- October 1, 2002
- 7:30 p.m. lecture in Lang Hall Auditorium
Imagine a city where young people are leading the way forward, where public schools are thriving community learning centers, where neighborhoods and institutions work together to share ideas and resources, and all citizens recognize and apply their talents to create a positive future for themselves and their community...
Since 1992, Imagine Chicago has engaged many communities both in Chicago and across the world in understanding, imagining and creating the future they value, incorporating appreciative inquiry into intergenerational civic projects which harness hope and imagination as resources for civic action.
Bliss W. Browne is the founder and president of Imagine Chicago. She is an ordained Episcopal priest, and was formerly a corporate banker and Division Head of the First National Bank of Chicago, where she worked for 16 years. She holds a M. Div. from Harvard Divinity School, a MM in Finance from the Kellogg School of Northwestern, and a BA from Yale. Bliss is internationally known for her uncommon ability to bring widely separated groups into productive dialogue.
- December 4, 2002
- 7:30 p.m. lecture in Lang Hall Auditorium
Thomas Steinfatt (Ph.D., Michigan State University) is a professor of communication at the University of Miami and leading expert on intercultural communication, communication in the spread of AIDS, organizational communication, communication in Southeast Asia--particularly Vietnam and Thailand, linguistic relativity, propaganda, and persuasion.
Dr. Steinfatt serves as a consultant on executive, organizational, and intercultural communication to corporations, NGOs, and branches of government both in the United States and abroad, and as an expert witness on propaganda, corporate documents, and interpretations of labels and texts. He often serves as a commentator on political communication for Miami television stations, and on National Public Radio. He directs the University of Miami's Annual Conference on International and Intercultural Communication and the National Communication Association's Annual Seminar on Communication, AIDS, and Sexuality.
He is the author of numerous articles, and has published four books, most recently Intercultural Communication co-authored with Everett Rogers (1999), and Working at the Bar: Sex Work and Health Communication in Thailand (2002). Steinfatt has also recently been appointed as a Fulbright scholar to Southeast Asia for January-June 2003 to work to repair some of the damage done to the Cambodian higher education system by the Khmer Rouge.
- January 29, 2003
- 7:30 p.m. lecture in Lang Hall Auditorium
As leader and co-founder of legendary rap group Public Enemy, Chuck D redefined rap music and Hip Hop culture with the release of PE's explosive debut album, Yo Bum Rush The Show, in 1987. His messages addressed weighty issues about race, rage and inequality with a jolting combination of intelligence and eloquence never seen before. The group's subsequent seven albums were released over the next 13 years, all meeting with critical acclaim from publications as disparate as Time and The Source, and worldwide sales in the millions. And at the close of 1999, The New York Times named Public Enemy's music to their list of the "25 Most Significant Albums of the Last Century."
Most recently, the media has anointed Chuck as the spokesperson and major proponent of music on the Internet. In September, 1999, he launched a multi-format "supersite" on the Web, Rapstation.com. A home for the vast global Hip Hop community, the site boasts a TV and radio station with original programming, a slew of Hip Hop's most prominent DJs, celebrity interviews, free MP3 downloads (the first was contributed by multi-platinum rapper Coolio), social commentary, current events, and regular features dedicated to empowering rap artists with the knowledge to turn their craft into a viable living. His outspoken advocacy of the Web has been profiled in Forbes, Time, USA Today and The Industry Standard, and he was named to Upside magazine's "Elite 100" list of Internet leaders, alongside the likes of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs.
February 12, 2003
- 7:30 p.m. reading in
- Lang Hall Auditorium
Sarah Vowell is best known for her monologues and documentaries for public radio's This American Life.A contributing editor for the program since 1996, she has written about everything from her father's homemade cannon and her obsession with the Godfather films to the New Hampshire primary and her Cherokee ancestors' forced march on the Trail of Tears.
As a critic and reporter, Vowell's writing has appeared in numerous newspapers and magazines, including Esquire, GQ, Artforum, The Los Angeles Times, The Village Voice, Spin and McSweeney's. As a columnist, she has covered education for Time; American culture for Salon.com; and pop music for the San Francisco Weekly, for which she won a 1996 Music Journalism Award.
