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Ritual, Health, and Healing: Reflecting in the Classroom with Shira Engel ‘14

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A personal account by Shira Engel ’14 of “Ritual, Health, and Healing”, a course which is part of the Creative Campus initiative of the Center for the Arts.

As anything comes to a close, reflection seems to be in order. Journals emerge, nostalgic conversations take place, and commemoration and commencement activities ensue. College courses are no exception to this rule. This is especially the case for Ritual, Health, and Healing, a class rooted in the creative self-reflection of both the students and the professors.

My friend, Hannah Cressy ’13, has covered wonderfully our trips to Brooklyn as a class to work with the St Nicks Arts @ Renaissance community center. Both Jill Sigman and Gillian Goslinga have emphasized for us the importance of deconstructing the invisible barrier between “process” and “product.” This course is all about process because that is what inspires authenticity and the ability for self- and group-reflection to take place.

To be perpetually engaged in process is not an easy task. As college students, we are, at times, taught to pump out ten-pagers and study, study, study, just for the end product of an exam. Process means to do, and then let go of results – to do for the sake of doing and let the results be what they are. This is, at least, my definition.

Two weeks ago, as we geared up for our final field trip to Brooklyn, we were a product-driven bunch. We were scrambling to find time to finish our offerings to the community. At the same time, we were unsettled with this shift in perspective – this constant doing. So, we used our Monday seminar to step back, take a deep breath, and see what it is we are actually doing in the process. We made a list on the board of the common themes of our offerings and of our experiences with the community. They included: reciprocity, interconnectedness of community, the power of listening, valuing lived experience, choosing engagement over disengagement, family, and teachers. Writing them up on the board to be seen was clarifying. It put the passion back into what we were doing and allowed us to see that the offerings we were making to the community were also offerings to ourselves, giving ourselves the gift of all that we had mentioned.

Ritual, Health, and Healing: In the Classroom with Shira Engel ’14

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A personal account by Shira Engel ’14 of “Ritual, Health, and Healing”, a course which is part of the Creative Campus initiative of the Center for the Arts.

Photo by Hailey Still.

“Ritual, Health, and Healing” is an interdisciplinary class that transcends disciplinary boundaries. It is cross-listed in Anthropology, Science in Society, and Dance. It is co-taught by Anthropology professor Gillian Goslinga and Artist in Residence Jill Sigman. Gillian Goslinga has an academic background in ethnographic research on ritual practices. Jill Sigman comes to Wesleyan from New York City, where she is a choreographer working in performance and installation, and directing her company jill sigman/thinkdance. She is currently engaged in her Hut Project. She also has a background in philosophy. The course is a true blend of the disciplines it is cross-listed in as well as the disciplines of the professors. As a student in the course, I find my mind being constantly expanded to think not in terms of a singular discipline, but to creatively combine them in ways that allows the material to sink in.

The course is divided into two segments. The first quarter of the semester, we learned about ritual, health, and healing and what these broad terms means to different cultures. This comprised the necessary theoretical component of the course that feeds into the service learning we are currently doing in Williamsburg-Greenpoint, Brooklyn (but I will let my lovely classmate Hannah elaborate on that in posts to come).

The course is also comprised of a three-hour seminar on Mondays and a movement lab on Tuesday evenings. On Monday, we discuss readings on the cultural and theoretical significance of ritual, health, and healing and on Tuesdays, we embody those readings and theories in movements that transcend the definition of dance.

Because we are constantly encouraged in this course to be self-reflexive, I will come out and say that I was attracted to this course in large part because on WesMaps, the description said that people without any dance experience are encouraged to apply. I do not consider myself a dancer and this course allows for a lack of labels. It allows for a blurring of the lines between disciplines, as well as a blurring of the lines between self-identified labels of artistic identity. After class, I talked to Jill Sigman about what makes this course creatively unique and she said, “This isn’t strictly a dance class. We may be using dance in the context of learning about other things, but there are people who are totally not here to learn to point their foot and that’s what makes it fascinating to me.”

