Patrick Otim – News

Removing Confederate monuments is only a starting point, �ֲ��ý panelists say

Emily McConville — Thu, 21 Sep 2017 17:46:18 +0000

Monuments to Confederate leaders celebrate white supremacy and should be removed from public spaces, participants in a �ֲ��ý 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 �ֲ��ý community members who attended “Responding to Charlottesville: Historical Perspectives,” a panel discussion on fighting racism, Confederate monuments, and activism in academics. (Theophil Syslo/�ֲ��ý 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/�ֲ��ý 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 �ֲ��ý, who made his fortune in Maine selling clothing made from slave-grown cotton and later gave some of that fortune to namesake �ֲ��ý 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/�ֲ��ý 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/�ֲ��ý 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/�ֲ��ý 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.��

Look What We Found: A historian’s life-sized cutout of Frederick Douglass

Phyllis Graber Jensen — Tue, 14 Feb 2017 20:07:15 +0000

Patrick Otim, a lecturer in history, has a life-sized cutout of Frederick Douglass in his Pettengill Hall office.

The cutout was created early last fall by the history faculty as a way to reach out to prospective history majors in the Class of 2020. Then it moved into Otim’s office.

A native of northern Uganda, Otim attended high school at Sacred Heart Seminary in the city of Gulu, where the library had a picture of Frederick Douglass along with this quote: “Some men know the value of education by having it. I know its value by not having it.”

Otim says that his younger self knew that the picture and quote were “strategically placed in our library to inspire us to take our studies seriously.” Still he didn’t completely grasp the quote’s meaning back then.

But, “the name Frederick Douglass stuck with me.”

Meaning came to him in graduate school. At the University of Wisconsin-Madison, he read Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave. There, he says, he understood why his high school “chose Douglass and that quote to be in our library.”

When Otim looks at the Douglass cutout in his office today, “it transports me back to when I was in the seminary. Some of the memories are good, some bad.”

He recalls the peaceful, idyllic setting that provided him with a chance for prayer and reflection. He also recalls that it was a time of violence at the hands of the Lord’s Resistance Army. “Some of my classmates were arrested by the rebels,” he says, and some of his friends died.

“I can’t stop thinking about these guys, that connection.”

At age 14, Patrick Otim (second row, standing fourth from left) poses with classmates at Sacred Heart Seminary in Gulu, Uganda.

Even today, his Ugandan high school doesn’t have any of Douglass’ several autobiographies. “I plan to buy a few copies and take them back with me in the summer. I am sure they will like them.”

A Mellon Diversity and Faculty Renewal Postdoctoral Fellow at �ֲ��ý this year, Otim is working on a book manuscript of his dissertation, “Forgotten Voices of the Transition: Precolonial Intellectuals and the Colonial State in Northern Uganda, 1850–1950.” He will be promoted to assistant professor of history in the fall.

�ֲ��ý College welcomes new faculty for 2016–17

Doug Hubley — Fri, 23 Sep 2016 12:00:44 +0000

The �ֲ��ý faculty during Commencement 2014. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

In the 1970s and ’80s, President Hedley Reynolds began an expansion of the �ֲ��ý professoriate that markedly increased the number, as well as the quality, of the college’s faculty.

When Reynolds retired, in 1989, all but 16 of the 159 faculty members had been appointed during his presidency.

This strategy elevated both the value and the reputation of the �ֲ��ý education during the late 20th century, helping to make the college the national presence that it is today.

But another consequence of Reynolds’ strategy, and an inevitable one, is playing out in this century as the young fresh faces of the 1970s and ’80s approach retirement age.

In 2012, �ֲ��ý filled five tenure-track openings. Last year, it filled four. This year, out of a total of 11 long-term hires, nine individuals have filled eight tenure-track positions, including two postdoctoral spots that will convert to tenure track a year from now.

In short, as President Clayton Spencer noted in a recent letter to the �ֲ��ý community, the 2015–16 academic year was the college’s largest faculty-recruiting year in recent memory.

