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Student DJ Mikaela Chang discusses what makes radio special and shares her recent picks of music and campus events. “I didn’t know anything about college radio,” Chang says about her introduction to WRMC four years ago. It was all word of mouth, and she and a friend decided to sign up without any prior opinions. Chang calls her first show kind of embarrassing. The idea was to pick songs in relative major and minor key signatures each week, and the show’s description earnestly encouraged the intended audience: “Confuzzled? Tune in, you’ll get it.” As for Chang’s current show: “It’s called ‘ho hum,’” she smiles, “kind of like a sigh, but also like you’re in thought.” It airs Thursday nights from 10 to 11 p.m., and it is Chang’s musical diary. “I wanted the solo space to flesh out my own thoughts.” ho hum’s stream of consciousness style allows Chang to actively analyze her current music choices. The show’s content has changed notably since its beginning in Fall of 2016, but she still enjoys the personal, sometimes scary experience of sharing her ideas on air. “They’re thoughts you would write in a journal,” she says, not necessarily things one would easily tell the listening public face-to-face. The show also revolves around her desire to share meaningful discussions with other Middlebury students. “Hey stranger — it’s been a minute! Let’s talk,” the description reads. Chang describes the experience of seeing people around campus and feeling the impossibility of holding a long conversation. Radio, she finds, is an effective medium to make those exchanges happen. Additionally, Mikaela is on WRMC’s executive board as part of the concerts committee. She enjoys working behind the scenes and, “hearing about what the audience wants.” She also acknowledges the unfortunate enduring image of WRMC as an exclusive organization and considers part of her role to be working to dispel that. “I hate that there are still people who are scared of [WRMC].” She recognizes some competing visions for the station and varying levels of perceived inclusivity from different students. “Straight up, explicitly, I wanted to be a representative of Middlebury’s POC community.” Chang hopes that the future of Middlebury college radio continues to involve diverse participation and creativity from a wide range of students. To find new music and updates, “I heavily, heavily depend on Spotify,” Chang admits. She uses the Release Radar and genre categories. “R&B Soul is something I listen to a lot.” Inevitably, though, she still misses many exciting releases. “It’s awesome and also the most stressful thing ever.” Chang’s recent music picks include a new album, “sleepless in ______” by Epik High (Chang describes them as “an old Korean hip-hop group”) and the music video for Doja Cat and Rico Nasty’s collaboration, “Tia Tamera.” “Tierra Whack just came out with a couple singles, too,” she suggests. Asked to put together a spring break playlist, Chang had a hard time narrowing it down. “When I think about going home, for some reason I play a lot of Frank Ocean...I don’t know why, but I’d probably just be listening to anything by him.” Also on the list were Latin trap artist Bad Bunny and some reggaetón, along with a nod to her mom’s music taste: “My mom really likes K-pop, and so I’d probably be listening to a lot of BTS. She’s a hardcore fan.” Chang also stressed exploring the events happening right on campus. “If there’s anything that four years at Midd has taught me, it’s that there is always something cool happening.” She highlights WRMC’s annual spring concert, Sepomana, this April and the Korean Culture Show on May 3. She also recommends checking out arts events in the Gamut Room, at the Mill, and at the MAC. WRMC has just released an app to make listening even easier — search WRMC Radio on the App Store or Google Play to keep up with Mikaela’s show and explore the others happening almost all day, every day.
Happy spring! Just a few updates before everyone leaves for break: 1. Go/heySGA – Reminder to use this form for any issues, comments, ideas, etc. that you would like to share with SGA! Thanks to everyone who has shared so far. 2. Election season is soon approaching! If you are interested in joining SGA in any capacity, look out for emails with more information. In the meantime, feel free to reach out to any SGA member if you have questions about their experience or want to hear more! 3. Help out admissions – If you are able to host a student (April 15th–16th) for preview days, visit go/pdhosting for more information. That’s all for now. Best of luck with midterms and preparing for the second half of the semester!
Middlebury’s log rolling club hosted the 2019 Middlebury Invitational this past weekend in the Natatorium. Sarah Howard ’19 won on the women’s side, while Derrick Burt ’20.5 took first place for the men.
The equestrian team hosted its first spring show at Wishful Thinking Farm in New Haven. Tom Sacco ’20.5 captured third place, while Hannah Patterson ’19 competes in the fences class.
