Michael Rocque

Megan Rapinoe did not stomp on the flag. Here’s why people got outraged regardless — Newsweek

In Newsweek, Associate Professor of Sociology Michael Rocque argued that a recent Twitter flareup — in which World Cup-winning soccer player Megan Rapinoe was accused of stomping on the American flag, when she’d done no such thing — is part of a pattern of often-uninformed outrage on social media.

“The temptation to jump to outrage is especially strong on social media, where our virtual communities of the like-minded, created by choosing our ‘friends’ and whom to follow, reinforce our preconceptions and can block any facts that get in their way,” Rocque wrote.

Michael Rocque, associate professor of sociology. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Anger spreads more easily online than other emotions, and collective anger paradoxically leads to feelings of affirmation and unity, Rocque wrote. “We’re wired to crave that collective anger.”

So before taking part in an online mob, he suggested, wait a second to get the facts.

“When we see a meme, post or tweet that sparks that familiar tingle of outrage, take a minute to look into it, verify sources or, better yet, wait to see how the story unfolds once more information is gathered.”

Read the story:

• “,” Newsweek, July 12, 2019

Joyce White Vance ’82

Prosecutors pick their battles. I chose not to pursue an ICE raid in Alabama — The Washington Post

Best-known these days for her legal insights into special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation and report on the 2016 elections, Joyce White Vance ’82 recently turned her attention to the massive Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid of food processing plants in Mississippi.

Former U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama Joyce White Vance ’82 speaks at a House Judiciary Committee hearing on the Mueller Report on Capitol Hill in June. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

A former U.S. attorney for Alabama, Vance once declined to pursue an ICE raid in her state because she failed to “see how it would be a wise use of our resources to pull away from crimes that were affecting our community in visible ways to arrest people who, while they might have lacked legal immigration status, were going to work every day.”

Noting that it took months to plan the ICE raids, Vance wondered if there aren’t other prosecutions that might have “better served the community” than “removing parents from children — children that the parents were hard at work for, so they could help them grow into productive citizens.”

Read the story:

• “,” The Washington Post, Aug. 9, 2019

Scott Allen ’84

These doctors risked their careers to expose the dangers children face in immigrant family detention — CNN

For years, Drs. Scott Allen and Pamela McPherson did their work — inspecting facilities where U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detains immigrant families — quietly.

But in 2018, the two doctors, who are medical consultants for the Department of Homeland Security’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, became whistleblowers.

Since then, Allen and McPherson have appeared in myriad media outlets, including The New York Times, 60 Minutes, and The Washington Post, to call attention to the harm children suffer when confined, with or without parents, to detention facilities, such as the ICE centers at the Southwest U.S. border.

“Each passing day of continued detention of children — and no acknowledgment of the risk that we have reported — alarms me,” Dr. Scott Allen ’84 told CNN in May.

“The medical community is quite unified in opposition to the detention of children. Decades of research have shown that detention is harmful to their medical and physical health,” Allen told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour in June.

For their work, Allen and McPherson, along with Scott Shuchart, received the 2019 Ridenhour Prize for Truth-Telling.

Read and watch:

• “,” CNN, May 23, 2019
• “,” The Washington Post, Dec. 19, 2018
• “,’�ĝ The New York Times, July 18, 2018

Stephanie Kelley-Romano

If the Democrats master this single strategy, they can defeat Trump in 2020 — Newsweek

Stephanie Kelley-Romano, associate professor of rhetoric, film, and screen studies, watched the second set of Democratic presidential primary debates in late July and concluded, in a Newsweek op-ed, that the candidates need to work on framing — defining the issues they’re talking about and the limits on their solutions.

Stephanie Kelley-Romano leads a “Television Criticism” class on March 6, 2019. (Theophil Syslo/�ֲ���ý College)

For example, debate moderators often framed discussions of universal healthcare as “taking away” private insurance in favor of government-funded care. It was only toward the end of these discussions that several candidates argued that universal healthcare would be a gain, not a loss.

“In the lead-up to 2020, Democrats must remember to take control of the framing of issues early, so they can focus on what it is they are trying to explain and why,” Kelley-Romano wrote.

Read the story:

• “,” Newsweek, Aug. 1, 2019

Dan Mills

An Artist’s Maps of Imperialism and Greed — Hyperallergic

Carl Little reviewed in art news site Hyperallergic an exhibit at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art by Dan Mills, director of the �ֲ���ý College Museum of Art.

Recently named by Maine magazine as one of 50 Mainers who are “creating a brighter future for the state,” Mills creates “collaged maps,” displays of numbers related to war and colonialism overlaid on vintage maps.

“Mills delves into the devastating numbers and then converts them into chaotically beautiful cartographies,” wrote Little, a well-known Maine art critic and historian. “The central paradox of his map pieces is that, even as they record the woes of the world, they are stunning and seductive. The visuals engage; the numbers appall.”

Read the story:

• “,” Hyperallergic, Aug. 10, 2019

Rebecca Fraser-Thill

The five biggest myths about meaningful work — Forbes

Backed up by a recent study by �ֲ���ý College and Gallup on purposeful work, Rebecca Fraser-Thill explained in Forbes that meaning in work and a meaningful life go hand in hand.

Rebecca Fraser-Thill is the director of faculty engagement and outreach at �ֲ���ý’ Center for Purposeful Work and a lecturer in psychology. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Dispelling several myths, Fraser-Thill, a visiting instructor of psychology and the director of faculty engagement and outreach at �ֲ���ý’ Center for Purposeful Work, argued that meaningful work is subjective and individual — it does not have to be a helping profession, high status, low paying, or even different from what you’re doing now.

