Humanities Lecture Series

Jeff Moran

Associate Professor of History, University of Kansas   

"The Antievolution Controversies and American Culture" 

Thu, February 16, 7:30  p.m.                  

The Commons, Spooner Hall

*Sponsored by the Friends of the Hall Center 

University of Kansas Associate Professor of History Jeff Moran brings a thoughtful, historical perspective to some of our most challenging contemporary issues. In 2000, Harvard University Press published his first book, Teaching Sex: The Shaping of Adolescence in the Twentieth Century, the first and only book-length history of sex education in the United States. In 2002, Moran published The Scopes Trial:  A Brief History with Documents. Originally intended as an undergraduate textbook, it won wider notice for its interpretation of the trial and its inquiry into hitherto unexamined aspects of the antievolution controversy. In his Humanities Lecture Series presentation "American Genesis: Antievolution Controversies from Scopes to Creation Science," Moran will examine the controversies around evolution as they have exploded in our public schools to ask how they reflect and deepen existing tensions in American culture.   His book American Genesis: Antievolution Controversies from Scopes to Intelligent Design is forthcoming from Oxford University Press.

Virginia Scharff

Distinguished Professor of History, University of New Mexico, and Director for the Center for the Southwest 

"The Women Jefferson Loved" 

Mon, February 6, 7:30  p.m.

Lied Pavilion

*Reception and book signing to  follow.     

 Virginia Scharff's critically acclaimed book, The Women Jefferson Loved (2010), puts Thomas Jefferson's free and slave families into the same story, and reveals how Jefferson's love for women shaped his ideas, achievements, and legacies. In so doing, Scharff offers readers a Jefferson who might belong to all of us. The book was named a New York Times "Editor's Choice." Scharff is Distinguished Professor of History at the University of New Mexico and Director for the Center for the Southwest. Her scholarly publications include Taking the Wheel: Women and the Coming of the Motor Age (1991); Twenty Thousand Roads: Women, Movement, and the West (2003), and the edited volume, Seeing Nature Through Gender (2003). She was Beinecke Research Fellow in the Lamar Center for Frontiers and Borders at Yale University (2008-9) and is Women of the West Chair at the Autry National Center in Los Angeles.

Angela Davis

Professor of History of Consciousness and of Feminist Studies, University of California Santa Cruz 

"Feminism and Political Activism" 

Tue, February 7, 5:00 p.m.

Budig 120
 *Co-sponsored by Student Union Activities; the Office of the Chancellor; the Office of the Provost; the Deans of CLAS; the Clifford P. Ketzel Fund; the School of Social Welfare; the School of Law; KU Honors Program; the Department of Theatre; and the Hall Center. With contributions from the Office of Minority Affairs and the Departments of African and African-American Studies, American Studies, Film & Media Studies, History, Philosophy, and Sociology.

Tickets required. Free tickets can be obtained by students after January 17 from SUA in the Kansas Union, or faculty and staff may retrieve them from Bailey 213.  

Through her activism and scholarship over the last decades, Angela Davis has been deeply involved in our nation's quest for social justice. Her work as an educator - both at the university level and in the larger public sphere - has always emphasized the importance of building communities of struggle for economic, racial, and gender equality. Davis is the author of eight books and has lectured throughout the United States as well as in Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, and South America. In recent years a persistent theme of her work has been the range of social problems associated with incarceration and the generalized criminalization of those communities that are most affected by poverty and racial discrimination. She draws upon her own experiences in the early seventies as a person who spent eighteen months in jail and on trial, after being placed on the FBI's "Ten Most Wanted List." She has also conducted extensive research on issues related to race, gender and imprisonment. Her most recent books are Abolition Democracy (2005)and Are Prisons Obsolete? (2003). She is now completing a book on prisons and American history.

Valentine's Day Film Festival at the Commons

Tue, February 14, 5:00 - 10:00 p.m.

The Commons, Spooner Hall 

Composed of 18 episodic stories and carried by an ensemble cast, Paris Je T'aime is set in multiple neighborhoods of Paris and explores different types of relationships in a cosmopolitan environment.





Cairo Time (2009)

The film tells the story of an unexpected love affair in contemporary Cairo in the context of an ancient culture, displayed by the Pyramids and traditional social behavior.

An Evening with Randy Klein and Friends

Tue, February 21, 7:30 p.m.

Hall Center Conference Hall
 *Reception to follow  

 Composer, pianist, and 2011-2012 Simons Public Humanities Fellow Randy Klein will once again collaborate with students and faculty from the School of Music to present an evening of music, conversation, and improvisation at the Hall Center. A similar presentation last Fall, featuring a number of extraordinarily talented KU students, was a resounding success. This semester's concert is also free and open to the public. Klein will be in residence at the Hall Center during four weeks in February and March of 2012. During that time he will conduct an ensemble in the jazz department and participate in the KU Jazz Festival. He is also composing a song cycle entitled Speak, to be performed by various ensembles. 

Rebecca Solnit

"Civil Society, the Phoenix in the Ruins: Disaster, Carnival, Revolution, and Public Joy" 

Wed, February 29, 7:30 p.m.

The Commons, Spooner Hall        

Additional Event: Idea Café with Rebecca Solnit: Do We Need Crisis to Have Citizenship?

Thu, March 1, 10:00 a.m.

Coffee is provided. RSVP to thecommons@ku.edu by February 22. Limit 40 guests.

 
Do we return to our original nature in chaos and crisis? That's been the theory of disaster management (and Hollywood disaster movies), but what if our original nature is calm, openhearted, generous, and creative? Rebecca Solnit has studied and written about major disasters and reached conclusions that are relevant not only to emergencies but to larger questions about our deepest desires and greatest possibilities. Based in San Francisco, Solnit is the author of thirteen books about art, landscape, public and collective life, ecology, politics, hope, meandering, reverie, and memory. She has worked on an array of topics including climate change, Native American land rights, antinuclear, human rights, antiwar and other issues as an activist and journalist.