Olivia DrakeSonia Sultan, chair and professor of biology, professor of environmental studies, received a fellowship from the Wissenschaftskolleg/Institute for Advanced Study for 2012-13. She and approximately 40 other fellows from around the world will work on projects of their own choice for one academic year. The group is designed to represent a range of academic disciplines from both humanities and sciences. As a fellow, Sultan will be working on a book project that is under contract with Oxford University Press for its Ecology and Evolution series. "In this book, I aim to bring together recent findings from a range of biological disciplines to shape an updated understanding of the developmental…
Nearly half of the nation’s students - 44 percent - are students of color, but only one of every six teachers is a teacher of color. To help recruit, support and retain individuals of color as K-12 public school teachers, the Woodrow Wilson-Rockefeller Brothers Fund Fellowships for Aspiring Teachers of Color offers scholarships to to ensure that greater numbers of highly qualified teachers of color enter public school classrooms around the country. This year, the Fund awarded fellowships to two Wesleyan seniors: Randyl Wilkerson '12 and Nastassia Williams '12. Wilkerson, an English major, and Williams, an African American Studies major, were chosen…
Bill HolderStacey Close, a professor of history, philosophy and political science at Eastern Connecticut State University, will spend the current academic year at Wesleyan as an ACE Fellow. Sponsored by the American Council on Education, the program prepares fellows to serve American colleges and universities in leadership positions. “It's a pleasure to welcome Stacey Close to campus,” says President Michael S. Roth. “Wesleyan will surely benefit from the expertise he brings, and I hope he will fulfill his professional goals through his association with us.” Close has served as director of faculty development at Eastern’s Center for Educational Excellence and as…
The Center for the Humanities advisory board awarded eight Wesleyan seniors with a Student Fellowship for 2011-12. These fellows will explore the themes “Fact and Artifact” and “Visceral States: Affect and Civic Life." Four Student Fellowships are awarded by the center’s advisory board each semester. During the fall semester, fellows Conan Cheong, Kevin Donohoe, Bridget Read and Alexandra Wang will will explore the theme "Fact and Artifact." They will examine the career of the modern fact and its uncomfortable companion, the artifact. The fellows will question, "Under what conditions can facts be created?" "How do efforts to pin down empirical…
On June 7, Zach Schonfeld '13 toured the modest 170-year-old site of President Grover Cleveland's 1837 birthplace. "Live from Caldwell, N.J.," Schonfeld blogged on this day. "It’s not much—the house has been expanded significantly since Cleveland’s birth, but the siteitself still blends seamlessly into the background of Caldwell’s quiet suburban sprawl. Yes, I drove past it initially and had to circle back. Sorry, Grover. Just be thankful I didn’t steal your parking spot." Cleveland's childhood home is one of 20-some presidential birthplaces Schonfeld is exploring this summer as a Wesleyan Olin Fellow. His project, partially funded by the History Channel,…
Q: Sarah, you received a Guggenheim Fellowship to translate the Greek tragedy trilogy, The Oresteia. Please explain the cultural significance of this particular historical play and why your translation will differ from others? A: The Oresteia is the first real tragic masterpiece. I think that the greatness of a piece of literature depends mainly on how much it lets us reflect on at once, and the Oresteia has everything: questions of human nature, the nature of the gods, the social order-- in this case, the startling Athenian moves toward government by ordinary people. And it's all conveyed in intense, complex, almost creepily…
David PesciAnne Mariel Peters, assistant professor of government, has been selected as a 2010-2011 Academic Fellow with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD) in Washington, D.C. As an FDD fellow, Peters will participate in an intensive course on terrorism and counterterrorism at the University of Tel Aviv from May 30 to June 9. The course examines terrorism from a variety of political, academic, and law enforcement perspectives. It also includes site visits to Israeli security installations and border zones, as well as meetings with Israeli, Jordanian, Turkish and Indian officials. Peters’ expertise is in the political economies of the…
As an archaeologist investigating 19th century sites in Zanzibar and Tanzania, it was impossible for Sarah Croucher to ignore the thousands of shreds of locally-produced and imported ceramics unearthed every day of excavations. For archaeologists, these materials are vital to interpreting the social history of 19th century Islamic colonialism in East Africa. "Many key questions remain uninvestigated, particularly in regard to how newly shared Zanzibar identities emerged during the 19th Century, which intersected with gender, religion, class and sexuality," Croucher explains. Croucher, assistant professor of anthropology, assistant professor of archaeology, assistant professor of feminist, gender and sexuality studies, has been…
Andrew Curran, associate professor of French, has been awarded the 2009-2010 Paul Klemperer Fellowship at the New York Academy of Medicine. This fellowship is awarded to support summer research in history and the humanities as they relate to medicine, the biomedical sciences and health. Curran is currently completing a book titled The Anatomy of Blackness, an interdisciplinary study related to the status of the African in the Enlightenment-era life sciences.