Lauren RubensteinElvin Lim comments on the New York governor's fondness for declaring legislation "historic"
Wesleyan President Michael S. Roth reviews a new memoir by renowned filmmaker Claude Lanzmann
Hari Krishnan, artist-in-residence in dance, received widespread media attention for his dance company's performance season in Canada. Positive reviews and articles appeared in the Toronto Standard, Toronto.com, Xtra!, To Live With Culture, Mooney on Theatre, and Fab Magazine. In other exciting news, Krishnan's dance company, inDANCE, was invited to present "Quicksand" and a new solo (commissioned for Jacob's Pillow) at the Canada Dance Festival, the country's most prestigious contemporary dance festival, on June 11.
Olivia DrakeA new book by Lisa Cohen, assistant professor of English, was given an enthusiastic early review in The New Yorker’s book blog on March 12. Her book, All We Know, will be published in July 2012. "Cohen’s remarkable, sui generis study about three modernist figures—Esther Murphy, Mercedes de Acosta, and Madge Garland, for many years a fashion editor at British Vogue—is, in part, about dread, which is to say failure and fear of self-exposure, and how we accommodate our lives to suit the various shadows splashed by the sun of occasional triumph... By servicing Murphy and, in the book’s shattering final section about Madge Garland,…
Basing teacher evaluations on student performance can undermine teachers' good work, writes Stemler
Consumer spending picks up, but firms are still holding back, says Assistant Professor Bill Craighead
David PesciMTV's game "Fantasy Election '12" is designed to inform, energize younger voters
Resident Writer Kit Reed has been nominated for a Shirley Jackson Award. Her book, What Wolves Know, published in spring 2011 by PS Publishing, was nominated in the category of Single Author Collection. What Wolves Know is a dystopian thriller; a collection of stories, including tales of mothers who are monstrous in their maternalness, families on the brink of implosion, and children mutated by parental pressure. The title story is about a boy raised by wolves who struggles to adapt to the modern world. Reed has published 22 novels and more than 100 short stories. More information about her work is available on…
Professor of Theater Ron Jenkins worked with inmates to share and create works of drama
Midday on Friday, April 13, Class of 2016 admitted students and their families spread out across a sunny Foss Hill at WesFest, enjoying a barbecue lunch buffet as upbeat music plays in the background. Some, having arrived only hours earlier, are still soaking in the sights and sounds of Wesleyan. Others already have a good feel for the school, having stayed overnight in the dorms with a student host, and sat in on a class or two. Kai Leshne and his mother have come from San Francisco, Calif., drawn by the excellent academics, and strong soccer and music programs. Kai…
Magda Teter, Chair of Medieval Studies, Jeremy Zwelling Professor of Jewish Studies, professor of history, professor of feminist, gender and sexuality studies, and Elizabeth Willis, the Shapiro-Silverberg Professor of Creative Writing, professor of English, have been awarded 2012 fellowships by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. According to the Guggenheim Foundation, the prestigious academic honor is presented to scholars “who have already demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts.” This year, the 87th annual competition recognized 180 scholars, artists and scientists from across the U.S. and Canada. They were selected from a pool of…
“When one surfaces on the national stage, most people tend to view the event as a sort of political phenomenon,” Leah Wright says. “They look at it with nearly the same disbelief and surprise as they would do with a unicorn sighting.” The phenomenon Wright is referring to? Why black Republicans, of course. “When we see a Herman Cain, Colin Powell, Condolezza Rice or Allen West appear on the national scene, the news media and many people tend to view these individuals as extreme outliers. In reality they are much more common than we are led to believe,” says Wright,…