Launch of the Difficult Dialogues initiative, fall 2006
The State of Our Democracy, spring 2007
Race and Ethnicity, spring 2007
Religion and Tolerance, fall 2007
Power, fall 2007
Climate Change, spring 2008
Reclaiming the common wealth, fall 2008
Where do we go from Here? Race in the Era of Obama, spring 2009
Old Forms Give Way/Visioning the New, fall 2009
Considering Gender, spring 2010
We live in a world of information overload, constant connectivity, work pressures and personal responsibilities, all of which are increasing and accelerating. The ways we read, learn and think have been altered by our use of the Internet; our ways of relating to people, work and recreation are transformed as they are channeled through e-mail, texting and tweeting.
How has time and the acceleration of life been seen historically and philosophically? How do our technologies affect our health, our relationships and the ways we learn? Do we want to change our relationship to these forces, and how? The symposium raises these questions in a film series, exhibitions, talks and panels, and a number of community conversations. Meditation, yoga and qigong practicegroups will also be held.
We’ll be viewing a great set of films and hearing from a variety of people including Nicholas Carr (on October 18), whose new book The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, has garnered a great deal of attention this year. Judith Shulevitz, author of The Sabbath World, will speak on October 5 and lead us into a Day of Slowing (October 6), in which we invite the whole community to take a fast from technology, to see what that might mean. Throughout the semester, we’ll hold conversations about our experiences of this wired world, and the question of “slowing” within it.
A full listing of events can be found below,
or you may download a PDF of our Fall 2010 Calendar
Digital Nation film screening, September 7
Time/Daytime film screening, September 13
Fragmented exhibition opening, September 16
Brazil (1985) film screening, September 22
Slow Food Worcester September 28
The Sabbath Advantage Judith Shulevitz, October 5
Day of Slowing October 6
The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains
Nicholas Carr, October 18
Moving Beyond Fear: Creating Clarity and Dialogue in Difficult Times
Paige Marrs , October 28
All the Time in the World exhibition opening, November 2
Keeping Quiet November 11
Slowing to the Pace of Nature
workshop w/Michael Dunning, November 13
Floor of the World Elaine Scarry, November 18
Difficult Dialogues Special Event
Exploring the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict through Dialogue
film screening and workshop, November 10 & 17
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Digital Nation: Life on the Virtual Frontier Within a single generation, digital media and the World Wide Web have transformed virtually every aspect of modern culture, from the way we learn and work to the ways in which we socialize and even conduct war. But is the technology moving faster than we can adapt to it? And is our 24/7 wired world causing us to lose as much as we’ve gained? In Digital Nation: Life on the Virtual Frontier, Frontline presents an in-depth exploration of what it means to be human in a 21st-century digital world. (90 minutes)
Tuesday September 7 @ 7 and 9:30 pm *
Dana Commons second floor lounge
*two screenings with a Conversation Café between
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Time:Daytime
Humans seem to run to the beat of time, often without being aware of how or why our perception of it may differ from nature’s rhythms or from our own
internal clock. We have a unique knowledge of time. We ‘know’ past and future. But, where does our sense of time passing come from? In the BBC’s Time: Daytime, String theory pioneer Michio Kaku goes on an extraordinary exploration of the world in search of time. This special awareness of time raises some of the most important questions about time itself: Why does it only flow in one direction? Why can’t we stop it, see it or hold it? And if it is so elusive, then is it real or just a figment of our minds? (60 minutes)
Monday September 13 — noon to midnight*
Dana Commons second floor lounge
*The episode starts on the hour for twelve consecutive hours;
We will hold a conversation café from 8 to 9 pm.
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FragmentedA group of mixed media paintings by Brooklyn-based artist Alex White Mazzarella communicate (and in some cases transcend) the complexity of existence within a context that is increasingly virtual and scattered in nature. He asks how human consciousness can be activated to balance an increasingly technologically based existence. His work is inspired by street art and Kirchner, Appel, Miro, Basquiat, Avery, Pollock, Tapies and William Blake. His work is in private collections in the United States, France, Denmark and Norway.
Alex White Mazzarella graduated from Clark University with a degree in economics and studied city planning in graduate school.
Thursday September 16
Conversation with the artist 4pm
Reception and exhibition opening 5pm
the exhibition runs until October 22
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Brazil (1985)A commentary on the “absurdity of the anonymous, ritualized, and soulless machinery that make up the necessities of adult life in modern society”, the film centers on Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce) as a young man trying to find a woman who appears in his dreams. He is working in a mind-numbing job and living in a small apartment set in a dystopian world in which there is an over-reliance on poorly maintained (and rather whimsical) machines. Written by Terry Gilliam, Charles McKeown, and Tom Stoppard, and starring Jonathan Pryce, Robert DeNiro and Michael Palin. (132 minutes)
Professor Betsy Huang of the English Department will introduce the film, and help facilitate the post-viewing conversation.
