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Photo credit: Courtesy of Junot Diaz |
October Speakers at Vassar
Poet and University of Michigan Professor of English Thylias Moss will deliver the Elizabeth Bishop lecture in Sanders Classroom 212 on October 1. Her latest book of “poams,” Tokyo Butter, was written during the development of Limited Fork Poetics, her theory of interacting language systems. She was a 1996 MacArthur Fellow and has received a Whiting Writer’s Award and a grant from the Guggenheim Foundation. Learn more about Moss.
Israeli 19-year-olds Maya Wind and Netta Mishly will deliver a lecture, entitled “Why We Refuse,” in Rockefeller Hall on October 4. Mishly and Wind refused to join the Israeli military to fight their neighbors in Palestine and have served jail time as a result. They are members of a group of conscientious objectors, the Shministim. Read more about the group.
Brian Martin, Williams College professor of French and comparative literature, will discuss “Gays in the Military: Combat Companions and Soldier Lovers in France,” on October 5 in Rockefeller Hall. Before modern debates on sexuality and the military, soldiers around the world sought companionship in one another from the Trojan War to World War I. The lecture is part of the series “Transnational Queer: Genders, Sexualities, Identities,” offered in conjunction with a course taught by French professor Vinay Swamy. Learn more about Martin and his publications.
Reverend Petero Sabune ’77 and several colleagues from Sing-Sing Correctional Facility will host the panel discussion “Religion in Prison in the 21st Century” on October 27 in Sanders Classroom 212. Sing-Sing is a maximum-security prison located in Ossining, NY. Sabune, a native of Uganda, is widely recognized for his work with Episcopal faith communities and immigrants. Read an article about Sabune at “Episcopal Life Online.”
Pulitzer-Prize winning author Junot Diaz (pictured) will deliver the Gifford Lecture in the Villard Room on October 28. Diaz has received worldwide acclaim for his fiction, which includes Drown and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. He currently works as fiction editor of the Boston Review and Rudge (1948) as well as the Nancy Allen Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.Read up on Diaz.