Olivia DrakeThis story has been moved to: https://newsletter.blogs.wesleyan.edu/2014/03/03/mukerjicaseelection/
Kate CarlisleHistorians will tell you that the past can often have a direct and profound effect on the present age. Take Magda Teter, for example. A scholarly probe into post-Reformation Europe recently led the professor of history and director of Jewish Studies at Wesleyan to an event that may have changed the course of Jewish and Christian relations in Poland. “This is how scholars can sometimes play a role in getting people to talk to each other,” she said. “It didn’t start that way, but that was the good result.” Sandomierz, a sleepy Renaissance town in southeast Poland, (now known in…
Randall MacLowry '86, visiting instructor in film studies, co-produced, directed and wrote an episode for the PBS history series American Experience. Titled "The Rise and Fall of Penn Station," the hour-long episode premieres at 9 p.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 18. Pennsylvania Station, a monumental train terminal in the heart of Manhattan, finally opened to the public on Nov. 27, 1910. Covering nearly eight acres, the building was the fourth largest in the world. By 1945, more than 100 million passengers traveled through Penn Station each year. But by the 1960s, what was supposed to last forever was slated for destruction. In…
Paul Erickson, assistant professor of history, is the co-author of How Reason Almost Lost Its Mind: The Strange Career of Cold War Rationality," published by the University of Chicago Press in 2013. In the United States at the height of the Cold War, roughly between the end of World War II and the early 1980s, a new project of redefining rationality commanded the attention of sharp minds, powerful politicians, wealthy foundations, and top military brass. Its home was the human sciences—psychology, sociology, political science and economics, among others—and its participants enlisted in an intellectual campaign to figure out what rationality…
A book written by Joe Siry was named a finalist for the 2013 National Jewish Book Award in the visual arts category. Siry is professor of art history, the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of the Humanities and chair of the Art and Art History Department. The Jewish Book Council announced the winners of the 63rd Annual National Jewish Book Awards on Jan. 15. Beth Sholom Synagogue: Frank Lloyd Wright and Modern Religious Architecture was published by the University of Chicago Press in 2011. Designated a National Historic Landmark in 2007, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Beth Sholom Synagogue was one of Wright’s last…
Mike SembosThe artwork of Assistant Professor of Art Sasha Rudensky ’01 has been featured in a multi-page spread in the January 2014 issue of Rangefinder, a monthly magazine for the professional wedding and portrait photographer. The story is called “Culture of Brightness,” and it explores Rudensky’s “Brightness” photo series, in which she documents the lives of everyday Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians. The collection was four years in the making. Rudensky herself was born in Moscow in 1979, and in the article she explains that in Russian-Ukrainian culture, the concept of “bright” is a synonym for “being beautiful, unforgettable — something that…
Ethnomusicologist Sumarsam, University Professor of Music, delivered a paper titled, "Javanese Gamelan in a Changing World," during the annual meeting of the Asian Pacific Society for Ethnomusicology (APSE), hosted by Mahasarakham University, Thailand Jan. 6-9. He also chaired plenary sessions at the annual meeting. The main objectives of the APSE are to preserve and safeguard the ancient and traditional music and music of ethnic groups, which are invaluable cultural heritage of the world. The APSE has held a conference every year since 1994. Many ethnomusicologists, scholars, and musicians from all over the world, who are interested in Asian Pacific cultures, particularly,…
Salvatore Scibona, the Frank B. Weeks Visiting Assistant Professor of English, is the winner of this year's Ellen Levine Fund for Writers Award for his novel-in-progress Where In the World Is William Wurs? The award is sponsored by the New York Community Trust and the Ellen Levine Fund for Writers. Members of the Teachers and Writers Collaborative nominated Scibona for the award, which comes with a $7,500 grant. Awards go an author who has previously published a print edition of one or two books of fiction, and who doesn't currently have a publishing contract for a second or third book of…
On Dec. 4, Ethan Kleinberg, director of the Center for the Humanities, professor of history, professor of letters, presented the keynote address at a conference on "Does Literature Matter," at the University of North Bengal in India. His talk was titled "Matters of Fact and Matters of Fiction: Literature and the Historian." He also led a workshop on "presence" at the conference. Kleinberg also will be presenting lectures and workshops in Delhi including a talk at University of Delhi on Dec. 10, a workshop at the Center for the Study of Developing Societies on Dec. 11, and a lecture on "History and…
Richard Grossman, professor of economics, spoke about the poor thinking behind nine of the worst economic policy mistakes of the past 200 years at Boston Public Library Dec. 4. Grossman is the author of the newly-published book, Wrong: Nine Economic Policy Disasters and What We Can Learn from Them. He also spoke about economic policy mistakes at the Seminary Coop Bookstore in Chicago on Nov. 14 and the Museum of American Finance in New York on Nov. 21. At Wesleyan, he teaches classes in American and European economic history, macroeconomics, and money and banking. Grossman also is a visiting scholar at the…
A book written by Rick Elphick, professor of history, tutor in the College of Social Studies, received "honorable mention" for the Herskovits Prize, the most prestigious award for scholarship on Africa. This annual award is named in honor of Melville J. Herskovits, one of the African Studies Association's founders. Elphick is the author of The Equality of Believers: Protestant Missionaries and the Racial Politics of South Africa, published by the University of Virginia Press in September 2012. The Equality of Believers reconfigures the narrative of race in South Africa by exploring the pivotal role played by these missionaries and their teachings in…
The prestigious Folio Society of London has just brought out a limited collector's edition of Fifty Fables of La Fontaine, a book of fables translated by Norm Shapiro, professor of French. The collection, originally published by University of Illinois Press in 1985, was the first of his several volumes of La Fontaine, culminating in the award-winning The Complete Fables of Jean de La Fontaine (2007). Jean de La Fontaine was the most widely read French poet of the 17th century. This new collector’s edition presents 50 of his fables.