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(01/31/24 4:07pm)
The night of Jan. 22 was a bleak one for Middlebury College, the sun setting early on a foggy and eerie campus. Despite the rather grim atmosphere, the main room of the New England Review headquarters on College Street was packed to the brim with roughly 40 students, sitting on extra chairs borrowed from the Bread Loaf Writers Conference building in anticipation of the crowd the event organizers hoped to draw.
(12/07/23 11:00am)
We are a group of 30 Jewish Middlebury students following in the footsteps of Brown University Jews for Ceasefire Now and many other Jewish students at schools such as Yale, Harvard, Columbia and Vanderbilt across the country who have rallied around important demands for justice and peace in Palestine and Israel. Inspired by many of our Jewish teachings about aligning values and actions, we are calling for students, staff and faculty to boycott all Starbucks products sold on campus.
(11/02/23 10:03am)
After a week of incredible events celebrating our campus’ cultural diversity, the International Students’ Organization (ISO) hosted “Radiance,” its annual variety show, a long-standing tradition for passionate and talented international students to entertain the eager crowd with a magical evening of dance, poetry and art.
(10/12/23 10:02am)
I have recently been thinking a lot about alienation at Middlebury. All of you are aware that Ev, who was a friend of mine, died in Forest Hall, but some of you may not know that Yan, another student and beloved teammate of mine, died in the same building over two years ago. The eeriness of two deaths in the same building leads me to wonder how our living spaces could have both direct and indirect impacts on our well-being. I am curious about the reciprocal relationship between two things: how our understanding of the world affects the places we live in, and how the places we live in influence our understanding of the world and our well-being. I think about how, despite often being called a “bubble” protected from the social realities of the world, Middlebury College often mirrors the patterns of alienation seen in our wider society. On a slightly optimistic note, I found that asking these questions in light of the tragedies of Ev and Yan’s deaths made me see more clearly the problem of isolation at Middlebury in general. By investigating mental health on this campus and how it correlates with trends in rural, suburban and urban areas, I believe that it is moreso ideologies — those that seem uncontrollable and anonymous like “the market,” “globalization” and “modernity” — than solely geography that explains how our build environments cause so much alienation.
(10/12/23 10:02am)
An aura of anticipation filled the air last Saturday evening as a nearly full house packed into McCullough Student Center for the return of Nordic music group Dreamers’ Circus. The Wilson Hall stage was packed with over a dozen instruments ranging from a traditional cittern (similar to a lute) to a modern electronic synthesizer, setting the group up for an exciting show. Made up of three highly acclaimed musicians, two from Denmark and one from Sweden, Dreamers’ Circus returned to campus on Oct. 7 as part of their fall 2023 tour after performing at Middlebury three years ago, just before the Covid-19 pandemic. As Ale Carr, Rune Tonsgaard Sørensen and Nikolaj Busk took to the stage, with the lights beginning a colorful, patterned dance, it felt like a triumphant and long-anticipated return for the traditional Nordic band.
(05/11/23 10:06am)
Nothing about the ambience of the Dance Theater in the Mahaney Arts Center (MAC) during the evenings of April 5 and 6 felt normal. Four dancers with solemn faces floated throughout the packed audience before the start of each show. When the lights dimmed, the dancers left the aisles and stood in still uniformity before the crowd. Then, everything went dark. As the percussive sounds of the music grew louder, a sense of anticipation filled the room.
(05/04/23 10:02am)
In “Bright Half-Life,” four decades flash back and forth, sometimes within seconds. Swinging between the life stages leading up to marriage and those that come with having kids, the story is a blur. For the weekend of April 27–29 in the Hepburn Zoo, four groups of audiences were taken into the mystifying, unchronological world of the play “Bright Half-Life,” where two young-adults-turned-parents experience the beauty and struggle of a 40-plus year relationship. The performance and its production also happened to be Meili Huang ’23’s senior work in acting, Will Napper ’23’s senior work in lighting design and Aidan Amster ’23.5’s senior work in directing — an impressive feat by these three thespians.
(04/27/23 10:01am)
Israel has been changing in character to become a more authoritarian regime. There has been a documented increase in settler violence, acts of terror, far-right ideology and, of course, democratic backsliding due to ongoing judicial “reforms.” To understand this trend, as many political scientists all over the world and at Middlebury are attempting to do, there seem to be two distinct “critical” narratives that emerge. The first narrative is a predominantly liberal Zionist view that Israel’s shift to authoritarianism is unexpected and requires protest, and, second, a view held by more radical voices, is that this “shift” is the logical conclusion to the contradictions inherent in a state that forcibly displaced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians (and is continually trying to).
(04/27/23 10:03am)
During the Covid-19 pandemic, Cole Merrell ’21 wrote a play about three siblings navigating vastly different life circumstances who are brought together by a death in the family and — if that wasn’t enough — a long drive trying to escape a serial killer. Merrell was raised in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (LDS) and took time off during his Middlebury career to serve as a missionary before coming back to finish his theater degree. The play was informed by his deep knowledge of scripture, the LDS community and the big questions of meaning and purpose central to any person’s life, especially those questioning their faith. During Merrell’s time at Middlebury, the play was only ever read as a script on Zoom and was never produced as a live show. That is, until seniors Zack Maluccio ’23 and Maggie Connolly ’23 got their hands on it.
