Themes

Unveiling America: Addressing Issues of Contemporary Homelessness

Thursday, February 28, 2019
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

Panelists

Jim Hoefler (moderator), Dickinson College
Christina Kapp, Cumberland County Housing & Redevelopment Authorities (Panelists was unable to present due to unforeseen circumstances)
Beth Kempf, Community CARES
Scott Shewell, Safe Harbour
Tim Whelan, Cumberland County Housing & Redevelopment Authorities

A panel of community leaders will discuss their efforts to find sustainable solutions to homelessness in this region.

This program is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the Churchill Fund; the departments of English; American studies; religion; and sociology; and the health studies program. It was initiated by the Clarke Forum’s student project managers and is part of the Clarke Forum’s Leadership in an Age of Uncertainty Series.

Biographies (provided by the panelists)

Jim Hoefler is professor of political science and coordinator of the policy studies program here at Dickinson where he has been teaching courses on politics and policy making since he joined the faculty in 1989.

Hoefler’s primary area of research is end-of-life care and end-of-life decision making. He has published several books and numerous articles in this area and has served on the UPMC Pinnacle Carlisle’s Biomedical Read more

Sharrell Luckett

Scholar & Performance Artist

Program is part of Love Your Body Week

YoungGiftedandFat: From Liberation to Creation

Tuesday, February 12, 2019
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

YoungGiftedandFat author, Sharrell Luckett, outlines the journey towards self-love through the sharing of narratives that are at once specific and universal. A book sale and signing will follow the lecture.

This program is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the Churchill Fund. This event is also part of the Clarke Forum’s Leadership in an Age of Uncertainty Series.

Love Your Body Week events are co-sponsored by Clarke Forum; Women’s and Gender Resource Center; Office of LGBTQ Services, Student Life and Campus Engagement; Wellness Center; PALS; Psi Chi; Psych Club; Center for Service, Spirituality and Social Justice; Access and Disability Services; Departments of Theatre & Dance; Psychology; and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies; Creative Writing and the Waidner-Spahr Library.

Biography (provided by the speaker)

Sharrell D. Luckett, Ph.D. is director of the Helen Weinberger Center for Drama and Playwriting and assistant professor of drama and performance studies in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Cincinnati. She is also affiliate faculty in the Read more

Barbara Brown Wilson

University of Virginia

Resilience for All: Striving for Equity Through Community-Driven Design

Wednesday, February 6, 2019
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

This talk will focus on the author’s research on community-driven efforts to make change in underserved communities and the lessons these efforts illuminate for resilience theory and practice. A book sale and signing will follow.

This program is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and a Civic Learning and Engagement Initiative Grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and co-sponsored by the Center for Sustainability Education and the departments of art & art history and environmental studies. It is part of the Clarke Forum’s semester theme, Sustainability.

Biography (provided by the speaker)

Barbara Brown Wilson is an assistant professor of urban and environmental planning and the director of inclusion and equity at the University of Virginia School of Architecture. Her research and teaching focus on the history, theory, ethics, and practice of sustainable development, and on the role of urban social movements in the built world. Her work investigates the role of codes (e.g. building, land use, and societal) and coalitions working in the service of more resilient communities. Wilson is particularly interested in the Read more

Nikole Hannah-Jones

Award-winning Investigative Reporter for The New York Times Magazine

Morgan Lecture & KDP Spring Forum & MLK Jr. Symposium

Understanding the Impact of Modern Day Segregation

Award-winning The New York Times Magazine investigative reporter, Nikole Hannah-Jones, will explore the important roles schools play in their communities, how they’re affected by their surrounding neighborhoods, and how seeing race from the lens of education tells a whole new story of inequality in America.

This program is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and the Morgan Lecture Fund and co-sponsored by Dickinson’s Chapter of Kappa Delta Pi, the International Education Honor Society; the Popel Shaw Center for Race & Ethnicity; the Churchill Fund, the Department of English; the Women’s & Gender Resource Center; and the Office of Institutional Effectiveness & Inclusivity.

Biography (provided by the speaker)

Nikole Hannah-Jones covers racial injustice for The New York Times Magazine, and has spent years chronicling the way official policy has created—and maintains—racial segregation in housing and schools. Her deeply personal reports on the black experience in America offer a compelling case for greater equity. She has written extensively on the history of racism, school resegregation, and the disarray of hundreds of desegregation

The Center for Spirituality in Nature

Wesley Lecture

Church of the Wild: A New and Old Way of Experiencing Spirituality

Wednesday, January 30, 2019
Stern Center, Great Room, 7 p.m.

