Titled Antisocial Media: Understanding Racism and Homophobia in a Digitally Connected World, Nakamura’s lecture was to be part of the series Race in a Post-Human World, sponsored by the Bates Lectures Committee. The committee hopes to reschedule Nakamura. The series will include two other lectures in 2011 and a dance performance, all of which will be open to the public at no cost. For more information, please contact this jgovinda@bates.edu.

As part of a Bates College series exploring the impacts of social and technological progress on concepts of race, author Lisa Nakamura offers a lecture at 7:15 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 2, in Pettengill Hall’s Keck Classroom (G52), 4 Andrews Road (Alumni Walk).

Nakamura’s lecture, titled Antisocial Media: Understanding Racism and Homophobia in a Digitally Connected World, will address social media’s influence on concepts of race and homosexuality, and will touch on the recent suicide of Rutgers first-year Tyler Clementi.

The talk is the first public offering in the series Race in a Post-Human World, which explores the collapse of social categories caused by advances in technology. Sponsored by the Bates College Lectures Committee, the series will include two more lectures and a dance performance, all of which will be open to the public at no cost. For more information, please contact jgovinda@bates.edu.

Post-humanism is a term expressing what many believe is our current condition as human beings. Thanks to technological advances — such as medical interventions like smart prosthetics and implanted defibrillators, and human-emulating capabilities such as artificial intelligence — the old boundaries between animal and machine are increasingly blurred.

Similarly, post-humanism challenges long-held notions of other categorizations of humanity such as gender, race and species — making post-humanism a concept that is highly controversial, but extremely idea-rich across a wide range of academic disciplines.

Nakamura is the director of the Asian American Studies Program and Professor in the Institute of Communication Research and Media at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She has published numerous books including Digitizing Race: Visual Cultures of the Internet (University of Minnesota Press, 2007) and Cybertypes: Race, Ethnicity, and Identity on the Internet (Routledge, 2002).

The series continues in 2011 with the lecture Ring, Ring, Ring: Popular Music and Mobile Technologies by Alexander Weheliye, associate professor of English and African American studies at Northwestern University, at 7:15 p.m. Monday, Feb. 14, also in Pettengill Hall’s Keck Classroom.

Weheliye teaches courses in African American and African diaspora literature and culture, critical theory and popular culture. He is the author of the book Phonographies: Grooves in Sonic Afro-Modernity (Duke University Press, 2005).

Alondra Nelson, associate professor of sociology at Columbia University, offers the lecture Roots Revelations: Genetic Ancestry Tracing and the YouTube Generation at 7:15 p.m. Thursday, March 3, again in the Keck Classroom.

Nelson specializes in race and ethnicity in the U.S.; gender and kinship; sociohistorical studies of medicine, science and technology; and social and cultural theory.

Race in a Post-Human World concludes with a performance by acting director and assistant professor of dance at Bates, Rachel Boggia. Her performance, In the Very Eye of the Night, takes place in May (date TBA) and is conceived and directed by Marlon Barrios Solano, a Venezuelan dance and new media artist, teacher and researcher.

Boggia, who has been on faculty at Wesleyan University, Dickinson College and Ohio State University, specializes in multidisciplinary collaboration with scientists, dance documentaries and multi-media performance.

The politics of horror films, the intersection of human rights and international development, and an overview of world religions come under discussion in three lectures at Bates College during March.

Jason Middleton, assistant professor of English and film and media studies at the University of Rochester, offers a talk titled American Horror Cinema in the “Age of Terror”: Reading the Politics of Eli Roth’s “Hostel” at 7 p.m. Monday, March 8, in the Keck Classroom (G52), Pettengill Hall, 4 Andrews Road (Alumni Walk).

A professor of international humanitarian studies at Tufts University, Peter Uvin addresses the topic When Development Practitioners Care About Human Rights, What Do They Do Differently? at 5 p.m. Monday, March 15, also in the Keck Classroom.

Stephen Prothero, author of bestselling books about religion, gives the lecture The Work of Doing Nothing: Wandering in the World’s Religions at 7 p.m. Wednesday, March 24, in Chase Hall Lounge, 56 Campus Ave.

The events are sponsored by the Bates Lectures Committee and are open to the public at no cost. For more information, please contact this adaugero@bates.edu.

Middleton will analyze contemporary American horror film in the geopolitical context of the recent Bush administration’s “war on terror.” He will focus on the 2003 film Hostel, which initially presents a critique of American aggression and cultural arrogance, Middleton says, but ultimately justifies American violence in a manner resonant with the policies of the Bush administration.

While it might be tempting just to dismiss such films as egregious examples of sadism and exploitation, Middleton believes, the confluence of their popularity with the outrage they often provoked demands a kind of critical attention that has been applied to their progenitors — slasher horror and exploitation films, and pornography.

Middleton co-edited the collection Medium Cool: Music Videos from Soundies to Cellphones (Duke University Press, 2007). He is also an experimental filmmaker.

At Tufts, Uvin is also the director of the Fletcher School’s Institute for Human Security, which promotes research and education at the intersection of humanitarianism, development, human rights and conflict resolution. His book Human Rights and Development (Kumarian Press, 2004) advocates a rights-based approach to development. Uvin shows how development practitioners can surmount tough ethical and human-rights obstacles they encounter.

