Wednesday, October 24
Dr. Katherine Hayles
University of California, Los Angeles
"Re-envisioning the Human in an Information-Intensive Era"

Katharine Hayles, Distinguished Professor of English at UCLA, specializes in the interrelations between literature and science in the 20th and 21st centuries and in electronic textuality. A prizewinning teacher and scholar, she is the author of The Cosmic Web: Scientific Field Models and Literary Strategies in the Twentieth Century; Chaos Bound: Orderly Disorder in Contemporary Literature and Science; How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature and Informatics; Writing Machines; and My Mother Was a Computer: Digital Subjects and Literary Texts.

Wednesday, November 14
Dr. Michael Mann
University of California, Los Angeles
"Ethnic Cleansing and Racism: How Often Are the Victims Considered Non- or Sub-human?"

Michael Mann, Distinguished Professor of Sociology at UCLA, is a historical sociologist who studies the history and workings of power in human societies. His books include The Sources of Social Power; Incoherent Empire; and The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing.

Wednesday, February 6
Dr. Erik Mueggler
University of Michigan
"“A World of Slobber and Slime”: British Imperial Botany, Technology, and Bewilderment in the Sino-Tibetan Borderlands"

Eric Mueggler is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan and an affiliate of Michigan's Center for Chinese Studies and Center for the Ethnography of Everyday Life. His fieldwork, scholarship, and teaching focus on the politics of ritual, religion, science, and nature in the border regions of China. The author of The Age of Wild Ghosts: Memory, Violence and Place in Southwest China, he is currently reconstructing the history of British botanical exploration in China's southwest borderlands with an emphasis on the relations of these explorers to the mountain inhabitants who worked as their guides, porters, and collectors.

Wednesday, March 19
Dr. Marc Bekoff
University of Colorado, Boulder
"Animal Passions and Beastly Virtues: Animal Emotions and Why They Matter"

Marc Bekoff is Professor Emeritus of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and a Fellow of the Animal Behavior Society. With Jane Goodall, he co-founded the organization Ethologists for the Ethical Treatment of Animals: Citizens for Responsible Animal Behavior Studies. He is the author of The Emotional Lives of Animals and the co-author of How Animals Talk.

Wednesday, April 23
Dr. Paula Findlen
Stanford University
"After Leonardo: The Artist as Scientist in Seventeenth-Century Italy"

Paula Findlen is Ubaldo Pierotti Professor of Italian History and Director of the Science, Technology, and Society Program at Stanford. She specializes in the rise of modern science, medicine, and technology during the European Renaissance and especially in Italy. The author of Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy, she is currently at work on a project entitled "The Women Who Understood Newton: Laura Bassi and Her World."