Brian KattenTen members of the Wesleyan University football squad visited the Woodside Intermediate School in Cromwell, Conn., Oct. 1 to join in some of the activities enjoyed by the students in grades 3-5. Arrangements for the visit, which is one of four the Cardinals will make during the season, began during the summer through a connection between Wesleyan assistant coach Jeff McDonald and Woodside principal Bo Ryan, a former quarterback at Western Connecticut State University. Plans formalized after McDonald spoke with the Wesleyan team captains and each Friday before Wesleyan's home games, a contingent of players will travel to the school…
Olivia DrakeNorm Shapiro, professor of romance languages and literatures, translated and edited the book Preversities: A Jacques Prevert Sampler, published by Black Widow Press, September 2010. Jacques Prevert (1900-1977) was a poet and screenwriter who actively participated in the Surrealist Movement as well as the Rue du Chateau group with Raymond Queneau and Marcel Duchamp. His poetry is taught in schools in France and his works appear in countless anthologies throughout the world. This comprehensive anthology, drawing from all time periods of his work, is the first in English to present a picture of the whole of Prevert's poetic achievement. Shapiro…
Angel Gil-Ordóñez, director of Private Lessons, Chamber Music and Ensembles, director of the Wesleyan Orchestra and Concert Choir, adjunct professor of music, was featured in the Sept. 27 Washington Post. Gil-Ordóñez also directs the Washington D.C.-based Post-Classical Ensemble. The orchestra performed a program titled "The Russian Gershwin" at the Clarice Smith Center. "Gershwin is overdue for a fresh look, and that's the ensemble's specialty: turning familiar music on its head, providing context and fresh perspectives and generally pulling the rug out from under listeners," the article states. "Pianist Genadi Zagor opened the evening with an introspective and elegant improvisation on…
Cem Duruöz, private lessons teacher on guitar, will perform at the Weill Recital Hall in New York at 8 p.m. Oct. 28 in a concert sponsored by D'Addario Foundation and Alhambra Guitars. The program will include Turkish music, Brazilian Bossa Nova and Tangos from Argentina. The program will include solos and duos with guitarist Philippe Bertaud. A frequent soloist, Duruöz has appeared with more than 10 orchestras regularly performing Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez among others, under the batons of such conductors as Wesleyan's Angel Gil-Ordóñez. In January 2008 he gave the world premiere performance of Concierto Anatolia, a guitar concerto featuring Turkish melodies…
David PesciThe first data analysis released by the Wesleyan Media Project is making national news. The New York Times recently reported that ads mentioning China had been run by 29 candidates for national office and cited the Wesleyan Media Project and it's director, Erika Franklin Fowler, assistant professor of government. The data analysis findings were also reported by BusinessWeek, among other outlets, and indicate that spending on political ads has increased by $220 million over the 2008 campaign cycle. Some of the increases are a result of senate races in more populous states than in 2008, including California, New York, and…
Khachig Tölölyan, professor of letters, professor of English, founder and editor of Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies, was interviewed by the French weekly publication L’Express about Thomas Pynchon on Oct. 6. The article is online, in French.
Beverly Hunter-Daniel, director of the Wesleyan Public Schools Collaborative for the Upward Bound Program, received a Educational Incentive Challenge Grant worth $8,000 from the City of Middletown Youth Service Advisory Board.
Victoria Smolkin-Rothrock, assistant professor of history, instructor of Russian and Eastern European studies, has several forthcoming publications: “The Voices of Silence: The Death and Funeral of Alexander Blok” in Petersburg/ Petersburg: Novel and City, ed. Olga Matich (University of Wisconsin Press, 2010); “Cosmic Enlightenment: Scientific Atheism and the Soviet Conquest of Space” in Into the Cosmos: Space Exploration and Soviet Culture in Post-Stalinist Russia, eds. James T. Andrews and Asif A. Siddiqi (University of Pittsburgh); and “The Contested Skies: The Battle of Science and Religion in the Soviet Planetarium” in Cosmic Enthusiasm: The Cultural Impact of Space Exploration on the Soviet…
[youtube width="640" height="420"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Il2H7XxxHk[/youtube] (Video by Nam Anh Ta '12) (more…)
David LowJeffrey Lane ’76 is the book writer for a new Broadway musical, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, based on the Spanish film of the same name directed by master filmmaker, Pedro Almodovar. The musical deals with love and abandonment in 1980s Madrid and stars Patti LuPone, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Sherie Rene Scott, and Laura Benanti. The show is directed by Bartlett Sher (South Pacific, The Light in the Piazza), and the composer and lyricist is David Yazbek, who previously worked with Lane on the hit Broadway musical, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, also adapted from a film. Lane was…
In an Oct. 8 The Los Angeles Times OpEd titled "Gaps in medical research ethics," Laura Stark, assistant professor of science in society, assistant professor of sociology, assistant professor of environmental studies, explains flaws in the current research review system in the United States. On the heels of a U.S. apology for medical research in Guatemala, the U.S. now has on opportunity to overhaul ethics rules. Stark shows how the ethics review process enabled the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to use federal prisoners in experiments during the 1960s. The prisoners were infected with “pneumonia, influenza and the common cold,…
Democrats and Republicans invoking the specter of their opposition's involvement with China