News

Wellesley honors this year’s December finishers.

Artist Lorraine O’Grady ’55, who defied category, is dead at 90. She worked in collage, photography, performance, video and installation, and she dealt forthrightly with the complexities of race and gender.

Mark S. Singel reflects on the Firefly Sparkle galaxy, discovered by a team led by astronomy professor Lamiya Mowla ’13: “We are all on this earth traveling through a magical galaxy together.”

A Wellesley College-led team of astronomers have discovered a new galaxy that is forming. And it looks a lot like our galaxy, the Milky Way.

Lorraine O’Grady ’55 developed a loyal following for artworks that often proved unclassifiable. Her art critiqued racism, misogyny, and privilege, but it did so using methods that were ambiguous and occasionally even tough to interpret. She spoke frequently of wanting to use what she called “both/and thinking” that stood against Western systems.

Kellie Carter Jackson writes that Kali Gross’s new book, Vengeance Feminism: The Power of Black Women’s Fury in Lawless Times, pushes readers to take in Black women’s justified anger and fury.

"The Milky Way began forming very early in the universe's history, likely around the same time as Firefly Sparkle," said astronomer and assistant professor of astronomy Lamiya Mowla ’13.

The galaxy resembling Christmas lights hanging in the cosmos has space scientists, including astronomy professor Lamiya Mowla '13, feeling festive.

Astronomer Lamiya Mowla ’13 is the co-lead author of “Formation of a low-mass galaxy from star clusters in a 600-million-year-old Universe” published in Nature on December 11, which is also the birthday of astronomer and Wellesley alum Annie Jump Cannon, class of 1884.