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Singer Ben Kweller Performs May 14 at Lawrence University

Lawrence University’s Student Organization for University Programming (SOUP) welcomes singer and songwriter Ben Kweller to campus on May 14. The concert, which features opening sets by the Lawrence student group Denes and another act to be announced, will take place at 7 p.m. in the Lawrence Memorial Chapel.

Kweller, originally the front man for the band Radish, self-released “Freak Out, It’s Ben Kweller” in 2000. He followed that collection with his 5-track ATO Records debut, “E.P. Phone Home” in 2001.

In 2002, “Sha Sha” was released, which included the very radio-friendly and popular single “Wasted and Ready.” Encompassing anti-folkadelica, indie-punkpop, and soaring ballads, Kweller’s warm, whimsical wordplay, and unstoppable power-pop hooks are in full effect on “Sha Sha.” Recorded in New York City during the summer of 2001, “Sha Sha” sees Kweller backed by, among others, bassist Josh Lattanzi and old friend and drummer from Radish, John Kent. The album pops with the same infectious energy of Kweller’s acoustic performances and home recordings, through fleshed out to feature a more fully realized sonic approach.

The much-anticipated follow-up to “Sha Sha” is Kweller’s “On My Way.” While “On My Way” offers a more consistent sonic vision than its gleefully genre-hopping predecessor, Kweller’s inexorable knack for music diversity continues unabated. Recorded in just three weeks at Sear Sound in New York City, “On My Way” sees Kweller backed by bassist Josh Lattanzi, guitarist Mike Stroud, and drummers Fred Eltringham and John Kent.

Kweller and his band have toured international and throughout the United States, both as headliners and alongside such bands as the Strokes, Kings of Leon, Dave Matthews Band, Dashboard Confessional, Adam Green, and Brendan Benson.

Tickets for Kweller’s concert are $10 for the public and are on sale at the Lawrence University Box Office, located in the Music-Drama Center, 420 E. College Ave., Appleton, or by phone at 920-832-6749.

Our Country’s Good to be staged at Lawrence University

The Lawrence University Theatre Arts Department will stage Our Country’s Good by Timberlake Wertenbaker at 8:00 p.m. May 11-13 and at 3:00 p.m. May 14 in Stansbury Theatre, located in the Music-Drama Center, 420 E. College Ave., Appleton.

Late in the 1780s the first fleet of British prison ships, under the command of Arthur Phillip, arrived at Botany Bay, in New South Wales, Australia, and soon settled up the coast at Port Jackson, the site of current-day Sydney. Many of the prisoners had been convicted of minor theft and many of their wardens were military men who fought and lost against the American colonies.

Our Country’s Good begins at the end of the voyage. It traces one of the more remarkable and unusual events of the new settlement, the staging of George Farquhar’s play, The Recruiting Officer, using an all-convict cast. The decision to stage the play is met with opposition and ridicule from various sides, but ends up profoundly changing the lives of all those involved. In acting in Farquhar’s play, the convicts gain a sense of self-worth and community, and discover the redemptive power of art.

Timothy X. Troy, associate professor of theatre arts and J. Thomas and Julie Esch Hurvis Professor of Theatre and Drama, directs this production.

Tickets for Our Country’s Good are $10 for adults and $5 for senior citizens and students. Tickets can be purchased at the Lawrence University Box Office, located in the Music-Drama Center, or by phone at 920-832-6749.

Former Death Row Inmate Discusses the U.S. Justice System at Lawrence University

One-time death-row inmate Ron Keine discusses the death penalty and the American justice system in an address at Lawrence University.

Keine presents “A Question of Justice” Thursday, April 27 at 7 p.m. in Lawrence’s Wriston Art Center auditorium. The event is free and open to the public.

