Featured Events

Join in a series of readings and discussion as together we’ll explore the ways in which humans and the natural world co-exist within the context of American environmental myths past and present. Through a combination of fiction and memoir, we’ll consider the ways our relationship to landscape transcends borders, politics, race, and socio-economics—and the ways in which it brings inequities into sharp relief.

Facilitator:  Kelly McMasters, Assistant Professor of English + Director of Publishing Studies, Hofstra University

Tuesday, October 6, 6:30-8 p.m.
Speaking of Nature by Robin Wall Kimmerer
A Potawatomi Indian and botany professor, discusses finding language that affirms our kinship with the natural world.

Tuesday, October 13, 6:30-8 p.m.
A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid
Kincaid brings us to Antigua, where she grew up, reminding us that behind the benevolent Caribbean scenery are human lives, and makes palpable the impact of European colonialism and tourism. 

Tuesday, October 27, 6:30-8 p.m.
The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man’s Love Affair with Nature by J. Drew Lanham
Growing up on his family’s land in South Carolina, the author fell in love with the subtle beauties of the natural world around him--and grew up to be one of the lone Black men in a predominantly white field.

Tuesday, November 10, 6:30-8 p.m.*
Mill Town: Reckoning with What Remains by Kerri Arsenault
Focused on a paper mill in Arsenault’s hometown in Mexico, Maine, this memoir is an American story, a human predicament, and a moral wake-up call that asks: what are we willing to tolerate and whose lives are we willing to sacrifice for our own survival?
*Special Guest Visit by the author

Tuesday, November 17, 6:30-8 p.m.
Nine Ways to Cross a River: Midstream Reflections on Swimming and Getting There from Here by Akiko Busch
Focused on a paper mill in Arsenault’s hometown in Mexico, Maine, this memoir is an American story, a human predicament, and a moral wake-up call that asks: what are we willing to tolerate and whose lives are we willing to sacrifice for our own survival?
*Special Guest Visit by the author

Tuesday, December 1, 6:30-8 p.m.
Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner

The Lawrence Herbert School of Communication and the Hofstra Cultural Center present In Conversation with filmmaker Martha Pinson. Martha Pinson is an independent film producer and director, who also has worked as a script supervisor for such major filmmakers as Martin Scorsese, Sidney Lumet, Brian DePalma, Oliver Stone and others, as well as on a number of prominent TV series, including Law & Order, Sex and the City, and Boardwalk Empire. Pinson will be discussing her own work as a producer-director, as well as her experiences as a script supervisor over the years.

Speaker: Martha Pinson, Independent Film Producer and Director

http://marthapinson.com

Moderator:  Rodney Hill, Chair and Associate Professor of Film
Department of Radio, Television, Film
The Lawrence Herbert School of Communication

This is a Virtual Event. Advance registration is required.

Join students, faculty and the community for an all-day exposure to some of the global indigenous movements and their centuries-long struggle for the defense of territory, culture, and the environment within the context of the many crises facing the planet.

This annual event is co-sponsored by the Center for Civic Engagement, the Center for “Race,” Culture and Social Justice, Hofstra University Honors College; the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program, Office of Intercultural, Engagement and Inclusion, and the Hofstra Cultural Center.

Join CUNY Professor Erika T. Lin and actor and playwright, Keith Hamilton Cobb, to discuss Shakespeare and the significance of producing and adapting his plays in our current moment. Shakespeare was crucial in making British and American theatre what they are today. Can the plays also support justice for people of color? What do we bring to these works, and how do we make them our own? And who counts as the “we” in industries whose gatekeepers have been (and remain) predominantly white? Our featured speakers, an award-winning scholar and the author of an award-winning play that sits at the intersection of Race, American Theater and Shakespeare, will engage the audience in tackling difficult subjects, including the limitations of academic and performance traditions that are underpinned by structural racism but also the power of the dramatic arts to shape our personal and political lives.

Facilitator:
Dr. Vimala C. Pasupathi
Associate Dean, Honors College
Associate Professor, Department of English
Hofstra University

Register for the event and receive a link for limited access to streaming video of  a very unique and rarely seen performance of American Moor (available October 10-15).The text of American Moor is now available from Bloomsbury’s Methuen Drama Series and can be ordered here and at booksellers of your choice.

Sponsored by the Hofstra Cultural Center, Hofstra University Honors College and the Joseph G. Astman Family.

