All News

Anthony Aveni, the Russell B. Colgate Professor of Astronomy and Anthropology at Colgate University, opened the Winslow lecture to a standing-room only crowd at the Kennedy Auditorium with a quote from the 2002 blockbuster, My Big Fat Greek Wedding. "Everything is Greek," he said, quoting the father character Gus Portokalos, whom Aveni jokingly referred to as a renowned Greek philosopher. What Aveni meant, he soon revealed, was that modern astronomy is built upon the works of the Greek astronomer, Hesiod. 

Associate Professor of Mathematics Debra Boutin presented a talk titled "The Cost of 2-Distinguishing" at a graph theory conference at Sandbjerg Manor, Denmark. In her talk, Boutin described a set of vertices that can be used to disrupt all symmetries in a network and presented her results on how small these sets of vertices can be in some well-known network families.

A group of Hamilton faculty from a variety of disciplines spoke in the newly renovated Kirner-Johnson Auditorium about "Environmental Justice and Sustainability" on Sept. 9.  The event, sponsored by the Diversity and Social Justice Project and the Levitt Center, provided few answers to pressing questions of sustainability but helped clarify the challenges that face humanity in preparing for the future. 

"Media Myths: Palin and Women," an analysis of voter preferences and how they may have changed with the introduction of Governor Sarah Palin as the Republican vice presidential candidate, appeared on Huffingtonpost.com on Sept. 10. In writing the piece, Philip Klinkner, James S. Sherman Associate Professor of Government, analyzed Gallup tracking poll numbers before and after the Palin announcement that revealed that McCain's surge came equally from men and women.

A group of Hamilton students and staff ventured north for the Adirondack Canoe Classic on Sept. 5-7, and came away with two firsts at the annual race, known as the 90-miler. Paddled over three days from Old Forge to Saranac Lake, this is the biggest race of the year in New York State and participants come from as far away as South Carolina to compete. For the past three years the members of The New York Marathon Canoe Racing Association has voted the 90 - Miler its race of the year.

Anthony Aveni, the Russell B. Colgate Professor of Astronomy and Anthropology at Colgate University, will give the Winslow Lecture at Hamilton College on Thursday, Sept. 11, at 4:10 p.m. in the Kennedy Auditorium of the Science Center. His lecture is titled "Scientific Astronomy in Hesiod? The Roots of Prehistoric Star Gazing," and is free and open to the public. 

Corinne Bancroft, a junior comparative literature major from Tucson, Ariz., contributed a guest opinion piece titled "Feds accountable for desert deaths" to the Sept. 8 edition of the Arizona Daily Star. Bancroft details her experiences volunteering with No More Deaths, a humanitarian group focusing on the U.S.-Mexico border, and the "human and environmental tragedy" that migration through the desert of Arizona causes. The piece reads, "If our government is serious about border security, they will redirect enforcement resources to improve the economies of Southern Mexico and Central America, thus eliminating the incentive for people to migrate."

Assistant Professor of Art Rebecca Murtaugh presented a visiting artist lecture titled "Play" at Virginia Commonwealth University on Sept. 4. She discussed her artworks conceived and exhibited over the past seven years, including the new series "The Sweetest Battle." In her work, she used diverse formats and media to create works that are both intellectually and visually seductive, such as using Post-it Notes to transcend the use of everyday objects.  While at VCU she also visited with graduate students in the Craft and Material Studies Department, who sponsored the lecture.

Students in Hamilton's program in New York City visited the Whitney Museum on Sept. 3, where they toured the exhibit, "Buckminster Fuller: Starting with the Universe."  According to the Whitney Museum Web site, "Visionary designer, philosopher, poet, inventor, engineer, and advocate of sustainability, Buckminster Fuller was one of the great transdisciplinary thinkers of the last century with a legacy that extends to nearly every field of the arts and sciences."

Russell Marcus, the Chauncey Truax Post-Doctoral Fellow in Philosophy, led a  workshop at the 17th annual International Workshop/Conference on Teaching Philosophy, run by the American Association of Philosophy Teachers (AAPT). The workshop was titled "Adjudicating the Objections and Replies: A Cooperative Lesson Using the Objections and Replies to Descartes's Meditations." Also, his article, "Structuralism, Indispensability and the Access Problem," was published in August in the Swiss journal Facta Philosophica.