David PesciGil Skillman, chair and professor of economics, was a featured guest on WNPR's "Where We Live" discussion on the general state of the economy one year after the demise of Lehman Brothers and the onset of the recession. Skillman and two other economists discuss what led to the collapse and point out some of the danger points that have been under-reported in the newsmedia and have yet to be addressed by the Federal Government.
The Colin McEnroe Show on WNPR had a discussion about Vodou and Haitian culture featuring Elizabeth McAlister, associate professor of religion, associate professor of African American studies, and Gina Ulysse, associate professor of anthropology, associate professor of African American studies, associate professor of feminist gender and sexuality studies.
The Department of Film Studies Elia Kazan Centennial, which opens Saturday, Sept. 12, was the focus of a feature in The Hartford Courant. A seminal director and founder of the Actors Studio, Kazan was both a brilliant and influential figure in film. He was also surrounded by controversy during his career, especially during the 1950s and the investigations by House of Representatives Un-American Activities Committee. Kazan was also a "fixture" at Wesleyan, where he often came to write and speak to the classes of Jeanine Basinger, Chair and Corwin-Fuller Professor of Film Studies. His personal papers reside in the Wesleyan…
Jared Radin '12 is among those interviewed in a Newsweek story about kids who grew up in the wake of the attacks on September 11, 2001.
All American Wesleyan volleyball player Lisa Drennan '09 has signed to play professional volleyball in Denmark this year.
In a piece in The Huffington Post, Wesleyan President Michael S. Roth recounts the strong ties Senator Edward Kennedy H'83 had with Wesleyan, and how the late Senator had the "courage to believe in the possibilities for positive change."
No Quarter: The battle of the Crater, 1864 by Richard Slotkin, Olin Professor of English, emeritus, is praised in a recent review in The New York Times. The book examines a Civil War battle in 1864 that involved extensive use of black soldiers by the Union and became a polarizing political symbol that might have cost Lincoln his second term as President of the United States. The review calls No Quarter "a riveting narrative and fair play to both sides, while exhuming an important episode from relative obscurity."
Jeanine Basinger, Chair and Corwin-Fuller Professor of Film Studies, discussed in The Los Angeles Times the recent reappearance of gigolo-type characters in feature films and television. Basinger talks about the social and economic implications of such characters and what they may imply about current times.
Geoffrey Ginsburg '78 is part of a team that has developed a genetic test for influenza that identifies infection before symptoms can even arise. The advance, reported in USA Today, could offer tremendous opportunities for early treatment of flu and the potential reduce the number of people who come down with the illness as save lives.
Gary Yohe, Woodhouse/Sysco Professor of Economics and a lead member of the Nobel Prize-winning United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), said in an article in USA Today that impoverished people, especially in underdeveloped nations, will be the hardest hit from global climate change.
Claire Potter, professor of history, professor of American studies, is cited in the on-going discussion that has been churning for a few months in literary circles regarding American Enterprise Institute scholar Christina Hoff Sommers, a frequent critic of academic feminism, who believes, according to The New Yorker, that many feminist scholars are " 'impervious to reasoned criticism' (she thinks they take things way too personally, and, consumed with effrontery, are unable to correct themselves)." This included Sommers’ critique of particular scholar's assertion that abuse began with the fabled founder of Rome, Romulus and a massive digression on whether such a…
The Hartford Courant profiled the ground-breaking stem cell research of Laura Grabel, Lauren B. Dachs Professor of Science in Society, professor of biology, and Janice Naegle, professor of biology, professor neuroscience and behavior, as well as the work of Gloster Aaron, assistant professor of biology, assistant professor of neuroscience and behavior. Wesleyan, along with Yale University and The University of Connecticut, has received grants from the State Stem Cell Initiative, a program that allows scientists to research human stem cell lines. Grabel, Naegele and Aaron are doing research aimed at replicating cells that would ultimately help cure a form a…