A reading and Book discussion with Dr. John Bryant, Professor Emeritus of English,  Hofstra University. The reading will be from Bryant’s new biography, Herman Melville: A Half Known Life (Vol. 2, Wiley-Blackwell, 2020). The reading features an episode in the growth of his "black consciousness," this is, his evolving empathy for Black peoples and the dispossessed. Join the conversation on social media at #HofstraVotes.

Sponsored by the Hofstra Cultural Center and the Department of English

This is a Virtual Event. Advance registration is required. 

The public has been chronically disenchanted with the U.S. economy, and the pandemic has only heightened social unrest. What can we do to address these concerns? N. Gregory Mankiw will discuss the many difficult tradeoffs policymakers face as they search for answers.

Speaker: N. Gregory Mankiw, Robert M. Beren Professor of Economics, Harvard University

Moderator: Professor Constantine Alexandrakis, Department of Economics, Hofstra University

N. Gregory Mankiw is the Robert M. Beren Professor of Economics at Harvard University. Mankiw is a prolific writer and a regular participant in academic and policy debates. His research includes work on price adjustment, consumer behavior, financial markets, monetary and fiscal policy, and economic growth. His published articles have appeared in academic journals, such as the American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, and Quarterly Journal of Economics, and in more widely accessible forums, such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal.

The Donald J. Sutherland Lecture is named for the former Hofstra trustee who endowed the annual event.

Co-sponsored by Hofstra College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the Hofstra Cultural Center. 

Join us as we recognize the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first enslaved Africans to North America and the ongoing experience of African Americans with a series of programming titled The Legacy 1619-2019. Programming reflects the journey of African Americans over four centuries and the hopes of a people, past and present, with historical reenactments, lectures, poetry readings, and panel discussions on a range of subjects. Each is a work in progress and is important in moving beyond the last 400 years. Join the #Hof1619 conversation on social media. For a full listing of #Hof1619 events, visit The Legacy 1619-2019.

Immediately following the New Hampshire primary on February 11, Hofstra University will host two political communication experts to examine campaign rhetoric in the 2020 presidential election. Dr. David Birdsell will discuss public policy debates on the campaign trail and the implications of policy dialogue on matters of equity in the United States. Dr. Basil Smikle Jr. will offer observations about messaging strategy in the nominating contests and possible ramifications for the general election.

Speakers:
Dr. David Birdsell, Dean, Marxe School of Public and International Affairs
Baruch College, CUNY

Dr. Basil Smikle Jr., Distinguished Lecturer of Politics and Public Policy,
School of Labor and Urban Studies, CUNY; Political Strategist and Former Executive Director of the New York State Democratic Party
Co-sponsored by the Hofstra Cultural Center.

Guthart Cultural Center Theater, Axinn Library

In this lecture, Cristina Pato shares her artistic journey, forging a multifaceted career as an internationally acclaimed Galician bagpiper master, classical pianist, producer and educator. She will also underscore how her multiple identities – teacher, performer, writer, producer– are a platform to probe social questions raised by the intersection of classical and folkloric music.

Speaker: Cristina Pato is a renowned artist and learning advisor for the project Silkroad 2019-2020 Chair in Spanish Culture and Civilization at the King Juan Carlos Center, New York University

(Presented in Spanish)
Room 202 Brower Hall, South Campus

(Presented in English)
Room 213, Monroe Lecture Center

Presented by the Department of Romance Languages and Languages.

This presentation will investigate the intersection between madness, power, excessive behavior, grief, and reputation in medieval and early modern Iberia. It will focus on three particular individuals and their social and cultural contexts: Isabel of Portugal (1428–96), queen-consort of Castile; Isabel of Aragon (1470–98) queen-consort of Portugal; and Juana of Castile (1479–1555) queen in-her-own-right of Castile. All were very closely related to Isabel I, the Catholic (born 1451, ruled 1474–1504), who ruled Castile as queen in-her-own-right and was lauded as a paragon of stability and rationality. Isabel of Portugal was Isabel the Catholic’s mother and the other were her eldest daughters. Each was described by their contemporaries as having gone mad, retreated into isolation, at least for a time, manifesting what might be described as extreme and self-destructive grief.

Speaker: Núria Silleras-Fernández, Associate Professor of Spanish and Portuguese
University of Colorado at Boulder
Author, Chariots of Ladies: Francesc Eiximenis and the Court Culture of Medieval and Early Modern Iberia

In collaboration with the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures; European Studies Program and
Center for "Race", Culture, and Social Justice.

