Olivia DrakeQ: Rachel, please explain what acrobatic yoga is, and how you got involved. A: AcroYoga, as it's called, is acrobatic partner yoga that mostly involves a "base" who uses their legs to hold a "flyer" in the air as they both collaborate to move through therapeutic poses as well as acrobatic maneuvers. I got involved when Ryan Rogers and Miles Bukiet '11 led an AcroYoga student forum last year. Q: What is the partner class you teach and how many students are in the class? A: Lizzie Simon '12 and I teach a student forum class called Acrobatic Partner Yoga and…
David LowPaul Weitz ’88 is the director of the film Being Flynn (Focus Features), which he adapted from an acclaimed memoir by Nick Flynn and which opened in theaters on March 2. The movie drama deals with a young, self-destructive writer (played by Paul Dano) who works in a homeless shelter where he reconnects after 18 years with his alcoholic father (played by Robert De Niro), also a writer, who comes to stay at the shelter. The film also stars Julianne Moore and Olivia Thirlby. Weitz’s film had a long journey to the screen and along the way, the director wrote…
Cynthia RockwellArchitect Andre Kikoski ’90 received the Institute Honor Award from the American Institute of Architects (the “AIA”), their highest recognition nationally for his creation of The Wright, the new restaurant in the Guggenheim Museum. Kikoski’s work was selected from more than 700 total submissions and was one of only 27 recipients worldwide who will be honored at the AIA 2012 National Convention and Design Exposition in Washington, D.C., in May. The Institute highlights the award winners on their web site, including photographs and a discussion of the design elements that the architects considered and reasoning for their solutions, as well…
Dr. Halley Faust MA ’05 is co-editor (with Paul Menzel) of Prevention vs. Treatment: What’s the Right Balance? (Oxford University Press). In the West, prevention is usually underfunded while treatment receives greater priority. This book explores this observation by examining the actual spending on prevention, the history of health policies and structural features that affect prevention's apparent relative lack of emphasis, the values that may justify priority for treatment or for prevention, and the religious and cultural traditions that have shaped the moral relationship between these two types of care. The publication helps clarify the nature of the empirical and…
Ethan de Siefe ’95 has written an entertaining new book, Tashlinesque: The Hollywood Comedies of Frank Tashlin (Wesleyan University Press). In the preface of his study, de Siefe writes: “Director Frank Tashlin left an indelible impression on American and global film comedy. His films are some of the funniest, most visually inventive comedies ever made, and they feature landmark performances by some of the greatest comedians in American film history, a list that includes not only Bob Hope and Jerry Lewis, but Porky Pig, Daffy Duck, and Bugs Bunny.” Tashlin (1913–1972) was a supremely gifted satirist and visual stylist yet…
Dr. Kenneth Schweller ’68, professor of computer science and psychology at Buena Vista University in Iowa has been appointed chair of the board of the Great Ape Trust. The trust is a scientific research facility in Des Moines, dedicated to understanding the origins and future of culture, language, tools and intelligence, and to the preservation of endangered great apes in their natural habitats. Great Ape Trust, announced in 2002 and receiving its first ape residents in 2004, is home to a colony of seven bonobos, including Kanzi, “the world’s undisputed ape-language superstar, was the first of his species to acquire…
Charles Sanislow, assistant professor of psychology, and two members of his lab, Katie Marcus '13 and Liz Reagan '13 published an article on challenging old assumptions about about the outcome of borderline psychopathology in the February 2012 issue of Current Psychiatry Reports. The paper details current findings from major longitudinal psychiatry studies including the Collaborative Longitudinal Personality Study, which Sanislow has been as an investigator on for the past 16 years, and suggests new directions for clinical research. The article is online here. Also published in February is a work that Sanislow co-authored from the Collaborative Personality Study in the…
In his new work The Color of Citizenship (Oxford University Press), Diego Von Vacano ’93 suggests that the tradition of Latin American and Hispanic political thought which has long considered the place of mixed-race peoples throughout the Americas, is uniquely well-positioned to provide useful ways of thinking about the connections between race and citizenship. He argues that debates in the United States about multiracial identity, the possibility of a post-racial world in the aftermath of Barack Obama, and demographic changes owed to the age of mass migration will inevitably have to confront the intellectual tradition related to racial admixture that…
The Wall Street Journal first attempted illustrating the news using the stipple drawing known as the hedcut with news maker portrait made from a series of dots and lines that modeled on currency engravings. Rutherford Chang ’02 now has transformed these illustrations into an art project called “The Class of 2008,” on display at the White Space Gallery in Beijing through March 18. He has reduced the Journal’s news coverage of 2008 to just the hedcuts and rearranged them, yearbook-style, in alphabetical order. “The Class of 2008” is “typical of his past works,” according to RedBox Studio, which promotes contemporary…
Jan Eliasberg ’74, of Aquinnah Films, was chosen as one of 10 fellows for the Fox Writers Initiative, a highly selective four-month program designed to groom writers to run television series and write and direct features across all the divisions of 20th Century Fox. The 10 were chosen from more than 350 nominations by representatives and arts organizations across the country. The initiative sought unique voices, as well as a diversity in backgrounds and life experiences. In a company press release, Nicole Bernard, senior vice president of audience strategy for The Fox Group, said, "These 10 incredibly gifted writers represent…
Government major Jourdan Khalid Hussein '11 has published an article based on his thesis at Wesleyan. The article "Not Secular Enough? Variation in Electoral Success of Post-Islamist Parties in Turkey and Indonesia" has been published in the journal STUDIA ISLAMIKA. Hussein currently works in the Indonesian "White House," as the assistant to the head, Indonesian President's Delivery Unit for Development Monitoring and Oversight." STUDIA ISLAMIKA is a journal published by the Center for the Study of Islam and Society. It specializes in Indonesian Islamic studies in particular, and South-east Asian Islamic Studies in general, and is intended to communicate original researches and…
Ruby Blackerby Hernandez ’11 has produced a 40-minute documentary film, Canaries in the Field, to explore the struggles of migrant workers and their families, as well as reporting on current abuses in the U.S. agricultural system. She wants the American public to be aware of what she calls the “corruptions in the agricultural industry.” Hernandez says that most in the U.S. believe that human rights abuses of farm workers ended decades ago. This is simply not true, she wants us to know. “It's not just an immigration issue anymore,” Hernandez told About.com reporter Dan Moffet. “Human rights abuses, wage garnishing,…