And the boom isn’t over: “This year we will search for 15 new faculty — 11 tenure-track, three long-term lecturers, and one senior, tenured position to lead the new Program in Digital and Computational Studies,” Spencer wrote.

Of course, as in Reynolds’ day, this influx of fresh talent amounts to an exciting process of renewal for the college. “What �ֲ��ý looks like in the future is at least partially revealed each time we hire a new faculty member,” Dean of the Faculty Matt Auer writes in his overview of the new tenure-track hires.

Let’s meet them.

+Wesley Chaney, Assistant Professor of History

Name: Wesley B. Chaney

Position: Assistant Professor of History

Where he studied: Stanford University
Davidson College

His work: In his graduate work, Chaney focused on legal, social, and environmental issues in northwest China in the 18th and 19th centuries. His dissertation examined the impacts of the advent of regular civilian administration, specifically disputes over land and trade. At �ֲ��ý, he teaches Chinese history from various eras and perspectives — and he’d like to introduce a course reflecting his current research into sports, gender, and the body in modern China. “It’s important to show undergrads the research that we’re doing and have them see how exciting that is.”

A teaching goal: Chaney based his dissertation research on archival material that included legal records involving homicides. Because of political or administrative concerns, he says, “creating these narratives was, in a lot of ways, more about creating a seamless narrative when, actually, what was on the ground was probably far messier. Historians need to be critical of the assumptions that went into the production of these records. We always keep in mind who’s the author, who’s the audience, why might this have been written, what is silenced in this source?”

These kids today: “It’s striking how many students today have studied Chinese language in high school, and have even been to China. So this is a big change. And even if they haven’t taken Chinese language, there’s far more knowledge about China now. But I give the historical context to understand the China of today — as well, I hope, as sparking a curiosity in a different way of being human.”

Wesley Chaney, Assistant Professor of History. (Josh Kuckens/�ֲ��ý College)

+Aleksandar M. Diamond-Stanic, Assistant Professor of Physics

Name: Aleksandar M. Diamond-Stanic

Position: Assistant Professor of Physics

Where he studied: University of Arizona
Carleton College

Before �ֲ��ý: Postdoctoral fellow, University of Wisconsin–Madison

His work: Virtually a vacuum, outer space does contain very diffuse matter — primarily hydrogen gas. This gas can coalesce to form stars, but the number of stars thus generated falls short of the potential. An astrophysicist, Diamond-Stanic seeks to understand that inefficiency in star creation. Specifically, he studies interactions between galaxies and the supermassive black holes at their centers, and how those interactions relate to gas and star formation. This work, for which Diamond-Stanic and �ֲ��ý students are working with Hubble Space Telescope imagery, is supported by funds from the Space Telescope Science Institute.

A teaching goal: “Physics has a little public relations problem: ‘That’s hard, I don’t want to do that, you have to be like Einstein.’ That myth is problematic because you lose very talented people as a result. It’s a social justice problem: People are being denied the right to pursue what they might be interested in. I want to push for ways to recognize that and improve it, to make teaching more welcoming and inclusive, so that people can pursue their interests and dreams in the field.”

Why �ֲ��ý: Diamond-Stanic discovered astrophysics through a welcoming and supportive professor at Carleton. “I wanted to get back to that small-college environment. I see my colleagues at larger research-focused institutions being pulled away from my values and priorities: How do you mentor and teach undergraduate students? That’s really No. 1 at �ֲ��ý. Given the importance of those priorities to my own identity development, my own decision to go into physics, that’s something I value highly.”

Aleksandar Diamond-Stanic, Assistant Professor of Physics. (Josh Kuckens/�ֲ��ý College)

+Nathan C. Faries, Assistant Professor of Asian Studies

Name: Nathan C. Faries

Position: Assistant Professor of Asian Studies (joint appointment)

Where he studied: The Pennsylvania State University
Baylor University
Wheaton College

Before �ֲ��ý: Associate Professor of English, University of Dubuque
(A tenured position; he left in good standing to join family at �ֲ��ý.)

