Browse All Upcoming Lectures

Ecological Economics: Creating a Sustainable and Desirable Future - Robert Costanza
8:00 PM @ Great Hall, Memorial Union - Robert Costanza is the Gund Professor of Ecological Economics and Director of the Gund Institute for Ecological Economics at the University of Vermont. Prior to 2002, he was at the University of Maryland, where he directed the Institute for Ecological Economics and was a professor in the Center for Environmental Science and in the Biology Department. Costanza is cofounder and past-president of the International Society for Ecological Economics (ISEE) and for many years served as the chief editor of its journal. His awards and distinctions include a Kellogg National Fellowship, the Society for Conservation Biology Distinguished Achievement Award, and selection as a Pew Scholar in Conservation and the Environment. Costanza received his Ph.D. from the University of Florida in systems ecology. He also has a master's degree in architecture and urban and regional planning from the University of Florida.The 2008 Pesek Colloquium on Sustainable Agriculture.

Banned Book Jeopardy! - The Game
7:00 PM @ Sun Room, Memorial Union - Join a Banned Book Week battle between two teams of literary mavens as they attempt to answer questions about banned books and their authors. Panelists include Ames Tribune editor Dave Kraemer and Ames Tribune reviewer and Meredith Books editor Steve Sullivan. Barbara Mack of the Greenlee School of Journalism will emcee. Questions developed by Iowa State's very own $10,000 Pyramid winner, Fern Kupfer, associate professor of English. Banned books will be on display and available for purchase.

An Evening of Spoken Word - Henry Rollins
8:00 PM @ Stephens Auditorium - Doors open at 7:00 pm - Henry Rollins is a post-punk renaissance man. In addition to making albums with the Rollins Band, he writes books and poetry, performs spoken-word tours, and appears in movies and on television. The former lead singer for Black Flag became a kind of father figure for many alternative bands on the strength of albums like The End of Silence, Weight and Come In and Burn. He hosts the weekly radio show Harmony in My Head and recently finished the second season of his television talk show. Rollins, who won a Grammy Award for his spoken-word performance, is on a new world tour titled Provoked: An Evening of Quintessentially American Opinionated Editorializing and Storytelling.

Strengthening the University's Public Mission: Sustainability through Community Engagement - Scott Peters
8:00 PM @ Sun Room, Memorial Union - Scott Peters is an associate professor of education at Cornell University. Previously, he served for ten years as Program Director of the University of Illinois YMCA, where he worked on a variety of civic education and community development initiatives. His current research examines the changing social, political, and cultural roles of academic institutions and their professionals, especially the nature and significance of the land grant university. Peters holds a Ph.D. in Educational Policy and Administration from the University of Minnesota. Part of the Center for Excellence in the Arts and Humanities Series: Sustaining the Earth.

An Evening with Adrienne Rich
8:00 PM @ Great Hall, Memorial Union - Adrienne Rich is a poet, nonfiction writer and feminist icon. Her poetry and prose are taught in literature, creative writing, and gender and gay studies courses across the country and abroad. In 1951 she received the Yale Younger Poets Award. Since then her list of honors and awards has included the Lannan Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the Common Wealth Award in Literature, the National Book Award, the Tanning Award for Mastery in the Art of Poetry, the Bollingen Prize for Poetry, a MacArthur Fellowship, and the National Book Foundation's Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. She is the author of more than sixteen volumes of poetry, including Diving into the Wreck and The Dream of a Common Language. Her works of nonfiction prose include Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution and What Is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics. Rich's new book of poems, Telephone Ringing in the Labyrinth, was released last fall. The 2008 Goldtrap Lecture. Please also join us for: Rewriting the World: Personal, Poetic, Political An Informal Meeting and Discussion with Adrienne Rich Tuesday, September 23, 2008, 10:00 a.m. Campanile Room, Memorial Union

