Bill HolderFour faculty members have received promotions incurring tenure effective July 1. Additionally, six faculty members were promoted to full professor, and eight adjunct faculty were promoted. Newly tenured faculty: Mary Alice Haddad, associate professor of government, has taught at Wesleyan since 2004. Her scholarship studies comparative politics, with a focus on civil society, and a regional specialization in East Asia. She is the author of Politics and Volunteering in Japan: A Global Perspective (Cambridge, 2007), Building Democracy in Japan (Cambridge, forthcoming in 2012), numerous articles and book chapters, and has delivered more than 25 invited talks and conference presentations. She is currently…
Olivia DrakeThis issue we ask “5 Questions” of Eric Charry, associate professor of music. Charry, an expert on African music, is currently directing the Ethnomusicology and Global Culture Summer Institute at Wesleyan. Q: Professor Charry, as an associate professor of music, what are your areas of musical expertise and what classes do you teach at Wesleyan? A: Most of my research and writing until recently has been in the area of African music, specifically, the West African region where Senegal, The Gambia, Guinea and Mali meet. I spent two years in the region learning to play the kora (harp), balafon (xylophone), and…
Khachig Tölölyan, professor of letters, professor of English, has been actively involved in the launching of the University of Oxford's Diasporas Programme in June. Tölölyan is the editor/founder of Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies and an internationally known expert on diasporas and transnationalism. On June 2, Tölölyan delivered the inaugural lecture titled "Diaspora Studies: Past, Present and Promise" at the program's launch. He is a scholar in residence at Wolfson College (one of the 40 colleges and halls that make up the university), where he is a tutor and consultant to various graduate students, postdoctoral faculty and researchers at several…
Khachig Tölölyan, Typhaine Leservot, Ashraf Rushdy and Indira Karamcheti were invited to speak at a conference hosted by the Universite Paul Valery, Montpellier III June 20-23. The event is titled "Diasporas and Cultures of Mobility." Rushdy and Karamcheti are invited visiting professors. Tölölyan, professor of letters, professor of English, editor/founder of Diaspora will be the keynote speaker. He will speak on "Twenty Years of Diaspora Studies: Success through Confusion." Typhaine Leservot, associate professor of letters, associate professor of romance languages and literatures, will speak on ""Maghrebo-Quebecois and Franco-Maghrebi: towards Distinct Identities?" Ashraf Rushdy, professor of English, professor of African American…
Gary Yohe, the Huffington Foundation Professor of Economics and Environmental Studies, and a faculty fellow in the College of the Environment, and was named a vice chair of the National Climate Assessment Development and Advisory Committee by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Jerry Melillo '65 was named chair of the committee. Melillo is a distinguished scientist at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass As a vice chair, Yohe will lead the advisory committee that will produce the next National Climate Assessment. The Global Change Research Act of 1990 requires a National Climate Assessment at least every…
Stephen Angle, professor of philosophy, professor of East Asian studies, tutor in the College of Social Studies, participated in a one-day Book Symposium on his book, Sagehood: The Contemporary Significance of Neo-Confucian Philosophy (Oxford, 2009), at the Institute for Chinese Philosophy and Culture, Academia Sinica, in Taipei, Taiwan, in early June. Altogether, nine papers were delivered by Taiwan-based philosophers, roughly half in English and half in Chinese. Angle had an opportunity to respond and participated in a general discussion. The symposium was timed to coincide with an intensive, two-week class that he's been teaching at Taipei's Soochow University, also on the…
Fred Cohan, professor of biology, professor of environmental studies, and biology graduate student Sarah Kopac received a $20,000 Connecticut Space Grant Consortium Training Grant on March 9. The award, which is subcontracted through the University of Hartford, supports a study titled "The Speciation of Bacillus Subtilis along a natural Salinity Gradient in Death Valley."
Sumarsam MA '76, University Professor of Music, participated in an ethnomusicology panel during the State of Indonesian Studies Conference April 28 at Cornell University. Sumarsam spoke on "Javanese Music Historiography: The Lost Gamelan of Gresik." The interdisciplinary conference focused on Indonesia's anthropology, art history, history, language, government and ethnomusicology. Marc Perlman MA '78, Ph.D. '94, associate professor at Brown University; Martin Hatch '63, MA'69, associate professor at Cornell University; Kaja McGowan '82, associate professor at Cornell; and Christopher Miller MA '02, a Wesleyan ethnomusicology Ph.D. candidate, also participated in the conference. The conference was hosted by Cornell's Southeast Asian Program.…
Bill Herbst, the John Monroe van Vleck Professor of Astronomy, will serve as director of graduate studies, beginning this fall 2011 through spring 2014. Herbst received his B.A degree from Princeton University, his M. Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Toronto and has taught at Wesleyan since 1978, often serving as chair of the Astronomy Department and as director of the Van Vleck Observatory. In 2003, he received the Wesleyan Alumni Association's Binswanger Award for Excellence in Teaching. He has recently served on the Advisory Committee, as chair of the Merit Committee, as vice-chair of RAB and, over the years, on many other faculty…
An article by Masami Imai, director and chair of the Mansfield Freeman Center for East Asian Studies, associate professor of economics, was published in Journal of International Business Studies, Issue 42, pages 406-426, in 2011. The article is titled "Related Lending and Banking Development," and is co-authored by Robert Cull and Stephen Haber.
Abigail Hornstein, assistant professor of economics, is the author of “Where A Contract Is Signed Determines Its Value: Chinese Provincial Variation in Utilized vs. Contracted FDI Flows,” published in the March 2011 edition of the Journal of Comparative Economics, 39(1). In the article, Hornstein explains how there are major differences between ex ante corporate investment plans and ex post investments. The case of China is useful for understanding this problem because there is substantial time series and cross sectional variation in the ratio of utilized to contracted FDI (UC ratio), which is less than one in most province-year observations. Provinces…
Angel Gil-Ordóñez, director of private lessons, chamber music and ensembles received the 2010 Wammie Award for Classical Conductor / Director by the Washington Area Music Association for his efforts directing the Post-Classical Ensemble, a Washington, D.C.-based orchestra co-founded by Gil-Ordóñez. The Washington Area Music Awards recognize significant career achievements by area musicians. Nominations and balloting come from the WAMA membership. Past show participants include Emmylou Harris, Joan Jett, The Clovers, The Orioles, Bo Diddley, Jorma Kaukonen, Jimmy Dean, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Ruth Brown, LaVern Baker, Sweet Honey in the Rock.