“Whether it’s simply asking a co-worker about her weekend or bringing a smile to customers in a coffee house, any act that makes us feel more connected to others also makes our work — and our lives — more meaningful,” she wrote.

Read the story:

• “,” Forbes, Aug. 7, 2019

John A. Elsesser ’80

Conversation with: John Elsesser — Journal Inquirer

Tim Leininger of the Manchester, Conn., Journal Inquirer sat down with John A. Elsesser ’80, who has been the town manager of Coventry, Conn., for more than three decades.

Elsesser, who over 30 years has improved Coventry’s trash and sewer systems as well as its school and recreation programs, mused that he took to local government, in part, because of his upbringing, as the son of a Baptist minister.

“We always had company over,” he told Leininger. “We were taught that you should do good for others, try to make an impact. There was a lot of pressure for me to become a minister, me and my brother and sisters actually. None of us did, but I think the issue of trying to make a positive difference was the core of that.”

Read the story:

• “,” Journal Inquirer, Aug. 3, 2019

Sarah Strong

Across space and time: translating Night on the Galactic Railroad — Metropolis

Kenji Miyazawa’s masterpiece Night on the Galactic Railroad is exceedingly difficult to translate, wrote Eric Margolis of English-language Japanese magazine Metropolis. The novel, about a lonely Italian boy who rides to heaven on a magical train, contains surreal imagery and sound effects, made-up words, and regional dialect.

In taking on the task of translation in 1991, Sarah Strong, who is now professor emerita of Japanese language and literature, sought to represent in English the emotions of reading the novel in Japanese.

“If something was weird, I wanted the reader to think, ‘That’s weird,’�ĝ Strong told Margolis. “What was funny? What was happy? What was sad? I needed to get as close as I could to really understanding the writing.”

Read the story:

• “,” Metropolis, Aug. 2, 2019

Stephanie Wade and Megan Guynes ’11

River story workshop held in Lewiston — Sun Journal

In early August, Stephanie Wade, assistant director of Writing at �ֲ���ý, ran a writing workshop at Tree Street Youth through the Androscoggin Land Trust.

Children at the youth center went fishing in the morning, then came back to write a story about their experiences, which Lewiston Sun Journal photographer Daryn Slover documented. Also on hand was Megan Guynes ’11, program director at Tree Street Youth.

See the photos:

• “,” Sun Journal, Aug. 1, 2019

Emily Kane

Winners overlook rigged games’ lack of fairness, study finds — Associated Press

For context on a Cornell study about winning and fairness, Associated Press reporter Seth Borenstein turned to Professor of Sociology Emily Kane.

In the study, nearly 1,000 people played a card came in which winners could throw out their worst cards and take other players’ best cards. The winners attributed their winning to talent and only acknowledged the unfairness of the game after they were allowed to exchange cards a second time.

The study “tells us something about privilege and about society,” Kane told Borenstein. “It reminds us how powerful perceptions are — it’s not just what is happening that matters, it’s often more a matter of what we think is happening,”

Read the story:

• “,” Associated Press, July 17, 2019

Mara Tieken

Despite West Virginia education reform, the extraction of rural youth to continue — The Register-Herald

Associate professor of education and rural education expert Mara Tieken spoke with reporter Erin Beck of West Virginia’s Register Herald about the state’s struggle to both promote college education and keep young people in the state.

Associate Professor of Education Mara Tieken teaches “Community Organizing for Social Justice” in May 2018. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Tieken said that few high school graduates in West Virginia are getting college degrees — there aren’t a lot of jobs in rural areas that require them, even as traditional jobs like coal mining are declining.

“If we’re really trying to support kids to go to college, we also need to make sure that there are jobs in rural places that can use that college education,” Tieken said.

Read the story:

• “,” The Register-Herald, Jul. 14, 2019

Karl Alexander ’12

Getting Bike Share Right Is a Balancing Act — U.S. 1

Karl Alexander ’12 spoke with Princeton, N.J., newspaper U.S. 1 about how bike-sharing companies can establish themselves responsibly in communities.

Alexander, marketing manager for Zagster, told reporter Diccon Hyatt that the bike-sharing company tries to move into places — like Princeton — that will already be receptive to more bicycles, and promote bike-friendliness from there.

“You have to take the time to look at what works best for the community, whether that’s bikes or scooters, or if it is something else entirely, like increasing walkability,” he said. “You have to think before you act. You’ll probably be better off in the long run.”

Read the story:

• “,” U.S. 1, July 10, 2019

Just past 8 last Thursday morning, a crew from �ֲ���ý Facility Services drove their red Chevy pickup truck to a nearby recycling center.

They weren’t making a delivery to Casella Waste Systems — the utility trailer they were hauling was empty.

Instead, the trip was for art’s sake, as the �ֲ���ý team of Mike Adams, Rick Ouellette, Mike Lecompte, and Eric Polley transported five bales of sorted plastics from Casella back to �ֲ���ý, where the bales are now a temporary artistic installation on the lawn outside Commons.

At the Casella facility that morning, as the five bales waited for a forklift to place them onto the �ֲ���ý trailer, they weren’t yet art. Or were they?

A forklift loads one of five bales of plastics recyclables, all destined for the �ֲ���ý campus, onto a flatbed utility trailer at the Casella facility in Lewiston on Oct. 25. (Jay Burns/�ֲ���ý College)

“One of the folks moving the bales asked me, ‘Is it art yet?’” said who’s behind the exhibit Out of Sorts, now on view on the lawn outside Commons. “It’s an interesting question.”