Norcross will share information about her organization’s new Church of the Wild, that gathers people in nature to celebrate the mutual indwelling of the Divine and the earth. She will discuss how the gathering is attracting both regular church-goers as well as those for whom traditional church is not appealing.

This lecture is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and the Center for Service, Spirituality and Social Justice with special thanks to the Baltimore-Washington Conference of the United Methodist Church and co-sponsored by Division of Student Life; the College Farm; the Center for Sustainability Education; the Women’s & Gender Resource Center; and the departments of religion and environmental studies. It is part of the Clarke Forum’s semester theme, Sustainability.

Biography (provided by the speaker)

Founder and executive director Beth Norcross brings her training and experience in both theology and ecology in founding and leading the Center for Spirituality in Nature. An enthusiastic and popular teacher, speaker and preacher, she loves to share her passion and Read more

Macarena Gómez-Barris

Pratt Institute

Extractive Zones + Decolonial Praxis

Monday, January 28, 2019
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

Based on her book, The Extractive Zone, this talk explores the old and new sites of land and water defense, and artistic and activist responses to these issues. Gómez-Barris will discuss work from the Américas to argue for alternative modes of living, being, and doing from within and outside of the extractive zones.

This program is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and a Civic Learning and Engagement Initiative Grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and co-sponsored by the departments of Latin American, Latino & Caribbean studies; Spanish & Portuguese; environmental studies; art & art history; and anthropology & archaeology. It is part of the Clarke Forum’s semester theme, Sustainability.

Biography (provided by the speaker)

Macarena Gómez-Barris is chairperson of the Department of Social Science & Cultural Studies and director of the Global South Center (GSC) at Pratt Institute. She is author of three books including The Extractive Zone: Social Ecologies and Decolonial Perspectives that theorizes social life, art, and decolonial praxis through five extractive scenes of ruinous capitalism upon Indigenous territories (Duke University Press, 2017). Gómez-Barris’s recent book Read more

Feminist Sorority Women: A Place for Intersectionality in Tradition?

Thursday, November 29, 2018
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

Panelists

Donna Bickford (moderator), Dickinson College
Brontè Burleigh-Jones, Dickinson College
Diana Turk, New York University
Deborah Whaley, University of Iowa

Sororities can be both a place for women’s empowerment and a site that produces elitism and constructs stereotypical gender roles. This student-initiated panel of experts will address the history of sororities and the possibilities for activism within them.

This program is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the departments of English, American studies, philosophy, sociology, women’s, gender & sexuality studies, the First Year Seminar Program, the Popel Shaw Center for Race & Ethnicity, Kappa Delta Pi, and the Churchill Fund. This program was initiated by the Clarke Forum’s Student Project Managers and it is also part of the Clarke Forum’s Leadership in an Age of Uncertainty Series.

Biographies (provided by the panelists)

Donna M. Bickford has served as the director of the Women’s and Gender Resource Center at Dickinson since January 2016. She also teaches in women’s, gender and sexuality studies and serves as co-chair of the President’s Commission on Women, Gender and Sexuality. Previously she was the director of the Carolina Read more

Jane Mt. Pleasant

Cornell University

The Paradox of Productivity: Lessons from an Indigenous Agriculture

Wednesday, November 14, 2018
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

Live Stream Link

Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) agricultural systems in the 17th and 18th centuries were three to five times as productive as their European counterparts at the same time. This lecture provides insights into this ‘paradox of productivity.’

This program is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and a Civic Learning and Engagement Initiative Grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and co-sponsored by the Churchill Fund and the departments of anthropology & archaeology, American studies, environmental studies, philosophy, history and the food studies program. It is part of the Clarke Forum’s Leadership in an Age of Uncertainty Series and its semester theme, Indigeneity in the Americas.

