This fall, the African American Studies Program hired its first core faculty members. They include Kali Nicole Gross, professor of African American studies, and Khalil Anthony Johnson Jr., assistant professor of African American studies.

Wesleyan opened the Afro American Institute in 1969 and offered minimal courses on African American history. In 1983, students could major in African American studies, but it wasn’t until 2008 that the university created the African American Studies Program. Now the program is poised to make institutional history by African American Studies gaining departmental status, which would put Wesleyan on par with other top-tier universities and colleges.

“Having faculty members hired solely into the AFAM Program represents a real growth and commitment to the long-term stability of the program,” said Lois Brown, professor and chair of the African American Studies Program. “Kali Gross and Khalil Johnson also bring remarkable research strengths to the university.”

Kali Gross

Kali Gross, who shares a faculty appointment with the Feminist, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program, is the author of Colored Amazons: Crime, Violence, and Black Women in the City of Brotherly Love, 1880-1910 (2006) and the newly released, Hannah Mary Tabbs and the Disembodied Torso: A Tale of Race, Sex, and Violence in America (2016). She has been featured on NPR, C-SPAN2 and other television programs, and has consulted for the PBS show “History Detectives.” Gross’s op-ed pieces have appeared in The Washington Post, The Huffington Post, The Houston Chronicle, American Prospect, Ebony, Jet Magazine, The Root and Truthout.

“Wesleyan University has an excellent reputation,” Gross said. “It’s a school that is known for its high academic standards and super-smart students. When I learned of the opportunity to join the faculty, I was pretty excited, and I was heartened by the fact that the program was doing a cluster hire — meaning the institution had committed to more than one line; to me that suggested a sustained investment in the development and growth of African American Studies—that was and remains of paramount importance to me.”

Gross has a PhD and MA from the University of Pennsylvania and a BA from Cornell University.

This fall she is teaching a junior colloquium on African American Women, Sex, Crime and Punishment. Next spring, she will teach Introduction to Modern African American History and African American Women’s History.

“I have been so impressed by the students in the AFAM Junior Colloquium. The students are brilliant, dynamic, and tireless in their educational pursuits. They are doing graduate-level coursework—and they have done so bravely,” Gross said. “Each week we have been grappling with dense histories covering African American women and sex, crime, and punishment in U.S. history. This is not easy or light reading. It can be incredibly difficult and frustrating because few of the works end with some sort of triumph—but my students have been diligent and have critically engaged the material. They have also brought fresh insights to texts that I have been reading for nearly a decade.”

Khalil Johnson

Khalil Johnson specializes in the intertwined histories of the African diaspora and Indigenous people in North America, with emphases on U.S. settler colonialism, education, and counter-hegemonic social movements. In his current manuscript project, Schooled: The Education of Black and Indigenous People in the United States and Abroad, 1730-1980, Johnson historicizes the Post-War migration of hundreds of African American educators to Indian Country ultimately unearthed a colonial genealogy of four generations of social reformers, missionaries, philanthropists, activists, and teachers who, since the 18th century, have used schooling to reconcile the founding cataclysms of the United States––the ongoing presence of Indigenous nations, free black people, and non-white immigrants. The result is a dramatic and transnational reinterpretation of American education and its consequences for colonized peoples across the globe.

“It’s only my first semester, but I love teaching at Wesleyan,” Johnson said. “The students are not only whip-smart, but more importantly they exemplify a politically engaged and compassionate mode of intellectual inquiry that inspires me to be more a humane, intentional, and active human in class, on campus, and in the world.”

Johnson received his PhD from Yale University and his BA from the University of Georgia.

This fall he is teaching Freedom School and Early African American History. Next spring, he will teach Black and Indigenous Foundations of U.S. Society.

The African American Studies Program at Wesleyan offers a dynamic interdisciplinary approach to the study of people of African descent in the Black Atlantic world, especially in the United States and in the Caribbean. The major enables undergraduates to bring the methodologies, theories, and insights of diverse disciplines to bear on their studies of the history, literature, politics, culture, and art of peoples of African descent. Courses, which range from seminars to larger discussion classes, are informed by theoretical and empirical approaches and explore topics such as conceptualizations of race, issues of race and identity, as well as the social structures, cultural traditions, and political realities of Africans in the Diaspora.

This fall, the African American Studies Program welcomed two new faculty members: Kali Nicole Gross, professor of African American studies, and Khalil Anthony Johnson Jr., assistant professor of African American studies.

Kali Gross

Kali Gross is the author of Colored Amazons: Crime, Violence, and Black Women in the City of Brotherly Love, 1880-1910 (2006) and the newly released, Hannah Mary Tabbs and the Disembodied Torso: A Tale of Race, Sex, and Violence in America (2016). She has been featured on NPR, C-SPAN2 and other television programs, and has consulted for the PBS show “History Detectives.” Gross’s op-ed pieces have appeared in The Washington Post, The Huffington Post, The Houston Chronicle, American Prospect, Ebony, Jet Magazine, The Root and Truthout.

“Wesleyan University has an excellent reputation,” Gross said. “It’s a school that is known for its high academic standards and super-smart students. When I learned of the opportunity to join the faculty, I was pretty excited, and I was heartened by the fact that the program was doing a cluster hire — meaning the institution had committed to more than one line; to me that suggested a sustained investment in the development and growth of African American Studies—that was and remains of paramount importance to me.”

Gross has a PhD and MA from the University of Pennsylvania and a BA from Cornell University.

This fall she is teaching a junior colloquium on African American Women, Sex, Crime and Punishment. Next spring, she will teach Introduction to Modern African American History and African American Women’s History.

“I have been so impressed by the students in the AFAM Junior Colloquium. The students are brilliant, dynamic, and tireless in their educational pursuits. They are doing graduate-level coursework—and they have done so bravely,” Gross said. “Each week we have been grappling with dense histories covering African American women and sex, crime, and punishment in U.S. history. This is not easy or light reading. It can be incredibly difficult and frustrating because few of the works end with some sort of triumph—but my students have been diligent and have critically engaged the material. They have also brought fresh insights to texts that I have been reading for nearly a decade.”

Khalil Johnson

Khalil Johnson specializes in the intertwined histories of the African diaspora and Indigenous people in North America, with emphases on U.S. settler colonialism, education, and counter-hegemonic social movements. In his current manuscript project, Schooled: The Education of Black and Indigenous People in the United States and Abroad, 1730-1980, Johnson historicizes the Post-War migration of hundreds of African American educators to Indian Country ultimately unearthed a colonial genealogy of four generations of social reformers, missionaries, philanthropists, activists, and teachers who, since the 18th century, have used schooling to reconcile the founding cataclysms of the United States––the ongoing presence of Indigenous nations, free black people, and non-white immigrants. The result is a dramatic and transnational reinterpretation of American education and its consequences for colonized peoples across the globe.

