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Wesleyan’s Music Department continued its tradition of performing in unexpected spaces this month, with musicians showing up in library and museum venues on campus. “Instrument—Body,” a series of four performances in surprising locations presented in conjunction with the seminar of the same name and curated by Visiting Assistant Professor of Music Ethan Philbrick, kicked off with bassist Brandon Lopez and musician and multimedia artist Cecilia Lopez MA '16 on synthesizers in the Joe Webb Peoples Museum of Natural History in the Exley Science Center in the afternoon on October 20. Professor of Music Paula Matthusen presented the third iterations…

Stewart E. Novick, Joshua Boger University Professor of the Sciences and Mathematics, Emeritus, passed away recently at the age of 78. Stew received his BS from Stony Brook University and his AM and PhD from Harvard University. He served as a research fellow at Harvard and a research associate at the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics, University of Colorado at Boulder, before he arrived at Wesleyan in 1978, where he taught until his retirement this past summer. During his 45 years at Wesleyan, he was named an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow, a National Science Foundation Fellow, and a Woodrow Wilson…

Some trudge, others sprint. Some materialize from otherworldly forces, others from infectious diseases. Some want flesh, others have a more specific taste for brains. Whatever their individual differences, we know zombies when we see them. And from 1932’s White Zombie to 2023’s The Last of Us, we’ve seen these charismatic, cannibalistic humanoids on the screen a lot through the generations. Off-screen, they’ve seeped into our language. (In the business world, a “zombie” lumbers on the edge of insolvency.) And more broadly, as suggested by a recent conspiracy theory that testing the nation’s emergency broadcast system would trigger an outbreak of ghouls,…

By Rose Chen '26 Renowned designer Stuart Weitzman visited Wesleyan on Thursday, Oct. 12 to share the inspiration behind his highly successful high fashion and luxury shoe company and give students advice from his 45-year career on entrepreneurship, risk-taking, creativity, and imagination. His talk was part of the Gordon Career Center’s Career Conversations and was hosted in Ring Family Performing Arts Hall. “The chief goal of events like this is to show students the myriad opportunities that are available to them with a liberal arts education,” Gordon Career Center Executive Director Sharon Belden Castonguay said. “Students are going to come…

President Michael S. Roth ’78 joined Middletown High School students in a discussion of his new book “The Student: A Short History” on Thursday, Oct. 5 at RJ Julia Bookstore. In addition to Roth’s talk, MeshEd led a writing and tutoring workshop entitled the “Art of the Personal Essay.” MeshEd, an organization that provides project-based learning curriculum and professional development for teachers, also offers afterschool programs at Middletown High School through its Aspiring Young Learners Initiative. Roth discerned a common theme through examining the relationships of Confucius, Socrates, and Jesus with their students, and diving into what it has meant…

The National Basketball Association. The pinnacle of the profession. A level that millions of people of every age and walk of life dream of being a part of. Assuredly every basketball-wielding person has put themselves there—the seemingly hour-long seconds flickering away at the end of the fourth quarter of an NBA Finals game. Few have lived the finals dream, even fewer have left winners. Both Jordan Sears ’18 and Greg St. Jean ’13 are among the few, each taking home a championship in the last few seasons. Sears won in 2021 as assistant video coordinator with the Milwaukee Bucks and…

Producer Michelle Rabinowitz Carney ‘02 has produced a newly released documentary about the civil trial of white supremacists in Charlottesville that sheds new light into the motivations of the far-right organizers—and the courageous stand attorneys and plaintiffs took against them. “No Accident,” released on HBO and available to stream on MAX or HBO and MAX October 10, follows the attorneys who took a novel legal approach against the leaders of a far-right rally in Charlottesville in 2017 that resulted in violence and the death of counter-protester Heather Heyer. “What people don’t realize is there was a larger conspiracy to commit…

A team of scientists from different corners of the field, all with unique backgrounds and countries they call home, tucked onto a vessel in the middle of the Northwest Atlantic for two months. It could be the set up to a research-themed superhero movie, or the dream scenario for an early-career professor. For Raquel Bryant, Assistant Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences, getting this experience had been a bucket list item for the past decade. Bryant once had a research mentor who had a similar experience who told lively stories of the life at sea with some of the world’s…

Attorney Ian Bassin ’98 was named a MacArthur Fellow by the MacArthur Foundation on Oct. 4. The prestigious award went to Bassin and 19 others who have demonstrated outstanding talent and creativity in their work. Bassin is the executive director of Protect Democracy, an organization he co-founded in 2016, which aims to counter authoritarian tactics and abuses of power. The group takes a multidisciplinary approach with work in litigation, legislative reform, research and analysis, election-monitoring software, and strategic communications. “Democracy is a rare form of government in human history,” Bassin said. “It is not something that comes about naturally or…

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) recently reported a steep rise in beneficiary complaints regarding the way Medicare Advantage and Medicare Part D programs were being advertised. Many of the complaints suggested that some advertisements for these programs were misleading consumers or using aggressive sales tactics to boost enrollment. To better understand this problem, the Wesleyan Media Project (WMP) collaborated with KFF to study how health insurers and brokers are marketing Medicare programs to the American public during the open enrollment period in 2022. “We have worked informally with KFF in the past since our core set of expertise…

More than half of people who die by suicide visited a primary care physician in the month prior to their death, according to research. That statistic indicates a unique opportunity to help identify people wresting with suicidal ideation and perhaps save lives. Assistant Professor of Psychology Alexis M. May, director of the Risk, Prevention, and Intervention (RPI) Lab, has recently published research that shows a common depression screening questionnaire given at regular primary care visits is more effective in predicting future suicidal behavior over the short term than specific questions about suicidal thoughts themselves. “It suggests to me that while…

In this continuing series, we review alumni books and offer a selection for those in search of knowledge, insight, and inspiration. The volumes, sent to us by alumni, are forwarded to Olin Memorial Library as donations to the University’s collection and made available to the Wesleyan community. This edition of YJHTRT highlights true crime, spooky stories, and thrillers for October. Daniel Sweren-Becker ’06, Kill Show: A True Crime Novel (HarperCollins) In this genre-bending novel, Daniel Sweren-Becker fashions an oral history around the seemingly familiar crime of a teenage girl gone missing. Yet Kill Show is no standard mystery. Sara Parcell disappeared…

Music in Unexpected Spaces

Stewart E. Novick, Joshua Boger University Professor of the Sciences and Mathematics, Emeritus, Passes Away

McAlister Explores Our Undying Attraction to the Undead

Designer Stuart Weitzman Spotlighted in Career Conversation at Wesleyan

Roth Speaks to High School Students at RJ Julia

Wesleyan Makes Coaches: St. Jean ’13, Sears ’18 Start NBA Season in New Roles

New Documentary Sheds Light on Charlottesville Trial

Raquel Bryant on Eight-Week Research Expedition in Waters of Greenland

Ian Bassin ’98 Named 2023 MacArthur Fellow

Wesleyan Media Project Studies Medicare Advertisements

New Research Explores Efficacy of Suicide Risk Screening Versus Depression Screening

“You Just Have to Read This…” Books by Wesleyan Authors Sweren-Becker ’06, Turkewitz ’10, and Vidich ’72, P’00, ’03