Announcements
PBS Documentary Showing and Discussion with Tom Mayer
Thursday, September 24, 2009
7:00 PM ~ Olin Auditorium
"Michaelangelo Revealed"
Thomas F. Mayer was brought in as historical consultant to the PBS documentary "Michelangelo Revealed" because of his work on one of Michelangelo's most important spiritual advisors, Reginald Pole (1500-1558), cardinal of England, nearly successful candidate for pope in 1549 and last Catholic archbishop of Canterbury under Mary I. By coincidence, Mayer was a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome while the film was being made, giving him the opportunity to serve as consultant. As such, he advised the screenwriter, Vania Del Burgo, about whom to use as on-camera experts, suggested readings, and read the script which had already been largely written before he became involved. The documentary was focused on the work of the art restorer Antonio Forcellino, so there were limits to how much impact Mayer's advice could have. In addition to restoring Michelangelo's Julius II tomb in San Paolo in Vincoli in Rome, Forcellino wrote two books about the monument's meaning. Mayer did not accept most of Forcellino's argument about Michelangelo's context (few professionals in the area do) and could not get most of his reservations into the script, but he did find Forcellino's reading of Michelangelo's revision of the monument more interesting than most art historians do. Thus, like Michelangelo and Pole, Mayer had to master the art of ambiguity in order to have as much input as possible in circumstances where most of the decisions had already been made.
The the link to the PBS movie is
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/episode-home/michelangelo-revealed
Research Practices Survey
Reminder: Please encourage your first year students to take the Research Practices Survey in the next few weeks! The RPS was developed by Carleton College and other liberal arts colleges for the Higher Education Data Sharing (HEDS) consortium to measure research skills, and it will allow us to compare our results to those of similar institutions. First year students will get an email asking for their participation in the survey, which will be active until September 18th. It will be administered during the fall and spring of the first year and then again in the senior year.
Students who complete the survey should print out the last "thank you" page, write their name on it and bring it to the library circulation desk on 2nd floor. A drawing will take place from those pages for two $50 dollar gift certificates to the college bookstore. All of this will be spelled out when students receive the survey.
For more information about the survey, feel free to contact Connie Ghinazzi in Tredway Library.
The Celebration of Faculty Scholarship and Teaching
October 12-16, 2009
Please submit your scholarship and teaching statements to Rita Griffin, Library Secretary, x7266, by Monday, September 28th
The library needs your scholarship published or performed from April 30, 2008 through August 30, 2009-including books, journal articles, grants, SoTL articles, music compositions, plays, photos of works of art, papers or presentations at conferences. If you wish, you are welcome to "catch up" by sending us anything you've done since 1-1-2002 (the starting date of our collection), but this year's celebration will focus on work published or performed 4-30-2008 through 8-30-2009. Scholarship published or performed after August 30, 2009, will be included in the next year's celebration.
We also need narratives about your teaching innovations. The topic for the Fall, 2009, celebration will be "Responding to Student Writing." Faculty are invited to submit narratives on approaches to this topic. (e.g., In what ways do you respond to student writing? How do you phrase critical remarks so as not to discourage? Do you use an effective grading rubric to respond to student writing? What is a timely response to student writing assignments?)
Please use our handy online forms at http://www.augustana.edu/library/Services/facultyachievement.html to submit your information. Work previously submitted to the library will be included-you need not send it again.
Questions? Please contact Rita Griffin, Library Secretary, x7266, or Carla Tracy.
Midwest Faculty Seminar
"The Human Condition"
November 5-7, 2009
Please contact Jeff Abernathy if you are interested in attending.
Registration Deadline s Friday, October 23, 2009
First published in 1958, Hannah Arendt's landmark 1958 text The Human Condition calls into question the practice of thinking of Man as an abstraction, and argued for the need to think of men in their plurality and multiplicity. Arendt begins with the simple proposal: to "think what we are doing" as a way to understand the reality of our social practices as they are, rather than as wel want them to be. The phrase is carefully chosen, in that one of the work's primary concerns is to understand human societies in their plurality, to study men, rather than 'Man.' Arendt considers society in practical terms as a massive gathering of individuals, each of whom represents unpredictable possibilities. Her schema examines three varieties of these possibilities in what she calls the vita activa, - labor, work, and action - as well as their role within the political, social, public and private realms. Basing her analysis in both a historical account of Classical Greece and her acute insights into contemporary modernity, Arendt's diagnosis of "the state of human humanity" has become an essential text for a variety of disciplines: philosophy, political science, history and literature. This seminar will explore Arendt's contributions to 20th century through this controversial and, hugely influential philosophical text, as well the work's relevance to contemporary discussion.
Human Condition Registration Form