HUMANITIES FORUM LECTURE SERIES FALL 2009
Featuring: A Series of Five Lectures and Panels Commemorating the 50th Anniversary of
C.P. Snow’s “Two Cultures” Lecture
Sponsored by UMBC’s Dresher Center for the Humanities, the Human Context of Science and Technology Program
and the Social Sciences Forum
Fifty years ago, on May 7, 1959, the scientist-novelist C.P. Snow (1905-1972) delivered his famous Rede Lecture at Cambridge University. Published as The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution Snow identified a deep and dangerous divide between the sciences and the humanities. As a research chemist and physicist who became deeply involved in the mobilization of scientific personnel first during the Second World War and then throughout the 1950s Cold War, C.P. Snow could speak with some authority about science and its applications. As a novelist with more than a dozen titles and the author of numerous essays and reviews, Snow was equally at home in the humanities. This series of lectures is intended to stimulate further discussion about the relationships between the sciences and the humanities.
9/30/09 4 p.m. AOK Library 7th Floor
C.P. Snow's “The Two Cultures”: A Fifty Year Perspective
G. Rickey Welch, Professor & Joseph N. Tatarewicz, Associate Professor and Director, Human Context of Science & Technology Program, UMBC
In 1959 the scientist-novelist C.P. Snow (1905-1972) delivered his famous Rede Lecture at Cambridge, published as The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution. His identification of a deep and dangerous divide between the sciences and the humanities has persisted, evoked more recently in the "culture wars" and "science wars." UMBC Professors Welch and Tatarewicz look at Snow, his historical context, and his enduring influence.
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10/5/09 4 p.m. AOK Library Gallery
Politics, Expertise and the Two Cultures
Harry Collins, Distinguished Research Professor, Centre for the Study of Knowledge, Expertise and Science, School of Social Sciences, Cardiff, UK
Science has been described, like war, as a continuation of politics by other means. Even if science may not always compel by the force of theory or experiment, it still remains a compelling choice. Collins argues we need an `elective modernism' that resurrects the two cultures in a positive way.
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10/28/09 4 p.m. AOK Library Gallery
Snow, Two Cultures and the Science Wars
Steve Fuller, Professor of Sociology, University of Warwick, UK
The contest for authority to speak about science and technology, called “the science wars,” has often been framed in terms of C.P. Snow’s earlier analysis. Fuller argues that few recent commentators are familiar with the historical trajectory that transports us from those concerns to the present ones. He will focus on the curious alignments that have transpired over the course of the Science Wars.
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11/2/09 4 p.m. AOK Library 7th Floor
Global Climate Change: Science, Polity, and Authority
Naomi Oreskes, Provost, Sixth College, University of California, San Diego
C.P. Snow worried that science and technology could not cross the divide of the humanities to render their true value. The new Sixth College, under the leadership of Provost Oreskes, “draws its creative inspiration from the interdisciplinary examination of culture, art and technology." She will report on her new research on the interwoven science, technology, and policy elements of global climate change.
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11/9/09 4 p.m. AOK Library 7th Floor
The Two Cultures Today: An Interdisciplinary Panel Discussion on the Connections between the Sciences and the Humanities
Susan Dwyer, Department of Philosophy, University of Maryland, College Park
Christoph Irmscher, Department of English, Indiana University
Manil Suri, Department of Mathematics, UMBC
Tim Topoleski, Department of Mechanical Engineering, UMBC
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UMBC Departmental lectures that are part of the Fall 2009 Humanities Forum
10/14/09 4 p.m. AOK Library Gallery
Webb Lecture and the Phi Beta Kappa Lecture
Lincoln and Darwin
Sandra Herbert, Professor Emerita, Department of History, UMBC
Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin were each born on February 12, 1809. The enormity of their importance in their respective areas of interest – politics for Lincoln, science for Darwin - became apparent when each man was about fifty years old. They never met. Yet Lincoln was aware of and sympathetic to evolutionary views, and Darwin was keenly supportive of abolition. This lecture will consider their lives and accomplishments in juxtaposition.
Sponsored by the UMBC’s Department of History, Phi Beta Kappa Chapter and the Dresher Center for the Humanities.
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10/21/09 4 p.m. AOK Library Gallery
Ancient Studies Week Lecture
Heroes: Mortals and Myths in Ancient Greece
Jenifer Neils
Ruth Coulter Heede Professor of Art History & Classics, Case Western Reserve University
Sponsored by UMBC’s Department of Ancient Studies, the Department of Visual Arts, and the Office of Summer, Winter and Special Programs with support from the Dresher Center for the Humanities.
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11/10/09 7:00 p.m. University Center Ballroom
Bookreading and Booksigning: Three Cups of Tea
David Relin, Best-selling Author, Journalist and Editor
Prize-winning journalist and editor David Oliver Relin profiled Greg Mortenson for over two years to write Three Cups of Tea, the book selected for the 2009-2010 UMBC New Student Book Discussion. David Relin will discuss the book’s remarkable story of a man who to this day continues to dedicate himself to educating children in some of the poorest communities in Afghanistan and Pakistan. For over two decades David Relin has reported on social issues and their effects on children.
Sponsored by UMBC’s Dresher Center for the Humanities, Honors College, Office of Undergraduate Education, Office of Student Affairs and the Shriver Center.
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11/11/09 7:00 p.m. University Center Ballroom
The 31st Annual W.E.B. DuBois Annual Lecture
Immigration and African Diaspora Women
Nkiru Nzegwu, Chair of the Department of Africana Studies and Professor of Philosophy, Interpretation and Culture, Binghamton University, New York Professor
Nzegwu is an artist and the author of close to a dozen scholarly books, edited books and exhibition catalogues on topics ranging from Gender and African Art History, African Diasporan Art, Feminist Concepts in African Philosophy and Culture, and Issues of African Identity. She is also the founder of Africaresource. com, a content-based educational website and the managing editor of five academic, peer-reviewed online journals devoted to aspects of the study of global Africa.
Sponsored by UMBC’s Department of Africana Studies and the Dresher Center for the Humanities.