Author: Hannah Reale

“It didn’t hurt that it was a gorgeous day,” attendee Gretchen Teran said.

On Saturday, October 21st, Middletown residents, University students on fall break, and out-of-towners alike waited for three hours outside of R.J. Julia to meet former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and have her sign their copies of her newly released memoir, “What Happened.” Although the event wasn’t set to start until 11 a.m., the crowd began to gather around 8 a.m., according to an R.J. Julia employee. “What Happened” is Clinton’s recollection of the 2016 presidential election and features anecdotes about her time on the campaign trail. It places blame on several parties for her eventual loss, including herself.

The hundreds of ticket holders displayed a sense of civic duty, electing to make the signing their morning’s priority. A woman in line made a call to push back an appointment four hours and hoped that she would be on time. One line-waiter expressed excitement in noticing that a great portion of the attendees were younger, first thinking that it would be dominated by an older crowd; young mothers waited with their young children, and young adults waited with their friends. This Argus reporter entertained herself by chatting with her neighboring waiters and by counting all of the sidewalk blocks between her place in line and the entrance and then dividing it by the time it took to move five (the estimate, it turned out, was entirely accurate after assuming that it was wrong and adding 20 minutes to it). The most surprising quality of this line-waiting was the apparent patience that the ticket holders maintained. Complaints arose only about the sun beating down, but as time passed, the shadows from Middletown’s buildings protected the backs of everyone’s necks.

The patrons acted like a determined group and people came from beyond the surrounding areas (the farthest known were from Westchester, N.Y., although there was by no means an official poll conducted). Maybe they would get a picture of her to show off to their friends or perhaps they just wanted a public figure’s signature. But a significant portion wore “I’m With Her” shirts, or bore various Democratic pins, or, in one case, proudly walked around with a Wellesley flag tied around their neck like a patriotic cape. Teran agreed that there was a sense of loyalty and duty among those waiting in line. Many had driven an hour to attend, and even those who lived right nearby were more than willing to wait. To this writer, the event read as a bittersweet sendoff to the first female presidential nominee of a major U.S. political party.

Not everyone seemed happy that the controversial candidate had come to Middletown. Pro-Trump protesters featured signs with slogans such as “I’m With Him” alongside an abstract drawing of Pepe the frog and “You’re Not My Role Model” with a sad emoji. Another man walked up the line yelling, “Trump’s a worm, Trump’s a werewolf, Hillary’s a vampire,” apparently alluding to their ties to corporate donations. One person held a sign that read “You’re With Them,” with Clinton’s signature arrow pointing to phrases like “Big Pharma” and other corporate sponsors that supported Clinton during her presidential campaign.

The line moved slowly as each patron went through a metal detector and allowed Secret Service agents to search their belongings. Once inside, attendees snaked around the tables of books that R.J. Julia had out. Each attendee shook Clinton’s hand and had the opportunity to speak with her for a moment.

The strange effect of this layout was the ability to watch every person walk away from Clinton. They had a wide range of expressions on their faces. Some appeared simply giddy, some almost wistful, nostalgic, and others still wearing a wry smile. Two young women cried and hugged, apparently overcome with joy and clutching their new books. An outsider with no awareness of who Clinton is would have simply seen a 70-year-old woman sitting at a table as hundreds of people blustered their way through an attempt to briefly communicate something—anything—of significance. But, to this author, it seemed that most took this as an opportunity to say thank you.

As the initial supply of books began to run low, employees scrambled to restock the table. Clinton pitched in with helpful suggestions, improving the flow of the event with her trademark capacity for leadership and efficiency.

“It was so telling to me in that she had perfect control over this silly thing in that they weren’t really getting the books to her as quickly as they should,” Teran noted.

The woman waiting in front of Teran was running for office in Connecticut, a fact that she brought up to Clinton.

“It’s a Republican stronghold apparently,” Teran said. “And it was so impressive because Hillary wasn’t prepared to talk about this…. And Hillary launched right into exactly what this young woman needed to do to strike at the vulnerable point of her opponent’s position. Hillary just zeroed right in on it in two seconds.”

Connor Aberle ’19 also went to the book signing, highlighting her role in U.S. politics.

“Seeing Hillary Clinton was surreal,” Aberle said. “From far away, I thought I was looking at a picture because Clinton looks in real life exactly like she does on TV. Regardless of what her legacy will be, it was incredible to shake the hand of someone with enormous historical significance.”

One man shook her hand firmly, declaring, “You should’ve won, you should’ve won.”

This writer realized while waiting and walking through the line that there was nothing quite worthwhile to say to someone of such significance. After stammering out a few words of gratitude for her public service, Clinton replied, “Thank you, that means a lot.”

And then it was over. The signing felt like part of Clinton’s last goodbye to the American people. Everyone walked away with the souvenir of “What Happened,” a memoir that would perhaps give them a little more insight into the woman that they had just met.

 

Hannah Reale can be reached at hreale@wesleyan.edu. 

