Olivia DrakeKit Reed, resident writer in the English Department, participated in the 17th Annual Festival of Reading in St. Petersburg, Fla., Oct. 24. Reed was one of dozens of authors who spoke to the community about a particular book. According to the St. Petersburg Times Festival author biography, Reed is "One of our brightest cultural commentators. " Often anthologized, her short stories appear in venues ranging from The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Asimov's SF and Omni to The Yale Review, The Kenyon Review and The Norton Anthology of American Literature. During the festival, Reed spoke about her book, Enclave.
Brian KattenWesleyan men’s soccer has accomplished two feats never before witnessed by Cardinal faithful: they have yet to lose after 15 games, and have set a school record for shutouts in a season. Now they are looking for a NESCAC title, something that has only been done once before (in 2005) by Wesleyan Men’s Soccer. Their campaign has in no way been easy. They opened the year on Sept. 12 facing perennial power and Little Three rival Williams College on the road. In that match the Cardinals came back after being down 1-0 to forge a 1-1 tie. Over the eight…
The Chemistry Department received a $125,000 grant from the George I. Alden Trust of Worcester, Mass. on Oct. 21. The funds will be used to replace, reconfigure, and add fume hoods in a teaching lab used for introductory chemistry courses.
More information on the Management Leadership Conference is online at http://www.wesleyan.edu/mlc/2009/
Cynthia RockwellVermont State Senator Peter Shumlin ’79 will be honored at the 8th Annual Human Rights Campaign New England Dinner, to be held in Boston on Nov. 14. HRC New England, the largest GLBT civil rights advocacy group in the country, is this year presenting the marriage equality award to “those who were heroes in our fight for equality.” As President Pro Tempore of the Senate, Shumlin is considered instrumental on the April 15, 2009 Vermont legislature’s vote to override the governor’s veto and pass same sex marriage into law for the state. Shumlin spoke about his reasons to support the…
Tanya Harrison MA ’08, who studied with Martha Gilmore, associate professor of earth and environmental sciences, and is now at Malin Space Science Systems in California, is first author on a report that says her team found evidence of liquid water flowing on the surface of Mars in multiple locations as recently as this year. An abstract of the report, titled "Present-Day Activity, Monitoring and Documentation of Gullies With the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Context Camera," was published in the Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs, Vol. 41, No. 7, p. 267. The findings were reported in a speech at…
A recent article in the Tennessean highlighted a notable discovery at Nashville’s Parthenon Museum: a rare and complete copy of William J. Stillman's 1870 photographic book, The Acropolis of Athens, Illustrated Picturesquely and Architecturally in Photography. Registrar and Assistant Curator Brenna Cothran ’01 came across it as part of an ongoing four-year-old project of inventorying every item in storage as other duties permitted. She told Tennessean journalist Janell Ross that when she saw the book, which had been stashed away in a storage room drawer, "The hair on my arms stood up. It was kind of this adrenaline rush.” Stillman,…
A father whose 17-year-old son died while driving in 2006, and who went on to take a leadership role in a statewide task force that advised the state legislature on rewriting Connecticut's teen driving laws, has launched a national blog for parents on safe teen driving. Tim Hollister '78, a West Hartford, Conn. resident and attorney, lost his son Reid in a one-car accident on Interstate 84 in Plainville, Conn. in December 2006. During 2007-08, as a member of Connecticut Gov. Jodi Rell's Safe Teen Driving Task Force, Hollister immersed himself in the issue of why driving is the leading…
David LowSteve Lehman ’00 is an alto and soprano jazz saxophonist who continues to receive praise from jazz critics across the country for performing music on the cutting edge. He is one of several graduates who studied jazz at Wesleyan and have gone on to notable music careers. Lehman is currently a doctoral candidate in music composition at Columbia University. Travail, Transformation & Flow (Pi Recordings), his latest CD with his octet, was recently reviewed on NPR’s Fresh Air. NPR describes Lehman as “an explorer in the esoteric compositional realm labeled ‘spectral harmony,’ and perhaps his most ambitious innovation is that…
In No Family History (Rowman and Littlefield, 2009), Sabrina McCormick ’96 offers convincing and compelling evidence of environmental links to breast cancer, ranging from everyday cosmetics to industrial waste. She writes lucidly about the a growing number of experts who argue that we should increase focus on prevention by reducing environmental exposures that have contributed to the sharp increase of breast cancer rates. McCormick also weaves the story of one breast cancer survivor with no family history of the disease into a powerful exploration of the big business of breast cancer—as drugs, pink products, and corporate sponsorships generate enormous revenue…
In early October, the White House press office announced that the President Obama and his family had chosen 45 art works borrowed from several Washington museums to decorate various White House walls, including the text painting Black Like Me No. 2 by Glenn Ligon ’82, which is on loan from the Hirshhorn Musuem. In an article in the Washington Post about the Obamas’ selection of art works, Blake Gopnik described Ligon as “one of the best one of the best African American artists working today, and also one of the smartest and toughest. His loaner work is a tall white…