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Andrew ChatfieldJune 1, 20225min
There is a quote attributed to Mao that is still used in daily conversation in China to encourage people to develop better health habits. “The healthy body is the fundamental investment for the revolutionary cause,' (or shenti shi geming de benqian)," said Ying Jia Tan, assistant professor of history and East Asian studies. To illustrate how important this sentiment has been in shaping China’s response to disease, faculty and students have curated an exhibit called “Strong Bodies for the Revolution: Pursuing Health and Power in the People’s Republic of China,” an exhibition featuring a collection of propaganda posters donated by…

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Andrew ChatfieldMay 19, 20226min
Gabby Farina ’23, an Art History and English major, was interested in how artists’ work dealt with family, identity, body, grossness, and fleshiness. What she found from her classmates inspired her. “Everything was very much tied back to this idea of the human form,” Farina said. Farina is the first Wesleyan student to curate a Senior Thesis Showcase exhibition on her own. The exhibition, “It's Mutual,” was the first such exhibition in the Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery since COVID-19 led to the cancellation of a planned showcase in May 2020. As part of her tutorial, Farina visited the working…

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Andrew ChatfieldFebruary 15, 20227min
Actor Greig Sargeant was watching a debate on YouTube in the fall of 2019 and he started getting very angry. It wasn’t new footage, though – the clip was over 54 years old. In February 1965, writers James Baldwin, one of the most powerful figures of the Civil Rights Movement, and William F. Buckley, Jr., the father of 20th century patrician conservatism, had been invited to the Cambridge University Union in England to debate the proposition “The American Dream is at the expense of the American Negro.” “It was definitely relevant for me, being a Black man and seeing this…