Guthart Cultural Center Theater, Axinn Library

Out of the more than 50,000 men and 2,500 women incarcerated in New York state, only a tiny fraction have access to higher education. College Behind Bars explores the transformative power of education through the eyes of a dozen incarcerated men and women trying to earn college degrees – and a chance at new beginnings – through one of the country’s most rigorous prison education programs. It’s a program with wide-ranging benefits, including lower rates of recidivism, and it challenges our prioritization of punishment over education. A film by Lynn Novick.

In collaboration with the Department of Sociology, Criminology Program, and the Maurice A. Deane School of Law.

Fortunoff Theater, Monroe Lecture Center

In this 70-minute workshop, participants will learn about the contemporary and larger historical context of nonfiction digital storytelling; recognize how concepts from cultural rhetorics, as well as feminist, queer, and disability studies, can inform digital storytelling practices and help us connect to issues of identity and community belonging; practice applying key concepts to the composition of their own short-form work of digital nonfiction; and brainstorm practical, rhetorical strategies for undertaking similar digital nonfiction projects and lessons in the classroom (face-to-face, online, or hybrid) or other community learning venues.

Speaker: Londie Martin, Assistant Professor
University of Arkansas at Little Rock

In collaboration with the Department of Writing Studies and Rhetoric.

Guthart Cultural Center Theater, Axinn Library

Mohammad Darawshe will discuss current affairs and analyze the results of the recent elections and their ramifications to Jewish-Arab relations with Israeli society. Mohammad Darawshe is the Director of Planning, Equality and Shared Society at Givat Haviva Educational Center and a Shalom Hartman Institute faculty member. Mohammad Darawshe is a leading expert on Jewish-Arab relations and has presented at the European Parliament, NATO Defense College, World Economic Forum, and Club de Madrid, US Congress, Herzliya Conference and Israel’s Presidential Conference.

Presented by the Muslim Students Association and the Hofstra Cultural Center, in collaboration with Office of Intercultural Engagement and Inclusion, Hofstra University Honors College, Department of Religion and the Program in Jewish Studies, Middle Eastern and Central Asian Studies, Center for “Race,” Culture and Social Justice, and the Department of Political Science. #HofNoHate

Guthart Cultural Center Theater, Axinn Library

Join us and lead Newsday investigative journalists for a discussion of housing discrimination on Long Island, its impact on would-be homeowners and communities, and what is being done to address the issue. This forum follows a three-year investigation by Newsday that revealed evidence of unequal treatment of minority homebuyers.

Panelists:

• Olivia Winslow, Newsday Reporter
• Keith Herbert, Newsday Reporter
• Arthur Browne, Newsday Project Editor

Moderated by Lawrence Levy, Vice President for Economic Development & Professional Studies and Executive Dean, National Center for Suburban Studies at Hofstra University.

Fortunoff Theater, Monroe Lecture Center

Is the negligibility of one’s contribution to a problem such as climate change a reason for inaction?

This has been asserted for individuals, companies, and even countries, comparing their contribution to the problem to that of others. Here I diagnose this line of appeal to ‘negligibility’ as based on a tacit importation of the economic model of perfect competition into the domain of politics where there is no reason to believe that it should apply. I will argue that the application of the theory of negligibility to the domain of individual and political action outside an idealized competitive market has distorted our understanding of action and denuded our understanding of politics. In accordance with this diagnosis, this paper aims not to solve the problem of negligibility so much as to dissolve it.

Speaker: Melissa Lane, Class of 1943 Professor of Politics and
Director, University Center for Human Values, Princeton University

Author, Eco-Republic: What the Ancients Can Teach Us about Ethics, Virtue, and Sustainable Living

In collaboration with the Department of Philosophy

Have you ever thought of how one could optimize complex road and transportation systems where decision-making is not centralized? In this presentation you will learn how the team involving mathematicians, computer scientists, and engineers from the Computational Methods in Industrial Mathematics Lab (Fields-CQAM and Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada) developed a simulation system that modeled a real operation on the grid of roads in a large city such as Winnipeg or Toronto. The routes of cars were simulated based on the socio-economic profiles of drivers accessibly through the Canadian census data. The simulation software developed within the project is freely available as Open Source and uses Julia - the new programming for numerical computing. This approach allows to capture, analyze, and understand dependencies in a real world complex road system.

