Lauren RubensteinThe students in ANTH 289, “Ritual, Health, and Healing” stepped outside the Wesleyan campus this spring to participate in a service learning project in the North Brooklyn neighborhood of Greenpoint. According to Assistant Professor of Anthropology Gillian Goslinga—who co-taught the course with Artist-in-Residence Jill Sigman, a North Brooklyn-based performance artist—Greenpoint is a neighborhood facing multiple health, social and environmental challenges. The students in this Creative Campus anthropology course, which is cross-listed with Science in Society and Dance, had the opportunity to collaborate with a number of community organizations, each dedicated to addressing a different issue. This is the first time…
Olivia DrakeEvery spring semester, more than 80 students attend lectures on Hemingway's writing, music and social movements, romantic poetry, Greek tragedies and French essays at Wesleyan. But these students aren't working on a college degree - yet. They're still in high school. As part of the Community and University Services for Education's High School Humanities Program, high school students from six area schools spend six Fridays on the Wesleyan campus, taking classes from Wesleyan faculty. On May 4, Wesleyan hosted a celebration of the program, which is more than 40 years old. "We're essentially offering high school students college courses in…
As a 2012-12 Fulbright recipients, Miriam Berger ’12 will study journalism in Egypt; and Matthew Alexander ’12 and Lynn Heere '12 will teach English in Germany. Su Zheng, associate professor of music, associate professor of East Asian studies, will study, "China’s Emergent Soundscape: New Music Creativities, Body Politics and the Internet in Defining a Global Chineseness," in Shanghai, China. The Fulbright Program is the largest U.S. international exchange program offering opportunities for students, scholars, and professionals to undertake international graduate study, advanced research, university teaching, and teaching in elementary and secondary schools worldwide. Miriam Berger, a College of Social Studies major, will begin…
Bill HolderRob Rosenthal, provost and vice president for Academic Affairs, the John E. Andrus Professor of Sociology, announced that six faculty members are being appointed to endowed professorships, effective July 1. They include: Anthony Braxton and Neely Bruce, professors of music, are being jointly awarded the John Spencer Camp Professorship of Music, established by a Wesleyan Trustee in 1929. Jill Morawski, professor of psychology, professor of science in society, professor of feminist, gender and sexuality studies, will become the Wilbur Fisk Osborne Professor. The Osborne Professorship was established with a gift from Wesleyan’s 1861 class valedictorian. Laurie Nussdorfer, professor of history, professor of…
Well-known and award-winning novelists, journalists, publishers and editors will be on the faculty of the 56th Annual Wesleyan Writers Conference, held June 14-17 on campus. The conference welcomes both experienced writers and new writers. "Our distinguished faculty offer careful attention to your work and will offer an array of seminars, readings, and panel discussions, all designed to move your work forward, or help you launch a new project," explains Anne Greene, director of the Wesleyan Writers Conference, director of Writing Programs. Over the years, conference participants have gone on to win a number of awards, including the Pulitzer Prize, Whiting…
David PesciIn this issue of The Wesleyan Connection, we ask 5 Questions of Giulio Gallarotti, professor of government and author of several books and scholarly articles, including The Power Curse: Influence and Illusion in World Politics. Lately he has turned his attention to the U.S.-China relationship and its place in the geo-political world. Q: Your recent work has taken you to the transition in much of the world from a Cold War stance to the coming “cold co-existence” between the U.S. and China. How would you define “cold co-existence”? A: The future U.S. relations with China will be far different than…
Midday on Friday, April 13, Class of 2016 admitted students and their families spread out across a sunny Foss Hill at WesFest, enjoying a barbecue lunch buffet as upbeat music plays in the background. Some, having arrived only hours earlier, are still soaking in the sights and sounds of Wesleyan. Others already have a good feel for the school, having stayed overnight in the dorms with a student host, and sat in on a class or two. Kai Leshne and his mother have come from San Francisco, Calif., drawn by the excellent academics, and strong soccer and music programs. Kai…
Magda Teter, Chair of Medieval Studies, Jeremy Zwelling Professor of Jewish Studies, professor of history, professor of feminist, gender and sexuality studies, and Elizabeth Willis, the Shapiro-Silverberg Professor of Creative Writing, professor of English, have been awarded 2012 fellowships by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. According to the Guggenheim Foundation, the prestigious academic honor is presented to scholars “who have already demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts.” This year, the 87th annual competition recognized 180 scholars, artists and scientists from across the U.S. and Canada. They were selected from a pool of…
“When one surfaces on the national stage, most people tend to view the event as a sort of political phenomenon,” Leah Wright says. “They look at it with nearly the same disbelief and surprise as they would do with a unicorn sighting.” The phenomenon Wright is referring to? Why black Republicans, of course. “When we see a Herman Cain, Colin Powell, Condolezza Rice or Allen West appear on the national scene, the news media and many people tend to view these individuals as extreme outliers. In reality they are much more common than we are led to believe,” says Wright,…
Cara Tratner ’12 grew up in the dorms of Stanford University where her dad taught English. Immersed in academia from the start, she did not begin to question her educational privilege until her freshman year at Wesleyan. “As I became aware of the unequal patterns of access to education in the U.S.,” Tratner comments, “I looked back at my own schooling in a different light, starting to think critically about the level of segregation even in my own ‘good’ high school, and the way in which my success as a student was to a certain extent dependent on the failure…
The Wesleyan community is invited to the 10th annual Shasha Seminar for Human Concerns on April 19-20. This year, experts will explore the topic, "The Political Economy of Oil." "Energy policy is always in the news. But with gas prices above $4 a gallon, shale gas revolutionizing the gas industry, and intense debates over the construction of the Keystone pipeline, it has never been more topical," says Peter Rutland, Colin and Nancy Campbell Professor in Global Issues and Democratic Thought, Professor of Government, Professor of Russian and Eastern European Studies At 8 p.m. April 19, Daniel Esty, commissioner of the…
A play written by Quiara Alegria Hudes, visiting writer in theater, has won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for drama. The play, Water by the Spoonful, is about the search for meaning by a returning Iraq War veteran working in a sandwich shop in his hometown of Philadelphia. The soldier struggles to put aside the demons that haunt him while his mother, a recovering addict, battles her own demons. The drama premiered at the Hartford State Company in 2011. Hudes, 34, wrote the book for the Broadway musical In the Heights, which was created by and stars Lin-Manuel Miranda ’02, is directed by…