Meditation's application to social action is talk topic

Joseph Goldstein, cofounder and guiding teacher of the Insight Meditation Society, will give a talk titled "Service and Silence: On the Application of Mindfulness Meditation to the World of Social Action" on Tuesday, March 30. His talk, which is free and open to the public, will begin at 4:30 p.m. in the faculty lounge of the Law School, 127 Wall St.

Goldstein is the author of "Insight Meditation: The Practice of Freedom" and "Transforming the Mind, Healing the World." He was the guiding teacher during a Yale Law School meditation retreat that was held last October.

Artist will talk about designs using interactive media

Krzysztof Wodiczko, director of the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will present a talk titled "Critical Vehicles" on Tuesday, March 30, as part of the lecture series " ... With Technological Means: Artists, Theorists and Curators Working in New Media." The series is sponsored by the Digital Media Center for the Arts.

Wodiczko's lecture will take place at 6:30 p.m. in Hastings Hall of the Art and Architecture building, 180 York St. It is free and open to the public.

Wodiczko has employed a variety of interactive sculptural, design, photographic and video elements in his work, which addresses such issues as militarism, xenophobia, urban violence, domestic abuse and homelessness. His ongoing research focuses on how design, performance and media interact to encourage dialog for social change. His projects have included visual projections on public monuments and buildings. His most recent video projection, "Let Freedom Ring," designed for ICA Boston in 1998, was projected upon the Bunker Hill monument.

Wodiczko's work has been shown in solo and retrospective exhibitions in Europe and the United States, and the artist has also been included in several international group exhibitions. An anthology of his writings, titled "Krzysztof Wodiczko: Art Public/Art Critique," was published in France in 1995. A collection of his writings, titled "Critical Vehicles," was published by MIT Press this year and is his first book in English.

Scientist will discuss role of fungi in ecological restoration

Mike Amaranthus, a mycologist at Oregon State University, will discuss the beneficial role of mycorrhizal fungi in ecological restoration on Wednesday, March 31, as part of the lecture series "The Restoration Agenda: Plants!" at the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.

His talk will take place 11:30 a.m.-2:20 p.m. in Bowers Auditorium of Sage Hall, 205 Prospect St. There is a registration fee. To register, contact Aimlee Laderman at 432-3335 or e-mail aimlee.laderman@yale.edu.

Amaranthus will discuss the pivotal role of fungi as demonstrated through case studies involving sites ranging from high elevation, non-reforested clearcuts to wildfire rehabilitation areas. "Although there is no 'magic bullet' for assuring restoration, there is a great opportunity to use mycorrhizal fungi as 'tools,'" says Amaranthus. "By understanding mycorrhizal fungi and putting them to wise use, practicing foresters and ecologists can better achieve restoration success."

Amaranthus is an associate professor at Oregon State University in Portland and is president of Mycorrhizal Applications, Inc. He holds a doctorate in forest ecology and was the lead scientist for the Soil Productivity Program in the Pacific Northwest Station. He has published numerous papers on mycorrhizal interactions in the Pacific Northwest.

"The Restoration Agenda: Plants!" is cosponsored by the Society for Ecological Restoration, the New Haven Land Trust and the Watershed Fund of the Regional Water Authority.

Master's tea to feature noted dancer/choreographer

Dancer and choreographer Lila York will speak informally at a tea on Wednesday, March 31, at 4:30 p.m. in the Calhoun College master's house, 189 Elm St. The event is free and open to the public.

York danced with the Paul Taylor Dance Company for 12 years, appearing in over 60 works. Since 1989 she has choreographed works for the Boston, San Francisco, Houston and Atlanta ballets, the Birmingham Royal Ballet, the Pacific Northwest Ballet, the American Repertory Ballet and the Connecticut Ballet Theatre. She also has choreographed works for the Sante Fe Chamber Music Festival, the Juilliard Dance Ensemble and the Eisenhower Dance Ensemble. Her 1994 work, "Rapture," is currently in the repertories of eight ballet companies, and she is creating new works for several companies.

In addition to her choreography, York has staged Paul Taylor's works for ballet and modern dance companies worldwide. From 1989 to 1994 she served for part of each year as director of PNS Offstage, a program for the development and production of new choreography at Pacific Northwest Ballet.

Physician to speak about alternative medicine

Dr. Joseph J. Jacobs, former director of the Office of Alternative Medicine at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, will present a lecture titled "Meeting the Challenge of Alternative Medicine" at 5 p.m. on Thursday, April 1. His talk, sponsored by the Program for Humanities in Medicine, will take place in the Beaumont Room of the School of Medicine, 333 Cedar. It is free and open to the public.

