Alumni News
Bohacz '78 Receives Alumni Service Award
Mazelle Ablon Bohacz '78 flanked by her husband, Kevin Bohacz, and Departmental Chair Stephen Whitfield.
Mazelle Bohacz '78 received the 2008 Service to the Association Award. This award recognizes an outstanding alumni leader whose commitment to Brandeis is truly extraordinary. Bohacz is honored for the amazing leadership she brought to her 30th Reunion and her tireless efforts on behalf of her alma mater.
Who Says Our Alumni Don't Lead Glamorous Lives?
Sara Kahan '07 (psychology) celebrates the New York premiere of "Australia" with American studies graduate Scott Feinberg '08 (top photo) and actor Hugh Jackman.
Featured AMST Alumni
Marc Tyler Nobleman
Marc Tyler Nobleman ‘94
During his freshman year, Marc Tyler Nobleman '94 registered for "American Film and Culture of the 1950s," thinking there would be no required reading. The class was about movies! Movies are fun! Fun isn't academic!
So when the syllabus came chockablock with books, it signaled an instant shift in Nobleman’s perception: his passion was more complex than he'd realized. He knew film could be a mirror or catalyst of culture, but he came to see how film could be an allegory or eulogy of culture as well. Nobleman stayed in the dark — AKA the screening room — throughout Brandeis, aiming to channel his film theory concentration into a career as a screenwriter-director.
He did become a "multihyphenate," but not quite the kind he had planned. Instead, he found himself a writer-cartoonist, author of more than 70 books, including the recently published "Boys of Steel: The Creators of Superman," and doodler whose work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal. Now, one of his presentation topics is the hidden complexity of the deceptively simple single panel cartoon — cousin, of course, to a frame of film.
Many of Nobleman’s American studies friends also became multihyphenates: a nutritionist-clinic owner, a college counselor-marketing consultant and yes, a screenwriter-director.
Mindy Schneider '82
Among our American studies alumni who have recently published books is Mindy Schneider, whose memoir of summers spent a Camp Kin-A-Hurra (not its real name) makes for delightful, hilarious, compelling reading. "Not a Happy Camper" was published by Grove Press in spring 2008 and is available in paperback. Even readers who did not attend a sleep-away camp in which so much could go wrong, or did not spend any summers at camp, are bound to enjoy reminiscences that are so unfailingly perceptive and witty in evoking the poignancy of early adolescence. Schneider has been a writer for television and lives in Los Angeles. "Not a Happy Camper" is her first book.