His work: Faries teaches Chinese language, literature, and culture. He is an authority on Christian narratives in China and has recently researched Catholicism, the official rehabilitation of Confucianism, and the important 20th-century writer and literary scholar Su Xuelin. Faries wrote The “Inscrutably Chinese” Church: How Narratives and Nationalism Continue to Divide Christianity.

The appeal of his work: “I grew up in a kind of missionary culture where there was this idea of the fierce oppressive Chinese government, the underground church, and all this secret stuff going on. And I went there to live, and realized that is not the whole story. I wanted to know: What are the mechanisms of control and freedom? How does the government negotiate its relationship with people who have a loyalty outside of the borders? And how do those Christians negotiate their identity, because they’re through-and-through Chinese? I like to see how narratives help them walk this tightrope between different parts of themselves.”

Why �ֲ��ý: “�ֲ��ý students have an attitude about education that I appreciate. They have questions, they’re engaged in their studies. It’s not a sideline for them or a career move. It’s liberal arts studies: How can I enlarge my vision through this and serve society eventually? And the college has all this support for pedagogy, how to be a better teacher. It’s a great focus.”

Nathan Faries, Assistant Professor of Asian Studies. (Josh Kuckens/�ֲ��ý College)

+Carolina González Valencia, Mellon Diversity and Faculty Renewal Postdoctoral Fellow

Name: Carolina González Valencia��

Position: Lecturer in Art and Visual Culture
Mellon Diversity and Faculty Renewal Postdoctoral Fellow*

Where she studied: School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Broward College

Her work: González brings a studio art background to work in new media, film, and video, including animation. A native of Colombia, her projects include videos that combine diverse production methods to explore issues of family and personal history, migration and immigration, feminism, displacement, and labor. As a Mellon Diversity and Faculty Renewal Fellow in 2016–17, she’s designing curricula for teaching animation and video in addition to teaching two courses.

Why she teaches: “Teaching allows me to connect with different ideas and to expand the conversation. I see the classroom as a circulation system, where we learn from and inspire each other. This exchange is refreshing and nurturing. Teaching also allows me to expand and question my research, to keep an active dialogue with my field — and at the same time, to facilitate a creative process for students where they can see themselves as makers of their own ideas.”

Why �ֲ��ý: “Art by its nature is interdisciplinary, so teaching art to students who are studying different fields creates a rich exchange of ways of thinking, researching, and interests that’s unique to a liberal arts college like �ֲ��ý. I’m eager to collaborate with other fields — Latin American studies, film studies, women and gender studies, social sciences, just to name a few. And I’m excited to see how my own art practice will develop within this context.”

*Mellon Diversity and Faculty Renewal Postdoctoral Fellows become tenure-track assistant professors in their second year at �ֲ��ý.

Carolina Gonzalez Valencia, Mellon Diversity and Faculty Renewal Postdoctoral Fellow and Lecturer in Art and Visual Culture. (Josh Kuckens/�ֲ��ý College)

+Andrew J. Kennedy, Assistant Professor of Chemistry

Name: Andrew J. Kennedy

Position: Assistant Professor of Chemistry

Where he studied: University of Virginia
Providence College

Before �ֲ��ý: Postdoctoral fellow, University of Alabama at Birmingham

His work: Kennedy studies phenomena involved in specific types of learning and memory, such as those that enable us to use language. Specifically, he looks at so-called epigenetic mechanisms, or chemical processes that control the organization of genes, as they relate to synaptic plasticity and long-term encoding of memory. Supported by the Pitt-Hopkins Research Foundation, he is conducting pioneering research into Pitt-Hopkins Syndrome, a rare disorder on the autism spectrum. In related research funded by the INBRE Investigator program, he’s also studying approaches to enhance cognition more generally.