On Friday, Oct. 13, R.J. Julia hosted Jenny Fran Davis ’17, who discussed her first novel, “Everything Must Go,” which was released on Oct. 3.

Davis’ novel tells the story of Flora Goldwasser, a Manhattan girl who goes off to alternative boarding school, Quare, for her junior year of high school. When she is thrown into the progressive Quaker school in upstate New York, she must learn to adapt to an entirely new environment. Davis’ excessive tale satirizes and also embraces the political left.

“I can’t do justice to how gratifying it is to be introducing Jenny Davis tonight,” Associate Professor of English Sally Bachner told the audience. “Let me say that it brings me joy, true joy, to know that this is just the first of many times we will be gathered to hear Jenny read from something wonderful.”

Bachner, Davis’ former professor, then prompted Davis with questions on her work. The pair discussed the challenge of recognizing how much of fiction is consciously autobiographical and how much is an unintentional peephole into the author’s mind. This balancing game is particularly complicated for Davis, who wrote the first draft of the novel when she was just 18 years old.

“Even now, talking about it, I feel like [I don’t have] much authority on it,” Davis said. “I’m looking forward to understanding it better through talking about it…. One of my biggest anxieties around its publication is that I wrote it so long ago that it seems like almost not me. And I also feared that fiction was like a reverse Rorschach test, where my subconscious was going to be splatted onto the pages and some number of people could interpret it as something that was, although alien to me, really explicit and vulnerable on the page. And I still don’t really know if fiction is that or if I do have authority on it.”

Additionally, she joked about how certain components of the novel felt entirely out of her control. Davis, who is queer, addressed how the relevance of queerness in the book changed over time.

“It became way queerer as I rewrote it,” Davis laughed. “Like the name of the school—Quare—like totally subconscious, but talk about a reverse Rorschach test…. Once I signed with St. Martin’s [Press], you go through a lot of revision processes. And they send it to you with notes, and then you send it back with notes, and you keep exchanging it, and each time I got it, I just started making more of the characters queer. Like, each time, there’d be another lesbian thrown in, or another gay person of some sort. And I don’t know why; it just happened.”

Many portions of Davis’ story are based on her own life; she attended Woolman Semester School in Northern California for a single semester when she was in high school and worked at a Jewish camp for several years, both of which served as inspiration for the fictional Quare.

“A lot of the characters, initially, were based on people in a really inappropriate way,” Davis said, recalling the people from Woolman that many of the novel’s characters were originally based off of. “I guess I so shamelessly just used people as characters. I made them into caricatures, in a way, with very little remorse, surprisingly. I didn’t even think it would be published, so I just snatched funny things that people did.”

Davis also commented on the satirical nature of her book.

“It’s a totally excessive story, like it’s so over the top,” she explained. “And once you buy into it, you’re suddenly finding yourself buying into everything along the way…. But in terms of camp and parody, my biggest fear is people not understanding that this is satire. I guess [you should] never underestimate people’s lack of understanding.”

“We can miss satire, if it pushes our buttons,” Bachner noted.

“For me, the role of parody, humor, satire, camp, is creating these excessive, extravagant scenarios that provide clarity in order to look at things that are really happening,” Davis said. “Somehow parody can unlock real phenomena that we are a part of in a way that it’s hard to see when it’s so close and rendered so realistically, and so I think that having certain things be over the top in a way that seems like a light roast of white, liberal, progressive, crunchy-granola people ultimately reveals things about people who partake in those communities or participate in them.”

Davis also shared that she became more nervous about the satire in her book when President Trump was elected.

“Once Trump was elected, I kind of freaked out and was thinking, ‘Will this be a reference that’s even relevant to people who read it in the future? Is including this document in a way that’s anything less than completely earnest inappropriate?’” Davis pondered. “And I ultimately came to the conclusion that humor isn’t disrespect. There’s some sort of way that humor can work with activism and it doesn’t undermine activism. I think there’s a huge stereotype about how people in the left can’t laugh at themselves; they’re humorless. And I actually don’t think that’s true at all.”

She also chose to keep some parts of the book more realistic, allowing for readers to relate to protagonist Flora in a fundamentally human manner.

“The things that I chose not to satirize, not to make campy, were the relationships between people,” Davis added. “Those are my most earnest attempts at representing the reality of being a 16-year-old…. When we think of our future selves, we somehow think that we’ll occupy this all-knowing, competent, calm consciousness, like when you think of yourself at 30, or 50, or 70”—“Never gonna happen,” Bachner interrupted—“but maybe we can gain a little more understanding and archive all of these experiences,” Davis finished.

Bachner noted that she enjoyed the celebration of femme style, as shown through Flora’s love of vintage clothing and accessories. Quare has a policy of “no shell speak,” which means that students are not allowed to comment on each other’s physical appearances, which Flora initially struggles with in the novel. Davis talks about the link between one’s identity as a consumer and identity as a person, noting that the latter is often reflected in the former.

