David LowAlvin Lucier, John Spencer Camp Professor of Music, Emeritus, is the author of Music 109: Notes on Experimental Music, published by Wesleyan University Press, 2012. In this insider’s view, composer and performer Lucier brings clarity to the world of experimental music as he takes the reader through more than a hundred groundbreaking musical works, including those of Robert Ashley, John Cage, Charles Ives, Morton Feldman, Philip Glass, Pauline Oliveros, Steve Reich, Christian Wolff and La Monte Young. Lucier explains in detail how each piece is made, unlocking secrets of the composers’ style and technique. The book as a whole charts…
Olivia DrakeAfter visiting Israel several times to lecture about Chinese and Jewish history, Vera Schwarcz, the Mansfield Freeman Professor of East Asian Studies, professor of history, decided to do something different during her next trip abroad. "I wanted to let go of the 'specialness' of my training and skills and do something more basic, something more grounded and more urgently needed at the moment," she says. On Dec. 16, Schwarcz will begin a two week service trip with “Volunteers for Israel," a 30-year-old program that promotes solidarity and goodwill among Israelis, American Jews, and other friends of Israel. Since 1982, more than 30,000…
Anthony Braxton, the John Spencer Camp Professor of Music, received a New Music USA award in the Letters of Distinction category for 2013. This honor has been awarded annually since 1964 and recognizes those who have made a significant contribution to the field of contemporary American music. Braxton is the founder of The Tri-Centric Foundation, a not-for-profit organization that cultivates and inspires the next generation of creative artists to pursue their own visions with the kind of idealism and integrity Braxton has demonstrated throughout his long and distinguished career. The foundation also documents, archives, preserves and disseminates Braxton’s scores, writings, performances…
Michael Dorsey, fellow of the College of the Environment, visiting professor of environmental studies, was one of four panelists who discussed "Climate Change and the World Court: The Role of Law" during the Doha Sustainability Expo, held Dec. 3 in Qatar. The panelists questioned, "What is a state’s responsibility to reduce harmful greenhouse gas emissions under international law?" Dorsey also reviewed a campaign founded by the Ambassadors for Responsibility on Climate Change that sought an emissions-related advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice. The expo was part of the 18th Conference of the Parties (COP18) of the United Nations Framework…
Wesleyan University Press's Music 109: Notes on Experimental Music by Alvin Lucier was named an "Overlooked Book" of 2012 by the Slate Book Review. Lucier is the John Spencer Camp Professor of Music, emeritus. In the article published Nov. 28, the Slate Book Review critics suggested "20 great books you never heard about—but should’ve." Slate editorial assistant J. Bryan Lowder writes, "Gleaned from Lucier’s long-taught contemporary music course (No. 109) at Wesleyan, Music 109 is, indeed, Lucier’s notes, clippings from a lifetime spent making, performing, and, most importantly, listening to the 'classical' music of our era. For John Cage and other…
Publishers Weekly named Assistant Professor of English Lisa Cohen’s book, All We Know: Three Lives, as one of the "Best Books of 2012." In All We Know, Publishers Weekly says "Cohen ... fully delineates the conventional biographical matters of ancestry, parents, schooling, marriages, affairs, friendships, breakups, work, and death. This well-researched, gossipy, informative, and entertaining biographical triptych is also a thoughtful, three-part inquiry into the meaning of failure, style, and sexual identity." The New York Times also named the book one of the "100 Notable books of 2012." In a book review, the NYT says "Cohen’s own idiosyncratic hybrid doesn’t disappoint. She builds a rich picture…
The Indiana University New Music Ensemble began its Nov. 29 concert with a piece written by composer Paula Matthusen, assistant professor of music. Matthusen's the art of disappearing for chamber orchestra premiered in the Netherlands in 2006. The electroacoustic work is scored for both conventional instruments and fixed media elements, also called tape. The fixed media uses electric guitar sounds, another contemporary influence that Matthusen draws on frequently.
Hannah Norman '16Elizabeth Willis, professor of English, Shapiro-Silverberg professor, was a part of a talk commemorating Joseph Cornell (1903-1972) at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, New York on Nov. 16. Cornell was an American artist, sculptor, and experimental filmmaker. He was also one of the pioneers of an art form known as assemblage, which involves compositions of various 2-D and 3-D objects. In this distinctive event, Willis joined other contemporary poets and filmmakers and shared poetry readings inspired by Cornell’s unique creations.
Gina Athena Ulysse, associate professor of anthropology, associate professor of African-American studies, was invited to perform her avant-garde meditation, "Voodoo Doll, What if Haiti Were a Woman?" at two international conferences in 2013. Ulysse's piece focuses on coercion and consent inspired by Gede, the Haitian Vodou spirit of life and death. She intersperses the story with Haiti’s geopolitical history, statistics, theory and Vodou chants. On Jan. 12-19, Ulysse will attend the 8th Encuentro of the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics at the Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil. There, she will join more than 400 artists, performers, scholars and activists who will…
Lauren RubensteinMagda Teter, the Jeremy Zwelling professor of Jewish studies, professor of history, recently gave a lecture at the Vatican. Delivered Nov. 13, the lecture was titled, "Reti di potere: gli ebrei e l'accesso all a Santa Sede nell'eta modern," or "Networks of Power: Jews and their Access to the Holy See in the Early Modern Period." Teter's talk was part of a lecture series organized in collaboration between the University "La Sapienza" in Rome and the Vatican's Archive of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (Archivio della Congregazione per la Dottrina della Fede), previously called the Holy Office…
Victoria Smolkin-Rothrock, assistant professor of history, assistant professor of Russian and Eastern European studies, tutor in the College of Social Studies, delivered the Sherman Emerging Scholar Lecture titled "A Sacred Space: The Spiritual Life of Soviet Atheism" Oct. 18 at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington. Paul Townsend, chairman of the History Department at N.C. Wilmington, said Smolkin-Rothrock was chosen because her work "explored the connections between art, culture and history." A native of Ukraine, Smolkin-Rothrock studied at Sarah Lawrence College and received her master’s and Ph.D. degrees from the University of California at Berkeley. She has published articles on “scientific atheism” and…
Khachig Tölölyan, professor of letters, professor of English, was appointed by the Social Science Research Council of the U.S. to teach a special seminar jointly with a French professor appointed by the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. They taught the topics of "Transnationalism" and "circulation migratoire" to 12 Ph.D candidates--six French and six American--first at the Université de Poitiers, France, from June 11-15, 2012, then in Philadelphia, from Sept. 12-16, 2012. Tölölyan also was the keynote speaker and gave a lecture titled “Claiming diasporas, reclaiming diaspora studies,” at the conference on “Transnationalism and Diaspora,” Centre for Research in International Migration…