Faculty Accomplishments

Keith Peterson, associate professor of philosophy, published a book just out, Nicolai Hartmann Ontology: Laying the Foundations (Walter De Gruyter, October 2019), which is the first English translation of the German philosopher's first volume of his four-volume ontological work. "The book deals with 'what is insofar as it is,' and its four parts tackle traditional ontological assumptions and prejudices and traditional categories such as substance, thing, individual, whole, object, and phenomenon; a novel redefinition of existence and essence in terms of the ontological factors Dasien and Sosien and their interrelations; an analysis of modes of 'givenness and the ontological embeddedness of cognition in affective transcendent acts; and a discussion of the status of ideal being," according to the book's back cover.

Jim Fleming, the Charles A. Dana Professor of Science, Technology, and Society, was an invited guest speaker at MIT’s annual PAOC (Program in Atmospheres, Oceans, and Climate) retreat at Jiminy Peak Mountain Resort in western Massachusetts. PAOC is a subset of graduate students, postdocs, researchers, and faculty in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences at MIT. The theme of this year’s retreat was History of Climate: Climate’s Current and Historical Impact on Cultural, Political, and Social Development. Fleming reports it was a special treat to spend time with third-year MIT graduate student Rebecca Chmiel ’17.

Marta Ameri, assistant professor of art, published an article titled "Variations on a Theme: Iconographic Variability in the Horned Anthropomorphic Figures of the Indus Civilization” in the most recent issue of Artibus Asiae. The article revisits two of the most distinctive motifs found in the corpus of seals and sealings from the Greater Indus Valley in order to question the perceived homogeneity of the material culture of prehistoric South Asia. The analysis highlights the iconographic variability that is, in fact, present in the artistic production of the 3rd millennium BCE Indus world and questions whether the diversity seen in certain depictions can be interpreted as a reflection of differences of personal identity and/or religious practice among the peoples of the Indus Civilization.

Mark Mayer, faculty fellow in English, contributed a story, titled "The Clown," in the recently released book The Best American Mystery Stories (Houghton, Mifflin, Harcourt). He also received a five-week funded summer residency at the Djerassi Resident Artists Program in California.

Professor of Art Véronique Plesch is the guest assistant editor for the Fall 2019 issue of the Maine Arts Journal: UMVA Quarterly. Organized around special themes, the journal features essays by and about artists, interviews, submissions by members of the Union of Maine Visual Artists (UMVA), poetry, UMVA updates about local chapters and current projects, and more. In addition to two essays in the current issue (one co-authored, one on the Colby College Museum of Art’s current exhibition), Plesch wrote the introduction to the fall issue, on the theme of Appropriation.

A book by Chandra Bhimull, associate professor of anthropology and African-American studies, has been awarded honorable mention in the 2019 American Ethnological Society Sharon Stephens Prize competition. Bhimull's book Empire in the Air: Airline Travel and the African Diaspora (2017, NYU Press) examines the role that race played in the inception of the airline industry. "This important topic is in the hands of a poet who has crafted a style of writing that is both exquisite and compelling, revealing the literary dimensions of anthropology," selection committee member Shirley Lindenbaum writes. "The committee found [Dr. Bhimull's] writing poetic and [her] consideration of the intersection of race and state power in the creation of air travel wonderfully imaginative and illuminating," Katherine McCaffrey, chair of the selection committee, wrote in an email notification.  Bhimull's book was also awarded honorable mention in the 2019 Victor Turner Prize in Ethnographic Writing, given by the Society for Humanistic Anthropology.

Laurie Osborne, the Zacamy Chair of English, contributed a chapter to the forthcoming book The Routledge Handbook of Shakespeare and Global Appropriation, which "brings together a variety of different voices to examine the ways that Shakespeare has been adapted and appropriated onto stage, screen, page, and a variety of digital formats," according to the publisher. Osborne's chapter, "Teaching Global Shakespeare: Visual Culture Projects in Action," draws on the Humanities Lab she taught in conjunction with the Colby Museum of Art a few years ago.

This summer Mary Ellis Gibson, the Arthur Jeremiah Roberts Professor of Literature and chair of the English Department, published her latest book, Science Fiction in Colonial India, 1835–1905. [While the publication date is March, copies were not available in the U.S. until June.] This collection of stories shows, for the first time, how science fiction writing developed in India years before the writings of Jules Verne and H. G. Wells in Europe. The five stories presented in this collection, in their cultural and political contexts, help form a new picture of English language writing in India and a new understanding of the connections among science fiction, modernity, and empire. Speculative fiction developed early in India in part because the intrinsic dysfunction and violence of colonialism encouraged writers there to project alternative futures, whether utopian or dystopic. These stories, created by Indian and British writers, responded to the intellectual ferment and political instabilities of colonial India. They add an important dimension to our understanding of Victorian empire, science fiction, and speculative fictional narratives. They provide new examples of the imperial and the anti-imperial imaginations at work. In Victorian India, technological change was necessarily understood through differences between the colonizer and the colonized. Since India was not a settler colony, new British-imposed forms of government could scarcely claim continuity with the past, and political and cultural dislocations gave rise to speculation about wholly new forms of social organization. Creation and destruction, cultural innovation and colonial resistance gave rise to the plots and tropes of science fiction. In the stories collected in Science Fiction in Colonial India, 1835–1905,19-century Indian writers project successful and failed revolutions into a 20th-century future. British writers imagine, on the one hand, a catastrophic flood – thanks to the projected Panama Canal – and, on the other, a utopian future of peaceful multi-ethnic parliamentary government. And a Muslim writer designs a feminist utopia in which women practice science and men keep house.

Kerill O'Neill, professor of classics and director of the Center for the Arts and Humanities, wrote an article titled "Creating a Space for the Humanities: Colby Center for the Arts and Humanities" published in July by CHCI. The article recounts the formation of the center and its programs and successes to date. Among the lessons O'Neill has learned from Colby's center are, "to be bold and dream big; to trust the collective wisdom of colleagues; and to think strategically, take what you can get, and then build on your strengths."

Professor of English Debra Spark has had several essays and stories published in the last since May. Spark also won a residency at the artist colony Arteles in Finland. Here are the titles, publications, and links (when available):

"Something Had Gone Wrong," Cincinnati Review  (short story), spring 2019

“A Container for Art,” Decor Maine, May 2019

“Writer Susan Orlean Restores a Schindler Classic In LA,” Dwell, May/June 2019

"My House: Writer Susan Orleans," Dwell+, May/June 2019 (interview)

“Scandinavian-Inspired Maine Retreat,” Dwell+, July 2019

“The Power of the Lens,” Elysian, summer 2019

“The World’s Greatest Art Fair,” Elysian, summer 2019

“A Clapboard Classic on a Maine Island,” New England Home, July-August 2019

“Compact Cape Contemporary,” New England Home, July-August 2019

“Childhood Redux,” New England Home, May-June 2019

“Shop Visit:  23 Milk Street,” New England Home, May-June 2019

“Like Mother, Like Son,” New England Home/CT, Summer 2019