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Greg Goldberg joined the Sociology Department as an assistant professor. His research interests include political economy, social theory, media and popular culture, digital and network technologies and music and sound. This semester he is teaching Introductory Sociology and Media and Society. "Thus far, I've found the students at Wesleyan to be ambitious, open, creative and independent thinkers; they are truly a pleasure to teach," he says. "They have sharp critical thinking skills, and are game for anything I can think to throw at them. I've been continually impressed by their ability to engage complex social questions and issues, and I…
Q&As with outstanding students is an occasional feature of The Wesleyan Connection. This issue we speak with Bill Tyner from the Class of 2013. Q: Bill, what is your major and what are your favorite classes this year? A: I have the pleasure of majoring in Cultural Anthropology with a certificate in Social, Cultural, and Critical Theory. This semester my favorite classes are Anthropology Theory 1 and Digital Media. Q: Tell us about your new blog, Freshleyan. Why did you start it, and what is your involvement? A: Driven by our fascination with writing, fashion and design, my friend Khari…
Scott Plous, professor of psychology, was elected to a three-year term as a council member of the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (SPSSI). The council is the governing board of the Society. Founded in 1936, SPSSI is a group of over 3,000 scientists from psychology and related fields and others who share a common interest in research on the psychological aspects of important social and policy issues. In various ways, SPSSI seeks to bring theory and practice into focus on human problems of the group, the community, and nations, as well as the increasingly important problems that…
Tasmiha Khan '12 and her group, Brighter Dawns, were featured in the Oct. 24 edition of The Middletown Press. In the article, Khan explains how she became interested in helping poor families - and her own family - in Bangladesh. “There’s a stark dynamic between the rich and the poor,” Khan says in the article. “I wanted to see how these people live, but I really had to push my family. They were scared of me getting raped or even murdered. There was no running water. Seven to eight people of extended family, living under one roof. Words aren’t enough…
Peter Mark, professor of art history, is the co-author of the book The Forgotten Diaspora: Jewish Communities in West Africa and the Making of the Atlantic World, published by Cambridge University Press, 2011. This study traces the history of early 17th-century Portuguese Sephardic traders who settled in two communities on Senegal's Petite Côte. There, they lived as public Jews, under the spiritual guidance of a rabbi sent to them by the newly established Portuguese Jewish community in Amsterdam. In Senegal, the Jews were protected from agents of the Inquisition by local Muslim rulers. The Petite Côte communities included several Jews…
Sally Bachner, assistant professor of English, is the author of The Prestige of Violence: American Fiction. 1962-2007, published by the University of Georgia Press in 2011. In The Prestige of Violence, Bachner argues that, starting in the 1960s, American fiction laid claim to the status of serious literature by placing violence at the heart of its mission and then insisting that this violence could not be represented. Bachner demonstrates how many of the most influential novels of this period are united by the dramatic opposition they draw between a debased and untrustworthy conventional language, on the one hand, and a…
Barbara Juhasz, assistant professor pf psychology, assistant professor of neuroscience and behavior, is the co-author of the paper, "Tangible words are recognized faster: The grounding of meaning in sensory and perceptual systems." The paper was published in the September 2011 issue of the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, Issue 64, pages 1683-1691.
A paper written by two faculty members and three undergraduates was published in the American Physical Society's Physical Review A, Volume 84, on Oct. 13. Their paper was one of six highlighted in the publication's Physics Focus and This Week in Physics. The paper is titled "Experimental study of active LRC circuits with PT symmetries." The authors include Tsampikos Kottos, associate professor of physics; Fred Ellis, professor of physics, Joseph Schindler '12, Ang Li '13 and Mei Zheng '10. The abstract of the paper is online here.
Jennifer Rose, research associate professor, received a grant worth $456,225 from the National Institutes of Health on Sept. 7. Rose will use the funds to support her study on "Integrative Analysis for Nicotine Dependence Symptoms in Novice Smokers" through July 2013. "The goal of this project is to use integrative data analysis to pool three independent, national level data sets and to use newly developed statistical methods to evaluate DSM-IV nicotine dependence symptoms in recent onset smokers with varying levels of current smoking exposure," she explains. Rose also received a grant worth $9,935 (subcontracted with Miriam Hospital) from the NIH…