Lauren RubensteinIn this recurring feature in The Wesleyan Connection, we highlight some of the latest news stories about Wesleyan and our alumni. Wesleyan in the News NPR: "Book Review: 'The Movie Musical!' Is a Symphony in Praise of the 'Razzmatazz' of the Genre" "Encyclopedic in scope, but thankfully not in structure, The Movie Musicals! is a downright delightful read," this NPR review of Corwin-Fuller Professor of Film Studies, Emerita, Jeanine Basinger's new book proclaims. The Movie Musicals! truly "dazzles" for its insight into the roles these films have played over the 20th century and into the 21st, the review states, noting, "And throughout the…
In this recurring feature in The Wesleyan Connection, we highlight some of the latest news stories about Wesleyan and our alumni. Recent Wesleyan News Gizmodo: "What's the Oldest Disease?" Douglas Charles, professor of anthropology, professor of archaeology, says "we don't know" the answer to this question because of limitations in fossil records. However, he says that there are indications of tuberculosis, leprosy and tumors found in ancient human and Homo erectus skeletons. The Middletown Press: "Wesleyan University to Move 90 Employees to Main Street Middletown" Wesleyan's University Relations staff and most Finance staff will move to the Main Street building as…
In this recurring feature in The Wesleyan Connection, we highlight some of the latest news stories about Wesleyan and our alumni. Recent Wesleyan News Wall Street International Magazine: "Tula Telfair: Reverie" Professor of Art Tula Telfair's new exhibition of landscape paintings, "Reverie," is presented Feb. 7 through March 30 at the Forum Gallery in New York. According to the article, "In the fourteen paintings that comprise 'Reverie,' she explores the inner reaches of her dreams and memories, taking us to places she has been or believes in so fully that she is able to portray and take the viewer to the…
In this recurring feature in The Wesleyan Connection, we highlight some of the latest news stories about Wesleyan and our alumni. Recent Wesleyan News The New York Times: "Anthony Braxton Composes Together Past, Present and Future" Anthony Braxton, the John Spencer Camp Professor of Music, Emeritus, is profiled. Among other ongoing projects, Braxton has spent much of the past four years working on his newest opera, “Trillium L,” which, he says, “is a five-day opera”—if it is ever performed. 2. Los Angeles Review of Books: "That Bit of Philosophy in All of Us" Tushar Irani, associate professor of philosophy, associate professor of letters,…
Olivia DrakeAndrew Curran, the William Armstrong Professor of the Humanities, is the author of Diderot and the Art of Thinking Freely, published by Other Press on Jan. 15. According to the publisher: "Denis Diderot is often associated with the decades-long battle to bring the world’s first comprehensive Encyclopédie into existence. But his most daring writing took place in the shadows. Thrown into prison for his atheism in 1749, Diderot decided to reserve his best books for posterity—for us, in fact. In the astonishing cache of unpublished writings left behind after his death, Diderot challenged virtually all of his century’s accepted truths,…
Andrew Curran, the William Armstrong Professor of the Humanities, has received the 2018 Prix Monsieur et Madame Louis Marin from the Académie des sciences d’outre-mer for his 2017 book L’Anatomie de la noirceur [The Anatomy of Blackness], which was published by Classiques Garnier. This prize, which is given by the French Académie des Sciences d’outre-mer, recognizes an outstanding work in the social sciences. The Académie des Sciences d’outre-mer was founded in 1922 and has conferred the Prix Marin since 1976. Curran’s book, a translation of his Anatomy of Blackness: Science and Slavery in an Age of Enlightenment, is the first comprehensive history of the…
Andrew Curran, professor of French, William Armstrong Professor of the Humanities, wrote a moving piece in The New York Times about the life-changing experience of his father's sudden death. Among other things, Curran describes the experience of seeing his father's body for the last time and saying goodbye. He also recounts the trip to his parents' house in North Carolina as a "chronology-less blur of grief and purifying laughter." He writes: I still dream quite often about my father. He generally makes an appearance toward 2 or 3 in the morning, sometimes waving to me from his car (he loved taking extraordinarily long car trips)…
Two Wesleyan faculty received NEH Public Scholarships to encourage new research and support their upcoming publications. Only 36 writers in the country received the award.
The Public Scholar program, a major new initiative from the National Endowment for the Humanities, is designed to promote the publication of scholarly nonfiction books for a general audience. On July 29, the NEH awarded a total of $1.7 million to 36 writers including Wesleyan’s Jennifer Tucker, associate professor of history, and Andrew Curran, the William Armstrong Professor of the Humanities and professor of French.
In recognition of their career achievements, five faculty members are being appointed to endowed professorships, effective July 1: Stephen Angle, professor of philosophy and East Asian studies, is receiving the Mansfield Freeman Professorship in East Asian Studies, established in 1986. Lisa Cohen, associate professor of English, is receiving the Douglas J. and Midge Bowen Bennet Chair. The Bennet Chair, endowed in 2007, is awarded for a five-year term to a newly tenured associate professor exhibiting exceptional achievement and evidence of future promise. Andrew Curran, professor of French and outgoing Dean of Arts and Humanities, is receiving the William Armstrong Professorship…
Benjamin Travers(more…)
The New York Times on Jan. 25 published an op-ed by Andrew Curran, dean of the arts and humanities and professor of romance languages and literature, on the legacy of Enlightenment era philosopher and novelist Denis Diderot. Curran writes of Diderot: "His message was of intellectual emancipation from received authorities — be they religious, political or societal — and always in the interest of the common good. More so than the deists Voltaire and Rousseau, Diderot embodied the most progressive wing of Enlightenment thought, a position that stemmed from his belief that skepticism in all matters was 'the first step toward truth.'…