News & Events Amherst in the News

Author Min Jin Lee, who will join the College as a writer-in-residence starting in the 2019-2020 academic year, recently spoke with WBUR’s On Point about being an immigrant in America, and on its elite college campuses.

The piece cited three recent pieces on this theme, a New Yorker column, “Stonehenge,” a New York Times opinion piece, “Breaking My Own Silence,” and an interview she gave to The Guardian.

"I’m going to sound like an optimist here,” she told The Guardian. “We are having a dark moment in the American political climate regarding undocumented migrants and asylum seekers but, then again, the history of immigration in America has always been checkered.”

“In the United States we have two competing mythologies about immigration. On the one hand, we believe that different kinds of races make up an American person. On the other, a deep nativist strain keeps resurfacing. Nevertheless, there has also been strong resistance to nativism. Frederick Douglass, for instance, called the United States a 'composite nation' when he argued against the Chinese Exclusion Act [of 1882].”

Her three-year appointment to Amherst’s English department came about after her appearance at the College’s LitFest in March 2018.

The Mead Art Museum’s exhibition, Dimensionism: Modern Art in the Age of Einstein, is getting attention.

“The exhibition challenges the narrative that Western culture is split into two cultures, science and the humanities,” wrote the Christian Science Monitor, which interviewed Vanja Malloy, the Mead Museum’s curator of American art and the exhibition’s organizer.

“Both art and science challenge our idea of what we see as reality,” Malloy told the Monitor. “And science is something that informs our worldview whether or not we like to admit it.”

Other recent write-ups included pieces in the Springfield, MA Republican and the Art Newspaper.

The exhibit, which opened at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive last November, runs through July 28 at the Mead. The exhibition features approximately 70 artworks and is accompanied by an illustrated exhibition catalogue published by MIT Press.

Amherst College’s newly-announced Climate Action Plan, that sets a goal for the College to achieve carbon neutrality by 2030, drew the attention of news outlets in the region, including the Daily Hampshire Gazette, WWLP-22 News, and the Daily Collegian at UMass-Amherst.

At its January 25-26, 2019, meeting, the Board of Trustees unanimously approved the College’s plan, which is consistent with Amherst’s strategic plan and the Board’s 2015 Statement on Sustainability and Investment Policy and follows President Biddy Martin’s recommendation to the Board.

“The financial costs of the Climate Action Plan will be substantial, but they will also be manageable with the support of our entire community and careful financial and budgetary decisions that allow us to pursue this important work alongside other key priorities,” Chairman of the Board of Trustees Andrew Nussbaum ’85 said in a letter quoted by the Gazette. “The plan represents a necessary investment in the future not just of our college but the world our graduates will inhabit.”

Renowned author and National Book Award finalist Min Jin Lee, who will join the College as a writer-in-residence starting in the 2019-2020 academic year, was recently the subject of a profile in the Boston Globe.

The New York Times best-selling author of Pachinko (2017) moved from New York to Boston this fall to start a yearlong fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study at Harvard. Lee is currently at work on American Hagwon, the final installment of her Korean diaspora trilogy, which began with Free Food for Millionaires (2007) and continued with Pachinko. The new novel is set in Boston.

She told the Globe that for each novel, she interviews “100 people, easily. Some are half-hour interviews, some are days long, where I follow people around,” she said. “So let’s say I’m writing a lawyer character — I’d take 10 people who do what she does, and cobble someone together.”

Her three-year appointment to Amherst’s English department came about after her appearance at the College’s LitFest in March 2018.

A recent profile in USA Today described Sen. Chris Coons ’85 as a “Republican whisperer” often caught in the middle of partisan debate, especially the fiercest one to date.

“It’s no surprise to those who know Coons that he was in the middle of the Senate’s singular bipartisan moment during the spectacle that has been Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing,” USA Today wrote. “Coons, a Delaware Democrat, is a one-time college Republican who has made a point of building relationships across the aisle, through travel, prayer meetings and work on legislation.”

“I would say it’s my mother tongue,” Coons joked, responding to the assertion that he can “speak Republican.”

“Coons once described himself, during his early years at Amherst College, as ‘sort of an Alex P. Keaton,’ the fictional, Ronald Reagan-loving teenager from the 1980s sitcom ‘Family Ties.’”

“George Will was one of my heroes when I was an undergraduate,” he said. 

“His political conversion came after he grew disillusioned with U.S. policy in South Africa and was exposed to extreme poverty while studying in Kenya. Within a year of founding a college Republican group, he was arguing the Democratic side in a debate and setting a new life course,” USA Today wrote. Coons has represented Delaware as senator since 2010.

