2014 fall

A Library in Full

“Here is a centrally located place, to which students will be drawn as by a beacon from inside its glass curtain walls.” That’s how David Spadafora ’72 described Sawyer Library during its dedication on Sept. 20. Named for John E. Sawyer ’39, the college’s transformative 11th president, the library extends the Williams ethos that we are a…

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History of the Book

“No object has so broadly and deeply represented the capacity for humans to create, preserve and transmit knowledge, information and ideas as the book,” states the description for “The History of the Book,” an ambitious new course taught by Chinese professor Christopher Nugent and Classics professor Edan Dekel. Part of the yearlong Book Unbound initiative…

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Transforming the Academy

As colleges and universities work to diversify their faculties, Williams has emerged as a leader in building a pipeline to the professoriate. An undergraduate fellowship from Williams allowed Drew Thompson ’05 to choose his passion—researching HIV/AIDS and public art in South Africa—over a lucrative job offer. An invitation to take classes and work closely with…

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The Cyberutopian

Ethan Zuckerman ’93 once considered himself to be a “cyberutopian.” His career began with successful commercial and nonprofit Internet startups. He believed the web was “going to make the world smaller and better connected. It was going to lead to more international understanding.” But while researching for his book Rewire: Digital Cosmopolitans in the Age…

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Musical Garlands: Ragamala

The sound of a sitar emanates from a first-floor gallery of the Williams College Museum of Art, beckoning visitors to an exhibition of 16 tiny Indian paintings that meld art, music and poetry. The people depicted in the paintings are without expression, but the worlds—and words—around them are rich and colorful. The paintings are part…

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Sex Work and Sports Events

Greg Mitchell has been researching sex workers in Brazil for nearly a decade, beginning with ethnographic studies of male prostitutes and, more recently, studying the marginalization of female sex workers during global sporting events. Now, the professor of women’s, gender and sexuality studies is expanding his focus beyond Brazil. While working on his Ph.D. in…

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Why Liberal Arts?

Amid a national conversation about the value of a college degree—and of the liberal arts, specifically—Williams has launched a yearlong effort to examine and discuss the educational experience it provides. “Why Liberal Arts?: Challenging, Transforming, Connecting” is an initiative of the Committee on Educational Policy (CEP) that focuses on how students experience the liberal arts,…

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Other Books

Zombies and Calculus. By Colin Adams, Williams’ Thomas T. Read Professor of Mathematics. Princeton University Press, 2014. Calculus is the ultimate survival tool in this novel about a zombie apocalypse at a liberal arts college in Western Massachusetts.         The Vault of Dreamers. By Caragh M. O’Brien ’84. Roaring Brook Press, 2014….

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Delusions of Regime Change in Iraq

Michael MacDonald started writing what would become Overreach: Delusions of Regime Change in Iraq (Harvard University Press, October 2014) the day after he returned from a yearlong sabbatical. He’d just completed Why Race Matters in South Africa (Harvard University Press, 2006). And the crumbling regime of Saddam Hussein was in the headlines. MacDonald, a professor…

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A Recipe (Book) for History

Joshua Morrison’s ’16 research of a privately held recipe book assembled by the famous Civil War author and diarist Mary Boykin Chesnut may uncover new details about domestic life in the South. Chesnut, the wife of a wealthy South Carolina planter and former U.S. senator, was an eyewitness to major developments in the Civil War….

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Creating and Connecting

This month, noted poet Craig Dworkin is visiting the Williams College Museum of Art, enlisting students to, as he puts it, “exhaustively collect, catalogue and analyze language found within WCMA’s walls, opening our minds to the oft-unnoticed language around us.” He’ll then turn the students’ documentation into an original work “that’s part poem, part sociological…

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Teaching to Learn

The students in Susan Langman’s third-grade class at Williamstown Elementary School are trying without success to remove food coloring from water with small, plastic pipettes. But their many exclamations over the impossibility of the task—which simulates removing pollution from the ocean—are cut short when Intekhab Hossain ’17 holds up a crystal-clear glass of water and…

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The Poster Session: Scientific Research at a Glance

On a sunny Friday in August, Schow Science Library is crammed with people. One hundred seventy-five students who spent the summer conducting in-depth research as part of the college’s Summer Science Research Program have distilled their work into 3-by-4-foot posters full of charts, diagrams and photos. Now the buzz of hundreds of individual conversations fills…

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In Memoriam: James MacGregor Burns ’39

