All News

Jay Williams, Walcott-Bartlett Professor of Religious Studies, delivered a paper titled “Thomas Nast and Multiculturalism” at the International Conference on Arts in Society at the University of Edinburgh on August 15. The conference was held concurrently with the l,Edinburgh International Festival the Edinburgh Art Festival, the Edinburgh International Book Festival and the Edinburgh International Film Festival and was sponsored by Common Ground, an academic publisher and conference organizer. Williams’ presentation addressed Nast’s belief that the United States should be an inclusive society. Nast particularly emphasized the need to include African Americans, Asians and Native Americans in society, but he railed against extremists who sought to dominate any aspect of society with a particular ideology.

Assistant Professor of East Asian Languages and Literatures Masaaki Kamiya gave a presentation at the 8th Seoul International Conference on Generative Grammar. The theme of the conference was "Minimalist views on language design." Kamiya's paper was titled "DP Goal, PP Goal, and vP internal structure in Japanese" in which he presented new evidence that the internal structure of verb phrase is more complex than ever thought.

When YiYang Cao ’09 picked up National Geographic in the spring of his sophomore year in high school, he read an article about pollution in China; later, visiting Shanghai, he saw the extent of the local water pollution. But it was the industrial accident which, in November of last year, caused the dumping of toxic carcinogens into a major river that really prompted Cao to act. “From then on,” he said, “I decided that if I was given a chance, I would study China’s pollution problems and its waters.” Spurred by this ambition, Cao applied for and was granted a Levitt Fellowship to research water pollution in China. He was advised by William R. Kenan Professor of Government Cheng Li.  

Associate Professor of Mathematics Sally Cockburn presented a paper at MathFest, the summer meeting of the Mathematical Association of America on Aug. 12 in Knoxville. The paper, titled "Deranged Socks," was joint work with former visiting professor Joshua Lesperance, and grew out of a problem from Cockburn's junior-level graph theory and combinatorics course. Specifically, given n distinct pairs of socks, how many ways are there to distribute 2 socks to each of n people so that no one receives a matching pair? Like many combinatorial problems, it is easy to state, but remarkably difficult to solve. 

Alison Chiaramonte ’08 (Sherman, Conn.) spent her summer on the Hill, but not the one you’re probably thinking of. The public policy major was nowhere near Hamilton this summer; instead, she was on Capitol Hill as an intern in the offices of Congressman Sherwood Boehlert and Congressman John Larson.

China is once again the setting for the research of Yejun Qian ’08 (Shanghai, China). Qian, a duel major in mathematics and economics, is studying the effects of China’s accession into the World Trade Organization with a particular emphasis on the environment. The central question of his study will be, “how have the trade patterns and environmental indicators changed, nationally and provincially, since China’s accession into WTO?”

A day-long music and arts festival is planned for the Village of Clinton the weekend Hamilton students return to campus. The first Clinton Art & Music Festival will be held at locations throughout Clinton on Saturday, Aug. 26, from 10 a.m.-10 p.m.  Hamilton’s Office of Student Activities has arranged for busses to run continuously from campus to the village, beginning at 3 p.m.

Associate Professor of Theatre Mark Cryer presented a panel on grant writing for the arts at the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE) Conference in Chicago. He also was elected chair of the Acting Focus Group at ATHE.

Ernest Williams, the Leonard C. Ferguson Professor of Biology, attended the annual meeting of the Ecological Society of America in Memphis, Tenn., August 6-11. He presented a poster "Tree removal expands habitat for lupine and frosted elfin butterfly," on which Associate Professor of Biology William Pfitsch was second author.

The new Science Center has brought many joys to students and professors alike. But while the center’s impressive architecture certainly warrants appreciation, the resident collection of new “science toys” has stolen the attention of the inhabitants. Heather Michael ’07 and Nikola Banishki ’07, for instance, perk up when they talk about the new DNA-sequencing machine.