Faculty Accomplishments

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.

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.