Faculty Accomplishments

The book Tropical Arctic: Lost Plants, Future Climates, and the Discovery of Ancient Greenland, cowritten by paleobotanist Ian Glasspool, a research scientist in the Geology Department, was reviewed in the high-profile journal Current Biology. The Association of University Presses Design also recently selected the book as one of 12 illustrated selections as part of its design showcase.

Assistant Professor of Government Nicholas Jacobs coauthored the recently released book What Happened to the Vital Center: Presidentialism, Populist Revolt, and the Fracturing of America (Oxford University Press). The book provides a long historical view of populism, party politics, and the growth of presidential power while tracing the joining of executive power and movement politics over the past six decades. "This book is an altogether impressive achievement―a work of impressive historical sweep and pointed analytical acuity, a bold and compelling reinterpretation of American political development," said Robert C. Lieberman, coauthor of Four Threats: The Recurring Crises of American Democracy.

Advocating for the Environment, How to Gather Your Power and Take Action, written by Sue Inches '77, was recently published by Penguin Random House. The book, a citizen's guide to environmental action, is based on her experiences teaching a Jan Plan course at Colby. Michael Brune, executive director at the Sierra Club, said the book is, “Smart, strategic, and genuinely empowering." It's a book "that activists everywhere will keep coming back to.”

Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Stacy-ann Robinson and Conall Butchart '22 have coauthored a paper titled "Planning for Climate Change in Small Island Developing States: Can Dominica’s Climate Resilience and Recovery Plan Be a Model for Transformation in the Caribbean?" Published in the journal Sustainability, the paper explores the quality of the plan and finds that, in order for it to be used as a model, other Caribbean jurisdictions would need to extend it by developing mechanisms for equitably sharing any benefits derived from the blue economy, centering Indigenous perspectives in environmental policy- and decision-making, and adequately accounting for exogenous, unexpected risks such as the Covid-19 pandemic.

Paleobotanist Ian Glasspool, a research scientist in the Geology Department, was interviewed for an article titled "Cretaceous Charcoal Gives a Glimpse of Plant Evolution." Glasspool, an authority on fires during the Cretaceous Period, said ancient wildfires “aren’t just localized, destructive, natural events but are also an integral part of the broader Earth system.” Wildfire has a “feedback role in stabilizing the Earth’s atmospheric oxygen concentration” and acts “as a ‘global herbivore’ through its impacts on vegetation," he went on to say.

Assistant Professor of Classics Kassandra Miller has won a fellowship with the Einstein Center Chronoi, an interdisciplinary research cluster in Berlin focused on time-reckoning and temporality. The fellowship will allow Miller to develop her second book project, provisionally titled Untimely Women: Synchronizing Female Bodies in the Ancient Mediterranean. Miller's research focuses on ancient medicine, science, technology, and magic. She will take up residence in Berlin during the summer of 2023 and remain there for the 2023-24 academic year.

Catherine Besteman, the Francis F. Bartlett and Ruth K. Bartlett Professor of Anthropology, was awarded a $143,000 Sustaining Public Engagement Grant from the ACLS, American Council of Learned Societies. The grant is part of a $3.5-million responsive-funding program made possible by the National Endowment for the Humanities’ Sustaining the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan (SHARP) initiative. Besteman will use the grant for her Freedom & Captivity Curriculum Project, which will "create curricula based on the materials generated through the Fall 2021 collaborative, statewide public humanities Freedom & Captivity initiative, which explored how to imagine an abolitionist future in Maine," according to the ACLS website.

Charles A. Dana Professor of Education Adam Howard and three of his former students have coauthored a chapter in a book recently released. Their chapter, "Transforming Privilege: The Four R's of Pedagogical Possibilities," appears in the book Paulo Freire and Multilingual Education. Howard's coauthors are Patrick Dickert '18, Wallace Tucker '21, and Sam Jefferson '20.

Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Stacy-ann Robinson has been invited to be a panelist at the University of Pennsylvania's 2022 Global Shifts Colloquium on "Islands on the Climate Front Line: Risk and Resilience." The colloquium, held April 20-21, 2022, will explore how islands can address historical, structural, and climate-driven vulnerabilities and what policies can be wrought from their example. Robinson will speak on the intersections of colonialism and climate change.