Olivia DrakeFor 25 years, Diane Kischell has cared for the children of dozens of Wesleyan employees and Middletown community members. This month, Kischell, director and head teacher at the Wesleyan-affiliated Neighborhood Preschool (NPS), is retiring. She started at NPS in 1983. "Diane's teaching, mentorship and commitment have guided the Neighborhood Preschool, fostering a school where children can be themselves and where they develop a firm foundation of self-esteem and communication skills that sustain them as they grow," says Suzanna Tamminen, director of Wesleyan University Press and mother of Hugh Barrett NPS '07, Fiona Barrett NPS '08 and Silas Barrett NPS '12.…
Willard B. Walker, professor of anthropology emeritus, died May 23 in Skowhegan, Maine. He was 82 years old. Walker was one of the mainstays of the Anthropology Department for more than two decades. He came to Wesleyan in 1966 as an assistant professor, where he and Dave McAllester established anthropology as a department. A specialist in Native American languages and cultures, Walker taught courses on the ethnography of the southwest, the southeast, and the northeast and he also single-handedly maintained a curricular focus on linguistic anthropology. His research interests ranged from Zuni phonology and semantics to the cryptographic use of…
Ellen "Puffin" D'Oench, curator emerita of the Davison Art Center, adjunct professor of art history emerita, and former trustee of Wesleyan University died May 22 in Middletown. She was 78 years old and had been ill for some time. D'Oench interrupted her education at Vassar College to marry Russell "Derry" D'Oench and raise their family. She completed her undergraduate education at Wesleyan in 1973, graduating magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa in the same class as her son Peter. She received a Ph.D. from Yale University in 1979. D'Oench was Curator of the Davison Art Center from 1979 until…
Jonathan Cutler, associate professor of sociology, spoke to Bloomberg Law's Lee Pacchia '02 about the United Auto Workers and the union's circumstance relative to the bankruptcy filings of General Motors Corp. Cutler is an expert on labor organizations. The report is online.
David LowAlexander Laban Hinton ’85 and Kevin Lewis O’Neill have co-edited Genocide: Truth, Memory, and Representation (Duke University Press), a book of essays in which leading anthropologists consider questions about the relationship of genocide, truth, memory and representation in the Balkans, East Timor, Germany, Guatemala, Indonesia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sudan and other locales. These specialists draw on ethnographic research to provide analyses of communities in the wake of mass brutality. They examine how mass violence is described or remembered, and how those representations are altered by the attempts of others, from NGOs to governments, to assert “the truth” about outbreaks of violence.…
Gary Yohe, the Woodhouse/Sysco Professor of Economics, is the co-author of “Risk Aversion, Time Preference, and the Social Cost of Carbon," published in Environmental Research Letters 4: 024002, 2009 and available at IDEAS /RePEc http://ideas.repec.org/p/esr/wpaper/wp252.html as well as http://stacks.iop.org/1748-9326/4/024002. He's also the author of “Discounting for Climate Change," published in an Economics e-Journal special issue on Discounting the Long-Run Future and Sustainable Development, 2009; available at http://www.economics-ejournal.org/special-areas/special-issues.
In her ethnographic account, Desi Land: Teen Culture, Class, and Success in Silicon Valley (Duke University Press), Shalini Shankar ’94 focuses on South Asian American teenagers (“Desis”) during the Silicon Valley dot-com boom. The diverse students whose stories are told are Muslims, Hindus, Christians and Sikhs, from South Asia and other locations, including first- to fourth-generation immigrants whose parents’ careers vary from assembly-line workers to engineers and CEOs. Shankar analyzes how Desi teens’ conceptions and realizations of success are influenced by community values, cultural practices, language use, and material culture, and she provides a compassionate portrait of a vibrant culture…
Christiaan Hogendorn, associate professor of economics, is the co-author of "The Economic of Renewable Resource Credits," published as Chapter 9 in Analytical Methods for Energy Diversity and Security, Elsevier, Morgan Bazilian and Fabien Roques, eds., 2008.
J. Kehaulani Kauanui, associate professor of American studies, associate professor of anthropology, attended the first Native American and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA) conference on May 21-23 in Minneapolis, Minn. More than 600 scholars from 16 countries and dozens of tribal nations exchanged research ideas and gave each other professional support. Kauanui is a founding steering committee member and is currently acting council of NAISA. Since 1969, American Indian studies has developed across the United States and Canada. Currently there are almost 120 American Indian studies programs and departments in the North America, not counting the 32 tribal colleges; among those,…
The following faculty members retired from Wesleyan University in May 2009. Their names, positions at Wesleyan, and Ph.D/D.Phil institutions are below: ANTHONY ANIELLO INFANTE Professor of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry (1984–2009) Professor of Biology (1978–1984) Associate Professor of Biology (1972–1978) Assistant Professor of Biology (1967–1972) Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania PETER KILBY Professor of Economics (1976–2009) Associate Professor of Economics (1970–1976) Assistant Professor of Economics (1965–1970) D.Phil., Oxford University R. LINCOLN KEISER Professor of Anthropology (1990–2009) Associate Professor of Anthropology (1977–1990) Assistant Professor of Anthropology (1972–1977) Ph.D., University of Rochester ÁKOS ÖSTÖR Professor of Anthropology (1988–2009) Ph.D., University of Chicago JOHN…
Lisa Dierker, associate professor of psychology, and Jennifer Rose, research associate professor of psychology, received a grant worth $521,938 from the National Institute of Health/National Institute on Drug Abuse on May 14. The grant was issued under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Dierker and Rose are researching "Individual Differences in Smoking Exposure and Nicotine Dependence Sensitivity." The grant will be applied over two years.
Proceeds from the sale go to Amazing Grace (St. Vincent DePaul's food pantry), the CT River Watch Program's CT River Coastal Conservation District and Sustainability at Wesleyan.