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Lawrence University Artist Series Presents Russian Pianist Olga Kern

The Lawrence University Artist Series will continue March 9 with pianist Olga Kern. The concert will take place at 8 p.m. in the Lawrence Memorial Chapel. Tickets are available at the Lawrence University Box Office, located in the Music-Drama Center, 420 E. College Ave., or by phone at 920-832-6749, and range from $15 for students to $22 for adults.

Kern’s career began in 2001 when she was awarded the gold medal at the 11th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition — the first woman to have achieved this distinction in more than 30 years. Since that time she has been captivating fans and critics alike with her passionately confident musicianship and vivid stage presence.

In 2004, Kern made her New York City recital debut at Carnegie Hall’s new venue, Zankel Hall. Eleven days later, she returned to New York to play again, this time on the stage of the Isaac Stern Auditorium at the invitation of Carnegie Hall.

Kern’s orchestral engagements include performances with the Delaware, Houston, Fort Worth, Youngstown, and Mobile Symphony Orchestras. Kern has given recital performances at the Kennedy Center Honors with Reneé Fleming, and in Atlanta, Boulder, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Portland, and San Juan. Internationally Kern has toured throughout Europe and Russia, and made an extensive tour of South Africa in 2002, where she returned to tour again in 2005.

She will be making her debut with the Taipei Symphony in June 2006; her debut at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall in Spring 2006; and in 2006-07, Kern will tour the United States with the National Philharmonic of Russia, under the director of Vladimir Spivakov.

Kern has performed in many of the world’s most important venues, including the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory, Symphony Hall in Osaka, Salzburger Festspielhaus, La Scala in Milan, Tonhalle in Zurich, and the Châtelet in Paris.

Kern, a Yamaha artist, records exclusively for Harmonia Mundi. Her releases include the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 1 with the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra and Christopher Seaman, a Rachmaninov recording of Corelli Variations and other transcriptions, and her newest recording, which was released in 2005, contains works by Rachmaninov and Balakirev. She was also featured in the award-winning documentary about the 2001 Cliburn Competition, “Playing on the Edge.”

For additional information on this and other “Performing Arts at Lawrence” series concerts, please visit www.lawrence.edu/news/performingartsseries.

Latest Robotic Developments Focus of Lawrence University Science Hall Colloquium

Paul Rybski, a systems scientist at the Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Institute, discusses his research and contributions to the development of robots that can determine their own internal “state” as well as that of other nearby robots Thursday, Feb. 23 in a Lawrence University Science Hall Colloquium.

A 1995 Lawrence graduate, Rybski presents, “Robust State Estimation for Intelligent Physically-Embodied Systems” at 4:30 p.m. in Science Hall Room 102 The lecture is free and open to the public.

Due to limited on-board computational power and imprecise sensing systems, researchers are working on novel artificial intelligence techniques by which robots that operate in natural real-world settings can perceive and interact with humans as well as other robots.

Rybski will discuss new research developments in the field of robotics and intelligent sensing which include: spatial reasoning techniques for small robots with limited on-board sensing that allow them to explore and build maps of their environments; algorithms that allow multiple robots to share information about their world and develop consistent world models in the face of sensor and communications errors; and recent results on an algorithm for visual object recognition that “learns” objects by observing how they are used by people.

Rybski, whose research interests include robust high-level environment modeling for sensor-poor robotic systems and distributed control of robot teams, started his robotics research at Lawrence as part of his senior honors project. He was a mathematics/computer science major at Lawrence with an interdisciplinary emphasis in cognitive science and earned a master’s and doctorate degree in computer science at the University of Minnesota.

After completing his Ph.D., he accepted a post-doctoral fellowship at CMU’s Robotics Institute in 2003 and was appointed to the faculty there as a systems scientist last July.

Award-winning Poet Cole Swensen Gives Reading at Lawrence University

Cole Swensen, one of the most intellectually curious experimental poets writing today, will conduct a reading Thursday, March 2 at 8 p.m. in the Lawrence University Wriston Art Center auditorium. A reception and book signing will follow the reading. Prior to the reading, Swensen will discuss her work in an open forum at 4:30 p.m. in Main Hall, Room 105. Both events are free and open to the public.

