The Wesleyan Connection

Diane Kischell will miss playing with the children at NPS.

For 25 years, Diane Kischell has cared for the children of dozens of Wesleyan employees and Middletown community members.

This month, Kischell, director and head teacher at the Wesleyan-affiliated Neighborhood Preschool (NPS), is retiring. She started at NPS in 1983.

“Diane’s teaching, mentorship and commitment have guided the Neighborhood Preschool, fostering a school where children can be themselves and where they develop a firm foundation of self-esteem and communication skills that sustain them as they grow,” says Suzanna Tamminen, director of Wesleyan University Press and mother of Hugh Barrett NPS ‘07, Fiona Barrett NPS ‘08 and Silas Barrett NPS ‘12.

Ana Perez-Girones, adjunct professor of romance languages and literatures, left her daughter, Hanna Westby NPS ‘06, in Kischell’s care for four years. Perez-Girones admired that Kischell would sit on the floor with the children, making herself approachable, while providing direction.

“What I loved about Diane’s approach to the kids was that it was so no-nonsense. She was direct, firm but not harsh, and she talked to the children as respectable people, young but smart,” Perez-Girones says. “Hanna was truly happy and secure there, and that place felt like home. If only every kid could go to daycare at a place like NPS, and with someone like Diane.”

Tamminen says she and fellow parents have relied on Kischell’s good nature, deep knowledge and steadfast practicality. Through her teaching and her extraordinary leadership at NPS, Kischell has made a profound difference in the lives of many families in the local community.

Kischell looks forward to spending more time with her own family, especially her new grandson, and to exploring new hobbies. Her favorite activity has been and remains playing with children.

Jody Viswanathan, library assistant in World Music Archives, put her child, Kerey NPS ‘92 in the care of Kischell in 1989. They’ve remained close friends ever since. Viswanathan admires Kischell as both a gifted teacher and as a specialist in early childhood development.

“Beneath that wonderful, unassuming, unaffected person who gets right down on the floor with the kids is a tremendously insightful,intuitive, well-trained, well-read, incredibly astute person,” Viswanathan says. “There’s only one Diane — and being the one and only, she’s an unbelievably hard act to follow.”

A potluck retirement party will be held from 5 to 7 p.m. Friday, June 12 at 115 High Street. Letters also can be written to Diane c/o NPS, 115 High Street, Middletown, CT 06457.

Willard Walker

Willard B. Walker, professor of anthropology emeritus, died May 23 in Skowhegan, Maine. He was 82 years old.

Walker was one of the mainstays of the Anthropology Department for more than two decades. He came to Wesleyan in 1966 as an assistant professor, where he and Dave McAllester established anthropology as a department. A specialist in Native American languages and cultures, Walker taught courses on the ethnography of the southwest, the southeast, and the northeast and he also single-handedly maintained a curricular focus on linguistic anthropology.

His research interests ranged from Zuni phonology and semantics to the cryptographic use of Choctaw, Comanche and Navajo by the U.S. military in World War II. He was a dedicated fieldworker whose projects had applied as well as theoretical aspects. He was particularly interested in native literacy movements and their reception in different communities. He compared the embrace of literacy in the native language among Cherokee to the notable resistance such movements encountered among the Zuni and the Pasamoquoddy of Maine.

In the latter case, he participated in designing the writing system and taught native literacy classes, which proved highly popular and yet singularly ineffective; specifically, he found that while the Pasamoquoddy enjoyed seeing their language graphically represented, they mistrusted native literacy as a constraint on oral creativity and thus a threat to the vitality of their cultural heritage.

After Walker retired from Wesleyan in 1989, he and his wife Perch moved to Canaan, Maine, where he continued to do research and to write, while also tending his beloved trees.

In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be sent in Walker’s memory to the Canaan Public Library Building Fund, P.O. Box 28, Canaan, ME 04924 or to the Somerset Animal Shelter, P.O. Box 453, Skowhegan, ME 04976.

Ellen "Puffin" D'Oench

Ellen “Puffin” D’Oench, curator emerita of the Davison Art Center, adjunct professor of art history emerita, and former trustee of Wesleyan University died May 22 in Middletown. She was 78 years old and had been ill for some time.

