Past Programs

Erika Doss

University of Notre Dame

Memorial Mania: Issues of Commemoration and Affect in Contemporary America

Thursday, March 20, 2008
7:00 p.m. – Stern Center, Great Room

Concentrating especially on recent 9/11 memorials, war memorials, and on issues such as fear, terror, security, and tribute. This program considers how “memorial mania” has altered the style and substance of America’s contemporary public sphere and assumptions of national identity.

Issue in Context
Since the Revolutionary War, the building of American nationhood has involved the design and presentation of war memorials. The memorials that have been built to commemorate the sacrifices of soldiers from the Civil War to the Vietnam War have taken on new cultural orientations and styles. In the wake of 9/11, there has been great passion for memorial design, and heated disagreements about how to best honor those lost in the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Arguments about how to make use of the land that once held the great monuments of New York’s financial district represent a new generation of memorial mania. Professor Doss will address the influences of historical perspectives on the planning, organizing, and constructing of memorials. She will also discuss how fear, terror, security, and the explosion of Read more

Robert Cook-Deegan, M.D.

Duke University

Genomics and Intellectual Property: Life in the Information Jungle

Tuesday, March 18, 2008
7:00 p.m. – Stern Center, Great Room

Controversies about gene patents and methods in genomics have led U.S. and international organizations to produce guidance about patenting and licensing genomic inventions. However, case studies show that patents are neither necessary nor sufficient for “some” kinds of genomic invention. The rich stories of genomic invention do not yield precise guides about optimal incentives for invention or to ensure broad and fair access to resulting goods and services.
The Clarke Forum Student Board generated this program.

Issue in Context
Since the discovery of the structure of DNA in 1953 by James Watson and Francis Crick, scientists have been experimenting with and modifying genes. As useful genes and gene fragments have developed, a market for these genes has emerged. Companies have invested and funded research to create desirable and useful genes. In order to protect their research investments, businesses have been granted patents for the genes they help create. Controversy regarding this practice of patenting living organisms emerged in 1980 with the Supreme Court Case of Diamond v. Chakrabarty. This case involved a scientist who sought to patent his Read more

Drinking Age Debate

Legal Age 21 after 23 Years: Has it Worked? Is it Working?

Thursday, March 6, 2008
7:00 p.m. – Holland Union Building, Social Hall

John McCardell, Founder and Director, Choose Responsibility
Chuck Hurley ’67, Chief Executive Officer, Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD)
Douglas Edlin, professor of political science, moderator

Link to NBC Nightly News Coverage of this program
Results from ballots passed out at the Drinking Age Debate Program:
57 People Voted for Lowering the Drinking Age to 18
28 People Voted for Keeping the Drinking Age at 21
(140 audience members – 85 ballots received)

The National Minimum Legal Drinking Age Act (NMLDA)has now been on the books for almost 24 years. During that time, we have had the opportunity to observe, measure, and experience its effects. Like most laws, the NMLDA has intended and unintended consequences. The purpose of this program is to explore those consequences in as serious, informed, dispassionate, and comprehensive a way possible, and to consider whether any change in the law, or any reorientation of public policy is warranted. This debate involves statistics, probabilities, charts, formulae, and tables. It also involves human lives. Every life lost to alcohol, in whatever setting, is lamentable, tragic. Read more

Stephen Adler

Editor-in-Chief, BusinessWeek Magazine

Rush Award Lecture
The Future of Media

Thursday, February 28, 2008
7:00 p.m. – Stern Center, Great Room

This program will focus on how technology, law, and new consumer habits are changing the way we learn about the world, and what these changes will do to the way we live, work, and choose our leaders.

Issue in Context
Today, much of how we communicate is digitized. E-mail allows people who are often many miles apart to exchange news instantly. Instant messaging and video conferencing allows people to talk in real-time through their internet connection. Until very recently, the best mode of world-wide communication in real-time was a telephone call that was very expensive; but as the costs have dropped drastically over the past two decades, it is not unusual for elementary school children to have personal cell phones so that their parents can contact them directly any time. Before the telephone, a common method of contact was handwritten correspondence through what we now refer to as “snail mail.”
With electronic media available to increasing numbers of citizens around the world, how do people receive breaking news and crucial information? Important television news reports are broadcast live across Read more

Microfinance and Social Entrepreneurship

Thursday, February 21 – 7:00 p.m.
Stern Center, Great Room

Hans Dellien, Women’s World Banking
Camilla Nestor, The Grameen Foundation
Benjamin Powell, Agora Partnerships
Craig Weeks ’77, J. P. Morgan Chase (moderator)

Microfinance, the provision of small-scale loans to enterprising individuals in developing countries came into being in the latter half of the 1900s. Two organizations currently involved in channeling those types of financial resources are the Grameen Foundation and Women’s World Banking. Social entrepreneurship, represented by Agora Partnerships, developed somewhat later. Over the past two decades, the revolution in information technology and competition in the “development space” have led to much change in both microfinance and social entrepreneurship.

