Faculty – Page 51

Building off research she did for her work "Body in Places" at Wesleyan in fall 2015, Visiting Instructor in Dance Eiko Otake will present a major platform at Danspace Project in New York City on March 11. The free talks include those by Wesleyan faculty members William Johnson, professor of history, professor of East Asian Studies, professor of science in society, professor of environmental studies, and Katja Kolcio, associate professor of dance, associate professor of environmental studies. March 11 marks the fifth anniversary of the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster in Fukushima, Japan. A photo collective by Eiko and Johnston will be…

A paper by Assistant Professor of Psychology Clara Wilkins, Alexander Hirsch '13 and Michael Inkles '12 has been published in the journal Group Processes & Intergroup Relations. Titled, "The threat of racial progress and the self-protective nature of perceiving anti-White bias," the paper describes two studies in which the researchers examine whether racial progress is threatening to whites, and if perceiving anti-white bias assuages that threat. The first study showed that whites primed with racial progress—by reading an article on social advancement by minorities—exhibited evidence of threat: lower implicit self-worth relative to the baseline. The second study replicated the threat effect…

Johan "Joop" Varekamp, the Howard T. Stearns Professor in Earth Science, led an invited talk at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) meeting in San Francisco, Dec. 2015. The earth and space science community participated in discussions of emerging trends and the latest research. The session, which was co-authored by former Wesleyan E&ES graduate student Lauren Camfield, focused on the 2012 eruption of the Copahue volcano in Argentina. Due to the success of the invited talk on Volcanic Hydrothermal Systems, Varekamp will be a co-editor for a special issue of a journal based on that session. As part of his role as…

John Finn, professor of government, is the author of an article published in Table Matters, an interdisciplinary journal of food, drink and manners. Titled “How Does a Recipe Mean: Interpreting the Recipe as a Text,” Finn makes the argument that recipes invite the cook to experience and perform them, rather than simply read them. Using the classic work “How Does a Poem Mean,” by John Ciardi, Finn draws a connection between poems and recipes through Ciardi’s idea that a “poem cannot be defined by dictionaries or understood simply by reading or memorizing it. It can be know only though experience. The…

Bill Herbst, the John Monroe Van Vleck Professor of Astronomy, and James Greenwood, assistant professor of earth and environmental sciences, co-authored an article published in the planetary science journal Icarus. Their article, “A New Mechanism for Chondrule Formation: Radiative Heating by Hot Planetesimals” grew out of research seminars from the recently introduced Planetary Science graduate concentration and minor at Wesleyan. Their work focused on chondrules, or tiny spheres of molten rock that permeate primitive meteorites and date to very close to the beginning of the solar system. For decades, the existence of chondrules has puzzled astrophysicists and cosmochemists as no…

Professor of Psychology Scott Plous has been elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). He was inducted on Feb. 13 during a ceremony in Washington, D.C., part of the association's annual meeting. Plous was one of eight fellows newly elected to the Psychology section of the AAAS this year. He was chosen "for distinguished contributions to social psychology, particularly understanding decision-making and prejudice, and for communication of psychology science to the public." Founded in 1848, the AAAS is an international nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing science for the benefit of all people. Fellows are…

This month, the Association for Asian Studies honored Phillip Wagoner, professor of art history, professor of archaeology, with the Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy Book Prize. Wagoner and his co-author Richard Easton received the award for their book, Power, Memory, Architecture: Contested Sites on India’s Deccan Plateau, 1300-1600, published by Oxford University Press in 2014. The Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy Book Prize honors a distinguished work of scholarship in South Asian Studies that promises to define or redefine the understanding of whole subject areas. The book's subject matter must deal with South Asia (India, Pakistan, Nepal, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh). Power, Memory, Architecture is the first comprehensive exploration of history…

Assistant Professor of Government Erika Franklin Fowler and her collaborators on the Wesleyan Media Project are the authors of a new book, Political Advertising in the United States, published in February by Westview Press. The book is edited by Ada Fung '06. Fowler's co-authors are Michael Franz of Bowdoin College and Travis Ridout of Washington State University. Political Advertising in the United States is a comprehensive survey of the political advertising landscape and its influence on voters. The authors draw from the latest data to analyze how campaign finance laws have affected the sponsorship and content of political advertising, how "big data" has…

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Wesleyan will present the first-ever creative writing specialization on the Coursera platform, beginning Feb. 9. Taught by four award-winning authors, the specialization is open to anyone with a love of reading or a drive to invent a story or tell their own. Titled “Creative Writing: The Craft of Story,” the specialization will include four courses, plus a capstone.

On Feb. 2, Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Joyce Jacobsen announced that Wesleyan has hired eight new tenure-track faculty in fields including African American studies, sociology and physics, among others. Wesleyan also made a senior hire, which will be announced later this semester after a successful tenure review, Jacobsen said. Nine other faculty searches are ongoing and will hopefully be completed this spring. “With 18 searches going on, we will likely have a larger than usual group of new faculty coming to campus next fall,” said Jacobsen. “We’re excited to welcome this accomplished and diverse group of scholar-teachers.” Brief…

Peter Gottschalk was named the Director of the Center for Faculty Career Development for a three-year term starting July 1. Gottschalk is currently Professor of Religion and has been at Wesleyan since 2002. He earned his BA at the College of the Holy Cross, his MA at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and his PhD at the University of Chicago. Gottschalk has co-edited one volume, co-authored another with a Wesleyan student, and authored three monographs, including the recent Religion, Science, and Empire: Classifying Hinduism and Islam in British India. His work has also been published in The Los Angeles Times and the OnFaith website formerly of The…

Eiko Otake to Present Major Platform at Danspace in NYC, March 11

Wilkins, Alumni Author New Paper on Threat of Racial Progress to Whites

Varekamp Leads Invited Talk at Geophysical Union Meeting

Finn Suggests Recipes Invite the Cook to Experience and Perform, Rather than Simply Reading Them

Herbst, Greenwood Co-Author Article on Chondrules

Plous Named Fellow of American Association for the Advancement of Science

Wagoner’s Book Receives Association for Asian Studies Award

Wesleyan Media Project Co-Directors Author Book on Political Advertising

History Matters Series Focuses on American Political Primaries

Wesleyan Launches First-Ever Creative Writing Specialization on Coursera

Wesleyan Hires 8 New Tenure-Track Faculty

Gottschalk Named Director of Faculty Career Development