Faculty

Ryan’s Courses Teach Effective Communication with Diverse Audiences

by Lauren Rubenstein • June 30, 2020

Sarah Ryan

Sarah Ryan is Wesleyan’s first associate professor of the practice in oral communication. She is an interdisciplinary scholar and attorney whose research explores public deliberation, civic participation, and criminal justice reform. We spoke to her about her distinctive interdisciplinary background and why learning communication skills is important for students’ future success.

Your position, associate professor of the practice in oral communication, is a new one at Wesleyan. Can you please explain the genesis of this position, and what it adds to the Wesleyan curriculum?

Sarah Ryan: In 2017, Wesleyan received a Davis Educational Foundation grant to create a regional consortium on best practices in the teaching of oral communication skills. Discussions during that initial one-year planning grant led to the development of my position. I was hired in 2019 to teach undergraduate courses in oral communication and to serve as a resource to faculty and staff who want to teach debate, group discussion, interpersonal communication, public speaking, etc.

What did you teach this past year?

SR: This past year, I taught [courses titled] Diffusion of Innovation, Communicate for Good, and From Litigation to Restorative Justice. In Diffusion, students learned how to spread pro-social practices and technologies through planned communication. In Communicate for Good, students learned how to promote public good through storytelling, informational messaging, and persuasion. In From Litigation, students learned to negotiate for their own interests and collective gain.

You have quite an interesting background as an interdisciplinary scholar and attorney. Can you fill us in on your career path?

SR: As an undergrad at Capital University, I joined the debate team. My first topic was “more severe punishment for violent crime.” To win debates, we had to research policy, law, and ethics, and develop recommendations for change. I was hooked immediately. After graduation, I became an assistant debate coach and started graduate school at Ohio University. My master’s and doctoral work were on welfare policy and perceptions of women receiving government assistance.

One summer, I taught at a high school debate camp in Vermont and became close with my debaters. They urged me to come to their tournaments. They debated for the New York Urban Debate League (NYUDL). So, my college debaters and I started driving to New York City to NYUDL tournaments. Two years later, the NYUDL needed someone to run its after-school center. I landed the job, promised my PhD advisor that I would write a dissertation someday, and moved to the Bronx. During my time at the center, my students won the state championships and we traveled to Belarus on an international debate exchange. On the side, I wrote a public affairs curriculum for Baruch College.

by Olivia Drake • June 17, 2020

Several faculty have recently authored or co-authored books, book chapters, and articles that appear in prestigious academic journals.

BOOKS AND BOOK CHAPTERS

Book by Joslyn Barnhart

Book translated by Susanne Fusso

Book by Kari Weil

Joslyn Barnhart, assistant professor of government, is the author of The Consequences of Humiliation: Anger and Status in World Politics (Cornell University Press, 2020).

Susanne Fusso, Marcus L. Taft Professor of Modern Languages, is the translator of The Nose and Other Stories by Nikolai Gogol (Columbia University Press, 2020).

Ruth Johnson, associate professor of biology, is the author of a book chapter titled “Adhesion and the Cytoskeleton in the Drosophila Pupal Eye,” published in the book Molecular Genetics of Axial Patterning, Growth and Disease in the Drosophila Eye (Springer Science and Business Media, 2020).

Elizabeth McAlister, professor of religion, is the author of a chapter titled “Sacred Waters of Haitian Vodou: The Pilgrimage of Sodo,” published in Sacred Waters: A Cross-Cultural Compendium of Hallowed Springs and Holy Wells (Routledge, 2020).

Kari Weil, University Professor of Letters, is the author of the book Precarious Partners: Horses and Their Humans in Nineteenth-Century France (University of Chicago Press, 2020). She also wrote a book chapter titled “The Animal Novel That Therefore This Isn’t,” published in New Approaches to the Twenty-First–Century Anglophone Novel (Palgrave MacMillan, 2019).

JOURNAL ARTICLES

Lindsay Dolan, assistant professor of government, is the author of “Rethinking Foreign Aid and Legitimacy: Views from Aid Recipients in Kenya,” which was published in Studies in Comparative International Development 55(2) in 2020.