“I noticed this all-encompassing obsession with depth as opposed to fringy, shallow things,” Davis said. “The people who were obsessed with stripping away the fringes of life were also the ones who had turned so into themselves that nothing else seemed important. Its purpose is pretty clear: to give people a break from focusing on external things. But I think that you can strip away external things, and clothes and style can become irrelevant, but then how are the things that remain somehow essentialized as more of the person? I never really understood that. It seems like you can keep taking away until you’ve whittled someone down to nothing but this deep, peaceful, pond-like nothingness.”

Davis wrapped up the talk by taking a question from the audience about her second book, which is a part of the deal she has with her publisher, St. Martin’s Press.

“The protagonist of the second book is a more peripheral character in the first book,” Davis revealed. “And the books have something in common. They’re in conversation, but they’re actually very different—intentionally so…. Book 2 is more relevant to things that I’m currently thinking about, but also has things that I started writing a few years ago, so I think we’re gonna run into the same thing with that one, but I think it’s better to not have mastery over your work.”

 

Hannah Reale can be reached at hreale@wesleyan.edu. 

Why not buy a “fucking bop” for charity?

Lin-Manuel Miranda ’02 released what he proclaims to be a “fucking bop,” “Almost Like Praying,” on Friday, Oct. 6. Miranda wrote the lyrics and also contributed vocals to the song. All proceeds from the track are donated to the Hispanic Federation, which is directing everything contributed to its UNIDOS fund toward disaster relief for Puerto Rico. Miranda, who was raised in Manhattan, has stayed close to both his Puerto Rican identity and his relatives that still live in the U.S. territory.

Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico on Sept. 20, and the recovery is far from over. 90 percent of the island is still without power and many are struggling to access clean, bottled water. Miranda has been outspoken in his opposition to Trump, and his anger with the president escalated following Maria’s landfall. The reason for his recent anger has centered around Trump’s response to Hurricane Maria, which has underplayed the devastation.

On Thursday, Oct. 12, Trump tweeted on the subject: “We cannot keep FEMA, the Military & the First Responders…in [Puerto Rico] forever!”

“Almost Like Praying” features “Despacito” singers Luis Fonsi and Marc Anthony, “Jane the Virgin’s” Gina Rodriguez, and “Hamilton’s” Anthony Ramos, along with famed singers Jennifer Lopez, Camila Cabello, Ednita Nazario, Gilberto Santa Rosa, Rubén Blades, Juan Luis Guerra, Joell Ortiz, Rita Moreno, Dessa, Ana Villafañe, Tommy Torres, Gloria Estefan, Pedro Capó, Alex Lacamoire, Fat Joe, PJ Sin Suela and actor John Leguizamo. The track topped iTunes charts Friday, Oct. 6 through Monday, Oct. 9, and as of Thursday, Oct. 12, it holds the No. 5 spot.

Apart from the proceeds, the lyrics of the track hold great significance. The hook (“Say it loud and there’s music playing / Say it soft and it’s almost like praying”) is a reference to a lyric that Maria sings in “West Side Story,” a lyric from Stephen Sondheim “West Side Story.” Miranda intentionally linked the lyric to “West Side Story’s” Maria so that the name would not be forever associated with this tragedy. One particularly poignant line translates from Spanish to “My beautiful land, I love you.” He also lists all 78 towns in Puerto Rico.

“[I included] all 78 towns in Puerto Rico so that no one feels left out and no one’s town feels forgotten,” he noted.

Miranda also discussed how enthusiastic artists were to join the project in an NPR interview.

“Everybody said ‘yes’ having not heard the song,” he said. “They just they felt as helpless as I did and they were trying to do as much good as I’m trying to do and make as much noise as I’m trying to make. And so you know I will never forget I D-M’d Luis Fonzi on Twitter and he just wrote back, ‘Bro. Two words. I’m in,’ having not heard anything, he just was in,” he said.

Miranda has also gone on various talk shows, such as The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, to promote the track and raise awareness about the ongoing catastrophe in Puerto Rico. Miranda emphasizes that he is made hopeful by the public’s response to the crisis.

“Despite the humanitarian crisis going on on the island, despite the difficulties, despite the slowness of the U.S. government’s response, I’ve never had more faith in people and American people and people all over the world,” he said. “My Twitter feed is full of kids breaking their piggy banks to donate. People saying we were going to go on vacation, now we’re going to use that money and send it to Puerto Rico instead. People taking their weekend to package supplies. It makes me cry to think about it. And if the government’s response were commensurate with the people’s spirit and compassion we’d be on the road to recovery and ending this crisis so much faster.”

Download “Almost Like Praying” on iTunes, listen to it on Spotify, or watch the music video on YouTube.

 

Hannah Reale can be reached at hreale@wesleyan.edu. 

The University’s Muslim Student Association (MSA) partnered with the International Young Leaders Assembly (IYLA) this past summer, and three MSA board members attended the assembly at the United Nations Headquarters. President Eunes Harun ’20 and Vice President Mubarak Sanni ’20, two of the attending members, spoke about the 2017 Global Summit in August, praising the eloquence and commanding energy that many of the speakers possessed. Harun addressed how they first got involved with the organization.