Herman’s installation is best appreciated in context, including why it’s here: as part of a bold new �ֲ���ý Museum of Art exhibition, Anthropocenic: Art About the Natural World in the Human Era, which opened last week, featuring artwork examining humanity’s mark on the planet with pathos, wit, and an eye-opening diversity of conceptual approaches and media.

Herman, who has shown her art at the Portland Museum of Art, the Center for Maine Contemporary Art, and the Brooklyn Museum, among other venues, is a �ֲ���ý visiting artist. Supported by the Learning Associates program, she is joining classes and meeting student groups.

+What's in the Five Bales?

This bale of plastics contains colored high-density polyethylene (HDPE), such as bottles of detergent and liquid drain openers. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

On loan from Casella Waste Systems, the bales that comprise the installation Out of Sorts contain five types of commonly recycled plastics, . Casella also bales up paper, metal, and glass.

Bale 1: Uncolored high-density polyethylene (HDPE) — e.g., milk, cider, water gallon jugs; large vinegar jugs. These have a plastic identification code 2.

Bale 2: Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) — e.g., water bottles, peanut butter jars, ketchup bottles, power drinks. These have a plastic identification code 1.

Bale 3: Colored HDPE 2— e.g., laundry detergent, bleach, motor oil, and antifreeze containers. These have a plastic identification code 2.

Bale 4: Mixed HDPE plastics — tubs and lids, butter containers, McDonald’s and Dunkin Donuts clear plastic iced-coffee cups. These have a plastic identification codes 2 through 5.

Bale 5: Rigid plastics — e.g., larger items such as laundry baskets and utility buckets. These have mixed plastic identification codes up to 7.

Last year, Herman installed a version of Out of Sorts at SPEEDwell Projects in Portland, where it ” critic Daniel Kany said in a Portland Press Herald review.

It’s offering that appearance at �ֲ���ý, too: The five bales sit in an otherwise pretty �ֲ���ý place, pieces of plastic from the bales flapping and flying away in the October breeze.

And as the bales did in Portland, they present at �ֲ���ý “a practically inexplicable oddness,” in Kany’s words.

Perhaps odd because the bales embody a paradox. They’re about “doing the right thing by our world” by recycling, Herman says, yet so many items inside the bales, like plastic water bottles, suggest that “we’ve hooked our wagon to the paradigm of convenience.”

Mike Adams of �ֲ���ý Facility Services uses a forklift to nudge one of the five bales that comprise the installation Out of Sorts into position outside Commons on Oct. 25. Artist Adriane Herman (left) and Dan Mills, director of the �ֲ���ý College Museum of Art, guide the placement. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

As an oddity, “it’s definitely art,” says Jake Michael ’21, a prospective English major from Ketchum, Idaho, who stopped by the bales on Tuesday. His reasoning: “It’s a representation of something designed for a specific purpose. In a way, it’s aesthetically appealing, the way they’re lined up.”

Herman says the quip “Is it art yet?” was made in fun but is still worth addressing. For one, the bales, measuring 5 feet by 4 feet by 3 feet, weren’t even created by an artist (though in terms of what defines art, that’s not a dealbreaker, considering ). And, she says, “I’m not necessarily invested in them being called art.”

“My intention is to pluck these things from ‘the unseen’ and to boomerang them back.”

Instead, she explains, her creative act is in “borrowing them and recontextualizing them.” That is, removing them from a recycling facility tucked away in an industrial park and plopping them down in a highly public space at a liberal arts campus.

“Context and intention are very important,” she says. “My intention is to pluck these things from ‘the unseen’ and to boomerang them back. It’s like finding gum on your shoe, which this stuff really is.”

Maine artist Adriane Herman inspects the bales of plastic recyclables before they were placed into position on the lawn outside Commons. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

And some of that gum could be our own. Since Casella handles �ֲ���ý recyclables, “some of what’s in the Bales may be making a return trip to campus,” says Dan Mills, director of the Museum of Art.

After seeing a few photos of the Nahida Moradi ’22 of New York City says that context matters in another way: distance.

“It stood out to me: the photo of guy with a skateboard, really up close, looked cool.” From another perspective, the top floor of Roger Williams Hall, “it just looked like blocks of plastics gathered together. It didn’t seem that cool, from far away.”

The blocks also make her think, in a hopeful way, of the building in Taiwan that was . “It’s a good way of putting to use what’s been wasted.”

A skateboarder flies past the bales of plastics before they were placed into position. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

The bales have thus become objects of contemplation by an audience, Herman says. “So I think they fulfill that role of art — to make people think about things, and to activate people around what they’re consuming and disposing.”

As Jake Michael got closer to the bales and saw the twisted and contorted items smashed inside, he also thought about context. “I’m thinking about how I view these things differently when they’re not bundled together in a heap of trash — and it makes me think they’re kind of disgusting now.

“Yet we created them and we don’t think ‘disgusting’ when they’re not bundled together, when we don’t see this product. In that respect, I would say that it is art, yes.”

Seen from the top floor of Roger Williams Hall, the bales are placed onto the lawn in front of Commons. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College).

As Austin Dumont ’21, an aspiring politics major from Auburn, Maine, considered the bales, he thought about privilege: Who gets to recycle? Who gets to have the knowledge about recycling?

“Because of the disparities in knowledge about these things, some communities may have recycling, and some may not,” he said. “It might depend on where you live, your ZIP code — and some of that might have to do with income.”

At �ֲ���ý, earnest efforts by the college’s sustainability team, including Dining Services, has increased the percentage of waste diverted from landfills to 45 percent.

Improving the diversion rate can pay dividends: �ֲ���ý pays between $60 and $80 per ton for trash that goes to a landfill, and typically about half that for out-going recyclables, though the has meant that �ֲ���ý has paid as low as $7 per ton and as high as $107 per ton in the last year.

