News & Events Amherst in the News

The Cut  — Dilg, an actor and musician, and his wife, actor Mimi Kennedy, were interviewed for The Cut’s Love Stories column about their 1960s experience with Operation Match, one of the country’s first computerized dating services. The system matched Dilg with Kennedy while they were students at Amherst and Smith College, respectively—but they didn’t start dating until years later.

The couple told interviewer Hanna Kozlowska about filling out the detailed questionnaires for Operation Match. “I wanted to be taken seriously as the authentic me, not a fake me. I sort of pulled back and said, ‘Well, you know, it would be interesting if I was totally honest about who I am,’” Dilg said. He received Kennedy’s name on his list of matches, but his response to her Catholic high school yearbook photo was, “Oh my God, it’s a nun!” Meanwhile, Kennedy began a relationship with someone else.

The pair briefly crossed paths in person years later at a dance, and finally were brought together by mutual friends in New York in 1974. “And that’s where we met and fell in love. I mean instantly. Wow,” said Dilg. Kennedy added that, when Dilg walked in, “I had that small still voice within me that said, ‘This one’s yours.’” They have been married since 1978. 

Writer’s Digest — Knowlton, who majored in English at Amherst, is the Grand Prize winner of the 22nd annual contest, which rewards excellence in fiction of 1,500 words or fewer. His story, “Bluebird,” focuses on a young boy who finds and buries a dead bird in his family’s yard. 

“On his fifth birthday, his grandfather gives him a book about birds,” begins the story, which Writer’s Digest has printed in its entirety. Knowlton tells of the unnamed boy’s promise to learn all about the birds, his discovery and burial of the beautiful bluebird, and what happens when he brings two neighbors to see the burial site. The story ends abruptly, but not before an ominous suggestion that these events may turn out to be “the first real fulcrum of his life, the root somehow of all that went wrong.”

“Emmett Knowlton grew up in Montclair, N.J.,” reads the author’s bio beneath the story. “He is a graduate of Amherst College and holds an M.F.A. from the University of Montana. His short stories have appeared in The Masters Review and MAYDAY Magazine. He is at work on a novel.”

Weill Cornell Medicine Newsroom — In an article and video celebrating its annual White Coat Ceremony of induction for new students, the New York City medical school focuses in part on Barghout’s life story. Her family emigrated from Egypt to Jersey City, N.J., and experienced homelessness before she enrolled as a first-generation college student at Amherst. 

As a teenager, Barghout found herself “living in a car for months with her two younger siblings after a tragic house fire left her parents in the hospital,” the article explains. “But for years she felt ashamed of this part of her past, keeping it a secret. Then, as a senior at Amherst College, where she was studying neuroscience, she was selected to give a TED Talk about her experience.” 

“I want to feel like I’m making a difference,” Barghout is quoted as saying. “I hope to work with underserved communities and increase awareness of the uneven access to care, and give back by helping others who have struggled like me. With everything I’ve experienced, I feel very impassioned to tackle these inequities and advocate for meaningful changes.”

The Washington Post — Youn, a reporter for The Washington Post, spoke with the author about her writing process, global beauty standards and her activism amid increased anti-Asian violence. Lee recently won South Korea’s Manhae Grand Prize for literature and is working on American Hagwon—the follow-up to her bestselling novels Free Food for Millionaires and Pachinko—as well as a nonfiction book called Name Recognition.

Lee tells Youn why it was important to her to travel to Seoul with her parents to accept the Manhae Prize in person, as the first Korean American writer to receive it: “Recognition of a person like you and me, diasporic Koreans, by an establishment organization, is personally very, very meaningful, because I’ve studied so much about diasporic Koreans and our experience of not being accepted.”

The term hagwon refers to Korean after-school academies or “cram schools”; Lee uses this as a central metaphor in the third novel of her trilogy about the Korean diaspora. “I’ve never met a Korean who doesn’t have a strong opinion about education,” she says. “I’m working on it now trying to explore what education means to Korea, to Koreans and diasporic Koreans. So what I’m really writing about is wisdom.”

Through experiments conducted at Amherst, an international research team led by Hall has created and observed a new class of vortices (tiny whirlpools) in an ultracold gas, reports Lancaster University. Their discovery has been published in Nature Communications.

“Although the vortex medium here is a fluid, it also possesses a set of hidden discrete symmetries. For example, one of the team’s creations had the fourfold symmetry of a square, and another had the symmetries of a four-sided die,” notes the Lancaster article. “The team’s work may have exciting future implications in unconventional realizations of quantum information and computing.”

