2006-2007 Schedule

 

Cultural Enhancement Series

(2006-2007)

         

 

PLEASE SHARE THIS MESSAGE WITH YOUR STUDENTS

The Cultural Enhancement Committee is delighted to present the 2006-2007 Cultural Enhancement Series.

 

Abraham Verghese, M.D.: The Search for Meaning in a Medical Life

                                Tuesday, November 14, 7:30 p.m.
                                           Van Meter Auditorium

Few books address concerns of health care and society more powerfully than Abraham Verghese's 1994 publication My Own Country: A Doctor's Story of a Town and Its People in the Age of AIDS (Simon & Schuster), the autobiographical account of Verghese's encounter with the emergence of AIDS in Johnson City, Tennessee. Ethiopian born, of Christian south Indian parentage, Verghese writes eloquently of the issues of identity faced by both patient and physician in a flawed system of health care delivery. His second book, The Tennis Partner (Harper Collins Publishers, 1998), is an equally compelling memoir exploring the power and limitations of friendship, and the dynamics of addiction. In 2002, after a stint as a professor of medicine and chief of infectious diseases at Texas Tech Health Sciences Center in El Paso, Texas, Verghese became the founding director of Center for Medical Humanities and Ethics, located on the campus of The University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, Esquire, Sports Illustrated, Granta, TALK, The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Atlantic Monthly.

For more of Dr. Verghese's views on the value of humanities in a medical education, please visit the Center for Medical Humanities & Ethics' Q&A with Dr. Abraham Verghese: http://www.texashumanities.org/questions.html

For a profile of Dr. Verghese, please visit http://www.saja.org/verghese.html

This lecture is co-sponsored by the College of Health and Human Services Dean's Office and the South Central Kentucky Area Health Education Center.

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Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

Monday, April 23, 2007, 7:30 p.m.
Van Meter Auditorium

Azar Nafisi's national bestseller, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books (Random House, 2003), electrified its readers with a compassionate and often harrowing portrait of the Islamic revolution in Iran.

Nafisi taught literature at the University of Tehran, the Free Islamic University, and Allameh Tabatabai where she conducted workshops for women students on the relationship between culture and human rights. These workshops in turn formed the basis of a new human rights curriculum in Iran.

Nafisi left Iran in 1997. She is currently a visiting Professor and the director of the SAIS Dialogue Project at the Foreign Policy Institute of Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C., where she teaches courses on the relation between culture and politics. Nafisi has written for The New York Times, Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal.

For interviews with Dr. Nafisi, please click on the following links: http://www.identitytheory.com/interviews/birnbaum139.php and http://www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcript_nafisi.html

Dr. Nafisi has recently become a figure of political controversy because of her memoirs: learn more at the Chronicle of Higher Education http://chronicle.com/free/v53/i08/08a01201.htm

This lecture is co-sponsored by the Women's Studies Program's Catherine Coogan Ward Visiting Professorship.

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Los Lobos in Concert   

                           Wednesday, March 14, 2007, 7:30 p.m.
                                               Van Meter Auditorium

Grammy Award-winning band Los Lobos has stretched musical definitions for more than a quarter of a century. Their innovative blending of Mexican traditional music with Tejano, rock, folk, blues and R&B has enthralled critics and fans from every background. Cesar Rosas, Conrad Lozano, David Hidalgo, and Louie Perez have been friends and musical collaborators since their teen years in East Los Angeles, giving their sound a coherence and depth born of long association. Saxophonist-keyboardist Steve Berlin joined the band in 1983. Their contribution to the soundtracks of the films La Bamba and Desperado brought the band to the attention of the public, but from their important first release, Just Another Band from East LA, to their most recent CD, The Town and the City, Los Lobos has always been a major force in American popular music.

Visit the band's website for more information: http://www.loslobos.org/site/

For a review of the band's latest work, go to
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/music/reviews/los-lobos-the-town-and-the-city/

This concert is co-sponsored by the Campus Activities Board.

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In a year filled with important milestone celebrations, the Cultural Enhancement Committee celebrates its tenth anniversary. The Series has brought to campus over 30 well-known scientists, journalists, historians, and performance groups in its 10-year history, and the Committee looks forward to continuing its selection of provocative speakers and extraordinary performers in the years to come.

If you have someone in mind you'd like for the Committee to consider bringing to campus, please email mina.doerner@wku.edu

For more information on the Cultural Enhancement Series, please call Mina Doerner at 745-5204. All events are free. Seating is open (sorry, no reserved seating is available). Please pass this message on to students and all interested folks.

We look forward to seeing you at this year's Series!

David Lee

Chair, Cultural Enhancement Committee

 

 

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