Pia Contreras
This Friday, March 15, students in over 90 countries will walk out of school to demand action against the climate crisis. In recognition of the fierce urgency of this crisis, we faculty look forward to joining the action organized by Middlebury College and Middlebury Union High School students: to leave campus at noon and rally in the park across from Shafer’s Market. We encourage all faculty, staff, and community members to walk in solidarity with Middlebury students at noon on Friday. Signed, Martin Abel Molly Anderson Julia Berazneva Tanya Byker James Chase Sanchez Molly Costanza-Robinson Laurie Essig Kemi Fuentes-George Peter Hans Matthews Jonathan Isham Rebecca Kneale Gould Marc Lapin Bill McKibben Jason Mittell Erica Morrell Linus Owens Michael Sheridan Dan Suarez Carly Thomsen
I was enchanted. I’m sure it was the book cover art that stopped me and attracted me to this work: a man is falling precariously but his only preoccupation is his writing. I needed to know more. The main character of this work is Arthur Less, a gay man approaching 50 who is, against his own design, still single. When his former long-time lover sends Arthur an invitation to his wedding, in order to develop a valid excuse not to attend, Arthur launches on a world tour to promote his writing, accepting invitations to speak, teach, travel and write in residence in Mexico, France, India and more. Why did I love this work? I think it’s the compassion I felt for Less and the degree with which I identified with him: he’s a talented man whose talent is largely unrecognized and he’s uncoupled, when all he wants to do is fold himself into another caring human being, preferably the same one, over and over again. And he’s pitiful. And haphazard. And a clown, unbeknownst to himself. For example, who accepts a teaching position in Germany, leading German students, but can hardly speak German? Less’s tale is one in which, like many, he leaves home to escape himself and destiny and finds them both en route away from them. I also liked this work because I’ve read *so* few that prominently feature gay men. I learned more about some of the sexual mores of the gay, male community than I’ve ever encountered before. I do think the work has a slow start but ultimately Arthur Less is so winning that it didn’t matter. Oh, and did I mention that this work won the Pulitzer Prize? For more works by gay and queer men, see Vivek Shraya’s “I’m Afraid of Men” or Dan Savage’s “American Savage” at go/overdrive/, anything in the collection by David Sedaris, for example, “Naked”, or search MIDCAT with the keyword “RuPaul.” Literatures & Cultures Librarian Katrina Spencer is liaison to the Anderson Freeman Center, the Arabic Department, the Comparative Literature Program, the Gender, Sexuality & Feminist Studies (GSFS) Program, the Language Schools, the Linguistics Program and the Department of Luso-Hispanic Studies.
After winning its second consecutive NCAA Division III championship back in November 2018, members of the field hockey team received their championship rings. Head coach Katharine DeLorenzo (top right) and her staff were voted the National Field Hockey Coaches Association (NFHCA) Division III National Coaching Staff of the Year, While Erin Nicholas was selected as the NFHCA National Player of the Year. In the final championship game, the Panthers defeated the Tufts Jumbos 2-0.