The Casella facility in Lewiston takes in recyclables — cardboard, paper, plastic, metal, and glass — from �ֲ���ý as well as cities and towns around Maine and New Hampshire, processing up to 22 tons of material each hour and selling the baled results to manufacturers to create new products.

(More context: The route to the facility from campus takes you past Casella’s neighbor: a massive Walmart distribution center, one of only two in New England. You can’t help but think: Stuff heads out one door at Walmart and, eventually, in the other door at Casella.)

A Casella worker sweeps the floor next to a stack of baled recycled paper. (Jay Burns/�ֲ���ý College)

At Casella, the sorting requires brute force and a light touch, a mix of people and machines. “It’s sorted by and it’s baled by us,” says Mary Haynes, a Casella supervisor.

After Casella trucks dump unsorted materials into big rooms, known as tipping floors, large front-end loaders and smaller skid-steer loaders move the waste toward conveyor belts.

At the beginning of the sorting process, workers hand-remove nonrecyclables, like Styrofoam, as the materials speed by on the conveyor belt. From there, much finer sorting processes, both mechanical and human, eventually yield a balable stream of recyclable materials.

Look at the bales, says Herman: All that industry is inside. “They’re monumental and massive. Look at the heft of them, the weight — it takes machinery and people and trucks and more fossil fuel to move them.”

Artist Adriane Herman and Mike Adams of �ֲ���ý Facility Services confer at the Casella Waste Systems recycling facility on Oct. 25. (Jay Burns/�ֲ���ý College)

Yet while the bales suggest big ideas like consumerism and recycling, Herman asks that we notice, too, how they’re loaded with poignant, if mundane, evidence of “our daily activities and efforts — to feed ourselves, our families, and our pets; to clean and organize things; and to stay alive and mentally stable,” the latter a reference to prescription-medicine bottles here and there in the bales.

All of it, she says, is worth our attention and focus. “We can always look more closely at what we are doing,” she says.

And when we “attend to things at the granular level,” she says, we stake a claim for being “more sensitive to subtlety and nuance” — a lesson of the liberal arts, to be sure — at time when such qualities are in short supply.

Well-educated elites are no strangers to white supremacy — The Washington Post

After the violence in Charlottesville, �ֲ���ý faculty lecturer Christopher Petrella ’06 saying that our conventional wisdom that “it’s impossible to be both a white supremacist and a well-educated white American” is “both dangerous and historically inaccurate.”

In fact, he says, white supremacy has “not gestated on the fringes of American politics” but “flourished as a social movement grounded in respectability politics and led by elites.”

Christopher Petrella ’06 makes a point during a meeting of the college’s Justice and Equity Reading Group on Sept. 13, 2017. Petrella, faculty lecturer and associate director of programs for the Office of Equity and Diversity, is the group organizer. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Believing otherwise “allows middle-class and college-educated white Americans to escape responsibility for extirpating this stain on our society.”

Petrella, who is also an associate director of programs in the Office of Equity and Diversity at �ֲ���ý, is completing his first book, on the history of white supremacy in 20th-century New England.

Social activism thrives in Maine’s fine art world — Portland Monthly

For , art critic Dan Kany interviews several Maine “art agitators,” including �ֲ���ý Museum of Art Director Dan Mills, who “represent the range and reality of Maine artists who dare to disturb, incite, and stir social engagement.”

Mills, who co-curated the first exhibition of Saudi contemporary art in New England, Phantom Punch: Contemporary Art from Saudi Arabia in Lewiston, is also an artist whose work has been exhibited in leading galleries in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles.

Mills’ “large-scale paintings on maps….use nuanced visual systems to redirect and provoke deeper understanding of demographic and map-related data,” Kany says.

Mills says that art “is only one facet or tool” for social change. “Unless the art rises to being culturally embraced beyond the art world and covered in the media, its scope is limited.”

Dan Mills’ painting “Current Wars and Conflicts Killed by Continent, Book 02,” ink, watercolor, and gouache on atlas, 15 1/4 x 22 1/2 x 2 inches.

Retiring �ֲ���ý Dance Festival director Faure “put Maine on the map” — Portland Press Herald

Laura Faure, who retires Nov. 30 after directing the �ֲ���ý Dance Festival for 30 of its 35 years, is known as “a fierce advocate for choreographers and dance in its many forms,” said Aimee Petrin, executive and artistic director at Portland Ovations.

Faure, who was profiled by , said that the “life of a dancer is a tough life, and what we offer is support and a safe space.” She added, “We support artists through the arc of their career, and I am so proud of that.”

Retiring �ֲ���ý Dance Festival Director Laura Faure poses with noted South African dancer and choreographer Vincent Mantsoe during one of her visits to Africa. Mantsoe has taken part several times in the festival’s International Visiting Artists Program. (�ֲ���ý Dance Festival)

Keyes said that Faure “helped establish the festival as a destination for dancers and choreographers to refine, perfect and expand their skills, establish new work, and experiment with ideas and collaborations.”

“We have created an environment that didn’t exist in the dance world and that is based in the democratic and egalitarian model that is �ֲ���ý College,” Faure said.

Faure will be succeeded by Shoshona Currier, who began her work in August.

Shaw’s veterinary health tech firm secures $223 million investment — Portland Press Herald

Vets First Choice of Portland, founded by CEO Ben Shaw ’00, received a $223 million investment in July that will “accelerate the company’s growth and hiring, launch new services and begin a global expansion effort into Europe and Asia,” according to .