Biography (provided by the speaker)

Jane Mt. Pleasant, associate professor in the Horticulture Section of School of Integrative Plant Science at Cornell University, studies indigenous cropping systems and their productivity. Using her expertise in agricultural science, she examines agriculture from a multi-disciplinary perspective that includes history, archeology, paleobotany, and cultural/social anthropology. Although much of her work has focused on Haudenosaunee agriculture in the 16 through 18^th centuries, more recently Read more

Daniel Ziblatt

Harvard University

How Democracies Die

Tuesday, November 13, 2018
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

Is democracy in decline around the world? Is American democracy itself in trouble? Examining the history of democracy in the United States against a global backdrop of how democracies have died throughout history, Ziblatt comes to some surprising conclusions about the sources of vulnerability and strength in American democracy today. After Ziblatt’s presentation, Prof. David O’Connell will offer a brief scholarly counterargument that challenges certain aspects of Ziblatt’s book as they pertain to the American political system. A book sale and signing will follow the program.

This event is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the departments of political science and international studies, and the Churchill Fund. It is part of the Clarke Forum’s Leadership in an Age of Uncertainty Series.

Biography (provided by the speaker)

Daniel Ziblatt is Eaton Professor of the Science of Government at Harvard University and a faculty associate at Harvard’s Minda De Gunzburg Center for European Studies. He researches and teaches in European politics, democratization, and historical political economy.

He is the author of three books, including two recent books, How Democracies Die (2018) (co-authored Read more

Dovie Thomason

Storyteller and Activist

Residency: Monday, October 29 – Friday, November 2, 2017

How the Wild West was Spun

Thursday, November 1, 2018
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

Thomason’s story begins in 1887, eleven years after the battle of the Little Big Horn, when Buffalo Bill Cody brought his premiere of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West to Europe, cementing Cody as one of the most famous people of his day. His show, which he called The Drama of Civilization, attracted millions and affected perceptions of history to the present day.

This residency is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and a Civic Learning and Engagement Initiative Grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and co-sponsored by the Churchill Fund and the departments of English, anthropology & archaeology, sociology, history, American studies, and theatre & dance.

Biography (provided by the speaker)

Dovie Thomason has been a storyteller and lecturer for over thirty years, sharing the importance of Indigenous narratives and arts to give voice to untold stories of Indigenous America. Her ability to craft tales that not only enchant audiences––but also
raise provocative questions about Indigenous realities ––has long made her an inspiriting contributor to schools and organizations across Read more

Eboo Patel

Interfaith Youth Core (IFYC)

Out of Many Faiths: Religious Diversity and the American Promise

Wednesday, October 24, 2018
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

America is the most religiously devout country in the Western world and the most religiously diverse nation on the planet. Will America’s identity as a Judeo-Christian nation shift as citizens of different backgrounds grow in numbers and influence? In what ways will minority religious communities themselves change as they take root in American soil? In addressing these questions, Eboo Patel will explore how America’s promise is the guarantee of equal rights and dignity for all, and how that promise is the foundation of America’s unrivaled strength as a nation. A book sale and signing will follow the program.

This event is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by The Marjorie M. and Irwin Nat Pincus Fund in Honor of their Daughters, The Milton B. Asbell Center for Jewish Life, the Division of Student Life, the Center for Service, Spirituality & Social Justice, the Office of Institutional Effectiveness & Inclusivity, the Departments of Judaic Studies and Religion, the First Year Seminar Program and the Churchill Fund. It is also part of the Clarke Read more

Congress to Campus

Monday, October 15, 2018
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

Panelists

Don Manzullo, (R-IL, 1993-2013) (Replacing Jim Kolbe, R-AZ)
Betsy Markey, (D-CO, 2009-2011)
David O’Connell (moderator), Dickinson College

Live Stream Link

A bipartisan pair of former members of Congress will look back on their own experiences in government and reflect on the challenges currently facing the United States of America. This discussion will be moderated by political scientist David O’Connell.

The event is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the department of political science, the Churchill Fund, and the Office of Institutional Effectiveness & Inclusivity.

Biographies (provided by the panelists)

Don Manzullo recently retired as president & CEO, KEI, Korea Economic Institute of America. During his 20 years of service representing the 16^thDistrict of Illinois, Manzullo was a leading voice in shaping congressional economic and foreign policy towards the Asia Pacific region. He started his career in the House of Representatives in 1993 on the Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and ended his tenure in Congress serving as the Republican leader of this pivotal subcommittee from 2007 until 2013, including chairing the Asia subcommittee Read more

Jacqueline Patterson

NAACP

Environmental Racism in the Age of Climate Change

Wednesday, October 10, 2018
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

Live Stream Link

Environmental racism proliferates throughout the climate change continuum from who is most likely to be exposed to the co-pollutants from facilities that spew the greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change, to who is most likely to be displaced or even killed from climate change induced disasters. The depth of the systemic inequities require a transformative response to ensure that civil, human, and earth rights are upheld. A book sale and signing will follow the program.

