Bucknell University

Peter Balakian is a poet, writer and academic, the Donald M. and Constance H. Rebar Professor of Humanities at Colgate University. Balakian was born... in 1951, in Teaneck, New Jersey to an Armenian family. He was raised in Teaneck and Tenafly, New Jersey. He earned a B.A. from Bucknell University, an M.A. from New York University, and a Ph.D., in American Civilization, from Brown University. He has taught at Colgate University since 1980. He is the Donald M. and Constance H. Rebar Professor of the Humanities in the Department of English and director of Colgate's creative writing program. He was the first director of Colgate’s Center for Ethics and World Societies. Peter Balakian is the author of five books of poems, including, most recently, June-tree: New and Selected Poems 1974-2000. His other books are Father Fisheye , Sad Days of Light , Reply From Wilderness Island , Dyer’s Thistle , and several fine limited editions.
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Edward Kirk Herrmann is an American television and film actor. He is best known for his Emmy-nominated portrayals of Franklin D. Roosevelt on... television, and to younger generations for his role as Richard Gilmore in Gilmore Girls, as a ubiquitous narrator for historical programs on the History Channel, and as the spokesman for Dodge automobiles in the 1990s. Herrmann was born in Washington, D.C., the son of Jean Eleanor and John Anthony Herrmann. He has German ancestry on his father's side. Herrmann grew up in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, and graduated from Bucknell University in 1965, where he was a member of Phi Kappa Psi. He studied acting at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art on a Fulbright Fellowship. Herrmann began his career in theatre. One of the first professional productions he appeared in was the U.S. premiere of Michael Weller's Moonchildren at the Arena Stage in Washington D.C. in November 1971. He moved with the show to New York City to make his Broadway debut the following year. Herrmann returned to Broadway in 1976 to portray Frank Gardner in the revival of Mrs. Warren's Profession.
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Philip Milton Roth is an American novelist. He gained fame with the 1959 novella Goodbye, Columbus, an irreverent and humorous portrait of... Jewish-American life that earned him the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction. In 1969 he became a major celebrity with the publication of the controversial Portnoy's Complaint, the humorous and sexually explicit psychoanalytical monologue of "a lust-ridden, mother-addicted young Jewish bachelor", filled with "intimate, shameful detail, and coarse, abusive language". Roth has been one of the most honored authors of his generation: his books have twice been awarded the National Book Award, twice the National Book Critics Circle award, and three times the PEN/Faulkner Award. He received a Pulitzer Prize for his 1997 novel, American Pastoral, which featured his best-known character, Nathan Zuckerman, the subject of many other of Roth's novels. His 2001 novel The Human Stain, another Zuckerman novel, was awarded the United Kingdom's WH Smith Literary Award for the best book of the year.
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