Ruth Johnson, associate professor of biology, and Joe Coolon, assistant professor of biology, are co-authors of “Mask, a Component of the Hippo Pathway, is Required for Drosophila Eye Morphogenesis,” published in Developmental Biology in August 2020. The study also is featured on the cover of Issue 464.

Bill Johnston, professor of history, is the author of “Epidemic Culture in Premodern Japan,” published June 23 by the Society for Cultural Anthropology, from the Series “Responding to an Unfolding Pandemic: Asian Medicines and Covid-19.”

Robert Lane, associate professor and chair of molecular biology and biochemistry, is the author of “Bioinformatics discovery of putative enhancers within mouse odorant receptor gene clusters,” published in Chemical Senses, 44(9), 2019.

Ioana Emy Matesan, assistant professor of government, is the author of “Grievances and Fears in Islamist Movements: Revisiting the Link between Exclusion, Insecurity, and Political Violence,” published in the Journal of Global Security Studies in 2020.

Ishita Mukerji, Fisk Professor of Natural Science and professor of molecular biology and biochemistry, and Manju Hingorani, visiting scholar in molecular biology and biochemistry, are the co-authors of “Mismatch Recognition by Msh2-Msh6: Role of Structure and Dynamics,” published in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences on Aug. 31, 2019.

Anna Shusterman, associate professor of psychology, is the co-author of “Working in the Research-to-Practice Gap: Case Studies, Core Principles, and a Call to Action,” published in PsyArXiv on Sept. 23, 2019. Six Wesleyan students also are co-authors of the article.

Justine Quijada is the author of “From Culture to Experience: Shamanism in the Pages of the Soviet Anti-Religious Press,” published in Contemporary European History, Vol. 29, Special Issue 2 (Religion and Socialism in the Long 1960s: From Antithesis to Dialogue in Eastern and Western Europe), 2020.

View all faculty publications online here.

Wesleyan in the News

by Lauren Rubenstein • May 31, 2020

Wesleyan in the News

1. The Chronicle of Higher Education: “Beware the Doyens of Disruption”

In this op-ed, President Michael Roth ’78 responds to predictions that COVID-19 is going to “change everything” in higher education with a reminder that “the desire of bright young people from all over the world for an on-campus education remains strong.” He writes, “It’s because the connectivity among people and practices that takes place in person intensifies the learning experience.”

2. HxA Podcast: “Michael Roth, Safe Enough Spaces”

President Michael Roth ’78 is interviewed on the Heterodox Academy’s podcast about his book, Safe Enough Spaces: A Pragmatist’s Approach to Inclusion, Free Speech, and Political Correctness on College Campuses. Heterodox Academy recently chose Safe Enough Spaces as the subject of its first ever book club. Roth was also recently interviewed on “The Way We Live Now,” a podcast from Dani Shapiro P ’22.

3. The Wall Street Journal: “Noted: Class of 2020”

The Wall Street Journal featured remarks by Caroline Bhupathi ’20 delivered at Wesleyan’s virtual commencement ceremony on May 24.

4. TLS: “Respect New Haven”

Assistant Professor of English Hirsh Sawhney reflects on the past, present, and politics of New Haven as he takes long, rambling walks through his city with his dog Pinky, a tiny chihuahua-dachshund mix.

5. PIX11: “College Students Create Program Connecting Young People with Senior Citizens in COVID-19 Isolation”

Marysol Castro ’96 features “Support a Pal,” a program created by Walker Brandt ’22 and Lars Delin ’22 to form connections between college students and elderly people in order to combat social isolation during the pandemic.

