Following are biographical sketches of the scholars and artists participating in the 2008-2009 Visiting Scholars and Artists Program. Dates are subject to change. For information about specific topics, detailed schedules for each scholar or artist, and specific times and locations of events, please contact the sponsoring departments.
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| Nural Yilgor |
| Sponsors: Paper Engineering, Chemical Engineering & Imaging, and Biological Sciences |
| Nural Yilgor is an Associate Professor in the Department of Forestry at Istanbul University. Dr. Yilgor actively conducts research in the areas of paper making and recycling and has 16 referred publications to her credit. These papers describe new energy efficient and environmentally safe pulp and paper processes. Dr. Yilgor obtained a Ph.D. in Wood Chemistry from Istanbul University, has conducted research at the Institure fur Holzforschung in Muchen, Germany, and completed a post doctorate at Western Michigan University. She has held several industrial and academic positions and plans on introducing an environmental friendly paper-making process in Turkey. Along this line, the proposed will aid both Dr. Yugor and WMU in developing expertise in the area of the use of enzymes in paper recycling processes. |
| DATES:April 7 to August 3, 2008 |
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| David Henderson |
| Sponsor:The Frostic School of Art, The Richmond Center for Visual Arts Exhibitions, Sculpture Area Foundations Program
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| David Henderson’s laminated wood sculptures are graceful, sometimes organic references to natural beauty, but with hidden agendas of the symbols of war, atomic bombs, and the mathematically designed devices of human conflict. The pieces are highly engineered, but beautifully flawed. The sculptures yearn for something that is more than skin deep, and like the works of Martin Puryear or Richard Deacon, there is still a handcrafted subtly to their elegance and imperfect complexity. David received a BFA from Bard College and a MFA from Columbia University in 1981. |
DATES: September 10-October 18, 2008
PUBLIC LECTURE: September 10, 2008 |
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| Yolanda Moses |
| Sponsor: Anthropology, Africana Studies, School of Communication |
| Dr. Yolanda Moses is Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Riverside and past President of both the City College of New York and the American Anthropological Association. She is a world renowned scholar who has written extensively on race as a social construction. Dr. Moses is presently engaged in a five campus NSF funded study in the University of California system to change departmental culture to be more welcoming to women and underrepresented minorities. She had devoted much of her professional life to making use of anthropology as a vehicle for challenging racism and social inequality. In this capacity, she provided leadership in developing the American Anthropological Association traveling exhibit, “Race: Are We so Different”. She chairs the American Anthropological Association Race Exhibit’s advisory board. |
| DATES: September 25-27, 2008 |
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| Hilary Godwin |
Sponsor: Department of Chemistry, Physics Department, College of Engineering and Applied Sciences |
| Dr. Hilary Godwin is a leading scientist at the chemistry-biology interface. Her research efforts address the effects of metals like lead on biological systems and their implications for the environment and human health. Dr. Godwin is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor and currently serves as Chair of the School of Public Health at UCLA. She received many honors and awards such as the Burroughs Wellcome Fund Toxicology New Investigator Award, the National Science Foundation CAREER Award, the Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, and the Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship. She is also on the COACH Advisory Board which currently has over 400 members who work to eliminate inequities in science and engineering. |
| DATES: September 29-30, 2008 |
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| Hiromi Ito |
| Sponsors:Department of Foreign Languages, Soga Center Japan |
| In the 1970’s, Hiromi Ito (b. 1955) emerged as the leader of a new, liberated generation of female poets who radically transformed the ways people were writing poetry in Japan. Her early work explored issues of the feminine body, sexuality and motherhood in frank language that made her an overnight sensation. Since then she has published a dozen volumes of poetry and dozens of essay collections on various aspects of feminine psychology, popular culture, and philosophy. After moving to California in l997, her work began exploring the many facets of modern migrancy, including the linguistic and culture experiences of being a Japanese transplant in America and the implications of that isolation for self-expression and identity. She has received many of Japan’s highest literary prizes, including the Hagiwara Sakutaro Prize and the Takami Jun Prize, and she has twice been a finalist for Japan’s highly coveted Akutagawa prize. |
| DATES: October 1-4 2008 |
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| Hayden White |
| Sponsors:Graduate College, History Department, English Department, Spanish Department, Anthropology Department, Foreign Languages Department, Medieval Institute
