Tag Archive for Publications

Fusso Translates Gandlevsky’s Illegible

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IllegibleSusanne Fusso, Marcus L. Taft Professor of Modern Languages, professor of Russian, East European, and Eurasian studies, is the translator of the first English-language version of Sergey Gandlevsky’s novel Illegible, published by Northern Illinois University Press.

Gandlevsky (b. 1952) is widely recognized as one of the most important living Russian poets and prose writers, and has received numerous literary prizes. Illegible, published in 2002, is his only work of prose fiction to date.

The novel has a double time focus, with both the immediate experiences and retrospective meditations of Lev Krivorotov, a 20-year-old poet living in Moscow in the 1970s. As the work begins, Lev is involved in a tortured affair with an older woman and envious of his more privileged friend and fellow novice poet Nikita, one of the children of high Soviet functionaries who were known as “golden youth.” Both narratives see Lev recounting with regret and self-castigation the failure of a double infatuation-turned-love triangle. Illegible provides unparalleled access to the atmosphere of Moscow and the ethos of the late Soviet and post-Soviet era, while simultaneously demonstrating the universality of human emotion.

Illegible is the second work of Gandlevsky’s that Fusso has translated. In 2014, she published an English-language translation of his autobiographical novel, Trepanation of the Skull.

Kim, Students Coauthor Paper on Self-Memory Advantage

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Kyungmi Kim

Assistant Professor of Psychology Kyungmi Kim, Youngbin (Amabel) Jeon ’19, Alexis Banquer ’20, and Danielle Rothschild ’19 are coauthors of a study published in the October 2018 volume of Consciousness and Cognition.

In the paper, “Conscious awareness of self-relevant information is necessary for an incidental self-memory advantage,” Kim and her students examine the relative contributions of conscious vs. unconscious self-processing to the incidental self-reference effect.

The incidental self-reference effect refers to a memory advantage for items simultaneously presented with self-relevant information (e.g., one’s own name) over those presented with other relevant information (e.g., someone else’s name) when the task at hand bears no relevance to the self (e.g., a simple location judgment task; “Does each item appear above or below the name in the middle?”).

In the study, Kim and her students compared memory for target items that were presented with one’s own name vs. another person’s name when the names were consciously identifiable vs. unidentifiable. They found the incidental self-reference effect when the names were consciously identifiable but not when they were consciously unidentifiable.

“These findings show that conscious awareness of self-cues in the environment is necessary for an incidental self-memory advantage to emerge, suggesting a boundary condition under which the self influences memory,” Kim explained.

History and Theory Journal Gains Popularity in Sweden

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History and Theory.

History and Theory.

The National Library of Sweden has announced that the Wesleyan-published (in affiliation with Wiley-Blackwell Publishing) History and Theory: Studies in the Philosophy of History is its 10th most popular foreign e-journal.

History and Theory publishes articles, review essays and summaries of books in the areas of critical philosophy of history, speculative philosophy of history, historiography, history of historiography, historical methodology, critical theory, time and culture, and history and related disciplines. The electronic form to all who subscribe to the print edition.

The editors include Ethan Kleinberg, Julia Perkins, Philip Pomper and Gary Shaw.

Dena Matthews Oversees Hundreds of Campus Print Projects

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Dena Matthews

Dena Matthews, publication production manager in the Office of University Communications, works with designers, editors, photographers, department contacts and outdoor vendors to create booklets, posters, direct mail pieces, banners, postcards and other material for Wesleyan.

Q: Dena, you recently celebrated your first-year anniversary working as a publication production manager in the Office of University Communications. Do you oversee all publications produced for campus-use?

A: Not all, but I manage hundreds of projects- booklets, posters, direct mail pieces, banners, postcards and more- that are intended for Wesleyan communities on-campus and off.

Q: Please cite a few examples of publications that you have helped manage recently.

Dena Matthews helped create the Homecoming/Family Weekend program.

Dena Matthews helped create the Homecoming/Family Weekend program.

A: The Wesleyan Annual Fund’s compelling direct mailer, the freshly redesigned packet mailed to newly admitted students, and the simply elegant Homecoming and Family Weekend booklet are terrific examples. Each uniquely exhibits beautiful and cost-effective solutions the Office of Communications staff can accomplish on schedule when collaborating with our campus constituents.

Q: Are most publications printed at Wesleyan’s print shop, Cardinal Print and Copy, or by outside businesses?

A: Cardinal Print and Copy handles our routine digital printing, like posters you see on-campus. I call on outside vendors operating offset printing presses, bindery and mailing services for complicated projects and/or those with quantities over one thousand.

Q: What is your role working with vendors?

A: I look for the best fit for each project matching it to a vendor by evaluating their location, environmental initiatives, services, capabilities and price. I work closely with the selected vendor and with Steven Jacaruso, art director, or Anne Marcotty, senior designer, to ensure the project specifications- like paper stock, dimensions, quantities or special instructions like folding, inserting and binding- are clear. Generally, I obtain three competitive bids.

