External Posts

Steven Simon, professor of the practice of international relations, coauthored an article titled "How Trump Can Escape His Iran Jam" that appeared in Politico and was also picked up by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Simon and his coauthors have a combined 80 years experience in U.S. Middle East policy, and they concur "that the only way out of this mess—if indeed there is one—is through negotiations, however poor their current prospects. If the U.S. and Iran can’t find a way to climb down from the ladder of escalation they’re on, the situation with Iran will likely go from really bad to a lot worse."

Catherine Besteman, the Francis F. Bartlett and Ruth K. Bartlett Professor of Anthropology," was interviewed Sept. 23 on "The Scott Horton Show" to "share some of her research about America’s covert proxy war in Somalia." Listen here.

Catherine Besteman, the Francis F. Bartlett and Ruth K. Bartlett Professor of Anthropology," was interviewed Sept. 23 on "The Scott Horton Show" to "share some of her research about America’s covert proxy war in Somalia." Listen here.

Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Gail Carlson penned an op-ed in the Morning Sentinel in advance of the Sept. 20 Climate Strike. Carlson, who teaches students about activism using a "well-worn formula" that provides success making change, challenges us all to ensure that youth voices are part of policymaking. She suggests three tools toward that goal: "educate ourselves about how policies are made and establish our own track records of advocacy;" secondly, "teach our youth about civics;" and lastly "help students identify opportunities to practice and develop their organizing skills."

Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Gail Carlson penned an op-ed in the Morning Sentinel in advance of the Sept. 20 Climate Strike. Carlson, who teaches students about activism using a "well-worn formula" that provides success making change, challenges us all to ensure that youth voices are part of policymaking. She suggests three tools toward that goal: "educate ourselves about how policies are made and establish our own track records of advocacy;" secondly, "teach our youth about civics;" and lastly "help students identify opportunities to practice and develop their organizing skills."

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.

The Chronicle of Higher Education tells the story of Colby's role in the transformation of downtown Waterville in a video titled "A College Gives Back to the Town That Once Saved It." The four-minute video follows President David A. Greene along Main Street while he points out projects already complete and other initiatives underway. "With Greene’s leadership, the liberal arts college has pulled together the community and investors, raised millions, and embarked on a major downtown revitalization," the Chronicle reports. Watch the video to see everything that's happened in the last five years and what lies ahead.

The Chronicle of Higher Education tells the story of Colby's role in the transformation of downtown Waterville in a video titled "A College Gives Back to the Town That Once Saved It." The four-minute video follows President David A. Greene along Main Street while he points out projects already complete and other initiatives underway. "With Greene’s leadership, the liberal arts college has pulled together the community and investors, raised millions, and embarked on a major downtown revitalization," the Chronicle reports. Watch the video to see everything that's happened in the last five years and what lies ahead.

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.

Professor of Government Anthony Corrado was quoted in the CNBC article titled "Presidential candidate Andrew Yang will give $1,000 a month to 10 more families," following Yang's announcement at the Sept. 12 presidential debate. Corrado, a campaign finance expert, told CNBC that Yang's plans could raise legal issues. “If the payments are made from the campaign, this will certainly raise questions as to whether they are permitted under the law, but at present how the law should be applied to these payments is a gray area for which there are no direct precedents,” Corrado said.