Eric GershonAn international group of scholars convenes at Wesleyan on June 27 for a four-day conference on topics in animal studies, including animal naming, the ways children mourn animal deaths, 19th-Century pet-keeping and the human impulse to laugh when playing with dogs. The conference is the culminating event in the first annual Animals and Society Institute-Wesleyan Animal Studies Fellowship Program, which brings to campus a broad range of scholars studying human-animal relations. The group includes professors and Ph.D. candidates in a variety of fields, including psychology, sociology, philosophy, English, women’s studies, veterinary medicine and environmental studies. Eight of the presenters are…
Lots of people like watching birds. Understandably, birds don’t always like people watching them. For the Audubon Center at Bent of the River, a 700-acre nature preserve in Southbury, Conn., this presented a problem: the swallows and kingfishers along a popular trail were perpetually startled by human visitors. Assistant Professor of Art Elijah Huge and the 11 students in his Architecture II class devised a solution – a chic bird blind they designed and built from scratch. The structure represents the third major design-build project for North Studio, a faculty-student design collaborative Huge founded in 2006 that is cultivating a…
Olivia DrakeThe Society of Phi Beta Kappa, the nation's oldest academic honor society, welcomed 87 members to the Gamma of Connecticut Chapter May 21. Election to the society is based on fulfillment of eligibility requirements, including a grade point average of 90 or above and the satisfactory completion of general education requirements prior to commencement. Phi Beta Kappa was founded in 1776, during the American Revolution. The organization’s Greek initials signify the motto, "Love of learning is the guide of life." The students join the ninth oldest Phi Beta Kappa chapter in the United States—founded in 1845. During the ceremony, Wesleyan…
한국말 하실 줄 아세요? (Can you speak Korean?) Judy Her '13 can. And by the end of this summer, she hopes to be fluent. As recipients of a U.S. Department of State Critical Language Scholarship, Her and Daniel Witkin '13 are spending 10 weeks in intensive language institutes this summer. The CLS Program provides fully-funded, group-based intensive language instruction and structured cultural enrichment experiences. Her is currently studying the Korean language in Jeonju City, South Korea at Chonbuk National University, and Witkin is studying the Russian language in Kazan, Russia at the Kazan Institute of Social Science and Humanities. "I…
This issue we ask “5 Questions” of Eric Charry, associate professor of music. Charry, an expert on African music, is currently directing the Ethnomusicology and Global Culture Summer Institute at Wesleyan. Q: Professor Charry, as an associate professor of music, what are your areas of musical expertise and what classes do you teach at Wesleyan? A: Most of my research and writing until recently has been in the area of African music, specifically, the West African region where Senegal, The Gambia, Guinea and Mali meet. I spent two years in the region learning to play the kora (harp), balafon (xylophone), and…
Fifth-grade students from Snow Elementary School in Middletown toured Wesleyan science labs June 10. They visited the Physics Department, Chemistry Department, Biology Department and the Scientific Imaging Lab. Pictures of their visit are below: (more…)
Q: Jennifer, you will be appointed the new director of Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) on July 1. How do you describe your new role? A: It’s such an exciting time for me to join CAPS in a director role. Our office will be undergoing many changes over the upcoming months, and I’m thrilled to be a part of it. I will be facilitating a changeover to a community mental health model that continues to prioritize therapy while simultaneously expanding the role of education, prevention, and outreach. All of us in the office are excited about new opportunities to collaborate…
Q: Sheryl, you're currently the director of Continuing Studies and Graduate Liberal Studies. Your office also oversees the Wesleyan Summer Session. What is your role with the program, and how are you able to wear three hats!? A: The programs we run all have a lot of logistical processes in common, so many of our roles are similar for Summer Session and the other programs. We are involved with recruitment of students and faculty, admissions, enrollment, student services, billing and payroll,etc., so it’s not too difficult to work on similar functions for different programs. Q: This is Wesleyan's second semester…
Khachig Tölölyan, professor of letters, professor of English, has been actively involved in the launching of the University of Oxford's Diasporas Programme in June. Tölölyan is the editor/founder of Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies and an internationally known expert on diasporas and transnationalism. On June 2, Tölölyan delivered the inaugural lecture titled "Diaspora Studies: Past, Present and Promise" at the program's launch. He is a scholar in residence at Wolfson College (one of the 40 colleges and halls that make up the university), where he is a tutor and consultant to various graduate students, postdoctoral faculty and researchers at several…
A Ph.D candidate and six recent graduates received Fulbright Fellowships for the 2011-12 academic year. Aaron Paige, a Ph.D. student in ethnomusicology, has received a Fulbright Fellowship to support his dissertation fieldwork in Malaysia, as well as a research grant from the Society for Asian Music to support research in Chennai, India. The dissertation project, “From Kuala Lumpur to Kollywood: Music, Language, and Identity in Tamil Solisai,” involves multi-sited ethnography and will trace the various meanings of Tamil hip-hop as it travels within and between local, national, and transnational spaces. Paige's work will take him to Chennai in the summer…
David LowNomi Teutsch ’11 received a Faiths Act Fellowship from the Tony Blair Faith Foundation. This year-long, paid international fellowship brings together exceptional future leaders inspired by faith to serve as interfaith ambassadors for the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) with particular focus on malaria. Fellows build partnerships across faith lines in their home countries to show the world how faith can be a positive global force in the 21st century, and they work in local NGOs to mobilize communities to take part in malaria-focused, multi-faith action. Teutsch grew up in a vibrant, diverse neighborhood in Northwest Philadelphia. A progressive Jewish…