David LowJohn Whitmore ’62 has co-edited Sources of Vietnamese Tradition (Columbia University Press), a fascinating guide to 2,000 years of Vietnamese history and a comprehensive overview of the society and state of Vietnam. Well-chosen selections deal with key figures, issues, and events, and they create a thematic portrait of the country’s developing territory, politics, culture and relations with neighbors. The volume explores Vietnam’s remarkable independence in the face of Chinese and other external pressures while it recognizes the complexity of the Vietnamese experience over the years. The anthology begins with selections that cover more than a millennium of Chinese dominance over…
In Musicking Bodies: Gesture and Voice in Hindistani Music (Wesleyan University Press), Matthew Rahaim ’00 studies the role of the body in Indian vocal music. Indian vocalists have long traced intricate shapes with their hands while improvising melody. Although every vocalist has an idiosyncratic gestural style, students inherit ways of shaping melodic space from their teachers, and the motion of the hand and voice are always intimately connected. Musicking Bodies is among the first extended studies of the relationship between gesture and melody. Rahaim draws on years of vocal training, ethnography, and close analysis to examine the ways in which…
Olivia DrakeNadja Aksamija, associate professor of art history, is spending her 2012-13 year abroad in Florence, Italy as a Robert Lehman Fellow at the Villa I Tatti, the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies. She is one of 15 scholars to receive the fellowship. I Tatti Fellows are selected by an international and interdisciplinary committee that welcomes applications from Italian Renaissance scholars from all nations. While abroad, Aksamija is researching the Bolognese villa in the age of Cardinal Gabriele Paleotti. "My project investigates the Bolognese villa culture at the end of the 16th century, a period marked by Catholic reform…
Sixty-four international students hailing from Algeria to Zimbabwe joined the Class of 2016. International Student Orientation began Aug. 26. The program is designed to introduce international students to campus life at Wesleyan and ease their transition to the United States. Students took campus tours, went shopping, learned about writing programs, health matters, counseling and psychological services, performed a skit, and attended a workshop on managing U.S. academic and Wesleyan culture. The international students transitioned into New Student Orientation on Aug. 30. Photos of International Student Orientation are below: (more…)
Through the American Muslim Civic Leadership Institute, Wesleyan's Muslim Chaplain Marwa Aly is engaging with experts in various fields and is articulately developing a vision and purpose in her work as a chaplain. As one of 22 prominent Muslim Americans who received a 2011-2012 Civic Leadership Fellowship, Aly is connecting to a network of civic leaders across the country and facilitating a forum for constructive intra-Muslim dialogue. She's learning how to identify leadership needs, ways to guide the development of projects, partnerships and resources and gaining practical skills in communication, community mobilization, leadership, advocacy and organizational management. "I am looking…
(more…)
Ali Chaudhry ’12 and Kumail Akbar '12 participated in the Geneva International Model United Nations (GIMUN) conference March 12-18. Chaudhry and Akbar currently serve as co-presidents for the Wesleyan Model United Nations Society. The conference took place at the "Palais des Nations," the United Nations Office at Geneva (previously the Headquarters of the League of Nations). Meetings were held in rooms used by United Nation committees with journalists and interpreters in attendance. The students dined in the UN cafeteria. “It felt like we were living the life of a diplomat,” Chaudhry says. “We were walking around conducting negotiations and overseeing…
(more…)