Wesleyan University - Literary, Media, and Cultural References

Literary, Media, and Cultural References

More than 30 books have been published concerning the University, including: The Wesleyan Song Book, by Karl P. Harrington and Carl F. Price (1901); The Goose-Step: A Study of American Education, by Upton Sinclair (1923); Wesleyan's First Century With an Account of the Centennial Celebration, by Carl F. Price (1932); Wesleyan University, 1831–1910: Collegiate Enterprise in New England, by David B. Potts (1999); The Gatekeepers: Inside The Admissions Process of a Premier College, by Jacques Steinberg (2002); One Hundred Semesters: My Adventures as Student, Professor, and University President, and What I Learned along the Way, by William M. Chace (14th President of Wesleyan) (2006); A History of the Eclectic Society of Phi Nu Theta, 1837–1970, by William B.B. Moody (2007); Hidden Ivies by Howard Greene and Matthew Greene (2000, 2nd Ed. 2009); Music at Wesleyan: From Glee Club to Gamelan by Mark Slobin (2010).

The main character, Girl, in the 2004 novel Citizen Girl (ISBN 0743266854), by the authors of The Nanny Diaries, is a graduate of Wesleyan. John Maher's 1995 work Thinker, Sailer, Brother, Spy: A Novel (ISBN 0964312107) features a fictional look at the life of a professor (a principal character) in the "hothouse atmosphere of Wesleyan University...." In the 1983 novel The Matlock Paper by Robert Ludlum, the author of espionage thrillers who created the character Jason Bourne, much of the action takes place in and around the campus of a thinly disguised Wesleyan, Ludlum's alma mater.

The 1963 comedic novel, Night and Silence Who is Here?, by novelist Pamela Hansford Johnson, is thought by many literary critics to be patterned humorously after Wesleyan's Institute for Advanced Studies (now the Center for the Humanities); the main characters comprise and parallel the cast of Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream. The Eclectic Society, a play that premiered on 27 January 2010 at the Walnut Street Theatre is based upon the Eclectic Society at the University during the early 1960s. In the 2012 novel Dream School, by novelist Blake Nelson, the protagonist attends an eastern liberal arts college, Wellington College, modeled on Wesleyan.

Characters in several television series have been portrayed as Wesleyan students or graduates. They include 30 Rock, As the World Turns, How I Met Your Mother (characters Ted Mosby, Marshall Eriksen, Lily Aldrin), Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The West Wing, and M*A*S*H.

The 1994 cult comedy film PCU was based on (and filmed in part at) Wesleyan, the alma mater of the screenplay's two writers, Adam Leff and Zak Penn, and represents "an exaggerated view of contemporary college life...." centering around a fictionalized version of the Eclectic Society, known in the film as "The Pit."

In the autumn of 2010, the Pulitzer prize-winning comic strip Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau featured the University in a series of daily strips.