“It’s only my first semester, but I love teaching at Wesleyan,” Johnson said. “The students are not only whip-smart, but more importantly they exemplify a politically engaged and compassionate mode of intellectual inquiry that inspires me to be more a humane, intentional, and active human in class, on campus, and in the world.”

Johnson received his PhD from Yale University and his BA from the University of Georgia.

This fall he is teaching Freedom School and Early African American History. Next spring, he will teach Black and Indigenous Foundations of U.S. Society.

The African American Studies Program at Wesleyan offers a dynamic interdisciplinary approach to the study of people of African descent in the Black Atlantic world, especially in the United States and in the Caribbean. The major enables undergraduates to bring the methodologies, theories, and insights of diverse disciplines to bear on their studies of the history, literature, politics, culture, and art of peoples of African descent. Courses, which range from seminars to larger discussion classes, are informed by theoretical and empirical approaches and explore topics such as conceptualizations of race, issues of race and identity, as well as the social structures, cultural traditions, and political realities of Africans in the Diaspora.

Michael Slowik ’03

As an undergraduate film studies major in the early 2000s, Michael Slowik admired how Wesleyan’s film faculty emphasized “their unabashed enthusiasm for movies,” the history of film and ways films impacted the audience. “These were things I closely connected with,” Slowik said.

Slowik, who graduated from Wesleyan in 2003 with a BA in film studies, was appointed assistant professor of film at Wesleyan this fall. His research interests include U.S. film history, film sound, film authorship and film’s relationship to music and theater.

“Nearly all of the film professors who were so influential to me are still at Wesleyan, so when I was offered a position in the department, I was happy and honored to accept it,” he said. “I feel privileged to be able to teach in our beautiful film building, and I also love the warm, almost family-like atmosphere of the department. It’s great to be back ‘home’ at Wesleyan.”

After graduating from Wesleyan, Slowik received a MA in humanities from The University of Chicago and a MA and PhD in film studies from the University of Iowa. His dissertation, After the Silents: Hollywood Film Music in the Early Sound Era, 1926-1934, was ultimately published by Columbia University Press in 2014. The book also was a top 10 finalist for the Kraszna-Krausz Foundation Moving Image Book Award.

Slowik authored papers published in New Review of Film and Television Studies, the Quarterly Review of Film and Video, Journal of Popular Film and Television, American Music, The Journal of American Culture, Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film and Music, Sound, and the Moving Image.

Slowik has delivered more than a dozen presentations on topics such as “Sound Effects and Sonic Depth in the Early Sound Western;” “Representing Pearl Harbor and September 11th in Fiction and Film;” “Before Kong: Film Music and Other Worlds in the Early 1930s;” “Sonic Sparseness in the Films of Alfred Hitchcock;” and “Losing the Human Element: The Shift from Live to Recorded Music in Hollywood’s Early Sound Era.”

Prior to his appointment at Wesleyan, Slowik taught classes at the University of Iowa, Western Kentucky University, Kutztown University and San Diego State University. During the 2016-17 academic year at Wesleyan, he is teaching courses on the history of world cinema, classic American film comedy and the Western genre of film.

“Teaching at Wesleyan has been a wonderful experience. The students are eager and thoughtful class participators, which makes my job all the more pleasurable,” Slowik said. “It’s not uncommon to bump into a student across campus and engage in an extended conversation about a recent film we watched in class. They also keep me on my toes, offering perceptive interpretations that force me to rethink films I thought I knew.”

Slowik, who is a member of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies, resides in Middletown with his wife, Amy, and six-month-old daughter, Emily. When he’s not watching films, Slowik enjoys running.

In its most recent meeting, the Board of Trustees conferred tenure on four faculty members including Tiphanie Yanique, associate professor of English; Jay Hoggard, professor of music; Ron Kuivila, professor of music; and Sumarsam, professor of music. Sumarsam also was appointed to the Winslow-Kaplan Professorship of Music. The appointments will be effective on Jan. 1, 2017.

“Please join us in congratulating them on their impressive records of accomplishment,” said Joyce Jacobsen, provost and vice president for academic affairs.

Tiphanie Yanique

Tiphanie Yanique is a widely published and highly regarded fiction writer, essayist and poet. She is the author of two novels, one children’s book, one collection of poems, numerous works of short fiction, and many nonfiction essays. Her novel, Land of Love and Drowning (Penguin Random House Publishers/Riverhead Books, 2014), is the recipient of several awards, including the Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize and the American Academy Rosenthal Prize, and her recent poetry collection, Wife (Peepal Tree Press, 2015), received the 2016 Bocas Poetry Prize in Caribbean Literature and the 2016 Forward/Felix Dennis Prize for best new collection in the United Kingdom. Her work has focused on themes of belonging and freedom. She offers courses on creative writing and literature. (Yanique’s photo by Debbie Grossman)

Jay Hoggard

Jay Hoggard is an influential jazz vibraphonist and composer. His creative output has included 21 albums as a leader, most recently, Harlem Hieroglyphs in 2016, as well as more than 50 albums working with others. He has performed at national and international concert halls, maintaining a presence at some of New York City’s most important jazz venues, including Jazzmobile, Birdland, and Minton’s, as well as prestigious jazz festivals, such as the Hartford Jazz Festival, Colorado Jazz Fest, and Atlanta Jazz Festival. He teaches courses on Theory of Jazz/Fundamentals of Jazz Improvisation; Jazz Orchestra; Sacred and Secular African American Music Survey; and Language of Jazz Orchestra/Music of Duke Ellington.

Ron Kuivila

Ron Kuivila is a prolific composer and installation artist in the American Experimental Music tradition. Over the past 35 years, he has created more than 50 sound installations in some of the most prestigious institutions in the world, including Hochschule für Musik, Franz Liszt Conservatory, Wiemar; a long-term installation (“The Idea of Rainforest”) at the Musical Instrument Museum in Berlin; MASS MoCA; and many other significant venues in the Netherlands, Italy, Canada, Switzerland, Spain and major cities throughout the United States. He offers courses on composition, sound recording, experimental music history and practice; computer music; and the interaction of sound studies, ethnomusicology and composition.

Sumarsam

Sumarsam is an ethnomusicologist whose research on the history, theory and performance practice of Javanese gamelan and wayang has resulted in the publication of two influential books, Javanese Gamelan and the West (University of Rochester Press, 2013) and Gamelan: Cultural Interaction and Musical Development in Central Java (University of Chicago Press, 1995) as well as numerous articles that are central to the field. His recent research focuses on the intersections between religion and performing arts. He is also an acknowledged leader in gamelan performance and a dalang (puppeteer) of Javanese wayang who performs and lectures throughout the U.S., Europe and Asia. He teaches courses on beginning and advanced Javanese Gamelan, music and theater of Indonesia, and a seminar for music majors.