The author of 10 books of poetry, Swensen’s most recent, “The Book of a Hundred Hands,” (2005) is a collection of poems in which she explores the expression of human emotion through the position and musculature of the hand, covering the spectrum of possibilities, from sign language to shadow puppets.

Swensen’s 2004 collection, “Goest,” which was loosely based on John Beckmann’s 19th century text “A History of Inventions, Discoveries, and Origins,” celebrates inventiveness, using facts as “diving boards for pools of rhyme and pun, distortion and song.” It was a finalist for the 2004 National Book Award in the poetry category.

She also has earned two Pushcart Prizes, which honors distinguished short stories, essays and poetry that are first published by small press houses. Her poetry collection “Try” received the 1998 Iowa Poetry Prize and the San Francisco State Poetry Center Book Award.

“Swensen’s work rewards the attentive and imaginative reader both with its breadth of focus and with its lyrical language,” said Faith Barrett, assistant professor of English, who is organizing the poet’s appearance.

In addition to writing poetry, Swensen is also a translator of contemporary French poetry, prose and art criticism. Her translation of Jean Frémon’s “Island of the Dead” earned her the PEN American Center Award for Translation.

A native of California who has lived in London, Denver, Washington, D.C. and most recently, Paris, where she maintains a part-time residency, Swensen began her career as a teacher at an alternative high school. She joined the faculty at the University of Denver in 1996 and also has taught at Grinnell College and the Naropa Institute. She is currently an associate professor at the University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop.

Swensen earned a bachelor’s and master’s degree at San Francisco State University and has undertaken doctoral studies at the University of California.

Swensen’s appearance is supported by the Mia T. Paul Poetry Fund. Established in 1998, the endowed fund brings distinguished poets to campus for public readings and to work with students on writing poetry and verse.

“Duty to Prevent” Focus of Lawrence University International Studies Address

Lee Feinstein, deputy director of studies and senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, D.C., discusses the international community’s responsibility to prevent security as well as humanitarian disasters in the second installment of Lawrence University’s four-part international studies lecture series “Pariah States and Policy Responses.”

Feinstein presents “A Duty to Prevent” Tuesday, Feb. 21 at 7 p.m. in the Wriston Art Center auditorium, 613 E. College Ave., Appleton. The event is free and open to the public.

With international concerns growing almost daily over the proliferation of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction by Iran, North Korea and the unprecedented threat posed by terrorists, Feinstein will examine the principle of a collective “duty to prevent.” The principle is aimed at nations that are run by rulers without internal checks on their power and designed to keep them from acquiring or using WMD, even if it means violating national sovereignty.

Feinstein argues the “duty to prevent” principle would complement the United Nations’ 2001 “The Responsibility to Protect” doctrine, which says U.N. member states have a responsibility to protect the lives, liberty and basic human rights of their citizens, and that if they fail or are unable to meet those obligations, the international community has a responsibility to step in.

The “duty to prevent” principle is based on three critical features: control both the proliferation of WMD and the people who possess them; emphasize prevention by calling on the international community to intervene early in order to be effective; and collective implementation through a global or regional organization.

An international lawyer who specializes in national security affairs, weapons of mass destruction and the United Nations, Feinstein served in the Clinton administration from 1994-2001, first as a senior advisor for peacekeeping policy in the office of the secretary of defense and later as principal director of policy planning under Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

Feinstein served as the co-director of the 2002 independent task force sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations and Freedom House on Enhancing U.S. Relations with the U.N. He has written widely on national security and foreign policy issues and is a frequent guest commentator on television public affairs programs.

He earned his bachelor’s degree at Vassar, a master’s degree in political science from City University of New York Graduate Center and holds a law degree from Georgetown University. Fluent in Russian and French, Feinstein also studied at the State Pushkin Institute of Russian Language in Moscow.