Speaker: Dr. Pawel Pralat, Associate Professor at Ryerson University and
Director of Fields-CQAM Lab on Computational Methods in Industrial Mathematics at The Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences

In collaboration with the Department of Mathematics.

Guthart Cultural Center Theater, Axinn Library

Dr. Julia Miele Rodas is professor of English at Bronx Community College of the City University of New York. Her book, Autistic Disturbances: Theorizing Autism Poetics from the DSM to Robinson Crusoe (University of Michigan Press, 2018) discusses how stigmatized characteristics of autistic language (such as "echolalia") are reflected in celebrated literary texts (such as repetition in Gertrude Stein). Rodas argues that autistic language is actually an essential part of mainstream literary aesthetics, visible in poetry by Walt Whitman, in novels by Charlotte Brontë and Daniel Defoe, in life writing by Andy Warhol, and even in writing by figures from popular culture. By affirming the aesthetic value of autistic language in literary texts, her book invites readers to reconsider the value of autistic language and autistic ways of being in everyday life.

In collaboration with the Disabilities Studies Program.

Guthart Cultural Center Theater, Axinn Library

Lolly Bowean, award-winning reporter for the Chicago Tribune, explores the process of telling the stories of her community dealing with race, poverty, and Chicago’s African American community. She discusses developing relationships and techniques for telling the stories of a city dealing with violence, diversity and disparities that is being led by its first black female mayor.

In collaboration with The Lawrence Herbert School of Communication.

Guthart Cultural Center Theater, Axinn Library

George Povall, director of the Long Island-based environmental advocacy group All Our Energy, will introduce the film and speak about new legislation that will ban single-use plastic bags in New York. Following the screening, Christa Farmer, professor of geology, environment, and sustainability at Hofstra University, will lead a discussion. Refreshments will be served.

For more information about the film, visit bagitmovie.com.

In collaboration with the Department of Geology, Environment, and Sustainability.

Guthart Cultural Center Theater, Axinn Library

Ramachandra Guha is the author of many books, including a two volume biography of Mahatma Gandhi, Gandhi Before India (2014) and Gandhi: The Years That Changed the World (2018), both of which were chosen by the New York Times and the San Francisco Chronicle as notable books of the year. He is a historian, biographer, and scholar of history and has taught at Yale, Stanford, University of Oslo, and London School of Economics.

Co-sponsored by the Center for Civic Engagement, Institute for Peace Studies, Hofstra Cultural Center, Hofstra College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Office of the Provost, Center for “Race,” Culture and Social Justice, and the departments of History and Sociology.

Student Center Theater, Mack Student Center

When the Jeffersonian team discovers the body of a renowned but disliked chess master amid pig slop, Sweets surprises the team with his chess skills and goes undercover in the world of professional chess to find the killer. Join us to watch this episode and delve into the show’s successes and failings with a real-life forensic anthropologist!

Speaker: Kristen Hartnett McCann
Department of Anthropology
Hofstra University

In collaboration with the Department of Anthropology.

Guthart Cultural Center Theater, Axinn Library

Vincent C. Immel Professor of Law (retired) Saint Louis University School of Law Joel K. Goldstein is a highly respected scholar of the vice presidency, presidency, and constitutional law, having written widely in all three areas. Perhaps best known for his work on the vice presidency, his doctoral dissertation grew into his first book, The Modern American Vice Presidency: The Transformation of a Political Institution. More recently, he has written a second book on the subject, The WhiteHouse Vice Presidency: The Path to Significance, Mondale to Biden. He has written numerous scholarly articles and commentary pieces on the vice presidency and is frequently interviewed by national and international media on the subject.

The Donald J. Sutherland Lecture is named for the former Hofstra trustee who endowed the annual event.

Co-sponsored by Hofstra College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the Hofstra Cultural Center.

Guthart Cultural Center Theater, Axinn Library

To register, please visit hofstra.edu/sutherland2019. 

Join the #HofstraVotes conversation on social media.

Many food writers highlight the link between taste and territory (environmental factors) called "terroir." An argument has ensued mostly about roots and rootedness and slowing down change. This covers about half the human experience. The other half is about movement and dispersal. Billions of people are moving from country to city, from city to city, from nation to nation. Krishnendu Ray brings mobility to the center of the discussion on taste, focusing on South Asian immigrant foodways in the United States.

