Olivia DrakeNovember 18, 20092min
The Wesleyan Theater Department presented Caryl Churchill's The Skriker Nov. 19, 20, 21 and 22 in the Center for the Arts Theater. The play was directed by Bob Bresnick, visiting assistant professor in theater with costume designs and puppet designs by Leslie Weinberg, artist in residence in theater. Churchill describes the title character in The Skriker as a "polluted, not-believed-in nature spirit who comes up to the world to get love, attention and revenge." The Skriker tries to enlist the help of two friends: one pregnant and one who has killed her child. With tragic poetry and stunning linguistic pyrotechnics, the play…

David PesciNovember 16, 20091min
Priscilla Meyer, professor of Russian language and literature, was awarded the University of Southern California Book Prize by the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies (AAASS) during their annual conference. The prize is awarded annually for an outstanding monograph published on Russia, Eastern Europe, or Eurasia in the field of literary and cultural studies. Meyer is the author of How the Russians Read the French. She speaks about her book online here. More than 2,100 scholars attended the conference.

Olivia DrakeNovember 12, 20097min
More than 5,000 parents, alumni and friends came to campus Nov. 6-8 to celebrate Homecoming/Family Weekend. This year's theme was "Come Home!" Event photos are posted on the HCFW website. "Every year, I hear from alumni, parents and students that Homecoming/Family Weekend gets better and better," says Gemma Fontanella Ebstein, associate vice president for external relations. "We had a terrific turnout this year and the energy was palpable across campus – in the WESeminars, athletic contests, department anniversary celebrations and other special gatherings throughout the weekend. This has become one of the highlights of the year for the Wesleyan community.” The…

Olivia DrakeNovember 12, 20097min
For 12 weeks last summer, Lauren Valentino ’10 taught underprivileged rising 9th graders how to speak French and read Hamlet – all while most of her students were still learning English as a second language. Valentino was in Denver, Colo., working with residents who had recently moved to the U.S. from Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Eritrea, Kenya, Mexico and Columbia, to name a few. "One student was a refugee from the Ivory Coast and had no formal schooling until three years ago," says Valentino, a sociology and French major. "He was one of my brightest kids." As a student-teacher working at the…

Olivia DrakeNovember 12, 20092min
Wesleyan has launched its new online look with a completely redesigned homepage. The new, image-rich homepage, http://www.wesleyan.edu/, offers rotating photographs of campus life, university factoids and departmental highlights that change when the page is reloaded. The most noticeable change to the new homepage is the open layout that emphasizes information, facilitates navigation, and refocuses content for Wesleyan's primary target audiences, including prospective students, their parents and external users. Under the images are recent headlines, upcoming events and title selections from a new, open access Community Blog. All members of the Wesleyan community can author a post, and anyone can comment…

David LowNovember 12, 20092min
Kate Wetherhead ’98 currently stars in the off-Broadway musical Ordinary Days with a score by Adam Gwon and directed by Mark Bruni. The show deals the lives and troubles of four young people living in New York City. In a positive review in The New York Times, Charles Isherwood says the show “captures with stinging clarity that uneasy moment in youth when doubts begin to cloud hopes for a future of unlimited possibility.” Wetherhead plays an unhappy graduate student who has lost her thesis notebook, which is found by an aspiring artist (Jared Gertner), and the two eventually meet at…