Distinguished Professor of History, University of New Mexico; Director of the  Center for the Southwest; and OAH Distinguished Lecturer
"The Women Jefferson Loved"
Monday, February 6, 7:30 p.m.
Lied Center Pavilion
Book signing and reception to follow


Additional event: A Conversation with the author of The Women Jefferson Loved
Monday, February 6, 1:30-3:30 p.m.
Hall Center Conference Hall
Open to faculty, staff, and graduate students

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's 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. 

Professor of History of Consciousness and of Feminist Studies, University of California Santa Cruz
"Feminism and Political Activism"
Tuesday, February 7, 5:00 p.m.
Budig 120
Tickets required. Free tickets can be acquired from SUA in the Kansas Union, or faculty and staff members may retrieve them from Bailey 213.
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.

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.  

School of Computer Science, University of Oklahoma
"Emerging Opportunities for Visual Analytics in the Digital Humanities"
Tuesday, February 7, 3:30-5:00 p.m.
Hall Center Seminar Room
 

Useful but specialized applications of visual analysis now exist in numerous domains that tackle complex, voluminous information sources. However, there is of yet little support for an open-ended, user-driven process of broad and deep digital engagement in which data processing, graphical depiction, and human interaction adapt to evolving research needs and goals, particularly in examinations of idiosyncrasy. In this talk, Chris Weaver will offer a vision of humanities scholarship infused with highly interactive, visual, computational facilities for interpretation and discourse. He will also present concrete progress on developing methods, techniques, and tools in support of that vision. Weaver is an Assistant Professor in the School of Computer Science and Associate Director of the Center for Spatial Analysis at the University of Oklahoma. 

Independent Scholar
"Jayhawk Assaults on Haskell's Roost: KU Raids on an Indian Boarding School and Its Sacred Wetlands"
Friday, February 10, 3:30-5:00 p.m.
Hall Center Conference Hall
 

The work Michael Caron Caron will present at the Hall Center primarily concerns the role major figures in KU's history, including Charles Robinson, Chancellor James Marvin, and Chancellor Joshua Lippincott played in exploiting Haskell. In particular he will explore the role of Professor E. Raymond Hall in a decade long effort to gain control of Haskell Wetlands for KU. Caron is Executive Director of Save the Wakarusa Wetlands, Inc., a non-profit formed to oppose routing the South Lawrence Trafficway through the wetlands. He has volunteered hundreds of hours working with Haskell WPO [Wetlands Preservation Organization] students on a wide variety of projects in their wetlands and the adjacent medicine wheel. He has led literally hundreds of wetland tours for all ages from 2nd graders to Ecological Society of America SEEDS students, Udall Legacy interns, and elder hostel groups. He is completing a book on the Wakarusa Wetlands in relation to Haskell history and student resistance to cultural genocide.  

"Re-Reading Readers: The Construction of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X in Composition Textbooks"
Friday, February 10, 12:30 - 2:00 p.m.
Hall Center Seminar Room

All graduate students are invited to attend these workshops, directed by the four students who received Hall Center Graduate Summer Research Awards. The talks will incline more to method, problem, or theory than to subject content, to increase their appeal to a wider audience. Lunch is provided, but RSVP is required no later than February 3. Click here to register.

KU School of Music Visiting Artist Performance
Saturday, February 11, 7:30 - 8:30 p.m.
Swarthout Recital Hall, Murphy Hall

Randy Klein is the 2011-2012 Simons Public Humanities Fellow, in residence at the Hall Center during the month of February. The Simons Public Humanities Fellowship brings individuals of experience and accomplishment from outside the university to the Hall Center and KU to participate in the intellectual life of the university for a period ranging from one month to one semester. It is made possible by a gift from the Simons Family of Lawrence with matching funds from a National Endowment for the Humanities Challenge Grant.