Inside UCR – Kaufman, an assistant professor of music composition at the University of California, Riverside, wrote Emily & Sue as part of Amherst College’s Bicentennial. Incorporating “pop, folk, musical theater, madrigals, and Sacred Harp influences,” the opera is based on evidence that the poet may have had a love affair with sister-in-law Susan Huntington Gilbert Dickinson.

“Emily & Sue debuted for a live audience in June [2022] at Amherst College,” writes Julia Woock. “The album with 15 songs was released November 11 and the live New York City premiere of Emily & Sue was at the National Opera Center on November 13. The performance also became a film,” directed by Ron Bashford ’84, associate professor of theater and dance at Amherst. “Kaufman returned to Amherst for a film screening and Q&A, hosted by the Emily Dickinson Museum, on Nov. 30.”

“I think composition is an extraordinarily powerful platform to highlight marginalized identities and stories that have normally been considered taboo,” Kaufman is quoted as saying. “Given how LGBTQ+ rights are being challenged in the states or are non-existent in so many places, this is an opportunity to be an activist through your art, and to give voice to such an important, but little discussed story.”

Arkansas Democrat Gazette – “Freddie Lee Scott is one of the best kept secrets in Arkansas sports,” writes columnist Wally Hall. “The Grady native went to Amherst College, where he was named to the Little All-America team. He spent 10 years catching passes in the NFL and was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 2001.” Now Scott is part of the latest class of inductees into his home state’s hall of fame.

Hall’s article describes the process by which the 50 members of the board of directors of the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame selected the inductees. “This year's class is one of the most interesting in history, as the class of nine represents five distinct areas,” he wrote. These areas include football, basketball, baseball, tennis and sports broadcasting.

A Black studies major at Amherst, Scott was a member not only of the football team but also of the basketball and track teams. He went on to be a wide receiver for the NFL from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s, playing for the Baltimore Colts and then the Detroit Lions. Today he works for the Arkansas Department of Education.

Forbes – Rohde has garnered a spot on the magazine’s 2023 list of North America’s rising young stars in the field of venture capital. She is a co-founder of the San Francisco-based Outset Capital, “a new $8 million fund investing in markets that are new and growing, like solar, AI and biologics,” her citation reads, “or those who have undergone change, like large language models, blockchain and regulation.”

“At Outset, she’s invested in companies like Medra, Charge Robotics and Meliora,” the citation continues. “She now writes a weekly newsletter helping founders find operation hires.”

Rohde graduated from Amherst with a triple major in economics, English and mathematics. Before co-founding Outset, was chief of staff at Generally Intelligent, an AI research startup, and Sourceress, an AI recruiting startup. She has also worked in political communications.

Because of Them We Can – “Gregory is an accomplished astronaut, test pilot, flight safety program manager, and former Air Force veteran who served as NASA’s Deputy Administrator from 2002 to 2005,” notes a website dedicated to celebrating Black excellence. Gregory also became, in 1985, the first African American to pilot a space shuttle.

The article features Instagram posts and quotes several sources that highlight other notable aspects of Gregory’s life and career, including the fact that he is the nephew of Dr. Charles Drew (class of 1926), the “famous surgeon and pioneer in blood plasma production and preservation” after whom Amherst’s Black Culture House is named. Gregory attended the College before enrolling in and graduating from the U.S. Air Force Academy. 

Gregory’s many awards and honors include “the Defense Superior Service Medal, the National Intelligence Medal of Achievement, the NASA Distinguished Service Medal, 2 NASA Outstanding Leadership Medals, a National Society of Black Engineers Distinguished National Scientist Award” and more. 

“Thank you for your contributions, Mr. Gregory!” the article concludes. “Because of you, we can!”

CBS Sports – Rooks, an Emmy-winning associate director and associate producer for CBS Sports and Paramount+, commented on what the World Cup has meant to him since childhood. The diversity of the current U.S. team, he said, “reflects the nation in a way that I can relate to, especially growing up playing soccer at the youth and collegiate level.”

“My earliest, distinct memory of the World Cup actually came in 1998 when I was seven years old. I just started playing the sport,” said Rooks, who was one of very few Black children on his team in the suburbs of Princeton, N.J. “And then after the 2002 World Cup, I felt like I wanted to dedicate my life to the entire sport because I had a couple of years of play under my belt where I understood the tactics at a higher level …. Seeing these young breakout players, Landon Donovan and [DaMarcus] Beasley most notably, made me fall in love with that U.S. team.”

Rooks also shared his thoughts about the promising players on the current U.S. team and their prospects for the 2022 World Cup as of Nov. 22.

The Hindu – “Maths has the potential to connect us to universal truths that we can each access directly with our bodies and minds,” says Ravikumar, an assistant professor at the Chennai Mathematical Institute. He has developed Geometry of Vision, a series of interactive, open-source online learning modules for students in India.

