External Posts

The Guardian ran a story about the new book by Associate Professor of Art Gary Green, When Midnight Comes Around. The article, "Trash, leather, sleaze: how Gary Green shot New York's punk scene," recounts how Green was able to capture the punk and post-punk scene in the late 1970s and early '80s. "What sets it apart is the sense that Green was both an insider – for a time, he shared an apartment with Sylvain Sylvain of the New York Dolls – and an acute social observer who understood that he was witnessing an important pop-cultural moment driven by outsiders and misfits," wrote the article's author, Sean O'Hagan. On May 15, O'Hagan interviewed Green on Instagram at #stanleybarkerbooks. 

In a new concept paper published in the journal Challenges, Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Stacy-ann Robinson and her coauthors present a pre-analysis plan to undertake regional-level action research in the Pacific. The research will aim to help regional organizations work together to jointly access international financing for designing and implementing more effective climate change adaptation projects across the many small islands in the region.

Cheryl Townsend Gilkes, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Professor of Sociology and African-American Studies, wrote an opinion piece picked up by Religion News Service titled "Kneeling to venerate hate: The meaning of a police killing in Minnesota." In the wake of the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Gilkes wrote, "America needs to understand that when we see a white police officer kneeling on a black body, squeezing the breath of life out of that body, we are witnessing an act of worship. It is an act of worship that honors the demons of racist hate and murder — a form of veneration deeply rooted in the American nightmare that is the underside of the American dream."  This piece also appeared in the Christian Century, Urban Christian News, and Black Christian News.

Rabbi Rachel Isaacs was a guest on Shmuel "Rosner’s Torah Talk" on the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles. Isaacs discussed Shavuot and "the connection between harvest and Torah, the burden of Torah, the Jewish religion and Jewish People, and growing potatoes and cucumbers," the website reports.

The Morning Sentinel article "Fifty years later, Colby College’s Class of 1970 recounts disruption to semester’s end" tells the story of the class that knows disappointment all too well. "During the 1969-70 academic year at Colby, tension reached an apex, culminating with a student strike in May that led to the cancellation of classes over the final weeks of the semester, and a subdued graduation ceremony that evokes strong reactions 50 years later," the Sentinel reports. Now, the class's 50th Reunion has been postponed due to the coronavirus. Alumni leaders "spent a lot of time planning the reunion with Colby’s alumni office, but know it cannot go on this summer. Understanding why it cannot go on does not lessen disappointment," the story said. However, one alumni sees it differently. "Given the circumstances, I think it’s a minor inconvenience," Ben Kravitz '70 said. "Whether we do it at 50 or 51 years is not a big deal to me.”

Associate Professor of Sociology Damon W. Mayrl coauthored a study, "What Do Historical Sociologists Do All Day? Analytic Architectures in Historical Sociology," recently published in one of the top journals for sociology, American Journal of Sociology. Mayrl and Assistant Professor Nicholas Hoover Wilson of Stony Brook University used quantitative and qualitative techniques to analyze 37 award-winning publications in historical sociology between 1995 and 2015. "We show that historical sociology comprises no fewer than four distinct analytic architectures that rely on different kinds of sources and use evidence and theory in different ways," according to the paper's abstract. "We find suggestive evidence that the recognition of these different architectures has varied over time, such that award-winning works of historical sociology increasingly use architectures that favor the heavier use of primary sources and/or constructive theoretical syntheses. These findings suggest that analytic architectures are a consequential facet of the practice of social research that may yield important insights into dynamics of scholarly recognition, consecration, and methodological pluralism across the social sciences."

The Portland Press Herald tapped Professor of Economics Michael Donihue for a story titled "Maine’s biggest unemployment jump ever put jobless rate at nearly 11% in April." Even if the coronavirus doesn't come back this summer and fall, Donihue fears that Maine's economic recovery will be slow to come. “We haven’t had a recession that started in the consumer sector before,” Donihue told the Press Herald. “I am fearful that a lot of these jobs are gone long-term.”  "If that is the case," he continued, "and recovery takes much longer than originally expected, there may be a role for a federal program to provide basic income in exchange for public service."

President Greene talked with Fox News' Arthel Neville May 24 about the College's Pay it Northward Initiative. "We've tapped 30,000 of our alums and friends and parents to say, 'open up your networks, open up experiences. Do everything you can to help these incredibly deserving students," President Greene said.

Assistant Professor of Biology Suegene Noh coauthored a paper recently published in the journal PeerJ titled "Endosymbiotic adaptations in three new bacterial species associated with Dictyostelium discoideum: Paraburkholderia agricolaris sp. nov., Paraburkholderia hayleyella sp. nov., and Paraburkholderia bonniea sp. Nov.” Noh and her colleagues had discovered over the years that there are three species of bacteria in the genus Burkholderia that are found in close association with the amoeba (and biomedical model organism) Dictyostelium discoideum. In this paper, we describe the morphological and physiological characteristics of each of these species and show through genome comparisons and molecular phylogenies that they are distinct from other known Burkholderia species. Therefore, Noh said, they deserve new species status, and the researchers formally named them Burkholderia agricolaris, Burkholderia hayleyella, and Burkholderia bonniea.   

Conor Larkin '20, an environmental policy major, wrote an opinion piece for the Morning Sentinel titled "We’re all in this attic together." In it, he reflects on meeting Barb Bailey, a member of the Victor Grange and lead volunteer for WindowDressers in central Maine, who helps Mainers increase energy efficiency with low-cost weatherized windows. "I’ve been thinking a lot about that experience and wondering how I can reflect Barb’s empathy, kindness, and action in the wider community," Larkin wrote. "With COVID-19, for the first time in my young life our neighbors, communities, and nation are truly all in this together."