Humanities Forums on Contemporary Issues

Spring 2006 Humanities Forums will present the Rooted Cosmopolitans series with a variety of talks exploring Madison and its place in the world.

During Madison's sesquicentennial year in 2006, the Center, in partnership with the Madison Public Library, will present a series of public forums, Rooted Cosmopolitans: Madison and the Rest of the World. The series will explore the ways in which Madison is at once a home town rooted in rural tradition and a cosmopolitan city, linked internationally to cities and cultures around the globe by mobile workforces, international commerce, technological innovation, and cultural complexity. Rooted Cosmopolitans will look at the meaning of cosmopolitanism in present-day Madison, exploring how the city is both a recipient and a source of international economic, social, and cultural trends.

As part of this series, and in partnership with the Madison Repertory Theatre and the UW-Madison Department of Theater & Drama, the Center will co-present a theater-talk in connection to the Madison Repertory's production of Thornton Wilder's Our Town.

    Greg Downey
  • Greg Downey
  • Professor of Journalism and Mass Communication and School of Library & Information Studies, UW-Madison

  • Madison as a "Livable City" and a "Wired City": Connections and Contradictions

  • February 7, 2006 @ 5:00 pm
  • Madison Public Library, Central Branch
  • This event is one of the Forums on Contemporary Issues events.
  • With Mike Ivey, Reporter, The Capital Times Here in Madison, our diverse population, strong school system, and vibrant economy have long earned the city a reputation for "livability" in the national press. Recently Madison has also been held up as a model "wired" city, a site of innovation and interaction for "new media" and "knowledge economy" workers. But has the growth of global cyberspace affected the livability of our local urban space? Can a city with a strong tradition of social justice awareness and activism confront its own "digital divides"? Join us for a wide-ranging introduction to current ways of thinking through these intertwined issues of technology, economy, and society.

  • Humanities Now Panel Discussion

  • Blasphemy and Free Speech: the Danish Cartoons and World Reaction

  • February 27, 2006
  • This event is one of the Forums on Contemporary Issues events.
  • Panelists/Participants Assistant Professor Birgit Brander Rasmussen (English, UW-Madison) Professor Deborah Jenson (French, UW-Madison) Ovamir Anjum (PhD student, History, UW-Madison) Professor Tejumola Olaniyan (English, African Languages and Literature, UW-Madison) Professor W. Flagg Miller (Anthropology, UW-Madison) Emeritus Professor Niels Ingwersen (Scandinavian Studies, UW-Madison) A panel discussion sponsored by the UW-Madison Center for the Humanities; co-sponsored by the International Institute's European Union Center of Excellence and the Middle East Studies Program; and the Lubar Institute for the Study of the Abrahamic Religions.

    Katherine Cramer Walsh
  • Katherine Cramer Walsh
  • Professor of Political Science, UW-Madison

  • Engaging Conflict and Difference: Race and Dialogue in Madison

  • March 7, 2006 @ 5:00 pm
  • Madison Public Library, Central Branch
  • This event is one of the Forums on Contemporary Issues events.
  • With Gladis Benevides, Civil Rights & Affirmative Action Expert, and Mona Adams Winston, Development Manager for Second Harvest Foodbank Madison is a cosmopolitan city in many ways, and yet according to residents, it has a long way to go to embrace and honor the cultural diversity within its midst. Madisonites are often accused of intellectualizing problems, of talking and deliberating too much at the sake of actually taking action to confront public problems. Are attempts to organize dialogues about race guilty of this charge? Katherine Cramer Walsh's talk will consider the use of inter-group dialogue programs to improve race relations in Madison and compare these attempts with the use of race dialogues in other U.S. cities. Mona Winston and Gladis Benevides, two community leaders and activists who have played central roles in the administration of the City of Madison Study Circles on Race, will offer commentaries on Walsh's research and reflect on the place of dialogue in Madison's interracial future.

