Lauren RubensteinIn this Q&A, meet Kerwin Kaye, assistant professor of sociology. Q: Welcome to Wesleyan, Professor Kaye! Please catch us up on your life up to the present. A: I grew up in Denver, Colo., and yes, I did learn to ski. My academic interests have transformed significantly, given that I began my university education with the idea of double-majoring in physics and philosophy. I wound up at CU-Boulder working on a crisis hotline and obtaining a BA in psychology. After that I moved to San Francisco, pursuing an MA in anthropology at San Francisco State University, where I conducted ethnographic research…
Olivia DrakeWesleyan faculty Victoria Smolkin-Rothrock and Susanne Fusso are the co-authors of “The Confession of an Atheist Who Became a Scholar of Religion," published in Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, Volume 15, Number 3, Summer 2014. The paper is based on an interview Smolkin-Rothrock completed on Russian atheist Nikolai Semenovich Gordienko. Smolkin-Rothrock is assistant professor of history; assistant professor of Russian, Eastern European and Eurasian Studies; Faculty Fellow Center for the Humanities; and tutor in the College of Social Studies. Fusso is professor of Russian, East European, and Eurasian studies. Among the most prominent professors of “scientific atheism” in the Soviet Union, Gordienko also was the author…
Fowler says negative ads tend to move polls
Gruen writes that euthanizing animals exposed to Ebola is a dangerous road to go down
Laura Ann Twagira, assistant professor of history, is the author of an article titled, "‘Robot Farmers’ and Cosmopolitan Workers: Technological Masculinity and Agricultural Development in the French Soudan (Mali), 1945–68," published in the November issue of Gender & History, Volume 26, Issue 3, pages 459-477. In 1956, Administrator Ancian, a French government official, suggested in a confidential report that one of the most ambitious agricultural schemes in French West Africa, the Office du Niger, had been misguided in its planning to produce only a ‘robot farmer’. The robot metaphor was drawn from the intense association between the project and technology. However, it was…
On Oct. 24, the Dance Department and Center for the Arts present "To Not Forget Crimea: Uncertain Quiet of Indigenous Crimean Tatars," a panel discussion and the Fall Faculty Dance Concert by Associate Professor of Dance Katja Kolcio. While international media and political leaders are ignoring the situation in Crimea, this event draws public attention to the widespread violation of the Tatars' human rights and the degree to which the Russian Occupation has forced them out of their ancestral homeland. The evening will begin with a free panel discussion, "Indigenous Ukrainian Perspectives of Crimea Post Russian-Invasion," from 6 to…
Gina Athena Ulysse, associate professor of anthropology, participated in "Imagining and Imaging the Caribbean,” the inaugural conference of Columbia’s Greater Caribbean Studies Center, on Oct. 18. Ulysse discussed "Writing in the Caribbean Diaspora" with fellow panelists Cuban writer and artist Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo (Brown University) and Kittian-Brittish novelist Caryl Phillips (Yale University). Other topics included "The Greater Caribbean as a Geo-Historical and Cultural Region," "Writing about the Caribbean from National Perspectives" and "Photographing the City in the Greater Caribbean." The event concluded with a Caribbean concert.
Vera Schwarcz, the Mansfield Freeman Professor of East Asian Studies, professor of history, is the author of a new book titled Colors of Veracity: A Quest for Truth in China, and Beyond, published by the University of Hawai'i Press in November 2014. In Colors of Veracity, Schwarcz condenses four decades of teaching and scholarship about China to raise fundamental questions about the nature of truth and history. In vivid prose, she addresses contemporary moral dilemmas with a highly personal sense of ethics and aesthetics. Drawing on classical sources in Hebrew and Chinese (as well as several Greek and Japanese texts), Schwarcz…
"The Haitian Vodou religion is not Krugman's voodoo," writes Ulysse
BBC News features the real world impacts of Plous' popular Social Psychology MOOC
Professor of Economics Richard Grossman, author of Wrong: Nine Economic Policy Disasters and What We Can Learn to Them, was interviewed on Concord News Radio about policy decisions made in the aftermath of the financial crisis. "The actions that were taken in the wake of the financial crisis, I view as having been completely necessary. If you go back and look at the Great Depression,when the government didn't do enough and the central bank for sure didn't do enough, then you get a sense of how bad things can be," said Grossman. "When you're just a few inches away from financial Armageddon, even if the policy isn't…
Visiting Writer Charles Barber, director of The Connection Institute for Innovative Practice, will be the principal investigator, along with David Sells of Yale University, on a study peer mentoring of prisoners, thanks to a $295,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Justice. The study is a two-year randomized trial involving 110 ex-offenders in New Haven, Bridgeport and other Connecticut cities — 55 will receive mentors, and 55 will not. "We will recruit clients from prisons, where mentors— who are former prisoners themselves, with at least five years of stability behind them — will meet with them two to three times, pre-release. Mentors will then…