The program is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the Popel Shaw Center for Race & Ethnicity, the Churchill Fund, the departments of American studies, sociology, Africana studies, the program in policy studies, the Women’s & Gender Resource Center, the Alliance for Aquatic Resource Monitoring (ALLARM), and the Center for Sustainability Education. This program was initiated by the Clarke Forum’s Student Project Managers and it is also part of the Clarke Forum’s Leadership in an Age of Uncertainty Series.

Biography (provided by the speaker)

Jacqueline Patterson is the director of the NAACP Environmental and Climate Justice Program. Read more

Dan Longboat – Roronhiakewen (He Clears the Sky)

Trent University

Honoring Indigeneity: Indigenous Knowledge(s) and Indigenous Sovereignty

Wednesday, September 12, 2018
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

For millennia Indigenous Nations have cared for and actively engaged with the landscape and through our respective cultures and unique ways of life have worked to create the bio-diverse richness of the Americas. Today, the Americas are confronted by a complexity of issues and problems that Indigenous Knowledge(s) can help to address. But we’ll need to start from the beginning, opening our minds to learning, understanding and honoring the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas.

This program is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the Churchill Fund and the departments of anthropology & archaeology, American studies, psychology, environmental studies, and earth sciences. It is part of the Clarke Forum’s Leadership in an Age of Uncertainty Series and its semester theme, Indigeneity in the Americas.

Biography (provided by the speaker)

Dan Longboat – Roronhiakewen (He Clears the Sky) is a Turtle Clan member of the Mohawk Nation and a citizen of the Rotinonshón:ni (Haudenosaunee – People of the Longhouse), originally from Ohsweken – the Six Nations community on the Grand River. Longboat is an associate professor in the Read more

Reece Jones

University of Hawaii at Manoa

Violent Borders: The State vs. the Right to Move

Monday, April 16, 2018
Stern Center, Great Room, 7 p.m.

Over 40,000 people died trying to cross a border in the past decade around the world. Jones argues these deaths are part of a long history of states using movement restrictions to protect privileges and to contain the poor. A book sale and signing will follow the presentation.

This program is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the Middle East Studies Program, the Departments of Sociology and International Studies and the Security Studies Certificate Program. It is also part of the Clarke Forum’s semester theme, Citizen/Refugee.

Biography (provided by the speaker)

Reece Jones is professor of geography at the University of Hawaii and the author two books: Violent Borders: Refugees and the Right to Move (Verso 2016) and Border Walls: Security and the War on Terror in the United States, India, and Israel (Zed Books 2012), four edited books, and over two dozen journal articles. His work has been published in the Guardian, the New York Times, and dozens of other media outlets around the world. He is currently working Read more

Nicole Guidotti-Hernández

University of Texas at Austin

Latinx: The Future is Now

Thursday, April 12, 2018
Stern Center, Great Room, 7 p.m.

This lecture charts out the histories of how we went from using Mexican American and Puerto Rican to Chicano and Nuyorican and then to the latest iterations, Latina/o and now Latinx. While millennials are leading the charge with the Latinx conversation, Guidotti-Hernández argues their boomer intellectual forerunners are often outright resistant to the use of Latina/o let alone Latinx, indicating the futurist potential and political necessity of the term.

This program is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the Departments of English, American Studies, Latin American, Latino & Caribbean Studies, and the Women’s & Gender Resource Center. It is also part of the Clarke Forum’s semester theme, Citizen/Refugee.

Biography (provided by the speaker)

Nicole Guidotti-Hernández is associate professor of American Studies and Mexican American and Latina/o studies at UT Austin. She is an expert in Borderlands History after 1846, Transnational Feminist Methodologies, Latinx Studies, and Popular Culture and Immigration.

Her book titled Unspeakable Violence: Remapping U.S. and Mexican National Imaginaries, Duke University Press (2011) won the 2011-2012 MLA Prize in Chicana/o and Latina/o Read more

Seeing = Believing?

