Faculty Accomplishments

In a New York Times op-ed, Steve Simon, professor of the practice of international relations, discusses hypersonic missiles, weapons that "have long been an object of desire by Russian, Chinese and American military leaders, for obvious reasons: Launched from any of these countries, they could reach any other within minutes," Simon wrote in the Jan. 2 opinion piece. "The biggest threat from hypersonics is that they come at a time when the world’s arm control treaties are falling apart," he concludes.

In a New York Times op-ed, Steve Simon, professor of the practice of international relations, discusses hypersonic missiles, weapons that "have long been an object of desire by Russian, Chinese and American military leaders, for obvious reasons: Launched from any of these countries, they could reach any other within minutes," Simon wrote in the Jan. 2 opinion piece. "The biggest threat from hypersonics is that they come at a time when the world’s arm control treaties are falling apart," he concludes.

Adrian Blevins, professor of English and creative writing, has five new poems published in the January-February 2020 issue of American Poetry Review. The poems, including "Crone Status," "Old Boyfriend Prison Status," and "Academician Abecedarian Status," come from her forthcoming collection, Status Pending. 

The Smithsonian Institution Fellowship Program (SIFP) has continued the appointment of Robert Gastaldo as an academic researcher. Gastaldo, the Whipple-Coddington Professor of Geology, had been associated with the Smithsonian for close to 35 years. His current research with SIFP is with the Smithsonian’s William DiMichele, and together they seek to understand what happened to Deep Time tropical ecosystems of the Carboniferous and Permian to changes in glaciation and climate.

On Nov. 9, Associate Professor of Philosophy Keith Peterson presented a paper in Germany on the work of Nicolai Hartmann as part of a conference, "Philosophical Anthropology as an Interdisciplinary Praxis: Historical & Systematic Perspectives." Peterson's lecture, titled "Hartmann’s Contribution to an Ecological Materialist Anthropology," was presented at the University of Cologne. The conference was sponsored by the Graduate School for the Humanities, Cologne, in cooperation with the Hartmann, Plessner, and Scheler societies. Hartmann was an early 20th-century German philosopher known for developing an elaborate realist ontology. The paper that Peterson delivered brought ontological and anthropological ideas to bear on models of the human in environmental philosophy. Peterson argued that Hartmann's stratified model of the human allows us to avoid reductionism and appreciate the ecological asymmetrical dependence of humans on nonhuman nature. The conference program is online here.

Robert Gastaldo, Colby's Whipple-Coddington Professor of Geology, and colleagues recently published an article in the journal PALAIOS, that upsets long-held beliefs about the End-Permian mass extinction 252 million years ago. Gastaldo is coauthor of an article titled “Testing the Daptocephalus and Lystrosaurus Assemblage Zones in a Lithostratographic, Magnetostratigraphic, and Palynological Framework in the Free State, South Africa.” PALAIOS is a journal that emphasizes the impact of life on Earth's history. The abstract of the piece says: "We conclude that the turnover from the Daptocephalus to Lystrosaurus Assemblage Zones is more protracted than envisioned, it is not coincident with the end-Permian event as recognized in the marine realm, and little evidence exists in support of a three-phased extinction model based on vertebrate assemblages in the Karoo Basin." Other articles coauthored by Gastaldo and published this year include “A Multidisciplinary Approach to Review the Vertical and Lateral Facies Relationships of the Purported Vertebrate-defined Terrestrial Boundary Interval at Bethulie, Karoo Basin, South Africa” in Earth Science Reviews, Volume 189; and “Discussion of ‘Permian—Triassic vertebrate footprints from South Africa: Ichnotaxonomy, producers and biostratigraphy through two major faunal crises,’” in Gondwana Research.    

Colby's William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Chemistry Jeffrey Katz is coauthor of an article in the Journal of Polymer Science, Part A: Polymer Chemistry published in October 2019. The article, “Evaluation of carboxylic, phosphonic and sulfonic acid protogenic moieties on tunable poly(meta-phenylene oxide) ionomer scaffolds,” which appears in volume 57 of the journal, is available online. Reuben Hudson, a former member of the Colby Chemistry Department now at College of the Atlantic, is also a coauthor of the article.

Assistant Professor of English Megan Cook lectured Nov. 14 in Austin, Texas, giving a talk titled "The First First Folio: Editing Chaucer in Renaissance England." The lecture, sponsored by the Harry Ransom Center and the University of Texas English Department, examined the lasting impact of Geoffrey Chaucer and his place in literary history. Details are online here.

In the journal Global Ecology and Conservation, an article coauthored by Ainslie Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Loren McClenachan concludes that there are "opportunities to integrate findings from historical ecology with other perspectives to create forward-looking management strategies that are rooted in place and past." The article,”Past Forward: Recommendations from historical ecology for ecosystem management” was published online Nov. 2. Full text is available online. It reviewed more than 200 historical ecology studies and analyzed recommendations for ecosystem management emerging from the field.

Robert Gastaldo, the Whipple-Coddington Professor of Geology, is the featured speaker at the New Hampshire Geological Society's fall meeting. Gastaldo talk is titled "The Terrestrial Record of the End-Permian Mass Extinction – Karoo Province, South Africa," which will discuss the end-Permian extinction event as it is recorded in South Africa, as a model for the Sixth Extinction that we now face. Gastaldo will be joined by Colby's Instructional Technologist Tim Stonesifer, and together they will show a virtual reality "tour" through one of the classic South African localities, Bethel farm, in the Free State. Last year Gastaldo and Stonesifer presented this "tour" during last year's GSA meetings in Indianapolis where participants put on VR goggles and "fly" through the locality and inspect the geology at various spatial scales, immersing themselves in a 360-degree view of the research area.