David LowStoryteller and cultural anthropologist Ruth Behar ’77 is the author of Traveling Heavy: A Memoir Between Journeys (Duke University Press), in which she recounts her life as an immigrant child and later, as an adult woman who loves to travel but is terrified of boarding a plane. Behar shares moving stories about her Yiddish-Sephardic-Cuban-American family, as well as the kind strangers she meets on her travels. The author refers to herself an anthropologist who specializes in homesickness and repeatedly returning to her homeland of Cuba. She asks the question why we leave home to find home. Kirkus Reviews writes: “A…
Virginia Pye ’82 has published her first novel, River of Dust (Unbridled Books), which begins on the windswept plains of northwestern China not long after the Boxer Rebellion. Mongol bandits kidnap the young son of an American missionary couple. As the Reverend sets out in search of the child, he quickly loses himself in the rugged, drought-stricken countryside populated by opium dens, nomadic warlords, and traveling circuses. Grace, his young wife, pregnant with their second child, takes to her sick bed in the mission compound, and has visions of her stolen child and lost husband. The foreign couple’s dedicated Chinese…
Cynthia RockwellKatherine Krug ’04, COO and co-founder of tech startup Everest, was recently featured by Forbes contributor Leslie Bradshaw as part of a running series on the rise of female chief operating officers. A psychology major as an undergraduate, Krug left the corporate world to become a tech entrepreneur, first founding a startup dedicated to changing the way nonprofits raise funds, before moving on to co-found Everest. Krug looks back on her decision to dive into entrepreneurship as one of the most personally fulfilling she’s ever made. “I now leave work everyday with more energy than when I arrived,” says Krug.…
Olivia DrakeHistory major Sophia Hussain '13 received a $500 grant from the Grants Award Committee of the Roosevelt Institute. According to David Woolner, Senior Fellow and Hyde Park Resident Historian of the Roosevelt Institute, "the Roosevelt Institute does not normally grant awards to undergraduate students, but given the quality of Sophia's proposal, which was excellent, we decided to make an exception in [her] case." The award is meant to assist Hussain's research at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum.
Lauren RubensteinThe Liberty Bank Foundation has awarded a grant of $30,000 over three years to support the Kindergarten Kickstart program, a summer pre-K program that is a collaborative partnership between Assistant Professor of Psychology Anna Shusterman's lab, MacDonough Elementary School, North End Action Team (NEAT), and the Connecticut State Department of Education's Family Resource Center. The program was piloted for the first time last summer at MacDonough. The grant will provide about 50 percent of the program's operating cost for each of the next three years, and allow the program to expand to two locations. Each site will be staffed by three…
Bill Fisher"At Wesleyan, I have the opportunity to teach and try my ideas out on the best undergraduates I've ever met." In this video, Professor Richard Adelstein talks about the defining characteristics of the students he's encountered in his nearly 40 years at Wesleyan. [youtube width="640" height="420"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GveyyQNwNF8[/youtube] #THISISWHY
This story of love in an Orthodox Jewish community follows a conventional marriage plot, says Basinger
Wesleyan is featured for its efforts to make Commencement more environmentally friendly
Charles Barber diagnoses the current American generation, explores consequences of medicalizing trauma
President Roth: MOOCs offer "a powerful mode of learning that is already enriching millions of lives"
President Roth reflects on teaching "The Modern and the Postmodern" as a massive open online course
Shakti, the South Asian Student Association, hosted the second annual Holi (Festival of Colors) April 27 on Foss Hill. Students freckled each other in colored powder at the event to celebrate spring. (Photos by Olivia Drake. Video by Bill Fisher) (more…)