Lauren RubensteinIn its recent meeting, the Board of Trustees conferred tenure on four faculty members. They are Associate Professor of Government Erika Franklin Fowler, Professor of African American Studies Kali Gross, Associate Professor of English and American Studies Amy Tang, and Associate Professor of Chemistry Erika Taylor. They join eight other faculty members who were awarded tenure earlier this spring. One faculty member, Louise Neary, was promoted to adjunct associate professor of Spanish. In addition, six faculty members are being promoted to full professor: J. Kehaulani Kauanui, professor of American Studies and anthropology Matthew Kurtz, professor of psychology Cecilia Miller, professor of…
Frederic Wills '19Professor of English Christina Crosby is the author of a new book published by NYU Press in March 2016. Titled, A Body, Undone: Living On After Great Pain, the novel chronicles her encounter with pain, which left her paralyzed. Three miles into a 17-mile bike ride, the spokes of her bike caught a branch, pitching her forward and off the bike. With her chin taking on the full force of the blow, her head snapped back leaving her paralyzed. This event, as she makes note of in her novel, opened her eyes to the beauty, yet fragility of all human bodies. Her…
The Chronicle of Higher Education has published an excerpt from a new memoir by Christina Crosby, professor of English, professor of feminist, gender and sexuality studies. The book, A Body, Undone: Living On After Great Pain, is due out later this month from NYU Press. Crosby tells the story of how her life changed after a bicycle accident in 2003, just after her 50th birthday, left her paralyzed. According to the publisher, "In A Body, Undone, Crosby puts into words a broken body that seems beyond the reach of language and understanding. She writes about a body shot through with neurological pain,…
Olivia DrakeJoel Pfister, the Olin Professor of English and American Studies and chair of the American Studies Department, is the author of Surveyors of Customs: American Literature as Cultural Analysis published by Oxford University Press, 2016. Within his book, Pfister argues “that writers from Benjamin Franklin to Louise Erdrich are critical 'surveyors' of customs, culture, hegemony, capitalism’s emotional logic, and more. Literary surveyors have helped make possible—and can advance—cultural analysis.” While noting that cultural theory and history have influenced interpretations of literature, he asserts that, in fact, “literature can return the favor.” The book raises many historical, but timely questions. "When and why…
#THISISWHY This year, four Wesleyan faculty are coordinating a year-long interdisciplinary project that enables students from an array of majors and academic disciplines to collaborate, create and work together as a learning community under the theme "Renaissance Projects: Reclaiming Memory, Movement and Migration." The Collaborative Clusters Initiative of the Allbritton Center enables faculty from a variety of departments and programs to develop a shared research project with a unifying theme. Cluster courses in 2015-16 provide perspectives from dance, music, English, and African American studies on the ways performance practices have engaged the past and present in the face of great…
Annie Dillard, who taught writing at Wesleyan for more than 20 years, will receive the 2014 National Humanities Medal, the White House announced on Sept. 3. President Barack Obama will confer the medal on Dillard and nine others at a ceremony at the White House on Sept. 10 (which will be live-streamed at 3 p.m. here). The National Humanities Medal honors an individual or organization whose work has deepened the nation’s understanding of the human experience, broadened citizen’ engagement with history and literature or helped preserve and expand Americans’ access to cultural resources. The medal was first awarded in 1996. This year’s…
David LowSalvatore Scibona, the Frank B. Weeks Visiting Assistant Professor of English, is the author of a new short story published in the September 2015 issue of Harper's Magazine. Titled, "Tremendous Machine," the story follows Fjóla Neergaard, a failed fashion model, lacking direction, and living in seclusion at her wealthy parents' vacant Polish country house. She sets out to purchase a sofa for the house, which contains almost no other furniture, and finds herself in an odd store full of pianos. She purchases a piano and signs up for lessons with an elderly, once famous pianist. Scibona shared some thoughts about the inspiration of his new story from…
Laurie KenneyThe Wesleyan Writers Conference celebrated its 59th year by welcoming more than 60 new and seasoned writers and others interested in the writer’s craft to the Wesleyan campus June 10-14. Headed by Wesleyan Writers Conference Director Anne Greene, adjunct professor of English and director of Writing Programs, the conference featured seminars, workshops, readings, panel discussions and manuscript consultations led by Wesleyan faculty and other nationally known writers, editors and agents. Conference topics included the novel, short story, poetry, nonfiction, memoir, biography, journalism, writing for film and TV, new media, writing about food and travel, writing about science and medicine, preparing your work for…
Alive: New and Selected Poems, a new volume of poetry by Elizabeth Willis, the Shapiro-Silverberg Professor of Creative Writing, professor of English, was recently published by New York Review Books. The book contains poems spanning more than 20 years. According to the publisher's website, with these poems, Willis "draws us into intricate patterns of thought and feeling. The intimate and civic address of these poems is laced with subterranean affinities among painters, botanists, politicians, witches and agitators. Coursing through this work is the clarity and resistance of a world that asks the poem to rise to this, to speak its fury." Willis is…
On March 5, the Certificate in Social, Cultural, and Critical Theory supported a discussion on "Tragedy and Revolution." Matthew Garrett, assistant professor of English, assistant professor American studies and director of the Certificate, moderated the discussion. Assistant Professor Matthew Garrett, visiting distinguished guest David Scott and Assistant Professor Lily Saint led a discussion on "Tragedy and Revolution" March 5 in the Russell House. David Scott, professor of anthropology at Columbia University and editor of the journal Small Axe, spoke about his recent book, Omens of Adversity: Tragedy, Time, Memory, Justice (Duke University Press, 2014). Lily Saint, assistant professor of English, provided a response to Professor Scott's…
Christina Crosby, professor of English, professor of feminist, gender and sexuality studies, was honored at an event March 10 at Barnard College. Several Wesleyan faculty and alumnae participated in the discussion. The event, titled "Body Undone: A Salon Honoring Christina Crosby," was hosted by the Barnard Center for Research on Women and NYU's Center for Gender and Sexuality Studies. It focused on Crosby's forthcoming memoir of living with disability, Body Undone: Living on After Great Pain. The memoir will be published by NYU Press in the "Sexual Cultures" series. In 2003, Professor Crosby broke her neck in a bicycle accident. "Spinal cord injury…
A poem by Elizabeth Willis, the Shapiro-Silverberg Professor of Creative Writing, professor of English, is published in the Jan. 12 edition of The New Yorker. Willis, a 2012-13 Guggenheim fellow, is the author of Alive: New and Selected Poems, which will be published this spring. She is an expert on 20th century American poetry and poetics, poetry and visual culture, 19th century poetry and poetics, modernism, post-modernism, poetry and political history and the prose poem. The published poem is titled "About the Author."