All News

The Saunders' Tree Peonies are in bloom in the Grant Garden. Professor of Chemistry A.P. Saunders hybridized the peonies in the early- to mid-1900s. His work with tree peonies -- which resulted in 73 named varieties -- was a notable achievement. His fame was established especially with hybridizing the yellow tree peony.

Robin Kinnel, the Silas D. Childs Professor of Chemistry, has been awarded a $238,357 National Science Foundation, Major Research Instrumentation Grant, "Acquisition of a High Field NMR for Chemistry Research," for 2004-2007.

Robin Kinnel, the Silas D. Childs Professor of Chemistry, received a $9,000 grant from the 2003 Pittsburgh Conference, Memorial National College Grants Program, for "A Spectrofluorimeter for Research and Teaching." He also co-authored three posters which were presented by Hamilton students at the national meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Denver in February, and at the 225th meeting of the American Chemical Society in New Orleans in March.

Visiting Assistant Professor of Classics Mark Masterson presented two papers at professional conferences. His paper, “Homosociality, Homosexual Behavior, St. Antony and Paul the Simple,” was presented at the 2002 American Philological Association Meeting, and “Morti Contermina Virtus: Masculinity and Statius’ Thebaid” was given at the Classical Association of the Atlantic States Meeting in New Jersey in October 2002. Masterson is also a member of American Philological Association Committee on the Status of Women and Minority Groups, and organizer of Lambda Classical Caucus Panel for 2003 American Philological Association Meeting.

Assistant Professor of Physics Seth Major presented a paper, "Where's the Relativity? Exploring modifications to Lorentz Invariance," at the East Coast Gravity Meeting in College Park, Md., in March. He also presented "Is there R in DSR"? Constraints on the 'new relativity,'" to a full session at the April meeting of the American Physics Society in Philadelphia. In both talks he discussed research work with Tomasz Konopka '02 and Dan Heyman '03.

Professor of Theatre Carol Bellini-Sharp participated in the 9th annual Performance Studies International Conference in New Zealand in April. She created a research project/performance piece inspired by the Moeraki Boulders which she first visited 18 years ago while on a Fulbright in New Zealand. Bellini-Sharp performed with the group, The Land: Whakapapa and Mapping, which consisted of New Zealand Maori, Australian, English and American performance artists, dancers and theater artists. They created and performed a multi-media piece about discovering and expressing their "whakapapa" (the whole of a person's being). Using visual, literary and kinetic images, the performance represented a mapping of the self in relation to ancestors, the land, the Boulders and each other.

Professor of Chinese Hong Gang Jin gave two invited lectures this spring. She presented "Input Analysis Studies in Teaching Chinese as a Second Language" at National Taiwan University in May and "Interactive Approach to Task Design" at Providence University in April.

Associate Professor of History Shoshana Keller received a grant from the ACTR/ACCELS Russian and Eurasian Program NIS Regional Language study program for June-July 2003. She spent two months in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, working on advanced language study and conducting new research on elementary education from 1945 to the present.

Lecturer in Art Sylvia de Swaan gave a lecture about her photographic work at Colgate University, co-sponsored by the Peace Studies and Art Departments, in March. Several of the images presented in her lecture will be featured in the upcoming Peace Studies Newsletter. She also visited Austin, Texas, to attend the National Conference of the Society for Photographic Education, where she served as a portfolio interviewer.

As a student delegate from Hamilton College and a volunteer in an on-site AIDS clinic, Hamilton student Lindsey Martin gained a unique perspective regarding the gravity of the AIDS virus worldwide as she attended the XIV UN Conference in Barcelona. Martin realized after the prestigious conference that Hamilton, as well as many universities across the United States, simply are not doing enough to help win the global fight against this deadly virus. This summer Martin is volunteering in an AIDS/HIV clinic in Kenya, where she will research the efficacy of foreign aid donations to AIDS organizations.