[InFocus] In Focus 2/02

[su-infocus at southwestern.edu]

 IN FOCUS: February 2, 2007
 
* TOP NEWS *
	  	*CALENDAR *
*MARCH 5-6 SYMPOSIUM AT SOUTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY TAKES A NEW LOOK AT OUR 
RELATIONSHIP WITH ANIMALS*
	  	

*February*

*2-17* Fine Line: Mental Health/Mental Illness, Fine Arts Gallery

*3* Baseball, alumni game, 2 p.m.

*4* Faculty recital: David Asbury, guitar, and Hai Zheng, cello, 3 p.m., 
Mood-Bridwell Atrium

*7* Gallery talk: "Madness in the Media: Mr. Monk's Postmodern Identity,"
5 p.m., Olin 105

*9* Women's basketball vs. Trinity, 6 p.m.

*9* Men's basketball vs. Trinity, 8 p.m.

*10* Baseball vs. Schreiner, 2 p.m.

*11* Baseball vs. Schreiner, 1 p.m.

*12* Women's basketball vs. University of Dallas, 6 p.m.

*12 *Fleming Lecture in Religion, 7 p.m., McCombs Ballroom

*12* Men's basketball vs. University of Dallas, 8 p.m.

*15* Baseball vs. Huston-Tillotson University, 3 p.m.

*16-18* Family Days

*16* Women's basketball vs. Austin College, 6 p.m.

*16* Men's basketball vs. Austin College, 8 p.m.

*17* Honors Convocation, 9:30 a.m., Lois Perkins Chapel

*17* Guest artist recital: Walter Stout, organ, 3 p.m., Lois Perkins Chapel

*17* Baseball vs. Concordia, 2 p.m. and 5 p.m.

*17* Women's basketball vs. Hendrix, 6 p.m.

17 Men's basketball vs. Hendrix, 8 p.m.

*21* Baseball vs. McMurry, 2 p.m.

*23-March 4* Company, Fridays and Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 3 p.m., 
Jesse and Mary Gibbs Jones Theater

*25* Baseball vs. University of Dallas, 1 p.m. and 4 p.m.

Animals. Sometimes we consider them our best friends and other times we 
experiment on them, mass produce them for food, use them for 
entertainment, and encroach on their habitats.

This "dualism" will be the topic of the 29th Brown Symposium to be held 
at Southwestern University March 5-6. The symposium is titled "Who Do We 
Think We Are?!"

Conference organizer Laura Hobgood-Oster, chair of the Religion and 
Philosophy Department, says the conference will take a new look at our 
relationship with animals from a variety of perspectives, including the 
scientific, legal, ethical and religious.

She says the conference topic is timely because of our growing reliance 
on mass-produced animals for food. Most of the livestock and poultry we 
eat today are raised in confined feedlots or tiny cages known as CAFOs - 
concentrated animal feeding operations. "Factory farming is arguably the 
cruelest interaction humans have had with animals," Hobgood-Oster says.

Speakers participating in the symposium include Pulitzer Prize-winning 
author Alice Walker; Marc Bekoff, a professor of biology at the 
University of Colorado - Boulder and co-founder with Jane Goodall of 
Ethologists for the Ethical Treatment of Animals; Ines Talamantez, a 
professor of religious studies at the University of California, Santa 
Barbara; and Paul Waldau, director of the Center for Animals and Public 
Policy at the Tufts University Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine. 
Tufts has the only veterinary school in the country that does not do 
research on live animals unless they are already sick or injured.

The symposium also will include an art exhibition organized by Professor 
of Art Star Varner. The exhibition is titled "Measured Strokes, 
Spontaneous Beasts: Paintings by Sarah Canright and Melissa W. Miller." 
Canright and Miller are nationally acclaimed artists whose works have 
been in prestigious museum exhibitions and have garnered attention from 
the most influential art critics and publications including /The New 
York Times/, /Art in America/ and /Art Forum/.

Also, on the evening of March 5, there will be a viewing of a 2002 
documentary by Sarita Siegel titled "The Disenchanted Forest." The 
documentary focuses on orphaned orangutans that are rehabilitated and 
returned to their rainforest home in Borneo. Hundreds of orangutans in 
southeast Asia have been threatened by the destruction of their habitat 
and the illegal pet trade. The film will be shown at 9 p.m. in Olin 105.

The symposium is free and open to the public. All the lectures will be 
held in the Corbin J. Robertson Center. For more information, visit 
www.southwestern.edu/brownxxix or call 512-863-1669.

Read the entire story here 
<http://www.southwestern.edu/newsroom/news/070201.html>.

*SOUTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR LEADS PROJECT TO GATHER STORIES OF 
FEMALE COMPUTER SCIENCE PIONEERS*

This year, only one female student will be graduating from Southwestern 
University with a degree in computer science. Nationwide, the statistics 
are pretty much the same: only about 20 percent of students receiving 
degrees in computer science are women.

Encouraging more women to enter the field of computer science is among 
the goals of a project being led by Barbara Boucher Owens, an associate 
professor of computer science at Southwestern.

Owens is working on an oral history project to document the stories of 
the women who pioneered the field of computer science.

The project began several years ago after a number of papers and books 
reported alarming trends in the number of students pursing careers in 
computer science, particularly women.

Shrinking numbers are especially problematic for women, Owens said, 
because research shows that one of the keys to success for women in 
computer science is to have the support of other women.

