Spring 2010
Humanities Forum Event Schedule
2/11 4 p.m. Albin O. Kuhn Library Gallery
Valerie K. Orlando (Department of French and Francophone Literatures and Cultures, University of Maryland, College Park)
"Francophone Voices of the 'New' Morocco in Film and Print: (Re) presenting a Society in Transition"
Dr. Orlando will explore through literature, journalism and film the changes that are taking place in Moroccan society under King Mohamed VI. The works she presents bear witness to the transitions from traditionalism to modernity that Moroccans are currently experiencing in areas such as human rights, women’s roles, and sexuality and gender.
Sponsors
Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics and Intercultural Communication (MLLI) with support from the Dresher Center for the Humanities
2/17 4 p.m. Albin O. Kuhn Library Gallery
Daphne Harrison Lecture
Michelle R. Scott (Department of History, UMBC),
"Street Scenes and Blues Lives: Bessie Smith’s Chattanooga”
Dr. Scott will discuss the “behind the music” process in studying the childhood community
and environment of blues legend Bessie Smith. Through photos, music clips, playbills, city directories, and oral histories Scott will flesh out the life of Smith as a street performer and explore recreational spaces as social protest for African Americans in the segregated early
20th century United States.
Sponsors
Dresher Center for the Humanities and Friends of the Library
3/3 4 p.m. Albin O. Kuhn Library 7th floor
Joseph "Skip" Morin (Department of Music, UMBC),
"Missives on Music in the Seventeenth Century: A View of Education and Values"
Music historians generally rely on scores and musical treatises rather than correspondence to trace the history of music. Professor Skip Morin's analysis of the Lettre de Mr Le Gallois à Mademoiselle Regnault de Solier touchant la Musique (Paris: Michallet, 1680) provides both a broad and insightful view of music in Paris during the second half of the seventeenth century and glimpses into the cultural and social values of Parisian culture at the time.
3/24 7 p.m. Albin O. Kuhn Library Gallery
Helene Cooper (New York Times White House correspondent)
Reading and Booksigning: The House at Sugar Beach: In Search of a Lost African Childhood
Journalist Helene Cooper fled her home country of Liberia as a young woman when civil war erupted in 1980. She will both read excerpts from her memoir and discuss the experience of growing up in Liberia. She will also share her insights about the Obama administration from her lens as the New York Times White House correspondent.
Sponsors
Department of English and Dresher Center for the Humanities
4/7 4 p.m. Albin O. Kuhn Library Gallery
Alan Cheuse (Department of English, George Mason University)
Reading and Booksigning: Travels around the Globe and the Mind in A Trance After Breakfast
The “voice of books” on NPR for over two decades, critic and author Alan Cheuse reads from his latest work, a collection of essays that roams New Zealand, tramp around Bali, probe the Mexican border, and return to childhood memories along the Jersey shore. Cheuse will share his reflections on travel, and on his life as a writer, book critic, and teacher.
Sponsors
Department of English with support from the Dresher Center for the Humanities
5/12 4 p.m. Albin O. Kuhn Library 7th Floor
Thomas T. Field (2009-10 Lipitz Fellow and Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics and Intercultural Communication, UMBC)
“If That Language May Be Dying, Why Are You Studying It?”
Current interest in endangered languages provides an opportunity to reflect on the ways in which linguistics tackles the study of language. These are more varied than outsiders tend to assume and leave linguists uncertain about how they fit into C.P. Snow’s “two cultures” schema of science and the humanities. Professor Field will provide examples from his work on the development and current status of Gascon.
Sponsors
College of Arts Humanities and Social Sciences with support from the Dresher Center for the Humanities