2012-2013 Contemporary Issues Lecture Series

The College of Letters and Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater is once again offering the Contemporary Issues Lecture Series.

"We strive to bring in speakers that will discuss contemporary issues in a provocative way to create an academic discussion that begins before the speaker arrives and continues after he or she has left," said Susan Johnson, associate professor of political science and lecture series committee chairperson. Faculty across campus have embraced the series and students are encouraged to attend the lectures.

All lectures will be in the Young Auditorium at 7 p.m. and are free and open to the public. Contact Susan Johnson (johnsons@uww.edu or 472-4766) for further information.

Fall 2012

Josh Fox
"Gasland"
Monday, October 1, 2012

Josh Fox is the founder and artistic director of International WOW Company. Fox has written/directed/produced two feature films and over twenty works for the stage which have premiered in New York, Asia and Europe. Gasland, his 2010 documentary about hydraulic fracturing ("fracking") in the U.S., earned him an Oscar nomination, several Emmy awards, a Sundance Film Festival Special Jury Prize, the Environmental Media Award for Best Documentary and many other honors. In Gasland, Fox reached out to scientists, politicians and gas industry executives and visited with people in several states where "fracking" is used to investigate its effects. The New York Times hailed him as an "adventurous impresario". Fox earned his BA from Columbia University.

Joan Garry
"Media and its Impact on Changing Hearts and Minds"
Monday, November 12, 2012

Joan M. Garry, former Executive Director of GLAAD (Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation), is recognized as one of the most vocal, passionate and effective civil rights leaders in America. Garry began her professional career as part of the management team that launched MTV in 1981. Currently a featured blogger at The Huffington Post, she offers commentary on issues of relevance to the gay community as a columnist with The Washington Blade and on a number of television and radio outlets, and her personal essays have been published in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times and other national publications.

Brooke Hauser
Campus/Community Read: "The New Kids: Big Dreams and Brave Journeys at a High School for Immigrant Teens"
Monday, December 3, 2012

Brooke Hauser has written for The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and The Miami Herald, among other publications. The New Kids: Big Dreams Brave Journeys at a High School for Immigrant Teens is her first book. Recently, People magazine selected The New Kids as one of its "Great Reads," and Parade magazine chose it as a "Parade Pick." In 2005, her interest in profiling characters not usually featured in the mainstream media led her to the City section of The New York Times. Since then, she has tried to dig deep and tread lightly in many different worlds, from New York's juvenile justice system to Harlem's spirited Baptist community.

Spring 2013

Andrew Leonard
"How the World Works: The Interconnections between Globalization, Energy Policy, Economics, the Environment, and Politics…and Everything Else in Between"
Monday, February 11, 2013

Andrew Leonard currently writes the hybrid blog/column for Salon.com "How the World Works" — a venue for exploring the interconnections between globalization, energy policy, economics, the environment, and politics. Leonard is the author of Bots: Origin of a New Species, described in a New York Times review as a "playful social history of the Internet." His work has appeared in Rolling Stone, Wired, Newsweek, The New York Times Book Review, The Nation, The Far Eastern Economic Review, the San Francisco Chronicle and numerous other publications. Before becoming a journalist he studied Mandarin Chinese for ten years and lived and traveled extensively in East Asia.

 

Doug McAdam
Distinguished Scholar Lecture: "The Civic Impact of Youth Voluntarism: The Curious Contrast between Freedom Summer and Teach for America"
Monday, March 11, 2013

Doug McAdam is a Professor of Sociology and Director of Urban Studies at Stanford University. He is also an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Author and co-author of 15 books and 75 articles in political sociology, he is a preeminent scholar in the field of social movements and "contentious politics", who played a key role in developing the political process model in social movement analysis. His seminal works on race in the United States, most notably, Freedom Summer won the distinguished C. Wright Mills book award in 1990. McAdam is the recipient of 2012 Gunnar Myrdal Prize.

 

Elizabeth Royte
"Bottlemania: Big Business, Local Springs and the Battle over America's Drinking Water"
Monday, April 8, 2013

Elizabeth Royte's writing on science and the environment has appeared in Harper's, The New Yorker, National Geographic, Outside, The New York Times Magazine, and other national publications. A former Alicia Patterson Foundation fellow and recipient of Bard College's John Dewey Award for Distinguished Public Service, Royte is a frequent contributor to the New York Times Book Review and a contributing editor for OnEarth, where she writes the blog The Royte Stuff. Her work is included in The Best American Science Writing 2004, and her first book, The Tapir's Morning Bath: Solving the Mysteries of the Tropical Rain Forest, was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year for 2001. Bottlemania was named one of Entertainment Weekly's 10 "Must Read" Nonfiction Books of 2008.