Olivia DrakeEthan Kleinberg, director of the Center for the Humanities, is the co-editor of Presence: Philosophy, History, and Cultural Theory for the Twenty-First Century, published by Cornell University Press in November 2013. Kleinberg also is professor of history, professor of letters and executive editor of History and Theory. In this book, Kleinberg and co-editor Ranjan Ghosh bring together an interdisciplinary group of contributors to explore the possibilities and limitations of presence from a variety of perspectives—history, sociology, literature, cultural theory, media studies, photography, memory and political theory. The book features critical engagements with the presence paradigm within intellectual history, literary criticism, and…
The prestigious Folio Society of London has just brought out a limited collector's edition of Fifty Fables of La Fontaine, a book of fables translated by Norm Shapiro, professor of French. The collection, originally published by University of Illinois Press in 1985, was the first of his several volumes of La Fontaine, culminating in the award-winning The Complete Fables of Jean de La Fontaine (2007). Jean de La Fontaine was the most widely read French poet of the 17th century. This new collector’s edition presents 50 of his fables.
Patricia Rodriguez Mosquera, associate professor of psychology, and her former student, Leslie Tan BA/MA '11, are co-authors of a paper published in the Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, Nov. 19, 2013. In the paper, titled, "Shared Burdens, Personal Costs on the Emotional and Social Consequences of Family Honor," the authors present two studies on the consequences of threats to family honor. In Study 1, 99 Pakistanis (67 females, 30 males, 2 undisclosed) and 134 European-Americans (65 females, 69 males) reported a recent insult to their family where the offender was either a family or a non-family member. The insults targeted the family…
Joop Varekamp and Ellen Thomas are the authors of three chapters included in a reference volume for Long Island Sound. The book, Long Island Sound: Prospects for the Urban Sea, is published by Springer in 2013. Varekamp is the Harold T. Stearns Professor of Earth Science, professor of earth and environmental sciences, professor of environmental studies. Thomas is research professor of earth and environmental sciences. Varekamp co-authored a chapter titled "Metals, Organic Compounds and Nutrients in Long Island Sound: Sources, Magnitudes, Trends and Impacts," and another chapter titled "The Physical Oceanography of Long Island Sound." Thomas co-authored a chapter titled…
David LowRichard Grossman, professor of economics, is the author of Wrong: Nine Economics Policy Disasters and What We Can Learn from Them, published by Oxford University Press in October 2013. In recent years, the world has been rocked by major economic crises, most notably the devastating collapse of Lehman Brothers, the largest bankruptcy in American history, which triggered the breathtakingly destructive sub-prime disaster. What sparks these vast economic calamities? Why do our economic policy makers fail to protect us from such upheavals? In Wrong, Grossman addresses such questions, shining a light on the poor thinking behind nine of the worst economic policy mistakes…
Elise Springer '90, associate professor of philosophy, is the author of the book, Communicating Moral Concern: An Ethics of Critical Responsiveness, published by MIT Press in September 2013. View photos of her recent book signing celebration in this Wesleyan Connection story. Modern moral theories have crystallized around the logic of individual choices, abstracted from social and historical context. Yet most action, including moral theorizing, can equally be understood as a response, conscious or otherwise, to the social world out of which it emerges. In this novel account of moral agency, Springer accords central importance to how we intervene in activity around us. To notice…
Albert J. Fry, the E. B. Nye Professor of Chemistry, is the author of four new papers published in 2013. "Ion pairing and association effects between tetraalkylammonium Ions and nitrobenzene redox species: Ion pairing to neutral substances” and " Ion pairing of tetraalkylammonium ions to nitrosobenzene and benzaldehyde redox species: A general binding motif for the interaction of tetraalkylammonium ions with benzenoid species," were published in the March and August editions, respectively, of the Journal of Organic Chemistry. The third, "The 'steric effect' of tetraalkylammonium ions on electrochemically generated anions is not steric" was published in the August edition of Electrochemistry Communications. These are the 7th, 8th,…
Lauren RubensteinPsyche Loui, assistant professor of psychology, assistant professor of neuroscience and behavior, recently had a paper, "Effects of Voice on Emotional Arousal," published in Frontiers in Psychology. Loui is lead author, and co-wrote the paper with Justin Bachorik, Hui C. Li and Gottfried Schlaug of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center/ Harvard Medical School, where Loui worked as an instructor before coming to Wesleyan this year. The study explores the effects of lyrics and the voice on the emotional processing of music and on listeners' preferences. The researchers found robust effects of vocal content on participants' perceived arousal, independent of the familiarity of the…
Masami Imai, professor of economics, professor of East Asian studies, is the author of a newly-published paper and a paper that just won an award. "Local Economic Effects of a Government-Owned Depository Institution: Evidence from a Natural Experiment in Japan," was given the best paper award in the Journal of Financial Intermediation. The paper, originally published in that journal in January 2012, can be read here. Imai is also the co-author–with Peter Hull of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology–of a paper,"Economic Shocks and Civil Conflict: Evidence from Foreign Interest Rate Movements," published in the Journal of Development Economics in July. It…
Manju Hingorani, professor of molecular biology and biochemistry, is the author of "Distinct structural alterations in proliferating cell nuclear antigen block DNA mismatch repair," published in Biochemistry on Aug. 20, 2013. Read an abstract of the paper online here. She's also the author of "Slow Conformational Changes in MutS and DNA Direct Ordered Transitions between Mismatch Search, Recognition and Signaling of DNA Repair," published in The Journal of Molecular Biology on Aug. 20, 2013. Her former students, F. Noah Biro '09 and Christopher Doucette '11 co-authored the paper. Read the abstract online here.
Hilary Barth, associate professor of psychology, associate professor of neuroscience and behavior; Mariah Schug, visiting assistant professor of psychology; and Kyle MacDonald '10 are the co-authors of "My people, right or wrong? Minimal group membership disrupts preschoolers’ selective trust," published in Cognitive Development, Issue 28, pages 247-259 in 2013. This publication is based on MacDonald's undergraduate thesis, which he conducted in Barth's lab. MacDonald is currently a graduate student in psychology at Stanford University. Elizabeth Chase, Barth's former lab coordinator, also co-authored the paper. Read the paper online here.
Brian Northrop, assistant professor of chemistry, is the author of "Experimental and theoretical studies of selective thiol-ene and thiol-yne click reactions involving N-substituted maleimides," published in The Journal of Organic Chemistry in August 2013. Read an abstract of the paper online here. He's also the author of a paper titled "Discrete, soluble covalent organic boronate ester rectangles" published in Chemical Communications, the journal of the Chemical Society, in July 2013. Read an abstract of the paper online here. Northrop's former students, Rob Stolz BA/MA '13 and Natalia Powers-Riggs '13 co-authored both papers.