College of Letters

Wesleyan’s faculty has been hard-at-work in 2023 sharing their scholarship with the world. Here are some of the books written by Wesleyan’s faculty over the past year. Homesick Blues: Politics, Protest, and Musical Storytelling in Modern Japan by Scott Aalgaard Assistant Professor of East Asian Studies Scott Aalgaard explores how people in Japan have used “musical storytelling” as a means of expressing themselves in their everyday life and as a political practice from the late 1940s to 2018. Within the book, he challenges assertions that political upheavals in the 1960s and 70s in Japan were the climax and end of…

Associate Professor of the Practice in Letters Charles Barber wrote “In the Blood,” the true story of how an absent-minded inventor and a down-on-his-luck salesman joined forces to create a once‑in‑a‑generation lifesaving product. The book was published in May 2023 by Grand Central Publishing. Giulio Gallarotti, Professor of Government, will release a new book titled “Alternative Paths to Influence: Soft Power and International Politics” in June 2023. The book, which explores the process by which soft power is created, will be published by Routledge. He was also recently named a Senior Fellow at the Global Climate Innovation Center, working with businesses…

Each year at Commencement, Wesleyan University recognizes three outstanding faculty members with the awarding of the Binswanger Prizes for Excellence in Teaching. The University announces that this year’s recipients are Matthew Garrett, associate professor of English; A. Meredith Hughes, associate professor of astronomy; and Tushar Irani, associate professor of philosophy and Letters. Underscoring Wesleyan’s commitment to its scholar-teachers, these annual prizes are made possible by gifts from the family of the late Frank G. Binswanger Sr., Hon’85. Recipients are chosen each spring by a committee composed of faculty and members of the Alumni Association Executive Committee based upon strong recommendations…

By amplifying the personal experience of women in Jamaica who are living with HIV/AIDS, Nilukshi Chen ’23 hopes to explore the rampant fear and stigma surround the disease in the island nation. Chen interviewed four women for her senior thesis on the stigma surrounding HIV and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) in Jamaica. Her thesis, titled “Sounding Subaltern Voices: Conversations with Jamaican Women Living with HIV/AIDS,” considers Spivak’s “Can the Subaltern Speak” to grapple with what it means give a voice to individuals who have been historically voiceless. The term “subaltern” refers to an individual or group who is excluded from…

Andrew Meier ’85 admits that an important part of his work as a journalist and writer is “chasing ghosts.” The Morgenthau family – counselors to presidents, participants in international diplomacy and important players in the criminal justice system – have given him plenty to chase. "They were a family that was kind of invisible to most Americans … they were really integral for a hundred years at the highest level of American political power. I don’t know any family that can really match that,” Meier said. In his newest book, Morgenthau: Power, Privilege, and the Rise of an American Dynasty,…

What Mark Masselli Hon ’09, P’15, ’16 had to do in 1972 to start Community Health Clinic, a local health clinic that offered free care to the underserved in Middletown was, in retrospect, almost impossible. Renting a storefront as a 20-year-old? Opening the doors and offering medical services without a license or permit? Masselli had dropped out of Wesleyan, so there was no degree backing him up. The students in Charles Barber’s service-learning class were baffled. “It was a seismic moment when a student commented, ‘you couldn’t do what you did now in 2021’ … too many rules, too many…

The first time Ethan Kleinberg, the Class of 1958 Distinguished Professor of History and Letters, immersed himself in the world of the French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas 20 years ago, he wrote a book. “It was written as a traditional intellectual history and I found that what that I had done was to completely deactivate the aspects of Levinas’ thought where he believes that there are ethical guidelines that come to us from outside our own history, these transcendent ethical guidelines puncture any historical or contextual moment,” Kleinberg said. He didn’t like what he’d written, so he took an unprecedented step—he…

Wesleyan in the News 1. Washington Post: "Biden Makes End Run Around Trump as the President Dominates the National Stage" Erika Franklin Fowler, associate professor of government and co-director of the Wesleyan Media Project, comments on Biden's unusual strategy during an unprecedented time for the 2020 presidential campaign. “There is not a ready off-the-shelf playbook for how you campaign in this environment if you are a nonincumbent, so that’s part of what you’re seeing,” she said. “We’re all being thrown into this new environment, where campaigns are going to need to reinvent, to some extent, how they go about things,…

Steven Greenhouse ’73, P’08, author of Beaten Down, Worked Up: The Past, Present, and Future of American Labor, spoke in the College of Letters Library on October 29 to a group that included Professor of History Ron Schatz's class on American Labor History on Oct. 29, in the College Of Letters Library. His topic was "White Collar, Blue Collar and Gig Workers: What is the Future of American Labor?" The lecture was sponsored by the History Department and the College of Letters. Greenhouse is a former New York Times labor reporter, and a review by Zephyr Teachout of Greenhouse's book…

Khachig Tölölyan, professor of letters, professor of English, was honored as the preeminent scholar of diaspora studies in general, and the Armenian Diaspora in particular, at the International Conference for the Society of Armenian Studies held at the University California, Los Angeles, on Oct. 12–13. The conference, titled “Diaspora and ‘Stateless Power’: Social Discipline and Identity Formation Across the Armenian Diaspora During the Long Twentieth Century" marked the association's 45th anniversary, and drew scholars from Italy, Mexico, France, Armenia, England, Portugal, the Netherlands, Germany, and around the United States. They came to present new papers and to hear Tölölyan’s keynote…

Charles Barber, writer-in-residence in letters, is the author of a new book that tells the dramatic story of William Juneboy Outlaw III. Formerly the head of a major cocaine gang in New Haven, Outlaw turned his life around and now is an award-winning community advocate, leading a team of former felons who negotiate truces between gangs on the very streets that he once terrorized. Barber wrote Citizen Outlaw: One Man's Journey from Gangleader to Peacekeeper, published Oct. 15 by HarperCollins, in collaboration with Outlaw. The two gave a WESeminar and book signing on Nov. 1 at Russell House as part…

In recognition of their career achievements, the following faculty members are being appointed to endowed professorships, effective July 1, 2019: Frederick Cohan, professor of biology, is receiving the Huffington Foundation Professorship in the College of the Environment, established in 2010. Susanne Fusso, professor of Russian, East European, and Eurasian studies, is receiving the Marcus L. Taft Professorship of Modern Languages, established in 1880. William Johnston, professor of history, is receiving a John E. Andrus Professorship of History, established in 1981. Ethan Kleinberg, professor of history and professor of letters, is receiving the Class of 1958 Distinguished Professorship, established in 2008. Tsampikos…

Wesleyan Faculty Publications 2023

Faculty Achievements: May 2023

2023 Binswanger Prizes for Excellence in Teaching Announced

Senior Thesis: Chen ’23 Studies HIV/AIDS and STD Stigma in Jamaica

Q&A With Andrew Meier ’85, Author of “Morgenthau”

New Book Chronicles History of Community Health Center

Kleinberg Authors New Book on Levinas’ Cultural Legacy

Wesleyan in the News

Greenhouse ’73, P’08 Lectures on the Past and Future of American Labor

Tölölyan Honored as Preeminent Scholar of Diaspora Studies

Barber Authors New Book on ‘One Man’s Journey from Gangleader to Peacekeeper’

6 Faculty Receive Endowed Professorships