Father and son entrepreneurs David Shaw and Ben Shaw ’00 consult before their May 5 talk, “Adventures in Business and Social Entrepreneurship,” part of the spring’s “Purposeful Work: Voices in Entrepreneurship” series. David Shaw returned to �ֲ���ý at Commencement to receive an honorary degree. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

“The venture capital funding represents the largest sum invested at one time in a privately held Maine company in at least two decades, and possibly ever,” Anderson reported.

Vets First Choice offers e-commerce pharmaceutical services to veterinary clinics.

Also in July, Shaw was recognized by Ernst & Young as a .

Atomic physicists will soon make ultracold states of matter on the space station — Science

When NASA’s $70 million Cold Atom Laboratory arrives at the International Space Station in early 2018, it will carry out a select few research experiments, including one designed by Associate Professor of Physics Nathan Lundblad.

In its Sept. 8 story, Science reporter Adrian Cho described a few of the projects, , noting that the Cold Atom Laboratory will “take advantage of weightlessness to attain record-low temperatures and break ground for ambitious studies of quantum mechanics and gravity.”

Physics major Dan Paseltiner ’16 narrates this short film about the �ֲ���ý experiment that will be aboard the Cold Atom Laboratory.

Weightlessness, plus the lab’s near-absolute-zero temperature, will “produce a long-predicted state of matter called a Bose-Einstein condensate, in which the atoms shed their individual identities and crowd en masse into a single quantum wave.”

Cho said that Lundblad’s experiment hopes to create “hollow shells of BECs,” like bubbles, something “that gravity squashes on Earth.” If successful, the shells might allow researchers “to probe the wave nature of the BEC in a new way.”

The other experiments were designed by scientists from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the universities of Colorado, Michigan, Rochester, Virginia, and California at Berkeley.

Commentary on why parents shouldn’t be told the sex of their fetus — Journal of Medical Ethics

Professor of Sociology Emily Kane, the author of The Gender Trap: Parents and the Pitfalls of Raising Boys and Girls, joined a sociological discussion about the common practice of parents learning the sex of their unborn child.

In an article published last year in the Journal of Medical Ethics, Tamara Kayali Browne of the Australian National University argued that .

Disclosure of the sex, she said, invariably leads parents to anticipate a child’s gender. Since “the conflation of sex with gender is implicit” when the sex of a fetus is disclosed, “it may be more accurate to refer to [disclosure] as misinformation.”

Professor of Sociology Emily Kane delivers her Convocation address, “Summer Posts, Fall Possibilities,” on Sept. 5, 2017 (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

In , she said that while other experts can weigh in on the feasibility of withholding such information, she agrees with Browne that both child and society would benefit by postponing “the gendered anticipation” that prenatal sex information encourages.

Given what we now know about the vast difference between gender and sex, postponing might “chip away productively at the vast network of social processes that constrain children and conflate sex with gender.”

Harvard names new diversity dean — The Harvard Crimson

Harvard Dean of Students Katherine G. O’Dair announced the appointment of Roland Davis ’92 as associate dean for diversity and inclusion, on Aug. 31.

Roland Davis ’92 is the new associate dean for diversity and inclusion at Harvard.

Davis “brings to Harvard a deep and nuanced understanding of the social, cultural, and psychological factors that impact communities around the issues of diversity and inclusion,” she wrote.

Davis’ appointment, the Crimson said, “coincides with the implementation of…penalties on members of single-gender social organizations,” such as barring members of these groups from “campus leadership positions, athletic team captaincies, and certain prestigious fellowships.”

A former dean in Student Affairs at �ֲ���ý, Davis served as the college’s founding director of the Office of Intercultural Education from 2010 to 2012.

Building products that people want to use — The Silicon Review

In its review of the 10 fastest-growing software companies, , a software engineering firm co-founded by Ben Schippers ’04.

The Review said that in the “ocean” of apps that exists today, Schipper’s company “is generating its mark by building thoughtful products” that “people want to use.”

Ben Schippers ’04 is co-founder of the Brooklyn-based software engineering firm HappyFunCorp. (Phyllis Graber Jensen)

One of HappyFunCorp’s recent products was an app allowing onto TV-based platforms, including Apple TV.

Portland’s restaurant  boom reflects the “simplicity of living here, and honoring individual ingredients” — American Way Magazine

Portland, Maine, is home to 672 dining establishments, according to , “giving it a human-to-restaurant ratio of roughly 96-to-1,” which is lower than “almost every other city in America (San Francisco can make a similar claim).”

For insights on the boom, writer Alexandra Hall turned to award-winning restaurateur Andrew Taylor ’03, who said that it’s about the “simplicity of living here, and honoring individual ingredients.” He said, “People here are averse to big: big corporations, big restaurants.”

Taylor and Mike Wiley are chef/co-owners, with their manager, Arlin Smith, of Eventide Oyster Co., The Honey Paw, and Hugo’s. The pair won a , considered an Oscar of the food world.

James Beard winner Andrew Taylor ’03 poses at his restaurant Eventide with Matthew Moretti ’06, president of Bangs Island Mussels and Wild Ocean Aquaculture, on Sept. 26 2016. Bangs mussels are featured at Eventide and exemplify Taylor’s commitment to the local food economy. (Josh Kuckens/�ֲ���ý college).

Preparing for the football season and for what’s ahead after graduation — WMTV-TV

WMTV-TV sports anchor Travis Lee , a chemistry major from Cumberland Center, Maine, who plans to enter the medical field after graduation.

Over the summer, Rasch traveled to Haiti with International Medical Relief to “get involved in some sort of medical experience outside the U.S. in a culture that I’m not used to.”

Rasch says that football, specifically a lineman’s job to communicate with teammates during “drastically changing circumstances,” will help him down the road. “I am able to communicate with people in a large group and help get people on the same page.”

