Susan Sontag to speak at Vassar Commencement

Susan Sontag will deliver the 139th Commencement address at Vassar College on Sunday, May 25, at 10 a.m. in the outdoor amphitheater. Ms. Sontag is one of America's best-known and most influential writers. Her books include four novels, The Benefactor, Death Kit, The Volcano Lover, and In America, which won the National Book Award for Fiction in 2000; a collection of short stories, I etcetera; a play, Alice in Bed; and six works of non-fiction, starting with Against Interpretation and including On Photography, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism, and Illness as Metaphor. Her books are translated into thirty-two languages.

Ms. Sontag's stories and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, The New Republic, Art in America, Parnassus, The Nation, and many other magazines here and throughout the world. Her play Alice in Bed has had many productions in the United States, Mexico, and Europe.

Ms. Sontag has written and directed four feature-length films: Duet for Cannibals (1970) and Brother Carl (1974), both in Sweden; Promised Lands (1974), made in Israel during the war of October 1973; and Unguided Tour (1983), from her short story of the same name, made in Italy.

She has also directed plays in the United States and Europe. Among her theatre work was a staging of Beckett's Waiting for Godot in the summer of 1993 in Sarajevo, where she lived for much of the time during the three years of war and was made an honorary citizen of the besieged city.

Ms. Sontag has been a human rights activist for more than two decades, and served from 1987 and 1989 as President of the American Center of PEN, the international writers' organization dedicated to freedom of expression and the advancement of literature, from which platform she led a number of international campaigns on behalf of persecuted and imprisoned writers.

A member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 1979, Ms. Sontag received the Malaparte Prize in Italy in 1992, and in 1999 was named a Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres by the French government. Between 1990 and 1995 she was a MacArthur Fellow. In 2001 she received the Jerusalem Prize for the body of her work.

Born in New York City in 1933, Ms. Sontag grew up in Arizona and Southern California. She received her B.A. from the College of the University of Chicago, and did graduate work in philosophy, literature, and theology at Harvard University and Saint Anne's College, Oxford. She lives in New York City. She is working on a new essay on illness.

Vassar's Commencement is open to the public. Seating is on a first-come, first-served basis. For additional information, contact the Office of Campus Activities at 845-437-5370. Individuals with disabilities requiring accommodations should contact Cathy Jennings at 845-437-5370 as far in advance as possible to request appropriate and reasonable accommodations for the event.

Vassar College is a highly selective, coeducational, residential liberal arts college founded in 1861.

Individuals with disabilities requiring accommodations or information on accessibility should contact Campus Activities Office at (845) 437-5370. Without sufficient notice, appropriate space and/or assistance may not be available.

Vassar College is a highly selective, coeducational, independent, residential liberal arts college founded in 1861.

This article was posted on Sunday, May 25th, 2003.