In addition to Hall, Amherst’s Paula R. and David J. Avenius 1941 Professor of Physics, the researchers included Magnus Borgh of the University of East Anglia; Janne Ruostekoski of Lancaster University; UMass graduate student Alina Blinova; Tuomas Ollikainen, who was visiting Amherst College from Aalto University in Finland; and Yixin (Arthur) Xiao ’19, lead author of the study. “We’re fortunate to have extremely talented and dedicated students who can do these kinds of challenging experiments,” says Hall.

Polich, a track star at Luther L. Wright High School in Ironwood, Mich., and then at Amherst College, is one of 10 athletes to be inducted into the UPSHF at its 51st annual banquet on May 13, 2023, according to The Daily Mining Gazette. 

Polich earned eight running letters in high school and 12 more at Amherst, writes Dennis Grall: “At Amherst College she broke individual 600m and 800m indoor track school records and helped her team break the 4 x 800m relay school record. She qualified to race the 800m and distance medley relay at NCAA nationals, and her relay team twice earned All-American honors.”

The UPSHF is located in Escanaba, Mich., and inducted its first class of athletes in 1972. In addition to Polich and another runner, the 2023 cohort includes standouts in horse racing, coaching, golf, basketball and tennis. 

Washington Parent Media features the Hsu brothers, who are competing in the 2022 World Lacrosse Men’s U21 Championship Tournament in Limerick, Ireland. Dylan is a rising sophomore and lacrosse player at Amherst, and Damon is a rising junior at Lehigh University.

Though the brothers were both born in Washington, D.C., and currently live in Potomac, Md., they are “playing for Team China, representing the national heritage of their grandparents,” writes Chris Dooly. The 11-day tournament includes 23 teams and 500 athletes and was delayed for two years because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“In addition to the two tryouts it took to secure their spots on the team, the brothers also attended the men’s training camp … in Towson, Md. Damon and Dylan Hsu traveled to Dublin, Ireland, at the end of July for more training before Team China’s first game in the tournament began on Thursday, Aug. 11,” Dooly concludes. “Wish these local brothers some luck!”

The Emily Dickinson Museum, owned by Amherst College, reopened to the public on Aug. 16 after two years of pandemic closure and its most significant restoration project ever. “The newly restored and more vivid furnishings allow visitors to experience the home in which Dickinson lived and, most importantly, wrote most of her 1,800 poems,” says an article in The Boston Globe.

Globe correspondent Betsy Groban begins by noting the “unexpected and extraordinary revival” of the reclusive poet’s popularity in recent years, relating to the TV series Dickinson and films such as A Quiet Passion and Wild Nights with Emily. Groban explains the history of the Homestead and the Evergreens, the two Dickinson family residences that today constitute the museum.

Citing museum director Jane Wald, Groban describes the extensive renovation—which focuses on historical accuracy—and names some features guests can expect to see, including a “wonderful interactive display [that] allows visitors the chance to complete several of Dickinson’s unfinished poems,” “a reproduction of one of her legendary white dresses, her writing desk (so tiny!)” and portraits on the walls.

Writing for The Conversation, Melillo, Amherst’s William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of History and Environmental Studies, notes: “Turner authored 71 papers and was the first African American to have his research published in the prestigious journal Science. Although his name is barely known today, Charles Henry Turner [1867–1923] was a pioneer in studying bees and should be considered among the great entomologists of the 19th and 20th centuries.”

“While researching my book on human interactions with insects in world history,” continues Melillo, referring to his 2020 publication The Butterfly Effect, “I became aware of Turner’s pioneering work on insect cognition, which constituted much of his groundbreaking research on animal behavior.”

Melillo’s essay, which has been picked up by numerous other websites, describes Turner’s early life and education, as well as the difficulties he encountered in securing long-term employment at a university; he spent most of his career teaching at Sumner High School in St. Louis. Turner not only conducted and published entomological studies that are still widely cited today, but also wrote extensively about education for African Americans.

The Ohio State University College of Arts and Sciences spotlights Hewitt, who earned her B.A. at Amherst and her Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University before joining the OSU faculty. In her research and teaching, she focuses largely on 18th- and 19th-century U.S. literature, but her interests are wide-ranging.

“I came to the study of literature relatively late—adding an English major in my final year of college,” Hewitt says. “As a political science major, I had written a senior thesis on utopianism and realized that I was particularly interested in imaginative writing about governance and socioeconomic policy. I was lucky enough to have had superb teachers in both literature and political science in both college and graduate school who allowed me to couple these interests.”

The Q&A touches upon Hewitt’s 2020 book, Speculative Fictions: Explaining the Economy in the Early United States; the courses she teaches and a study-abroad program she has led; her advice to students; and her favorite books, music, movies and hobbies. “There’s not much that I don’t like talking about,” she says.

