Lauren RubensteinApril 22, 20133min
James McGuire, professor and chair of government, professor of Latin American studies, tutor in the College of Social Studies, recently had a book chapter and an article published. The chapter, titled, "Social Policies in Latin America: Causes, Characteristics, and Consequences," appeared in Routledge Handbook of Latin American Politics, edited by Peter Kingstone and Deborah J. Yashar and published March 8 by Routledge. The chapter classifies the main social policies enacted in Latin America from 1920 through 2010, explores the effects of those policies on the well-being of the poor, and outlines some of the forces and circumstances that led to…

Olivia DrakeApril 1, 20132min
Ellen Alexander '14, Professor Joop Varekamp and graduate student Lauren Camfield recently returned from Argentina where they studied the eruptive products of the Copahue volcano March 7-March 19. Varekamp, the Harold T. Stearns Professor of Earth Science, professor of environmental studies, has studied the volcano since 1997. It erupted in 2000 and again in December 2012. "Many Wesleyan students have done their senior theses and grad theses on Copahue. It's exciting stuff for us volcanology types," Varekamp said. Camfield sampled the products of the most recent eruption of Copahue, which included ash, pumice and volcanic bombs. She will analyze her samples…

Olivia DrakeApril 1, 20132min
Sumarsam, the University Professor of Music, discussed Indonesian puppetry during the Playwriting, Puppets and Dramaturgy Symposium March 9 at the University of Connecticut Puppet Arts Complex. The symposium brought together playwrights, puppeteers, dramaturgs, students and puppetry enthusiasts to share ideas and experiences about the practice, theory, and history of puppetry’s uses of text in performance. Experts discussed ways the visual dramaturgy of puppetry’s sculpture in motion works in tandem with dramatic and narrative texts. Sumarsam and symposium organizer John Bell, director of the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry at the University of Connecticut, spoke on “Puppets and Texts: Global…

Olivia DrakeApril 1, 20131min
Matthew Kurtz, associate professor of psychology, associate professor of neuroscience and behavior, traveled to Gujarat, India in March to work with The MINDS Foundation. The organization provides mental health services to rural regions of the developing world. While in India, Kurtz joined Lennox Byer ’12, director of programs, to enhance current programming and develop a social/vocational skills rehabilitation program for patients. Kurtz is developing this program using his research experience gained through social skills training programs he has developed for patients with Schizophrenia in Connecticut. Kurtz is a MINDS Foundation board member. The MINDS Foundation was founded in 2010 by…

Cynthia RockwellApril 1, 20135min
Sasha Chanoff ’94 and the organization he founded, RefugePoint,  were featured prominently on several national media outlets recently, including a special on 60 Minutes on Sunday, March 31. RefugePoint works throughout Africa identifying refugees in life-threatening situations and relocating them to safety. The CBS news show, 60 Minutes, aired a two-part 20-minute special March 31, on the resettlement of the Sudanese Lost Boys and what has happened over the past decade since they've arrived in the United States. Chanoff was instrumental in facilitating this story and was featured in the segment, which included footage of his original contact with these…

David LowApril 1, 20132min
Norman Shapiro, professor of romance languages and literatures, translated Comtesse Anna de Noailles' A Life of Poems, Poems of a Life. The poetry collection was published by Black Widow Press in 2012. A poet whose reputation has lasted beyond the popularity of her actual works, de Noailles was respected and beloved by France's literary and lay population alike, counting among her admirers such figures as Proust, Cocteau, Colette and many others. Seemingly unconcerned with the tenets of this or that poetic school, she tuned the traditional elements of French prosody to her personal lyrical use, refusing however to be straitjacketed…

Lauren RubensteinMarch 11, 20133min
Associate Professor Jennifer Tucker has been selected for a Fulbright-U.S. Scholar Award, through which she will spend eight months at the University of York in England. Tucker is a historian of British science, technology and medicine, specializing in the study of the connections among British science, photography and the visual arts from 1850 to 1920. At the University of York, she will complete work on her second book, tentatively titled, Facing Facts: The Tichborne Cause Célèbre and the Rise of Modern Visual Evidence. She also plans to begin preliminary research toward her next book project, which will trace the social…

David LowMarch 11, 20133min
Acclaimed National Geographic photographer Michael Yamashita ’71 has just published a new book of photographs Shangri-La: Along the Tea Road to Lhasa (White Star Publishers). His latest photography collection is a rare, intimate look into the Tibet’s changing world—both ancient and modern, sacred and commonplace, the rarefied and the gritty—before the legends and mysteries of the Chamagudao, the Tea Horse Road, disappear into the Tibetan mist. Yamashita captures stunning images of the Tea Horse Road, which winds through dizzying mountain passes, across famed rivers like the Mekong and the Yangtze, and past monasteries and meadows in a circuitous route from Sichuan…

Lauren RubensteinFebruary 27, 20131min
On Feb. 27, City of Middletown Mayor Dan Drew issued a proclamation to thank three Wesleyan students for their service to the city assisting in sales agreement documentation and language translation between International Lubricant, Inc. and Chinese investors. Mayor Drew declared Feb. 27, 2013 as "Yejing Gu ('14), Michael You Rong Leung ('15) and Meiyi Cheng ('13) Day." See this document for more information.