Advanced Study
Lectures/Events Calendar
Distinguished Lecture Series
Recent Lectures
Wes Jackson
President of The Land Institute
"Why Agriculture Must Take the Lead Toward a Sustainable Future"
Wednesday, March 28
Jordan Hall, Room 101
Dr. Jackson’s lecture was sponsored by a number of Notre Dame units and departments, including the College of Science, the Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts, the College of Arts and Letters, the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study, the Office of Sustainability, the Center for Sustainable Energy, the Department of Anthropology, and the Center for a Sustainable Future at Indiana University South Bend.
About Wes Jackson
Dr. Wes Jackson, President of The Land Institute, was born in 1936 on a farm near Topeka, Kansas. After attending Kansas Wesleyan (B.A Biology, 1958), he studied botany (M.A. University of Kansas, 1960) and genetics (Ph.D. North Carolina State University, 1967). He was a professor of biology at Kansas Wesleyan and later established the Environmental Studies department at California State University, Sacramento, where he became a tenured full professor. He resigned that position in 1976 and returned to Kansas to found The Land Institute.
Dr. Jackson’s writings include both papers and books. His most recent works, Nature as Measure (2011) and Consulting the Genius of the Place: An Ecological Approach to a New Agriculture (2010), were both published by Counterpoint Press. The Virtues of Ignorance: Complexity, Sustainability, and the Limits of Knowledge (2008) and Rooted in the Land: Essays on Community and Place (1996), were co-edited with William Vitek. Becoming Native to This Place, 1994, sketches his vision for the resettlement of America's rural communities. Altars of Unhewn Stone appeared in 1987 and Meeting the Expectations of the Land, edited with Wendell Berry and Bruce Colman, was published in 1984. New Roots for Agriculture, 1980, outlines the basis for the agricultural research at The Land Institute.
The work of The Land Institute has been featured extensively in the popular media including The Atlantic Monthly, Audubon, National Geographic, Time Magazine, The MacNeil-Lehrer News Hour, and National Public Radio's "All Things Considered." Life magazine named Wes Jackson as one of 18 individuals they predict will be among the 100 "important Americans of the 20th century." In the November 2005 issue, Smithsonian named him one of “35 Who Made a Difference” and in March, 2009 Wes was included in Rolling Stone’s “100 Agents of Change.”
Wes Jackson is a recipient of the Pew Conservation Scholars award (1990), a MacArthur Fellowship (1992), Right Livelihood Award (Stockholm), known as “Alternative Nobel Prize” (2000), and the Louis Bromfield Award (2010). He has received four honorary doctorates. In 2007 he received the University of Kansas Distinguished Service Award and was one of the 2011 recipients of the University of Kansas College of Liberal Arts & Sciences’ Distinguished Alumni Awards.
In addition to lecturing nationwide and abroad, Dr. Jackson is involved outside The Land Institute with a variety of projects including being a Post Carbon Institute Fellow, a Councilor with the World Future Council and a member of the Green Lands Blue Waters Steering Committee.
Dmitri Nikulin
Professor of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research
“Comedy, Seriously”
Wednesday, February 29th
Eck Visitors Center Auditorium
Professor Nikulin's lecture was co-sponsored by the Notre Dame Workshop on Ancient Philosophy (NDWAP) and the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study (NDIAS).
About Dmitri Nikulin
Dmitri Nikulin is Professor of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research with research interests in philosophy and the history of science of late antiquity and early modernity (17th century), the philosophy of dialogue, and the philosophy of history. He is the recipient of numerous Alexander von Humboldt Foundation research grants at the Universities of Tübingen, Freiburg, Heidelberg, and Marburg and he has held visiting positions at the universities of Essen, Heidelberg (Germany), Oslo (Norway), Reykjavik Academy (Iceland), Universidad de los Andes (Santiago, Chile), Istituto italiano per gli studi filosofici (Naples, Italy), and the Ecole pratique des hautes études (Paris). In 2009 and 2012 he was a Fellow at the Forschungskolleg in Bad Homburg, Germany. He currently serves on the Board of Editors of the Gesamtausgabe der Werke von Hans Jonas (in affiliation with the Hans Jonas Zentrum, Berlin). He is the editor of Philosophy of Dialogue (2005) and the author of Metaphysik und Ethik. Theoretische und praktische Philosophie in Antike und Neuzeit (1996), Matter, Imagination and Geometry. Ontology, Natural Philosophy and Mathematics in Plotinus, Proclus and Descartes (2002), and On Dialogue (2006). His most recent work is Dialectic and Dialogue (2010).
