Academic Affairs

Zohar Gazit, Program in Modern Hebrew, will give a talk as part of the 2020-21 Carol Rifelj Faculty Lecture Series. This lecture explores Israeli women who suffered perinatal loss and reveals manners in which women frame the loss in a way that enables the performance of motherhood. Private and public activities, such as performing mourning rituals and commemorating the loss – even without mementos testifying to the child’s existence – are used to define the ambiguous event as a ‘death’ occurrence.

Pieter Broucke, Department of History of Art & Architecture, will give a talk as part of the 2020-21 Carol Rifelj Faculty Lecture Series: “New Approaches to Ancient Art: the Teaching Collection of Antiquities at the College Museum”

Michael Olinick, Department of Mathematics, will give a talk as part of the 2020-21 Carol Rifelj Faculty Lecture Series: “The Enigma of Alan Turing’s Death: Suicide, Accident or Political Assassination?”

David Miranda Hardy, Department of Film and Media Culture, will give a talk as part of the 2020-21 Carol Rifelj Faculty Lecture Series. Cultural discussions about media representations of people with disabilities tend to either decry their absence in our narrative landscape or, when included, critique their misrepresentation.

Stefano Mula, Department of Italian, will give a talk as part of the 2020-21 Carol Rifelj Faculty Lecture Series. In exile for his opposition to Fascism, Ignazio Silone wrote his first literary works while abroad. His novel Fontamara was first published in German, while the Italian version was and still is almost impossible to find in Italy. The early novellas were also first published in German, and the Italian original was lost. Silone enjoyed great popularity abroad, also for his political positions, while being almost unknown in Italy.

Ajay Verghese, Department of Political Science, will give a talk as part of the 2020-21 Carol Rifelj Faculty Lecture Series. Political scientists have theorized the implications of various religions on political behavior, yet their analyses rarely extend beyond the Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. This talk examines Hinduism in India, the world’s largest Asian religion with over one billion followers.

As part of the 2020-21 Carol Rifelj Faculty Lecture Series, Gary Margolis ‘67 will read from his recently published book of poems “Museum of Islands: New and Selected Poems”(Baughan Publishing) which includes a number of College-related poems and from a new manuscript, “Arias and Arguments” which includes poems written during and speaking to the pandemic. Dr. Margolis is Executive Director of College Mental Health Services, Emeritus and Associate Professor (part-time), English and American Literatures.

Sigal Ben-Porath received her doctorate in political philosophy from Tel-Aviv university in 2000, after which she joined Princeton University’s Center for Human Values as a post-doctoral fellow. In 2004 she moved to the University of Pennsylvania where she is currently a professor of education, philosophy and political science. Her most recent books are Free Speech on Campus (Penn Press, 2017) and Making up Our Mind: What School Choice is Really about (with Mike Johanek, University of Chicago Press 2019).

Ellery Foutch, Program in American Studies, will give a talk as part of the 2020-21 Carol Rifelj Faculty Lecture Series.

Narratives from Rented Rooms: The Literary Fascination with Hotels and their Dwellers in early 20th Century Germany and Austria
Bettina Matthias, Department of German, will give a talk as part of the 2020-21 Carol Rifelj Faculty Lecture Series.