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Associate Professor of Theatre and Dance Craig Latrell recently returned from two research trips to Southeast Asia funded by the Mellon Foundation and Christian Johnson Foundation. The first trip, in early spring, took him to the Malaysian states of Sarawak and Sabah, Malaysia (the northern part of Borneo Island), Singapore and Kuala Lumpur. Latrell's purpose was to visit a number of tourist "villages" to study the role of performance in constructing representations of local cultures, and to see how they relate to other national and global identities.

Winslow Professor of Chemistry George Shields published an article in the International Journal of Quantum Chemistry. The article, "Comparison of Density Functional Theory Predictions of Gas Phase Deprotonation," was co-authored with Matthew Liptak '03. The work shows the utility of a method of calculations known as Density Functional Theory for accurate computation of pKa values.  Liptak, a Goldwater Scholar during his senior year and winner of a Pfizer Summer Research Fellowship in 2002, has published seven papers from his undergraduate research in Shields' lab. Liptak's work formed the foundation for the recent grant awarded by the National Science Foundation to support research for students working with Shields and with Visiting Assistant Professor of Chemistry Karl Kirschner.

Derek Jones, the Irma M. and Robert D. Morris Professor of Economics, has been awarded a fellowship at the Helsinki School of Economics by the Foundation of Economics Education. The fellowship will provide support for Jones' continued work on econometric case studies of the nature and effects of human resource policies, in particular cases that are based in Finland. Jones will be a visiting professor at Helsinki School of Economics from January - May 2006. He has also contributed a chapter titled "Corporate Governance Cycles During Transition: Theory and Evidence from the Baltics" (with Niels Mygind, Copenhagen Business School) in the book The Life Cycle of Corporate Governance, edited by Igor Filatotchev, King's College London, and Mike Wright, Nottingham University Business School.

Although Laura Oman ’07 (New Providence, N.J.) has already had great success exploring two of her academic passions, English literature and Asian studies and culture during the academic year, she will be able to concentrate on these two diverse interests this summer. As the recipient of an Emerson grant, Oman will spend her summer working with Hamilton Assistant Professor of English Steven Yao on a project titled “Chineseness in Ezra Pound’s Cathay and the Construction of Race in Early Twentieth Century Discourse.”

President Joan Stewart has written to all alumni outlining her decisions on future directions for the Kirkland Project. Here is an advance look at that letter.

Brian Sweeney ’06 (Old Westbury, NY) has been interested in the story of Peter Pan since he was 7 years old. He has read J.M. Barrie’s novel and seen movie adaptations of the classic story. Then this past semester he took Professor Patricia O’Neill’s Children of Empire [course] where the class read the novel. It was not until this class that Sweeney, a rising senior majoring in an interdisciplinary study of English/Comparative Mythology, saw a correlation with the story of Peter Pan and mythology. As the recipient of an Emerson grant, he is now working on one research project that combines these two interests titled, “Peter Pan as a Modern Myth.”

Thirty-two Fulbright Grants…nine Thomas J. Watson Fellowships…six Barry M. Goldwater Scholarships…numerous grants from international foundations. Since 2000, Hamilton students have been awarded 60 prestigious national fellowships and scholarships, in everything from the natural sciences to Asian studies, to enable study at renowned research institutions and travel around the world.

Students in Janice Kapps' third grade class at Clinton Elementary are having a personal geography lesson about Uganda, thanks to Hamilton students who are spending a month working on a school in the African country. Meghan Moulton '07 wrote an e-mail to the Clinton students, describing how different school is in the Ugandan village of Lukolo. The Clinton students wrote letters to the children in Uganda, and Moulton and the other Hamilton students were helping the Ugandan children write back to Mrs. Kapps' class.  

Blackwell Publishing has issued the Companion to Narrative Theory, co-edited by James Phelan (Ohio State University) and Hamilton Professor of Comparative Literature Peter J. Rabinowitz. The massive anthology includes 35 original essays by leading narrative theorists from the United States, Canada, Europe, the Middle East and Asia, and offers a comprehensive and global view of the state of the discipline at the beginning of the 21st century, covering not only literary narrative, but also narrative in other mediums and other fields.

Eleven. To many Hamilton students and faculty, this is the number of weeks remaining in a relaxing summer vacation. However, to Steve Bellona, Hamilton’s Associate Vice President for Facilities and Planning, the rest of the Hamilton College buildings and grounds crew and the builders from Barr and Barr, the next 11 weeks will be less than relaxing, as it is the number of weeks they have left to finish the $56 million science building construction project.