Vowell has performed her monologues
at the Aspen Comedy Festival, Amsterdam's Crossing Borders Festival,
and Seattle's Foolproof Comedy Festival. She has appeared on the
Late
Show with David Letterman, Late Night with Conan O'Brien and
Nightline.
Sarah Vowell's most recent book is Partly
Cloudy Patriot (Simon & Schuster). A native of Oklahoma and
Montana, and a long-time resident of Chicago, Vowell lives in New York
City.
- March 5, 2003
- 7:30 p.m. lecture in Lang Hall Auditorium
In October 1998, Judy Shepard lost her twenty-one-year-old son, Matthew, to a murder inspired by anti-gay hate. Her ordeal moved thousands of people across America to attend vigils and rallies in Matthew's honor. Determined to prevent their sonís fate from befalling other people, Judy and her husband, Dennis, established The Matthew Shepard Foundation to help carry on Matthew's legacy by embracing the just causes he had championed. This includes working for gay and lesbian equality and helping to prevent hate crimes. Judy is determined to use her grief over her son's death to make a difference. She has made the prevention of hate crimes the focus of her efforts, and she is now speaking to audiences nationwide about what they can do to make their schools and communities safer for everyone, regardless of their race, sex, religion, or sexual orientation. All proceeds from her speeches will go toward the support of The Matthew Shepard Foundation.
- April 16, 2003
- 7:30 p.m. lecture in
- Lang Hall Auditorium
Kathleen Kelly (Ph.D., University of Maryland) is a leading authority on fund raising -- an important organizational function for charitable nonprofits, of which there are more than 700,000 in the United States. Her scholarly work, spanning 15 years, has had a significant impact on the study and practice of philanthropy and nonprofit management. She is presently coordinator of the public relations degree program at University of Louisiana-Lafayette, where she holds the Hubert J. Bourgeois Endowed Research Professorship.
Dr. Kelly is the author of the 1991 book, Fund Raising and Public Relations: A Critical Analysis, and the first academic textbook on fund raising, Effective Fund-Raising Management (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1998). She has also published numerous articles, book chapters, and monographs. Her work on fund raising and public relations has been featured in such national media as U.S. News & World Report, Public Relations Tactics, The Chronicle of Philanthropy, and Ann Landers' syndicated column.
Dr. Kelly has received a number of national awards for her research. Most recently, she won the 1999 Jackson, Jackson & Wagner Behavioral Science Prize from the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) Foundation. She is also the 1995 recipient of the prestigious Pathfinder Award from the Institute for Public Relations.
- April 24, 2003
- 7:30 performance in the Interpreters Theatre, Lang Hall
- April 26, 2003
- 10 a.m.-4 p.m. open performance in Waterloo, location TBA.
A New York-based artist, Michael Keck is an actor, writer, and composer whose works have been featured at professional theatres across the U.S. and in Europe. His solo performances address social issues, such as the disproportionately high numbers of incarcerated minority men. Keck is also a teaching artist who directs theatre workshops built around themes of social change, multicultural understanding, community, identity, creativity and expression. His workshops have been conducted in a number of locations, including community centers, correctional facilities, and universities around the country.
Keck is co-author, composer and host of the "Holidays For Children" video and is the composer of A Village Fable (book and lyrics by James Still) which was workshopped at Sundance Playwrights Lab and is published by Dramatic Publishing. Keckís music and soundscapes have been featured at The Kennedy Center, Mark Taper Forum, Arena Stage, Cincinnati Playhouse, The Children's Theatre Company of Minneapolis, Alliance Theater, Portland Center Stage, Santa Fe Stages, and many others. He also has served as panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts, The New York State Arts Council, Georgia Council for the Arts and Meet The Composer. Michael Keck is a recipient of both the Oppenheimer and American Critics Awards for his music and creativity in other dramatic works.
The Meryl Norton Hearst Lecture Series is supported by the Meryl Norton Hearst Chair in the College of Humanities and Fine Arts, and created by an endowment from James Schell Hearst, author, poet and professor of creative writing at UNI from 1941 until his retirement in 1975.