In Wasilla, Alaska, this summer, incoming ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ student Karsten Stiner ’26 looked through the offerings for First-Year Seminars, and landed on one offered by Professor Emerita of History Margaret Creighton. 

Called “Inventing New England: The World of the Wyeth Family,� it promised a rich look at both the place he was moving to and three generations of American artists named Wyeth: N.C., his son Andrew, and Andrew’s son Jamie. Stiner had never heard of them, and he mostly associated the words “New England� with a football team, the Patriots. “I’d heard the term like four times in my life,� he says, smiling. “I didn’t even know what states were included in New England.�

As he signed up, he did note that it was interesting that a Wyeth family member, Victoria Browning Wyeth ’01, who is the only grandchild of Andrew and Betsy Wyeth, would lecture in the course, helping to answer sweeping questions like: What is New England? Who and what gets included in popular images of the region? How does New England differ from other imagined areas, particularly the American West?

But he didn’t realize what having a Wyeth as a teacher would actually mean, or how deep of an insider’s look that she would provide into Wyeth World, especially during the group’s ultimate Midcoast road trip on an October day. 

“I didn’t know that this would all be involved,� Stiner said as he walked through fields browning in the Maine autumn under gray skies, the tidal reaches of the Saint George River a few hundred yards away. He’d just come from a tour of a Wyeth family home in Cushing, with a window seat looking out over the very New England countryside.

The group wrapped up the day at the famed Olson House in Cushing, the setting from many of Andrew Wyeth’s works, a tour of his very last studio, and a visit to the grave of Andrew and Betsy Wyeth, where Victoria would leave a couple of pumpkins, in honor of the Wyeth family love of Halloween (and kiss her grandparents’ tombstone, as she does on every visit). 

There’d even been a guest star: one of Andrew Wyeth’s models from the 1970s, who talked to the students about what it was like to pose for the painter of such works as the iconic 1948 work Christina’s World, which hangs in the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Walking ahead of Stiner on the dirt road were his classmates and both his teachers, who two decades ago were teacher and pupil. Creighton was Wyeth’s thesis advisor when she was at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, and also her professor in a course that offered deep community engagement in Lewiston. Wyeth, who majored in American Cultural Studies, says today that Creighton was a vital part of her development as a ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ student, nurturing and mentoring her. 

She and Wyeth began talking about co-teaching this First-Year Seminar last year. As ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ continues to improve and revamp its overall First-Year Experience program, both traditional and brand-new seminar offerings such as “Inventing New England” continue to play a key role in introducing students to ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ academics — close contact with professors, intensive writing and building both a real sense of community and of place.

In the case of “Inventing New England,� a sense of place is particularly pertinent. The syllabus is filled with New England specific work, like Carolyn Chute’s 1985 novel The Beans of Egypt, Maine, but also some classic Westerns, such as John Ford’s Stagecoach, to provide perspective on how the American West is represented on screen or canvas.

“That was a good way to start talking about region and regional identity and how the West got imagined in dominant American culture,â€� Creighton says. “And one of the advantages here is that N.C. Wyeth did a lot of Western paintings as well.â€� 

The field trip to the coast had started with an up-close and personal visit to the art itself at the Farnsworth Museum in Rockland, where artworks from all three generations of painters are well represented in the Wyeth Center. There, Victoria Wyeth, who knows the paintings the way others know a family photo album, led the students through multiple galleries.

She’s a generous and ebullient lecturer, gesturing for emphasis, always inviting student input and sharing strong opinions about everything, from the media Andrew Wyeth used â€” on watercolors she says, “they control him, he doesn’t control themâ€� — to results. While talking the students through the composition of one study for a later work, she confides “I actually like this better than the final version.â€� She also connects with her own ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ experience, readily offering up a tale of getting a B-minus in an art history class in the middle of the whirlwind of her highly personalized, expert crash course in the Wyeths. 