"As fewer women enter the field, there is no one for other women to talk 
to," she said.

In 2004, Owens organized a meeting to discuss the problem with 
colleagues in the Association for Computer Machinery's Computer Science 
Education Special Interest Group. Owens has been a member of this 
group's board since 1995 and currently serves as its vice chair. One 
idea they came up with was to collect oral histories of women who have 
persevered in the field.

The group got several experts to train them on how to collect oral 
histories, and Owens has received several grants to fund the project. In 
2005, she received a grant from the Sam Taylor Fellowship Fund which 
helped her purchase the equipment needed to record the stories.

Just recently, she received a $40,000 grant from the National Science 
Foundation that will help her and her colleagues continue planning the 
project. Still to be determined, she said, are questions such as how 
many people to interview and what age range should be covered. She noted 
that some men also will be interviewed for the project.

Boucher helped collect the first interview for the project in 2005 with 
Maria Klawe, the first woman to serve as president of Harvey Mudd 
College, one of the country's premier undergraduate colleges for 
engineering, science and mathematics.

Since then, Owens and her colleagues have collected oral histories from 
11 women and three men. Excerpts from some of the interviews are posted 
online at a temporary Web site Owens set up at 
http://cs.southwestern.edu/OHProject/.

This semester, students in the computer science capstone class at 
Southwestern are working on improvements to this Web site. The class is 
being taught by Vicki Almstrum, a well-known software engineering 
educator from The University of Texas at Austin who is working with 
Owens on the oral history project.

In addition to posting the stories online, Owens hopes to publish a book 
with selected stories.

Read the entire story here 
<http://www.southwestern.edu/newsroom/news/070201a.html>.

 

* EVENTS *

Robert Alter, professor of Hebrew and comparative literature at the 
University of California, Berkeley, and author of /The Art of Biblical 
Narrative/, /The Art of Biblical Poetry/, /Necessary Angels: Tradition 
and Modernity in Kafka, Benjamin, and Scholem/, and numerous other books 
and publications, will present the 2007 Fleming Lecture in Religion on 
"The Body in Psalms" Monday, Feb. 12, at 7 p.m. in the McCombs Ballroom. 
A reception will follow.

As a scholar of comparative literature, Alter caused a revolution in 
Biblical studies by applying newer methods of literary analysis to the 
Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. His translation and notes for /Genesis/, and 
also for the books of Samuel under the title of /The David Story/, are 
probably the best that exist in English.

The Fleming Lecture in Religion, a series named in honor of former 
President Durwood Fleming and his wife, is funded by a gift from St. 
Luke's United Methodist Church in Houston.

The Sarofim School of Fine Arts presents "Madness in the Media: Mr. 
Monk's Postmodern Identity," a lecture by Davi Johnson, assistant 
professor of communication studies, at 5 p.m. in the F.W. Olin Building, 
room 105, Wednesday, Feb. 7.

Contemporary television is filled with images of mental illness. Recent 
statistics show, for example, that more than 20 percent of prime-time 
television shows feature representations of mental illness. In the past, 
these images have been very negative: examples might include typical 
stereotypes such as "psycho," the serial killer, or the fool. Persons 
with mental illness have most commonly been portrayed as different, 
aggressive, violent and dangerous. This is starting to change; positive 
representations are becoming more frequent. For example, shows including 
"ER" and "Scrubs" have won awards from advocacy groups for their 
constructive images of persons with mental illness. In the talk, Johnson 
will address what is at stake in these changing patterns of representing 
mental illness. These representational shifts reflect broader 
transformations in social understandings of mental illness and what it 
means to be "normal." Johnson will look at the hit show "Monk" (the USA 
Network series about a detective with obsessive compulsive disorder) to 
illustrate the specific ways in which television representations reflect 
a more positive image of persons with mental illness.

*FACULTY FORUM*

Dan Hilliard, professor of sociology, and Mary Young, professor of 
economics, will lead the noon Faculty Forum titled "Attempts to Measure 
and Improve the Health of Williamson County Youth" on Monday, Feb. 5, in 
the Lynda McCombs Room.

Sodexho will provide a hot lunch for $4.25 per person and coffee and tea 
will be available for 50 cents.

MEDIA COVERAGE

President Jake Schrum recorded a commentary on college tuition that 
aired Jan. 30 on National Public Radio stations across the country. It 
ran as part of the program called the "Marketplace Morning Report" that 
airs during NPR's "Morning Edition."

Listen to the program on the Marketplace Web site at 
http://marketplace.publicradio.org/shows/2007/01/30/AM200701302.html.

The /Williamson County Sun/ ran an article about Southwestern University 
receiving a $2 million gift toward the Center for Lifelong Learning.

The /Austin American-Statesman/ ran an article about Edward L. Kain, 
professor of sociology and University Scholar, receiving the 2007 
Distinguished Contributions to Teaching Award.

NOTABLES

*David Tabb Stewart*, assistant professor of religion and philosophy, 
presented the paper "Stories as Shades: (Bat-)Yiftach as Specter for the 
Outrage at Gibeah" at the annual conference of the Association for 
Jewish Studies in San Diego on Dec. 17, 2006. In November, he also 
presented two papers at the annual conference of the Society of Biblical 
Literature. The first was titled "Deafness and Temple Service: Why the 
Priests Don't Need to Hear;" the second, "The Politick Text: 
17th-Century Text-Reception of Leviticus in English."




 
 
 
 
  	  	 

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