Past Events

In preparation for Avenali Lecturer Peter Greenaway’s visit to campus, the Townsend Center screens several of Greenaway’s films for viewing.

Winner of the 1970 Chopin International Piano Competition, pianist Garrick Ohlsson is regarded as one of the world’s leading exponents of the music of Frédéric Chopin. He is also noted for his masterly performances of the works of Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert, as well as the Romantic repertoire.

This lecture uses the text of Assembly to discuss one of the most important cultural developments in China at the beginning of the twenty-first century: the re-configuration of both scholarly and popular consciousness about modern and contemporary Chinese history.

In 2007, Ang Lee’s film, Lust, Caution opened simultaneously in mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong. It was a sensation, leading to strong, passionate reactions. Dai Jinhua’s lecture approaches the interpretations and reception of Lust, Caution, along with the acclaim and denunciations of the film, as a cluster of socio-cultural symptoms.

Kelly Oliver is W. Alton Jones Chair of Philosophy and Professor of Women's Studies at Vanderbilt University. She has written on issues such as the ethics of surrogate motherhood, the ethics of reproductive technologies, affirmative action, reverse discrimination and the courts, ethics of adoption, family values, and more recently on the effects of embedded journalism, women in the military, the ethics of war, and women suicide bombers.

While it may come as an affront to our local sensibilities, not everyone appreciates the wine that flows out of the Napa Valley. In Mondovino, Sommelier and filmmaker Jonathan Nossiter travels across three continents and through five languages to explain how Napa has radically reshaped the age old activity of oenology, or wine making. Labeled by one critic as the “documentary companion to Sideways,” the film reveals the complex world that goes into the bottle we eventually uncork, be it from Napa or elsewhere.

This lecture examines the text of Still Life in order to discuss the realist paradoxes of China’s destruction and construction, submersion and emergence, in the midst of rapid economic development.

Picking up where the series left off in the fall, the Forum on Digital Technology in Humanities Scholarship considers how web technologies are changing humanities research, teaching, and collaboration. Each one-hour, brown-bag lunch forum focuses on an aspect of the "digital humanities" by featuring a short talk by a specialist, followed by a round-table discussion of issues with the audience.

One of Britain’s most influential literary theorists and critics, Terry Eagleton is Distinguished Professor of English Literature at the University of Lancaster, and a Visiting Professor at the National University of Ireland, Galway.

Although it covers most of the globe and makes up the majority of our bodies, we take few things for granted like the water that flows from the tap. Combining expert interviews with firsthand footage from regions as diverse as the deserts of South Africa and the suburbs of Minnesota, Director Irena Selina aims to change this lack of appreciation with her engaging exploration of our most vital resource. From global battles against the privatization of drinking water to local skirmishes over access to water rights, Flow outlines a developing problem we can scarcely afford to ignore.