Careers in Microfinance and Social Entrepreneurship
HUB, Social Hall West – 3:30 p.m. – 4:45 p.m.
Students are encouraged to attend. To register, visit www.dickinsonconnect.com.

Issue in Context
Microfinance consists of extending financial services to individuals, usually women, to establish or expand a small, self-sustaining business. One of the components of microfinance is microcredit – the extension of small loans to individuals who are too poor to qualify for traditional bank loans. Microfinance institutions often offer business advice and counseling, and facilitate peer support between clients Read more

Transnational Gender and Sexuality Symposium

Thursday, February 14, 2008
Various Times
Stern Center, Great Room

This one-day symposium offers perspectives from three scholars critically exploring sexuality and gender identities in relation to shifting cultural and national boundaries.

10:30 a.m. – Denise Brennan, Georgetown University
Love Work and Sex Work in the Dominican Republic
Suggested Readings:
1. Nicole Constable’s book: Romance on A Global Stage
2. Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Hochschild’s edited volume: Global Woman: Nannies, Maids and Sex Workers in the New Economy
3. Carla Freeman’s book: High Tech and High Heels in the Global Economy
4. Faye Ginsburg and Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing’s edited volume: Uncertain Terms: Negotiating Gender in American Culture
5. What’s Love Got to Do with It? Transnational Desires and Sex, by Denise Brennan
1:00 p.m. – France Winddance Twine, University of California, Santa Barbara

Written on the Body: Hair and Heritage in Black Europe

2:30 p.m. – Karen Kelsky, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

The Personal is Personal: Predicaments of the Lesbian Feminist Subject in Japan.

4:30 p.m. – Panel Discussion

The panel will explore such questions as: How does transnationalism affect cultural reproduction in intimate areas, such as family relations (husband-wife, parent-child), inter-generational ethnic relations, and the sphere defined as

Cindi Katz

City University of New York, Graduate Center

Writing on the Wall: From Disaster to Doing Something

Thursday, February 7, 2008
7:00 p.m. – Holland Union Building, Social Hall

Hurricane Katrina scoured the political economic landscape of New Orleans revealing the toll of decades of disinvestment in and ‘hostile privatism’ toward social reproduction in a city riddled with corrosive inequalities around class, race, and gender. Business and government have failed to address the social and economic needs of poor and working people in New Orleans in the wake of Katrina. The toll can be seen in the unevenness of neighborhood and infrastructural recovery, the difficulty of establishing a stable workforce of residents, and the deepening of ongoing neoliberal tendencies toward privatization in education, healthcare, and housing. Focusing on these issues, we will look at the sorts of activism these failures have spurred. The discussion will center on community based political groups working to redress this situation in New Orleans, but will also connect their work to groups working elsewhere to draw out a ‘countertopography’ of activisms that interrogate the underlying politics and policies–explicit and implicit–that have undermind the social wage and produced this situation not just in New Orleans but all Read more

Daniel Desmond

Deputy Secretary of the Office of Energy and Technology Deployment, Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection

Focus the Nation: Global Warming Solutions

Thursday, January 31, 2008
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium – 7:00 p.m.

Keynote Speaker for “Focus the Nation”
Co-sponsored by Environmental Studies Department and Dickinson SAVES

Visit this link for more information on Dickinson’s Focus the Nation programs.

