Olivia DrakeOctober 13, 20101min
Victoria Smolkin-Rothrock, assistant professor of history, instructor of Russian and Eastern European studies, has several forthcoming publications: “The Voices of Silence: The Death and Funeral of Alexander Blok” in Petersburg/ Petersburg: Novel and City, ed. Olga Matich (University of Wisconsin Press, 2010); “Cosmic Enlightenment: Scientific Atheism and the Soviet Conquest of Space” in Into the Cosmos: Space Exploration and Soviet Culture in Post-Stalinist Russia, eds. James T. Andrews and Asif A. Siddiqi (University of Pittsburgh); and “The Contested Skies: The Battle of Science and Religion in the Soviet Planetarium” in Cosmic Enthusiasm: The Cultural Impact of Space Exploration on the Soviet…

David LowOctober 13, 20102min
Jeffrey Lane ’76 is the book writer for a new Broadway musical, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, based on the Spanish film of the same name directed by master filmmaker, Pedro Almodovar. The musical deals with love and abandonment in 1980s Madrid and stars Patti LuPone, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Sherie Rene Scott, and Laura Benanti. The show is directed by Bartlett Sher (South Pacific, The Light in the Piazza), and the composer and lyricist is David Yazbek, who previously worked with Lane on the hit Broadway musical, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, also adapted from a film. Lane was…

David PesciOctober 13, 20101min
In an Oct. 8 The Los Angeles Times OpEd titled "Gaps in medical research ethics," Laura Stark, assistant professor of science in society, assistant professor of sociology, assistant professor of environmental studies, explains flaws in the current research review system in the United States. On the heels of a U.S. apology for medical research in Guatemala, the U.S. now has on opportunity to overhaul ethics rules. Stark shows how the ethics review process enabled the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to use federal prisoners in experiments during the 1960s. The prisoners were infected with “pneumonia, influenza and the common cold,…

David PesciSeptember 24, 20102min
Wesleyan University is launching the Wesleyan Media Project, a non-partisan initiative designed to perform comprehensive tracking and analysis of federal and state political advertisements by candidates, parties and special interest groups. The project launches at the onset of a political election season poised to break advertising records. Throughout the course of the 2010 election cycle, the Wesleyan Media Project will provide real-time, public information on the content and targeting of advertising in federal election campaigns across the country. In light of the Supreme Court’s recent Citizens United decision, the Project will also provide systematic evidence on the extent of corporate…