5. NJ.com: “‘A Smile Never Left His Face’: Steve Pikiell’s Forgotten Season Leading a Division-3 Underdog, 20 Years Before Rutgers”

Wesleyan alumni recall Steve Pikiell’s brief but memorable time as head coach of Wesleyan’s basketball team, long before he became head coach of Rutgers’ men’s basketball team. “I needed a guy like that in my life when he came along,” said Josh Schaer ’96, one of the senior captains on the team. “He had this infectious energy about basketball. He made me love the game again. He was just able to give us a boost. He lived up to expectations. He was a breath of fresh air. A smile never left his face. He loved where he was and he loved what he was doing.”

by Olivia Drake • May 31, 2020

monogram Wesleyan’s Board of Trustees recently announced the promotions of nine faculty members, effective July 1, 2020.

Five faculty were conferred tenure with promotion. They join six other faculty members who were awarded tenure earlier this spring.

Joslyn Barnhart Trager, associate professor of government
Anthony Keats, associate professor of economics
Andrew Quintman, associate professor of religion
Michael Slowik ’03, associate professor of film studies
Takeshi Watanabe, associate professor of East Asian studies

In addition, four faculty members are being promoted. They join one other faculty member who was promoted earlier this spring.

Erika Franklin Fowler, professor of government
Barbara Juhasz, professor of psychology
Hari Krishnan, professor of dance
Phillip Resor, professor of earth and environmental sciences

Brief descriptions of their areas of research and teaching appear below:

Joslyn Barnhart Trager is a political scientist whose research focuses on international security and the effects of psychology and biology on international conflict. Her work examines the ways collective emotions shape national identity, how gender and suffrage interact to affect war and peace, and how rhetorical justifications for territory relate to the use of force. In her recent book, The Consequences of Humiliation: Anger and Status in World Politics (Cornell University Press, 2020), she argues that when international events trigger a sense of humiliation among people who identify with a country, those people become more likely to behave aggressively to restore the country’s image. She offers courses on Psychology and International Relations, Introduction to International Politics, and The Nuclear Age in World Politics, and she received Wesleyan’s Carol Baker Memorial Prize for excellence in teaching and research in 2019.

Erika Franklin Fowler’s research focuses on American politics, with a specialty in political communication—examining the ways political information is disseminated and the effects of such dissemination on political attitudes, knowledge, and behavior. Her Wesleyan Media Project, which provides information on spending and the content of political advertising, has received over $2.7 million in external grant funding. She has co-authored a book, Political Advertising in the United States (Westview Press, 2016), along with numerous peer-reviewed articles and invited publications. She received the APSA Political Organization and Parties Section’s Jack Walker Award for the best article in 2017, and Wesleyan’s Binswanger Prize for Excellence in Teaching in 2019. She teaches courses on American Government and Politics, Media and Politics, and Empirical Methods.

Barbara Juhasz is a cognitive psychologist who studies reading and word recognition in adults. Through her Wesleyan Eye Movement and Reading Laboratory she investigates how words and their meanings are represented in memory and processed during reading as revealed by eye movements. Her work seeks to answer questions such as what variables can predict how, and how quickly, a word is processed. She has published extensively in many peer-reviewed journals, including Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition; Memory and Cognition; and Behavior Research Methods, and her publications have received over 3,000 citations to date. She offers courses on Sensation and Perception, Psychology of Reading, Experimental Investigations into Reading, and Statistics: An Activity-Based Approach.

Anthony Keats’s research in development economics uses a variety of approaches, including randomized control trials conducted in the field and quasi-experimental methods using household survey data, to answer causal questions related to education, early child health, financial access and savings, and occupational choices in developing countries. His highly-cited work has been published in the Journal of Development Economics and the Economic Journal. He has received over $3.3 million in grants from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Bank Strategic Impact Evaluation Fund, Omidyar Network, and other funding organizations. He teaches courses on Quantitative Methods in Economics, Econometrics, and Development Economics.

Hari Krishnan is a dance artist and scholar, specializing in bharatanatyam, queer/contemporary dance, and the interface between dance history and film studies. Bridging theory and practice, he interrogates the boundaries between modern and traditional dance forms, engaging critically with questions of gender, sexuality, and race. His choreographies have been featured at esteemed venues including Jacob’s Pillow, La MaMa’s, Asia Society, Canada Dance Festival, HarbourFront Centre (Canada), Maison des Cultures du Monde (France), The Other Festival, and the Music Academy Dance Festival (India). He is a Bessie award nominee in the Outstanding Performance category, and his recent monograph, Celluloid Classicism: Early Tamil Cinema and the Making of Modern Bharatanatyam, was published by Wesleyan University Press. His courses include Bharatanatyam; Contemporary Dance from Global Perspectives; Mobilizing Dance and Cinema; and Queering the Dancing Body.

