Symposia/Tertulias 2007-08

Trinity 100/126,Thursdays 4-5:30pm and Fridays 3-5 pm unless otherwise noted
Director: Troy Jollimore, 898-4506, tjollimore@csuchico.edu

August | September | November | March | April | August

AUG. 31 Friday Tertulia

Andrew Flescher, Religious Studies, and Charles Urbanowicz, emeritus, Anthropology “Why Go to the Galapagos? Why Not?”
Humanities Center Friday Tertulia, 3-5 pm, Trinity 100

The College of Humanities and Fine Arts is sponsoring a tour for students, staff, faculty, and the community to the Galapagos Islands and Quito, Ecuador, January 4-14, 2008. The faculty-in-residence is Professor Flescher, who earned his PhD from Brown University. He has traveled extensively to Brazil and spent one summer studying wildlife in the Amazon River basin. It is possible for CSU, Chico students to earn 1-3 units through the Department of Religious Studies. Professor Urbanowicz has traveled extensively throughout the Pacific, including the Galapagos Islands, and he will share information that can enhance the trip to the Islands, which were made famous by Charles Darwin.

SEP. 28 Friday Tertulia
Beth Spencer, English “Small Presses, Big Pressures: Keeping an Independent Press Afloat in the Age of Amazon.com”
Humanities Center Friday Tertulia, 3-5 pm, Trinity 100*

Spencer, who teaches in the Literary Editing and Publishing Program here and is founder and owner of Bear Star Press in Cohasset, discusses the joys and trials of keeping a small press going in the twenty-first century. She will cover the situation in general with some specific examples from Bear Star and provide information about where not to buy books if one truly supports literary publishing.

Bear Star’s published list follows (poetry remains the focus but there will be more story collections):
NOW, Molly Tenebaum
DEATH OF A MEXICAN & OTHER POEMS, Manuel Paul Lopez
PLATO’S BAD HORSE, Deborah Woodard (former faculty at CSU Chico)
REDEMPTION CENTER (stories), Vincent Craig Wright
THE NOVICE MOURNER, Joshua McKinney
SKUNK TALK, Albert Garcia
THE SOUP OF SOMETHING MISSING, Rick Bursky
KEEL BONE, Maya Khosla
NOWHERE NEAR MOLOKAÌ, Gary Chang
PARTICULATE, Joanne Allred (former faculty at CSU Chico)
THE BOOK OF COMMON BETRAYALS, Lynne Knight
THE BANDSAW RIOTS, Arlitia Jones
CLOSET DRAMA, Kandie St. Germain
THE ARCHIVAL BIRDS, Melissa Kwasny
POEMS IN WHICH, Joseph Di Prisco
PART SONG, Muriel Nelson
ON JOHN MUIR’S TRAIL, Gary Thompson (faculty emeritus, CSU Chico)
AT THE SEAMS, Terri Drake

Chapbooks
LIVING AGAIN, George Keithley (faculty emeritus, CSU Chico)
THE ORPHAN CONDUCTS THE DOVEHOUSE ORCHESTRA, Deborah Woodard
THE BOOK OF RIDDLES (from Boxcar Press, an imprint), Deborah Woodard
BATHING WITH ANTS (from Boxcar), Susan Wooldridge (alumna, CSU Chico)

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NOV. 2 Friday Symposium
Andrew Flescher, Religious Studies, and Daniel Worthen, Psychology “The Altruistic Species”

Humanities Center Friday Symposium co-hosted with the Religious Studies Lecture Series, 3-5 pm, Trinity 100/126*

What motivates altruism? How essential is the phenomenon of altruism to the human experience? Is altruism readily accessible to the ordinary person? In The Altruistic Species (Templeton, 2007), Flescher and Worthen explore these questions through the lenses of four disciplinary perspectives—biology, psychology, philosophy, and religion. In the course of their investigation, they make an extended argument for the existence of altruism against competing theories that construe all ostensible cases of benevolence as self-interest in disguise. The authors consider theories of egoism; the role of genetics and evolutionary biology; the psychological states that induce altruistic behavior; philosophical theories of altruism in normative ethics such as Kantian, utilitarian, and Aristotelian models of moral action; and accounts of love of the neighbor in Christianity and Buddhism. Additionally, they offer a new, comprehensive definition of altruism that is inclusive of the insights of each of these perspectives.

I can say with absolute conviction that in my entire four decades of studying benevolent love and altruism, this is clearly the finest scholarly statement yet presented at the interface of science, philosophy, and religion.—Stephen G. Post, Department of Bioethics, Case Western

MAR. 28
Mahan Mirza, Religious Studies “The Holy Qur’an: The Word as Text”

Humanities Center Friday Symposium co-hosted with the Religious Studies Lecture Series, 3-5 pm, Trinity 100*

Mahan Mirza (PhD, ABD, Yale), with his specialization in the texts and traditions of Islam, joined the faculty in the Religious Studies Department this past fall. His dissertation, which contributes towards more general questions of medieval Islamic thought and its relationship to modernity, consists of a close reading of the works of the medieval Muslim scientist and polymath al-Biruni (d. ca. 1050). Mirza recently edited a special issue of The Muslim World on the theme of “Contemporary American Discourses on Islam: The Politics of Representation.” He is currently serving as the assistant editor for an Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought with Princeton University Press. His future research interest is in examining the use of the Qur’an by Islamic revivalist movements as a vehicle for the revitalization of faith in the modern world.

APR. 3
John Traver, English, Talk on Novelistic Sequels

Humanities Center Thursday Tertulia 4-5:30 pm, Trinity 126*

John Traver joined the Department of English this fall. He graduated with a MAR in Biblical studies from Westminster Theological Seminary in 2001 and earned his PhD in 18th-century British literature from the University of Notre Dame in 2007. Currently, he is researching novelistic sequels written in the 18th century.

AUG. 29
Andrew Flescher, Religious Studies “Passage to Peru”

Humanities Center Friday Tertulia, 3-5 pm, Trinity 100

The College of Humanities and Fine Arts is sponsoring a tour for students, staff, faculty, alums, and the community to Peru including Machu Picchu January 5-15, 2009. The faculty-in-residence is Professor Flescher, who earned his PhD from Brown University. He has traveled extensively to Brazil and spent one summer studying wildlife in the Amazon River basin. This past January he led a group of 35 on an eleven-day trip to Ecuador including the Galapagos Islands. It is possible for CSU, Chico students to earn 1-3 units through the Department of Religious Studies. Flescher will talk about Peru and the upcoming trip.

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*The Humanities Center’s theme for this year—“The Book”—is being underwritten by a generous grant from New Urban Builders, which enables the Center to bring a wide range of outside speakers to campus as well as to host a number of community events.