Arts & Humanities

Students from the “Dance as Activism” course this spring will perform a new movement piece based on excerpts from Shapiro-Silverberg Distinguished Writer in Residence Mahogany L. Browne‘s poetry collection “Chrome Valley” at Lincoln Center in New York on September 9. Their performance, called “Movement Through The Valley,” received its first showing in the Bessie Schönberg Dance Studio April 14. The “Dance as Activism” course is taught by Assistant Professor of the Practice in Dance and African American Studies Joya Powell. On May 8, the class will share individual projects—solos and duets, and a workshop—in conversation with social issues of their…

Art, like many areas of creative expression, does not always get the full attention it deserves. On average, visitors only spend 15 to 30 seconds looking at an artwork before moving on, according to studies done by several notable art museums. Peter Ketels Fulweiler ’23 said hearing this statistic fascinated him and made him want to create art that kept people’s attention. He exhibited his senior thesis piece “Terms and Conditions,” an interactive sculpture, at the Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery on March 28 to April 2. And yet, 15 to 30 seconds would seem long for many to view…

By amplifying the personal experience of women in Jamaica who are living with HIV/AIDS, Nilukshi Chen ’23 hopes to explore the rampant fear and stigma surround the disease in the island nation. Chen interviewed four women for her senior thesis on the stigma surrounding HIV and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) in Jamaica. Her thesis, titled “Sounding Subaltern Voices: Conversations with Jamaican Women Living with HIV/AIDS,” considers Spivak’s “Can the Subaltern Speak” to grapple with what it means give a voice to individuals who have been historically voiceless. The term “subaltern” refers to an individual or group who is excluded from…

A collection of Wesleyan's seniors gathered on the steps of Olin Memorial Library on April 19 to celebrate the submission of their senior theses with a champagne shower. Smiling faces, hugs between friends, and cries of joy and relief fluttered through the air alongside the popped corks and bubbly.

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 Library as donations to the University’s collection and made available to the Wesleyan community. In honor of Poetry Month, this edition of YJHTRT features chapbooks and collections in verse that investigate grief, language, and the human condition. Ian Boyden ’95, A Forest of Names: 108 Meditations (Wesleyan University Press, 2020) When an 8.0 magnitude earthquake leveled China’s western Sichuan province in May 2008, tens of thousands of people…

Merve Emre, scholar, critic, and contributing writer for The New Yorker, had no expectation as an undergraduate that she would have a literary career. An academic one, perhaps, but a life working in letters didn’t seem to be in her future. As a government major at Harvard, Emre expected to go to graduate school to study international relations. She’d done the appropriate coursework but found herself disengaged from her own field of study. It was literature that captured her attention. “(Literature and criticism) is a process of endless intellectual renewal and gratification. It’s a constant act of communing with the…

On August 6, 1945, Toshiko Tanaka was a six-year-old on her way to school in Hiroshima, Japan, when, at 8:15 a.m., she looked up and watched the sky overhead turn blinding white. Tanaka didn’t talk about what happened next for more than 60 years: the burns that rendered her unrecognizable to her own mother, the corpses on the city’s riverbanks, the illnesses that struck down seemingly uninjured survivors, and the once-unimaginable devastation made real after the US dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima—the first of two times nuclear weapons have been used in conflict—near the close of World War II.…

April is Jazz Appreciation Month, which culminates on campus with the 20th annual Wesleyan Jazz Orchestra Weekend, featuring two nights of concerts in Crowell Concert Hall. Cellist, composer, and educator Akua Dixon makes her Connecticut debut with her string quartet, Quartette Indigo, on Saturday, April 29 at 8pm. The group includes violinists Meg Okura and Frederika Krier, Judith Insell on viola, and bassist Jennifer Vincent. The Wesleyan Jazz Ensemble, directed by Noah Baerman, presents a concert with a variety of modern small-group jazz traditions and techniques on Friday, April 28 at 8pm. Assistant Professor of the Practice in Music Jin…

Every time author and Assistant Professor of English Rachel Heng begins a new project, she asks herself, “what are the stakes?” Why is she writing this story? When writing her new novel, The Great Reclamation, she saw her mother reminiscing about former greenscapes converted to tall buildings in her native Singapore. She grew up hearing stories of life before the high-rise filled city she grew up in. “My mother would go to places and say, ‘oh, you know, we used to live here, but I don't really know where it is anymore because they changed all the roads,’” Heng said.…

A group of artists and academics came together in the first of a series of climate change conversations to examine how art can impact policy. This event is part of the Ocean Filibuster: Art and Action series—a semester of art and activism, science and storytelling—building to the Connecticut premiere performances of PearlDamour’s "Ocean Filibuster" in the CFA Theater from Thursday, May 4 through Saturday, May 6, 2023. For more information and related events, please visit www.wesleyan.edu/cfa/ocean. The first panel discussion on March 28 considered the relationship between artmaking and policy—how artists, scientists, and policymakers can be more powerful, and more able to shape…

Does theater really change somebody? That is the question that director and Assistant Professor of Theater Katie Pearl always asks herself when she does a show about an issue she cares about. In her most recent work “Ocean Filibuster,” Pearl explores the intimate, critical relationship between humans and the ocean. “I make a play because I want to have a conversation with the topic,” Pearl said. “I like to think of the rehearsal room as a little radical ecosystem. As a director my job is to create a community that is in the conversation that the play is wanting to…

David Rabban ’71, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin School of Law, delivered a wide-ranging exploration of academic freedom and freedom of speech at the annual Hugo L. Black Lecture on Freedom of Expression. The lecture was presented by The Allbritton Center for the Study of Public Life and took place March 30 in the Daniel Family Commons. “One of the things I loved about Wesleyan when I was here was the commitment of the faculty and administration to free speech and academic freedom,” Rabban said. His talk cited a wide array of case law to show…

‘Dance as Activism’ Students Create Movements to Poems from Browne’s ‘Chrome Valley’

Senior Thesis: Peter Ketels Fulweiler ’23 Comments on AI and Surveillance with Sculpture

Senior Thesis: Chen ’23 Studies HIV/AIDS and STD Stigma in Jamaica

Gallery: Wesleyan Seniors Celebrate Thesis Submissions

“You Just Have to Read This…” Books by Wesleyan Authors Boyden ’95, Schafer ’85, and Yankelevich ’95

Emre Named Director of Shapiro Center for Creative Writing and Criticism

Hiroshima Bombing Survivor Toshiko Tanaka Shares Her Story of Tragedy and Resilience

Jazz Appreciation Month Features Cellist Akua Dixon

Heng Publishes New Novel The Great Reclamation

Artists and Academics Discuss Climate Change

Connecticut Premiere of “Ocean Filibuster” Takes Place May 4-6

Annual Hugo Black Lecture Explores Academic Freedom