New Minor in African Studies!

The African Studies Faculty Cluster is pleased to announce the new African Studies minor!  Our current course cluster has been very successful with students, many of whom already pursue academic research, thesis projects, and career internships related to Africa.  As you think about courses for this semester and your Wesleyan careers, please keep this new and exciting opportunity in mind. Please direct any questions to the African Studies Cluster link on WesMaps and to our new website (http://www.wesleyan.edu/africanstudies/about.html)

Panel on the Syrian Refugee Crisis — Feb. 3, 7 p.m.

 

The first of three panels on the Syrian refugee crisis will occur next week:

The Development of the Crisis and the Response in Europe

Robert Ford, former U.S. Ambassador to Syria

Marcie Patton, Fairfield University Professor of Politics

Bruce Masters, Wesleyan Department of History

Moderator: Richard Grossman, Wesleyan Professor of Economics

Wednesday, February 3, 7PM PAC 001.

Spring ’16 Student Forums

For information about student forums that are being offered this semester, check out: https://wesfiles.wesleyan.edu/departments/Reg/StudentForums/Public/ApprovedStudentForums.pdf.

Interested students should reach out to the student leader(s) to attend the class and sign the Student Forum Registration Roster. The student leader(s) must submit the completed roster to the Registrar’s Office by 5pm on the last day of Drop/Add.

There is a 15 student course limit, and the student leader(s) have already been enrolled in the course.

Grief Support Group–Tuesdays at 7:30 p.m.

STUDENT-RUN GRIEF SUPPORT GROUP

(Sponsored by the office of Counseling and Psychological Services) CAPS 

Meets: Weekly Tuesdays

Time: 7:30pm      Start Date: February 2nd, 2016

Location: Solarium (Room 201), 2nd fl., Davison Health Center

Intended to create a network of support for those who have experienced the death of a loved one. Please feel free to come and leave when it is convenient for you.

For more information please contact:  scorner@wesleyan.edu , rwinkler@wesleyan.edu or gmartino@wesleyan.edu

Stress Relief Practicum — Apps due Jan. 29

balance

Stress Relief Practicum

Connect with others who are seeking self-care strategies for health and well-being.

Learn new skills and tools to manage stress and take care of yourself.  

Mondays beginning February 1st –29th from 5-6PM

Meetings will follow an exploratory workshop format and participants will learn and practice different techniques for mind-body wellness each week.

The group will be led by Tanya Purdy, MPH MCHES Director of WesWell, Office of Health Education, & Colby Colbert-Sangree Wellness Intern, WesWell  

To sign up fill out this registration formSign up by Friday, January 29th at noon.

Space is limited and on a first come basis.  Participants will be expected to attend all 5 sessions.

Housing Accommodations–App deadline Feb. 5

Students requesting a specific housing accommodation due to a disability for 2016/17 must complete a Housing Accommodation Request Form and submit it to Dean Patey, Disability Resources, (North College – Room 021), no later than Friday, February 5, 2016. This includes students who have previously requested and been approved for a housing accommodation in the past.

Housing assignments which are provided as an accommodation are only provided to students with documented disabilities.  Please note that housing accommodations do not include current or potential roommates.  Housing offers may not necessarily be considered class appropriate, or represent your first choice in housing, but will address your needs.

If you have any questions about the process, please contact Dean Patey at lpatey@wesleyan.edu or 860.685.2332.

New Course: ANTH309–The Anthropology of Digital Media

Here is a  new course we just added to our Spring roster. Anth 309/AMST 311, The Anthropology of Digital Media, taught by Jordan Kraemer, will meet on Tuesdays from 1:10-4 pm in Anthropology, Room 6.

Anthropology of Digital Media

Networked media technologies, from the Internet to mobile phones, are reshaping many aspects of daily life, selfhood, and society. While digital and electronic media seem to make the world smaller, ostensibly facilitating global flows of capital, people, goods, and ideas, this course examines how these technologies co-constitute particular kinds of subjects, accommodating some uses and modes of living more than others. Digital platforms and services, for example, are often designed with elite, technically savvy users in mind, yet are taken up transnationally in diverse and unexpected ways. Media, like other technologies, never exist separately from social life as independent agents of change, but instead emerge through contingent histories, material realities, constellations of discourse, and unequal distributions of power. This course introduces students to the anthropology of digital media and culture, drawing on empirical, ethnographic accounts from a variety of theoretical perspectives, including feminist technology studies, actor-network theory, queer theory critiques, new materialisms, postcolonial studies, and social informatics. Topics include space and place online, media publics, new transnationalisms, design anthropology, big data, social networks, virtuality and embodiment, the social construction of users, mobility and disability, and telecommunication infrastructures.

We will consider emerging media practices in cross-cultural and transnational settings, to examine the situated contexts of design and use, while asking broadly what consequences these technologies have for our social worlds. This course requires intensive reading and writing, including a final project that can be undertaken in a variety of ways, such as an original ethnographic or creative project exploring an emerging media practice.

 

New Course: “Zionism: A Political Theology”

This is a new course taught by Yotam Hotam who is visiting from the University of Haifa.

Zionism: A Political Theology

CHUM 319 Spring 2016 M 1:10-4:00 CFH 106

This seminar examines the political theology of Zionism by focusing on the intersections of secular aspirations and theological notions embedded in the ideology and practice of the national Jewish mission. To this end, the seminar is designed to explore the modern concept of political theology. In analyzing a range of selected primary and secondary sources, it will also bring this concept to bear on an understanding of the Zionist secular adaptations of theological concepts, such as heresy, faith, inner-experience, and redemption. Finally, the seminar will focus on how this type of political-theology informed the national Jewish language, symbolism, literature, social institutions, and social and political imagination.

https://iasext.wesleyan.edu/regprod/!wesmaps_page.html?crse=014538&term=1161

The Wellness Experience! App deadline–1/29

Be Well

The Wellness Experience

Are you seeking self-care strategies for health and well-being?

Do you want to learn new skills and gain tools to manage stress?

  • Select a wellness activity to practice each week.
  • Choose from a broad range of activities to fit into your schedule.
  • Each week addresses a different wellness theme: emotional, physical, spiritual, and social.

For more info and to sign up, CLICK HERE.

Sign up by 12pm on Friday, January 29th. 

If you have any questions please email Tanya Purdy, MPH MCHES Director of WesWell, Office of Health Education tpurdy@wesleyan.edu

The Wellness Experience is coordinated by: ASHA, CAPS, Health Services, Office of Religious & Spiritual Life, Residence Life, SALD, WesBAM!, WesHEAL, and WesWell