Tuesday, April 3, 2018
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

Panelists

Eitan Grinspun, Columbia University
Steven Malcic, Dickinson College
Tabitha Peck, Davidson College
Graham Roberts, The New York Times
Gregory Steirer (moderator), Dickinson College

Where is computer-generated imaging and sound technology, including virtual reality, going next? Our panel of experts will discuss new developments in these technologies and what they mean for the politics of media production and consumption.

This program is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the Departments of English; International Business & Management; Philosophy; the Film Studies Program; and the Churchill Fund. This program was initiated by the Clarke Forum’s Student Project Managers and it is also part of the Clarke Forum’s Leadership in an Age of Uncertainty Series.

Biographies (provided by the panelists)

Eitan Grinspun is associate professor of computer science and applied mathematics at Columbia University, and co-director of the Columbia Computer Graphics Group. He was an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow and NSF CAREER Award recipient, NVIDIA Fellow and a Caltech Everhart Distinguished Lecturer. Prior to joining Columbia University, he was a research scientist at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences from 2003-2004, a doctoral Read more

Yoko Tawada

Award-Winning Writer

An Evening with Yoko Tawada

Wednesday, March 28, 2018
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

Known internationally for her novels, poems and essays in German and Japanese, author Yoko Tawada creates worlds in which foreigners, outsiders and animals, always aware of their strangeness, navigate and read their surroundings with wonder and minuteness. Tawada will collaborate with Bettina Brandt (Pennsylvania State University) in a multilingual performance which includes German and Japanese as well as English translations. A book sale and signing will follow the presentation.

This program is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the Departments of German; East Asian Studies; English; the Max Kade Foundation; and the Flaherty Lecture Fund. It is also part of the Clarke Forum’s semester theme, Citizen/Refugee.

Biography (forthcoming)

Yoko Tawada was born in Tokyo in 1960, educated at Waseda University and has lived in Germany since 1982, where she received her Ph.D. in German literature. She received the prestigious Akutagawa Prize for The Bridegroom Was a Dog. She writes in both German and Japanese, and in 1996, she won the Adalbert-von-Chamisso Prize, a German award recognizing foreign writers for their contributions to German culture. She also received Read more

Ajuan Mance

Mills College

The 1001 Black Men Online Sketchbook and the Art of Social Justice

Wednesday, March 7, 2018
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

Mance created 1001 Black Men: An Online Sketchbook as a reaction against the controlling images that have limited and defined media representations of Black men. Mance will use a slideshow of images from her series as the basis of a wide ranging discussion of art, Black maleness and gender performance, and representation.

This program is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the Women’s & Gender Resource Center; the Popel Shaw Center for Race & Ethnicity; and the Departments of Africana Studies; American Studies; English; French; and Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies.

Biography (provided by the speaker)

Ajuan Mance is a professor of English at Mills College in Oakland, California. She holds degrees from Brown University and the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. A lifelong artist, she works in acrylic on paper and canvas, ink on paper and, for the 1001 Black Men project, ink on paper and digital collage. Ajuan has participated in solo and group exhibitions throughout the San Francisco Bay Area as well as at the University of Read more

Margot Canaday

Princeton University

Pink Precariat: LGBT Workers in the Shadow of Civil Rights

Wednesday, February 21, 2018
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

This talk – part of a larger book project that centers the workplace in queer history – offers a preliminary ethnography of LGBTs working in mainstream occupations during the American economy’s “golden age” of the 1950s and 1960s.

This program is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and co-sponsored by the Departments of English; American Studies; and Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies. It also part of the Clarke Forum’s semester theme, Citizen/Refugee.

Biography (provided by the speaker)

Margot Canaday is a legal and political historian who studies gender and sexuality in modern America. She holds a B.A. from the University of Iowa and a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota. Her first book, The Straight State: Sexuality and Citizenship in Twentieth Century America (Princeton, 2009), won the Organization of American Historians’ Ellis Hawley Prize, the American Political Science Association’s Gladys M. Kammerer Award (co-winner), the American Studies Association’s Lora Romero Prize, the American Society for Legal History’s Cromwell Book Prize, the Committee on LGBT History’s John Boswell Prize, the Lambda Literary Award for LGBT Studies, Read more