It is a shame, is it not, that I was 32 before I came to place Audre Lorde within a literary and social context. Middlebury, of all places, gave her to me. Not my undergraduate institution. Not my graduate school experience(s). Not my travels abroad. Rather, my job, as a librarian, on this campus. In college, I took a class called “Hurston, Hughes and Wright,” which studied 20th century literature by black writers. But it wasn’t ’til I came here, to rural Vermont, that this black, lesbian, feminist thinker, Audre Lorde, was introduced to me. Professor Catharine Wright was engaging the author’s memoir, Zami, in her class, “Outlaw Women,” and I wanted to know more about the content students were reading, so I checked the work out. And Audre Lorde’s name resurfaced again and again on this campus. So I began to wonder, “Was there a secret club I didn’t belong to where people learned who this woman was and were made better for it?” Then Marcos Rohena-Madrazo, a man I admire, spoke to me about how fabulous Lorde’s Sister Outsider was. So when it became available as an audiobook at go/overdrive/, I checked it out. Succinctly, Sister Outsider is a collection, as the book’s cover art suggests, of essays and speeches that, for me, largely questions, for one, who is allowed to participate in feminist discourse and, two, who is considered a producer of knowledge. To the first of these questions, Lorde transparently posits that lesbian women have been excluded from feminist discourses that undeniably concern them. Second, she lobbies for change that proactively seeks out the most marginalized women to participate publicly in feminist discourse. It’s more: she asks that regular and systematic efforts be made to recruit poor, “colored” and gay women to platforms and gatherings where their rights, livelihoods and well beings are discussed. Her works suggest that an exclusive and exclusionary feminism is no feminism at all. With fear of blaspheming, I can’t say that what she said/wrote in her speeches and essays sounded new to me. But perhaps, in the year of my birth, 1984, she was one of the first who found a way to say it publicly and explicitly. Perhaps it is because she said and wrote it then that it sounds rote to me now some 30 plus years later. I do think it’s quite remarkable that I could spend so much time in college, 10 plus years, and not know any of her works intimately. (Who sets the curriculum and for who is it designed? What knowledge is considered worthy and worthwhile? Does education only happen within the classroom?) That’s troubling. However, what I appreciate most from what I’ve seen of her oeuvre thus far is actually how very many diverse narratives Lorde represents in one person: she is black, a child of immigrants, a poet, vision-impaired, politically engaged, a lesbian and a mother. Her words, therefore, consider quite a variety of perspectives. I’ll be honest: I wasn’t expecting a chapter on her travels to Eastern Europe or an exegesis on Grenadian-U.S. relations. But I got both plus much more. I’d recommend this work to anyone who is beginning to understand and identify their interlocking identities and feels puzzled and/or “shook.” For more work like this, I recommend Kimberlé Crenshaw’s work in Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings that Formed the Movement or Crenshaw’s work in Feminist Theory, edited by Wendy K. Kolmar, which I have yet to read. Learn more about the author at go/katrina. Literatures & Cultures Librarian Katrina Spencer is liaison to the Anderson Freeman Center, the Arabic Department, the Comparative Literature Program, the Gender, Sexuality & Feminist Studies (GSFS) Program, the Language Schools, the Linguistics Program and the Department of Luso-Hispanic Studies.
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Sarah Fagan
In terms of plot, Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book, “The Underground Railroad,” is much of what you might expect: it’s a fictionalized story of two people escaping slavery in the pre-Civil War era South. The language is rich. The characters are full. The trajectory is treacherous. Check. Check. Check. Perhaps what is special about this work is the magnification the author carries out in highlighting plantation cultures and the interstate economics of recapturing escaped slaves and returning them to their legal “owners.” Whitehead makes a concerted effort to “peel back the curtain” on early Georgian systems of agriculture that were dependent on the forced labor of enslaved Africans and their descendants. Viewed primarily as property, these people encountered few, if any, protections from the law, from their “masters” and/or from each other. The brutality they lived through was not limited to the fields and was not meted out solely by white hands. That is, enslaved people, too, were perpetrators of inhumane acts, too, within a society that normalized such behavior. For me, the tale is Cora’s. Like anyone else, she desires self-determination, tenderness and the promise an open horizon offers. The lore surrounding Cora’s mother leads all within Cora’s community to believe that Cora’s mother, Mabel, successfully made it North to free territory. Her mother’s mysterious disappearance leads others to believe that Cora has inherited something rich, unique and worthy of reverence. Perhaps that thing is the belief that escape is possible. Cora and her companion, Caesar, then make their way North, and the novel is the tale of all they encounter en route: literacy, courting, abolitionists, bounty hunters, hope, fear, promise and more. Without wanting to give too much away, for me, the tragic flaw for Cora and Caesar is that they run until they feel safe; they do not run until they are actually free. Their complacency ushers in a new set of dangers and evils. I listened to this work as an audiobook at go/overdrive/. And I recommend it to anyone who enjoys historical fiction. For me, however, I have to wonder how/why the United States has such a sick love affair with the re-telling of violence enacted on black bodies. Why are these narratives so popular, seductive and persistent here? Is this our national fetish? The book is certainly well-crafted, don’t get me wrong. But why is it that the works featuring black people and black narratives that draw the most attention are about blood, victims and suffering? Why is it that the more harrowing the tale is, the more praise and critical acclaim it receives? Cases in point? 2016’s “Moonlight,” which featured homophobic violence and social ostracization; 2016’s “Fences,” which featured broken dreams and toxic masculinity; 2009’s “Precious,” which featured incest, rape and mental and verbal abuse; 2001’s “Monster’s Ball,” which featured explicit racism, misogynoir and the death of a child. “Django Unchained,” “12 Years A Slave,” et cetera. Do “our” only chances for widespread critical acclaim within screenplays lie incestuously beside our despair? My thought is not an original one, no. And sure, there’s an exception to the rule, sure: 2018’s “Black Panther,” for example. But the questions remains: Can we exist if we are not overcoming, defying expectations and surviving abuse? The book is “good,” yes. But what tropes must it perpetuate in order to be “good”? For more works that are thematically similar, check out the audiobook “The War Before the War: Fugitive Slaves and the Struggles for America’s Soul” at go/overdrive/, “The Autobiography of Frederick Douglass,” “Incidents in the Life of A Slave Girl,” “What the Slaves Ate” or “Django Unchained.” Spencer is the college’s Literatures & Cultures Librarian. Learn more at go/katrina.