On Dec. 8, Wesleyan will hold Wesleyan Thinks Big, a biannual TED-talk style event featuring Wesleyan faculty and administrators giving 10-minute speeches on an experience, a personal passion, an existential question or another topic of their choosing. The event will take place at 5 p.m. in Memorial Chapel.

This year’s event is being coordinated by Catherine Wulff ’18, with help from Rachel Godfrey ’19 and Kaiyana Cervera ’19.

“Wesleyan Thinks Big is a way to bring the community together outside of the classroom, by shedding light on the strength of personal testimony and human connection,” said Wulff. “Our main goal is for the audience to leave energized and hopeful.”

Wesleyan Thinks Big will feature:

• Iris Bork-Goldfield, adjunct professor of German studies and chair of the German Studies Department: “Thank you for Smoking. The Unintended Consequences of Lucky Strikes;”
• Danielle Vogel, visiting assistant professor of creative writing in English: “Narrative & Nest;”
• Renee Johnson-Thornton, dean for the Class of 2018: “How to Excel in College by Cultivating Membership in a Community of Practice;” and
• Khalil Johnson, assistant professor of African American studies: “Settler Colonial Blues: Musings from the Margins of Black and Indigenous History.”

In June, Jan Naegele, professor of biology, professor of neuroscience and behavior, traveled to Mundgod, India to teach Tibetan monks through the Emory-Tibet Science Initiative (ETSI), a program promoting “the convergence of science and spirituality as two complementary systems of knowledge,” according to the Emory Tibetan Partnership. ETSI was founded as a pilot in 2006 by Emory University at the bequest of the 14th Dalai Lama. Naegele’s journey, which she took together with her husband, Dr. Paul Lombroso, was described in the Winter 2016 issue of Rutland Magazine, in an article featuring many photographs provided by Naegele.

Lombroso explains, “The Dalai Lama escaped from Tibet in 1959 and continued as the head of the Tibetan Buddhist world. From many trips abroad he realized that modern science is something the monks needed to learn about as another ‘piece of the puzzle’ as they had never been educated in science.”

Monks selected for the three-year program are educated in the areas of philosophy, biology, physics and neuroscience. Naegele taught second-year students about sensory systems in the brain, including visual, auditory and olfactory communication. She told Rutland Magazine that the customized curricula devised for ETSI had to be revised on-the-fly by the teaching staff, who discovered that the Western education system needed modification to “reach” the monastics who brought a totally different cultural experience to the classroom. Tibetan Buddhist monks fluent in English translated the lectures as the professors taught, which was no easy task given the lack of Tibetan words for scientific terms such as electro-magnetic fields, chromosomes, or neurotransmitters.

According to the article:

Also missing from the regulation teaching modules was something that the Tibetan Buddhist monks embraced in class and out of it: true, not theoretical, compassion. To introduce the concepts of natural selection in evolution, several of the faculty introduced the monks to an experiment to exemplify survival of the fittest in the wild. One monk was allowed to use his fingers (mimicking a bird’s “big beak”) to extract pieces of dried fruit tacked onto a board and then eat it. Next to him, another monk was given only tiny tweezers (mimicking a “little beak”) to pry fruit from the grid, and despite his efforts, failed. To Naegele’s surprise and delight, the “big beak” monk promptly extracted more fruit which he then fed to his “little beak” friend, who otherwise would have gone without. This compassion is seen, too, in the end goal of many of the monks in the program: they strive to achieve the Geshe Lharampa degree (described by ETSI as “the highest academic degree granted in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition”) and return to their villages in Tibet to help their countrymen.

The group of faculty teaching in the ETSI program come from all over the U.S. Naegele was reunited with two of her former students: Sam Sober ’98, currently assistant professor of biology at Emory, and Matthew Tresch ’92, currently associate professor of biomedical engineering and physical medicine and rehabilitation at Northwestern University.

Naegele and Lombroso were invited to return to the program and will be joined next summer by Matthew Kurtz, professor and chair of psychology, professor of neuroscience and behavior.

Joan Cho

This fall, the College of East Asian Studies welcomes Joan Cho to Wesleyan.

Cho is an assistant professor of East Asian studies, a tenure-track position partially funded by the Korea Foundation. She also is an affiliate member of the Government Department.

Her research and teaching interests include authoritarian regimes, democratization, and social movements, with a regional focus on Korea and East Asia.

During the fall semester, Cho taught Social and Political Changes in Korea and Democracy and Social Movements in East Asia. In spring, she will teach Korean Politics through Film and Legacies of Authoritarian Politics.

“Although this is only my first semester at Wesleyan I’ve already noticed that Wesleyan students are very intellectually engaged and interested in applying course materials to current affairs,” she said. “The small class size we have at Wesleyan naturally facilitates an interactive learning environment, which has provided me with the opportunity to learn from my students as well.”

Cho comes to Wesleyan from Harvard University, where she worked as a teaching fellow. She earned her PhD in political science from Harvard in 2016 and completed her BA in political science from the University of Rochester in 2008.

Cho is the co-author of the paper “Socioeconomic Foundations of South Korea’s Democracy Movement” published in Routledge Handbook of Korean Culture and Society: A Global Approach, 2016; and “Media Exposure and Regime Support Under Competitive Authoritarianism: Evidence from South Korea,” which is forthcoming in the Journal of East Asian Studies. She’s also working on papers focused on the long-term effect of industrialization on a labor mobilization in South Korea and ways investment in public infrastructure helps autocrats.

Cho applauds Wesleyan’s interdisciplinary learning environment, especially at the College of East Asian Studies.

“Being surrounded by colleagues and students with diverse interests in the region — covering pre-modern to contemporary period on various topics in language, literature, philosophy, history, economics and politics — has broadened my own interests and perspectives on Korea as well,” she said.

Cho was born in South Korea but grew up in England, South Korea, then Ohio and New York. “I’m a naturalized U.S. citizen and I’m proud of my Korean-American identity, but I do wish that I still had my British accent,” she said.

Cho currently lives near campus and enjoys exploring the area’s nature and dining at new restaurants. In her spare time, she and her fiancé enjoy traveling and hiking.

Gabrielle Ponce-Hegenauer

Last fall, the College of Letters (COL) welcomed Gabrielle Ponce-Hegenauer to the department as an assistant professor of letters. Ponce-Hegenauer is an expert on the biography and works of Spanish writer Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616), author of Don Quixote.

She’s also interested in 16th-century translation theory and poetics; pre-Cartesian Renaissance philosophy; cultural and intellectual history in the Spanish Golden Age; early modern metaphysics; medicine and philosophy in 16th-century Spain; the history of the book and manuscript culture; Spanish theater; Renaissance and Baroque Spanish poetry; Spanish and Italian literary exchanges; the 19th-century imagination of the Golden Age; and 19th-century Spanish novelist Benito Pérez Galdós.

