The showcase, “Look Again,” will feature the New York- and Paris-based artist’s works, which begin with old and not-so-old art works that he combines with text to create something new. The exhibit will be displayed from Feb. 6 to April 14.

Aptekar’s work illustrates the idea that paintings produce meaning only through viewers’ interaction with the images. He carefully mines the works of other artists—from Old Master painters to Edward Hopper and Philip Guston—and skillfully re-creates select portions of their paintings, combining the original paintings with text selected from a variety of sources, including Aptekar’s own writing.

The two-time National Endowments for the Arts (NEA) Fellowship recipient has his work displayed in numerous museums in the North America and Europe, including the Jewish Museum (New York), the Victoria and Albert Museum (London), the National Museum of American Art (Washington, D.C.), and the Contemporary Art Trust (London).

To mark the opening of the exhibit, Aptekar will deliver lecture “Objecting to Objects: Notes of the Re-Painter” at 6 p.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 8 in the Weber Theatre, Watson Fine Arts Center.

By Kimberly Anastos

The New England Council of Latin American Studies awarded its 2011 Best Article Prize to Torres and her co-author, David Carey, Jr., for "Precursors to Femicide: Guatemalan Women in a Vortex of Violence" published in the Latin American Research Review.

The article looks at the historical record of epidemic levels of violence against women in Guatemala to understand the ways that social relations  perpetuate the murder of women and girls. The study reflects Torres's long-standing scholarly interest in understanding the anthropology of violence, particularly differing impacts on women and men.

"I am committed to understand femicide, the socially supported murder of women and girls, as a human being and a scholar," Torres said. "Violence against women is a pervasive health problem and a barrier to development and peace in our world. Worldwide, it is estimated that violence against women kills and disables as many women between the ages of 15 and 44 as cancer.

"Looking at how femicide has taken hold in Guatemala in the last century is an entry point to understanding how violence and a society’s reaction to violence can erode the basic citizen rights to life," she said. "In essence, it can allow me to understand how violence changes institutions, what we do and how we see our place in the world."

Guatemala has earned a reputation for violence. In 2007, for example, Guatemalans were killed at a rate of nearly 42 people per 100,000, compared to U.S. figures of 5.6 people per 100,000, according to government statistics cited by Torres. In fact, the death rate continues to be comparable to that experienced during the country's civil war. Since 2000, nearly 6,000 women have been murdered. Men fare worse and were killed ten times as often as women.

"What our work has found is that what allows violence to flourish in a society is the society’s reaction to violence," she said.

"Our work shows that in the last 100 years in Guatemala, femicide has been culturally supported by the society’s acceptance of unequal gender roles, the portrayal of women as minimally human, and legal and social acceptance to violations of women. This legal leniency effectively provided impunity and helped foster a more generalized violence in Guatemalan society that erodes women's rights in particular and citizens' rights more generally."

Torres involves Wheaton students in her research projects. Currently, she is working with student assistants to digitize her collected records of political murders that took place during Guatemala's civil war and make that information accessible to the public.

"Working on this project allows our students to use their accumulated Spanish language skills and gain new skills with digital technologies," she explained. "More importantly for me, it allows them to participate in the responsibility of scholarship. Together we are working on making our findings public, accessible and finding ways to present them in ways that are useful to researchers and general audiences."

Douglas’ selection comes at the end of a comprehensive national search for a chief financial officer. The search was overseen by a search committee and Wheaton President Ronald Crutcher.  “Brian’s energy, creativity and knowledge of higher education as well as his qualifications in management and finance impressed us all,” the president said.

The associate vice president for budget, planning and administration for the University of Massachusetts, Douglas has played a leading role in operating and capital budget planning for the state’s five-campus university system. During his three years in the position, he has helped the university navigate a difficult recessionary economy, serving a growing student population even as it experienced reductions in state support.

“As a graduate of a very similar college, I can attest to the value of the liberal arts degree that Wheaton offers, and I am truly excited to be a part of it,” said Douglas, “I am very impressed with the talent and commitment of the faculty and staff, and I look forward to working with the entire college community in charting a course to enhance Wheaton’s strength for the future.”

Douglas entered the UMass system in 2000, helping to found UMassOnline, serving as the new venture’s director of technology and operations. He was promoted to chief technology officer in 2004 and associate vice president for learning technologies in 2007.

The higher education executive began his career as program manager for the National Association of College and University Business Officers, the primary national service organization for chief financial officers in Washington, D.C. In that capacity, he managed research projects in higher education management and finance.

Douglas earned a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy and Religion from Colgate University, and a Master of Education degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

The college's resident assistants have declared Wednesday, Dec. 7 as Wheaton Wednesday. The idea: "to spark some togetherness among the Wheaton members as a whole," says Conor Riordan '13, a head resident assistant and one of the organizers of the day.

Students, faculty and staff are urged to "to wear any Wheaton apparel, accessories, and colors they can" to show their Lyons pride.

Need some inspiration? Have a look at Wheaton stylin.

