Bill HolderThe internationally lauded novelist and journalist Amos Oz will speak on “Israel Through Its Literature," at 8 p.m., Thursday, Nov. 3 in Memorial Chapel. The event is free and open to the campus community. Amos Oz, Israel’s best known writer, is the author of novels, novellas, short stories, children’s books, literary and political essay collections, and the moving memoir A Tale of Love and Darkness. Oz’s most widely acclaimed novel, My Michael (1968), was an immediate artistic and political sensation. It has been published in over 30 countries and in 1975 was made into a popular film. Among many other…
Olivia DrakePrize-winning author Robin D.G. Kelley will deliver the Center for African-American Studies 17th Annual Distinguished Lecture at 8 p.m. April 14. Kelley is a professor of American studies and ethnicity and history at the University of Southern California. His topic will be, "Faking It for Freedom: Grace Halsell's Amazing Journey through the Minefields of Race, Sex, Empire and War - A 20th Century Love Story." The lecture is based on Kelley's new project - a biography of the late journalist Grace Halsell. Halsell, a white journalist, spent a good part of her life masquerading as others and traveling the country…
Nell Irvin Painter will deliver the 9th Annual Shasha Seminar for Human Concerns Keynote Address titled, "What the History of White People Can Tell Us about Race in America." "Americans are likely to think first and only of black people when the topic of race comes up," she says. "But in the past Americans considered as white have also been raced and ranked as belonging to better or worse white races. In and of itself this history is fascinating, but beyond its intellectual interest, it can also offer some ideas about the functions of racial categorization in science and in…
Ethics leader and law professor Lawrence Lessig will speak on "Speech and Independence: The Wrongs of Corporate Speech," during the 19th Annual Hugo L. Black Lecture on Freedom of Expression. The event is at 8 p.m. April 7 in Memorial Chapel. Lessig is professor of law at Harvard Law School and the director of the Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics. As director, Lessig is leading a five-year project studying “institutional corruption” relationships which are legal, even ethical, but which weaken public trust in an institution. Prior to Harvard, Lessig was a professor at Stanford Law School, where he…
Through film, eco-activist, and reality television star Shalini Kantayya will speak about the global water crisis during Wesleyan's Earth Day Celebration April 15. "Water is life," says Kantayya, the event's keynote speaker. "We are facing a world water crisis. A world in which nations are at war for water and every drop is for sale." The event begins at 7:30 p.m. in the Center for the Arts Cinema. Kantayya will discuss her film, “a DROP of LIFE”, which will be viewed following her presentation. "a DROP of LIFE," is a futuristic sci-fi flick about the mounting global water crisis. It…
An emerging worldwide energy crisis demands a new approach for a sustainable energy future. "How we adapt will determine our future on this planet," said physicist Fred Schlachter, during the Department of Physics' Colloquium Series Feb. 26 in Exley Science Center. Schlachter, a guest speaker from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's Advanced Light Source Division, is the co-author of Energy Future: Think Efficiency, a report that examines how America can look within to achieve energy security and reduce global warming. At Wesleyan, he gave a presentation titled "Over a barrel: A world wide energy crisis." The topic of energy is…
Rob Rosenthal, professor of sociology, spoke at a conference titled "Celebrating Seattle's Striking History," sponsored by the University of Washington Department of History. The conference was held Feb. 6 at the Seattle Labor Temple to commemorating the 90th anniversary of the Seattle General Strike of 1919. Rosenthal spoke about the strike, and also about a rock opera he wrote and recorded in 1986 with his band, The Fuse, about the strike. The Seattle Labor Chorus sung two songs from the album. In addition, Rosenthal was interviewed about his song on the NPR station in Portland, KBOO, and the NPR station in Seattle, KUOW.
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A group of Wesleyan students, led by Demian Pritchard, visiting assistant professor of Latina/o literature and culture in the English Department, attended a reading by Cherríe Moraga at Wellesley College Nov. 20. Moraga is an influential and prolific Chicana lesbian writer of poetry, drama and essays. She is known for mixing genre in her writing as she engages issues of sexuality, race, gender and class - alongside questions of nation and language. Her reading was titled "Still Loving in the Still War Years," a play on the title of one of her most widely read books: Loving in the War…
Berel Lang, visiting professor of philosophy, visiting professor of letters, has given lectures recently at a conference held at Boston University in honor of Elie Wiesel's 80th Birthday; at a conference on "History and Memory of the Holocaust," held in Berlin at the Adenauer Foundation; and at a conference on "Holocaust Denial" in Paris at the Ecole Normale Superieure. Lang's new book, Philosophical Witnessing: The Holocaust as Presence, is scheduled for publication by the University Press of New England in 2009.