Corrinne Bedecarré - Do We Have an Ethical Responsibility to Teach Our Young People How to Drink?

Abstract:

Corrinne Bedecarré is a philosopher of French and Irish heritage. Storytelling, socializing and literature are integral to her life and these cultures. They also bring with them their share of complex relationships with the fruit of the grape and the nectar of hops. As a mother, auntie and college professor, Bedecarré has been painfully and personally aware of the extreme dangers which current drinking practices bring. After determining that binge drinking wasn’t just an extended family systems problem, Bedecarré has been thinking about ways that philosophy can contribute to the contemporary discussions and problem solving about effective approaches to alcohol, especially for the young.

The focus of those inquiries has been her search to provide a viable response to the question:

Do we have an ethical responsibility to teach our young people how to drink?

Presenter Bio:

Bedecarré received her undergraduate philosophy degree at Sonoma State University in California where she, as an undergraduate, helped to organize critical thinking conferences which have continued with great success. Longtime member of the Society for Women in Philosophy, Midwest Division, Bedecarré received her Master’s and Doctorate from the University of Minnesota. A California transplant, she spent her sabbatical, 2007-2008, reviewing applied ethics in Marin County, California.

Related Links:

Scientific Facts on Alcohol

College Drinking Prevention

College Presidents Want to Lower Drinking Age

Ron Ward - Origins, Ecology, and Economy of Invasive Species in Minnesota

Abstract:

“You know, one of the most shocking things about it is to realize how easily we have lost a world that seemed so safe and certain.” (From “Day of the Triffids” by John Wyndham)

Throughout the history of human civilization people have facilitated the spread of many species of plants, animals and fungi, as well as bacteria, viruses and other pathogens.

The necessary conduit for the spread of these organisms, whether intentional or accidental, is the human economy. As global economic trade intensifies increasing numbers of species are moving from place to place. Most introduced species do not become established, or do become established and end up being benign members of their host ecosystems.

However, a small number of species introductions result in established populations of “invasive” pest species. As global economic interconnectedness intensifies, numbers of invasive species are expected to increase exponentially. By definition, invasive species end up “winners”, and in many instances out-compete native species that end up “losers”. In concert with habitat destruction and fragmentation and the loss of many native species, increasing numbers of invasive species represent a transition from the world we know to a world of ragweed, cockroaches, mice and pigeons – a world the natural history author David Quammen calls a “planet of weeds”.

Presenter Bio:

Ron Ward - a native Upper Midwesterner - is originally from Grand Forks. He now hails from Nordeast Minneapolis, where he lives with his wife of 12 years and his 5 year old son. He received his Bachelors in Geography from the University of Minnesota, and his Masters and PhD from the University of Georgia, where he specialized in biogeography and human-environmental relationships. His dissertation research, which he finished in 2002, is titled "Biogeomorphic Effects of Ligustrum sinense (Chinese privet) invasion on the Upper Oconee River Floodplain, North Georgia". He is still quite active among invasive plant researchers, but now needs a new project because last summer he finished the last of 7 years of follow-up on his research site at the Georgia State Botanical Gardens.

Related Links:

Minnesota DNR - Invasive Species

Invasive Species Information

Ben Maegi - The Curious Case of the Latvian Cotton Pickers: Writing the History of Immigration, Race and Labor in the Postwar Mississippi Delta

Abstract:

In 1948, hundreds of Latvian refugees arrived in the Mississippi Delta to work as cotton pickers on the region’s plantations. By the mid-1950s, only a handful of Latvians remained in the area. Why did white planters turn to this source of labor? And why did the Latvians leave the Delta so quickly? The refugees had arrived at an unsettled time, as white planters dealt with increasing mechanization, international competition, the out-migration of black labor and above all the growing challenge of the civil rights movement. White planters viewed the Latvian refugees as suitably white citizens who could help create a white majority once segregation and black disenfranchisement ended. The Latvians, for their part, resisted Americanization under the terms set by the white planters, instead forming their own distinctly Latvian-American communities both inside and outside the Delta.

In addition to discussing immigration, race and labor in the postwar Mississippi Delta, attention will also be paid to the process of how History gets written. While historians often claim objectivity and adopt an authoritative tone, privately they admit that their work is quite often subjective and profoundly ambiguous. The case of the Latvian cotton pickers reveals some of the ways in which the biases of historians and the limitations of their craft determine what kind of History gets written and, ultimately, remembered.

Presenter Bio:

Bernard “Ben” Maegi earned his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in 2008, where his advisors were the eminent historians of U.S. immigration, Rudolph Vecoli and Donna Gabaccia. A second-generation immigrant, Ben’s interest in History stemmed from his parents’ harrowing stories of their lives as Eastern European refugees during and after the Second World War. Ben has taught U.S., Minnesota and World History at Normandale since 2000.

Related Links:

Displaced Persons Camps

Forced Migration

David Rayson - The Social Justice Fundamentalism of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Abstract:

Beginning in 1980 with the concurrent rise of Protestant fundamentalism in the United States and Islamic fundamentalism in Iran (Shi’a fundamentalism) and Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan (Sunni fundamentalism), the tension between modernism and fundamentalism has been a central focus of both scholars and public policy experts. The idea that this tension only arose in the last quarter of the 20^th century has, however, been largely overturned through the work of religious historians, most notably Karen Armstrong who traced fundamentalist movements in Christianity (mostly Protestantism), Judaism, and Islam from 1492 to the present in her excellent book The Battle for God. Unfortunately, most scholars (including Armstrong) define fundamentalism only in terms of same thinking (orthodoxy) or same ritual practice (orthopraxy). A deeper reading of the historical record, however, quickly reveals that many religious reformers have sought to control the excesses of modernism through a fundamentalism based on the social justice message which is also present in religious texts. Last Spring, I talked about the social justice fundamentalism of Hindu religious leader Mohandas Gandhi and the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer and at this colloquium I will focus on the much more difficult task of spiritual preparation for resistance which Martin Luther King, Jr. undertook beginning in Montgomery, Alabama in December of 1955.

