Faculty Accomplishments

Véronique Plesch, the James M. Gillespie Professor of Art, presented a paper at the international conference Épigraphie et latinité au Moyen Âge (Epigraphy and Latinity in the Middle Ages), held in Poitiers, France, May 18-23, 2026. Her paper, “Graffiti et Multigraphisme / Graffiti and Multigraphism,” was featured as part of a set of sessions on medieval graffiti. The conference brought together international scholars to explore medieval inscriptions within the broader context of Latin culture and its geographical and cultural margins. Moving beyond traditional historiographical reviews to look at cutting-edge applications in medieval epigraphy, the overarching goal was to assess the deep significance of written expression in shaping historical and cultural identities. The conference, organized by the Centre d’études supérieures de civilisation médiévale—France's premier research institution dedicated to the Middle Ages—served as the conclusion to two major European research initiatives: the ERC GRAPH-EAST and IUF CARMECA projects.

James R. Fleming, Charles A. Dana Professor of Science, Technology, and Society, Emeritus, was an expert panelist on a special American Meteorological Society webinar discussing the science behind the film Pressure. The webinar was a forum to discuss weather, history, filmmaking, and the remarkable story behind the film, which tells the story of James Stagg, the UK Met Office meteorologist who served as chief meteorological advisor for the D-Day invasion, and the creation of the weather forecast that helped shape history. Fleming was one of four panelists, joining the film's director and two technical advisors for the film. The webinar was recorded and is available online.

A new book by Adam Howard, the Charles A. Dana Professor of Education, is newly released. Privileged Brotherhoods: Becoming Men at Elite All-Boys Schools (Polity Books, 2026) "offers an unprecedented look inside the hidden world of elite all-boys schools in the United States. These institutions have long shaped the nation's most powerful men but have largely escaped critical scrutiny," according to the publisher. "Drawing on extensive and immersive fieldwork, Adam Howard reveals how these schools function as incubators of elite masculinity, instilling in their students a sense of entitlement, competitive drive, and loyalty to powerful male networks. At the heart of this process are 'brotherhoods': informal institutions molding boys into men prepared to defend privilege and resist challenges to traditional power structures."

Professor of Art Gary Green has a new exhibition of photography on view at the Maine Jewish Museum in Portland. Titled "Drawn by Nature: New Photographs," the exhibition shows Green's take on tall, vertical panoramas, which he first introduced in Colby's last faculty show, even though he began the series with experiments in 2006 when he was an artist in residence at Southern Maine Community College. "The new pieces I have since made in 2025 and 2026 have a more ominous spirit to me," said Green. "They are darker (some are printed as negatives, one a double exposure) and they represent, for me, the dark tangled masses of lies we find ourselves trying to penetrate and understand. On another level, this somewhat abstract look at nature represents one meaning of the title." Green said that the other meaning of the work is his "own being drawn to nature as a subject. My interest in photography is indeed the collaboration of nature, light, film, chemistry, and my own guiding the process through technical and aesthetic issues to complete the process." The exhibition will be on view May 7-June 25, 2026.

Robert Gastaldo, Whipple-Coddington Professor of Geology, Emeritus, has published a consequential paper that calls for the abandonment of an established mass extinction model. Published in the Geological Society of America Bulletin, the paper, titled "Conundrums of Wapadsberg Pass and other locales in the Karoo Basin, South Africa: The death knell of the end-Permian vertebrate-extinction model," concludes that based on the authors' "independent, and a posteriori, tests that the prevailing Karoo Basin vertebrate-extinction paradigm violates fundamental biostratigraphic principles and that the terrestrial end-Permian mass extinction model on which it is based should be abandoned in the Karoo Basin and globally."

Gail Carlson, associate professor of environmental studies, has been selected for a female playwright residency at Waterman's Community Center on North Haven Island in Maine. The residency is funded by the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation and will allow Carlson to interact with community members to explore environmental themes and spend time working on the script for her play titled Persistence, a rural family drama about the human impacts of PFAS and a cautionary tale about chemical pollution. An in-person reading of the play will take place during this year's Environmental Humanities Summer Institute. This fall, the play will be produced and performed by Colby's Performance, Theater, and Dance Department under the direction of Bess Welden, senior lecturer of performance, theater, and dance.

Assistant Professor of Music José Martínez has released two albums within three months. /home/usuarios/shared/intuición (Bogotana Records, December 2025) and Short Stories (New Focus Recordings, March 2026) showcase compositions by Martínez, a percussionist and electroacoustic musician. In /home, which features Martínez and the ensemble TuKuPrá, the listener is taken "through a sonic path that delves into free and spontaneous creation alongside a premeditated musical discourse." Short Stories "presents a fascinating series of collisions on this bracing, diverse, electronics-spiked portrait album, asking musicians to grapple with technology, language, and musical tradition," wrote reviewer Peter Margasak for Bandcamp. Short Stories was also reviewed by blogcritics.

Grace McGowan, visiting assistant professor of English, has had two articles published recently. In the Digital Colored American Magazine, she provided commentary on the magazine's July 1903 issue, which she said "is particularly concerned with two intertwined themes: the politics and tensions of early-twentieth-century beauty and the reimagining or reclaiming of a classical tradition from Ancient Greece and Rome by and for Black people." The second is a reference article titled "Black Women in the North American Literary Tradition" and appeared in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Gender and Women's History. The article is "a survey of Black women in the North American literary tradition from the 18th to the 21st century, which provides an overview of Black women’s writing across time periods, outlines key contributors to the canon, and supplies an introduction to overarching debates within the tradition," McGowan said in the article's abstract.

Michael Burke, professor of English and creative writing, emeritus, has a new essay that appeared in Panorama: The Journal of Travel, Place, and Nature. Titled "Weapon Station," the essay involves rattlesnakes, military weapon depots, and rivers. Among others, said Burke. The essay recounts memories of Burke's childhood, in a housing development built among almond trees outside of San Francisco. "The eastern edge of the town was signified by a sturdy barbed wire fence, where the Concord Naval Weapons Station began. The Weapons Station was strictly off limits, of course, that side patrolled every day by stern-looking men in pickup trucks who did not banter with those of us on the other side of the fence," Burke wrote in the essay's opening paragraph.

In March, pianist and Associate Professor of Music Yuri "Lily" Funahashi and composer, percussionist, and Assistant Professor of Music José Martínez visited two music conservatories in Italy, at the Conservatory of Music Luisa D'Annunzio in Pescara and the Conservatory of Music Benedetto Marcello in Venice. At both conservatories, Martínez held a masterclass about his compositions, including Guajeos (2018), a piece for four hands that draws on the energy and rhythmic vitality of salsa traditions. Funahashi's piano duo, with Steve Pane, gave concerts in both cities, featuring Martínez's Guajeos, among other American works. Before the Italian tour, Funahashi and Pane gave a preview of the program at the University of Maine Farmington, covered by the Daily Bulldog.