UNE Center for Global Humanities Seminar Series kicks off 4th year in Portland Sept. 24th with live broadcasts at Bangor and Houlton libraries
UNE's Center for Global Humanities has announced speakers for the 2012-2013 year, its fourth year of programming.
The Center is a public forum designed to introduce students and members of the public to the exploration of the great issues facing humanity today in partnership with the Maine Humanities Council, and also through an agreement with Euro-Arab Foundation Institute.
Anouar Majid, director of the Center, says: "UNE's Center for Global Humanities has filled a much needed gap in the cultural life of the greater Portland area as well as the whole state of Maine. We offer our programming free to folks wherever they may be. The issues we highlight are of crucial importance to the health of our planet - that's why our videos are watched nationally and globally. I invite all to be part of this unique experience."
Events are held on UNE's Portland Campus, and many are also broadcast live at the Bangor Public Library and the Cary Library in Houlton. For more information, visit the Center for Global Humanities website.
The first of this year's lecture series begins at 6 p.m. on Monday, September 24, 2012 when the Center hosts Michael F. Bérubé who will discuss, "Bioethics: Too Important to be Left to Bioethicists." The event will be held on UNE's Portland Campus in the WCHP Lecture Hall in Parker Pavillion. A reception will be held at 5 p.m. prior to the lecture in the UNE Art Gallery.
Bérubé will discuss his book, Life As We Know It: A Father, A Family, and an Exceptional Child. He is president of the Modern Language Association, and the Paterno Family Professor in Literature and Director of the Institute for the Arts and Humanities, Pennsylvania State University.
Drawing on his work in disability studies and his experience as a father of a child with Down syndrome, Bérubé will argue that an understanding of disability and human variation is critical not only for the humanities, but also for the life sciences and "applied" fields such as bioethics.
Taking on the work of philosophers such as Michael Sandel, Julian Glover, Eva Kittay, Martha Nussbaum, Jeff McMahan, and Peter Singer, he will show that intellectual disability should be of crucial importance to intellectuals - and that our major intellectual traditions have largely failed to meet that challenge.
Other lectures planned for the upcoming year, planned for 6 p.m. at UNE’s Portland Campus:
October 15, 2012: Michael T. Klare, will discuss his book, The Race for What's Left: The Global Scramble for the World's Last Resources. He is the Five College (Amherst, Hampshire, Mount Holyoke, and Smith Colleges and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst) professor of peace and world security studies, and director of the Five College Program in Peace and World Security Studies.
October 29, 2012: Ann Kibbie is an assistant professor of English at Bowdoin College. Her lecture will focus on the medical and cultural history of transfusion before the 20th Century, from the ill-fated experiments of the late 17th Century to the re-introduction of the practice in 19th Century England.
November 26, 2012: David Carey, Jr. will discuss his book, Engendering Mayan History: Mayan Women as Agents and Conduits of the Past, 1875-1970. He is a professor of History and Women and Gender Studies at the University of Southern Maine.
December 10, 2012: Liam Riordan is the author of, Many Identities, One Nation: The Revolution and its Legacy in the Mid-Atlantic. He is a professor in the Department of History at the University of Maine at Orono.
January 28, 2013: James Webb, Jr. is the author of Humanity's Burden: A Global History of Malaria. He is a pioneer in the field of historical epidemiology, and professor and director of African Studies at Colby College.
February 25, 2013: Joanna Moncrieff is the author of The Myth of the Chemical Cure: A Critique of Psychiatric Drug Treatment. She is the senior lecturer at University College London and a consultant psychiatrist.
March 25, 2013: Carl J. Richard will discuss his book, Greeks and Romans Bearing Gifts: How the Ancients Inspired Founding Fathers. He is professor of history at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.
April 29, 2013: Jonathan Israel on the Enlightenment. He was appointed professor of modern European history in the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton in January 2001.