CAS Lectures for November, December, January

November

Poet Daniel Lusk presents his Research-in-Progress Seminar #225, "Lake Studies: Meditations on Lake Champlain," on Tuesday, November 17, at 7:30 p.m. in Memorial Lounge, Waterman Building. This research project is designed to generate a book-length poem cycle based on historical, archeological, and scientific inquiries, coupled with legend, insight, and first-hand experience. Lusk teaches poetry and creative writing at UVM. The seminar is sponsored by the Center for Research on Vermont.

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An Art History lecture will be given by T. Barton Thurber, Ph.D., Curator of European Art, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College. "Picturing Pompeii from the Age of Enlightenment to the Victorian Era" will begin at 6:00 p.m. on Wednesday, November 18, in room 301 Williams Hall with a reception to follow.

The systematic excavations of Pompeii and Herculaneum beginning in the eighteenth century captured the imagination of scholars, visitors, and artists alike. The discovery of lavish residences and personal artifacts transformed the idea of the Roman world. Over the years, as a wealth of information was increasingly documented and published, artists recorded their firsthand impressions and created idealized reconstructions. These images illuminate the growing understanding of antiquity and reflect the perspectives of their own time.

Bart received his doctoral degree from Harvard University in 1994. He worked for several years at the National Gallery of Art and later held postdoctoral appointments at Villa I Tatti, The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies in Florence, Italy, and the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts in Washington, D.C. Bart arrived at Dartmouth College in 1998, where he has organized a variety of exhibitions ranging from Renaissance prints to Early Modern paintings. His publications include articles, reviews, and exhibition catalogues on diverse subjects, including the architecture of Andrea Palladio, French landscape painting, and mythological prints from Mantegna to Picasso.

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University of Massachusetts, Amherst Professor Emeritus Henry Lea presents his lecture "Criminals with Doctorates: An SS Officer in the Killing Fields of Russia, as reported by the Jewish novelist Jonathan Littell," on Wednesday, November 18, 7:30 p.m., in Room 427, Waterman Building.

The lecture will address Littell's novel, The Kindly Ones (Les Bienveillantes, 2006), which focuses on the "Einsatzgruppen," death squads sent by the Germans into the Soviet Union during World War II to kill Jews and other "undesirables." The narrator is an SS officer who becomes a murderer and lives to tell the tale.

Henry Lea, born in Berlin in 1920, received his doctorate at the University of Pennsylvania. He served as a simultaneous interpreter at the Nuremberg Trials and remains one of two still alive who served in the Einsatzgruppen case. He has published on literature and music, including books on Gustav Mahler and Wolfgang Hildesheimer, with a forthcoming article on "Dictionary-Making in the Third Reich: The Case of Trübners Deutsches Wörterbuch."

This event is sponsored by the Department of German and Russian and co-sponsored by the Miller Center for Holocaust Studies.

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Slavoj Žižek will give a talk, "'We're Only Human': Ideology in Hollywood Today" in the Billings/Ira Allen Lecture Hall (formerly CC Theatre) on Friday, November 20 from 3:00 - 4:30 p.m. A noted philosopher, social theorist and cultural critic, Žižek is a Senior Researcher at the Institute for Social Studies in Ljubljana, Slovenia as well as a Professor at the European Graduate School. Žižek is the author of such books as Looking Awry, The Plague of Fantasies, and The Ticklish Subject, as well as many more. Come hear the philosopher The Village Voice calls "A one-person culture mulcher....A fast forward philosopher of culture for the postwar period," and The New Republic calls "the most dangerous philosopher in the West." The talk is sponsored by the Film and Television Studies Program through the James and Mary Brigham Buckham Fund.

December

The Global and Regional Studies Fall 2009 Lecture Series concludes on Tuesday, December 1 when Syracuse University Geography Professor Farhana Sultana presents her lecture: “Gender, Participation and Community: Rethinking Development in Contentious Waterscapes.” John Dewey Lounge, Old Mill 325, 1:00 - 2:00 p.m. Sponsored by the Department of Geography.

January

The CAS Full Professor Lecture Series continues when Professor of Biology C. William Kilpatrick, presents his lecture on January 19 from 5:00 - 6:30 p.m. in Waterman Memorial Lounge.

The College of Arts and Sciences Full Professor Lecture Series was designed to recognize faculty newly promoted to full professor rank. This year’s series was to conclude with a lecture by Professor of Biology Alison Brody in March, but Dr. Brody has had to reschedule her lecture and hopes to present it in the fall of 2010.