Olivia DrakeWesleyan 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…
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.…
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…
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…
Adrian Peter Standaart, private lessons teacher of flute, passed away Sept. 16 at the age of 70. Standaart was born in Richmond, Va., and grew up in Asheville, N.C. He was of Dutch descent and came from a musical family; his father was an organ builder and his mother an organist. He was educated at Duke University, the North Carolina School for the Arts, and Yale University. Standaart came to Wesleyan in 1975 and continued to teach flute until shortly before his death. "His knowledge of the flute literature was encyclopedic, and his influence as a pedagogue and a champion of…
For her ongoing contributions to the philosophical foundations of psychology, Jill Morawski, Wilbur Fisk Osborne Professor and professor of psychology, is the recipient of two distinguished awards. Morawski was most recently honored with the American Psychological Association Division 24 Award for Distinguished Theoretical and Philosophical Contributions to Psychology. The award was presented at the annual meeting of the APA, at which Professor Morawski delivered an invited address, “Chasing Psychology’s Objects: The Quest for Ontological Certainty.” It is the division's highest award and recognizes one of its members each year for lifetime scholarly achievement. Morawski also received the American Psychological Foundation’s 2017 Joseph B.…
Cynthia RockwellSuicide and Resilience: Finding the Words was the topic of the 2018 Shasha Seminar, held Sept. 14-15 on campus. Endowed by James Shasha '50, P'82, the Shasha Seminar for Human Concerns supports lifelong learning and encourages participants to expand their knowledge and perspectives on significant issues. The educational forum provides Wesleyan alumni, parents, and friends with an opportunity to explore issues of global concern in a small seminar environment, The seminar was codirected by Karl Scheibe, professor of psychology, emeritus, and Jennifer D’Andrea, director of Wesleyan’s Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS), the seminar, held Sept. 14-15, (Photos by Olivia Drake, Rebecca Goldfarb…
Lewis “Lew” Lukens, professor emeritus of molecular biology and biochemistry, passed away on Sept. 8 at the age of 91. Lukens received his BA from Harvard University and his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania. He came to Wesleyan in 1966, first in the Biology Department and then as one of the founding members of the Department of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry, where he remained until his retirement in 1999. Lukens' research involved the regulation of gene expression by eukaryotic cells, specifically the genes for Type I and Type II collagen. He received many research grants from the National Institutes…
Three Wesleyan faculty were honored with the Wesleyan Prize for Excellence in Research on Sept. 4. The inaugural prize, presented by Joyce Jacobsen, provost and senior vice president for academic affairs, is similar to the Binswanger Prize for Excellence in Teaching, but is presented to members of the faculty who demonstrate the highest standards of excellence in their research, scholarship, and contributions to their field. Each recipient received a plaque and citation as well as research funds for their award. Nominations by faculty colleagues for this new prize will be accepted through the end of April each spring, and the…
Lauren RubensteinIn this issue of The Wesleyan Connection, we speak with Assistant Professor of Psychology Alexis May ’05, who joined the Department of Psychology this fall. May will be among the speakers at the Shasha Seminar for Human Concerns on Sept. 14–15. Q: Welcome (back) to Wesleyan, Professor May! You earned your BA from Wesleyan in psychology and neuroscience and behavior in 2005. Please tell us about your journey since then. A: After gaining substantial clinical research experience in the psychology department as a project coordinator for [Walter Crowell University Professor of Social Sciences, Emerita] Ruth Striegel Weismann, I was sure of my…
Stéphanie Ponsavady, assistant professor of French, is the author of a new book titled Cultural and Literary Representations of the Automobile in French Indochina: A Colonial Roadshow, published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2018. In the book, Ponsavady aims to answer the question: How are the pleasures and thrills of the automobile linked to France’s history of conquest, colonialism, and exploitation in Southeast Asia? Ponsavady addresses the contradictions of the “progress” of French colonialism and their consequences through the lens of the automobile. She examines the development of transportation systems in French Indochina at the turn of the 20th century, analyzing…
This summer, Mariel Middlebrook '20 gathered archival material on 19th-century alkali workers in London through a Wesleyan Student-Faculty Research Internship. The Student-Faculty Internship program provides students with paid opportunities to work on research projects in collaboration with Wesleyan faculty. As a recipient of the internship award, Middlebrook was able to work alongside Associate Professor of History Jennifer Tucker, who is collecting information on Widnes, an industrial town in Halton, Cheshire, Northwest England, that is known for being the birthplace of Britain's chemical industry in the late 1840s. (Tucker's article, "It’s No Downton Abbey, but It’s Just as Much a Part of…