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Wesleyan’s Transportation Services Department announces the addition of a new 14-passenger bus to the Wesleyan RIDE system fleet. The RIDE is a free shuttle service with 17 stops around campus. The department also provides a free off-campus grocery shuttle service to Price Chopper and Aldi on Sunday afternoons. “Adding this bus to the RIDE program will allow us to move more people, more efficiently, and more comfortably," said Joe Martocci, transportation services manager. The RIDE shuttles are available seven nights a week, and Martocci says volume picks up on the weekends. “We move over 500 students every weekend. The idea…

Miss You Like Hell is a new musical written by the Shapiro Distinguished Professor of Writing and Theater, Quiara Alegria Hudes. Focusing on what it means to be a family in an ever-changing American society, Hudes’ work follows the story of a “whip-smart, deeply imaginative teenager and her free spirited Latina mother, as they embark on a road trip.” Commissioned by Christopher Ashley, the artistic director at La Jolla Playhouse, in La Jolla, California, the production is a new piece that embraces the idea of changing identities. Ashley states in an a broadwayworld.com article, “this is exactly the right time…

Scott Higgins, chair and professor of film studies, delivered the keynote address during the 2016 SERCIA Conference, held Sept. 8-10 in Paris, France. The topic of his talk was “Benefits of Incoherence: Seriality in the Studio Era," largely based on book, Matinee Melodrama: Playing with Formula in the Sound Serial (Rutgers, 2016). SERCIA, an organization established in France in 1993, encourages teaching and research in English-speaking cinema. During the 22nd annual conference, Higgins joined film scholars from all over the world to explore links between the filmic form and seriality. "I argued that American sound-serials in the 1930s and 1940s, with incoherent…

With 2.25 million citizens behind bars, America incarcerates more people than any other country. The Wesleyan Center for Prison Education is proud to present the 15th Annual Shasha Seminar for Human Concerns: The Role of the University in the Era of Mass Incarceration. Join students, alumni, faculty, and leading experts from across the country on Oct. 14-15 to discuss this pressing issue and examine the university’s role in addressing it. Registration is open now. Speakers will lead panels on the following topics: Mass Incarceration and the University Curriculum, The Role of University-Produced Scholarship in Public Policy, College-in-Prison’s Effect on Incarcerated Students:…

The Center for the Arts hosted the Common Moment Sept. 2 on Andrus Field. As one of the culminating experiences of New Student Orientation, the Common Moment brought the Class of 2020 together as they experienced cultures and dance from around the world. Prometheus, Wesleyan's fire-spinning group, also performed during the Common Moment. Photos of the event are below and in this Wesleyan Center for the Arts photo gallery. (Photos by Sandy Aldieri of Perceptions Photography) (more…)

WESU 88.1 FM recently kicked off its 2016-2017 season with a new and improved fall program. With a mixture of both new and old radio shows, the fall programming boasts a diverse blend of news and public affairs from NPR, Pacifica, and other independent and local media sources. Changes to their fall programming include, the addition of a much anticipated daily public affairs program from Pacifica called “Rising up with Sonali,” which brings progressive news coverage, rooted in gender and racial justice, to a wide audience. They also will pay tribute to Jim Mascia, a cherished, late co-host of “Best of Living Naturally,”…

Seth Lerer ’76, literary critic and Distinguished Professor of Literature at the University of California at San Diego, spoke to Slate.com on the complex history of children’s literature. “The earliest kids books…were largely designed to teach moral behavior,” he said. "They were about social decorum and a particular way of being a child, especially in relation to parents and teachers. Some children’s books—many of the early medieval romances, for instance—had an adventure quality to them, but always a moral and spiritual quality too.” He also observed the increasing focus on young women in today’s literature. “When you look at the…

On Sept. 10, Wesleyan's football team welcomed its newest member to the program, 10-year old Michael from Team IMPACT. Michael, from Cromwell, Conn., was born with an immune dysfunction and is blind in one eye. He also suffers from cardiac issues, developmental delays and cognitive impairments. Michael started speaking at 4 1/2 years old and took his first step at 2 1/2. He now walks independently and has scoliosis in his spine. Because of his immune deficiency, he is very susceptible to getting sick. Partnering with Team IMPACT, whose focus is to improve the quality of life for children facing life-threatening…

Film studies major Adam McGill ’16 screened his short film Punked! at the Princeton Student Film Festival this summer. McGill’s comedy is about a punk rock singer and guitarist named Dale, whose allegiance to his music is challenged when a new romance enters his life. McGill filmed the short in the fall of 2015 as a senior thesis project at Wesleyan. During his time at Wesleyan, McGill was taught by Jeanine Basinger, the Corwin-Fuller Professor of Film Studies, who said, “I’m happy to see his work recognized outside the classroom. He joins a long line of Wesleyan film majors who have…

Chris Weaver MALS ’75, CAS ’76, visiting professor in the College of Integrative Sciences at Wesleyan, was appointed co-director of the Video Game Pioneers Archive at the Smithsonian Institute’s Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation. This one-of-a-kind initiative will record oral-history interviews with first-generation inventors of the video game industry, creating a multimedia archive that will preserve the evolution of the industry in the words of its founders. The archive will offer scholars and the public the opportunity to better understand the personalities, technologies, and social forces that have driven interactive media to become one of the…

A Connecticut dance event offered Associate Professor of Dance Katja Kolcio an additional way to explore her ongoing dance/movement project highlighting the effect of political forces at work in Ukraine. Last summer, Kolcio invited colleague and Associate Professor of Dance Nicole Stanton to join with two other dancers, both with ties to Ukraine, to create a dance. This event, Dance for Peace, was sponsored by Artists for World Peace, an organization founded and led by Wendy Black-Nasta P’07, with music director Robert Nasta MA ’98, P’07. Kolcio, who holds a doctorate in somatics, places the dance they created, “Steppe Land,”…

Michael Weir, professor of biology, professor of integrative sciences, received a grant worth $491,599 from the National Institutes of Health in September. Weir will use the award to better understand how ribosomes — the machines that make proteins — choose sequences in mRNAs (messenger ribonucleic acids) to start protein translation. "This is an ongoing challenge in biology and is of great importance for investigations of cell function," Weir said. Weir is testing the hypothesis that sequences downstream of the translation start codon of mRNAs can form transient base pairs with a conserved sequence in 18S ribosomal RNA (called the 530…

Transportation Services’ New 14-Passenger Bus Moves Students More Efficiently

Hudes’ New Musical Focuses on Family in an Ever-Changing American Society

Higgins Delivers Keynote at International Film Conference

“The Role of the University in the Era of Mass Incarceration” Topic of 15th Annual Shasha Seminar Oct. 14-15

Class of 2020 Experiences Different Cultures, Dance Styles at Common Moment

Public Affairs, Progressive News Coverage New to WESU 88.1 FM’s Fall Programming

Lerer ’76 Interviewed By Slate Magazine on the Evolution of Children’s Literature

Wesleyan Football Drafts 10-Year-Old Michael from Team IMPACT

McGill ’16 Screens Short Film at Princeton Film Festival

Weaver MALS ’75, CAS ’76 to Co-Direct Smithsonian’s Video Game Pioneers Archive

Kolcio, Stanton Create, Perform “Steppe Lands” as Freedom Dance Ukraine

NIH to Support Weir’s Research on Ribosome Protein Translation