Rachel Wachman '24Professor of Religion Mary-Jane Rubenstein recently co-authored an essay in collection titled Image: Three Inquiries in Technology and Imagination alongside Mark C. Taylor ’68, professor of religion at Columbia University. The book, published in September 2021 by the University of Chicago Press, explores how visual elements function in relationship to humans and technology. “Modern life is steeped in images, image-making, and attempts to control the world through vision,” the book’s description reads. “Mastery of images has been advanced by technologies that expand and reshape vision and enable us to create, store, transmit, and display images. The three essays in Image,…
Lauren RubensteinIn this recurring feature in The Wesleyan Connection, we highlight some of the latest news stories about Wesleyan and our alumni. Wesleyan in the News NPR: "Book Review: 'The Movie Musical!' Is a Symphony in Praise of the 'Razzmatazz' of the Genre" "Encyclopedic in scope, but thankfully not in structure, The Movie Musicals! is a downright delightful read," this NPR review of Corwin-Fuller Professor of Film Studies, Emerita, Jeanine Basinger's new book proclaims. The Movie Musicals! truly "dazzles" for its insight into the roles these films have played over the 20th century and into the 21st, the review states, noting, "And throughout the…
In this recurring feature in The Wesleyan Connection, we highlight some of the latest news stories about Wesleyan and our alumni. Wesleyan in the News CNN: "What the ‘Woke Student’ and the ‘Welfare Queen’ Have in Common" "Every age seems to need a bogeyman, some negative image against which good people measure themselves," writes President Michael Roth '78 in this op-ed. Roth compares today's bogeyman, the "woke" college student, with those of past eras—the "welfare queen" and "dirty hippie"—and seeks to build understanding and dispel negative misperceptions of activist college students. "The images of the welfare queen and of the woke…
Professor of Religion Mary-Jane Rubenstein was a guest on WNYC's "Studio 360" recently, in a show titled, "The Theoretical Physicist Wore a Toga." She addressed existential "what if" questions and the idea of multiple universes—an idea, she explains, which "is about 2,500 years old." "For the ancient Atomist philosophers [in Ancient Greece], the most desirable thing about what we're now calling the multiverse was that it got rid of the need for a god. If it is the case that our world is the only world, then it's very difficult to explain. How is everything so perfect? How is it that sunsets so beautiful?" she said. "What…
In its most recent meeting, the Board of Trustees conferred tenure on Hari Krishnan, associate professor of dance. He joins seven other faculty members who were awarded tenure earlier this spring. In addition, seven faculty members were promoted to Full Professor: Mary Alice Haddad, professor of government; Scott Higgins, professor of film studies; Tsampikos Kottos, professor of physics; Edward Moran, professor of astronomy; Dana Royer, professor of earth and environmental sciences; Mary-Jane Rubenstein, professor of religion; and Gina Athena Ulysse, professor of anthropology. Brief descriptions of their research and teaching appear below. Associate Professor Krishnan teaches studio- and lecture-based dance courses on Mobilizing Dance: Cinema, the Body, and Culture…
Olivia DrakeMary-Jane Rubenstein, associate professor of religion, is the author of Worlds Without End: The Many Lives of the Multiverse, published by Columbia University Press, 2014. “Multiverse” cosmologies imagine our universe as just one of a vast number of others. While this idea has captivated philosophy, religion and literature for millennia, it is now being considered as a scientific hypothesis—with different models emerging from cosmology, quantum mechanics and string theory. Beginning with ancient Atomist and Stoic philosophies, Rubenstein links contemporary models of the multiverse to their forerunners and explores the reasons for their recent appearance. One concerns the so-called fine-tuning of the…
Bill HolderMary-Jane Rubenstein, associate professor of religion and chair of the Religion Department, has been appointed Wesleyan's 2013-14 Distinguished Teaching Fellow. She also is associate professor of feminist, gender and sexuality studies. Established last year by the John E. Andrus Professor of Sociology Rob Rosenthal, the Distinguished Teaching Fellowship honors Wesleyan's most outstanding teachers and gives them the opportunity to teach a course outside their usual departmental offerings. The inaugural fellowship was awarded to Andy Szegedy-Maszak, Jane A. Seney Professor of Greek, professor of classical studies. "It is no surprise that Mary-Jane is Wesleyan's second Distinguished Teaching Fellow: she is known…
Mary Jane Rubenstein, associate professor of religion, is the author of "Cosmic Singularities: On the Nothing and the Sovereign," published in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Vol. 80, No. 2, pages 485–517, in 2012. Until very recently, the paper explains, "the creation myth of secular modernity has been the hot big bang hypothesis: the explosion of our single universe out of a single point. Physicists concede that in its traditional form, this story performs an uncanny recapitulation of Christian creation theology: the universe bursts forth suddenly, in a flood of light, out of nothing. As many contemporary thinkers have…
David PesciWesleyan is pleased to announce that during its most recent review, the Board awarded tenure to four faculty effective July 1, 2011. Ulrich Plass, associate professor of German studies, joined the Wesleyan faculty in 2004 as assistant professor. Plass is a specialist in German literature, literary criticism, and critical theory, with a particular focus on the works of the German philosopher Theodor Adorno. He conducted his undergraduate studies at the University of Hamburg, Germany; his M.A. is from the University of Michigan, (more…)
Mary-Jane Rubenstein, assistant professor of religion, assistant professor of feminist, gender and sexuality studies, was a guest panelist at a conference titled “Christianity and the Global Politics of Sexuality” held Oct. 21 at the Barnard Center for Research on Women, New York University. Focusing specifically on sexuality, Rubenstein and other panelists discussed the ways in which transnational and non-governmental Christian organizations have an impact on legal and social policies in different areas where Christians may comprise a small minority or a larger percentage of the population. In addition, sexuality continues to rankle and even divide Christian churches themselves, as evidenced…