In honor of Halloween, the staff at the Center gave each fellow a list of previous office occupants. (As a reminder, I’m spending the year at CASBS thanks to a grant from the Annenberg Foundation to bring communication scholars here.) Below is my list of ghosts from the past.

Bay, Christian
Bauer, Raymond
Opler, Morris E.
Hymes, Dell H.
Beattie, John H. M.
Heady, Earl O.
Cohen, Albert K.
Millon, Rene
Shaffer, Jerome A.
Jenkins, James J.
Tannenbaum, Percy
Lydall, Harold F.
Mandelbaum, Maurice
Kothari, Rajni
Barber, Cesar L. Joe
Hartz, Louis
Mazrui, Ali
Neisser, Ulric
Peterson, Osler
Said, Edward
Cohen, Ronald
Graves, Theodore
Vaillant, George
Goody, Esther Newcomb
Dawes, Robyn M.
Watson, Richard Allan
Kaestle, Carl F.
Prewitt, Kenneth
Scott, Rebecca J.
Cawte, John
Weber, David J.
Lougee, Carolyn Chappell
Nipperdey, Thomas
Ashenfelter, Orley
Hermalin, Albert I.
Meinwald, Jerrold
Palloni, Alberto
Weber, Elke U.
Lerdahl, Fred
Camarillo, Albert M.
Trouillot, Michel-Rolph
Green, Martin B.
Rév, István
Cook, Karen S.
Twining, William Lawrence
Grimshaw, Jane
Biernacki, Richard G.
Gruenfeld, Deborah H.
Fisher, Philip
Katzenstein, Mary F.
Katz, Jonathan N.
Hargittai, Eszter

It may seem silly to focus on individual offices, but given the special architecture of this place, each office is a distinct part of the Center. Its architect William Wurster did a wonderful job of constructing a place that offers considerable privacy to each office occupant while also fostering interaction among community members. Perhaps some of the pictures I have taken convey that. There are no hallways here, just rows of offices and gardens in between.

Being given an opportunity to be at the Center is already humbling enough, but to think that all of the above people had been in the exact same spot working away is quite amazing. It’s neat to find some connections. For example, I only brought a few dozen books with me to the Center, but one of them is Carl Kaestle’s Literacy in the United States so it was really fun to see his name on my list.

I could spend days browsing the lists of the various offices, there is so much exciting history here.

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