The Tuesday Lunch Series welcomes John Davis, Assistant Professor of Black Studies, East Asian Studies, International Studies and Anthropology and Sociology at Denison, presenting “The Racial Politics of ‘Japan’s Invisible Race’.” Japan’s Burakumin minority, introduced to the West as “Japan’s Invisible Race,” is often posited as a diverse demographic disadvantaged by the powerful and pervasive ideology of Japan as a racially and ethnically homogeneous society. However, this presentation will...

The Tuesday Lunch Series welcomes BethAnn Zambella, director of libraries at Denison, presenting “The Once and Future Library.” In this talk, Zambella discusses a variety of topics including what the “Open” movement means for libraries and Denison (including the Lever Press, Institutional Repositories, and the Open Textbook Network), a sneak peek at the library’s spring focus group results and “Design Thinking” and libraries.

The Tuesday Lunch Series welcomes Xiao Jiang, assistant professor of economics and philosophy, politics and economics at Denison, presenting “Value-added Erosion in Global Value Chains: Rethinking International Trade.” The prevalence of “vertical specialization” and global value chains (GVCs) in today’s world demands us to think about international trade and its relationship to employment differently. Moreover, inherent to the surge of trade in intermediates in GVCs is often the decline in...

The Tuesday Lunch Series welcomes Diana Mafe, associate professor of English, presenting “Where No Black Woman Has Gone Before: Subversive Portrayals in Speculative Film and TV.” Mafe’s newly published book examines representations of black womanhood and girlhood in new millennial British and American speculative film and television. The movies and shows in question which include “28 Days Later,” “AVP: Alien vs. Predator,” “Children of Men,” “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” “Firefly,” and...

Founded in 1983 in the wake of the first visionary national conference on Black women’s health, the National Black Women’s Health Project was a galvanizing grassroots force in the lives of many thousands of Black American women. The organization, initially under the aegis of the National Women’s Health Network, coalesced around the work of two dynamic women activists: experienced health feminist Byllye Avery, already co-founder of two other pioneering feminist women’s health institutions, and...

The Tuesday Lunch Series welcomes Denison professors Rebecca Kennedy and Max Goldman presenting “Teaching in Rome: No Classroom Required.” One of the most exciting elements of teaching off campus, especially abroad, is the chance to take students into unusual environments and to teach in ways that no classroom can ever allow. In this talk, Goldman and Kennedy will discuss their summer course, “Art and Archaeology of Ancient Rome,” taught at various archaeological sites and museums throughout...

The Tuesday Lunch Series welcomes Jo Tague, assistant professor of history at Denison, presenting “Educating Activists: The South African Education Program on Denison’s Campus, 1982 to 1990.” Each summer from 1982 to 1990, Denison hosted a month-long orientation for the South African Education Program (SAEP). Administered by the Institute for International Education (think Fulbright) and funded by American foundations, corporations, and universities as a means to secure and promote the...

Riggen’s popular film “La misma luna” (2007) has been praised as a heartwarming film that humanizes undocumented immigrants for American audiences and, for Mexican audiences, deviates from typical immigration narratives by focusing on women and children as immigrants rather than men. Despite this seemingly progressive intentionality, St-Georges argues that Riggen’s film is exceedingly conservative in its portrayal of mexicanidad as not only inescapably patriarchal, but “naturally” so....

What does it take for two or more people to act together? What constitutes solidarity? This talks brings into dialogue two philosophers working in disparate subfields – feminist and queer theory icon Judith Butler and Finnish philosopher of action Raimo Tuomela – in order to develop a view of joint action that does justice to its embodied nature and to the multiple forms it can take. From the Tuesday Lunch lecture series

The Tuesday Lunch Series welcomes Bill Kirkpatrick, associate professor of communication, presenting “Radio MD: Quacks, the AMA and the Radio Industry of the 1920s and ’30s.”

The role of genetic inheritance in defining physical characteristics in living organisms has been well established for over a century. But over the past several decades, genetic researchers have come to identify additional factors that drive these characteristics. “Epigenetics” describes inheritable elements that operate above-and-beyond genetic features, genes/DNA, to shape the characteristics of an individual and their descendants. In this talk, Thompson will outline current understanding...

The Tuesday Lunch Series welcomes Karen Spierling, associate professor of history and director of global commerce at Denison, presenting “Imagining the Protestant Reformation, 500 Years Later.”