Other scheduled speakers in this year’s lecture series include:

• March 1 — Jack DuVall, president and founding director of the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict, Washington, D.C., “The Right to Rise Up: People Power and the Virtues of Civic Disruption.”

• April 4 — John Merrill, chief of the Northeast Asia Division, Bureau of Intelligence and Research, U.S. State Department, “North Korea.”

The “Pariah States and Policy Responses” lecture series is sponsored by the Mojmir Povolny Lectureship in International Studies. Named in honor of long-time Lawrence government professor Mojmir Povolny, the lectureship promotes interest and discussion on issues of moral significance and ethical dimensions.

Lawrence University Main Hall Forum Looks at Public Memorials to the Truth

The complex challenge of appropriately memorializing an unpleasant chapter of a country’s history and the relationship between politics and aesthetics is the focus of an upcoming Lawrence University Main Hall Forum.

Nancy Gates Madsen, lecturer in Spanish at Lawrence, presents “The Art of Truth-Telling: Memorials to the Disappeared in Buenos Aires,” Tuesday, Feb. 21 at 4:30 p.m. in Main Hall, Room 201. The event is free and open to the public.

Based on two essays Gates Madsen wrote for the 2005 book “The Art of Truth-Telling About Authoritarian Rule,” the presentation will explore the “politics of memory” in Argentina in the wake of the state-inflicted terror during the country’s “dirty war” from 1976-83 in which thousands of citizens simply vanished.

Kidnapped from their homes and workplaces, people were taken to clandestine detention centers, tortured, killed and buried in unmarked graves. Despite demands by victims’ families and human rights groups that the government account for the thousands of “desaparecidos,” their fate still remains largely unknown.

Through a comparison of the officially sanctioned Memory Park in Buenos Aires with a more spontaneous memorial that arose at the ruins of The Athletic Club, a former underground detention center in the capital city, Gates Madsen will address questions such as what constitutes an appropriate memorial to a past horror, if memorials to brutality force people to remember events or enable them to forget them and whether, in a climate of impunity, memorials can serve as a substitute for justice.

A specialist in contemporary Latin American literature and culture, Gates Madsen joined the Lawrence faculty in 2005. She earned her Ph.D. in Spanish from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

V-Day Lawrence University to perform Eve Ensler’s “The Vagina Monologues”

V-Day Lawrence University will perform Eve Ensler’s “The Vagina Monologues” again this February. Performances will be held on Feb. 25 at 3 p.m. and 8 p.m. and on Feb. 26 at 8 p.m. in Cloak Theatre of the Lawrence Music-Drama Center, 420 E. College. Ave. Tickets are $10 for adults and $5 for students and may be purchased at the Lawrence University Box Office, 920-832-6749.

“The Vagina Monologues” has been performed in cities all across the nation and at hundreds of college campuses. It has inspired a dynamic grassroots movement—V-Day—to stop violence against women.

This is V-Day Lawrence University’s fifth year performing the monologues. Through the performance V-Day hopes to generate awareness, raise funds to end violence against women, as well as provide a night of entertainment. Junior Brianne Mueller is directing this year’s show.

V-Day generates broader attention for the fight to stop violence against women and girls, including rape, battery, and incest.
Through V-Day campaigns, local volunteers and college students produce annual benefit performances of “The Vagina Monologues” to raise awareness and funds for anti-violence groups within their own communities.

Proceeds from the V-Day Lawrence University performances will benefit the Fox Valley Sexual Assault Crisis Center, Men Can Stop Rape and KIWOHEDE. This is the fifth year that V-Day will support the Fox Valley SACC, a local organization that provides a variety of important services for those affected by sexual assault. Men Can Stop Rape is a national organization that focuses on ending rape and sexual violence through education. KIWOHEDE is an organization in Tanzania that educates, shelters and rehabilitates women rescued from sexual slavery and domestic abuse.

