Ruth Chang, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Rutgers University, will participate in a Philosophy departmental colloquium on Friday, September 24 at 4:00 p.m., in room 109, 70 South Williams Street. Egan's specialty areas are normative ethics, metaethics, axiology, philosophy of practical reason.
Her current interests include the nature of normativity, the explanatory relation between reasons and values, the underdetermination of reasons or values, the role of the will in practical reason, self-constitution, and animal versus human action. She is exploring connections among these topics, all of which grow out of a long-standing interest in the "incommensurability" of values.
******
Dr. Jack Sullivan, Department of Biological Sciences, University of Idaho, will be on campus as guest of the Biology Department. His lecture, "Testing Divergence with Gene Flow in Chipmunks (Tamias)," will be on Monday, September 27, from 4:05 - 7:05 p.m. in room 105, Marsh Life Science Building. Sullivan was awarded the Biology Department's 2010 Accomplished Alumni.
Sullivan received a B.A. (1985) and M.S. (1990) in Zoology from UVM. After completing a Ph.D. at the University of Connecticut and a postdoc with Dave Swofford at the Smithsonian Institute, he joined the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Idaho. He has risen rapidly through the ranks at the University of Idaho and was promoted to Full Professor in 2008. He has published over 40 papers, has maintained grant support from NSF, and is currently the Editor-In-Chief of Systematic Biology. Dr. Sullivan has been a founder of a number of collaborative groups, including an Initiative for Bioinformatics and Evolutionary Studies, Palouse Ecology, Evolution and Systematics Group, and an Initiative for Organismal Interactions. At Idaho, Dr. Sullivan has supervised more than 20 students and postdocs in his research lab.
******
The Center for Research on Vermont begins its Research in Progress Seminar Series with a lecture by Dr. John Crock, Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Director of the UVM Consulting Archaeology Program. His lecture "9,000 Years of Life Under the Bridge:The Archaeology of Chimney Point," will be on Tuesday, September 28 at 7:30 p.m. in Memorial Lounge, Waterman Building.
The University of Vermont Consulting Archaeology Program recently completed excavations at Chimney Point as part of the construction of the new bridge between West Addison, VT and Crown Point, NY. The project was conducted on behalf of the Vermont Agency of Transportation as part of the federal permit process for the massive construction project led by the New York State Department of Transportation. The results of historic and archaeological research associated with the bridge project illustrate the significance of Chimney Point to the Native American and European history of the Champlain Valley and Vermont. In the space of only a half an acre under the old bridge, archaeologists have found evidence of 9,000 years of human occupation, ranging from Native American settlements and camps, to portions of a French Fort built in 1731, to the location of one of Vermont's first pottery kilns.
******
Women's and Gender Studies is hosting Dr. Jocelyn Olcott, Associate Professor, Department of History and Women’s Studies, Duke University on Thursday, September 30 from 12:30-1:30 p.m. in room 225, Old Mill. Her lecture will be“Transnationalizing Women’s Studies.” A light lunch/refreshments will be served.
Olcott's work is on feminist history of modern Mexico. Her first book, Revolutionary Women in Postrevolutionary Mexico, explores questions of gender and citizenship in the 1930s. She is currently working on two book-length projects: a history of the 1975 UN International Women's Year Conference in Mexico City (under contract with Oxford University Press), and a biography of the activist and folksinger Concha Michel. She is also developing a long-term project on the labor, political, and conceptual history of motherhood in twentieth-century Mexico.
"A Response to Gwen Ifill: Politics, Policy and Reality from Washington to Vermont and Beyond," will take place on Friday, October 1 from 10:00-11:30 a.m. in the Livak Ballroom, Davis Center. Faculty members from Political Science, English, Geography, and other departments in the College of Arts and Sciences will come together to discuss Thursday night's Aiken Lecture Series keynote address by Gwen Ifill, author, moderator and managing editor of "Washington Week," and Senior Correspondent and Co-anchor for "PBS NewsHour."
******
The Political Science Department and the Global and Regional Studies Program is hosting Dr. Jocelyn Olcott, Associate Professor, Department of History and Women’s Studies, Duke University on Friday, October 1 from 1:55-2:45 p.m. in the John Dewey Lounge, room 325, Old Mill. Her lecture will be "Soldiers, Suffragists and Sex Radicals: Women, Gender, and the Mexican Revolution."
******
Mr. Victor Zhikai Gao, former interpreter for Deng Xiaoping, will lecture on Monday, October 4, from 12:50 p.m. to 2 p.m. on "The Inside Story of China's Transformation," in the John Dewey Lounge, room 325 Old Mill. Speaking on the process of economic reform in China over the last thirty years, Mr. Gao will focus mostly on the modern Chinese economy. Mr. Gao has run a number of state-owned enterprises in China, including the oil company CHOOC, which has led Chinese expansion into Africa. Sponsored by the UVM Department of Political Science and Middlebury College Department of Political Science.
