Rachel Wachman ’24

Jennifer Tucker, associate professor of history and chair of the Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Department, gave a virtual talk titled “Adventures of Victorian Aeronauts” on March 28. The lecture focused on the way balloon travel changed the landscape of Victorian aviation. The talk was hosted by Profs & Pints, an online platform for professors to give lectures that reach a wide virtual audience. Tucker began with a historical panorama of ballooning from its origins in Enlightenment science and Romanticism, to its uses for various purposes in the 19th century. She also explored balloon fashion and follies, accidents and mishaps,…

On March 30, more than 150 students gathered outside Usdan University Center for a community vigil to mourn the victims of the March 16 Atlanta spa shootings and to create a safe space for Asian and Asian-American students to discuss the rise of anti-Asian violence and be heard by the community. The vigil was organized by Emily Chen ’23, Kevin Le ’22, and graduate student Emily Moon, in conjunction with members of the Asian American Student Collective. Students read poems, played music, and shared their reflections during the event. Towards the end, the organizers gave anyone moved to speak the…

Sofia Warren ’13 has always loved to draw, but she didn’t know she could make a career out of it until graduating from Wesleyan and entering the world of animation. Now she works as a cartoonist for The New Yorker and recently launched a virtual advice column called “You’re Doing Great.” “It feels like a really fun fusion for me of art, which I love to do, and listening to people and figuring out how to help them,” Warren said about the column. She originally began posting doodles on her Instagram stories around the time of the election and asking…

Ákos Östör, professor of anthropology, emeritus, and his wife, Lina Fruzzetti, a professor of anthropology at Brown University, co-produced six films that are now being included in a retrospective hosted by the Smithsonian’s Recovering Voices Initiative for the annual Mother Tongue Film Festival. The festival features diverse films which explore language and knowledge around the world. This year’s theme is “The Healing Power of Storytelling.” While the festival must take place online due to the COVID-19 pandemic, each film is available to stream throughout the spring for a certain window of time. Östör and Fruzzetti also participated in a virtual…

Martha Gilmore, George I. Seney Professor of Geology and professor of earth and environmental sciences, is the co-author of seven new papers and articles. These include: “Distinct Mineralogy and Age of Individual Lava Flows in Atla Regio, Venus Derived From Magellan Radar Emissivity,” published in the March 2021 issue of JGR: Planets. Gilmore's former postdoc Jeremy Brossier, Katie Toner '20 and Avi Stein '17 co-authored this paper. “The Venus Life Equation,” published online in the January 2021 issue of Astrobiology. “Variations in the radiophysical properties of tesserae and mountain belts on Venus: Classification and mineralogical trends,” published in the February…

Suzanne OConnell, professor of earth and environmental sciences, is featured on Vox Media’s podcast Unexplainable in a March 17 episode titled “Journey Toward the Center of the Earth.” The podcast explores unanswered scientific questions about mysterious aspects of the world and examines what scientists are doing to find answers. The episode with OConnell delves into a 20th-century quest to drill into the Earth’s layers through the ocean, specifically to learn more about a very dense region between the crust and the mantle called the Mohorovičić discontinuity, or the Moho. “Project Moho was a bust, but it lay a foundation for…

Johan "Joop" Varekamp, Harold T. Stearns Professor in Earth Science, professor of earth and environmental studies, is the co-author of an article published in Geology, March 2021. The study, titled "Volcanic Carbon Cycling in East Lake, Newberry Volcano, Oregon," focuses on the bubbling East Lake, the site of the Newberry Volcano, and the geological implications of the carbon reactions happening there. Varekamp co-authored the article with graduate student Christina Cauley and former students: Hilary Brumberg '17, Lena Capece '16, Celeste Smith '19, Paula Tartell '18, and Molly Wagner MA '19. The team researched this geological phenomenon from 2015 to 2019,…

Tucker Lectures on Victorian Aeronauts and the History of Ballooning

Students Gather to Honor Atlanta Victims, Combat Anti-Asian Violence

Warren ’13 Talks Virtual Advice, Cartoons, Creativity

Östör Celebrates 6 Films Featured at Smithsonian Festival

Gilmore, Alumni Author Papers in 7 Journals

OConnell Talks Ocean Exploration in Vox Podcast

Volcanic Lake Study by Varekamp, Former Students, Published in Geology