2022-23 Distinguished Faculty Lecture Series Announced

The University of Massachusetts Amherst is pleased to announce the 2022-23 Distinguished Faculty Lecture Series and recipients of the Chancellor's Medal: Erin Baker, Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina, Peter Schloerb and Young Min Moon.

Established in 1974, the annual Distinguished Faculty Lecture is dedicated to acknowledging the work of our most esteemed and accomplished faculty members. The lecture series not only honors individual faculty members and their achievements but also celebrates the values of academic excellence that we share as a community. Each honoree is presented with the Chancellor’s Medal, the highest recognition bestowed upon faculty by the campus.
 
Event details are available on the Distinguished Faculty Lecture Series website prior to each lecture. 

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Erin Baker

Distinguished Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, College of Engineering; faculty director of the Energy Transition Institute

Wednesday, Nov. 9, 2022, 4 p.m.

Great Hall, Old Chapel

Climate Change Solutions: Finding Common Ground When Experts and Models Disagree

Climate change is a code red for humanity. We need to address it and do it fast. But because the climate problem is highly complex, it is hard to characterize how specific actions will lead to specific outcomes. Experts, methods, and models provide conflicting information, resulting in deep uncertainty. And this uncertainty is impeding the world’s ability to respond to climate change.

To help policy makers find common ground, Professor Baker, a world-recognized leader in macro-energy systems modeling and analysis, and her collaborators have introduced a paradigm-shifting approach they call Robust Portfolio Decision Analysis. In her lecture, Professor Baker will describe how this concept allows the synthesis of multiple conflicting sources of information, uncovering previously unseen intelligent responses. Using multiple large-scale expert elicitation studies and integrated assessment models, Professor Baker will illustrate how Robust Portfolio Decision Analysis helps identify research and development investments that can lead to climate change solutions.

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Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina

Paul Murray Kendall Chair in Biography and professor of English, College of Humanities and Fine Arts

Wednesday, Feb. 8, 2023, 4 p.m.

Great Hall, Old Chapel

Forgotten Lives: What They Mean, and Why They’re Important.

Professor Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina is an internationally acclaimed scholar widely known for her work in British literary and cultural studies. Much of her award-winning work explores forgotten lives. Most recently, an updated edition of her book Black London was published in the UK under the new title Black England: A Forgotten Georgian History, with a foreword by Zadie Smith. Gerzina’s work reaches beyond the field of literary studies and has made significant contributions to scholarship in history, art history, and African American studies.

In her lecture, Professor Gerzina will describe how in times past, only the lives of the famous, political, or influential were deemed worthy of exploration. Today, however, much can be learned by the lives of the ordinary or the overlooked. Gerzina will speak about what those lived experiences tell us about how people actually belonged to their times, and the way that national myths can be questioned or altered when we take another look at those who helped make social and artistic changes and allow us to reimagine the past.

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F. Peter Schloerb

Professor in the Department of Astronomy, College of Natural Sciences

Thursday, March 23, 2023, 4 p.m.

Great Hall, Old Chapel

UMass and the Large Millimeter Telescope

In 2019, the first image ever made of a black hole triggered international excitement. The stunning image brought enormous attention to the University of Massachusetts, which played a key part in the global collaboration that captured the image.

The image of the black hole was made possible by UMass Amherst’s leadership in the construction and operation of the 50-meter-diameter Large Millimeter Telescope (LMT), located atop a mountain in Mexico. One of the university’s most ambitious scientific projects, the LMT was built jointly by the country of Mexico and UMass Amherst. Professor Schloerb, an award-winning radio astronomer and planetary scientist who, has been a leader in the LMT project for over 30 years. In this lecture, he will tell the story of the university’s role in the conception, design, and construction of the world-leading telescope. He will discuss its most notable scientific achievement—the black hole image—and the LMT’s prospects for future exciting discoveries.

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Young Min Moon

Professor and chair of the Department of Art, College of Humanities and Fine Arts

Wednesday, April 12, 2023, 4 p.m.

Great Hall, Old Chapel

The Aftereffects of War in Contemporary Korean Art

Over the past century, the Korean Peninsula has seen a succession of violent ruptures, and it remains a flashpoint for the world’s superpowers. The peninsula is still gripped by Cold War geopolitics, long after the fall of the Communist bloc. In the aftermath of the Korean War, South Korea was built on androcentric nation building, anti-communism, and a relentless drive for industrialization. In the period of compressed development from the poverty-stricken 1950s to the global success of today, countless lives have been lost to the state apparatus—lives whose memories must be contextualized in the history and politics of the Cold War.

 Professor Moon is an artist and a prolific critic whose awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant. In this lecture he will examine how contemporary Korean artists investigate this difficult historical legacy: through their grappling with political violence, forsaken memories, and the unfinished task of mourning.