Issue in Context
Global warming is a phenomenon believed to occur as a result of the build-up of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. Over the past 200 years, the burning of fossil fuels such as coal and oil has caused the concentrations of heat-trapping “greenhouse gases” to increase significantly in our atmosphere. These gases prevent heat from dissipating, somewhat like the glass panels of a greenhouse.
Greenhouse gases are necessary to life as we know it, because they keep the planet’s surface warm. But, as the concentrations of these gases continue to increase in the atmosphere, the Earth’s temperature is climbing above previously recorded levels. According to NASA data, the Earth’s average surface temperature has increased by about 1.2 to 1.4°F in the last 100 years. Eleven of the last twelve years rank among the warmest years recorded since 1850, with Read more

Rory Kennedy

Pandemic: Facing AIDS

Monday, December 3, 2007
7:00 p.m. – Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium
The scope of the global AIDS epidemic is staggering. Over the last 20 years, the disease has killed nearly 22 million people. Behind these statistics are the stories of millions of people, each of whom must face the challenge of AIDS in their own way. Rory Kennedy followed the lives of five people living with AIDS in different parts of the world–India, Russian, Thailand, Uganda and Brazil. Their experiences put faces behind the numbers, and connect audiences with the heartache and triumph of living under the extreme conditions that AIDS involves.
Co-sponsored by the Intrafraternity Council, Panhellenic, Student Activities, Dean of Students, Student Senate, The Zatae Longsdorff Women’s Center, Community Studies, Sociology, Institutional and Diversity Initiatives and Learning Communities Program, Health and Wellness Committee and MOB.

Issue in Context
AIDS is one of the most destructive epidemics in history. UNAIDS, the Joint United Nations Program for AIDS, estimates that there are currently 33.2 million people worldwide living with HIV. This figure has greatly increased over the past two years. The most striking increases have occurred in East Asia, Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Sub-Saharan Africa, accounting Read more

Guerrilla Girls

Monkey Business

Performance
Thursday, November 29, 2007
7:00 p.m. – The Depot
The Guerrilla Girls are feminist masked avengers in the tradition of anonymous do-gooders, like Wonder Woman and Batman. They use facts, humor and outrageous visuals to expose sexism, racism and corruption in politics, art, film and pop culture. Co-sponsored by Women’s Studies and The Zatae Longsdorff Women’s Center.

Issue in Context
Sexism and racism are pervasive throughout the world of art and popular culture. Women artists and artists of color are greatly under-represented in art museums. In the National Gallery of Art, 98% of the artists displayed are male and 99.9% are white. Galleries and art collectors generally buy art from white men and when they do buy art from women or artists of color, it often ends up hidden in the gallery’s storage facility.
Women and people of color are also under-acknowledged and under-appreciated in the film industry. A female director has never won an Oscar and only three have ever been nominated. In all of the Oscars for acting, only 3% have gone to people of color.
The film and music industries continue to portray women as sexual objects or in a stereotypical fashion without depth Read more

Karin Morin

Associate Professor, social/gender geography, Bucknell University.

Women, Religion and Space: Making the Connections

Thursday, November 15, 2007
4:30 p.m. – Stern Center, Great Room

In this talk, Karen Morin ‘triangulates’ among the scholarly domains of geography, women’s studies, and religious studies, suggesting ways to draw out the geographical implications of the study of women and religion. The talk highlights the ways that religions regulate women spatially, and how religious women negotiate and define spaces and their sense of themselves in them. Co-sponsored by the anthropology and religion departments.

Issue in Context
In the 17th century, Medieval Roman Catholic nuns benefited from the mobility of being allowed to work outside of their convents and within their communities, and of participating in missionary activities. However, in 1662, laws were passed in accordance with the Counter-Reformation that restricted the nun’s movement and often imprisoned them to their cloisters. The construction of gates and high walls around convents, the grills used to separate the nuns from the laypeople, and the use of the turntable to receive goods were just some of the limitations imposed on their lives. Nuns no longer had the right to play an active part in the church or in the Read more

Lisa Sherman ’79

Metzger-Conway Fellow, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Logo TV.
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
7:00 p.m. – Stern Center, Great Room

Changing Hearts and Minds: Media as a Bridge Builder for LGBT America

For the past several decades, the media has been an important and powerful tool for humanizing LGBT Americans, gradually replacing stereotypes and caricatures with authentic portrayals and depictions of LGBT people characters. In the past several years, media specifically for the LGBT audience has come to the forefront, notably with the launch of Logo, the new 24/7 ad-supported television and broadband channel from MTV networks. Lisa Sherman will discuss gays and lesbians in the media as well as the context for Logo’s place in the media landscape and how it is helping to advance a sense of an electronic community for many LGBT Americans. Co-sponsored by the psychology department.