“In the first couple weeks of June, I got an email from this guy, Yeqing Li,” Harun said. “Basically, he runs this organization, and it’s partnership-driven, to empower youth to basically make a change in the world. To empower youth to do what they’re passionate about…. They want to make connections with groups from all across the spectrum of different kinds of organizations to grow their network.”

Sanni added that accomplished lawyers, CEOs, and a diverse array of other professionals attended the event along with college and even high school students, which provided extraordinary networking opportunities.

On campus, the MSA has been growing rapidly. Harun explained that before the class of 2020 arrived at the University, there were typically only three or four people at their weekly Jumu’ah prayers. Sanni added that last year, people who worked in Middletown would come to the MSA’s Friday prayers because Middletown does not have a mosque. Now, there are approximately 20 people coming every week. Although both Harun and Sanni are elated about the group’s recent boom, there have been a couple growing pains.

“The biggest struggle that we have…is that, because of how fast we’re growing, and the amount of people that we have, we just don’t have the space to support it,” Harun acknowledged. “There’s a Muslim prayer room in the Office of Religion and Spiritual Life. Here, there’s space for maybe seven or so people…. We really can’t fit everyone in there…. We don’t even have a space to do our weekly prayer, and it’s good that we’re having this issue because that just means that our community is growing and building bigger. The past couple weeks, we’ve been really really grateful that the Jewish community allows us to use their space. We’re so, so, so grateful that they allowed us into their home in the Bayit, and we’re able to use the first floor and hold our prayer there.”

“There’s no place where we can all convene for interfaith work, and that’s something that I would like to see in the future,” he said. “I understand that, while we have been growing a lot, it’s still a minority on campus—Muslims—so a shared space where we can all share, interfaith, but use that for our Jumu’ah space.”

Interfaith work may come naturally to Harun, who grew up in a family with three different religions.

“Finding a small group that can really be my family, a group that I can really relate with, that has been life-changing for me,” Harun recalled. “My mom is Jewish and my dad is Muslim and my mom’s father is Christian, so I learned about all three religions as I was growing up. As I grew older, and I was exploring the three different religions, I found that Islam really fits me the best, and that’s why I personally pursued it on my own. Now, because of that, there’s so much that I don’t know about Islam, that people who have grown up being very religious know so much more than me, and there are also just people that want to know more, so coming together, we can all learn a little bit more about it and share each other’s ideas and finally have a community and a family around it.”

Religious tolerance and open-mindedness are central to the group’s practices. Sanni spoke about the mayhem after the 2016 presidential election, and the group’s activity directly after.

“We prayed outside in front of Usdan because, after the elections, things got heated and everything was all over the place, so the Wesleyan community actually got together and they joined hands around our prayer and it was a huge circle while we were praying in the middle,” Sanni recalled. “They joined hands to show that Muslims were safe on campus…. The amount of people that showed up, ranging from professors to students and all these other faculty and staff showing up, joining hands around us, was definitely reassuring and definitely made me feel safer on the Wesleyan campus, being Muslim.”

“I’ve just been so delighted and appreciative of all the support we’ve gotten from different faith groups, but also just people on campus—professors, everyone—has been so supportive of us,” Harun added. “It’s just been really, really nice, everyone’s accepting. [We’ve] had very few negative experiences, and everyone recognizes that—minority groups—everyone’s usually had an experience of their own, so they can empathize with us and feel, as a minority group, we need to stick together, just like we need to support other groups that are minorities, too.”

Looking forward, they’re both excited to continue growing the group.

“We’d just like to have a bigger community,” Sanni said. “That’s always the goal. Just getting more people, just because there’s not many Muslims around.”

Apart from their weekly prayers, the MSA also participates in and hosts other events, such as interfaith apple picking, which brought together campus’ Christian and Muslim communities for a day of fun activities. Coming up on Saturday, Oct. 14 at 6 p.m., they will be hosting a banquet to celebrate a sacred Muslim holiday, Eid Al-Adha, in Daniel Family Commons.

“The two sacred holidays [are] Eid Al-Fitr and Eid Al-Adha,” Harun said. “Eid Al-Fitr comes at the conclusion of Ramadan, which is a month-long fast. Eid Al-Adha comes about a month and a half later. It’s based on a lunar calendar, so it changes every year. This year, Eid Al-Adha fell on the first week of September, during move-in day…. Because of that, one of the two sacred holidays kind of went unacknowledged on this campus, unfortunately, because a lot of people were so busy with moving in…. We want to make sure that people are able to experience and celebrate Eid…. Here at Wesleyan, our friends and family really is the Wesleyan community. So we want to bring Eid Al-Adha, the celebration, traditionally, back to Wesleyan. So we want to hold an Eid banquet. We’re able to share our culture and our history—and some food, too—not only with the MSA but with the greater Wesleyan community.”