This course shifts disciplinary boundaries in ways that make us – the students – uncomfortable, thrilled, challenged, self-reflexive, and on our toes. It challenges preconceptions of academic work, teaching us that it is inherently creative. Jill Sigman’s studio in Brooklyn is called “The Border.” In many ways, we exist on the border between disciplines, definitions of art, activism, and service in this course as we grapple with definitions of ritual, health, and healing. I am excited to see how these definitions will continue to unfold as we progress into the service learning, creatively translating the work we have done in the seminar and movement lab into practice, while realizing that all is part of the same process.

Shira Engel ’14 previews the Middletown Public Schools Art Exhibition (Mar. 10-18)

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Shira Engel ’14 contemplates the upcoming Middletown Public Schools Art Exhibition, opening March 10.

Twice a week, I foray off campus to the Woodrow Wilson Middle School as part of the student-run community partnership between Wesleyan and the full-time residents of Middletown. Wesleyan is replete with a plethora of programs that serve as points of connection between neighbors, creating pores in a much-talked-about campus bubble. These programs involve tutoring, among them WesReads/WesMath, Woodrow Wilson, and Traverse Square. They also inherently involve the arts, either implicitly through the tutoring programs, or explicitly through the work students from kindergarten to high school ages do through facilities like Green Street, Buttonwood Tree, and Oddfellows Playhouse.

I knew about a lot of these programs and venues before my time at Woodrow Wilson, but one of my tutees has enlightened me further with his firsthand account of all they have to offer. The first thing he told me when I said I went to Wesleyan was that he loves going to dance performances in the Center for the Arts. Creativity served as a perfect and much-needed icebreaker for our first session. Creativity is a link between our different lives and age groups.

This week, after talking to my tutee about dance at Wesleyan, I returned my “Wesleyan Tutor” badge to the main office only to see a poster for a Middletown Youth Arts Exhibit, which, come Saturday March 10, will be held at the CFA’s very own Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery.

Right when Wesleyan students go on spring break, Middletown kids will take over the CFA with their original art, claiming their rightful place in Wesleyan creative life, which is representative not just of this campus, but of the greater world. It is a true creative collaboration between the schools and Wesleyan University.

So, if you happen to be hanging around campus an extra day and can free up an hour from your thesis work or whatever may have you chilling here, come check out this talent! At 5pm on Saturday, March 10 is a free opening reception for the exhibit, which is sponsored by the Middletown Board of Education, Middletown Public Schools Cultural Council and Wesleyan University’s Center for the Arts. Come support your neighbors through the common bond of creativity.

The exhibition will be open from Saturday, March 10 to Sunday, March 18 at the Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery. The gallery is open Monday through Friday, noon to 7pm and Saturday & Sunday, 1pm to 4pm. The opening reception will held from 5pm to 7pm on March 1o. Admission is free.

Shira Engel ’14 reviews the annual Wesleyan performance of “The Vagina Monologues”

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Shira Engel ’14 reviews the annual Wesleyan performance of “The Vagina Monologues”. 

This weekend marked the belated true meaning of Valentines Day for most Wesleyan students: The Vagina Monologues. More valued than pink candy hearts are the cast of student actors dressed in purple and black, spilling their souls out on the stage of the ’92 Theater. It is no surprise that all the shows were sold out.

Even though the audience was encouraged to shut off their cell phones, they were also encouraged to be loud when appropriate. For The Vagina Monologues, this meant screaming “cunt” in response to one particular monologue, and then cheering at enacted orgasms.

What is beautiful about The Vagina Monologues is that it balances the sad with the hilarious, the tear-jerking with the gut-wrenching. A part of the national V-Day movement started by Eve Ensler, The Vagina Monologues is a way to artfully spread awareness of the violence against women in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. And the proceeds of those $4 tickets that came straight out of student accounts went to Planned Parenthood of Connecticut and the national V-Day movement.

While a tribute to the Congo, the show is not only about Congolese women. The diversity of the monologues is their common thread. They range from the voices of sex workers to the voices of elderly women learning to rekindle their sexuality.