In one gallery, currently showing Islands in Maine, an Andrew Wyeth show of works from Muscongus and Penobscot bays spanning the period from 1939 to 2008, when Wyeth and his wife Betsy spent his last summer on Benner Island, Victoria Wyeth stopped in front of a 1999 study for Dock.

It shows a woman walking down a dock. The image of a woman walking away, straight-backed and somehow resolute, even from behind, conjures up a hundred possible stories for the imagination, but Wyeth knows the real one. “I always told you, he paints his life,� she told the class. The woman is Ann Call, she explained, a frequent model, easy to recognize by her perfect haircut. Call worked with Wyeth’s grandmother Betsy on Benner Island, but lived on nearby Allen. “So this is her getting ready to go on the boat for the end of the day,� Wyeth said.

Wyeth lectures worldwide on the artists in her family. In 2011, she shared some of her never-before-displayed collection of family works in an exhibition at the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Museum of Art. As a student, she organized a 2001 show at the museum focused on her grandfather’s process from a series of studies to the final painting, Her Room, which was the very first Wyeth painting acquired by the Farnsworth in 1964. (She’s also a talented photographer, who has occasionally exhibited her work, including portraits of her grandfather.)

As the group moved around the galleries, Wyeth leaned into paintings and invited the students to do the same, to see all the little things that don’t show up in digital slides quite the way they do in person, like the little birds, and the dry brushwork that sketches out a lichen-covered roof, or “just the feeling of this storm coming in.� She knows the technical details of the works, like the way her grandfather came to use and cherish tempera as a medium, but also the emotional landscapes behind them.

She drew the students in to look at the last painting Andrew Wyeth completed before his death in 2009. It’s a view of a white building on the shore of Allen Island and its ghostly reflection in the water, and is called simply Goodbye. Wyeth reminded the students that her grandmother typically named her husband’s paintings and then asked if they could tell which white parts of the painting were tempera and which were simply the white panel, left bare by the artist. Leah Belber of Washington, D.C., got right in, and she and Wyeth debated the topic before deciding neither one of them can tell for sure. But it was easy to agree that the painting is beautiful, a haunting farewell to a well-loved place.

Belber was one of several students already well-acquainted with the concept of New England, and even the Wyeths themselves. She signed up for the course because “I love museums and I love looking at art.� She’s been relishing the interplay between Creighton and Wyeth. “It’s definitely quite a class. They have a fun dynamic.�

Josh Smith of Farmington, Maine, felt a pull to the class because in his family home, a print of Jamie Wyeth’s Fog Bound Coast has long hung on the wall.

Riley Baker of Northfield,Ill., says she signed up because “I just wanted something different,â€� but as with Smith, a specific piece of art sparked her connection. She attended St. Andrews in Delaware, where a giant mural by N.C. Wyeth covers the wall of a dining room. And that mural is featured in Dead Poets Society, a 1989 film shot at St. Andrews. Baker has watched it over and over again. 

When Liam Shlager of Ross, Calif., signed up for the course, he, like Stiner, was a newcomer to the Wyeth mythology but was intrigued. “Then I walk in the first day and Miss Wyeth is there and I was like, ‘Oh wow, this is going to be big.’�

And it has been, from the lively classroom discussions about art to the history lessons and insider stories about growing up in the Wyeth family, where artistic talent tends to make itself evident by age 6, according to Victoria. 

Getting to spend a day touring various Wyeth-related properties, and hearing from one of Wyeth’s iconic models in person, standing in the exact spot in the farmhouse where Wyeth painted her as a teenager 50 years ago, only elevated the experience. “Like 100 percent,� Shlager says.

The model, who asked not to be named, shared a detail about posing for Andrew Wyeth, about how he asked her to wet her hair every time she arrived to pose, and that detail caused Victoria to gasp. “You never told me this,� she said. “I am blown away.�

“This is so cool,� Victoria went on. “That’s how you guys are going to remember this. I mean, I know it’s sinking in now, but I’m telling you, in 20 years? You’re going to remember this.�

For Wyeth herself, the excursion was equally joyful. “I was so thrilled to get to know my students on such a different level,� she says. “We all had a blast on the bus ride to Cushing. I learned about their taste in music and some fun family stories. I can’t quite put into words how much closer it made us as a class. We went from being a class to feeling like a family.�

Monuments to Confederate leaders celebrate white supremacy and should be removed from public spaces, participants in a ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ panel agreed Monday night.