Andrew Quintman is a scholar of premodern Buddhist traditions in Tibet and the Himalayas. He has special expertise in biographical and autobiographical literature, in particular the analysis of Buddhist hagiography and historiography, religious poetry, and representations of sainthood. His monograph, The Yogin and the Madman: Reading the Biographical Corpus of Tibet’s Great Saint Milarepa (Columbia University Press, 2014), presents a systematic analysis of the entire Himalayan literary tradition about Milarepa, including all 128 biographies written about the 11^th-century Tibetan saint. His book received numerous awards, including the American Academy of Religion’s Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion and Yale University’s Samuel and Ronnie Heyman Prize for Outstanding Scholarship. He offers courses on Buddhist Traditions of Mind and Meditation, Tibetan Buddhism, and Who is the Dalai Lama?

Phillip Resor is a structural geologist who studies rock deformation with an emphasis on fault zones. His research, which combines field work and modeling, has important applications in planetary science, energy resources, and present-day hazard assessment related to earthquakes. He has received grants from the National Science Foundation Tectonics Program, NASA’s Planetary Geology and Geophysics Program, and the Southern California Earthquake Center. He has published widely, and in 2019 he received Top Author recognition from NAGT Teach the Earth. In 2016 he received the Joe Webb Peoples Award in recognition of his contributions to promoting the understanding of Connecticut geology. He offers courses on Dynamic Earth, Structural Geology, Field Geology, Modeling the Earth and Environment, and Geologic Field Mapping.

Michael Slowik’s research focuses on the history of film and film aesthetics, with a special emphasis on the uses and evolution of sound and music in cinema. His book, After the Silents: Hollywood Film Music in the Early Sound Era, 1926-1934 (Columbia University Press, 2014), which provides a detailed analysis of the evolution of film music from the start of synchronized sound through 1934, was a top 10 finalist for the 2015 Kraszna-Krausz Foundation Moving Image Book Award. His latest manuscript, Defining Cinema: The Films of Rouben Mamoulian, is under contract with Oxford University Press. He teaches courses on Film Genres: The Western; History of Film Sound; Sex and Violence: American Filmmaking Under Censorship; and Cinema Stylists: Sternberg, Ophuls, Sirk, Fellini. Slowick is a 2003 alumnus of Wesleyan.

Takeshi Watanabe is a scholar of premodern Japanese literature. In his recent book, Flowering Tales: Women Exorcising History in Heian Japan (Harvard Asia Center, 2020), he examines the historical tale A Tale of Flowering Fortunes (c. 1000), and demonstrates how the rise of writing in the vernacular allowed a new type of historical writing that captured court gossip and channeled its divisive energy into stories that brought healing. He has published broadly in both English and Japanese, and his scholarship covers art history, material culture, and the history of food. He teaches courses on Japanese literature and culture and East Asian culture, including From Tea to Connecticut Rolls: Japanese Culture through Food; Samurai: Imagining, Performing Japanese Identity; and In Search of a Good Life in Premodern Japan.

Birney Studies Ancient Perfume “Knock-Offs” in Athens as New Directions Fellow

by Olivia Drake • May 29, 2020

Greyware unguentaria (perfume bottles) were produced in Greece (pictured at left); however, Wesleyan’s Kate Birney excavated similar bottles in Ashkelon, Israel (pictured at right). By using the scientific process of ceramic petrography, Birney is revealing that the unguentaria from Israel are likely “knock-offs” of the Greek perfumes. “When we excavated these bottles at Ashkelon in Israel, their coloring and fine quality looked exactly like the ones known from Greece. We’d seen some crummy imitations before—basically thick-walled bottles painted grey and haphazardly striped, clearly echoing the Greek original but not going to fool anybody—but the assumption was that the nice, super-delicate ones must be imported from Greece,” Birney said. “That is not necessarily the case.” (Image at left: Unguentaria (P10734) from graves near the Agora. Image from the Athenian Agora Excavations Collection at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. Image at right: courtesy of the Leon Levy Expedition.)

