Dialog, UA Faculty and Staff News

Special Lectures, Lecture Series and Academic Activities at UA Cross Disciplines

During the academic year, many departments and programs at the University offer special lectures and lecture series, academic activities and performances representing topics and activities across disciplines. Some representative examples include:

Public Nights (department of physics and astronomy)
The Darden Lecture (department of biology)
The Bankhead series in English and history
The Aronov Lecture (department of religious studies)
Alabama Museum of Natural History activities
The Hudson Strode lectures (the Strode Program within the department of English)
The Center for Mental Health and Aging series
Numerous performances in the School of Music, including the special Celebrity Series.

Resources for listings of events include Dialog, Dialog Extra, UA's events calendar at www.events.ua.edu, the on-line College of Arts and Sciences and School of Music calendars, and various individual departments. Some upcoming events are listed below. Also see the Calendar page in each issue of Dialog.

School of Music Celebrity Series Features Empire Brass, Olga Kern and Kronos Quartet
Bankhead Visiting Writers Series Begins New Season with Lynn Emanuel and Joyelle McSweeney
Second Annual Aronov Lecture to Focus on Religion and the Courts
UA Dinoff Lecture to Focus on Headaches
Theme for Strode Lectures Announced

School of Music Celebrity Series Features Empire Brass, Olga Kern and Kronos Quartet

UA's School of Music is proud to announce its Celebrity Series concert schedule for 2003-04. This season's three offerings will offer a variety of styles sure to delight audiences. All concerts take place at 7:30 p.m. in the Concert Hall of the Moody Music Building. Celebrity Series subscriptions are $60 for main floor and first balcony and $40 for second balcony and main floor Rows A and B. Single ticket prices are $22 and $15 for general audiences and $7 for students with valid IDs. For ticket information or an immediate credit card purchase call the School of Music Box Office at 205/348-7111.

Empire Brass -- Tuesday, Oct. 14

Empire Brass

Empire Brass enjoys an international reputation as North America's finest brass ensemble, renowned for its brilliant virtuosity and the unparalleled diversity of its repertoire. The five musicians -- all of whom have held leading positions with major American orchestras -- perform more than 100 concerts a year in cities like New York, Boston, Chicago, Washington, London, Zurich and Tokyo. Empire Brass has been awarded the Naumburg Prize and the Harvard Music Association Award.

Olga Kern, Piano -- Tuesday, Nov. 18

Olga Kern

Sponsored by the Gloria Narramore Moody Foundation. Olga Kern has been captivating fans and critics alike with her passionately confident musicianship and vivid stage presence for years. She has performed in many of the world's most important venues, including the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory, Symphony Hall in Osaka, La Scala in Milan and the Salle Cortot in Paris. Her final round Van Cliburn International Piano Competition performances with the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra and Maestro James Conlon are showcased in the new PBS series "Concerto." Kern recently recorded the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 1 with the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra and Christopher Seaman, which will be released this fall.

Kronos Quartet -- Tuesday, March 9, 2004

Kronos Quartet

Synonymous with musical innovation, the Kronos Quartet is known for its unique artistic vision and fearless dedication to experimentation. Since its inception in 1973, Kronos has assembled a body of work unparalleled in its range and scope of expression and in the process has captured the attention of audiences worldwide. Their recorded performances have been heard throughout the world on radio and television, in films and in live dance and theater performances. Of the 30 records released on Nonesuch, six have been Grammy nominees.

Bankhead Visiting Writers Series Begins New Season with Lynn Emanuel and Joyelle McSweeney

Lynn Emanuel

Lynn Emanuel and Joyelle McSweeney will kick off the 2003-04 Bankhead Visiting Writers Series on Sept. 4 at 7:30 p.m. in 205 Smith Hall.

Emanuel has been the recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships and the National Poetry Series Award. She is a Coal Royalty Chairholder in Creative Writing at UA for the fall 2003 semester. She is the author of three books of poetry, most recently "Then, Suddenly" (1999), a selection of the Academy of American Poets' Poetry Book Club. Emanuel's work has been selected for the "Pushcart Prize Anthology" and "Best American Poetry," among others.

Joyelle McSweeney

McSweeney attended Oxford University and Harvard before receiving her MFA from the Iowa Writer's Workshop. She has joined the program in creative writing at UA as an assistant professor as of fall 2003. She is the author of "The Red Bird," winner of the 2001 Fence Modern Poets Series Prize selected by Allen Grossman, and her poems have appeared in the "Boston Review," and "Poetry," among others.

The Bankhead Visiting Writers Series is made possible by an endowment from the Bankhead Foundation, UA's program in creative writing, the department of English and the College of Arts and Sciences. For more information, contact UA's creative writing program at 348-0766 or visit www.bama.ua.edu/~writing.

Second Annual Aronov Lecture to Focus on Religion and the Courts

Professor Jonathan Z. Smith will give the second annual Aaron Aronov Lecture Tuesday, Sept. 23, at 7 p.m. in 205 Smith Hall. The lecture is titled "God Save this Honorable Court: Religion and Civic Discourse." Smith is one of the world's most insightful and influential scholars of religion. He is the Robert O. Anderson Distinguished Service Professor of the Humanities at the University of Chicago.

His lecture will look at the role religious discourse plays in the U.S. court system. According to Dr. Russell McCutcheon, UA's chair of the department of religious studies, this topic is timely in Alabama and of wide interest to UA faculty and staff.

UA Dinoff Lecture to Focus on Headaches

Dr. Frank Andrasik, senior research scientist at the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition and professor of psychology at the University of West Florida, will be the guest speaker for the annual Michael Dinoff Memorial Lecture on Friday, Sept. 19, at 7 p.m. in 208 Gordon Palmer Hall. The Michael Dinoff Memorial Lecture is sponsored by the UA department of psychology in memory of Dr. Michael Dinoff, who was a professor of psychology and director of UA's Psychological Clinic from 1963 until his death in 1982.

Andrasik will discuss "Uncommon Cures for the Common Headache." The lecture is open to the public. Andrasik received his doctorate in clinical psychology from Ohio University in 1979. At West Florida he has focused his research primarily in the area of assessment and treatment of the chronic headache. He has been the recipient of several federal and foundation research grants including a Research Career Development Award from the National Institute of Neurological Communicative Disorders and Stroke. Andrasik has also served on numerous editorial review boards including Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback and Behavior Therapy.

Theme for Strode Lectures Announced

The theme for the series of Hudson Strode lectures for the 2002-04 academic year is "Individual Style." The lectures are held at 5 p.m. in 301 Morgan Hall unless otherwise announced. The lectures are sponsored by the Hudson Strode Program in Renaissance Studies, a privately endowed program to promote the study of literature from Skelton to Milton. More information is available at www.as.ua.edu/english/ strode/. More detailed information about the speakers and their lectures will be forthcoming. Speakers and dates follow: Sept. 8, Swapan Chakravorty (Jadavpur University); Sept. 22, MacDonald P. Jackson (University of Auckland); Sept. 29, Paul Yachnin (McGill University); Oct. 6, Jahn Jowell (Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham); Oct. 20, Brian Vickers (Centre for Renaissance Studies, University of Zurich); and Nov. 3, Christopher Ricks (Boston University).