Thursday, 2 April, 2009

Art in the Age of Obama
I had the good fortune to attend Peter Sellars' "Art in the Age of Obama" lecture at  Montalvo Arts Center last month. This excellent presentation is now available online, and I urge you to view it. Click here and scroll to "Agency: Peter Sellars"(the interview and lecture are two separate files).

Join us for a wide-ranging conversation with Henry Louis “Skip” Gates, Jr., one of the most influential voices in American academia today. Claude Steele, who has known Professor Gates over the course of his long, pioneering career, will guide an interview that illuminates various dimensions of this leading scholar’s life and work at Harvard, where he served as chair of the Department of African and African American Studies from 1991 to 2006, as a writer for The New Yorker under Tina Brown, as a film and television documentary producer, and as a keen observer of the role of race in American society and politics. Related Themes: education, politics, race, scholarship

Joycelyn Elders entered college at age 15 after growing up in a sharecropper’s shack. She attended medical school on the G. I. Bill and became a pediatrician and professor. In 1993, she was appointed Surgeon General of the United States. Related Themes: courage, hope, politics, public health

In recent decades, political debates have often come down to struggles for control of the language: leftist agenda and right-wing conspiracy, fair and balanced and media bias, choice and life, diversity and preferences, class warfare and corporate welfare, support the troops and quagmire. How does language shape and reinforce our political perceptions? Are linguistic divisions more marked in American political life than they used to be? Does one side have a dominant linguistic position? Two linguists well known for their writing about the language of public life assess the state of political language and ask where it is headed. Related Themes: democracy, language, politics

Please join our post-election Town Hall Meeting. We begin with forty-five minutes of on-stage conversation between Amy Goodman, Larry Diamond, David Dill and John McManus before opening up the microphones for audience questions and comments. Related Themes: democracy, journalism, politics, voting

Join us as Newsweek managing editor Jon Meacham discusses religion, one of the most pervasive yet least understood forces in American life. With reference to his best-selling book, American Gospel, he will use the Founding Fathers’ insistence on religious liberty to illuminate conflicts at work in our country as we approach the first wide-open presidential election since 1952. Related Themes: media, politics, religion

What are we to make of the increasing expression of politics as media experience? How are "new media" (mobile video, YouTube, blogs) influencing political campaigns? What does the future of democratic processes look like with new media as a political force? Join three experts on political messaging for a stimulating conversation on democratic ideals in the age of the electronic town hall. Related Themes: media, politics