“I like locating the particularities of big ideas in specific texts,” she said. “I’m constantly moving between a microcosmic and macrocosmic perspective. Nuance, variation, paradox and metaphor: these are key.”

Ponce-Hegenauer, who is fluent in Spanish, Italian and French, earned a BA in rhetoric at the University of Illinois Urbana, as well as both an MFA in poetry and creative writing and a PhD in German and romance languages and literatures from The Johns Hopkins University. Her dissertation, published in April 2016, was titled Cervantes, Poet: Lyric Subjectivity as Practice in the Rise of the Novel in 16th-Century Spain. Recently, she authored entries on “Giangiorgio Trissino” and “God” for the Encyclopedia of Renaissance Philosophy, and she’s completing a translation of a selection of Cervantes’s lyric poems.

Ponce-Hegenauer found the COL’s unique interdisciplinary approach intriguing when exploring career opportunities at Wesleyan.

“There are very few departments of the kind in the country that foster this approach to the humanities,” she said. “As an early modernist, most of the authors I treat were multilingual polymaths. Modern disciplinary and linguistic divisions are almost antithetical to the subject matter. I also tend to work across chronological divisions, so the COL has given me the opportunity to combine various fields and linguistic cultures in order to do what I do best in the classroom and in my own research.”

This spring, Ponce-Hegenauer is teaching a Junior Colloquium on the history, literature and philosophy of Europe in 1475-1800.

Ponce-Hegenauer is currently focusing her research on a reevaluation of the literary corpus of Cervantes through a restoration of the history of ideas concerning literary (poetic) art forms, love and madness in 16th-century Europe. This project moves beyond nationalistic readings of Quixote towards a reintegration of the author and his output in the European and Mediterranean context of the 16th century. Don Quixote was published in 1605 (Part I) and 1615 (Part II), so it comes at the end of a long and dynamic century during which Cervantes was, for the most part, a lyric poet.

“I take seriously Cervantes’ role as a lyric poet as a central aspect of his work which has often been overlooked by theories of the novel. I propose that the lyric, specifically the pastoral lyric, is the omphalos from whence the modern novel developed in late 16th-century Spain.”

This spring, she is teaching a Junior Colloquium on the history, literature and philosophy of Europe in 1475-1800, and Folly and Enlightenment: Madness Before and After the Mind/Body Split, a course that examines a variety of ways in which madness has been conceptualized in the history of literature, philosophy and medicine. She previously taught a First-Year Seminar on writing about love, and a College of Letters seminar on Novelistic Fiction in Journey Narratives.

At Wesleyan, Ponce-Hegenauer looks forward to continued team-teaching, which takes place in the COL colloquia.

“I can’t imagine a better format for students interested in mastering intellectual discourse as a process of encounter and exchange,” she said. “Broadly, I’ve been so excited and impressed by student involvement both in and outside the classroom. It’s a pleasure to teach such creative and motivated young people.”

Outside the classroom, Ponce-Hegenauer, who “tends to think through movement,” enjoys yoga, running, dancing, rollerblading and weight training. She also enjoys art museums, oil painting and exploring creative literature.

Eiko Otake stands on the top of a breakwater in a dark gray kimono. To her right, the ocean crashes into piles of concrete cubes–their shapes, stacked together, seem almost too clean, like abstractions of stone. She clutches a large but frayed scarlet cloth that catches the wind and encircles her, hovering just inches from her skin. Following the breakwater into the distance, a large cubic structure is visible along the water’s edge. It is the Fukushima Daini Nuclear Plant, 12 miles from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant. She is standing at the midpoint between the infamous two, in the area where the tsunami wave reached 68 feet and the level of radiation remains very high.

Tableaux like this constitute A Body in Fukushima (2016), a series of photographs by Otake, visiting artist in dance and the College of East Asian Studies, and her collaborator William Johnston, professor of history, East Asian studies, science in society and environmental studies. The series shows her, a lone body in the landscape of Fukushima, Japan, in the aftermath of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami. This collaborative photo exhibition had been on Wesleyan’s campus from February through May 2015.

Currently in New York City as part of The Christa Project: Manifesting Diving Bodies, at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, the exhibit will culminate in Remembering Fukushima: Art and Conversations at the Cathedral on March 11, the sixth anniversary of the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdowns that followed.

A collection of speakers, musicians and artists, many of whom are Wesleyan alumni, will participate. Artists, performers, and those facilitating reflections on Fukushima and its legacy include Wesleyan Artist in Residence and University Organist Ronald Ebrecht, Ralph Samuelson MA ’71, Shin Otake ’10, Megu Tagami ’10, DonChristian Jones ’12, Nora Thompson ’15, and Hannah Wolfe Eisner ’17, who is co-curator of The Christa Project at the cathedral. Professor of Dance Katja Kolcio will be one of the professors participating in a conversation on nuclear issues and how these have affected their teaching. Otake also cites dramaturge Mark McCloughan ’10 and media coordinator Alexis Moh ’15, who will be showing their art, including Moh’s new video installation—a reflection on her time at Standing Rock.

This project had its inception in an unlikely place—a train station. In October of 2014, Otake was performing her first solo project A Body in Places, a 12-hour performance piece, at the 30th Street Amtrak station in Philadelphia. Previously she had visited the deserted train stations in Fukushima in 2011 after the triple disaster—and she was inspired. “The next thing to do,” reported Otake, “was to call Bill Johnston.” He was an ideal collaborator: the two had previously taught a course on the atomic bomb together and he has expertise in issues of Japanese public health.

Johnston and Otake twice visited Fukushima for their first photoshoots in 2014, delving into evacuated spaces. The result was shown as the three-gallery exhibition at Wesleyan in 2015. Upon returning for their 2016 iteration of A Body in Fukushima, the two further explored abandoned areas—the deserted woodlands and silent shrines of Fukushima.

Forests remain some of the few spaces left untouched within the vicinity of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Reactor, she says. The rest—fields, roads and houses—have been bulldozed by workers in an attempt to decontaminate—so the areas that appear pristine are actually those that harbor the greater levels of radioactivity.

“We are going through such a hard time politically that I am afraid the name ‘Fukushima’ is not in many people’s minds these days,” Otake says, “but I want Fukushima to remain a concern, especially now. The Fukushima meltdowns were the worst nuclear accidents since Chernobyl, and contamination of the surrounding areas continues. Professor Johnston and I witnessed another layer of human negligence when we returned to Fukushima this summer. We cannot ask people to remember something they have little knowledge about or familiarity with, so I want to offer a time and space in which a wide range of people can have a firsthand experience, connect and create a new memory regarding nuclear matters.”