(04/20/23 10:01am)
As students, we all know that getting mass emails from the college can be frustrating. Another survey to fill out, an initiative that needs attention, a new administrative position being announced. Nevertheless, the email entitled “Mandatory Attendance” that was sent to hundreds of first-year students on Wednesday, April 12 was no such instant-delete message. In fact, it was the very email that mobilized dozens of students to spend part of their Friday night after a day off from school supporting the arts community on campus. If you haven’t yet guessed, this is the email that Joshua Garson ’26 sent out to the first year class “cordially” inviting them to his Intro to Dance recital.
(04/13/23 10:02am)
Would you dance through the night in the apocalypse? What would it be like to eat your last tomato? Why would you bring kids into a world without adequate food and water? Could the end of days bring out the worst in you? These are just some of the questions posed by Marisela Treviño Orta’s “Somewhere,” directed by Assistant Professor of Theatre Olga Sanchez Saltveit, which premiered April 6 in the MAC. The play was part of a larger series of events spanning two separate weeks entitled “Art vs. the Apocalypse,” in which the Franklin Environmental Center invited a variety of artists, professors and students to share with the community what role the arts have in raising awareness about climate change.
(04/06/23 10:04am)
What do a dairy farm, film photography about caregiving, a paper animation about German folk tales, Mayan rituals, prison, shopping carts and balloons have in common? Absolutely nothing. And yet, such were the subjects of the six short films, each made to be performed with a live accompaniment, that were shown on Friday night at Robison Hall with the Vermont Symphony Orchestra, as part of the event “A Night at the Movies.” Dozens of students, community members, faculty and even some of the producers and directors of the films themselves piled into the auditorium. The ensemble appeared serene as conductor Matt LaRocca took the stage and began to introduce the night’s event.
(03/16/23 10:05am)
Dozens of students, staff, faculty and community members gathered in a circle in the Dance Theatre of the Mahaney Arts Center on Wednesday, March 9, stretching and waiting as light, upbeat music filled the room. Visiting Assistant Professor of Dance Lida Winfield entered and introduced the event, the first of a multi-part series entitled “Movement Matters: Global Body in Conflict.” Winfield explained these new events as part of a recent grant given to the Dance Department on behalf of the funding from the Kathryn Wasserman Davis Collaborative in Conflict Transformation.
(03/09/23 11:04am)
Vintage Martin Flat-top. Jazz Archtop. National resonator. Flat-top with DeArmond sound-hole pickup. Solid-body Electric. These five pristine, glistening guitars stood still, entrancing the audience as the lights of the Robison Concert Hall in the Mahaney Arts Center slowly faded on March 3. Dozens of students, staff, faculty and community members sat silently as William Nash, professor of American studies and English, took center stage. Nash explained that this event, “An Evening with Paul Asbell,” served a myriad of purposes. Not only was it a performance for the greater Middlebury community, but it also served a specific academic purpose: This semester, Nash is teaching an American studies class entitled “The Guitar in American Culture” for the second time. While there are plenty of pertinent readings, pictures and recordings, this performance offered a chance to hear a live guitar performance.
(03/02/23 11:05am)
Who are these three well-dressed young gentlemen who I have seen standing outside Proctor Dining Hall for the last few weeks, handing out pamphlets and talking to Middlebury students? Well, the four of us were asking the same questions during the last week of J-Term over lunch. So, we decided to ask the new missionaries for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) in town if they wanted to sit down with us and talk about their lives. What follows are the highlights from an hour-long interview in which we — Liam Morris ’26, Rach Peck ’25, Sophia Afsar-Keshmiri ’24 and Joshua Glucksman ’25 — asked them — Isaac Tippett, Isaac Quick and Parker Taylor — about their lives, aspirations and stories.
(01/26/23 11:05am)
“Freedom Dreaming: Envisioning an Antiracist Middlebury,” a spoken word performance, was presented by Faculty Director of Equity, Justice & Inclusion Tara Affolter and a group of students with the aim of examining the potential for an antiracist Middlebury on Jan.18. The group’s work began in the spring of 2021, when they conducted interviews with students of color about racism on campus, asking the bold question, “What would an anti-racist Middlebury look like?” After transcribing the interviews, staging and rehearsing, the planned fall 2021 performance was canceled because of the Covid-19 pandemic. The group finally performed this past November. This first performance was covered in detail by The Campus, but Jan. 18 marked the group’s final performance. There was a Q&A following the performance, as well as an update on what has been accomplished in the months since the initial performance.
(09/22/22 10:04am)
“Why on earth does Middlebury have six a cappella groups?” Or so I asked myself on a Sunday as I sat in the Chapel and watched each group perform a song at the annual “A Cappella Jambo” to advertise their upcoming auditions. For such a small college, Middlebury has an astonishing variety of a cappella groups. So, on Tuesday, Sept. 13, I took it upon myself to try out for each one, with the goal of answering one question: what makes each of these groups so different from the other five?
(03/10/22 10:59am)
The Hirschfield International Film Series’ most recent feature “Drive My Car” is not unlike a long road trip. Road trips usually elicit two seemingly conflicting feelings: boredom and awe. With a runtime just shy of three hours, director Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s lauded masterpiece could easily miss the mark if his audience fails to stay engaged. The second feeling takes more work. Like a road trip with changing, beautiful scenery, motifs come and go throughout the film’s duration. However, the theme of multicultural understanding between the different Asian cultures represented ties the whole film together and leaves the audience with a profound sense of awe.
(03/03/22 10:59am)
While the “Feb identity” has rightly been deconstructed in recent years, there are still some Febs who wear the tropes well. Lee Summers ’24.5 is one such quintessential Feb. He plays rugby and studies Ancient Greek at Middlebury. He resides in Houston (and will let you know it), and he picked up a quirky new hobby over his Febmester: bluegrass.