Meet the Professor Fall 2015
The College of Arts and Sciences and the Liberal Studies Project offer the monthly Meet the Professor series to highlight the college's wide variety of cultural and research offerings.
The Thursday luncheon talks begin at noon in the University Club. Reservations are required, with $15 payment in cash or check. To reserve a spot, contact Janna Tajibaeva at 502-852-2247 or janna@louisville.edu no later than the Monday before each event.
PROFESSOR CHRISTOPHER FULTON
The Medici Moment: How a family of bankers rose to power and made the Renaissance
Thursday, SEPTEMBER 3 - Christopher Fulton, Professor of Art History, will examine how the Medici family achieved ascendancy and how they governed Florence for generations. Did their rule alter civic life or social relations? And how do we measure their impact on art and learning? Were they simply the money-men behind cultural projects, or did they influence artistic and intellectual expression in a more fundamental way? Responding to these questions will clarify the Medici’s historical position and elucidate the cultural project known as the Florentine Renaissance.
PROFESSOR JENNIFER WESTERFELD
Egypt after the Pharaohs
Thursday, OCTOBER 1 - In the 21st century, we are accustomed to think of the monuments of ancient Egypt as the ultimate objects of Egyptian national pride. But has that always been the case? In this talk Jennifer Westerfeld, Professor of History, will explore the fate of Egypt’s monumental architecture in the period after the pharaohs, in a time when Egypt was under Roman rule and the country’s Christian communities were crafting a variety of responses to the legacy of the ancient past.
PROFESSOR RANEN OMER-SHERMAN
Literary Generations and the Kibbutz Experiment
Thursday, NOVEMBER 5 - Ranen Omer-Sherman, Endowed Chair of Judaic Studies, will discuss the kibbutz and its depiction in different genres. Numerous novels, short fiction, memoirs, and movies have portrayed the kibbutz as a crucial microcosm for understanding Israeli values and identity. The central drama explored in their works is the monumental tension between the individual and the collective, aspiration and ideological rigor, self-sacrifice and self-fulfillment, and between belonging and estrangement. As such, these artists’ imaginative witnessing of the fraught relation between the collective and the citizen-soldier is the story of Israel itself.
PROFESSOR KAREN CHRISTOPHER
More Rights, but Greater Expectations: Work-Family Conflict in Contemporary Women’s Lives
Thursday, DECEMBER 3 - In recent decades, U.S. women have made significant progress towards gender equality in education and employment. At the same time, mothers spent more time caring for their children, in part because of growing cultural demands for “intensive mothering.” In her talk, Women’s & Gender Studies/Sociology Prof. Karen Christopher unpacks these countervailing trends. Drawing from her research on women in caring professions, she explores gender, race, and social class, and concludes with social and policy changes that can help all workers better manage work-family conflict.
