Lecture

“Law & Lit: Who Owns It?” 4/1–4:30 p.m.

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Eva Geulen (Bonn University), “Law and Literature: Who Owns It?”

Friday, April 1, 4:30 p.m., Russell House

Co-sponsored by German Studies, History, COL, Sociology, English, the Dean of the Social Sciences, and the Center for the Humanities.

Eva Geulen’s talk will examine the historically and conceptually fraught relationship between law and literature from four points of view: 1. The common history and shared heritage of law and literature; 2. law as literature; 3. literature vs. law; 4. literature in law.

Eva Geulen received her Ph.D. from the Johns Hopkins University and has taught at the University of Rochester and at New York University.  Currently, she is professor of modern German literature at Bonn University. She has published widely in the areas of modern narrative prose, discourses of education, gender studies, and aesthetics. Her books include The End of Art: Readings in a Rumor after Hegel (Stanford UP 2006) and Giorgio Agamben zur Einführung [Introducing Giorgio Agamben] (Junius 2005; second, revised edition 2009).

Amb. Marwan Mu’asher: “Redefining Arab Moderation” 3/31, 5 p.m.

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Ambassador Marwan Mu’asher:  “Redefining Arab Moderation”

 Thursday, March 31, 5:00 p.m.   Russell House 

Marian Mu’asher is vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment, where he oversees the Endowment’s research in Washington and Beirut on the Middle East. Mu’asher served as foreign minister (2002-04) and deputy prime minister (2004­-05) of Jordan, and his career has spanned the areas of diplomacy, development, civil society, and communications. He is also a senior fellow at Yale University.

Mu’asher began his career as a journalist for the Jordan Times. He then served at the Ministry of Planning, at the prime minister’s office as press adviser, and as director of the Jordan Information Bureau in Washington. In 1995, Mu’asher opened Jordan’s first embassy in Israel, and in 1996 became minister of information and the government spokesperson. From 1997 to 2002, he served in Washington again as ambassador, negotiating the first free trade agreement between the United States and an Arab nation. He then returned to Jordan to serve as foreign minister, where he played a central role in developing the Arab Peace Initiative and the Middle East Road Map.

In 2004 he became deputy prime minister responsible for reform and government performance, and led the effort to produce a ten-year plan for political, economic, and social reform. From 2006 to 2007, he was a member of the Jordanian Senate.  Most recently, he was senior vice president of external affairs at the World Bank from 2007 to 2010.

He is the author of The Arab Center: The Promise of Moderation (Yale University Press, 2008).

 

 

Charlie Chan: Film Screening 3/26; Talk 3/31

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This event is co-sponsored by the Mansfield Freeman Center for East Asian Studies and the Department of Film Studies. 

FILM SCREENING:  The Black Camel (1929)  and Charlie Chan in Honolulu (1938)–Sat., March 26,  8 p.m., Goldsmith Family Cinema           

TALK

Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and His Rendezvous with American History   

Yunte Huang (the University of California, Santa Barbara)   4:30 pm, Thursday, March 31, 2011; FEAS Seminar Room, Mansfield Freeman Center for East Asian Studies (343 Washington Terrace)

Shortlisted for the 2010 National Book Critics Circle Award in Biography and the 2011 Edgar Award for Best Critical/Biographical Book. 

To most Caucasian Americans, Charlie Chan is a funny, beloved film character who talks wise and acts even wiser. But to many Asian Americans, he remains a pernicious example of a racist stereotype, the kind of Chinaman who, passive and unsavory, conveys himself in laughable broken English. Yet despite being a flamboyant cinematic and cultural icon, Charlie Chan and his influence on American culture has remained, until now, virtually unexamined. At last, in this groundbreaking work, scholar Yunte Huang traces the evolution of Charlie Chan using hundreds of biographical, literary, and cinematic sources, both in English and in his native Chinese. This is the first biography of the cinematic hero Charlie Chan, whose character was inspired by the real-life story of Chang Apana, a bullwhip-wielding, five-foot-tall Chinese immigrant detective whose raids on opium dens and gambling parlors made him into a Hawaiian legend. Yunte Huang masterfully re-creates the world in which Apana roamed filled with desperate Chinese who worked as indentured laborers on sugarcane plantations, railroad builders who took on the overly dangerous jobs, and laundrymen who toiled away through steam and starch. Set against the backdrop of turn-of-the-century territorial Hawaii, Huang follows Apana’s footsteps through the shadowy alleyways of Honolulu’s bustling Chinatown, where the real-life adventures of the cowboy turned constable would eventually become folklore for the local population. The talk will be followed by a book signing.

Yunte Huang a professor of English at the University of California, Santa Barbara, is the author of Transpacific Imaginations and Charlie Chan. Born in China, he lives in Santa Barbara, California.  See  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/11/books/11chan.html

Annual Hugo Black Lecture: “The First Amendment is an Information Policy” — Wed., 8 p.m.

