Olivia DrakeWesleyan’s College of the Environment has appointed faculty members Johan “Joop” Varekamp, Clark Maines, Vijay Pinch and Elise Springer as 2011-12 fellows. The fellows will gather with other Wesleyan scholars and undergraduate students for a year-long academic "Think Tank" on a critical environmental issue. The 2011-12 topic is "Water’s Past, Water’s Future." The aim of the Think Tank is not only to generate a deeper understanding of the thematic issue, but also to produce scholarly works that will influence national and international thinking and action on the issue. Scholars and students in the think tank are expected to produce scholarly (more…)
This spring, students of all ages will have the opportunity to see dinosaur tracks in Connecticut, discuss emerging infections, explore retirement planning options, or examine emotions, traits and institutions that promote healthy psychological functioning. These course topics, among others, will be taught through The Wesleyan Institute for Lifelong Learning (WILL) this spring. The course offerings cover the arts, social sciences, literature, science and mathematics. The spring courses include: Legacies in Words: An Introduction to Memoir Writing, Life's Great Transitions and Four Essential Dialogues, Exploring the Mysteries of Finance, Positive Psychology, Life Is But a Dream, Germs Are Us, Brownstone Stories:…
Jan Willis, professor of religion, professor of East Asian studies, is featured in the Aetna’s 2011 African American History Calendar. The calendar’s theme is “Healthful Blessings: Faith-Based Health Initiatives Making a Difference for African Americans.” Willis’s profile on the Aetna web site reads: As a 10th grader in the ’60s, Prof. Jan Willis marched with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Birmingham, Ala. That moment, which she often still reflects on, changed her life forever. “The nonviolence that I witnessed there is echoed in Buddhism,” she said. Though she grew up a Baptist, she now practices and teaches Tibetan…
Liza McAlister Liza McAlister, associate professor of religion, African American studies and American studies, joined an invited conference on “Global Oprah: Celebrity as Transnational Icon” Feb. 25-26 at Yale’s MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies. The academic conference aimed to theorize neoliberalism, celebrity and humanitarianism, using Oprah Winfrey as a focusing lens. The conference consisted of six panel discussions, which examined the way celebrities define America, and the role they play in international human rights and politics. McAlister presented a paper on Wyclef Jean, a Haitian-born Hip-Hop superstar. She discussed his career trajectory beginning with the Fugees, to his…
Susan Howe, the English Department's Distinguished Visiting Writer for 2010-11, was awarded the prestigious Bollingen Prize in American Poetry at Yale University. Previous recipients include Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens, Marianne Moore and Adrienne Rich. Two of Howe's most influential books, Singularities (poetry) and The Birthmark (essays), were published by Wesleyan University Press. Of Howe’s most recent book, the three-member judging committee said: “Susan Howe is a fierce elegist. That This, prompted by the sudden death of the poet’s husband, makes manifest the raw edges of elegy through the collision of verse and prose, visionary lyricism and mundane incident, ekphrasis, visual patterning, and the…
Richard Grossman, professor of economics, presented a paper titled "Contingent Capital and Bank Risk-Taking: Evidence from British Equity Markets before World War I” at the Yale Economic History Workshop on Feb. 21. Masami Imai, chair and associate professor of East Asian studies, associate professor of economics and director of the Freeman Center for East Asian Studies, co-authored the paper. The workshop was sponsored by Yale University's Department of Economics.
Janice Naegele, professor of biology, professor of neurosceince and behavior, and a group of Wesleyan students attended the Connecticut Forum on “The Glorius, Mysterious Brain” Feb. 25 at the Bushnell Theater in Hartford, Conn. The Connecticut Forum is a nationally recognized, nonprofit organization that offers live, unscripted panel discussions among renowned experts and celebrities, and community outreach programs. Nagele’s group listened to Autism advocate Temple Grandin, author and Harvard professor Steven Pinker and cognitive scientist Paul Bloom. In addition, Michael Greenberg '76, chair of neurobiology at Harvard Medical School, spoke to Naegele's students about “experience-dependent changes in gene expression."
Johan "Joop" Varekamp, the Harold T. Stearns Professor of Earth Science, professor of environmental studies, was elected as president of the Board of Trustees of the Connecticut Fund for the Environment (CFE). The CFE is an organization of environmental advocacy, habitat restoration and outreach with about 20 staff members. Its mission is to protect and improve the land, air and water of Connecticut and Long Island Sound by using legal and scientific expertise and by bringing people together to achieve results that benefit the environment for current and future generations.
Priscilla Gale, private lessons teacher for jazz and voice in the Music Department, will host a show on "Sacred Song Reiki" for Internet Radio - VoiceAmerica.com. The show will be aired at noon on Saturday starting April 23. VoiceAmerica features more than 200 hosts talking about a variety of topics—from sports and finance to health, hobbies, pop culture and business. It has more than 2.5 million listeners.
Computer science majors Jeff Ruberg ’12, Michael Vitale ’11 and Katie Wagner ’12 participated in the Humanitarian Fee and Open Source Software Project summer internship program. For their project, they worked on software that is part of the Tor network. Tor is software that allows users to browse the web anonymously, and is used by human rights workers, individuals in repressive regimes, and people who just don’t want corporations tracking their on-line movements. It is implemented as a world-wide network of “relays” that are run by volunteers on anything ranging from academic servers to home computers. Ruberg, Vitale and Wagner completely re-designed and…
Johan “Joop” Varekamp, the Harold T. Stearns Professor of Earth Science, professor of environmental studies, is the co-editor of a special issue of the Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research, titled Continental Margin Volcanism. He's also the co-author of an article titled "Back-arc basalts from the Loncopue graben (Province of Neuquen, Argentina)," which is published in the special issue.
Two Wesleyan alumni who wrote Ph.D dissertations on Russian politics have recently accepted tenure-track jobs in political science departments. Russian and East European studies major Danielle Lussier '98, will be an assistant professor at Grinnell College, where she will be replacing Robert Grey '61. Lussier wrote her B.A. thesis on the women's movement in contemporary Russia, and her Ph.D at the University of California, Berkeley on a comparison of civil society and political mobilization in Russian and Indonesia. College of Social Studies major Lauren McCarthy '01 will be an assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She wrote her…