Role, Definition of Masculinity Focus of Lawrence University Panel Presentation

The recent release of “Brokeback Mountain,” the so-called “gay cowboy movie,” has generated box office success, critical acclaim, a slew of Academy Award nominations and considerable discussion on what constitutes a “real man.”

A four-member Lawrence University faculty panel tackles that topic Wednesday, Feb. 15 in the Main Hall Forum “What is ‘Masculinity’? — And Why That’s the Wrong Question.” The presentation, at 4:15 p.m. in Main Hall, Room 201, is free and open to the public.

Each of the four panelists — Melanie Boyd, Paul Cohen, Randall McNeil and Monica Rico — will address the topic from a different perspective/area of expertise, followed by a general discussion and question and answer session with the audience.

Boyd, one of Lawrence’s charter postdoctoral Fellows with an appointment in gender studies, will discuss masculinity within queer theory. Her presentation will focus on the ways “queerness” is useful in highlighting the routine combining of gender and sexuality, examining the way in which heterosexuality is intrinsic to the hegemonic definition of masculinity.

Cohen, professor of history and the Patricia Hamar Boldt Professor of Liberal Studies who is developing the course, “Reel Men: Masculinity in American Film since World War II,” will review the portrayal of masculinity in post-war American film. Using Howard Hawks’ 1948 classic western “Red River” as an example, Cohen will examine the iconic gender archetypes in the movie, especially the John Wayne persona and the notion that “real men” are wholly self-willed, self-sufficient individuals who don’t need women or anyone else.

Rico, an assistant professor of history with a focus on gender and cultural history, especially of the American West, will discuss how historians have recently taken up the issue of masculinity by examining the ways social pressures to “act like a man” have evolved over time, where those pressures originate and how the ideals of masculinity shift in relation to ethnic and class identities.

McNeill, associate professor of classics whose research interests include Roman and Greek history, will discus “codes of masculine behavior” as a subject of study in the field of classics, specifically how scholars are refining their understanding of the various ways in which Roman men dealt with the expectations that were placed upon them.

Incompatibility of Morality, Religion Focus of Lawrence University Address

Author and objectivist philosopher Andrew Bernstein challenges the conventional belief that morality can only be based in religious faith in an address at Lawrence University.

Bernstein presents “Religion vs. Morality” Friday, Feb. 10 at 8 p.m. in Riverview Lounge of the Lawrence Memorial Union. The event is free and open to the public.

The purpose of morality is widely viewed as a guide to human life on earth and that without a God no principles of right and wrong can exist. Bernstein counters that wisdom by suggesting religion is incapable of providing a basis for morality, arguing that human conduct requires a code of secularism, rationality, egoism and freedom. According to Bernstein, religious faith actually clashes with every principle of a proper moral code and as a result can only lead to hell on earth.

A senior writer for the Ayn Rand Institute, Bernstein is the author of several books, including “The Capitalist Manifesto: The Historic, Economic and Philosophic Case for Laissez-Faire,” and the 2002 novel “Heart of a Pagan.” He has taught philosophy at Marymount College, Hunter College, Long Island University and has held adjunct professor of philosophy positions at Pace University and at the State University of New York at Purchase. He earned his Ph.D. in philosophy at City University of New York.

City of Qumran, Dead Sea Scrolls Focus of Archaeology Lecture at Lawrence University

Jodi Magness, professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina, presents “The Archaeology of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls” Monday, Feb. 13 in an Archaeological Institute of America lecture at Lawrence University.

The slide-illustrated presentation, at 7:30 p.m. in Lawrence’s Wriston Art Center auditorium, is free and open to the public and includes an informal reception with the speaker following the address.

Magness will discuss the archaeological connection between the Qumran site, which was excavated in the 1950s, and the famous scrolls. Hailed by some as the greatest manuscript discovery of modern times, the ancient parchment scrolls were found in 1947 by a young Bedoin goat herder in a jar in a cave along the northwest shore of the Dead Sea, 13 miles east of Jerusalem. Scholars eventually discovered more than 800 scrolls among 11 different caves in the area.

