"There are a variety of reasons why I wound up a novelist, but a very big one is Amherst College," the 2016 honorary degree recipient told The Armenian Weekly.
Hailing the College as "a national leader in expanding access to college for low-income students," the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation named Amherst the 2016 recipient of a prize that will be used to close what President Biddy Martin calls "invisible opportunity gaps." In a New York Times column about the award, Frank Bruni described Amherst as an "exemplar" and "way, way ahead of most of its peers" in enrolling low-income students.
"I think that, in our society, the idea of motherhood is pathologically ill, and even well-meaning people assume martyrdom in a mother," says the best-selling novelist in a recent New Yorker interview.
Jamie Horowitz '98, president of Fox Sports National Networks, is garnering national attention for his plan to transform FS1, the cable sports network of 21st Century Fox. "This is the mission," Horowitz told The New York Times: "Two thoughtful guys in a format that allows them to say incisive things that other people hadn't considered or weren't exposed to."
A Boston Globe article on quirky commencements describes Amherst's practice of giving each graduate a Conway Cane—a symbol of "how a college education can support students' lives long after they leave school." The tradition dates to the 1800s and was revived and reshaped by the class of 2003.
He studied mathematics, law and business during his long career, but for Bob Ellis '43, one passion he never thought he'd experience again was flying. Then, this month, the 95-year-old former U.S. Navy airman found himself once again in the cockpit.
Ronald C. Rosbottom, the Winifred L. Arms Professor in the Arts and Humanities and professor of French and European studies, will serve as a judge on the nonfiction panel for the 2016 National Book Awards. He is the author of When Paris Went Dark: The City of Light Under German Occupation, 1940-1944, which was long-listed in that same category in 2014.
The April 8 New York Times Book Review features a new memoir by Catherine Newman '90. "As she sees it," the reviewer notes, "the categories of together and apart are woefully insufficient to describe the sometimes sublime, sometimes claustrophobic relationship between mother and child."
Life is a Dream, by composer and music professor Lewis Spratlan and librettist and Spanish professor James Maraniss, has a long and unusual history. Completed in 1978, it won a Pulitzer Prize in 2000 but was never fully staged until 2010. Now it has won the Charles Ives Opera Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
A son of English professor William H. Pritchard '53 published an essay about teaching the same book, in the same week, as his dad.
In an interview with Jewish Journal about his New World Haggadah, Spanish professor Ilan Stavans said the diversity of the Jewish experience should be reflected in the Passover seder: "As a Mexican Jew who immigrated to the United States, for years I have felt a more diverse, more pluralistic, inclusive delivery was needed."
If Marisa Parham has her way, future students won't just study Gettysburg, they'll be there for the battle. Parham, professor of English and director of the Five College Digital Humanities Project, told New England Public Radio how virtual reality could make that happen, and what she's doing to help.
“[H]uman rights would be the key to securing U.S. interests and recapturing American ideals,” wrote Vanessa Walker in an essay for the Miller Center of Public Affairs’ First Year 2017 project, which is designed to influence the national conversation during the first year of the new presidential administration.
Twelve students and recent grads were awarded Fulbrights for the 2015-16 academic year, continuing a trend that has lasted more than a decade, and that has consistently placed Amherst high on The Chronicle of Higher Education's list of “top producers.”
In The Right Wrong Man, Lawrence Douglas, Amherst’s James J. Grosfeld Professor of Law, Jurisprudence and Social Thought, “deftly delivers disquisitions on nuanced legal questions as if they were plot points in a thriller, making his demanding book a pleasure even for readers unschooled in the particulars of international law,” according to the review.