His 1998 book Aiding Violence: The Development Enterprise in Rwanda (Kumarian Press, 1998) made the bold, influential argument that development aid was complicit in the structural conflicts that resulted in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.

Prothero is professor of religion at Boston University and the author of several books including American Jesus: How the Son of God Became a National Icon (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2003) and The New York Times bestseller Religious Literacy: What Americans Need to Know (HarperOne, 2007).

He has commented on religion for National Public Radio and major television networks, and has been a guest on “The Daily Show” and “The Oprah Winfrey Show.” A regular contributor to The Wall Street Journal and USA Today, he has written for The New York Times Magazine and New York Times Book Review, Slate, Salon, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and The Boston Globe.

Historian of science at the University of California, San Diego, Naomi Oreskes gave a lecture on the science of climate change and the notion of scientific consensus at 7 p.m. Monday, Oct. 20, in Chase Hall Lounge, 56 Campus Ave.

Oreskes focused on the established agreement within the scientific community on the existence of climate change and the implications of these changes.

Sponsored by the College Lecture Series, her talk offered insight into the involvement and tension of political influence in the scientific community. The event was open to the public free of charge.

Oreskes’ research aims to bring attention to scientific facts about climate change that have been downplayed or ignored by political figures for as long as 30 years, delaying action to deal with greenhouse gases. Her analyses of abstracts published in scientific journals between 1993 and 2003 revealed that nearly 20 percent explicitly say that Earth’s climate has been impacted by human activities, with another 55 percent implicitly endorsing the consensus.

Her essay on science and society “Beyond the Ivory Tower: The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change” was published in the journal Science in December 2004 and cited in Al Gore’s influential documentary “An Inconvenient Truth.”

Oreskes has also taught at Harvard, New York University and Dartmouth, and has worked as a consultant for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. In 2004, she received the George Sarton Award Lecture from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and she completed an American Philosophical Society Sabbatical Fellowship in 2002.

She has been cited by National Public Radio, The New Yorker, USA Today, Parade and the Royal Society’s publication, “A guide to facts and fictions about climate change.”

Jeffrey Brown

Jeffrey Brown, senior correspondent for the NewsHour, conducts studio discussions and reports from the field in the areas of culture, arts, and the media. Mr. Brown has profiled and interviewed dozens of leading American and international writers, musicians, and other artistic figures. In addition, he’s contributed stories in may other areas, including religion and science. His work as producer and correspondent has garnered an Emmy Award, four Cine Golden Eagles, and other honors. He spoke at Bates College in Lewiston. From MPBN’s Speaking in Maine. (Total time: 1:05:31) [More...]

Lee Silver, a molecular biologist and author known for his trenchant analysis of issues at the intersection of biotechnology, law, ethics and religion, visits Bates College to offer a lecture based on his new book at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 8, in Chase Hall Lounge, 56 Campus Ave.

Professor of molecular biology and public affairs in the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton, Silver will discuss his book Challenging Nature: The Clash of Science and Spirituality at the New Frontiers of Life (Ecco, 2006). A book signing and reception follow his talk. Silver’s books will be for sale throughout the evening and are available now at the Bates College Store. Sponsored by the College Lecture Series, the event is open to the public at no cost.

Silver’s book explores the conflict between exponents of cutting-edge biotechnology and the Western spiritual beliefs that drive vigorous and widespread opposition to such technology. Such opposition, Silver notes, defies cultural and political stereotypes, as many Protestant and Catholic fundamentalists reject stem-cell research even as many secular environmentalists fight against genetic food engineering.

Silver examines the sources of such stubborn resistance to the beneficial possibilities that emerging biotechnology has to offer, from alleviating human suffering to stemming the tide of environmental degradation. What those opposed to biotechnology have in common, Silver finds, is a profound fear of violating a higher spiritual authority beyond any individual or species.

Silver, a prominent experimental scientist who has himself manipulated genes, chronicles his worldwide search for the stories of spiritual belief that can help explain the divide between science and the world at large. In his travels, he experiences nature’s random destructiveness and the ecological turmoil caused by humankind.

He also uncovers a fundamental difference in attitudes expressed toward biotechnology by people raised in nontheistic or polytheistic cultures. Most notably, in the Hindu and Buddhist traditions, which hold that spiritual lives are eternal and self-determined, the admonition not to play God is meaningless. Countries such as Japan, India, Singapore and China, therefore, are more eager to embrace bioscience and better poised to surpass the West in their commercial exploitation of these technologies.

Ultimately, Silver asserts that scientific knowledge rather than faith-inspired ignorance provides the best hope for achieving the goals desired by both humanitarians and environmentalists.

Silver also wrote the critically acclaimed Remaking Eden: How Genetic Engineering and Cloning Will Transform the America Family (Harper Perennial, 1998), which has been published in 16 languages. His other writings include textbooks on genetics and more than 200 articles and essays in scholarly journals and popular media, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Time magazine, Newsweek International, Science and Nature.

Silver has been a guest on many television and radio programs, including Nightline, Nova, Crossfire, The Charlie Rose Show, 60 Minutes, 20/20, NewsHour, All Things Considered and Talk of the Nation. Among many honors, he has been elected a lifetime fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and has received the prestigious MERIT Award for outstanding research in genetics from the National Institutes of Health. Silver holds a Ph.D. in biophysics from Harvard University.