All News

It’s the beginning of March and that can mean only one thing: cycling season. Well, that’s what the beginning of March meant for the Hamilton College Cycling team as they traveled to Piscataway, N.J., for their first race ever at the Rutgers Classic Race Weekend on March 4 and 5. The team was founded last fall and competes in the Eastern Collegiate Cycling Conference (ECCC).

Katherine H. Terrell, visiting assistant professor of English, presented a paper titled "Chaucer's Immoral Monk: Illicit Sexuality and the Fertility of Narrative" at the 15th annual Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque Interdisciplinary Symposium at the University of Miami in February. The theme of this year's program was "When there was no sex or gender?" Terrell’s paper argued that sex and gender (specifically, constructions of masculinity and its relation to sexuality) are very much at issue in the prologue to Chaucer's "Monk's Tale," and are linked to medieval theories of narrative's social function.

Two Washington DC publications recently featured Yao Odamtten ’98 and the launch of his new lifestyle brand Ewoenam. The Washington Blade and DC North magazine both highlighted the organic quality and individual character of his new designer clothing line.   In the articles, Odamtten discusses the concept of individuality behind his designs. The women’s clothing, neckties, handbags and sandals are more about the person wearing them than the Ewoenam name. “I'm not here to change you, you are who you are. I want each article of clothing to say, ‘This piece is about you.'”   Both articles praise the environmental friendliness of his work because of the organic materials he uses. For example, he only uses fabrics with natural dyes. “We work with what nature gives us,” stated Odamtten.   Odamtten launched his line on October 25, 2005 at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. For more information on Odamtten’s clothing, visit Ewoenam’s website.      

Hamilton College students Joey Campanella '08, Benjamin Critton '06, Sarah Felder '07 and Liz Herring '08 are participating in the "Speak Out" art exhibition at the Utica Library. This regional Juried College Student Art Exhibition includes work by students from Hamilton College, Colgate, Syracuse University and the Munson-Pratt at Munson Williams Proctor Art Institute. The exhibition will run until March 31. The library is located at 303 Genesee Street in Utica.

Brian Rosmaita, assistant professor of computer science, presented a paper, "Accessibility First! A New Approach to Web Design" on March 3 at the Association for Computing Machinery SIGCSE 2006 Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, held in Houston.  His paper proposes an "accessibility first" pedogogy for web design, developed at Hamilton, in which the course is organized around the requirement of implementing web pages accessible to visually impaired computer users, as opposed to the traditional method of teaching accessibility only after students have already learned web design. 

Philip Klinkner, the James S. Sherman Associate Professor of Government, was quoted in The New York Times article, "For Democrats, Lots of Verses, But No Chorus," about the Democratic candidates for Congress. Klinkner said conditions were historically right for the Congressional election to turn on national issues." "You tend to see it at times when you have really unpopular presidents or really popular presidents," Klinkner said.

Karilyn Larkin '06, Meghan Dunn '06, and Frank Pickard '05 won Outstanding Poster Presentation Awards at a recent 46th annual Sanibel International Symposium on Atomic, Molecular, Biophysical, and Condensed Matter Theory. The meeting, held on St. Simon's Island from February 26 - March 3, is an international symposium devoted to forefront theory and computation in quantum chemistry, condensed matter, chemical physics, nanoscience, quantum biochemistry and biophysics.

Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature Melek Su Ortabasi has been awarded a 2006-2007 research fellowship by the Japan Foundation. She will travel to Japan for the 2006-2007 academic year to carry out research on her book project, "Disseminating Modernity: Language and Doubt in Yanagita Kunio's Native Ethnology. Ortabasi will be hosted by the University of Tokyo. She has also been selected as an alternate for a Fulbright research award for the same period.

Douglas Weldon, Stone Professor of Psychology, attended the Project Kaleidoscope Conference at Meredith College in Raleigh, North Carolina, March 3-5. Project Kaleidoscope or PKAL is an organization that advocates for building and sustaining strong undergraduate programs in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). PKAL focuses on building learning environments that attract and sustain undergraduate students in the study of STEM fields and motivate them to consider careers in related fields.

Dr. Nell Irvin Painter presented a talk titled, "Creating Black Americans: African American History and its Meanings, 1619 to the Present," based on her recently published book of the same name, on March 2 as part of the History Department Speaker Series. In her lecture, Dr. Painter discussed the writing of history and the ways in which that writing intersects with visual images.