In 1973, while on a motorcycle trip from California to Michigan, Keine and three companions were arrested in Oklahoma for a robbery and charged with the murder of a University of New Mexico student. The body of 26-year-old William Velten was discovered in the foothills outside Albuqurque. He had been shot in the head through his mouth and his chest was slashed with a knife.

Keine and his companions were later convicted largely based on the testimony of a maid from an Albuquerque motel who told police that she saw the bikers torture and kill Velten in a room at the motel. By state law, an automatic death penalty for first-degree murder was imposed. That law was later found to be unconstitutional.

Keine spent 22 months in a 6-by-9-foot cell on death row before another person, Kerry Rodney Lee, who had undergone a religious conversion, came forward and confessed to the Velten murder in 1975, leading police to the murder weapon.

Now in his late 50s, Keine is the only one of the four men wrongfully convicted who is still alive. After being released from prison, Keine returned to his home state of Michigan, got involved in business and at one point served as chairman of the local Republican Party.

Keine’s appearance is sponsored by Students for Leftist Action.

Lawrence University Art Historian Named 2006 Guggenheim Fellow

For the past 10 years, Lawrence University art historian Carol Lawton has been carefully studying the Greek and Roman votive reliefs of lesser-known gods and heroes unearthed in excavations of the Greek Agora, the civic, commercial and religious center of ancient Athens.

Starting this September, Lawton will be able to devote a year’s worth of undivided attention to her ongoing research as a 2006 Guggenheim Fellow.

Professor of art history and holder of the Ottilia Buerger Professorship in Classical Studies, Lawton recently was named one of 187 national recipients of a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship by the New York-based foundation. She is the second member of the Lawrence art department in the past 10 years to be awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. Sculptor Todd McGrain was named a recipient in 1996.

Lawton was selected for the $38,000 grant from among nearly 3,000 artists, scholars and scientists who applied. The fellowship will enable her to complete work on her book “Popular Greek Religion and the Votive Reliefs from the Athenian Agora.”

Since undertaking her research, Lawton has studied more than 400 marble reliefs that have been discovered among the excavations of the Agora. Her research focuses on understanding the function and role of sculptural art in ancient Athens.

“These reliefs are dedications created by individuals in request of, or in thanks for, help from deities and heroes,” said Lawton, who spends most of her summers in Greece working on the project. “They are of interest primarily for what they tell us about Athenian popular religion. They were dedicated not so much to the more familiar Olympian deities such as Athena and Apollo, but rather to gods and heroes who were more immediately important and accessible to the people. They tend to honor healing and fertility gods or the heroes and gods who were thought to ensure prosperity.

“I am certainly thrilled as well as very grateful to have been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship,” she added. “This grant will give me the opportunity to dedicate an entire year of uninterrupted work on my project and as any researcher will tell you, that is invaluable.”

Lawton joined the Lawrence art department in 1980 and serves as curator of Lawrence’s Ottilia Buerger Collection of ancient and Byzantine coins. She has previously received research fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the J. Paul Getty Trust and is the author of the 1995 book “Attic Document Reliefs of the Classical and Hellenistic Periods” (Oxford University Press).

In 2004, Lawton was recognized with Lawrence’s Award for Excellence in Teaching, becoming the only faculty member to earn all three of the college’s major teaching awards. She was the recipient of the college’s Young Teacher Award in 1982 and the Freshman Studies Teaching Award in 1998. She earned her Ph.D. in art history from Princeton University.

Guggenheim Fellowships are awarded “to men and women who have already demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability” across a wide range of interests, from the natural sciences to the creative arts. Fellow selections are based on the recommendations from hundreds of expert advisors.

Since its founding in 1925, the Guggenheim Foundation has awarded more than $247 million in fellowships to more than 16,000 individuals, among them Ansel Adams, Martha Graham, Linus Pauling, Aaron Copland and Langston Hughes.

