Faculty Accomplishments
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Adam Howard, the Charles A. Dana Professor of Education, Kevin O'Boy '23, and Clay Bolster '24 traveled to Gothenburg, Sweden, to present a paper as part of the 2023 European Social Science History Conference. Their paper, "Privileged Brotherhoods: Becoming Men at Elite All-Boys Schools in the United States," highlights the distinctive role that elite all-boys schools play in making and remaking elites in the United States. O'Boy and Bolster were coauthors on the paper and have been working on this project throughout their time at Colby. Next school year, the team plans to publish an article based on this research.
Associate Professor of Art Marta Ameri has joined the team of series editors for the Women in Ancient Cultures book series, published by Liverpool University Press. This series "aims to unite groundbreaking research from all fields of ancient-world studies, publishing research that pertains to all aspects of women’s lives in the ancient world and the various levels of agency that they could, and could not, attain as well as the dynamics and modalities of female agency under, and against, oppressive conditions—patriarchal, heterosexist, and otherwise." Ameri will work with the other series editors to solicit and vet book projects focusing on women's lives in the Ancient Near Eastern, South Asian, and Early Islamic Worlds.
An article by Assistant Professor of English Dyani Taff was recently published in the journal Coastal Studies & Society. The article, titled "Rivers and Bogs: Slow Protests in Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko,” received critical praise from its reviewers. "I’m very impressed with this smart, persuasive, and important article that places readings of Behn’s Oroonoko in dialogue with emerging scholarship about early modern critical race studies and ecocritical studies, with a particular emphasis on rivers, estuaries, and swamps," said one reviewer. While another said, "I find this an intelligent take on 'protest' that moves beyond simply ascertaining whether Oronooko 'fails' to combat environmental and social injustice; I think it helpfully historicizes racial and colonial ideologies and underscores recent critical responses to their ills; and I admire its concluding, compelling call for modern readers to attend to 'slowness' as both a method and a movement (in multiple senses of the word)."
Professor Robert A. Gastaldo, Whipple Coddington Professor of Geology, emeritus, has joined Maine's Department of Education's Science Standards Steering Committee in their evaluation of the state's NextGen Science standards. The Steering Committee is composed of education experts who represent the cultural diversity found in Maine and a range of viewpoints as to the content of the standards. He served as a developer and writer for the American Geological Institute's middle school earth science curricula—Constructing Understandings of Earth System and Investigating Earth Systems—and as a development leader and author for their high school, inquiry-based curriculum, EarthComm. Gastaldo's college-level laboratory manual, Deciphering Earth History, has been on the market since the mid-1990s, and he recently edited an advanced undergraduate/beginning graduate level textbook, Nature Through Time.
Associate Professor of French Mouhamédoul Niang has written an essay for Africa to Maine, a photo exhibition at the Portland Public Library that runs through June 18. It was produced by the Greater Portland Immigrant Welcome Center as a community response to Outside the Frame: Todd Webb in Africa, currently on display at the Portland Museum of Art. In the 1950s, Webb, an American documentary photographer, documented emerging industries and technologies in nine African countries. In contrast, the photos in “Africa to Maine” show the lives of individuals and families in Africa during the past 60 years. In his essay, “Photography and Immigrants,” which was also printed in the April edition of Amjambo Africa, Niang writes about those photos.
The spring issue of the Maine Arts Journal contains essays by Professor of Art Véronique Plesch, Professor of Art Bevin Engman, and painter and illustrator Sam Onche '22. For this issue, which addresses the theme of Truths and Lies, Plesch wrote the introduction, her "Art Historical Musings" column (“Artful Lies"), and an essay on the drawings that Josefina Auslender did during the dictatorship in Argentina.
Professor of Art Véronique Plesch participated in the International Workshop on Standards and Criteria for the Photo Reproduction, Diagnostic Analysis, and Preservation of Graffiti that took place March 23-24, 2023, at the Dipartimento di Lettere, Arti e Scienze Sociali (DiLASS) of the Università degli Studi “G. d’Annunzio,” Chieti-Pescara, Italy. She presented a paper titled "La relazione tra testo e immagine nello studio dei graffiti" (The Relationship Between Word and Image in the Study of Graffiti). The workshop was organized in the context of the European Research Council project Graff-IT, “Writing on the Margins. Graffiti in Italy, 7th to 16th century," a five-year project that received a grant of 2.5 million Euro. Plesch is part of Graff-IT's Team of Experts. Plesch also gave a guest lecture titled “I graffiti, oggetto del patrimoniale culturale?” (Graffiti as Cultural Heritage?) in the context of the doctoral program in Cultural Heritage Studies, Università degli Studi “G. d’Annunzio,” Chieti-Pescara, Italy.
Tanya Sheehan, the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Art, has been appointed a Beinecke Senior Visiting Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery Art. CASVA fellowships are highly selective, and the program is among the most sought-after research opportunities for art historians in the U.S. At CASVA Sheehan is working on her third book, a study of African-American artists’ engagement with the subjects of medicine and public health between the 1930s and 1950s. Sheehan is also the principal investigator for Colby's initiative Critical Medical Humanities: Perspectives on the Intersection of Race and Medicine.
Assistant Professor of Government Nicholas Jacobs and Lukas Alexander '22 coauthored an article recently published in the journal Congress & the Presidency. Titled "Presidential Partisanship and Legislative Cooperation in the U.S. Senate, 1993–2021," the article unveils a historical change in the way legislation works its way through the U.S. Senate. The research shows how Senators have increasingly based their votes on presidential partisanship, particularly when they are members of the opposition party. Consequently, one reason that legislative gridlock has become so common is because presidents now occupy a central role in dictating party affairs, mobilizing the party base, and setting the legislative agenda.
The Maine Governor's Energy Office recently named Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Alison Bates as an advisory board member for the Maine Offshore Wind Research Consortium. The board's role is to establish a research strategy to identify opportunities and challenges caused by the deployment of floating offshore wind projects to the existing uses of the Gulf of Maine; methods to avoid and minimize the impact of floating offshore wind projects on ecosystems and existing uses of the Gulf of Maine; and ways to realize cost efficiencies in the commercialization of floating offshore wind projects. The board began its work in February 2023.