******
Professor Aram Yengoyan, Distinguished Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of California, Davis will be on campus as part of the Dan and Carole Burack President's Distinguished Lecture Series. Hosted by the Department of Anthropology, Yengoyan's lecture is titled: "Worlds Fairs and the Exhibitionary Complex: Civilization and Culture (1851-1940). Monday, October 4, 4:00 - 5:30 p.m., Votey Hall, room 105.
After obtaining his doctorate at the University of Chicago in 1964 Prof. Yengoyan spent 30 years at the University of Michigan before moving to the University of California, Davis. He has published extensively on cultural and linguistic theory as well as on Australian Aborigines and the southern Philippines.
******
Amie Thomasson,
Philosophy Professor and Parodi Senior Scholar in Aesthetics,
University of Miami, will participate in a Philosophy departmental colloquium on Friday, October 8 at 4:00 p.m., in room 109,
70 South Williams Street.
Thomasson's areas of specialization are in metaphysics, philosophy of mind, phenomenology, and philosophy of art. She is the author of Ordinary Objects (Oxford University Press, 2007), Fiction and Metaphysics (Cambridge University Press, 1999), and co-editor (with David W. Smith) of Phenomenology and Philosophy of Mind (Oxford University Press, 2005).
******
Professor Philip Barth, English Department, is the recipient of the Fall 2010 Dean's Lecture Award. He will present his lecture:
"A Brief Series of Impolitic Remarks, Potentially Culminating in Summary Dismissal from the University (Or, On Satire)," at 5:00 p.m. on
Tuesday, October 12, in Memorial Lounge, Waterman Building.
According to Baruth, "Satire is always hungry for pieties: commonplaces we learn and repeat without ever asking how, public figures we esteem without ever quite understanding why. For this reason, there is a certain rhetorical violence to satire that is at once its greatest draw, and its greatest drawback. Because he or she makes sport of powerful people and closely-held ideas, those that society has done its best to sanctify, the satirist is generally held in low esteem — and eventually fired, or maimed and then killed. This is especially true of a satirist working in a very small New England state." In this talk, Professor Baruth will review some of the things he's written that have caused deep offense in the past, and make headway on provoking fresh offense for the future.
Website for Professor Baruth: http://www.uvm.edu/~english/?Page=PhilipBaruth.php.
Photo by Kathy FitzGerald.
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.
******
On Wednesday, October 13, from 3:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m., Professor Melvin Rogers, University of Virginia, will speak on "The People, Rhetoric and Affect: On the Political Force of W. E. B. DuBois' / The Souls of Black Folk." John Dewey Lounge, Room 325 Old Mill. Co-sponsored by ALANA U.S. Ethnic Studies.
******
Faculty from Dartmouth and Middlebury will participate in a yearlong series of events on "Television in the Academy" sponsored by the Humanities Program. How Should We Study TV? A panel discussion at the University of Vermont, will begin at 3:00 p.m. Friday, October 15, Room 003 Kalkin Bldg. Featured panelists will be:
Future events will take place at Dartmouth and Middlebury, and there will be a culminating daylong conference in the spring.
******
The Romance Languages Department will be hosting the Puerto Rican writer, Judith Ortiz Cofer, who will give a prose and poetry reading as part of the Dan and Carole Burack President's Distinguished Lecture Series. Ortiz Cofer writes primarily in English with some Spanish words interspersd in her work. The lecture,
“ A Love Story Beginning in Spanish: A Prose and Poetry Reading,” will be held on Thursday, October 21 at 4:00 p.m. in North Billings Lounge, Billings Center. A reception will follow the lecture.
Cofer's work can largely be classified as creative nonfiction. Her narrative style is strongly influenced by oral storytelling, which was inspired by her grandmother, an able storyteller in the tradition of teaching through storytelling among Puerto Rican women. Cofer's autobiographical work often focuses on her attempts at negotiating her life between two cultures, American and Puerto Rican, and how this process informs her sensibilities as a writer. Her work also explores such subjects as racism and sexism in American culture, machismo and female empowerment in Puerto Rican culture, and the challenges diasporic immigrants face in a new culture. In 1984 she joined the faculty of the University of Georgria, where she is currently Franklin Professor of English and Creative Writing. In April 2010, Cofer was inducted into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame.
******
The Philosophy Department will be hosting J. David Velleman, New York University, for two events this month. On Thursday, October 21, Velleman will deliver the John Dewey Memorial Lecture at 4:00 p.m. in Memorial Lounge, Waterman.
On Friday, October 22 at 4:00 p.m., he will participate in a departmental colloquium in room 109, 70 South Williams Street.
Velleman received his Ph.D. from Princeton in 1983 and is Professor of Philosophy at NYU. Professor Velleman's work in the philosophy of action includes the book Practical Reflection (Princeton 1989) and a collection of papers, The Possibility of Practical Reason (reprinted 2009, University of Michigan). His papers on the self are collected in a volume entitled Self to Self (Cambridge 2006). His most recent book, on the foundations of morality, is How We Get Along (Cambridge 2009). He has also published papers in bioethics and (with Paul Boghossian) on the metaphysics of color. He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Guggenheim Foundation, and he serves (with Stephen Darwall) as founding co-Editor of Philosophers' Imprint.
