A committee of five Latin American studies professors submitted a proposal for a new major in Latinx and Latin American Studies (LLAS) to the Committee on Educational Policy on Saturday, March 25, and it is currently under review. If approved, the LLAS major, which has been advocated for by Latinx student movements for decades, will be offered in the spring of 2018.
After a controversial election process that included Judiciary Council (JC) complaints and a runoff election, the Amherst Association of Students (AAS) announced on Wednesday morning, April 12 that the student body elected Aditi Krishnamurthy ’18 as AAS president for the upcoming year. Krishnamurthy received only two more votes than did fellow candidate Phillip Yan ’18.
During the inaugural State of the College Address on Wednesday, March 29, President Biddy Martin announced that Valentine Residence Hall will be renovated this summer.
In an email interview with Chief of Campus Operations Jim Brassord, the renovations to the dorm “will be a light-touch cosmetic upgrade of the interior finishes in the corridors and common areas.” The common areas will be repainted, carpeted and installed with new lighting fixtures.
The college’s academic curriculum is under review for an update in the upcoming school year by committees formed of students, faculty and staff members that plan to develop changes to school-wide academic policies, including revising the requirements for make-up exams and extending the “Freshman Drop.”
The faculty passed two of the proposals on Tuesday, April 4.
Elaine Vilorio is a double major in black studies and the interdisciplinary major Latin American and Latino studies. Her thesis examines educational disparities between different race and class groups in her hometown in Hackensack, New Jersey. Her adviser is Assistant Professor of American Studies and Sociology Leah Schmalzbauer.
Alexander Pushkin is Russia’s national poet, and “Eugene Onegin” is his most resonant masterpiece. It is no easy feat to transfer the life of poetry to the stage, but it was the burden director Rimas Tuminas had to bear in his much-anticipated and much-acclaimed reimagination of Pushkin’s seminal poem. The production, shown in Amherst Cinema, lasts a little under two hundred minutes, and in that time presents a jarringly contorted vision of the world of “Onegin,” one in which regret mangles its chronology.
Before Polina Barskova began to read her poems this past Sunday afternoon at the Jones Library in Amherst, she said something very wise: “Poetry is not to be understood but to be dealt with.” This comment proved to be especially fitting, at least for me, as she continued to read three of her wonderful poems in the original Russian — a language completely foreign to me — along with the accompanying English translations.
