prints is the piece Nore created to celebrate the inauguration of Jewell’s President Dr. Elizabeth MacLeod-Walls.

The show displays a range of media including printmaking, oil paint, sculpture and watercolor, as well as a wide variety of styles. Nore is not afraid to confront difficult themes. Many of her pieces reflect upon her religion, her divorce and self-realization. One section of the show features “imagined roads,” which Nore stated equated to her searching for a path and understanding the road she has walked during her life.

“Enclosed Garden” is a large installation piece in the center of the gallery. Nore first created this piece in 1995 and has rebuilt it for her retrospective.

“[The piece] is a story about the hero’s journey,” Nore said. “It follows the quest, the idea that you find yourself in a new place and your eyes have been opened enough that you know you’re not going to live the status quo any longer.”

The piece itself has four stages that describe how the self goes through trial and despair, and is ultimately destroyed, in order to be resurrected again. The ruby slippers that are a part of the piece represent how one can represent the transformation that has occurred. The center of the installation is a pedestal with a ceramic piece mounted on the top.

“You travel up through the pedestal, with peacock feathers representing eternity and you see the heart covered in feathers,” said Nore. “I ran a sculpted fish through the middle of it. ‘Ichthus’ is Jesus Christ, God, Son, Savior, is the shape of the fish. I really saw that the heart would be pierced through by the Christ principle for me.”

The artwork in the retrospective continues in the drawing and painting room at the bottom of Brown Hall.

Nore will be retiring this year at the age of 66, having spent the last three decades as a member of the art department. She has been invited by a former student to travel to Italy in June. Nore hopes to continue her world travels and making art well through her retirement.

The end of the art department at WJC was an unexpected event for Nore, especially as it happened to coincide with her retirement. She hopes that there will eventually be art courses offered again and for the Stocksdale Gallery to continue to be used by the community in the years ahead.  

Photos by Emil Ostafiiciuc. 

This map gained the attention of the U.S. military when Nathan Ruser, a 20-year-old Australian student, tweeted Jan. 27 about how the map “made military bases clearly identifiable and mappable.” Two days later the U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State issued a statement explaining that security procedures regarding fitness trackers and related technology is now being revised. Secretary of Defense James Mattis and the Department of Defense were made aware of the situation and involved in redesigning security protocol.

Strava released their global heatmap. 13 trillion GPS points from their users (turning off data sharing is an option). https://t.co/hA6jcxfBQI … It looks very pretty, but not amazing for Op-Sec. US Bases are clearly identifiable and mappable pic.twitter.com/rBgGnOzasq

— Nathan Ruser (@Nrg8000) January 27, 2018

“The rapid development of new and innovative information technologies enhances the quality of our lives but also poses potential challenges to operational security and force protection,” the statement said.

According to open-source imagery analyst Scott Lafoy, it is still too early to determine how useful the map data really is. Having the ability to track movements in military bases can give more insight into patrol routes or where specific personnel, such as diplomats, are. Other Twitter users potentially located U.S. special operations in Africa, a Patriot missile base and a suspected CIA site in Somalia.  

“If the data is not actually anonymous, then you can start figuring out timetables and like some very tactical information, and then you start getting into some pretty serious issues,” LaFoy said.

Strava stated that the information available on the global heat map is completely anonymous and does not include movement in “private” or “user-defined privacy zones.” 

The Pentagon issued over 2,500 Fitbits as part of a program to fight obesity. It is still unclear whether these government-issued fitness trackers provided any of the information shown on Strava’s global heat map. A spokesperson from U.S. Central Command stated that the military is constantly working to refine security policies to address any challenges that come up.

Photo courtesy of Daily Express.

Joe Biden has had a 44-year career in politics. Biden became a Democratic senator for the state of Delaware in 1972 and served as such until 2009 when he became part of Barack Obama’s ticket in the 2008 presidential election. Biden’s second term as vice president ended in 2017 with Trump’s inaguration. As of now, Biden is not actively discussing whether or not he will run for president in 2020 and is not collecting donations for a potential campaign. However, he does not oppose the idea of helping a Democratic hopeful in the 2020 presidential campaign.

“Something’s got to happen, man. We’ve got to turn this ship around. But I’d much prefer to be helping someone turn it around than being the guy turning it around,” Biden said in an interview with Vanity Fair.

In a recent poll conducted by Huffpost Pollster, Biden has an approximately 55 percent approval rating among Americans. Another poll concluded 74 percent of Democrats view Biden favorably as a potential presidential candidate, followed by Democratic Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Kamala Harris of California.

Despite positive poll results, Biden recognizes that finding the next generation of Democratic leaders is essential to the survival of the party. He is currently focused on supporting colleagues in the Senate. Twelve of the 14 candidates Biden endorsed in the Nov. 7 election won, including Danica Roem, a transgender candidate who won a seat in the Virginia House of Delegates. A person close to Biden stated that the former vice president is working intently on supporting and helping to elect Democrats at all levels of government. Biden is paying very close attention to the current political environment in the United States but has not stated whether or not his next political move will be a bid for the White House.

Photo courtesy of New York Trend.