Joseph H. H. Weiler
Joseph Straus Professor of Law and European Union Jean Monnet Chaired Professor at New York University School of Law
"Freedom from Religion"
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Eck Hall of Law
Professor Weiler’s lecture “Freedom from Religion” will focus on the March 2011 decision of the European Court of Human Rights in Lautsi v. Italy, which held that the Italian law providing for the display of the crucifix in public schools does not violate the European Convention on Human Rights. That ruling overturned a previous, unanimous decision by a smaller group of judges of the same court, that had found that crucifixes could not be displayed in Italian schools. The Grand Chamber decision represents a major victory for religious rights and religious pluralism in Europe.
Professor Weiler's lecture is being co-sponsored by the College of Arts and Letters, the Notre Dame Law School’s Program on Church, State, and Society and its Program on Law and Human Development, the Nanovic Institute for European Studies, the Department of Theology, and the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study.
About Joseph H. H. Weiler
Professor Weiler is University Professor and European Union Jean Monnet Chair at NYU Law School. He serves as Director of The Tikvah Center for Law and Jewish Civilization and The Straus Institute for the Advanced Study of Law and Justice. He was previously Professor of Law at Michigan Law School and then Manley Hudson Professor of Law and Jean Monnet Chair at Harvard Law School. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and recipient of a doctorate Honoris causa from several universities. His publications include Un’Europa Cristiana (translated into nine languages), The Constitution of Europe – “Do the New Clothes Have an Emperor?” (translated into seven languages), and a novella, Der Fall Steinmann.
Horst Koehler
Former President of the Federal Republic of Germany, 2004-2010
See photos of the visit by Dr. and Mrs. Koehler.
"The Whole Is at Stake"
September 28, 2011
Carey Auditorium in Hesburgh Library
Dr. Koehler's lecture is being co-sponsored by the Nanovic Institute for European Studies and the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study (NDIAS). A public reception in the concourse of the Hesburgh Library will follow the lecture.
and
"Understanding Africa: A View from Europe"
September 29, 2011
Auditorium of the Hesburgh Center for International Studies
Dr. Koehler's second lecture is being co-sponsored by the Department of Africana Studies, the Africa Working Group of the Kellogg Institute for International Studies, and the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study (NDIAS).
About Horst Koehler
Dr. Horst Koehler was elected on July 4, 2004 as the ninth President of the Federal Republic of Germany, serving from 2004 to 2010. In 1990, prior to serving as President, Dr. Koehler was appointed State Secretary. While serving in this role, Dr. Koehler negotiated the German monetary union with the German Democratic Republic (GDR), also known as East Germany. As the German representative in Moscow, he negotiated the withdrawal of Soviet troops from the GDR, later serving as chief negotiator for the Maastricht Treaty on the European Monetary Union as well as serving as the Personal Representative of Federal Chancellor Helmut Kohl for the World Economic Summits. In 1998, at the request of Chancellor Kohl, Dr. Koehler was named President of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in London, an institution charged with building up the market economy and democracy in the former Eastern bloc states. In 2000, Federal Chancellor Gerhard Schröder named Dr. Koehler the new Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Washington, DC. In this role, Dr. Koehler’s goals were to make the IMF’s work transparent and to focus on crisis prevention. Increasing IMF cooperation with the World Bank, Dr. Koehler was convinced that more had to be done to alleviate poverty if peace and stability were to be secured and, to this end, he instigated far-reaching reforms in the IMF. As President of the German nation, Dr. Koehler worked to build a better national education system and to implement a creative approach to demographic change that would help to regenerate the nation. Believing Germany to be a “land of ideas” with the confidence and unity required to shape its own future, he proposed that the country shoulder its responsibility to be a force for good in the world, especially in the European Union. In the field of foreign policy, he advocated for a more humanistic dimension to globalization and clearly defined rules, campaigning staunchly in favor of poverty eradication and for improvements on the African continent. On May 23, 2009, President Koehler was re-elected for a second term of five years by an absolute majority of 613 votes in the Federal Convention during the first round of voting. On May 31, 2010, he resigned from the office of Federal President.
