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In this recurring feature in The Wesleyan Connection, we highlight some of the latest news stories about Wesleyan and our alumni. Wesleyan in the News 1. The Washington Post: "How One College Is Helping Students Get Engaged in Elections—and, No, It’s Not Political" President Michael Roth writes about Wesleyan's initiative to engage students meaningfully in work in the public sphere ahead of the 2020 elections, and calls on other colleges and universities to do the same. He writes: "Now is the time for higher education leaders to commit their institutions to find their own paths for promoting student involvement in the…

On Jan. 12, several creatives gathered in Mumbai, India, to share valuable insights on liberal arts and the impact of Indian cinema on global entertainment. The event, Liberal Arts + Film and Storytelling: A Wesleyan University Forum, brought together Wesleyan faculty, distinguished alumni, aspiring students and their parents, and the wider Wesleyan community across the globe. Speakers included Wesleyan President Michael Roth '78; Scott Higgins, Charles W. Fries Professor of Film Studies and director of Wesleyan’s College of Film and the Moving Image; and acclaimed global film- and entertainment-industry personalities Matthew Weiner '87, P '18, and Navdeep Singh. Weiner is…

From Wisconsin to Massachusetts, Assistant Professor of Theater Katie Pearl has visited five small American towns named Milton and developed a series of performances, each focused on (and performed in) a particular Milton. Since 2012, Pearl and Lisa D'Amour—known collectively as PearlDamour—have led the performance and community engagement experiment. In November 2019, PearlDamour released MILTON, a book that includes the full text of PearlDamour's North Carolina performance, along with photos and excerpts from performances in Oregon and Massachusetts, and essay reflections on the process and practice of community-based art-making. For more than 20 years, Obie-Award winning PearlDamour has pushed the boundaries…

Three Wesleyan faculty recently received Academic Research Enhancement Awards (R15) from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). R15 grants stimulate research at educational institutions that provide baccalaureate training for a significant number of the nation's research scientists, but that have not been major recipients of NIH support. Awards provide funding for small-scale, new, or ongoing health-related meritorious research projects, enhancing the research environment at eligible institutions and exposing students to research opportunities. Amy MacQueen, associate professor of molecular biology and biochemistry, received a $492,900 award on Aug. 7 for her research titled "How do Synaptonemal Complex Proteins Mediate the Coordinated?" MacQueen…

Takeshi Watanabe, assistant professor of East Asian studies, is the author of Flowering Tales: Women Exorcising History in Heian Japan, published by Harvard University Press in January 2020. The book is the first extensive literary study of A Tale of Flowering Fortunes (Eiga monogatari), a historical tale that covers about 150 years of births, deaths, and happenings in late Heian society, a golden age of court literature in women’s hands. According to the publisher: Takeshi Watanabe contends that the blossoming of tales, marked by The Tale of Genji, inspired Eiga’s new affective history: an exorcism of embittered spirits whose stories needed to be…

Martha "Marty" Gilmore, George I. Seney Professor of Geology, professor of earth and environmental sciences, is the author of a research article titled "Present-day volcanism on Venus as evidenced from weathering rates of olivine," published in Science Advances Vol. 6 on Jan. 3, 2020. According to the paper's abstract: At least some of Venus’ lava flows are thought to be <2.5 million years old based on visible to near-infrared (VNIR) emissivity measured by the Venus Express spacecraft. However, the exact ages of these flows are poorly constrained because the rate at which olivine alters at Venus surface conditions, and how that…

Art enthusiasts can now enjoy Wesleyan's Davison Art Center (DAC) collections on their own living room walls. The DAC has partnered with Art Authority and 1000 Museums to offer the public high-quality reproductions of select holdings from the DAC collection. Currently, the DAC store includes works by Albrecht Dürer, Paul Gauguin, and all 80 prints in Francisco de Goya’s series, Los Caprichos. Each reproduction is made using a professionally photographed digital image and printed on archival fine art paper. A variety of sizes and framing options are available for each print. The DAC is working to make reproductions of additional…

Professor of History William "Vijay" Pinch, a scholar of South Asian History, recently consulted on Laal Kaptaan, a Hindi feature film directed by Navdeep Singh. The film was released in India in October 2019 and can be viewed on Amazon Prime in the US. Director Singh referred to one of Pinch's books, Warrior Ascetics and Indian Empires (Cambridge University Press, 2006), in imagining the period and the drama's lead character, a warrior ascetic in the late 18th century. Pinch was then contacted to read and comment on the script, and to answer questions during the filming. In November 2020, Pinch and…

Ellen Thomas, Harold T. Stearns Professor of Integrative Sciences, Smith Curator of Paleontology of the Joe Webb Peoples Museum of Natural History and University Professor in the College of Integrative Sciences, is the co-author of five new publications. They include: "On impact and volcanism across the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary," published in Science, Jan. 17, 2020. Also, see this research in The New York Times and National Geographic. "Stable isotope constraints on marine productivity across the Cretaceous-Paleogene mass extinction," published in Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology, Volume 34, June 2019. "Refining the planktonic foraminifera I/Ca proxy: results from the Southeast Atlantic Ocean," published in Geochimica…

Tsampikos Kottos, Lauren B. Dachs Professor of Science and Society and professor of physics, is the co-author of several new publications. They include: "Constant Intensity Conical Diffraction in Discrete One-Dimensional Lattices with Charge-Conjugation Symmetry," published in Optics Letters, Vol. 45, Issue 1, January 2020. "Enhanced Sensing and Nondegraded Thermal Noise Performance Based on PT-Symmetric Electronic Circuits with a Sixth-Order Exceptional Point," published in Physical Review Letters, Vol. 123, Issue 21, November 2019. "Adiabatic Thermal Radiation Pumps for Thermal Photonics," published in Physical Review Letters, Vol. 123, Issue 16, October 2019. Fred Ellis, professor of physics, co-authored this piece. "Effects of…

William B. Coley, Professor of English, Emeritus, passed away on Jan. 7, at the age of 96. Coley served in the US Army from 1942 through 1946, and then received his BA, MA, and PhD from Yale University. Arriving at Wesleyan in 1952, he taught English here for almost 40 years until he retired in 1991. Coley was a lifelong scholar, awarded fellowships by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, and the American Council of Learned Societies. He published numerous books and articles, including Hogarth on High Life (with A.S. Wensinger, Wesleyan University Press, 1970),…

An audiobook featuring Gayle Pemberton's memoir/essays, The Hottest Water in Chicago: Notes of a Native Daughter and other essays has been released on iTunes and Audible. Pemberton is professor of English and African American studies, emerita. The Hottest Water in Chicago was published in 1998 by Wesleyan University Press. In the book, Pemberton interweaves her own history with reflections on American literature, art, music, and film through 16 autobiographical essays.

Wesleyan in the News

Alumni Gather at Liberal Arts + Film and Storytelling Forum in Mumbai

Pearl Creates MILTON, a Performance, Community Engagement Experience

MacQueen, Coolon, Mukerji Receive NIH Academic Research Enhancement Awards

Watanabe Explores Japanese Historical Tale in New Book

Gilmore’s Paper on Venus’s Volcanoes Published in Science Advances

Davison Art Center Offers Museum-Quality Art Reproductions

Pinch Consults on Recent Hindi Feature Film

Thomas Co-Authors 5 New Publications

Kottos Co-Authors Several Publications

Professor of English, Emeritus Coley Dies at the Age of 96

Pemberton’s Essays Released as Audiobook