But removing such monuments would mean little without an understanding of why they were created, how racism persists today, and how to move forward.

“The value of history in relation to these debates is just as much about absence as it is about presence,� said , a lecturer in history and Mellon Diversity and Faculty Renewal Postdoctoral Fellow.

The panel discussion, which filled a room in Pettengill Hall, was held to shed light on issues of white supremacy and Confederate monuments in the wake of in Charlottesville, Va. It was sponsored by the Department of History and the Office of Equity and Diversity and moderated by Christopher Petrella ’06, lecturer in humanities and associate director of programs at the OED.

Extra chairs were needed for ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ community members who attended “Responding to Charlottesville: Historical Perspectives,” a panel discussion on fighting racism, Confederate monuments, and activism in academics. (Theophil Syslo/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

The wide-ranging discussion encompassed the historical and geographic context of Confederate monuments and the intersection of anti-racist activism and academia, as well as issues of activism on social media and the role of violence in protests.

Baker said focusing only on Confederate monuments risks forgetting that racism and white supremacy were not unique to the South in the 19th century. In fact, monuments to Confederate leaders were erected in the early 20th century, partly in reaction to an emerging civil rights movement.

For their part, Northerners were complicit in advancing white supremacy, both before and after the Civil War, Baker said. For example, 20th-century historians whose work sought to legitimize the idea that slavery was positive and black suffrage negative were not primarily from Southern institutions, he said.

Racism has “always been a part of America itself, and so that touches all of us,” said Lecturer in History Andrew Baker. (Theophil Syslo/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

It is important, therefore, not only to remove Confederate monuments, but to look at history closer to home, Baker said — at, for example, Benjamin ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, who made his fortune in Maine selling clothing made from slave-grown cotton and later gave some of that fortune to namesake ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College.

People who live anywhere with a difficult racial history “generally like to say that it belonged to a different time,� Baker said. “I think we need to address that lie head on and recognize that these problems are everywhere, it’s always been a part of America itself, and so that touches all of us.�

Creating and focusing on Confederate monuments, added history department chair Margaret Creighton, meant that other stories from the Civil War are left behind. She recalled how, during fieldwork in Gettysburg, Pa., she and her students met an African American woman whose ancestors had lived in the town during the Civil War and either suffered under or fought against Confederate soldiers.

Professor of History Margaret Creighton said the presence of Confederate monuments ignores other people’s stories from the Civil War. “Their history was never written.” (Theophil Syslo/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

“We can talk all we want about the issue of erasing monuments, but there are many people for whom monuments were never built,� Creighton said. “Their history was never written. Filmmakers never made a documentary about them.� 

Assistant Professor of History Patrick Otim, meanwhile, placed Confederate monuments in a global context. Otim said his native Uganda and other African countries are experiencing a similar conflict over their own set of monuments — ones that celebrate both European colonial powers and the dictators who took power in some countries after independence.  

Africans, he said, are paying attention to the American debate.

“It will inform the sort of discussions that are going on in different African countries,� he said. “What goes on here, because of the power of the Internet or access to information in different parts of the world, will dictate what goes on in different African countries.�

As the discussion continued, a question emerged: How can professional historians and academics fight racism, when its negative effects seem so immediate?

Assistant Professor of History Patrick Otim said similar debates over monuments are happening in African countries, including his native Uganda. “What goes on here…will dictate what goes on in different African countries,” he said. (Theophil Syslo/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Panelist has experience in both fields: She is a doctoral candidate in African and African American studies at Harvard who also works in a group that fights to take down symbols of white supremacy in New Orleans. McDowell said activism and academia do not have to be separate — the organizers she works with have many roles, including as researchers.

