News

Associate Professor of Art History Stephen J. Goldberg presented a paper titled “The Fate of Place and Memory in the Art of Yun-Fei Ji” at the 11th Philosophers’ Conference at the East-West Center in Honolulu on May 25.

In her seventh interview on American Public Media’s Marketplace program in a year, Ann Owen, the Henry Platt Bristol Professor of Economics, discussed the recent surge in consumer spending in April. The increase was the largest in more than six years, due in large part to hefty spending on durable goods. Owen said that the “glass half full interpretation” would be that people are feeling more confident and are willing to make big purchases.

“PANORAMA: Three Ecocinematic Territories,” an essay by Visiting Professor of Art History Scott MacDonald, appears as a chapter in the Handbook of Ecocriticism and Cultural Ecology. Edited by Hubert Zapf, the book was recently published by De Gruyter, a German publishing house.

A fund established by 1964 Hamilton graduate Daniel W. Dietrich II, who died last year, has provided the college with a $6 million gift to establish The Daniel W. Dietrich ’64 Fund for Innovation in the Arts and The Daniel W. Dietrich ’64 Arts Museum Programming  Fund. These two funds will significantly expand the College’s already robust arts programming for its faculty, students and community.

“You can ask just one simple question to find out whether someone likes Donald Trump more than Hillary Clinton: Is Barack Obama a Muslim? If the answer is yes, 89 percent of the time that person will have a higher opinion of Trump than Clinton.” So began an analysis of results from the 2016 American National Election Study (ANES) pilot survey by James S. Sherman Professor of Government Philip Klinkner published by Vox on June 2.

Dan Chambliss,  the Eugene M. Tobin Distinguished Professor of Sociology, and Christopher Takacs ’05 were recently keynote speakers at the “NoName Facilities Conference” held at the University of Maryland, where they spoke on “How College Works for Students: And How Architecture Makes It Better or Worse.” The conference was a gathering of architects, campus planners and higher education facilities managers. 

Barbara Gold, the Edward North Professor of Classics, presented a paper titled “Were Female Martyrs Transgendered? Perpetua Between Genders” at the seventh triennial Feminism and Classics conference in Seattle on May 20.

Two Hamilton faculty members were approved for tenure by the College’s Board of Trustees during a recent meeting. The board granted tenure to Russell Marcus, philosophy, and Benjamin Widiss, literature and creative writing.

With a well-known commencement speaker who holds controversial views, Hamilton may have anticipated a bit more national media attention to the event than in past years. What was not expected was additional focus on the dean of faculty.

Associate Professor of Africana Studies Nigel Westmaas presented a paper on the topic “The Historical and Contemporary Contours of Guyanese Philosophy” in Georgetown, Guyana, on May 23.