A talk about the unusual and unlikely forces that act on writers, including the speaker, and turn them to their vocation. Richard Ford, author of the recently published The Lay of the Land, won the Pulitzer Prize for Literature and the Penn/Faulkner Award in 1996 for Independence Day. A native of Mississippi, he graduated from Michigan State University and received an
Pasquale Scaturro’s talk precedes the opening of “To the Mountains of the Moon: Mapping African Exploration, 1541-1880″ a map exhibition of the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections in Firestone Library, to which all are welcome. Pasquale Scaturro, geophysicist, adventurer, and expedition leader is one of the most successful and accomplished mountain and river expedition leaders in the world
The visual culture of ancient Greece has left a record rich with information on the active role of women in the organization and functioning of cult. Connelly draws upon images from vase painting, portrait sculpture, votive reliefs, and funerary monuments to bring to life the movement of women within ritual space. Considering this material in the context of what we
Paula Vogel’s play, How I Learned to Drive, received the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the Lortel, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle and New York Drama Critics Awards for Best Play, and won her a second OBIE. It has been produced all over the world, and her screenplay has been in development for HBO. Her other plays include The Long
The technologies for high speed Internet access are racing ahead towards achieving gigabit speeds to the home, and hold the promise of a digital ubiquity in which any content can be delivered almost instantly on demand. However, the sociology, economics, and policies governing this capability are yet to be determined. What will fill these enormous pipes, who will own them,
From the reactions to British rule during the colonial era to the administration of George W. Bush, Americans have argued over two competing visions of their sense of national purpose. Different from Europe, special in its destiny, virtuous in theory if not always in practice, some of our leading politicians and thinkers have argued that America should be as good
Fifteen years after the launch of the World Wide Web and five years after the start of the Semantic Web, the web of documents is well deployed and work on the web of data is taking off steadily. This talk will discuss the challenges and deployment paths, as well as the the Semantic Web concepts and progress to date. Tim
The study of DNA sequence differences within and between species opened new inroads to the understanding of the history of humans as a species. We have learned that we are remarkably similar to other individuals as well as to our closest primate relatives. To understand what makes us unique, both as individuals and as a species, we need to consider
At the dawn of the twenty-first century, women in America are richer, more educated, and more powerful than they’ve ever been. So why is it, Susan Estrich asks, that they account for a mere three percent of the nation’s top executives? Why are there only three women running Fortune 500 companies? A quick survey of politics, academia, law, medicine, and