    Rebecca L. Walkowitz
  • Rebecca L. Walkowitz
  • Professor of English, UW-Madison

  • Eat Locally, Think Globally: Cosmopolitan Taste in Madison and Beyond

  • April 25, 2006 @ 5:00 pm
  • Madison Public Library, Central Branch
  • This event is one of the Forums on Contemporary Issues events.
  • This discussion will examine the conjunction of regionalism and internationalism by focusing on matters of taste in the context of food. Professor Walkowitz will talk about how cosmopolitan culture can be both less than national (regional) and more than national (international), sometimes at the same time. We will also include a panel of respondents that will bring local restaurants, farming, and culture to the discussion.

    A Celebration of WisCon's 30th anniversary year
  • A Celebration of WisCon's 30th anniversary year

  • A Feminist Utopia in Madison? Global Communities, Science Fiction, and Women

  • May 24, 2006 @ 7:00 pm
  • Wisconsin Historical Society Auditorium
  • This event is one of the Forums on Contemporary Issues events.
  • Panelists: Justine Larbalestier (moderator), science fiction historian, critic and author; and science fiction writers Nalo Hopkinson, Karen Joy Fowler, Meghan McCarron, Elizabeth Bear. This panel will discuss the global communities of feminist science fiction, WISCON, and the history of feminist science fiction, which stretches back far further than 30 years. Special attention will be paid to well-known feminist science fiction books and stories by leading women authors such as Octavia Butler, Suzy Mckee Charnas, Joanna Russ, and Ursula Le Guin. WisCon, the world's leading feminist science fiction convention, has been bringing together writers, readers, fans, and scholars from all over the globe to talk, think, argue, and laugh about feminism, science fiction, politics, media, and everything else under the sun (and beyond it!) for thirty years. This annual feminist sci-fi utopia has been created right here in Madison. Justine Larbalestier is the author of the Hugo-shortlisted Battle Of the Sexes in Science Fiction (Wesleyan University Press, 2002) and the editor of Daughters of Earth: Feminist Science Fiction in the Twentieth Century (Wesleyan University Press, 2006). She has published two novels, Magic or Madness (Penguin/Razorbill, 2005), and its sequel, Magic Lessons (Penguin/Razorbill, 2006). The final book in the trilogy will be out in March 2007. She is an Honorary Associate in the School of English, Art History, Film and Media at the University of Sydney in Australia. Elizabeth Bear was born on the same day as Frodo and Bilbo Baggins, but in a different year. She grew up in New England, and has recently returned there after some years in the Mojave Desert. She is the author of over twenty published short stories; the best-selling, critically acclaimed Jenny Casey series (Hammered, Scardown, and Worldwired); and the forthcoming Carnival and Blood and Iron, and is the recipient of the 2005 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Author. She got her chin at a second-hand shop; it used to belong to the Joker. Karen Joy Fowler is the author of the novels Canary, The Sweetheart Season, Sister Noon, and The Jane Austen Book Club as well as the short story collections Artificial Things and Black Glass (which won the World Fantasy Award for Best Collection in 1999.) Her short story, "What I Didn't See," won the 2004 Nebula Award, and Sister Noon was a Pen/Faulkner finalist. Along with writer Pat Murphy, Fowler co-founded the James Tiptree, Jr. Award, given annually to a work of science fiction and fantasy that explores or expands our understanding of gender, an award now in its 15th year. Nalo Hopkinson is Jamaican-Canadian (and a bunch of other hyphens, too). She is the author of novels Brown Girl in the Ring, Midnight Robber, and the Salt Roads, and of short story collection Skin Folk. She is a founding member on the board of the Carl Brandon Society, which exists to promote the visibility of people of color in science fiction community. She's currently completing a novel in which menopause is magic. Meghan McCarron was called "Bucky" in the womb after R. Buckminster Fuller. When she was a kid, her mother introduced her to books, feminism, and science fiction, and the three have been linked in her mind ever since. Her short fiction has appeared in Strange Horizons, Twenty Epics, and Flytrap, and she's a graduate of Clarion West, a highly selective workshop for speculative fiction writers. She blogs about feminism, science fiction, and the beautiful stupidity of post-college life at megmccarron.livejournal.com. She lives, for the moment, in Los Angeles. This event is presented by the Center for the Humanities in partnership with WisCon. To learn more about WisCon, visit their website at: www.wiscon.info.