Harun noted the importance of community and acceptance within the association.

“Everyone practices differently, and it’s important that everyone feels accepted, whether or not they practice in one specific way,” he said. “Everyone is welcome, whether they’re religious or not, whether they’re Muslim or not.”

 

Hannah Reale can be reached at hreale@wesleyan.edu. 

Jenny Fran Davis ’17 only graduated this past May, but St. Martin’s Press is set to publish her debut novel on Oct. 3. Last week, The Argus published our crosstalk about “Everything Must Go” (spoiler alert: we loved the book), and we spoke to Davis herself. Read our conversation with our recent alum—and former Argus Editor-in-Chief—about her experience of writing, editing, and publishing the novel.

 

The Argus: What was your original inspiration behind the book?

JD: I spent a semester of high school at a Quaker farm school in Northern California where we took Peace Studies instead of English, Global Issues instead of history, and environmental studies instead of biology or chemistry. It was probably the most challenging, terrifying, hilarious, and formative four months of my life. And then a year or so later, I was working at a Jewish farm camp the summer before starting Wesleyan and started reading through all the journal entries and notes I wrote during that semester. After the kids went to bed I stayed up and started to outline what would become the first draft of Everything Must Go. I consider the novel in its finished form to be a sort of failed autobiography—it began as something that was mostly rooted in personal experience, but evolved into something mostly unrecognizable from both its original self and my life.

A: Was there anything big that changed in the novel over the course of writing?

JD: I wrote so many drafts, and each time a lot of the plot changed, but the most major shift was formal—switching to the epistolary format from the traditional third-person. This was the end of freshman year, after writing a really rough draft over winter break and then doing some editing in the spring. Something didn’t feel urgent or exciting or fresh, and when I was on the Metro North home from school at the end of the year, it occurred to me that the whole thing should be told in letters home from Quare to Flora’s friends in New York. It, of course, became a lot more complicated than that—there are so many other types of documents, as well as many written by characters other than Flora—but the letters idea is what I think let me finish the book.

A: We looked back at the interview you did with Molly [Schiff ’18] right after getting the deal with St. Martin’s [Press] and it mentioned that you started writing novels when you were 10. What made you want to write? Do you remember the first thing that you wrote that you felt really satisfied with, like it was something good that you wanted other people to read?

JD: There’s this part of Claudia Rankine’s interview with the MacArthur Foundation—they interview the “genius grant” winners about their work—where she says something like, “In a college class I studied Adrienne Rich, and I thought, ‘This says ALMOST what I would like to say.’ And after that class, I just started writing.” I think the impetus to write is sort of similar for me: I read books that said ALMOST what I would like to say, with characters that were ALMOST like those I would have created and ideas that were ALMOST the ideas I would’ve chosen to explore. None of this was intentional at the time, but looking back, that’s where it started: that small gap between the books I adored and the books I wanted. I don’t really know what, substantively, lived in that gap. I think it was just the space between recognition and real reflection.

I think the first thing I wrote that I was satisfied with was this collaborative class project that I engineered and forced everyone in my third-grade class to participate in: making our own version of Chicken Soup for the Soul for our teacher, who always read us essays from those books. I think it was called “Chicken Soup for the Third-Grade Soul” or something. I don’t really remember my essay, but I remember that something clicked when I wrote it. But yeah, since age 10, once I started writing novels—the first of which were just fifty-page stories that were literally ALMOST Judy Blume books—I haven’t been super excited by the idea of other people reading my work. Nothing really compares in terms of anxiety and self-loathing. With this book, I’m proud of some parts, and other parts still make me cringe. Every time I think about the fact that in a few days, millions of people will be able to read it without the disclaimers I make my friends and family endure, I feel sort of sick. Giving up control over one’s audience is intensely scary!

A: We get a sense, almost a summary, of Flora falling in love with Elijah, but we’re not walked through it in the same way that we’re walked through everything else at Quare. Why did you choose to start the “meat” of the text after she’s already enamored by him?

JD: The Elijah obsession is the closest we really come in this book to the familiar, heterosexual love story that a lot of readers look for and that some writers use to shape a story, to give it structure and meaning. I thought it might be cool to shove that entire part into the beginning, just to see what would happen. Like, what happens when the “love story” dissolves by the middle of the book? The real story has more room to unfold, and Flora’s relationships with more interesting characters, like Juna and Dean and Lael, become crisper and more resonant. But I’m still always surprised by how much people focus on Flora’s initial love for Elijah when they talk about the book.

A: Great! I think I personally focused on it (after reading a Goodreads comment about this very idea) because it articulated what I see as a specific, unique quality of your YA novel, which initially does follow the format of “girl falls in love with boy that she can’t have/may be too cool for her”—and when we get to know Flora as an individual, it’s so exciting because we get to see what sets her apart rather than the duller slow-fall-in-love tale.

JD: Yes exactly!!!

A: You have a two-book deal with St. Martin’s Press, so what’s in the works for your second book?

