All News – Page 161

Wesleyan's Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance (ICPP) received a two-year, $150,000 grant from the Ford Foundation. The award will support a new leadership fellowship program; three curatorial mini-intensives for prospective students; and two global curatorial forums designed to bring an international perspective to the discussion and dissemination of best practices and forge a global network of performing arts curators. This funding will further ICPP's efforts to advance diversity among participants and to amplify the graduate program's impact on the field of performance. "The Ford Foundation funding allows ICPP to support diverse perspectives in the field of performance curation, both…

Four former students who enrolled in the service-learning course AMST 250: Decolonizing Indigenous Middletown: Native Histories of the Wangunk Indian People—taught in fall 2015—are now co-authors of articles published in the Bulletin of the Archaeological Society of Connecticut, No. 79, 2017. Iryelis Lopez ’17, Tiana Quinones '17, Abigail Cunniff ’17 and Yael Horowitz ’17 partnered with the Middlesex County Historical Society and spent their semester examining 17th- and 18th-century Middletown records that focused on the Algonquian peoples of the lower Connecticut River known as Wangunks. The Wangunks lived near the Connecticut River primarily in present-day Middletown and Portland, Conn. In February 2016, self-selected students…

Norman Shapiro, the Distinguished Professor of Literary Translation, is the editor and translator of Fables of Town and Country, published by Black Widow Press in October 2017. Fables of Town and Country is the English version of poet-novelist Pierre Coran's Fables des Villes et des Champs. Supported by a grant from the Belgian Ministry of Culture, Fables of Town and Country is the second of three works by Coran that Shapiro is translating. The first was Fables in a Modern Key in 2014, and the third, Rhymamusings is scheduled to appear in 2019. Coran, Shapiro explains, "is a whimsical octogenarian celebrated throughout his native Belgium as a preeminent…

The Wesleyan Media Project’s research is resonating in our nation’s capital and beyond. Associate Professor of Government Erika Franklin Fowler, together with a team of Wesleyan students and colleagues at several institutions across the United States, conducts research on campaign advertising and health media, which is informing work in government, nonprofits and the private sector. In January, the Bipartisan Policy Center released a major report, The State of Campaign Finance in the U.S., which relied heavily on data and research from the Wesleyan Media Project. The task force that developed the report, led by a Stanford law professor and top…

Wesleyan faculty frequently publish articles based on their scholarship in The Conversation US, a nonprofit news organization with the tagline, "Academic rigor, journalistic flair." Lori Gruen, the William Griffin Professor of Philosophy, has written a piece explaining how philosophers determine what is the right, or ethical, thing to do. Gruen also is professor of feminist, gender and sexuality studies, professor of science in society, and coordinator of animal studies. Read her bio in The Conversation. How should we decide what to do? How many times do we wonder, "What’s the right thing to do?" Most of us are faced with ethical…

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Care to brush up on your French? Learn Japanese? Or perhaps acquire a language that isn’t commonly taught at colleges, such as Danish? Wesleyan is offering alumni and members of the on-campus community free access to the Mango Languages platform, says Antonio Gonzalez, professor of Spanish and director of the Fries Center for Global Studies. The platform provides high-quality online instruction in 72 languages, with an excellent blend of conversational language and cultural study. Gonzalez says that reception of Mango as a teaching and learning tool "has been very positive on campus" and that it is an attractive means for…

On Jan. 27, the Athletic Department hosted its third annual National Girls and Women in Sports Day celebration at the Freeman Athletic Center. As part of the celebration, more than 50 female Wesleyan student-athletes and coaches led a sports clinic for local grade-school children. Seventy-three girls participated in seven sports sessions on softball, field hockey, tennis, lacrosse, crew, volleyball and soccer. (more…)

The Broadway cast recording of the Tony Award–winning musical Dear Evan Hansen won the Grammy for Best Musical Theater Album on Jan. 28. The album was produced by Atlantic Record’s President of A&R (artists and repertoire) Pete Ganbarg ’88, along with music supervisor and orchestrator Alex Lacamoire, creators Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, and Broadway producer Stacey Mindich. “What a great weekend for Wes!" said Ganbarg. "I was so thrilled to be surrounded by so many amazingly talented alums. Got to finally meet Grammy winner Gail Marowitz ’81, be in the room where it happens when Lin-Manuel Miranda ’02 won his latest…

For two hours every Saturday—and any early morning or late night shift available—Middletown resident Franco Liseo fills the airwaves of WESU 88.1 FM, with Italian music. His specialty is the sounds from the ’60s and ’70s; "Love songs," he says. "When I left Italy, I left with the music”—and he's been doing this for 30 years. The Saturday show is special; he broadcasts with a co-host, Lucilla Caminito, the daughter of a childhood friend, who Skypes in from Melilli. These shows feature contemporary music that Caminito chooses and sends to Liseo (whose DJ name is "Francaccio") via the internet, YouTube,…

"Pattern recognition was a constant in my explorations at Wesleyan—and what I focused on afterwards," says Benjamin Fels ’06, explaining the unity behind a seeming diversity of interests. The Bill and Melinda Gates Organization is interested, also, in what Fels finds intriguing. The company Fels co-founded, macro-eyes, is one of 20 that the foundation selected to be a Grand Challenges Explorations winner. The project that macro-eyes proposed seeks to use their own breed of statistical machine learning, trained on supply chain and immunization data at health facilities in Tanzania. The goal is to maximize the number of children who get vaccinated and minimize vaccine…

Last fall, 19 students enrolled in the Earth and Environmental Sciences 280 course, Introduction to GIS, assisted a local organization while learning data analysis skills. At the start of the semester, the class teamed up with community partner Emma Kravet, education director at the Connecticut Forest & Park Association (CFPA). Kravet expressed a need for a mapping tool that shows the location of schools and other community resources near the CFPA's blue-blazed hiking trail system. If such a map existed, she could facilitate more meaningful connections to schools and organizations near the trails. The class broke into five thematic groups to…

Ford Foundation Supports Wesleyan’s Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance

Research by Service-Learning Class Published in Archaeological Society Bulletin

Shapiro Translates Coran’s Fables of Town and Country

Wesleyan Media Project Research Informing Work in Government, Private Sector

Lori Gruen in The Conversation: How Should We Decide What to Do?

Alumni, Friends Gather with President Roth in Honolulu, Denver

Leverage Language Skills with Free Mango Platform

Student-Athletes Teach Sport Clinic for Girls

Ganbarg ’88 & Miranda ’02 Score Grammy Gold

Liseo, Hardigg ’90 Share WESU Connection Spanning 3 Decades

Fels ’06 Wins Gates Grand Challenges Explorations with macro-eyes Health Care Initiative

Students Use Mapping Skills to Collaborate with Community Partner