The scrolls are believed to have been written between 200 B.C. and 68 A.D. and contain biblical as well as non-biblical materials. With the exception of the book of Esther, parts of all the books of the Old Testament have been found among the scroll fragments.

Scholars estimate that Qumran may have been occupied as early as the 8th century B.C. and believe it served as the home for some of the Essenes, a Jewish sect that developed in the 2nd century B.C. Some scholars credit the Essenes with having a major influence on the development of Christianity.

Magness, the Kenan Distinguished Professor for Teaching Excellence in Early Judasism at North Carolina, has done extensive field research throughout Israel. She is the author of five books, including “The Archaeology of Qumran: and the Dead Sea Scrolls.”

She spent 11 years in the classics and art history department at Tufts University before joining the faculty at North Carolina. She earned her bachelor’s degree in archaeology and history at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and her Ph.D. in classical archaeology at the University of Pennsylvania.

Lawrence University Opera Theatre Presents Mozart’s Classic “The Magic Flute”

Lawrence University joins in the world-wide celebration of the 250th anniversary of the birth of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart with three performances of the composer’s ever-popular opera classic “The Magic Flute.”

The opera will be staged Thursday and Friday Feb. 16-17 at 8 p.m. and Sunday Feb. 19 at 3 p.m in Stansbury Theatre of the Lawrence Music-Drama Center, 420 E. College Ave. Tickets, at $10 for adults, $5 for students and senior citizens, can be purchased through the Lawrence Box Office, 920-832-6749.

The last of 20 operas written by Mozart — it premiered in Vienna on September 30, 1791, less than three months before he died — “The Magic Flute” is built around the simple but timeless plot themes of man’s search for true love and the fundamental desire to help good triumph over evil. It is considered by some the most fanciful and wide-ranging of the composer’s operatic works, exploring numerous musical styles and theatrical devices.

“Mozart and the German librettist Emanuel Schikeneder used story lines and images from Masonic rites as their source material for this opera,” said Timothy Troy, the J. Thomas and Julie Esch Hurvis Professor of Theatrea and Drama who will direct the production. “Those elements give the opera a sense of mystery and good-natured melodrama.”

The production will feature a combination of large, three-dimensional sculpture and projected images of ancient civilizations such as Egypt, Mesopotamia and Celtic Ireland. The set is designed to create the mysterious world the two main characters, Tamino, a handsome Egyptian prince, and Pamina, the daughter of Astrifiammante, the wicked Queen of the Night, navigate their way through before eventually marrying.

The opera’s title comes from the flute Tamino is given that enables him to sound an alarm and summon help in time of peril during his efforts to rescue Pamina.

David Becker, director of orchestral studies at Lawrence who will serve as conductor for the production, says it is the deft blending of so many different elements that makes this particular opera special.

“The unusual exploration of almost slapstick comedy along side of humanitarian symbolism relating to his affiliation with Freemasonary, along with use of Austrian folk song, Italian vocal display, German ‘singspiel,’ the revival of Baroque contrapuntal style and the masterful combination of his magical music with the libretto makes ‘The Magic Flute’ not only one of Mozart’s greatest operatic creations but arguably one of the greatest of all German operas,” said Becker.

What “The Magic Flute” lacks in terms of a subtle story line, is more than made up by the music according to Troy.

“In the play “Amadeus,” Antonio Salieri remarks that you can hear the voice of God in Mozart’s music,” said Troy. “That statement is especially true in this opera.”

In addition to the stage and musical direction of Troy and Becker, the production features a set designed by Rich Frielund, associate professor of theatre arts and vocal coaching by Bonnie Koestner, assistant professor of music. The production also will include the contributions of two guest artists: Milwaukee area lighting designer Jason Fassl and costume designer Emily Rohm-Gilmore, ’02, of Naperville, Ill.

Tenor Steve Spears, assistant professor of music, will sing the romantic male lead role of Tamino, while sophomore Emily Fink of Neenah (Thursday) and senior Caitlin Cisler of Appleton (Friday, Sunday) will share the female lead role of Pamina.