CAS Lectures mid-February to mid-May

FEBRUARY

Professor Emeritus Alan Wertheimer, Political Science Department, will present the Donald Brown Memorial Lecture, Thursday, February 25, 4:00 PM, Memorial Lounge.

Professor Wertheimer was a Fellow in the Program in Ethics and the Professions at Harvard University (1989-90) and a Fellow of the School of Social Sciences at the Institute for Advance Study, Princeton (1984-85). His teaching and research areas is political philosophy of law. He is the author of Coercion (Princeton University Press, 1987) and Exploitation (Princeton University Press, 1996) and numerous articles. Professor Wertheimer recently served as Visiting Professor at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. He was selected as "University Scholar" for 1995-96, one of the highest honors in the University of Vermont.

MARCH

The Center for Research on Vermont is hosting a symposium entitled “What Is the Role of Government? Then and Now.” As part of the celebration of the 25th anniversary of Madeline M. Kunin’s inauguration as Governor of Vermont, Ms. Kunin will be speaking at the symposium on the topic, “What Difference Do Women in Leadership Make?” The day-long symposium takes place on March 2 from 9:30 - 5:30 PM and will be held in the Davis Center on the UVM campus. For more information on the symposium and other participants, call 802-656-4389 or see the the poster link (PDF).

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John Broome, University of Oxford, will deliver the John Dewey Memorial Lecture, Monday, March 1, at 4:00PM in Memorial Lounge. On Tuesday, March 2, at 1:00 PM he will participate in a Philosophy Departmental Colloquium in Room 109, 70 S. Williams St. Broome’s areas of interests are ethics, normativity, rationality, and reasoning.

Website for Dr. Broome: http://users.ox.ac.uk/~sfop0060/

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Professor Sergio Parussa, Wellesley College, author of the recent book Writing as Freedom, Writing as Testimony: Four Italian Writers and Judaism, will speak about Primo Levi on March 17. Time and location to be announced.

Sergio Parussa is an Associate Professor of Italian Studies at Wellesley College. He received his Bachelor of Arts from the University of Turin, Italy, and his Ph.D. in Italian Studies from Brown University with a specialization in twentieth-century Italian and French Literature.

Website for Dr. Parussa: http://www.wellesley.edu/Italian/sparussa/index.html

Sponsored by the Department of Romance Languages and co-sponsored by the Center for Holocaust Studies. Updated information is available under “Events” at: http://www.uvm.edu/~uvmchs/

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Professor Daniel Smail, Harvard History Department, will give his Burack Presidential lecture: "Is Culture Just A Drug? History, Neuroscience, and the 'Great Transformation'," on Thursday, March 18 at 4:00 PM in the Livak Family Ballroom, Davis Center.

The lecture is being delivered in honor of UVM Religion Professor Luther Martin who will be retiring at the end of the semester after 43 years in the department. To recognize his work in the cognitive study of religion, the Religion Department, co-sponsored by History and Anthropology, submitted the Burack nomination to bring Smail to UVM to give a talk. A reception will follow the presentation.

Website for Dr. Smail: http://history.fas.harvard.edu/people/faculty/smail.php

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Frank Bryan, John G. McCullough Professor of Political Science at the University of Vermont will present the Center for Research on Vermont Research-in-Progress Seminar #227, "Vermont as a Civil Society: The Search for a Genetic Code," on Wednesday, March 24, at 7:30 PM in Memorial Lounge, Waterman Building.

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Professor Ted Sider, New York University Philosophy Department, will be on campus to give the John Dewey Memorial Lecture on Thursday, March 25, at 4:00 PM and a Philosophy Departmental Colloquium on Friday, March 26, at 4:00 PM. Sider’s areas of specialization are metaphysics and philosophy of language. Both events will take place in Memorial Lounge, Waterman Building.

Website for Dr. Sider: http://tedsider.org/

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Tina Escaja Professor Tina Escaja, Romance Languages Department, is the recipient of the Spring 2010 Dean's Lecture Award. She will present her lecture: "The Printer at the Far End of the Romance Languages: A CyberArtist / Feminist / Impostor's Take on Otherness," Wednesday, March 31, from 5:00-6:30 PM in Memorial Lounge, Waterman Building.

Website for Dr. Escaja: http://www.uvm.edu/~romlang/escaja.html

The Dean's Lecture Series was established in 1991 as a way to recognize and honor colleagues in the College of Arts and Sciences who have consistently demonstrated the ability to translate their professional knowledge and skill into exciting classroom experiences for their students -- faculty who meet the challenge of being both excellent teachers and highly respected professionals in their own disciplines. The award is a celebration of the unusually high quality of CAS faculty and has become an important and treasured event each semester.

APRIL

Susan Ouellette, Professor of History and American Studies at St. Michael's College will present the Center for Research on Vermont Research-in-Progress Seminar #228, "Antebellum Women's History through the Journal of Phebe Orvis Eastman," on Wednesday, April 7 at 7:30 PM in Memorial Lounge, Waterman Building.

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Travis Beal Jacobs, Middlebury College Fletcher D. Proctor Professor Emeritus of American History, will present the Center for Research on Vermont Research-in-Progress Seminar #229, "Senator Robert Stafford: A Work in Progress," on Wednesday, April 21, at 7:30 PM in Memorial Lounge, Waterman Building.

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Associate Professor of Philosophy Ram Neta, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, will participate in a Philosophy Departmental Colloquium on Friday, April 23, 4:00 PM, Room 109, 70 S. Williams St. Dr. Neta specializes in epistemology and is currently at work on a book on knowledge.

Website for Dr. Neta: http://ramneta-philosophy.blogspot.com/

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Anna Hajkova, University of Toronto and Editor, Terezin Studies and Documents, will speak on Jewish life in the Terezin (Theresienstadt) ghetto on April 27 at 8:00 PM, Memorial Lounge, Waterman Building.

This lecture is sponsored by the Center for Holocaust Studies at UVM in association with a performance of the Verdi Requiem, a piece performed by Jewish prisoners at Terezin as an act of defiance, by the Vermont Symphony Orchestra on Saturday, May 1, 2010. Information about the concert can be found at: http://www.vso.org/eventview.php?id=43

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Professor Sharon Street, New York University, will participate in a Philosophy Departmental Colloquium on Friday, April 30, 4:00 PM, Room 109, 70 S. Williams St.

Dr. Street specializes in metaethics, and is the author of a series of articles on how to reconcile our understanding of normativity with a scientific conception of the world. Her work concerns the nature of both practical and epistemic reasons, and draws especially on an evolutionary biological perspective.

Website for Dr. Street: http://homepages.nyu.edu/~jrs477/street.html

MAY

Professor Lesley-Ann Dupigny-Giroux, Geography Department, and Vermont State Climatologist will speak at the Center for Research on Vermont Annual Meeting. The topic of her presentation will be, "Backward Seasons, Droughts, Maple Sugaring, and Other Indicators of Historic Climate Fluctuations." The lecture takes place on Tuesday, May 4, at 7:30 PM, Memorial Lounge, Waterman Building.