Professor Jeannine D. Uzzi, Honors 101 faculty and Chair of the Classics Department, will present a lecture titled: “Greek Sexuality: the Unexpected Marriage of Honors, Classics, and Pornography”
7pm, Payson Smith 44
Free and open to the public
Honors assistant director, Beth Round is featured in an aritcle about online networking in the retirement section of the Thursday, October 15th, 2009 NYTimes. Read the article online here.
The article discusses a growing trend of older generations consulting with younger generations on the use of social networking tools like blogs, Facebook and Twitter to promote businesses or build a second career online.
Mac McCabe is a consultant for national sustainable businesses and needed a new venue for his ideas and contacts. Beth and Mac met to discuss what he needed and the most effective, cost-friendly way to jump into the exciting work of social media. She helped him create a blog that is now up and running as well as a presence on Facebook and Twitter. Go visit his site MACMCCABE.COM.
Beth Round has been blogging personally and professionally since 2001. Right now she is focused on the USM Honors blog but occaisonally updates her personal blog about zombies: dieorama.com
In 1992, shortly after independence was declared from Yugoslavia, the Republic of Slovenia erased nearly 18,000 people from the register of permanent residence. These people – many of whom had been born elsewhere in Yugoslavia – were effectively rendered stateless. Activists and researchers Barbara Beznec and Andrej Kurnik will discuss the efforts of the Association of the Erased to seek justice in the broader context of European struggles for migrant rights.
Thursday, October 15th, 2009
7-9pm
Moot Court Room, Law Building
Free and Open to the Public
Contact: Dusan Bjelic (207) 699-8271
Jennifer Clarke Kosak of Bowdoin College gave a lecture on Greek Medical Texts Wednesday, October 7, 2009 at 7:00pm in Masterton Hall Rm 113 on the Portland Campus. This event was hosted by the faculty of Honors 101: Jerry Conway, Ron Schmidt and Jeannine Diddle Uzzi.
Refreshments were partially funded by a grant from The Davis Foundation.
Phone: 207-780-4189
Email: bround@usm.maine.edu
Listen to the lecture here.
This spring Honors is offering a new course that satisfies the D requirement. It will be taught by Professor George Caffentzis from Philosophy.
HON 105D: Interdisciplinary Introduction to Logic and Mathematics
History, social thought, literature and the arts are the initial paths to understanding logical and mathematical concepts and systems. These concepts and systems will then be used to solve basic problems in everyday life and in academic research, from representing arguments in scholarly texts to determining the odds of winning a hand in a game of chance to assessing scientific hypotheses. Special emphasis will be placed on developing the skill of detecting logical and statistical fallacies. Finally, the scope and limits of logical and mathematical systems will be studied.
Prerequisite: This course is open to any USM student with successful completion of the University’s mathematics proficiency requirement. Students who successfully complete Hon105D are then eligible to move on to Honors 201K.
Click here to listen to the lecture given by Professor Ron Schmidt and Political Science student Erica Sawyer on Spike Lee’s film Do the Right Thing.
We will be posting futures lectures given by Jennifer Clarke Kosak and Professor Jeannine D. Uzzi in October.
Honors101 (the Entry-Year Experience for Honors students) went through a major revision this year and has emerged as a course that looks at ethics and cultural identity. Students recently watched Spike Lee’s groundbreaking 1989 film Do the Right Thing and Dr. Schmidt will discuss the political and ethical questions of race in the US (with some nods to 5th century Athens, another aspect of Hon101).
Erica Sawyer, a student in Political Science, presented her research on the critical reaction and political reception of Spike Lee’s film.
USM Honors is happy to present a new feature this year to our growing learning community that invites students, faculty and staff from all areas, alumni and interested members of the public to be part of a program called: The Honors Read.
Faculty and student representatives chose the book Things Fall Apart by Nigerian author Chinua Achebe as the vehicle for ongoing open discussions of issues that arise from the subjects within the book and the way a shared reading can create opportunities to learn more about ourselves and others.
