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Hamilton College's highest awards for teaching were presented on May 9 to five faculty members. Professor of Biology Ernest Williams Jr. received the Christian A. Johnson Professorship; Associate Professor of Physics Brian Collett was awarded the Samuel & Helen Lang Prize for Excellence in Teaching; Associate Professor of English Catherine Gunther Kodat received the Class of 1963 Excellence in Teaching Award; Assistant Professor of Anthropology Haeng-Ja Chung was honored with the John R. Hatch Excellence in Teaching Award; and Visiting Assistant Professor of Psychology Mark Oakes received the Sidney Wertimer Award.

Nathan Goodale, visiting instructor in anthropology, published a chapter in Recent Advances in Paleodemography: Data, Techniques, Patterns, edited by Jean Pierre Bocquet-Appel. The chapter, titled "The Demography of Prehistoric Fishing/Hunting People: A Case Study of the Upper Columbia Area," considers the role of demography and the evolution of socioeconomic systems among hunter-gatherers. The volume stemmed from a session at the international conference the 25th World Population Congress, July 2005 in Tours, France. This publication represents the third related to Goodale's M.A. thesis research.

In an adventure that would make your average weekend warrior look rather feeble, this year's HamTrek competitors will once again be swimming 525 yards, biking nine miles and running 3.1 miles around the campus and in the village of Clinton. The event will begin in Hamilton College's Bristol Pool at 2:30 p.m. on Friday, May 9.

Dean of Faculty Joseph Urgo's essay, "Gorham Munson Falls Out with Cather: A Letter" was published in Willa Cather: New Facts, New Glimpses, Revisions, eds. John J. Murphy and Merrill Maguire Skaggs (Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson Press). The essay is based on a letter discovered by Urgo in a Drew University archive. Through a close reading of the 1934 letter from Cather to critic Gorham Munson, probably never mailed, Urgo reconstructs a previously undocumented aspect of Cather's relationship with her contemporaries.

Professor of English Vincent Odamtten presented a paper, "The Perils of Recovering Identities In 'Appier/Appiah Times" at the 34th Annual African Literature Association Conference held at the Macomb and Western Illinois University, April 22-27.

Associate Professor of Art History Stephen J. Goldberg published a paper titled "Art and the Authority of Excellence in Traditional China" in La question de l'art en Asie orientale, a publication of Le Centre de Recherche sur l'Extrême Orient de Paris-Sorbonne (CREOPS). Goldberg examined the relevance of the classical tradition of Confucian reflection for the aesthetic reception and historical understanding of the art of the scholar-painter in China.

Assistant Professor of Anthropology Haeng-ja Chung has received a fellowship from the Social Science Research Council and Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (SSRC-JSPS). While being affiliated at the Department of Cultural Anthropology, University of Tokyo, in 2008-2009, Chung will conduct research on performative, emotional and affective labor of Korean nightclub hostesses in Japan. Based on this research, Chung plans to work on two book projects in English and Japanese.

Associate Professor of English Steven Yao spoke recently at Cambridge and Sussex Universities in England. At Cambridge, Yao presented a paper titled, "Ezra Pound's Cathay and the Languages of Anglo-American Modernism," as part of the international conference on Translations and Transformations: China, Modernity, and Cultural Transmission that was hosted there on May 1-3. While in the UK, Yao also gave an invited lecture at Sussex University in Brighton, where he spoke to the American Studies research seminar on "Asian American Verse and the Limits of Hybridity," a talk arising from his current book project of Chinese American poetry.

Class & Charter Day, Hamilton's annual convocation recognizing student and faculty excellence during the preceding academic year, will take place on Friday, May 9, at 12:15 p.m. in the Chapel. This year's speaker is Austin Briggs, the Hamilton B. Tompkins Professor of English Literature emeritus.  His talk is titled "The Good Old Days/The Bad Old Days." He has taught at Hamilton for more than 50 years. An all-campus picnic will follow the awards and HamTrek, the fifth annual campus triathalon, will begin at 2:30 p.m.

Professor of Comparative Literature Peter J. Rabinowitz delivered a paper, "Can a Sonata Have an Unreliable Narrator?: Focalization, Style, and Musical Rhetoric," at the International Conference on Narrative in Austin, Texas, on May 4. Intended as a contribution to the on-going theoretical discussions of the value of narrative theory in the analysis of music, the paper argued that the concept of the unreliable narrator—normally viewed as an essentially literary device without any musical equivalent—can illuminate the processes by which we listen to music and can increase our appreciation of music's expressive potential.