Arts and Humanities Commons^™

The Promise Of Education 2017-2018, University Center For The Humanities

University Center for the Humanities Events

Education promises to be the key to a good life in the twenty-first century. College students often load up on debt only to graduate into an economy that does not offer enough high-paying jobs for them to prosper financially. Increasingly under scrutiny to produce quantifiable results, public school teachers and university professors struggle to define and defend the goals of liberal education and, especially, the value of the humanities. Journalists report and analysts of all sorts note the gap between expectations and realities. Even in a community inspired by the Promise, the promise of education can sometimes seem precarious. We …

2014-15 Series Brochure - Healing Arts, University Center For The Humanities

University Center for the Humanities Events

In our 2014-15 series “Healing Arts,” the University Center for the Humanities celebrates Kalamazoo’s rich history as a community dedicated to health and well-being. From W.E. Upjohn to Homer Stryker, medical scientists in our community have contributed to the health of people in our state, the nation, and indeed the world. And that commitment to health has led directly to strong support for the arts and humanities in Kalamazoo, endowing the Irving S. Gilmore Foundation, the Kalamazoo Community Foundation, the Arts Council of Greater Kalamazoo, as well as the Black Arts & Cultural Center, the Kalamazoo Institute of Art, the …

2013-14 Series Brochure - Changing Climates, University Center For The Humanities

University Center for the Humanities Events

In our 2013-14 series, “Changing Climates,” the Center for the Humanities brings together scientists and humanists to consider how our climate is changing and what we need to know and do in response. Scientific research is defining issues that concern everybody, including the warming of the globe, the toxicity of our environment, and the fundamental changes we are making to the natural world. Scientists are giving us an opportunity, even a necessity, to talk across the usual boundaries within the University and throughout the community.

2012-13 Series - Harry Elam, Jr., University Center For The Humanities

University Center for the Humanities Events

What does it mean to “perform race?” How do we, and how can we, understand the relationship between race and performance? This talk will examine the meanings of various performances and explore the interrelation of racial performances in everyday life to those on stage and in film; the case studies in this presentation will be far ranging, going from the horrible spectacle of slavery to the plays of Lorraine Hansberry to the film Bamboozled and finally to the 2012 presidential campaign. After the election, Dr. Elam will look at how power and politics figured into representations of Mitt Romney and …

2012-13 Series - Jocelyn Cesari, University Center For The Humanities

University Center for the Humanities Events

With the demise of the Ben Ali and Mubarak regimes in Tunisia and Egypt, Islam’s role in future regimes is a topic under considerable discussion. In light of current events, Dr. Cesari makes two counter intuitive claims. First, she broadens the approach of religion beyond ideas or beliefs by adopting an institutional approach. Second, she introduces State’s actions and policies as a factor in the politicization of Islam. She will ground her demonstration in original data produced in 2011-2012 as the Minerva Chair at the National War College. The findings shed new light on secularity and the role of Islam …

2012-13 Annual Report, University Center For The Humanities

University Center for the Humanities Events

The mission of the Center is to recognize and support the humanities at Western Michigan University. As a gathering place for dialogue, the Center acts an incubator for the exchange of ideas among faculty, emeriti, alumni, undergraduate and graduate students, and people in the wider community. Through the understanding of diverse cultural, professional, political, and intellectual landscapes, we nurture engaged and vital academic life.

2011-12 Series - Jen Bervin, University Center For The Humanities

University Center for the Humanities Events

Jen Bervin will focus on visual and verbal conjunctions in Dickinson’s manuscripts and look at how they intersect with earlier formal gestures in her herbarium, embroidery sampler, letters, and editions of books that she read, marked or altered. Bervin’s large-scale art works will be on exhibit at the Kalamazoo Book Arts Center, where she will read from her own poems on March 29 at 7 p.m.

2011-12 Series - Sonya Bernard-Hollins, University Center For The Humanities

University Center for the Humanities Events

Ms. Bernard-Hollins will talk about her search for information on African American graduates of WMU and how she discovered Merze Tate, a 1927 graduate of WMU and donor to the University. Her original sources research include archives in public and university libraries, private collections, media outlets and oral histories.

2011-12 Series - Art Caplan, University Center For The Humanities

University Center for the Humanities Events

Some argue that we can avoid rationing health care. Dr. Caplan will use demographics that prove this view is simply wrong, and will take up practical questions. If we must ration, how ought we do so? And if we do so, who should ration and what principles ought they to follow?

