7 Prominent Speakers Share Ideas at 2nd Annual TEDxWesleyanU

On April 27, seven prominent thought leaders including Wesleyan alumni, two medical doctors, and local politicians shared their ideas during the second annual TEDxWesleyanU Conference held in Beckham Hall. In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. (more…)

In this recurring feature in The Wesleyan Connection, we highlight some of the latest news stories about Wesleyan and our alumni. Wesleyan in the News The New Yorker: "The Shapeshifting Music of Tyshawn Sorey" "There is something awesomely confounding about the music of Tyshawn Sorey [MA '11], the thirty-eight-year-old Newark-born composer, percussionist, pianist, and trombonist," begins this profile of Sorey, assistant professor of music. Sorey was recently featured in the Composer Portraits series at Columbia University's Miller Theatre. 2. The Register-Mail: "Video Slots Take Heavy Toll on Some Players" In this article exploring the expansion of video slot gaming in a region…

In the second of this continuing series, Sara McCrea '21, a College of Letters major from Boulder, Colo., reviews alumni books and offers this selection for those in search of knowledge, insight, and inspiration. The volumes, sent to us by alumni, are forwarded to Olin Library as donations to the University's collection and made available to the Wesleyan community. Sarah C. Townsend ’90 writes with an urgency that comes not from the saltwater of her tears, but directly from her pen. In Setting the Wire: A Memoir of Postpartum Psychosis, which was released from The Lettered Street Press earlier this…

A paper by John Monroe Van Vleck Professor of Astronomy William Herbst and Assistant Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences James Greenwood will be published in the September 2019 issue of Icarus, published by Elsevier. The paper is available online. The paper, titled "Radiative Heating Model for Chondrule and Chondrite Formation," presents a new theory of how chondrules and chondrites (the most common meteorites) formed. It suggests a new approach to thinking about these rocks that populate the meteorite collections on Earth. It includes both theory and experiments (completed in Greenwood's lab in Exley Science Center). These laboratory experiments demonstrate that porphyritic olivine…

Wesleyan’s College of Film and the Moving Image (CFILM) is launching the Wesleyan Documentary Project, an initiative to teach, support, and produce nonfiction film and video. Beginning this fall, the Wesleyan Documentary Project will be led by Tracy Heather Strain and Randall MacLowry ’86, the duo behind the Boston-based documentary film company, The Film Posse. They will join Wesleyan’s faculty as professors of the practice, teaching courses in documentary creation and studies. MacLowry and Strain will also relocate their production company to Middletown, where they will continue to produce films for PBS and other outlets. Together, The Film Posse and the…

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H. Shellae Versey, assistant professor of psychology, is the author of "A tale of two Harlems: Gentrification, social capital, and implications for aging in place," published in Social Science & Medicine, Volume 214, October 2018. In this paper, Versey discusses the impact of gentrification on features of the social and cultural environment. "While research generally describes gentrification as a phenomenon of housing shifts and neighborhood migration, I argue that gentrification is more so a process of slow violence that increases housing scarcity and social isolation, disrupts neighborhood social capital, and decreases a sense of belongingness, particularly among older adults and…

Two Wesleyan students are the recipients of the Friends of the Wesleyan Library's third annual Undergraduate Research Prize. Emma Leuchten '19, an anthropology and religion double major, received the first place prize for her senior essay, "Anthropology Beyond Belief: Navigating Dreams and Reality in the Burmese Weikza Tradition." Leuchten based the paper on fieldwork she conducted in Myanmar during a semester abroad. Her advisor was Elizabeth Traube, professor of anthropology. The essay explores quests for power and knowledge in a contemporary Burmese wizardry tradition. Drawing from personal interviews with weikza (wizard-saints), devotees, and skeptics, Leuchten examines the tensions that have arisen between this…

Wesleyan faculty frequently publish articles based on their scholarship in The Conversation US, a nonprofit news organization with the tagline, “Academic rigor, journalistic flair.” In a new article, Elizabeth Bobrick, visiting scholar in classical studies and visiting assistant professor in liberal studies, writes about lessons from Sophocles' Greek tragedy Antigone, a play which, she writes, "mirrors the state of America's current disunion." What the Greek tragedy Antigone can teach us about the dangers of extremism In a Greek tragedy written in the middle of the fifth century B.C., three teenagers struggle with a question that could be asked now: What happens when…

This year, approximately 740 teams from more than 350 universities across the country competed in tournaments hosted by the American Mock Trial Association (AMTA). And of those 740 teams, Wesleyan's Mock Trial Team A placed eighth in the country in the Temple Law Division during the National Championship Tournament on April 7. The AMTA hosted three rounds of competition for the 5,300 participating college students: Regionals, the Opening Round Championship Series (ORCS), and the National Championship. Wesleyan's three teams—A, B, and C—qualified for the ORCS tournament leading up to Nationals. And for the first time in Wesleyan's history, teams A and B…

A book coauthored by Wesleyan alumni Kennedy Odede ’12 and Jessica Posner ’09 was unanimously chosen as the Common Reading selection for the Class of 2023. The Common Reading is part of Wesleyan's First Year Matters Program, which serves as an introduction to intellectual life at Wesleyan. All Class of 2023 students will receive an electronic copy of the book, Find Me Unafraid: Love, Loss, and Hope in an African Slum (2016). As their first Wesleyan "homework assignment," the students are expected to read it prior to New Student Orientation. The book will serve as a tool for spearheading discussions throughout…

Lizzie Whitney ’19, a College of Letters and German studies double major from California, is the recipient of a 2019 DAAD scholarship for study/research in Germany. The Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst, or German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) supports the internationalization of German universities and promotes German studies and the German language abroad. The study scholarship is presented to graduating seniors at the top of their class. Whitney, who is applying to the University of Konstanz for graduate school, will use her DAAD scholarship to support her studies in comparative literature. The study scholarship also provides students with a monthly stipend plus funds for…

7 Prominent Speakers Share Ideas at 2nd Annual TEDxWesleyanU

Wesleyan in the News

“You Just Have to Read This…” 3 Books By Wesleyan Authors

Study by Herbst, Greenwood Presents New Theory on How Meteorites Formed

MacLowry ’86, Strain to Launch Wesleyan Documentary Project on Campus

Psychology Department Hosts Research Poster Session

Versey Authors Paper on the Impact of Gentrification, Moderates Panel

Students Receive Undergraduate Research Prizes from Friends of the Wesleyan Library

Bobrick in The Conversation: What the Greek Tragedy Antigone Can Teach Us About the Dangers of Extremism

Wesleyan Mock Trial Team Takes 8th Place in National Competition

Book by Odede ’12, Posner ’09 Chosen for First Year Matters Program’s Common Reading

Whitney ’19 Wins DAAD Scholarship to Support Graduate Study in Germany