Role of poetry in Bedouin life is topic of scholar's talk
Clinton Bailey, a visiting professor at Trinity College in Hartford, will talk about "The Role of Poetry in Bedouin Life" on Monday, April 6, at 4 p.m. in Rm. 203 of Luce Hall, 34 Hillhouse Ave. His talk, sponsored by the Council on Middle East Studies of the Yale Center for International and Area Studies, is free and open to the public.
Bailey, who has lived among the Bedouin people and studied their culture for 30 years, says that poetry is unusually significant in the lives of the Bedouin, who have traditionally been both nomadic and illiterate. They have used poetry to communicate both information and ideas, particularly about major events, he says. Active on behalf of Bedouin rights in Israel, Bailey was awarded the Emil Grunzweig Human Rights Award of the Association of Civil Rights in Israel in 1994. He is the author of the book "Bedouin Poetry from Sinai and the Negev: Mirror of a Culture."
Expert in genomic drug discovery is next speaker in lecture series
Dr. Gualberto Ruaño, cofounder of Genaissance Pharmaceutical Co. in New Haven, will be the final speaker in the Yale-New Haven Biotechnology Enterprise Forum series. His talk, titled "Genomic Strategies and Drug Discovery," will be presented Tuesday, April 7, 4:30-6:30 p.m. in Hope Conference Rm. 216 of the Sterling Hall of Medicine, 333 Cedar St. Refreshments will be served in the foyer outside the conference room 4-4:30 p.m. His lecture, sponsored by The Biotech Committee of Greater New Haven and the Yale Office of Cooperative Research, is free and open to the public.
Ruaño, who earned Ph.D. and M.D. degrees from Yale, also is chief executive officer and chief scientific officer of Genaissance. He is the inventor of Coupled Amplification and Sequencing, the company's leading technology for genetic discovery, which is now being used for HIV diagnosis and therapeutic management. An acknowledged expert in the profiling of human genome diversity and molecular evolution, he is among the biotech industry's leaders in applying these methods to clinical medicine and pharmaceutical drug development. Focusing specifically on breast cancer and cardiovascular diseases, Genaissance is developing customized drugs with increased therapeutic potency and vastly reduced side effects.
For more information 432-5446.
Art historian to talk about collector Isabella Stewart Gardner
Anne Higonnet, associate professor of
art history at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, will present the second lecture in the Yale University Art Gallery's annual Andrew Carnduff Ritchie Memorial Lecture Series, this year titled "Private Collection into Public Museum: Four Great Collectors." Higonnet will talk on the subject "Skirts, Pictures, and a Museum: Isabella Stewart Gardner" on Wednesday, April 8,
at 5 p.m. in the lecture hall of the gallery, 1111 Chapel St. The event is free and open
to the public.
Higonnet received her Ph.D. from Yale before joining the Wellesley faculty in
1988. Her publications include "Pictures of Innocence: the History and Crisis of Ideal Childhood," "Berthe Morisot's Images of Women" and "Berthe Morisot: A Biography." She has contributed articles, essays and book chapters to a number of publications. She has received fellowships from the John Paul Getty Museum and the Huntington Library, as well as the Woodrow Wilson Research Grant in Women's Studies, the American Association of University Women Fellowship and the Harvard College Augustus Clifford Tower Fellowship.
The Ritchie Memorial Lectures are sponsored by the Yale University Art Gallery and the Yale Center for British Art in memory of Yale's longest-serving art gallery director.
Lecture and tea will feature chemical engineer/astronaut
Albert Sacco Jr., the George A. Snell Professor in Chemical Engineering at Northeastern University and the first chemical engineer chosen to train as a U.S. astronaut, will be on campus Wednesday and Thursday, April 8 and 9, as a guest of the chemical engineering department and Jonathan Edwards College master Gary Haller. On Wednesday at 4 p.m., he will talk about his experiences as an astronaut at a tea in the Jonathan Edwards College master's house, 70 High St. The following day, he will deliver the John McClanahan Henske Distinguished Lecture in Chemical Engineering on the topic "Nucleation and Growth of Zeolite Crystals" at 4 p.m. in Mason Laboratory, 9 Hillhouse Ave. Both events are free and open to the public.
