The Wesleyan Connection

Phillip Resor, assistant professor of earth and environmental sciences, and Vanessa Meer '06, are co-authors on a paper titled “Slip heterogeneity on a corrugated fault," to be published in Earth and Planetary Science Letters in December. In 2005, Resor, Marie Brophy '07, pictured in foreground, and Meer (pictured in background) scanned a fault in Greece using a reflectorless total station in the field. Meer and Resor returned in 2006 to rescan with a newer instrument. The paper builds on Meer's honor thesis work in Greece.

Tags: Earth and Enviornmental Sciences, faculty

Alex Dupuy, the Class of 1958 Distinguished Professor of Sociology, is the author of “Indefensible: On Aristide, Violence, and Democracy,” published in the November issue of Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism 30, pages 161-173. The article is edited by David Scott.

Tags: Publications, sociology

Magda Teter, associate professor of history, associate professor of medieval studies, associate professor of feminist, gender and sexuality studies, is the co-author of ”Out of the (Historiographic) Ghetto: Jews and the Reformation,” published in Sixteenth Century Journal 40 No. 2, pages 365-393 in 2009.

The exhibit catalog for “Pearl of the Snowlands: Buddhist Printing from the Derge Parkhang” is now available. The catalog contains essays by Patrick Dowdey, Curator of Freeman Center for East Asian Studies, Clifton Meador, and Yudru Tsomu as well as an extended photo essay by Clifton Meador who is a noted book artist.

Laurie Nussdorfers’ book Brokers of Public Trust: Notaries in Early Modern Rome was published by The Johns Hopkins University Press in October 2009. Nussdorfer is is a Professor of History, Medieval Studies, and of Letters.

Deb Olin Unferth joined the Department of English in fall.

Deb Olin Unferth has joined the Department of English as assistant professor. She specializes in fiction writing, innovative literature, the short story and the novel.

She says she was attracted to Wesleyan because of its well-known writing program.

“Wesleyan is a fantastic liberal arts school,” Unferth says. “I am very excited to be here. I am enjoying my classes immensely. The students are excellent—in ability, focus, creativity, intelligence, and temperament.”

Unferth has a B.A. in philosophy with distinction from the University of Colorado, where she was Phi Beta Kappa. In 1998, she earned her M.F.A. in creative writing from Syracuse University.

Unferth’s debut novel Vacation was published by McSweeney’s in October 2008. The book garnered her the Virginia Commonwealth University Cabell First Novelist Award for 2009.

Locations included in the book are Manhattan, Syracuse, and Nicaragua (places that Unferth says she knows well). Vacation could be described as being “about leaving–about all forms of departure,” she says.

Unferth’s first book received several positive reviews and the Village Voice called Vacation a “dreamy, surreal debut novel … at once precise and startling.”

Additionally, her story “Wait Till You See Me Dance” was published in the July 2009 issue of Harper’s. Unferth’s collection of stories called Minor Robberies, was published by McSweeney’s in 2007.

Unferth lives in New Haven, Conn. Next semester she will be teaching an advanced fiction writing workshop and a literature class called “Poetics of the Short Short” about the very short story.

Tags: English Department, faculty

The Center for Community Partnerships received a grant for $170,923 from the Consortium for Liberal Arts in Prison at Bard College on Sept. 14. The award will support the Wesleyan Center for Prison Education, a two year pilot program at Cheshire Correctional Institution.

In the Nov. 16 issue of The New Yorker, staff writer Ariel Levy ’96 looks at two new books: When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present (Little Brown) by Gail Collins, and You’ve Come a Long Way, Maybe: Sarah, Michelle, Hillary and the Shaping of the New American Woman (Palgrave) by Leslie Sanchez.

In her essay, titled “Lift and Separate,” Levy discusses not just the content of the two books but also considers how feminism is still so divisive. She discusses some of the triumphs and defeats of the feminist movement and some myths of the movement as well. For instance, Levy writes that “bra burning became the most durable and unsettling image of modern feminism,” but then continues: “So it may be worth noting that it never actually happened.”

Levy notes how activist feminists are often stereotyped and how women like Sarah Palin and Cindy McCain who describe themselves as “traditional” are far from traditional women. She recognizes how the feminist movement succeeded in getting women into the government and the private sector workforce. But she also comments that the “contours of mainstream feminism started to change accordingly. A politics of liberation was largely supplanted by a politics of identity.”

Near the end of her essay, Levy writes: “Feminism as an identity politics has enjoyed real victories. It matters that women serve on the Supreme Court, that they make decisions in business, government, academia, and the media. But a preoccupation with representation suggests that feminism has lost its larger ambitions. We’ve come a long way in the past forty years … The trouble is that the journey hasn’t always been in the intended direction. These days, we can only dream about a federal program insuring that women with school-age children have affordable child care.”

Tags: alumni, alumni publications

Book co-edited by Grant Brenner ’92

Grant Brenner ’92, Daniel Bush and Joshua Moses are co-editors of Creating Spiritual and Psychological Resilience: Integrating Care in Disaster Relief Work (Routledge), which explores the interface between spiritual and psychological care in the context of disaster recovery work, drawing upon recent disasters including the experiences of Sept. 11, 2001.

The book contains three sections structured around the cycle of disaster response and focusing on the relevant phase of disaster recovery work. In each section, selected spiritual and mental health topics are examined with contributions from spiritual care and mental health care providers. This is a useful reference volume for theory and an invaluable hands-on resource, which identifies and considers interdisciplinary collaborations, creative partnerships, gaps in care and necessary interdisciplinary work.

The book grew out of several conferences co-organized by two of the editors during the years following 9/11, and it represents the collective wisdom of many people who have worked diligently and often at great cost to themselves. The volume highlights the often overlooked partnership between spiritual and mental health caregivers, a partnership especially important in distressful situations involving trauma, disaster and terrorism.

Grant Brenner, MD, is in private practice in Manhattan and works as a psychiatrist, psychoanalytic psychotherapist, and consultant. He is on faculty at the William Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis and Psychology, where he is a chief psychiatric consultant and director of the Trauma Service; is assistant clinical professor at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Mount Sinai School of Medicine (adjunct); and teaches and supervises psychiatric residents in addition to other academic roles.

Tags: alumni, alumni publications

Daniel Pollitt ’43, University of North Carolina Kenan Professor Emeritus and longtime civil-liberties and civil-rights advocate, was awarded the Order of the Long Leaf Pine, one of the state’s highest honors, last summer.

Nominated for the award by state Sen. Floyd McKissick Jr., whose father, Floyd McKissick Sr., worked with Pollitt on a number of civil-rights issues, Pollitt was presented with the award by Sen. Ellie Kinnaird, with whom he was wed last April.

Bestowed for a lifetime of “integrity, learning and zeal,” the award recognizes his activism and commitment to the causes of social justice. In the 1950s, he served as defense council in a number of historic civil-liberty trials, including those of Lillian Hellman and Arthur Miller before the House Un-American Activities Committee, helped lead a successful protest to integrate a downtown Chapel Hill theater in the 1960s, and continues to be active in his opposition to the death penalty.

An article in the Carrboro Citizen, quotes him proclaiming his motto: “Constant skepticism is the hallmark of a democratic society.”

For further information, see  http://www.carrborocitizen.com/main/2009/08/06/pollitt-receives-long-leaf-pine-award/

Tags: alumni