“Whatever I do for a living, I want to make sure that it has a good deal of purpose. That way I can dedicate myself fully to it.”

A ‘Scientist to Watch,’ Castro uses science to make connections with people — The Scientist

The featured “Scientist to Watch” in the magazine, Assistant Professor of Neuroscience Jason Castro says he came to �ֲ���ý to “do the science equivalent of running a mom-and-pop — a small operation, working closely with students, and staying close to the data and the experiments myself.”

Assistant Professor of Neuroscience Jason Castro is a “Scientist to Watch,” says The Scientist magazine.

Writer Ben Andrew Henry points out that “in setting up shop at a small college, Castro did not sacrifice scientific ambition,” highlighting Castro’s recent National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development Grant, “a recognition usually awarded to researchers at larger universities.”

“I’m certainly able to do the science I want to do,” Castro says.

Time alone is hard, but perhaps necessary, for a writer — Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Speaking with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on the eve of a Dec. 5 speaking appearance, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Elizabeth Strout ’77 talks about her childhood and having “an awful lot of time alone as a child,” which, she believes, is “very important for a writer. I lived in my head and wrote things down.”

Reporter Anya Sostek also describes Strout’s creative process, which involves scraps of a paper and a table. “She writes scenes on scraps of paper,” Sostek reports, most of which end up on the floor. But “when she writes enough scenes ‘that have some life, where there’s a heartbeat to them,’ she starts to arrange them on the table like puzzle pieces.”

Eventually, says Strout, at “a period of time when I feel overwhelmed,” those scraps become a book.

He’s a “commanding, virile” hip-hop Othello, a “noble heart corrupted” — The New York Times

Othello: The Remix, with Postell Pringle ’98 in the title roll and Greg Qaiyum ’98 its co-creator, “conforms broadly to the original” but is “continually infused with impish humor,” notes a glowing review by The New York Times’ Charles Isherwood.

The production got rave reviews during its Chicago run in 2013, when it also played at the Cook County jail, .

In Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s production of Othello: The Remix, Postell Pringle ’98 (left, as Othello) and GQ (Iago) face off as Iago’s plot unfolds. (Photograph by Michael Brosilow)

The adaptation “conforms broadly to the original,” notes the Times review, but is “continually infused with impish humor; it’s as much a spoof of Othello as it is a serious attempt to translate the play into a contemporary musical idiom.”

Othello here “is a musical eminence at the top of his fame and his game (think Jay Z),” writes reviewer Charles Isherwood. “Mr. Pringle is a commanding, virile presence. His transformation, under Iago’s manipulation, into a monster of sexual insecurity doesn’t carry the dramatic force it does in the original, but we do see clearly noble heart corrupted.”

The production is by the Q Brothers, whose creative directors are GQ (Greg Qaiyum ’98) and JQ (his brother, Jeffrey). Pringle is the director of choreography.

In a recent interview with , Pringle says that the most challenging part of the role is “probably getting raw and honest with the depths of this character’s feelings,” not to mention “the roller coaster ride which he has portraying love and betrayal and hate and confusion.”

That’s a “huge range of emotions in an 80-minute span of time.”

�ֲ���ý joins national bid to defend undocumented students — Lewiston Sun Journal

A Lewiston Sun Journal story on Nov. 23 reported President Spencer’s joining with other college presidents to sign a letter to President-elect Donald Trump urging the continuation and expansion of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

“We stand ready to defend the rights of any and all of our students.”

that �ֲ���ý “has maintained an unwavering commitment to recruiting students regardless of gender, race, religion, economic background or family circumstance” since the college’s 1855 founding.

“By adding our voice to this important issue,” she says, “we continue to honor this mission and we stand ready to defend the rights of any and all of our students to pursue their educational goals.”

In a Nov. 30 statement to the �ֲ���ý community, Spencer discusses the college’s DACA policy in the context of “a set of actions we have taken to speak out against any present or potential encroachment on the rights of individuals in our community or values central to the �ֲ���ý mission.”

A World’s Fair that hoped to show the superiority of a Caucasian way of life — The Wall Street Journal (paywall)

Buffalo’s hosting of the 1901 Pan-American Exposition “seemed like a good idea at the time,” writes Wall Street Journal reviewer Howard Schneider. “Alas, it didn’t turn out the way it was supposed to: The fair was afflicted by complications, including the worst complication of all — the murder of a president,” William McKinley.

That and more is the substance of Professor of History Margaret Creighton’s new book, The Electrifying Fall of Rainbow City: Spectacle and Assassination at the 1901 World’s Fair.

Schneider calls the book a “deft, thorough account of how the exposition and its home city became the victims of wretched luck” and how the fair “was a microcosm of some momentous facets of the United States, good and bad” of the time, including how the country hoped to “demonstrate the superiority of Caucasian, specifically American Caucasian, attributes and culture.”

An exhibit that transcends differences and offers new perspectives — Vogue Arabia

Vogue Arabia talks to Dan Mills, director of the �ֲ���ý Museum of Art, and Loring Danforth, Dana Professor of Anthropology, co-curators of Phantom Punch, the museum exhibition featuring contemporary Saudi Arabian artists.

“The exhibition aims to promote cross-cultural communication, understanding, and appreciation,” said Danforth. “It is through projects like this that we are able to transcend the real differences that separate us; draw on the equally real shared values that unite us and allow us to move toward a world with less hatred, conflict, and violence.”

In America, “very little is known about contemporary Saudi art and artists,” Mills said. “With this exhibition, we have a rare opportunity to gain critical new perspectives on Saudi society and culture from a group of perceptive young artists.”