Jacobs will discuss alternative and complementary medicine as they relate to the doctor-patient dialog. He also will speak about the challenges facing the contemporary clinician in trying to communicate between two worlds: the world of belief in the role of ancient healing and the modern world of science. Finally, Jacobs will reflect on the notion of consumer empowerment.

'Multiculturalism v. Feminism' is subject of Law School lecture

Leti Volpp, an assistant professor at the Washington College of Law, American University, will deliver this year's James A. Thomas Lecture on Monday, April 5, at 4 p.m. in Rm. 127 of the Law School, 127 Wall St. The topic of her talk, which is free and open to the public, is "Multiculturalism v. Feminism."

In her talk, Volpp will address the position that multiculturalism and feminism are "incompatible projects." "Scholars who have advanced this position represent multiculturalism through invoking cases where nonwhite immigrants are accused of behavior subordinating women and children, including forced arranged marriages of adolescent girls, parent-child suicide, wife killing, veiling of schoolgirls, female genital mutilation and marriage by capture," says Volpp. "This talk will excavate the premises on which this position relies -- which include limited understandings of feminism, multiculturalism and the relationship of culture to the law."

Volpp's work has focused on issues of culture and the law, particularly the rights of immigrant workers, women workers in the global economy, Asian Americans and the law, and gender, race and hate violence. In 1997-98, she was a staff attorney for the National Employment Law Project in New York City, where she litigated on behalf of garment workers and deaf Mexican immigrant workers. She previously was a trial attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice's voting section, part of its civil rights division. In addition, she has also been a staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union's Immigrants' Rights Project.

Award-winning novelist/critic to deliver Finzi-Contini Lecture

Novelist and critic A. S. Byatt will deliver the Finzi-Contini Lecture on Monday, April 5, at 4:30 p.m. in the auditorium of the Whitney Humanities Center, 53 Wall St. Her topic will be "Old Tales and New Forms: Storytelling in Modern European Fiction." The event is free, and the public is welcome.

Byatt's novel "Possession" won the Booker Prize. Her other works of fiction include "The Shadow of the Sun," "The Game," "The Virgin in the Garden," "Still Life," "Angels and Insects," "The Matisse Stories," "Babel Tower" and "The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye." Her new book, "Elementals: Stories of Fire and Ice," will be published in April. She has taught at University College, London.

The Finzi-Contini Lectureship was endowed in 1990 by the Honorable Guido Calabresi, a judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and former dean of the Yale Law School, and Dr. Paul Calabresi of Brown University, in memory of their mother, Bianca Maria Finzi-Contini Calabresi. Finzi-Contini was a scholar of European literature an a native of Ferrara, Italy, who, along with her husband, Dr. Massimo Calabresi, fled fascism in that country and settled in New Haven. She earned a Ph.D. in French at Yale. The biennial lectureship in her honor sponsors a distinguished speaker in the field of comparative literature. Previous Finzi-Contini Lecturers have been Umberto Eco, René Girard, Tzvetan Todorov and Charles Rosen.

Lecture series will feature 'high priest of astronomy'

The Yale astronomy department and the Astronomical Society of New Haven are sponsoring a six-part series of lectures by John Dobson, who has been called "the high priest of astronomy." The series, titled "Cosmology by John Dobson," will begin on Monday, April 5, and will be held each Monday, Wednesday and Friday through April 16. The lectures will take place 7-
9:30 p.m. in Rm. 263 of the J.W. Gibb Research Laboratory, 260 Whitney Ave. The fee for the series is $45, and preregistration is required. To register, call Bob Carruthers at 265-6014.

Dobson will also speak at a meeting of the Astronomical Society of New Haven on Tuesday, April 6, at 7 p.m. in Rm. 202 of Osborn Memorial Laboratory, corner of Prospect and Sachem streets. This talk is free and open to the public.

Dobson, who is now in his 80s, started out as a Roman Catholic priest in the San Francisco area, but he eventually left the profession to pursue his passion for astronomy. He made his first telescope out of discarded materials, and later invented the dobsonian telescope mount, which is today a standard item for visual observations of the sky.

While standing on the streets in San Francisco, Dobson would treat passersby to the sights of the sky. He promoted others' interest in astronomy by making telescopes and giving them away, or teaching others how to make their own. He has independently studied cosmology and has lectured across the country on the subject.