Rewriting the World: Personal, Poetic, Political - A Discussion with Adrienne Rich
10:00 AM @ Campanile Room, Memorial Union - This informal meeting is an opportunity for questions and discussion with poet and feminist icon Adrienne Rich. Rich's poetry and prose are taught in literature, creative writing, and gender and gay studies courses across the country and abroad. In 1951 she received the Yale Younger Poets Award. Since then her list of honors and awards has included the Lannan Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the Common Wealth Award in Literature, the National Book Award, the Tanning Award for Mastery in the Art of Poetry, the Bollingen Prize for Poetry, a MacArthur Fellowship, and the National Book Foundation's Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. She is the author of more than sixteen volumes of poetry, including Diving into the Wreck and The Dream of a Common Language. Her works of nonfiction prose include Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution and What Is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics. Rich's new book of poems, Telephone Ringing in the Labyrinth, was released last fall.

Enrique's Journey and America's Immigration Dilemma - Sonia Nazario
8:00 PM @ Sun Room, Memorial Union - Sonia Nazario, a projects reporter for the Los Angeles Times, won a Pulitzer Prize for her series on the experiences of Latin American children who immigrate to join their parents in the United States. The series was the basis for her book Enrique's Journey, which tells the story of a Honduran boy's struggle to reach his mother in the United States. She has spent more than two decades reporting and writing about social issues, including children of drug-addicted parents and hunger among California schoolchildren. Nazario grew up in Kansas and in Argentina and began her career at the Wall Street Journal before moving to the Los Angeles Times. She has a master's degree in Latin American studies from the University of California, Berkeley. Part of the Latino Heritage Month Celebration.

Can Capitalism Save the Planet? - Ted Steinberg
8:00 PM @ Ames City Auditorium, 515 Clark Ave - Ted Steinberg, the Adeline Barry Davee Distinguished Professor of History and Professor of Law at Case Western Reserve University, has worked as a U.S. environmental historian for nearly twenty years. His talk will examine the roots of modern ecological change and the emergence of a new, more business-friendly strand of environmental thinking. Many of Steinberg's recent publications focus on the intersection of environmental and social history. They include American Green: The Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Lawn, Down to Earth: Nature's Role in American History and Acts of God: The Unnatural History of Natural Disaster in America. Steinberg holds a PhD from Brandeis University in the history of American civilization. Part of the Center for Excellence in the Arts and Humanities Series: Sustaining the Earth.

Challenging Chomsky: Has a Remote Amazonian Language Changed our Understanding of Culture, Grammar, and Thinking? - Daniel Everett
8:00 PM @ Sun Room, Memorial Union - Daniel L. Everett is chair of the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, and a professor of anthropology and linguistics at Illinois State University. Everett began his linguistics work in 1977 as a missionary with SIL International (Summer Institute of Linguistics) in Brazil, where he studied the indigenous language Pirahã. He eventually began and completed an Sc.D. in linguistics at the University of Campinas (UNICAMP). His current research is concerned with understanding how cultural values constrain language. Everett has concluded that Noam Chomsky's framework of universal grammar, the fundamental principle of recursion in particular, didn't obtain in Pirahã. His 2005 article in Current Anthropology, titled "Cultural Constraints on Grammar and Cognition in Pirahã," has caused a controversy in the field of linguistics. The 2007-08 Quentin Johnson Lecture.

The Supreme Court under Chief Justice Roberts - Neal Katyal
8:00 PM @ Sun Room, Memorial Union - Neal Katyal is an expert in national security law, the American Constitution, the Geneva Conventions, and the role of the president and Congress after 9/11. He successfully challenged the policy of military trials at Guantanamo Bay Naval Station, Cuba. On June 29, 2006, the Supreme Court sided with him by a 5-3 vote, finding that President Bush's tribunals violated the constitutional separation of powers, domestic military law, and international law. Katyal attended Yale Law School and is currently a professor at Georgetown University Law School. He served as National Security Adviser in the U.S. Justice Department, was co-counsel in the Supreme Court presidential election dispute of 2000, and represented the deans of most major private law schools in the landmark University of Michigan affirmative-action case. Constitution Day Lecture and Part of the National Affairs Series: How Will America Change?