Otake struggled with this issue of exposure during her trips to Fukushima. She confesses, “‘I took off my shoes and had a moment of hesitation, ‘This is high radiation and I am barefoot.’ But I had to be barefoot. Many months later I still ask myself the same question and keep realizing I HAD TO be barefoot to be connected to the land.”

On Sept. 3, Class of 2019 students met with their faculty advisor to discuss their fall semester pre-registration enrollments and educational goals. The individual faculty advising appointments are part of New Student Orientation for the Class of 2019. (Photos by Olivia Drake and Laurie Kenney)

Khachig Tölölyan, director of the College of Letters, professor of letters, professor of English, met with John Cote ’19.

Courtney Weiss Smith, assistant professor of English, met with Catherine Albert ’19.

Masami Imai, chair and professor of economics, professor of East Asian studies, met with with Brian Oh ’19.

Stephen Devoto, professor of biology, professor of neuroscience and behavior, met with with Meghan Jain ’19.

William “Vijay” Pinch, director of the Environmental Studies Certificate Program, professor of environmental studies, professor of history, met with Willa Schwarz ’19.

Bill Herbst, the John Monroe Van Vleck Professor of Astronomy, met with Jonathan Oh ’19.

Naho Maruta, assistant professor of Japanese practice for the College of East Asian Studies, met with Shota Nakamura ’19.

Antonio Gonzalez, director of the Center for Global Studies, professor of Spanish, met with Shantelle Brown ’19.

Stephanie Weiner, chair of the English Department and professor of English, met with Bobby Baldocchi ’19.

Richard Grossman, professor of economics, met with Meg Harrop ’19.

Jesse Torgerson, assistant professor of letters, with Joy Feinberg ’19.

Annie Burke, professor of biology and director of graduate studies, met with Chloe Qiu ’19

Marguerite Nguyen, assistant professor of English, met with Elvira Lum ’19.

This fall, Assistant Professor of Biology Joe Coolon is teaching Principles of Biology (MB&B181) and Cell and Development Journal Club (BIOL505). (Photo by Olivia Drake)

This fall, Wesleyan welcomes Assistant Professor Joseph Coolon to the Department of Biology.

Coolon comes to Wesleyan from the University of Michigan where he worked as an assistant research scientist and a postdoctoral fellow for the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. Coolon has a BS in biology and PhD in biology from Kansas State University. His dissertation was titled “Ecological Genomics of Nematode Responses to Different Bacteria.”

At Wesleyan, Coolon plans to have two primary research projects. The first project is aimed at understanding the major sources of variation in gene expression including changes in DNA sequence, responses to the environment, and epigenetic effects of previous generations’ experiences.

This project takes advantage of new technological advances in high throughput sequencing and custom computational tools developed in his lab to measure genome-wide gene expression.

The second project focuses on a largely unmet challenge in genomics, determining the functional consequences of a changes in gene expression. To do this, he uses the fruit fly Drosophila sechellia, which has evolved to eat only a single fruit that produces toxic compounds capable of killing most insects. Through an evolved change in gene expression identified by his group, this species has become resistant to the primary toxin of the plant. This project will functionally characterize how this adaptation works mechanistically.

“I am excited to bring new genomics research to Wesleyan,” he said.

Coolon, who has an ongoing collaboration with faculty at Carnegie Mellon and the University of Connecticut Health Center, is interested in understanding the patterns, process and mechanisms of change in gene expression genome-wide using Drosophila. He also is the co-author of more than 15 published papers, many on gene expression and gene regulation in Drosophila.

“I look forward to building collaborations with the other genetics and genomics research groups in both Wesleyan’s Biology and Molecular Biology and Biochemistry Departments in the future,” he said.

This fall, Coolon is teaching Principles of Biology (MB&B181) and Cell and Development Journal Club (BIOL505). Next spring he will teach a new course called Genomics Analysis (BIOL310). This new course, developed by Coolon, will introduce current applications of genomics techniques, how to build a genomics workflow, and an introduction to statistical analyses in R programming language providing hands on experience in the analysis and interpretation of large data.

“I am passionate about both scientific research and science education and Wesleyan is a perfect balance of both, with a world-renowned research reputation and outstanding undergraduate and graduate education in the liberal arts tradition,” he said.

Assistant Professor of Government Yamil Velez’s expertise lies at the intersection of psychology and political science. This year he is teaching Racial and Ethnic Politics and Place and Politics. (Photo by Olivia Drake)

In this News @ Wesleyan story, we speak with Yamil Velez, a new member of Wesleyan’s Government Department.

Q: Welcome to Wesleyan! Please tell us about your background—where did you grow up, go to school, etc?

A: I grew up in Miami, Florida as the only son of two immigrant parents. My parents divorced at an early age and since my mother had to work and go to school to support us, I spent a lot of time with my grandparents. It was my grandmother who instilled a passion for politics in me, as I would spend every afternoon listening to talk radio and discussing contemporary politics with her. When it was time to go to college, I opted for a university in the capital of Florida with a great political science department – Florida State University – and there I began my journey as a political scientist. Political science appealed to me because it reminded me of the long conversations I would have with my grandmother about local and global politics, and I was excited to contribute to the discussion.

Q: As an undergrad, you double majored in political science and psychology. How did this inform your graduate work and scholarly interests today?

A: I appreciated political science for its focus on understanding how different political actors interact and its emphasis on institutions. However, I always felt like these courses did not place enough importance on the individual so I sought out psychology as a double major. I took a political psychology course in the spring of my junior year. After that semester, I decided to go to graduate school. My professor in that class strongly recommended that I go to Stony Brook because at the time, it was the only program that specialized in political psychology, a sub-discipline that united my two fields of study. I was ecstatic once I found out I was admitted and I am glad I went there. It was such an interesting department with the most fascinating people. I still remember my first prospective students meeting with the head of the department, Milton Lodge. He described how some of his recent work had found that exposure to judicial symbols led people to accept the legitimacy of judicial decisions, irrespective of their beliefs about the decision. I responded, “Wow,” and Milton Lodge snappily said, “Wow is right.” This was a place where conventional thinking in the discipline was constantly challenged and I believe my research reflects the Stony Brook spirit.

Q: What attracted you to Wesleyan’s Government Department?

A: Wesleyan University has a reputation for producing people who go out into the world and make a difference. Along with having excellent colleagues who study important topics in America and abroad, I wanted to be a part of a department where I could teach highly engaged students.

Q: What courses are you teaching this year? Are there other courses you hope to teach in the future?

A: This year I am teaching two courses: Racial and Ethnic Politics and Place and Politics. In the future, I hope to teach courses on immigration politics, gentrification, political psychology, and experimental methods.

Q: How would you describe your teaching style?

A: I consider my teaching style to be highly interactive. I like students to participate and confront the material through debate and discussion.

