faculty achievements

The 2022 midterm elections featured a record volume of television advertising, while, in addition, candidates in federal races spent almost $150 million on digital ads, according to a post-mortem analysis from the Wesleyan Media Project. Late February, the Wesleyan Media Project published two reports on television and digital ad spending in The Forum: A Journal of Applied Research in Contemporary Politics. “After all was said and done, and after billions of dollars were spent on political advertising in the 2022 U.S. midterm election campaign, American politics mostly changed on the margins,” according to the Wesleyan Media Project. According to WMP…

Through a series of intimate and informal salons, Wesleyan’s Embodying Antiracism Initiative Fellows shared some of the work they have created this year during the program’s Think Tank. The salons are mini-festivals of arts, ideas, and activation, looking at works-in-progress and building community, said Stephanie McKee-Anderson, Executive Artistic Director of partnering organization Junebug Productions and Special Advisor to Provost Nicole Stanton. A Fellow might have the seed of a creation, so a salon could be a helpful place to dialogue about that idea, while the others might act as thought provocateurs. “What questions make a creator more excited about their…

Every exhibition presented in the Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery establishes an idea–or an argument–of what art is, how art is made, who makes art, and what art does. “With every presentation, we attempt not to narrow the answers to any of those big questions,” said Associate Director of Visual Arts and Adjunct Instructor in Art Benjamin Chaffee ’00. “We think critically about the art that is shown and also how we’re framing it.” The most recent exhibition at Zilkha has created an interesting opportunity for juxtaposition. "Liquid Gold" includes a video installation and a sculpture by Assistant Professor of…

Assistant Professor of Computer Science Sebastian Zimmeck sees internet privacy as nothing less than a human right—everyone should have control over their data and how it is distributed in the world. “The concerns are twofold. Private companies have a lot of our data that we don’t know about, and the second point is that the government can request data from these companies that can be used in legal proceedings … the average internet user has no idea of the sheer amount of data collected from us,” Zimmeck said. A quick glance at the headlines in the New York Times over…

Professor of American Studies J. Kēhaulani Kauanui has been recognized with the American Indian History Lifetime Achievement Award, given by the Western History Association meeting, at the annual meeting held October 12-15, 2022, in San Antonio. For the last twenty years, the award has been given to the one individual every year who has served in the trenches on all fronts to advance Indigenous History. Past scholars who have been awarded include Philip J. Deloria, K. Tsianina Lomawaima, Frederick Hoxie, Jean M. O'Brien, Colin Calloway, Roger Nichols, Clifford Trafzer, and Jeffrey Ostler. Kauanui is one of the six cofounders of the…

Assistant Professor of African American Studies Kaisha Esty’s recent article on African American women's and girls’ battle during the Civil War over labor and sexual consent was named winner of the 2022 Letitia Woods Brown Article Prize for the best article in African American women’s history. The prize is awarded by the Association of Black Women Historians. “The shifting legal ground and character of the state that Black women and girls confronted reveals their fraught historical relationship to notions of sexual consent within the framework of Western liberalism. Their strategies speak to the ultimately burdened ways that African American women…

During the 2015-16 school year nearly 10 percent of Connecticut public school children met the criteria for being chronically absent. The disruption COVID-19 wrought on education only exacerbated the problem. The Connecticut State Department of Education launched the Learner Engagement and Attendance Program (LEAP) in April 2021 to help address these issues. In 15 school districts throughout the state, school officials and representatives from local non-profit agencies conducted home visits with almost 9,000 students who were considered chronically absent. School officials often assisted families with food, job placement, or just general support to remove any external barriers to school attendance.…

The Center for Religion and the Human at IU Bloomington announces Professor of Religion and Science in Society Mary-Jane Rubenstein’s Worlds Without End: The Many Lives of the Multiverse (Colombia University Press, 2014) as winner of the third annual Iris Book Award. Jurors for the Iris Book Award praised Worlds Without End as “a delightful tour of a topic that was once esoteric, but now is hovering on the edges of science fact: that we do not exist in a universe, but rather in a multiverse,” and called the book “a fascinating and entertaining exploration of the history of an idea that just…

Thanks to her discovery of a global warming event that occurred 56 million years ago, Ellen Thomas, the Harold T. Stearns Professor of Integrated Sciences, Emerita, changed the way we think about climate change. Her research started with a serendipitous discovery of severe extinction of microscopic deep-sea organisms, foraminifera. Because of her prolific and impactful research, Thomas, along with her colleague James Zachos of the University of California, Santa Cruz, was given the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the climate change category. “Both laureates think that the destructive impact of the event should be a warning to us…

There is a moment in Zora Neale Hurston’s book, Their Eyes Were Watching God, where the day is done, people have stopped working and finally have time for themselves. “The sun was gone, but he had left his footprints in the sky. It was the time for sitting on porches beside the road. It was the time to hear things and talk. These sitters had been tongueless, earless, eyeless conveniences all day long. Mules and other brutes had occupied their skins. But now, the sun and the bossman were gone, so the skins felt powerful and human. They became lords…

Deep philosophical ideas aren’t the only things Hedding Professor of Moral Science Joseph T. Rouse has been dueling with as of late. Rouse has been training for the United States Veteran Fencing team, a team comprised of fencers over the age of 70. His first national qualifier this season will take place in January at the North American Cup in Louisville, Kentucky. His first bout a year ago against the current world champion in his age group ended in a loss, but Rouse thinks he's got more than a fighting chance, having beaten his opponent the last two times they…

In the face of global climate and environmental crises, Elon Musk wants to launch humanity to Mars. His fellow billionaire Jeff Bezos believes we should build artificial space pods between the Earth and the Moon to increase the resources we need for our technologically soaked lives. They were the only ones who could save humanity from a dire end, they sort of said (and, perhaps, making a tidy profit for themselves in the process.) The messianic vibes were unmistakable. The thought of this baffled Mary-Jane Rubenstein, professor of religion. “The more I learned about the contemporary state of things in…

Wesleyan Media Project Publishes New Study on 2022 Midterm Advertising

Arts, Ideas, and Activation: Embodying Antiracism Fellows Share Creations

Open-Ended Questions: New Exhibit at the Zilkha Gallery

Internet Privacy Focus of 2023 Shasha Seminar

Kauanui Given Lifetime Achievement Award

Esty’s Research Honored by Association of Black Women Historians

Research Shows New Program Helps Prevent Chronic Absenteeism

Faculty Achievements: January 2023

Thomas Receives Frontiers of Knowledge Award

Professor Directs New Zora Neale Hurston Documentary

Professor Parries With Ideas and Opponents

New Book Explores Corporate Space Race