CNU Dean William Parks 2008 Colloquium Continues
News Release - January 22, 2008
Media Contact:
Emily L. Lucier
Press Secretary and Media Manager
emily.lucier@cnu.edu
(757) 594-8428
(NEWPORT NEWS, Va.) - During the Christopher Newport University 2007-2008 academic year, the Dean William Parks Colloquium will explore what author Doris Lessing describes as the major struggle of the modern world: “the conflict between the individual conscience and the collective good.” The goal of this series will be to have a balanced, academic discussion about issues of importance to the future in the 21st century. Through the scholarly talks, documentary films and literary readings described below, the presenters and attendees will explore how traditional and modern cultures deal with important issues like religion, the environment, scientific theory, gender and leadership, politics, immigration and business. The speakers and films will ask attendees to think about how individuals formulate moral conscience, how societies define justice and, most importantly, what happens when that individual conscience comes into conflict with larger notions of a “collective good.”
The professors, filmmakers and scientists who comprise the 2008 series will ask audiences to think about the hard issues and conflicts in our society and imagine how they may be able to solve them in the future.
“Individual Conscience and the Collective Good”:
the Future of the 21st Century
Lectures and Film Screenings: Ferguson Music and Theatre Hall at 7pm
Workshops: Madison Room of David Student Center at 3:30 pm
All Free of Charge and Open to the Public
Spring Semester, 2008
February 7: Professor Warren Belasco Professor of American Studies at the University of Maryland, will speak on “The Future of Food: Meals to Come.”
Nothing is more frightening than the prospect of running out of food. Reflecting humanity's deep-rooted heritage of food insecurity, there have always been prophets warning us against complacency. And given mounting environmental concerns about population growth, global warming, diminishing returns from fertilizers, soil erosion, water scarcity, agrochemical pollution, and energy shortages, we are right to wonder whether the banquet is over. Will our grandchildren's grandchildren enjoy the cornucopian bounty that most of us take for granted?
”Meals to Come” looks at the way the future of food has been conceived and represented over the past 200 years. Worries about the future of food have been embedded in a diverse array of expressive, prescriptive, and material forms: e.g., utopian and dystopian fiction and film, refereed scientific journals, USDA yearbooks, mass journalism and advertising, nutrition textbooks, Victorian fantasies of a "meal-in-a-pill," world's fairs, Disney amusement parks, supermarket and restaurant architecture, communal gardens, market research, the "kitchen of tomorrow, Space Food, the recent rebirth of organic farmers markets, debates over genetic engineering and other "smart" technologies.
Lecture at 7pm in the Ferguson Music and Theatre Hall. Workshop at 3:30 pm in Madison Hall of the David Student Center. Workshop leader: Professor Scott Pollard
March 5: Screening of PBS documentary film, “Darwin’s Dangerous Idea” about the contemporary struggles between Darwinian and religious conceptions of the origins of the earth. Screening at 7pm in the Ferguson Music and Theatre Hall. Discussion leader: Professor Linda Johnson.
March 18: Professor Kenneth Miller of Brown University, presents “God, Darwin, & Design: Thoughts about America's Continuing Problem with Evolution.”
Evidence supporting the theory of evolution is pervasive in all fields of biology, and allows modern science to place the origin of the human species into its proper scientific context. But evolution remains controversial, especially in the United States, and is widely seen as embracing a worldview that many Americans find objectionable, even reprehensible. Conflicts over the teaching of evolution have become commonplace in many American communities, leading to public battles fought out in local and state elections, and even in federal court. Professor Miller will address the aspects of evolution that seem to provoke such responses, and will suggest that the science of Darwinian evolution can be understood in an entirely different way that might well lead to a reduction in the apparent conflicts between science and religion in our society.
Professor Kenneth Miller, author of the book Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common Ground Between God and Evolution, a lively analysis of the key issues that divide science and religion. He contends that, properly understood, evolution adds depth and meaning not only to a strictly scientific view of the world, but also to a spiritual one. Lecture at 7pm in the Ferguson Music and Theatre Hall. Workshop at 3:30 in Madison Hall of the David Student Center. Workshop leader: Linda Johnson
April 1: Filmmaker Maryann Breschard’s will screen and discuss her probing documentary “Running in High Heels,” (co-sponsored by the School of Business and the Leadership and American Studies.) Through the story of one political candidate, Breschard interviews a variety of female political leaders from left, right and center about the future of feminine political leadership in the United States. Lecture at 7pm at the Ferguson Music and Theatre Hall. Workshop at 3:30 Madison Hall of the David Student Center. Workshop leader: Michelle Barnello
For more information, please see the Dean Parks website at http://provost.cnu.edu/colloquium/ or contact Professor Roberta Rosenberg, Chair at 594-7149 or rrosenb@cnu.edu.
Christopher Newport University is a four-year public university in Newport News, Virginia. CNU enrolls 4,800 students in programs through its College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the Joseph W. Luter III College of Business and Leadership and offers great teaching, small classes and an emphasis on leadership, civic engagement and honor.
Visit us at www.cnu.edu.