A number of world-renowned authors, artists and policymakers will be visiting the Hill this spring.
Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, the Eleonore Raoul Professor of the Humanities and Professor of History at Emory University, will speak at Hamilton on Thursday, Jan. 27. Bryn Mawr and Harvard educated, Dr. Fox-Genovese has taught at several schools and universities, including Emory University, where she founded the Institute for Women's Studies, SUNY Binghamton and the University of Rochester; and is the author of numerous books and papers. Among her many awards and distinctions are the 2003 National Humanities Medal from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Cardinal Wright Award from the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars.
The film A Great Day in Harlem will be screened on Tuesday, Feb. 1, at 7 p.m. in Kirner-Johnson Auditorium, followed by a talk by its producer Jean Bach. This film tells the story behind the historic 1958 gathering of jazz artists that was photographed for Esquire Magazine. Bach resurrected film footage and additional photographs from the event and created a poignant and entertaining documentary
Gloria Feldt, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation, will lecture on Wednesday, Feb. 2. A teen mother and wife from rural Texas, she raised three children while attending college. She taught in the Head Start program and was active in the civil rights movement. Realizing that women's civil rights depend on the right to determine their own reproductive destiny, Gloria joined Planned Parenthood in 1974. Her innovative thinking, effective activism, and courageous leadership as a Planned Parenthood affiliate chief executive, first in West Texas and later in Arizona, led to her being tapped as president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) in 1996. She is also president of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, the organization's political arm. A renowned public speaker, Feldt has lectured widely, written commentary for several major newspapers and journals, appeared on numerous radio and television networks, and is the author of two books about women's rights.
Kathleen Sweeney, writer and award-winning media artist, comes to Hamilton on Monday, Feb. 21. Sweeney published Maiden USA: Representations of Teenage Girls in the Media in Afterimage in January 1999. She continues to curate "Reel Girls/Real Girls," a traveling showcase of films and videos by teenage girls, which premiered in December 1998 at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in a program sponsored by the San Francisco Cinematheque.
Donald Kettl, professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania and nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, will address the Hamilton community on Monday, March 7. Kettl is executive director of the Century Foundation's Project on Federalism and Homeland Security and also academic coordinator of the Government Performance Project (source: www.ssc.upenn.edu). He is the author of numerous books and articles, including Transformation of Governance (winner of the 2003 Louis Brownlow Book Award for best book in public administration) and Deficit Politics: The Search for Balance in American Political Life.
Poet and author Cornelius Eady visits Hamilton on Friday and Saturday, April 8-9. He is the author of Brutal Imagination; You Don't Miss Your Water; The Gathering of My Name, a Pulitzer Prize nominee; BOOM BOOM BOOM; and Victims of the Latest Dance Craze, which was the Lamont Poetry Selection of The Academy of American Poets. His honors include the Prairie Schooner Strousse Award and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Foundation. Eady is associate professor of English and director of the Poetry Center at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.
Douglas Holtz-Eakin, the director of the Congressional Budget Office, will lecture on Monday, April 11. Dr. Holtz-Eakin previously served as chief economist for the President's Council of Economic Advisors and is Trustee Professor of Economics at the Maxwell School, Syracuse University (Source: Congressional Budget Office).
Author Salman Rushdie will give this year's Tolles lecture on Wednesday, April 13 in Wellin Hall. Rushdie's 1988 book, The Satanic Verses, led Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini to declare a fatwa, or death sentence, on the author. The Iranian government withdrew support of the fatwa in 1998. Rushdie, born in 1947 in Bombay, India, is an essayist and author of fiction, most of which is set on the Indian subcontinent. He grew up in Mumbai (then Bombay) and graduated with honors from King's College, Cambridge, in England. His narrative style, blending myth and fantasy with real life, has been described as connected with magical realism.