Issue in Context

Gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people are frequently excluded and misrepresented. Gay men are often represented as overly ‘feminine,’ while lesbian women are depicted as ‘masculine.’ LGBTs are also classified as excessively sexual, and it is assumed that they will make advances towards all members of the sex to which they are attracted. Such Read more

Sara Lennox

Director of the Social Thought and Political Economy Program and professor of German Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Reading Transnationally: The German Democratic Republic and Black Writers

Thursday, October 25, 2007
7:00 p.m. – Stern Center, Great Room

Keynote speaker for the conference of the same name. Many of the African-American authors GDR publishers prmoted after the war were deeply influenced by Soviet models of proletarian internationalism, national self-determination, and masculine subjecthood. GDR scholars could thus appropriate such Black writers texts to provide confirmation of official GDR notions about race-blind class solidarity, general-neutral revolutionary subjectivity, the GDR’s positioning of itself on the right side of history, and the role that particular kinds of literary production could play in moving history forward. Only a reading attentive to transnational influences acting upon the GDR and Black writers in their Cold War contexts can fully account for why and how East Germans were encouraged to read African-American literature. Co-sponsored by Music and German Departments.

Issue in Context
Beginning in the 1920’s, a number of African-American artists and intellectuals openly expressed their adherence to socialism as a way to gain rights for Black people under the political unity of American working classes. Read more

Yolanda Lopez, political artist

The Virgin of Guadalupe on the Road to Aztlan

Wednesday, October 17, 2007
7:00 p.m. – Stern Center, Great Room

Artist-provocateur and activist, Yolanda Lopez, will discuss the trajectory of her work, including her famous “virgin of guadalupe” paintings, in the context of her experiences with the Chicano civil rights movement, feminism, and contemporary immigration debates. Co-sponsored by Latin American Studies, American Studies and sociology Department.

Issue in Context
The Virgin of Guadalupe is one of the most revered Roman Catholic symbols in Mexico. She is believed to be an apparition of the Virgin Mary. From the time of the Mexican War of Independence, the Virgin of Guadalupe has been assumed as an icon of Mexican culture. Each year on December 12, millions of Mexicans and Mexican Americans celebrate The Queen of Mexico with dancing, songs, fireworks, and prayers.

According to the United States Census Bureau, in 2000 there were more than 20 million Mexican Americans living in the United States. Although they represent a large portion of the U.S. population, Chicanos, or Mexican-Americans, still often find themselves marginalized and discriminated against in mainstream society. The Chicano movement addresses negative representations of Mexican-Americans. Activists in the Chicano movement have worked Read more

Julie Nemecek and Bear Bergman

Gender and the Search for Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness

Thursday, October 11, 2007

Part I – Common Hour
“Transgender Issues” – Facilitator, Prof. Christine Talbot
12:00 p.m. – Weiss Center, Rubendall Recital Hall

Part II – “Gender and the Search for Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness”
7:00 p.m. – Stern Center, Great Room

Julie Nemecek, consultant, former associate professor and minister and S. Bear Bergman, writer, activist, performer, will use their own compelling stories and current research to discuss the barriers gender causes for the realization of the “unalienable rights” enumerated in our country’s Declaration of Independence. They will also identify key tools and actions needed to overcome those barriers. The Clarke Forum Student Board has created this program. Co-sponsored by the Office of the Dean of Students.

Issue in Context
In an article published in the September issue of the Human Relations journal, professors Stephen Linstead and Alison Pullen define “transgender” as a gender identity that goes beyond the normative binary system of male and female social representation. By this definition, transgender does not refer to sexual orientation and transgendered people may identify as heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, or asexual. The American Psychological Association specifies Read more

Dana Priest

Author and National Security Correspondent with The Washington Post

The Media as Junkyard Dog: One Journalist’s Journey From Secret CIA Prisons to the Walter Reed Scandal

Wednesday, October 10, 2007
4:30 p.m. – Stern Center, Great Room
Dana Priest, Pulitzer Prize winner, and the reporter who “broke the story” on Walter Reed Hospital. What is the role of the mainstream media during a time of war and growing government secrecy? Priest takes us through the obstacle course, with all its trapped doors and moral dilemmas she encounters everyday in reporting during a time of great national angst and fear of terrorism. Co-sponsored by the United States Army War College and the philosophy department.

