Arts & Humanities

Wesleyan University’s Center for the Arts (CFA) started the celebration of its 50th birthday with a joyous party featuring a dozen activities spread out across six of the complex’s buildings on campus. “In a very Wesleyan fashion, we're not doing an anniversary,” said Director Joshua Lubin-Levy ’06. “We're doing a birthday party for buildings, and for the people that fill them and the art that has filled them over fifty years,” Lubin-Levy said. Roger Mathew Grant, Dean of the Arts and Humanities and Professor of Music, said the CFA has never been just about its structures - it has a…

Margot Weiss, associate professor of anthropology and American studies, affiliated faculty in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and coordinator of queer studies, saw a gap in the world of queer anthropology—there was no central text compiling the leading theories and ideas of the field. So, she made one—well, two. Weiss recently published Queer Then and Now, a collection of lectures given by the winners of the CLAGS: Center for LGBTQ Studies' annual David R. Kessler Award. CLAGS, which is housed at the City University of New York, gives the Kessler Award for lifetime achievement in queer and trans studies. The…

Merve Emre, Shapiro-Silverberg Professor of Creative Writing and Criticism, believes the function of criticism is to model a passionate form of thinking. Her new lecture series will put that passion on display through a series of conversations with writers working at the top of their profession. The series, called “The Critic and Her Publics,” features writers from The New Yorker, New York Times Magazine, N+1, and other leading publications. The lineup includes Andrea Long Chu, Maggie Doherty, Moira Donegan, Hannah Goldfield, Lauren Michele Jackson, Jo Livingstone, Anahid Nersessian, Sophie Pinkham, Doreen St. Felix, Parul Sehgal, Carina del Valle Schorske, and…

The day after arriving on campus, the Class of 2027 gathered on Andrus Field for a celebration of embodied practice—using your body to know the world. On Thursday August 31, over 700 first year students took part in the 16th annual “Common Moment” as part of new student orientation. The celebration also included new transfer students from both the Class of 2026 and the Class of 2025. Five faculty members from the Dance Department gave new students an opportunity to learn the eclectic and diverse world dance traditions taught at Wesleyan, and then to have fun performing those energetic dances…

Wesleyan University’s Center for the Arts (CFA) starts a celebration of its 50th birthday in September. The 2023-2024 season features live performances and exhibitions that reflect on the roots of the center while also bringing new artists and works to campus. Director Joshua Lubin-Levy ‘06 said he and his staff want to hear from anyone who has engaged with the CFA over the years. The CFA’s curatorial team will be asking students, faculty, staff, and visiting artists to join them in their reimagining of what it means to center art in the context of a liberal arts education. “As with…

The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has awarded a Dangers and Opportunities of Technology: Perspectives from the Humanities grant to Jennifer Tucker, Professor of History at Wesleyan University, and Stephen Hargarten, Professor of Emergency Medicine at Medical College of Wisconsin, (MCW) and the senior policy and injury science advisor for the Comprehensive Injury Center at MCW. The NEH grant supports their collaborative study Engineering Safety into U.S. Firearms, 1750-2010: Inventions, Manufacturers, Outcomes, & Implications. The two-year scholarly investigation is hosted at Wesleyan University within the Center for the Study of Guns and Society, which was established in 2022 with…

After a four-year hiatus due to construction and COVID-19 restrictions, Wesleyan’s Summer Film Series returned this past July with a trio of films showcasing international settings as part of the “Big Screen Vacations” theme. The Summer Film Series was launched by the film department in 2007 with the goals of offering free-of-charge programming to local audiences, welcoming new people to campus, and making use of the state-of-the-art Goldsmith Family Cinema at the Jeanine Basinger Center for Film Studies during summer breaks. Today, audience members are an eclectic mix of Middletown community members, Wesleyan faculty, and students doing summer work or…

Every day, when Charles Barber comes home from teaching at Wesleyan, he starts what he calls “his second shift.” After a short nap, he settles down to reading, research, and writing, a disciplined practice that has allowed him to be, over the past several years, a prolific nonfiction author. Since 2019 Barber has published three substantive works and has more ideas in the pipeline. “I wish I’d started (writing) earlier. I had done some other things—I was working in the mental health world, and I was proud of what I did. I am now trying to get as much done…

Assistant Professor of Art Tammy Nguyen will follow her recently won Guggenheim Fellowship with her first museum solo exhibition, taking place at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston from Aug 24, 2023 to Jan 28, 2024. Nguyen was recognized with the Guggenheim for her work intersecting the disciplines of painting, drawing, printmaking, and bookmaking. She’s bringing the same wide-ranging approach to her newest show, inspired by Ralph Waldo Emerson’s book-length essay Nature, written in 1836 in Concord, Mass. “I am thinking a lot about some of the essential ideas in Nature, like how does man create and extend his…

In this continuing series, we review alumni books and offer a selection for those in search of knowledge, insight, and inspiration. The volumes, sent to us by alumni, are forwarded to Olin Memorial Library as donations to the University’s collection and made available to the Wesleyan community. Michelle Gagnon ’93, Killing Me (Putnam) Amber Jamison’s life is a total mess and she’s about to become the latest victim of a serial killer. She’s savvy and street smart, so when she gets pushed into, of all things, a white windowless van, she is more angry than afraid. Things get even weirder…

A chance encounter with a scarlet tanager, a migratory songbird that travels from North to South America on a yearly basis, prompted Associate Professor of Spanish María Ospina to consider the larger topics of what animals think and feel and, ultimately, how human beings define their own concept of home. Ospina has recently released a novel written in Spanish entitled “Solo un poco aquí,” published by Random House in Latin America, where she explores how animals move across the landscapes that humans transform. Ospina’s novel has been reviewed in Spain’s most important newspaper, El País, by the renown Mexican author Emiliano…

Excerpt from #236, Emily Dickinson’s poem-letter to Susan Huntington Dickinson, early October 1883 Dear Sue — A Promise is firmer than a Hope, although it does not hold so much— Hope never knew Horizon When Dickinson wrote these lines in 1883 to her friend and future sister-in-law, Susan, she likely never envisioned that they would be published and pored over by scholars and fans nearly 150 years later, including readers in China. This letter is part of a collection of poems and letters titled Open Me Carefully: Emily Dickinson's Intimate Letters to Susan Huntington Dickinson. Soon, Chinese readers will have…

Center for the Arts Celebrates 50th Birthday

Weiss Publishes First of Two Queer Studies Anthologies

New Lecture Series Explores the Passion of Criticism

Wesleyan’s Newest Class Shares a ‘Common Moment’ with Collaborative Dance Experience

Center for the Arts Celebrates 50 Years

NEH Awards Grant For Collaborative Study “Engineering Safety into U.S. Firearms: 1750-2010”

Wesleyan Summer Film Series Returns

New Book Tells of Most Successful Medical Development of the Iraq War

Guggenheim-Winning Professor To Hold Solo Art Show in Boston

“You Just Have to Read This…” Books by Wesleyan Authors Gagnon ’93, Hauser ’13, and Meyerson ’04

New Novel Explores Animal Life

Going to China with Emily Dickinson and Wesleyan University Press