How Do You Love Yourself and Others?

What might a life anchored in integrity, community, and meaning look like? A small group of faculty, students, and staff, fortified by Thai food and a welcoming atmosphere, got together in the Develin Room in Olin Library October 15 to kick around these ideas. The talk, entitled “In a World Full of Fear, How Do You Love Yourself and Others?” brought together thinkers from across campus for a conversation. Exploration was the goal of the day. Mary-Jane Rubenstein, professor of religion; Rev. Marichal Monts ‘85, pastor of The Citadel of Love in Hartford; Dia Fortenberry, the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Engagements…

One-hundred-and-eighteen days after the Supreme Court repealed Roe vs. Wade, a group of Wesleyan faculty and students assembled in Judd Hall for a teach-in focusing on protecting reproductive freedom across the country. The October 20 event, co-sponsored by Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and Wesleyan Reproductive Advocacy and Legislation (WRAL), gave students the opportunity to learn more about abortion access, coalition work around reproductive freedom, and other related issues. Historically speaking, Connecticut has played an important role in the abortion debate. A 1965 Supreme Court decision, Griswold v. Connecticut, set the legal groundwork for the Roe v. Wade decision. And…

Wesleyan University faculty and students played an important role at Middletown’s 2022 Amistad Journey to Freedom Community Day Celebration in Harbor Park Saturday, October 8. Event planners coordinated with Discovering Amistad to offer age-appropriate tours of the replica vessel, which arrived in Middletown one week earlier. Jesse Nasta ’07, assistant professor of the practice in African American Studies, who wrote his honors thesis on Middletown’s Beman Triangle, was already signed up to participate, leading the 4th Annual Middletown Middle Passage Ceremony. “The Middle Passage and the Middle Passage Ceremony are an origin story of the Beman Triangle and other…

Community can be defined in many ways—shared interests, shared experiences, a shared zip code. For Oliver Egger ’23, founder of the student-led Route 9 Collective writing community, Middlesex County provided fertile ground from which to examine the different voices that populate this small Connecticut county spanned by Route 9. In early September, Wesleyan University Press (WesPress) and the Route 9 Collective published Route 9 Anthology: A Collection of Writing from Wesleyan Students, Faculty, Staff, and Middlesex County Residents, compiled and edited by Egger, who has dreamed of fostering community through art in this manner since his first year at Wesleyan.…

Krishna Winston, Marcus L. Taft Professor of German Language and Literature, Emerita, and Professor, College of the Environment, Emerita, was recognized with the Tom ODell Distinguished Service Award by the Rockfall Foundation at a ceremony held Thursday, October 6. The award, which recognizes long-term accomplishments in environmental conservation and preservation, was given for Winston's many years of advocacy for the environment in Middletown. Winston's formal service to the City began in 1989 when she was appointed to the task force that designed Middletown's recycling program. When mandatory recycling began in Connecticut two years later, she became the chair of Middletown's…

The New England Foundation for the Arts awarded over $2 million to this year’s National Dance Project Production Grant recipients and finalists on September 28. Five of the 36 dance companies have close ties to Wesleyan University, from faculty and alumni to collaborative partners and guest artists. Twenty grantees will each receive $56,500 to create and tour a new dance work, and in support of production residencies and community engagement. The companies will also receive $10,000 in general operating support. And $700,000 is allocated to support U.S. organizations to present the projects in-person, digitally, or via new hybrid models. Hari…

Yuri Herrera, part of Wesleyan’s inaugural Shapiro-Silverberg Distinguished Writers in Residence program, is regarded as one of the most remarkable writers in contemporary Mexican literature. In spare, weighty prose flecked with language-bending neologisms, Herrera explores borders—the physical, the social, and beyond—in books like The Transmigration of Bodies and Signs Preceding the End of the World, the latter of which The Guardian named one of the 100 best books of the 21st century. A professor at Tulane University in New Orleans, Herrera holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Texas at El Paso and a PhD from the…

Barry Chernoff, the Robert F. Schumann Professor of Environmental Studies, has the look of someone who has just received everything they’d wanted - happiness combined with the realization of how much work there is ahead. “Be careful what you wish for,” he said with a laugh while describing the ambitious goals that will be realized by the recent $2 million grant from the Robert F. Schumann Foundation to support sustainability initiatives at the Robert F. Schumann Institute of the College of the Environment, at Wesleyan, and in the surrounding region. The goals include building a network of local community non-governmental…

By Maia Bronfman '23 “How much do Americans know about the kitchens and the bathrooms and the marriages of places anywhere else in the world?” Bernardo Antonio Gonzales, professor of Spanish and founder of the Center for Global Studies, asked the question to pose a self-admittedly trivial but thematic backdrop for the annual Contemporary Cinema from the Hispanic World Film Series. Along with María Ospina, associate professor of Spanish and Latin American studies, Gonzales has curated a series of films by young directors from Mexico, Argentina, Costa Rica, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. “These films have little chance of making the…

A new Survey Lab led by Steven T. Moore, assistant professor of government, will have the opportunity dig deeply into public opinion to learn how and why Americans think the way they do about political and cultural issues. “This is one of the more exciting parts of my job. We’ve got all kinds of theories on how the world works, but they often don’t work out in reality. I’m trying to figure out which ones are concrete and which ones are telling us about how people are processing complicated events in this pivotal moment in American politics,” Moore said. The…

Recent research by Erika A. Taylor, associate professor of chemistry, suggests that the way scientists have long believed some antibiotics used to treat bacterial infections work could be incorrect. Aminoglycoside antibiotics have broad-spectrum, bacterial killing abilities and are often prescribed for childhood infections caused by Gram-negative bacterial pathogens, which can be found in E. coli, Salmonella, and V. cholera, amongst others. The stakes of the research are real, Taylor explained. Improved antibiotics would prevent needless deaths from E. coli, Salmonella and other Gram-negative bacteria. Relatively simple treatments, such as those for urinary tract infections, would be more efficient, improving people’s…

Martha “Marty” Gilmore, the George I. Seney Professor of Geology and professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences, has been awarded the 2022 Claudia J. Alexander Prize from the Division for Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) for her study of Venus’ geology. Gilmore is a Science Team Member on the DAVINCI and VERITAS missions to Venus, and the principal investigator of a Venus Flagship Mission Concept Study for the Planetary Decadal Survey. Gilmore’s work has “helped usher in a new decade of exploration of Venus with the selection of two new NASA Venus missions,” according to the AAS.…

How Do You Love Yourself and Others?

Teaching Reproductive Rights

Wesleyan Joins Middletown To Recognize Amistad Journey to Freedom Day

Celebrating Community Voices: The Route 9 Anthology

Krishna Winston Named 2022 Environmental Champion by Rockfall Foundation

Wesleyan Connected to Five National Dance Project Grant Recipients

The Musicality of Language: A Q&A with Yuri Herrera, Shapiro-Silverberg Distinguished Writer in Residence

Chernoff Leads Effort to Improve Local Sustainability Networks

Contemporary Cinema from the Hispanic World Film Series Launches in September

New Survey Lab to Explore Political and Cultural Issues

New Research Questions Efficacy of Some Antibiotics

Martha Gilmore Wins Claudia J. Alexander Award