Meet the Instructors

The instructors for our courses include current and retired Wesleyan faculty members who live in the Middletown area, alumni/ae,  and local professionals—artists, clergy, curators, scholars, scientists, writers, and other experts—who have no formal affiliation with Wesleyan but are pleased to share their knowledge, experience, and perspectives with our students.

  • Scott W. Aalgaard

    Scott W. Aalgaard works on cultural production in modern and contemporary Japan, with particular emphases on popular music and literature. He is interested in the possibilities and pitfalls of storytelling, and how the tactical conjuring and telling of stories (in various forms, and in different ways) can serve to both generate and undermine the worlds that we inhabit. Aalgaard's research and teaching is interdisciplinary: his work addresses geopolitics, political economy, regional and social histories, nations and nationalisms, histories of empire and fascism, and disparate modes of protest and critique, among other topics.

    Aalgaard's first book, titled Homesick Blues: Politics, Protest, and Musical Storytelling in Modern Japan (University of Hawai'i Press, 2023), explores the interplay between popular music and everyday life, and how music is used by artists, fans, and others to imagine and re-imagine social, political, and cultural life in modern Japan. His second book project explores the manifestation and utility of sound in literature, and how sonic regimes are used by authors as a means of engaging critically with modernity itself.

  • Robert Barnett

    Robert Barnett’s academic degrees and professional practice are in architecture and campus planning. Geographically, Barnett identifies with New England, though he was raised in the Hudson Valley, educated in Philadelphia and New York, practiced architecture in Los Angeles, and campus planning at Princeton. Along the way, out of interest and necessity, Barnett developed photographic, public speaking, and writing skills. Since 2008, he has been able to devote his time to writing non-fiction specializing in architecture and campus planning.

  • Gina Barreca

    Called “smart and funny” by People magazine and “very, very funny for a woman” by Dave Barry, Professor Gina Barreca was deemed a “feminist humor maven” by Ms. Magazine. Novelist Wally Lamb said Barreca’s prose, in equal measures, is “hilarious and humane.”

    A UConn faculty member, Gina is winner of UConn’s highest award for excellence in teaching. Barreca has delivered, often as a repeat guest, keynote speeches at events organized by the National Writers Workshop, the Women’s Campaign School at Yale, the National Association of Independent Schools, The Chicago Humanities Festival, Women In Federal Law Enforcement, Chautauqua, and The Smithsonian– to name a few.

    She has several titles to her credit include the bestselling “They Used to Call Me Snow White, But I Drifted: Women’s Strategic Use of Humor” (Viking/Penguin); “Babes in Boyland: A Personal History of Coeducation in the Ivy League” (UPNE); “Sweet Revenge: The Wicked Delights of Getting Even” (Crown); “It’s Not That I’m Bitter, or How I Stopped Worrying About Visible Panty Lines and Conquered the World” (St. Martin’s); and “I’m With Stupid: 10,000 Years of Misunderstanding Between the Sexes Cleared Right Up” (written with Gene Weingarten, based on articles appearing in “The Washington Post” and published by Simon and Schuster).  

    Her academic specialties include creative writing, popular literature, women’s literature, gender and humor, modern British literature, and Victorian literature. Barreca grew up in Brooklyn and Long Island, and now lives with her husband in Storrs.

  • Sarah Bilston

    Professor Bilston's research focuses on literature of the British Victorian period. Professor Bilston teaches a wide range of courses in Victorian literature.

    Her first academic book, The Awkward Age in Women’s Popular Fiction, 1850-1900: Girls and the Transition to Womanhood, was published in 2004 by Oxford University Press. Her second, The Promise of the Suburbs: A Victorian History in Literature and Culture was published by Yale University Press in 2019 and was a "Choice" Outstanding Academic Title. 

    Her new book, The Lost Orchid: A Story of Victorian Plunder & Obsession, will be published by Harvard University Press on May 6, 2025, and earned a Kirkus Starred Review. Professor Bilston has also published numerous articles in peer-reviewed journals, such as Victorian Literature and Culture, Victorian Review, Cusp, and ELT, and two novels, Bed Rest (published in 2006 in nine languages) and Sleepless Nights (2009) with HarperCollins.

