Wesleyan's softball team hosted the NESCAC Tournament May 3-5. Posted 05/15/08 Coming off a team-record 21-15 season in 2007, one that featured a first-ever trip to the NESCAC tournament, Wesleyan's softball team came into the 2008 campaign with realistic hopes of repeating last year's success.   “Our goal this season was to get better every day,” said seventh-year head coach Jen Shea. “We knew we had a lot of talent but we needed to see how it would come together.”   Come together was just what the team did, equaling the team record for wins, three of those coming during…

Posted 05/15/08 Associate Professor of History Magda Teter has received a $14,000 grant from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University to help with the operating costs of the sixth annual Early Modern Workshop (EWM) in summer 2009. The workshop will explore the topic of “History of Reading across Cultures: The Jewish Book and Its Readers in Early Modern Europe.” The workshop seeks to form collaborative interaction between scholars of Jewish history, early modern history and literature and to facilitate cross-fertilization of ideas between them. Workshop participants will be examining how Jewish readers coped with the advent of…

Posted 05/15/08 Robert H. Whitman, professor of Russian emeritus, died recently in Berkeley, Calif. He was 78 years old. Professor Whitman was trained as a linguist. He earned a bachelor of arts from Hamilton College and a Ph.D from Harvard University and joined the Wesleyan faculty in 1959. He left Wesleyan in 1963 and spent a year in the USSR, then returned to teach and continue his research at Cornell University, the University of Indiana, and the University of California at Berkeley, before returning to Wesleyan in 1971. He was a visiting professor at Yale for one semester, served as…

At right, Lori Gruen, associate professor and chair of feminist, gender and sexuality studies, associate professor of philosophy at Wesleyan, spoke on “Environmental Justice as a Feminist Issue” during the Environmental Justice Curricular Workshop at Malcom X House May 9. Posted 05/15/08 In 1982, the State of North Carolina chose to dump 60,000 tons of PCB-contaminated soil into a landfill in Warren County. Residents felt the state had chosen their county because it was predominately black and one of the poorest in the state. As a result, the landfill became the focus of accusations of “environmental racism,” or racial discrimination…

The Mansfield Freeman Center for East Asian Studies Celebrates its 20th Anniversary with the Freeman family from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. May 24. Posted 05/15/08 What began in an empty, shingle-style home on the edge of campus 20 years ago has prospered into a central hub for East-Asian-focused lectures, tea ceremonies, exhibitions, student performances, and programs to introduce school-aged children to new cultures. This year, the Mansfield Freeman Center for East Asian Studies celebrates two decades of existence. Wesleyan will honor the Freeman family for their unique legacy of excellence during an open house and reception May 24. “The…

Andrea Ray's Désire is on exhibit in the Center for the Arts' Zilkha Gallery. The dinner table is embedded with speakers, playing a dinner conversation. Posted 05/15/08 May 2 marks the 40th anniversary of a student strike in France that led to a shift to the eventual the end of the De Gaullle government in France. This historic event is the topic of a new exhibition in Wesleyan’s Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery. Titled Désire by Andrea Ray, the three-part installation revisits May 1968 to pose a question about the present: Could the Paris model of social and political agency…

Professor Emeritus Robert Rosenbaum was honored by the Connecticut Association of Public School Superintendents during a banquet May 8. Posted 05/15/08 The Connecticut Association of Public School Superintendents (CAPSS) has awarded Robert Rosenbaum its Distinguished Service Award in recognition of his exemplary career, with its many contributions to math and science education. Rosenbaum, chair and founder of the Project to Increase Mastery of Mathematics and Science (PIMMS), and the University Professor of Sciences and Mathematics, emeritus, received the award May 8 at the organization’s annual awards banquet in Groton, Conn. “Extending a well-known aphorism of Henry Adams, I remark that…

Posted 05/15/08 Students who received academic prizes, fellowships and scholarships were honored at a reception May 6 in Beckham Hall. The awards and the student recipients are: George H. Acheson and Grass Foundation Prize in Neuroscience Established in 1992 by a gift from the Grass Foundation, this prize is awarded to an outstanding undergraduate in the Neuroscience and Behavior Program who demonstrates excellence in the program and who also shows promise for future contributions in the field of neuroscience. Jacob Mirsky '08 Alumni Prize in the History of Art Established by Wesleyan alumni and awarded to a senior who has…

Posted 05/15/08 A Navajo sacred ceremony recording by the late David McAllester, professor of music and anthropology, emeritus, was accepted into the 2007 National Recording Registry. The recording, titled “Navajo Shootingway Ceremony Field Recordings representing the David McAllester Collection (Recorded by David McAllester 1957-1958),” was one of 25 new additions to the registry, announced May 14. The registry is online at http://www.loc.gov/rr/record/nrpb/. “McAllester’s recording is listed among such luminaries as Fiorello LaGuardia, Michael Jackson, Ronald Reagan, and Kitty Wells,” says Alec McLane, music librarian and director of Wesleyan’s World Music Archives. “It may be the only record of a deeply…

Posted 05/01/08 Richard l. Berke, assistant managing editor for news at The New York Times, will be the keynote speaker at a conference titled “Make Democracy Work,” on Saturday, May 3. The conference will run from 11:30 a.m. until 4 p.m. and is being presented by the Wesleyan University Chapter of the Roosevelt Institution. The conference also features panel discussions and workshops designed to highlight important components of democracy that are often overlooked or taken for granted and give them both local and national perspectives. “We wanted to raise awareness about what democracy means and how it functions and fails…