The first official talk in the 2012-2013 Monday Seminar Series will be given by Nina Strohminger on the role of disgust in moral judgment on September 17 at noon. Strohminger is currently a Postdoctoral Associate at the Institute working under the supervision of Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Dan Ariely, and David Pizarro.
This symposium will critically examine the intersections of religion and public life, while deepening academic understanding of religious and political institutions in the United States. Speakers include:
U.S. Senator Chris Coons (D-Delaware)
Dr. Randall Balmer, Author, “God in the White House”
Dr. Randy Styers, Professor, UNC
Rev. Stephen Lewis, President, The Fund for Theological Education
Rev. George Reed, Executive Director, NC Council of Churches
Dr. Jason Bivins, Chair of Religion and Philosophy Dept. NCSU
Eric Sapp, Eleison Group
Dr. John Senior, Wake Forest University
Topics include:
Co-sponsored by Duke Divinity School
September 24-25, 2012
Von Canon A, Bryan Center, Duke University
Examining Equity: A Multidimensional Framework for Assessing Equity in Payments for Ecosystem Services
Melanie McDermott, Associate Director of the Rutgers Initiative on Climate and Society at Rutgers University, will be speaking September 24th as part of the Monday Seminar Series from 12:00-1:30 in room 101, West Duke Building. This talk is part of the Environmental Justice Initiative in collaboration with Nicholas School of the Environment.
Melanie McDermott is a research assistant professor in the Human Ecology department and the associate director of the Rutgers Initiative on Climate and Society. With degrees in interdisciplinary social science (B.A., Harvard; Ph.D., Berkeley) and forestry (M.Sc. Oxford), she has over 20 years’ experience in the U.S., Asia, Southern Africa, and the Caribbean in research, policy analysis, and consulting. Her work has pursued a number of related themes: the social impacts of climate change mitigation and adaptation; the political ecology of natural resource management, with an emphasis on community forestry; indigenous land rights; gender; non-timber forest products and agroforestry; sprawl, green spaces, and urban forestry; and environmental risk communication. A focus on social equity crosscuts this diverse field. At a more theoretical level, she investigates how the causes and consequences of peoples’ resource-use practices are shaped by environmental factors and social relations of power, difference and identity operating across multiple scales.
The Monday Seminar Series kicks off on August 27 with a discussion led by KIE graduate fellow (and Ph.D. candidate in the Nicholas School of the Environment) Shana Starobin:
“Do Nothing?: A Conversation on the Ethics of Inaction”
Using cases to elicit discussion, this seminar endeavors to open a conversation about why we do nothing, especially when pressing situations challenge us individually and/or collectively to respond. Under what conditions is “doing nothing” the best option, the most appropriate ethical choice?
Monday, August 27, 12-1:30pm
101 West Duke Building
The Institute welcomes students to campus with an open house from 3pm to 5pm on Friday, August 31st. Come join us for cupcakes and conversation as we gear up for the new year! The event will be held in Room 101 in the West Duke Building, across the hall from the main office of the Kenan Institute for Ethics.
Project Change kicks off its fifth year on August 13th. Arriving students should meet at the Women’s Center in the Few Building on West Campus by 2pm.
Facing long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. military has adopted a controversial new program, ‘Human Terrain Systems’, to make cultural awareness a key element of its counterinsurgency strategy. Michael Udris’s Human Terrain (2010) exposes this and the U.S. effort to enlist academia in the war effort. Having gained rare access to war games in the Mojave Desert and training exercises at Quantico and Fort Leavenworth, Udris takes the viewer into the heart of the war machine and the shadowy collaboration between American academics and the armed services.
Taking the theme “condemned to be free,” each of the films in the 2012 Ethics Film Series in some way explores how individuals – even in the most restrictive, oppressive circumstances – claim their existential freedom by taking responsibility for their decisions and actions. The consequences of these claims, and the weight of their responsibility, may appear overwhelming, but it is this acknowledgement of freedom that enables authentic ethical action.
A post screening discussion features Michael Udris.
Co-sponsored by the Center for Documentary Studies and the Program in Arts of the Moving Image.
Free and open to the public.
Monday, April 23, 7pm
Griffith Film Theater, Bryan Center, Duke University (map).
Parking is available in the Bryan Center parking deck.
Having recently returned from Egypt and Nepal, the 2012 DukeImmerse students are pleased to present Uprooted/Rerouted: Narratives of Iraqi and Bhutanese Refugees Losing and Finding Homes. With Grace Benson, Jamie Bergstrom, Kiran Bhai, Nicole Daniels, Eugenie Dubin, Heather Durham, Kelly Howard, Esther Kim, CeCe Mercer, Malena Price, Julie Stefanich, and Ronnie Wimberley.
Sunday, April 22, 6pm
The Nasher Art Museum (map)
Free and open to the public, with free parking and a free post-show reception.
Craig Howe is director of the Center for American Indian Research and Native Studies. He earned his doctoral degree in anthropology and architecture from the University of Michigan, co-edited This Stretch of the River, and authored articles and chapters on tribal histories, Native studies, museum exhibitions, and community collaborations. Howe was raised and lives on his family’s cattle ranch in the Lacreek District of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. He is an enrolled member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe.
Thursday, April 5, 11:30am-1pm
101 West Duke Building (map)
Light lunch will be served.
Loosely based on real-life events, Of Gods and Men (2010) explores the faith and motivation of eight French Trappist monks who chose to stay in Algeria in the midst of increasing violence in the 1990s. Written by and directed by Xavier Beauvoir, Of Gods and Men won the 2010 Ecumenical Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival and was France’s official Oscar selection.
Taking the theme “condemned to be free,” each of the films in this series in some way explores how individuals – even in the most restrictive, oppressive circumstances – claim their existential freedom by taking responsibility for their decisions and actions. The consequences of these claims, and the weight of their responsibility, may appear overwhelming, but it is this acknowledgement of freedom that enables authentic ethical action.
A post-screening discussion features Adam Hollowell, who works with the Duke Chapel and has taught courses including Faith and Political Violence and Ethics in an Unjust World.
Co-sponsored by the Center for Documentary Studies and the Program in Arts of the Moving Image.
Free and open to the public.
Tuesday, April 3, 7pm
Griffith Film Theater, Bryan Center, Duke University (map).
Parking is available in the Bryan Center parking deck.