Our very own Hannah Fitton appears today in a profile on the Colgate website.  The story highlights Hannah’s accomplishments as a member of our swimming team as well as her role as a cellist in the university orchestra.

In addition to the infomation in the profile, you might be interested to learn about Hannah’s research as one of Colgate’s Alumni Memorial Scholars, working in the Balkans on forensic anthropology, or the study of human skeletal remains and what they can tell us about past times and cultures.  Hannah is building on this experience as part of an honors project in SOAN this term.

Finally, and probably most important, Hannah is a cheesehead from Appleton, Wisconsin, like yours truly.

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Sociology major Marshall Scott ’14 delivered the keynote address at the opening ceremony for the 2014 MLK Week. His insightful remarks engaged the Colgate Community to consider what does it mean to “do better” in our efforts to promote “full equality for people of color, women, the poor, and the LGBTQ community.”

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Jonathan Hyslop

Professor Jonathan Hyslop recently contributed an article to a forum in the journal Safundi  on the documentary film ‘Searching for Sugar Man.’  The movie won the Oscar for Best Documentary at the 2012 Academy Awards.

It tells the story of how music recorded in the 1970s by Sixto Rodriguez, a Latino construction worker from Detroit, developed a cult following in South Africa. There, his songs became associated with opposition to the authoritarian apartheid government. But strangely enough, the artist did not know of his fame in the southern hemisphere, and South African fans thought, wrongly, that their hero was internationally famous.

The movie recounts how two South Africans tracked down Rodriguez, who had long given up performing, and how this led him to a new career as a minor international rock star. In the Safundi forum, a number of critics argued that ‘Searching for Sugar Man’ is misleading and is ultimately conservative in its implications.

Hyslop, however, contends in his article that the film, while flawed, opens up some important sociological issues about youth, politics and global cultural connections. He shows how the influence of the American ‘counter-culture,’ of which Rodriguez was part, can validly be understood as an element contributing to change in South Africa (although a small one). And he suggests that the movie has a positive message about the working class in America.

Professor Hyslop’s article can be read on his academia.edu page.

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