Humanities Room 218

Professor Ania Loomba, Catherine Bryson Chair, University of Pennsylvania

“The Border and Boundary Between Colonialism and Postcolonialism”

Ania Loomba currently holds the Catherine Bryson Chair in the English Department at the University of Pennsylvania. She is also a member of the faculty in Comparative Literature, South Asian Studies, Women’s Studies, and Asian-American Studies, and her courses are regularly cross-listed with these programs.

Her publications include Gender, Race, Renaissance Drama, Colonialism/Postcolonialism, and Shakespeare, Race, and Colonialism. She has co-edited Post-colonial Shakespeares and Postcolonial Studies and Beyond, and has written extensively on race and colonialism, early modern drama and culture, Shakespeare, adaptations of Shakespeare, the women’s movement, and feminist theory and politics. Most recently, she has compiled (with Jonathan Burton) Race in Early Modern England: A Documentary Companion, which documents the range and complexity of premodern thinking about racial difference and shows their significance for theories of race.

She is series editor of Postcolonial Literary Studies, is currently working on a critical edition of Antony and Cleopatra, and is co-editing a collection of essays on South Asian feminism. She is also working on a monograph on early modern English contact with Asia. 

York Galleries, The Evelyn and Earle Wolf Hall

"Clarence Morgan: Notes and Ideas"

Reception: September 30, 2010, 6 - 8 pm

Lecture: September 30, 2010, 5 pm, DeMeester Recital Hall

Clarence Morgan is a painter who lives and works in Minneapolis. He has exhibited his work nationally and internationally including solo and group exhibitions at Reeves Contemporary in New York, Ze Zhong Gallery in Beijing, and Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, among many others. He received his MFA from the University of Pennsylvania in 1978 and a four-year certificate from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1975. Grants include a Bush Foundation Artist Fellowship, McKnight Foundation Artist Fellowship, Jerome Foundation Travel and Study Grant, Minnesota State Arts Board Grant, North Carolina Arts Council Visual Artist Fellowship, Southern Arts Federation NEA Regional Fellowship, and a grant from Art Matters, Inc. His work is included in the collections of the Cleveland Art Museum, Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis Art Institute, General Mills, and University of Alabama, among others. Morgan currently teaches painting in the Department of Art at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, where he is professor and chair of the Department.

Collegiate Performing Arts Center

Ed Diener, Joseph R. Smiley Distinguished Professor of Psychology, University of Illinois 

“Positive Psychology”

Ed Diener received his doctorate at the University of Washington in 1974 and has been a faculty member at the University of Illinois for the past 34 years. He was the president of both the International Society of Quality of Life Studies and the Society of Personality and Social Psychology. He is currently the president of the International Positive Psychology Association. Diener was the editor of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and the Journal of Happiness Studies, and he is the founding editor of Perspectives on Psychological Science. He has over 260 publications, with about 200 being in the area of the psychology of well-being, and is listed as one of the most highly cited psychologists by the Institute of Scientific Information with over 15,000 citations to his credit. He won the Distinguished Researcher Award from the International Society of Quality of Life Studies, the first Gallup Academic Leadership Award, and the Block Award for Personality Psychology. Diener also won several teaching awards, including the Oakley-Kundee Award for Undergraduate Teaching at the University of Illinois. 

Humanities Room 218

A marvelous new film from Andrew Bujalski, one of the brightest stars in indie cinema, Beeswax (2009) revolves around the personal and professional entanglements of twin sisters Jeannie and Lauren (played by real-life twins Tilly and Maggie Hatcher). Jeannie co-owns a vintage clothing store in Austin, Texas, with Amanda, a semi-estranged friend who she fears is trying to end their partnership. Lauren leads a looser, less tethered existence and is considering getting out of the country altogether. Imbued with an innate charm, Beeswax is a story about families, friends, lovers, and those awkward moments that bring all of them together. A.O. Scott of the New York Times recently selected the film as a “NYT Critics’ Pick,” calling it a “remarkably subtle, even elegant movie.” Bujalski himself is acclaimed as the godfather of “mumblecore,” a movement in contemporary American independent cinema driven by the digital revolution and an ultra-low-budget, do-it-yourself approach to filmmaking. According to Cinema Scope magazine, he is “making what may prove to be the defining movies about [his] generation.” In a special appearance as part of the 2010-11 Humanities Film Series, this talented and important filmmaker will present his latest movie and answer questions about it after the screening.