Kate Birney

There was something about Kate Birney’s research that smelled a little off.

As far back as the 4th century B.C., Greece was a global leader in producing a plethora of posh perfumes sold in handcrafted ceramic bottles marked with three chalky-white stripes.

“Much like today, some of these ceramic perfume bottles were ‘branded‘—made in distinctive shapes, and painted or decorated in distinctive ways—probably to tell the consumer what scent they contained, or which perfume house/region they were imported from,” said Birney, associate professor of classical studies and chair of Wesleyan’s Archaeology Program.

So when similar bottles, or unguentaria, were excavated from the site of Ashkelon in southern Israel, scientists assumed the Hellenistic-period (4th–1st century B.C.) perfumes were imported via trade routes. Or were they?

Through a Mellon Foundation New Directions Fellowship, Birney spent this past winter and early spring at the Wiener Lab of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, studying the ceramic petrography of bottles collected from Ashkelon. There, she worked with petrographic specialists and accessed the lab’s comparative collections.

by Olivia Drake • May 26, 2020

At left, Hilary Barth, Robert Conn, Sanford Shieh, and Nicole Stanton.

This month, four Wesleyan faculty received the honorary degree of Master of Arts ad eundem gradum.

This degree has been awarded by Wesleyan since 1894 to those members of the faculty who are not graduates of Wesleyan at the bachelor’s level and who have attained the rank of full professor. The award makes each full professor an alumnus/a of the University.

Recipients include Hilary Barth, professor of psychology; Robert Conn, professor of Spanish; Sanford Shieh, professor of philosophy, and Nicole Stanton, professor of dance.

Wesleyan Honors 8 Retiring Faculty

by Olivia Drake • May 26, 2020

Eight Wesleyan faculty members are retiring at the end of the 2019–20 academic year. They include:

RICHARD ADELSTEIN
Woodhouse/Sysco Professor of Economics (2010–2020)
Professor of Economics (1990–2020)
Associate Professor of Economics (1981–1990)
Assistant Professor of Economics (1976–1981)
Visiting Assistant Professor of Economics (1975–1976)

IRINA ALESHKOVSKY
Adjunct Professor of Russian Language & Literature (2003–2020)
Adjunct Associate Professor of Russian Language & Literature (1995–2003)
Adjunct Assistant Professor of Russian Language & Literature (1992–1995)
Adjunct Lecturer of Russian Language and Literature (1987–1992)
Teaching Associate in Russian Language and Literature (1983–1987)

by Editorial Staff • May 19, 2020

L. Kent Bendall, professor of philosophy, emeritus, died on May 15 at the age of 88.

Bendall received his BA from Rice University and his MA and PhD from Yale University. He arrived at Wesleyan in 1963, where he taught philosophy until his retirement in 1992. During his 29 years at Wesleyan, Bendall was an integral part of the University and the Philosophy Department. He served many terms as chair of the Education Policy Committee and of the Philosophy Department; he also served as chair of the University Senate and was a member of the planning committee for the new African American Institute in 1974.

He was a philosopher who was devoted to the ideal of truth and a rigorous search for it. Joe Rouse, Hedding Professor of Moral Science and Professor of Philosophy, recalled: “Kent Bendall was an excellent logician and philosopher, and a generous colleague and friend. Two considerations will always stand out in my recollection of Kent: his extraordinary clarity of thought and expression, and his utterly unquestionable personal and intellectual integrity.”

by Editorial Staff • May 17, 2020

Every spring, Wesleyan recognizes outstanding faculty with three Binswanger Prizes for Excellence in Teaching.

This year’s recipients include Gloster Aaron, associate professor of biology, Robyn Autry, associate professor and chair of sociology, and Keiji Shinohara, artist-in-residence.

