Fall 2009 Center for the Humanities Colloquium Series: “Provocations, Passions and Disruptions”

Thursday, Sept. 24: Lecture by Gay Robins

"The Small Golden Shrine of Tutankhamun and Ankhesenamun"
7 p.m.; Campus Commons Room, Whitaker Campus Center

Gay Robins, Ph.D., is the Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Art History at Emory University. An expert in ancient Egyptian art, Robins will explore the meaning of the scenes depicted on the tomb of Egyptian King Tutankhamun and his queen Ankhesenamum. She will describe how the scenes relate to ancient Egyptian ideas of divine kingship and the belief that the divine aspect of the male ruler had to undergo constant regeneration through interaction with the queen, who represented the female cosmic principal.

Wednesday, Sept. 30: Reading and Talk by William Heath

“Blacksnake’s Path: A Reading and Talk by William Heath”
7 p.m.; Marx Center

William Heath, Ph.D., is professor emeritus of English at Mount St. Mary’s University and a former Libman Professor of the Humanities at Hood. His poems, stories and essays have appeared in numerous literary magazines and scholarly journals. His novel, “The children Bob Moses Led,” which tells about the civil rights movement in Mississippi, was judged one of the 11 best novels on the African-American experience in 2002. He will read from “Blacksnake’s Path: the True Adventures of William Wells,” which chronicles the life of Wells, who as a 17-year-old was kidnapped from his frontier home by Miami Indians, and his adventures as a soldier, spy, translator, negotiator and government agent.

Monday, Oct. 19: Lecture by Alan Walker

“Chopin: The Poet of the Piano”
7 p.m.; Brodbeck Music Hall

Alan Walker, D.Mus., is professor emeritus of musicology at McMaster University in Ontario and an award-winning author. His three-volume biography of the Hungarian composer, Franz Liszt, received numerous awards for biography and music criticism. His lecture will focus on the life and works of Chopin, illustrated with recordings by renowned Chopin pianists of the past and present.

Monday, Oct. 26: Lecture by Mitchell Merback

"Cascade and Confluence: Transpositions of an Eucharistic Motif at the Host-Miracle Shrines of Late Medieval Germany"
7 p.m.; Campus Commons Room, Whitaker Campus Center

Mitchell Merback, Ph.D., is an associate professor of art history at The Johns Hopkins University. His lecture will center on the topic of his book, “Pilgrimage and Pogrom,” which describes the many ways in which art worked to sustain and inform acts and expressions of anti-Semitism in the period between 1300 and the advent of the Reformation in Germany.

Wednesday, Nov. 4: Lecture by Peter Singer

“The Life You Can Save”
7 p.m.; Hodson Auditorium, Rosenstock Hall

Peter Singer is the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University. Best known for “Animal Liberation,” a work widely credited with starting the animal rights movement, he is also the author or editor of more than 25 books on ethics. Singer’s lecture will offer ethical arguments, provocative thought experiments, illuminating examples and case studies of charitable giving to show that our current response to world poverty is not only insufficient but ethically indefensible.

For more information contact:
Rebecca Prime, Ph.D.
Sophia M. Libman NEH Professor
Hood College
prime@hood.edu