Roth Discusses Wesleyan, COE on NPR

In an interview with popular Berkshire radio host Alan Chartock on the NPR affiliate WAMC, Wesleyan President Michael Roth discussed topics ranging from his time at Wesleyan to Freud and the creation of the College of the Environment.

Elizabeth McAlister, associate professor of religion, was invited to present recent work on how evangelical missionaries are responding to the Haiti earthquake at a conference on Refugees and Missionization at the Max Planck Institute, Goettingen, Germany Oct. 6-7, 2011. She also attended an invited conference on the study of prayer funded by the Templeton Foundation at the Social Science Research Council, Desmond NYC, on April 30, 2012. McAlister also is an associate professor of African American studies and associate professor of American studies.

Mary Jane Rubenstein, associate professor of religion, is the author of "Cosmic Singularities: On the Nothing and the Sovereign," published in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Vol. 80, No. 2, pages 485–517, in 2012. Until very recently, the paper explains, "the creation myth of secular modernity has been the hot big bang hypothesis: the explosion of our single universe out of a single point. Physicists concede that in its traditional form, this story performs an uncanny recapitulation of Christian creation theology: the universe bursts forth suddenly, in a flood of light, out of nothing. As many contemporary thinkers have…

Leo Lensing, chair and professor of German studies, professor of film studies, is the co-editor of the book, Träume. Das Traumtagebuch 1875-1931, published by Wallstein Verlag in 2012. Träume is the dream journal of Austrian writer Arthur Schnitzler (1862-1931). Schnitzler is the author of La Ronde, Fräulein Else and other classics of early 20-century Austrian literature. Prepared together with Peter Michael Braunwarth to celebrate Schnitzler's 150th birthday, the revised and expanded version of the dream texts originally included in Schnitzler's diaries can be read as an implicit challenge to Freud's Interpretation of Dreams. Schnitzler's Träume (Dreams) is both an "unconscious" autobiography of its author, whom Freud called his doppelgänger, and a dark, surreal reflection of…

Charles Sanislow, assistant professor of psychology; Ellen Bartolini '11; and Emma Zoloth '10 are the co-authors of an article on avoidant personality disorder, published in the Encyclopedia of Human Behavior, 2nd Edition by the Elsevier imprint Academic Press, pages 257-266, 2012. According to an abstract of the article, "Avoidant personality disorder (APD) is characterized by severe and chronic social anxiety. Prospective studies demonstrate modest symptomatic stability and chronic functional impairment. Current diagnostic conceptualizations distinguish APD from other distress disorders, such as anxiety and depression, by a long-standing pattern of social avoidance accompanied by fears of criticism and low self-worth so pervasive that it defines who a…

Justine Quijada, assistant professor of religion, is the author of two new publications. They include: “Signs as Symptoms in Buryat Shamanic Callings,” published in The Healing Landscapes of Central and Southeastern Siberia, with David Anderson, ed. The publication is supported by the Canadian Circumpolar Institute (CCI) Press in cooperation with the Centre for the Cross-Cultural Study of Health and Healing, University of Alberta. The edited volume is the first in a possible series that addresses health problems in Native Canadian communities by both training doctors to consider cross-cultural perspectives in health, and to train more Native Canadians as doctors. The book…

John Kirn, professor of biology, chair and professor of neuroscience and behavior, is the co-author of three recent articles. They include: "Adult neuron addition to the zebra finch song motor pathway correlates with the rate and extent of recovery from botox-induced paralysis of the vocal muscles," published in the Journal of Neuroscience, 31(47): 16958-16968. Yi-Lo Yu ’03, MA ’04 co-authored this paper. "Morphological plasticity in vocal motor neurons following song crystallization in the zebra finch," published in the Journal of Comparative Neurology, Accepted manuscript online on April 2, 2012. DOI: 10.1002/cne.23120. Biology major Kathryn McDonald Ph.D. '09 co-authored this article. And "Adult neurogenesis is associated…

The Center for the Arts received a grant worth $10,474 from Department of Economic and Community Development on April 4 to support the Dance Series and DanceMasters Weekend 2013. The DECD also receives support from the National Endowments for the Arts, a federal agency.