Fall 2018

Illustration of needlework showing New England trees on the front and palm trees on the back with a needle and yarn attached.

Histories in the Making

The story begins in 1986 with a box discovered in the basement of Fayerweather Hall containing objects that once belonged to the Williams Lyceum of Natural History. Or it begins with a student prayer meeting in 1806 that launches the American foreign missionary movement, later commemorated with the Haystack Monument near the aptly named Mission…

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Photo of two large portraits in the windows of a building with a reflection of the photographer in the glass of the door.

WE ARE: America

The portraits are at once intimate and imposing; some stand 25 feet tall. In the spring, they appeared throughout New Haven, Conn.—50 photographs of immigrants and refugees from all over the world who now call the city home. Mounted on framed stands in New Haven Green, draped from the sides of buildings and hung inside…

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Illustration of silhouettes helping each other, petting dog.

Giving It Forward

Mary Moule ’91 still remembers the frustration. As a student receiving financial aid, she was able to borrow textbooks for her courses each semester from Williams’ 1914 Library. But she wasn’t allowed to write in them. “While reading Booker T. Washington’s Up From Slavery, I finally gave up and started writing angry notes in the…

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Audubon plate of Chestnut-sided Warbler

North on the Wing

Bruce M. Beehler ’74 developed an affinity for wood warblers as a child while listening to his mother’s bedtime stories. Nature writers were their favorites, especially the naturalist Edwin Way Teale and his 1951 book North with the Spring. Beehler went on to a career in ornithology, ecological research and nature conservation, mostly in tropical…

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Illustration of a silhouette in a boat, casting a net and catching a variety of circles of different colors. Yellow background.

Constructing Reality

Religion Chair and Professor Jason Josephson Storm is teaching a new course this fall on social construction. At its core is a theory that has become common over the last 25 years: Categories such as race, gender and sexuality are in some sense not part of nature but instead are created and maintained socially. “The…

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Professor Soledad Fox

Americans Abroad

When Professor of Spanish and Comparative Literature Soledad Fox Maura advised students in a study abroad program in Spain several years ago, she was struck by how unprepared some of them seemed for the experience. “Their homesickness or a sense of disappointment and culture shock sometimes led to an inability to connect with their new…

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An Army great coat belonging to Charles Whittlesey, Class of 1905.

Williams and World War I

An Army great coat belonging to Charles Whittlesey, Class of 1905. A century after the end of World War I, Williams faculty, librarians and students are taking a fresh look at the many connections between the college and the Great War. “The First World War changed everything,” says French and comparative literature professor Brian Martin,…

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A photo of volunteers clearing debris out buckets of debris from streams in Hopkins Forest.

Hands-On Learning

Marco Vallejos ’20 was working as a lab assistant for the geosciences department a few summers ago when he was recruited to help out with Weir Day. He joined 20 other Williams volunteers—students, faculty and staff—on a hot August day, hiking into Hopkins Memorial Forest carrying shovels, buckets and spring scales to clear tons of…

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In Memoriam

Three longtime members of the Williams community passed away over the summer. Nicole Desrosiers taught French and art history to undergraduates and graduate students at Williams and The Clark Art Institute for more than four decades. She died on Aug. 31 at the age of 77. She came to Williams in 1974 and was known…

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Williams Read Features Jesmyn Ward

MacArthur Fellow and two-time National  Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward, whose Sing, Unburied, Sing is this year’s Williams Reads selection, visited campus on Oct. 11  for a talk and book signing. Ward told a rapt audience in Chapin Hall how she was an avid reader as a child, gravitating to stories of “girls who triumphed”…

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Robinson to Chair Williams’ Board of Trustees

Liz Beshel Robinson ’90 has been named chair of the Williams College Board of Trustees, effective July 1, 2019. She will succeed Michael Eisenson ’77, whose 12-year board term, including five years as chair, ends June 30. Robinson spent 25 years at Goldman Sachs, ultimately becoming partner and global treasurer before retiring in 2016. Her…

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Beyond the Museum Walls

Delirious Matter, a temporary public art project by Diana Al-Hadid, will be on view through March 24 at sites across the Williams campus. The four architecturally scaled sculptures were commissioned by Madison Square Park Conservancy in New York City and combine aluminum, steel, fiberglass, concrete, polymer modified gypsum and pigment. Al-Hadid’s work draws on a…

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A Closer Look: Modern Science

Though the South Science Center opened in June, September was the first time many students had the opportunity to use it for their work. The new, 77,000-square-foot building houses research and teaching laboratories, a microscopy suite and faculty offices for the biology, chemistry and physics departments. It’s phase one of the Science Center Renewal Project,…

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At A Glance: ’68 Center for Career Exploration

Career Services at Williams has a new name: The ’68 Center for Career Exploration. The result of a 50th reunion gift from the Class of 1968, the name reflects new programming that engages students early and often. Design Your Williams introduces first-year students to the center and to the idea that “major rarely equals career,”…

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Joyner Gives Convocation Address

In her Convocation address to the Class of 2019, Cheryl C. (Robinson) Joyner ’85 emphasized the importance of mentoring. She challenged each senior to make a connection with a younger student and maintain it after graduation. “While you may not be able to imagine it now,” she told those gathered in Chapin Hall for the…

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Recently Published

A Political Companion to Frederick Douglass (University Press of Kentucky, 2018), edited by Neil Roberts, associate professor of Africana studies and faculty affiliate in political science, examines how Douglass’ autobiographies, essays and speeches analyzed and articulated core American ideals. History professor Eiko Maruko Siniawer ’97 explores how the Japanese have thought about waste “in terms of…

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Support for Big Ideas

Assistant Professor of Biology Matt Carter, Professor of Computer Science Stephen Freund and Professor of Mathematics Chad Topaz have each won prestigious three-year grants to pursue research projects with students. Carter’s $369,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health will support his research with a student team to better understand the role of parasubthalamic nucleus…

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A Universe of Possibilities

Williams astronomy professors and students are helping to shape research at some of the nation’s most important observatories and facilities as new members of the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA). Membership was restricted to large research universities until last May, when Williams and seven other liberal arts colleges that make up the…

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Our Past, Present and Future

This fall has been a season of Williams firsts for me as president: my first classroom visit, my first Convocation and Bicentennial Medals ceremony, my first Mountain Day. Many of these firsts connect me to important Williams traditions—new to me but not to Williams. My introduction to those traditions has prompted thoughts about Williams’ connections…

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Comment

More on Free Speech Free Speech and Its Enemies is a peculiar title to a philosophy course purported to foster open discussion (“Free Speech and Its Enemies,” summer 2018). By implication those supporting the cancellation of the Derbyshire visit are the “enemy.” That’s not how I recall Philosophy 101. Free speech is not a virtue…

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The New Shape of Hawai‘i

Pele, the Hawaiian goddess of fire, is both creator and destroyer. She inhabits the Halema‘ūma‘ū Crater on the top of Kīlauea Volcano, and recently her work has felt almost exclusively destructive. Kīlauea Volcano reaches to 4,000 feet above sea level and has been active for many years, although for the most part Hawai‘i eruptions are…

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