Deeply Rooted
Williams’ 18th president discusses life, leadership and the liberal arts. Maud S. Mandel wasn’t looking to become a college president. Her entire professional career—more than 20 years—had been at Brown University, teaching history and Judaic studies, establishing policy and practice as a faculty leader, and, most recently, working to enhance the undergraduate academic experience as…
Deconstructing Borders
Williams faculty explore how social media has moved from the personal to the political and now to the pedagogical—as both a teaching tool and a subject of critical study. Social media has the potential to build community, create solidarity and spread ideas more quickly and broadly than ever. It can also deepen divisions, silence voices…
Outreach & Upreach
Tessa Kelly ’07 blends literature and architecture in her project, The Mastheads. Now in its second summer, The Mastheads—a literary and architectural project cofounded by Tessa Kelly ’07—brings five writers to private, one-room studios scattered throughout Pittsfield, Mass., for month-long residencies. Each writer is assigned a studio designed as an architectural interpretation of the original…
Rumor Has It
Exploring the facts and fictions behind a dozen Williams legends. In 225 years, Williams has amassed a formidable collection of stories. They have been passed down by generations of Ephs to be shared during campus tours, in first-year common rooms, in classrooms and even around the world. But are they true? We asked students, faculty,…
The Mathematics of Locust (and Other) Swarms
To Professor of Mathematics Chad Topaz, the world is full of patterns. From the stripes on a zebra to the V-shaped flight formation of migratory birds, patterns seem to arise easily in nature, and Topaz has long sought to understand them. In graduate school, he studied the mathematical properties of pattern formation in earnest, with…
Free Speech and its Enemies
In the spring of 2016, a group of Williams students invited writer and political commentator John Derbyshire to speak at the college about national identity and immigration. Williams’ president at the time, Adam Falk, canceled the event, calling Derbyshire’s provocative, often inflammatory, views “hate speech.” As Falk wrote in a letter to the campus announcing…
Apology, Understood
Research on apologies by social psychologist Cindy Frantz ’91 has garnered attention in recent months as public apologies have dominated news cycles. A member of the psychology department at Oberlin for the last 15 years, Frantz also studies environmental psychology. Her current scholarship considers how to make climate change a more concrete problem for people—thus…
Modeling Economies
A professor and student collaborate on new macroeconomic models that better predict how policies affect the global economy. Assistant Professor of Economics Greg Phelan and economics and math major William Chen ’19 have spent nearly two years developing a model that predicts how countries respond to the economic policies of other countries. Now Chen, who…
In Memoriam
H. Ganse “Binks” Little, who joined the Williams faculty in 1963, died on March 14. He was 85. Little served as chair of the religion department for 20 years during a time that witnessed the development of a landmark introductory religion course. He also was chair of the Committee of Undergraduate Life, paving the way…
Recently Published
In his survey course The Modern Middle East, history professor Magnus T. Bernhardsson covers topics including cultural diversity, radical religious groups, the impact of imperialism and the discovery of oil. His book Mið-Austurlönd (which means Middle East in Icelandic and was published by Eymundsson in 2018) is based on the class, and “each chapter is…
Williams Names Chaplain
The Rev. Valerie Bailey Fischer joins Williams in July as chaplain to the college. She has more than 11 years of college chaplaincy experience, nearly a decade in ordained ministry and strong foundations in experiential education and social justice. “I am inspired by how the chaplains, faculty, staff and students are engaged in issues of…
Catching Up With Watson Fellow Rob Hefferon ’18
Rob Hefferon ’18 is among the select few to win this year’s Thomas J. Watson Fellowship. The $30,000 stipend enables the Spanish and political science major to spend a year traveling the globe and examining important societal issues as they relate to coffee. Williams Magazine caught up with him before he headed overseas. Why coffee?…
A Closer Look: It’s Something
For the senior exhibition It’s Not Nothing at the Williams College Museum of Art, English and studio art major Phoebe Mattana ’18 says she focused on the idea of “the camera as a gun—a tool of oppression in modernist consumerist culture used to sell not only products and services but also a set of cultural…
At a Glance: The Williams Reunion Jazz Band
A look at the Williams Reunion Jazz Band, which has been making music for nearly half a century in a variety of incarnations.
New Direction
Africana studies professor Rhon Manigault-Bryant will use a Mellon Foundation New Directions Fellowship to attend film school. The fellowships allow faculty to seek training outside their discipline. Manigault-Bryant has long been interested in how some black, male filmmakers represent black women, often by playing the roles themselves. “I was teaching Introduction to Religion, the year…
Williams Wins Directors’ Cup
21: Number of times, including this year, that Williams’ athletic teams have won the Directors’ Cup in the award’s 23-year history. Six Williams teams finished fifth or better nationally, 10 finished in the top 10, and 15 finished in the top 20. Overall, Williams finished 125 points ahead of second-place Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The…
Trustees Join Board
On July 1, Williams welcomed Mariam Naficy ’91 and Gretchen Howard ’95 to its Board of Trustees. Naficy is the founder and CEO of Minted, an online marketplace that crowdsources prints, stationery and other high-end paper goods developed by independent artists and designers and then sells their work. In 2013 she received a Bicentennial Medal…
A Future in Physics
Bingyi Wang ’18 has been named among the inaugural class of Knight-Hennessy Scholars, the largest fully endowed scholarship program in the world. The scholarship supports up to 100 high-achieving students from around the globe in their pursuit of any graduate degree at Stanford University. A physics major from Xuzhou, China, Wang says she plans to…
Silo Songs
A historic wooden silo in Pittsfield is the site of a new, immersive sound installation. Silo Songs, a collaboration between Hancock Shaker Village and Brad Wells, Williams’ Lyell B. Clay Artist in Residence, is inspired by hymnals and song sheets from the college’s Shaker Collection and the library at Hancock Shaker Village. “To be invited…
Intentional Joy
Life has been a rush of joyous activity since the Williams Board of Trustees appointed me as the college’s 18th president in the spring. First the happy blur of the public announcement in March, then campus meetings with faculty, students and staff . Next came my family’s relocation, which was a significant endeavor after 16…
A Reflection on Math, Art and Meaning
During his first semester at Williams, mathematics major Alex Semendinger ’18 borrowed a work of art from the Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA) to hang on his dorm room wall. He initially participated in the Williams Art Loan for Livings Spaces (WALLS) program because he couldn’t believe the college would lend works of art…
Comment
The Danger of Normalization As a proud Williams alum who was shaped by the institution’s stated values (including a commitment to diversity, equity and sustainability), I was shocked to see the Williams platform used to elevate the Heritage Foundation in the spring 2018 issue (“Election Results”). I certainly commend the effort to spotlight a variety…