“Ravikumar’s own journey into interactive learning has an unusual background,” writes Nahla Nainar. “Growing up in the U.S., he obtained a double major in Maths and English Literature from Amherst College, Massachusetts, before pursuing his Ph.D. in Maths at Rutgers University.” He has also worked as a theater artist and puppeteer.

The Geometry of Vision series is designed in e-book format and accessible through an “Interactive Sandbox” that Ravikumar developed with New York Times science writer Aatish Bhatia. “I hope this course can connect with a wide variety of learners, not only in terms of life experiences and mathematical backgrounds but also geographic locations,” he is quoted as saying. “One of the aspects I love most about Maths research is how it can bring together people of vastly different cultures, classes, and nationalities in a shared exploration.”

The Conversation — “My research on the history of French home cooking reveals how restyling dinner scraps first became fashionable more than a century ago,” writes Samantha Presnal, a fellow in the College’s Center for Humanistic Inquiry.

“In 19th-century France, leftovers were a way of life for the lower classes,” she continues. “Because of their association with poverty, leftovers were stigmatized up until the late 19th century. But by the turn of the 20th century, it had become hip to whip something up with the remains from last night’s meal.”

Presnal quotes from an 1892 “encyclopedic cookbook” called 150 Ways to Accommodate Leftovers, and presents the book’s recipe for “Turkey en fricasée.” “In the 1890s top chefs also started to contribute recipes to domestic cooking magazines,” she notes, giving several examples. She explains how “culinary literature proliferated in the late 19th century during a period of rapid growth for the popular press,” which was also an era of increasing literacy and home-economics education for girls across France: young women were “taught that their talent for accommodating leftovers was a reflection of their thrift and resourcefulness—the markers of middle-class French femininity.”

The Berkshire Edge – “Curry, a now retired Bishop Suffragan of the Episcopal Church in Connecticut, has dedicated more than a decade to working with families of victims of gun violence,” writes Hannah Van Sickle. The clergyman is a co-founder of Swords to Plowshares Northeast, “a nonprofit rooted in the transformation of guns into garden tools.”

Curry serves as head of operations and chief blacksmith for the organization, which is inspired by and named for a verse in the Book of Isaiah. He helped to launch the initiative in the wake of the December 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., which was part of his diocese. Swords to Plowshares has partnered with a Colorado organization called RAWTools on a nationwide gun-buyback program and, before the COVID pandemic, taught blacksmithing skills to incarcerated people. 

Curry is also a founding member of Bishops United Against Gun Violence, a contributor to the anthology Reclaiming the Gospel of Peace and a board member of Mothers United Against Violence in Hartford, Conn.

The New York Review of Books – Read an excerpt from Nabokov Noir: Cinematic Culture and the Art of Exile (Cornell University Press, November 2022), in which Parker, a visiting assistant professor of Russian, examines Russian émigré writer Vladimir Nabokov’s “sustained engagement with silent and early sound cinema.”

Parker describes how Nabokov “was born three years after the first film screening in Russia, and his childhood in early twentieth-century St. Petersburg paralleled the nascent medium’s development.” The young writer then fled with his family to Weimar Berlin, where he frequented movie theaters as a friend of film critic Georgy Gessen. Nabokov also appeared in front of the camera as a film extra and tried writing film scripts.

“Russian émigrés with occupations in the cinema feature across Nabokov’s Russian fiction and drama—the extra Ganin in Mary (1926), the actress Marianna in The Man from the U.S.S.R. (1927), and the producer Valentinov in The Luzhin Defense (1929–1930),” notes Parker. “To Nabokov, the spectrality of film seemed not to distort reality but to hold a mirror up to the ghostlike and insubstantial existence of dispossessed Russians in cities like Berlin and Paris.”

The New York Times – The Emily Dickinson Museum’s Homestead “has reopened after a two-year, $2.5 million renovation that restores the once-austere, sparsely decorated interiors to their richly furnished, almost Technicolor 1850s glory,” says an article by Jennifer Schuessler, featuring photos by Jillian Freyer.

“Few writers’ work is as intertwined with a place as Dickinson’s is with the yellow brick house at 280 Main Street, not far from Amherst College,” writes Schuessler. The article describes the history of the Homestead and The Evergreens (the museum’s second building, still closed for repairs), and mentions the influence of the recent Apple TV+ series Dickinson on public interest in the poet. It details how museum staff drew upon historical clues to renovate the Homestead with period-accurate wallpaper, carpeting, newspapers and other touches.

The reporter quotes the museum’s executive director, Jane Wald, and tour guide Melissa Cybulski.