Faculty

Matesan Speaks at Meeting with Policymakers in Switzerland

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From left, Assistant Professor of Government Ioana Emy Matesan, Imelda Deinla, Clark Lombardi and moderator, Mimmi Söderberg Kovacs on a panel discussion with policymakers on conflict resolution.

From left, Assistant Professor of Government Ioana Emy Matesan, Imelda Deinla, Clark Lombardi, and moderator Mimmi Söderberg Kovacs in a panel discussion with policymakers on conflict resolution.

On Sept. 29–Oct. 1, Assistant Professor of Government Ioana Emy Matesan traveled to Switzerland to participate in a research workshop that brought together an international and interdisciplinary group of scholars working on conflict and violence, as well as in a meeting with policymakers.

Matesan was one of only six researchers from five different countries invited to attend the meeting with policymakers—primarily from the Human Security Division within the Swiss Department of Foreign Affairs—which was organized by the Folke Bernadotte Academy (the Swedish government agency for peace, security, and development), the Department of Peace and Conflict Research at Uppsala University, the Center for Security Studies in Zurich, and the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs of Switzerland.

Matesan participated in a panel discussion on resolving conflicts involving Islamist actors, along with Imelda Deinla, the director of the Philippines Project at Australian National University, and Clark Lombardi, the director of Islamic legal studies at the University of Washington.

Ioana Emy Matesan

Ioana Emy Matesan

“The panel was centered on the question of what research can tell us about the prospects of conflict resolution, and what questions it raises for policymakers and practitioners who want to engage in negotiations and mediation,” said Matesan. “In my comments I drew on my research on Egypt and Indonesia to emphasize that group ideology and tactics can change over time in response to internal dynamics and public condemnation, but I also warned against policies that use overwhelming force, and the assumption that either groups or publics are passive recipients of propaganda with little agency.”

Case, Hingorani Coauthor Study on DNA Repair

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Molecular biology and biochemistry graduate student Brandon Case and Manju Hingorani, professor of molecular biology and biochemistry, are coauthors on a study published in Nucleic Acids Research in October 2018.

The paper, titled “Coordinated protein and DNA conformational changes govern mismatch repair initiation by MutS,” reports new findings on how the Mutator S (MutS) protein repairs mistakes in the DNA sequence, which is essential for maintaining the accuracy of the genetic code.

The collaborative effort from researchers at Wesleyan, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and North Carolina State University employed single molecule and ensemble kinetic methods to study the mechanism of action of MutS. The outcome is a unified model of coordinated changes in MutS and DNA conformation that enable the protein to recognize errors in DNA and initiate their repair.

The research at Wesleyan was supported by NIH grant R15 GM114743 awarded to Manju Hingorani.

Wesleyan in the News

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In this recurring feature in The Wesleyan Connection, we highlight some of the latest news stories about Wesleyan and our alumni.

Recent Wesleyan News

  1. The New York Times: “Why Half a Degree of Global Warming Is a Big Deal”

Gary Yohe, the Huffington Foundation Professor of Economics and Environmental Studies, comments on a new report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a group with which he was involved from the early 1990s through 2014.

2. Avant Music News: “Tyshawn Sorey Residency at the Kitchen”

On Oct. 21–23, Tyshawn Sorey MA ’11, assistant professor of music; assistant professor, African American studies; will present a rare three-night New York City appearance in a residency at The Kitchen in Chelsea with a variety of musicians.

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Slotkin Authors New Book of Semifictional Stories

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Richard Slotkin, Olin Professor of English, Emeritus, is the author of a new book, Greenhorns: stories, published Oct. 10 by Leapfrog Press.

Slotkin writes more personally in Greenhorns than in his past nonfiction books, in a series of linked semifictional stories based on his ancestors’ immigration from Eastern Europe early in the 20th century.

A kosher butcher with gambling problems; a woman whose elegant persona conceals unspeakable horror; a Jewish Pygmalion who turns a wretched orphan into a “real American girl”; a boy who clings to his father’s old-world code of honor on the mean streets of Brooklyn; the “little man who wasn’t there,” whose absence reflects his family’s inability to deal with their memories—these tales of early 20th-century Jewish immigration blur memoir and fiction, recovering the violent circumstances, the emotional costs of uprooting that left people uncertain of their place in America and shaped the lives of their American descendants.

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Kauanui Presents Paper at Decolonizing Anarchisms Conference

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J. Kehaulani Kauanui

J. Kehaulani Kauanui

J. Kēhaulani Kauanui, professor and chair of American studies, recently presented her research at a conference in Loughborough University on Decolonizing Anarchisms. The gathering was the fifth annual conference of the UK Anarchist Studies Network.

