Editorial Staff(By K Alshanetsky '17) Brooklyn rapper Latasha Alcindor ’10, also informally known as LA, is following up the release of her debut album B(LA)K. with her newest project, Teen Nite at Empire. The project is named for the Empire Rolling Skating Center, a former nightlife venue in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights neighborhood, which closed its doors in 2007 due to increasing gentrification in the area. As described on her Bandcamp––where audiences can listen to and purchase the album––it is dedicated to "the around the way ones, 2 for $5 bootlegs and realizing freedom.” Having grown up frequenting and coming of age…
Olivia DrakeBetween 1967-1972, ethnomusicologist Mark Slobin was one of only four Western ethnomusicologists who managed to complete research in Afghanistan before the subsequent Soviet invasion, civil war, and anti-music Taliban regime. During these five years, Slobin, who retired from Wesleyan 2016 as the Winslow-Kaplan Professor of Music, completed a comprehensive documentation of music, culture, language and society in the Afghan North. Given the region's volatile unrest, no further musical—and by extension cultural—studies have been undertaken since. Slobin's rare survey of this time period is now available online through Alexander Street, a producer of online educational resources. "The Mark Slobin Fieldwork Archive, Music in the…
Lauren RubensteinProfessor of Economics Richard Grossman was asked by Wales Online about his expectations for the economic impact of Brexit over the next few years. He said: "Leaving the European Union will be a drag on the British economy in the medium term. Even before Brexit takes effect, however, the economy will be hurt by two factors: expectations and uncertainty. “The expectation that the UK will no longer have free access to the European market may lead exporters to reorient production toward domestic consumption or export to non-EU regions well before Brexit comes into force. UK-based financial firms may shift operations to EU…
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(By K Alshanetsky '17) Renowned conceptual artist Glenn Ligon ’82 recently curated an exhibition titled Blue Black for the Pulitzer Arts Foundation in St. Louis, Missouri. The group show, which had its opening day on June 9, was inspired by the Pulitzer’s permanent installation of Blue Black, a wall sculpture by Ellsworth Kelly. In Ligon’s take on the variety of meanings and uses of these two colors, he explores the combination as a means to raise nuanced questions about race, history, identity and memory. Choosing works that respond to the theme of the blues in open-ended ways, he draws numerous points…
On June 23, Professor of Economics Richard Grossman presented a paper at an economic history symposium jointly sponsored by the Bank of England and the the Centre for Economic Policy Research. Titled, "Beresford's Revenge: British equity holdings in Latin America, 1869-1929," the paper looks at stock market returns of Latin American firms traded on the London Stock Exchange. The program for the conference can be seen here.
Two Wesleyan students received top prizes in the Five College Korean Language Speech Contest held April 14 at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. This was Wesleyan's second year participating in the contest. The recipients include Madison McClain-Frederick '20, who took first prize for the beginning level with her speech titled "My Red Sneakers," and Bethlehem "Betty" Bekele '19, who took second place at the intermediate level with her speech titled "My Country Ethiopia and Korea." Bekele is supported through a Center for East Asian Studies language study grant to spend this summer studying language in Korea. The contest is sponsored by the Five College East…
The Boston Globe recently published a profile of Audrey Pratt, an incoming student in Wesleyan's Class of 2021 and the winner of the inaugural Wesleyan University Hamilton Prize for Creativity. Pratt, a graduate of Needham (Mass.) High School, won a four-year, full-tuition scholarship to Wesleyan for her short fiction submission, "Thorns, Black and White." Pratt, who was accepted early decision to Wesleyan, told the Globe that when she applied for the prize, she "didn't think in a million years I'd win," but she was excited for the chance to have Lin-Manuel Miranda '02 and Thomas Kail '99 read her work. Miranda, writer/creator and former star, and Kail, the director…
Professor of Religion Mary-Jane Rubenstein was a guest on WNYC's "Studio 360" recently, in a show titled, "The Theoretical Physicist Wore a Toga." She addressed existential "what if" questions and the idea of multiple universes—an idea, she explains, which "is about 2,500 years old." "For the ancient Atomist philosophers [in Ancient Greece], the most desirable thing about what we're now calling the multiverse was that it got rid of the need for a god. If it is the case that our world is the only world, then it's very difficult to explain. How is everything so perfect? How is it that sunsets so beautiful?" she said. "What…
Cynthia RockwellGraduate Liberal Studies visiting professor Marion Belanger P’02, is the author of Rift/Fault, a photographic study of the land-based edges of the North American Continental Plate. A Guggenheim Fellowship in 2002 supported a project in the Everglades, where Belanger turned her lens on both the landscape within the national park as well as the suburban development of the swamplands outside the protected area. Now, Rift/Fault continues her interest in natural land formations and boundaries—this one along the San Andreas Fault in California and the Mid-Atlantic Rift in Iceland—and the influence of human society on the earth Published by Radius Books, and…
Joshua Dubler ’97, assistant professor of religion at the University of Rochester, is one of 33 national recipients of a 2016 Carnegie Award. With this fellowship, Dubler is studying prison abolition. His book manuscript, Break Every Yoke: Religion, Justice, and the End of Mass Incarceration, presents abolitionist logic to make the case. Co-authored with Vincent Lloyd, it explores the ways that religion has underwritten and sustained mass incarceration. Currently under peer review, it has an expected publication date of 2018. While an advocate of both ending mass incarceration and offering educational programs for those imprisoned, Dubler is seeking something further…