Elizabeth McAlister, associate professor of religion, associate professor of African American studies, and Gina Ulysse, associate professor of anthropology, associate professor of African American studies, associate professor of feminist gender and sexuality studies, were featured guests on the Sept. 11 Colin McEnroe Show on WNPR. The 49-minute show titled “CMS: Hatian Vodou and Zombies Too!” focused on the practices of Vodou and how it affects so many aspects of Haitian culture.
Posted in Alumni News on Sep. 22, 2009 by Bill Holder
David Montero ’98 has been nominated for an Emmy for “Outstanding Continuing Coverage of a News Story in a News Magazine.” The nomination recognizes his Frontline documentary titled “Pakistan: State of Emergency,” which explores the volatile Swat Valley.
At the foot of the Himalayas in the border area with Afghanistan, the Swat Valley is an impoverished area that has provided a fertile ground for conflict between Taliban forces and Pakistani troops.
In a Frontline interview, Montero said, “I first went to Swat in May 2007. Maulana Fazlullah, a radical cleric in the valley, had begun to become a problem for the Pakistani government. All the newspapers were writing about him. Editorials were coming out in the press about him because (more…)
Posted in Alumni News on Sep. 22, 2009 by David Low
Lin-Manuel Miranda ’02, left, on House. (Photo by Mike Yarish/FOX)
Lin-Manuel Miranda ’02 was featured prominently on the two-hour season premiere of the highly popular medical series House, which aired on September 21, 2009 on Fox. On this episode, Dr. Gregory House, played by Hugh Laurie, checks himself into the Mayfield Psychiatric Institute, to recover from a Vicodin addiction and other bad behavior. The well-written premiere introduces several intriguing new characters who viewers are likely to see again this television season.
Miranda plays Laurie’s roommate, Alvie, and becomes his co-conspirator at the hospital. Near the end of the show, Alvie and House perform a rap number together. Miranda is scheduled to appear in upcoming episodes of House.
Link to Wall Street Journal article about House:
http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2009/09/22/house-season-6-premiere-tv-recap/
An essay titled “Romance Crushed” by Marie Mencher ’12, a prospective Spanish major, was published in the July 20 edition of The New York Times.
“He left, I ran up to my room and put the Indigo Girls’ ‘Mystery’ on repeat for the next half-hour, and sobbed. I made awful, croaking, animal noises and screamed into my pillow, but running through my mind were these beautiful simple thoughts like, ‘We were so close.’
An extended excerpt of the essay is online here.
Extra-solar planets was the theme of StarConn, an all-day convention and astronomy celebration held at Wesleyan on June 4. The event was an outreach effort presented by the Astronomical Society of Greater Hartford with the help of the university. The event featured lectures and a two-hour observing session with the 20-inch Clark refractor at Wesleyan’s Van Vleck Observatory.
Seth Redfield, assistant professor of astronomy, was one of the speakers at the event. He is featured in a June 4 Meriden Record Journal article about StarConn. The article is online here.
The Green Street Arts Center on Fox 61 News.
Fox 61 News featured Green Street’s AfterSchool Program within the segment “Fox Focus” with Susan Christensen. The newscast was broadcast May 18. The piece featured the Green Street students’ and teaching artists’ work. The report is online here.
Ori Sivan, visiting instructor in religion, is the head writer and co-producer of the HBO series In Treatment. In the series, a psychotherapist questions his abilities and gets help by reuniting with his old therapist, whom he has not seen for 10 years.The show is based off the Israeli series BeTipul.
Sivan hosted two screening of BeTipul with subtitles April 23 and April 30 in the Center for Film Studies. He gave presentations at the screenings. It was featured in The Hartford Courant April 23.
Wesleyan is featured in River & Shore.
Wesleyan University is the cover feature in the Spring 2009 edition of River & Shore Magazine. In an article titled “College by the River: Memories Cut in Brownstone,” the author, Erik Hesselberg, writes about the history of Wesleyan, College Row’s brownstone buildings, the crew team, Wesleyan’s first president Wilbur Fisk, the former Judd Hall of Natural Science Exley Science Center, the Geology Department and more.
Jelle de Boer, the Harold T. Stearns Professor of Earth Science, emeritus, also is mentioned in an article titled “Reading the Rocks.” The article focuses on De Boer’s interests in plate tectonics and mentions his theory on why the Connecticut River abruptly changes direction below Middletown.
River & Shore Magazine is “Connecticut’s Magazine of costal lifestyles.” It is not as of yet available online.
Jelle Zelinga de Boer, the Harold T. Stearns Professor of Earth Science, emeritus, was cited in April 3 edition of The Hartford Courant. In an article titled ” Remnants Of Old Mine In Middletown Date to Revolutionary Times,” de Boer explains why an abandoned silver mine in Middletown, Conn. played a supporting role in the history of the country’s industrial past.
According to de Boer, the Middletown mine was originally opened to mine lead and was one of only two sites in New England that produced the metal for the Continental Army during the early stages of the Revolutionary War. The operation began in earnest in 1775 when smelting works were built along the river to provide lead for ammunition, including cannonballs. According to the article, records show that the mine produced 15,563 pounds of lead and even helped defeat British Gen. John Burgoyne and 6,000 British troops during the Saratoga Campaign in 1777. The mine was opened periodically over the years after the Revolution, including a stint as a silver mine in the mid-1800s when huge stampers crushed tons of rock laden with silver.
De Boer has a upcoming book titled Stories in Stone: How Geology Influenced Connecticut History and Culture.
When parasites attack woolly bear caterpillars, such as this Grammia incorrupta, the insects eat leaves loaded with chemicals called alkaloids, which seems to cure the infection. The discovery, by Michael Singer, represents the first clear demonstration of self-medication among bugs.
Michael Singer, assistant professor of biology, is the author of “Self-Medication as Adaptive Plasticity: Increased Ingestion of Plant Toxins by Parasitized Caterpillars,” published in PLoS ONE, March 2009. PLoS ONE is an open access, online scientific journal from the Public Library of Science.
This new article rigorously demonstrates that caterpillars can self-medicate, following up on a previous publication in Nature in 2005. This is the first experimental demonstration of self-medication by an invertebrate animal.
This paper also represents the first publication to arise from research funded by a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant awarded to Singer in December 2007. Kevi Mace BA ’07 MA ’08 assisted with the research.
The research also was featured in an article titled “Woolly Bear, Heal Thyself,” published in Discover Magazine online, and in an article titled “Woolly Bear Caterpillars Self-Medicate — A Bug First,” published in National Geographic News. The caterpillars also were mentioned in the March 26, 2009 edition of nature-research-highlights-09.
