News & Events In the Classroom

Inside Iran, a seminar course being taught this semester by Monica Ringer, associate professor of history and Asian languages and civilizations, explores contemporary Iran from a historical and interdisciplinary perspective.

Article by Katherine Duke ’05
Photos by Rob Mattson

Plum. Vanilla. Licorice. Leather. Oak. Old Band-Aid.

These were just a few of the scents that students were challenged to identify at a recent meeting of their seminar on “Wine, History and the Environment.” Working in small groups, the students moved around the Environmental Geology Lab of the Beneski Earth Sciences building and took turns sniffing small vials of the chemical compounds that create these aromas in wine, trying to locate each smell on an aroma wheel. Later, they sipped water subtly flavored with other compounds—as well as some actual 2009 Malbec from Argentina—and attempted to describe the tastes.   

April 29, 2015
By Rachel Rogol

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Seven students in Professor Justin Kimball's advanced photography course "Eight People, One Place and a Book" spent the fall 2014 semester traveling to photograph the Village of Turners Falls, Mass., about half an hour from Amherst. Upon arrival each week, they split up to take photographs on their own with the goal of building individual bodies of work. 

February 23, 2015

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Missy Roser ’94, head of research and instruction at Frost Library, and
Rhonda Cobham-Sander, professor of Black studies and English

Thanks to the digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC), an entire collection on Panama and the Panama Canal is available online. For Rhonda Cobham-Sander, professor of Black studies and English at Amherst, the collection inspired a collaborative course—and promises a long-term international partnership.

Several years ago, Leah Rosenberg, associate professor of English at the University of Florida and fellow scholar of early Caribbean literature, introduced Cobham-Sander to dLOC, and Cobham-Sander was impressed: “They can digitize materials that were published long ago, or published in very small editions—the kinds of things that, when we were doing research as graduate students, we had to look long and hard to find.” Housed at the university, dLOC digitizes materials from libraries and archives across the Caribbean.

February 18, 2015

February 18, 2015

The growing season is in full swing at Book & Plow Farm but the spring semester already saw a harvest —of knowledge.

The farm is now in its second year of providing organic vegetables to Amherst College’s Dining Services (and a handful of other customers), with some produce from this year's crop --Red Leaf Lettuce, Romaine Lettuce, Bok Choy, Scallions and Radishes-- already in the meal plans for Reunion 2014. The on-campus farm is expanding its operation, leasing more land from the college and coming up with increasingly ambitious plans for plantings.

by William Sweet

In Patricia O’Hara’s popular new introductory chemistry course, the periodic table of elements includes nitrogen, mozzarella and prosciutto.

“Molecular Gastronomy and Food Science: From Test Tubes to Taste Buds” looks like a cross between a cooking class and a science lab—and that’s the point, said O’Hara, the Amanda and Lisa Cross Professor of Chemistry.

by William Sweet

“Global Valley” sounds like a contradiction, but the course, taught by Professors Lisa Brooks and Karen Sánchez-Eppler, delivers an ambitious amount of historical and cultural knowledge from sites barely a half-hour drive from campus.

Article by Katherine Duke ’05

Photos by Rob Mattson

Human beings seem unique among species in our ability to communicate through words. But what about communication without words—through gestures? When a small child points a finger, or looks where someone else is pointing, in what sense is she engaged in “communication”? Is she using intellectual abilities that go beyond those of a dog or a chimpanzee? How can we tell?

Encounters with Nature is an Amherst College First-Year seminar taught by Professors Nicola Courtright and Rick Lopez '93 that explores the nature surrounding the college, including the college's Wildlife Sanctuary.

by William Sweet

How are we all going to die? There are so many options, changing from week to week: killer tsunamis, mile-wide meteors, avian flu, earthquakes school shootings, and dirty bombs. If you need a little distraction from this gloom, maybe it’s time to take in a movie. The Poseidon Adventure? Armageddon? The Day After Tomorrow? Melancholia? Something with zombies?

By Caroline Hanna

Gigi Green and Kaitlyn McInnis '13 had lunch at Valentine Dining Hall recently.

To see them eating a meal together, you might think Kaitlyn McInnis ’13 and Amherst resident Gigi Green make an odd couple: McInnis is 21 and Green is 88.

But the pair has many things in common. Both women are regular exercisers: Green frequents the Planet Fitness Gym in nearby Hadley and McInnis is a forward on the college’s hockey team. Both enjoy meditating. And both have deep interests in history, particularly World War II.

“Your welcome letter found me all engrossed in the history of Sulphuric Acid!!!!!”

—Emily Dickinson, first-year student at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, writing to her brother Austin, February 17, 1848.

Emily Dickinson, scientist?

By William Sweet

As Halloween approaches, witches fly through our imaginations, flitting through Western culture on a broomstick ride through children’s stories, TV sitcoms and movies. Witches are older than Christianity and as current as a Broadway musical hit.