What he loves about his work: “We’re in a position to ask really exciting questions about how the brain functions to facilitate learning and memory. A century ago, quantum physicists developed tools to start probing the fundamental aspects of matter, and it was a whirlwind of discovery. I think we’re entering a similar era in neuroscience. In this century, one of the big questions will be how the brain works to elicit complex human behavior. As long as there have been humans, we’ve wondered what it means to be human, and we can now look into the brain at a molecular level and start to understand that in a physical way. So, it’s a very exciting time.”

Why �ֲ��ý: “�ֲ��ý is special because it bridges the gap between the educational excellence of an elite small college and a commitment to high-quality research. You have juniors and seniors who have gained a deeper understanding of the underlying principles in the classroom, and you can put them into research labs that are asking the kinds of questions that they may devote themselves to in graduate school and beyond.”

Andrew Kennedy, Assistant Professor of Chemistry. (Josh Kuckens/�ֲ��ý College)

+Yinxing (Mia) Liu, Assistant Professor of Asian Studies

Name: Yinxing (Mia) Liu

Position: Assistant Professor of Asian Studies (joint appointment). From 2014 to 2016, Liu was a lecturer in Asian studies and a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Humanities at �ֲ��ý.

Where studied: University of Chicago
The Pennsylvania State University
Xiangtan University, China

Before �ֲ��ý: Postdoctoral associate, East Asian Studies Center, Yale University

Her work: Liu is an art historian who studies modern and contemporary art, cinema, and visual culture in China and East Asia, focusing on the dynamics and cross-fertilization between different media. She has previously written on landscape aesthetics in Chinese cinema, while her recent work focuses on pictorialist photography in China during the mid-20th century, its social-political engagements, and its interaction with traditional art media such as ink painting.

Why study Chinese art? “If you want to engage with the world, Chinese culture is a huge part of the world. And Chinese art has a very strong presence in contemporary art now. Also, the beauty of art is that you can’t really pin it down. Art is a good way for us to challenge our preconceptions and jog our prejudices. It keeps our minds open, young, and fresh. That’s very fitting for a liberal arts education, too — that’s the point of us being here, really. In the case of Chinese art, especially, we can see different perspectives and hear different voices challenging one message from a single source, and also jolting our preconception of a culture and a tradition that keeps evolving with the time.”

Why �ֲ��ý: “I like the liberal arts setting; I never had experience with it before I came to �ֲ��ý. I like the freedom of my research — I can define my own research profile, within reasonable boundaries. I also like the fact that students are very engaged. They want to learn.”

Mia Liu, Assistant Professor of Asian Studies. (Josh Kuckens/�ֲ��ý College)

+Andrew M. Mountcastle, Assistant Professor of Biology

Name: Andrew M. Mountcastle��

Position: Assistant Professor of Biology

Where he studied: University of Washington
Bowdoin College

Before �ֲ��ý: Postdoctoral fellow, Harvard University

His work: Mountcastle studies mechanisms that animals employ for motion through environments that can be complex, dynamic, and often unpredictable. His current focus is insect flight. “Insects are ubiquitous, and yet there are so many aspects of insect life and locomotion patterns that we don’t fully understand. Wings have fascinated me for years: They are highly adapted and the focus of intense, often competing, selective pressures. In addition to flight, insect wings also have assorted other functions, including helping camouflage the insect or facilitating courtship activity.” Most recently, he has worked to incorporate a type of joint found in wasp wings into a flying microrobot.

The Maine connection: Mountcastle grew up in Orono, where his father recently retired from the University of Maine physics faculty. “Maine has been in my blood ever since. It’s great to be back.”

A teaching goal: As an undergraduate, Mountcastle took a physics course in which students were expected to develop and address their own research questions. (He developed a microphone array to locate birds by their calls.) “I was asking questions that, to my knowledge, hadn’t been explored, and was coming up with tools and techniques to answer them. It was thrilling. I really try, in my teaching, to bring my students to the frontiers of scientific knowledge. For me, that was the most rewarding part, as opposed to just sitting there and learning about what other people have already learned.”