Krishnendu Ray is chair of nutrition and food studies at NYU, and former associate dean at Culinary Institute of America. He is the author of The Migrant’s Table (2004) and The Ethnic Restaurateur (2016), and co-editor of Curried Cultures: Globalization, Food and South Asia (2012). Ray’s most recent work is on street vending in global cities.

In collaboration with the Food Studies Program in the Department of Anthropology.

Guthart Cultural Center Theater, Axinn Library

A series of films showcasing Coppola’s work over the decades. To mark the 80th year of one of Hofstra’s distinguished alumni, Francis Ford Coppola (born April 1939), we present a series of film screenings, showcasing some of the director’s best work. From Coppola’s biggest hits of the 1970s, to his more independent productions and his recent, more personal approach to filmmaking, we are proud to present the following films.

Thursday, October 10, 7 p.m.
The Godfather (1972)

One of the true masterpieces of the American cinema, this sprawling family epic stars the incomparable Marlon Brando as the head of a New York crime family in the 1940s, with a supporting cast of future A-listers, including Al Pacino, Diane Keaton, Robert Duvall, James Caan, and Talia Shire. With stunning cinematography by one of the masters, the late Gordon Willis, this multiple-Oscar-winning film took Coppola’s career to a whole new level. Introduced by Professor Stanislao Pugliese, Hofstra University Department of History.

Monday, October 21, 7 p.m.
Apocalypse Now — Final Cut (1979/2019)

This mythic reimagining of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, set during the Vietnam War, won the prestigious Palme d’Or at the 1979 Cannes Film Festival. Starring Martin Sheen, Robert Duvall, Laurence Fishburne, and Marlon Brando, the film was recently restored and expanded by Coppola’s American Zoetrope. Introduced by Associate Professor Aaron Braun, Hofstra University Department of Radio, Television, Film.

Wednesday, October 30, 7 p.m.
Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992)

Coppola’s version of the classic vampire tale takes some liberties in turning Stoker’s source novel into a stylish, gothic romance crossed with a good old-fashioned horror film. Starring Gary Oldman as Dracula, with Winona Ryder, Keanu Reeves, Anthony Hopkins, Tom Waits, and Cary Elwes. Introduced by Assistant Professor Russell Harbaugh, Hofstra University Department of Radio, Television, Film.

Monday, November 4, 7 p.m.
The Rain People (1969)

Shot partially on Hofstra’s campus and featuring Shirley Knight, James Caan, and Robert Duvall, this feminist road movie is emblematic of the sort of independent, highly personal filmmaking to which Coppola has returned time and again throughout his career. Introduced by Professor Paula Uruburu, Hofstra University Departments of English and Radio, Television, Film and Associate Professor Christine Noschese, Hofstra University Department of Radio, Television, Film.

Monday, November 11, 7 p.m.
Tetro (2009)

Coppola’s first original screenplay since 1974, starring Vincent Gallo, Maribel Verdu, and Alden Ehrenreich in a semi-autobiographical family drama set in Buenos Aires. Tetro exemplifies Coppola’s return to a more independent mode of film production. Introduced by Assistant Professor Nicole Franklin, Hofstra University Department of Radio, Television, Film.

Co-sponsored by the Department of Radio, Television, Film in The Lawrence Herbert School of Communication, and the Hofstra Cultural Center.

Location for all film screenings: Guthart Cultural Center Theater, Axinn Library

Jessica Stites Mor will present on a recent volume she edited that explores artistic production in solidarity movements in Latin America. This multidisciplinary anthology reveals the tremendous role that art and performance have played in the quest for social justice in the Americas. Case studies include artistic solidarity in the aftermath of the Honduran coup, feminist photography in Mexico, and tapestries in Chile.

Speaker: Jessica Stites Mor, Associate Professor of History, University of British Columbia, Okanagan; Editor-in-chief of the Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies

Author of Transition Cinema: Political Filmmaking and the Argentine Left Since 1968 (University of Pittsburgh, 2012) and Human Rights and Transnational

Solidarity in Cold War Latin America (University of Wisconsin, 2013)

Co-sponsored by the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program (LACS) and African Studies Program.

Guthart Cultural Center Theater, Axinn Library

The U Turn, the third documentary in Luis Argueta’s immigration trilogy, narrates the transformational journey of immigrant workers who broke their silence about abuses endured at the Agriprocessors Inc. meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa. The film showcases the U visa, which permits victims of certain crimes who have suffered substantial mental or physical abuse while in the United States to enter or remain when they might not otherwise be able to do so.

