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According to the predictions of Benjamin Bowser, the African American middle class could completely disappear in as little as 20 years. Bowser, chair of the Department of Sociology and Social Services at California State University, East Bay, spoke on April 10 about his recent book “The Black Middle Class: Social Mobility – and Vulnerability,” in the Kirner-Johnson Red Pit at Hamilton. The former president of the Association of Black Sociologists has written extensively on race, ethnic relations and HIV/AIDS prevention.

The Classics Department at Hamilton College is hosting a conference, "Alexander Hamilton and the Classics," on Wednesday, April 11, from 2:30-5:30 p.m. in the Kennedy Auditorium of the Science Center (G027). The event is free and the public is welcome to attend.

On Wednesday, April 4, Visiting Professor of Film History Scott MacDonald lectured at Colgate University as part of Colgate's Art and Art History Lecture Series. In his talk, "Aspects of a Critical Cinema," MacDonald explored some of the ways in which the varied experiences provided by avant-garde films offer critiques of the conventions of mass culture as these conventions are embodied in commercial media; create revealing avenues into essential elements of the cinematic apparatus (the set of machines and practices that make motion-picture media possible); and retrain perception, instigating new forms of engagement with the spaces and times of everyday experience.

Economics lecturer Nesecan Balkan and Gwyn Kirk, a former Jane Watson Irwin Chair in Women’s Studies (1999 – 2001), traveled in El Salvador during spring break to observe sustainability projects. They are researching sustainable development in Central America with a focus on El Salvador, a country characterized by great inequality, legacies of colonization, militarism and war; environmental devastation; and the privatization of resources, especially water.

Sylvia de Swaan presented a slide talk about her work at Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, N.Y., on Wednesday April 4, as the community service component of her 2006 photography fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts. Her presentation, which was free and open to the public, included selections from her work of the last 15 years. She placed special emphasis on her ongoing project "Sub-version," which on a range of contemporary issues - terror, surveillance, mass media, post millennial anxiety, dual realities, shadowy threats and ominous rumors.

Robin Wong, a candidate for May graduation from Hamilton College, has been awarded a Fulbright Grant to China. She plans to study attitudes toward aging in China to investigate the relationship between age identity, life satisfaction and positive mental health. In her proposal Wong says, "Maintenance of an identity younger than one's actual age has been correlated to positive well-being in the U.S. but may bit hold true for adults in a collectivist culture such as China. Both explicit and implicit measures are necessary for a more complete view of age identity."

Evan Savage, '08, has been awarded an American Society of Pharmacognosy (ASP) Undergraduate Research Award for the summer of 2007. This highly competitive award will provide a stipend for Savage to pursue research on marine sponges with Robin Kinnel, the Silas D. Childs Professor of Chemistry, for 10 weeks.

Hamilton alumnus David Chanatry '80, a former NBC news producer, has been recognized by the Broadcast Education Association Media Arts Festival for two stories he reported from the Balkans last year. Chanatry, assistant professor of journalism at Utica College, won the audio short form category award for his coverage of an Albanian youth group. He also won the radio hard news category award for a story about lead poisoning affecting Roma refugees in Kosovo. Chanatry reported this year's award-winning stories for Public Radio International's "The World."

Professor of History Maurice Isserman was a panel member at a symposium noting the 25th anniversary of the publication of Cornell historian Nick Salvatore's prize-winning biography Eugene V. Debs: Citizen and Socialist. The symposium was held on Friday, March 30, at the annual meeting of the Organization of American Historians (OAH), held this year in Minneapolis. Isserman argued that Salvatore's interpretation of Debs was shaped by a "Sixties prism," emphasizing Debs' radical individualism rather than his role as a proponent of the class struggle.

Phoebe Potter ’09 published a summary of the event “Moving Toward a Free Cuba” on the American Enterprise Institute’s web site with another intern from the University of Kansas, Gregory Trum Jr. The article summarized speeches regarding Cuba’s future after Fidel Castro dies.