******
The Art and Art History Department is bringing Molly Brunson, Assistant Professor, Slavic Department, Yale University to campus to present her lecture: "Borderline Realism: Ilya Repin and Russian Painting in the 1870s." Monday, October 25, at 5:30 p.m. in Williams 301.
******
Dr. Marc Allard, Research Microbiologist, Food and Drug Administration, will be on campus as guest of the Biology Department. His lecture, "Comparative Genomics of the Salmonellae: A Food Safety Perspective," will be on Monday, October 25 from 4:05 - 7:05 p.m. in room 105, Marsh Life Science Building. Allard was awarded the Biology Department's 2010 Accomplished Alumni.
Allard received a B.A. (1983) in Zoology from UVM. After completing his M.S. in Zoology with Dr. Ira Greenbaum at Texas A&M University he received his Ph.D. in Biology in 1990 from Harvard University. Dr. Allard was the Louis Weintraub Associate Professor of Biology and Genetics at George Washington University, Washington, DC from 1994 to 2008. He has had appointments to the visiting Scientists Program both at the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Counterterrorism and Forensic Science Research Unit (CTFSRU) and in the Chem-Bio Sciences Unit (CBSU) for approximately eight years, where he assisted in the anthrax investigations as well as in human genetics data-basing. Dr. Allard joined the Office of Regulatory Science and the Division of Microbiology in November 2008 where he uses DNA sequence information from the genomes of food-borne pathogens to identify unique single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), SAAPs, and whole proteins to rapidly identify various strains of bacteria. Dr. Allard specializes in both phylogenetic analysis and bioinformatics methods, as well as the wet laboratory methods that generate this genetic information.
******
Andy Egan, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Rutgers University, will participate in a Philosophy departmental colloquium on Friday, October 29 at 4:00 p.m., in room 109, 70 South Williams Street. Egan's specialty areas are philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, metaphysics, and ethics.
On Tuesday, November 2, UVM Professor of Sociology Thomas Streeter, will deliver his Full Professor Lecture, "From James Marsh to Computers in Backpacks: UVM and Romanticism in the 21st Century," at 4:00 p.m. Memorial Lounge, Waterman. More information about Professor Streeter can be found at http://www.uvm.edu/~tstreete/ and at http://www.uvm.edu/~tstreete/Net_Effect/
******
Professor Nancy Rosenblum, Harvard University, will deliver her lecture, "Partisanship and Independence: The Moral Distinctiveness of Party Identification," on Wednesday, November 3, from 3:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. as part of the Rosen Lecture Series. John Dewey Lounge, Room 325, Old Mill Building.
******
Anne M. Wagner, Henry Moore Foundation Research Curator at the Tate Britain, will be on campus as part of
the Dan and Carole Burack President's Distinguished Lecture Series. Hosted by the Art and Art History Department, Wagner's lecture is titled:
"Women's Time: Martin and Truitt in the Moment of Minimalism." The lecture takes place
Monday, November 8 at 6:00 p.m. in room
301, Williams.
In "Women's Time," Anne Wagner will consider the implications of the work of the artists Agnes Martin and Anne Truitt, not least in terms of the challenges they level at minimalism and the modern repackaging of time.
Anne M. Wagner was for many years a professor in the Department of History of Art at the University of California, Berkeley, where she remains the Class of 1936 Chair Emerita. Her work has appeared in such journals as Artforum, Representations, October, and The Threepenny Review. Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux: Sculptor of the Second Empire, was published in 1986, and Three Artists (Three Women) in 1996. In 2005, her third book, Mother Stone: The Vitality of Modern British Sculpture, came out from Yale University Press. A book of her essays, A House Divided: On Recent American Art, will appear in 2011. In progress is Behaving Globally, which has been commissioned by Princeton University Press for a new series called "Essays on the Arts."
******
Ross Thomson, UVM Professor of Economics, will deliver his Full Professor Lecture on Tuesday, November 9, at 5:00 p.m. in Memorial Lounge, Waterman.
******
The Philosophy Department will be hosting Eli Hirsch, Brandeis University, for two events this month. On Thursday, November 11, Hisrch will deliver the John Dewey Memorial Lecture at 4:00 p.m. in Memorial Lounge, Waterman.
On Friday, November 12 at 4:00 p.m., he will participate in a departmental colloquium in room 109, 70 South Williams Street.
Hirsch is an American philosopher and the Charles Goldman Professor of Philosophy at Brandeis University. He is best known for his work in meta-ontology. He coined the phrase "soft-ontology" and has authored numerous books, such as The Concept of Identity and Dividing Reality.
******
Please note: All lecture speakers, topics, start times, and locations are subject to change.