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Past Events

Wednesday, 11 Feb 2009

The Live Well Collaborative as a New Model for Design Thinking - Craig Vogel
7:00 PM – Kocimski Auditorium, College of Design - Craig Vogel is a professor in the School of Design, the associate dean of research and graduate studies and director of the Center for Design Research and Innovation in the College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning at the University of Cincinnati. He has developed an approach to design that integrates interdisciplinary teaching and research while working with a variety of companies as a consultant for new product development and strategic planning. Vogel is a fellow and past president of the Industrial Designers Society of America. He is the co-author of two books, The Design of Things to Come: How Ordinary People Create Extraordinary Products (Wharton School Publishing, 2005) and Creating Breakthrough Products: Innovation from Product Planning to Program Approval (FT Press, 2001), and "Innovate or else: the new imperative," an article in the Ivey Business Journal Online. Vogel earned an undergraduate degree in psychology from Marist College, Poughkeepsie, N.Y., and a Master of Industrial Design from Pratt Institute. Part of the College of Design's 30th anniversary celebration

Monday, 9 Feb 2009

Living Upstream: The Sustainable Life - Larry Shinn
8:00 PM – Great Hall, Memorial Union - Larry Shinn has been the president of Berea College in Kentucky for the last fourteen years. Under his leadership, Berea has developed a sustainability initiative that has included creating a Sustainability and Environmental Studies Program, completing ecological renovations of many campus buildings, and establishing a residential "ecovillage" for student families. Dr. Shinn will also provide the keynote address for Iowa State's Live Green Symposium beginning at 7:45 a.m. on Feb. 10, 2009, on "Turning Green: Berea College in the 21st Century." The Symposium is free but registration is required. Go to http://www.livegreen.iastate.edu/09/symposium/homepage.php for more information and a registration form. 7 p.m. poster session and reception will precede the lecture.

A River Runs Through It, and Other Adventures: A Reading and Conversation with Annick Smith
7:00 PM – Sun Room, Memorial Union - Annick Smith is a writer, editor, and filmmaker who lives in Montana’s Blackfoot River Valley. Her books include the memoir Homestead; Big Bluestem, Journey into the Tallgrass, written for The Nature Conservancy; the Montana anthology The Last Best Place, coedited with William Kittredge; and the recently published The Wide Open: Prose, Poetry, and Photographs of the Prairie. She was a founding member of the Sundance Film Institute, the executive producer of the feature film Heartland, and a coproducer of Robert Redford’s production of A River Runs Through It. The conversation will be moderated by Professor of English Debra Marquart. A reception hosted by the MFA Program in Creative Writing and the Environment will precede the talk at 6:30 in the South Ballroom. Part of the Symposium on Wildness, Wilderness, and the Creative Imagination.

Of Men and Marshes: A Tribute to Ecologist Paul Errington - James Pritchard and Matthew Sivils
3:00 PM – Sun Room, Memorial Union - Faculty and students honor the life, work, and memory of the ecologist and Iowa State professor Paul L. Errington. Errington was internationally recognized for his work on the population phenomena of vertebrates, especially fur and game species. He became a staff member at Iowa State University in 1932, the same year he received his doctorate from the University of Wisconsin, and was a professor of zoology at Iowa State at the time of his death in 1962. He was the author of four books, including Of Predation and Life and Of Men and Marshes. The tribute will be led by James Pritchard, Departments of Landscape Architecture and Natural Resource Ecology and Management, and Matthew Sivils, Department of English, and include short readings from Errington’s work. Part of the Symposium on Wildness, Wilderness, and the Creative Imagination.

The Artist as Environmental Activist - Annick Smith, David T. Hanson, Shannon Ramsey, Clark Wolf
1:00 PM – Sun Room, Memorial Union - The artist is trained to watch, listen, observe, and report, but what are the obligations of artists to act, agitate, and intervene? Artists and environmentalists David Hanson, Shannon Ramsey, Annick Smith and Clark Wolf will discuss how they came to a point of understanding and reconciliation with issues of environment in their work. Writer and photographer David Hanson taught for over a decade at the Rhode Island School of Design in the department of Photography and Landscape Architecture. Shannon Ramsey is the President, CEO and cofounder of Trees Forever, a national non-profit organization based in Marion, Iowa. Annick Smith is a writer, editor, and filmmaker. She coproduced the movie A River Runs through It, and her latest book is The Wide Open: Prose, Poetry, and Photographs of the Prairie. Clark Wolf is the Bioethics Program Director and Associate Professor of Philosophy at Iowa State. The conversation will be moderated by Iowa State associate professor creative writing Stephen Pett. Part of the Symposium on Wildness, Wilderness and the Creative Imagination.

