Lauren RubensteinAssistant Professor of Economics Damien Sheehan-Connor is the author of an oped in the Orlando Sentinel (available to subscribers) arguing that raising the gas tax would not only help the environment, but would save lives on the road. Sheehan-Connor considers the findings of a new study out by the National Safety Council, which suggested that automobile accidents are on the rise again after years of decline. While many factors could potentially contribute to this reversal, he writes that it's likely that two seemingly positive developments--lower gas prices and stricter fuel economy standards imposed by the government--have played an important role. How? Lower…
David LowSalvatore Scibona, the Frank B. Weeks Visiting Assistant Professor of English, is the author of a new short story published in the September 2015 issue of Harper's Magazine. Titled, "Tremendous Machine," the story follows Fjóla Neergaard, a failed fashion model, lacking direction, and living in seclusion at her wealthy parents' vacant Polish country house. She sets out to purchase a sofa for the house, which contains almost no other furniture, and finds herself in an odd store full of pianos. She purchases a piano and signs up for lessons with an elderly, once famous pianist. Scibona shared some thoughts about the inspiration of his new story from…
Brian KattenIn this Q&A we speak to Ben Somera Jr., adjunct associate professor of physical education, head coach of volleyball. Somera joined the faculty at Wesleyan this summer. Q: Ben, welcome to Wesleyan! You had a very successful three-year stay at New England rival Roger Williams, building the Hawks into a regional and national power in women's volleyball. What tempted you to make the move to Wesleyan? A: I have coached collegiate volleyball for almost 20 years and have had the opportunity to experience four university cultures and how they operate. It was important to me that Mike Whalen, our athletics director, wants to win…
Olivia DrakeGina Athena Ulysse, professor of anthropology, is the author of Why Haiti Needs New Narratives: A Post-Quake Chronicle, published by Wesleyan University Press in 2015. In this book, Ulysse, a Haitian-American anthropologist and performance artist, makes sense of her homeland in the wake of the 2010 earthquake. Mainstream news coverage of the catastrophic earthquake of Jan. 12, 2010, reproduced longstanding narratives of Haiti and stereotypes of Haitians. Cognizant that this Haiti, as it exists in the public sphere, is a rhetorically and graphically incarcerated one, Ulysse embarked on a writing spree that lasted more than two years. As an ethnographer and a…
An international research team headed by Professor of Art History Peter Mark has been awarded a grant for a project titled “African Ivories in the Atlantic World.” The $115,000 three-year grant from the Portuguese Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) will make it possible for the research team to carry out the first laboratory analyses of selected ivories, in order to determine more precisely the age and the provenance of these little-known artworks. In addition, team members will compile the first comprehensive catalogue of “Luso-African ivories” in Portuguese collections, as well as the first thorough study of those carvings that were exported…
The College of East Asian Studies (CEAS) received two major, multi-year grant awards to hire new faculty and improve library resources. The Korea Foundation has awarded the CEAS a $314,330 five-year grant to support the hiring of a tenure-track faculty member in Korean political economy. The mission of The Korea Foundation is to promote better understanding of Korea within the international community and to increase friendship and goodwill between Korea and the rest of the world through various exchange programs. Located in Seoul, the foundation was established in 1991 with the aim to enhance the image of Korea in the…
A paper authored by Assistant Professor of Psychology Clara Wilkins, her former post-doc Joseph Wellman, and Katherine Schad '13, MA '14, was published in August in the journal Group Processes & Intergroup Relations. Titled "Reactions to anti-male sexism claims: The moderating roles of status-legitimizing belief and endorsement and group identification," the paper examines how people react to men who claim to be victims of gender bias, an increasingly common phenomenon. In particular, the researchers considered how status legitimizing beliefs (SLBs), which encompass a set of ideologies that justify existing status hierarchies, and gender identification (GID) moderated men's and women's reactions to a man who claimed…
Ellen Thomas, the University Professor in the College of Integrative Sciences, received a grant in August from the National Science Foundation to support her research on “Evaluating Deep-Sea Ventilation and the Global Carbon Cycle during early Paleocene Hyperthemals.” The $105,000 award is part of a combined $619,000 grant shared with Yale University and the University of Texas at Arlington. Rapid, short-term global warming events in the Early Paleogene (~65-45 million years ago) were caused by massive greenhouse gas release into the ocean-atmosphere system. These warming events, called hyperthermals, had far-reaching effects on the evolution of life on Earth, ecosystems and…
This fall, Wesleyan welcomes 15 new faculty to the university. They are: Francesco Aresu, assistant professor of Italian; Joseph Coolon, assistant professor of biology; Daniel DiCenzo, adjunct associate professor of physical education and head coach of football; Candice Etson, assistant professor of physics; Anthony Hatch, assistant professor of Science in Society; Han Li, assistant professor of mathematics; Jeffrey Naecker, assistant professor of economics; Paula Park, assistant professor of Spanish; Michelle Personick, assistant professor of chemistry; Felipe Ramírez, assistant professor of mathematics; Ben Somera Jr., adjunct associate professor of physical education, head coach of volleyball; Ying Jia Tan, assistant professor of…
Associate Professor of French Catherine Poisson recently participated in a radio series on the French writer and intellectual Simone de Beauvoir. The series aired the week of August 17-21 on the France Culture network; it can be heard online here. Taped in Paris, New York and Chicago, the Grande Traversée (the "great crossover") show sought to reveal another Simone de Beauvoir, considering every stage of her life--from the dutiful daughter to the independent and engaged woman to, finally, breaking the taboo of old age. It showed her as passionate and multi-voiced---intimate and political, unleashed in her youth diaries and love letters, audacious in her…
Professor of Theater Ron Jenkins writes in The Jakarta Post about Wayan Nardayana, a popular and provocative puppet master in Bali who "combines the political insight of a social activist with the spiritual wisdom of a priest and the comic instincts of a master entertainer." Jenkins describes the artist's recent performance at a celebration of the birthday of Indonesia's first president, Sukarno. "The dalang’s ability to make connections between sacred texts, Indonesian history and contemporary reality is at the core of his art," Jenkins writes. Nardayana tells the audience, "Indonesians today can also harness the power of their ancestors to inspire them to…
John Seamon, professor of psychology, emeritus, is the author of a new book, Memory and the Movies, published August 14 by The MIT Press. The book is an outgrowth of a Psychology course, "Memory in the Movies," which Seamon taught at Wesleyan for five years before his retirement in 2013. He is currently preparing a MOOC version of it to run on Coursera next winter. The book examines what films such as Slumdog Millionaire, Memento, and Away From Her can teach us about how human memory works. Seamon explains that memory is actually a diverse collection of independent systems, and uses examples from movies to to…