Media Coverage

Assistant Professor of Creative Writing Arisa White has earned attention in the California media. Her book Biddy Mason Speaks Up (Fighting for Justice) was reviewed in the Los Angeles Review of Books Aug. 18. The book recounts the story of "a woman who was born a slave in Georgia in 1818 and died a successful businesswoman and philanthropist in Los Angeles in 1891," said the reviewer, Candance Cooper, who grew up in Los Angeles. "The writers and illustrator of this book have done an excellent job relating what one remarkable woman was able to accomplish against overwhelming odds," she concluded.

At the Poetry Center Digital Archive at the Poetry Center at San Francisco State University, White compiled a digital collection of 14 "historic recordings features, in alphabetical order, original Poetry Center readings by Ai, Maya Angelou, Gwendolyn Brooks, Lucille Clifton, Jayne Cortez, Wanda Coleman, Audre Lorde, June Jordan, and Pat Parker" that was just released. Dubbed "Black Women in the Archives," the project was completed during White's time as the Poetry Center scholar in residence in 2016.

A report by Catherine Besteman, the Francis F. Bartlett and Ruth K. Bartlett Professor of Anthropology, was referenced in the op-ed "When is America going to end its shadow war in Somalia?" in the Sept. 5 Guardian. The report, titled "The Costs of War in Somalia," was just released by the Cost of War project at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs and "looks at the past four decades of US military involvement in Somalia," the op-ed reports. Besteman is an expert on Somali and has written extensively about it, including her 2016 book Making Refuge: Somali Bantu Refugees and Lewiston, Maine.

Laura Seay, assistant professor of government, wrote the article "To Cure Ebola Will Take More Than a Pill" that appeared in Foreign Affairs Sept. 4. While experimental drugs are helping the country with its latest Ebola outbreak, "eradicating Ebola in Congo will require building public trust among Congolese and working with community organizations in order to reach vulnerable populations and overcome governance issues" Seay wrote.

Colby was ranked number seven in Sierra Magazine's Cool School list, released Sept. 3. The schools in this list display "a deep and thorough commitment to protecting the environment, addressing climate change, and encouraging environmental responsibility through their curriculum and on-campus operations," according to the magazine. In 2013 Colby became the fourth college or university to achieve carbon neutrality,

A poem by Arisa White, assistant professor of creative writing, was selected for the Portland Press Herald's series Deep Water: Maine Poems. "Screaming Woman," White's poem, "offers a troubling and refracted portrait of a woman’s very public disassembling. Rather than hold that portrait at an arm’s length, the poem implicates us all in it," the series' curator Gibson Fay-LeBlanc said.

Loren McClenachan was quoted in the National Geographic article titled "The silent decline of the platypus, Australia’s beloved oddity." The decline was noted in a study that made use of historical data, which is McClenachan's specialty. "For species like platypus, whose population declines happened before ecologists started studying them, these types of historical observations are extremely valuable,” said McCleanchan, Colby's Elizabeth and Lee Ainslie Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies.

Gary Green, associate professor of art, had his work chosen for JRNL NO. 2, published by Fotofilmic, a gallery and publisher in Vancouver. Green's work was juried by U.K. photo book publishers Stanley/Barker and will be included in Fotofilmic's next photography publication, which will include 11 other artists from all over the world.

Jim Condron '92, a sculptor and artist from Baltimore, has a new exhibition at Wilson College library's Sue Davison Cooley Gallery opening Sept. 4. Titled You Never Wash it Off Completely, the exhibit uses relics and artifacts from the college that Condron collected with the help of "Wilson archivists, professors, and students to construct compelling art installations from historic artifacts," according to a press release from the college. “A typical archives exhibit has a literal feeling with traditional objects arranged with descriptive labels, but in this art installation, Condron magnificently captures both the feeling of belongingness, as well as the fleeting nature of each individual’s experience," said Amy Ensley, director of Wilson's Hankey Center for the History of Women’s Education. "This is about shared memories across time and the celebration of a community that endures.” The exhibition was reviewed by ArtDaily.com, which said, "Each work of art is titled with a textual fragment from literature that intends to add to the piece’s rhetoric rather than naming or defining it. Titles are applied to the works the same way Condron assembles materials and are appropriated from literature by an array of great authors such as Toni Morrison, Ray Bradbury, Don DeLillo, and others."

Jim Condron '92, a sculptor and artist from Baltimore, has a new exhibition at Wilson College library's Sue Davison Cooley Gallery opening Sept. 4. Titled You Never Wash it Off Completely, the exhibit uses relics and artifacts from the college that Condron collected with the help of "Wilson archivists, professors, and students to construct compelling art installations from historic artifacts," according to a press release from the college. “A typical archives exhibit has a literal feeling with traditional objects arranged with descriptive labels, but in this art installation, Condron magnificently captures both the feeling of belongingness, as well as the fleeting nature of each individual’s experience," said Amy Ensley, director of Wilson's Hankey Center for the History of Women’s Education. "This is about shared memories across time and the celebration of a community that endures.” The exhibition was reviewed by ArtDaily.com, which said, "Each work of art is titled with a textual fragment from literature that intends to add to the piece’s rhetoric rather than naming or defining it. Titles are applied to the works the same way Condron assembles materials and are appropriated from literature by an array of great authors such as Toni Morrison, Ray Bradbury, Don DeLillo, and others."

The French newspaper Le Monde interviewed Raffael Scheck, Katz Distinguished Teaching Professor of History, on the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Paris. The interview, conducted in French, asked Scheck the question: why were there no black soldiers in the Free French division that liberated Paris? Scheck answered "that this division, which had become an armored division, was 'whitened' at the behest of the United States because American generals did not think that black French soldiers (who had been very prominent in the Free French armies in the beginning) could drive tanks. Moreover, the British authorities did not want any more black soldiers on their territory because they argued that there had been many incidents with black GIs," Scheck reported via email. Watch the interview here.