The Latin American Studies Program at the University of Kentucky presents a conference by Joanne Rappaport, Professor in the Department of Anthropology and Department of Spanish and Portuguese Georgetown University entitled "Challenges to the Production of Indigenous Knowledge"

The talk will take place on Wednesday March 7th at 3:00p.m. in the Niles Gallery in the Fine Arts Library.

Joanne Rappaport received a Ph.D. in sociocultural anthropology from the University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign in 1982. Her interests include ethnicity, historical anthropology, new social movements, literacy, race, and Andean ethnography and ethnohistory.

The Confucius Institute in Bradley Hall will lead informal Taichi sessions in the Bradley courtyard. Starting on Tuesday February 28^th, at 10:00 a.m., Confucius Institute Professor Zhou Yufang, who has won national prizes in Taichi in China, will be leading 10 minutes of Taichi exercises in the courtyard outside OIA, every Tuesday and Thursday.  All you need is comfortable shoes for this exercise.

Taichi is a gentle version of Chinese martial arts, and is part of the rich cultural heritage of China. Recent research has proven that Taichi is not only good physical exercise, but that it also combats stress. It will boost the immune system and help with general wellbeing . For this reason, Chinese communities often engage in collective Taichi in the mornings, as they get ready to face the day.

Students, faculty, and staff are invited to participate.

WHAT:Biology Seminar: "Understanding the Relationship Between Genes and Social Behavior: Lessons from the Honey Bee”

WHO: Gene Robinson, Ph.D. Interim Director, Institute for Genomic Biology, University of Illinois

 WHEN: 4:00 P.M. March 1, 2012

WHERE:116 T. H. Morgan Building, University of Kentucky Department of Biology

 

Sponsored by:

Department of Biology Ribble Endowment

Host: BGSA

*Refreshments served at 3:45

Speaker: Sascha Seiler, Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany

Lecture title: Closing the Transatlantic Gap: American Popular Music and German Culture since the 1960’s

Date, time, place: Monday, March 5, 4:00 pm, Student Center 249

Abstract of the talk:

Today, American popular culture can be found everywhere in Germany, but this was not always the case. Especially German literature, and with it every other form of cultural articulation commonly regarded as ‘high art’, had its problems in accepting these new forms of music, film or writing that came from the USA. In fact, until the end of the 1960s there was such a strict division between what was considered highbrow and lowbrow that it took a major cultural scandal to open German culture up to the aesthetic possibilities that lay in American popular culture. For German intellectuals it was a long and hard way to realize that popular culture in general must be seen as an important aesthetic phenomenon that not only has a big influence on everyday life but also is a basic factor when we consider transatlantic cultural relations between Germany and the USA.

The talk analyzes the great influence that American popular culture had on German literature until the present day, starting with the problematic beginnings in the 1960s and ending with the ironic ‘Popliteratur’-movement that began to surface in the late 1990s.