The Andersons follow parallel but diverse paths in visual studies

By Linda Myers

When students at Cornell first saw televised images of the World Trade Center towers collapsing, "Everyone was saying 'It's so unreal, it's like watching a movie,'" said Erica Anderson. She and her sister, Alicia, immediately thought of Like a Film, a book by one of their professors, Tim Murray, that discusses what it means when the distinction between the real and the imagined on screen begins to blur.

The Andersons, who are identical twins, are both seniors concentrating in visual studies. The emerging field tries to make sense of the images and words that permeate people's lives, that explain who we are and have been as a society and a culture, says Brett de Bary, director of Cornell's Visual Studies Program, professor of Asian studies and Erica's adviser.

Erica, left, and Alicia Anderson, both seniors concentrating in visual studies, pose with items from the Sage Cast Collection, reproductions of classical sculptures purchase by Cornell's first president, Andrew Dickson White, in 1881. The curator of the collection is Professor Peter Kuniholm. Robert Barker/University Photography

Erica likens people's confused sense of reality following the fall of the twin towers to the way trauma triggered memory in a film she studied in depth, Alain Resnais' 1959 Hiroshima, Mon Amour, in a course she took with Murray. Erica explains that in the film, a Frenchwoman travels to Japan to witness the past devastation of Hiroshima and, through her relationship with a Japanese lover, comes to terms with her own horrific wartime memories. "The film is a complex layering of language and discourse, what they are saying and what you are seeing," comments Erica.

One of the most exciting things about visual studies, says de Bary, is that even before it became a formal concentration, it began to attract students, like the Anderson twins, who are able to ask new questions. "Erica first came in for an advising session three years ago. She had already combed through the college catalog for courses that had to do with visuality. Her list was longer than ours."

Both Erica and Alicia have since taken Introduction to Visual Studies, taught by Murray (English, film and video) and Visual Culture and Social Theory, taught by Professor Susan Buck-Morss (History of Art, Government). Alicia says that The Age of Realism and Naturalism with Assistant Professor Jacqueline Goldsby (English) motivated her analysis of 19th century American painting, New York City photography and early 20th century film with Murray and Associate Professors Laura Meixner (History of Art, American Studies) and Mary Woods (Architecture). Erica says that her studies of performance theory and the psychology of perception with Assistant Professor Rebecca Schneider (Theatre, Film and Dance) and Associate Professor David Field (Psychology) fueled her approach to Asian art, writing and translation with Assistant Professor Kaja McGowan (History of Art) and Professor Naoki Sakai (Asian Studies, Comparative Literature).

About the decision to concentrate in visual studies, Erica says: "It found us. We've always been interested in finding creative connections between writing and visual arts." Even when they were growing up in the small town of Cobleskill, N.Y., they were intrigued by the power of visual imagery, both sisters say. As young girls they wrote and illustrated children's stories (still an interest) and later made murals to augment lessons in such subjects as American history and calculus.

Once they got to Cornell, exposure to what Erica called an "explosion" of new ideas in a range of subjects -- art history, literature, psychology, film, Asian studies and American studies -- spurred their intellectual growth. "A place like Cornell encourages diverse thinking. There are so many opportunities," she says.

"Like the chance to look at actual medieval illuminated manuscripts at the library," says Alicia, who studied them to determine how image conveys meaning as part of a freshman writing seminar on art and society in the Italian Renaissance.

"It also was great to work behind the scenes at the Johnson Museum on materials as diverse as ancient Grecian urns and contemporary video art," says Erica. Last year at the museum, she was a curatorial intern in paintings and sculpture, while Alicia interned in prints, drawings and photographs.

"They are prototypical Cornell humanities students -- independent minded, able to strike out on their own, and hungry to develop their own projects," says Murray, who serves on both their honors thesis committees. "They are incredibly talented students individually, and they personify the Cornell visual studies student who is comfortable with cross-disciplinary study. In their case, visual studies grounded and catalyzed their combined interests in art, art history and literature."

In her honors thesis Erica is looking at problems that "doubleness" presents, from Edgar Allan Poe's doppelgangers and the double vision of 19th century stereoscopes, to more contemporary representations of twins in Diane Arbus photographs and Japanese mass media. She also is intrigued by the psychology of twinship in an international arena and the attacks on the twin towers.

Alicia says her honors thesis asks how rising visual technologies in 19th century America, namely photography, provide a new vocabulary for narratives of place at the turn of the century. She is especially interested in the way in which women visually "site" self and nation in autobiographical texts and regionalist fiction.

"Alicia has such a range of interests," says Shirley Samuels, professor of English and American Studies, who is on her thesis committee. "She's drawn to Civil War photographs, to 19th century portraits, particularly of women, and their interplay with the writings of Stephen Crane, Sarah Orne Jewett and Harold Frederic. Crane was obsessed with visual components, Jewett was fascinated with landscapes, and Frederic, a regionalist writer from upstate New York, looked at the tension between where people come from and where they end up."

For the Anderson sisters, there's no apparent tension between their small-town roots and current intellectual interests. They still describe themselves as "country girls," albeit ones who have learned how to take advantage of the kind of stimulating intellectual environment Cornell offers.

Still, there's no escaping the twin thing -- even their achievements at Cornell seem parallel, if not identical. Among other achievements, they are both college scholars with 3.99 cumulative G.P.A.s; members of the Golden Key National Honor Society; and musicians with the Wind Symphony and Symphonic Band (Erica plays the clarinet, Alicia the French horn). And both Andersons plan to go on for doctorates in areas related to visual studies, although they may end up in places far from each other.

In the meantime, "We're lucky to have each other," says Erica, "to encourage, care and support one another emotionally and intellectually. We try to give each other the space to take different paths, to explore. It's such a delicate balance, learning how to listen to one another and your own heart, too."