Andrew Mountcastle, Assistant Professor of Biology. (Josh Kuckens/�ֲ��ý College)

+Jeffrey S. Oishi, Assistant Professor of Physics

Name: Jeffrey S. Oishi��

Position: Assistant Professor of Physics

Where he studied: University of Virginia
Columbia University

Before �ֲ��ý: Assistant Professor of Physics, Farmingdale State College

His work: Oishi is a computational astrophysicist specializing in fluid dynamics. In a recent project, he developed relatively simple mathematical models to help understand instability in the rotation of magnetized fluids within stars — an analysis that otherwise, he says, demands “far more computational power than will exist in our lifetime.” Undertaken with research partners in Colorado and students at �ֲ��ý, Oishi’s current project aims to adapt the behavior of solar magnetic fields as models for stars in general.

The appeal of his work: “It’s an intersection of a lot of different fields. I do a lot more math than the average astronomer, more programming than the average theorist, and more astronomy than the average fluid dynamics person. So what really appeals to me is that I can pull from a broad set of skills, which means I’m always learning something new.”

“Ask an Astronomer”: Oishi exemplifies a generation of scientists committed to engaging the public. He took part in the “Astronomy on Tap” barroom lecture series in Brooklyn and joined a friend who, with a sign reading “Ask an Astronomer,” answered questions about the field in the New York subway. “We got a lot of stories from people who liked science as a child, and then something happened and they lost interest or felt they could no longer pursue it — a teacher or experience in school made them feel science wasn’t for them. I’ve been thinking a lot about how to reach those people and make science more inclusive.”

Jeffrey Oishi, Assistant Professor of Physics. (Josh Kuckens/�ֲ��ý College)

+Patrick W. Otim, Mellon Diversity and Faculty Renewal Postdoctoral Fellow

Name: Patrick W. Otim��

Position: Lecturer in History
Mellon Diversity and Faculty Renewal Postdoctoral Fellow*

Where studied: University of Wisconsin-Madison
University of Notre Dame
Gulu University, Gulu, Uganda
Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda

His work: As a Diversity and Faculty Renewal Fellow, Otim is designing courses on African history and African studies more broadly. His research has focused on his native Uganda, but he will teach the history of East Africa this fall, the history of health and healing in the winter, and a broad survey of African history next fall.

Why study Africa? “It is an important continent with a lot of rich and diverse histories and global connections. For example, you cannot study slavery without thinking about Africa. Even in the post-independence era, if you want to talk about things like the Cold War, Africa was greatly involved. So to study history without Africa is just telling only part of a story. Africa really has to be there.”

A teaching goal: Otim comes from a small town called Gulu in northern Uganda, which was the center of the Lord’s Resistance Army insurgency. From 2002 to 2008, he worked for an international NGO assisting people displaced by the insurgency. That work illustrated the clash between Western concepts of justice and local practices: In northern Uganda, victims of wrongdoing expect perpetrators to confess and show remorse publicly, rather than serving time. “It’s this different kind of understanding that I want my students to think about. When you’re in a different cultural context, you shouldn’t think, ‘This is how justice should be.’ It is never uniform. I feel I can contribute to peace by teaching students my understanding of peace.”

* Mellon Diversity and Faculty Renewal Postdoctoral Fellows become tenure-track assistant professors in their second year at �ֲ��ý.

Patrick Otim, Mellon Diversity and Faculty Renewal Postdoctoral Fellow and Lecturer in History. (Josh Kuckens/�ֲ��ý College)

Patrick Otim – News

Removing Confederate monuments is only a starting point, �ֲ���ý panelists say

Look What We Found: A historian’s life-sized cutout of Frederick Douglass

�ֲ���ý College welcomes new faculty for 2016–17

Removing Confederate monuments is only a starting point, �ֲ��ý panelists say

�ֲ��ý College welcomes new faculty for 2016–17