External Posts

The latest book by Professor of Government, Emeritus Walter Hatch has been published by the University of Michigan Press. Ghosts in the Neighborhood: Why Japan is Haunted by its Past and Germany is Not, explores the idea that "Germany, which brutalized its neighbors in Europe for centuries, has mostly escaped the ghosts of the past, while Japan remains haunted in Asia," according to the UMichigan Press. Hatch's book rejects conventional wisdom on the topic and instead "rigorously defends the argument that political cooperation—not discourse or economic exchange—best explains Germany’s relative success and Japan’s relative failure in achieving reconciliation with neighbors brutalized by each regional power in the past."

The transformation of Main Street in downtown Waterville into a two-way road caught the attention of a variety of regional media including CBS affiliate WABI.

A poem by Professor of English and Creative Writing Adrian Blevins was included in the Village Soup's latest "Poets' Walk" column, written by Judy Kaber, poet laureate of Belfast, Maine. Kaber turned to Blevins's "Pastoral" to complement the column's focus on wildness and "a taste for country." The poem "tries to make a case for this more natural mode of being in a world still struggling to understand difference," wrote Kaber.

Watch this MaineLife video (starting at the 11:50 mark) for a sneak peek of the soon-to-be-completed Paul J. Schupf Art Center on Main Street in downtown Waterville.

Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Alison Bates has published an article titled "Enabling an Equitable Energy Transition through Inclusive Research.” Bates is joined by leading energy and justice scholars across the country to lay out a progressive research agenda for energy equity and justice. Appearing in the journal Nature Energy, the authors outline an interdisciplinary research agenda centering frontline communities and address the intersecting dimensions of equity. The authors conclude with action items for funding agencies to operationalize an equitable energy transition to meet national priorities such as the White House Justice40 initiative.

Adam Howard, the Charles A. Dana Professor of Education, was quoted in a Portland Press Herald article titled "College students worry about decreasing diversity if affirmative action is overturned" about the upcoming decision by the Supreme Court about affirmative action in higher education. "If the court overturns affirmative action it will undoubtedly hinder colleges trying to make their schools more diverse,” said Howard, who studies social class in education.

Tanya Sheehan, the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Art, authored an essay titled "Where to Begin: Marking Race in Surveys of American Art" that appeared in American Art, the journal of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. "The pedagogical strategies presented in this essay aim to address the racial biases and foundations of American art history as a field and, more broadly, to expose and undermine the enduring power of Whiteness," according to the essay's abstract.

Assistant Professor of Education Pei Pei Liu was the first author in a paper titled "A Mixed-Methods Exploration of Mastery Goal Support in 7th-Grade Science Classrooms" recently published in the journal Cognition and Instruction. "Mastery goal structures, which communicate value for developing deeper understanding, are an important classroom support for student motivation and engagement, especially in the context of science learning aligned with the Next Generation Science Standards," according to the paper's abstract." In the study, Liu and her team "aimed to provide a stronger understanding of how middle school science teachers can support students’ mastery goal orientation, facilitating the effective implementation of NGSS instruction and deeper learning in science."

Nicholas Jacobs, assistant professor of government, talked to NewsNation about his research on the widening divide in America between urban and rural voters. 

An article in the New York Times about the relationship between Alex Katz and Paul Taylor referenced how the Colby Museum’s current show Alex Katz: Theater and Dance is largely focused on that partnership. The piece also included commentary from the exhibition’s catalog.