On Oct. 18 the Williams community gathered in Thompson Memorial Chapel to pay tribute to James MacGregor Burns ’39, the college’s Woodrow Wilson Professor of Government, who died on July 15 at the age of 95. Burns was a renowned presidential historian and leadership scholar. He began his career as a congressional aide in Washington,…

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By the Numbers

It’s difficult to quantify the world of individuals who bring their intelligence, talents, perspectives, and aspirations to Williams. But the Student Profile of 2014-15 provides useful facts and statistics about the student body. Here are some highlights. The Student Body

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Majumder Receives NSF Grant

A three-year, $347,000 grant from the National Science Foundation will help physics professor Tiku Majumder continue his precise spectroscopic studies of atoms—research ultimately aimed at testing the Standard Model of particle physics. Majumder’s project will measure the properties of the heavy-metal atoms indium and thallium in unprecedented detail using semiconductor diode lasers. The data Majumder…

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Grant Aids Net-Zero Goal

A $161,260 grant from the National Science Foundation will help Williams monitor energy usage in its new environmental center and use the data to implement standards that will help it to meet the Living Building Challenge (LBC). Computer science professor Jeannie Albrecht and Sarah Abramson ’15, Pamela Mishkin ’16, and Abbie Zimmermann-Niefield ’15 are determining the…

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Williams Dedicates Sawyer Library

On Sept. 20, the Williams community celebrated the dedication of Sawyer Library with a musical performance, readings from selected works in the college’s collection and remarks by Dean of the College Sarah Bolton, President Adam Falk, and Newberry Library President David Spadafora ’72. “Sawyer Library is, most fundamentally, the academic crossroads of Williams,” Falk said…

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Convocation Celebrates Senior Class, Distinguished Alumni

The college marked the start of the academic year and the accomplishments of the senior class and alumni at convocation on Sept. 20. During the ceremony, six alumni received Bicentennial Medals for distinguished achievement in fields relevant to The Book Unbound, a yearlong initiative celebrating Sawyer Library. The medalists were (clockwise from top left) Kenard…

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A Pipeline into the Academy

Readers of Williams Magazine know most of the large effects this small college has on the world. One you may not know about, however, is hugely important to Williams and higher education. Through sustained work and the support of many alumni and friends, Williams now educates students from a much wider variety of backgrounds than…

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Summer Kudos

I took a few minutes this morning to read Williams Magazine (summer 2014) and be amazed one more time at the depth and breadth of the college’s impact on so many lives that then drives their contributions to the world. It is difficult to imagine how three times per year the magazine staff is able…

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Dropping the “F” Word

As an alumnus, former class treasurer and former class agent, I was tremendously disappointed to see that the summer 2014 Williams Magazine included at least three instances of the “F” word (“Higher Edukation”). What is wrong with you? Why has the college embraced the race to bottom? There is nothing artistic or redeeming in publishing profanity. Where is truth, beauty, or goodness…

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Jews at Williams

I read with much interest “Gentlemen Jews” (summer 2014), excerpted from the book by Benjamin Aldes Wurgaft. It is a fascinating subject. I admit to having a particular interest, as I am the granddaughter of Edward S. Greenbaum, Class of 1910. The statement that “Greenbaum met with Williams President Harry A. Garfield, Class of 1885, and offered to…

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A Spiritual Instrument

The article on Cole Porter’s piano (“A Spiritual Instrument,” summer 2014) brought back memories of the late fall of 1964, when college librarian Wyllis Wright, Class of 1925, called to ask: “How would you like to go with me and see what Cole Porter has left us?” I joined him at the small house on West…

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The Alumni Network

The tradition of Ephs helping Ephs along the job path is an old one (“The Alumni Network,” summer 2014). My father, Frank Coan, Class of 1911, was helped into a government job by Williams President Phinney Baxter, Class of 1914 and a high official in the Office of Strategic Services. My first job was in…

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Whale Tales

Shortly after moving to Arrowhead, his farmhouse on the outskirts of Pittsfield, Mass., Herman Melville wrote to a friend: “I have a sort of sea-feeling here in the country, now that the ground is covered in snow. I look out my window in the morning when I rise as I would out a port-hole of…

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Uncharted Waters

This past May, the Charles W. Morgan—the last remaining wooden whaling ship in the world—set sail for the first time in nearly a century. Its 38th voyage was unlike any that came before it. The ship once roamed every corner of the ocean in pursuit of whales. But it spent last summer sailing the New…

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