The Wesleyan Connection

Jacob Mergendoller '11 discovered that Facebook profiles may contain a great deal of alcohol content and are accessible by anyone, regardless of age.

Jacob Mergendoller ’11 is changing the way Facebook markets alcohol on the social networking site.

In a research article titled “Alcohol Promotion on Facebook,” published in The Journal of Global Drug Policy and Practice, Mergendoller and co-authors Sarah Mart and Michele Simon explain how the social networking site Facebook changed its advertising policies and regulations from not offering online advertising to soliciting paid advertisements for products and services including alcohol products.

“There are a number of loopholes in Facebook’s enforcement of their own alcohol advertising policy,” Mergendoller says. “There are some age restrictions on the alcohol content on Facebook (meaning inaccessible to minors), but there is also a strong presence of alcohol advertisements in different forms which can be accessed by anyone.”

For the report, Mergendoller explored the prevalence of alcohol-related content found in popular aspects of Facebook profiles and identified aspects of Facebook that contain a great deal of alcohol content and are accessible by anyone, regardless of age.

Psychology major Mergendoller wrote the article during a summer internship at the Marin Institute, an organization which fights to protect the public (more…)

Angel Gil-Ordóñez, director of private lessons, chamber music and ensembles, adjunct professor of music and Wesleyan Orchestra and Wesleyan Concert Choir music director, is mentioned in the October 2009 issue of Gramophone, the world’s leading classical music magazine.

Gil-Ordóñez directed the Washington D.C.-based Post-Classical Ensemble, which performed a newly-recorded soundtrack to Aaron Copland’s 1939 documentary film, The City.

The article says, “In what can only be called a spectacular improvement from the original monaural recording (which is included on the DVD as an extra), the newly performed score showcases every aspect of Copland’s Americana style, from majestic splendor accompanying wide-angle shots to an almost minimalist pulse of customers eating at busy lunch counters, to heart-rending looks at the urban poor. It was this masterful treatment that led to Copland’s successful run in Hollywood in films such as Our Town and The Red Pony. Anyone who is a fan of that music will surely not want to miss the full soundtrack of The City.”

The City, released by Naxos, is online at http://www.naxos.com/catalogue/item.asp?item_code=2.110231.

Earth and environmental sciences graduate student George Bennum ‘08 received an honorable mention for his student research poster titled “3D Modeling of Synsedimentary Faults in the Capitan Reef, Guadalupe Mountains, NM/TX” at the American Association of Petroleum Geologists “Rocky Mountain Rendezvous of Geoscience Students and Employers.” Phil Resor, assistant professor of earth and environmental sciences, is Bennum’s advisor.

Neely Bruce, professor of music, directed The Mitchell College Singers & Friends Oct. 20 in New London, Conn. The Mitchell College Singers performed The Bill of Rights: Ten Amendments in Eight Motets, one of the more notable musical works created within Connecticut in the past decade. This unique program was presented in New London’s historic Pequot Chapel. Prior to the concert, Bruce spoke on “Why I Set the Bill of Rights to Music,” and led a recitation of the Preamble to the Bill of Rights.

This was the fourth complete performance of The Bill of Rights. The song’s premiere was at Wesleyan in 2005. More information on Bruce and the Bill of Rights event are posted in the Oct. 8 edition of the Wesleyan Connection, online here.

Wesleyan University Press published the award-winning book.

A book published by Wesleyan University Press is a 2009 National Book Award Finalist in the poetry category.

Versed, by Rae Armantrout, offers readers an expanded view of the arc of the author’s writing. The poems in the first section, “Versed,” play with vice and versa, the perversity of human consciousness. They flirt with error and delusion, skating on a thin ice that inevitably cracks. In the second section, “Dark Matter,” the invisible and unknowable are confronted directly as Armantrout’s experience with cancer marks these poems with a new austerity shot through with her signature wit and stark unsentimental thinking.

Together, the poems of Versed part us from our assumptions about reality, revealing the gaps and fissures in our emotional and linguistic constructs, showing us ourselves where we are most exposed.

Rae Armantrout is a professor of writing and literature at the University of California, San Diego.

Kit Reed

Kit 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.

Alvin Lucier performed at Queen's University Oct. 25.

Alvin Lucier, the John Spencer Camp Professor of Music, is featured in an Oct. 23 article titled “Alvin and the experimentals: Alvin Lucier comes to town as a Queen’s visiting artist and special guest for Tone Deaf 8″ published by The Journal of Queens University.

According to the article, Queen’s Tone Deaf 8 festival “brings an experimental sound adventure to campus through the genius of experimental composer Alvin Lucier and some of his critically-acclaimed students.”

Lucier teaches music composition, an experimental music course, as well as a freshman course on the Orpheus Myth at Wesleyan, where he’s been teaching for over 30 years. Lucier presented his work at the Sydenham St. United Church on Oct. 24 and gave a public lecture at Queens on Oct. 25.

