Dear SOAN students,
Welcome back for another year at Colgate! I hope you had a great summer and are excited about starting a new semester of courses and activities. If you are studying off-campus this semester, I wish you the best during your time away from Colgate. I will be serving again as department chair of SOAN this year, and I’m writing with some information to help you make the most of SOAN opportunities and events in the Fall 2014 term. Please read on…
A New Space for SOAN Students
I encourage you all to visit the newly renovated SOAN Resource Room, in Alumni 429/430, and especially the portion on the west side of the building that is dedicated as a student work area. We really hope that you will use this space to study, collaborate with your fellow students and faculty advisors, and work on the computers that we have there. As you can see in the picture, we have four computers for your use, as well as an open work area where you can plug in your own laptops or other devices. We are working on allowing printing for SOAN students from these computers and hope to have that capability available soon. There is also a whiteboard in this room where you can write announcements and express your creativity. Please make this area your workspace and help us to keep it clean and accessible for everyone.
Our newly renovated Resource Room is a great place for SOAN students to work.
SOAN Faculty and Courses
In the fall we have several faculty on leave from teaching: Professors Jordan Kerber, Paul Lopes, Mary Moran, Elana Shever, Alicia Simmons, and Jacqueline Villarubia are all on leave! Why do professors go on leave? The most common reason is that they need some time away from teaching in order to start up a new research project or write up the results from one. If you previously had one of these faculty members as your advisor, you will be temporarily transferred to another SOAN professor who will serve as your advisor.
This semester we also welcome two new visiting faculty members: Dr. Joe Gibbons, from the University of Albany, and Dr. Lavinia Nicolae, joining us from New Mexico. Professor Gibbons is a sociologist who studies social inequality, especially in the context of urban United States communities; Professor Nicolae is an anthropologist who studies the impact of laws and policies affecting same sex marriage. Each of them will bring their research on these topics into the courses that they teach, and I think you will find them very interesting opportunities. As I write this note, we still have openings available in the courses that they are offering this semester. I encourage you to speak with your SOAN faculty advisor or me if you are looking for a course to take this semester.
SOAN Events – Fall 2014
This year marks the 50th anniversary of “Freedom Summer,” a key event in the Civil Rights social movements that impacted U.S. history and race relations in the twentieth century—Colgate first-year students read a book about Freedom Summer for their summer reading project. In recognition of this history, SOAN is sponsoring a yearlong series of events on the theme of “Civil Rights and Social Movements”—you will see tie-ins with these events in many of your courses in Anthropology and Sociology this year. In addition, we are continuing many of the same community-building events that we offered last year—including happy hours and Cho-Dunkin’ Tuesdays! Please check the weekly news and events emails that we will send throughout the semester for more details about coming events. Here is a list of some of our keys events for the fall term:
Tuesday, September 9, 8:15am-noon:
Cho-Dunkin’ Tuesday; yogurt and donuts served in the SOAN lounge.
Friday, September 12, 6pm:
Screening of Freedom on My Mind with filmmaker Connie Field; part of the Friday Night Film Series. BBQ at 6pm and film at 7:30pm on the Academic Quad.
Tuesday, September 23, 7pm:
Screening of The Throwaways with filmmakers Bhawin Suchak and Ira McKinley (http://vimeo.com/40812791). Love Auditorium, Olin Hall.
Tuesday, October 21, 8:15am-noon:
Cho-Dunkin’ Tuesday; yogurt and donuts served in the SOAN lounge.
Thursday, October 16, 5-7pm:
SOAN Happy Hour. Donovan’s Pub. SOAN students are invited to enjoy free food and drink with faculty and learn more about fellow students’ summer research experiences.
Tuesday, October 28, 7pm:
Nicole Fabricant lecture on “Food Justice: Native Peoples Struggle for Land, Rights, and Resources in Santa Cruz, Bolivia.” Persson Hall Auditorium.
Tuesday, November 11, 8:15am-noon:
Cho-Dunkin’ Tuesday; yogurt and donuts served in the SOAN lounge.
Thursday, November 13, 5-7pm:
“Let’s Talk about…Elections and Civil Rights.” Panel discussion and happy hour.
Tuesday, December 9, 8:15am-noon:
Cho-Dunkin’ Tuesday; yogurt and donuts served in the SOAN lounge.
Keeping Up With SOAN News
SOAN implemented a few ways to keep up with SOAN news and events last year that we will continue this term:
(1) Weekly SOAN email updates—please don’t just hit DELETE! These updates are quick and have a lot of good information in them.
(2) The SOAN Blog: http://blogs.colgate.edu/sociology-and-anthropology. We want more student-generated content for the blog, so please consider submitting a post—we will give a $10 Bookstore gift card to students who submit a SOAN-related post.
(3) The SOAN Opportunities Tumblr: http://soan-colgate.tumblr.com/. This is where we post opportunities for all kinds of academic programs: fellowships, off-campus study, summer schools, graduate programs, etc. Please check it out and forward any opportunities to me for posting.
I wish you all the very best in your courses and other campus activities this semester. Please stop by and say “hi” some time this semester—my office is in Alumni 419.
Sincerely,
Chris Henke
Chair, SOAN Department