Olivia DrakeJuly 31, 20123min
Wesleyan Provost Rob Rosenthal and his son, Sam Rosenthal, presented a reading with rock ‘n’ roll Hall of Famer Pete Seeger July 18 at Bryant Park in New York City. They are mentioned in this July 19 The New Yorker story. According to The New Yorker, "Rosenthal spoke ... briefly, about collecting Seeger’s words. He said that over and over, he found letters to Seeger saying, 'I’m in the middle of my own political struggle and what has kept me going is your music.'" The letters were “From people all over the world,” Rosenthal said. Rob and Sam Rosenthal are the co-editors…

Olivia DrakeJuly 31, 20122min
As part of his summer study trip, University Professor of Music Sumarsam attended and presented a paper at the “Congress and World Puppetry Festival” in Chengdu, China. Music Librarian Alec McLane also attended the Festival. Sponsored by Union Internationale de la Marionnete (UNIMA), the festival staged puppet shows from all over the world, and hold seminar and organizational meeting. Sumarsam presented a paper on “Electric Light Bulb in Contemporary Javanese Shadow Puppet Play,” in a panel on puppetry and technology. The panel included paper presentation by Jim Henson’ daughter, Cheryl Henson—the President of The Jim Henson Foundation. She talked about…

Olivia DrakeJuly 31, 20124min
Former Wesleyan Dean of Students and Dean of the University Mark Barlow '46 died June 23 at the age of 87 in Hanover, N.H. Born in Utica, N.Y. in 1925, he graduated with a degree in mathematics from Wesleyan after serving in the Navy. He received an M.A. from Colgate University and a doctorate of education from Cornell University. He married Jane Atwood in 1954, and in 1957 he became Dean of Students at Wesleyan and later Dean of the University. Because of his age, the students dubbed him "the boy dean," but he quickly developed a reputation for handling…

Olivia DrakeJuly 31, 20122min
Lisa Cohen, assistant professor of English, is the author of All We Know: Three Lives, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in July 2012. The book is 448 pages and includes 52 illustrations and notes. In All We Know, Cohen describes three women’s glamorous choices, complicated failures, and controversial personal lives with lyricism and empathy. Esther Murphy was a brilliant New York intellectual who dazzled friends and strangers with an unstoppable flow of conversation. But she never finished the books she was contracted to write—a painful failure and yet a kind of achievement. The quintessential fan, Mercedes de Acosta had intimate…

Olivia DrakeJuly 9, 20122min
On the morning of June 22, Matt Donahue '14 and and Pik-Tone Fung '14 learned that a Wesleyan chemistry professor had been shot in the basement of Hall-Atwater Laboratory. Public Safety taped off the area around Room 078 and removed the body, leaving behind a blood-stained lab coat, a gun, two shell casings, a hand-written note from "Greg Mulligan," a bloody bullet and an overturned chair. Small pools of blood collected under the victim and blood droplets freckled the nearby lab cabinets and counter. The professor did owe $20,000 to Greg Mulligan. Was he murdered for not returning the money?…

Olivia DrakeJuly 9, 20122min
The Wesleyan Board of Trustees has awarded tenure to eight faculty members. Additionally, four associate professors and two adjunct faculty members also have been promoted. Wesleyan President Michael Roth and Rob Rosenthal, provost and vice president for Academic Affairs, announced the promotions, which were effective July 1. Newly tenured faculty, promoted from Assistant to Associate Professor Gloster Aaron, associate professor of biology, associate professor of neuroscience and behavior, arrived at Wesleyan in 2006, following five years as a post-doctoral researcher at Columbia University. Aaron studies the brain’s synaptic circuitry to better understand communication patterns in the neocortex. His most recent…