Award-winning Irish poet to read from her work

Irish poet Moya Cannon will read from her work on Monday, April 5, at 8 p.m. at the Pierson College master's house, 231 Park St. The event is free and open to the public.

Cannon was born in Dunfanaghy, County Donegal, and lives in Galway, where she is an educator of children in the Traveler community, Ireland's nomadic people. She holds degrees in history and politics from University College, Dublin, and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. Her first collection of poems, "Oar," won the 1991 Brendan Behan Memorial Prize. Her second collection, "The Parchment Boat," was published by Gallery Press in 1997. Cannon is a former editor of Poetry Ireland Review.

"Complicated things happen simply in her poems," Irish writer Tim Robinson has said of Cannon's work. "The Burren's dove-saints hatch out under the eyes of raptors; old wooden sailboats of Connemara take root in salt water. Moya Cannon's style is as discreet as the advance of spring over her favorite landscapes." The Irish Times has praised Cannon's "subtly evoked passion and meditative restraint."

Noted skeptic will speak at campus events

Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic magazine and author of the 1997 best-seller "Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time," will be featured in two campus events on Tuesday, April 6.

At 4:30 p.m., he will be the guest at a tea at the Morse College master's house, 99 Tower Pkwy. He will discuss the topic "Why People Believe in Weird Things." The event is open to students only.

At 6:30 p.m., Shermer will present "A Short History of Bad Science in the Courtroom" in Levinson Auditorium of the Law School, 127 Wall St. This event is free and open to the public. Prior to his lecture, Shermer will take part in a discussion with audience members at 6 p.m. at the Yale Bookstore, 77 Broadway.

Shermer maintains that people believe in "weird things" because it is comforting. "To most people, science seems to offer only cold and brutal logic in its presentation of an infinite, uncaring and purposeless universe," he has said. "Pseudoscience, superstition, myth, magic and religion offer simple, immediate and consoling canons of morality and meaning."

Shermer is the founding director of the Skeptics Society and is host of the Skeptics Lectures Series at the California Institute of Technology. He also hosts the radio show "Science Talk with Michael Shermer" on a National Public Radio affiliate station in southern California. The show has attracted over a quarter of a million listeners.

Shermer's visit is cosponsored by the Yale Skeptics Society, the Yale Law and Technology Society, Morse College, the Yale Society of Humanists, Atheists and Agnostics,
the New England Skeptical Society and the Humanist Association of Central Connecticut.

Pediatrician to discuss care of chronically ill children

Dr. Ruth Stein, professor and vice chair of the department of pediatrics at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, will discuss the care of chronically ill children in two talks on Wednesday, April 7.

At noon, she will deliver the seventh annual Warren Weiswasser Lecture on the topic "Can the Needs of Children with Chronic Conditions Be Met in Managed Care?" at noon in Fitkin Amphitheater in the Laboratory for Medicine and Pediatrics, 15 York St. At 2:15 p.m., she will take part in a seminar titled "Mental Health Issues in the Care of Children with Chronic Conditions" in the Milton Senn Conference Room at the Child Study Center,
333 Cedar St. The events are free and open to the public.

Stein, a specialist on the care of chronically ill children, is also an attending pediatrician at Montefiore Hospital and Medical Center in New York City. She has spent much of her career in New York, where she has also been associated with the Jacobi Medical Center (previously the Bronx Municipal Hospital Center). She is on the adjunct faculty at Yeshiva University in New York City and has previously been at the Yale School of Medicine as a visiting professor and visiting scholar.

Stein is a member of numerous professional organizations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics.

The Warren Weiswasser Lecture is named for a pediatrician who specialized in the social and behavioral problems of children. He was a fellow at the Child Study Center before becoming chief of pediatrics, and later deputy director, at Connecticut Health Care Provider (CHCP).

T H I SW E E K ' SS T O R I E S

'Yale Constructs'--Program will explore future plans for campus facilities
Happy 350th Birthday, Elihu!--Yale will honor the man for whom it is named
Photosynthesis in a test tube? Scientists find a way . . .
Noted historian to present talk on 'moral authority' of U.S. presidency
Bennett will continue efforts to strengthen Yale's libraries
This year's DeVane Medals go to two English professors
League commissioner David Stern to speak on managing 'Global NBA'
Drama student sharing her love of dance in campus classes
Technology's impact on nation is topic of Sheffield Lecture
Coach Dick Kuchen resigning after 13 years at the helm . . .
'Missing' work will be performed for first time in nearly 40 years
Vladimir Petrov dies -- taught Russian at Yale
Grants support innovative new projects using digital media
Campus Notes

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