2011 – Page 28

Melissa Myozen Blacker ’76 is co-editor (with James Ishmael Ford) of The Book of MU: Essential Writings on Zen’s Most Important Koan (Wisdom Publications, 2011). The word “mu” is one ancient Zen teacher’s response to the earnest question of whether even a dog has “buddha nature”—and discovering for ourselves the meaning of the master’s response is the urgent work of each of us who yearns to be free and at peace. “Practicing Mu” is synonymous with practicing Zen, and “sitting with Mu” is an apt description for all Zen meditation. It has been said that thousands and thousands of koans…

From 1741 until Alaska was sold to the United States in 1867, the Russian empire claimed territory and peoples in North America. In his new book, Russian America: An Overseas Colony of a Continental Empire, 1804–1867 (Oxford University Press), Ilya Vinkovetsky ’88, an assistant professor of history at Simon Fraser University, examines how Russia governed its only overseas colony. Russian America was effectively transformed from a remote extension of Russia's Siberian frontier penetrated mainly by Siberianized Russians into an ostensibly modern overseas colony operated by Europeanized Russians. Under the rule of the Russian-American Company, the colony was governed on different…

Kathy Prager Conrad '81 was named the principal deputy associate administrator of the General Services Administration's Office of Citizen Services and Innovative Technologies. Honored as a Federal 100 award winner by Federal Computer Week in March, she was previously senior vice president of Jefferson Consulting Group. In an interview with Federal Computer Week, Conrad noted that she was honored to have the opportunity to advance the Administration's open government and innovation initiatives. Her new responsibilities include fostering adoption of innovative technologies such as cloud services and mobile computing and enhancing use of government data to improve government and citizen engagement.…

Jonathan Smith ’92 will be one of 14 delegates selected to participate in the U.S. State Department’s Global Entrepreneurship Program (GEP) Mission to Indonesia in July. The delegation, made up of U.S. investors, entrepreneurs and academics, will offer individualized mentoring to Indonesian early-stage and growth-stage companies. Additionally Indonesian start-ups will have an opportunity to present their ideas to the delegation with the hopes of obtaining investors. Smith, who earned his Wesleyan bachelor’s degree with a College of Social Studies degree, also holds a master’s degree in accounting, as well as a certificate in Homeland Securities Studies from Michigan State University.…

Po-wei Weng, a Ph.D. candidate in Wesleyan’s ethnomusicology program, has won a $15,000 grant to support his dissertation work on a popular Taiwanese Puppet television series. Competing with applicants from all disciplines and many top colleges in the United States, Weng was this year the only person from the music studies field to win an award from the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange. His dissertation project is "Music, Technology, and Mediated Modernity: Soundscape of Pili Budaixi in Taiwan." Currently in Taiwan, Weng returns to Middletown in August.

The Department of Film Studies received a $7,500 grant from the Academy Foundation of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to support the AMPAS Speaker Series in 2011-12. The grant was awarded on May 1. Lea Carlson, associate director of film studies, is the grant's P.I. This is the third year Wesleyan received support from the Academy to fund the speaker series. Film Studies will welcome about four speakers to campus in the second half of the fall semester.

Peter Gottschalk, chair and professor of religion, is the editor of the book, Engaging South Asian Religions: Boundaries, Appropriations, and Resistances, published by the State University of New York Press in May 2011. The book looks at Western understandings of South Asian religions and indigenous responses from precolonial to contemporary times. Focusing on boundaries, appropriations, and resistances involved in Western engagements with South Asian religions, this volume considers both the pre- and postcolonial period in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. It pays particular attention to contemporary controversies surrounding the study of South Asian religions, including several scholars' reflections on the contentious reaction…

Charles Sanislow, assistant professor of psychology, so-authored a study in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry in May that compares the abilities of clinician-practioners and clinical researchers with expertise in personality to make DSM-IV personality disorder diagnoses based on trait models. This work is one facet of Sanislow’s effort to inform the revision process for DSM-5 and help shape psychiatric nosology. The study is online here.

Steven Horst, professor of philosophy, is the author of Laws, Mind and Free Will, published by MIT Press in March 2011. This is his third book. In Laws, Mind, and Free Will, Horst addresses the apparent dissonance between the picture of the natural world that arises from the sciences and our understanding of ourselves as agents who think and act. If the mind and the world are entirely governed by natural laws, there seems to be no room left for free will to operate. Moreover, although the laws of physical science are clear and verifiable, the sciences of the mind seem to…