Adventures in Ideas: Humanities Seminars
2011-2012
Sponsored by the Fulton School of Liberal Arts and
the Whaley Family Foundation. Adventures in Ideas seminars feature
outstanding faculty from the Fulton School of Liberal Arts
exploring important social, cultural, or moral topics.
Cost (including coffee, snacks & lunch): $30 each or
$75 for all three
Purchase
Tickets Online
For more information and to communicate special dietary needs contact the Fulton School Dean’s
Office, Donna Carey at 410-543-6450 or
dmcarey@salisbury.edu
"Johnny Reb, Billy Yank, and Us: The Civil War in Retrospect"
Panelists: Professor Emeritus Donald Whaley
(bio) and Professor Clara
Small (bio) of Salisbury University and Professor Emeritus Larry Whiteaker
(bio) of
Tennessee Tech University.
The 150th anniversary of the Civil War provides an
occasion to look back on the Civil War from current
perspectives. The seminar will address the ongoing
controversy about the causes of the war, the question of whether
the Civil War was our first "modern" war, our growing
understanding of the role of African Americans (especially those
on the Eastern Shore) in the conflict, and the war's legacy.
* * *
"Film, Media, and Society Today"
Elsie Walker, Dave Johnson, and James
Burton (from the Departments of English and Communication Arts)
will lead a broad-ranging discussion about understanding the
power of film and media.
This seminar will be informed by the current research of all
three professors. First, Dr. Walker will present clips from the
classic Western
The
Searchers and from the contemporary melodrama
The
Piano in order to explore the power of music on film.
More specifically, she will discuss how film music works in
terms of psychological impact, perceptions of nationhood,
globalized gender politics, and changing approaches to scoring
for American cinema. Walker’s presentation relates to her
current research, a book titled
Understanding Sound Tracks Through Film Theory, now
under contract with Oxford University Press.
Second, Dr. Johnson will investigate the surprisingly
contentious history of a seemingly simple approach to studying
cinema: the idea that a film director is the primary creative
force behind a film. Viewed through the specific case study of
world-renowned, independent American director Richard Linklater,
Johnson will trace some of the historical origins of director
studies as well as, more generally, the history of cinephilia,
or the passionate love of cinema, in terms of how both continue
to inflect the ways we write about film today. This
presentation grows out of his recent completion of a book for
the University of Illinois Press about Richard Linklater.
Third, Dr. Burton will embark upon an unorthodox biography of
the film
Forrest Gump. Through a careful consideration of
Gump’s production history, its controversial use of the
American past, its use by politicians and commentators to assert
particular notions of Americanness, its initial embrace and
subsequent ridicule by critics, while noting its extraordinary
popularity and status as a cultural phenomenon, he will discuss
the socio-political importance of the film through an attempt to
unravel its meaning as one of the true enigmas of American
cinema. This presentation reflects Burton’s, as he acknowledges,
unexplainable obsession with this film and his continuing book
project about its life.
* * *
"Apocalypse Now: 2012 and Disaster in History
and Culture"
Looking at a variety of sources, from Mayan prophecy to
contemporary science to popular media, this session will explore
how fears related to disaster and beliefs about the end of the
world manifest themselves in cultures both locally and in other
parts of the world.
With: Drs. Louise Detwiler and Michael Lewis,
Departments of Modern Language and History of Salisbury
University.
* * *
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