Presenter Bio:

David Rayson earned his Ph.D. in History at the University of Minnesota in 1996. From 1996-2001, David was a Teaching Consultant and Instructor in graduate-level courses on pedagogy as part of the University of Minnesota’s Preparing Future Faculty Program during which time he became an advocate of the Universal Design for Learning approach to education. Since coming to Normandale in Fall 2000, he has taught predominantly World History courses where he has increasingly focused on the tension between modernism and fundamentalism, tension which he argues is the central challenge of the 20^th and 21^st centuries.

Related Links:

Fundamentalism

Relativism vs. Fundamentalism

Susan Krook - Why Do Anthropologists Have All the Fun?

Abstract:

Described as “merchants of astonishment, peddlers of the strange” by Clifford Geertz in 1985, anthropologists have, for the most part, accepted their lot in academia and embraced the subject matter with aplomb. Perhaps what has been described as “having fun” is nothing more than doing what we do best – studying ourselves. One subfield in anthropology, archaeology, has been referred to as the “glitzy” part of the discipline. After all, Hollywood stars have come out of films that show the excitement of discovery. For the past three years, faculty and students (some seasoned and some not-so-seasoned) at Normandale have been diligently working at an archaeological site in southwestern Minnesota on a pre-Contact and post-Contact site. This site is now a registered archaeological site with the State of Minnesota. Our archaeological finds so far, along with plans for future excavation and evaluation at this site, will be shared with others at this colloquium.

Presenter Bio:

Susan Krook completed Ph.D. in Anthropology at the University of Colorado Boulder in 1992. She started teaching Anthropology part time at Normandale in 1990 while she was working as a research associate and medical anthropologist at the University of Minnesota's Medical School and completing her dissertation. Susan grew up in Minnesota, attended Edina schools and eventually found her way to Colorado with her husband and three children. She has been fascinated with archaeology since she was a young girl, going to the St. Paul Science Museum many times to stare at the Egyptian mummy that was and still is on display there. Susan taught in California for two years beginning in 2002 and she returned to Minnesota in 2004 after she learned that she was not a California girl. Since her return in 2004, she has been teaching full-time at Normandale in many areas of this broad discipline, but her true love has come back to her in the form of an exciting archaeological discovery in southwestern Minnesota.

Related Links:

Anthropology Tutorials

MPR - Slaughter Slough

Patrick O'Donnell - Soul Image: Explaining Sir Tyrone Guthrie's Fascination with Shakespeare's "Hamlet"

Abstract:

Sir Tyrone Guthrie, founder of the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, had a personal psychological fascination with Shakespeare's play "Hamlet." He directed it five times in his long career as a stage director and it was the inaugural production in May, 1963, for the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis. Guthrie’s investment in the play had deeper roots than its cultural prestige: the prince Hamlet was in some sense a haunted and haunting image of his own identity as a rebellious, non-conformist stage director.

Presenter Bio:

Originally from Dublin, Ireland, Patrick O’Donnell has been living in Minnesota since 1994. He joined the Normandale English Department in 1999. He is currently working on his doctoral thesis at University College Dublin. It is titled: ‘The Irish roots of the Guthrie Theatre’ and it explores various biographical and historical contexts of Sir Tyrone Guthrie, the founder of that theatre from 1959- 1963, and Joe Dowling, who orchestrated its re-invention from 1998-2006.

Related Links:

Sir Tyrone Guthrie

Guthrie Theater

Michael Bielmeier - Philosophy for Poets: Hamlet According to Kierkegaard

Abstract:

No writer in the Western World has so fascinated scholars and the public alike as has Shakespeare, nor any of his works so much as Hamlet. Certainly such was the case for the Danish philosopher/theologian/satirist Soren Kierkegaard. In his pseudonymous writings, Kierkegaard makes various references to Shakespeare’s characters, not the least of whom is Hamlet. This presentation will briefly explore the connection between Kierkegaard and Hamlet by looking at Kierkegaard’s concept of the three existential modalities, or ways of living: the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious (spiritual). By using Kierkegaard’s existential notions as an analytic framework, we are provided with a remarkable insight into the sometimes mystifying behaviors of the melancholic Prince of Denmark.

Presenter Bio:

Dr. Michael Bielmeier has taught in the English Dept. at Normandale since 2005. Previous to this, Dr. Bielmeier taught at Columbus State Community College and Franklin University in Ohio, and prior to that he was many years at Silver Lake College in Manitowoc, WI, where he served as Chair of the English Dept. He received his undergraduate degree in English from St. Norbert College, his M.A. in English from Arizona State University, and his Ph.D. from Marquette University, where his English emphasis was Renaissance drama and philosophy. Dr. Bielmeier has presented papers at numerous academic conferences on the subject of Shakespeare and philosophy, and he has had articles published on this topic in scholarly journals. In 1999, Dr. Bielmeier received a post-doctoral fellowship from the International Kierkegaard Society, and in 2000, Mellen Press published his book length study Shakespeare, Kierkegaard, and Existential Tragedy.

Related Links:

Hamlet (Provided by MIT)

Kierkegaard (Provided by Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)