Folk Singer Peter Siegel Performs at Lawrence University Earth Day Festival

Peter Siegel brings his unique brand of politically tinted folk music to the Lawrence University Wriston Art Center amphitheatre Saturday, April 22 with a 3 p.m. concert as part of the college’s eighth annual Earth Day Festival.

The day-long salute to all things environmental begins at 9 a.m. with a group trash clean-up of the north bank of the Fox River. All interested participants are asked to meet at the Wriston Art Center turnaround.

From 11 a.m. -2 p.m., the Main Hall Green will feature a variety of earth-friendly activity and information booths from student and community environmental organizations. A “Bring Your Own Plate & Cup” picnic lunch also be served with Lawrence student groups providing musical entertainment.

Siegel, whose eclectic performances that mix blues, swing and hip hop on the guitar, banjo and mandolin with traditional fiddle tunes have been dubbed “Space Age Vaudeville,” headlines the day’s celebration. In the event of inclement weather, Siegel will perform in Riverview Lounge inside the Lawrence Memorial Union.

A native of suburban New York City, Siegel credits the likes of Pete Seeger, Miles Davis, Run DMC and TV theme songs as musical influences. He first made a name for himself as a member of the Hudson River Valley’s Harmonious Hogchokers, singing original and traditional songs of political and environmental significance.

Siegel is a former grand prize winner of Massachusett’s WRSI singer-songwriter competition. He has performed at festivals and venues throughout the nation, including the Kennedy Center Millennium Stage, the New England Folk Festival and the American Festival of Fiddle Tunes in Port Townsend, Wash. During his career, he has opened for Peter Mulvey, Tim O’Brian and Tony Trishka and shared the stage with such performers as Pete Seeger, Tom Chapin and Paul Stookey.

Lawrence University’s Hane Awarded Fulbright Grant to Teach English in Germany

Ben Hane knows with virtual certainty what he will be doing five months from now. He just isn’t sure where he will be doing it.

The Lawrence University senior from East Dundee, Ill., has been named a 2006-07 Fulbright Scholar by the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board. The fellowship will provide Hane a 10-month opportunity to teach English at the high school and vocational school level somewhere in Germany beginning this September.

“Being a teaching assistant abroad will be great experience,” said Hane, who is expected to graduate in June with a major in both German and history. “I will have an opportunity to live in Germany for close to a year, improving my language skills all the time and getting to know the culture even more.”

While Hane knows he will be heading to Germany, the exact location and school are still to be determined. He indicated a preference to teach in the state of Saxony in the former East Germany, or somewhere in Hesse or Lower Saxony, but the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the U.S. State Department, which oversees the Fulbright programs, can assign him to a school anywhere in the country.

“As someone who hopes to pursue teaching as a career, the Fulbright fellowship will provide an incredible classroom experience teaching middle and high school-aged students,” said Hane.

“Having previously worked with several exchange students here at Lawrence, I can honestly say that I really enjoy helping people learn English and understand American culture. As a language assistant in Germany, I’m looking forward to working again with foreign students and hopefully learning much from them as well.”

No stranger to Europe, Hane spent the 2004 Fall Term on the Institute for the International Education of Students study-abroad program in Freiburg, Germany. In addition, he was one of seven students who spent last month’s spring break recess in Berlin, touring the city as part of the German department course “Berlin: Experiencing a Great City.”

The Fulbright Program was created by Congress in 1946 to foster mutual understanding among nations through educational and cultural exchanges. Arkansas Senator J. William Fulbright, who sponsored the legislation, saw it as a step toward building an alternative to armed conflict.

Since its founding, the Fulbright Program has become the U.S. government’s premier scholarship program. It has supported more than 265,000 American students, artists and other professionals opportunities for study, research and international competence in more than 150 countries. Fulbright alumni have become heads of state, judges, ambassadors, CEOs, university presidents, professors and teachers. Thirty-five Fulbright recipients have gone on to earn Nobel Prizes.

