David LowKrishna Winston, the Marcus L. Taft Professor of German Language and Literature, is the translator of Patrick Roth's Starlight Terrace, published by Seagull Books in 2012. In a rundown Los Angeles apartment building—the titular Starlite Terrace—Roth unfurls the tragic linked stories of Rex, Moss, Gary and June, four neighbors, in a sort of burlesque of the Hollywood modern. In each of their singular collisions with fame, Roth’s dark prose presages a universal and mythical fate of desperation. In “The Man at Noah’s Window,” Rex shares the story of his father, a supposed hand double for Gary Cooper in High Noon. In “Eclipse…
Olivia DrakePeter Gottschalk, professor of religion, is the author of Religion, Science, and Empire Classifying Hinduism and Islam in British India, published by Oxford University Press in November 2012. In this 448-page book, Gottschalk offers a compelling study of how, through the British implementation of scientific taxonomy in the subcontinent, Britons and Indians identified an inherent divide between mutually antagonistic religious communities. England's ascent to power coincided with the rise of empirical science as an authoritative way of knowing not only the natural world, but the human one as well. The British scientific passion for classification, combined with the Christian impulse…
Q&As with outstanding students is an occasional feature of The Wesleyan Connection. This issue we speak with Konnie Dominguez from the Class of 2015. Q: Konnie, what are you planning on majoring in and why? A: I'm planning on majoring in biology. With a bachelors in biology, I can continue to pursue a career in biological anthropology, specifically in paleoanthropology, the study of human fossils. I've had at least one class in science ever since the sixth grade and this year, I had three - biology, chemistry and neuroscience! Q: Are you involved in any extracurricular activities? A: Most of my free time, when…
Wesleyan's Center for the Arts announces the creation of the Madhu Reddy Endowed Fund for Indian Music and Dance at Wesleyan University. Reddy, a real estate agent with William Raveis based in Glastonbury, Conn., established the fund with a pledge of $100,000. During a ceremony on Dec. 14, Reddy presented an initial check for $50,000 to Pamela Tatge, director of the Center for the Arts, and David Nelson, artist in residence. “For more than 50 years, Wesleyan’s Music and Dance Departments and the Center for the Arts have been presenting the music and dance of India to the campus and…
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Wesleyan alumni Jessica Posner '09 and Kennedy Odede '12 appeared on NBC’s Rock Center with Brian Williams on Jan. 17 in a report titled “Couple’s School becomes Lifeline in Kenyan Slum.” Watch the report, hosted by Rock Center Special Correspondent Chelsea Clinton, online here. Posner and Odede are co-founders of Shining Hope for Communities, an organization working to combat gender inequality and extreme poverty in the Kibera slum of Nairobi, Kenya. In August 2009, Shining Hope for Communities founded The Kibera School for Girls, the first tuition-free school for girls in Kibera. By providing a superior education, daily nourishment, uniforms, and schools supplies all free of…
An audio-archive project managed by Jorge Arévalo Mateus PhD '12 will be available to the general public in the United States and the Dominican Republic in 2013. The project, "The Sacred and Festive Music of the Liboristas Communities of the Dominican Southwest," contains 32 hours of field recordings gathered between 2001 and 2004. With support from the GRAMMY Foundation® in the category "Preservation and Archive," Arévalo Mateus digitally preserved music audio recordings captured in rural areas of the Dominican Republic preserving more than 20 genres. The result is the first archive documenting the different genres of music played at Liboristas communities…
Krishna Winston, the Marcus L. Taft Professor of German Language and Literature, is the translator of Günter Grass's From Germany to Germany, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2012. In January 1990, just months after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Günter Grass made two New Year’s resolutions: the first was to travel extensively in the newly united Germany and the second was to keep a diary, to record his impressions of a historic time. Grass takes part in public debates, writes for newspapers, makes speeches, and meets emerging politicians. He talks to German citizens on both sides, listening to their…
Stephen Angle is the author of Contemporary Confucian Political Philosophy, published by Polity in 2012. Angle is professor of philosophy, professor of East Asian studies, and tutor in the College of Social Studies. Confucian political philosophy has recently emerged as a vibrant area of thought both in China and around the globe. This book provides an accessible introduction to the main perspectives and topics being debated today, and shows why Progressive Confucianism is a particularly promising approach. Students of political theory or contemporary politics will learn that far from being confined to a museum, contemporary Confucianism is both responding to current…
(Story contributed by Jim H. Smith) Its official name was the Century 21 Exhibition, but it was better known as the Seattle World Fair, and it seemed to be an unambiguous statement about America’s aspirations for its future. Boasting a futuristic monorail and an iconic Space Needle whose elevators were piloted by female attendants wearing excessive blue eye shadow and costumes out of a Hollywood sci-fi feature, it came to hold totemic significance for a nation whose philosophical differences with the Soviet Union were being sorted out against the majestic backdrop of outer space. One of the first visitors to the…
In this edition of The Wesleyan Connection, we ask "5 Questions" of Richard "Rick" Elphick, professor of history and co-chair of the College of Social Studies. Elphick is the author of The Equality of Believers: Protestant Missionaries and the Racial Politics of South Africa, published by the University of Virginia Press in September 2012. Q: What do you think is the main message, or the main achievement, of your new book? A: For decades, historians of South Africa have struggled to trace how a white minority, starting in the 1650s, established a system of stark inequality among the races in the…
Lauren RubensteinHistory major Solomon “Zully” Adler ’11 has been named a Marshall Scholar for 2013-14, an honor that will allow him to study toward a graduate degree at a British university. He is Wesleyan’s eighth Marshall Scholar, and the first since 1996. The Marshall Scholarship was founded in 1953 in honor of U.S. Secretary of State George C. Marshall to commemorate the humane ideals of the Marshall Plan (the American program to help European economies rebuild after the end of World War II). Each year, up to 40 intellectually distinguished young American scholars are selected to receive full financing of a…