Lauren Rubenstein

In honor of Black History Month in February, Wesleyan Students of Color hosted a campus formal on Feb. 19 and a performance by world-renowned poet Saul Williams on Feb. 20. The second event, held at Crowell Concert Hall in the Center for the Arts, also featured performances by Tarishi Midnight-Shuler, a professional Connecticut-based spoken word artist, and Destiny Polk ’19. Williams performed at Wesleyan as part of his “MartyrLoserKing” tour, offering the audience an original compilation of spoken word and performance. (Photos by Andrew Hirsh '18) (more…)

At its meeting Feb. 27, the Board of Trustees voted to increase tuition and residential comprehensive fees by 3.3 percent for the 2016-17 year. Tuition will be $50,312 for all undergraduate students. The residential comprehensive fee will be $13,950 for first-year and sophomore students, and $15,858 for juniors and seniors. For the past three years, Wesleyan has linked tuition increases to the national CPI average as part of an initiative to address affordability. That effort has been successful, resulting in very low tuition increases compared to most peer institutions. In recent years, we have seen increased pressure on our financial…

This month, the Workshop, a new student-run arts collective, opened in the basement of Hewitt 8, The collective was created to provide space, support and resources to any student wanting to pursue a creative project—from bookmaking and woodworking to photography and filmmaking to sewing and weaving.

In February, the annual student-curated exhibition, Be The Art, committed to celebrating and raising awareness of artists of color, was held at the Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery. The objective of this showcase is to create a space that exhibits the work of artists who are often underrepresented at Wesleyan and in the world at large. The exhibition featured works of art by Gandarv Chawla '17, Dung Pham '17, Ocean Gao '19, Eunice Lee '19, Justina Yam '19, Shirley Fang '18, Phuong Le '18, Malcolm Phillips '19, Katherine Puntiel '19, Tenzin Kyisarh '16, and Rajaa Elidrissi '16, and performances by Sahil Singhvi…

Justine Quijada, assistant professor of religion, assistant professor of Russian, Eastern European and Eurasian studies. recently co-edited a book titled, Atheist Secularism and its Discontents: A Comparative Study of Religion and Communism in Eurasia (Palgrave Macmillan 2015). Based on a workshop Quijada and her co-editor organized when they were at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethic Diversity, the book examines a “comparative approach to understanding religion under communism, arguing that communism was integral to the global experience of secularism. It shows that appropriating religion was central to Communist political practices.” Quijada and her co-editor were interviewed about their work…

Building off research she did for her work "Body in Places" at Wesleyan in fall 2015, Visiting Instructor in Dance Eiko Otake will present a major platform at Danspace Project in New York City on March 11. The free talks include those by Wesleyan faculty members William Johnson, professor of history, professor of East Asian Studies, professor of science in society, professor of environmental studies, and Katja Kolcio, associate professor of dance, associate professor of environmental studies. March 11 marks the fifth anniversary of the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster in Fukushima, Japan. A photo collective by Eiko and Johnston will be…

A paper by Assistant Professor of Psychology Clara Wilkins, Alexander Hirsch '13 and Michael Inkles '12 has been published in the journal Group Processes & Intergroup Relations. Titled, "The threat of racial progress and the self-protective nature of perceiving anti-White bias," the paper describes two studies in which the researchers examine whether racial progress is threatening to whites, and if perceiving anti-white bias assuages that threat. The first study showed that whites primed with racial progress—by reading an article on social advancement by minorities—exhibited evidence of threat: lower implicit self-worth relative to the baseline. The second study replicated the threat effect…

Sustainability Director Jennifer Kleindienst spoke in January at the Connecticut Recyclers Coalition conference about Wesleyan's experience with composting (also called organics recycling). Wesleyan's composting efforts began intermittently in 2010 through student initiative. Beginning in 2012-13, Kleindienst, her interns, Physical Plant staff, and Bon Appetit led regular residential and dining pre- and post-consumer collection. The vast majority of composed material comes from Usdan, but other participants include approximately150 wood frame, program houses, and apartment residences, seven of nine dorms, and a handful of offices. Finished compost is sent to Long Lane Farm. Wesleyan's trash, recycling and composting data can be seen below: Kleindienst announced that…

The Green Street Teaching and Learning Center has received a second round of funding from the State of Connecticut Department of Education to expand its K-8 Math Institute to three new school districts over the next two years. The $428,479 Math and Science Partnership Award will allow Green Street offer the program to 90 teachers from the Hamden, Vernon and New Haven school districts in programs being offered this summer and next. Green Street works closely with district math coordinators to select teachers to participate. “In Connecticut and all over the country, there are issues with math education—students aren’t achieving…

Professor of Psychology Scott Plous has been elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). He was inducted on Feb. 13 during a ceremony in Washington, D.C., part of the association's annual meeting. Plous was one of eight fellows newly elected to the Psychology section of the AAAS this year. He was chosen "for distinguished contributions to social psychology, particularly understanding decision-making and prejudice, and for communication of psychology science to the public." Founded in 1848, the AAAS is an international nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing science for the benefit of all people. Fellows are…

Ann Cvetkovich of the University of Texas–Austin will deliver the 28th annual Diane Weiss '80 Memorial Lecture on Feb. 25. Her talk, titled, "Archival Turns and Queer Affective Methods," will be held at 7 p.m. in PAC 001. Cvetkovich is the Ellen Clayton Garwood Centennial Professor of English and professor of women’s and gender studies at the University of Texas at Austin. She is the author of Mixed Feelings: Feminism, Mass Culture, and Victorian Sensationalism (Rutgers, 1992); An Archive of Feelings: Trauma, Sexuality, and Lesbian Public Cultures (Duke, 2003); and Depression: A Public Feeling (Duke, 2012). She co-edited (with Ann Pellegrini) “Public Sentiments,” a special issue of The…

Assistant Professor of Government Erika Franklin Fowler and her collaborators on the Wesleyan Media Project are the authors of a new book, Political Advertising in the United States, published in February by Westview Press. The book is edited by Ada Fung '06. Fowler's co-authors are Michael Franz of Bowdoin College and Travis Ridout of Washington State University. Political Advertising in the United States is a comprehensive survey of the political advertising landscape and its influence on voters. The authors draw from the latest data to analyze how campaign finance laws have affected the sponsorship and content of political advertising, how "big data" has…

Students Celebrate Black History Month with Campus Formal, Poet Performance

Board of Trustees Sets 2016-17 Student Charges

New Student-Run Workshop Allows Any Student to Pursue Creative Projects

Student-Curated ‘Be the Art’ Exhibition Held at Zilkha

Quijada Co-edits New Book on ‘Atheist Secularism and its Discontents’

Eiko Otake to Present Major Platform at Danspace in NYC, March 11

Wilkins, Alumni Author New Paper on Threat of Racial Progress to Whites

Kleindienst Speaks on Wesleyan’s Composting Efforts at CT Recyclers Coalition

Green Street Receives Grant to Expand K-8 Math Institute

Plous Named Fellow of American Association for the Advancement of Science

FGSS Presents 28th Annual Diane Weiss ’80 Memorial Lecture, Feb. 25

Wesleyan Media Project Co-Directors Author Book on Political Advertising