Kelley Helmstutler Di Dio, Professor of Art HistoryTuesday, October 13, at 5:00pm
Waterman Memorial Lounge
Title: How Did That Get Here? The Risks and Rewards of Making and Moving Sculptures in Renaissance Italy
Kelley Helmstutler Di Dio, Professor of Art History
Tuesday, October 13, at 5:00pm
Waterman Memorial Lounge
Title: How Did That Get Here? The Risks and Rewards of Making and Moving Sculptures in Renaissance Italy
Synopsis: Michelangelo once remarked that a good sculpture is one that can be rolled down a hill without breaking. Many Renaissance sculptures were made to be shipped long distances, over sea and land, as they were sent as gifts from one prince to another in Early Modern Europe (ca. 1400-1700). But how did they get there? What risks and costs were inherent in the process? What made them worth it? In this lecture, Professor Kelley Helmstutler Di Dio will reveal the answers she has found while reading the private letters of one of the greatest families of Renaissance Europe: the Medici of Florence, Italy.
Kelley Helmstutler Di Dio received her M.A. (1997) and Ph.D. (2000) from Rutgers University and came to UVM in 2003, after teaching and researching in Italy for seven years. She has won fellowships from the Ministry of Arts and Culture of Spain; the Samuel H. Kress Foundation; the Medici Archive Project; and Harvard's Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, "Villa I Tatti." She has published four books and two dozen articles, essays, and reviews. She has given lectures at the Museo del Prado, Madrid; the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Wallace Collection, London; and at universities and international conferences across Europe and the U.S.
Greg Bottoms, Professor of English
Tuesday, November 10, at 5:00pm
Waterman Memorial Lounge
Title: White Kid: A Memoir of Race, Racism, Class, and Culture in the 1970s
Synopsis: English and Creative Writing Professor Greg Bottoms will read from his current work-in-progress. White Kids tells stories from his early life in Hampton Roads, Virginia, where he lived in an all-white, working-class neighborhood adjacent to poor, all-black neighborhoods during the time of busing and integration. The memoir explores the insidious effects of sanctioned and institutionalized racism and the nature and origins of white anxieties about race in urban areas that led to massive “white flight“ to the suburbs in the 1970s and 80s.
Professor Bottoms is a writer of essays, memoirs, art and cultural criticism, and short stories. He is the author of seven books, including the acclaimed memoir Angelhead and the recent collection of autobiographical essays and stories Pitiful Criminals, which was long-listed for the prestigious Story Prize. Esquire has written, “Bottoms writes like a poet, he writes like he is on fire.” And David Ulin of The Los Angeles Times says, “Everything matters, is what [Bottoms] means to tells us, and yet we can never understand what it all means.”
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 discipline. The Award is a celebration of the unusually high quality of our faculty and has become an important and treasured event each semester.
A recording of the lecture will be made available at the online media blog http://blog.uvm.edu/compute-cas-media/ and eventually at the College of Arts and Sciences website.
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Please note: All lecture speakers, topics, start times, and locations are subject to change.