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The Town of Kirkland, Village of Clinton, Hamilton College, Clinton School District, and Oneida County have reached a mutual agreement in which Hamilton College will provide increased annual contributions to the local area.

Visiting Professor of Art History Scott MacDonald participated in this year’s “Flaherty,” a week-long seminar devoted to documentary and experimental filmmaking. The annual event, which was the 13th MacDonald has attended, was held at Vassar College from June 17 through June 24.

Vivyan Adair, the Elihu Root Peace Fund Associate Professor of Women's Studies, participated in a gallery opening and panel presentation at the National Women's Studies Association Convention in Oakland, Calif. The ACCESS project photo exhibit, The Missing Story of Ourselves, was put on display. About 1000 people attended the opening reception and viewed the exhibit. The panelists were Adair, Nolita Clark (Hamilton College '06), Shannon Stanfield '07, Paulette Brown (ACCESS '05) and Gita Rajan, Irwin Chair 04-06.

Assistant Professor of Sociology Yvonne Zylan appeared before the Bankruptcy Appellate Panel of the 9th Circuit in San Francisco, California on June 23, presenting oral argument in a case concerning the interaction between California’s Domestic Partners Rights and Responsibilities Act and the federal Bankruptcy Code. The case, on which Zylan has been acting as a pro bono consultant since last fall, raises issues of statutory interpretation and public policy with respect to the legal definition of civil marriage.

Professor of Religious Studies Heidi Ravven was interviewed for the article: "Missed Behavior; Can cognitive biases explain unethical behavior?" in Chartered Financial Analyst Magazine. The article quotes Ravven, who offered insight into how one's actions can be influenced by various social contexts and our religious values. According to the article, "the identification of behavioral insights isn't inherently good or bad. Nor do such insights explain why some individuals behave unethically while others are down right saintly." Ravven is quoted as saying, "We have a culture backed by incentives and disincentives." But these incentives and disincentives do not always work to promote ethical behavior.

When Music/Philosophy major Christopher Boveroux ’08 (Appleton, WI) traveled to Estonia with his high-school choir, he most likely assumed that the trip was only a chorus concert, albeit an interesting one. It was in the massive amphitheatre where once nearly a third of the population of Estonia gathered for a three-day music festival that the idea for a summer proposal was born. Several years later, Boveroux applied for and was offered an Emerson Grant to research, with Heather Buchman, assistant professor of music, the key role of music in the Baltic Independence Movement.

While many of her peers are working in laboratories on campus, Ruth Duggan ’08 chose to travel to New Mexico to pursue her summer research. Duggan, a physics major from Oakland, Calif., is working on the NPDGamma experiment at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico. Her Hamilton project advisor, Assistant Professor of Physics Gordon Jones, helped build a cell that Duggan is using in her research.

Assistant Professor of Art Rebecca Murtaugh has work exhibited at the Schweinfurth Memorial Art Center in Auburn, N.Y. The group exhibition titled “Made In New York” was juried by Matthew Friday and Gerald Mead and runs until August 26. For directions and more information visit www.myartcenter.org

Professor of Religious Studies Heidi Ravven was the invited Scholar-in-Residence at Decalogues Roundtable Discussion on "Where is God?" at the University of Denver in May. It was a three-day intensive roundtable discussion among 10 top scholars of Jewish Studies before an audience of students, faculty and the general public. On June 6, Ravven gave a Ford Foundation presentation to a group of scholars and other grantees on her ongoing research on "What Happened to Ethics? Searching for Ethics in a New America."  She also chaired a panel, "Was Spinoza an Atheist?" at the Association for Jewish Studies annual meeting in Washington, D.C. in December.

Associate Professor of English Naomi Guttman presented a paper on June 9 at the joint annual meeting of the Association for the Study of Food and Society and the Agriculture, Food, and Human Values Society hosted by Boston University's Program in Gastronomy. This year's theme was "Place, Taste, and Sustenance: The Social Spaces of Food and Agriculture." Her paper was called "The Picky Eater: Professional Advice and Personal Experience in Educating Children's Tastes," and is both a survey of the advice given to parents of picky eaters and a memoir of her own experiences with her family's picky eater.