Distinguished Faculty Lecture Series — Past Lectures
2011-2012 Lectures
Chasing Interdisciplinarity While Chasing Tornadoes
David J. McLaughlin
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Recent catastrophic tornadoes in Joplin, Missouri, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and yes: even Springfield, Massachusetts, along with increasingly severe and anomalous weather patterns worldwide, have placed a high premium on weather centers that observe, understand, predict, and respond to hazardous weather with greatest accuracy. The Engineering Research Center for Collaborative Adaptive Sensing of the Atmosphere, conceived by Professor McLaughlin and his collaborators, comprises a dense network of small radars that communicate with one another to sense hazardous weather patterns and distribute accurate warnings to people who need them. Not just a collaboration among radar engineers, CASA also represents an interdisciplinary effort by meteorologists, sociologists, geographers, computer scientists, graduate and undergraduate students, and partners from the public and private sectors—all of whom are subject to the weather. Professor McLaughlin will articulate the social, policy, behavioral and technical interface issues around the use of CASA in weather-determined decision making and response.
Wednesday, April 4, 2012 • 4 p.m.
Mullins Center Massachusetts Room
Stress, Puberty, and Mental Health: Remodeling of the Brain's Response to Hormones
Jeffrey D. Blaustein
Department of Psychology and the Neuroscience and Behavior Program
Professor Blaustein is a pioneer in behavioral neuroendocrinology—the study of how hormones act on the nervous system to influence behavior and mental health. He discovered in animal models that, while hormones influence cells of the brain by acting on hormone-specific receptors, and consequently behavior, receptors for the hormones can also be regulated by stress and stimulation from the surrounding environment. Stress encountered during puberty in mice, for example, actually remodels the brain, permanently altering its response to ovarian hormones. These findings, although made in mice, have great promise to help us understand mental health as an entire complex of interactions between hormones, the environment, and the nervous system.
Wednesday, March 7, 2012 • 4 p.m.
Mullins Center Massachusetts Room
Communicating More -- or Less? Social Networking and Democratic Action in the Global Arena
Jarice Hanson
Department of Communication
Digital technologies—especially social media and social networking—are shaping new behaviors, communication contexts, social practices, and grassroots political movements around the world. Professor Hanson focuses on themes that reflect the shift from "old" to "new" media: online social practices such as cyberbullying and identity formation, the idea that new technology leads to efficiency, and the belief that interactive media are more "democratic"—both in the United States and emerging power bases elsewhere.
Monday, November 6, 2010 • 4 p.m.
Mullins Center Massachusetts Room
UMass Amherst’s Radical Revolution in Economics, 1965-1981
Donald W. Katzner
Department of Economics
Against a backdrop of Cold War fears, social upheaval, and student activism, an academic department at a state-supported institution underwent changes as unexpected as they were rapid and wrenching. Professor Katzner describes how a significant, visible group of Marxian economists replaced their traditionalist counterparts in the UMass Amherst Economics Department and how the resulting turmoil eventually resolved itself into an intellectually exciting, friendly, and productive atmosphere with lasting implications for academic endeavor and a profound legacy for the economics profession.
Wednesday, October 19, 2011 • 4 p.m.
Bernie Dallas Room, Goodell Building
2010-2011 Lectures
Did the Abolitionists Cause the Civil War?
Part 1
Part 2
Manisha Sinha
W. E .B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies
To help mark the sesquicentennial of secession and the American Civil War in 2010-2011, Professor Sinha revisits the place of abolition in the sectional conflict. As she traces its development from radical agitation for social reform to a broad-based antislavery political party, she describea the often overlooked role African Americans played in the movement and note reverberations in contemporary political rhetoric on secession and states' rights.
Wednesday, April 27, 2011 • 4 p.m.
Mullins Center Massachusetts Room
What Is This Thing Called Happiness?
Fred Feldman
Department of Psychology
Economists, sociologists, psychologists, and others frequently report excitingly on their empirical research on happiness yet they seem to come to wildly different conclusions about what makes us happy and when we are happiest. Drawing on his latest book, Professor Feldman will describe recent popular research methodologies, argue that much empirical research focuses on things that do not deserve to be called happiness, and make a case that defining happiness is a job for philosophy.
Wednesday, March 1, 2011 • 4 p.m.
Mullins Center Massachusetts Room
Curves: A Visual Essay
Sigrid Miller Pollin
Department of Art, Architecture, and Art History
Examining three aspects of curvilinear geometry in contemporary architecture, Professor Pollin will briefly trace an historic lineage of architects exploring the curve in organic architecture, assess the curve in 21st-century architectural design in the context digital advancements, and discuss the esthetic and practical observation of natural phenomena in the architects' generation of the curve. Images of her own and other architects' work will illustrate and integrate the themes.
Wednesday, November 30, 2010 • 4 p.m.
Bernie Dallas Room, Goodell Building
Telling Earth Time: New Ways to Date Earth Processes and Explain Geologic Time
Michael L. Williams
Department of Geosciences
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Whether it's the millions of years required for mountain building or the nanoseconds for the rupture of an earthquake fault, geoscientists are finding new ways to measure the timing of Earth processes. Professor Williams will describe the length of geologic time, ways to think about time on various scales, how the unique UMass "Ultrachron" is dating geologic events, and why it's important that people understand "deep time" as demonstrated in his latest project, the new Trail of Time at the Grand Canyon.