Cynthia RockwellThe pilot for Sound Tracks: Music Without Borders, aired nationally on PBS in late January. Described as a magazine show “about the intersection of music with life, politics and culture around the world,” it is a collaboration between two alumni of the class of ’70—executive producer Stephen Talbot and executive producer for Oregon Public Broadcasting David Davis. The first episode includes a vignette on Russian pop: "A Man Like Putin” is a catchy tune that became a generation’s anthem. Another section takes the listener to Africa, where Nigerian music legend Fela Kuti’s youngest son, Seun, has kept his father’s legacy alive…
David LowKristin Bluemel ’86, a professor of English at Monmouth University, has edited a new essay collection, Intermodernism: Literary Culture in Mid-Twentieth-Century Britain (Edinburgh University Press). This volume of original critical essays encourages readers to accept a new term, new critical category, and new literary history for 20th-century British literature. Its primary subject is the intriguing and typically neglected British writing of the years of the Depression and World War II, including the fiction, memoirs, criticism, and journalism of writers such as Elizabeth Bowen, Storm Jameson, William Empson, George Orwell, J. B. Priestley, Harold Heslop, T. H. White, Rebecca West, John…
Something Sweet, Nina Zeitlin’s ’03 family/kids’ album, was named in the Top 10 on NPR’s “2009 Best Music for Kids and Their Families." In a story for WXPN’sKids Corner in Philadelphia, host Kathy O’Connell noted that she’d remember 2009 as “the gold standard in kids’ music,” and included Zeitlin’s musical ensemble, King Pajama, as one of the groups “whose kid-centric themes (love of the library, train rides, ice cream) provide a clue to their intended audience, since the songs themselves work for everyone.” Zeitlin, a sociology major at Wesleyan, sang, recorded and produced the collection, which also won a 2009…
John Ravenal ’81 is now president of his professional organization: the Association of Art Museum Curators (AAMC). The Sydney and France Lewis Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, Ravenal has become the fourth president of AAMC since the organization was founded in 2001. Ravenal joined the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA) in 1998, and his exhibitions have included Vanitas: Meditations on Life and Death in Contemporary Art; Outer & Inner Space, a history of video art; and Artificial Light, displayed at VCUarts Anderson Gallery and the Museum of Contemporary…
"Restrepo" filmmakers Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington. On Jan. 30, Restrepo, a documentary about the Afghanistan war co-directed by Sebastian Junger ’84 and Tim Hetherington, received the grand jury prize for a domestic documentary at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. Junger and Hetherington spent a year with part of the U.S. Army’s 173rd Airborne Brigade in Korengal Valley, known as the deadliest valley in Afghanistan, and as a stronghold of al Queda and the Taliban. Indie Wire recently interviewed the two filmmakers and said that the documentary “may be one of the most experiential and visceral war…
Olivia DrakeNorman Shapiro, professor of romance languages and literature, translated Jean de La Fontaine's poems in La Fontaine's Bawdy, Revised Edition: Of Libertines, Louts, and Lechers. The 273-page book was published by Black Widow Press/Commonwealth Books, Inc. in Boston, Mass. on Jan. 16. David Schorr, professor of art, illustrated the book. The Contes et nouvelles en vers of Jean de La Fontaine (1621-1695) were published at various times throughout his life, often these works threatened to get him in trouble with both Church and Academie. This translation covers the entire corpus in all their variety. The mildly suggestive mingle with the frankly bawdy…
Anthony Braxton, professor of music, was featured in a Jan. 27 edition of The Globe and Mail. In an article titled "8 hours + 60 musicians = 1 sonic genome," Braxton explains how his 8-hour concert, Sonic Genome Project, held in Vancouver on Feb. 1, involved "synchronous starting points, target area space points, target strategic points. ... geometric trajectories from the music system, all the way to implanted and target-space objectives." For the Genome, Braxton employed 47 "resident players" from the Vancouver area, a mixture of creative music veterans and high-school students. These players joined Braxton and 12 of his…
A book published by Wesleyan University Press is a 2009 finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Versed, by Rae Armantrout, was honored in the poetry category. The finalist reading will be held at 7 p.m. March 10 at The New School in New York, N.Y. The reading is free and open to the pubic. Rae Armantrout is a professor of writing and literature at the University of California, San Diego. Her book also is a National Book Award Finalist. For more information on the book click here.
A book review written by Kirk Swinehart, assistant professor of history, was published in the Dec. 18 issue of The Chicago Tribune. Swinehart reviewed Dorthea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits, by Linda Gordon. The photographer Dorothea Lange " is such a figure, a woman whose quietly searing depictions of the American Dream gone awry reflect her own innermost struggles and resonate powerfully with our own," Swinehart writes. "Linda Gordon, a professor of history at New York University, shows how in her arresting new biography of Lange. In Gordon's telling, Lange emerges as something substantially greater than America's pioneering photo-chronicler of the Great Depression and…
Matthew Sellier ’11 was featured a Hartford Courant article titled "Pulling All the Stops to Help Homeless." On Jan. 29 Sellier performed an organ recital at Middletown's South Church to raise resources for and awareness of homelessness in the area. Sellier performed a composition by Neely Bruce, professor of music. The piece is based on the spiritual "Heaven Bell A-Ring." Performing a work by a composer present in the audience, Sellier says in the article, is "nerve-wracking" but also has its advantages in that he doesn't have to guess about a composer's intent. "I can ask Neely what he wants,"…
David Schorr, professor of art, and Keiji Shinohara, artist-in-residence of art and East Asian studies, are showing their artwork at the DFN Gallery, 64 East 79th Street in New York, N.Y. Their work is featured in an exhibit titled "Looks Good on Paper," which runs through March 6. Schorr has been a faculty member at Wesleyan since 1971 where he has taught printmaking, drawing, typography, book design, graphic design and calligraphy. Fifteen years ago he turned to canvas for a series of paintings about AIDS and early death so he could layer the backgrounds, dissolving the figures in the ether…
Steven Jacaruso, art director in the Office of University Communications, recently judged the 2010 Connecticut Libraries Publicity Awards Contest. As one of three judges, Jacaruso observed more than 75 imaginative bookmarks, brochures, newsletters, program flyers and innovative web sites, blogs, podcasts, videos and electronic newsletters. Awards in each category are based on the library’s total operating budget (less than $750,000 or $750,000 and over). The event was held at The Middletown Library Association in Middletown. "Considering the budget constraints and the fact that most of the submissions were by non-professional designers, some of the work was of a very high…