External Posts

Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Stacy-ann Robinson has coauthored a new paper titled "Human Adaptation to Coastal Hazards in Greater Bridgetown, Barbados." Published in the journal Frontiers in Environmental Science, the paper highlights Greater Bridgetown’s capacity for coastal/urban resilience, but emphasizes that this cannot be maximized without institutional prioritization of vulnerability, increased stakeholder “buy-in” and participation, and significant investment in the protection of valuable coastal infrastructure. Cindy Nguyen '20, Catherine Nisbet '20, and Rock Tonkel III '20 are coauthors.

The Colby College Museum of Art reopened June 4, the Portland Press Herald reported. The article also highlighted the upcoming summer exhibition, Bob Thompson: This House is Mine, "the first major survey in more than 20 years of the African American figurative painter, who died in 1966 before he turned 30."

The Colby College Museum of Art will reopen to the public June 4, the Morning Sentinel reported. The reopening coincides with the final weekend of the exhibition Roy Lichtenstein: History in the Making, 1948-1960. "We’ve really missed having a broader swath of our friends and community members in our galleries," Deputy Director Julianne Gilland told the Press Herald.

The Colby College Museum of Art's summer exhibition, Bob Thompson: This House is Mine, was included in the Boston Globe's list of "New England's 10 Hottest Museum Shows for Summer." Of the retrospective, Boston Globe art critic Murray Whyte said, "the painter’s short, incandescent career left a vapor trail across the sky of American art that glowed brightly and faded quickly."

Assistant Professor of Geology Bess Koffman has contributed to a study recently published in Geophysical Research Letters. The article assessed the causes of the recent melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet. "Satellite measurements and computer models have shown that the reflectivity (or albedo) of the Greenland Ice Sheet has decreased in recent decades, causing increased melt and sea level rise," stated the paper's abstract, which also noted that the causes for the albedo decline are unknown. "We demonstrate how a recent increase in the frequency of atmospheric high-pressure systems over Greenland increases grain sizes via several mechanisms and contributes to Greenland's observed albedo decline and faster melt."

Tanya Sheehan, the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Art, is one of four invited contributors to the Library Company of Philadelphia’s innovative project, Imperfect History: Digital Catalog. An integral online element of the online exhibition Imperfect History, the catalog creatively engages with the project's concept of (un)conscious bias and multiple viewpoints in reading images. Four guest catalogers from the curatorial, art history, and studio art fields authored descriptions of the same visual material from their individual perspectives as influenced by their discipline. The objects selected for their analysis include an antebellum daguerreotype of an unidentified African-American woman, a mid-19th century allegorical print of the stages of life of a white man, and a circa 1880 watercolor of an 1851 Philadelphia street scene. The catalog serves as a case study of the inherent tensions and revelations invoked from a traditionally standardized, "objective" process pro-actively made subjective and diverse. In her own contributions, Professor Sheehan drew upon her expertise in 19th-century American visual culture, especially the history of photography and the representation of whiteness and blackness. In 2006 she held the William H. Helfand Visiting Research Fellowship at the Library Company of Philadelphia and the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Stacy-ann Robinson has coauthored a new paper titled "China's climate ambition: Revisiting its First Nationally Determined Contribution and centering a just transition to clean energy." Published in the journal Energy Policy, the paper argues that, while China is set to meet its non-fossil fuel targets, progress on its fossil fuel targets is stymied by continual coal development, which has negative implications for staying within the Paris Agreement's 2°C temperature limit. It further argues that the country’s focus on carbon-intensive economic expansion is a major barrier to greater climate ambition, especially in view of its growing portfolio of overseas investments in fossil fuel-dependent sectors. D'Arcy Carlson '21 led the paper. Catie Blair '21 and Mara McDonough '20 are also coauthors.

Professor of English Debra Spark has written a review of Lauren Oyler's debut novel Fake Accounts for Yale Alumni Magazine. "Oyler is a terrific writer, her long propulsive sentences featuring one mordant comment after another, so that even a reader wholly uninterested in social media will enjoy the obsessive analysis of online behavior and contemporary culture," Spark wrote.

Mary Ellis Gibson, the Arthur Jeremiah Roberts Professor of Literature, has guest-edited an article, "Forum: Varieties and Denominations of Victorian Christianity," which appeared in the fall issue of Victorian Review. In the same issue, Gibson also coauthored another essay, titled "Protestant Evangelism in India: A Beginner's Guide."

Poet Richard Blanco will be Colby's commencement speaker, the Press Herald reported. Colby's 200th commencement will also "confer honorary degrees on restaurateur Erin French, owner of The Lost Kitchen in Freedom; Nobel Prize-winning geneticist and chronobiologist Michael Rosbash; and Theresa Secord, award-winning Penobscot basket maker and founding director of Maine Indian Basketmakers Alliance."