Stephany Flores Ramos '17 Receives Soros Fellowship for New Americans
Flores Ramos is one of 30 young scholars—all immigrants or children of immigrants to the United States—chosen this year to receive up to $90,000 in support of a graduate-level education. She is working toward a Ph.D. in biomedical sciences.
Professor Kiara Vigil Receives $300,000 New Directions Award From the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
Vigil, associate professor of American studies and co-founder of the College’s Native American and Indigenous studies program, will use the funding to learn, practice and preserve the endangered language, Dakota, of her ancestors, and translate Dakota-language publications in Amherst’s extensive Kim-Wait / Eisenberg Native American Literature Collection.
Professor Jen Manion on the Challenges of Telling LGBTQ History
Manion was one of four experts who took part in a panel discussion now featured on the website for BBC History Magazine and BBC History Revealed. “I think what’s been really exciting in the past decade,” said the professor, “is how much the LGBTQ community, and especially young people, has been really interested in our history.”
Ingrid Katz ’93 on Worldwide COVID-19 Vaccine Inequality
“If we assume that it’s fine just to vaccinate American citizens but no one else in the world, we’re going to be in big trouble,” says Katz, associate faculty director at the Harvard Global Health Institute, in a recent piece for NPR’s Goats and Soda. She also spoke to Amherst magazine about the pandemic in 2020.
Farewell to Legendary Songwriter Jim Steinman ’69, H’13
A New York Times obituary details the career of Steinman, who wrote hit songs “vivid in their imagery and heavy on drama” for such artists as Meat Loaf, Bonnie Tyler and Celine Dion, as well as for the stage. Steinman received an honorary doctorate from Amherst in 2013, and Reunion weekend of 2019 featured a 50th-anniversary revival of his musical The Dream Engine
Jessica Bruder ’00: “I Lived in a Van to Write the Book Behind Nomadland. The Fear Is Real.”
Bruder, whose 2018 nonfiction book was the basis for the recent Oscar-winning film, writes for The New York Times about what it’s like for van-dwelling workers to live with the threat of “the knock.”
Amy Ziering ’83, #MeToo’s Preeminent Documentarian, Is Just Getting Started
Bustle profiles Ziering, maker of several influential films—including The Invisible War, The Hunting Ground, On the Record and Allen v. Farrow—that address sexual assault.
Amherst College Knowledge
You probably know about Joseph Hardy Neesima, class of 1870, the first Japanese citizen to graduate from any American college. Several other Japanese students attended Amherst in the decades after Neesima. Do you know the name and class year of the graduate who went on to found the Non-Church Movement in Japan and become an influential intellectual and pacifist? Submit your answer here.
We will give a copy of Eye Mind Heart to three randomly chosen people with the correct response! To mark Amherst’s Bicentennial, the College has commissioned three keepsake books. Visit the Bicentennial website to learn more.