Olivia DrakeOctober 20, 20081min
Seiji Naito, adjunct associate professor of Asian languages and literatures emeritus, died in Zama City, Japan. He was 66 years old. Naito was trained as a linguist. He earned a bachelor of arts in education from Yokohama National University and a Ph.D in linguistics from Harvard University. He held positions at the University of Hawaii, Boston University, and Tokyo Junshin Women's College before joining the Wesleyan faculty as adjunct assistant professor in 1993. In 1999 he was promoted to adjunct associate professor, and he left Wesleyan in 2003. (more…)

Corrina KerrOctober 6, 20081min
Michaelle Biddle, head of preservation services, has returned from a five-week sabbatical to Nigeria, where she conducted a survey of Islamic manuscripts and related materials in northern Nigeria under the auspices of the Arewa House, Centre for Historical Documentation and Research, Ahmadu Bello University. Biddle was there working on preserving documents and taught conservation workshops to preserve documents in Kaduna, Kano, Sokoto and Maiduguri and teach archivists and conservationists how to best preserve paper documents in accordance with international conservation standards. The program Biddle taught was entitled “Conservation in a Box” and was funded by the U.S. Ambassador's Cultural Preservation Program.…

David PesciOctober 6, 20081min
It’s all about politics, about western influences, Asian influences, African influences, gender relations, protest, genocide, violence, spirituality, centuries of culture, the latest fad, and performers in the New York Subway system and more than a hundred other topics set in disparate times, places and civilizations. Which is all another way of saying it’s all about music. Specifically, the Annual Meeting for the Society for Ethnomusicology (SEM), which will be held Oct. 25-28 at Wesleyan.   (more…)

David PesciSeptember 23, 20081min
Imagine this architectural challenge: create a site-appropriate structure for a former cranberry bog covered with 3 feet of water; use durable and sustainable materials and construction technologies as extensively as possible; work within a budget and; make it optimal for observing Redwing Blackbirds, Scarlet Tanagers, Hooded Mergansers, and the occasional Great Blue Heron. (more…)

Olivia DrakeSeptember 23, 20081min
During a restless winter day in northeast Vermont, Katherine Bascom ‘10 had an indoor wrestling match with her overly energetic dog, Ori. Midway through the contest, Bascom grabbed a camera off her nightstand and began snapping some shots. One of these photographs, a close-up action-shot of Ori, is the page 36 feature photo of Wesleyan’s new, student-run magazine called Exposure. (more…)