THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE NEW YORK METS
Thursday, Friday, Saturday
April 26, 27, 28, 2012
April 2012 will mark the 50th anniversary of the New York Mets, one of the most popular and culturally significant baseball franchises.
On Thursday through Sunday, April 26-28, 2012, Hofstra University will host a conference to consider all aspects of the history and culture of the team. This will be the first multidisciplinary conference to consider every aspect of a Major League Baseball franchise.
Expected participants at the conference will include current and former members of the Mets' organization; baseball executives, journalists, broadcasters, and analysts; baseball scholars, historians, and cultural critics; and writers, artists, filmmakers, cartoonists, bloggers, collectors, and fans.
List of Participating Scholars and Paper Topics
Speakers will include:
*Hal Bock, former sports writer, The Associated Press
*Ed Charles, New York Mets (1967-1969)
*Vince Gennaro, Society for American Baseball Research (SABR)
*Bud Harrelson, New York Mets (1965-1977); Senior Vice President, Part Owner and Former Manager, Long Island Ducks
*Ed Ingles, Professional in Residence, WRHU-FM, School of Communication, Hofstra University
*Stan Isaacs, writer, www.thecolumnists.com; former writer, Newsday
*Ed Kranepool, New York Mets (1962-1979)
*Sal Marchiano, former sports anchor and Emmy Award recipient, CW11 News at Ten
*Art Shamsky New York Mets (1968-1971)
*Rusty Staub, New York Mets (1972-1975, 1981-1985)
*John Thorn, official historian, Major League Baseball
*George Vecsey, journalist, The New York Times
Contributing Organizations:
The Cradle of Aviation Museum
Garden City, NY
Andrew Parton, Executive Director
5 Towns Batting Range - Mini Golf - Target Pinball
Lawrence, NY
Matt Rosen
Gold Pure Food Products Co., Inc.
Hempstead, NY
Marc Gold
For more information please contact the Hofstra Cultural Center at (516) 463-5669 or by email at hofculctr@hofstra.edu.
CONFERENCE CO-DIRECTORS
Richard J. Puerzer
Associate Professor and
Chair of Engineering
Hofstra University
Richard.J.Puerzer@hofstra.edu
Paula M. Uruburu
Professor of English and Vice Dean, School for University Studies
Hofstra University
Paula.M.Uruburu@hofstra.edu
CONFERENCE PROGRAM
If you are interested in attending the 50 Years of the New York Mets Conference, please register on-site beginning Thursday, April 26, at 9 a.m. in the Multipurpose Room, Sondra and David S. Mack Student Center, North Campus. Please call 516-463-5669 for more information.
Dr. Dana Brand
1954-2011
The Hofstra community is deeply saddened by the passing of Professor of English Dana Brand on Wednesday, May 25. Dr. Brand was a former chair of the English Department and taught all genres and periods of American literature, with a main focus on fiction written between 1850-1950. He had been on the Hofstra faculty since 1989.
Dr. Brand was the author of The Spectator and the City in Nineteenth-century American Literature (Cambridge, 1991) and numerous articles on topics in English, American, and French literature, philosophy, and film. He was also a personal essayist and the author of 2007’s Mets Fan, a collection of essays about his experiences as a baseball fan. He wrote a second book about baseball fandom in 2009 titled The Last Days of Shea. Professor Brand was particularly active in Hofstra’s Honors College, where he taught “Culture and Expression.” He said in a 2007 interview with Hofstra Magazine, “The students are so exciting, receptive and involved. In this course I get to introduce them to literary works written hundreds of years ago, and I love to see how they find ways to connect these works to their lives. … If I wasn’t in regular contact with these bright, exciting young people, I would have a much less interesting and much less hopeful view of the world.”
Dr. Brand and Dr. Richard Puerzer, chair of the Department of Engineering, were in the midst of working with the Hofstra Cultural Center on a 2012 conference commemorating the 50th anniversary of the New York Mets. He also maintained a blog about the Mets at http://danabrand.com/blog/.
Dr. Brand is survived by his wife, Sheila Fisher, and his daughter Sonia. A campus memorial will be planned for the fall semester.
The conference on The 50th Anniversary of the New York Mets is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Dana Brand.
Fall 2011 Hofstra Horizons article by Joseph Fichtelberg, Professor of English: "The World and Dana Brand"