Olivia DrakeJ. Kehaulani Kauanui, associate professor of American studies, associate professor of anthropology, was a distinguished guest panelist at the 2014 Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship Program in the Humanities Conference at the University of California - Los Angles on March 7. She spoke on “Hawaiian Indigeneity, (Same-Sex) Marriage, and the Racial Politics of Colonial Modernity." She also spoke on “Till death Do Us Part? Settler Colonialism and (Same Sex) Marriage in Hawaii,” at the Women’s Studies and Consortium for Critical Interdisciplinary Studies on Feb. 20 and “New Directions in American Studies: Settler Colonialism and Critical Indigenous Studies,” at the Circuits of Influence: U.S. Israel, and Palestine Symposium…
Psyche Loui, assistant professor of psychology, assistant professor of neuroscience and behavior, presented a talk at a symposium held March 6-8 at the University of Rochester Medical Center's Schmitt Program on Integrative Brain Research (SPIBR). Her talk, titled, "Action and Perception in the Musical Brain," described current research from her lab and others that related to the structure and function of the brain to music perception and production, with examples from tone-deafness, absolute pitch, music learning and strong emotional responses to music.
Mike SembosDavid Westmoreland, associate professor of chemistry, and chemistry graduate student Breanna Craft presented a paper titled, “pH-Dependent Mechanisms of 1H Relaxivity in a Series of Structurally Related Mn(II) Cyclen Derivatives” at the 245th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society held in New Orleans, La. in April 2013. Westmoreland, Craft and chemistry graduate student Sarah Hensiek also presented a paper titled, “Solution Dynamics of Transition Metal Complexes of Cyclen Based Ligands Containing Amide and Carboxylate Functional Groups."
Eirene Visvardi, assistant professor of classical studies, gave three talks in 2013 including “Afraid, They Judge. Afraid, They Act: Collective Fear in Greek Tragedy and Democratic Politics," at Texas Tech University on May 6; "Emotional Acts: The Case of Pity," at Yale University on Sept. 28; and "Teaching Euripides' Medea," at Columbia University on Oct. 13.
Michael Roberts, chair and professor of classical studies, spoke about “Pompatic Poetics: Claudian’s Epithalamium for Honorius and Maria and Some Features of Late Latin Poetry," at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign on March 21. He also presented a paper titled “Venantius Fortunatus on Poetry and Song,” at the annual meeting of the International Society for Late Antique Literary Studies at Brown University, Oct. 31-Nov. 2, 2013. Roberts also is the Robert Rich Professor of Latin and professor of medieval studies.
Bill Firshein, the Daniel Ayers Professor of Biology, emeritus, is the author of the book, The Infectious Microbe, published by Oxford University Press in January 2014. Firshein is the founding faculty member of the Molecular Biology and Biochemistry Department. In The Infectious Microbe, Firshein uses six different critical diseases to illustrate how viruses and bacteria are spread. He discusses the relationship between man and virus, and how to defeat viruses. The book will help non-scientific readers better understand the issues surrounding the spread of disease. Thomas Broker '66, professor of biochemistry at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, described the book as an “engaging journey…
John Finn, professor of government, is the author of Peopling the Constitution (Constitutional Thinking), published by the University Press of Kansas on Feb. 24. According to the University Press of Kansas, Peopling the Constitution outlines a very different view of the Constitution as a moral and philosophical statement about who we are as a nation. This "Civic Constitution" constitutes us as a civic body politic, transforming "the people" into a singular political entity. Juxtaposing this view with the legal model, the "Juridic Constitution," Finn offers a comprehensive account of the Civic Constitution as a public affirmation of the shared principles of…
Assistant Professor of Theater Rashida Shaw ‘99 shared her observations as a researcher, ethnographer and audience member who has attended urban theater productions in Chicago for a chapter in a book called Black Theater Is Black Life: An Oral History of Chicago Theater and Dance, 1970-2010, written by Harvey Young and Queen Meccasia Zabriskie, and published in November 2013 by Northwestern University Press. It features interviews with producers, directors, choreographers, designers, dancers, and actors, and serves to frame the colorful four-decade period for the African American artistic community in the Windy City.
Michael McAlear, associate professor of molecular biology and biochemistry, is co-author of “A New System for Naming Ribosomal Proteins” published in Current Opinion in Structural Biology 24:1–5 in 2014.
Meredith Hughes, assistant professor of astronomy, is the co-author of a paper titled "Molecular Gas Clumps from the Destruction of Icy Bodies in the β Pictoris Debris Disk," published in the journal Science on March 6. Read more about Hughes study in this Wesleyan Connection article.
Ron Jenkins, professor of theater, is the author of an article titled, "African-American Step Dancing meets Balinese "kecak'" published in the March 6 edition of The Jakarta Post. The article highlights a cross-cultural theater collaboration that brought together African-American step-dancers and Balinese "kecak" performers who create interlocking rhythms with choral chants. Jenkins wrote the article while in Pengosekan Village, Indonesia doing sabbatical research. Read the article here. Jenkins also wrote a book review titled, "Illuminating: The Enigma of Time," which appeared in the Feb. 24 edition of The Jakarta Post. The book, Time, Rites and Festivals in Bali, is written by Gusti Nyoman Darta, Jean…
Marguerite Nguyen, assistant professor of English contributed a book chapter titled, “Like We Lost Our Citizenship: Vietnamese Americans, African Americans, and Hurricane Katrina," for the book Improbable Southerners: Asian Americans in the South, published by the University of Illinois Press in 2013.