Olivia DrakeQ: Sheryl, you're currently the director of Continuing Studies and Graduate Liberal Studies. Your office also oversees the Wesleyan Summer Session. What is your role with the program, and how are you able to wear three hats!? A: The programs we run all have a lot of logistical processes in common, so many of our roles are similar for Summer Session and the other programs. We are involved with recruitment of students and faculty, admissions, enrollment, student services, billing and payroll,etc., so it’s not too difficult to work on similar functions for different programs. Q: This is Wesleyan's second semester…
Khachig Tölölyan, professor of letters, professor of English, has been actively involved in the launching of the University of Oxford's Diasporas Programme in June. Tölölyan is the editor/founder of Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies and an internationally known expert on diasporas and transnationalism. On June 2, Tölölyan delivered the inaugural lecture titled "Diaspora Studies: Past, Present and Promise" at the program's launch. He is a scholar in residence at Wolfson College (one of the 40 colleges and halls that make up the university), where he is a tutor and consultant to various graduate students, postdoctoral faculty and researchers at several…
Eric GershonA Ph.D candidate and six recent graduates received Fulbright Fellowships for the 2011-12 academic year. Aaron Paige, a Ph.D. student in ethnomusicology, has received a Fulbright Fellowship to support his dissertation fieldwork in Malaysia, as well as a research grant from the Society for Asian Music to support research in Chennai, India. The dissertation project, “From Kuala Lumpur to Kollywood: Music, Language, and Identity in Tamil Solisai,” involves multi-sited ethnography and will trace the various meanings of Tamil hip-hop as it travels within and between local, national, and transnational spaces. Paige's work will take him to Chennai in the summer…
David LowNomi Teutsch ’11 received a Faiths Act Fellowship from the Tony Blair Faith Foundation. This year-long, paid international fellowship brings together exceptional future leaders inspired by faith to serve as interfaith ambassadors for the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) with particular focus on malaria. Fellows build partnerships across faith lines in their home countries to show the world how faith can be a positive global force in the 21st century, and they work in local NGOs to mobilize communities to take part in malaria-focused, multi-faith action. Teutsch grew up in a vibrant, diverse neighborhood in Northwest Philadelphia. A progressive Jewish…
Steven Horst, professor of philosophy, attended several conferences on Cognitive Science of Religion during the 2010-11 academic year. In July, he attended a summer workshop on "Cognition, Religion, and Theology" at Oxford University. In August, he attended the International Association for Cognitive Science of Religion, meeting in Toronto. At both conferences, he presented his paper titled, "Whose Intuitions? Which Dualism?" Horst also presented a paper titled, “What is Unity of Knowledge, and Are We Really Missing Anything Without It?” at the Ian Ramsey Conference held at St. Anne's College, Oxford, in July.
Ron Jenkins, professor of theater, was featured in the June 9 edition of The Jakarta Post in an article titled "From Hell to Heaven at Kerobokan Prison." In January, Jenkins started running a theater project at the Kerobokan Correctional Institution in Bali, where he taught 20 men and women inmates about acting. After six months of practice, the group performed Dante's Divine Comedy," a story about taking a personal journey through hell and purgatory to heaven. "It is a story that anyone who has experienced hard times can understand,” Jenkins explains in the article. “But people in prison unfortunately have…
Wesleyan boasts yet another 2011 Dell Social Innovation Competition semifinalist. The group Bitone Troupe, led by Branco Sekalegga MA '11, Allana Kembabazi '11 and AhDream Smith '12, will work with the Bitone Children's Center in Kampala, Uganda this summer on a project titled "Enlightenment Uganda: Disease Control and Prevention." The troupe, made up of young adult performers, represent the promise and potential of Uganda’s youth, 2.5 million of whom are orphans of HIV/AIDS, civil war and acute poverty. According to the group's project description, the lack of knowledge on disease control and prevention has negatively impacted Ugandan communities, mostly children and pregnant…
Khachig Tölölyan, Typhaine Leservot, Ashraf Rushdy and Indira Karamcheti were invited to speak at a conference hosted by the Universite Paul Valery, Montpellier III June 20-23. The event is titled "Diasporas and Cultures of Mobility." Rushdy and Karamcheti are invited visiting professors. Tölölyan, professor of letters, professor of English, editor/founder of Diaspora will be the keynote speaker. He will speak on "Twenty Years of Diaspora Studies: Success through Confusion." Typhaine Leservot, associate professor of letters, associate professor of romance languages and literatures, will speak on ""Maghrebo-Quebecois and Franco-Maghrebi: towards Distinct Identities?" Ashraf Rushdy, professor of English, professor of African American…
Gary Yohe, the Huffington Foundation Professor of Economics and Environmental Studies, and a faculty fellow in the College of the Environment, and was named a vice chair of the National Climate Assessment Development and Advisory Committee by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Jerry Melillo '65 was named chair of the committee. Melillo is a distinguished scientist at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass As a vice chair, Yohe will lead the advisory committee that will produce the next National Climate Assessment. The Global Change Research Act of 1990 requires a National Climate Assessment at least every…
Stephen Angle, professor of philosophy, professor of East Asian studies, tutor in the College of Social Studies, participated in a one-day Book Symposium on his book, Sagehood: The Contemporary Significance of Neo-Confucian Philosophy (Oxford, 2009), at the Institute for Chinese Philosophy and Culture, Academia Sinica, in Taipei, Taiwan, in early June. Altogether, nine papers were delivered by Taiwan-based philosophers, roughly half in English and half in Chinese. Angle had an opportunity to respond and participated in a general discussion. The symposium was timed to coincide with an intensive, two-week class that he's been teaching at Taipei's Soochow University, also on the…
A study by Wesleyan's Department of Psychology is mentioned in a May 23 Business Wire article. Mattel, Inc. announced it will fund four university research projects focused on the impact of play in children’s early development through Mattel’s Philanthropy Programs. Anna Shusterman, assistant professor of psychology; Hilary Barth, assistant professor of psychology, assistant professor of neuroscience and behavior; and Emily Slusser, a postdoctoral fellow in psychology, received one of the grants worth $25,000. Their study is titled "Understanding the Power of Play: Study will focus on assessing the cognitive benefits of independent, self-directed play with toys." More information on the…
In a lengthy Q&A in the June 7 issue of Current Biology, Professor of Biology Fred Cohan talks about the evolution of bacteria, his favorite course at Wesleyan – and the legendary 1965 baseball game that impressed upon him the power and possibility of data. For the full Q&A, click here.