The actors were fearless. From freshmen to seniors, they rose to the task of reproducing a production that happens all over the country. It was their fearlessness that evoked a raw production that had the audience gripped, hooked, and responding emotionally. Even with the evident sadness, I left inspired and happy, satisfied by monologues that were about the expression of truth, in a variety of forms.

To learn more about The Vagina Monologues, visit the V-Day website.

First Look: “Lift Your Head”, Senior Thesis Production by Sarah Wolfe ’12 (Dec. 8-10)

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Shira Engel ’14  and Malik Salahuddin ’13 provide a first look at the senior thesis production by Sarah Wolfe ’12, “Lift Your Head” (Dec. 8-10).

Lift Your Head, a senior thesis production by Sarah Wolfe ’12, is a truly collaborative creative process. She and Mica Taliaferro ’11 and Emma Maclean ’14 followed a trail of inspiration that led them to this final production, which has been influenced by Wesleyan’s multimedia and collaborative approach to theater. From transforming short stories into short plays, to reading Euripides’ The Trojan Women, Lift Your Head is what a senior thesis should be – a culminating and productive representation of Sarah’s time at Wesleyan.

Click here to watch a preview video of Lift Your Head created by Malik Salahuddin ’13.

Ms. Wolfe retells The Trojan Women, using various modern adaptations and translations of the narrative to tell the story of Hecuba, her daughters, and Helen at the end of the Trojan War. The Trojan Women has been called by many the greatest anti-war play. These performances will examine its relevance throughout history as told by playwrights including Ellen McLaughlin, Charles Mee, Jean Paul Sartre and Karen Hartman. These performances are in partial fulfillment of Ms. Wolfe’s Honors Thesis in Theater.

Don’t miss Lift Your Head, playing from Thursday, December 8 through Saturday, December 10, 2011  at 8pm in the Patricelli ’92 Theater, located at 213 High Street on the Wesleyan campus in Middletown. Tickets are free, and will be made available of the day of each performance at the Wesleyan University Box Office, located at 45 Wyllys Avenue. Off-campus guests only may call the box office at 860-685-3355 after 10am to reserve tickets to be held in their name until fifteen minutes prior to curtain. On-campus guests must pick up their tickets at the box office. There is a two-ticket limit per person for free ticketed events.

Leigh Stewart ’13 discusses her WESU radio show “The Smorgasboard”

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Shira Engel ’14 interviews Leigh Stewart ’13 on her radio show for WESU.


Tell me about your radio show.

It’s called The Smorgasboard and it is a show that combines international electronic and dance music. It’s a great excuse for me to play my favorite new releases that fall under those genres. It came up unexpectedly because my friend and I were supposed to do a show together, but she went abroad so I did the training and decided I might as well do a show by myself. I realized I have a lot in this genre. I wasn’t sure how I’d feel doing this whole solo radio thing, but I like having full reign over the playlist.

Why did you decide to start it?

I felt like I wanted to explore more how music is circulated and college radio is a very small representation. I was interested in how production works and how artists get their names out. I have several friends that are just signing onto labels and starting to DJ bigger shows. I’m interested in the progression of how a musician, and particularly a DJ, starts out. I thought it would be really interesting to look at it in terms of one really small aspect, which is radio. The College Music Journal has you record your playlist and you have to have a certain number of new releases every hour. It’s a way that they track new artists and make sure music is getting promoted through this outlet. I attended The College Music Journal’s festival, which compiles a lot of that music and at the end of the year in October, they have a festival in New York where they get over 900 bands and a lot of the stuff is funded and free or reduced prices for all these shows. I stumbled across that and wondered how these bands get here and how concerts and shows are related to radio.

How do you choose the music?

A lot of the music I want to play and that I’m interested in is actually old music from the earlier half of the decade that I have the opportunity to show to this audience. The new releases force to me to constantly expand what I am exposed to and what I expose other people to and it taught me to realize that the things I think are new for listeners maybe aren’t new at all. There are certain sounds and combinations of beats that I really like and ten or fifteen artists that I really like and I check their social media and trace that lineage to what could potentially be new music along that similar trajectory that I want to promote.