Luis Argueta is a Guatemalan-American film director and producer. His 1994 film, The Silence of Neto, a coming-of-age film set in Cold War-era Guatemala, was the first Guatemalan film to be internationally recognized. Since then, Argueta has produced a trilogy of documentaries (AbUSed: The Postville Raid [2010], Abrazos [2014], and The U Turn [2016]) that present the human face of immigration and aim to contribute to the national and international conversation on one of the most important topics of our time.

Co-sponsored by the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program (LACS) and African Studies Program.

Guthart Cultural Center Theater, Axinn Library

MAURICE A. DEANE SCHOOL OF LAW presents

Wednesday, April 3, 12:10-1 p.m.
2019 HOWARD LICHTENSTEIN DISTINGUISHED PROFESSORSHIP IN LEGAL ETHICS LECTURE
presents
Prosecution Ethics in Current Times With
Angela J. Davis

Angela J. Davis is a professor of law at American University’s Washington College of Law, and an expert in criminal law and procedure with a specific focus on prosecutorial power and racism in the criminal justice system. Davis previously served as director of the D.C. Public Defender Service, where she began as a staff attorney representing indigent juveniles and adults; as executive director of the National Rainbow Coalition; and as a former law clerk of the Honorable Theodore R. Newman, former chief judge of the D.C. Court of Appeals. Davis is the author of Arbitrary Justice: The Power of the American Prosecutor (Oxford University Press, 2007. She has co-edited numerous books and published articles in the Michigan, Iowa, Fordham, and Hofstra Law Reviews.

The Sidney R. and Walter Siben Moot Courtroom, Room 308 Maurice A Deane School of Law, South Campus

For more information, please contact Debbie Grattan, legal ethics coordinator at the Monroe H. Freedman Institute for the Study of Legal Ethics, at 516-463-5748 or email deborah.j.grattan@Hofstra.edu.

Tuesday, April 9, 11:10 a.m.
Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us

Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist and author of the No. 1 New York Times bestseller Salt Sugar Fat, Michael Moss is a leading expert on the food industry, health and wellness, and marketing. Taking audiences on an eye-opening journey deep inside some of the world’s biggest and most successful companies, he offers audiences an illuminating and surprising look at the researchers, marketers, strategists, and CEOs who seduce us with their products. Moss brings to life the creative ways food manufacturers use the science of human behavior, biology and marketing. Using humor, case studies, and insight gleaned from investigative reporting that won him a Pulitzer Prize, he shows how companies get consumers to buy, often at the expense of their health.

In collaboration with the Food Studies Program and National Public Health Week.

Guthart Cultural Center Theater, Axinn Library

Monday, April 15, 12:50-2:15 p.m.
Practicing Development in the Jim Crow South

Drawing on a range of works that extends from gendered historical analyses of colonialism to critical histories of development, and based on archival research in Alabama, Arkansas, and Mississippi, Dr. Mona Domosh argues that what we now call international development – a form of hegemony different from but related to colonialism – needs to be understood not only as a geopolitical tool of the Cold War, but also as a technique of governance that took shape within the realm of the domestic and through a racialized gaze. She does this by tracing some of the key elements of U.S. international development practices in the postwar era to a different time and place: the American South, a region considered “undeveloped” in the first decades of the 20th century, and the agricultural extension practices that targeted the rural farm home and farm women, particularly African- American women.

Speaker: Dr. Mona Domosh, Professor of Geography, Dartmouth College

In collaboration with the the Mu Kappa chapter of the international geographical honor society Gamma Theta Upsilon, and the Department of Global Studies and Geography.

Fortunoff Theater, Monroe Lecture Center

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Thursday, April 18, 9:35 a.m.
Psychographics: Graphic Memoirs and Psychiatric Disability

Elizabeth Donaldson juxtaposes the linkage of psychosis and violence in the superhero comics tradition with representations of mental illness in contemporary graphic memoirs. This new tradition of illness memoirs in comics helps to make a maligned disability experience (psychosis) publicly legible in innovative and potentially liberating ways.

Speaker: Elizabeth J. Donaldson, Associate Professor of English, Director, Medical Humanities Program, New York Institute of Technology

Editor, Literatures of Madness: Disability Studies and Mental Health; Co-editor, The Madwoman and the Blindman: Jane Eyre, Discourse, Disability

In collaboration with the Disability Studies Program.