“Tagged and Documented” (2013) by Huda Bedoun appears in Phantom Punch.

“The Pilot House,” a 2014 digital montage by Jeffery Becton. Courtesy of the artist.

An exhibition of Maine photographer Jeffery Becton’s digital images, which merge seascape and interior views in dreamlike ways, and a show of posters from the worldwide Occupy movement open at the �ֲ���ý College Museum of Art with a reception at 6 p.m. Friday, Nov. 6, in the Olin Arts Center, 75 Russell St.

Becton will sign copies of the new book, The Farthest House (Marshall Wilkes), during the opening. The book features 68 reproductions of Becton’s images; an exploration of his work and career by noted Maine art historian Carl Little; and appreciations of the artist by novelist Deborah Weisgall, Wall Street Journal critic Peter Plagens and �ֲ���ý museum director Dan Mills, who curated the exhibition.

“Keep Calm,” a 2011 poster by Mark Miller, Los Angeles.

The museum’s winter exhibitions, titled The View Out His Window (and in his mind’s eye): Photographs by Jeffery Becton and The Art of Occupy: The Occuprint Portfolio, run through March 26. Showing at the museum through the same period is Maine Collected: Contemporary Selections From the Permanent Collection, an exhibition of images from the museum’s holdings by living artists with a Maine connection.

�ֲ���ý art museum events are always open to the public at no cost. The museum’s regular hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday (until 7 p.m. Wednesdays while �ֲ���ý is in session). For more information, please contact 207-786-6158 or museum@bates.edu.

Read more about:

• The View Out His Window (and in his mind’s eye): Photographs by Jeffery Becton
• The Art of Occupy: The Occuprint Portfolio
• Maine Collected: Contemporary Selections From the Permanent Collection

"Pacific Lands" (2012), an acrylic painting on a printed map mounted on board by Dan Mills.

When Dan Mills talks with artists about showing their work at the �ֲ���ý College Museum of Art, of which he is the director, he has more insight into their concerns than do some of his peers.

That’s because Mills is a working artist himself. He makes work that employs a variety of media to explore themes and imagery that encompass cartography, humor, imperialism, cartoon characters, landscape and portraiture.

On July 13, Chicago’s opened exhibitions by Mills and two other artists, Wilder Buck and Glenn Wexler. The gallery, established in 1976, shows a diverse selection of contemporary artwork.

A week later, at the , Mills is showing his U.S. Future States, a “world atlas” composed of supposed U.S. annexations of various nations — in short, a parody of U.S. imperialism. The opening is at 5:30 p.m. on the 20th, and Mills gives a gallery talk the following day at 1 p.m. The show runs through Sept. 23.

The Perceval Press, actor Viggo Mortensen’s publishing company, produced a hardcover book based on US Future State Atlas series of drawings in 2009.

, continues the artist’s interest in maps as deliberately constructed art forms that depict a geography as much subjective and psychological as physical and national. Like such other Mills projects as The US Future States Atlas and the Embassy series, the Quest paintings are “characterized by a keen sense of irony and a witty insouciance toward the desires that fuel colonialism and imperialism,” writes Eleanor Heartney in her exhibition catalog essay, “Will to Power.”

“But at the same time, Mills never neglects the visual aspects of his work. His projects straddle the worlds of politics and art, and in the end occupy a region that partakes as much of Matisse as of 18th-century political satirists like James Gillray and William Hogarth. His works appeal to the mind and to the eye, making us smile in order to make us think.”

The Zolla/Lieberman exhibitions continue through Aug. 25. Zolla/Lieberman represents Mills.  Director of the �ֲ���ý museum since 2010, Mills and his wife, artist Gail Skudera, lived in Chicago and were active in the Windy City’s art community from 1981 to 1994.

Curated by Dan Mills, director of the �ֲ���ý College Museum of Art, the BCMA exhibition Dialogue, a video series features four prominent contemporary artists: Christian Marclay of New York, Roy Villevoye and Jan Dietvorst of Amsterdam and Rachel Perry Welty of Boston.

Reflecting �ֲ���ý’ dedication to good conversation and an open exchange of ideas and artistic expression, the artists explore dialogue and communication in videos that are profound, humorous and provocative. The exhibition opens with a 6 p.m. reception on Jan. 14 and runs through March 25.

Playing continuously in the museum’s Synergy Seminar Gallery, each of the three videos will show for several weeks. Here’s the schedule:

Jan. 14-Feb. 5: Marclay’s “Telephones” (1995). “This short, intense video comprises footage from Hollywood films that foregrounds the telephone in image and sound, and constructs a captivating narrative from the actors’ responses and clipped dialogue,” says Mills.

Artist-composer Marclay is known for inventively exploring connections among disciplines. He transforms sound and music into visual forms through performance, collage, sculpture, large installations and photography, as well as video. His recent exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Christian Marclay: Festival, included daily concerts with musicians playing his scores and works serving as scores.

Feb. 7-March 3: Welty’s “Karaoke Wrong Number” (2004). The piece depicts the artist lip-synching to wrong-number messages left on her answering machine, messages that, she told Sculpture Magazine, “got me thinking about issues of privacy and how technology both helps and impedes communication.”

“Welty embodies a remarkable array of disembodied voices in this humorous and also poignant video,” says Mills.

March 4-25: Villevoye and Dietvorst, “Owner of the Voyage” (2007). Since the early 1990s, Villevoye has made frequent and extended visits to Papua New Guinea, often joined by Dietvorst. They have made a body of work about the outside influences to which the Asmat people have been exposed since their first contact with Westerners in the 1950s.

