Faculty News

Hamilton College’s Class & Charter Day celebration, an annual convocation recognizing student and faculty excellence during the preceding academic year, will take place Monday, May 9, at 4:15 p.m., in Wellin Hall. This year’s ceremony will also celebrate the tenure of President Joan Hinde Stewart, who is retiring on June 30.

Several national and regional media outlets included interviews with Hamilton experts in the last few weeks on topics ranging from the decision to keep Alexander Hamilton on the $10 bill to new strategies for engaging younger donors. Inside Higher Ed, The Washington Post, NBC News, Roll Call, and WAMC were among the outlets that featured Hamilton.

Alan Cafruny, the Henry Platt Bristol Professor of International Affairs, discussed trade agreements at a conference on “Rules, Rights and Resistance: The Battle Over TPP and TTIP.” The event was hosted by The New School on April 28-29 in New York City.

 A team of Hamilton students won the programming competition at the 21st annual Consortium for Computing Sciences in Colleges - Northeastern Region, held at Hamilton on April 29 -30. Linnea Sahlberg ’17, Ryan Woo ’17 and Alex Dennis ’18 were the winners from among 39 teams. 

Professor of English and Creative Writing Vincent Odamtten discussed Nnedi Okorafor’s “Who Fears Death: Telling Trauma, Telling Justice” at the 42nd annual conference of the African Literature Association (ALA) held April 6-9 in Atlanta.

“‘Too Smart to be Religious?’ Discreet Seeking Amidst Religious Stigma at an Elite College,” an article by Kateri Boucher ’17 and Assistant Professor of Sociology Jaime Kucinskas, was recently published in a thematic issue of the journal Social Inclusion.

Theresa Lopez, the Chauncey Truax Postdoctoral Fellow and Visiting Assistant Professor of Philosophy, presented her research at the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) on April 16. In her presentation, Lopez proposed a holistic method for using findings from the science of moral cognition to guide moral belief revision.

“Like a hike into rough terrain, the book is full of surprises … And it is packed with fascinating details,”  proclaimed a Wall Street Journal reviewer in describing Professor of History Maurice Isserman’s newest book. According to publisher W.W. Norton & Company, Continental Divide – A History of American Mountaineering “tells the history of American mountaineering through four centuries of landmark climbs and first ascents.” 

Visiting Assistant Professor of Literature Nhora Lucía Serrano presented a paper titled “Graphic Parenthesis and Nationalist Anxiety: (Re)membering Jacque Tardi’s Adele Blanc-Sec and Paris” at the 18th annual International Comic Arts Forum held at the University of South Carolina April 14-16.

Visiting Assistant Professor of Africana Studies Reynaldo Ortiz-Minaya recently presented a lecture titled “Plantation Economies and Penal Landscapes in 19th Century Cuba and Louisiana, 1803-1886” at the University of Louisiana-Lafayette. His discussion focused on the relationship between the rise of global capital and slave labor in the 19th century and the modern penal system.