Olivia DrakeJelle Zelinga de Boer, the Harold T. Stearns Professor of Earth Science, emeritus, is the author of New Haven's Sentinels: The Art and Science of East Rock and West Rock, published by The Driftless Connecticut Series and Garnet Books in July 2013. John Wareham, video production coordinator for Information Technology Services, provided photographs for the book. East Rock and West Rock are volcanic entities that were emplaced in voluminous sandstone formations some 201 million years ago. Their presence facilitated the introduction of modern (European) geologic concepts in America by Yale University Professor Benjamin Silliman and his disciples. Furthermore, more than…
Ellen Thomas, research professor of earth and environmental sciences, is the co-author of "Surviving rapid climate change in the deep-sea during the Paleogene hyperthemals," published in the June 4 issue of The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 110, No. 23. Read the paper's abstract online here. Thomas also is the co-author of "Paleoenvironmental changes during the Middle Eocene Climatic Optimum (MECO) and its aftermath: the benthic foraminiferal record from the Alano section (NE Italy)," published in the May 15 issue of Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, 378, 22-35. Read the paper's abstract online here. She also co-authored a book titled, The…
Two faculty members and two graduate students co-authored a paper published in the July 18 edition of the academic journal, Biochemistry. Erika Taylor, assistant professor of chemistry, assistant professor of environmental studies; Manju Hingorani, professor of molecular biology and biochemistry; chemistry graduate student Daniel Czyzyk; and molecular biology and biochemistry graduate student Shreya Sawant wrote the paper, "Escherichia coli Heptosyltransferase I: Investigation of Protein Dynamics of a GT-B Structural Enzyme." It appears online here. Biochemistry is a publication of the American Chemical Society.
Lisa Cohen, assistant professor of English, was recently shortlisted for the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography for her book, All We Know: Three Lives. For more than 50 years, the PEN awards have honored many of the most outstanding voices in literature across such diverse fields as fiction, poetry, science writing, essays, sports writing, biography, children's literature, translation and drama. With the help of its partners and supporters, PEN will confer 16 distinct awards, fellowships, grants, and prizes in 2013, awarding nearly $150,000 to writers, editors and translators. The final winners and runners-up will be announced later this summer…
Sumarsam, the University Professor of Music, is the author of Javanese Gamelan and the West, published by the University of Rochester Press on July 1. In Javanese Gamelan, Sumarsam examines the meaning, forms and traditions of the Javanese performing arts as they developed and changed through their contact with Western culture. The book traces the adaptations in gamelan art as a result of Western colonialism in 19th century Java, showing how Western musical and dramatic practices were domesticated by Javanese performers creating hybrid Javanese-Western art forms, such as with the introduction of brass bands in gendhing mares court music and West Javanese…
Natalie Robichaud ’14Professor of Romance Languages Norman Shapiro, who translated La Fontaine into English, recently translated most of New Orleans poet Jules Choppin’s poems for New Orleans Poems in Creole and French. The book, published by Second Line Press in August 2013, presents a bilingual collection of forgotten treasures of 19th century francophone American literature. Choppin was a well-known poet who had been published in New Orleans papers as well as Comptes-rendus de l’Athénée Louisianais, a 19th-century Louisianan literary journal. Several of Choppin’s works are inspired by La Fontaine’s good-humored fables and written in “sprightly Lousisana Creole." Order the book online here.
A paper co-written by Professor of Biology Ann Burke, “Body wall development in lamprey and a new perspective on the origin of vertebrate paired fins,” was published in the July issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Burke and her colleagues investigated the sea lamprey and the Japanese lamprey, comparing “the embryonic development of both these jawless fish to jawed animals — a shark, the catshark, and a salamander, the axolotl.” The abstract of the paper states, “Classical hypotheses regarding the evolutionary origin of paired appendages propose transformation of precursor structures (gill arches and lateral fin folds) into…
Vera Schwarcz, the Mansfield Freeman Professor of East Asian Studies, professor of history, is the author of Ancestral Intelligence, published by Antrim House Books in 2013. In Ancestral Intelligence, Schwarcz depicts the cultural landscape of contemporary China by creating “renditions” of poems by a mid-20th century dissident poet, Chen Yinke, and by adding a group of her own poems in harmony with Chen Yinke’s. Like his, her poems show a degradation of culture and humanity, in this case through comparison of classic and modern Chinese logographs. In the tragic yet inspiring story of Chen Yinke, Schwarcz finds her own powerful…
Seth Redfield, assistant professor of astronomy, and Katy Wyman MA '11, recently co-authored a paper that will appear in the Aug. 10 Astrophysical Journal, detailing several hundred spectral line measurements out to bright stars within 326 light years of our sun. Wyman is now employed at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. The study also appeared in the July 28 edition of Forbes in an article titled "Looking In The Sun's Rear-View Mirror: A New Map Of The Local Interstellar Medium." The first comprehensive map of the local interstellar medium — the gas drifting between the nearest stars — "will not only help theorists…
David LowIn this issue of the Wesleyan Connection, we speak with Kit Reed, resident writer in the English Department. Reed recently published two new books, Son of Destruction (Severn House), in which a reporter searches for his father and winds up investigating cases of human spontaneous combustion; and The Story Until Now (Wesleyan University Press), a rich collection of 35 stories that displays the range and complexity of her work. In a recent review of Reed’s two books in The New York Times, thriller writer Chelsea Cain wrote: “Reed finds humanity in the most fantastic places. She does it without pretension.…
Barry Chernoff and Dana Royer are the co-authors of "Diversity in neotropical wet forests during the Cenozoic linked more to atmospheric CO2 than temperature," published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, B, in 2013. Proceedings B is the Royal Society's flagship biological research journal, dedicated to the rapid publication and broad dissemination of high-quality research papers, reviews and comment and reply papers. The scope of the journal is diverse and is especially strong in organismal biology. Chernoff is the director of the College of the Environment, the Robert Schumann Professor of Environmental Studies, professor of biology, professor of earth…
Fred Cohan, chair and professor of biology, professor of environmental studies, is the co-author of "Species," published in the Encyclopedia of Genetics, Amsterdam, Elsevier, 2013; "Accuracy and efficiency of algorithms for demarcating bacterial ecotypes from DNA sequence data," published in BMC Genomics, 2013; and "Speedy speciation in a bacterial microcosm: New species can arise as frequently as adaptations within a species," published in the ISME Journal's Advance Online Publication, 2013.