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| Hayden White (PhD, University of Michigan, 1956) is Professor Emeritus of the History of Consciousness at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and Professor of Comparative Literature at Sanford University. In Knowledge and Postmodernism in Historical Perspective (New York, 1996), the editor Joyce Oldham Appleby writes about Hayden White: “Only since the historical profession made the ‘linguistic turn’ has White become known as the foremost critic of the modern historiographical tradition. While his predecessors focused upon historical methodology, White questions the very forms of language in which history is written.” (p.393). According to Brian Fay, Whites Metahistory (1973) is a watershed in the philosophy of history (Richard T Vann, “The Reception of Hayden White,” History and Theory, 37 (1998), 143-61, on p. 143.) |
| DATES: OctoberR/November, 2008 |
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| John Norton |
| Sponsor:Philosophy Department, History and Philosophy of Science Workshop |
| John Norton, Ph.D. studied chemical engineering at the University of New South Wales (1971-74) and then worked for two years as a technologist at the Shell Oil Refinery at Clyde, Sydney. He then began a doctoral program in the School of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of New South Wales (1978-1981). His dissertation was on the history of general relativity. In September, 1983, he came to the University of Pittsburgh as a visitor in the Center for Philosophy of Science/visiting faculty member in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science. He was promoted to full professor in 1997, served as Chair from 2000-2005. Since September 2005, he is the Director of the Center for Philosophy of Science. |
| DATES: December 4 -7, 2008 |
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| Karen Feathers |
| Sponsors: Department of Special Education/ Literacy Studies, Department of Teaching, Learning and Educational Studies |
| An award-winning educator internationally known for her work in literacy, Dr. Karen Feathers is coordinator of the Reading, Language and Literature program in the Division of Teacher Education at Wayne State University in Detroit. Dr. Feathers has prominent publications in the field of literacy, both research articles and instructional material. Her research has attracted prestigious funding support from the Michigan Department of Education, Verizon, and the U.S. Department of Education. Her current work with colleague, Dr. Poonam Arya, focuses on ways that reading success is affected by the structures of text that readers view. Sensitive eye movement measuring equipment has revealed the reading strategies of at risk urban students, yielding promising insights about what these young readers need. |
| DATES: March 15-16, 2009 |
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| Gahite Fofana |
| Sponsors:The Departments of Foreign Languages, Africana, Communications |
| Gahite Fofana is a filmmaker from Guinea-Conakry. He studied at ESRA in Paris. His first documentary, “Tanun”, won a prize at the Black Movie Festival in Geneva in 1994. In 1997, another short, “T?em?edy”, won the Special Prize of the Jury at the Francophone Film Festival of Namur in 2000. His second feature film, “Un matin bonne heure”, in 2006, had commercial success in Europe and won the United Nations Prize for Children Rights at the FESPACO 2007. |
| DATES: March 17-23, 2009 |
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James H. Bray |
| Sponsors: Counselor Education and Counseling Psychology/College of Education; Specialty Program in Alcohol and Drug Abuse/College of Health and Human Services; Department of Family and Consumer Sciences/College of Education, Department of Psychology/ College of Arts and Sciences, and Family and Children Services of Kalamazoo (Community Based Co-Sponsor)
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James H. Bray, Ph.D. is Associate Professor in the Department of Family & Community Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. Bray is an internationally acclaimed researcher, author and lecturer on Adolescent Alcohol and Drug Abuse Prevention and Treatment and Stepfamily Therapy. Dr. Bray has served in numerous leadership roles within the American Psychological Association (APA) and is 2009 President. His extensive experience in addressing the
needs of at-risk children and families and his position as President of the 148,000 member APA affords him a unique opportunity to advocate for families as an influential mental health public policy leader in the United States. Dr. Bray will present to the Western Michigan University and the Kalamazoo communities on Adolescent Substance Abuse Treatment and Stepfamily Therapy. |
| DATES: April 7-8, 2009 |
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| Sally Helgesen |
| Sponsor: School of Communication |
| Sally Helgesen is an internationally acclaimed author, speaker, and leadership development consultant. Her books include, The Web of Inclusion: A New Architecture for Building Great Organizations, cited in the Wall Street Journal as one of the best books on leadership of all time, and The Female Advantage: Women’s Ways of Leadership, hailed as “the classic work” on women’s leadership styles. Sally has developed and delivered programs for hundreds of the world’s leading corporations, partnership firms, universities, and non-profit organizations. Articles about her work have been featured in Fortune, Business Week and Fast Company. She is contributing editor to Strategy + Business magazine, an editorial consultant for Booz Allen Hamilton, and is on the board of the Air Force Academy. |
| DATE: March 24-26, 2009 |
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