Lawrence Symphony Orchestra and Choirs Present a Mozart/Shostakovich Birthday Celebration

The Lawrence University Conservatory of Music will celebrate the 100th birthday of Dmitri Shostakovich and the 250th birthday of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in two concert performances on Saturday, April 22 at 8:00 p.m. and Sunday, April 23 at 3:00 p.m. The concerts will showcase the talents of the Lawrence Symphony Orchestra, under the direction of David Becker, and the Lawrence University Concert Choir, Women’s Choir, Chorale, and White Heron Chorale, conducted by Richard Bjella. Special guest will be soloist Daniel Cilli.

Titled “A Birthday Celebration,” the concert will feature Shostakovich’s Festive Overture, Op. 96, and The Execution of Stepan Razin, a poem for bass, chorus, and symphony orchestra, with introductory comments by Richard Yatzeck, professor of Russian at Lawrence University. In celebration of Mozart’s birthday, his Requiem, KV 626, will be performed and will include solos by conservatory faculty members Patrice Michaels, soprano, Karen Leigh-Post, mezzo-soprano, Steven Spears, tenor, and John Gates, bass.

Guest artist Daniel Cilli, baritone, has performed at the Aspen Music Festival, Tanglewood, and with the Utah Symphony and Opera, West Bay Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Amarillo Opera, and Central City Opera. He studied lieder at the Franz Schubert Institute in 2001, and attained performance degrees from Stetson University and New England Conservatory of Music.

Both performances will take place in the Lawrence Memorial Chapel. Tickets are currently on sale at the Lawrence University Box Office, located in the Music-Drama Center, or by phone at 920-832-6749, and are $10 for adults, and $5 for senior citizens and students.

Terri Schiavo’s Brother Discusses his Sister’s Life, Death in Lawrence University Address

The younger brother of Terri Schiavo, whose medical condition launched a lengthy legal battle that captured national attention and generated congressional hearings, discusses his sister’s life in an address at Lawrence University.

Bobby Schindler presents “The Truth About Terri Schiavo: What the Media Didn’t Tell You” Tuesday, April 18 at 4:30 p.m. in Youngchild Hall, Room 121. The event is free and open to the public.

Schindler will discuss his sister’s life, the struggle his family endured in their attempt to save her life, the secular media’s misrepresentations surrounding Schiavo’s life and death as well as the danger and the frequent misdiagnoses of persistent vegetative state. Schiavo, who suffered severe brain damage as the result of a heart attack in her Florida home in 1990, died at the age of 41 on March 31, 2005 after a feeding tube had been removed two weeks earlier.

Shortly after his sister’s death, Schindler began working full time for the Terri Schindler Schiavo Foundation. The organization, initially founded to help save her life, now provides support to families and persons with disabilities in situations similar to Schiavo’s.

Following her heart attack, Schiavo spent 10 weeks in a coma and was later diagnosed as being in a persistent vegetative state with little chance of recovery. Her husband, Michael Schiavo, asked the courts in 1998 to remove a gastric feeding tube from his wife, touching off a long and contentious legal fight between Michael Schiavo and Terri’s parents, Robert and Mary Schindler.

Both the state government of Florida and the U.S. Congress eventually became involved in the case. On four different occasions, the U.S. Supreme Court denied petitions to review it.

“Satanic Verses” Author Salman Rushdie Speaks at Lawrence University April 20

Celebrated British author Salman Rushdie, whose 1988 book “The Satanic Verses” generated a firestorm of controversy among Islamic fundamentalists, explores the freedom of expression, religion and their relationship to modern society Thursday, April 20 at Lawrence University as part of the college’s convocation series.

Rushdie presents ”A Morning with Salman Rushdie” at 11:10 a.m. in the Lawrence Memorial Chapel, 510 E. College Ave., Appleton. He also will conduct a question-and-answer session at 2 p.m. in Youngchild Hall, Room 121. Both events are free and open to the public.