The purpose of the conference was “to stimulate discussion of colonialism and racism as forms of oppression that anarchists oppose, but which continue to be felt in anarchist organizing; and to welcome individuals, groups and communities who have not previously participated in ASN events. By recognizing the legacy of non-western and anti-colonial thought and action in the anarchist tradition, we want to strengthen the ties between contemporary anarchists and decolonial theory and practice in the struggle against oppression, and to use the recognition of racist and Eurocentric practices and mind-frames to open up the event to marginalized groups.”

Kauanui’s paper, “Anarchist and the Politics of Indigeneity and Sovereignty in Settler Colonial Context,” distinguished a diversity of anarchist practices to clarify common misunderstandings about indigenous nationalism often held by nonindigenous people in order to offer some initial thoughts on bringing together an indigenous sovereignty politic in relation to anarchist philosophy and activism.

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Wesleyan in the News

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In this recurring feature in The Wesleyan Connection, we highlight some of the latest news stories about Wesleyan and our alumni.

Recent Wesleyan News

  1. The New York Times Magazine: “Letter of Recommendation: Phyllis Rose’s ‘Parallel Lives'”

Professor of English, Emerita Phyllis Rose’s 1983 book Parallel Lives: Five Victorian Marriages, is featured in the New York Times Magazine. The book, which the reviewer notes she has re-read every few months recently, is a “group biography of several notable Victorians and their marriages,” through which the reader can gain deeper insight into intimate relationships and societal change.

  1. Middletown Press: “Middletown Musician Noah Baerman Wins Guilford Performing Arts Fest Artists’ Award”

Noah Baerman, director of the Wesleyan Jazz Ensemble, received the inaugural Guilford Foundation/Guilford Performing Arts Festival Artists’ Award at a ceremony on Sept. 29. The award was created this year to encourage the development of new work by professional Connecticut artists and to provide a vehicle for the debut of original material at the festival.

2. Commentary: “Among the Disbelievers”

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Weiss Pens Book on Indigenous Peoples’ Futures on Canadian Islands

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Joseph Weiss, assistant professor of anthropology, is the author of Shaping the Future on Haida Gwaii: Life beyond Settler Colonialism, published by the University of British Columbia Press in September 2018.

Shaping the Future on Haida Gwaii shows how an indigenous nation in British Columbia not only continues to have a future but is at work building many different futures—for themselves and for their non-indigenous neighbors. The project emerges from an almost decade-long relationship between Weiss and the citizens of the Haida Nation of Haida Gwaii, a series of islands off the west coast of Canada.

Weiss explores these possible futures in detail, demonstrating how Haida ways of thinking about time, mobility, and political leadership are at the heart of contemporary strategies for addressing the dilemmas that come with life under settler colonialism.

Too often, Weiss explains, indigenous peoples have been portrayed as being without a future, destined either to disappear or assimilate into settler society. This book asserts the opposite: Indigenous peoples are not in any sense “out of time” in our contemporary world.

“This work was in large part about trying to respond to dominant assumptions—both in the academy and in North American society—about the ways that indigenous peoples experience settler colonialism,” Weiss said. “I sought to shift the narrative from one that emphasizes domination and constraint towards telling stories about how Haida citizens and communities are building all sorts of different futures, claiming their right to decide for themselves what should come next and what should not.”

From the threat of ecological crisis to the assertion of sovereign rights and authority, Weiss shows that the Haida people consistently turn towards their possible futures, desirable and undesirable, in order to work out how to live in and transform the present. His book breaks new ground in the exploration of the relationship between time and colonialism as experienced in the day-to-day lives of an indigenous community.

Weiss first started visiting Haida Gwaii in 2010 through ties of friendship and a deep admiration for and interest in the work of the Haida Nation in fighting for Haida rights to their sovereign territories and to self-determination. In 2013, he moved to the Haida community of Old Massett to begin a two-and-a-half-year period of full-time fieldwork, focusing on exploring communities’ experiences and understandings around political and social change. While there, he worked as a classroom assistant and occasional school play director for the community’s primary school, the Chief Matthews School.

Weiss’s work was and remains an attempt to engage in respectful anthropological research grounded in dialogue with and accountability to the community of Old Massett and the Haida Nation. This extended both to the kinds of questions that were asked and to the ways interviews were conducted and then approved by Weiss’s Haida friends and colleagues.

“Shaping the Future is as much the result of building relationships and this commitment to respect as it is an academic text,” Weiss said.

This book will appeal to scholars and students of indigenous studies, particularly in anthropology, political science, sociology, and history. Researchers planning to work with communities will learn from the author’s reflections on conducting ethnographic fieldwork with First Nations.

 

Angle, Glick to Speak at Human Rights Teach-Out

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Stephen Angle

Stephen Angle

Megan Glick

Megan Glick

Wesleyan faculty Stephen Angle and Megan Glick are participating in a Global Human Rights Teach-Out Oct. 17–20, hosted on Coursera.

