All News

Assistant Professor of Anthropology Haeng-ja Chung has received a fellowship from the Social Science Research Council and Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (SSRC-JSPS). While being affiliated at the Department of Cultural Anthropology, University of Tokyo, in 2008-2009, Chung will conduct research on performative, emotional and affective labor of Korean nightclub hostesses in Japan. Based on this research, Chung plans to work on two book projects in English and Japanese.

Associate Professor of English Steven Yao spoke recently at Cambridge and Sussex Universities in England. At Cambridge, Yao presented a paper titled, "Ezra Pound's Cathay and the Languages of Anglo-American Modernism," as part of the international conference on Translations and Transformations: China, Modernity, and Cultural Transmission that was hosted there on May 1-3. While in the UK, Yao also gave an invited lecture at Sussex University in Brighton, where he spoke to the American Studies research seminar on "Asian American Verse and the Limits of Hybridity," a talk arising from his current book project of Chinese American poetry.

Class & Charter Day, Hamilton's annual convocation recognizing student and faculty excellence during the preceding academic year, will take place on Friday, May 9, at 12:15 p.m. in the Chapel. This year's speaker is Austin Briggs, the Hamilton B. Tompkins Professor of English Literature emeritus.  His talk is titled "The Good Old Days/The Bad Old Days." He has taught at Hamilton for more than 50 years. An all-campus picnic will follow the awards and HamTrek, the fifth annual campus triathalon, will begin at 2:30 p.m.

Professor of Comparative Literature Peter J. Rabinowitz delivered a paper, "Can a Sonata Have an Unreliable Narrator?: Focalization, Style, and Musical Rhetoric," at the International Conference on Narrative in Austin, Texas, on May 4. Intended as a contribution to the on-going theoretical discussions of the value of narrative theory in the analysis of music, the paper argued that the concept of the unreliable narrator—normally viewed as an essentially literary device without any musical equivalent—can illuminate the processes by which we listen to music and can increase our appreciation of music's expressive potential.

The students of Professor Gary Wyckoff's Topics in Public Policy classes tackled the public health care system on Sunday, May 4. Students were divided into two groups and charged with the task of devising a plan to cover the nation's uninsured and growing medical costs. Both group's plan had to be specific, comprehensive, fiscally sound, ethically defensible and politically feasible.

HAVOC hosted 35 children from the Neighborhood Center in Utica for a Spring Fling event on Saturday, May 3. Participants planted flowers in decorated pots, made Mother's Day gifts, played relay races and enjoyed lunch in Commons. The Neighborhood Center children come to campus about three times each semester for fun-filled events and meaningful interaction with Hamilton students.

An article by Professor of Mathematics Robert Kantrowitz '82 appears in the May 2008 issue of the American Mathematical Monthly. The paper, "Yet another proof of Minkowski's inequality," co-authored with Michael M. Neumann of Mississippi State University, offers an alternative proof, based on convexity, to a celebrated, century-old inequality attributed to the German mathematician Hermann Minkowski (1864-1909).

Hamilton alumni who are experts in health care will be on campus Sunday, May 4, to critique Hamilton students' proposed solutions to the U.S. health insurance system. The critique will take place in the Red Pit at 7:30 p.m. The students are from two of Professor Gary Wyckoff's "Topics in Public Policy" classes.  Alumni panelists are Karen Volmer '94, assistant professor of health policy and administration, Penn State University; David Duggan '75, professor of medicine at SUNY Health Science Center at Syracuse; and Tim Finan '75, president and CEO, Olean General Hospital, Olean, New York.

Students participating in the Program in Washington toured the U.S. Department of State on April 30. While the group was able to catch a glimpse of State Department officials at work while passing through the first floor, the tour focused mainly on the eighth floor Diplomatic Reception Rooms. The Secretary of State meets with hundreds of dignitaries, both foreign and domestic, in these rooms each year.

Hilary King '05 has been awarded a Fulbright Grant to the United Kingdom. She will undertake a year of graduate study in the anthropology of development and social transformation at the University of Sussex in order to learn how anthropological theory can best inform economic initiatives. Ginny Dosch, Hamilton's Student Fellowships Coordinator, says the United Kingdom is the most competitive country for Fulbrights, with 465 applications for 12 awards.