Rushdie, 58, has established himself as one of the most successful novelists of his generation in part for his thought-provoking examinations of the world’s changing sociopolitical landscape. Hailed as an “author to watch” by literary critic David Wilson after his first novel, 1975’s “Grimus,” Rushdie has written eight novels and a half dozen other works, including the award-wining children’s fairy tale “Haroun and the Sea of Stories” and a collection of short stories entitled “East, West.”

He is arguably best known for “The Satanic Verses,” a complex narrative that has been compared to “A Thousand and One Nights” for its multiple stories-within-a-story approach. Honored with the U.K.’s Whitbread Novel Award and named a finalist for the prestigious Booker McConnell Prize, “The Satanic Verses” was banned in Rushdie’s native India before it was published. It was subsequently deemed sacrilegious by Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeni, who issued a “fatwa” — death sentence — against Rushdie in 1989. A reward of nearly $3 million was offered by fundamentalist Muslim groups to have Rushdie killed. The Iranian government eased the fatwa in 1998, although some Islamic groups claim that a fatwa cannot be canceled.

Rushdie’s 1995 novel, “The Moor’s Last Sigh,” another Booker McConnell Prize finalist, took a satirical look at the politics of India and earned a fate similar to “The Satanic Verses.” It, too, was banned by the Indian government.

His follow-up to “Grimus,” 1981’s “Midnight’s Children, won both the Booker McConnell Prize for fiction and the Union Literary Award. His more recent works include “Step Across This Line: Collected Non-Fiction, 1992-2002,” a series of essays, some of which explore his own reaction to the fatwa, as well as reactions of the media and various governments and the novel “Shalimar the Clown,” which was published by Random House last September.

Born in Mumbai (Bombay), India and educated at King’s College at the University of Cambridge, where he earned a degree in history, Rushdie has been recognized with numerous international literary awards. In addition to the Booker Award, the most prestigious award available to British novelists, he’s also been honored with France’s Prix du Leilleur Livre Etranger, the Budapest Grand Prize for Literature, Italy’s Natova Prize, the Austrian State Prize for European Literature and the London International Writers’ Award.

In 2004, Rushdie was the named the president of The PEN American Center in New York City, the largest of the 141 centers of International PEN, the world’s oldest human rights organization and the oldest international literary organization.

Lawrence University Science Hall Colloquium Looks at Maximizing Robotic Planning

The latest research developments to enable robots and other “automated planning agents” to maximize their on-board computational powers will be the focus of a Lawrence University Science Hall Colloquium.

Kurt Krebsbach, associate professor of computer science at Lawrence presents, “Planning to Plan: Deliberation Scheduling using GSMDPs,” Thursday, April 13 at 4:15 p.m. in Science Hall Room 102 The lecture is free and open to the public.

With limited computational resources such as time, memory and partial information, robots in realistic (over-constrained) situations are unable to produce the perfect sequence of actions because the “deliberation” required to do so is unavailable. The problem of deliberation is magnified when acting and planning occur concurrently because satisfactory plans must be constructed in time to be executed.

Just as people in the real world are forced to “think about what to think about” all the time, Krebsbach says researchers are turning to meta-planning, or “planning to plan,” to help robots determine which planning activities are worthwhile given the constraints of the situation at hand.

In his presentation, Krebsbach will discuss how the problem of deliberation scheduling is being addressed by “decision-theoretic approaches based on recent advances in Generalized Semi-Markov Decision Processes (GSMDPs).” This first-ever application of GSMDPs to the problem of deliberation scheduling will allow computer scientists to more accurately model domains in which planning and execution are concurrent, plan-improvement actions have uncertain outcomes and durations and events, such as threats, occur randomly.

A specialist in artificial intelligence and automated planning, Krebsbach joined the Lawrence faculty in 2002. A 1985 Lawrence graduate, he earned bachelor’s degrees in both music and mathematics/computer science. He holds an M.S. and Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Minnesota.