Sacco is also director of the Center for Advanced Microgravity Materials Processing at Northeastern. His research interests are in the areas of carbon filament initiation and growth, catalyst deactivation and synthesis of zeolite crystals in microgravity environments. He has extensive experience aboard NASA's KC-135 low-gravity aircraft, where he has tested experimental protocols and evaluated space-flight equipment. He has also been the principal investigator on five space flight experiments. In 1995, he was a payload specialist on a 16-day mission aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia. His honors include the Admiral Earl Award in 1984 and a National Science Foundation Young Faculty Initiation Grant in 1978. Sacco is a member of the American Institute of Chemical Engineering and the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
The John McClanahan Henske Distinguished Lecture is named in honor of the former chief executive officer of the Olin Corporation. The lectures are made possible with a fund established by the Olin Corporation and are administered by the department of chemical engineering.
Cardiologist to explore the role of maps as guides
Dr. Harold L. Osher, a cardiologist, cartographer and director of the Osher Map Library at the University of Southern Maine in Portland, will explore the nature of maps, their role as illuminators of the historical record and the prominent role of physicians in the history of cartography in the next lecture sponsored by the Program for Humanities in Medicine. His talk, titled "Old Maps: Guides to the Geography of the Earth, Body & Mind," will take place at 5 p.m. on Thursday, April 9, in the Beaumont Room of the School of Medicine, 333 Cedar St. The event is free and open to the public.
Osher has been a cardiologist at the Maine Medical Center since 1953. He has received several awards for his work in medicine, including a Distinguished Service Award from the Northern New England Tri-State Chapter of the American College of Cardiology. Since 1974, Osher has actively collected and studied antique maps, charts, atlases and other materials related to early exploration and discovery, as well as the history of cartography.
In 1994, he and his wife, Peggy Osher, founded the Osher Map Library. Dr. Osher was curator of two exhibits there, one on the history of Jerusalem and the other celebrating Maine's 175 years of statehood. The Oshers have also collected graphic works by Maine artist Winslow Homer, and donated a collection of those works to the Portland Museum of Art.
'Ivory tower science' is subject of talk by Tufts professor
Sheldon Krimsky, professor of urban and environmental policy at Tufts University, will discuss "Can Ivory Tower Science Go Commercial and Retain Its Virtue? The Pits and Falls of Commercial Biology" on Wednesday, April 8, at 4:30 p.m. in Rm. C105 of the Sterling Hall of Medicine, 333 Cedar St. The event is free and open to the public.
Krimsky's research focuses on the role of science in public policy, environmental policy, social theories of risk, biotechnology and chemicals in the environment. He has served on the national Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee of the National Institutes of Health, and chaired the Committee on Scientific Freedom and Responsibility of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He has published numerous essays on regulation and the social and ethical aspects of science and technology, and is the author of "Genetic Alchemy" and "Biotechnics and Society." He also is coauthor of "Environmental Hazards and Agricultural Biotechnology and the Environment" and coeditor of "Social Theories of Risk." He serves on the board of directors of the Council for Responsible Genetics and has been a consultant to the Office of Technology Assessment of the U.S. Congress.
Master's tea features talk by Wall Street Journal correspondent
David M. Wessel, chief economics correspondent in the Washington bureau of The Wall Street Journal, will be the guest at a tea on Thursday, April 9, at 2:30 p.m. in the Calhoun College master's house, 189 Elm St. The event is free and open to the public.
Wessel, a native of New Haven, was offered his current job at The Wall Street Journal on the day the stock market crashed in 1987. He began his career with the newspaper in its Boston bureau in 1984. He had previously worked for the Boston Globe, the Hartford Courant and the Middletown Press. He shared a Pulitzer Prize in 1984 for a series of Boston Globe stories on the persistence of racism in Boston. In 1996, he and several other Wall Street Journal reporters shared the InterAmerican Press Association award for spot-news coverage for their stories on Mexico's economic and financial crisis. The Washingtonian magazine included Wessel on its August 1997 list of the top 50 journalists in Washington.
Wessel is the coauthor (with Wall Street Journal colleague Bob Davis) of the new book "Prosperity: The Coming 20-Year Boom and What It Means for You." In the book, the authors explain their belief that the combination of technology, education and globalization will make the next 20 years better for the American middle class than the last 20 years.
Scholar of 18th-century literature will give Walpole Library lecture
"Exposures: Sex, Privacy and Sensibility" is the title of the sixth annual Lewis Walpole Library Lecture, which will be delivered on Thursday, April 9, by Patricia Meyer Spacks, a former Yale faculty member who is now the Edgar F. Shannon Professor of Eighteenth-Century Literature at the University of Virginia. Her lecture, which is free and open to the public, will begin at 4 p.m. in Sheffield-Sterling-Strathcona Hall, corner of Prospect and Grove streets. It will be followed by a reception at 5 p.m. at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, corner of Wall and High streets.
