Olivia DrakeRandall MacLowry '86, visiting instructor in film studies, co-produced, directed and wrote an episode for the PBS history series American Experience. Titled "The Rise and Fall of Penn Station," the hour-long episode premieres at 9 p.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 18. Pennsylvania Station, a monumental train terminal in the heart of Manhattan, finally opened to the public on Nov. 27, 1910. Covering nearly eight acres, the building was the fourth largest in the world. By 1945, more than 100 million passengers traveled through Penn Station each year. But by the 1960s, what was supposed to last forever was slated for destruction. In…
Three Wesleyan employees participated in the Penguin Plunge, held Feb. 8 at Hammonassett Beach State Park in Madison, Conn. The team raised $585 to benefit Special Olympics Connecticut. Team members included Nate Peters, associate vice president for finance; Christine Daniels, executive assistant to the vice president for finance and administration; and Sherri Condon, accounting specialist for auxiliary operations and campus services.
Dr. Larry Antosz, a psychotherapist with Wesleyan's Counseling and Psychological Services, spoke to parents about children's needs at the Cobb School, Montessori in Simsbury, Conn. on Jan. 24. Dr. Antosz joined Paul Assaiante, squash coach and author from Trinity College, and John Kniering, director of career services at the University of Hartford, to encourage parents to "guide your children, then let them fly." "Dr. Antosz took time out of his busy day to talk with Cobb School parents about what children really need. He sat on a panel and shared his thoughts on parenting and education and everything in between.…
Mike SembosWesleyan Provost, Vice President of Academic Affairs and John E. Andrus Professor of Sociology Rob Rosenthal got to know Pete Seeger rather well while interviewing and spending time with him for two books he authored: Playing for Change: Music and Musicians in the Service of Social Movements and Pete Seeger: In His Own Words. The latter is a large collection of letters, drafts, poetry, notes and such that had been stored en masse in Seeger’s barn. Seeger allowed Rosenthal and his son Sam to sift through and publish selections — over the course of a year — provided he didn’t try to make…
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David LowMichael Collins ’81 has written a new book of poems, The Traveling Queen (Sheep Meadow Press). He sent us the following comments on his collection: “This book is dedicated to Annie Dillard, who began teaching at Wesleyan University while I was there and who encouraged me to pursue a career as a writer so many times that she finally overcame my misgivings. “In general, the writing of the book was informed by my sense that poems are promises. ‘So long as men can breathe or eyes can see/ so long lives this [poem],’ Shakespeare promises in one sonnet, ‘and this…
Johanna Tayloe Crane ’93 is the author of a new study, Scrambling for Africa: AIDS, Expertise, and the Rise of American Global Health Science (Cornell University Press) which documents how and why Africa became a major hub of American HIV and AIDS research in recent years after having formerly been excluded from its benefits due to poverty and instability. “American AIDS researchers became interested in working in Africa for two major reasons—one humanitarian, and one having more to do with scientific/professional motivations,” Crane said. “Once effective HIV treatment was discovered in the mid-1990s and the American epidemic began to come…
Tatanka, directed by Jacob Bricca ‘93, will have its world premiere at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival in Missoula, Montana on February 22, 2014. Big Sky is one of America's premiere documentary festivals with over 20,000 visitors/year, and the film will be screening alongside such critically lauded films as Citizen Koch, I Am Divine, and Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia. In the film, based on his own experiences, Bricca, the son of a sixties activist, confronts the enigma that is his father Kit, a man whose uncompromising idealism helped build a movement but nearly tore his family…
In his new book, The Forensic Historian: Using Science to Reexamine the Past (M. E. Sharpe), Robert Williams ’60 demonstrates how seemingly cold cases from history have been solved or had new light shed on them by scientists and historians using new forensic evidence. He provides examples ranging in time from Oetzi the Iceman—who died 5,300 years ago in the Swiss Alps from an arrow wound, yet is known to have had brown eyes Lyme disease, type-O blood, an intolerance to lactose, cavities, and tattoos—to the process of identifying Osama Bin Laden’s body in 2011. “Since World War II, forensic…
Starz CEO Chris Albrecht has named John Penney '87 Chief Strategy Officer at Starz, the integrated global media and entertainment company. Penney will work closely with the CEO to extend the company’s corporate and business growth strategies via partnerships, ventures and innovative models for new business opportunities. “His deep insight into the global media and entertainment ecosystem is uniquely valued,” said Albrecht, in a press release. “He has set a high bar in providing our management team with keen industry analysis that has been invaluable to our decision making, and we look forward to John’s continued contributions to helping grow…
Paul Erickson, assistant professor of history, is the co-author of How Reason Almost Lost Its Mind: The Strange Career of Cold War Rationality," published by the University of Chicago Press in 2013. In the United States at the height of the Cold War, roughly between the end of World War II and the early 1980s, a new project of redefining rationality commanded the attention of sharp minds, powerful politicians, wealthy foundations, and top military brass. Its home was the human sciences—psychology, sociology, political science and economics, among others—and its participants enlisted in an intellectual campaign to figure out what rationality…
Magda Teter, the Jeremy Zwelling Professor of Jewish Studies, professor of history, professor of medieval studies, is the co-editor of a book titled, Jewish-Christian Relations in History, Memory, and Art: European contet for the paintings in the Sandomierz Cathedral, published in Polish by Wydawnictwo Diecezjalne, Sandomierz in 2013. A large painting known as Infanticidium on the western wall of the Cathedral church in Sandomierz, Poland depicting scenes of Jews killing Christian children, has been frequently viewed as an example of Polish anti-Semitism and a troubling symbol of Jewish-Catholic relations. The painting became a site of memory (lieu de mémoire), crystalizing…