2016: Fall

Editor
Emily Gold Boutilier
(413) 542-8275
magazine@amherst.edu

Alumni Editor
Betsy Cannon Smith ’84
(413) 542-2031

Print Design Director
Ronn Campisi

Assistant Editor
Katherine Duke ’05

Featured Stories

Before Dallas

How to Spark Imagination and Inspire Debate

We All Get Captured

Amherst Made: Night Flying

College Row

News & Views from Campus

New Dorms Integrate Academic, Social Life

The four new residence halls that opened this fall are more than just places to sleep; they’re blurring the line between inside and outside the classroom.

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Reframing the American Dream

In a talk in LeFrak, author Ta-Nehisi Coates said the mission of his life is confronting racism.

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When Students Think Otherwise, Or, how Amherst is like a good loaf of bread

Welcoming new students at Convocation, President Biddy Martin unpacked one of the more curious adjectives used to describe the College: yeasty.

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Best Shows of the Season

Can't get Hamilton tickets? Amherst’s resident playwright offers five recommendations on what to see on and off Broadway.

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Building Community, Two Wheels at a Time

A student-led bike share is making campus more open and more green.

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New Ways to Talk About Guns

At Amherst this year, a subject of intense national debate is inviting close scholarly scrutiny.

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Photography for the Modern World

Justin Kimball, professor of art, has traveled around the country photographing small towns brought to the brink of obsolescence by the nation’s economic crisis.

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Mascot Suggestions Wanted

In 2017 Amherst will adopt an official mascot for the first time, and that mascot will be chosen by the community at large.

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Meet the New Class

Statistics about the Class of 2020

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Name Change for the Career Center

A seven-figure gift is helping the newly named Loeb Center for Career Exploration and Planning expand its work in connecting students’ intellectual interests to possible career choices.

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Environmental Leaders: The Next Generation

A $2 million revolving fund will reduce greenhouse gas emissions, cut campus energy use and help students develop real solutions to today’s environmental problems.

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Q&A: Exposing Plants to Disease

A new grant from the National Institutes of Health will support Associate Professor of Biology Michael Hood and colleagues from two other institutions as they study the evolutionary ecology of disease transmission.

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Courses: Beyond the Punch Line

It’s a subculture often dismissed with a punch line: Nigerians who email unsuspecting victims and convince them to send money in return for nonexistent goods or deals. This semester, 25 Amherst students looked beyond the punch line to the young perpetrators of the infamous scam.

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Research: Let Kids Lose

Unearned victories can make it harder for young children to assess situations, make decisions and figure out whom to trust.

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Beyond Campus

Alumni in the World

Putting a Pin in It

A colleague advised her to “break Pinterest.” So she did—but only because her students get so much out of it.

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Water, Un-Mucked

When he took his daughter for a swim, the water turned her bathing suit brown—and shifted his career path.

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Sending Doctors to Factories

A healthcare program finds uncommon ways to care for women and babies around the world.

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Science, Kids and Building Things

In a small museum, he saw a chance to combine three things he really liked.

A Job in Riyadh

An out-of-the blue phone call brought an alumnus to a new job in Saudi Arabia.

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Amherst Creates

Arts News & Reviews

Short Takes

Amherst alumni and faculty offer plenty of music and reading material for cozy autumn evenings.

Reading Recommentations

TV Review: Speaking Teen

Two alumnae bonded in the writers’ room for an MTV comedy.

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Film Review: The Women of Wall Street

In Hollywood’s first female-dominated depiction of corporate America, there are just as many women behind the camera as there are on screen.

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Profile: How to Launch a Theater

She was in a creative wasteland and worked to find a way out.

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Theater Review: The Spiritual Cost of Success

Ever since graduating from Amherst and earning an MFA in acting, Jiehae Park ’02 has followed a dual-skill path as actor and playwright, earning a suitcase full of prizes, fine-tuning her writing in half a dozen major workshops and staging multiple readings of her plays.

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