Bates College has named three Dana Professors as two members of the anthropology faculty and one member of the religion faculty.

Established in 1966 with a matching grant from the Charles A. Dana Foundation of New York City, Dana Professorships recognize exceptional teacher-scholars at Bates. The Dana Professors named during summer 2004 are Loring Danforth and Steven Kemper, professors of anthropology, and John Strong, professor of religion.

The additions bring to seven the number of Dana Professors at Bates.

Danforth, of Lewiston, came to Bates in 1978. He earned his doctorate and master’s degree at Princeton University and his bachelor’s degree at Amherst College.

Danforth has conducted research on the Greek Civil War and on ethnic Macedonian populations. He is the author of The Macedonian Conflict: Ethnic Nationalism in a Transnational World (Princeton University Press, 1995) and Firewalking and Religious Healing: The Anastenaria of Greece and the American Firewalking Movement (Princeton University Press, 1989), both selected for the CHOICE list of outstanding academic books.

Kemper, also of Lewiston, started at Bates in 1973. He earned his doctorate and master’s degree at the University of Chicago and his bachelor’s at Dartmouth College.

Kemper has made a dozen research trips to Sri Lanka and elsewhere in Asia. He is the author of The Presence of the Past (Cornell University Press, 1991), an exploration of the contradictions involved in textualizing the history of Sri Lanka, and of Buying and Believing: Sri Lankan Advertising and Consumers in a Transnational World (University of Chicago Press, 2001).

Strong, of Auburn, started at Bates in 1978 and chairs the religion department. He received his doctorate at the University of Chicago, his master’s degree at the Hartford Seminary Foundation and his bachelor’s at Oberlin College.

Strong’s several books include The Legend and Cult of Upagupta: Sanskrit Buddhism in North India and Southeast Asia (Princeton University Press, 1991), The Buddha: A Short Biography (Oneworld Publications, 2001) and the forthcoming Relics of the Buddha (Princeton University Press).

Since the early 1960s Bates has received a number of grants from the Dana Foundation. Through these awards, the Foundation has recognized and honored excellence among Bates students and faculty.

In 1966 the foundation awarded Bates a grant to establish an endowed professorship fund that would recognize faculty members for exemplary teaching, the value of their research and their service to Bates. Between three and seven Dana professors from across the disciplines hold the honor at any one time. The other Dana Professors are: Martin Andrucki, of the theater and rhetoric department; George Ruff, physics; Thomas Wenzel, chemistry; and Richard Williamson, French.

In 1965 Bates received support from the Foundation to establish the Dana Scholars Program, which recognizes 10 men and 10 women from each first-year class for academic excellence and promise, leadership potential and service.

The Dana Foundation awarded funds to Bates in 1963 to support the construction of Dana Chemistry Hall. It also supported the construction of Ladd Library in 1971 and renovations of Memorial Commons in 1966 and 1976. In 1984 the foundation provided funds to established the Dana Research Apprenticeship Program, which supports student research.

The symposium, which begins in Pettengill Hall at 9 a.m., is designed to share Bates scholarship with alumni, students and their parents, along with the faculty at large. The 10 presentations involve research soon to be published, projects still in development, and results of sabbaticals. Questions and discussion after each talk are encouraged. Among the presenters are:

Margaret Imber, assistant professor of classical and medieval studies, who uses the legal defense of a Roman citizen (accused of seducing a widow with magic) to illustrate how provincial Romans constructed their cultural identity;

Loring M. Danforth, professor of anthropology, who makes the game of soccer a frame for examining ways in which the ethnic and cultural narratives of Australian society serve the country’s political and economic interests;

Erica Rand, associate professor of art. Rand, author of the alternative social history Barbie’s Queer Accessories (Duke University Press, 1995), scrutinizes Ellis Island for the traces of immigrants whose sexual and cultural identities fell outside the mainstream.

Designed to inform the Bates and Lewiston-Auburn communities about the unfolding events in Europe, Browne and Danforth will make brief presentations about their areas of expertise, followed by questions from the audience.

Danforth received critical acclaim for his recent book The Macedonian Conflict: Ethnic Nationalism in a Transitional World (Princeton University Press, 1997). Danforth examines the Macedonian conflict– set in the broader context of Balkan history and the more narrow context of the disintegration of Yugoslavia– in light of contemporary theoretical work on ethnic nationalism, the construction of national identities and cultures, the invention of tradition and the role of the state in building a nation.

Browne, an expert in Balkan language, literature and culture as well as Russian popular culture, has traveled frequently to Yugoslavia and Croatia, and communicates regularly with friends and colleagues in Serbia. He is critical of U.S. And NATO policies leading to and following the Paris peace talks.

In The Macedonian Conflict: Ethnic Nationalism in a Transnational World, just published by Princeton University Press, Danforth examines the Macedonian conflict in light of contemporary theoretical work on ethnic nationalism, the construction of national identities and cultures, the invention of tradition and the role of the state in building a nation.

The conflict is set in the broader context of Balkan history and the more narrow context of the recent disintegration of Yugoslavia. The book concludes with an analysis of the construction of identity on an individual level among immigrants from northern Greece who have settled in Australia, where multiculturalism is an official policy.

Harvard anthropologist Michael Herzfeld calls the book “the clearest exposition yet of the extraordinary complexities that have led observers to equate Macedonia with ‘confusion’… it is the most dispassionate available commentary on what has become a highly politicized situation. The use of data from Australia is a stroke of genius.”

A cultural anthropologist, Danforth is also the author of The Death Rituals of Rural Greece and Firewalking and Religious Healing: The Anastenaria of Greece and the American Firewalking Movement, both published by Princeton University Press.

Danforth joined the Bates faculty in 1985. He has received number of prestigious grants and fellowships including a Fulbright Fellowship to conduct research at the University of Melbourne in Australia. Danforth graduated from Amherst College and received master’s and doctoral degrees from Princeton University.