David LowIn his new nonfiction collection Playing in Time: Essays, Profiles, and Other True Stories (University of Chicago Press), acclaimed journalist Carlo Rotella ’86 explores a variety of characters and settings, His writing has been praised for going beneath the surface of the story as he sympathetically dwells in the lives of the people and places he encounters. The two dozen essays in this volume deal with subjects and obsessions that have characterized his previous writing: boxing, music, writers, and cities. “Playing in time” refers to how people make beauty and meaning while working within the constraints and limits forced on…
Gabe Rosenberg '16Paul Dickson ’61 is the winner of the fifth annual Jerome Holtzman Award for his 2012 book, Bill Veeck: Baseball’s Greatest Maverick. The Holtzman Award, established in 2008, is presented by the Chicago Baseball Museum to the person who “reflects the values and spirit of its Hall of Fame namesake. The honoree is selected by what is deemed to be the most significant contribution to the promotion of Chicago baseball and the preservation of its history and namesake.” The book, collecting information and accounts from primary sources and over one hundred interviews, is an in-depth portrait of a baseball innovator,…
Cynthia RockwellBill Queen ’86 was recently named president of the Travelers Ocean Marine business unit. Affiliated with Travelers since 1986, he has held a variety of positions in underwriting and sales, as well as marketing and field management. Most recently, Queen served as chief operating officer for Travelers First Party Group and as a key member of the interim management team for the Ocean Marine organization. This group, currently ranked as one of the largest ocean marine insurers in the United States (based on direct written premium) provides highly specialized property and liability insurance products for maritime-oriented exposures including commercial vessels, cargo transport,…
Jonathan Kalb ’81 is the recipient of two national awards for his recent book, Great Lengths: Seven Works of Marathon Theater, published by The University of Michigan Press. Kalb, professor of theater at Hunter College and doctoral faculty member at The City University of New York, won the George Jean Nathan Award for dramatic criticism and the Theatre Library Association’s George Freedley Memorial Award. Great Lengths takes a close look at large-scale theater productions, often running more than five hours in length, which present special challenges to the artists and audiences. Recreating the experience of seeing the works, which include Tony Kushner’s…
Abbie Goldberg ’99 is the author of the new book Gay Dads: Transitions to Adoptive Fatherhood , published by New York University Press, which collects stories and empirical data from interviews with 70 gay men, taking a close look at societal and political issues in gay parenthood. Introducing the book with a vignette of two new adoptive fathers, Carter and Patrick, Goldberg dives into a discussion of the mazes of adoption agencies, couples’ decisions to openly present themselves as gay, the social implications of parenthood, and the changes in career commitment. “Exploration of the experiences of gay adoptive fathers,” Goldberg writes,…
Steve Roslonek ’93, known to families with young children as "SteveSongs" or "Mr. Steve," the co-host of the nationally broadcast PBS KIDS preschool destination, released his eighth album, Orangutan Van, in January. Since its release, "Flat Stanley," the first single from the new album, reached the number one spot on the Sirius/XM Radio Kids Place Live chart; "Song Without a Rhyme" is headed up the chart. The new album and some of its songs have been four years in the making. To celebrate the release of Orangutan Van, SteveSongs will be touring around the country, along with Anand Nayak ’96 on electric…
Cynthia Arnson ’76 is the editor of the book, In The Wake of War: Democratization and Internal Armed Conflict, published by Woodrow Wilson Center Press and Stanford University Press in 2012. The book focuses on the relationship of internal armed conflict to postwar democratization in Latin America, centering on Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Nicaragua and Peru. In those countries, Arnson writes, the dominant aspect of political life during and after the end of the Cold War was insurgency or counterinsurgency war, a product of political exclusion and reinforced by patterns of socio-economic marginalization. Through its case studies, the book looks…
Olivia DrakeWesleyan’s Green Street Arts Center received a $5,000 grant from the Department of Economic and Community Development, Connecticut Office of the Arts, on Jan. 17. The award will support the center’s Arts and Science After School Program through Dec. 31, 2013. The Department of Economic and Community Development, Connecticut Office of the Arts, also receives support from the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency.
Wesleyan's Center for the Arts received a $42,660 grant from Dance/USA, the national service organization for professional dance. The CFA is one of 20 member organizations across the country awarded funding for "Round Two of Engaging Dance Audiences," the first national funding program for audience engagement practices focused specifically on the art form of dance. The award will support two new CFA programs: the DanceLink Fellowship Program, in which Wesleyan students will intern with three professional dance companies during the summer, and then serve as ambassadors for the companies when they are presented on campus during the 2013–2014 Breaking Ground…
Wesleyan’s Program for Student College Success received a grant of $2,500 from the Community Foundation of Middlesex County on Jan. 7. The funds will support the four-week summer session and 40 weeks of academic-year programming that help first-generation, low-income and underrepresented students successfully transition into college.
Lauren RubensteinMatthew Kurtz, associate professor of psychology, associate professor of neuroscience and behavior, has published an article in the March 2013 issue of Scientific American Mind magazine. Kurtz, who studies schizophrenia, writes about the less-well-known symptoms of the disease, which include cognitive and social deficits. These troubles make it difficult for people with schizophrenia to maintain meaningful relationships, hold jobs and live independently. Sadly, drugs used to treat the hallucinations and delusions in schizophrenia do nothing to improve patients' quality of life in these other areas. In the article, Kurtz describes some of the new psychological interventions shown to improve cognitive…
Seth Redfield, assistant professor of astronomy, is the co-author of "Probing potassium in the atmosphere of HD 80606b with tunable filter transit spectrophotometry from the Gran Telescopio Canarias," published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 419, pages 2233-50, 2012.