All News – Page 196

This semester, students in Antonio Gonzalez’s Spanish 258, “The Intercultural Stage: Migration and the Performing Arts in the Hispanic World” have been experiencing what they study. With the assistance of a videoconferencing system, the Wesleyan students are “joined” in the classroom periodically by a group of students studying at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (Charles III University in Madrid, Spain). Gonzalez, professor of Spanish, co-teaches the course with his colleague in Spain, Julio Checa. Checa also works on modern/contemporary Spanish theater and performance, and the two have collaborated on various scholarly projects over the years. They previously ran the trans-Atlantic…

Director and playwright Emily Mann will give a talk at Wesleyan on March 28 as part of the Performing Arts Series of the Center for the Arts. Mann will be in conversation with Wesleyan’s Shapiro Distinguished Professor of Writing and Theater Quiara Alegría Hudes. “Emily Mann is a revered theatrical auteur,” said Hudes, a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright who teaches playwriting to beginning and advanced writers at Wesleyan. “An accomplished playwright, director, and artistic director of a leading regional theater, Mann is known for her probing inquiry into our nation's most urgent issues. Her art has time and again advanced the…

Shantelle Brown ’19 has been awarded a Davis Projects for Peace grant for her summer project, Sisters for Empowerment & Equality (SEE), which aims to address gender inequality in Jamaican culture through an art-based mentorship program for girls age 13 to 16. Brown’s project is one of 120 initiatives selected for a Davis Projects for Peace grant, each receiving $10,000 for implementation during the summer of 2017. In 2007, Projects for Peace was the vision of philanthropist Kathryn W. Davis on the occasion of her 100th birthday to motivate tomorrow's promising leaders by challenging them to find ways to "prepare for…

With the proposed elimination of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), and the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), one representative of the arts community at Wesleyan has petitioned against these cuts alongside the Northeast Small College Art Museum Association (NESCAMA). Clare Rogan, curator of the Davison Art Center at Wesleyan University, joined the initiative on behalf of Wesleyan. In 2014, the Davison Art Center was the recipient of a three-year IMLS grant in the amount of $111,000 to further the digital imaging of works on paper in the art center’s…

Gary Yohe, the Huffington Foundation Professor of Economics and Environmental Studies, joined Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy at a press conference March 22 at the Connecticut Science Center to speak out against major cuts to environmental programs proposed by President Donald Trump. "As a scholar with more than three decades of experience studying climate change, I fear our new president is on a course to reverse this progress with extremely dangerous consequences,'' Yohe said at the event, according to The Hartford Courant. Yohe was a senior member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)—which received a share of the 2007 Nobel Peace…

Members of the Philadelphia-based ensemble Tempesta di Mare will perform baroque chamber music from Venice and Naples on period instruments for the Connecticut premiere of A Tale of Two Italian Cities in Crowell Concert Hall at 8 p.m., Friday, March 31. This performance by Tempesta di Mare is part of the Performing Arts Series at the Center for the Arts, and the conclusion of the 2016-2017 season. “These performances feature a wide array of world-class musicians, cutting-edge choreography, and groundbreaking theater,” explained Sarah Curran, director of the Center for the Arts. “We’re excited to include a baroque chamber orchestra this…

In the March 21 issue, the Toronto Star profiles Associate Professor of Dance Hari Krishnan in connection with his latest full-length work, "Holy Cow(s)!" Krishnan discusses the ways in which he often endures "ridiculous if non-malevolent cultural prejudices," such as assumptions that he practices yoga or doesn't eat beef due to his Indian heritage. Krishnan would prefer people to look beyond the stereotypes, beyond what he calls such false binaries as East/West, white/coloured, masculine/feminine, tradition/modernity. Says Krishnan: “I’m brown. I’m a beef-eating Hindu from Singapore and I’m proudly gay. I’m not a tourism poster.” Krishnan, an award-winning dancer/choreographer, is founder of the performing company…

“Wait, turn that up! What is that song?” If you've ever watched a commercial that became more significant the second you heard a song you just had to hear again, chances are Jonathan Hecht ’04—founder of Venn Arts—was behind its discovery. His interest in pairing music with picture was inspired by the Paul Thomas Anderson film Boogie Nights: "I realized how different some of the musical selections were, but how they all fit together to create a sound and musical character for the film.” He began to wonder if he could create a career out of this observation—which became Venn Arts,…

Albert Fry, the E.B. Nye Professor of Chemistry, Emeritus, will be honored at the Electrochemical Society National Meeting in New Orleans in May. The symposium, aptly titled, “The 80th Birthday Trifecta in Organic Electrochemistry,” celebrates Fry, and his two colleagues, Professor Jean Lessard of Sherbrooke University and Professor Denis Peters of Indiana University, who will all be celebrating their 80th birthdays. “Besides having carried on research in organic electrochemistry for many years, each of us has served as chair of the organic and biological electrochemistry division of the Society, and Peters and I received the Baizer Award in organic electrochemistry,” explained…

Foss Professor of Physics Thomas Morgan has been appointed as honorary professor at Queen’s University in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He will hold this title for the next three years. Morgan was recognized for this honor for his broad research contributions to the fields of atomic and molecular physics and plasma physics. He has published over 90 research papers, including many with international collaborators from Germany, France, Mexico and Japan. Morgan will continue his research work at Wesleyan on highly excited states of diatomic molecules, and, as an honorary professor title holder, he will have access to Queen’s University’s resources for…

Architects Newspaper praised Nathan Rich ’02 and his firm, Peterson Rich Office (PRO) for the design of a new gallery-residential building at 282 Grand Street in New York City. The building, which is located in the Lower East Side, covers 20,000 square feet and will house 20 condos, climbing to 80 feet. Aside from the two penthouses at the top level, the rest of the dwellings are 550 square-foot one-bedroom condos. The gallery space is larger than most galleries in the area, spanning 45 feet wide. Each space is highly efficient and the building features an innovative perforated aluminum rain-screen…

Elizabeth McAlister, chair and professor of religion, is the co-author of an op-ed on CNN titled, "Haiti and the distortion of its Vodou religion." Together with her co-author, Millery Polyné, a Haitian-American professor of African-American and Caribbean history at the Gallatin School–NYU, she provides an introduction to the Vodou religion—the creation of African slaves who were brought to Haiti and converted by Roman Catholic missionaries in the 16th and 17th centuries. While Vodou shares much with Christianity, and its initiates must be Roman Catholic, it departs in its views of the cosmos. Vodou teaches that there is no heaven or hell, and…

Students at Wesleyan, in Madrid Collaborate through Teleconferencing

Playwright Emily Mann in Conversation with Quiara Alegría Hudes

Brown ’19 to Address Gender Inequality as Davis Projects for Peace Grant Recipient

Wesleyan Joins the Northeast Small College Art Museum Association in Statement in Support of Major Arts Agencies

Yohe Joins Conn. Governor to Oppose Environmental Program Cuts

CFA Performing Arts Series Concert to Feature Italian Baroque Chamber Music

Dance Department’s Krishnan ‘Slaughters’ Stereotypes

Hecht ’04 Finds the Irresistible Music for Commercial Clients

Fry to Be Honored at Electrochemical Symposium in May

Morgan Appointed Honorary Professor at Queen’s University

Architecture Firm, Owned by Rich ’02, Praised for Innovative Design

McAlister Writes Op-Ed on ‘Demystifying Vodou’