This presentation explores the general education movement - a groundswell of writing and experimentation on creating, implementing, teaching, and evaluating curricula for secondary and postsecondary students between 1930 and 1960. It challenges the historical and contemporary interpretation that prestigious universities including Columbia, Harvard and the University of Chicago influenced the curriculum of high schools and institutions of higher learning across the nation. Kevin S. Zayed is...

The Tuesday Lunch Series welcomes Denison professors Heather Rhodes and Sarah Wolff presenting “Service Learning on a Global Scale: Experiences partnering with a STEM program in Africa.”

We have always had an uneasy relationship with madness. The history of mental illness is, in many respects the history of silence, the history of shame. As a creative writer, Dr. Grandbois' discussion veers into a poetry reading and an excerpt from a stage-play, all written during his past year's sabbatical exploration of the history of the ways in which human beings talk about, tip-toe around, or turn away from those who suffer from mental illness and the consequences of that engagement or...

In contemporary U.S. politics, anger is a potent force that cements new communities even as it fractures others. In this presentation. Dr. Griffin looks at social media content that circulated during and after the 2016 U.S. Presidential election in order to parse out the relationships it forges between gender, activism, and political culture online. First, Dr. Hollis examines "Biden memes," which use imagined text and images of former Vice President Biden as a humorous way to express...

As part of the Denison Summer Travel Seminars, seven students and two faculty members spent a month in Martinique to examine the complex identity issues shaping this French overseas department whose geographical, historical, linguistic, cultural, and economic landscapes vastly differ from metropolitan France. In addition to being hosted by local families and attending lectures at the Université des Antilles, students conducted individually designed research projects, providing them a unique...

Does civil society in the US maintain an independent role to play in American politics? One of the more remarkable happenings of 2016 was the white evangelical embrace of Donald Trump - twice divorced, obviously ignorant about religion, certainly not evangelical, formerly supportive of abortion rights and gay rights, and downright crude. This made for a (painfully) banner time to study religion and politics in the United States and I was there to crunch the numbers. Were evangelicals just...

When did North Korea become a global bandit and villain that deserves “fire and fury that the world has never seen before?” How has been this small country in the Korean peninsula used to justify America’s military expansion in Asia-Pacific? What does Christianity (Americanized Protestantism in particular) have to do with America’s militarized foreign policy in Asia? How can we, as a learning community, talk about America’s wars in foreign countries? Contemplating these questions, my...

The idea of a sanctuary city has been stirring outrage for a long time. Debates in the news might seem the product of modern concerns surrounding immigration, race, and economic inequality. But, the idea has recurred for millennia. This talk explores what we can learn about today’s sanctuary cities by looking at monastic “Cities of Refuge” in early medieval Ireland. These settlements were among the largest and most economically complex settlements of their day. But, they were also sacred...

The black-white wealth gap in the United States looms ominously over all facets of social life in the United States. Am emerging literature has documented the links between household wealth and health, education, segregation, inter-generational poverty, psychological well-being, and prosperity. In this presentation, Dr. Uribe discusses the different theoretical explanations and some new empirical work that attempts to untangle this complicated issue. From the Tuesday Lunch lecture series

The Tuesday Lunch Series presents Denison Debates, hosted by associate professor of history Adam Davis, discussing the topic “Should Colleges Have Safe Spaces and Trigger Warnings?” Panel Members: Dr. Barbara Fultner, Dr. Rebecca Kennedy, Dr. Veerendra Lele, & Dr. Fred Porcheddu

The Tuesday Lunch Series welcomes Sheilah Wilson, associate professor of studio arts, presenting “Project Based Learning through The Billboard Project,” with Gina Dow, Fareeda Griffith, Megan Hancock and Emily Nemeth.

In the wake of Dylann Roof’s attack on parishioners at Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston, the state of South Carolina immediately sought Roof’s execution. The state response also included lowering the Confederate Flag from a memorial outside the State House. Taken together, these two actions suggest a considerable tension between the traditional/customary legitimacy of white supremacy and the rational/legal legitimacy of rational/legal authority. Pool’s talk will suggest that South...

Critical thinking can only be truly critical thinking if it is self- critical thinking, thinking that keeps in mind at every moment that it might not be correct. How is it possible to believe something strongly, and indeed to act on that belief, while recognizing that nonetheless one might be wrong to believe it? The twentieth-century philosopher Karl Popper developed an account of what it is to think critically about one’s own views according to which what was crucial wasn’t finding evidence...