Campus News & Events

Several Wesleyan faculty and alumni have been featured in national media outlets recently. They include: The New York Times—Christina Crosby, 67, Dies; Feminist Scholar Wrote of Becoming Disabled NBC News—Biden Picks Jessica Rosenworcel [’93] as Acting FCC Chief NBC Think—Trump’s ‘1776 Commission’ Tried to Rewrite U.S. History. Biden Had Other Ideas.; by Robyn Autry Inside Higher Ed—Everything Won’t Be Different; by Michael Roth ’78 NPR’s Short Wave—Let’s Go Back to Venus!; features Martha Gilmore MyRecordJournal.com—WRESTLING: Paint It, Black! Wesleyan Coach Drew Black of Cheshire Tabbed for National Hall of Fame The New York Times Magazine—Poem: Variation on a Theme by Elizabeth Bishop; poem by John…

Wesleyan's 2021 spring semester is scheduled to begin Tuesday, Feb. 9, with university housing opening Friday, Feb. 5. All incoming students will be required to quarantine for two weeks upon arrival and be tested for COVID-19 on campus. Classes will take place online only for the first two weeks. "Starting a few weeks later than usual, combined with careful testing and quarantine protocols around arrival, should allow us to start off on the right foot, despite the high positivity rates around the country," wrote Wesleyan President Michael Roth '78 in a Jan. 20 post. "Of course, we will have to…

Each year, three faculty members are presented the Binswanger Prize for Excellence in Teaching during the Commencement Ceremony. The Binswanger Prize recognizes outstanding faculty members as exemplified by a commitment to the classroom, student accomplishment, intellectual demands placed on students, lucidity, and passion. Juniors, seniors, graduate students, and GOLD alumni (Graduates Of The Last Decade) are eligible to nominate up to three professors who had the most enduring impact on students’ Wesleyan experience. An invitation to nominate will be sent on Jan. 30 by Vanessa Guida ’04, chair of the Binswanger Committee. For questions, contact Gina Driscoll (gdriscoll@wesleyan.edu), associate director,…

A poetry collection authored by John Murillo, assistant professor of English, is longlisted for both the 2021 PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry Collection and the Believer Book Awards. Kontemporary Amerikan Poetry (Four Way Books, 2020) explores the legacy of institutional, accepted violence against Blacks and Latinos and the personal and societal wreckage wrought by long histories of subjugation. The collection includes a sonnet triggered by the shooting deaths of three Brooklyn men that becomes an extended reflection on the history of racial injustice. The PEN/Voelcker Award, which comes with a $5,000 prize, is awarded to a poet whose distinguished collection of…

This month, Wesleyan is launching two new MOOCs (massive open online courses) on the Coursera platform. Enrollment for both classes is free of charge. Take Action: From Protest to Policy launches on Jan. 17 and is taught by Mary Alice Haddad, John E. Andrus Professor of Government, and Sarah Ryan, attorney and associate professor of the practice in oral communication. Jeffrey Goetz, associate director, Center for Pedagogical Innovation, also assisted with creating the course. (more…)

The year 2020 will undoubtedly go down in history as one of the most memorable of the modern era. From the threat and real-life toll of a global pandemic to domestic clashes over social, racial, and political injustice, 2020 was full of challenges—and the Wesleyan community met each one head-on. We banded together to keep our students and staff safe and pushed each other to show our resilience, to step up and speak out, and to use our trademark creativity to adapt and lead the way in addressing our new socially distanced and politically charged reality. In this timeline, we…

Ronald Schatz, professor of history, is the author of The Labor Board Crew: Remaking Worker-Employer Relations from Pearl Harbor to the Reagan Era, published by the University of Illinois Press on Jan. 11, 2021. According to the publisher: Schatz tells the story of the team of young economists and lawyers recruited to the National War Labor Board to resolve union-management conflicts during the Second World War. The crew (including Clark Kerr, John Dunlop, Jean McKelvey, and Marvin Miller) exerted broad influence on the U.S. economy and society for the next 40 years. They handled thousands of grievances and strikes. They…

Christina Crosby, professor of English, passed away Jan. 5 at the age of 67. She also was professor of feminist, gender, and sexuality studies. Crosby arrived at Wesleyan in 1982 after receiving her AB from Swarthmore College and PhD from Brown University. She was a respected Victorianist, feminist, and theorist who was widely published, including two books, The Ends of History: Victorians and “The Woman Question” (Routledge, 1990) and A Body, Undone: Living on After Great Pain (NYU Press, 2016). She received Wesleyan’s Binswanger Prize for Excellence in Teaching in 1994. "Christina was a brilliant scholar-teacher," recalled Natasha Korda, professor…

Frances Sheng, adjunct associate professor of Asian languages and literatures, emerita, passed away on Jan. 3 at the age of 95. Sheng completed her undergraduate degree at Fu Jen Catholic University in Beijing, and her MA at the University of Connecticut. In 1972 she arrived at Wesleyan, where she founded Wesleyan’s Chinese language program and inspired generations of students by teaching Chinese faithfully until her retirement in 1994. During her 22 years at Wesleyan, Sheng was involved in the establishment of the East Asian Studies program as well as study abroad in China, and she founded the Frances M. Sheng…

Wesleyan University Press authors Hafizah Geter, Rae Armantrout, and Honorée Fanonne Jeffers were recently longlisted for awards from PEN America. Hafizah Geter’s debut poetry collection, Un-American, is longlisted for the PEN Open Book Award. The PEN Open Book Award honors a work of fiction, literary nonfiction, biography/memoir, or poetry written by an author of color. The award was created by PEN America’s Open Book Committee, a group committed to racial and ethnic diversity within the literary and publishing communities. Geter’s collection moves readers through the fraught internal and external landscapes—linguistic, cultural, racial, familial—of those whose lives are shaped and transformed by…

When hometown friends Michayla Robertson-Pine and Tessa Levenstein found themselves frustrated with online learning at the college level, they suspected school-aged children were also suffering in the world of online education, and that young people were actively looking for fun creative ways to engage with each other socially. That's when Wesleyan junior Robertson-Pine '22 and Amherst College junior Tessa Levenstein '22 decided to create a remote, project-based, community-oriented program with the intent of spreading joyful learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. Named Tin Can Learners, the program aims to take the load off of parents and offer engaging and energizing after-school…

As part of the BIO 173: Global Change and Infectious Disease course, Professor Fred Cohan assigns students to write an essay persuading others to prevent future and mitigate present infectious diseases. If students submit their essay to a news outlet—and it's published—Cohan awards them with extra credit. As a result of this assignment, more than 25 students have had their work published in newspapers across the United States. Many of these essays cite and applaud the University's Keep Wes Safe campaign and its COVID-19 testing protocols. Cohan, professor of biology and Huffington Foundation Professor in the College of the Environment…

Wesleyan in the News

President Roth on the New Year, New Semester

Nominate Faculty for 2021 Binswanger Prize for Excellence in Teaching

Murillo’s Poetry Longlisted for PEN/Voelcker, Believer Book Awards

Wesleyan Offers 2 New Coursera Courses Focused on Creating Social Change

From Global Pandemic to Anti-Racism: Wesleyan’s Year in Review

Schatz Pens New Book on the Influence of the National War Labor Board

Crosby Remembered for Being a Brilliant Scholar-Teacher

Adjunct Associate Professor of Asian Languages and Literatures, Emerita, Sheng Dies at 95

Wesleyan University Press Authors Longlisted for PEN Awards

Students Launch Fun, Interactive Virtual Program for School-Aged Kids

Students’ Essays on Infectious Disease Prevention, COVID-19 Published Nationwide