Q: It’s obviously an exciting time in American politics with the 2016 presidential race heating up. Will you be bringing current events into your curriculums, and how?

A: Since both of my classes focus on race and ethnicity in the United States, it is difficult not to include discussions about current events. Almost every topic we will be covering in both of my classes is in the news on a regular basis, which speaks to the importance of race and ethnicity in our time.

Q: Who or what are you watching closely this election season?

A: I am watching whether candidates on either side of the aisle will competently address immigration, police-community relations, and inequality.

Q: You’ve published papers in the past about factors influencing voters’ attitudes and behaviors. Please tell us about these.

A: My research focuses on how local racial and ethnic composition shapes citizens’ perceptions and attitudes of out-groups. I find that local influxes of immigrants cause people who value conformity and diversity to polarize on the issue of immigration. I also find that citizens accurately perceive these local increases in immigration and are more sensitive to changes in local immigrant composition than existing levels.

Q: What are you researching currently? How did you become interested in this topic?

A: I am currently working on a book project that examines when native-born residents of ethnically diversifying communities will engage in local politics to fight off immigration and when they will move out of those communities. This project is meant to speak to literatures in sociology, political science, and economics that study immigration but have not integrated each other’s insights. I have always been interested in the topic, but the current salience of immigration in national politics has motivated me to think deeply about the topic.

Q: What do you like to do for fun?

A: Music is one of my biggest passions. I have played in multiple bands, produced a handful of albums, and still compose music whenever I get a chance. 

Satoshi Omura Hon. ’94, the honorary Max Tishler Professor of Chemistry, received a Nobel Prize on Oct. 5.

Satoshi Omura was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine for developing a new drug, which has nearly eradicated river blindness and dramatically reduced mortality from other devastating diseases. Omura made the discovery that led to this drug while a visiting professor at Wesleyan in the early 1970s.

Omura has remained in touch with Wesleyan colleagues since then and in 2005 was appointed the first Max Tishler Professor of Chemistry, an honorary position. He returns to campus every few years to meet with faculty and present his current research.

The Nobel Committee honored Omura and William Campbell for discovering the drug Avermectin, as well as Youyou Tu, who discovered Artemisinin, on Oct. 5.

“These two discoveries have provided humankind with powerful new means to combat these debilitating diseases that affect hundreds of millions of people annually,” the committee said in a statement. “The consequences in terms of improved human health and reduced suffering are immeasurable.”

Omura came to Wesleyan in 1971 while on sabbatical from the Kitasato Institute in Tokyo, and worked closely with the late Professor of Chemistry Max Tishler for a year and a half. According to Albert Fry, the E.B. Nye Professor of Chemistry, who was a young professor here at the time, Omura brought to Wesleyan a number of extracts from soil samples to analyze their effects on harmful microorganisms.

“Within months after arriving here, he found a material (the microorganism Streptomyces avermitilis) that apparently was highly potent against a wide variety of bacteria, and quickly discovered that this was really a very attractive antibiotic,” Fry said.

Tishler, who joined Wesleyan’s faculty after retiring as senior vice president of research and development at the pharmaceutical company Merck & Co., introduced Omura to contacts at Merck, which developed the microorganism isolated by Omura into a powerful, broad spectrum antibiotic.

“This was one of the major discoveries that has happened at Wesleyan over the years,” Fry said. “So it as very exciting to see that develop from the initial discovery that Omura made into a product that has now saved many thousands of lives, particularly in Africa.”

The drug has also proven valuable in treating livestock and pets, as well as reducing in humans the incidence of filariasis, which causes the disfiguring swelling of the lymph system in the legs and lower body known as elephantiasis.

In 1994 Wesleyan awarded Omura an honorary Doctor of Science. In 2001, Omura established an endowed fund for the department, which supports operations, equipment and the work of junior faculty.

“We have been extremely fortunate to have Satoshi Omura as a member of this department. We are of course very excited and pleased that Satoshi has won this award,” Fry said. “In fact, some of us have thought that this was long overdue.”

Omura also has an ongoing relationship with faculty in the College of East Asian Studies, to which he donated cherry trees.

“I’m delighted that Dr. Omura has been honored for his research that began at Wesleyan–a truly important contribution to world health,” said Mary Alice Haddad, professor and chair of the College of East Asian Studies, professor of government, professor of environmental studies. “We look forward to deepening Wesleyan’s relationship with him in the future, possibly through the exchange of scientists.”

Hear a WNPR report on the Nobel Prize, featuring Fry, here. Japan’s Fuji TV also covered the news; Fry’s interview begins about a minute into the video.

In addition, Paul Modrich, who collaborated on DNA mismatch repair research with Manju Hingorani, professor of molecular biology and biochemistry, received a 2015 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Hingorani, postdoctoral researcher Miho Sakato and Modrich co-authored a paper titled “MutL Traps MutS at a DNA Mismatch,” published in the July 21 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Modrich, along with Sweden’s Tomas Lindahl and Turkey’s Aziz Sancar “mapped and explained how the cell repairs its DNA and safeguards the genetic information,” the Nobel committee reported. Modrich’s research on DNA mismatch repair showed how cells correct errors when DNA is replicated during cell division.

Jeanine Basinger, Corwin-Fuller Professor of Film Studies (Photo credit: Smallz + Raskind)

Jeanine Basinger, Corwin-Fuller Professor of Film Studies, was recently featured in a Hollywood Reporter article “The Professor of Hollywood,” by film historian and best-selling author Sam Wasson ’03, who studied with Basinger at Wesleyan. The magazine brought together 33 of her former pupils who work prominently in the film industry for “an A-list class reunion” photo—and several of them talk about how Basinger inspired them, encouraging their self-expression while also sharing with them her love for the medium.

In the article, Basinger discusses how and why she came to devote her life to the study of film and how working as an usher in a movie theater, watching the same film over and over, helped her to understand the filmmaking process—and gave her the foundation for her future as a film scholar at a time when there were no film schools. In 1960 she began work in the advertising department at a scholastic publisher on the Wesleyan campus, but within a decade, she began teaching at the University some of first film study classes in America.

Basinger with 33 former students who are film industry leaders. (Photo by Smallz + Raskind)

Wasson writes: “She may not be a household name anywhere other than Hollywood, but Jeanine Basinger … is an iconic figure in American cinema, one of the most beloved and respected film history professors in the history of film studies. In fact, she pretty much invented the discipline, starting Wesleyan University’s Film Studies program back in 1969, a time when the notion of studying movies as a serious art form was still considered radical thinking. The list of her former pupils could fill the Dolby Theatre— and quite often they do. Among them, Michael Bay (’86), Joss Whedon (‘87), Laurence Mark (’71), Akiva Goldsman, (’83), Paul Weitz (’88), Marc Shmuger (’80) and Alex Kurtzman (’95). Other Wesleyans, like Stephen Schiff (’72) and Bradley Whitford (’81), never took her courses but became campus acolytes anyway. Then there’s the list of Hollywood luminaries who simply consider her a close friend, like Clint Eastwood (‘Truly one of my favorite people,’ he says) and Isabella Rossellini, who donated her mother’s letters and diaries to Basinger’s famous Wesleyan Cinema Archive (‘She always shows an exquisite sensitivity,” she says, ‘never forgetting that Ingrid Bergman is for me my mother, not just a great actress’).”