The Campus skated around some questions with senior Katherine Jackson.
If I am honest with you, the author of this work is everything I’ve ever wanted to be: a smart, paid and recognized writer who addresses issues of race in her writing without being beholden to them (and who has a solid plan B for a career, just in case). In this debut collection of short stories, Nafissa Thompson-Spires draws a broad swath of characters, who also happen to be people of color, who encounter a variety of challenges. There’s the woman who lives for likes on Facebook; the university professor who struggles to assert authority over a shared office space; a woman who has a romantic fetish for amputees; an anime-based cosplayer at a convention; and feuding mothers who attack each others’ children with ongoing epistolary insults. The literary plain is so rich! And the verisimilitude so plausible! In one work alone, Thompson-Spires addresses the sometimes brutal confrontation between the 21st century desire to be well adjusted and to appear well-adjusted on social media; the weight of code-switching many people of color encounter as we/they navigate personal/social circles and professional/educational ones and the general quirks and eccentricities of a people that is as diverse as any other. I should probably call the author by her first name, “Nafissa,” as we’ve met and occasionally chat on social media. Nafissa and I coincided at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She was shy and (lovingly) awkward in person, her social skill failing to convey what would come next as the United States’ “ideal” protagonists of “success” are often effusively extroverted and take up a good deal of space. At that time, I didn’t know I was in the company of genius. I also didn’t know that “Nafissa” was also “Dr. Thompson-Spires,” that the book she released would be chosen for Oprah’s Best Books of 2018 or that she would be interviewed regarding her writing on Late Night with Seth Meyers. Since the time we met at a bus stop on Wright Street a handful of years ago, Nafissa has publicly launched a writing career with a strong foundation. Part of what’s special about her writing is that it both casually and aggressively eschews the use of caricatures and stock characters. Twentieth century consumers of media have certainly encountered enough of those when it comes to representations of African Americans. See “magical Negro,” “mammy,” “Sambo,” et al. There’s an entire Wikipedia page dedicated to the topic: “Stereotypes of African Americans.” She takes characters who are “queer” (in the retro, retro sense of the word) and demonstrates that they, too, exist within communities of color and also experience the crises of identity that have been regularly afforded to the dominant culture. She diversifies diversity, an effort creators and people of color have long wanted to see forwarded. I listened to this work as an audiobook on go/overdrive/ as, at this point in my life, moments of multitasking allow me to get slightly more done this way. I move through texts faster, but I imagine I retain less. I recommend this work to people with seemingly conflicting identities holed up in one body. For example, if you’re both a ballerina and a boxer or a fitness guru and a junk food fiend. Thompson-Spires’ works explore the less visible personalities that exist among the extremes. For more titles like this one, see Carmen Maria Machado’s “Her Body and Other Parties” (which I have yet to read), “The Ways of White Folks” by Langston Hughes or “The Complete Short Stories” by Zora Neale Hurston. Literatures & Cultures Librarian Katrina Spencer is liaison to the Anderson Freeman Center, the Arabic Department, the Comparative Literature Program, the Gender, Sexuality & Feminist Studies (GSFS) Program, the Language Schools, the Linguistics Program and the Department of Luso-Hispanic Studies.