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Who's Who
The instructors for our courses will be drawn primarily from the body of retired Wesleyan faculty members who live in the Middletown area--over 80 in number. In addition, there are authors, artists, scientists, and scholars in our community who have no formal affiliation with Wesleyan but who will be called upon from time to time to offer courses in our program.
Professor of German and Letters, EmeritusHERBERT A. ARNOLD is professor of German and letters emeritus. After more than 40 years of teaching at Wesleyan, including in the MAT and GLSP programs, he is revisiting some of his early research interests, including the European Baroque era, and continuing work on a biographical-historical investigation of central European history in the 20th century. Most of his work in the past has centered on the intersection between history and literature in a pan-European context, and his publications range in time and subject matter from late 15th-century manuscripts to contemporary popular culture.
Partner, Northeast Collaborative ArchitectsJEFFREY BIANCO is the founding partner of Northeast Collaborative Architects, with offices in Middletown since 1987. He is a qualified historical architect by the standards of the National Park Service. Bianco spent his early career in New York City and was project architect for restoration projects at Grand Central Terminal, the New York Public Library, and the National Building Museum, among other assignments. Locally, he has worked on Portland Town Hall, deKoven House, General Mansfield House, and Kid City. He is a graduate of the City College of New York.
RICHARD A. MILLER is Woodhouse/Sysco Professor of Economics emeritus. He taught at Wesleyan from 1960 until 2006, and his courses included introductory, microtheory, and industrial economics, antitrust, business ethics, and corporate finance. His research interests include structure-performance in U.S. manufacturing, mergers, gender discrimination, cost curves, cost of capital, and how algebra helps to understand the mortgage crisis.
ArchitectALAIN MUNKITTRICK ’73 has practiced architectural design, historic preservation and documentation, interior design, and space planning in partnership with his wife, Rosemary, since 1979. Their work has appeared in such publications as The New York Times and Interior Design, as well as in foreign publications. He has taught continuing education courses associated with Boston Architectural College (BAC) and Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design. He has a BA from Wesleyan and a bachelor of architecture from BAC.
BILL ROBERTS ’63 was the minister of the First Church for 20 years. He left the parish ministry in 1989 and worked for KPMG and Prudential before beginning his own consulting firm. He has written two books: Initiation to Adulthood: an Ancient Rite of Passage in Contemporary Form and Crossing the Soul’s River: A Rite of Passage for Men (at Midlife).
Visiting ScholarSARAH RUDEN, currently a visiting scholar in classical studies, received a doctorate in classics from Harvard University and an MA from the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars. She has taught at Harvard University, Yale University, and other institutions. She is a prolific journalist, poet, and translator and recently sold her ninth book (on the translation of the Bible) to Knopf.
Kenan Professor of the Humanities and Professor of Art HistoryJOSEPH SIRY is Kenan Professor of the Humanities and a professor of art history who specializes in modern architectural history. He is the author of Carson Pirie Scott: Louis Sullivan and the Chicago Department Store; Unity Temple: Frank Lloyd Wright and Architecture for Liberal Religion; The Chicago Auditorium Building: Adler and Sullivan’s Architecture and the City, which won the 2003 Society of Architectural Historians’ Alice Davis Hitchcock Award for best book by a North American scholar; and Beth Sholom: Frank Lloyd Wright and Modern Religious Architecture. Siry also has published book chapters and articles in the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians and the Art Bulletin—the first of which won College Art Association’s 1991 Arthur Kingsley Porter Prize for the outstanding article by a younger scholar. He received Wesleyan’s Binswanger Award for Excellence in Teaching in 1994. His work has been funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Getty Research Institute, the Mellon Foundation, and the Graham Foundation.
Teacher, Independent Day SchoolELIZABETH WARNER teaches middle school history at the Independent Day School in Middlefield. In 1990, she wrote A Pictorial History of Middletown, which she updated in 2000 for a reprint by the City of Middletown. Her most recent projects related to Middletown history are “An Experiment in Community,” a research report on the African American neighborhood along Cross Street completed for the Connecticut Historical Commission, and a piece on Middletown history for the Encyclopedia of Connecticut History Online (ECHO).
Harold T Stearns Professor of Earth Science EmeritusJELLE ZEILINGA DE BOER is Harold T. Stearns Professor of Earth Science emeritus. He was raised in Indonesia, studied in the Netherlands, and taught earth science at Wesleyan from 1965 to 2005. Lately, he has focused on the role geologic phenomena played in Greek mythology, specifically at the Oracle site at Delphi and Apollo temples in southern Anatolia. He has published Volcanoes in Human History, Earthquakes in Human History (both with Donald Sanders ’52), and Stories in Stone, which explores the influence geology has had on Connecticut’s history.
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