Carleton professor of anthropology Jay Levi appeared on the Jan. 24 episode of National Geographic’s “Taboo” show, in an episode entitled “Freaky Remedies.” The fourth episode of season eight touched on the extreme and rare remedies people seek to cure asthma, infertility and pain, among other ailments. Levi comments on the use of a guinea pig sacrifice in Peru’s Andes Mountains, where the show’s subject is seeking an ancient animal sacrifice to remedy his health problems that couldn’t be cured through surgery. “The patient has to have faith in the techniques and power of the shaman for it to work,” Levi says in the show. “If performed by a shaman, then it does work, especially, and perhaps only, if you believe.”

The Chronicle of Higher Education’s Scott Carlson wrote a feature titled “In an Old School Building, Carleton College and Its Community Enjoy New Lessons” for the publication’s Jan. 21 edition. Carlson tells the history of the building, how the College purchased and planned the renovation, shows how many of the old spaces morphed into the new and how Carleton used many of the old parts of the building in interesting and creative ways. The article includes an online slide show as well.

Laurel Bradley, director and curator in the Perlman Teaching Museum and senior lecturer in art and art History, gives us a tour of the Weitz Center for Creativity’s museum space. She talks about exactly what it means for Carleton to have such a facility and gives us a sneak preview of the two winter term exhibits. “A Complex Weave: Women and Identity in Contemporary Art” is on display in the museum’s Braucher Gallery through March 11, while the Kaemmer Family Gallery hosts “Running the Numbers: Portraits of Mass Consumption” at the same time.

Carleton College has announced the formation of a new Center for Community and Civic Engagement (CCCE), combining the efforts of the College’s Academic Civic Engagement (ACE) and Acting in the Community Together (ACT) offices, while adding a third area of public scholarship to bring increased visibility to collaborations between faculty and students, and to support the work of engaged scholarship by Carleton’s faculty. The new effort will be launched with an open house on Friday, Jan. 20, from 10 a.m.-12 noon, at the Sayles-Hill Student Center, room 150. Carleton President Steven G. Poskanzer and Dean of the College Beverly Nagel will offer remarks at 11:15 a.m.

This past Friday, Carleton presented the Stuart Pimsler Dance and Theater performance as 2012’s first event in the Weitz Center for Creativity.

Steven Schier, the Dorothy H. and Edward C. Congdon Professor of Political Science, is quoted in a Jan. 2 article in Iowa’s HometownSource.com regarding Sixth District Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, R-Stillwater, who is seeking the Republican party’s presidential nomination. After winning a summer straw poll in Iowa, experts are predicting a fatal finish for Bachmann in today’s caucus and likely end to her 2012 presidential aspirations. If that happens, Schier told the paper, she’ll likely seek re-election to her House seat. “What else will she do?” Schier said.

Steven Schier, the Dorothy H. and Edward C. Congdon Professor of Political Science, is quoted in a Dec. 15 story by Reuters regarding the Tea Party members’ attitudes and feelings towards former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney as a possible Republican Party Presidential nominee, and how the movement has become more organized and focused in advance of the 2012 elections. “The Tea Party was a very showy populist movement in the last cycle,” he said. “Now they are in the trenches and institutionalizing their efforts.”  

The Sherman Fairchild Foundation has awarded a grant to Carleton College for the project Collaborative Directions in Art and Technology. The $300,000, three-year project will support Carleton arts and technology faculty in developing new class modules, courses, collaborative courses, and curricular models for multi-disciplinary student projects. The project will enable Carleton faculty members to make full use of the new Weitz Center for Creativity, which will be providing staff, technological resources, and facilities in support of project efforts.