Search For Lectures

From Athlete to Adventure Writer - Lynne Cox and Dr. Gabriella Miotto
7:00 PM – Sun Room, Memorial Union - Lynne Cox, athlete and author of Swimming to Antarctica, Grayson, and South with the Sun, is known for her unique ability to perform open-water swims in frigid waters. She has used her endurance swims as tools of diplomacy to promote cooperation between countries and is the recipient of the Susan B. Anthony Award for Leadership. She was inducted into the Swimming Hall of Fame in 2000. Dr. Gabriella Miotto, is a practicing family physician and served as Lynne Cox's personal physician on several of her open-water swims. She specializes in community and integrative medicine and uses poetry, art and dance therapies with her patients. Her photographs from Cox's Antarctic swims were featured in The New Yorker. Their joint presentation will include a slide show of those images and footage from the Antarctic swims. Part of the Women and Gender Studies 35th Anniversary Celebration.

Healing and the Imagination - Dr. Gabriella Miotto
4:00 PM – South Ballroom, Memorial Union - An interactive presentation led by Dr. Gabriella Miottto, a family physician, humanitarian, activist and poet. Dr. Miotto focuses on community and integrative medicine and uses poetry, art and dance therapies with her patients and trauma victims. She has worked with refugees in both Kosovo and Guatemala and is currently on staff at the Children's Clinic in Long Beach, California. Her work appears in Pop Art: An Anthology of Southern California Poetry. Part of the Women and Gender Studies 35th Anniversary Celebration.

Piled Higher & Deeper: The PhD Movie - Film Screening
7:00 PM – 0001 Carver Hall - The PhD Movie, a film adaptation of the popular online comic strip Piled Higher and Deeper by Jorge Cham, introduces audiences to the unique and funny culture of academia. Filmed on location at the California Institute of Technology, it follows four graduate students as they struggle to find balance between research, teaching and their personal lives. Jorge Cham, the author of the Piled Higher and Deeper comic strip, has been called the Dilbert of academia. His strip appears in numerous university newspapers and chronicles the struggles and humor of the lives of graduate students and stressed out academics.

Understanding the Fossil Record of Evolution: From Darwin to Today - Gene Hunt
7:00 PM – Curtiss Hall Auditorium, Room 127 - Gene Hunt is a distinguished lecturer with the Paleontological Society. His research focuses on how short-term ecological and evolutionary changes translate into the long-term patterns that paleontologists can see in the fossil record. Hunt is the curator of Ostracoda at the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History. He studies the ecological response of deep-sea crustaceans to the more recent rapid climate change and the evolutionary response, shown in body size, to more long-term, sustained climate changes. His research explores how evolution by natural selection should look in the geological record as well as how fast lineages and communities change in the fossil record. Hunt earned his PhD from the University of Chicago.Part of the Department of Geological & Atmospheric Sciences Distinguished Lecture Series.

Jeans, Genes, and Genomes: Exploring the Mysteries of Cotton - Jonathan Wendel
7:30 PM – Sun Room, Memorial Union - Jonathan F. Wendel is professor and chair of the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Organismal Biology at Iowa State. His research focuses on mechanisms by which flowering plant genomes and phenotypes diversify, with a special focus on the phenomenon of genome doubling, or polyploidy. Much of his work centers on cotton, in which two diploid and two polyploid species were each independently domesticated thousands of years ago. Cotton thus provides a model framework for exploring the origin of form and diversity in nature, human domestication, and the evolutionary consequences of genome doubling. College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Dean's Lecture Series.

The Women's Room - Alex Warner
7:00 PM – South Ballroom, Memorial Union - Alex Warner was recently appointed project historian for the Women's Leather History Project at the Leather Archives and Museum in Chicago and is curator of the project's first museum exhibit, A Room of Her Own. Warner earned her PhD in history from Rutgers University. Her research focused on the intersections of the politics of feminism and sexual liberation, and she has taught courses in the History and Women's and Gender Studies Departments at Rutgers, Seton Hall, and San Francisco State University as well as for the Writing Program and the Institute for Research on Women at Rutgers. Adult Content

Civility in a Troubled Economy - Jim Leach
4:00 PM – Kocimski Auditorium, 101 College of Design - Jim Leach is the ninth chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Prior to being nominated by President Obama for the post, Leach was a professor at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University and interim director of the Institute of Politics at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Leach's brief stint in academia was preceded by thirty years of service as one of Iowa's representatives in the United States Congress, where he chaired the Banking and Financial Services Committee, the Subcommittee on Asian and Pacific Affairs, and the Congressional-Executive Commission on China. Leach attended Princeton University, the School of Advanced International Studies of Johns Hopkins, and the London School of Economics.

Only a Theory? Evolution and the Battle for America's Soul - Kenneth R. Miller
8:00 PM – Sun Room, Memorial Union - Winner of the 2011 Stephen Jay Gould Prize and a repeat guest on The Colbert Report, biology professor Kenneth R. Miller, is a passionate defender of evolution and the scientific method. He has served as a key witness in several high-profile evolution-creationist court cases, including the 2005 Dover "Intelligent Design" case, which ultimately forestalled further attempts to mandate the teaching of intelligent design in high school science curricula. Miller is well known for his widely used high-school textbook Biology, coauthored with Joseph Levine. He has also written about the relationship between science and religion in Finding Darwin's God. His most recent book is Only a Theory - Evolution and the Battle for America's Soul. Miller received his PhD in biology from the University of Colorado and taught at Harvard University before joining the faculty at Brown University. Part of the National Affairs Series. An audio recording of this presentation is not available due to equipment malfunction during the taping process.

An Evening with Edgardo Rivera and Son de Trova
7:00 PM – Wesley Hall, Collegiate United Methodist Church, 2622 W. Lincoln Way, Ames - Edgardo Rivera, accompanied by Son de Trova, will perform and discuss the history and cultural significance of one of Puerto Rico's most traditional musical genres. Son de Trova is certified by the Puerto Rican Culture Institute as one of the official groups that disseminates Puerto Rican autochthonous music. In 1997, Rivera was named champion of the prestigious Bacardi Fair, and in 2009 he was chosen to participate in "Prefiero Ser Trovador," a production by Silverio Perez. Trova grew out of the 19th-century tradition of groups of itinerant musicians, trovadores, who moved around earning their living by singing and playing the guitar. The new trova music of Latin America often has a social or political message. They will also be performing that night at the Social Salsa After Party in the Sun Room at 9 p.m. Rivera's and Son de Trova's performance is part of the Puerto Rican Student Association's Cultural Night, which runs from 6:00-9:00 p.m. and includes traditional food and dancing.

Friday Night Music with Edgardo Rivera and Son de Trova
6:30 PM – Gallery, Memorial Union - Edgardo Rivera, accompanied by Son de Trova, will perform and discuss the history and cultural significance of one of Puerto Rico's most traditional musical genres. Son de Trova is certified by the Puerto Rican Culture Institute as one of the official groups that disseminates Puerto Rican autochthonous music. They will also be performing Saturday, November 5, 6:30-8:30 p.m. in the Collegiate United Methodist Church Lower Level and at the Social Salsa After Party that night at 9 p.m. in the Sun Room, Memorial Union.