Made possible by gifts from the family of the late Frank G. Binswanger Sr., Hon. ’85, these prizes underscore Wesleyan’s commitment to its scholar-teachers, who are responsible for the University’s distinctive approach to liberal arts education.

by Editorial Staff • May 17, 2020

Rob Rosenthal

At the University’s 188th Commencement on May 24, Wesleyan will present the Baldwin Medal, the highest award of the Alumni Association, to Rob Rosenthal, John Andrus Professor of Sociology, Emeritus.

The Baldwin Medal pays tribute to the late Judge Raymond E. Baldwin ’16, the only man to have held the offices of Connecticut governor, U.S. senator, and chief justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court. First awarded Sept. 20, 1981, during the opening convocation of Wesleyan’s Sesquicentennial, the Baldwin Medal is the highest honor Wesleyan’s alumni body presents for extraordinary service to Wesleyan or for careers and other activities that have contributed significantly to the public good.

Rosenthal served as Wesleyan’s provost and vice president for Academic Affairs from 2010 to 2013, and as director of the Allbritton Center for the Study of Public Life from 2014 to 2017. He returned to serve as interim provost and senior vice president for Academic Affairs again from July 2019 through May 2020.

by Olivia Drake • May 11, 2020

Wesleyan’s Traveler’s Lab released a time-enabled regional map of COVID-19 cases in the tri-state area surrounding New York City.

In late March, as New York City’s coronavirus infection rate skyrocketed to five times higher than the rest of the country, members of Wesleyan’s Traveler’s Lab explored a movement-focused approach to the rapid spread of the disease.

Rather than focusing on political borders, lab members depicted major freeways, highways, and commuter rail lines out of New York City, and examined counties within a 2.5-hour drive from the City.

“While New York City may be the center, it is the travel region immediately surrounding the city that provides the true context of how COVID-19 has spread and is spreading to, and from, the City,” said Traveler’s Lab manager Jesse Torgerson, assistant professor of letters. “Informed by geographic and historical methods, this approach provides a truer context for human interactions.”

by Olivia Drake • May 10, 2020

In this linear graph, Professor Joop Varekamp shows logged plots of coronavirus time versus death data in Italy (green) and the United States (blue). The straight-line segments represent exponential growth, and the curved arrays occur after social distancing rules and lockdowns were imposed. Extrapolation of the straight line for the United States (deep blue line) would have reached 1 million casualties (black circle) around April 21 if the U.S. had not imposed social distancing rules, according to Varekamp.

Last March, Johan (Joop) C. Varekamp, Harold T. Stearns Professor of Earth Science, intended to teach an ore deposit and formation class in Italy; however, the COVID-19 pandemic caused him to stay near campus.

Nevertheless, Varekamp kept a keen watch on Italy. With a fascination with the pandemic’s wildfire spread, Varekamp began plotting coronavirus data from both the United States and Italy to see how their growth curves compared.

“Infectious diseases follow initially exponential growth patterns until measures are taken to limit transmission or a vaccine becomes available,” Varekamp said. “I wanted to know how disease propagation compares to population growth, which I teach in some detail in my classes.”

On May 7, Varekamp shared his ongoing Coronavirus Plot Maps with the campus community through Wesleyan’s Community Forum. His study features some of the differences in the progression of the disease in the two countries that may provide some insights “and possibly some dark thoughts about our future.”

Varekamp suggested that if social distancing rules are weakened too early, the disease will pick up where it left off at the exponential end. “This will all be repeated until about 60–70% of the population has been infected with the disease,” he said. “Only then the virus burns itself out, to some degree as a result of lack of non-immune individuals, and transmission rates will decrease to values below one.”

He also stated that if no social distancing had been ordered in the U.S. in late March, the U.S. would have stuck to its exponential growth pattern, and close to 1 million people would have died by the end of April.

If he’s able to safely fly internationally next year, Varekamp hopes to have another attempt at teaching the EU-coordinated ore deposit class at the University of Bologna.

“It is hard to see how all of this evolves,” he said.