Faculty – Page 54

On Dec. 5, Wesleyan students, faculty and the local community gathered for a two-hour discussion on "Indigenous Middletown: Settler Colonial and Wangunk Tribal History." The event was sponsored by the American Studies Department, the Center for the Americas, and the Allbritton Center for the Study of Public Life. J. Kehaulani Kauanui, associate professor of anthropology, associate professor of American studies, coordinated the event, which stemmed from her Service Learning course, Decolonizing Indigenous Middletown: Native Histories of the Wangunk Indian People. The class is in partnership with the Middlesex County Historical Society. (more…)

A collaborative project by Assistant Professor of Music Roger Matthew Grant was listed in New York Times' co-chief art critic Holland Cotter's Top 10 list of Best in Art. Grant served as the dramaturg and also performed in the installation of "The Magic Flute," a revamped version of Mozart's original at New York University's Steinhardt School of Culture, staged by 80WSE Gallery and the Cheap Kollectiv of Berlin. "This was theater for mind and senses," writes Cotter, describing it as "packed with magic." Part one of "The Magic Flute," an opera in six steps, was in open rehearsals Dec. 1–5. Part two, a film…

William "Bill" Firshein, the Daniel Ayres Professor of Biology, emeritus, died Dec. 7 at the age of 85. Firshein arrived at Wesleyan in 1958 after receiving his BS from Brooklyn College and his MS and PhD from Rutgers University. He taught at Wesleyan for 47 years before retiring in 2005. Firshein was an active scholar who was awarded research grants totaling more than $2 million over his career. He investigated the molecular biology of DNA replication cell division in Bacillus subtilis and Escherichia coli and their plasmids. In his most recent book, The Infectious Microbe, published by Oxford University Press…

Professor of Anthropology Gina Athena Ulysse is the author of two new essays on The Huffington Post. In "Pedagogies of Belonging," she writes about her experience working with students of color as they face the realities of structural racism, and she challenges institutions to go beyond rhetoric, to face up to the difficult challenges of moving onto a path of greater belonging. The essay begins: There is a conversation Black faculty often have with Black students that we rarely mention in public, let alone in mixed company. The tone of this exchange differs to some extent if the student are U.S.…

During Wesleyan Thinks Big, six faculty delivered 10-minute inspirational lectures on topics they are personally passionate about. The student-run event took place Dec. 10 in Memorial Chapel.

In an essay published on The Washington Post's "Answer Sheet" blog, President Michael Roth responds to those in the media who see political correctness "run amok" on college campuses. "I work with students everyday, and I have had protesters at my office, and I don’t see their realities reflected in public discourse," he writes. Roth sees political correctness as a "charismatic bogeyman with strange powers to titillate liberal and conservative writers alike." (more…)

More than 60 Graduate Liberal Studies students, their guests, and community members attended a free open class meeting of "Monk and Mingus: The Cutting Edge of Jazz," at Russell House on Nov. 30. Presented by Graduate Liberal Studies and Jazz Ensemble Coach Noah Baerman, the event included a discussion followed by a performance by Baerman of pieces composed by and associated with jazz greats Thelonious Monk and Charles Mingus. Baerman was accompanied by bassist Henry Lugo and Visiting Assistant Professor of Music and Private Lessons Teacher Pheeroan akLaff on percussion. (Photos by Will Barr '18) (more…)

Four Wesleyan undergraduates and a faculty member received awards in the latest call for proposals from NASA's Connecticut Space Grant Consortium. Astronomy major Rachel Aronow '17 was awarded an Undergraduate Research Fellowship in the amount of $5,000 for her project, "Planet Formation and Stellar Characteristics in Tatooine-like Systems." She is working with Bill Herbst, the John Monroe Van Vleck Professor of Astronomy, studying Tatooine-like systems (named after the fabled home system of Luke Skywalker), which are planet-forming disks that surround a close pair of stars that are in orbit around each other. Aronow conducted research with Herbst last summer, and these funds will support further…

Andrew Curran, professor of French, William Armstrong Professor of the Humanities, wrote a moving piece in The New York Times about the life-changing experience of his father's sudden death. Among other things, Curran describes the experience of seeing his father's body for the last time and saying goodbye. He also recounts the trip to his parents' house in North Carolina as a "chronology-less blur of grief and purifying laughter." He writes: I still dream quite often about my father. He generally makes an appearance toward 2 or 3 in the morning, sometimes waving to me from his car (he loved taking extraordinarily long car trips)…

Suzanne O'Connell, professor of earth and environmental sciences, faculty director of the McNair program, is the author of a new op-ed appearing on Inside Sources and The Hartford Courant, in which she urges aggressive action to counteract climate change. O'Connell acknowledges the difficulty in communicating the urgency of climate change, and writes that one way she's found to express this to her students is to liken climate change to cancer. That is, it is the rapid rate at which we are introducing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere—much like the accelerated rate of cell growth in cancer—that is so harmful. She writes: Cancer progresses at different rates in different…

Gary Yohe, the Huffington Foundation Professor of Economics and Environmental Studies, was a guest on WNPR's "Where We Live" to discuss drought and climate change, particularly in light of the climate talks going on in Paris. "Droughts have occurred on every continent. They have occurred certainly in North America—Texas has suffered a severe drought, California has suffered a severe drought," said Yohe. "I'm not sure New England has suffered a severe drought but we are certainly below average in terms of rainfall. One of the things that people in Paris are worried about though, is that not only are drought conditions a source…

Wesleyan Earth and Environmental Sciences students and faculty attended and contributed to this year’s Geological Society of America (GSA) Annual Meeting, held Nov. 1–4 in Baltimore, Md. (more…)

Local Community Joins Discussion on Indigenous Middletown

Grant’s Project Among NYT’s 10 ‘Best in Art’

Firshein Remembered for being a Founding Member of the Molecular Biology and Biochemistry Department

Ulysse Writes About ‘Pedagogies of Belonging,’ Public Anthropology

6 Faculty Deliver Short Lectures at Wesleyan Thinks Big

President Roth: Has political correctness really ‘run amok’ on college campuses?

GLS Holds ‘Monk and Mingus’ Open Class

Several Wesleyan Projects Awarded NASA’s CT Space Grants

Curran on Making Sense of His Father’s Death With Baudelaire

O’Connell Writes ‘Time to Stop Climate Cancer’ in Op-Ed

Yohe Discusses Drought and Climate Change on WNPR

E&ES Faculty, Students Contribute to GSA Annual Meeting