NOTE: McCosh 10 Cosponsored by the Spencer Trask Lectures Series and the Program of Belknap Visitors in the Humanities The Thinking Eye Edward Tufte, data theorist and pioneer in the field of data visualization, will discuss seeing, reasoning, and producing in high science and high art. His latest project “The Thinking Eye” examines “forever knowledge” and helping people “see
Dava Sobel and Diane Ackerman: A ConversationApril 27, 2012 (NOTE: 7:00 p.m.)Cosponsored by the Spencer Trask Lecture Fund and Princeton University Diane Ackerman was conferring with Carl Sagan, creating poems about the planets for her doctoral dissertation at Cornell when she met Dava Sobel, then science writer in the University’s news bureau. Since befriending one another in the 1970s they have
Stand Up: My Rise and Collapse (NOTE: Free ticket required. See below.)December 8, 2011 in McCosh Hall 50 (Simulcast in McCosh 10)Spencer Trask Lecture Update 12/01/11: There are NO more tickets available. There will be a wait line before the event for any unclaimed seats. There WILL be simulcast in McCosh 10 (no ticket necessary).
Picturing Robert: Remembering a friendship and artistic relationship with Robert MapplethorpeDecember 7, 2010. Spencer Trask Lecture Patti Smith is a singer, songwriter, poet, and visual artist. Her memoir, Just Kids (Ecco, Harper Collins 2010) about her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe, just won the 2010 National Book Award for nonfiction. Smith will read excerpts from the book and her poems and perform some of the music
SIGNALS GraphicChipDesignKiddNovember 30, 2010. Spencer Trask Lecture Citing examples from his near quarter-century’s worth of work, Chip Kidd explains the way graphic design works, how our brains process it, what it means if it succeeds or fails, and why we should care. Chip Kidd is an award-winning art director and graphic designer. Currently he is associate art director at Knopf, an
The AshtrayNovember 15, 2010. Spencer Trask LectureErrol Morris is a director and filmmaker. His film “The Fog of War” about Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara won the 2003 Academy Award for best documentary feature. Other films have won the Edgar from the Mystery Writers of America, the Golden Horse (Taiwan International Film Festival), the Grand Jury Prize (Sundance Film
The Writer as Two Selves: Reflections on the Private Act of Writing and the Public Act of CitizenshipOctober 20, 2010. Spencer Trask Lecture Born in Nigeria, novelist Chimamanda Adichie is the author of Purple Hibiscus (2003),which was nominated for a Booker Prize, andHalf of a Yellow Sun (2006), which won the 2007 Orange Prize for Fiction and revolves around the Biafran war of
This Filthy WorldMarch 25, 2010. Cosponsored by the Lewis Center for the Arts/Performance Central and the Spencer Trask Lecture Fund. In this part-lecture, part-vaudeville performance, Waters speaks candidly and irreverently about the formative influences on his career, Hollywood, the art world, social taboos, and modern culture in general. Born in Baltimore, Waters began his career making low-budget underground films. His
The Man Who Loved ChinaFebruary 11, 2010. Spencer Trask Lecture (NOTE: 8 p.m. in McCosh Hall 10) Seldom can it be said that any one person ever managed to change the outside world’s perception of an entire nation, an entire people. But, beginning in 1954, Joseph Needham (1900–1995), a Cambridge biochemist, a figure dauntingly eccentric and brilliantly polymathic in equal measure, did
A Reading from Marias’s Works Followed by a Conversation with Professors Angel G. Loureiro and Michael Wood December 1, 2009. Cosponsored by the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and the Spencer Trask Fund. (NOTE: McCormick 101 at 4:30 p.m.)