External Posts

The Sunday edition of the Portland Press Herald published a feature article on Colby’s Center for the Arts and Humanities and its “Food for Thought” theme. In the story, Dean Allbritton, associate professor of Spanish and the center’s director, commented on how “food is such a rich theme,” and it’s “really about thinking about our relationship to food.” The piece also noted how the topic was “bringing food-related investigations to 16 classes in fields from anthropology and Spanish to religious studies,” and that there are also a “series of food-related lectures, panel discussions, and film screenings to underscore this year’s theme.”

Professor of Psychology Christopher Soto appeared on TVO's show "The Agenda" with Steve Paikin in an episode titled "What Makes Up Our Personality?" Soto, director of Colby's Personality Lab and an expert on the Big Five personality traits, was one of three guests discussing nature vs. nurture, lifespan personality development, intentional personality change, and the Big Five traits. TVO is an agency of the Ontario Ministry of Education.

Tanya Sheehan, the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Art, has been selected to organize and host webinars for the Addison Gallery's "Collection in Dialogue" series. The series invites "leading scholars of American art to analyze objects in the Addison's permanent collection." Sheehan has identified "collection areas and speakers with the aim of demonstrating the museum's commitment to promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion," the gallery reports. The first webinar is Dec. 1  at 6 p.m. and is titled "The Art of HIV/AIDS." These virtual webinars are free and open to pre-registrants.

Professor of Environmental Studies Philip Nyhus, a conservation biologist who specializes in human–wildlife conflict, provided context for a story in Nature titled "Asian elephants mostly roam outside protected areas — and it’s a problem." Nyhus commented on researchers' attempts to study Asian elephants, which "live deep in dense forest and so are much more difficult to study than African elephants, which roam open savannahs," he told Nature. Researchers are trying to understand why the elephants leave protected areas and how they can reduce that behavior. "The research provides strong evidence for how to set up suitable protected areas that reduce the risk of elephants wandering out," said Nyhus.

Professor of Biology Cathy Bevier was the lead author of the paper "Early Life of the Mink Frog (Rana septentrionalis): From Fertilization to Metamorphosis," published in the journal Ichthyology and Herpetology. The paper reports on the team's "initial efforts to describe larval Mink Frog development by inducing breeding of wild-caught adults in the laboratory, then sampling tadpoles from fertilization until the subsequent spring," the paper's abstract states. "Our approach here demonstrates that Mink Frogs can be captive bred for use in laboratory experiments, and our work provides a novel larval series from egg mass to metamorphosis for this secretive, understudied species."

As part of the University of Pennsylvania's Climate Week activities, Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Stacy-ann Robinson delivered a short lecture on October 12 titled, "Climate justice in an unjust world." In it, she highlighted the challenge of climate change in Caribbean small island developing states and called for a recognition of the uneven impacts of climate change, debt relief from the International Monetary Fund and other international financial institutions, and increased transparency in climate funding allocations.

Professor of English Debra Spark penned a review of Getting Lost, a new book by Annie Ernaux, winner of the 2022 Noble Prize in Literature. Published on the website Frenchly, Spark's review questions why Ernaux published Getting Lost after already covering the same material in her novel Simple Passion, which recounts her love affair with a Russian diplomat. "In the end, I found it tormenting (and boring) to read about Ernaux’s torment," Spark wrote. "The feminist in me does not want to see a woman of Ernaux’s accomplishments feel as she does, though, of course, I’ve seen many an accomplished woman do the same."

Director of the Davis Institute for Artificial Intelligence Amanda Stent is one of 25 Mainers of the Year, as chosen by Maine magazine. Stent "views the work that she has done over the past year as raising awareness, first and foremost. Through talks that the institute has hosted, an interview with Maine Voices Live, and forming relationships with Bigelow Labs, Dirigo Labs, the University of Maine, and the Roux Institute, getting the word out about AI across Maine has been an important first step," the magazine said.

Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Stacy-ann Robinson has coauthored an article titled "The unequal geographies of climate finance: Climate injustice and dependency in the world system." Appearing in the journal Political Geography, the article asks whether climate finance follows the expectations of world-systems theory and reproduces relationships of dependency. It finds that it does, in many ways. However, potential avenues exist for challenging spatial dependency, contesting the unequal balance of power between states, and advancing climate justice.