How do you prepare for it?

My show airs every other week, the seconds and fourth Wednesdays of every month from 9:30 to 11pm and it’s WESU Middletown 88.1FM and you can stream it online through their website. I use the two-week period to prepare and look for new releases so I’m constantly scouring blogs and putting them
nd go into hip hop and rap at the end. I always have extra music on hand and my playlists are always more than I think I will use in the studio. Another thing that goes into the show is beats per minute, which is matching the tempo of each song so I try to start out with each beat and mix between the song and between voice breaks. I change the tempo and move to songs that are a little bit slower or faster.

WesHEAL: A Creative Twist on Healing & Self-Care

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Shira Engel ’14 interviews Sonya Freeman ’12, co-founder of WesHEAL.

At Creative Campus, we define creativity in a broad sense. Creativity is not limited to a narrow definition of “the arts.” It is, rather, a way of going about life. At Wesleyan where students use innovative means to express themselves through student groups, it is important to acknowledge the creativity that goes behind student organizing. So, to kick off the post-Student Activities Fair year, I interviewed Sonya Freeman, co-founder of WesHEAL (Helping Envision Alternative Lifestyles) on how she views creative ways to go about healing.

Why did you decide to start WesHEAL?

I came back from Ecuador feeling particularly passionate about healing – using herbal remedies, accupuncture, ayurveda, and natural medicine in general. My experience working in a water birth clinic in Ecuador and my job as a research assistant at Cornell Medical College have taught me about working with different kinds of healing methods, specifically targeted towards women. At the birth clinic, I danced with women to relax their bodies before beginning contractions and watched as they gave birth in bathtubs. At Cornell, I worked in reproductive psychiatry, where they focus on treating illness with medication. I felt inspired by both methods of healing. When I returned to Wes, I did some research and learned about integrative/complementary medicine. When I started talking to students about the topic, they tended to show interest. Hannah Cressy ’13 teamed up to create and lead an official student group based on raising awareness of integrative medicine through education and activism. We worked with Lisa Sy ’13 to make a logo and spread the word about the group using posters, Facebook, Wesleying, and the student groups fair. We have covered a wide range of opinions on a wide range of topics, including the most effective ways to address different illnesses, the placebo effect, the dynamics of the doctor-patient relationship, and many more!

How did you create an image for the club that reflected its ideals?

The more opinions we have, the more effective the group will be. We want the group to be viewed as an exciting new initiative that will grow on account of its accessibility to the student body. We aim to provide an open space where people can talk freely about healing, which can be a very personal topic.

How would you consider WesHEAL a creative endeavor?

It’s a relatively new idea that is being developed all over the United States. Integrative medicine is an approach to healing that requires an open mind to all types of medicine in the world. Combining the approaches to healing used in different parts of the world, including the Westernized medicine we’ve been raised on, is special and creative.

What’s your vision for WesHEAL?

This year, we aim to create a healing section at Weshop, which will include natural remedies and directions on how to use them effectively, and install a meditation room in the library to be utilized during midterms and finals (the times when students tend to treat their bodies the worst!).  We also want to bring in a guest speaker from the Osher Institute at Harvard (an organization that specializes in integrative medicine), and screen a movie about integrative methods of healing. In the long term, we hope WesHEAL will grow into a strong presence on the Wesleyan campus. Integrative medicine is constantly developing and changing.  We hope to keep students and faculty informed about and involved in the advances in this growing field.

Creative Campus at the Student Activities Fair

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Want to know what arts events are happening on campus? Are you involved in arts events and want to get the word out about them? Are you creative and want an outlet for that awesome expression? Or maybe you want to offer up your fresh take on what’s happening on this very creative campus.

This past spring, the Creative Campus website started in conjunction with the Center for the Arts. It was created collaboratively with Wesleyan students, artists, and staff. It is intended for anyone who wants to know what is going on with creative life on this vibrant and inspirational campus. It is a way of aggregating and collecting the creative life on campus, across disciplines, passions, departments, and student groups.