Read more of the Hollywood Reporter article.

On Feb. 2, Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Joyce Jacobsen announced that Wesleyan has hired eight new tenure-track faculty in fields including African American studies, sociology and physics, among others. Wesleyan also made a senior hire, which will be announced later this semester after a successful tenure review, Jacobsen said. Nine other faculty searches are ongoing and will hopefully be completed this spring.

“With 18 searches going on, we will likely have a larger than usual group of new faculty coming to campus next fall,” said Jacobsen. “We’re excited to welcome this accomplished and diverse group of scholar-teachers.”

Brief bios of the eight new tenure-track faculty follow:

Abigail Boggs, assistant professor of sociology, is a Wesleyan alumna whose PhD thesis from University of California – Davis is titled “Prospective Students, Potential Threats: The Figure of the International Student in U.S. Higher Education.” Her work crosses the boundaries of feminist studies, popular culture, queer studies, and transnational studies. Her first book manuscript, “American Futures: International Studies and the Global U.S. University” is currently under review.

Khalil Johnson, assistant professor of African American studies, is a magna cum laude graduate of the University of Georgia who is currently finishing his dissertation at Yale, titled “Our Black Teachers: African-American Education and Settler Colonialism, 1730-1980.” He has been particularly interested in the complicated relationships between African-Americans, Native Americans, and European-Americans in the American West. His paper “The Chinle Dog Shoots: Federal Governance and Grassroots Politics in Post-War Navajo Country” won the W. Turrentine Jackson Prize in 2014.

Michael Meere, assistant professor of French, holds a BA from Northwestern University and a PhD from the University of Virginia, as well as two master’s degrees from Lyon II and the Sorbonne. His book Troubling Tragedies: Violence on the French Renaissance Stage is currently under review, and he has already begun a second monograph, Performing Social Dramas in Early Modern France. He was also the sole editor of a collection of essays on French renaissance and baroque drama, and the author of many other articles. He has been a visiting faculty member at Wesleyan since 2014.

Courtney Patterson, assistant professor of sociology, earned her BA from the University of Pennsylvania and is currently completing her dissertation at Northwestern, titled “Fat Chance, Slim Chance: Identity, Culture, and a Politic of Fatness” while serving as a teaching fellow in Critical Identity Studies at Beloit College. She is interested in the intersectionality of body size, race and gender. She has had three articles published as a graduate student with several more in the works.

Renee Sher ’07, assistant professor of physics, has a PhD from Harvard and a BA in physics from Wesleyan. She specializes in condensed matter physics, in particular the study of semiconductors and organic polymers with a focus on photovoltaic materials. Her research has resulted in a number of publications in top journals in the field. She comes to Wesleyan from Stanford and the SLAC Lab.

Michael Slowik ’03, assistant professor of film, has a PhD from the University of Iowa, a MA in humanities from the University of Chicago and a BA in film from Wesleyan. His 2014 book After the Silents: Hollywood Film Music in the Early Sound Era: 1926-1934, based on his dissertation, has been shortlisted for the Kraza-Krausz Foundation Moving Image Book Award. He also has published articles on different topics in film, including one about how modern films have dealt with the rise of terrorism.

Royette Tavernier, assistant professor of psychology, holds a BS from Trent University and a PhD from Brock University in Ontario. She specializes in sleep research, particularly among adolescents and emerging adults. She has published several papers on this topic, and she has also studied the stress response of villagers to Tropical Storm Erika in her native Dominica.

Takeshi Watanabe, assistant professor of East Asian studies, holds a BA and a PhD from Yale, where his dissertation won the Marston Anderson Prize. He has written several articles about the role of food and representations of it in Japanese art, religion and culture, particularly during the late Heian period. He returns to Wesleyan after teaching here from 2012 to 2014 as a visitor.

Kari Weil, University Professor of Letters, director of the College of Letters, spoke on “Current Trends in American Animal Studies” at the Pontificia Catholic University of Chile. Her invitation was part of an academic agreement between the university and the Cultural Affairs Section of the U.S. Embassy in Chile.

Stray dogs are everywhere in Santiago, Chile. They lie on sidewalks, wander the parks, and even cross busy streets unaided. No one seems to mind; they’re just part of the culture.

For Kari Weil, University Professor of Letters, they also were a striking reminder of the purpose of her recent trip to Santiago. At the invitation of the U.S. Embassy there, she visited the Pontificia Catholic University of Chile Jan. 6-9 to discuss current trends in American animal studies.

Although academics have studied animals from various perspectives for a long time, animal studies as a cross-disciplinary field has come into its own fairly recently. The field, developing robustly in the United States, draws the attention of scholars in areas such as anthropology, film studies, psychology, literary studies and philosophy. At Wesleyan, Weil and Lori Gruen, professor of philosophy, have led the development of an Animal Studies program with courses ranging from Animal Theories/Human Fictions to Applied Animal Welfare Science and Bioethics and the Animal/Human Boundary. They also co-sponsor a summer fellowship in animal studies at Wesleyan, in conjunction with the Animals and Society Institute.

In some areas outside the United States, scholars have less familiarity with animal studies. Weil led a series of workshops designed to introduce the field to an eclectic gathering of faculty from universities in the Santiago area. Her intent, she says, was to help them understand how animal studies has become a vibrant area of study that chips away at anthropocentric views and raises questions about whether and how one can gain access to another being that cannot communicate in human language.

Her workshops were followed by a round table of academics beginning to work within animal studies in Santiago.

“What was exciting to them about animal studies was that it forces people from different disciplines to talk to each other,” she said. “One participant said that in Chile interdisciplinary gatherings of faculty almost never happen.”

Stray dogs, like this one pictured riding a bus, are part of the culture in Santiago.

Stray dogs wander the grounds of Catholic University and never seemed far from workshop conversations. Participants heard from a Chilean filmmaker, Sergio Castilla, who is releasing a film in April inspired by a stray dog he adopted. Earlier, Weil discussed the poem, “Pink Dog,” by Elizabeth Bishop, that connects a stray dog’s bodies with women’s bodies, and raises questions of gender, class, breeding and community.

Animal studies poses questions about agency, and Weil notes that the word is difficult to translate into Spanish. The concept also runs somewhat counter to Catholic doctrine, which states that animals don’t have souls and traditionally portrays them as here for humans to use. Animal studies challenges this point of view.