JD: Oh, god. I’m pretty behind on Book 2, which is what it’s been known as in my mind for the past year or so—it’s going to be so weird when it has a name! I also like to think of it as Book 2—and, even more so, to think of EMG [“Everything Must Go”] as Book 1—because I’ve had a lot of anxiety about having written EMG as an eighteen-year-old, and it helps to keep it all in perspective: everything goes into the archive, and nothing is all-encapsulating in terms of my identity as a writer. So Book 2 is so far fairly different from Book 1: it’s not epistolary, at least not now, and it spans more time, and I think my voice as a writer has changed or at least has had to change for this specific project. It’s been so challenging. But I will say that one of the central protagonists of Book 2 is a character from Book 1, even though the books are really different. And maybe because of that continuity of character, I am thinking of the books as talking to each other in some way or growing out of each other.

 

“Everything Must Go” by Jenny Fran Davis is released today, Oct. 3. Davis is coming to R.J. Julia on Friday, Oct. 13 at 7 p.m. for a book reading.

 

Hannah Reale can be reached at hreale@wesleyan.edu.

Emmy Hughes can be reached at ebhughes@wesleyan.edu.

In a campus with a variety of coffee joints, students must decide which is their preferred mode of coffsumption. Three passionate students, each with a different preference, sat down to debate the merits of Pi, Red & Black, and Espwesso. Emmy Hughes ’20 advocates for Pi, Hannah Reale ’20 for Espwesso, and Erin Hussey ’20 for Red & Black, in a crosstalk about each café’s location, ambiance, and, of course, coffee.

Emmy Hughes: I am a big frequenter of Pi. I go there five days a week. I go there for both breakfast and lunch. I find the atmosphere really, really welcoming and wonderful. It’s a nice size in terms of the layout of the place. It’s awesome in terms of location—I have three classes in Exley, and I do all of my work in SciLi, so it’s so easy. You just go there and come back. Food options: Numerous. Coffee options: Numerous. Expense: Not particularly expensive. So, generally, it’s always a good experience for me there.

Hannah Reale: I think that Pi is a great place, but if we’re talking about coffee, I’ll usually make my coffee in my room, so if I’m not gonna do that, I want good coffee. Pi’s coffee is fine, but I’ve never actively sought it out, it just tastes like very average coffee, whereas Espwesso’s is much better. The location is comparable, and the atmosphere of Espwesso is a little—I hate this word—quirkier, with the fun tables and the nice environment overall. The person who’s working there has control of the music, so there’s always a slightly different vibe going in, but it’s good because it mixes it up a bit. And it’s both a social space and a workspace, so it’s a great place to go with a couple of friends to chat while doing some light homework. I’d also go there to pick up my coffee, on the go, because you can bring in a reusable cup for cheap or free coffee. It’s a lot cheaper than Pi or Red & Black.

Erin Hussey: Red & Black, even though it’s far, has really amazing coffee. It’s a great workspace. I feel like Pi and Espwesso are both really really loud, and Red & Black is a great place to work and even bring friends if you want to do a group study. Also, it has great hours. My issue with Espwesso is that they’re never open. I always feel like I wanna go on a Saturday and get a good cup of coffee, but they’re not open on Saturdays, and they’re not necessarily open when you need them to be. Actually, a friend and I just went this weekend to try and get coffee, and they were closed! And I think that Pi is great, but you can’t beat the snacks at Red & Black. Like those cookies are so good.

Emmy: I’d like to make a quick response to points on both sides. So, I 100 percent agree with Erin on the hours of Espwesso. I have tried to go there in the past and then will find that it’s 5 p.m. and it’s closed on some day, and the hours at Pi and Red & Black go really late, like Pi goes until 10 p.m. If you need a bagel at 9 at night—and you just NEED one—you can just go and get one and then come back and keep working. You have your nice little places to work at the little tables, and if you need to meet someone, it’s really easy to just talk with someone there at a table in the center. I feel just SO comfortable in Pi. And that level of comfort, in a coffee place, is so important to me. But, I do see what you mean about the atmosphere, with the music played by the student employee, and the really cool space. And at Red & Black, having a really nice quiet location is awesome.

Erin: Can we talk about, also, the importance of food? Not to bash Espwesso too much—

Hannah: Well, there’s no food—

Erin: Yeah, there’s no food! I feel like that’s an important component.

Hannah: I’m talking about it as a general social space where you can get work done. I don’t think it would work as a lunch place or a dinner place; it’s where you go when it’s like 11 at night and you have that reading to do, but at the same time you really don’t want to be focusing that hard just because you know you can’t. The environment and the atmosphere there is very welcoming. And I always feel like I’m too loud in Red & Black, and I don’t think I could bring a group to do work in there, so if I wanted to do work on my own, I don’t need to be in a café to do that. I could just be in Olin—I don’t need to be in Red & Black to have coffee and sit there alone. But in Espwesso, you can be in this nice social atmosphere when it’s open, and when it’s closed it’s pretty silent, and that’s also nice because you can just like be in this physically cool space to get your work done.

