social theory

Emancipation, New Sensibility, and the Challenge of a New Era: Arnold Farr

 

This November, scholars and activists from around the world will gather at UK to attend the 5th Biennial Conference of the International Herbert Marcuse Society. Arnold Farr, a philosopher and social theorist here at the University of Kentucky, is organizing the conference, which seeks to examine “Emancipation, New Sensibility, and the Challenge of a New Era.”

The Making of an Icon: Black Harlem and the Jewish Lower East Side with Catherine Rottenberg

This past April, the University of Kentucky's Jewish Studies Program was lucky enough to host a lecture with renowned scholar and author Catherine Rottenberg. The talk, titled "The Making of an Icon: Black Harlem and the Jewish Lower East Side," concluded a series of special events hosted over the past year by the Jewish Studies Program. Rottenberg is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Foreign Literatures and Linguistics and the Gender Studies Program of Ben Gurion University in Beer-Sheva, Israel.

The End of Wonder in the Age of Whatever

Dr. Michael Wesch, a cultural anthropologist and media ecologist at Kansas State University, will be giving a talk entitled "The End of Wonder in the Age of Whatever" presented by the Center for the Enhancement of Learning and Teaching (CELT). Dr. Wesch regularly teaches large classes and was the 2008 U.S. Professor of the Year for Doctoral and Research Universities selected by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. 
 
He will be talking about creating a sense of "wonder" in the classroom and giving students the gift of "big questions." Professor Wesch's visit strives to inspire UK faculty and foster a dialogue on campus around topics such as teaching large classes and using new media and technologies in the classroom to nurture student curiosity and exploration as they pursue authentic and relevant questions. 
 

New media and technology present us with an overwhelming bounty of tools for connection, creativity, collaboration, and knowledge creation - a true "Age of Whatever" where anything seems possible. But any enthusiasm about these remarkable possibilities is immediately tempered by that other "Age of Whatever" - an age in which people feel increasingly disconnected, disempowered, tuned out, and alienated. Such problems are especially prevalent in education, where the Internet often enters our classrooms as a distraction device rather than a tool for learning.

What is needed more than ever is to inspire our students to wonder, to nurture their appetite for curiosity, exploration, and contemplation. It is our responsibility to help them attain an insatiable appetite and pursue big, authentic, and relevant questions so that they can harness and leverage the bounty of possibility, rediscover the "end" or purpose of wonder, and stave off the historical end of wonder.

Date:
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Location:
WT Young Auditorium
Event Series:
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