D’Oench interrupted her education at Vassar College to marry Russell “Derry” D’Oench and raise their family. She completed her undergraduate education at Wesleyan in 1973, graduating magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa in the same class as her son Peter. She received a Ph.D. from Yale University in 1979.

D’Oench was Curator of the Davison Art Center from 1979 until 1998. She served as a board-elected member of Wesleyan’s board of trustees from 1977 through 1979.

Her doctoral dissertation resulted in the exhibition and catalog “The Conversation Piece: Devis and his Contemporaries” at the Yale Center for British Art. She co-authored catalogues raisonnés on Jim Dine and Sylvia Plimack Mangold, and curated numerous exhibitions on topics ranging from the color photography of Robert Sheehan to prodigal son narratives. After retiring, she published Copper into Gold: Prints by John Raphael Smith, 1751-1812.

At Wesleyan, she taught courses on museum studies, the history of prints, and the history of photographs, and advised many tutorials and student-organized exhibitions at the Davison Art Center.

D’Oench was a gifted scholar, a generous colleague, and an inspired teacher who sparked in many a love of prints and photographs. With the aid of gifts and funds raised by the Friends of the Davison Art Center, she expanded the renowned collection of the Davison Art Center by more than 5,000 objects, including significant photographs and contemporary prints.

D’Oench is survived by three children, five grandchildren, and one great-grandchild.

Donations in memory of Puffin may be made to the Friends of the Davison Art Center, Wesleyan University, or to Middlesex County Community Foundation, Inc. More information is available at Doolittle Funeral Home: http://obit.doolittlefuneralservice.com/obitdisplay.html?id=673531

Jonathan Cutler (photo courtesy of WNPR Public Radio)

Jonathan Cutler, associate professor of sociology, spoke to Bloomberg Law’s Lee Pacchia ‘02 about the United Auto Workers and the union’s circumstance relative to the bankruptcy filings of General Motors Corp. Cutler is an expert on labor organizations. The report is online.

Book edited by Alexander Laban Hinton ’85.

Alexander Laban Hinton ’85 and Kevin Lewis O’Neill have co-edited Genocide: Truth, Memory, and Representation (Duke University Press), a book of essays in which leading anthropologists consider questions about the relationship of genocide, truth, memory and representation in the Balkans, East Timor, Germany, Guatemala, Indonesia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sudan and other locales.

These specialists draw on ethnographic research to provide analyses of communities in the wake of mass brutality. They examine how mass violence is described or remembered, and how those representations are altered by the attempts of others, from NGOs to governments, to assert “the truth” about outbreaks of violence.

One contributor questions the neutrality of an international group monitoring violence in Sudan. Another investigates the consequences of how events, victims, and perpetrators are portrayed by the Rwandan government during the annual commemoration of that country’s 1994 genocide. Other writers consider issues of political identity and legitimacy, coping, the media, and ethnic cleansing.

Contributors include Pamela Ballinger, Jennie E. Burnet, Conerly Casey, Elizabeth Drexler, Leslie Dwyer, Alexander Laban Hinton, Sharon E. Hutchinson, Uli Linke, Kevin Lewis O’Neill, Antonius C. G. M. Robben, Debra Rodman, and Victoria Sanford.

Hinton is director of the Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights and associate professor of anthropology and global affairs at Rutgers University, Newark. He also is the author of Why Did They Kill? Cambodia in the Shadow of Genocide and editor of Annihilating Difference: The Anthropology of Genocide.

Gary Yohe, the Woodhouse/Sysco Professor of Economics, is the co-author of “Risk Aversion, Time Preference, and the Social Cost of Carbon,” published in Environmental Research Letters 4: 024002, 2009 and available at IDEAS /RePEc http://ideas.repec.org/p/esr/wpaper/wp252.html as well as http://stacks.iop.org/1748-9326/4/024002.

He’s also the author of “Discounting for Climate Change,” published in an Economics e-Journal special issue on Discounting the Long-Run Future and Sustainable Development, 2009; available at http://www.economics-ejournal.org/special-areas/special-issues.