Erin: So we’ve talked about ambiance, but we should probably talk about the merits of coffee.

Emmy: Oh yeah! Let’s get some coffee comments!

Hannah: Okay, then Espwesso wins.

Emmy: Yeah, I would agree.

Erin: I would agree as well.

Emmy: In terms of coffee, Espwesso wins. But it’s so much MORE than that!

Erin: Yeah! You can’t beat Espwesso coffee. So, in the coffee column, Espwesso gets a point. Food, though. I mean. I’m saying Red & Black wins. Have you had their cookies??

Emmy: No?

Hannah: We have a box of them every Argus production night!

Emmy: Oh, right! Right. I HAVE had their cookies, everyone. And they’re really good. I love their cookies, actually. I have to say, Red & Black food is really delicious.

Erin: But in terms of convenience, you can’t beat a Pi bagel.

Emmy: That’s what I’m saying! Pi bagels are, are….Oh my gosh. Like, the everything bagel is so delicious. And it’s delicious because it fluctuates in deliciousness based on how well you toast it, or how well you cream cheese it. Sometimes you toast it and it’s not that great, but then sometimes you toast it and it’s phenomenal. It’s a little adventure every time you’re getting a Pi bagel, and that’s something I need in my life. Stability, but also within that stability, a little fluctuation.

Hannah: Yeah, with food, Espwesso doesn’t compete, because it literally doesn’t have food. It’s fine. But what I like about Espwesso is that it feels like a uniquely college place, whereas Pi, that’s a place I would just run into and run out of with like a bagel and coffee, some adult routine that I could have when I’m older. And Red & Black, that’s where you would be getting a meal with a friend in your early twenties during a Thursday lunch break. But Espwesso is just like a bunch of 20-year-olds sitting together and probably being a little pretentious but also getting some work done, and that’s more fun to me than a more run-of-the-mill, although definitely still enjoyable, experience at another place.

Erin: Yeah, Espwesso is undeniably Wesleyan. I feel like it’s just grungy enough to be Wesleyan. We gotta keep it to our roots!

Emmy: Yeah, the atmosphere just IS Wesleyan, like at its core. And Hannah, you’re totally right about Pi being, like “I’m adulting! I’m just going in and grabbing a coffee and bagel!” But, on the other hand, there are Middletown residents who work there, and I’ve found that you can have a real relationship with the people who work at Pi. I know the people who are employed there, and they know me, and that’s so lovely! And you can’t get that at Espwesso I don’t think, or even Red & Black.

Erin: And also, Pi has some fire Spanish music if you ever go there in the morning.

Emmy: Yes, that it does.

Erin: So I think we can end this on something we can agree on. Which is that Usdan Café just isn’t at the same level.

Hannah: Usdan Café, which we’re a few feet away from right now, by the way, has the same food selection as Pi, but with fewer options. And zero ambiance.

Emmy: No ambiance! The ambiance does not exist.

Erin: If you’ve ever had their chai tea, it’s spicy, but in a bad way?

Emmy: I’ve just gotten from Usdan Café the worst coffee I have had in years. Seriously. I threw half of it out.

Erin: Wow, we’ve really trashed Usdan Café.

Hannah: Still, Usdan Café can be really convenient if I’m running to class in Boger and I just need a cup of coffee and a granola bar to get through my morning seminar. It works really well as a grab-and-go-snack type of place.

Emmy: That’s very true! That’s a wonderful thing actually about each of these places—they all fill a different niche on campus, and though coffee may be better in one and food better at another, having a variety of options is VITAL to getting through the day.

 

Hannah Reale can be reached at hreale@wesleyan.edu.

Emmy Hughes can be reached at ebhughes@wesleyan.edu and on Twitter @emmyughes.

Erin Hussey can be reached at ehussey@wesleyan.edu. 

Frank B. Weeks Visiting Professor of Theater Kathleen F. Conlin has joined the University as the new chair of the Theater Department. After a tumultuous year in which Dean of Arts and Humanities Ellen Nerenberg, who has no experience in theater, was temporarily working as the Theater Department’s chair and the department only had two tenured faculty members, the hiring of Conlin seems to signal a turning point for theater majors and faculty.

Conlin received a bachelor’s degree in English from Youngstown State University, a master’s degree from the University of Pittsburgh, and then a doctorate in theater from the University of Michigan. Her experience lies both in academia and theater production, having worked as a tenured faculty member at the University of Texas at Austin, among other institutions. She has an extensive background in production and a broad range of works, with a specialty in Shakespearean works.

The Argus sat down with Conlin to learn about her thoughts on the University and the future of the department.

 

The Argus: What do you think sets [the University’s Theater Department] apart from theater departments that you’ve been involved with before?

