2020

Wesleyan University Press authors Hafizah Geter, Rae Armantrout, and Honorée Fanonne Jeffers were recently longlisted for awards from PEN America. Hafizah Geter’s debut poetry collection, Un-American, is longlisted for the PEN Open Book Award. The PEN Open Book Award honors a work of fiction, literary nonfiction, biography/memoir, or poetry written by an author of color. The award was created by PEN America’s Open Book Committee, a group committed to racial and ethnic diversity within the literary and publishing communities. Geter’s collection moves readers through the fraught internal and external landscapes—linguistic, cultural, racial, familial—of those whose lives are shaped and transformed by…

When hometown friends Michayla Robertson-Pine and Tessa Levenstein found themselves frustrated with online learning at the college level, they suspected school-aged children were also suffering in the world of online education, and that young people were actively looking for fun creative ways to engage with each other socially. That's when Wesleyan junior Robertson-Pine '22 and Amherst College junior Tessa Levenstein '22 decided to create a remote, project-based, community-oriented program with the intent of spreading joyful learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. Named Tin Can Learners, the program aims to take the load off of parents and offer engaging and energizing after-school…

As part of the BIO 173: Global Change and Infectious Disease course, Professor Fred Cohan assigns students to write an essay persuading others to prevent future and mitigate present infectious diseases. If students submit their essay to a news outlet—and it's published—Cohan awards them with extra credit. As a result of this assignment, more than 25 students have had their work published in newspapers across the United States. Many of these essays cite and applaud the University's Keep Wes Safe campaign and its COVID-19 testing protocols. Cohan, professor of biology and Huffington Foundation Professor in the College of the Environment…

Ioana Emy Matesan, assistant professor of government, is the author of The Violence Pendulum: Tactical Change in Islamist Groups in Egypt and Indonesia, published by Oxford University Press, September 2020. The Violence Pendulum challenges the notion that democracy can reduce violence, or that there is anything exceptional about violent Islamist mobilization in the Middle East. It also addresses an ongoing puzzle in the study of political violence, and shows why repression can sometimes encourage violence, and other times discourage it. Matesan also investigates escalation and de-escalation in an inter-generational and cross-regional study of Islamist mobilization in Egypt and in Indonesia.…

Ren Ellis Neyra, associate professor of English, is the author of The Cry of the Senses: Listening to Latinx and Caribbean Poetics, published by Duke University Press, 2020. Weaving together the Black radical tradition with Caribbean and Latinx performance, cinema, music, and literature, Ellis Neyra highlights the ways in which Latinx and Caribbean sonic practices challenge anti-Black, colonial, post-Enlightenment, and humanist epistemologies.

A book written by Hari Krishnan, professor and chair of dance, received a special citation by the awards committee of the Dance Studies Association. Krishnan's Celluloid Classicism: Early Tamil Cinema and the Making of Modern Bharatanatyam (Wesleyan University Press, 2019) was honored with the 2020 de la Torre Bueno® First Book Special Citation for being an "invaluable addition to scholarship on Bharatanatyam in the crucial period between the 1930s and 1950s, offering an impeccably researched and well-argued revision of the common recounting of this phase of the dance’s history." Krishnan’s archival work "is impeccable," the citation reads, "combining interviews with…

When religion major Shayna Dollinger '22 imagined her college experience, it never involved mandatory quarantining, weekly virus testing, attending concerts—solo—in a 6-by-6-foot square space, and wearing masks at a socially distanced tashlich on Rosh Hashanah. But this was the true reality of her junior year at Wesleyan. "But weirdly enough, I don’t miss what could have been. I am proud and grateful every day for the lengths my university has gone to keep its students safe and engaged during these turbulent times," Dollinger wrote in an essay titled "My Pandemic Year in College Has Brought Pride and Purpose." The essay,…

During a virtual ceremony on Dec. 2, 15 members of the Class of 2021 were inducted early decision into the Gamma Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa. The oldest scholastic honor society in the nation, Phi Beta Kappa at Wesleyan is limited to 12% of the graduating class each year. Fall-semester election is based on grades through the end of a student’s junior year and fulfillment of the General Education expectations. The minimum grade point average for the fall election is 93, and students are nominated by their major departments. “Your families, teachers, fellow students, and others at Wesleyan couldn't be…

For 19 years, Joyce Topshe took on the role of managing Wesleyan's construction services, environmental services, rental properties, and Physical Plant-Facilities. Now in her 20th year of working at Wesleyan, the associate vice president for facilities is powering through "the most challenging year of my career," she said. "As we approach the end of the fall semester during a raging pandemic, I am feeling like we almost won the World Series. My entire team has worked exhaustively to make our campus safe during the pandemic, and I am so grateful to every member of my team for staying the course…

During the Center for the Humanities Lecture Series, nine scholars explored the theme of "Dirt" throughout the fall 2020 semester. The theme explored the material ecologies and symbolic currencies of filth, waste, toxicity, and contamination alongside ideas of purity, hygiene, and cleanliness to address and reframe a range of contemporary environmental and cultural urgencies. Through various topics, the scholars discussed uses and abuses of dirt and its various political, religious, sexual, ethnic, racial, and ecological significations. The topics and speakers included: "Projected Resonances: Intersections of Sound, Performance, and Tourism Underground at Mammoth Cave" by Paula Matthusen, associate professor of music;…

Two books written by Wesleyan faculty have recently been translated to Russian, where they are now being distributed. Nabokov and Indeterminacy: The Case of the Real Life of Sebastian Knight was originally written by Priscilla Meyer, professor emerita of Russian language and literature, and published by Northwestern University Press in 2018. Renowned translator and Nabokov expert Vera Polishchuk translated Meyer's book, which is now available in Russian by Academic Studies Press. Nabokov and Indeterminacy shows how Vladimir Nabokov’s early novel The Real Life of Sebastian Knight illuminates his later work. Meyer explores how Nabokov associates his characters in Sebastian Knight with…

A couple years ago, Ron Cooper '79, a retired corporate executive-turned-travel, documentary, and portrait photographer, was in New Mexico to photograph cowboys, Civil War re-enactors, gunslingers, and snake-handlers. After completing the shoot, one of the subjects asked if he could show Cooper a very different character that he also portrayed. "I agreed and he went to change. He came back as Santa Claus in a terrific Western-style Santa suit, complete with bolo tie. As it turns out, he had a side gig during the holiday season as Santa Claus at a shopping mall in Albuquerque," Cooper recalled. "Not long after…

Wesleyan University Press Authors Longlisted for PEN Awards

Students Launch Fun, Interactive Virtual Program for School-Aged Kids

Students’ Essays on Infectious Disease Prevention, COVID-19 Published Nationwide

Matesan’s New Book Explores Political Violence, Islamist Mobilization in Egypt and Indonesia

Ellis Neyra Pens New Book on Latinx, Caribbean Poetics

Krishnan’s Book Receives Special Citation from the Dance Studies Association

Dollinger ’22: Pandemic Year in College Brings Pride, Purpose

15 Seniors Elected to Phi Beta Kappa

Employees Recognized for Years of Service to Wesleyan

Scholars Explore the Theme of “Dirt” Through Center for the Humanities Series

Books by Meyer, Smolkin Translated and Distributed in Russia

Behind the Beard: Cooper ’79 Captures Images, Stories of Professional Santa Clauses