[act-ma] Cambridge Forum Winter-Spring 2011 Program Schedule

[Cambridge Forum]

Attached is Cambridge Forum's Program Schedule for Winter-Spring 2011.

A text version of the schedule is copied below:

Pat Suhrcke, Director

Cambridge Forum
Program Schedule
Winter 2011
Wednesdays at 7:00 pm.  **(unless otherwise noted)
First Parish in Cambridge
3 Church Street
Harvard Square
Cambridge, MA 02138

FREE and Open to the Public


Parlor
January 26		COMMON AS AIR: Revolution, Art and Ownership*

MacArthur Fellow Lewis Hyde defends the concept of the cultural commons.  How has our cultural heritage, the store of ideas and art we have inherited from the past, come to be seen as “intellectual property.” Does the emergence of Wikileaks endanger the notion of freedom of the press?  Is “net neutrality” possible in the ownership society?

Book:  Common as Air: Revolution, Art and Ownership (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Co-sponsored by Mullane, Michel & McInnes, Counselors-at-Law


Meetinghouse
February 9		WORLD ON THE EDGE: How to Prevent Environmental and Economic Collapse*

Internationally renowned environmentalist Lester Brown has been assessing the health of the earth’s ecosystems for more than two decades.  Over that time he has seen increasing signs of break-down until we are now facing issues of near-overwhelming complexity and unprecedented urgency. Can we change direction before we go over the edge? In his new book World on the Edge, Brown attempts to answer that question by systemically laying out both challenges and potential policy solutions.

Book:	World on the Edge: How to Prevent Environmental and Economic Collapse

Co-sponsored by Tim Weiskel and an anonymous Friend of Cambridge Forum.






Meetinghouse and Parlor
Friday
February 18**	CREATIVITY IN TEREZIN: The Artists of Holocaust
6:30 Reception
7:30 Performance and discussion

Terezin was a model concentration camp serving as a way station to Auschwitz and as a Nazi propaganda tool to dispel rumors of the Final Solution.  Red Cross inspectors found children taking art classes.  Composers wrote music for the camp ensembles to perform.  Poets and playwrights created new works.  Most were murdered in the Shoah.

How can creativity flourish in such terrible circumstances?  How do the works of art produced under such duress compare with those created under less stressful conditions?  Many artists suffer--illness, poverty, loneliness--for the sake of their art.  What can we learn about the connection between creativity and suffering from the extreme case of artists in the Holocaust?

Performances by the Hawthorne Quartet and the Underground Railway Theater of works created in Terezin and contemporary works inspired by the artists of the holocaust are followed by a panel discussion featuring Mark Ludwig, director of the Terezin Music Foundation and the Hawthorne Quartet;  Debra Wise of the Underground Railway Theater, artist Catherine Cabaniss, psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Dr. Anna Ornstein, and  psychologist Ellen Winner explores the relationship between creativity and stress, using the works created in Terezin as examples. 

Tickets:  $100 (includes reception with the artists and reserved seating);  $50 (includes reception); $25 (general admission); and $10 (students 12-18 with ID).

Proceeds benefit the Terezin Music Foundation and Cambridge Forum.


7:00 pm
Thursday**
February 24 	“YELLOW:” My Two Amherst Neighbors, Emily Dickinson and Ruth Owen Jones 

Her “life like a loaded gun” (Lyndall Gordon), the "woman in white", Emily Dickinson, arguably, wrote the greatest poetry in 19th century English. Lynn Margulis discusses Hans Werner Luescher’s (b. Switzerland, 1901- d. California 1991) lifework to decode Dickinson. Luescher wrote (to T. J. Wilson, Director, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, April 19, 1962): “In the course of my painstaking analysis of the symbols, similes and parables contained in Emily Dickinson’s poems, I have come to discover the central fact in the life of the poet.” Lynn will talk about Luescher’s opus and its relation to Ruth Owen Jones’ far more reliable identification of Emily's Master figure.

Book:		Dazzle Gradually: Reflections on the nature of nature (Chelsea Green) 	

Parlor
March 2	ROGUE STATES AND SUITCASE BOMBS: Coping with the New Nuclear Threat

Harvard Kennedy School expert in nuclear security Matthew Bunn discusses the nuclear threats of the 21st century: nuclear theft and terrorism, proliferation, and the nuclear energy fuel cycle.  How serious are the new nuclear threats?  What methods for handling them are effective?
  
Co-sponsored by Don and Jeannette McInnes and an anonymous Friend of Cambridge Forum.

Parlor
March 16	FIRE IN THE HEART:  White Activists for Racial Justice**

Harvard sociologist Mark Warren uncovers the dynamic processes through which some white Americans become activists for racial justice in his new book Fire in the Heart.  Based on in-depth interviews, Warren shows how the motivation to take and sustain action for racial justice is profoundly moral and relational.  What are the difficulties that white activists face on their path to embracing racial justice?  How have these challenges evolved over the past half century?

Co-sponsored by Dan Bartley and Helen Glikman-Bartley. 

Book: 		Fire in the Heart: How White Activists Embrace Racial Justice


Chapel
Monday**
March 21	WHY EVERYONE (ELSE) IS A HYPOCRITE: Evolution and the Modular Mind*

Evolutionary psychologist Robert Kurzban challenges the traditional concept of the integrated self.  The human mind’s structure makes for behavioral inconsistency, so it is perfectly natural to believe that everyone else is a hypocrite.   What is meant by the notion of the “modular mind”?  What are the implications of human inconsistency for a world built around rational models?

Book:		Why Everyone (Else) Is a Hypocrite: Evolution and the Modular Mind (Princeton)


Parlor
April 13		EMPIRES OF FOOD

Andrew Rimas discusses his latest book, Empires of Food: Feast, Famine and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations. What does this sweeping look at the relationships between food, food availability, new food, and developing human civilizations tell us about food security in our own warming world?

Book: 	Empires of Food: Feast, Famine and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations

Meetinghouse
Thursday**
6:00 pm
May 19		CHARLES SUMNER AT 200: The Tradition of Civil Rights in Cambridge

Charles Sumner, 19th century abolitionist and U.S. Senator, is one of the most visible figures in Harvard Square.  On the 200th anniversary of his birth in 1811, the city of Cambridge rededicates his statue on the corner of Massachusetts Avenue and Church Street.  Immediately following, Beverly Morgan-Welch, executive director of the Museum of African American History, and Daniel Coquilette, visiting professor at Harvard Law School, discuss Sumner’s significance in America’s on-going debates about Civil Rights.

Co-sponsored by Jane Sturtevant, the Longfellow NHS, the Boston African American NHS, the Museum of African American History, Friends of the Longfellow House, and First Parish in Cambridge.


Cambridge Forum
3 Church Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
Phone:  617-495-2727
email:  mailto:director at cambridgeforum.org
website:  http://www.cambridgeforum.org

"Bringing People together to talk again . . ." 
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