Lauren RubensteinThe Washington Post published a remembrance by President Michael Roth of Carl Schorske, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian who died this month at age 100. Schorske taught at Wesleyan for many years, and was a mentor to Roth. Roth writes: Carl was the great historian of anti-historical thinking. What does that mean? He charted how at times a wave of culture makers attempted to break free of any connection to the past. But Carl, with care and precision, wove their rejection of history into a narrative that made meaning out of context and change over time. In his masterwork, “Fin de Siècle Vienna:…
At a time when gun deaths are spiking and Congress has failed to enact significant legislation to tackle the problem, Associate Professor of History Jennifer Tucker writes an op-ed looking at how we got here. She contends that it is Hollywood’s version of history—not reality—that is behind the belief that guns have been a critical part of American culture over centuries. She writes: The 1953 movie “Shane” exemplifies the narrative of a “good man with a gun.” Responding to a woman’s wish that guns be banished, Shane replies: “A gun is just a tool, Marian. It’s as good or bad as…
President Michael Roth reviewed Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning by Timothy Snyder in The Washington Post. While many other historians have emphasized structural elements that made the Holocaust possible, Snyder focuses on Hitler's personal ideology "as essential for grasping the history of Nazi efforts to eliminate Jews from the planet." Roth writes: In “Black Earth,” we are reminded that for Hitler, Jews were the explanation for everything that went wrong. The health of the human race was dependent, he shrieked, on protecting it from Jewish pollution. There was talk among Nazis and others of isolating the malignancy — maybe shipping Jews…
Assistant 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…
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…
Writing for Inside Sources, President Michael Roth made the case for a broad, contextual education, in a counterpoint to an essay by Eastern Kentucky University President Michael Benson, arguing for education that provides "a transferable set of skills." Roth writes that the types of contentious debates currently raging over the value of a college education are as old as America itself, something he explores in-depth in his book, Beyond the University: Why Liberal Education Matters. He writes: Several of the Founding Fathers saw education as the road to independence and liberty. A broad commitment to inquiry was part of their dedication…
Ahead of the centennial celebration of Wesleyan's Van Vleck Observatory, The Hartford Courant explored a bit of observatory history, including some recent discoveries of rare artifacts. A team of Wesleyan professors and students, together with the Astronomical Society of Greater Hartford, is preparing for an exhibit this spring, "Under Connecticut Skies: Exploring 100 Years of Astronomy at Van Vleck Observatory in Middletown, Connecticut." "We've been looking into every nook and cranny to see what we have here," Associate Professor of History Paul Erickson told the Courant. One exciting find: a rare early mechanical model of the solar system, long believed to be lost, known as "Russell's Stupendous and…
Seventy years later, it is widely believed that President Harry S. Truman made a decision to authorize the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The truth, writes William Johnston in the Hartford Courant, is that he never did, at least not explicitly. Johnston, professor of history, professor of East Asian Studies, examines in an op-ed how history has been rewritten surrounding the bombings. In fact, Truman's first explicit decision about atomic bombs was to later order that their further use be stopped without his "express authority." But in summer 1946, Johnston explains, the need arose to write an alternative narrative, as the bomb's…
Writing for Africa is a Country, Professor of Anthropology Gina Athena Ulysse reflects on the story of Sandra Bland, an African-American woman who was arrested by a state trooper during a traffic stop in Waller County, Texas and was later found dead in her jail cell. Video footage from a dashboard camera found the trooper had threatened Bland with a Taser after she refused to put out her cigarette and the encounter escalated. Her death was found to be a suicide, though her family has doubts. Ulysse writes that she identified with Bland, and responded strongly to images and videos of the…
When Psyche Loui first heard Rachmaninov's Piano Concert No. 2 on the radio as a college student, she still remembers the chill that went down her spine, the fluttering in her stomach and the racing heart. Now an assistant professor of psychology and neuroscience and behavior at Wesleyan, Loui studies this phenomenon--which she refers to as "frissons" or "skin orgasms"--in her lab. She recently co-authored a paper with Luke Harrison '14 in Frontiers in Psychology reviewing the evidence and theories in this area, and spoke to the BBC about their findings. Loui, also an accomplished pianist and violinist, points out that the sensations…