Events Archive
MillerComm Lecture Series
Joan Wallach Scott
When the French government passed a law banning Islamic headscarves in public schools, one of the justifications for it was that it would guarantee the equality of women. Professor Scott's talk will take a critical look at that justification. She will suggest that we need to reexamine universal…
Michael Scriven
Just as scholarly disciplines share in the use of language, mathematics, ethics, and aesthetics, they share in using and misusing the process of evaluation. But unlike those other processes, there is no central focus, no discipline for the study of evaluation. Michael Scriven, a distinguished…
John Searle
John Searle inquires into familiar social institutions and asks, for example, what is the structure that accounts for a social reality such as money? He argues that collective intentionality confers powers on bits of metal and pieces of paper that cannot be explained by their physical properties.…
Robert A. Sedler
Robert A. Sedler has spent a lifetime studying and promoting civil rights. In this discussion, he will examine the legal, medical, and social issues relating to the hastening of death by the terminally ill and the broader questions concerning the extent to which the State may limit the freedom of…
Ensemble Sequentia
Musicians; Benjamin Bagby, Elizabeth Gaver, Lena-Susanne Norin, and Barbara Thornton
Actors: Steve Karier, Benjamin Morgenstern
"Singing more beautiful than theirs is not to be heard today...Each carefully planned and balanced program is a modern adventure through the rich past."—The New Yorker…
Gene Sharp
The major unsolved political problems of our time—dictatorship, genocide, war, social oppression, popular powerlessness—may require us to rethink politics in order to develop fresh strategies and programs for their resolution. Dr. Sharp believes one such strategy is that of a "civilian-based…
Roger Shattuck
In the offices of a major New York publisher, two editors, a literate sales manager, a French scholar, and a literary critic discuss an unorthodox proposal for a new translation and edition of Proust's novel. The matter of presentation soon leads the debate into questions of how to interpret and…
Jonathan Shay
Jonathan Shay is a psychiatrist with long experience in treating the psychological damage that combat inflicts on soldiers. His work with Vietnam veterans suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder led him to ponder the lessons of Homer's poems. Dr. Shay brings his expertise in modern…
Tommie Shelby
Ghettos in the U.S. are predominantly black metropolitan neighborhoods with high concentrations of poverty. Tommie Shelby will examine the limitations of technocratic and paternalistic solutions to the problem of ghetto poverty and look for ways to engage the ghetto poor as potential allies in the…
Mary Sheriff
How did women in eighteenth-century France picture themselves as artists when the dominant view held them to be incapable of creating great art? This talk focuses on pictorial allegories of creativity and explores the French Enlightenment view that women were governed by passions and fantasies…
Jagdish N. Sheth
Just after India's independence fifty years ago, the government adopted a policy of economic nonalignment. Twenty-five years later, a policy of self-reliance was embraced. Neither path has resulted in realizing the vast potential of this nation rich in resources, both physical and human.
In an…
Ben Shneiderman
Creativity Support Tools is a research topic with high risk but potentially very high payoff. The goal is to develop improved software and user interfaces that empower diverse users in the sciences and arts to be more productive, and more innovative. Potential users include a combination of…
Dmitry Shvidkovsky
"Russia was a part of Europe for two centuries: from 1703, the year St. Petersburg was founded, to 1917, the year of the Bolshevik victory. Before the eighteenth century, however, Russia had quite another historical destiny. It maintained closer ties with the Asian steppes and Byzantium than with…
Mark Siegler
Dr. Siegler will present an exploration of today's bioethical issues and the future challenges facing modern medicine in societies around the world. The dilemmas that clinicians face will not go away and will be compounded by the widening gap between the universality of values and the increasing…
Daniel Singer
Based upon recent economic and political trends in Western Europe, Daniel Singer predicts that the European Union will enter a period of "consensus politics" looking very much like Reaganism and the Republican 1994 "Contract with the People." Given an absence of viable solutions from the…
Sheila Violet Makate Sisulu
Apartheid divided South Africa along racial lines and created injustices with innumerable permutations. Although Apartheid has been abolished and democratic elections held, deep inequalities still divide South Africa, and the South African government is working to overcome the problems.
The…
Lawrence Sklar
A "naturalist" might suggest that we abandon philosophical metaphysics and seek the answers to the questions about the basic nature of the world from our "best available foundational physical theories." But these theories only tell us what the world is like when they are "interpreted." Why is…
Theda Skocpol
America has long been known as an unusually civically engaged democracy, not only the world's first mass electoral democracy but also a country whose citizens form and participate in all kinds of voluntary associations. Today, many observers feel that American civic engagement is in decline.
What…
Stephen Slawek
Professor Slawek's lecture is being given in conjunction with Images of Krishna: Painted Pichlavais of the Vallabhaite Sect, an exhibition organized by the University Art Museum, Santa Barbara, California with guest curator, Julia Emerson, which will be shown at the Krannert Art Museum from…
Daniel Lord Smail
In recent years, neuroscience has made startling inroads into fields like economics, law, and political science, not to mention psychology and the natural sciences. The past, by contrast, seems resistant to the possibility of a neuroscientific approach, since no one is there to provide brain images…
Barbara Smith
Despite the institutionalization of Black studies and increasing academic recognition of lesbian, gay, 'queer," and gender studies, the lives of Black lesbians, gay, bisexuals, and trans-identified people have been generally ignored. Currently, this history exists in fragments—in scattered…
Daniel Scott Smith
Cosponsored by: Department of Anthropology, Department of Economics, Department of History, Department of Sociology, Afro-American Studies and Research Program, Campus Honors Program, Division of Human Development and Family Studies, Humanities Council/LAS, National Center for Supercomputing…
Merritt Roe Smith
In conjunction with: College of Commerce and Business Administration; Department of Economics; Department of History; Department of Philosophy; Department of Physics; Department of Sociology; Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations; Program in Arms Control, Disarmament, and International…
Timothy Snyder
Timothy Snyder calls into question not only ethnic definitions of the nation, but also sociological accounts that focus on the state. In this presentation, he outlines a new theory of nationalism, one that incorporates the personal into the impersonal, and helps to explain not only the rise of the…
Timothy Snyder
Europe's early 20th century was an era of unprecedented brutality in human history–the 16 million dead of World War I followed in short order by the 60 million casualties of World War II. Historian Timothy Snyder, the foremost scholar of the period, presents his path-breaking interpretation of…