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The Knight Professor of Constitutional Law and the First Amendment at Yale Law School, Jack M. Balkin, will speak on “The First Amendment is an Information Policy,” during the 20th Annual Hugo L. Black Lecture on Freedom of Expression. The event will be held at 8 p.m., March 23, in Memorial Chapel.

Professor Balkin is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and writes political and legal commentary at the weblog Balkinization. Professor Balkin is the founder and director of the Information Society Project at Yale Law School, an interdisciplinary center that studies law and the new information technologies.  He is also the director of Yale’s Knight Law and Media Program.

Prof. Kari Weil Lecture on “Thinking Animals” — Wed., 3/23

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Professor Kari Weil will speak in COL’s Works in Progress series on Wednesday, March 23 at 4:15 PM in the COL Lounge.  Her talk is entitled,

Civilization and the Dog’s Discontents, or Desperate Housepets, A Reading of Virginia Woolf’s “Flush.“

Kari Weil received her doctorate in Comparative Literature from Princeton University and has published widely on 19th and 20th century literature, feminist theory, literary representations of gender (especially in France) and more recently on theories and representation of animal otherness.  Her course, “Animal Subjects,” which she taught at the California College of the Arts, won the United States Humane Society’s “Best Course Award” in 2006.  Her talk will be taken from her book, “Thinking Animals,” which is forthcoming from Columbia University Press.

COL Lecture: Prof. Berel Lang on Holocaust writer Primo Levi — 11/17

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On Wednesday, November 17 at 4:15 pm, Professor Berel Lang will deliver the annual Philip Hallie lecture in the COL Lounge (Butterfield C 100.)  His talk is entitled “Primo Levi, Writer (and Memoirist.)”

Berel Lang is the author of Philosophical Witnessing: The Holocaust as Presence (2009), Holocaust Representation: Art Within the Limits of History and Ethics (2000), Heidegger’s Silence (1996), Act and Idea in the Nazi Genocide (1990) and many other works bridging philosophy, aesthetics, ethics and history.  Much honored for outstanding scholarship and teaching, he has held fellowships from the N.E.H., ACLS, American Philosophical Association, and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, and is a member of the American Academy for Jewish Research.  This semester, he is Visiting Professor of Letters at Wesleyan; he has taught at Wesleyan, Trinity College, SUNY at Albany, the University of Colorado, and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

Talk on Elephants by Dr. Laurence Kruger — 11/4

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Elephants: A Talk by Laurence Mohr Kruger, PhD.
Thursday November 4, 4:30-5:30 pm at Earth House (159 High St)

 

Do you like Elephants? Do you like South Africa? Do you like Plants and Ethnobotany? Do you like Conservation?If the answer to any of the above is YES! (which, let’s admit, it obviously was), then come to a cool talk at Earth House this Thursday, Nov. 4th!Laurence Möhr Kruger, Ph.D., a professor and director at the Organization for Tropical Studies in South Africa, will give a presentation about elephants in South Africa and their interaction with the plants and environment around them. His extensive field work in the national parks in South Africa and research in the field has given him a unique ability to shed light on their interactions, which can have consequences about plant and animal relationships everywhere.

This is a great opportunity to talk with a professional in the field about any of the above listed topics.

NY Times Film Critic, A.O. Scott — Thurs., 11/4

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This Thursday, November 4, New York Times film critic A.O. Scott will give a talk in the Memorial Chapel at 7 PM. This event is free and open to the public.

A. O. Scott joined The New York Times as a film critic in January 2000. Previously, Mr. Scott was a Sunday book reviewer for Newsday and a frequent contributor to Slate, The New York Review of Books and many other publications.

The event is sponsored by the New York Times, the Wesleyan Student Assembly, and the Wesleyan Film Department. We hope to see you at the Chapel this Thursday.

Koeppel Panel: Journalism & Social Change — Sat., 10/23

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HC/FW Koeppel Panel: William Finnegan and Jane Eisner ’77 on Journalism and Social Change

William Finnegan of The New Yorker, and Jane Eisner, editor of the Forward, will discuss journalism and social change on Saturday October 23rd, 2010 at 1:30 pm in the Memorial Chapel.

William Finnegan, staff writer for The New Yorker, is the author of award-winning works of international journalism. He has written recently about immigration issues and politics in Europe and Mexico, as well as racism and conflict in Southern Africa and poverty among youth in the U.S. His article, “Leasing the Rain,” received the James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism. He has twice received the John Bartlow Martin Award for public interest magazine writing.

Jane Eisner ’77 has been a national and international reporter, columnist, and executive editor at thePhiladelphia Inquirer and a leader in national discussions of media and democracy.  She is now editor of theForward, the weekly Jewish newspaper of major influence nationally and internationally. She is the first woman to win Wesleyan’s McConaughy Award for her contributions to journalism and public life, and she is the first Koeppel Fellow in Journalism at Wesleyan.

This event is sponsored by the Koeppel Journalism Fellowship and the Wesleyan Writing Programs. It is free and open to the public. For more information call (860) 685-3448, or visit http://www.wesleyan.edu/writing/distinguished_writers/.