Hobart and William Smith Colleges

Each Friday during the Fall and Spring academic semesters, a faculty volunteer gives a 30 minute lunchtime talk on her/his scholarship and/or teaching practices. Faculty members are invited to learn a little more about their colleagues, chat with others that attend the presentations, and enjoy a wonderful buffet lunch. Talks start at 12:30 p.m. and are usually over a little past 1 p.m.

The event is sponsored by the Office of Academic and Faculty Affairs.

Spring 2025 Schedule

Mar 14   Tania Johnson (Director of Sponsored Research)

Sponsored Programs at HWS

In this talk, I will discuss how the Office of Sponsored Programs can support scholarly work at HWS, institutional processes related to grants, updates on the transitions in OSP, new and existing grantsmanship resources, and navigating the current funding landscape, among other topics.

Mar 7   Vikash Yadav (International Relations)

Freedom in an Algorithmic Society

The presentation examines how the spread of algorithms, combined with a relationship between tech corporations and the state, enhance the authoritarian trends of political capitalist regimes such as China. The presentation asks whether digital totalitarianism is the fate of liberal capitalist regimes or whether there are opportunities to subvert algorithmic technologies of surveillance, management, and repression.

Feb 28   Seraphine Hamilton (WS Basketball Head Coach)

Own Your Power: Teaching Student-Athletes Resilience and Self-Belief

Student-athletes face high demands and expectations on their time and performance. They must balance rigorous, time-consuming training; academic obligations and opportunities; and the constant pressure from within (and without) to perform. In “Own Your Power,” I will address the ways in which I work to foster resilience and confidence within each student-athlete and build their capacity to set and continually raise their own standards and expectations for their own learning and performance.

Feb 21   Lisa Yoshikawa (History)

Hunting Taiwan: empire building, animal conservation, Indigenous peoples

Modern sport hunting culture entered Japan in the 19th century from Britain/Europe, and as in those places, quickly became popular as manifestation of modernity, celebration of masculinity, emblem of colonial conquest, and more. When Japanese colonizers began to occupy Taiwan in 1895, they brought along sport hunting with them. Yet, these hunters had to negotiate their culture as the Japanese faced armed resistance in their new territory, agricultural extraction became a main industry, and they discovered a different kind of hunting tradition already extant on the island. This talk introduces some early discoveries from hunting (including head-hunting)-related sources that I read over the break for a co-authored project.

Feb 14   Bill Waller (Economics)

The Cambridge Tradition in Economics and Original Institutional Economics: Reflections on the connections between two heterodox traditions.

This presentation is preparatory for the 120th anniversary of Joan Robinson’s birth and the 40th anniversary of her passing. To be presented at Cambridge University in March.

Feb 7   Gabrielle LaBare (Warren Hunting Smith Library) and René Guo (Intercultural Programs & Initiatives )

Reimagining Black Creativity: The Living Legacy of the New Negro Movement (AIC and Library Collaboration)

The New Negro Movement, otherwise known as the Harlem Renaissance, interrogates a central question: What does blackness mean in modernity? This presentation explores how the movement’s intellectual, artistic, and political currents reverberated globally, reflecting the internal diversity and contested potentiality of Black identity—simultaneously inviting and resisting reductive categorization. Through poetry readings of Langston Hughes, live musical performances, and faculty presentations, this collaborative event bridges creative expression and academic inquiry to animate the era’s interdisciplinary spirit. Faculty and staff will demonstrate pedagogical approaches that integrate this period into engagement events and curricula across disciplines.

Like Christi Belcourt’s Walking With Our Sisters, which materialized absence through collective creation, our project harnesses collaboration—between library archives, faculty and staff—to honor the New Negro Movement/Harlem Renaissance’s legacy as a site of communal reimagining. The movement’s enduring power lies in its refusal of monolithic narratives, offering instead a dynamic lens to confront past and present struggles for Black liberation. In echoing Hughes’ declaration that “the past has been a mint / Of blood and sorrow,” we invite audiences to engage with this era not as a closed chapter, but as an ongoing conversation about belonging, resistance, and the boundless possibilities of Black creativity and identity.

Jan 31   Angelique Symanek (Art and Architecture)

Materializing the Missing: Christi Belcourt’s Walking With Our Sisters

In 2012, Métis artist Christi Belcourt used social media platforms to solicit donations to Walking With Our Sisters (WWOS), a public arts project commemorating the thousands of ‘disappeared’ women and girls from communities across Canada and the U.S, a disproportionate number of whom are Indigenous. Belcourt had hoped to recruit 600 people to create and mail moccasin “vamps,” the top portion of the shoes which are traditionally stitched and beaded by hand. In just over a year, the artist received over 1,600 uniquely decorated pairs, many of which were created in beading circles lead by Indigenous community members in various sites across Turtle Island (North America).  Lead by ancestral knowledge and produced through community collaboration, this paper contends that Walking With Our Sisters both honors the dead and those who mourn them while foregrounding that which is always already ‘disappeared’ under colonial logic: Indigenous humanity. To use Maya Ode’Amik Chacaby framing, through its materiality, process, and public engagements, WWOS offers an “un-settling presence that brings awareness of relationships that have for too long been occupied with erasure.”

Jan 24   Craig Talmage (Business Management & Entrepreneurship)

Neolocalism and Craft Breweries: Navigating the Authenticity Dilemma

Craft breweries are more than just places to grab a drink—they’re community hubs where neolocalism shines, celebrating local identity for visitors and residents alike, creating third places that build social capital and democracy, and fueling economic growth through collaboration rather than cut-throat competition. But with rising property values and gentrification, how do they stay true to local roots without excluding longtime residents? From the Finger Lakes and beyond, across rural, suburban, and urban landscapes, we’ll explore real-world stories of how these enterprises balance authenticity, sustainability, and inclusivity, especially looking at tethers between marketing and reality. Whether you’re a fan of craft beer, a champion of local culture, a skeptic about development in general, or curious about local community economic development, this session will serve up fresh insights into how these "hoppy" spaces can bolster resilient, welcoming, and forward-thinking neighborhoods.