Lucier said he strives to explore many of the natural characteristics of sound and sound waves. His work isolates single sounds and plays around with tone and synchronization for extended periods of time. His album, Still and Moving Lines of Silence in Families of Hyperbolas, contains songs with only one key on a piano being played at a time.

“This includes echoes from pulse waves reflecting off walls, ceilings and floors; brain waves, vibrating wires … rather than simply writing for musical instruments,” he said, in the article.

Planned Parenthood volunteer Zak Kirwood '12 used a condom-stuffed backpack pocket as a way to recruit fellow students to talk to him about sexual health issues.

Zak Kirwood ’12, a volunteer with Planned Parenthood of Connecticut, was awarded the 2009 Planned Parenthood Federation of America Young Volunteer of the Year award.

During his senior year at Amity Regional High School in Woodbridge, Conn., Kirwood volunteered for Planned Parenthood and was recruited for the organization’s Students Teaching About Responsible Sexuality (S.T.A.R.S.) peer education program. S.T.A.R.S. educators speak to members of their communities about sexual health issues.

“I would act as a resource in my high school – handing out condoms, and information about sexual health and rights,” Kirwood said during his award acceptance speech in Houston, Texas.

In attempt to reach the 1,600 students in his high school, Kirwood used his backpack as a advertisement, stuffing the side mesh pockets with condoms. He pinned an “ask” sign to the backpack.

“I handed out hundreds of condoms that year. People could come to me and ask me about anything,” he recalls.

Kirwood continues these efforts at Wesleyan, where he is a campus action intern. He works independently to plan events related to reproductive and sexual rights, and collaborates with other sexual health groups on campus.

“I’ve always been politically interested in a variety of causes. Planned Parenthood had a ton of opportunities for me to get involved,” he said.

A video of Kirwood’s acceptance speech is online below:

Paul Erickson was honored for his contribution to the History of Science in Western Civilization. (Photo by Corrina Kerr)

Paul Erickson, assistant professor of history and assistant professor of Science in Society, has been awarded the 2009 Prize for Young Scholars from the International Union for the History and Philosophy of Science, Division of History of Science and Technology (DHST). He received the award at an August ceremony in Budapest, Hungary.

The award was bestowed in recognition for Erickson’s significant scholarly contribution to the History of Science in Western Civilization. The prize is awarded every four years at meetings of the Union Congress to recent PhDs in the history of science and technology for outstanding dissertation projects on topics in the western tradition. Erickson’s dissertation, “The Politics of Game Theory: Mathematics, Rationality, and Cold War Culture” impressed the award committee with its “innovative approach” and manner of making “mathematics and Cold War culture accessible for a critical discussion.”

In citing his dissertation, the prize committee stated “Erickson did a brilliant job in discussing a topic with a mathematical image in a real historical way.” The citation also heralded Erickson’s ability to explain the “incompatible applications of game theory in the military and evolutionary realm.” Notably, Erickson was selected for the Young Scholars award by unanimous vote of the prize committee.

Erickson's award.

Game theory, which models strategic interactions between rational individuals, was developed in the 1920s and `30s by the Hungarian-American mathematician John von Neumann and the Austrian economist Oskar Morgenstern. The theory’s original inspiration was parlor games like chess and poker, but in the wake of World War II, military-funded mathematicians found applications of the theory to problems of tactical decision-making and logistics. Subsequently, game theory has become a central modeling technique throughout the social and biological sciences, from economics and psychology to evolutionary biology, according to Erickson.

“Game theory is also a theory of how human beings should behave rationally, perhaps; how they do behave; how they might behave and so forth,” Erickson says.

”My work can be read on two levels. On one hand, it tells the history of game theory as a branch of mathematics. On the other, it presents a history of rationality in 20th century America by focusing on links between game theory and broader currents in American culture and politics,” he says.

Erickson explored the ways in which rationality became a seriously contested concept in the nation during the Cold War—especially from a political and cultural standpoint.

Erickson completed his PhD in the History of Science at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and has been at Wesleyan University since summer, 2008. He specializes in the science of the Atomic Age, the history of ecology, biology and technology, game theory’s wider applications in science and social science, the study of populations and science in public policy, among other research specialties and interests.

Photos from the Union Congress are available here.

Four seniors were nominated for the Thomas J. Watson Fellowship Program. The students, and their projects are, Eve Mayberger ’10 with “Interwoven Fibers: The Art of Papermaking in China, Korea, Japan and France;” Ezra Silk ’10 with “The Internet Revolution and the Press: Ghana, Norway, and Vietnam;” Liana Woskie ’10 with “Bringing Health Care Home in Bangladesh, India, Thailand, Tanzania and Lesotho;” Toni Zosherafatain ’10 with “(Trans)forming the World: The Shape of Transgender Communities in Britain, Argentina, Australia and South Africa.”

The mission of the Thomas J. Watson Fellowship Program is to offer college graduates of unusual promise a year of independent, purposeful exploration and travel outside of the United States in order to enhance their capacity for resourcefulness, imagination, openness, and leadership and to foster their humane and effective participation in the world community.

The fellowship program will announce the award recipients by March 15.