    M.A., B.A., Univ. College, Univ. of London
    M.St., D.Phil., Somerville College, Oxford

  • Neely Bruce

    Neely Bruce is an American composer, conductor, pianist, and scholar of American music. He is the composer of over 800 works including three full-length operas. Currently, he is John Spencer Camp Professor of Music and American Studies at Wesleyan University, where he has taught since 1974.

  • Richard Friswell

    rfriswell@wesleyan.edu

    Richard Friswell is a cultural historian who lectures widely on topics related to Modernism and the modern era in world history.  Underpinning his cultural-historical approach to art history is the notion that the art, literature, and social history of nations are interrelated.  His recent publications include Balancing Act: Postcards from the Edge of Risk and Reward (2017) and Hudson River Chronicles: In Search of the Splendid & Sublime on America's 'First' River (2019).  His historical novel, Merchants of Deceit: American Fortune & the China Trade (Fall 2021) deals with the experiences of the Middletown merchant Samuel Russell in Canton, China.

  • Katherine Hauswirth

    Katherine Hauswirth’s writing focuses on connection and contemplation inspired by the natural world. She has been published in Christian Science Monitor, Orion online, Whole Life Times, and Connecticut Woodlands. Her blog, First Person Naturalist, reflects on experiencing and learning about nature. Her awards include artist residencies at Trail Wood (Connecticut Audubon’s Edwin Way Teale memorial sanctuary) and Acadia National Park. A piece in her most recent book, The Book of Noticing: Collections and Connections on the Trail, won first place in the Soul-Making Keats Literary Competition. The book also won honorable mention for general nonfiction in the American Society of Journalists and Authors 2018 competition. Katherine lives with her husband and son in Deep River, Connecticut.

    In The Morning Light, The Lily White, she presents a collection of very short essays—one for each day of the year—offering knowledge, insight, and introspection. Hauswirth examines countless components of our natural world, answering such questions as: What’s going on beneath still winter pond waters? Do birds ever sleep in? Do bees really use their tongues as crowbars? and Do flying squirrels actually fly? You will approach nature differently after reading this book, following in Hauswirth’s footsteps as she learns from nature by being one with nature.

  • Rhea Higgins

    rhiggins@wesleyan.edu

    Rhea Padis Higgins taught for many years in the art history department in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Hartford. She holds a BA from Smith College and an MAT from Harvard. From 1986 to 2002 she also taught at Wesleyan in Graduate Liberal Studies. Her particular area of expertise is 19th-century European painting, with an emphasis on post-Impressionist artists, but her knowledge of art ranges from classical antiquity to the present.

  • Kathleen Housley

    Kathleen Housley is the author of eleven acclaimed books, ranging from women’s history to materials science. She has written for numerous national journals, including the Christian Century and Image. She is also a freelance writer and editor.

    In her two books of poetry, Firmament (Higganum Hill Books 2007) and Epiphanies (Wising Up Press 2013), Housley explores the borderlands between science and religion. Her poems have been compared to iron filings between two magnets, revealing lines of force that are both scientifically complex and beautifully simple.  Likewise, her essays Keys to the Kingdom: Reflections on Music and the Mind exist in the borderlands between science and art.

  • Jeffers Lennox

    Jeffers Lennox is an historian of early North America, with a specific focus on the history of interactions between British, French, and Indigenous peoples. My first book, Homelands & Empires: Indigenous Spaces, Imperial Fictions, and Competition for Territory in Northeastern North America, 1690-1763 (University of Toronto Press, 2017) explores how the Wabanaki peoples, French settlers, and British colonists used borders, land use, and the language of geography to control territory in what is now Nova Scotia / New Brunswick / Northern Maine.

