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Past Events

Thursday, 22 Sep 2011

Radical Marxist, Radical Feminist, Radical Love: What Mother Teresa Taught Me about Social Justice - Mary Poplin
7:00 PM – Stephens Auditorium - Mary Poplin is a professor of education at Claremont Graduate University, where she has served as director of the master's program in teacher education and dean of the School of Educational Studies. In 1996 Poplin worked for two months with Mother Teresa in Calcutta, India, to understand why her Missionaries of Charity describe their ministry to the poor as religious work and not social work. Poplin later published the book Finding Calcutta about her experience. She is a frequent speaker in Veritas Forums. The Veritas Forums are university events that engage students and faculty in discussions of life's hardest questions. Veritas Forum

Wednesday, 21 Sep 2011

The Mystical Arts of Tibet: The Symbolism of the Sand Mandala - Head Lama of the Drepung Loseling Monastery
8:15 PM – Sun Room, Memorial Union - Monks from the the Drepung Loseling Monastery will create a mandala sand painting in the lobby of the Memorial Union Monday, September 19 through Thursday, September 22, working 10 a.m. - 5 p.m. daily. The process consists of opening ceremony with chants, music and mantra recitation and ends with the dismantling of the mandala and dispersal of the sand. Millions of grains of sand are poured from traditional metal funnels called chakpur to create a finished mandala approximately five feet by five feet in size. Formed of a traditional prescribed iconography that includes geometric shapes and ancient spiritual symbols, the sand-painted mandala is used as a tool for re-consecrating the earth and its inhabitants.

Inuit Culture of North Canada - Peter Irniq
7:00 PM – Great Hall, Memorial Union - Peter Irniq is a longtime resident of the Kivalliq Region of Nunavut in Canada's Northwest Territories and a member of the indigenous Inuit peoples. He will be in Ames to build three inuksuit, or "signposts of the north," in local parks between September 18 and October 1. Inuksuit are large monuments often made of unworked stone that have been used by the Inuit people as guides in the Arctic, marking trails, caches of food, nearby people, or the migration routes of caribou. Irniq, a former representative in the Northwest Territories legislature, has served as the executive director of the Inuit Cultural Institute and in the Department of Education, Culture and Employment for the Government of Northwest Territories. His most recent post with that agency is Deputy Minister of Culture, Language, Elders and Youth, where his mandate is to protect traditional Inuit culture and language.

Saturday, 17 Sep 2011

MYTHBUSTERS with Grant Imahara
7:00 PM – Stephens Auditorium - Grant Imahara, a member of the Discovery Channel's MythBusters team, will show clips from the show and explain how they do it all. Imahara is a former animatronics engineer and model maker for George Lucas's Industrial Light & Magic, the special-effects shop, where he worked on such movies as The Lost World: Jurassic Park, Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines and A.I.: Artificial Intelligence. He also worked on The Matrix Reloaded and Revolutions. Imahara earned a BS in electrical engineering from the University of Southern California. Mythbusters is a science and technology television series that takes a light-hearted look at modern misconceptions and the bizarre claims of Urban Legends and puts them to the test. Engineers' Week.

Thursday, 15 Sep 2011

Sex+Money: A National Search for Human Worth
7:00 PM – Great Hall, Memorial Union - Sex+Money is a documentary about the sex trafficking of minors in the United States and the modern-day abolitionist movement fighting to stop it. It was filmed by a group of photojournalists who traveled cross-country conducting interviews with federal agents, victims, politicians, activists, psychologists and porn-stars, among others. The group previously produced a collection of photographs and stories by the same title that provided a global perspective on human trafficking. While researching that book, the journalists were shocked to discover that the same injustice was happening on their own soil. Currently, between 100,000 and 300,000 minors are being sexually exploited across America. The sexual exploitation of children has become the nation's fastest-growing form of organized crime. A discussion following the 90-min film will include a victim and her family member, an FBI special agent, and a social worker.

Wednesday, 14 Sep 2011

A Campaign Narrative: Why Iowa Matters - or Not! Clarence Page
8:00 PM – Sun Room, Memorial Union - Clarence Page, the 1989 Pulitzer Prize winner for Commentary, is a columnist syndicated nationally by Tribune Media Services and a member of the Chicago Tribune's editorial board. He is a frequent contributor of essays to The News Hour with Jim Lehrer and has been a regular on such news panel programs as PBS's The McLaughlin Group, NBC's The Chris Matthews Show, ABC's Nightline and BET's Lead Story. Page worked as a reporter and assistant city editor for the Chicago Tribune early in his career. In 1972 he participated in the paper's Task Force series on vote fraud, which won the Pulitzer. He is the author of Showing My Color: Impolite Essays on Race and Identity. 2011 Chamberlin Lecture

A Histo-Musical Lecture about the Gullah/Geechee - Queen Quet Marquetta L. Goodwine
6:00 PM – Alliant Energy-Lee Liu Auditorium, Howe Hall - Queen Quet Marquetta L. Goodwine, the selected and elected official head-of-state and spokesperson for the Gullah/Geechee people, uses activism through the arts to educate global audiences on human rights and the continuation of cultural communities. Her presentation, "Gullah/Geechee: Crakin Teet wid de Worl Bout Who WEBE" is about the distinctive group of Black Americans who live in farming and fishing communities on the Sea Islands from Jacksonville, North Carolina to Jacksonville, Florida. They are known for the preservation of their African cultural and linguistic heritage. Queen Quet is the founder of the cultural advocacy organization the Gullah/Geechee Sea Island Coalition. Her "histo-musical presentations" use the arts to educate audiences on human rights and cultural continuation. Part of the Technology, Globalization and Culture Series.

Monday, 12 Sep 2011

Creating an Infrastructure for Peace - Dorothy Maver
7:00 PM – Sun Room, Memorial Union - Dorothy Maver is an international educator and peacebuilder. She is the president of the National Peace Academy, a founding member of the Leadership Council of the Global Alliance for Ministries and Departments of Peace, and coauthor of the book Conscious Education: The Bridge to Freedom. The lecture will cover peace building; catalyzing a movement for peace activism; and personal, social, political and ecological peace learning. Maver will also address the questions Is peace a human right? Is it possible in our world? Part of the World Affairs Series

Thursday, 8 Sep 2011

Investigation of Magnetic Reversal at Almost the Nanoscale - E. Dan Dahlberg
5:00 PM – Sun Room, Memorial Union - E. Dan Dahlberg is a professor in the School of Physics and Astronomy in the College of Science and Engineering at the University of Minnesota. He is also director of the Magnetic Microscopy Center (MMC). The MMC applies magnetic force microscopy techniques to a variety of outstanding physics problems such as the dynamics of single domain magnetic particles, micromagnetics of domain structures and magnetic logic devices. His active research program involves a substantial effort in spin transport in magnetic multilayers and films and ferromagnetic/antiferromagnetic exchange coupling. Dahlberg has a master's and doctorate in physics from UCLA and a master's in physics from the University of Texas at Arlington where he earned his undergraduate degree in physics. Part of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Distinguished Lecture Series.

Tuesday, 6 Sep 2011

Religion and Violence: A New Theory for an Old Problem - Hector Avalos
6:30 PM – South Ballroom, Memorial Union - Hector Avalos is a professor of religious studies at Iowa State University whose books include The End of Biblical Studies and Fighting Words: The Origins of Religious Violence. He received a Master of Theological Studies from the Harvard Divinity School and a doctorate in biblical studies at Harvard.