Olivia DrakeVera Schwarcz, the Mansfield Freeman Professor of East Asian Studies, chair of the East Asian Studies Proggram, professor of history, professor of East Asian studies, is the author of Chisel of Remembrance, a new collection of poems that draws from roots in Jewish, Chinese, and other ancient traditions. The 76-page book of poetry was published from Antrim House Books.
David LowChristopher McKnight Nichols ’00 has co-edited and co-authored (with Charles Mathewes) a challenging essay collection, Prophesies of Godlessness: Predictions of America’s Imminent Secularization from the Puritans to the Present (Oxford University Press, 2008). The book considers the similar expectations of religious and moral change voiced by major American thinkers from the time of the Puritans to today. Generations of Americans, from colonial times to the post-modern present, have witnessed or predicted the coming of “godlessness” of American society. The essay collection examines the history of these prophesies, and each chapter explores a certain era, a particular individual, a community of…
In her new biography, My Happiness Bears No Relation to Happiness: A Poet’s Life in the Palestinian Century (Yale University Press, 2009) Adina Hoffman ’89 tells the story of an exceptional man, Palestinian poet Taha Muhammad Ali, and the culture from which he emerged. Born in 1931 in the Galilee village of Saffuriyya, he had to flee his homeland during the war in 1948. He traveled on foot to Lebanon and returned a year later to find his village destroyed. An autodidact, he has since run a souvenir shop in Nazareth, but his written work is highly respected by many…
Masami Imai, assistant professor of economics, assistant professor of East Asian studies, is the author of "Political Influence and Declarations of Bank Insolvency in Japan," published in the Journal of Money Credit, and Banking, 2009.
Joyce Lowrie, professor of romance languages and literatures, emerita, is the author of Sightings: Mirrors in Texts - Texts in Mirrors, published by Rodopi in December 2008. This book analyzes mirror imagery, scenes, and characters in French prose texts, in chronological order, from the 17th to the 20th centuries. It does so in light of literal, metaphoric and rhetorical structures. Works analyzed in the traditional French canon, written by such writers as Laclos, Lafayette, and Balzac, are extended by studies of texts composed by Barbey d'Aurevilly, Georges Rodenbach, Jean Lorrain and Pieyre de Mandiargues. This work offers appeal to readers…
Wesleyan was featured as the cover story in Doors & Hardware magazine's Jan. 2009 issue. Doors & Hardware is a publication of the Door and Hardware Institute, which aims to advance life safety and security solutions. In an article titled "Off-Campus Fire Safety: How Wesleyan University meets the Challenge of Making its Unique Student Housing Fire Safe," the magazine cites Wesleyan's Facilities for upgrading residential sprinkler systems. Joyce Topshe, associate vice president of facilities, and Barb Spalding, associate director of campus fire safety, are featured in the article. Wesleyan allocated $5M towards sprinklers for a residence hall that housed 520…
Gloster Aaron, assistant professor of biology, assistant professor of neuroscience and behavior, is the co-author of "Statistical Significance of Precisely Repeated Intracellular Synaptic Patterns," published in PLoS ONE 3(12): e3983, Dec. 19, 2008.
Katja Kolcio, associate professor of dance, is co-author of "Faking It: The Necessary Blind Spots of Understanding" in the journal Cultural Theory-Critical Methodologies 9:2, published in May 2009. Kolcio wrote this article in collaboration with Wesleyan dance major, Ellen Gerdes '06. Gerdes is currently doing graduate studies in dance at Temple University.
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Hilary Barth, assistant professor of psychology, is the author of "Judgments of discrete and continuous quantity: An illusory Stroop effect," published in the journal Cognition in November, 2008.
Barbara Juhasz, assistant professor of psychology, is the author of "The processing of compound words in English: Effects of word length on eye movements during reading," published in Language and Cognitive Processes, 23, 1057-1088, Nov. 2008. She also is the co-author of "The processing of novel and lexicalised prefixed words in reading," published in Language and Cognitive Processes, 23, 1133-1158, Nov. 2008.
Francisco Rodriguez, assistant professor of economics, is the co-author of the article "Freed from Illiteracy? A Closer Look at Venezuela's Misión Robinson Literacy Campaign," which was published as the lead article in Economic Development and Cultural Change 57(1):1-30, October 2008.