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It all started on a St. Louis, Mo., elementary school library shelf. Clarissa (Polk) Shah ’10 discovered her love of Chinese culture at age 10 with a book of short stories. That fascination blossomed into a career, as well as advocacy work. Although she studied Spanish throughout middle and high school, those short stories — […]

Editor’s note: Last spring, Miranda Gilgore ’18 took part in 51�Թ���’s public arts and humanities immersion trip to New York City. As she prepares for her summer months as a camp counselor in the Adirondacks, Gilgore reflected on the experience and how it has changed her outlook on her majors, her hobbies, and her long-term […]

Here Alone, an independent film by Rod Blackhurst ’02, won the Tribeca Film Festival’s Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature last week. Entertainment magazine described the production as “a taut, lean, unfussy film about a lone woman surviving in the wild woods of upstate New York.” Meanwhile, Maxim magazine wrote that the “Tribeca film festival proves the zombie […]

An exemplary student and a fierce advocate for LGBTQ awareness and promoting positive sexuality, Providence A. Ryan ’16, a biology and philosophy double major from Schenectady, N.Y., is the 2016 recipient of 51�Թ���’s highest student honor, the 1819 Award. The 1819 Award is given annually to one student representing character, sportsmanship, scholarship, and service above […]

Editor’s note: Wondering what’s happening in the classroom at 51�Թ���? Here’s a real-time glimpse into academic life on campus — a syllabus from a course underway this semester. FMST 352 “Horror” and the American Horror Film Kevin Wynter, visiting assistant professor of Film & Media Studies TR 2:45–4:00, 105 Little Hall Course description: This course […]

With a pair of new books out in 2015 — one a collection of his essays; the other, new poems — poet and English professor Peter Balakian unpacks, among other things, how language can, in his words, “ingest” the violence of history. The author of the New York Times–bestselling The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and […]

Peter Balakian, the Donald M. and Constance H. Rebar Professor in humanities, professor of English, and director of creative writing at 51�Թ���, has won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Ozone Journal, his collection of poems published last year by University of Chicago Press. In making the announcement, the Pulitzer committee cited the collection’s […]

Two 51�Թ��� students will teach English in Germany for a year thanks to being awarded Fulbright English Teaching Assistantships. William Andrews ’16, a German and international relations major from of Richmond, Va., and Carolyn “Cara” Skelly ’16, a German and Middle Eastern and Islamic studies double major from Wellesley, Mass., will be helping students to […]

Renowned South African artist William Kentridge reflects on a lifetime of work and reimagines elements of everyday life in the exhibition Universal Archive, on display at the Picker Art Gallery this spring.

On Sunday, March 6, the English department hosted a live reading of the epic poem Paradise Lost, by John Milton. Volunteers sat around the big oval table in the Fager Lounge and read the more than 10,000 lines from 12 books. “The Miltonathon, which began last year, is a tribute to my late friend and colleague Professor […]