Andrew Logan ’18This semester, the Certificate in Social, Cultural and Critical Theory is hosting a lecture series titled “Contours of the Present Crisis.” This series will respond the heightened social and political conflicts of the current moment. Talks will be held on March 7, March 30 and May 4. "Our aim is to emphasize at every turn the relationship between what we call 'theory' and the rest of our lives," says Matthew Garrett, associate professor of English, associate professor of American studies and the director of the Certificate in Social, Cultural, and Critical Theory. "Intellectual work certainly deserves a privileged place; at the…
Lauren RubensteinProfessor of Anthropology Gina Athena Ulysse was recently invited to guest edit a double issue of the journal e-misférica on the theme of Caribbean rasanblaj, to which three of her Wesleyan colleagues also contributed. The journal e-misférica is an online publication of New York University's Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics, a "collaborative, multilingual and interdisciplinary network of institutions, artists, scholars, and activists throughout the Americas. Working at the intersection of scholarship, artistic expression and politics, the organization explores embodied practice-performance as a vehicle for the creation of new meaning and the transmission of cultural values, memory and identity." For several years, Ulysse has been involved with the…
Olivia DrakeIn its most recent meeting, the Board of Trustees promoted seven faculty members. The BOT conferred tenure on Lauren Caldwell, associate professor of classical studies; Stephen Collins, associate professor of film studies; Paul Erickson, associate professor of history; Matthew Garrett, associate professor of English; Brian Northrop, associate professor of chemistry; Julia Randall, associate professor of art; and Seth Redfield, associate professor of astronomy. The promotions are effective July 1, 2015. Brief descriptions of their areas of research and teaching appear below. Lauren Caldwell Caldwell’s research focuses on Roman social history, Roman law, and Greco-Roman medicine. Her recent book, Roman Girlhood and the Fashioning of Femininity (Cambridge University Press,…
Matthew Garrett, assistant professor of English, is the author of Episodic Poetics: Politics and Literary Form after the Constitution, published by Oxford University Press in April 2014. In Episodic Poetics, Garrett merges narrative theory with social and political history to explain the early American fascination with the episodic, piecemeal plot. Since Aristotle's Poetics, the episode has been a vexed category of literary analysis, troubling any easy view of the subsumption of unwieldy narrative parts into well-plotted wholes. Episodic Poeticsproposes a new method of reading and a new way of conceiving of literary history. The book combines theoretical reflection and historical rigor with careful…
Matthew Garrett brings research interests in American literature, narrative theory, literary and social history, and social theory to Wesleyan’s Department of English. Garrett, an assistant professor, joined the department in 2008. He has a B.A. from Bard College, a M. Phil. from Cambridge University, and a M.A. and Ph.D. from Stanford University. “I came to Wesleyan to work with superb scholars and to teach students who are famous as some of the best in the world. That combination of active scholarship and exciting teaching is truly exceptional, and I think it distinguishes Wesleyan from both its liberal-arts and big-university peers,”…
Ruth Nisse, associate professor of English, and Matthew Garrett, assistant professor of English, received a 2011-12 American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship. The ACLS is a competitive fellowship for scholars in all disciplines of the humanities and humanities-related social sciences. Applications are peer reviewed by scholars in the applicant's field. The fellowship is designed to provide scholars with devoted time for their research and writing. Seventy national scholarly organizations below to the ACLS. Nisse will use her fellowship to complete her book called Jacob's Shipwreck. “The book focuses on Jewish-Christian relations and the transmission of ancient texts into both medieval…
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