Olivia DrakeFilm studies major Zachary Valenti '12 understands how cancer can devastate a family. The disease claimed two grandparents – his father's mother and mother's father – as well as a stepfather. As an adolescent, Valenti was already aware of the risks of male breast cancer. He suffered from gynocomastia, the abnormal development of breast tissue in men. For the past three months, Valenti has combined his life experiences and film studies skills for a project that raises breast cancer awareness in the local community. Valenti is creating a documentary featuring eight female breast cancer survivors for the Middlesex Hospital Comprehensive Breast…
David PesciKennedy Odede ’12 will be a featured panelist at the fourth annual meeting of former President Bill Clinton’s Clinton Global Initiative University (CGI U), which will be held at the University of California - San Diego on April 1-3. Odede is one of three participants on the panel; the other two are Clinton and actor Sean Penn. “This is very exciting and a tremendous honor for me, and for my foundation, Shining Hope for Communities,” Odede said. The CGI U is part of the former president’s Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) foundation. According to CGI’s website, CGI U “challenges students (more…)
Eric GershonEven when he’s in Connecticut, Associate Professor of Theater Yuriy Kordonskiy never really leaves Romania – his work is almost always on display there. During a fall sabbatical from Wesleyan, Kordonskiy returned to Bucharest to find that “Uncle Vanya” – the Anton Chekhov classic he directed there in 2001 – was not only in performance, but still had its original cast. “They didn’t replace a single actor,” he says, 10 years later. “And the shows are still sold-out.” Today, no fewer than five Kordonskiy productions are in rotating performance at the Bulandra, Bucharest’s top repertory theater, including his latest, “Bury Me…
Wesleyan is pleased to announce that during its most recent review, the Board awarded tenure to four faculty effective July 1, 2011. Ulrich Plass, associate professor of German studies, joined the Wesleyan faculty in 2004 as assistant professor. Plass is a specialist in German literature, literary criticism, and critical theory, with a particular focus on the works of the German philosopher Theodor Adorno. He conducted his undergraduate studies at the University of Hamburg, Germany; his M.A. is from the University of Michigan, (more…)
Assistant Professor of Art Elijah Huge and 11 of his students have designed four proposals for a bird-viewing observatory for a 700-acre nature preserve in Southbury, Conn., and plan to build one by the end of April. It is the third major design-build project for North Studio, the faculty-student design collaborative Huge established in 2006. The students are all members of his Architecture II class. Previous North Studio projects have included a bird-viewing platform for an Audubon Society sanctuary in Portland, Conn., and a Sukkah, or temporary Jewish ritual structure, at Wesleyan. Audubon wildlife sanctuary Bent of the River is…
Bill HolderNell Irvin Painter will deliver the 9th Annual Shasha Seminar for Human Concerns Keynote Address titled, "What the History of White People Can Tell Us about Race in America." "Americans are likely to think first and only of black people when the topic of race comes up," she says. "But in the past Americans considered as white have also been raced and ranked as belonging to better or worse white races. In and of itself this history is fascinating, but beyond its intellectual interest, it can also offer some ideas about the functions of racial categorization in science and in…
This issue, we ask “5 Questions” of Magda Teter, the Jeremy Zwelling Associate Professor of Jewish Studies, associate professor of history, associate professor of feminist, gender and sexuality studies, associate professor of medieval studies. Teter is the author of Sinners on Trial: Jews and Sacrilege after the Reformation, published by Harvard University Press in March 2011. Q: Professor Teter, you are a scholar of religious and cultural history. What are your research interests, and what courses do you teach at Wesleyan? A: In my writing I focus on Jewish-Christian relations, particularly in Poland, which was once the one of the…
Former Boston Red Sox hero Luis Tiant will visit Wesleyan on April 7 to attend a screening of “Lost Son of Havana,” a 2009 film about the charismatic pitcher and Cuban émigré’s first return to his homeland in 46 years. The screening and a subsequent discussion with Tiant and Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Jonathan Hock are part of the Center for the Americas’ 2011 Americas Forum, which will take place on campus April 7-8. The forum, “Sports Documentary Filmmakers in the Americas: The Politics of Access,” also will feature a screening of “The Two Escobars,” a documentary by Jeffrey and Michael…
Olin Library’s copy of the 1874 F.W. Beers County Atlas of Middlesex Connecticut has brittle pages and tattered maps. However, anyone investigating 19th-century local history finds the Beers atlas invaluable. “We’d love to make the book accessible to the Wesleyan community and outside researchers, but we can’t do so without damage to the book until its physical condition is stabilized,” explains Pat Tully, university librarian. “It needs to be preserved so that it is usable by current and future scholars.” To help old books find a home back on the shelves, The Friends of the Wesleyan Library created an “Adopt A…
Q: Maureen, you are an accounting specialist for the Molecular Biology and Biochemistry Department, and an administrative assistant for the Wesleyan Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Program in the Life Sciences. Is it challenging to wear two hats? A: Maybe it should be more of a challenge, but I’ve been doing it so long it’s become second nature. I akin it to speaking two languages, your brain just shifts automatically from one to the other. Michael Weir (director of the Hughes Program) in one door to talk summer applications and Mike McAlear (chair of the Molecular Biology and Biochemistry Department) walks in…
David LowSeveral Wesleyan graduates are involved in Armchair/Shotgun, a new literary magazine based in Brooklyn, N.Y. that publishes new fiction, poetry, visual art work and author profiles. The publication was co-founded by writers John Cusick ’07 and Evan Simko-Bednarski ’07 is run by an editorial and business staff that includes the co-founders and Laura McMillan ’05, Aaron Reuben ’07, Adam Read-Brown ’07 and W. Gavin Robb ’07. The staff celebrated the release of its second issue on March 18 at Greenlight Bookstore in Brooklyn. This issue features a profile by Kevin Dugan of novelist Jesse Ball, author of Samedi the Deafness…
Cynthia RockwellThe law firm of Miller Canfield has elected Megan Norris ’83 to serve a two-year term as a managing director, effective Jan. 1. She is part of a five-person management administration that works with the CEO to oversee the firm’s offices in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Poland and China. A principal in the Detroit, Mich. office, Norris is leader of the firm’s Labor and Employment Law Group. She counsels clients on employment matters that include discipline and discharge, discrimination, harassment, and tort claims. She is a nationally recognized expert on the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Family…