Noted Philosopher Martha Nussbaum to Deliver UNC Asheville Commencement Address;
Three to Receive Honorary Degrees

Noted philosopher and author Martha Nussbaum will deliver the UNC Asheville commencement address on Saturday, May 14. The ceremony begins at 9:30 a.m. on the Ramsey Library Terrace. Tickets are not required.

UNC Asheville Chancellor James H. Mullen Jr. will confer honorary doctoral degrees on Nussbaum as well as celebrated Tony Award-winning costume designer William Ivey Long and revered traditional Cherokee potter Amanda Swimmer. Some 600 students are candidates for bachelor’s and master of fine arts degrees.

Nussbaum is the Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago Law School. A leader in the field of the humanities, she has also taught at Harvard, Brown, Stanford and Oxford universities and currently holds appointments in the University of Chicago’s Law School, Philosophy Department and Divinity School. She has written or edited more than 20 books. Her text, “Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education,” has won several awards and is used in UNC Asheville’s Humanities Program. Her most recent book, “Hiding from Humanity: Shame, Disgust and the Law" was published in 2004 by Princeton University Press. One of three national presidents of the American Philosophical Association in 1999-2000, Nussbaum also has been a member of the Council of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Board of the American Council of Learned Societies, and an academician in the Academy of Finland. She earned a bachelor’s degree from New York University and both master’s and doctoral degrees from Harvard University.

Long, a native North Carolinian, has six shows currently running on Broadway. His designs for many of Broadway’s most popular musicals have won four Tony Awards and seven nominations. His eye-catching, avant-garde designs for the original Broadway production “Nine” earned his first Tony in 1982, followed by “Crazy for You” in 1992, “The Producers” in 2001 and “Hairspray” in 2003. The National Theatre Conference named him Person of the Year in 2000, and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago presented him with the Legend of Fashion Award in 2003. Long spends half his time on his family farm in Seaboard, N.C., in Northampton County, and each summer he designs costumes and sets for “The Lost Colony” on Roanoke Island. Long majored in history at the College of William and Mary, was a fellow in art history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, then pursued an M.F.A. in stage design at Yale University Drama School.

Swimmer is one of the best-known potters in the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. Raised on the Qualla Boundary, she has been hand-building and firing pots in the traditional manner for more than 50 years. From 1960 to 1993, Swimmer worked as an artisan at Oconaluftee Indian Village, a replica of the 18th-century Cherokee community. She continues to teach pottery making at Cherokee Elementary Schoo, at the John C. Campbell Folk School and several Georgia colleges. Her pots are on exhibit in North Carolina, Washington, D.C. and New Mexico. She received the North Carolina Heritage Award, presented to the state’s most eminent folk artists by the North Carolina Arts Council, in 1994.

For more information about commencement, call UNC Asheville’s Provost Office at 828/251-6470.

Media Contacts:

• Merianne Epstein, UNC Asheville Public Information Director, 828/251-6676
• Jill Yarnall, UNC Asheville Public Information Assistant Director, 828/251-6526