Inside Iowa State

Sept. 8, 2006

Center's guest lecturers will contemplate spaces and place

by Anne Krapfl

Program offerings by the Center for Excellence in the Arts and Humanities this year will take an interdisciplinary look at the idea of place.

"There are so many people interested in the concept of space," said Brenda Daly, University professor of English and director of the center. "It has to do, in a broader sense, with the understanding that we live in a global economy, it's a small world, there are so many migrants -- everywhere and also in American history. We're very much shaped by our environments, and when people's places are destroyed -- by something like Hurricane Katrina, by urban renewal -- this is traumatic.

"The question in this series is, 'How do we engage with the places that we live?'" Daly said.

The lecture series opens Sept. 14 with Julie Ellison, professor of English at the University of Michigan. Ellison directs "Imagining America," a consortium of about 75 colleges and universities whose mission is to strengthen the relationship between academic scholarship and public practice in the arts, humanities and design. Her talk will be about "public scholarship," for example, intellectual work that produces a public good, or creative work planned and carried out jointly by university and community partners. It begins at 7:30 p.m. in the Memorial Union Sun Room.

The series continues Oct. 5 with an 8 p.m. lecture, also in the Sun Room, on "Space, Time and Storytelling in the Making of an American Place." The speaker is William Cronon, a professor of history, geography and environmental studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He wrote Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West, and edited Open Sky: Rethinking America's Western Past.

A New York City board-certified research psychiatrist who has studied the long-term consequences of urban renewal for African-Americans comes to campus Nov. 7. Dr. Mindy Thompson Fullilove, professor of clinical psychiatry and public health at Columbia University, will give a lecture titled "How Tearing Up City Neighborhoods Hurts America," which also is the subtitle of her 2004 book. Fullilove also founded NYC RECOVERS, an alliance of organizations concerned with the social and emotional recovery of New York City since 9/11.

The center's schedule also includes a one-day symposium on Tuesday, Jan. 30, 2007. Daly said nearly 30 faculty, from disciplines across campus, already have registered for "Mapping Territories: Dialogues on Places, Peoples and Spatial Practices." The format will be a series of panel discussions (featuring panel members from various disciplines and a panel coordinator). Applications are due Oct. 4. More information is online at http://www.iastate.edu/~ceah/workshops.html.

Other events in the 2006-07 series include:

• "Spirit and Food," Mary Swander, ISU English, Oct. 25
• "Racing in Place" (a reading), Michael Martone, creative writing program director, University of Alabama, Feb. 22, 2007
• "Urban Operations," Christine Boyer, professor of architecture and urbanism, Princeton University, March 29, 2007

"We're very much shaped by our environments, and when people's places are destroyed -- by something like Hurricane Katrina, by urban renewal -- this is traumatic."

Brenda Daly, director of the Center for Excellence in the Arts and Humanities