The organization, , uses the fight for monument removal as a way to push toward broader racial and economic justice.

Discussing monuments as well as subtler forms of racism can be an effective way to build a coalition, McDowell said.

“That’s their access point, to start having conversations and start understanding,� she said.

But if Confederate monuments are removed, what to do with them afterwards is a complicated question. Audience member , an art historian and assistant professor of Asian studies, said she wanted Confederate monuments to be removed from public spaces but asked the panel whether statues could be studied as art history.

Robin McDowell, a Harvard doctoral student and community organizer, said working to remove monuments can be a starting point for addressing systemic racism. “We can’t underestimate the imagination of our communities,” she said. (Theophil Syslo/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

“We [art historians] are supposed to be the ones who know who sponsored them, what places they are in. We are supposed to think about those issues,� she said.

Baker said he generally did not want to see Confederate statues in museums but thought art historians could work to dismantle the message of Confederate statues.

“It’s a very subtle and interesting way of reflecting on how we can repurpose these monuments, maybe in ways that wouldn’t occur to the average person,� he replied. “The art historian would think carefully about how to subvert their own purpose, the reason they were put up to begin with.�

A related question emerged: What, if anything, should replace a vanquished monument?

McDowell said implementing a new vision had to involve the people such a vision would affect. In New Orleans, she said, more than 200 local artists recently met to propose replacements for white supremacist monuments in the city.

“We can’t underestimate the imagination of our communities,� she said. 

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 ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ 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,â€� 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.”

ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ 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 ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ “has maintained an unwavering commitment to recruiting students regardless of gender, race, religion, economic background or family circumstanceâ€� 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 ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ 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 ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ 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 ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ 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.

President Spencer says a flier posted on campus was “absolutely directed at suppressing the vote” — Washington Post

A dastardly attempt to discourage ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students from voting caught the attention of local and national media.

“Somebody doesn’t want ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College students to vote Tuesday,” reported the on Nov. 6.

Orange fliers posted in Commons and residences on Sunday by an unknown person implied that voting in Maine meant that a student must get a Maine driver’s license and, if they owned a car, register it, which could cost “hundreds of dollars.”

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Orange fliers with false voting information posted on campus on Nov. 6 were a deliberate attempt to discourage students from voting, said President Spencer. (Photograph by Sarah Frankie Sigman ’18)

In a statement issued Monday morning, President Spencer took to the bully pulpit, reaffirming ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students’ legal right to vote and to same-day registration and denouncing the fliers as “clearly a deliberate attempt at voter suppression.” She added:

We are proud of our students’ interest and participation in the electoral process, and I am deeply disturbed that anyone would seek to deter their exercise of the most basic form of citizenship…. Any unofficial communications that suggest otherwise are contrary to the ideals of American democracy.

President Spencer leads off this story by WCSH-TV in Portland by saying that the orange fliers seemed “absolutely directed at suppressing the vote.”

Sarah Frankie Sigman ’19 of Port Washington, N.Y., told the that “rage” was her reaction when she read the flier, labeled as a “Legal Advisory,” on Sunday in Commons.

“This is obviously meant to scare ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students from voting, which is not right,” said Sigman, who spoke to her upbringing and how “the need to vote has been instilled in me since birth.â€�

On Election Day, the editorialized that “the principle of one person, one vote is something to celebrate” yet it has been “under attack” in Maine and in the nation.

Maine law is clear that a U.S. citizen of voting age can vote in Maine and register as late as Election Day by establishing “voting residence,” which can, in the case of a student, be a college dorm.

‘ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ies really showed up’ on Election Day — Lewiston Sun Journal

In a noontime story on Election Day, the Lewiston Sun Journal noted that “ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College students aren’t backing down at the polls.”

Hannah Wilson ’17 of Brooklyn, N.Y., casts her ballot at the Lewiston Armory on Central Avenue, two blocks from campus. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

The Nov. 8 story looked at how students were reacting to a weekend incident in which “mystery fliers” posted around campus “appeared to be an effort keep students from voting.”

