Olivia DrakeAndrew Curran, professor of romance languages and literatures, is the co-winner of the 2010-11 James L. Clifford Prize. The prize is awarded annually by the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies to the author of the best article regarding any aspect of eighteenth-century culture. Receiving the award is Curran’s Rethinking Race History: The Role of the Albino in French Enlightenment Sciences. The Clifford Fund was originally established to support an annual prize in honor of James L. Clifford. Clifford founded The Johnsonian News Letter in 1940, was Secretary to the English Institute, twice a Guggenheim Fellow, a Fellow of the Royal Society of…
Elizabeth McAlister, associate professor of religion, associate professor of American Studies, associate professor of African American Studies, gave the keynote presentation in collaboration with her daughter, Lovely Nicolas, at a conference at Harvard University on March 25 titled “African Dance Diaspora: A Symposium on Embodied Knowledge. McAlister and Nicolas presented an academic performance combining dance, memoir, and dance theory in a piece titled “Move Your Words.”
David PesciWesleyan is pleased to announce that during its most recent review, the Board awarded tenure to four faculty effective July 1, 2011. Ulrich Plass, associate professor of German studies, joined the Wesleyan faculty in 2004 as assistant professor. Plass is a specialist in German literature, literary criticism, and critical theory, with a particular focus on the works of the German philosopher Theodor Adorno. He conducted his undergraduate studies at the University of Hamburg, Germany; his M.A. is from the University of Michigan, (more…)
Neely Bruce, professor of music, received an Arts Advocy Award from the Middletown Commission on the Arts on April 4. Annually, in honor of National Arts Advocacy Day, the Middletown Commission celebrates an individual and a group who have shown extraordinary support and initiative for the arts in the city. Bruce was granted the individual award for his lifelong commitment to the arts. Bruce is a composer, conductor, pianist and scholar of American music, past chorus director for Connecticut Opera, and director of music at South Congregational Church.
On a March 9 episode of Ebru TV‘s “Fresh Outlook,” Giulio Gallarotti, professor of government, discussed the premise, “Has the United States, once the leader of the free world, lost its edge?” The discussion was prompted by recent world events, especially the uprisings in the Middle East, as well as the outcome of last fall’s G-20 Summit. Ebru TV is a Turkish-based broadcasting network with affiliates throughout the world.
Liza McAlister Liza McAlister, associate professor of religion, African American studies and American studies, joined an invited conference on “Global Oprah: Celebrity as Transnational Icon” Feb. 25-26 at Yale’s MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies. The academic conference aimed to theorize neoliberalism, celebrity and humanitarianism, using Oprah Winfrey as a focusing lens. The conference consisted of six panel discussions, which examined the way celebrities define America, and the role they play in international human rights and politics. McAlister presented a paper on Wyclef Jean, a Haitian-born Hip-Hop superstar. She discussed his career trajectory beginning with the Fugees, to his…
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Scott Higgins, associate professor of film studies, edited the book, Arnheim for Film and Media Studies, published by Taylor & Francis, 2010. Rudolf Arnheim (1904-2007) was a pioneering figure in film studies, best known for his landmark book on silent cinema Film as Art. He ultimately became more famous as a scholar in the fields of art and art history, largely abandoning his theoretical work on cinema. However, his later aesthetic theories on form, perception and emotion should play an important role in contemporary film and media studies. In this new volume, edited by Higgins, an international group of leading…
Mark Slobin, professor of music, is the author of Folk Music: A Very Short Introduction, published by Oxford University Press, 2010. According to the publisher, "This is the first compact introduction to folk music that offers a truly global perspective. Slobin offers an extraordinarily generous portrait of folk music, one that embraces a Russian wedding near the Arctic Circle, a group song in a small rainforest village in Brazil, and an Uzbek dance tune in Afghanistan. He looks in detail at three poignant songs from three widely separated regions--northern Afghanistan, Jewish Eastern Europe, and the Anglo-American world--with musical notation and lyrics included.…
Andy Szegedy-Maszak, Jane A. Seney Professor of Greek, professor of classical studies, joined the guests on a recent episode of WNPR’s Colin McEnroe Show to discuss narcissism in our society. The show was inspired by an article in The New Yorker by New York Times columnist David Brooks, who also joins the show.
The biography of Giulio Gallarotti, professor of government, tutor in the College of Social Studies, is published by the Marquis editors’ Who's Who in America 2011. The 2011 edition contains more than 96,000 biographies of the nation's most noteworthy people in a single, comprehensive resource. The book is a biographical reference tool for networking, prospecting, fact-checking, and numerous other research purposes. He also appeared in the 2010 Who's Who.
Ethan Kleinberg, associate professor of history, associate professor of letters is spending the year as director of the Vassar-Wesleyan Paris Program and an invited scholar at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris. During the Fall 2010 semester, Kleinberg delivered two lectures based on his current book project, The Myth of Emmanuel Levinas. Levinas is a French Jewish philosopher who turned to the use of Jewish (more…)