    His current book project investigates the ways in which Canada shaped the American Revolution and the creation of the United States. In North of America: Revolution, British Provinces, and Creating the United States, 1774-1815 (under contract, Yale University Press) I argue that America is the product of those provinces that refused to be subsumed by the Revolutionary experiment. Concerns about Quebec and Nova Scotia during the Revolutionary War influenced not just the decision to fight but also the process of declaring independence; the creation of new provinces (New Brunswick in 1785, Upper and Lower Canada in 1791) and states (Vermont in 1791) was an entangled endeavour that pushed and pulled settlers across porous and fluid borders.

    BA, University of Toronto; MA, Dalhousie University; PHD, Dalhousie University
    Professor of History, Wesleyan University.

  • Vicky McCarthy

    vmccarthy@northeastwoodsales.com

    Vicky McCarthy is a Connecticut licensed arborist who works full time at SavATree in the Ridgefield territory. She is also a beekeeper and master gardener. As a UConn horticultural professional she taught at Middlesex Extension in Haddam, sharing garden education including The Enclosed Garden with an accompanying trip to the Cloisters and other edutainment classes. Vicky is an arboriculture and gardening contributor on the Lisa Wexler Show on WICC. When she is not working you can find her in her garden.

  • Alain Munkittrick

    Alain Munkittrick is a graduate of Wesleyan University and the Boston Architectural College and, with his wife Rosemary Munkittrick, has practiced architecture, space planning and interior design for 40 years in the Boston area and in Connecticut. Adaptive reuse and historic preservation are particularly important aspects of their practice. This work is informed by research and studies of architectural history, building technology and local history. Alain was a founding member of the Wesleyan University Landmarks Advisory Board, past president of the Greater Middletown Preservation Trust, and is currently President of the Board of the Middlesex County Historical Society in Middletown, Connecticut. With Deborah Shapiro he co-authored Middletown's High Street and Wesleyan University, His latest book, Historic Houses of the Connecticut River Valley, includes over 300 period photographs (many never published), illustrating a curated selection of 160 historic houses, arranged thematically to tell the story of the river valley's development.

  • Jon Rose

    Vintner Jon Rose is the owner of Rose Vineyards in Branford, CT. Originally settled in 1644, the Rose family farm is one of the oldest, family-run farms in the country. Over the years, the Rose farm evolved from a traditional New England farm, meant to serve a young, thriving family, to an operating orchard allowing patrons to purchase the freshly farmed produce.

  • Jennifer Tucker

    Jennifer Tucker is an historian who studies the interrelations of art and science, photography, and mass visual culture, with a specialization in 19th to mid-20th century British, U.S., women’s and gender history, and trans-Pacific history. The common threads in my diverse research fields are the dynamics of visual media in modern history, the nature of evidence, public perceptions and practices of history, and the interrelationships of science, technology, and the law. 

    Her interests focus on how and why new forms of visual evidence evolve, and what we learn about the past by investigating the functions that images and other objects serve when they are put into mass circulation across private and public domains in places as varied as homes, schools, laboratories, museums and courtrooms. They also extend to the study of technologies and industrial histories, including of chemical and ballistic technologies.  I share this scholarship with the public through a number of public history projects and museum collaborations that seek to uncover new insights and approaches to history, particularly through visual and digital storytelling projects. 

    She has two book projects. The first is a study of identity, photography, and imposture in the 19th century. It draws on hundreds of photographs, engravings, and other visual materials associated with one of 19th century Britain’s most high-profile trials, the Tichborne Affair, to show how photographs, their circulation, and commentary upon them shaped the meaning of legal decision-making. It also explores how caricatures, news illustrations, and other artistic responses shaped popular.

  • Richard Voigt

    Richard Voigt is a graduate of Wesleyan University and the University of Virginia Law School.  He served in the Office of the Solicitor, U.S. Department of Labor, before entering private practice in Connecticut, focusing on labor, employment, and other workplace issues.  He has often been recognized for his work, including in Best Lawyers in America.  Before his retirement, he was a partner in the law firm of McCarter & English and also served as a Parajudicial Officer for the U.S.District Court for Connecticut.  He now lectures on a variety of topics of American history.