Guthart Cultural Center Theater, Axinn Library

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Thursday, April 18, 11:10 a.m.
Scholar-Athletes and Embodied Learning: Writing Themselves In

Dr. J. Michael Rifenburg’s recent book The Embodied Playbook offers groundbreaking insight into the teaching of scholar-athletes. He offers a new approach to understanding student literacy in a surprising place: the university athletics department. Through analysis of a yearlong case study of the men’s basketball team at the University of North Georgia, Rifenburg shows that a deeper and more refined understanding of how humans learn through physical action can help writing instructors reach a greater range of students.

Speaker: J. Michael Rifenburg, Associate Professor of Writing, University of North Georgia

In collaboration with the Department of Writing Studies and Rhetoric.

Guthart Cultural Center Theater, Axinn Library

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Monday, April 29, 7 p.m.
Navigating Our Intersections:
A Conversation About Race, Ability, and Queerness With Lydia X. Z. Brown

In celebration of Asian Pacific Islander Heritage Month and in an effort to promote inclusive and intersectional dialogue about social justice, Lydia X. Z. Brown will deliver a lecture about their experiences as an autistic, trans-racial adoptee. Through their lecture, Brown will challenge us to speak about transracial and transnational adoption as a reproductive justice, disability justice, decolonization, and racial justice issue. They will also tackle how the fame of individuals emulating Rachel Dolezal and her blackface have affected their ability to navigate American society as a real transracial person.

Speaker: Lydia X. Z. Brown, Disability Justice Advocate, Organizer, and Writer

Co-sponsored by the Queer and Trans People of Color Coalition, The Gender Identity Federation, The Pride Network, Hofstra’s Asian American Pacific Islander Alliance, Collegiate Women of Color, Intercultural Engagement and Inclusion, and the Hofstra Cultural Center.

Guthart Cultural Center Theater, Axinn Library

This film sets out to tell the story of World War I with the greatest realism possible through the melding of warfare and melodrama, a narrative strategy D.W. Griffith had perfected in his extraordinary and controversial film work prior to this film. Yet Griffith’s unprecedented access to the battlefield did not ensure the film’s success, and considering the reasons for this may help us understand something of the nature of what was a new and terrifying form of war—and the inability of contemporaries, from politicians to soldiers, to grasp its true nature.

Presenter:
Dr. Isabelle Freda
Assistant Professor of Radio, Television, Film
The Lawrence Herbert School of Communication
Hofstra University

Guthart Cultural Center Theater, Axinn Library

Speaker:
Dr. Nicole Dombrowski-Risser
Professor of History
Towson University

Lowenfeld Conference and Exhibition Hall, Axinn Library, 10th Floor

J’accuse, a French silent film directed by Abel Gance, juxtaposes a romantic drama with the background of the horrors of World War I. Work on the film began in 1918, and some scenes were filmed on actual battlefields. The film’s powerful depiction of wartime suffering, and particularly its climactic sequence of the “return of the dead,” made it an international success and confirmed Gance as one of the  most important directors in Europe.

Guthart Cultural Center Theater, Axinn Library

Celebrate Halloween as Tara Rider sheds light on the most famous American witch hunt, which began in 1692 in Salem, Massachusetts. Yet, more than three decades before that notorious event, Long Island had its very own witchcraft trial — the trial of Goody Garlick. Accusations of flying on poles and cavorting with the devil ran rampant in the colonies during the 17th century and led to hundreds of accusations of witchcraft. To understand what happened during these trials, we must first understand the stresses of ordinary 17th century life in New York and why the fear of witches existed. The trial of Goody Garlick acts as a lens to help us understand the hysteria associated with these accusations.
Speaker: Dr. Tara Rider
Lecturer and Director of the International Academic Program to Ireland and England
Stony Brook University

Sponsored by the New York Council for the Humanities.

Guthart Cultural Center Theater, Axinn Library

Wednesday, April 5, 11:15 a.m.-12:40 p.m.
THE GREAT WAR – A HUNDRED YEARS ON

Join us for a series of readings commemorating the anniversary of American engagement in World War I, including the reading of President Woodrow Wilson's speech "Making the World Safe for Democracy" and other works focused on democracy.