And speaking of student groups, Creative Campus will have a table at the Student Activities Fair! Come check us out to find out how you can get involved, to promote your student group through Creative Campus, or just to say hi. Hope to see you there!

Shira Engel ’14 reviews “Mixed Signals: Artists Consider Masculinity in Sports”

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Shira Engel ’14 reviews “Mixed Signals: Artists Consider Masculinity in Sports”.

Catherine Opie: Josh (2007). Chromogenic print, 30 x 22 1/4 in. (76.2 x 56.5 cm). Courtesy the artist and Regen Projects, Los Angeles.

In the Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery, a plethora of departments, interests, and values intersect in the Mixed Signals: Artists Consider Masculinity in Sports exhibit. This is a must-see exhibit for Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Sociology, African American Studies, and Anthropology majors, as well as all athletes and Friday Night Lights fans at this university. Basically, if you go to Wesleyan and engage in conversations concerning self and social expression, this exhibit can offer a new and intimate perspective on the age-old institution of American athletics.

The exhibit first takes the viewer through the stereotypes of the male athlete. It uses the art of exposure and reinterpretation as a socially subversive and critical agent of change. Adorning the walls of Zilka, you will find football jerseys, gym equipment, football helmets dangling from the ceiling, photography, paintings, and silent film. In both form and content, intersectionality is heavily present in Mixed Signals. It is, after all, the necessary by-product of a liberal arts education, which is known for interdisciplinary studies.

The multimedia approach creates a multisensory experience, allowing the viewer to experience the social stigma and expectations of masculinity in sports. This is art that is hyper-relevant to the Wesleyan student, as all aspects of the Mixed Signals exhibit have the power and potential to affect campus life.

Mixed Signals is on display through Sunday, October 23, 2011. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Sunday from Noon to 4pm, and on Friday from Noon to 8pm. Gallery admission is free.

Ronald Ebrecht to play music by César Franck, Sept. 9

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Shira Engel ’14 interviews Artist in Residence and University Organist Ronald Ebrecht before his free, all-Franck concert, “Bach to School”, taking place Friday, September 9, 2011 at 8pm in Memorial Chapel.

Tell me about the concert.

The composer was born in Eastern Belgium, an area that belonged to everybody. There is a BU program to increase cross-border cultural things in those regions where the borders have moved a lot. This is one of César Franck’s anniversary years (1822-1890). My specialty is music from the 1950s so this stuff – from the 1850s – is a little early for it. This guy was very important to the history of symphony. He became a model for a lot of other composers, such as Charles Ives. It is a major piece in orchestra. Musical scenes from one movement were re-introduced in other movements. Franck was the first person to repeat scenes. He was important in chamber music, the most important 19th-century French composer. The ability to write melodies creates memory, which makes him very popular.

What do you hope students will get out of the concert?

I always like to be first because then I get a really good audience. I always have a mystique around campus. We have the largest undergraduate organ program. All the schools are jealous of our Organ Romp. I like to be first and kick the series off to a good start. In a few weeks, there’s another concert composed by students (“The Musical Singularity”, Thursday, September 22, 2011 at 8pm in 
Memorial Chapel). There will be a newness to this concert because it’s the first of the season. I don’t have to put together an ensemble; it’s just me so there’s no major rehearsal.

If you like music that will lay you out on the floor, Franck does that.

What was the inspiration? Tell me about the festival.

I was supposed to have played in Germany for another thing, an all-American program, but I wasn’t able to go. The students always want to know what’s going on in the studio. My studio downstairs has posters from a bunch of places in the world and students can sit there and practice and think, “If I work really hard, I can go to all these places.”

What pieces are you most excited for?

The d minor symphony became a piece that all other composers of symphonies are interested in, and Franck was so pleased with how much attention that piece got that he decided to write a piece for other organs. That became a genre of its own. It’s a cyclical organ symphony so he brings back scenes from earlier movements to set the stage for other movements. We have a problem in serious music where people say, “I don’t know how to listen to that,” but when the scenes come back from other movements, it makes it a lot easier.

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