The Santa Fe New Mexican and Rio Grande Sun profile the Amherst alumna who plays grieving mother Helen Atcitty on the acclaimed new murder mystery series. DezBaa’ (also known as Sharon Anne Henderson) is a member of the Navajo Nation, on whose land the show is set.

The articles describe DezBaa’’s current and prior acting roles, and the involvement of other members of her family in Dark Winds and in influencing her career path. They also mention her educational background, which includes studying at Amherst College, Northern New Mexico College and the Institute of American Indian Arts.

“Above all, DezBaa’ has ambitions of becoming a top film creative,” writes Jessica Pollard in the New Mexican, “so she can shine a light on the path for others like her who struggle to find role models in the industry.” Dezbaa’ states her desire to “help other, primarily Indigenous, creatives figure out how to do it.”

(Though not named in the articles, actor Joe Manuel Gallegos Jr. ’05 and supervising sound editor Scott G.G. Haller ’85 also worked on Dark Winds.)

“I am so excited to be recognized as an Eagle Scout, and for young women all across the country to have full access to [Scouts BSA, formerly called Boy Scouts of America],” Ireland told Patch.com. “This is a long time coming; I am so grateful for this opportunity and to be part of the first class of female Eagle Scouts.”

Reporter Lisa Finn outlines Ireland’s successful nine-year campaign to convince the BSA to admit girls, calling her “a trailblazer and pioneer … the first female in Scouting history to successfully complete all requirements to earn the Eagle rank, Boy Scouts’ highest honor.” An accompanying YouTube video presents highlights of the fight. 

Ireland finished her Eagle Scout project, Connect a Vet with a Pet, on Veteran’s Day of 2018, but was told that “she’d have to redo all the work, since she wasn’t an official member when she began …. Undaunted, she forged ahead, and, as a student at Amherst College, she had her official BSA Board of Review on Oct. 1, 2020.” In July 2022, she attended her Court of Honor at New York City’s Avenue Church as a member of Manhattan Council Troop 414.

A Daily Hampshire Gazette article points out that Gromacki has fostered success not only in coaching Amherst College women’s basketball, but also in coaching his young son’s Little League baseball team, the Amherst 12U All-Stars, during recent summers. 

“The Amherst College women’s basketball head coach has brought the Mammoths to nine NCAA Division III Final Fours, winning three national championships. His latest semifinal trip isn’t with his team in purple and white, though,” writes reporter Kyle Grabowski. “Gromacki is  coaching his son Derek Gromacki’s Little League baseball team.” 

“It's just a lot of fun. It's just a joy to be around them and to help the Amherst community,” the coach is quoted as saying (and his son agrees). Compared to college basketball players, the Little Leaguers “can get down on themselves a little bit more. … There are definitely differences just because of the age but, you know, it’s all competition.”

The Philadelphia Jewish Exponent profiles Klein, founder of the Philadelphia Argentine Tango School (PATS). She and the school are part of a “growing effort to rebuild the tango community” in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and, more broadly, since “national political disarray saw tango nearly disappear in Argentina” in the 1970s.

Writer Sasha Rogelberg begins the article by summarizing the history of tango since its cosmopolitan “golden age” in the 1930s through 1950s. When a military dictatorship came to power a few decades later, “Jews started leaving Argentina around the same time tango dancing did.” 

The article mentions Klein’s founding of PATS in 2008, her recent festival performances with dance partner Andres Amarilla, and the shared Jewish heritage that has helped her bond with many dancers in the tango communities of Buenos Aires and Philadelphia. It also describes how she “immediately fell in love with the dance” while studying music theory at Amherst.

Karen Sánchez-Eppler, the L. Stanton Williams 1941 Professor of American Studies and English, is quoted in a Daily Hampshire Gazette article about expansions in historical understanding of the Porter-Phelps-Huntington house. She leads the board of directors of the foundation associated with the 270-year-old house, which is today a museum.

The house and its prosperous farm were “owned by six generations of the same extended family before being turned into a museum in the mid-20th century,” writes reporter Steve Pfarrer. It “has been a treasure trove for historians … providing a valuable window into 18th- and 19th-century life in the Valley.” New research has begun “taking into account the lives of others who once lived and worked on the property: enslaved people, indentured servants, farm and dairy laborers, artisans and seamstresses” as well as “Indigenous people who lived on the land before European settlers arrived.”

“We want to keep expanding the story,” Sánchez-Eppler is quoted as saying during a late-June presentation at the house. She was joined by several other historians and UMass Amherst graduate students who “have done fresh research about the Hadley property that was funded in part by different grants the museum was awarded in recent years.”