Spring 2014

Ideas That Matter

One hundred members of the campus and local communities gathered at the ’62 Center for Theatre and Dance on Jan. 25 for TEDxWilliamsCollege. The first event of its kind to be held at the college, the half-day program featured six faculty members and two students who each spoke about topics inspired by ideas explored in…

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Typology of a Library

“Libraries can’t stand still, and now is a wonderful moment to reflect on how we got here and where we’re going.” — Michael Lewis In this adaptation of his architecture lecture “Chalices of Words and Light,” Micheal Lewis, the Faison-Pierson-Stoddard Professor of Art History, takes us on a visual tour of the four freestanding libraries…

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The South in Black and White

Professors Leslie Brown and Charles Dew ’58 weave history and memory to help students understand how lives lived on opposite sides of the color line come together in one place. “The history of the American South is a racial one, where blacks and whites lived their lives intertwined and disconnected.” So begins the course description…

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40 at 40

What makes a successful sports program? The goal in any athletic contest is to win, and Williams’ record in winning is well-known. But the purpose of an athletic program is to help educate students. It’s possible to pick the most valuable players, but it’s impossible to measure who’s learned the most from their athletic education…

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The Mathematics of Legos

Associate Professor of Mathematics Steven Miller wants his students to see math in action, outside of textbooks and outside of the classroom. So he organized a Winter Study course with the ultimate aim of building a Lego Super Star Destroyer—a 50-inch vessel made up of 3,152 pieces that’s part of the “Star Wars” Imperial fleet—in…

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On Being a Third-Culture Kid

Other Faculty Lectures This Spring Jeannie Albrecht, associate professor of computer science: “Detecting and Predicting Occupancy in a Smart Home” Lisa Gilbert, associate professor of geosciences and marine sciences: “Adventures in the Deep Sea: Rocks Younger than You” Amy Holzapfel, associate professor of theater: “Acts of Seeing: Art, Vision and Realist Theater” Jason Ananda Josephson,…

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Researching Rocks (at the billion-pixel level)

Gigapans are panoramic photos made up of billions of pixels. The technology, developed by scientists at Carnegie Mellon and NASA’s Ames Research Center for use in Mars Rover expeditions, involves a robotic camera mounted on a tripod. As the mount slowly swivels, hundreds or even thousands of individual images are captured. Software stitches the images…

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Other Books

Pests in the City: Flies, Bedbugs, Cockroaches and Rats. By Dawn Day Biehler ’97. University of Washington Press, 2013. Despite modernity and sustainability in U.S. cities, urban pests remain a problem at the intersection of public health, politics and environmental justice. Art, Vision and Nineteenth-Century Realist Drama: Acts of Seeing. By Amy Holzapfel, Williams associate…

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The Pursuit of Dao

George T. (Sam) Crane is an empirical social scientist. But when his son Aidan was born profoundly disabled, Crane found that empiricist rationality fell short of helping him to understand the meaning of Aidan’s life. Crane’s scholarship and teaching focused on contemporary East Asian politics, so ancient Chinese philosophy “had long been on the edges…

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Visual Activism

Zanele Muholi’s work confronts discrimination and broadens the representation of black queer life in South Africa. And for Williams Associate Professor of History Gretchen Long, the artist’s photos, now on display at the Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA), complement the issues she’s exploring with students in her course “Black Women in the U.S.” Long…

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Liza Johnson’s Hateship, Loveship to Premiere in U.S.

Professor of Art Liza Johnson ’92 has spent the last several years directing, writing and producing films while teaching courses in moving image production. Her latest work, Hateship Loveship, was picked up by IFC films after premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival in September. It will be released in the U.S. on April 11….