Wednesday September 22 @ 7 pm
Dana Commons second floor lounge
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As technology and the industrialization of food takes us further away from its source and origins, a burgeoning group of committed growers, activists, restaurateurs and consumers are trying to bring us back to our sustainable, local, healthy and delicious roots. The Slow Food movement was “founded in 1989 to counteract fast food and fast life, the disappearance of local food traditions and people’s dwindling interest in the food they eat, where it comes from, how it tastes and how our food choices affect the rest of the world”. The movement has now made its way to central Massachusetts.
Casey Burns (Regional Environmental Council), Alec Lopez (Armsby Abbey), Julius Jones (REC YouthGrow), Marty Dudek (College of the Holy Cross), Paul Booras (Flats Pizza) and others have been engaged with this effort for years and will join us to share their experience and wisdom. The evening will include reports from the field, dialogue circles, resources on how to “slow” your food and a tasting of what Worcester has to offer.
Tuesday September 28 @ 7 pm
Dana Commons second floor lounge
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The Sabbath Advantage In a world of brightness and portability and instantaneous intimacy, the Sabbath foists on the consciousness the blackness of night, the heaviness of objects, the miles that keep us apart. The Sabbath prefers natural to artificial light. If we want to travel, it would make us walk, though not too far. If we long for social interaction, it would have us meet our fellow man and woman face-to-face. This timely examination of an ancient ritual will include dialogue circles where we share our own experiences of Sabbath.
Author Judith Shulevitz thinks about what rituals of time do for us and why we still need some. She is the author of The Sabbath World: Glimpses of a Different Order of Time (Random House, 2010) and columnist for Slate and The New Republic.
Tuesday October 5 @ 7pm
Dana Commons second floor lounge
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We invite the Clark community to heighten awareness of our relationship to the technologies in our lives through a campus wide voluntary fast from technology. We encourage everyone to refrain from use of the Internet, email, cellphones and iPods, and experience a shift of pace and focus. Look around campus for opportunities to engage in meditation, qigong, live music, yoga, conversation, drawing sessions, labyrinth walking, slow food. There will be a number of dialogue circles around campus on topics arising from the experiences of the day.
Wednesday October 6
sunrise to sunset
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The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to our BrainsThe technologies we use to think with — to gather, store, share, and analyze information — influence the way that we think, says
Nicholas Carr. The course of this influence can be traced back throughout humankind’s intellectual history, and it forms the context for understanding how the Internet is reshaping our minds. Whereas the printed page shielded us from distractions, encouraging deep
attentiveness, the Internet inundates us with distractions. It promotes fast-paced skimming and scanning,but provides little opportunity or
encouragement for quieter, more solitary modes of thinking, such as reflection, introspection, and contemplation. The price we’re paying
for the many benefits of the Net is an erosion in the depth of our intellectual lives and even our culture.
Nicholas Carr is the author of The Big Switch and Does IT Matter? He has written for the New York Times, New Republic, Wired, and
other periodicals.
Monday October 18 @ 4:30pm
Tilton Hall, Higgins University Center
Faculty conversation on the relationship between technology and pedagogy
Wednesday October 20 @ 3:30 pm
(following the Faculty Assembly)
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Moving Beyond Fear: Creating Clarity and Dialogue in Difficult TimesFear can, and has, become a prominent player in our lives. Feelings of trepidation, uncertainty, and confusion are a given in our current environment. We want to respond creatively and positively, but we can’t do that if we are quietly (or openly) quaking in our boots! This seminar, led by Paige Marrs, draws on the neurosciences and cutting-edge communication theory to offer fresh perspectives on neutralizing the unwitting presence and influence of fear. You’ll gain actionable insights for creating clarity and dialogue in difficult times.
Paige Marrs is a scholar/practitioner, consultant and executive coach in business and academic settings. Her work with individuals and organizations draws on 25 years professional experience. She is a founding member of the Transforming Communication Project, an international consortium of scholars and practitioners dedicated to reducing confl ict and creating better social worlds through transformed communication, and is on the Board of Directors of the Public Dialogue Consortium. Paige holds a doctorate in Human and Organizational Systems from Fielding Graduate University, and lives in Los Angeles.
Thursday October 28 @ noon
Dana Commons second floor lounge
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All the Time in the World All the Time in the World is a visual dialogue between Toby Sisson and Cheryl Wilgren Clyne, two artists that use divergent media to explore time as both subject and object. Generated from a shared desire to “make” time and presented through the depiction of oppositional forces — stillness/movement, space/form, natural/artificial and past/future, these meditative works create an environment for contemplation and reflection.
Toby Sisson is an Assistant Professor of Studio Art at Clark University. Her creative research examines organic and land-based art forms, the hybridization of indigenous and immigrant artistic traditions, as well as public art and community-based service learning. Cheryl Wilgren Clyne is an Adjunct Instructor of Experimental and Media Art at the University of Minnesota. Her specializations include drawing, digital photography, video, exhibit design and installation, and the educational uses of technology and social networking tools.
