David PesciAnn Burke, associate professor of biology, received a three-year, $395,000 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to study the development and evolution of the shoulder girdle using transgenic mice, frog and salamander. She also received a two-year $100,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to use the same amphibian systems (salamander and frog) to develop a model system for understanding body wall defects in humans.The grants will provide funds for a team of researchers at Wesleyan working with Burke on these projects, including a postdoctoral fellow, graduate students and undergraduates.
Olivia DrakeEvan Perkoski ’10 is a recipient of a 2009-10 Undergraduate Research Program grant sponsored by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START). Perkoski, who is majoring in government, will study "Counterterrorism and ETA in Spain." His faculty advisor is Erica Chenoweth, assistant professor of government. Undergraduate Research Program recipients are actively engaged in critical research related to the study of terrorism and responses to terrorism, consistent with the mission of START. Each recipient is paid $3,000 to enhance his/her START research and professional development and receives funds to attend the 2010 START Annual Meeting in College…
David LowNow through Dec. 20, the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College (CCS Bard) in Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y. presents Consider the Lobster, the first major survey of New York-based artist Rachel Harrison ’89. Named after an essay by the late David Foster Wallace, this exhibition encompasses more than 10 years of large-scale installations by Harrison, all of which will be reconfigured for the CCS Bard galleries, as well as a number of the autonomous sculptural and photographic works for which she is best known. In addition to Rachel Harrison’s work in the CCS Bard Galleries, six artists, including Nayland Blake, Tom…
Mark Schafer ’85 is the translator for Before Saying Any of the Great Words: Selected Poems of David Huerta (Copper Canyon Press, 2009), a bilingual anthology of one of Mexico's foremost living poets, David Huerta. The collection contains translations of 84 of Huerta's poems selected from 12 of his 19 collections along with the original Spanish-language poems. The book is a powerful antidote to recent news coverage of Mexico that depicts the country as often violent and drug-ridden. Huerta has been a central figure in two of the most influential poetic movements in late-20th-century Latin America—the neobaroque movement and that…
Michael Rau ’05 is the director of the play Evanston: A Rare Comedy by Michael Yates Crowley at the Undergroundzero Festival at P.S. 122 (150 First Ave.) July 14–17 and at the Summer Sublet Series at HERE! Arts Center 145 Sixth Ave., between Spring and Broome Streets, enter on Dominick Street) Aug. 3–5 in New York City. Presented by Wolf 359, Evanston: A Rare Comedy begins with the disappearance of a teenage girl in deepest suburbia and ends when a meeting of The Evanston Women’s Book Club goes horribly awry. In between, a transgender student dreams of death, a housewife…
Richard Grossman, chair of the Economics Department and professor of economics, appeared on Fox Business Radio on May 22, 2009. In the news segment, Grossman speaks on the historical recession and offers his views on how the country got to this point, how we will emerge from the problem and where are the opportunities.
Claire Potter, professor of history, chair and professor of American studies, director of the Center for the Americas, is featured in a June 24 Inside Higher Ed article titled "Fifty Years After Stonewall." Police raided the Stonewall Inn in Greenwhich Village in June 1969 and drag queens fought back. In the article, Potter says the GLBTQ liberation "is unfinished and becoming more complex as the research emerges that takes us on beyond Stonewall. What I would like for transgender studies in 10 years is what is happening already in gay and lesbian history: placing the emergence of identities and the emergence of liberation…
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.
A book review by Kirk Swinehart, assistant professor of history, was published in the June 27 edition of The Chicago Tribune. Swinehart writes about the novel, Tall Man, written by Australian author Chloe Hooper. According to the review, Hooper has written an account of life and death on Australian's Palm Island "as fast paced as it is horrific. Australians long ago consigned Palm Island to the bin of places best forgotten. And there it stayed until November 2004, when a 36-year-old Aboriginal man named Cameron Doomadgee died in police custody. Overnight, Palm Island became the epicenter of a wrenching national…
Wesleyan's Green Street Art Center was the lead story in the July 9 issue of The Middletown Press. The article featured the GSAC's North End Nights, series of four consecutive Thursday evenings that feature free concerts and arts workshops. North End Nights will continue for the next three Thursdays. On July 16, an African drumming workshop at Green Street Arts Center at 5:30 p.m. will precede a concert in the herb garden featuring the Wesleyan African Drummers. Roslyn Carrier-Brault, administrative assistant in the Chemistry Department, is a photojournalism teacher for the program and is quoted in the article.
Peter Rutland, Colin and Nancy Campbell Professor in Global Issues and Democratic Thought, professor of government, has co-written an opinion piece for the Moscow Times where he reviews U.S. President Barak Obama's recent trip to Russia.
Ann Burke, associate professor of biology, comments in Science on a new study that examines turtle embryology with an eye to the animal's evolutionary development.