Despite the attempt at voter suppression, “ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ies really showed up,â€� said Hannah Prince ’18 of Ardsley, N.Y.

The Sun Journal reported that campus sidewalks were “chalked with many messages urging everyone to vote and pointing the way to the polls” and that “posters and banners hung on walls” in Commons. “And many students were involved in trying to rouse their classmates to go vote.”

Katherine Cook ’18 of South Burlington, Vt., said that people need to realize “this election isn’t just about you, it’s about everyone else.â€�

America’s founding greatness ‘was also an incomplete idealism’ — Portland Press Herald

In an , Associate Professor of History Joseph Hall and four students wrote that America’s greatness under a new president will require teamwork to make the country’s founding ideals “more real.” They continued:

Working together can be difficult. Recent efforts of voter suppression at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College make clear that some wish to silence others. More troublingly, many millions remain outside of the political process, marginalized by their lack of money, their lack of education and simply who they are.

Hall’s coauthors were Ben Aicher ’18 of Falmouth, Maine, Max Milavetz ’20 of Salt Lake City, Andrew Segal ’17 of Glencoe, Ill., and Francesca Steiner ’19 of Salt Lake City, all members of his course “The Age of the American Revolution, 1763-1789.”

Op-ed writers Ben Aicher ’18 of Falmouth, Maine, Max Milavetz ’20 of Salt Lake City, Francesca Steiner ’19 of Salt Lake City, Associate Professor of History Joe Hall, and Andrew Segal ’17 of Glencoe, Ill., pose on Alumni Walk on Nov. 11. (Josh Kuckens/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Turning human waste into biofuel — BBC World News

The BBC World News show Horizons covered a Rwandan-based company founded by Ashley Murray Muspratt ’02 that for industrial kilns and boilers in the cement and textile industry.

The sanitized and odorless fuel has 20 percent more energy and 10 percent less moisture than other biomass fuels. “Africa needs power,� says Horizons host Adam Shaw, and access to power is seen as a key factor in the continent’s economic development.

Ashley Muspratt ’02 founded Waste Enterprisers and its Rwanda operation, Pivot, in 2010.

“Our mission is to radically reduce the cost of waste treatment for developing cities by producing valuable fuel from human waste,� Muspratt tells reporter Fiona Mbabazi. “In the U.S., we treat waste as a disposal problem rather than a resource. We have a huge market opportunity across the African continent and beyond.�

A biology major at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, and its Rwanda operation, Pivot, in 2010. She has a Ph.D. from Berkeley’s Energy and Resources Group and was a postdoctoral fellow at the International Water Management Institute in Ghana.

Exhibition of Saudi artwork highlights a fast-evolving art scene — Portland Press Herald

The landmark Museum of Art exhibition Phantom Punch “sizzles and sparkles in the academically open-minded and intersectional museum space,” writes , “but underlying it is an anxiety about how to create a functional contemporary art culture for Saudis.”

In a country without a “robust community of art venues,” Saudi artists are creating an art culture through social media.

“And because 60 percent of Saudis are now 30 years or younger, these artists are trying to build a new cultural path forward for an ever younger and more technologically savvy society.”

From “Elementary 240,” 12 photographic prints and a video by Njoud Alanbari. (Courtesy of the artist)

Echoes of an exposition, and an assassination — New York Times

For three days in Buffalo, New York Times reporter Eve Kahn followed a group of scholars assembled by Professor of History Margaret Creighton as they went about “excavating artifacts and scouring archives” related to the Pan-American Exposition of 1901 and the assassination of William McKinley.

Margaret Creighton is the author of The Electrifying Fall of Rainbow City.

Those events are covered in Creighton’s new book, The Electrifying Fall of Rainbow City: Spectacle and Assassination at the 1901 World’s Fair.