” ‘Owner of the Voyage’ is a double-projection video presenting the story of the voyage to Amsterdam of two Asmat friends of Villevoye, as told by a mutual friend,” Mills explains. “The Asmat friend, who has only traveled locally, reconstructs their travels from his understanding, and infuses his own agenda into the video.”

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Mills comes to Maine from Bucknell University, where for nine years he served as director of the Samek Art Gallery.

He joins a museum known both for innovative, high-profile exhibitions and as a model of the academic art museum — a laboratory where students, faculty and the community interact with art that resonates across the disciplines of a liberal arts education.

“I’ve known of �ֲ���ý for many years from afar,” says Mills, and was drawn by the museum’s exhibition track record as well as its facilities and collection.

Mills adds that he has come to the college at a singular moment in its history, as President Elaine Tuttle Hansen has asked the institution to renew its emphasis on the arts as one part of Choices for �ֲ���ý, a collaborative, college-wide strategic initiative. Spawning initiatives that include the creation of a �ֲ���ý Arts Collaborative of faculty and campus arts presenters, “this is a wonderful situation, one with many opportunities for the arts and the college,” says Mills.

More about Dan Mills

“Dan Mills achieved great things at the Samek Gallery,” says Dean of the Faculty Jill Reich. “His exhibitions were adventurous and provocative, truly ahead of the curve. His vision will strengthen the �ֲ���ý museum’s role in enriching the arts scene in southern Maine.

“His commitment to making the collections accessible to all disciplines and interests means that the museum will be a resource for teaching and scholarship for the campus and the community,” Reich says. “We appreciate his belief that students, scholars and artists should be able to encounter the collection firsthand and up close.”

Mills, who started at �ֲ���ý Sept. 13, led the Samek through a remarkable transformation. During his tenure there, the museum attracted national recognition for the energy and variety of its exhibitions, often focusing on contemporary art. Samek shows traveled to major cities, other academic museums and China.

Recent Samek exhibitions of note include Xiaoze Xie: Amplified Moments (2010-12), An Academic Resource: Highlights from the Permanent Collection (2010) and Regeneration: Contemporary Chinese Art from China and the U.S (2003-06).

“My philosophy has always been to organize exhibitions that would be terrific anywhere, but to do them for the institution I work at,” says Mills.

He also dramatically expanded campus access to the Samek’s permanent collection. “The collection changed from being a ‘best-kept secret on campus’ to a high-use research field and resource for disciplines across campus,” he notes.

The latter achievement speaks directly to Mills’ views on the ideal role for an academic art museum. Whether by opening a collection to the campus or curating a dynamic exhibition, it’s all about connection: connecting programming in visual arts to students and faculty in all manner of academic disciplines.

“I find the liberal arts college an especially exciting arena for this,” says Mills, because of the prevailing emphasis on education through both breadth and depth in subject matter. “I’ve had civil engineering or geography classes looking at art, and Spanish literature classes engaged in an exhibition in ways that were amazing — and which I learned from.”

Strongly committed to museum involvement in the community beyond campus, Mills is intrigued by �ֲ���ý’ overall engagement with Lewiston-Auburn. “There’s a real service and outreach component that’s in �ֲ���ý’ DNA, and that I find very appealing,” he says.

Mills is also an accomplished artist whose work, in a variety of media, explores themes and imagery including cartography, humor, imperialism, cartoon characters, landscape and portraiture. Since 2009, he has had solo exhibitions at Sherry Frumkin Gallery in Santa Monica, Calif., the Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts Museum in China and at several academic institutions. The Perceval Press, actor Viggo Mortensen’s publishing company, produced a hardcover book based on his “US Future State Atlas” series of drawings in 2009.

Mills earned his bachelor’s degree in fine arts at the Rochester Institute of Technology and his master’s at Northern Illinois University. He previously directed the Gibson Gallery at the State University of New York, and served as curator for the art program at the First National Bank of Chicago.

He is married to Gail Skudera, an award-winning artist whose work, combining aspects of pictorial weaving with painting and photographic transfers, has been exhibited widely throughout the Midwest and eastern U.S. They have three adult children.

Mills succeeds Mark Bessire, who now heads the Portland (Maine) Museum of Art.

About the �ֲ���ý College Museum of Art

Founded in the 1950s with a donation of materials relating to pioneering American modernist Marsden Hartley, the �ֲ���ý College Museum of Art embraces the influential role that academic museums play in integrating art, scholarship, collaboration and unfettered innovation to champion diverse perspectives and explore pressing issues of global and local scope.

The museum has gained national recognition for such innovative exhibitions as Green Horizons, a 2007 exploration of sustainability that anticipated a surge of national interest in the topic; and 2006’s , encompassing artists’ commentary on the world of unknown, rumored or hidden animals. The museum is noted for its attention to emerging art from China, with shows such as the �ֲ���ý-curated crossing the U.S. through the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service.

Comprising some 5,000 objects, the museum collection is particularly strong in works on paper, among which such masters as Paul Cezanne, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Mary Cassatt and Walker Evans are represented.

Moreover, the museum has built on its founding donation of Hartley materials to reflect the myriad dimensions of the Maine experience. Artists including Carl Sprinchorn, Neil Welliver, John Marin and Robert Indiana are represented in the collection. The museum devoted its summer 2010 exhibition to a , a member of the �ֲ���ý studio art faculty who is also a renowned realist painter.

An exhibition venue and academic resource for students and faculty in visual arts and culture, the �ֲ���ý museum also intersects with disciplines as diverse as dance, English and physics. In addition, the museum welcomes approximately 15,000 visitors annually, including public-school students in organized programs, and is a valued destination for Maine residents and visitors alike.