faculty publications

A new book written by two Wesleyan faculty explores the experience of two travelers in the land destroyed by the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in 2011. William Johnston, John E. Andrus Professor of History, and Eiko Otake, visiting artist in dance, are the co-authors of A Body in Fukushima, published June 1 by Wesleyan University Press. Johnston, a historian and photographer, accompanied Japanese-born performer and dancer Otake on five explorations across Fukushima, creating 200 photographs that document the irradiated landscape, accentuated by Eiko's poses depicting both the sorrow and dignity of the land. Johnston elaborated on the process of creating…

Peter Rutland, Colin and Nancy Campbell Professor in Global Issues and Democratic Thought, professor of government, has recently authored and co-authored many scholarly articles and book chapters. His research focuses on contemporary Russian politics, the political economy, and nationalism. His works include: A chapter titled “Looking back at the Soviet economic experience,” published in 100 Years of Communist Experiments in June 2021. “Dead souls: Russia’s COVID Calamity,” published in Transitions Online in March 2021. “Workers Against the Workers’ State,” published by the NYU Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia in February 2021. “Poverty, Politics and Pandemic: The Plague…

Peter Rutland, Colin and Nancy Campbell Professor in Global Issues and Democratic Thought and a professor of both government and Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies, has recently authored and co-authored many scholarly articles and book chapters. His research focuses on contemporary Russian politics, the political economy, and nationalism. His articles include: “Transformation of nationalism and diaspora in the digital age,” published in Nations and Nationalism in December 2020. “Russia and ‘frozen conflicts’ in the post-soviet space,” published in Caucasus Survey, in April 2020. “Do Black Lives Matter in Russia?,” published in PONARS Eurasia policy memo in July 2020. (more…)

Helen Poulos, adjunct assistant professor of environmental studies, is the lead author on a research article titled “Wildlife severity and vegetation recovery drive post-fire evapotranspiration in a southwestern pine-oak forest, Arizona, USA” published in Remote Sensing in Ecology and Conservation on May 8, 2021. Undergraduates Michael Freiburger '21 and Hunter Vannie '20 assisted in collecting field data. From the paper’s abstract: In this study, post-fire ET was driven by plant species composition and tree canopy cover. ET was significantly higher in the morning and midday in densely vegetated post-fire shrublands than pine-dominated forests that remained 5–7 years after wildfire. Our…

Ellen Thomas, Harold T. Stearns Professor of Integrative Sciences, is the co-author of five scientific papers. All are part of the output of international collaborations of which her Wesleyan-based research was a part, funded by the National Science Foundation over the last three years. “All the studies look at different aspects of the behavior of microscopic organisms in the oceans under past environmental stress, whether caused by the impact of the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs, or past episodes of global warming or cooling, and at the effect of different rates of environmental change on these life forms," she said.…

Richard Grossman, professor of economics, recently co-authored an article titled “Before the Cult of Equity: the British Stock Market, 1829-1929” in European Review of Economic History, published on March 24, 2021. According to the paper's abstract, the co-authors "analyze the development and performance of the British equity market during the era when it reigned supreme as the largest in the world. By using an extensive monthly dataset of thousands of companies, we identify the major peaks and troughs in the market and find a relationship with the timing of economic cycles. We also show that the equity risk premium was…

Martha Gilmore, George I. Seney Professor of Geology and professor of earth and environmental sciences, is the co-author of seven new papers and articles. These include: “Distinct Mineralogy and Age of Individual Lava Flows in Atla Regio, Venus Derived From Magellan Radar Emissivity,” published in the March 2021 issue of JGR: Planets. Gilmore's former postdoc Jeremy Brossier, Katie Toner '20 and Avi Stein '17 co-authored this paper. “The Venus Life Equation,” published online in the January 2021 issue of Astrobiology. “Variations in the radiophysical properties of tesserae and mountain belts on Venus: Classification and mineralogical trends,” published in the February…

Johan "Joop" Varekamp, Harold T. Stearns Professor in Earth Science, professor of earth and environmental studies, is the co-author of an article published in Geology, March 2021. The study, titled "Volcanic Carbon Cycling in East Lake, Newberry Volcano, Oregon," focuses on the bubbling East Lake, the site of the Newberry Volcano, and the geological implications of the carbon reactions happening there. Varekamp co-authored the article with graduate student Christina Cauley and former students: Hilary Brumberg '17, Lena Capece '16, Celeste Smith '19, Paula Tartell '18, and Molly Wagner MA '19. The team researched this geological phenomenon from 2015 to 2019,…

Gabe Snashall '21 and Adjunct Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Helen Poulos are the co-authors of "Oreos Versus Orangutans: The Need for Sustainability Transformations and Nonhierarchical Polycentric Governance in the Global Palm Oil Industry," published in the Feb. 22 issue of Forests. According to the paper's abstract, "While the myriad benefits of palm oil as a food, makeup, and cleaning product additive drive its demand, globally, the palm oil industry remains largely unsustainable and unregulated. The negative externalities of palm oil production are diverse and devastating to tropical ecosystem integrity and human livelihoods in palm oil nations. Given the current…

Ronald Schatz, professor of history, is the author of The Labor Board Crew: Remaking Worker-Employer Relations from Pearl Harbor to the Reagan Era, published by the University of Illinois Press on Jan. 11, 2021. According to the publisher: Schatz tells the story of the team of young economists and lawyers recruited to the National War Labor Board to resolve union-management conflicts during the Second World War. The crew (including Clark Kerr, John Dunlop, Jean McKelvey, and Marvin Miller) exerted broad influence on the U.S. economy and society for the next 40 years. They handled thousands of grievances and strikes. They…

Ioana Emy Matesan, assistant professor of government, is the author of The Violence Pendulum: Tactical Change in Islamist Groups in Egypt and Indonesia, published by Oxford University Press, September 2020. The Violence Pendulum challenges the notion that democracy can reduce violence, or that there is anything exceptional about violent Islamist mobilization in the Middle East. It also addresses an ongoing puzzle in the study of political violence, and shows why repression can sometimes encourage violence, and other times discourage it. Matesan also investigates escalation and de-escalation in an inter-generational and cross-regional study of Islamist mobilization in Egypt and in Indonesia.…

Ren Ellis Neyra, associate professor of English, is the author of The Cry of the Senses: Listening to Latinx and Caribbean Poetics, published by Duke University Press, 2020. Weaving together the Black radical tradition with Caribbean and Latinx performance, cinema, music, and literature, Ellis Neyra highlights the ways in which Latinx and Caribbean sonic practices challenge anti-Black, colonial, post-Enlightenment, and humanist epistemologies.

Johnston, Otake Explore Fukushima Disaster in New Book

Rutland Writes Of Russia, Politics, COVID-19 in Recent Publications

Rutland Writes about Russia, Politics, COVID-19 in Recent Publications

Poulos Publishes Paper on Arizona Wildfires

Thomas Co-Authors 5 Studies on Oceanic Environmental Stress

Grossman Co-Authors Article on British Stock Market

Gilmore, Alumni Author Papers in 7 Journals

Volcanic Lake Study by Varekamp, Former Students, Published in Geology

Study by Snashall ’21, Poulos Published in Forests

Schatz Pens New Book on the Influence of the National War Labor Board

Matesan’s New Book Explores Political Violence, Islamist Mobilization in Egypt and Indonesia

Ellis Neyra Pens New Book on Latinx, Caribbean Poetics