Young has shared her green thumb at Wheaton for 19 years. She graduated from Stonehill College as a history major certified to teach secondary education, but discovered her love of plants soon after graduation when she entered a plant store. She went in to buy a celebratory cactus and left with her first post-graduate job in plant care and retail. With her self-taught knowledge of botany and her knack for teaching, she began to teach extension courses in indoor horticulture at the Rhode Island School of Design early in her career. For years she wrote a weekly column for the Boston Globe.

At Wheaton, she says that it is the natural-yet-controlled environment that she enjoys most about working in the greenhouse. “It is a perfect combination of nature and serenity,” she says. “Nature can be very violent, unpredictable and dangerous, but the greenhouse provides a place to enjoy the different natural settings of plants without the risk of dangerous weather conditions, animals, disease and geographic hazards. “I can watch cacti bloom without getting stranded in the desert. I can see rainforest plants grow and thrive without having to avoid snakes and quicksand. I have the best of the best without the worst, so to speak. Plus I don't need a passport or vaccinations!”

The new greenhouse gathers this world of botanical diversity into a 1,200-square-foot setting. The adjacent rooms that make up the greenhouse include a rainforest room, desert room, and temperate room. A larger space also is reserved for student and faculty research. In each designated environment, the lighting, temperature, humidity and ventilation are all adjusted automatically in response to outdoor climate conditions. On bright days, warm sunlight streaming in creates a beautiful atmosphere, and provides for the plants.

Not only is the greenhouse a beautiful rooftop sanctuary, it is also a teaching tool. It holds four new growth chambers, enclosed machines that allow researchers to tinker with exactly how much light, heat and humidity a growing plant will receive. Many classes benefit from the student research room, growth chambers, and diversity of plants. For example, students in “Introduction to Biology” can use the facility to conduct their self-designed research projects. Students in “Plant Biology” visit the greenhouse regularly to study species diversity and anatomy, and “Genetics” classes use greenhouse plants to study cross-pollination in rapid cycling Brassica plants, which grow very quickly, enabling students to study two generations of plants by the end of the semester.

The general public benefits, too: Wheaton interns at the on-campus Elizabeth Amen Nursery School bring children to visit the greenhouse, and local elementary schools and other groups such as Assisted Living of Norton and the Westwood Garden Club also stop by.

To view photos and to read more about the greenhouse visit: http://wheatoncollege.edu/science/greenhouse/.

Elizabeth Meyer '14

Dukakis will be joined on the panel by Steve Poftak of the Pioneer Institute and Wheaton Professor of Political Science Jay Goodman.

Organized by the college's student-run Roosevelt Institute, the event will begin at 8 p.m. in the May Room, Mary Lyon Hall. It is free and open to the public.

With the ongoing recession and the rise of the Tea Party and Occupy movements, tax policy is expected to continue to be a point of national discussion in the 2012 election cycle, as witnessed by the continuing debates surrounding the expiration of the Bush tax cuts and tax breaks for corporations.

Dukakis served as the governor of Massachusetts from 1975 to 1979 and from 1983 to 1991. He rose to national prominence in 1988 as the Democratic candidate for president of the United States, but was defeated in the general election by George H.W. Bush.

Since leaving office, Dukakis has served as a professor of political science at Northeastern University, as well as a visiting professor at Loyola Marymount University, and at the School of Public Affairs at UCLA. He also is a founding member of The Next Generation Initiative, a leadership program aimed at getting students involved in public affairs.

Steve Poftak represents the Pioneer Institute, a Massachusetts-based conservative think tank that he serves as director of research and director of its Shamie Center for Better Government. Poftak has experience in public policy debates on Beacon Hill, including tax policy issues. Professor Jay Goodman of Wheaton College, who received a J.D. from Suffolk University Law School and a Ph.D. from Brown University, specializes in American politics and will help to provide a context to the broader framework and history of the conversation.

Founded after the 2004 election, Wheaton's chapter is among the nation's first college chapters of the Roosevelt Institute Campus Network, which is aimed at promoting student activism through discussion of public policy issues and the development of public policy proposals in one of six areas: health care, defense and diplomacy, education, energy and the environment, equal justice and economic development. Each year, the 10 best proposals from each area are published nationally and distributed to advocacy organizations and public officials.

Professor Sarah Tobin, a Mellon Post Doctoral Fellow in Anthropology, reviews the democratic political movements in the Mid-East known as the Arab Spring and talks about the importance of these events for U.S. citizens, nationally and personally. This lecture was given on Wednesday, Nov. 9 as the second event in the Flash Seminar series.

Economic Collapse, Economic Change: Getting to the Roots of the Crisis, which Miller wrote with co-author Arthur MacEwan, focuses on the U.S. but also connects its diagnosis to world economies.

Published by M.E. Sharpe, the book argues that the economic crisis was caused by economic and political inequality and a widespread belief that the market is best left to regulate itself.

