Olivia DrakeSusanne Fusso, professor of Russian, East European and Eurasian studies, delivered a paper at a symposium on "Dostoevsky beyond Dostoevsky," held at Brown University, March 15-16. Merging Darwinian theory, Romantic poetry and the complexities of human morality, the Dostoevsky symposium offered multiple perspectives on novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky's work. Fusso's paper was titled "Prelude to a Collaboration: Dostoevsky's Aesthetic Polemic with Mikhail Katkov." The conference was attended by scholars from Yale, Columbia, Duke, Northwestern, Johns Hopkins, St. Petersburg State University, Brandeis, University of California - San Diego, and other institutions.
Lauren RubensteinProfessor of Economics Richard Grossman is the author of an op-ed titled, "The Monetary Cosmopolitans," published March 27 on Project Syndicate, a website that publishes commentary "by global leaders and thinkers." Grossman expresses support for a new trend toward countries appointing foreigners, and those with considerable foreign experience, to what is widely considered a country's second most important post: that of the head of the central bank. "This represents a major departure from the tradition of filling central banks' top leadership positions with people who have spent most of their careers there—a tradition that, over time, allowed central banks to…
Natalie Robichaud ’14James Lieber ’84, president of the consulting firm, Lieber Strategies, hosted a dinner for Wesleyan students in Paris in March. “I think they were all fed for a week," Lieber said. After graduating from Wesleyan with a BA with honors in art history, Lieber went on to get his master’s degree in public policy from Harvard and a juris doctor degree cum laude from Northwestern University School of Law. In Paris, he founded Lieber Strategies, a strategic consulting firm that specializes in management of cross-border projects for multinational and national corporations, investment funds and private individuals.
David LowNot one but two books about baseball by Wesleyan graduates have just hit the shelves. Daniel Gilbert ’98, assistant professor in the School of Labor and Employment Relations at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, has published Expanding the Strike Zone: Baseball in the Age of Free Agency (University of Massachusetts Press), while Benjamin Baumer ’00 and Andrew Zimbalist P’02 have co-written The Sabermetric Revolution: Assessing the Growth of Analytics in Baseball (University of Pennsylvania Press). Expanding the Strike Zone takes a look at issues of work and territory that have come into play as baseball expanded since the mid-20th…
Roberta Pereira ‘03 is the co-founder and managing editor of Dress Circle Publishing, whose mission is to provide its readers with a peek behind the curtain through theater-themed books. The company publishes fiction and nonfiction, which attracts a varied audience, and especially theater-lovers everywhere. Dress Circle Publishing has just published The Untold Stories of Broadway, Volume 1, by musical theater historian and producer Jennifer Ashley Tepper, which records the stories of eight Broadway theaters and productions that have played there, as told by producers, actors, directors, writers, musicians, and the various other artists and workers involved. Pereira edited the book and…
Kenneth Kimmell ’82 will join the Union of Concerned Scientists as president in May. After graduating with a BA from Wesleyan, Kimmell received his JD from UCLA. His decision to become an environmental attorney was prompted by an experience assisting a United State District Court judge on a case in which the government misused science. He was a director and senior attorney at a law firm in Boston before joining the administration of Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick. As General Counsel of the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs, Kimmell wrote and helped pass five groundbreaking environmental and energy laws.…
Cynthia RockwellThe Institute on Education Law and Policy (IELP), an interdisciplinary research project at Rutgers University-Newark that director Paul Tractenberg '60 established in 2000, has produced two major reports [see one and two] on school segregation in New Jersey in collaboration with The Civil Rights Project at UCLA. “The findings were sobering, even for a state that has long been home to some of the most segregated schools in the country,” wrote Tractenberg for NJ Spotlight. Tractenberg, who is also the Board of Governors Distinguished Service Professor and Alfred C. Clapp Distinguished Public Service Professor of Law at Rutgers School of Law-Newark, recently published Courting Justice:…
Robert Feldman ’70 was appointed deputy chancellor of the University of Massachusetts-Amherst by Chancellor Kumble Subbaswamy. In this new role, Feldman, currently dean of the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, will coordinate and facilitate campus-wide quality enhancement efforts, collaborating across campus areas including Academic Affairs, Student Affairs and Administration and Finance. He will also oversee implementation of campus-level strategic plan initiatives, as well as oversee administration of the Chancellor’s Office, including portfolios such as the Equal Opportunity and Diversity. Subbaswamy praised Feldman, saying that he “brings to this position a wealth of skills and experience as an administrator, a…
Bill Herbst, the John Monroe Van Vleck Professor of Astronomy, director of graduate studies, received a $5,000 grant from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to support observations with the Spitzer Space Telescope. The title of the proposal is “Planet Formation in the Circumbinary Disk of KH 15D.” Herbst and his colleagues are measuring the brightness of the T Tauri binary system KH 15D covering several important missing orbital phases around minimum light and one near maximum. Data is crucial to understanding the mechanisms behind the observed reddening in the system, which has implications for planetformation and disk evolution. Learn more about this study online here.
Clifford Chase, visiting writer in the English Department, is the author of The Tooth Fairy: Parents, Lovers and Other Wayward Deities published by Overlook Press on Feb. 6. The Tooth Fairy is a humorous memoir of a man torn between isolation and connection. Chase tells stories that have shaped his adulthood through intimate confessions, deadpan asides and observations on the fear and turmoil that defined the long decade after 9/11. He writes about his aging parents, whose disagreements sharpen as their health declines; his sexual confusion in his 20s; the joyful music of the B-52s; his beloved brother, lost tragically to AIDS;…
Alex Dupuy, the John E. Andrus Professor of Sociology, is the author of a new book, Haiti: From Revolutionary Slaves to Powerless Citizens. Essays on the Politics and Economics of Underdevelopment, 1804-2013, published by Routledge on Feb. 24. The book examines Haiti's position within the global economic and political order, including how more dominant countries have exploited Haiti over the last 200 years. Haiti's fragile democracy has been founded on subordination to and dominance of foreign powers.
On March 31, students and staff gathered at the Career Center for the series finale of the hit TV show, How I Met Your Mother. The show was co-created by Carter Bays ’97 and Craig Thomas ’97 and has won several awards throughout its nine seasons. University Relations and the Wes Watches HIMYM Blog sponsored the event so the Wesleyan community could watch the final episode together. Photos of the event are below: (Photos by Ryan Heffernan '16) (more…)