“Whether it’s the stray dogs or Mathilde [Weil’s family dog], they have a way of influencing us, of getting us to do things and think about them in certain ways,” she said. “That’s what I was trying to push: how do animals have agency? But also, when and why do we push back against this idea, wanting to claim our independence from them.”

She noted that it’s stimulating to consider how one can represent their perspective on the world when you cannot know it with certainty.

The workshop topics produced spirited discussion, she said, adding, “There was a good response, good feedback. Even the dog who visited the lecture room seemed pleased.”

Weil led a series of workshops designed to introduce the field to an eclectic gathering of faculty from universities in the Santiago area.

Sasha Rudensky, assistant professor of art, and Jeffrey Schiff, chair and professor of art and art history, curated and introduced the exhibit Picture/Thing Jan. 29 in the Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery. Picture/Thing presents 10 artists who make hybrid objects that challenge the taxonomical limits of photography and sculpture at a time when the definitions of the two media continue to evolve.

Students examine Façade, by Anouk Kruithof, which explores the fragmented and refracted psycho-social state of contemporary New York.

In Swan #20, artist Jon Kessler uses a live-cam to pick up the fragmented photographic image of a woman pasted to the back of a cut-out sheet metal relief, projecting it onto a video screen above. The cutouts enable the camera to capture the image of the viewer and the surroundings as well, intermixing the subject and viewer live on the video screen.

Defying photography’s ontological specificity as a “window onto the world,” some pieces prioritize the very materiality or object-ness of the photograph over the actual image, while others migrate the graphic flatness of the photograph into the full dimensionality of the sculptural realm. Letha Wilson’s Utah Maine Concrete Slab, uses photography as a material ingredient in the creation of a monolithic sculpture.

Jeffrey Schiff explained how the artists included in the exhibition take varying approaches to material, technology, and presentation, expanding and redrawing the traditional perimeters of both.

Artist Kendall Baker’s work in the exhibition entails enlargement of the quotidian world beneath our feet: blades of grass. To Baker’s left is Untitled #24, one of the artist’s two contributions to the exhibition.

Artists Kendall Baker and Jon Kessler talk with Center for the Arts Director Pam Tatge at the exhibition’s opening reception.

Picture/Thing is organized by the Center for the Arts with support from the Department of Art and Art History and the Office of Academic Affairs. The exhibition is open through March 1. (Photos by Aviva Hirsch ’16)

For more information on the exhibit and gallery hours, see this link.

How do faculty help students, and themselves, thread a path through an ever-growing body of information? What practices can faculty and students find that enable them to bring a clear and sustained focus to their work in the classroom and the laboratory?

Through two workshops and discussions, held Feb. 19, participants can consider how one might approach teaching from a contemplative perspective, in both the long and short term. Faculty and students will experiment with the adaptation of several traditional contemplative practices to classroom situations including “stilling” (breath and body awareness), contemplative writing, “beholding,” and explore how these might be instantiated in a classroom, laboratory or personal practice.

Michelle Francl

Michelle Francl, professor of chemistry on the Clowes Fund for Science and Public Policy at Bryn Mawr College, will lead the workshops along with Wesleyan faculty and staff. Francl is a quantum chemist who has published in areas ranging from the development of methods for computational chemistry to the structures of topologically intriguing molecules. She takes a contemplative approach to both, introducing students to practices to help them find stillness and focus, including contemplative writing, and feels strongly that a pedagogical stance that recognizes the role contemplation plays in research and writing — scientific or otherwise — has the potential to deepen students engagement in their work.

“Studies show that contemplative pedagogy – a teaching method to integrate secular meditation and mindfulness into the classroom – can help improve cognitive and academic performance,” said Janice Naegele, director of the Center for Faculty Career Development, professor of biology, professor of neuroscience and behavior. “Even just five minutes of quiet focus at the beginning of a class can decrease student distraction and foster creativity, empathy, compassion, interpersonal skills and self-awareness.”

Students, she said, report that mindfulness training aids attention, improves concentration, reduces stress, and helps them access self-knowledge. And faculty find that contemplative pedagogy fosters their connection to students and rejuvenates their creative engagement with teaching and research.

The first event, a teaching workshop titled “Practically impractical: Contemplative practices in the classroom” will be held from 10 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. in Allbritton, room 311. The workshop is open to all STEM faculty (Science + Technology + Engineering + Mathematics), postdocs and graduate students.

An Academic (Technology) Roundtable luncheon titled “Using Contemplative Pedagogy in the Classroom” will follow the teaching workshop from noon to 1 p.m. also in room 311. Francl, Mary Jane Rubenstein, chair and associate professor of religion, associate professor of feminist, gender and sexuality studies, will lead the discussion on ways faculty are using contemplative pedagogy practices to engage students. This luncheon is open to all faculty and staff.

The teaching workshop is sponsored by the Center for Faculty Career Development. To RSVP for the workshops and/or lunch to CFCD@wesleyan.edu.

Francl also will lead a student-centered workshop and dinner from 6 to 8 p.m. in the Downey House Lounge. Francl, who is a dedicated person of faith, will speak about her life and experience balancing her religious and professional identities. She will discuss her own spiritual practices and how she tries to negotiate the subtle edge of things between science and religion, faith and reason, and living in a culture that is ok with being spiritual, but far less with being religious.

Tracy Mehr Muska, university Protestant chaplain, and Rabbi David Teva, director of religious and spiritual life and university Jewish chaplain, will host the event. All students of faith are invited to join the conversation. RSVP on Facebook or email Rev. Merh Muska at tmehrmuska@wesleyan.edu.

The student workshop is sponsored by the CFCD, the Department of Chemistry and the Office of Religious and Spiritual Life.

Green Street Director Sara MacSorley accepts a $12,500 grant from Dr. William Petit.

Wesleyan’s Green Street Teaching and Learning Center has received a $12,500 grant from the Petit Family Foundation to support the center’s Girls in Science Summer Camp. Green Street Director Sara MacSorley accepted the gift from Dr. William Petit.

The Green Street Girls in Science Summer Camp will take place August 3 – 7 and will be open to girls entering grades 4, 5, and 6. Erika Taylor, assistant professor of chemistry, assistant professor of environmental studies, Ruth Johnson, assistant professor of biology, and Christina Othon, assistant professor of physics, will participate in the five-day program, covering topics from biochemistry to physics and culminating in a science showcase to share projects with family and friends. The camp will be held at Green Street, but students will also spend time in teaching labs on Wesleyan’s campus.

Founded by Petit in memory of his wife and daughters, the Petit Family Foundation raises and distributes funds to help educate young people, especially those with an interest in science; to help support those with chronic illnesses; and to help protect those affected by violence.