Writing across International Boundaries - Jennifer Kwon Dobbs and Heather Derr-Smith
10:30 AM – Sun Room, Memorial Union - What are the responsibilities of authors who travel internationally and write on global themes? Is it possible for authors to see the world and represent it beyond the limitations of their own cultural blinders? Poets Jennifer Kwon Dobbs and Heather Derr-Smith share their stories and writings about the environmental degradation and political upheaval they’ve witnessed around the world. Jennifer Kwon Dobbs was born in Won Ju Si, South Korea. Her debut collection, Paper Pavilion (2007), received the White Pine Press Poetry Prize. She is an assistant professor of creative writing at St. Olaf College and lives in Minneapolis. Heather Derr-Smith received her undergraduate degree in art history from the University of Virginia and her M.F.A. in poetry from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Her first poetry collection, Each End of the World, features poems about the Bosnian war in the 1990s. Part of the Symposium on Wildness, Wilderness and the Creative Imagination.

Hiddenscapes: Glaciers and Their Impact on the Iowa Landscape - Kathleen Woida and Barbara Haas
9:00 AM – Sun Room, Memorial Union - State geologist Kathleen Woida and Iowa State creative writing professor Barbara Haas will explore the impact of glacial activity on the landscape of Iowa. While no one witnessed the extraordinary process that formed our contemporary Iowa landscape, it is possible to piece together parts of the dramatic geological events through examination of bedrock and sub-soil evidence. Through slide show imagery, scientific data, music, and creative writing, Haas and Woida will suggest and evoke the shape and movement of the hiddenscape of Iowa glaciology. Part of the Symposium on Wildness, Wilderness, and the Creative Imagination.

Sunday, 8 Feb 2009

Who Owns the American West? A Reading and Conversation with William Kittredge
7:00 PM – Sun Room/South Ballroom, Memorial Union - Author William Kittredge has for years been a prominent voice in the literature of the American West, with writings that explore the theme of sustainability and its relationship to culture, history, and human nature. His many books include a memoir, Hole in the Sky; two collections of essays, Owning It All and Who Owns the West as well as a collection of short stories and the novel The Willow Field. He was coproducer of the movie A River Runs Through It with Annick Smith. They also coedited The Last Best Place: A Montana Anthology. Kittredge taught at the University of Montana for twenty-nine years, retiring as Regents Professor of English and Creative Writing in 1997. The conversation will be moderated by Benjamin Percy. Part of the Symposium on Wildness, Wilderness, and the Creative Imagination.

Wasteland: Meditations on a Ravaged Landscape - David T. Hanson
2:00 PM – Brunnier Art Museum, Scheman Building - David T. Hanson will discuss photographic works from his monograph, Waste Land: Meditations on a Ravaged Landscape, several of which are featured in the Brunnier exhibition, Imaging a Shattered Earth: Contemporary Photography and the Environmental Debate. Hanson’s photographs portray some of the hidden environmental hazards of the United States—chemical wastes, the exhausted land resulting from coal mining, and various other consequences of industrialization and militarization. The Waste Land series is composed of triptychs, each work consisting of a geological survey map, an aerial photograph taken by Hanson, and a description of the site supplied by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). These works expose the most polluted places in the United States, sites first corrupted by industrialization, then neglected by legislators. Part of the Symposium on Wildness, Wilderness, and the Creative Imagination.

Writers Grow Here: Flyaway "Home Voices" Award
1:00 PM – Brunnier Art Museum, Scheman Building - Writers in the MFA Program in Creative Writing and Environment will read from their creative work featuring themes of environmental imagination. The readers were selected from a competitive pool of submissions by the staff of Flyway, a journal of writing and environment in which the top winner’s work will also be published in 2009. Part of the Symposium on Wildness, Wilderness, and the Creative Imagination.