Olivia DrakeOctober 2, 20075min
Miri Nakamura, assistant professor of Japanese language and literature, teaches Japanese horror films and fiction.   Posted 10/02/07 Miri Nakamura has joined the Department of Asian Languages and Literatures as an assistant professor of Japanese language and literature. Her primary research interests are modern Japanese fantastic fiction and gender theory. She is also interested in the dialogue between science and literature in the prewar era. Her dissertation, titled Monstrous Bodies: Gender and Reproductive Science in Modern Japanese Literature, examined how the classical image of monstrous women came to be modified and developed in the modern period. By situating fantastic writings…

Olivia DrakeOctober 2, 20076min
After wearing through four pairs of shoes and speaking to hundreds of people in 12 states about war solutions, Wesleyan student Ashley Casale '10 returned briefly to campus after a 3,000-mile cross-country trek to promote world peace. Casale walked from San Francisco, Calif. to Washington D.C. this summer to raise peace awareness and discuss ways to take action nonviolently. Her March for Peace concluded Sept. 10 in front of the White House. "Overall, this was a great, eye-opening experience," Casale said to peers, deans and President Michael Roth during campus visit Sept. 21. "This walk was about peace, and (we…

Olivia DrakeOctober 2, 20073min
Posted 10/02/07 Wesleyan’s Mathematics and Computer Science Department will host The Wesleyan Dynamical Systems Conference, Oct.13-14 at the Exley Science Center. The conference is being held in honor of Ethan Coven, professor of mathematics, emeritus. Dynamical systems, an extremely broad and central field of mathematics, is, at its core, the quantitative study of systems evolving over time. “Scientists in many disciplines have come to realize and use geometric and quantitative techniques that have been the outgrowth of this field of study,” says Edward Taylor, associate professor and one of the conference organizers. “It cross cuts such major areas of mathematical…

Olivia DrakeOctober 2, 20073min
Posted 10/02/07 A free flu vaccination is available for Wesleyan faculty, staff and their dependents this month. Influenza is a highly contagious viral illness marked by fevers, muscle aches, cough, headache and fatigue. “Influenza is at best a miserable experience for which we are all at risk every year,” says Dr. Davis Smith, medical director at the Davison Health Center. “An annual flu shot is very likely to confer protection against this year’s strains of influenza and is highly recommended for all members of the Wesleyan community. When flu season comes around, better to know you got the flu shot…

Olivia DrakeOctober 2, 20075min
Posted 10/02/07 Wesleyan's campus has been captured on camera and bound in a book. Wesleyan University Press has released Welcome to Wesleyan: Campus Buildings in October 2007. The 64-page, full-color book features numerous photographs of Wesleyan's diverse structures captioned with historical notes. Leslie Starr, the assistant director and marketing manager at Wesleyan University Press, is the book's author and editor. Photographs in the book were contributed by a number of university staff members and professional photographers. “We’ve felt that Wesleyan has needed a book like this for a long time – an informative and inexpensive memento of campus,” Starr says.…