All News

What is life like for a Utica high school student? The new theatrical production The Utica Spotlight Express, featuring 12 talented, driven students from Proctor High School, hopes to answer just that. The production opens December 14 at 8 p.m. in Hamilton's Minor Theatre. 

The Key Reporter, Phi Beta Kappa's magazine, recognized the legacy of Richard W. Couper '44 in its winter 2007 issue and included an article by Mariam Ballout '10, detailing the Couper Phi Beta Kappa lecture at Hamilton on Oct. 23. The lecture, titled "Sex, Celibacy and Gender Roles in Shaker Communities," was presented by Glendyne Wergland.

Associate Professor of English and Assistant Dean of Faculty for Diversity Initiatives Steven Yao presented a paper at the Globalizing Modern Chinese Literature: Sinophone and Diasporic Writings conference held at Harvard University on December 6-8. His paper, "Transplantation and Modernity: The Chinese/American Poems of Angel Island," discussed the intricate weave of diverse historical, social and cultural contexts in both China and the U.S. against which the "Island" poems gain their complex significance.

Hamilton's debate team attended the MIT Innovation Tournament where 69 teams and 64 novices competed during the weekend of Nov. 30-Dec. 1. Hamilton sent three teams: Rouvan Mahmud '11 and Andrew Harris '11; Chris Smith '11 and Phil Fraccola '08; and Kye Lippold '10 and Andrew Portuguese '11. Harris won 1st place novice speaker and Mahmud won 2nd place novice speaker. Mahmud and Harris also broke to varsity quarter finals and ended up winning 1st place novice team and 7th place varsity team, despite being novices.

"Using China as a target may provoke a backlash, so politicians need to be careful," said Cheng Li, William R. Kenan Professor of Government, in a Dec. 11 Bloomberg News article. Li, who is also a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, was commenting on a recent poll that found that the U.S. public has a more favorable impression of China than do congressional staff members and is more positive about trade with China than those staffers and business executives believe they are.

The exclusive advance showing of The Great Debaters for friends of Hamilton, held on Monday, Dec. 10 in New York City, proved to be an entertaining evening for attendees as well as a resounding fundraising success for the College's oral communication program. Generating just slightly less than $30,000 for the program, the event was attended by a capacity crowd of Hamilton alumni and friends. The event was underwritten by Sara Weinstein '02 and The Weinstein Company.

The photography of Sylvia de Swaan, visiting instructor of art, has been selected by SHOTS Magazine for inclusion in its annual portfolio issue (winter 2007). The magazine selected and showcased the work of nine photographers, publishing a four-page spread for each that included images as well as an interview. De Swaan's work was also selected for the magazine's back cover.

Assistant Professor of Government Sharon Werning Rivera presented a paper titled "The Russian Elite during Putin's Second Term: Has Militarization Continued?" at the annual conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies on Nov. 16 in New Orleans. Rivera and her co-author, government lecturer David W. Rivera, revisit the question they addressed in a 2006 article in Post-Soviet Affairs, whether Russian President Vladimir Putin has created a "neo-KGB state."

Jeff Pliskin, Associate Professor of Economics and Director of the Levitt Center, and Derek Jones, Irma M. and Robert D. Morris Professor of Economics, were invited attendees at the First International Economic Research Meeting of the Mondragon Cooperative Academic Community. The meeting was hosted by the Mondragon University business studies faculty in Oñati, Spain, Dec. 3-4.

Professor of Classics Barbara Gold has published an article "The Natural and Unnatural Silence of Women in the Elegies of Propertius" in Antichthon (the Journal of the Australasian Society for Classical Studies) 41 (2007). The article was invited as part of a keynote lecture (the Trendall Lecture) that she gave at the annual meeting of the Australasian Classical Society in Hobart, Tasmania, in 2006.