As part of a series exploring the impacts of social and technological progress on concepts of race, Alondra Nelson visits Bates to deliver the lecture Roots Revelations: Genetic Ancestry Tracing and the YouTube Generation at 7:15 p.m. Thursday, March 3, in Pettengill Hall’s Keck Classroom (G52), 4 Andrews Road.

Nelson’s lecture is part of 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, all of the series’ events are open to the public at no cost.  For more information, please contact dbegin@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.

Associate professor of sociology at Columbia University, Nelson also holds an appointment in the Institute for Research on Women and Gender and specializes in race and ethnicity in the U.S.; gender and kinship; sociohistorical studies of medicine, science and technology; and social and cultural theory.

Before joining the Columbia faculty in July 2009, Nelson taught in the departments of sociology and African American studies at Yale University, and served as a visiting scholar at BIOS: Centre for the Study of Bioscience, Biomedicine, Biotechnology and Society at the London School of Economics; the International Center for Advanced Studies at New York University; and the Bayerische Amerika-Akademie in Munich, Germany.

Nelson has also had several books and essays published, including Body and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Politics of Health and Race (forthcoming, University of Minnesota Press), “Bio Science: Genetic Ancestry Testing and the Pursuit of African Ancestry” (in the journal Social Studies of Science), and “The Factness of Diaspora” (in the edited volume Revisiting Race in a Genomics Age).  Her publications include articles on race and digital culture, “scientism” in Black Power politics, and the use of racial categories in medicine.

Race in a Post-Human World, which began in November, 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,” will take 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 multimedia performance.

– Office of Communications and Media Relations

As the culmination of a three-day Tolkien Film Festival at Bates College from Monday, Oct. 22, through Wednesday, Oct. 24, leading Tolkien scholar Thomas Shippey delivers a lecture titled “Filming the Lord of the Rings: How Peter Jackson Coped with J.R.R. Tolkien,” at 7 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 25, in the Olin Arts Center, 75 Russell St.  The public is invited to attend the talk, followed by reception in the Olin lobby, free of charge. For more information, contact 207-786-6135 or this  olinarts@bates.edu.

Walter J. Ong chair of humanities at St. Louis University, Shippey received his M.A. and Ph.D. from Cambridge University. Shippey’s primary areas of focus are medieval literature, especially the earliest literature of Anglo-Saxon England, and modern fantasy and science fiction. These interests merge in his two much-reprinted and translated books on J.R.R. Tolkien, The Road to Middle Earth: How J.R.R. Tolkien Created a New Mythology (Houghton-Mifflin, 1982) and J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century (Harper Collins, 2000).

Both Shippey and Tolkien attended King Edward’s School, Birmingham, as schoolboys, and each played rugby for Old Edwardians. The two men both taught at Oxford University. As an English professor at Leeds University, Shippey inherited Tolkien’s chair and syllabus.

President of the International Society for the Study of Medievalism, Shippey’s most recent publications is The Shadow-walkers: Jacob Grimm’s Mythology of the Monstrous (Brepols, 2005) and Roots and Branches: Selected Papers on Tolkien (Walking Tree Press, 2007). His numerous books include The Oxford Book of Fantasy Stories (Oxford University Press), The Oxford Book of Science Fiction Stories (Oxford University Press) and Fiction 2000: Cyberpunk and the Future of Narrative (University of Georgia Press).

All three film screenings begin at 7 p.m. and are held in the Filene Room of Pettigrew Hall, 75 College St., Bates College. The public is invited to attend at no cost. For more information about the screenings, please call 207-786-8294.

• Day One of the Tolkien Film Festival, Monday, Oct. 22, features Fellowship of the Ring (2001, 178 min.), the first of director Peter Jackson’s three films based on Tolkien’s epic “The Lord of the Rings.”
• Day Two, Tuesday, Oct. 23, features The Two Towers (2002, 179 min.).
• Day Three, Wednesday, Oct. 24, features The Return of the King (2003, 201 min.), the final installment in Jackson’s trilogy.

Shippey’s talk is sponsored by the English department, the college lectures committee, the interdisciplinary studies program and the humanities division. The Tolkien Film Festival is sponsored by the college’s information and library services.

Juan Williams, senior correspondent for National Public Radio’s Morning Edition and author of an acclaimed biography of Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, will give a lecture titled The Legacy of Brown vs. the Board of Education at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, May 12, in the Bates College Chapel. The public is invited free of charge.

Part of a yearlong series of events examining the legacy of the 1954 Supreme Court case outlawing segregation in public schools, the event is sponsored by the law firm of Skelton Taintor & Abbott, the Harward Center for Community Partnership at Bates and the College Lectures Committee. For more information call 207-786-6195.

Author of the critically acclaimed Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary, Williams also wrote the nonfiction bestseller Eyes on the Prize: American’s Civil Rights Years, 1954-1965, the companion volume to the notable television series. His book This Far by Faith: Stories from the African American Religious Experience (2003) provided the basis for a six-part public television documentary. In 2004, Williams led a team of reporters and editors in the production of My Soul Looks Back in Wonder: Voices of the Civil Rights Experience, accounts of 50 activists from the civil rights movement.

During his 21-year career with The Washington Post, Williams served as an editorial writer, op-ed columnist and White House reporter. He received an Emmy for TV documentary writing and has won widespread praise for a series of documentaries including Politics: The New Black Power.

Williams contributes as a political analyst to the Fox News Channel and is a regular panelist on Fox News Sunday. He has appeared on many television programs, including Nightline, Washington Week in Review, Oprah and CNN’s Crossfire.

A graduate of Haverford College, Williams sits on various boards, including the Washington Journalism Center and the New York Civil Rights Coalition.