Tuesday November 2 @ 4 pm
Dana Commons, second floor
Conversation with the artists @ 4pm;
Reception and exhibition opening @ 5pm
the exhibition runs until December 10
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Keeping Quiet “Now we will count to twelve and we will all keep still” begins Pablo Neruda’s poem Keeping Quiet. In this call for a “moment without hurry, without locomotives” when “perhaps a great silence would interrupt this sadness, this never understanding ourselves” Neruda longs for a world that does less harm to itself, asking us to walk side-by-side “without doing anything.”
Professor Maria Acosta Cruz of the Department of Foreign Languages and Literature will facilitate an informal conversation about the poet, the poem, and what it evokes for us in our present circumstances.
Thursday November 11 @ 4pm
Dana Commons second floor lounge
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Slowing to the Pace of Nature: Lessons from the Human Embryo Thinking, acting and living at high speed has disconnected us from the slow endogenous tempo of Nature; the loss of this connection has led to an epidemic of stress-related illnesses. Today we face an instinctual crisis — we seek to re-engage with nature’s healing presence but often don’t know how. What nature is it that we seek to return to? Does this slow endogenous tempo even exist in our manipulated, altered and commodified biosphere? Michael Dunning suggests that to answer some of these questions we must turn to the human embryo, not in an anatomy book but rather in our adult body; that we slow down enough to maintain and stabilize our perception of our body and its inner rhythms. When we can achieve this, nature will enter our perception and enliven our world.
Michael Dunning is a biodynamic craniosacral therapist, musician, writer and artist from Scotland. He is the founder and director of the “The Sacred Yew Institute” which teaches an experiential embryology and offers a Foundation Training in Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy.
Saturday November 13 — 10 to 12 am
This workshop is by registration only.
Please contact Lisa Gillingham at 508 793 7479 to reserve a place.
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This lecture by Harvard professor Elaine Scarry is about the possibility of vast injury to the world posed by nuclear weapons and simultaneously, about the way such weaponry nullifies the one potential brake on warmaking: democratic citizenship. The claim that modern warfare requires instantaneous decision-making by one person eliminates the democratic processes of deliberation and broad participation.
Elaine Scarry, a professor of English and American Literature and Language, is the Walter M. Cabot Professor of Aesthetics and the General Theory of Value at Harvard University. Her publications include On Beauty and Being Just (1999) and The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World (1985).
Thursday, November 18 @ 7pm
Dana Commons second floor lounge
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For almost three years, the Difficult Dialogues initiative has sought to increase understanding by creating conversations about the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis. We continue this semester with a two-part dialogue held on consecutive Wednesdays in November. A new documentary about the struggle of peace-movements in Israel and Palestine will set a context for these conversations. We invite you to join us and to bring your own stories and insights.
Little Town of Bethlehem (2010)
Sami (a Palestinian Christian), Ahmad (a Palestinian Muslim), and Yonatan (an Israeli Jew and former Air Force pilot) come from radically different backgrounds in a land of unending war. Yet, against all odds, including some within their Israeli and Palestinian communities,
they are able to find common ground. This documentary from writer/director Jim Hanon tells us the story of peace activists who rarely make the headlines but are making a difference. (75 minutes)
Wednesday September 29 @ 7 pm
Dana Commons second floor lounge
Co-sponsored with the Center for Non-Violent Solutions
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Exploring the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict through Dialogue
Two day workshop
Drawing on people and resources within our community, we will meet to consider different aspects of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in a two-day intensive workshop
format including dialogue. Each afternoon will include two sessions, with a supper break between them; supper will be provided for attendees.
Please note that the workshops require registration in advance (see below).
Wednesdays November 10 and 17 — 4 to 7:30pm
Dana Commons second floor lounge
To attend these workshops, please register with Lisa Gillingham at 508 793 7479.
Wednesday November 10
4 pm Role of Identity: Understanding identity in the context of conflict
6 pm Telling Our Stories: Perspectives on the conflict
Wednesday November 17
4 pm Bridging the Divide: Seeking a Third Way
6 pm U.S. Role and Responsibilities
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Meditation
A sitting meditation practice group based on Buddhist principles is held on Thursdays @ 8:30am in the second floor lounge at Dana Commons. Instruction is available for beginners, and everyone is welcome. For more information, please contact Professor Sarah Buie. Sponsored by the Difficult Dialogues Initiative.
Thursdays @ 8:30am // Dana Commons, 2nd floor
Yoga
Yoga is an ancient practice which promotes physical fitness, flexibility, mental wellness and more. Yoga @ ClarkU offers a wide variety of classes and welcomes students, staff, faculty and the community to join in at their convenience: once, twice or every class! Yoga @ ClarkU is based on the principles of vinyasa, or flow- style yoga, connecting the body with the breath to bring calm to the mind. Participants can expect to be challenged in a productive way, find relaxation and work the body while clearing the mind.
Qigong /Tai Chi
Thursdays @ noon // Dana Commons, 2nd floor
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