The Wesleyan Connection

Gloster Aaron, assistant professor of biology, assistant professor of neuroscience and behavior, received a $50,000 grant from The Epilepsy Foundation on Dec. 6 titled “STEP Regulation of Epileptogensis in the Hippocampus.”

Drugs prescribed to combat epilepsy can yield unwanted side effects. One reason that drugs have side effects is that they can affect almost every neuron in the brain, regardless of their roles in spreading seizures. Aaron will research ways target only the neurons that may be most important in stopping the spread of seizures. Previous work has shown that a certain protein, STEP, is found in select groups of neurons. One of those groups of neurons, the hilar interneurons of the hippocampus, is a crticial group with regards to epilepsy. By manipulating that protein, researchers can target that group of neurons, and hopefully gain traction in a selective therapy for preventing and curing epilepsy.

Wesleyan President Michael Roth plays piano while Gina Driscoll, associate director of development events; Nancy Meislahn, dean of admission and financial aid; guest Shanda Reynelli; Roth's wife Kari Weil, visiting professor of letters and faculty fellow; and Louise Brown, dean for academic advancement/dean for the Class of 2009, sing along. President Roth held a holiday party at his home for faculty and staff on Dec. 11.

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Mash-up artist and disk jockey Gregg Gillis, known as Girl Talk, performed at the Bacon Field House Dec. 6. Proceeds from the event totaling $30,000 will benefit financial aid.

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Sean McCaan, director of the Center for Faculty Career Development, professor of English, held a book signing Dec. 4 at Broad Street Books in Middletown. McCann is the author of the book, A Pinnacle of Feeling: American Literature and Presidential Government.

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Ellen D'Oench, curator emerita; Claire Rogan, curator of the Davison Art Center, and Jean Shaw P'79, browse artwork for sale during the Friends of the Davison Art Center Holiday Print Sale Dec. 4. A percentage of each sale helped fund acquisitions for the Davison Art Center collection.

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The Center for Community Partnerships (CCP) hosted a "Green Your Holiday" craft event Dec. 6 for the Wesleyan staff, faculty and students and the local community. Volunteer Sheila Graham Smith, at left, taught participants how to make festive centerpieces using fresh pine greens. Elisa Del Valle, assistant director of student activities and leadership development, is pictured at right.

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Pictured, from left, Cherrie Moraga, poet/writer and Demian Pritchard, visiting assistant professor of Latina/o literature and culture in the English Department, pose for a photograph with Wesleyan students Emily Evnen '10, Alicia Garrison '09, Hope Steinman-Iacullo '09, Elizabeth Busch '10, Dan Heinrich Manuyag '10, Elissa Martel '10, and Christie Kontopidis '10.

A group of Wesleyan students, led by Demian Pritchard, visiting assistant professor of Latina/o literature and culture in the English Department, attended a reading by Cherríe Moraga at Wellesley College Nov. 20.

Moraga is an influential and prolific Chicana lesbian writer of poetry, drama and essays. She is known for mixing genre in her writing as she engages issues of sexuality, race, gender and class – alongside questions of nation and language.

Her reading was titled “Still Loving in the Still War Years,” a play on the title of one of her most widely read books: Loving in the War Years, and inspired by the recent California passage of Proposition 8 barring the right for gays and lesbians to marry in the state – a right won in California recently, and quickly lost.

Moraga read from an in-process essay about her relationships with her mother and her teenage son as a frame for her reading from another in- process essay on President-elect Obama. In her essay she called upon the nation to remember its responsibility to continue to participate in the process of “change” asked for by Obama – to transform the work gone into his election inspired by “the audacity of hope” to a long-term politics of continued participation, which she called “the tenacity of hope.”

(Photo and text contributed by Demian Pritchard)

Trevor Paglen from the University of California Berkeley's Department of Geography, spoke on "Blank Spots on a Map: State Secrecy and the Limits of the Visible," Dec. 4 at the Eclectic Society. Paglen studies secret government programs from both a political and aesthetic perspective. His talk focused on the secret or "black world" of the military, which is composed of programs, people and places that are officially unacknowledged.

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More than 70 Wesleyan students took part in the Winter Dance Concert Dec. 5 and 6 in the Center for the Arts Theater. The annual concert showcases the work of dance majors completing Choreography Workshop. Pictured are Sheryl Sinclair '09 and Collin Cutrone McMichael '09 performing a dance titled "unto i lovE: an anagram" by Yumin He '09.

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John Frazer, professor of art, emeritus, taught drawing and film classes at Wesleyan from 1959 to 2001. He's pictured here in his Middletown studio with two of his own still life paintings. (Photo by Olivia Bartlett)

After 42 years of teaching, and a lifetime of painting and drawing, John Frazer isn’t ready to rinse his brushes clean just yet.

Although the professor of art, emeritus, is wheelchair-bound after six knee surgeries, his art studio remains intact. Set-up easels, brushes and oil paints, a painter’s palate and untouched cotton canvases await his return.

“I haven’t been able to paint in over a year, but I will return to painting. I am sure of that, but I prefer to work standing up,” Frazer says. “It’s the only way I’ve ever worked.”

Frazer, a Texas native, came to Wesleyan in 1959 for a one-year appointment teaching painting and drawing to undergraduates.

“I got off the bus on Main Street in Middletown, walked up to campus and looked at the Davison Art Center, and said, ‘I’m going to stay here,’” he recalls.

Frazer, now 76, was 27 years old at the time. He had recently completed a Fulbright grant (more…)