The first community discussion will be Tuesday, September 15thfrom 6:30-8pm in the 7th Floor Events Room of the Glickman Library
Portland Campus
In addition to the Library discussions there is also an online community Discussion Board. Please join (it’s free) and offer discussion topics and responses as well as links to related articles and events.
“The novelist Chinua Achebe, a fine stylish and an astute social critic, is one of the best-known African writers in the West and his novels are often assigned in university courses.
Nigerian novelist and poet, whose works explore the impact of European culture on African society. Achebe’s unsentimental, often ironic books vividly convey the traditions and speech of the Ibo people. Born in Ogidi, Nigeria, Achebe was educated at the University College of Ibadan (now the University of Ibadan).
He subsequently taught at various universities in Nigeria and the United States. Achebe wrote his first novel, Things Fall Apart (1958), partly in response to what he saw as inaccurate characterizations of Africa and Africans by British authors. The book describes the effects on Ibo society of the arrival of European colonizers and missionaries in the late 1800s. ”
To continue reading go here.
If you plan to participate or have any questions, please RSVP to Beth Round or call: 780-4189
Post graduation, given the economic recession and my flustered scramble to find a job, I found myself doing that thing that I had promised myself I would never do again, work in a fine dining restaurant—face to face with some of that mutual exploitation we find in the market of lavish consumption and financial gain—somewhat akin to those relationships which I had struggled to dissect in my Honors thesis “Disconnections of Desiring: Consumer Society and Global Labor Exploitation”—those relationships in contemporary capitalist society that excessive consumption and the manipulation of consumer tendencies manifest—massive amounts of perpetual and often shared exploitation; this, to me, now more than ever, is apparent in the world of hundred dollar bottles of wine in an economic recession.
As a fine dining employee one is at once the exploited and the exploiter—simultaneously sweatshop slave and financial opportunist/manipulator (a car salesman is another example of this)—I was living my own personal hell.
But what is it about the restaurant business that always has its labor force crawling back. “The money is just so good,” we say. “It’s the only way to make money around here.” etc. etc.
During this recent but brief stint I realized that I was only living out those unfair tactless assumptions made about philosophy students by either concerned or judgmental peers and elders. “What are you going to do with a degree in philosophy? Wait tables? Ha. Ha.”
Luckily, something has saved me from fulfilling the cynical prophecy of philosopher turned bus boy and thus from aiding and abetting the unapologetic mockery that is our system. That thing is the acceptance to an organic farming apprenticeship in Northern California—the chance to work for a purpose—an un-alienating labor—non-abstracted or problematic food production—while living a lifestyle that greatly reduces my own needless personal consumptions.
So, I am off. Back to the land! As they say. In just over a week I will be living on an organic off the grid farm in Boonville, CA. There I will be running a c.s.a. (community supported agriculture system) with by girlfriend Tasha and doing exciting things like building solar showers and frolicking around the beautiful terrain of Northern California.
In my down time (fingers crossed) I will be continuing Professor Kaitlin Briggs’s ever-helpful “Think and Writes” (from Hon100 and the Thesis workshops) , working on my freshly inspired paper, “On Warfare and Fine Dining, or the Art of Exploitation”, and applying to grad schools.
In the mean time we are driving across America to get there; the epic journey has begun as we speed through the deserts, plains, and mountain terrains of the U.S.A; for, as Jean Baudrillard writes, “Driving is a spectacular form of amnesia. Everything is to be discovered, everything to be obliterated.”
If the next time you see me I am back in Maine bussing your table, splash some water in my face.
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Jacob Chamberlain is a Philosopher, an Honors graduate, a musician and an organic farmer. He graduated from USM in 2009. He loves nature so much, he’s willing to hug a cactus to prove it.
Congratulations to our very own Dr. Katharine Lualdi who competed in the 2009 Peaks to Portland open water swim race. She came in at 54:57, 8th female swimmer and 34th overall out of 220 racers.
Not one to rest on her laurels, Katharine packed up two weeks later and swam the infamous Alcatraz Sharkfest open water race in San Francisco. She and her team wore shark wetsuits for good luck.
Way to go, Katharine!
Katharine has taught Honors 102 since 2001.
In addition to being a professional yo-yo player, Brandon is also a 4th degree black belt.