2011-12 Series - Jim Torczyner, University Center For The Humanities

University Center for the Humanities Events

Jim Torczyner will talk about the McGill Middle East Program in Civil Society and Peace Building and its emphasis on the empowerment of children, youth and women in processes that affect their lives. He will discuss the unlikely path to empowerment that MMEP has taken, and the power of partnership and solidarity in the struggle for social change.

2011-12 Annual Report, University Center For The Humanities

University Center for the Humanities Events

The mission of the Center is to recognize and support the humanities at Western Michigan University. As a gathering place for dialogue, the Center acts an incubator for the exchange of ideas among faculty, emeriti, alumni, undergraduate and graduate students, and people in the wider community. Through the understanding of diverse cultural, professional, political, and intellectual landscapes, we nurture engaged and vital academic life.

2012-13 Series - E.J. Dionne, University Center For The Humanities

University Center for the Humanities Events

Our Divided Political Heart explores the tension between individualism and community throughout our nation’s history. Dionne contends that maintaining a balance between these two ideas is a responsibility that comes with the privilege of being American. However, the Tea Party’s interpretation of our history—an idealization of the Gilded Age and radicalized individualism—threatens this equilibrium. As Americans we must work together to restore the critical balance embodied by Lincoln, Clay, and Hamilton.

2012-13 Series Brochure - Power And Publics, University Center For The Humanities

University Center for the Humanities Events

In the United States, elections dramatize the dynamics of power while mobilizing the public to participate in the democratic process. The 2012 elections inspire this year’s theme, “Power and Publics.” Taxpayers, primary voters, swing voters, independent voters, values voters, non-voters, minors, immigrants, Asian Americans, African Americans, evangelicals, bloggers, the 1%, the 99%, whites, blacks, Southerners, Yankees, liberals, conservatives, and people of color are all labels we place on individuals groups that have influence on our shared public life. This year, we invite you to join our community of humanists in a discussion of various publics and their political power.

2012-13 Series - Chris Mooney, University Center For The Humanities

University Center for the Humanities Events

Over the past decade in America, science has grown increasingly politicized. Scientists roundly denounced the administration of George W. Bush for suppressing research and taking anti-scientific positions; when President Obama came in, he promised great changes but did not always deliver. And now what?

In this talk, Chris Mooney, who has covered the politics of science for a decade in Washington D.C., takes a look at the future of science policy under the next president (Obama or Romney). Will climate change legislation pass? Will the administration take science seriously?

2011-12 Series - Claudia Stevens, University Center For The Humanities

University Center for the Humanities Events

No abstract provided.

2011-12 Series - Richard Arum, University Center For The Humanities

University Center for the Humanities Events

Extending the findings on the first two years of college in “Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses” (2011), the lecture will present the analysis of the complete four years of student longitudinal data (Fall 2005-Spring 2009) and will also look at how these students are faring in the current U.S. economic crisis.

2011-12 Series - David Carrasco, University Center For The Humanities

University Center for the Humanities Events

This multi-media presentation focuses on the cultural encounters between Spanish, Aztec and African peoples that formed the Mexican Americas. Using the perspective of the ‘borderlands’ as his interpretive lens, Carrasco will narrate stories of the ‘conquest of New Spain’, the bilingualism of La Malinche, the apparitions of the Virgin of Guadalupe at the indigenous site of Tepeyac, and the growing devotions for Dia de los Muertos in Latino cultures.

2010-11 Series - Martha Nussbaum, University Center For The Humanities

University Center for the Humanities Events

No abstract provided.

2011-12 Series - Convergence Of Cultures, University Center For The Humanities

University Center for the Humanities Events

This year the University Center for the Humanities focuses a lens on the contact zones between culture and power to understand the tensions, collaborations, accommodations and conversions that accompany sustained cross-cultural encounters. It considers the intersections of ethnicity, language, religion, politics, science and culture and the innovative and creative human products of that interaction. The lecture series is designed to contest stereotypes of difference and expand the understanding of complex social dynamics.

2010-11 Series - Developing A Humanities Center, University Center For The Humanities

University Center for the Humanities Events

No abstract provided.

2010-11 Series - Humanities In Professional And Vocational Education, University Center For The Humanities

University Center for the Humanities Events

No abstract provided.

2010-11 Series - Kickoff Event, University Center For The Humanities

University Center for the Humanities Events

No abstract provided.