The exhibition, Kahn writes, was “meant to celebrate America’s ingenuity and dominance over the Western Hemisphere — you know, when America was ‘great again.’”

Creighton explained the fair’s “amusements and philosophical framework, not the least of which were its undeniably racist overtones. The displays, she told me, were ‘all about supremacy.’”

In 1901, Buffalo played host to fairgoers, stunts, and a presidential assassination — Christian Science Monitor

During the 1901 Pan-American Exhibition in Buffalo, anarchist assasinated President McKinley.

Professor of History Margaret Creighton grew up in Buffalo, yet “knew little about the exposition next door,” writes Christian Science Monitor staff writer Randy Dotinga. “No wonder. Almost all of the fair’s buildings have vanished, replaced by streets and elegant homes.”

Creighton fills the gap with her new book The Electrifying Fall of Rainbow City: Spectacle and Assassination at the 1901 World’s Fair.

She came up with the book idea after her students read Devil in the White City, about the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, and asked her about other such fairs.

“Creighton’s curiosity about Buffalo’s past inspired her to dig into the fair and the epic tragedy that defined it,” Dotinga writes.

Creighton says that she soon learned “that an entire world surrounded this assassination, very rich and compelling and full of eccentric characters.â€�

Students and professors dig in deep for lessons on climate change — Portland Press Herald

The primary function of the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½â€“Morse Mountain Conversation Area, writes Portland Press Herald staff writer Mary Pols, is “to serve as a research and educational laboratory for both ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students and professors.”

Case in point is Cailene Gunn ’16, whose research experiences at BMMCA with Professor of Geology Beverly Johnson led to Gunn’s job at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, one of the U.S. Department of Energy’s national labs.

Cailene Gunn ’16 of Granby, Conn., poses for a portrait in a marsh near ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½â€“Morse Mountain in August 2015. (Josh Kuckens/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Pols explains that Johnson is an expert on how coastal ecosystems capture carbon emissions. These so-called blue carbon ecosystems “sequester roughly 15 times more carbon per unit area than the upland forests.”

Johnson is part of the international policy and scientific experts who come from universities, governments, and NGOs worldwide.

Our magnetic 5-year-old is not a threat to anyone — Washington Post

Over the summer, Vanessa Kalter-Long Ford ’02 and her husband Ron Ford shared their experiences, including a first-person , as parents of a young transgender child.

They did so after a May 2016 federal directive to public schools about accommodations for transgender students sparked backlash in some states.

“The national conversation about transgender people — about our daughter, Ellie — isn’t truly about bathrooms,” Vanessa and Ron write. “It is about discrimination.”

They write:

Our daughter, like thousands of transgender and gender non-conforming children, does not want special treatment. She wants to make friends, to learn, to participate in sports, to go trick-or-treating on Halloween and wear pretty dresses on her birthday.

 And, yes, she wants use the bathroom that matches her gender identity when she needs to pee. Not because that’s special treatment, but because that’s the same treatment everyone else receives. Our daughter wants to be included, just like everyone else.

10 questions with Val Smith, president of Swarthmore College — NBC10 Philadelphia

In a Q&A with NBC10 of Philadelphia, Val Smith ’75, now into her second year as president of Swarthmore College, was asked about the qualities of a good listener.

Good listening, she said, furthers the goal of making “every effort to respect the opinions and ideas of our interlocutors, even if we think we have nothing in common with them.”

There are time, she said candidly, “when I think I don’t want to listen to what other people have to say.” That’s the exact moment to “remind myself that however right I may think I am about a particular issue, there was usually always something I can learn if I let myself listen to what other people have to say.”

The result? “One’s deeply held opinion might change or be modified or gain nuance if one is able to enter into conversation with other people.”

Her poetry is much like the author herself: passionate and purposeful — Take Magazine

In a Q&A with Take Magazine, Crystal Williams talks about her work as the college’s chief diversity officer and associate vice president for strategic initiatives, then deftly switches to the meaning of a line of her poetry (she’s also a widely published poet and professor of English).