For two decades, Miller has served as a contributing editor to the magazine Dollars & Sense, and he has also contributed to publications, including Challenge and the Review of Radical Political Economics. He also edits and contributes to the classroom reader, Real World Macro, which is published by Dollars & Sense. (A selection of Prof. Miller's articles are available on his web site.)

"I hope our readers are convinced by our book that the inequality-power-ideology nexus we describe is indeed at the center for the economic crisis, and that that changes in income and wealth distribution, in who has power in our society, and in the ideology of how we view the operation of the economy are at the center of a lasting solution to the problems of our economic lives," says Miller.

At Wheaton, Professor Miller teaches courses on macroeconomics, the history of economic thought and global economic issues.

He has been a visiting professor at the University of California and served as an economic consultant to the Southeast Asia Office of Oxfam America. In 1995 he was awarded a J. William Fulbright Scholarship and spent the year as the Southeast Asia Regional Research Scholar of the Council for International Exchange of Scholars.

Robinson will receive an honorary degree at Wheaton’s Commencement, as will two of the college's distinguished graduates, Deborah Haigh Dluhy ’62 and Barbara Jensky Kovensky ’67.

Janet Robinson joined the Times company in 1983 and was named CEO in 2004. In this role she oversees and coordinates the company’s operations and business units and works closely with Times chairman and publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. to chart the company’s direction.

Her tenure as CEO has coincided with a seismic shift in the news industry, as print newspapers have declined and digital media have proliferated. In March 2011 Robinson oversaw the roll-out of a digital subscription plan for the company’s web operation, nytimes.com, termed by New York Magazine as “one of the most impressive news sites on the planet.” This “paywall” subscription plan attracted nearly a quarter of a million subscribers in its first months.

Robinson served as president and general manager of the Times newspaper from 1996 until 2004 and as senior vice president, newspaper operations, for The New York Times Company from 2001 until early 2004. In the latter role, she led the operations of all of the company’s newspapers, including The New York Times, The Boston Globe, the International Herald Tribune and several regional newspapers.

A native of Fall River, Mass., Robinson graduated from Salve Regina College in Newport, R.I., and in 1998 received an Honorary Doctorate of Business Administration from her alma mater (now Salve Regina University).

Robinson serves on the Presidential Board of Trustees of Salve Regina University and on the boards of the Newspaper Association of America and New England Sports Ventures. She is a member of the advisory board for New York Women in Communications, a member of the Leadership Committee for The Lincoln Center Consolidated Corporate Fund, and a trustee of the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

Deborah Haigh Dluhy, who will also be honored at Commencement, majored in art history at Wheaton and earned her doctorate in that field from Harvard University. She later became the first woman to serve as dean of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, and also served as deputy director of the museum during her 32-year career at the MFA.

She has been a trustee of Wheaton College since 2000, serving as chair from 2005 to 2010. Previously, Dluhy filled a number of key volunteer roles for the college, including member of the President’s Commission and president of the Alumnae/i Association.

Barbara Jensky Kovensky, also receiving an honoring degree, is president of Experchem Laboratories, a food science and technology company in Toronto. She majored in chemistry at Wheaton and received her master of science degree from the University of Toronto. Kovensky is now recognized as a leading expert in food science and technology. Her many professional affiliations include the Order of Professional Chemists of Quebec, the Association of Chemical Professionals of Ontario, and the Canadian Institute of Food Science and Technology.

The Digital Humanities Council was formed by the National Institute for Technology in Liberal Education, an organization that seeks to improve liberal arts education through the strategic use of technology.

Tomasek's appointment to the 14-member panel represents national acknowledgement for the leading role she has played in promoting the use of technology in teaching and learning in the humanities.

"I've been interested in how digital tools can enhance students' learning experiences since I arrived at Wheaton in 1992," says the associate professor of history, who also serves as co-director of the college's Digital History Project. "At that point, faculty members were exploring the use of email discussion lists as a way to encourage students who were uncomfortable speaking in classroom discussion to find a different way to participate in courses."

The conversation has changed radically in the intervening years. Faculty members in the humanities employ technology to analyze images and texts in increasingly sophisticated ways that enable students to get involved in original research and scholarly work.

Tomasek's scholarship exemplifies the trend at Wheaton and elsewhere. In 2004, she began working with students to digitize and encode historical documents—diaries from the 19th century written by a woman from Maine. Since then, Tomasek has collaborated with students and LIS staff to digitize and encode primary sources related to the founding of Wheaton, including diaries and financial ledgers.

Students who study with Tomasek also get involved in contributing to the History Engine, an online resource of original articles on historical events.

These projects have led to the publication of numerous articles on methods in digital humanities teaching and learning, including an essay in the forthcoming volume, Writing History in the Digital Age, which will be published as a digital book by the University of Michigan Press later this year.

The digital humanities projects in which Tomasek has been a leader also have received several grants, including recent awards from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Members of the team also collaborate with Brown University researchers, winning additional grants to power this work.

"The idea is that students learn best when they are actively engaged in real research that adds to the sum of knowledge that exists in the world," Tomasek says.