The Wesleyan Connection

Masami Imai, assistant professor of economics, assistant professor of East Asian studies, is the author of “Political Influence and Declarations of Bank Insolvency in Japan,” published in the Journal of Money Credit, and Banking, 2009.

Book by Joyce Lowrie.

Joyce Lowrie, professor of romance languages and literatures, emerita, is the author of Sightings: Mirrors in Texts – Texts in Mirrors, published by Rodopi in December 2008.

This book analyzes mirror imagery, scenes, and characters in French prose texts, in chronological order, from the 17th to the 20th centuries. It does so in light of literal, metaphoric and rhetorical structures. Works analyzed in the traditional French canon, written by such writers as Laclos, Lafayette, and Balzac, are extended by studies of texts composed by Barbey d’Aurevilly, Georges Rodenbach, Jean Lorrain and Pieyre de Mandiargues.

This work offers appeal to readers interested in linguistics, French history, psychology, art, and material culture. It invites analyses of historical and ideological contexts, rhetorical strategies, symmetry and asymmetry.

Andrew Seibert ’86 Promoted to President of SmartMoney
Andrew Seibert has been named president of SmartMoney, a joint venture between Hearst Corporation and Dow Jones & Co. Seibert will continue in his current position as vice president and publisher of SmartMoney’s Customs Solutions, the venture’s successful custom publishing arm. In his expanded role, Seibert will be responsible for the circulation, advertising and marketing operations of SmartMoney magazine as well as for SmartMoney.com. (more…)

Jolee West

Jolee West, director of academic computing services, director of digital projects, was chosen to participate in the 2009 Frye Leadership Institute for library and information professionals. The intensive summer program takes place at Emory University from May 31 to June 11. Following the two week session at Emory, each participant works on a year-long practicum at their institution, and the classes remain in contact through e-mail groups and subsequent conferences.

Ganesan “Ravi” Ravishanker, associate vice president for Information Technology Services, nominated West for the Leadership Institute. The nationally competitive application process selects around 45 participants from an average of 200-250 applicants. West received Mellon Foundation Scholarship to cover tuition, room and board expenses.

The Frye Institute seeks to develop Higher Education leadership talent from participants working in Library and Information Technology. Each Frye class is constructed carefully to ensure representation from different fields and types of institutions. The program is not specifically about libraries or information technology, but about leadership, policy and effecting change and transformation in Higher Education.

Rob Rosenthal, professor of sociology, spoke at a conference titled “Celebrating Seattle’s Striking History,” sponsored by the University of Washington Department of History. The conference was held Feb. 6 at the Seattle Labor Temple to commemorating the 90th anniversary of the Seattle General Strike of 1919. Rosenthal spoke about the strike, and also about a rock opera he wrote and recorded in 1986 with his band, The Fuse, about the strike. The Seattle Labor Chorus sung two songs from the album. In addition, Rosenthal was interviewed about his song on the NPR station in Portland, KBOO, and the NPR station in Seattle, KUOW.

Krishna Winston, the Marcus L. Taft Professor of German Language and Literature, dean of the Arts and Humanities and coordinator of the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship, participated in a meeting with Nobel Prize-winning author Günter Grass Jan. 18-24 in Luebeck, Germany. She is the English-language translator for Grass’s work and one of 16 people working on translations of his new, semi-autobiographical novel, The Box, for publication worldwide.

The Chicago Tribune reviewed Look, What I Don’t Understand, a solo-performance by Anthony Nikolchev ’08, co-directed by the Assistant Professor of Theater Yuriy Kordonskiy, lighting design by Anna Martin ’09.

The production was originally developed as a student show at Wesleyan and moved to its four-week professional run at the Chicago Athenaeum Theatre in January 2009. This one-man drama draws upon historical narratives experienced by Nikolchev’s family during their 1960s escape from the totalitarian hostility of communist Bulgaria to detainment in America, challenging himself and audiences to comprehend the experience of past generations through the perspective of present generations.

Other feature reviews include The Windy City Times, The Urban Coaster and The Latest and Greatest art blog. In April 2009, the production is invited to participate in the ArmMono, a festival of solo-performances in Yerevan, Armenia.

Ellen Thomas, research professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, attended the ‘Climate and Biota of the Early Paleogene’ meeting in New Zealand in January. She was on the organizing committee for this meeting, and presented an invited talk during the ‘Greenhouse Earth Symposium,’ an event presenting the highlights of relevant research to the general public.

Thomas also was the co-author on two other talks, which she presented with her Ph.D students from Utrecht University in the Netherlands and Leuven University in Belgium. She also co-authored a poster Laia Alegret from Zaragoza University in Spain. Alegret spent two summers at Wesleyan while she was working on her Ph.D thesis under Thomas.

John Paoletti, the Kenan Professor of the Humanities, professor of art history, will retire from Wesleyan in May. (Photo by Olivia Bartlett)

For 37 years, John Paoletti has explored the ideas and histories that produced both well-known and not so well-known works of Renaissance and modern art with thousands of Wesleyan students.

This May, Paoletti will retire from Wesleyan’s Art and Art History Department, ending a longtime career of teaching artists such as Jackson Pollock, Andy Warhol, Donatello, and Michelangelo as well as the patronage of the Medici family.

“I will really miss working with the Wesleyan students and faculty colleagues across the curriculum,” Paoletti says from his office in the Davison Art Center. “Both have always been keenly critical of the issues at hand and have asked tough questions aimed at arriving at clearer understanding of whatever matter was being discussed.”

Paoletti joined Wesleyan in 1972 as an associate professor of art history. At the time, he was one of two art historians on campus; (more…)

Gary Yohe, the Woodhouse/Sysco Professor of Economics.

Gary Yohe, the Woodhouse/Sysco Professor of Economics, has been appointed to the Adaptation Subcommittee of the Connecticut Governor’s Steering Committee on Climate Change, 2008-2010.

He also has been selected to be a member of the National Research Council Committee on America’s Climate Choices: Panel on Adapting to the Impacts of Climate Change, 2008-2011. The panel will host a Climate Summit in DC at the end of March and provide Congress and the Administration a review of the panel’s “Choices” by the end of the year. A synthetic blueprint will then be created by an umbrella panel.

Yohe also helped organize an Institute of Medicine Roundtable on Environmental Health Sciences, Research and Medicine in Washington, DC. It focused on climate change to inform the research agenda of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies. In addition, Yohe moderated a session and gave a talk on “Economic Analysis of a Basic and Applied Research Agenda: Strategies for Prioritization” on Jan. 16.