BY MAYA HOFFMAN ’20
Noche Latina
La Unidad MHC hosted “Noche Latina” on March 24 as a fundraiser to help Puerto Rico deal with the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, on Mar. 24. The event, which included dinner and after party, aimed to “educate the public about Latinx culture and the natural disasters that affected Puerto Rico,” according to the event page.
Hurricane Maria was a 12-hour storm that affected each of the 78 municipalities that make up Puerto Rico, according to the Huffington Post. Residents were left without electricity and running water, which caused many deaths after the hurricane itself had passed. A large percentage of the population (11 percent as of March 2018) is still without power, according to NPR.
Lantinx students highlighted issues facing Puerto Ricans with multiple performances including a speech about natural disasters in Puerto Rico, followed by a PowerPoint presentation by two students currently enrolled in the “History of Deportation” class who visited a sanctuary for migrants displaced by Hurricane Maria in Amherst.
In addition to the educational pieces, the night’s events included dance performances from a variety of regions in Central and Latin America. La Unidad invited two young children to dance from Rhode Island. “I really wasn’t expecting children,” said Hannah McDonald ’20, who attended the event. “I was thinking it would be just college students, so it was a really nice surprise to see members of the external community included.”
Imagining the Abominable
Dr. Caroline Roeder, a former visiting professor of modern european history during the 2016 - 2017 school year, who returned to the College on Thursday, March 22 to deliver a lecture on “Imagining the Abominable: Soviet Science, Popular Culture, and the Search for the Snowman” to a packed Reese lecture hall.
Dr. Roeder, Who received her Ph.D. from Harvard University, shared her research findings from Harvard archives about the history of the hunt for the abominable snowman, also known as the Yeti. She discussed how the Yeti can be used as a tool to analyze the history of science across international boundaries in the time of the Cold War and post-Cold War. “Yeti’s are good to think with,” said Roeder. The goal of her research was to explore what the Yeti meant for cultures in the Soviet era.
According to Dr. Roeder’s lecture, the Yeti became an obsession of global reach. China and the Soviet Union went as far as to engage state-sponsored explorations for the mythical creature. At a time when the world was engaged in a steadfast race for the next best technology and countries were in a hotbed of competition for knowledge and power, the search for the Yeti became a lynchpin for many other scientific advancements. “I was interested in learning about how the Snowman was used as an excuse for other scientific expeditions,” said Larisa Millman ’20, a Russian and Eurasian studies major.
As to whether or not the abominable snowman really exists, Dr. Roeder took no stance, saying that there is no conclusive evidence either way.