External Posts

The startup software company Eariously, co-founded by Nick Rimsa '13, has been awarded a $10,000 grant from the Maine Technology Institute. The grant will allow Rimsa to "continue working with software design and development specialists to bring its product to market," the Central Maine Growth Council reported. Eariously software converts digital text—from a website, a PDF, email, etc.—into audio that can be listened to on a laptop or phone. "Maine’s entrepreneurship leaders are ensuring that software startups see success by designing for our success. We’re very happy to be making Eariously here,” Rimsa said of his Waterville-based company. Mainebiz also shared the story.  

Cheryl Townsend Gilkes, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Professor of Sociology and African-American Studies, has an essay titled "Red Summer, Trump Summer and the politics of hate," in Religion News Service. "Living memories of terror and exclusion within my family became personal, cultural and social capital, enabling and motivating my parents to resist discrimination and to provide the spiritual and intellectual armament that prepared me to resist and stand strong against the assaults, discrimination and name-calling I experienced in my lifetime," she wrote in her Aug. 16 opinion piece

Raffael Scheck, the Audrey Wade Hittinger Katz Distinguished Teaching Professor of History, was interviewed for BBC Newsday on Aug. 15, which marked the 75th anniversary of Operation Dragoon, an event that "paved the way for the Allied invasion of southern France during World War Two." In the four-minute interview, Scheck told the BBC that the "units landing in August 1944 were mostly from North Africa and also from the west and central African colonies of France." Scheck, an expert on French Black African soldiers in World War II, said they black soldiers “took part in the liberation of the key ports of Toulon and Marseille.”  

Raffael Scheck, the Audrey Wade Hittinger Katz Distinguished Teaching Professor of History, was interviewed for BBC Newsday on Aug. 15, which marked the 75th anniversary of Operation Dragoon, an event that "paved the way for the Allied invasion of southern France during World War Two." In the four-minute interview, Scheck told the BBC that the "units landing in August 1944 were mostly from North Africa and also from the west and central African colonies of France." Scheck, an expert on French Black African soldiers in World War II, said they black soldiers “took part in the liberation of the key ports of Toulon and Marseille.”  

Loren McClenachan, the Elizabeth and Lee Ainslie Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies, coauthored a paper recently published in PNAS. "Challenges to natural and human communities from surprising ocean temperatures" discusses how individuals and institutions will benefit by betting that trends of increasing temperatures will continue, a "strategy [that] represents a radical shift that will be difficult for many to make," according to the paper's abstract.

The final beam for the new athletic center was hoisted into place Aug. 6, completing the skeleton of the building, reports the Morning Sentinel. "It’s the largest single project in the college’s history, according to Colby President David A. Greene," the Sentinel said. "In April 2017, Greene said the athletic complex was one of two things, the other being the arts, that would draw people to Waterville and sustain the revitalization of the city that the college and community had embarked upon."

The final beam for the new athletic center was hoisted into place Aug. 6, completing the skeleton of the building, reports the Morning Sentinel. "It’s the largest single project in the college’s history, according to Colby President David A. Greene," the Sentinel said. "In April 2017, Greene said the athletic complex was one of two things, the other being the arts, that would draw people to Waterville and sustain the revitalization of the city that the college and community had embarked upon."

Associate Professor of Philosophy Lydia Moland has a new book out, Hegel's Aesthetics: The Art of Idealism, published by Oxford University Press. The book "offers the first comprehensive book in English on Hegel's philosophy of art in thirty years, gives a new, controversial interpretation of Hegel's notorious 'end of art' thesis, and Illuminates the relevance of Hegel's aesthetics to contemporary art," according to the publisher.

Cheryl Townsend Gilkes, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Professor of Sociology and African-American Studies, was quoted in the article "From New York to Alabama, blacks worshipped in own spaces before slavery’s end" in Religion News Service Aug. 1. The article looks at the buildings and the religious practices used by blacks during and after slavery. “African Americans did not become Christian by default but they came out of slavery with a Christianity that was critical of the people who enslaved them,” Gilkes said in the article. “All you have to do is look at the spirituals to see where African Americans were connecting with the Bible in spite of the fact that you had white missionaries who had a truncated Bible that they were sharing with slaves because they didn’t want them to know about Moses,” she said.

Cheryl Townsend Gilkes, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Professor of Sociology and African-American Studies, was quoted in the article "From New York to Alabama, blacks worshipped in own spaces before slavery’s end" in Religion News Service Aug. 1. The article looks at the buildings and the religious practices used by blacks during and after slavery. “African Americans did not become Christian by default but they came out of slavery with a Christianity that was critical of the people who enslaved them,” Gilkes said in the article. “All you have to do is look at the spirituals to see where African Americans were connecting with the Bible in spite of the fact that you had white missionaries who had a truncated Bible that they were sharing with slaves because they didn’t want them to know about Moses,” she said.