Spacks, who earned her M.A. from Yale in 1950, is the author of 11 books, including "Boredom: The Literary History of a State of Mind," "Gossip," "Imagining A Self," "The Female Imagination" and "The Insistence of Horror." She also edited a 1994 edition of Jane Austen's "Persuasion," as well as "Contemporary Women Novelists," "Late Augustan Poetry" and "Late Augustan Prose." She has been a fellow of the National Humanities Institute and the National Humanities Center, and was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Impact of faith on health is focus of Divinity School talk
Dr. David B. Larson, president of the National Institute for Healthcare Research, will explore the questions "Is God Good for Your Health? What Does the Research Say?" in a talk on Thursday, April 9, at 4 p.m. in
the Divinity School's Marquand Chapel, 409 Prospect St. His talk, which is free and open to the public, is being presented as part of the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences/Templeton Foundation University Lectureship. A reception will follow in the Divinity School common room.
Larson is also adjunct professor in the departments of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at both Duke University Medical Center and Northwestern University Medical School, and in the department of preventative medicine and biometrics of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Maryland.
The Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences was founded in 1981 to promote mutual interaction between contemporary theology and the natural sciences through research, education and public service. The John Templeton Foundation was established in 1987 to encourage the discovery and use of scientific evidence to reveal
knowledge about God and the natural laws that govern the universe.
Playwright/performance artist to explore gender roles, sexuality
Kate Bornstein, a transgendered playwright and performance artist, will explore gender roles, sexuality and societal perspectives on Monday, April 13, in an event sponsored by the women's studies program and the Fund for Lesbian and Gay Studies.
Her presentation, titled "Cut 'n' Paste," combines humor, drama, poetry and lecture. It will begin at 4 p.m. in Rm. 309 of William L. Harkness Hall, 100 Wall St. The event is free, and the public is welcome.
Bornstein is the author of "Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women, and the Rest of Us," in which she asserts that the distinction of male and female is an outgrown concept and that gender is a spectrum that all are free to explore. Her most recent publication, "My Gender Workbook," is a guide to living with or without gender. In the work, Bornstein claims that there are countless genders lumped under the two-gender designation, and she quotes over 300 people who say they are neither men nor women. The book includes quizzes and puzzles designed to challenge the reader's own perceived sexual identity.
For more information, call the women's studies program at 432-0845.
Award-winning artist will be guest at master's tea
Painter, photographer and sculptor William Christenberry will be the guest at a tea on Monday, April 13, at 4:30 p.m. in the Calhoun College master's house, 189 Elm St. The event is free and open to the public.
Christenberry is professor of art at The Corcoran School of Art in Washington, D.C. A native of Alabama, his sculptures, drawings, paintings and photographs have often reflected his Southern heritage. His works have been exhibited in group and solo exhibitions at museums and galleries throughout the United States, including the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American Art, and the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C. In 1977, his works were featured in the Yale University Art Gallery exhibit "Five Years of Collecting Photographs." In 1991 and again in 1993, he was a visiting artist at the Yale Summer School of Art and Music in Norfolk, Connecticut.
Christenberry's honors include the University of Memphis Distinguished Achievement Award in Memory of Elvis Presley, The Alabama Prize and the Educator in Fine Arts Award from Hallmark Cards, Inc. He has also received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, among others. He is the subject of a 1997 film titled "William A. Christenberry, Jr.: a portrait," and of the recent book "Christenberry Reconstruction: The Art of William Christenberry" by Trudy Wilner Stack.
Talk will examine mutual fund's commitment to environment
Carlos Joly, chair of the investment advisory committee of the Storebrand Scudder Environmental Value Fund, will give a talk on "Finding Green in Green: Environmental Performance in a Mutual Fund" on Thursday, April 16. His talk, which is free and open to the public, will begin at 4:15 p.m. in Bowers Auditorium in Sage Hall, 205 Prospect St. A reception in the Sage Hall lounge will follow the presentation. Joly's talk is the final event in this year's spring lecture series "How Do You Know if You're Going Green? Measuring Corporate Environmental Performance," which is sponsored by the Yale Industrial Environmental Management Program.
Joly will discuss the approach taken by the Storebrand Scudder Environmental Value Fund (EVF), a Norwegian mutual fund. Unlike other mutual funds that focus on the environment, Storebrand Scudder's EVF does not take a "green sector" approach that emphasizes waste management and pollution control companies. Instead, the EVF invests only in those firms that are among the top 30% in environmental performance in their respective industry sectors. In 1997, the fund achieved a 24 percent return, out-performing the Morgan Stanley Capital International World Index.
Joly helped found the EVF and formerly served as senior vice president in charge of the fund.