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Opening the Classroom Door

Assistant Professor of Africana Studies Rashida Braggs has a new tool in her teaching kit. Someday soon, she plans to ask her students a single question—and she knows it has to be a doozy—and structure an entire class discussion around it. It’s an idea inspired by a visit last semester to an introductory level comparative…

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Low-Tech Printmaking

Mei Kazama ’16 bends over a large piece of linoleum that’s warming on a 2-by-2-foot hot plate. Gripping a sharp cutting tool, she slowly carves a design into the softened tile, called a “lino plate.” She straightens up every few minutes to check her progress, alternately sketching with a pencil and then carving over the…

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In Memoriam

Gordon E. Winston, the college’s Orrin Sage Professor of Political Economy, Emeritus, died on Dec. 3 at the age of 84. Winston joined the economics faculty at Williams in 1963 and focused primarily on economic development. He was influential in the growth of Williams’ Center for Development Economics and served as head of the Yale…

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Roomful of Teeth Wins Grammy

“New classical music is well and alive,” Brad Wells said as he and his vocal ensemble Roomful of Teeth accepted a Grammy in January for Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance. Wells, the Lyell B. Clay Artist in Residence in Vocal Studies and director of choral activities at Williams, founded Roomful of Teeth in 2009. The…

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By the Numbers: Williams Trivia

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Williams Welcomes 237 to Class of ’18 via Early Decision

The college has offered admission to 237 students under its early decision plan. The 124 women and 113 men comprise 43 percent of the incoming Class of 2018, which has a target size of 550. Students from 33 states and Puerto Rico as well as 17 countries make up the early decision cohort. American students…

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Tenured

Five Williams faculty members have been promoted to associate professor with tenure, effective July 1. They are: Jessica Chapman, history. Chapman specializes in U.S. foreign relations with a focus on Vietnam, decolonization and the Cold War. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and serves on the college’s Committee on Undergraduate…

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Congratulations to Our Newest Rhodes Scholar…And to Our Recently Named Churchill Scholar

Brian McGrail ’14 has been named a Rhodes Scholar for 2014. He’s one of 32 U.S. students selected this year and the first from Williams since 2005. He plans to use the fellowship to pursue a Bachelor of Arts in philosophy, politics and economics at the University of Oxford. A double major in history and…

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Breaking Ground, Cultivating Change

On Feb. 6, students, faculty and staff celebrated Claiming Williams Day, a series of discussions, performances and events aimed at building and sustaining a more inclusive community. This year’s themes was “Breaking Ground, Cultivating Change,” and the program included (clockwise, from top left) spoken-word poetry by Joshua Bennett, a workshop on class identity, a performance…

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Sports at Williams

At Homecoming in the fall, Athletics Director Lisa Melendy and I had the pleasure of accepting the 2013 Directors’ Cup, the college’s 16th in 18 years. It’s awarded to the school in each NCAA division that performs the best in post-season play. Last year we had 12 teams (eight women’s, four men’s) finish in the…

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Reclaiming Williams

In addition to the attractive new graphic layout, I’ve been delighted to encounter some edgier articles in Williams Magazine of late. Chief among these was Robert J. Seidman’s ’63 “Band of Brothers” (spring 2013), which recounts the student-led rebellion against fraternity control of the campus in the early 1960s (of which I’d heard only vaguely whitewashed…

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Credit Where Credit’s Due

In your most recent edition you include a proud hymn to sustainable building (“Living Laboratory,” fall 2013) in the form of an article and video, but neither ever once mentions the architect or architects involved in the project. How can that be? Do the designers of a supposedly pathbreaking, environmentally sensitive building not merit any…

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Fire and Light

The excerpt from the new book by James MacGregor Burns ’39 in the fall 2013 magazine was instructive (“Fire and Light“). Burns tells us the Enlightenment rejected the old philosophy “furnished top to bottom by God,” replacing it with the “new unflinching standards of empiricism.” But rudderless empiricism also has its problems. Despite its achievements,…

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Monumental Achievement

Reading “A Monumental Achievement” (fall 2013), my heart pumped out emotions: pride in the longstanding tradition of excellence and reach of Williams art faculty and gratitude that in 1957 I experienced Whitney Stoddard ’35, one of the art department’s “Holy Trinity.” My longing for a story of aesthetic intellectuals making major contributions in the messy…

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Nation-building

Nation-building A collection of 26 Soviet propaganda posters from the 1920s at the Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA) is now an important part of several courses, thanks to a Russian and international studies major who researched and translated them last year. The posters reflect “how the government emphasized things such as industry, literacy, agriculture,…

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True Democracy

“And with that, I’ll turn things over to Conor,” Professor of History Magnus Bernhardsson said as all the eyes in the classroom shifted to me. I paused for what seemed like an eternity, nervously scanning the faces in the room, and looked directly into the large video screen in front of me. “Williams College is…

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