Olivia DrakeQ: Jane, you are Wesleyan's first Fellow in Journalism, a position endowed by a member of the class of 1979. What class will you teach this spring? A: I’ll teach a small seminar called “The Journalist as Citizen." We’ll explore the many ways journalism has affected democracy and civic life in America. Mostly, we’ll write and write. For that reason, this isn’t just a class for aspiring journalists – it’s for anyone with an interest in public life who wants to improve his or her writing. Q: You graduated from Wesleyan, cum laude, in 1977 and earned a master's degree…
This issue we ask 5 Questions of ... Michael Singer, assistant professor of biology. Q: Professor Singer, you are known around campus for being "the bug man," or more specifically, "the caterpillar man." What is your interest in entomology? A: I’m generally interested in insects because of their diversity in form, function, and habits. Contrary to many people, I find most kinds of insects quite beautiful. They also have endless stories to tell. I’m particularly interested in a species of woolly bear caterpillar called Grammia incorrupta because of its polyphagous feeding behavior. (Polyphagous means that it eats many different kinds…
Corrina KerrProfessor of History Philip Pomper is making history of his own as he plans to retire from Wesleyan after 46 years in May 2010. Pomper came to Wesleyan after graduating from the University of Chicago with a doctoral degree. He had enjoyed the seminar style classes at Chicago and looked forward to teaching seminars at Wesleyan. "I always dreamed of joining the faculty of a small liberal arts institution," Pomper says. Not only did Pomper have an idea for the type of institution he was drawn to, he was compelled to be a professor even in high school. "After the…
David PesciThis issue we ask 5 Questions of…David Pollack, associate professor of mathematics and computer science. Q: How did you become interested in mathematics in general, and as an academic career specifically? DP: Mathematics was my favorite subject in school as far back as I can remember. At that time I had no idea that one could be a mathematician, so I imagined I would be a scientist or engineer. After my sophomore year in high school I was fortunate enough to attend the summer mathematics program at Hampshire College, where I was first exposed to professional mathematicians. I realized more…
Courtney Fullilove has joined the History Department as assistant professor. She specializes in research related to the study the development of technical knowledge in the fields of agriculture, medicine, and manufacturing in the 18th and 19th century United States. A graduate of Columbia University's Ph.D program in history, Fullilove was attracted to Wesleyan for many reasons, among them its historical significance and liberal arts idealism. She says that being a part of a place where "everyone is creative and engaged" is satisfying to her. "I'm a historian, so I like to think about the fact that Wesleyan was founded as…
This summer, students will have the opportunity to complete semester-long courses in a period of five weeks. Twenty-five courses, taught by Wesleyan faculty, will be offered during the 2010 Summer Session. Classes begin June. 7. "These courses include some highly popular courses that always have more interested students than space during the regular academic year, as well as some new and advanced courses, and some new thematic institutes," explains Joe Bruno, vice president for Academic Affairs and provost. Highlights include three two-course institutes on different themes: neuroscience and psychology, computer programming and computer music, and visualizing (more…)
American history has almost completely edited out Henry Roe Cloud from its story, even though this full-blood Winnebago was one of the most accomplished and celebrated American Indians in the first half of the twentieth century. Joel Pfister's The Yale Indian: The Education of Henry Roe Cloud corrects this omission. Pfister, chair of the English Department and the Kenan Professor of the Humanities, and former chair of the American Studies Program, began exploring American Indian archives when he was a Yale doctoral student in the 1980s and started his research on Yale’s Roe Cloud letters in 1995. Very little has…
Ramnad V. Raghavan, a widely respected performer of the Karnatak mrdangam and long-time member of Wesleyan's music faculty, died in Chennai, India, Nov. 21 after a long illness. Raghavan came from a distinguished family of musicians that produced, among others, his brother Ramnad V. Krishnan and internationally known violinists L. Subramaniam and L. Shankar. Sri Raghavan learned mrdangam from his brother Ramnad Easwaran. He served as artist in residence in music at Wesleyan from 1970 to 1975, and again from 1987 to 2000, teaching South Indian drumming. In the years between his Wesleyan appointments he lived in Cleveland, Ohio where…
Tsampikos Kottos, assistant professor of physics; Joshua Bodyfelt Ph.D '09; and Mei Zheng '10 are the co-authors of the paper "Fidelity in Quasi-1D Systems as a Probe for Anderson Localization," published in Acta Physica Polonica A, Proceedings of the 4th Workshop on Quantum Chaos and Localisation Phenomena, Warsaw, in 2009. They wrote the paper with Ulrich Kuhl, and Hans-Jürgen Stöckmann, who are collaborators from the University of Marburg. This publication is part of the conference proceedings for a workshop at the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw where Kottos presented this past summer. The combined theoretical and experimental work done in this…
Wesleyan's Sociology Department, The Hoy Fund and The Wesleyan Writing Programs sponsored "Martyrdom, Mirth, and Mayhem in Middle-Class Politics: A Conversation with Novelist Jay Cantor and President Michael S. Roth," Nov. 18 in the Shapiro Creative Writing Center. Cantor is the author of Great Neck, The Death of Che Guevara and Krazy Kat, along with two collections of non-fiction essays, The Space Between: Literature and Politics and On Giving Birth to Ones Own Mother. Cantor, a MacArthur Prize Fellow, is professor of English at Tufts University. President Roth and Cantor discussed their mutual admiration for late Norman O. "Nobby" Brown,…
Richard Grossman, professor of economics, was interviewed on five radio stations in November on the fiscal crisis facing states. The stations include WOOD Grand Rapids, Mich.; WHAS Louisville, Ky.; WHJJ Providence, R.I.; WCHV Charlottesville, Va. and WSYR Syracuse, N.Y.