The Teach-Out will address the various dimensions of human rights. Participants will join citizens from all over the world to contribute to an online discussion on various human rights with scholarly input in the form of podcasts from over 20 academic instructors, including some contributions from advocacy groups addressing the urgency of issues.

The event will end with a live-streamed discussion, hosted in The Hague by Leiden University, where participants can ask questions of some of the speakers as well as participants from all over the world.

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Shinohara’s Woodcuts, Monotypes on Exhibit

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Artwork by Artist-in-Residence Keiji Shinohara is on display at the Deerfield Academy’s von Auersperg Gallery in Deerfield, Mass., through Oct. 29. The exhibit, titled Whispers of the Infinite, features multiple woodcuts and monotypes that Shinohara created while participating in residencies in Denmark over the past two summers.

Shinohara was born and raised in Osaka, Japan. After 10 years as an apprentice to the renowned Keiichiro Uesugi in Kyoto, he became a Master Printmaker and moved to the U.S. Shinohara’s natural abstractions are printed on rice paper with water-based inks from woodblocks in the Ukiyo-e style–the traditional Japanese printmaking method dating to 600 CE. Shinohara has been a visiting artist at more than 100 venues. He has received grants from the Japan Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts and his work is in many public collections, including the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Milwaukee Art Museum, the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University, and the Library of Congress.

This semester, Shinohara is teaching Introduction to Sumi-e Painting and Alternative Printmaking: Beginning Japanese Woodblock Technique.

Gilmore, Greenwood Recipients of NASA Grant to Map Venus’s Craters

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Caption: Radar image of Venus. Alpha Regio tessera is partly covered by the dark parabola of the impact crater Stuart on the volcanic plains.

Professors Martha Gilmore and James Greenwood recently received a NASA grant to study crater parabolas on Venus using radar data. Pictured is a Magellan radar image of Venus. Alpha Regio tessera is partly covered by the dark parabola of the impact crater Stuart on the volcanic plains. (Photo courtesy of NASA)

Like planet Earth, the geology of Venus is diverse; consisting of areas of flat plains and deformed, mountain-like terrains called tesserae. And like Earth, Mars, and the Moon, Venus is checkered with hundreds of craters.

“What’s odd about Venus’s craters, is that craters we do see are relatively young, indicating the surface of Venus has been covered by planet-wide volcanic flows,” says Martha “Marty” Gilmore, George I. Seney Professor of Geology, professor of earth and environmental sciences. “The tesserae are the only terrains older than these volcanic flows and thus our only hope at accessing rocks from the first billion years of Venus’s history, when the planet may have had an ocean and may have been habitable.”

As the recipient of a three-year $430,801 grant from NASA’s Solar System Workings Program, Gilmore and James Greenwood, assistant professor of earth and environmental sciences, will use Magellan radar data to create the first map of crater ejecta on Venus classified by origin on plains or tessera terrain. Their project is titled “Radar Emissivity and Dielectric Permittivity of the Venus Surface Beneath Crater Parabolas.” Crater parabolas refer to the shape of the ejecta deposits as they are carried westward by the high-altitude Venus winds.

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Graduate Students, Faculty to Present Studies at Society for Ethnomusicology’s Annual Meeting

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Three Wesleyan music graduate students and two faculty were accepted to present at the Society for Ethnomusicology‘s 2018 Annual Meeting Nov. 15–18 in Albuquerque, N.M.

Bianca Iannitti will present a case study on the queer Indian-American DJ, Bianca Maieli, in order to explore the queer female identity within Desi music and virtual spaces.

Gene Lai, MA ’16, will present a study titled “Disdained at Home Embraced by Motherland: The Revitalized Tamil Folk Drumming Ensemble in Singapore.”

And Douglas Kiman will present a study titled “Mapping Klezmer Music in Contemporary Europe: A Case Study of the Jazz’n Klezmer Festival.” He will also be presenting at the Society for American Music in March on the musical identity of a band, the New Orleans Klezmer All-Stars.

In addition, B. “Balu” Balasubrahmaniyan, adjunct associate professor of music, will speak on “Hybridized Instrumentation in Ilayaraja’s Tamil Film Scores: A Quest for Village Identity.” And Kate Galloway, visiting assistant professor of music, will speak on “Stop to Smell the Pixels: A Digital Field Guide to Nonhuman Musicality in Proteus.”

Founded in 1955, the Society for Ethnomusicology is a global, interdisciplinary network of individuals and institutions engaged in the study of music across all cultural contexts and historical periods. The annual meeting will include several presentations, roundtable discussions, a symposium, concerts, an open jam session, and a world music pedagogy workshop and professional development workshop.