Nina Felshin, curator of exhibitions and adjunct lecturer in art history, is curator of The Disasters of War: From Goya to Golub, which is on view now in the Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery. From left to right, Melanie Baker's charcoal and pastel drawing, Writing a Memo (in Blood); Francisco de Goya's etching from The Disasters of War (Los Desastres de la Guerra) and Leon Golub's acrylic on canvas, Interrogation III, on loan from The Broad Art Foundation, Santa Monica.   Posted 10/18/05 War, torture and inhumane behavior in the international arena are themes of an exhibit in the Ezra…

Habitat for Humanity recipient Titeana McNeil, 11, plays with a caulk gun while Habitat volunteers Ted Paquette and Manny Cunard, site supervisor and director of Auxiliary Operations and Campus Services work on the family's new kitchen. Below, mother Jennifer McNeil and her children, Jamarea, 3; Tyquan, 14; Titeana, 11; and Taquana, 15 stop by their future home to check the progress on Oct. 13. (Photos by Olivia Drake) Posted 10/18/05 Jennifer McNeil had no idea that watching television would one day help her own a home. But, thanks to that and a partnership between Wesleyan University and Northern Middlesex Habitat for…

Long Lane Farming Club member Rachel Ostlund ’08 will welcome the community to the club’s annual Pumpkin Fest Oct. 29. At left, a flower garden still blooms at the farm, located south of Physical Plant and Wesleyan University Press. Posted 10/18/05 Wesleyan’s Long Lane Farming Club will hold its second annual Pumpkin Fest from 2 to 7 p.m. Saturday Oct. 29 and people from the campus and the local community are welcome to attend. But while the freshly-grown pumpkins available the fest will be locally-grown, they won’t be a product of the students’ land. “We had some problems this year…

Professor Dianna Wall of Colorado State University speaks with Lori Gruen, associate professor of philosophy and co-chair and associate professor of feminism, gender and sexuality studies during the 2005 Robert Schumann Environmental Studies Symposium held Oct. 8.Below, Professor Barry Chernoff, the Robert Schumann Professor of Environmental Studies, professor of biology, professor of earth and environmental sciences, and director of the Environmental Studies Certificate program speaks with the symposium's attendees. Chernoff organized the day-long symposium. Posted 10/18/05 “Where on Earth are We Going? II” was the topic of the 2005 Robert Schumann Environmental Studies Symposium held Oct. 8. in Exley Science…

At top, Mark Flory, assistant professor of molecular biology and biochemistry, lectures to a group during the Sixth Annual Biophysics Retreat for the Molecular Biophysics Program Sept. 15. At left, Maggie Chen, a Ph.D candidate in the Department of Chemistry explains her research titled “Site-Resolved Dynamics and Energetics of a Ribosomal RNA” during the Fall Retreat Poster Session, part of the biophysics program. Posted 10/01/05 The Sixth Annual Biophysics Retreat was held at the Wadsworth Mansion in Middletown on Sept. 15. Organized by David Beveridge, professor of chemistry, Manju Hingorami, assistant professor of molecular biology and Ishita Mikerji, associate professor…

Olin Library's new Information Commons features a library reference desk, an Information Technology Services desk and a SARN information and referral desk. Posted 10/01/05 A new information lab in Olin Memorial Library has merged three services into one. Information Commons provides library reference, information technology and access to the Student Academic Resources Network (SARN). The facility is located in the Campbell Reference Center on the first floor of the library. “Students are relying on the Internet more and more to get information, but there’s still a demand for the library’s material, reference services and workspace,” says Dale Lee, information service…

Posted 10/01/05 The September, 2005 issue of Perspectives, the monthly publication of the American Historical Association, included a study of history Ph.D.s earned between 1989 and 2002 and showed that the leader in the field was in fact Wesleyan University - even though Wesleyan doesn’t have a Ph.D. program in history. Though the results may sound incongruous at first, the data is actually quite solid. The study’s author, Robert Townsend, found that a higher percentage of Wesleyan students who earned bachelor’s degrees during the surveyed period went on to earn Ph.D.s in history than undergraduates from any other institution in…

Posted 10/01/05 First-year chemistry students will have the opportunity to spend some time with a Nobel Laureate at Wesleyan. Sir Harry Kroto, professor of chemistry at Florida State University, will lecture to chemistry classes at 9 a.m. Oct. 31 in room 84 of Hall-Atwater. Kroto shared the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1996 for discovering C60, a new form of carbon. In addition, Kroto will present a chemistry symposium titled “Architecture in Nanospace,” at 4 p.m. Oct. 31, also in HA 84, or Exley Science Center 150 if attendance requires it. This symposium will be open to the public. Formerly…

Pictured are Kay and Morton Briggs. Briggs, professor emeritus of romance languages and literatures, died Sept. 25. He worked at Wesleyan for 42 years. Posted 10/01/05 Morton W. Briggs, a Wesleyan faculty member for over 40 years, died Sept. 25 at Middlesex Health Care Center at the age of 90. Born in 1915 in Millbrook, N.Y., he was graduated from Cornell University in 1937. He studied at the Sorbonne in Paris and obtained master’s (1939) and doctoral (1944) degrees from Harvard University. He joined the Wesleyan faculty in 1943 and attained the position of professor of romance languages in 1956…

Posted 10/01/05 James van Benschoten Dresser, '63, P'93, chairman of Wesleyan's Board of Trustees, will be among the kick-off speakers of a new "First Friday" series being sponsored by the Center for Community Partnerships. The event is open to the Wesleyan community and will be held from 4 to 5 p.m. Friday, Oct. 7 at 167 High Street. The series will feature presentations on the first Friday of every month and has been created by the Center for Community Partnerships for members of the Wesleyan and Middletown communities who are interested in town-gown collaborations. Dresser's talk, titled "If These Walls…

At top, Lori Gruen, associate professor of philosophy, explains "The Chimp Project" from her office in Russell House. She and  Hughes Fellow Shayla Silver-Balbus '06 (pictured at left) studied chimpanzees in Ohio this summer. Posted 10/01/05 Lori Gruen spent this past summer with curious students of an unsuspecting kind – chimpanzees named Emma and Harper. Gruen, an associate professor of philosophy and co-chair of the Wesleyan Feminism, Gender and Sexuality Studies Department, formally known as the Women’s Studies Department, studied the chimpanzees at the Ohio State University Chimpanzee Center where she continues to gather information for an upcoming book on…

Liz Lerman of the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange, discusses "The Making of Ferocious Beauty: Genome,” the first in a series of lectures addressing the implications of genetic research. (Photo by Lex Leifheit) Posted 10/01/05 The year 2003 marked a major milestone in human genomics: the completion of the sequencing of the human genome. With that milestone came a seemingly endless number of possibilities, and the challenge of understanding their consequences. “Where do we as individuals and where do we as a society draw the line, and who should do the line drawing?” asked Kathy Hudson, director of the Genetics and…