Hobart and William Smith Colleges - Academics News

Free Discusses Civil War Popularity

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Why don't Americans drive around in cars emblazoned with battle streamers from the War of 1812? Or dress up as soldiers to reenact battles from the Spanish-American War? What is it about the Civil War that is still so compelling to Americans that it prompts many to care passionately about its symbols, its moments and its legacies? Laura Free, assistant pr...

Lightweis-Goff Earns Dissertation Award

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Jennie Lightweis-Goff, an assistant professor of women's studies at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, has won the SUNY Press Dissertation / First Book Prize in African-American Studies for "Blood at the Root: Lynching as American Cultural Nucleus." In her manuscript, Lightweis-Goff argues that "Spectacles of mob violence demarcated racialized boundaries ...

Wells '10 Studies Military

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Last spring, Stephanie Wells '10 set out to find an internship studying child abuse and the effects it has on a child's development. She found Dr. Glenda Kaufman-Kantor, a researcher at the Family Research Lab at the University of New Hampshire, who had years of experience studying abuse and substance abuse. However, at the time she was studying the milit...

Bringing Literacy to Liberia

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Last week, Professor Charlie Temple of the Education Department was in Monrovia, Liberia, conducting two parallel workshops on "Reading Liberia," a literacy project for teachers and writers. Schools in Liberia reopened this fall for more than a million students after the long-term disruptions caused by the 14-year civil war. Reading Liberia, with funding ...

Kenyon Receives NIH Grant

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 00:00:00 GMT

As a developmental biologist, Assistant Professor of Biology Kristy Kenyon has spent years studying life in its most nascent forms. Her research efforts have focused on understanding the cellular mechanisms that drive embryonic cells to grow, divide, migrate, organize and differentiate into a vast number of cell types and tissues. Now, Kenyon continues th...

Democracy: A Radical Idea

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 00:00:00 GMT

In the second Fisher Center lecture of the semester, "John Dewey's Vision of Radical Democracy," Richard Bernstein, philosopher, theorist and professor at the New School for Social Research, stressed that the word 'democracy' has had a negative connotation for much of its history. "Today 'democracy' has taken on such a positive aura that we rarely thin...

Writing a Water Textbook

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Brittany Flaherty '10 recently took a truly interdisciplinary approach to research, combining her studies of the sciences with her background in English by helping Assistant Professors of Environmental Studies Darrin Magee and Beth Kinne work on a manuscript for a water resources textbook. Their work will help future students learn more about what is "arg...

HWS Debate Team's Season Kickoff

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 00:00:00 GMT

The HWS Debate team is off to a great start this fall. The team recently went to a tournament at the University of Vermont. Other schools that participated in the event were Cornell, Williams, Bates, RIT, Colgate, Bard, Rochester and the Claremont Colleges from California as well as many others. "I thought the tournament at UVM was a huge success, bot...

Dunn Documentary Featured

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Kevin Dunn, professor of political science at HWS, was recently featured in The Florida Times-Union for a documentary he produced based on his research of the global punk movement and the politics of resistance. The documentary called "My Life is Great: The Stevie Stiletto Story," debuted in Jacksonville last weekend, where Dunn grew up and where Ray McKe...

Doane '11 Explores Personality Psych

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 00:00:00 GMT

The Colleges' Summer Science Program provided the perfect opportunity for Michael Doane '11, a psychology major with a minor in cognition, logic, and language, to hone his interest in personality psychology. The Science Program allowed Doane to interpret research literature, analyze data collected in the field, as well as provided him with the skills to d...