Issue in Context
While the “War on Terror” and the debate about its constitutionality continues, concerns about the system of American democracy and its morality are at the center of our national life.
As the link between the government and the American public, the media are responsible for informing American citizens about Federal policies and practices, and the government’s actions and inactions. But what happens if the government withholds such information from the media? Does the Bush administration have the right to operate in secrecy? The treatment Read more

Carmencita "Chie" Abad

No More Suffering From Sweat

Tuesday, October 9, 2007
7:00 p.m. – Stern Center, Great Room
Chie will discuss the horrible working conditions she endured in the U.S. territory of Saipan while making clothing for the Gap. In her struggle to unionize workers, she was forced to leave the island and is now working to educate Americans about inhumane factory conditions worldwide. Co-sponsored by campus academic life (first year seminars/learning communities) and the sociology department.

Issue in Context
Where did you buy the clothes you are wearing today? It is possible your clothes were made in a garment factory by underpaid women and children working in deplorable conditions. In many garment and clothing factories around the world, workers spend prolonged periods of time in dangerous settings, pressured to meet production quotas. Corporations use these “sweatshops” in their production process in order to capitalize on cheap labor costs, boost production, and pursue increased profits at the expense of the human rights and dignity of the human beings who sweat to assemble products for mass consumption.

While some limited progress has been made in establishing regulations and worker rights in some factories, a large percentage remain outside the sphere of global attention. Read more

Sister Helen Prejean

Dead Man Walking: The Journey Continues

Thursday, October 4, 2007
7:00 p.m. – Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium
Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking and Death of Innocents: Wrongful Executions. Sister Helen is a Southern storyteller who brings you on a journey and shares her experiences involved with her death penalty ministry while working with the poor. She is the author of Dead Man Walking and Death of Innocents: Wrongful Executions. Book signing to follow. Co-sponsored by The Legislative Initiative Against the Death Penalty, Unitarian Universalists of the Cumberland Valley, community service and religious life, and the religion, philosophy, and English departments.

Join us for a student-led discussion “Continuing the Conversation” to be held on Friday, October 5, 12:30 p.m. at The Clarke Forum. Bring a bag lunch.

Issue in Context
Since 1976, there have been 1,095 executions in the United States. The death penalty has been used as a form of punishment in America since the founding of the colonies as Europeans brought the practice with them to the New World. The methods of execution have evolved over the years from hanging, to the firing squad, the electric chair in 1890, the gas chamber in 1924, and Read more

Vinton Cerf

Priestley Award

Tuesday, September 25, 2007
7:00 p.m. – Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium

Social, Technical and Economic Consequences of the Internet Evolution

Vinton Cerf, one of the founding fathers of the internet, will discuss new internet products and services that may be appearing over the next decade. He will also explore the business consequences of dramatic changes in the economics of computing, networking and international demographics. Dr. Cerf will receive the Priestley award for his key technical and managerial role in the creation of the Internet, in particular, for leading the development of the TCP/IP protocols. Co-sponsored by the mathematics and computer science department.

Issue in Context
It is difficult to identify anything that has changed our lives to the extent that the Internet has. While the 19th century industrial revolution led to manufacturing prowess, expanding GDP and an increase in per capita purchasing power, the technological revolution which so much of Dr.Cerf’s work represents has captured the essence of human evolution and has taken us places previously incomprehensible. Who would have imagined that we could one day monitor the progress of our washer/dryer from our office desk? Who would have imagined that we could one day browse BBC online Read more

Judge Marjorie O. Rendell

United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, 43rd First Lady of Pennsylvania

The Constitution Day Address: The Constitution and Civic Responsibility

Monday, September 24, 2007
7:00 p.m. – Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium
As a federal judge, First Lady and citizen, The Honorable Marjorie O. Rendell is passionate about civic learning. She has said, “We are the newest guardians of our democracy. It is important that we rededicate ourselves to the creation of those “voices of the people” proficient in understanding and willing to sacrifice for the rights and responsibilities embodied in our Constitution. We have a duty as “living” citizens to educate our youngest so that they not only know the words, “we the people…,” but fully embrace their meaning.” Co-sponsored by the department of political science.

Issue in Context
On September 17, 1787, thirty-nine men signed the U.S. Constitution, giving the people sovereignty under the American government. As the oldest written national constitution in use, the United States Constitution stands as a model of statesmanship and cooperation. September 17, 2007 marked the 220th anniversary of the signing of the Constitution; this date serves as a reminder of the Founding Father’s legacy and American citizen’s responsibility to uphold Read more