Faculty Accomplishments

Assistant Professor of Government Carrie LeVan joined a webinar, organized by FairVote as part of its series called "The Future of American Elections," to discuss Maine’s historic first use of ranked-choice voting (RCV) in a presidential general election. The conversation was moderated by FairVote Senior Policy Coordinator Pedro Hernandez and the panelists included LeVan, Executive Director of the League of Women Voters of Maine Anna Kellar, and Utah State Representative Marc Roberts. The video of the webinar, which took place Nov. 17, 2020, has just been released online.

Associate Professor of German Arne Koch has been selected as one of the seven recipients of the Goethe‐Institut/AATG Certificate of Merit, given by the American Association of Teachers of German (AATG) to recognize achievements in furthering the teaching of German. Koch said the selection is a tremendous honor. "A big thank you has to go to my colleagues and, of course, our students for letting us try out different ways of digging into German Studies. It is important to note that this award is again recognition of the German Program at Colby because it explicitly acknowledges innovative curricular design, interdisciplinary cooperation, and significant contributions to the profession—all hallmarks of our small but vibrant academic home here on Mayflower Hill.” This award comes two years after Colby's German Program was named a 2018 Center of Excellence by the AATG, an honor that speaks to the strength of the program’s scholarship, teaching, and engagement on campus and in the community. Koch will be receiving his award at a virtual presentation Nov. 21.

Associate Professor of Psychology Christopher Soto has published a new paper, exploring the link between gender and extraversion, in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science. "The Big Five personality traits have been linked with a broad range of consequential life outcomes," writes Soto in the abstract. "The present research systematically tested whether such trait–outcome associations generalize across gender, age, ethnicity, and analytic approaches that control for demographic and personality covariates."

Visiting Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Caitlin McDonough MacKenzie has coauthored a paper, "Recurrent neural network reveals overwhelming sentiment against 2017 review of US monuments from humans and bots," published in the journal Conservation Letters. "US federal agencies solicit public comments to scope for ideas, solve problems, and use the best available science for policy‐making, legislation, and management," writes the authors in their abstract. Using machine learning techniques, the study analyzes "comments received by the Department of the Interior in response to the proposed executive review of 27 national monuments designated and expanded between 1996 and 2016."

Associate Professor of French Mouhamédoul Niang published a new paper, "In defense of secular modernity: Politicizing the body and space in Malika Mokeddem’s Of Dreams and Assassins," in the Journal of the African Literature Association. "This paper argues that Malika Mokeddem champions secular modernity through Kenza, the female protagonist in Of Dreams and Assassins," according to the abstract. "It examines the processes and practices that shape her as a secular modern woman who castigates exclusivist identities that intolerant religious and state patriarchies seek to impose on Algerians in two different contexts of historical discontinuities."

Associate Professor of Italian Gianluca Rizzo has published a new book titled Poetry on Stage: The Theatre of the Italian Neo-Avant-Garde. "The book sheds light on a forgotten chapter of twentieth-century Italian literature, arguing that the theatre was the ideal incubator for stylistic and linguistic experiments."

An article by Associate Professor of French Mouhamedoul Amine Niang was quoted in the recently released Routledge Handbook of African Literature (2019). The article, titled "Croisées narratives ou nouvelle translation du vécu spatial de l’immigré. Le post-épistolaire et le mémoriel dans Le Ventre de l’Atlantique de Fatou Diome," appeared as a book chapter in the collected volume Frictions et devenirs dans les écritures migrantes au féminin.

Catherine Besteman, the Francis F. Bartlett and Ruth K. Bartlett Professor of Anthropology, has published a new book titled Militarized Global Apartheid (Duke University Press, 2020). The book "offers a sweeping theorization of the ways in which countries from the global north are reproducing South Africa's apartheid system on a worldwide scale to control the mobility and labor of people from the global south," according to the publisher.

Raffael Scheck, the Audrey Wade Hittinger Katz and Sheldon Toby Katz Professor of History, has published a new book titled Love between Enemies: Western Prisoners of War and German Women in World War II (Cambridge University Press, 2020). His latest work "explores the forbidden relationships which formed between foreign prisoners of war and German women during the Second World War," according to the publisher.

The latest book by James R. Fleming, Charles A. Dana Professor of Science, Technology, and Society, First Woman: Joanne Simpson and the Tropical Atmosphere (Oxford University Press, 2020), details the life of pioneering meteorologist Joanne Simpson (1923-2010). Fleming, the first to write a comprehensive biography of Simpson, spent five years mining her archive at Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute to bring her story to life. He was the first to read her personal diaries, containing details of a love affair and her passion for life. “This settles it,” Fleming said upon finding the diaries. “I’ve got to write this up.” Read more about Fleming's book at Colby Magazine.