Privacy in the Digital Age
Our smart devices are listening, our faces and bodies routinely scanned and our preferences tracked. But four alumni are leading efforts to make sure new technologies don’t infringe on our civil and constitutional rights. It feels like a harmless trade-off: give up a little privacy, gain a little happiness—or at least a little efficiency. We…
Justice For All?
A grassroots movement for environmental justice is taking root at Williams. We see it in new courses being taught across the curriculum, in scholarship and research, in discussions and in activism—both local and global—among students, faculty and staff. To get an understanding of the scope and scale of campus involvement, Williams Magazine convened a conversation…
Life in the Details
Log lunches. Labs. Block parties. Band rehearsals. Rallies. Radio shows. Study sessions. Swim meets. Sunrise. Shadows. Candlepin bowling.Chamber Choir. Coffee. Classes. More coffee. First snow. Final exams… See how the year unfolded at Williams—day by day—in this video: Video by Jay Corey
The Unwinding of the Miracle
“This story begins at the ending. Which means that if you are here, then I am not. But it’s OK. … Dying has taught me a great deal about living—about facing hard truths consciously, about embracing the suffering as well as the joy. Wrapping my arms around the hard parts was perhaps the great liberating…
Tiny Plants, Big Answers
Marchantia polymorpha, a species of liverwort, was one of the first plants to colonize land roughly 470 million years ago. At the time, the tiny plants lowered carbon dioxide levels enough to trigger a mini ice age. Today liverwort grows all over the world—and all over Williams’ campus. The biomechanics of how it spreads is…
Building Worlds
An interpretation of a scene from Angels in America, for the course Worldbuilding. Model by Tobias Delgado ’21. When David Gürçay-Morris ’96 was a theater and studio art major at Williams, he enrolled in Introduction to Staging and Design, a course that influenced the rest of his career. When he returned to the college 11…
Nature Via Nurture
What determines behavior: genes or the environment? Neuroscientist Betty Zimmerberg and her students have worked to answer that question in the tutorial Nature Via Nurture. The course explores topics such as child neglect, antisocial behavior, addiction, anxiety, risk-taking, empathy and depression in animal models. It’s a traditional tutorial—with pairs of students under Zimmerberg’s guidance alternately…
Mundo, Recognized
Art professor C. Ondine Chavoya’s groundbreaking scholarship is the basis for a fall WCMA exhibition on queer Chicanx creative networks. Despite his nickname, “Mundo,” which means world in Spanish, Edmundo Meza, a queer Chicanx artist, wasn’t well known in the mainstream art world. His work all but disappeared from view after his death in 1985….
Vértiz Wins Pen Award
In late 2018, Vickie Vértiz ’98 was awarded a PEN America Literary Award-Los Angeles for her poetry collection Palm Frond With Its Throat Cut (University of Arizona Press, 2017). The collection is a series of portraits of cities—including Los Angeles, Mexico City and Paris—and of rivers, freeways and people. The Los Angeles Review of Books…
Recently Published
The work of top scholars to understand how state structures—rather than moments of crisis or partisan realignment—shape political history informs the collection Shaped by the State: Toward a New Political History of the Twentieth Century (The University of Chicago Press, 2018), edited by Mason B. Williams, leadership studies and political science professor, et. al. Religion…
Learned Faculty
Two Williams professors have received fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies. Gregory Mitchell, associate professor of women’s, gender and sexuality studies, was named a Frederick Burkhardt Residential Fellow. The fellowship provides a $95,000 stipend and a $7,500 research budget and will allow Mitchell to spend the upcoming academic year at Princeton University to…
Music Makers
At the Williams College Department of Music’s I/O fest in January, the student group Axxea String Quartet performed a suite by Sato Matsui ’14 as well as a new piece by composer and visual artist Tristan Perich. Violinist Jeffrey Pearson ’20 says it was “a rare and exciting experience to work with living composers and…
Trustee Update
On July 1, Williams welcomed Michele Y. Johnson Rogers ’79 and Nathan K. Sleeper ’95 to its Board of Trustees. Rogers, who was elected by the Society of Alumni and appointed by the trustees, is director of partnerships with Chicago organizations and a clinical assistant professor with the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University….
WCMA’s Summer Home
The Williams College Museum of Art (WCM) is taking it to the streets while Lawrence Hall closes temporarily for renovations. The Summer Space at 76 Spring St., open daily from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. through Sept. 2, features the WCMA shop and an exhibition from the WALLS Collection. The weekly summer Ologies series continues…
Science, Supported
Microscopic fossils, artificial intelligence and solar eclipses are the research areas of three professors who received more than $481,000 combined in National Science Foundation grants. Geosciences professor Phoebe Cohen and her research partners are measuring organic carbon isotopes of microscopic fossils, a window into the evolution of life before the rise of animals. Computer science…
In Memoriam
William “Bill” T. Fox ’54, the Edward Brust Professor of Geology and Minerology, died on Feb. 12. He was 86. Fox spent 35 years at Williams, serving as chair of the geology department and helping to plan and develop Bronfman Science Center, one of the most innovative scientific facilities of any college when it opened…
Drag Culture
LaWhore Vagistan, alter ego of Tufts professor (and former Williams queer life coordinator) Kareem Khubchandani, discussed the dangers of performing in drag, pop culture influence—and why he keeps his body hair—during “Drag Me! Ethics, Performance and the Politics of Drag,” part of a yearlong series on performative ethics, presented by the Program in Women’s, Gender…
On Campus Activism
It’s summer in Williamstown: a wonderful time to step out onto campus and feel the embrace of mountains on all sides. And yet this summer also feels like the quiet eye of a far-reaching storm, swirling with debate of many issues. Williams is hardly alone in this experience. From Maine to California, my fellow college…
Lessons from Wrestling
Coaching students inside the classroom and on the mat. I’m standing on the sidelines of a middle school wrestling match, watching one of my students get beat. He’s a little guy—just like I was at his age—and I’ve coached him for a couple of years. To the best of my ability, I’ve shown him what…
Comment
Other Missions? I read “Mission Possible” (spring 2019) with amazement at the hard work and creativity of Williams scientists. However, I couldn’t help but think how much money is being spent on U.S. space programs (as well as on educating space scientists) while countless people are suffering from cancer, Alzheimer’s and many other modern diseases….