June 3, 2003

Contact: Janet Crow, Hall Center for the Humanities, (785) 864-7822.

Hall Center announces speakers for 2003-04 lecture series at KU

LAWRENCE -- The Hall Center for the Humanities at the University of Kansas has announced the speakers for the 2003-04 Hall Center Lecture Series. The series will feature Peter Gay, Sherman Alexie Jr., Linda Stone-Ferrier and E.O. Wilson, as well as a lecture by Hall Center Director Victor Bailey. The series is free and open to the public.

Peter Gay, a prominent historian and author, will begin the season with a lecture on "Modernism in Exile" at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 4, in the Kansas Union ballroom. Gay will draw on his own experiences as an exile from Nazi Germany, memories that also served as the basis for his 1998 book, "My German Question: Growing up in Nazi Berlin." The book details the contradictions of everyday life under the Nazi dictatorship and discusses Gay's conflicting emotions for the country of his birth.

Victor Bailey, Hall Center director and professor of history at KU, will present a lecture on "Winston Churchill: The Greatest Adventurer of Modern Political History" at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 2, in the Spencer Museum of Art auditorium. Bailey, a scholar of British history, will explain how Churchill became the trusted and beloved political figure remembered today when, as late as 1939, he was reviled by the British as a fanatical, fickle egotist and distrusted by Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt as an alcoholic imperialist.

Sherman Alexie Jr., author and producer of the Sundance Film Festival hit "Smoke Signals," will present a lecture on "Killing Indians: Myths, Lies and Exaggerations" at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 29, at the Lied Center. Alexie, a Spokane/Coeur d'Alene Indian, draws from his own life experiences to create a realistic portrayal of Native Americans, free from stereotypes such as brave warriors, mystical shamans and victims of poverty. Alexie will explore the realities and stereotypes of Native American life in his lecture and will discuss those ideas further in two colloquia at KU and Haskell Indian Nations University.

The spring semester will begin with Linda Stone-Ferrier, KU professor of art history, who will discuss "The Rembrandt Research Project: Issues and Controversies" at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 26, in the Spencer Museum of Art auditorium. Stone-Ferrier, a scholar of 17th-century Dutch art, will address a long-standing project funded by the Dutch government that aims to determine, once and for all, which paintings were painted by Rembrandt and which were not. The project has spawned controversies among art historians about what determines authenticity and how authenticity is defined.

E.O. Wilson, Pulitzer Prize-winning author and biologist, will complete the series with a lecture on "The Future of Life" at 7 p.m. Thursday, April 15, at the Lied Center. Spanning the disciplines of biology, ecology and sociology, Wilson's writings form a conservationist philosophy that aims to create a sustainable future for both human and animal life. Wilson's lecture and colloquium will draw on his latest book, also called "The Future of Life," in which Wilson says that people must make drastic changes to the way they live and how they use the earth if humanity is going to survive past this point.