Book by Shalini Shankar '94.

In her ethnographic account, Desi Land: Teen Culture, Class, and Success in Silicon Valley (Duke University Press), Shalini Shankar ’94 focuses on South Asian American teenagers (“Desis”) during the Silicon Valley dot-com boom.

The diverse students whose stories are told are Muslims, Hindus, Christians and Sikhs, from South Asia and other locations, including first- to fourth-generation immigrants whose parents’ careers vary from assembly-line workers to engineers and CEOs.

Shankar analyzes how Desi teens’ conceptions and realizations of success are influenced by community values, cultural practices, language use, and material culture, and she provides a compassionate portrait of a vibrant culture in a changing urban environment.

Whether she is considering instant messaging, arranged marriages, or the pressures of the model minority myth, the author keeps the teens’ voices, perspectives and stories front and center. She looks at how Desi teens interact with dialogue and songs from Bollywood films as well as how they use their heritage language in ways that inform local meanings of ethnicity while they also connect to a broader South Asian diasporic consciousness.

Shankar is assistant professor of anthropology and Asian American studies at Northwestern University.

Christiaan Hogendorn, associate professor of economics, is the co-author of “The Economic of Renewable Resource Credits,” published as Chapter 9 in  Analytical Methods for Energy Diversity and Security, Elsevier, Morgan Bazilian and Fabien Roques, eds., 2008.

J. Kehaulani Kauanui

J. Kehaulani Kauanui, associate professor of American studies, associate professor of anthropology, attended the first Native American and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA) conference on May 21-23 in Minneapolis, Minn. More than 600 scholars from 16 countries and dozens of tribal nations exchanged research ideas and gave each other professional support.

Kauanui is a founding steering committee member and is currently acting council of NAISA.

Since 1969, American Indian studies has developed across the United States and Canada. Currently there are almost 120 American Indian studies programs and departments in the North America, not counting the 32 tribal colleges; among those, 47 offer baccalaureate majors. With this growth has come a proportionate increase in the number of scholars researching related topics, variously called American Indian, Native American, First Nations, aboriginal and indigenous studies.

NAISA developed from two meetings, the first at the University of Oklahoma, Norman in May 2007, and the second at the Institute of Native American Studies at the University of Georgia in April 2008. At the 2008 meeting, registered attendees voted to ratify a constitution and bylaws for the new association

The following faculty members retired from Wesleyan University in May 2009. Their names, positions at Wesleyan, and Ph.D/D.Phil institutions are below:

ANTHONY ANIELLO INFANTE
Professor of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry (1984–2009)
Professor of Biology (1978–1984)
Associate Professor of Biology (1972–1978)
Assistant Professor of Biology (1967–1972)
Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania

PETER KILBY
Professor of Economics (1976–2009)
Associate Professor of Economics (1970–1976)
Assistant Professor of Economics (1965–1970)
D.Phil., Oxford University

R. LINCOLN KEISER
Professor of Anthropology (1990–2009)
Associate Professor of Anthropology (1977–1990)
Assistant Professor of Anthropology (1972–1977)
Ph.D., University of Rochester

ÁKOS ÖSTÖR
Professor of Anthropology (1988–2009)
Ph.D., University of Chicago

JOHN T. PAOLETTI
William R. Kenan Professor in the Humanities (2005–2009)
Professor of Art History (1980–2009)
Associate Professor of Art History (1972–1980)
Ph.D., Yale University

ROBERT J. ROLLEFSON
Professor of Physics (1986–2009)
Associate Professor of Physics (1980–1986)
Assistant Professor of Physics (1973–1980)
Ph.D., Cornell University

GAY SMITH
Professor of Theater (1997–2008)
Associate Professor of Theater (1989–1997)
Ph.D., University of California, Los Angeles

ALFRED TURCO
Professor of English (1980–2009)
Associate Professor of English (1974–1980)
Assistant Professor of English (1969–1974)
Instructor in English (1967–1969)
Ph.D., Harvard University