Dena Matthews managed the Office of Admission's packet that is mailed to newly admitted students.

Dena Matthews managed the Office of Admission's packet that is mailed to newly-admitted students.

Q: How would you help, say, the Office of Admission create the Admissions Packet? What are the steps from start to finish, and what is an average turn-around time?

A: Since the project was a redesign initiated by Jillian Baird-Burnett, associate dean of admission, I arranged a meeting with our staff, her and others from the offices of Admission and Financial Aid to discuss their goals. It was a complex project, so I’ll outline our process.

We start by developing concepts. After a one is selected, I request a vendor deliver paper dummies using the proposed paper stock. This is evaluated for compliance with Wesleyan Station’s metering equipment, U.S. postal regulations, and postage cost. Once I have a consensus on the physical construction of the piece, I focus on facilitating the content development.

The designers search our archives of images to suggest in the layout. Bill Burkhart, university photographer, is called upon if a project requires updated campus images. This particular photo was taken by Olivia Bartlett Drake in our office.

The packet contains literature

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Wesleyan University Press Releases Book on the Connecticut River

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This photograpy book was published by Wesleyan University Press in October 2009.

This photograpy book was published by Wesleyan University Press in October 2009.

Wesleyan University Press published a photographic book about the Connecticut River Oct. 23. The photographs in The Connecticut River: A Photographic Journey Through the Heart of New England follow this major waterway for 410 miles, from its origin near the Canadian border to its wide mouth on Long Island Sound, giving readers a vivid portrait of a living artery of the New England landscape. Middletown is featured in the book.

Author and photographer Al Braden opens the book with an essay introducing important aspects of the river, and Chelsea Reiff Gwyther, executive director of the Connecticut River Watershed Council, closes with an essay that succinctly highlights the environmental pressures that the river faces.

The book has 136 full-page color photos, ranging from close-ups to dramatic aerials, to reveal the river as few people are privileged to experience it. Readers will see and learn about many facets of the river, including its landscape, history, development, conservation, geologic formations, flora and fauna, and, of course, the moods of the water, sky, and riverbank. Informative captions provide a wealth of information about the images, which depict every¬thing from pristine misted mornings to rich valley farmlands and modern hydroelectric turbines. The Wesleyan University Press book is $35 and available online.

Armstrong-Roche Author of Book on Cervantes

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Michael Armstrong-Roche, associate professor of romance languages and literatures, associate professor of medieval studies, is the author of Cervantes’ Epic Novel: Empire, Religion, and the Dream Life of Heroes in Persiles, published by the University of Toronto Press in May 2009.

New book by Michael Armstrong-Roche.

New book by Michael Armstrong-Roche.

The 384-page study sets out to help restore Persiles to pride of place within Cervantes’s corpus by reading it as the author’s summa, as a boldly new kind of prose epic that casts an original light on the major political, religious, social, and literary debates of its era. At the same time it seeks to illuminate how such a lofty and solemn ambition could coexist with Cervantes’ evident urge to delight.

Grounded in the novel’s multiple contexts – literature, history and politics, philosophy and theology – and “in close reading of the text, Michael Armstrong-Roche aims to reshape our understanding of Persiles within the history of prose fiction and to take part in the ongoing conversation about the relationship between literary and non-literary cultural forms. Ultimately he reveals how Cervantes recast the prose epic, expanding it in new directions to accommodate the great epic themes – politics, love, and religion – to the most urgent concerns of his day.”

Rubenstein Author of Strange Wonder

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Mary-Jane Rubenstein, assistant professor of religion, assistant professor of feminist, gender and sexuality studies, is the author of the book, Strange Wonder: The Closure of Metaphysics and the Opening of Awe, published by Columbia University Press, March 2009. Strange Wonder confronts Western philosophy’s ambivalent relationship to the Platonic “wonder” that reveals the strangeness of the everyday. On the one hand, this wonder is said to be the origin of all philosophy. On the other hand, it is associated with a kind of ignorance that ought to be extinguished as swiftly as possible. By endeavoring to resolve wonder’s indeterminacy into certainty and calculability, philosophy paradoxically secures itself at the expense of its own condition of possibility.

Schwarcz Publishes Chisel of Remembrance

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Chisel of Remembrance by Vera Schwarcz.

Vera 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.

McKnight Nichols ’00 Edits Essay Collection on Prophesies of Godlessness

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Christopher McKnight Nichols ’00 is co-author and co-editor of Prophesies of Godlessness: Predictions of America’s Imminent Secularization from the Puritans to the Present.

Christopher 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 thought, and changing conceptions of secularization. Among the subjects addressed are: Thomas Jefferson’s philosophy of history and the future of American Christianity; Abraham Lincoln, William T. Sherman, and evangelical Protestantism during the Civil War; World War 1 and after—godlessness and the Scopes Trial; and secularization and prophesies of freedom during the Sixties.

Nichols is currently a postdoctoral fellow in U.S. history at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia.