Arts & Humanities

Wesleyan’s Music Department continued its tradition of performing in unexpected spaces this month, with musicians showing up in library and museum venues on campus. “Instrument—Body,” a series of four performances in surprising locations presented in conjunction with the seminar of the same name and curated by Visiting Assistant Professor of Music Ethan Philbrick, kicked off with bassist Brandon Lopez and musician and multimedia artist Cecilia Lopez MA '16 on synthesizers in the Joe Webb Peoples Museum of Natural History in the Exley Science Center in the afternoon on October 20. Professor of Music Paula Matthusen presented the third iterations…

Tula Telfair’s paintings explore wilderness in the form of recalled and imagined landscapes in order to acknowledge its inherent power and remarkable fragility. “My work investigates consciousness, memory, and the subjectivity of perception to anchor our place in the world,” Telfair said. As someone who creates photo-realistic, but materially varied and analogue process oil paintings of places that only exist in her mind’s eye, issues surrounding artificial intelligence interest her. Last year she put forward the topic: Artificial Intelligence or Artificial Consciousness for Wesleyan’s annual Shasha Seminar on Human Concerns. “As I was imagining the proposal, my first thought was,…

Some trudge, others sprint. Some materialize from otherworldly forces, others from infectious diseases. Some want flesh, others have a more specific taste for brains. Whatever their individual differences, we know zombies when we see them. And from 1932’s White Zombie to 2023’s The Last of Us, we’ve seen these charismatic, cannibalistic humanoids on the screen a lot through the generations. Off-screen, they’ve seeped into our language. (In the business world, a “zombie” lumbers on the edge of insolvency.) And more broadly, as suggested by a recent conspiracy theory that testing the nation’s emergency broadcast system would trigger an outbreak of ghouls,…

The Center for the Study of Guns and Society at Wesleyan brought together historians, museum curators, legal scholars, journalists, filmmakers, and other subject-matter experts for the Center’s second-annual flagship conference, Current Perspectives on the History of Guns and Society, which took place October 13-14. Through panel discussions, a film screening, and other sessions, the conference shed fresh light on the ever-expanding role of history in America’s contemporary gun discourse. [See photos from the event.] “How have the uses and meanings of guns changed over time?” asked Jennifer Tucker, professor of history and the Center’s founding director. “How does historical knowledge…

President Michael S. Roth ’78 joined Middletown High School students in a discussion of his new book “The Student: A Short History” on Thursday, Oct. 5 at RJ Julia Bookstore. In addition to Roth’s talk, MeshEd led a writing and tutoring workshop entitled the “Art of the Personal Essay.” MeshEd, an organization that provides project-based learning curriculum and professional development for teachers, also offers afterschool programs at Middletown High School through its Aspiring Young Learners Initiative. Roth discerned a common theme through examining the relationships of Confucius, Socrates, and Jesus with their students, and diving into what it has meant…

Wesleyan’s annual Navaratri Festival celebrated the diversity of Indian music and dance from October 5 through October 8, 2023. "Over its 47 years, our festival continues to widen representation, to expand the classical canon of Indian arts and who is allowed to perform it, and to rigorously engage with South Asian culture through a creative lens," said Fiona Coffey, Associate Director for Programming and Performing Arts. Coffey mentioned Wesleyan’s new major as part of the Global South Asian Studies program, which offers students opportunities to explore the cultures connected to the region through a diverse set of disciplines. ”We're incredibly excited…

Producer Michelle Rabinowitz Carney ‘02 has produced a newly released documentary about the civil trial of white supremacists in Charlottesville that sheds new light into the motivations of the far-right organizers—and the courageous stand attorneys and plaintiffs took against them. “No Accident,” released on HBO and available to stream on MAX or HBO and MAX October 10, follows the attorneys who took a novel legal approach against the leaders of a far-right rally in Charlottesville in 2017 that resulted in violence and the death of counter-protester Heather Heyer. “What people don’t realize is there was a larger conspiracy to commit…

Professor of Government Sonali Chakravarti connected the 1970 Black Panther trials held in New Haven to important jury reforms taking place in Connecticut today. Chakravarti delivered her lecture on the subject, entitled “The Black Panther Trials in New Haven and the Power of the Jury,” at the Faculty and Staff Lunch Talk held on October 5. She outlined a brief history of the Black Panther Party in Connecticut and the facts behind two trials surrounding the 1969 murder of Alex Rackley, a 19-year-old Floridian who had been sent to help the Panther chapter in New Haven. The Black Panther Party…

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…

Music in Unexpected Spaces

Shasha Seminar on Human Concerns: Artificial Intelligence or Artificial Consciousness

McAlister Explores Our Undying Attraction to the Undead

Center for the Study of Guns and Society Explores History’s Growing Role in Understanding Firearms

Roth Speaks to High School Students at RJ Julia

Wesleyan Celebrates 47th Annual Navaratri Festival

New Documentary Sheds Light on Charlottesville Trial

Lecture Explores Impact of 1970 Black Panther Trials on Connecticut Juries

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