Related Event:
Wednesday, April 5, 7 p.m.
Film Screening and Discussion
All Quiet on the Western Front

The 1930 American film starring Louis Wolheim, Lew Ayres, John Wray, Arnold Lucy and Ben Alexander and based on the book by the same name, shows the physical and mental toll that World War I took on the soldiers. Rodney Hill, Hofstra assistant professor of radio, television, film, leads a discussion following the film

Room 211 Breslin Hall, South Campus

Monday, November 14, 7 p.m.
Jennifer Teege
My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me:
A Black Woman Discovers Her Family’s Nazi Past

My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me is a book born of a shocking discovery for speaker Jennifer Teege. She picked up a book by chance at Hamburg's main library and discovered that her grandfather was the brutal Nazi commandant of the Plaszow concentration camp, portrayed so memorably by Ralph Fiennes in the film Schindler's List. Ms. Teege's mother was German; her father was Nigerian. Raised in a loving home by her adopted German family, Ms. Teege struggled with depression as she coped with the trauma of rejection by her birth mother. She went to college in Israel, where she learned fluent Hebrew and earned degrees in Middle Eastern and African Studies. She later returned to Germany and now had to learn about her biological family's secret from a book; and that a monstrous man, Amon Goeth, reviled for decades as "the butcher of Plaszow," was her biological grandfather. After her emotional pilgrimage, Ms. Teege says, "I'm no longer a prisoner of the past. I know now that I am not to blame, and the guilt no longer weighs heavily on my shoulders. There is no Nazi gene: We can decide for ourselves who and what we want to be."

Guthart Cultural Center Theater, Axinn Library

Wednesday, November 16, 11:15 a.m.-12:40 p.m. (Common Hour)
The Emergent National Security Landscape: The New Strategic Polarization of the World President

Obama’s national security strategy suggests that environmental factors represent a core foreign policy challenge, and indeed, the ongoing discourse regarding the potential security implications of climate change has promoted environmental security to the forefront of the global security agenda. As the president suggests, national security affairs may no longer be limited to traditional politico-military dynamics; but instead, climate, resources, and demographics may now be viewed as being equally important as traditional elements of national power. Nevertheless, linkages between violent conflict and environmental degradation are a matter of some controversy and continue to inspire a great deal of debate in academic and professional circles.

Speaker: Frank Galgano, Chair, Department of Geography and Environment, Villanova University

Co-sponsored by the Department of Global Studies and Geography

Guthart Cultural Center Theater, Axinn Library

Thursday, December 1, 4:30 p.m.
Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar Philip Kitcher:
Six Problems of Climate Change

Debates concerning what to do about climate change – and whether to do anything at all – turn on six major questions: (1) Is it real? (2) Does it matter? (3) How much should we care about the future? (4) What can be done? (5) Who will pay? (6) Do we need new politics? Philip Kitcher, John Dewey Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University, will explain these questions, and suggest answers to them. The lecture is drawn from a forthcoming book, co-authored with Evelyn Fox Keller, The Seasons Alter: How to Save Our Planet in Six Acts (W.W. Norton, 2017).

Guthart Cultural Center Theater, Axinn Library

Friday, March 11, 2:55 p.m.
The Music Business, Broadway, Belting, and Crossing Over From the Classical Side

Steven Gross presents a Master Class illumining many of the things he has learned in his more than 20 years of musical experience, including what to expect during a Broadway audition, the best way to present your materials and how to select your personal repertoire. Mr. Gross has worked on Broadway and the West End as a music director, conductor and pianist. Mr. Gross has appeared with many national and international opera companies, symphony orchestras and festivals. He holds a Doctor of Musical Arts in conducting from Yale University and is a Fulbright and Rotary Scholar. He has extensive experience working in academia as a clinician, guest artist and professor and is the founder and CEO of the musical theater database MusicalTheaterSongs.com.

Co-sponsored by the Hofstra Cultural Center and the Department of Music

Fortunoff Theater, Monroe Lecture Center

Tuesday, March 15, 2:20 p.m.
Mariposa & the Saint

Longtime friends and current collaborators Sara (Mariposa) Fonseca and Julia Steele Allen have written a play through the prison wall. Over the course of three years, crafted only by letters, they smuggled out a story that is urgent, emotional and profound. From inside the isolation of solitary confinement, Mariposa speaks directly to the audience. Her words will change you. The performance is followed by opportunities for the audience to engage in a dialogue regarding the issue of solitary confinement and take action. Directed by Noelle Ghoussaini with performances by Ray Huth and Julia Steele Allen.

Fortunoff Theater, Monroe Lecture Center