events

coe sponsored and cosponsored events. A full list of upcoming events can be found on FB @wesleyancoe or IG @wes_coe.

sunrise shines light on the green new deal

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Wes students & faculty learned about the Green New Deal at a Town Hall event here on campus–one of hundreds of events organized nationwide by Sunrise Movement, cofounded by COE alum Evan Weber ‘13. Last night’s event, organized by WesDivest and Wesleyan Climate Action Group and cosponsored by the COE, featured Sunrise Movement rep Lauren Maunus, a senior at Brown U studying enviro science with a focus in environment & inequality. Lauren is on the leadership team of the Energize RI Coalition and the RI Green New Deal Research Council, and helped start Sunrise RI.

 

parker committed to breaking down communication barriers in environmental journalism

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Meaghan ParkerMeaghan Parker, executive director of the Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ), visited Wesleyan University earlier this month to present “Talking about the Weather: Communicating Complexity in the Era of Climate Change,” an event sponsored by the College of the Environment. As a previous editor at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Parker’s work has a strong focus on actionable ideas that can realistically be implemented in journalism and education. Her talk emphasized the roles that journalists play in environmental education, from raising awareness to holding politicians accountable, and how journalists can be more effective at communicating the intricacies of the environmental movement, current events, and the subtle relationships they often have with each other.

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franceschi ’19 exhibits senior thesis photos

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Kudos to art & art history and environmental studies double-major Paul Franceschi ’19, who showcased his senior thesis work, “Frontcountry Principles,” as part of an exhibition at Zilkha Gallery here at Wesleyan, earlier this month.

“One of the more expected ways to engage with the environment through images might be to highlight some kind of devastation that humans have wrought upon the natural world,” says Franceschi. “In my work I’m trying to identify a more subtle but possibly just as worrying impulse: a covering-of-tracks, a hidden curation and regulation of space, a totalization of the landscape. Rather than focusing on a conflict between the natural and human worlds, in my photos I’m trying to frame a kind of virtual reality of landscape, where images of the environment are illusory, malleable, and almost uncanny.”

Franceschi is also one of four environmental studies seniors to be inducted into Wes U’s Gamma Chapater of Phi Beta Kappa this academic year. Read more about the ceremony on News@Wes.

sayet shares importance of revitalizing traditional foodways

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On Feb. 28, students in ENVS201/soph seminar greeted guest speaker Rachel Sayet, an anthropologist/educator from the Mohegan Tribe, who spoke about revitalizing traditional foodways in New England and beyond. ENVS201, taught by COE Director Barry Chernoff and assistant professor of environmental studies Helen Poulos, introduces students to critical methods for conducting research on environmental issues, as a primer for performing research in the ENVS major.

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mcleod ’19 hosts bears ears exhibit and screening

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On February 22, the COE hosted a screening of the 2016 documentary short film Shash Jaa’: Bears Ears, followed by a Q&A with Navajo-Hopi filmmaker/director Angelo Baca. A post-showing reception featured a photo exhibit of the Bears Ears region by Fiona McLeod ’19.  Shash Jaa’ details the efforts of the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition against the reduction of Utah’s Bears Ears National Monument by 85 percent after President Trump’s 2017 executive order. It is a continuation of the film Into America: The Ancestors’ Land, directed by Baca & Nadine Zacharias, which examined natural resource extraction in southeastern Utah.

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ucsb’s kuris discusses research

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Schistosomiasis (a disease caused by parasitic worms) affects 200 to 300 million people worldwide. On December 3, the COE welcomed evolutionary biologist Dr. Armand Kuris of University of California, Santa Barbara to campus, for a discussion about his research on the disease in Kenya and Senegal. Dr. Kuris’s work has shown that transmission control through predation on snail intermediate hosts may be necessary to achieve elimination of schistosomiasis in Africa. More photos can be found here.