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Students in Hamilton's fall 2006 semester in Washington D.C. have established a blog, HC@DC, to describe their life in the nation's capital. HC@DC provides insight and ideas about politics, policy, culture and life inside the beltway. Visit the blog at http://hamcol.blogspot.com/

Catherine W. Phelan, professor and chair of Communication, presented a paper titled “Democracy in the Digital Age” at the Media Ecology Association Conference in Boston, during the summer. Material for this presentation was drawn from a larger manuscript she is currently working on which investigates how innovations in digital media challenge foundational concepts of American democracy. Phelan’s work with the Media Ecology Association also includes a forthcoming publication titled “Notions of Progress” which will appear in the journal Explorations in Media Ecology (v. 5, n. 2, 2006).

The College has announced the founding of the Alexander Hamilton Center (AHC), an organization inspired by Alexander Hamilton’s life and work. The AHC seeks to "promote excellence in scholarship through the study of freedom, democracy and capitalism as these ideas were developed and institutionalized in the United States and within the larger tradition of Western culture," according to the center's charter.

Assistant Professor of Anthropology Chaise LaDousa published "The Discursive Malleability of an Identity: A Dialogic Approach to Language "Medium" Schooling in North India" in the latest issue of The Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, the journal for the Society for Linguistic Anthropology of the American Anthropological Association. The article is derived from LaDousa's ongoing research in Banaras and Delhi on the ways that the school provides an ethnographic site for exploring constructions of class, region and nation in contemporary India.

“I’ve always been thinking about this sharp transition from the traditional big family to the ‘124 family’ (one child, two parents, four grandparents),” said Xin Wang ’09 of her Levitt summer research project. Advised by Cheng Li, the William R. Kenan Professor of Government, Wang spent her summer researching Chinese single children from different socioeconomic backgrounds with a special focus on their consumptive patterns.

Tumelano Gopolang ’08 (Orapa, Botswana) spent her summer chasing money. As an intern with the Trinity University Haiti Program in Washington, D.C., Gopolang researched the uses and delivery of economic aid pledged to Haiti in 2004.

Nicholas Tampio, visiting assistant professor of government, presented a paper on “Kantian Principles” at the 2006 American Political Science Association Conference, held in August. The paper argues that Kant’s heirs should create new principles rather than retain Kant’s original principles. The panel included several prominent Kant scholars, including Elisabeth Ellis, William Galston, Patrick Riley, and Susan Shell. Tampio’s paper is part of his book manuscript on Kant’s legacy in contemporary political theory.

Visiting Instructor of History Christopher Hill wrote a book review titled "They Killed the King," that was published in The Wall Street Journal (Sept. 6, 2006). Hill reviewed The Tyrannicide Brief, by Geoffrey Robertson (Pantheon). The book tells the story of John Cooke, England's solicitor-general in 1649, and his role in the treason trial of King Charles I. Hill noted that the trial and Charles' execution "arguably began the separation of Europe from authoritarian rule." In the review, Hill wrote that Cooke "became a martyr to the Puritan cause he had championed." He called the book "superb" and said the author believes Charles' trial "is the precedent for our admirable, modern-day efforts to call tyrants to account in courts of law. Hill noted: "Mr. Robertson's occasional enthusiasm for Cooke, however, cannot obscure the great success of his book: illuminating the heroic role played by the Puritans in curtailing authoritarian rule."

Last winter, fresh from a semester in France, Sara Feuerstein ’07 (Rochester, N.Y.) headed to Washington, D.C. for a second semester off campus. While there, she did some extensive Internet research, called the French Embassy and asked for an interview. Hired “on the spot,” Feuerstein spent the summer as an intern in the Publications Office of the French Embassy.

Assistant Professor of Japanese Masaaki Kamiya (with Seiki Ayano in Mie University in Japan) gave a presentation at Formal Approaches to Japanese Linguistics at Osaka University in Japan during August. The talk was titled "Verbal Nouns in Japanese are so called for good reasons."