David PesciIn an episode of WNPR’s “Where We Live,” Sarah Croucher, assistant professor anthropology, assistant professor archeology, discusses the upcoming dig at Beman Triangle, a site in Middletown, Conn. that was the center of the city’s African American community in the 19th and early 20th century.
Olivia DrakeKhachig Tölölyan, professor of letters, presented several lectures on Diaspora studies in 2011. They include: “The Transatlantic Study of Transnational Diasporas,” at Germany’s Münster University, whose new program of diaspora studies was funded for $3.6 million by the Marie Curie Institute, an EU organization. Nov. 28, 2011; “Varieties of Diaspora: Phenomena, Concepts, Terminology,” at the conference “Perspectives on Global Diasporas,” organized by the Programs in Jewish Studies, Asian Studies, African American Studies and International Affairs, at Northeastern University, Nov. 17, 2011; “Twenty years of diaspora studies: success through confusion,” at the Conference on Diasporas and Cultures of Migration,” held at…
David LowSome Day Catch Some Day Down and Sunset Park Polyphony, two CDs released recently and produced by Wesleyan alumni, showcase the cross-pollination of world music and jazz at Wesleyan across decades, and specific collaborations of Wesleyan graduates and faculty for more than 30 years. The albums also reflect Abraham Adzenyah’s long contribution to the Wesleyan community as a teacher of West African music, and his deep influence on generations of Wesleyan students who now make up a large number of alumni. Some Day Catch Some Day Down by Talking Drums (innova Recordings) was originally released in 1987 as an LP and was…
Mark Molina ’81 joined SafeNet, the data protection company, as senior vice president and chief legal officer this month. Responsible for the legal affairs of SafeNet on a global basis, with direct supervisory authority over the company’s worldwide legal strategies, functions, and personnel, he also serves as secretary to SafeNet’s board of directors. He brings to SafeNet more than two decades of experience advising public and private technology companies on a wide variety of matters, including public and private securities offerings, SEC reporting and compliance obligations, and intellectual property and protection efforts. Prior to joining SafeNet, he served as executive…
Cynthia RockwellAfter a national search, Joshua Borenstein ’97 was appointed managing director of Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, Conn., confirmed by unanimous vote at a special session of the Board of Trustees. “Josh was simply the best candidate. Because of our national search, his skills and qualification for the position became more and more clear to us on the Board of Trustees,” said Charles Kingsley, board chair, in a press release. “He’s been serving as the interim managing director for the past six months and he’s done a wonderful job. Josh has the total confidence of the Board, the staff…
Frances Padilla ’81 was appointed president of the Universal Health Care Foundation of Connecticut, a nonprofit that has lobbied for universal health care in the state. Padilla, who joined the foundation in 2004 and served as executive vice president, succeeds Juan A. Figueroa, the founding president, who will step down in September. Under her leadership, the foundation has employed an activist philanthropy approach to build a movement for universal health care by funding results-oriented outreach, education and mobilization. She has also directed the foundation’s research and policy initiatives, which culminated in the development of Connecticut’s historic SustiNet health care reform…
Jay Geller ’75 is the author of The Other Jewish Question: Identifying the Jew and Making Sense of Modernity (Fordham University Press). Geller considers how modernizing German-speaking cultures, undergoing their own processes of identification, responded to the narcissistic threat posed by the continued persistence of Judentum (Judaism, Jewry, Jewishness) by representing “the Jew”’s body—or rather parts of that body and the techniques performed upon them. Such fetish-producing practices reveal the question of German-identified modernity to be inseparable from the Jewish Question. Jewish-identified individuals, immersed in the phantasmagoria of such figurations—in the gutter and garret salon, medical treatise and dirty joke,…
Lauren RubensteinSteven Stemler, assistant professor of psychology, is the co-author of a new book, The School Mission Statement: Values, Goals & Identities in American Education," published by Eye on Education in March. Co-authored with Damian J. Bebell of Boston College, the book contains an extensive review of mission statements from a diverse range of schools, including public schools, charter schools, magnet schools, vocational schools, parochial schools and Native American schools. Stemler and Bebell developed a coding rubric to classify the mission statements according to eleven broad themes (eg. Foster cognitive development; foster social development; foster emotional development; integrate into global community).…
Dana Royer and Ellen Thomas are among the 21 authors of a review paper, "The Geological Record of Ocean Acidification," published in Science, March 2012: Vol. 335, no. 6072, pages 1058-1063. In the paper, the authors review events exhibiting evidence for elevated atmospheric CO2, global warming, and ocean acidification over the past 300 million years of Earth’s history, some with contemporaneous extinction or evolutionary turnover among marine calcifiers. Ocean acidification may have severe consequences for marine ecosystems; however, assessing its future impact is difficult because laboratory experiments and field observations are limited by their reduced ecologic complexity and sample period, respectively. Royer is…
Magda Teter, the Jeremy Zwelling Professor of Jewish Studies, published an article, “Sacrilege and the Sacred and Profane Spaces: Jews and Christians in Early Modern Poland," which was published in Brotherhood and Boundaries: Fraternià e barriere by Edizioni della Normale, pages 215-224 in 2011. Teter also is chair and professor of medieval studies, professor of history, and professor of feminist, gender and sexuality studies. This book offers a comparative study of secular and religious brotherhoods and networks of social relationships, analyzing role in the various forms of religious communities, national, cultural and social from the 14th to the 18th century. More information on…
Lisa Dierker, chair and professor of psychology, and Ruth Striegel, the Walter A. Crowell University Professor of the Social Sciences, professor of psychology, are co-authors of a paper titled, "Behavioral Symptoms of Eating Disorders in Native Americans: Results from the Add Health Survey Wave III," published in the International Journal of Eating Disorders, 2011. In addition, Dierker is the author of "Alcohol Use as a Signal for Sensitivity to Nicotine Dependence: Cross-sectional findings from a Nationally Representative Sample of Recent Onset Smokers," published in Addictive Behaviors, Issue 36(4), pages 421-426, 2011. And "How Spacing of Data Collection May Impact Estimates of Substance Use…
A research group led by Manju Hingorani, associate professor of molecular biology and biochemistry, has published eight papers in 2011-2012 on the mechanisms of DNA replication and repair proteins, independently and in collaboration with research groups at Wesleyan and other national and international universities. The papers are: "Large conformational changes in MutS during DNA scanning, mismatch recognition and repair signaling," published in The EMBO Journal, 2012 (in press). "The Variable Sub-domain of Escherichia coli SecA functions to regulate in the SecA ATPase Activity and ADP release," published in the Journal of Bacteriology, 2012 (March 2 Epub). Don Oliver, the Daniel Ayres Professor of…