Professor Kathleen Conlin: A couple of things. One is that it’s so student-centered, and it’s also about providing the conditions that help students to generate work in a very creative way. That’s different, that sense of generating. Often times, BFA, MFA programs, for example, are really about training actors in skills to slot in. Same thing with design and whatever. And [Wesleyan’s Theater Department] is much more about creating that intellectual framework and creative framework so that the artistic process and the intellectual insights come together to create something. I think that’s extraordinary…. So many of the classes themselves have performance components, whether they’re performance classes or not. It’s also the fact that Second Stage is totally the students’ domain, so that gives them a freer way of experimenting. And then they’ve got the faculty shows, which provide a model for what the entire professional operation is. And that’s a difference. So those are two different kinds of skills and the fact that both are available, but that the students have that control over the Second Stage.

A: At the end of the spring of 2015 semester, the former chair resigned and they had to be in a transition year last year…. There were only two tenured professors. So what changes have been implemented and what can we expect to see?

KC: Well, we’ve been approved for a tenure-track search next year, so we’ve started the search. We’re in the process of drafting the description, so that won’t be public, I think, until Oct. 1. But that’s the first tenure-track position in a couple of years. And that we’ve been able to hire really superb visiting professors—some of them for longer lines and some of them per course—but the range of skills they bring are extraordinary. So I think that input, plus this now—it’ll be slow, in terms of the tenure track—but it is happening, and that’s key.

A: What’s your impression of Wesleyan as a whole in comparison to other institutions that you’ve worked at? Although it’s only been a few weeks….

KC: I did three days of orientation, so I know everything [laughs]. I guess it’s the care. The care that I sense from the administration as a whole, and the constant search for better ways to do things with and for the students. And then, because of the size of the institution, the students have so many opportunities to be a voice, to be a participant in various things. I think that’s extraordinary. And also, I have to admit that the political-social values are very strong…. Also, just the fact that [President Michael Roth ’78] is so articulate to the public—and I don’t know if the students are aware of how important that is, but, as a faculty member from other institutions, seeing a president go out on a limb and publish, now, points of view that are no longer popular. This whole thing about how liberal arts is totally under attack by certain political factions, state legislatures, I mean it’s amazing. Everyone is jobs-oriented, and he keeps making the case eloquently about how important the entire [liberal arts] education is. And I think that’s extraordinary, and that puts the Wesleyan student way ahead of the game. There’s no doubt in my mind.

A: So, looking back on the other work you’ve done, like at the Utah Shakespeare Festival where you have 22 seasons of experience—which is incredible—and all of the other Shakespeare works you’ve produced. Are you going to bring the Shakespeare into Wesleyan a bit more?

KC: I’ll do a class next semester, I hope, in which I share it with some guests coming in. We will do some work in that. But I want to make it very clear that that’s just one aspect—it happens to be one that I spent a lot of time doing, but it wasn’t the only thing. I’m a firm believer that we have to make sure that we bring the past with us. At the same time, we keep trying to look toward the future, so I’m really interested in new work and whatever, but I don’t want new work done with ignorance of what else has happened. And my approach to Shakesperian text is always to think of it as a contemporary play, like I’ve never read anything about it, never heard anything about it. Here it is. What sense do I make of it? And that’s what I do with my first reading of it. And then I go back and I say, “Oh, but I know how this speech operates, I know how this scene comes together,” but my first impulse should be, what is that story saying to us? And I think that’s really important…. I always feel like…I should be balancing while I do [my work], as opposed to saying, “Oh, there’s a WAY to do Shakespeare.” There’s no [one] way to do Shakespeare, there’s just possibilities, but you gotta know the text.

A: You were hired over the summer to come in, and that’s too late to start up any classes for this semester. So what have you been working on, or what are you going to be working on this semester?

KC: In terms of the search, it’s getting to meet and talk with everybody, faculty-wise, making sure that every person is understood in terms of what their ideas are or their teaching, because I think they’ve lost some sense of somebody paying attention. So I’m paying a lot of attention this semester. I’m reconstituting a Majors Committee for the students: I want to be able to meet with them at least once a semester, if not more. We’re gonna take them to lunch and we’ll talk through issues. I think that’s really very important to get that feedback and to constantly reevaluate the curriculum. At the same time, I’m trying to meet with everyone I possibly can on campus, so that I’m constantly sending out the word about what’s happening here. But at the same time, I want to make sure that we are aligning ourselves with the campus in ways that make sense, so I’m actually on my feet a lot. My door’s closed most of the time.

A: When you say that you’re aligning yourself, and the department, with other parts of campus, do you sense that the theater department was less aligned?

KC: I think that [it] was a little more isolationist than it needed to be. Because I think our work dovetails with everybody in some way, and I just want to make sure we don’t lose opportunities to find partners across the campus. We’ve been pretty good about cross-listed courses and things like that, but I’m looking for other things, where there could be the sense that we come together because there’s an idea we want to pursue, that might be a panel, a symposium, whatever. And if I can attach it to production in some way, that would be even more interesting.

 

Hannah Reale can be reached at hreale@wesleyan.edu.