faculty achievements

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."

Four faculty from the History Department participated in the American Historical Association Meeting in New York City Jan. 2-5. The topic was "History and Other Disciplines." Professor of History Ethan Kleinberg presented “Just the Facts: The Fantasy of a Historical Science." Kleinberg also is the director of the Center for the Humanities, professor of letters and executive editor of History and Theory. Assistant Professor of History Victoria Smolkin-Rothrock spoke on “From a Society Free of Religion to Freedom of Conscience: How Toleration Emerged from within Totalitarianism." She also is assistant professor of Russian, Eastern European and Eurasian studies and tutor in the College of…

Priscilla Meyer, chair and professor of Russian, East European and Eurasian studies, is the recipient of a 2014 Excellence in Post-Secondary Teaching award, granted by the American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages (AATSEEL). AATSEEL exists to advance the study and promote the teaching of Slavic and East European languages, literatures, and cultures on all educational levels. Meyer received her award during the the 2015 AATSEEL Conference Jan. 9 held in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The event featured scholarly panels, supplemented by advanced seminars, roundtables, workshops, informal coffee conversations with leading scholars, and other special events, such as poetry…

J. Kehaulani Kauanui, associate professor of anthropology, associate professor of American studies, participated in several conferences and events during the fall semester. She presented on a roundtable, "Indigenous Sovereignty, Conquest Mythology, And Indian Policy: Histories and Futures in New England" at the New England American Studies Association Conference held at Roger Williams University, Oct 17-18. She also was an invited participant for a public panel discussion, "Countering Columbus Day,” held at the Mashantucket Pequot Museum & Research Center on Oct. 25. Kauanui also presented ongoing research on Palestinian solidarity through participation at two events. First, as an invited speaker at Johns Hopkins University for a Gaza teach-in…

Masami Imai, professor of economics, professor of East Asian studies, is the co-author of an article titled "Attribution Error in Economic Voting: Evidence from Trade Shocks," published in the January 2015 edition of Economy Inquiry, Volume 53, Issue 1, pages 258-257. Rosa Hayes '13, currently a research analyst at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, also is one of the paper's co-authors. This article exploits the international transmission of business cycles to examine the prevalence of attribution error in economic voting in a large panel of countries from 1990 to 2009. Masami and his co-authors found that voters, on average, exhibit…

The Washington Post selected President Michael Roth's book, Beyond the University: Why Liberal Education Matters, on its list of top 50 notable works of nonfiction in 2014. A brief summary of the review states: The president of Wesleyan University describes two distinct traditions of a liberal education--one philosophical and "skeptical," the other rhetorical and "reverential"--and argues that both are necessary for educating autonomous individuals who can also participate with others. Beyond the University was originally reviewed in the Post on May 23 by Christopher Nelson, president of St. John's College in Annapolis, Md. In that review, Nelson calls the book "a substantial and lively discussion" as well…

Richard Grossman, professor of economics, delivered a keynote speech at the 10th Chief Risk Officer Assembly in Munich, Germany on Nov. 19. The speech was based on his book, WRONG: Nine Economic Policy Disasters and What We Can Learn from Them (Oxford University Press), and focused the consequences of government policy for economic risk. The CRO Assembly is organized by Geneva Association, an insurance industry think-tank, and the CRO Forum, which is made up of chief risk officers from large (primarily European) multi-national insurance and re-insurance companies. The conference took place at the headquarters of Munich RE, one of the world’s largest…

A book by Magda Teter, the Jeremy Zwelling Professor of Jewish Studies, received honorable mention for the 2014 Jordan Schnitzer Book Award. The Schnitzer Book Award was established in 2007 to recognize and promote outstanding scholarship in the field of Jewish Studies and to honor scholars whose work embodies the best in the field: innovative research, excellent writing and sophisticated methodology. Teter's book, Sinners on Trial: Jews and Sacrilege after the Reformation, published by Harvard University Press in 2011, was honored in the Medieval and Early Modern Jewish History category. In recognizing her book, the Prize Committee wrote: "In this beautifully written and…

Susanne Fusso, professor of Russian, East European, and Eurasian studies, is the translator of Sergey Gandlevsky's autobiographical novel, Trepanation of the Skull, published in November from Northern Illinois University Press. Sergey Gandlevsky is widely recognized as one of the leading living Russian poets and prose writers. His autobiographical novella Trepanation of the Skull is a portrait of the artist as a young late-Soviet man. At the center of the narrative are Gandlevsky’s brain tumor, surgery and recovery in the early 1990s. The story radiates out, relaying the poet’s personal history through 1994, including his unique perspective on the 1991 coup by Communist hardliners resisted by Boris Yeltsin.…

It turns out that teaching language arts, math and science to fourth graders is not the same as manufacturing cars on an assembly line. That is, the microeconomics principle of economies of scale—or the cost advantages that businesses get by increasing the scale of production—do not always apply to educational interventions. Put another way, an intervention that works great in one specific educational setting cannot necessarily be “scaled up” to work in many other settings. This is the finding of a major new study funded by the National Science Foundation, on which Associate Professor of Psychology Steven Stemler collaborated with…

On Nov. 3, Brian Northrop, assistant professor of chemistry, spoke to students at the Green Street Arts Center about polymers. As part of the hands-on workshop, Northrop taught the participants how to make their own silicone polymer putty with glue, water, Borax and food coloring. Similar putty was accidentally invented during World War II when an American scientist working for General Electric in New Haven, Conn. was trying to create synthetic rubber using silicone oil and boric acid. The result produced a "solid-liquid" goo that had a high melting temperature, could bounce when dropped, and stretch. The product is most commonly known as Silly Putty, a trademark…

Wesleyan faculty Joop Varekamp and Ellen Thomas are among the authors of a paper on rates of sea-level rise along the eastern U.S. seaboard titled "Late Holocene sea level variability and Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation," published in the journal Paleoceanography, Volume 29, Issue 8, pages 765–777 in August 2014. Varekamp is the Harold T. Stearns Professor of Earth Science, professor of earth and environmental sciences and professor of environmental studies. Thomas is research professor of earth and environmental sciences at Wesleyan, and also a senior research scientist in geology and geophysics at Yale University. Pre-20th century sea level variability remains poorly understood due to…

Willis’s Poem Published in The New Yorker

History Faculty Participate in American Historical Association Meeting

Meyer Recipient of Excellence in Post-Secondary Teaching Award

Kauanui Speaks on Native American Politics, Palestine Solidarity Politics

Imai’s Paper Examines the Prevalence of Attribution Error in Economic Voting

Books by Roth, Bloom, Waldman ’86 Honored by Washington Post

Grossman Keynote Speaker at Chief Risk Officer Assembly

Teter’s Book Receives Honorable Mention for Jewish Studies Award

Fusso Translates Gandlevsky’s Trepanation of the Skull

Stemler’s New Study Finds Educational Interventions Cannot Be “Scaled Up”

Northrop Teaches Students at Green Street about Polymers through Putty Workshop

Studies by Varekamp, Thomas Published in Paleoceanography