Month: October 2016

Student Spends a Summer in Germany

image147648-rsideEthan Klein, a third year mechanical engineering student with a minor in German at Michigan Tech has always had a fascination for Germany and German culture.

So you can imagine how excited he was to have been chosen to participate in a Cultural Vistas Fellowship program in Germany.

Cultural Vistas Fellowship awards a select group of students the opportunity to travel abroad, with the goal of increasing understanding of innovation and entrepreneurship in a global market. The two-month program destinations include Germany, India and Argentina. The students undergo an intensive two-day training program in New York prior to departure, preparing them to live and work in their selected countries; they then share their experiences in New York once again, when they return.

Klein, whose fascination with German history is fueled by his family ancestry, was thrilled to have the opportunity to not only go to Germany, but to secure an internship where he and his team members worked on a testing apparatus for linear led lighting systems.

When Klein was younger, his family hosted a German exchange student, Matthias Straubinger. Klein’s family kept in contact with Matthias over the years. Klein was very pleased to be able to spend time with Matthias while in Germany. The two toured some of the local sights, including a historic park in the Grunewald Forest and a castle built in 1542 by Prince-Elector Joachim II.

Read the full story.

Artist Sarah Hewitt: special lecture today!

Guest artist Sarah Hewitt, will give a special lecture,  The Rise of the Feminine: SHE VOWS, tonight at 5:00pm in the Rozsa lower level. Hewitt’s exhibit, “Flats and Rounds,” is on display in the Rozsa A-Space Gallery through Nov. 18. In this lecture (free and open to the public), Hewitt will talk about her work and her influences, her use of unusual materials, and how weaving is connected to past and future traditions. This lecture is presented as part of the VanEvera Distinguished Lecture Series.hewitt

Sarah Hewitt lives between New York and Maine. Her work has been exhibited throughout the country. Recent exhibitions include Kindred Beasts at the Everson Museum, and Accidents into Incidents at Momenta Art. Hewitt has received awards and residencies from the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Vermont Studio Center, Purchase College/SUNY, Quimby Colony and Haystack Mountain School of Crafts. She was recently nominated for a Joan Mitchell Painters and Sculptors Grant.

Book on Vonnegut Brothers Discussed at Remote Sensing Seminar

Noted Author Ginger Strand will speak at the Remote Sensing Seminar, slated for 4 p.m. Monday (Oct. 17) in Dow 642.

Strand will discuss her book “The Brothers Vonnegut,” which tells the unbelievable story of GE’s Covonld War project to take control of the weather, and how it shaped a young aspiring writer named Kurt Vonnegut.

Set at the dawn of the computer era, in a nation beset by atomic anxiety, the story of Kurt and his scientist brother Bernard demonstrates the powerful connections between science and art.

Strand will discuss Nobel Laureate Irving Langmuir’s unresolved meteorological experiments, Bernard Vonnegut’s misgivings about them and Kurt Vonnegut’s use of all of it to write some of the most inventive novels about science ever produced—books that raise questions about scientific ethics that remain just as pressing today.

A book signing and reception will follow the talk. Books will be available for purchase at the signing and at the campus bookstore. This special event is co-sponsored/funded by the Visiting Women and Minority Lecturer/Scholar Series (VWMLSS) which is funded by a grant to the Office of Institutional Equity and Inclusion from the State of Michigan’s King-Chavez-Parks Initiative and EPSSI (The Earth, Planetary and Space Sciences Institute). It is also sponsored by EPSSI and the Departments of Humanities and Social Sciences.

Syd Johnson at American Society of Bioethics and Humanities

SydL. Syd M Johnson (HU) was in Washington DC for the American Society of Bioethics and Humanities annual meeting Oct. 6-9.

She presented “Dead Wrong: Inference, Uncertainty, and Inductive Risk” in a panel session with Robert Truog (Harvard) and John Banja (Emory).

She also co-chaired the meetings of the Neuroethics Affinity Group and the Animal Bioethics Affinity Group.

 

Jennifer Daryl Slack in New Book: Cultural Studies 1983: A Theoretical History


Cultural Studies 1983Stuart Hall, one of the most prominent and influential scholars of cultural studies internationally, delivered eight foundational lectures on the theoretical history of cultural studies at the University of Illinois in 1983. After his death in 1914, Hall’s widow authorized publication of those lectures, which were recorded by Jennifer Daryl Slack (HU). 

Slack, along with Lawrence Grossberg from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, transcribed, edited and wrote an introduction to these lectures. The lectures have been published by Duke University Press under the title “Cultural Studies 1983: A Theoretical History.”

The 41 North Film Festival Returns to the Rozsa, November 3-6

Screen Shot 2016-10-06 at 1.29.42 PMFrom a family’s unique intervention into the silent world of autism to six intrepid young entrepreneurs building startups in Detroit, the 41 North Film Festival offers human stories that engage, inform, inspire and uplift.

Over the course of four days, the festival features more than 20 acclaimed films from around the world, as well as music, prizes and other special events.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ron Suskind and Academy Award-winning director Roger Ross Williams will be in attendance for the screening of “Life, Animated,” the documentary based on Suskind’s best-selling memoir “Life, Animated: A Story of Sidekicks, Heroes, and Autism.”

Award-winning editor, and Michigan native, Jason Zeldes will present his directorial debut film, “Romeo Is Bleeding.”

Detroit Free Press Executive Video Producer Brian Kaufman will be joined by Rolf Peterson (SFRES) and John Vucetich (SFRES) for a panel discussion following the screening of his film “Predator/Prey: The Fight for Isle Royale Wolves“.

Among other feature films included this year are “All These Sleepless Nights,” (Marczak, 2016), “Operator” (Kibens, 2016), “Kedi” (Torun, 2016), “Do Not Resist” (Atkinson, 2016), “Death by Design” (Williams, 2016), “A Stray” (Syeed, 2016) and “Sonita” (Maghami, 2016), which won both the 2016 Sundance Audience and Grand Jury prizes for World Cinema Documentary.

Now in its 12th year, the festival continues to be free and open to the public. Major Sponsors include the Humanities department, the Visual and Performing Arts department, the Rozsa Center for the Performing Arts, Student Affairs and Advancement, Pavlis Honors College, the Visiting Women & Minority Lecturer/Scholar Series and the Parents Fund of the Michigan Tech Fund.

Learn more about the films, events, sponsors and how to reserve your ticket online. For more information email 41north@mtu.edu.

(by Erin Smith. This article originally appeared in TechToday.)

RTC PhD Candidate Lindsay Hingst Awarded Finishing Fellowship for Fall of 2016

lindsay hingstRTC PhD candidate Lindsay Hingst’s dissertation, “A Pedagogy of Witnessing: Linguistic and Visual `Frames’ of the Dark Side in the Multimodal Classroom,” focuses on the theoretical and practical benefits of implementing written, oral, and visual testimonies from traumatic history as a tool for teaching the importance of empathetic and ethical composition practices. Specifically, the dissertation provides resource material for a critical pedagogical model that supports “responsible witnessing” through short writing assignments and a final research project that analyze selected narratives, historical accounts, images, and films spanning World War II and the Vietnam War to more recent global events. HIngst hopes that her work will be of interest to teachers of composition and communication and students who wish to bring approaches to understanding and responding to human suffering and social injustice into the classroom.