Olivia DrakeThe Wesleyan Board of Trustees reviews tenure cases three times each year during its meetings on campus, scheduled as the cases arise. At the most recent meeting in March, the Board awarded tenure — effective July 1, 2013 — to these faculty members: Elijah Huge, associate professor of art, has taught at Wesleyan since 2006. A licensed architect, his work includes private commissions and award-winning competition entries for the High Line (New York, N.Y.), the Bourne Bridge|Park (Bourne, Mass.), and the Tangshan Earthquake Memorial (Tangshan, China). His writing and design work have been featured in Praxis, Thresholds, Perspecta, Architectural Record, Landscape Architecture, Dwell, Journal of Architectural Education, and Competitions. His current scholarly…
Sumarsam, the University Professor of Music, discussed Indonesian puppetry during the Playwriting, Puppets and Dramaturgy Symposium March 9 at the University of Connecticut Puppet Arts Complex. The symposium brought together playwrights, puppeteers, dramaturgs, students and puppetry enthusiasts to share ideas and experiences about the practice, theory, and history of puppetry’s uses of text in performance. Experts discussed ways the visual dramaturgy of puppetry’s sculpture in motion works in tandem with dramatic and narrative texts. Sumarsam and symposium organizer John Bell, director of the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry at the University of Connecticut, spoke on “Puppets and Texts: Global…
Kate CarlisleDavid Nelson, artist in residence at Wesleyan and accomplished musician specializing in Indian music, has been honored with the title of Kala Seva Mani by a prestigious music festival. The Cleveland Aradhana, said to be the largest annual Carnatic music festival outside India, bestowed the title on Nelson during the festival March 27-April 7. The Aradhana describes the title on its web site: "The title of Kala Seva Mani is bestowed upon individuals who have made a lasting contribution to the Carnatic arts through their propagation and demonstration in the United States and Canada." Nelson, who has performed internationally and…
Seth Redfield, assistant professor of astronomy, spoke on "Properties of the Interstellar Medium Surrounding the Sun and Nearby Stars" during a conference held March 11-15 in the Physikzentrum in Bad Honnef, Germany. The conference, which was 527th in a series, was sponsored by the Wilhelm und Else Heraeus Stiftung, a German foundation that supports scientific research and education. The topic of the conference was "Plasma and Radiation Environment in Astrospheres and Implications for the Habitability of Extrasolar Planets."
David Schorr, professor of art, and director of the Art Studio Program for the Art and Art History Department, will have artwork on exhibition at the Addison Gallery of American Art in Andover, Mass. The exhibit, Secrets, Loss, Memory and Courage: Works by Male Gay Artists, will be on display April 27-July 31. The show honors gay rights activist, author and poet Paul Monette (1945-1995), who received an honorary degree from Wesleyan in 1993. Schorr and Monette collaborated on three books.
Lauren RubensteinIn the wake of a recent scandal in which horse meat was discovered in meat products labeled as beef in the United Kingdom, University Professor of Letters Kari Weil wrote an op-ed in The Boston Globe about a debate in 19th century France over the morality of eating horse meat. Hippophagy, or the eating of horse meat, was not legalized until the late 19th century in France, and only after a “public campaign to override objections very like the ones Americans have today.” “…the fact that it took so much persuasion to convince the French to consider eating horse—in a…
Associate Professor Jennifer Tucker has been selected for a Fulbright-U.S. Scholar Award, through which she will spend eight months at the University of York in England. Tucker is a historian of British science, technology and medicine, specializing in the study of the connections among British science, photography and the visual arts from 1850 to 1920. At the University of York, she will complete work on her second book, tentatively titled, Facing Facts: The Tichborne Cause Célèbre and the Rise of Modern Visual Evidence. She also plans to begin preliminary research toward her next book project, which will trace the social…
University Professor of Natural Science and Mathematics David Beveridge was one of 33 leading experts in science, engineering and technology recently elected to membership in the Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering. The new members will be introduced at the Academy's 38th annual meeting and dinner on May 22 at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Conn. According to the Academy, election is "on the basis of scientific and engineering distinction achieved through significant contributions in theory or applications, as demonstrated by original published books and papers, patents, the pioneering of new and developing fields and innovative products, outstanding leadership of nationally…
Janice Naegele will become director of the Center for Faculty Career Development on July 1. Naegele, professor of biology, professor of neuroscience and behavior, has served as chair of the Biology Department, and has served on the Educational Policy Committee, Review and Appeals Board, the Graduate Liberal Studies Advisory Committee, the Life Sciences Building Committee, and the Writing Certificate Committee. She has published extensively in the areas of developmental neurobiology, stem cells and translational rodent models of neurological disorders. Her research explores genetic, small molecule, and neural stem cell based treatments for cognitive disabilities and epilepsy. She currently serves on…
J. Kehaulani Kauanui, associate professor of American studies, associate professor of anthropology, was appointed an Organization of American Historians (OAH) Distinguished Lecturer by the OAH Distinguished Lectureship Program. In an e-mail to Kauanui, Alan M. Kraut, president-elect of the OAH wrote, "Since 1981, OAH presidents have appointed their most illustrious and dynamic colleagues to our program, making it one of the longest running and most successful efforts of its kind among scholarly associations. It has proven to be an ideal way to reach a broader audience while raising money for the organization's initiatives on behalf of historians." As part of the…
An article by Ethan Kleinberg, director of the Center for the Humanities, professor of history, professor of letters, is featured in the 50th anniversary issue of Perspectives on History, the monthly publication of the American Historical Association. The article, titled "Academic Journals in the Digital Era" is part of a forum on "The Future of the Discipline" edited by Lynn Hunt. View the full list of contributors online.
David LowKrishna Winston, the Marcus L. Taft Professor of German Language and Literature, is the translator of Patrick Roth's Starlight Terrace, published by Seagull Books in 2012. In a rundown Los Angeles apartment building—the titular Starlite Terrace—Roth unfurls the tragic linked stories of Rex, Moss, Gary and June, four neighbors, in a sort of burlesque of the Hollywood modern. In each of their singular collisions with fame, Roth’s dark prose presages a universal and mythical fate of desperation. In “The Man at Noah’s Window,” Rex shares the story of his father, a supposed hand double for Gary Cooper in High Noon. In “Eclipse…