Olivia DrakeErika Taylor, assistant professor of chemistry, assistant professor of environmental studies, delivered the keynote address at the 16th Annual Undergraduate Research Symposium, hosted by the School of Natural Sciences of Fairleigh Dickinson University on April 25. Taylor spoke on "Alternative Energy Sources: Enzymology That Is Essential for Making Lignin." At Wesleyan, Taylor is exploring the enzymology that is essential for making Lignin a viable biomass source for production of energy and as a commodity chemical feedstock.
Once a week, a group of Wesleyan faculty gather to work on individual projects. Although they come from different departments - psychology, classical studies, government, among others - they're all working towards the same goal: to write, be published, and celebrate each others' accomplishments. The Wesleyan Faculty Writing Group, founded in 2010, provides an opportunity for faculty to come sit in a shared space and work on any writing projects they are pursuing. Participants are currently working on book proposals, book manuscripts, articles, reviews, grant and fellowship applications and op-eds. "All of us have found that the occasional change of…
Kate CarlisleAssociate Professor of Art and Art History Katherine Kuenzli has won a prestigious American Council of Learned Societies fellowship for next year. The award will support her work on Henry van de Velde, a European artist whose aesthetic helped shape modernism. The fellowship – one of 65 awarded this year to scholars in the humanities and humanistic social sciences – provides salary replacement for faculty who are embarking on six to 12 months of full-time research and writing. “I am thrilled to have the support for and acknowledgement of my work,” Kuenzli said. “I began (the project) in 2009 and…
Mike SembosThe U.S. Air Force has taken a keen interest in the recent work of Tsampikos Kottos, the Douglas J. and Midge Bowen Bennet Associate Professor of Physics. Kottos, along with Graduate Research Assistant Eleana Makri, Hamidreza Ramezani Ph.D. '13 (now a postdoc at U.C. Berkeley) and Dr. Ilya Vitebskiy (AFRL/Ohio), has come up with a theoretical way to build a more effective, reusable power limiter. Generally speaking, the function of a power limiter is to protect a sensor — be it the human eye, an antenna, or other sensitive equipment — from high-intensity radiation, like that generated by high-power lasers. Kottos, Makri, Ramezani…
In recognition of Wesleyan’s commitment to equity and inclusion, A Better Chance Foundation will present President Michael Roth with its 2014 Benjamin E. Mays Award. Named for the famed civil rights pioneer, the Mays award is presented annually to a leader in education who individually and with their institution demonstrate a clear commitment to diversifying higher education. "I'm deeply honored to be recognized by A Better Chance,” Roth said. “The Wesleyan community has been enriched by the students who come to us through the foundation.” The foundation’s mission is to increase substantially the number of well-educated young people of color…
Kari Weil, University Professor of Letters, delivered a keynote address on “Animal Studies: The Ends of Empathy and Beginnings of Reading” at a "Why do Animal Studies?" conference April 3-4 at the University of Chicago. During the conference, scholars discussed "What is it that draws a multiplicity of voices into this conversation, and how can they productively engage with one another? Why has this field of inquiry gained such traction in recent decades? How is Animal Studies taking shape as a field that overlaps multiple discourses and disciplines, and what opportunities or difficulties arise as a result? How do different methodologies clarify or substantiate one another, fill knowledge…
Lauren RubensteinProfessor of Economics Richard Grossman gave a public lecture about his book, WRONG: Nine Economic Policy Disasters and What We Can Learn From Them, at the Center for Economic Studies/Institute for Economic Research at Munich University on April 7. He delivered the talk in German. More information about the Munich Seminars is here. The book was published in November 2013 by Oxford University Press. A video of the lecture is available here.
Michael Roberts, professor and chair of the Classical Studies Department, presented a paper titled, “Venantius Fortunatus on Poetry and Song,” at the annual meeting of the International Society for Late Antique Literary Studies at Brown University, Oct. 31-Nov. 2, 2013. He also spoke at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign on March 21 on “Pompatic Poetics: Claudian’s Epithalamium for Honorius and Maria and Some Features of Late Latin Poetry.” Roberts also is the Robert Rich Professor of Latin and professor of medieval studies.
Professor of Religion Peter Gottschalk is the author of an op-ed published April 17 in The Los Angeles Times on the history of religious intolerance in the U.S. Responding to recent shootings near Jewish community centers in Kansas, in which three people were killed, Gottschalk writes that though the incident "seems at first glance like a disparaged past flaring briefly into the present," in fact religiously motivated violence is alive and well in the U.S. Gottschalk walks readers through a history of religious intolerance from the country's earliest days, and traces the various forms the KKK has taken over the years. He…
Professor Phillip Wagoner is the co-author of Power, Memory, Architecture: Contested Sites on India’s Deccan Plateau, 1300-1600, published by Oxford University Press in March 2014. Wagoner is chair and professor of archaeology, professor of art history. Focusing on India’s Deccan Plateau, this book explores how power and memory combined to produce the region’s built landscape, as seen above all in its monumental architecture. During the turbulent 16th century, fortified frontier strongholds like Kalyana, Warangal, or Raichur were repeatedly contested by primary centers—namely, great capital cities such as Bijapur, Vijayanagara or Golconda. Examining the political histories and material culture of both…
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Assistant professor of music Paula Matthusen has won a prestigious Rome Prize from the American Academy, which will allow her to spend the next year in the Eternal City working on the compelling compositions that distinguish her career. Matthusen is a composer of acoustic and electronic music who, among other things, teaches Laptop Ensemble at Wesleyan, and records sound in historic structures and architecture. The resulting work reflects the character of these spaces, which include the Old Croton Aqueduct in New York. As an American Academy fellow, she will visit the paths of the Roman aqueducts. “I’m elated,” Matthusen said.…