Crystal Williams is a professor of English, chief diversity officer, and associate vice president for strategic initiatives at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½. (Photograph by Brian Fitzgerald)

The line is, “The heart is a beautiful monster; it nearly always survives its fate.”

Williams tells writer Alexa Harrison that “our hearts, or spirits, are our most robust qualities. They are from whence emerge our kindnesses and our travesties. So they can be both monstrous and beautiful and are often both — at once. This duality is what makes human beings, at least to me, so very interesting and compelling.”

In 2016, most students don’t have memories of 9/11 — Portland Press Herald

A Press Herald story published on the 15th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks quotes Associate Professor of English Eden Osucha, who has taught the course “Narrating 9/11 in Literature and Film.�

Associate Professor of English Eden Osucha. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

The youngest ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students, barely 3 years old when 9/11 took place, “don’t have personal baggage” associated with the attacks, she tells reporter Edward Murphy.

But they do carry “cultural baggage”: the burden of comprehending all the stories of what happened that day.

At the same time, Murphy writes, “many don’t have a full understanding of the cultural landscape of America prior to the attacks because, understandably, the events of that day overshadowed the years that immediately preceded them.”

You eat where you are: In her course “Back East, Down South, Out West: Regions in American Culture,” history professor Margaret Creighton looks at eating habits as part of a greater examination of regional identity. In the East, deep South and West, the course explores the intersection of demographic and economic history with cultural invention. Creighton’s readings include America Eats! by Pat Willard, a collection of experiences from writers of the Works Progress Administration who describe dining experiences from chitlin struts to squirrel hunts. [and five more. . .]

“Red Sox Nation,” a course taught by Professor of History Margaret Creighton, uses the Olde Towne Team to discuss issues like race, class and gender in America.

According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, the Sox class now has academic competition from a likely source: the New York Yankees.

Short Term at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ is known among students for pressure-cooker courses like “Cellular and Molecular Biology,” aka “Cell Hell,” and “Introduction to Abstraction,” better known as “Math Camp.”

But the academic offerings during these five weeks of spring have a reputation not only for rigor but for topicality, adventurousness and even, dare we say, for fun. And Short Term units new in 2005 are no exceptions.

Historian Margaret Creighton, whose new book on the Battle of Gettysburg has received critical acclaim nationwide, hits a home run on the topicality front with her new “Red Sox Nation,” a unit exploring the cultural history of New England’s favorite team.

Topicality in the sciences is reflected in one new psychology unit that examines adolescence from perspectives ranging from gender to religion to socioeconomic status, and another exploring historical and technical aspects of sleep research. (A subject not so topical but certainly fun undergoes a mathematical analysis in “Roller Coasters: Theory, Design, and Properties.”)

Meanwhile, with the world of Islam still a mystery to many Americans despite its presence in the daily news, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ explores this religion in two units — one a comparative study also involving several Asian belief systems, and the other traveling to India to study in depth that country’s Islamic traditions.

Speaking of travel, Short Term can provide a needed getaway for students and faculty alike. This spring, one group will go to Budapest and Prague to investigate regional film and theater. Another will visit Morocco to witness the legacy of French and Spanish colonialism. Still another will visit Chile to investigate environmental politics.

And even when they stay on campus, the students of Short Term may find themselves wandering back in time: back to the Viking conquests, back to the age of Chaucer — in a unit taught by ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ President Elaine Tuttle Hansen — or back just a few years to the origins of electronic dance music in Chicago and Detroit.

In short, like spring itself, Short Term is the time to get out and see what’s going on. As a sophomore, Sarah Klenakis ’05 took the unit “Religion in the City.” The course, exploring how various religions find expression in the community, was an eye-opener.

“We toured Maine’s most renowned Catholic church” — Lewiston’s Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul — “met with a cantor at a synagogue, mediated with monks at a Buddhist temple, and got the rare opportunity to tour a local Shaker village,” Klenakis says. “Each experience was intriguing and rewarding.”