Previous Lectures
Prof. Dr. Klaus Schmidt
German Archaeologist;
Director of the excavations at Göbekli Tepe
"Göbekli Tepe (Southeastern Turkey):
A Neolithic Mountain Sanctuary"
March 8, 2011
Andrews Auditorium in Geddes Hall
Prof. Dr. Schmidt's lecture is being co-sponsored by the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study (NDIAS), Ian Kuijt, Department of Anthropology, Department of Classics, and the Oriental Institute, Chicago.
About Klaus Schmidt
Klaus Schmidt is a professor in archaeology and referent for Prehistoric Archaeology of the Middle East in the Orient Department of the German Archaeological Institute in Berlin. Since 2007 he has also served as professor at the University of Erlangen. In 1994 he discovered the temples and huge ceremonial site at Göbekli Tepe, built some 11,500 years ago, and since1995 has led the excavation work being undertaken at that site in southeastern Turkey. He believes his monumental discoveries at Göbekli Tepe indicate that the late pleistocene society of hunter-gatherers had been developed towards a complex and active religious community in the early holocene in Upper Mesopotamia. Professor Schmidt’s discoveries at Göbekli Tepe raise significant questions about how we understand the role of religion in the development of societies and in the development of civilized life. These discoveries led to the publication of They Built the First Temples: The Mysterious Sanctuary of the Stone Age Hunters (2006) and became the subject of worldwide attention, including a feature article in Newsweek (http://www.newsweek.com/2010/02/18/history-in-the-remaking.html). Professor Schmidt is the author or co-author of several scientific articles, including, with Klaus Dieter Linsmeier, An Anatolian Stonehenge? (2003), and Early Neolithic Temples. A Research Report on the Pre-Pottery Neolithic of Upper Mesopotamia (1998).
Dr. Heinrich von Staden
Professor Emeritus, Classics and History of Science;
Princeton Institute for Advanced Study
"Experimentation in Ancient Medicine: Animals and Humans"
March 2, 2011
Professor von Staden's lecture was organized and sponsored by the Notre Dame Workshop on Ancient Philosophy (NDWAP), the History and Philosophy of Science Graduate Program (HPS), the Philip S. and Joan C. Coogan Endowment for Excellence in the History of Medicine, and the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study (NDIAS). His lecture was also co-sponsored by the Department of Classics, the Department of History, and the Department of Philosophy.
About Heinrich von Staden
Heinrich von Staden has written on a variety of topics in ancient science, medicine, philosophy, and literary theory, from the fifth century BC to the fifth century AD. Drawing on a wide range of scientific, philosophical, and religious sources, he has contributed to the transformation of the history of ancient science and medicine, particularly of the Hellenistic period. His book Herophilus: The Art of Medicine in Early Alexandria (1989) is a major contribution to the history of Greek intellectual discourse. His current projects include a book on Erasistratus (one of the two Hellenistic pioneers of human dissection), a study of the exegesis of scientific texts in antiquity, and further work on the "semantics of matter" in ancient science.
Michael Witzel
Out of Africa: Tracing Early Mythologies by a New Approach, Historical-Comparative Mythology
Monday, April 12, 2010
Andrews Auditorium of Geddes Hall
About Michael Witzel
Michael Witzel, the Wales Professor of Sanskrit at Harvard University, is an acclaimed scholar of Indology and is known internationally for his analyses of the dialects of Vedic Sanskrit, old Indian history, the development of Vedic religion, and the linguistic prehistory of South Asia. He has written extensively on important religious and literary concepts of India, their Central Asian antecedents, as well as the oldest frame story, prosimetric texts, the Mahabarata, the concept of rebirth, the line of progeny, the holy cow, the Milky Way, the asterism of the Seven Rsis, the sage Yajnavalkya, as well as modern Indocentric tendencies. The author of more than 120 articles, book chapters, and other publications, Professor Witzel is also the author of “Indocentrism: Autochthonous Visions of Ancient India” in The Indo-Aryan Controversy: Evidence and Inference in Indian History (2005) and “Rama’s Realm: Indocentric Rewritings of Early South Asian Archaeology and History” in Archaeological Fantasies: How Pseudoarchaeology Misrepresents the Past and Misleads the Public (2006). Additional works focus on the traditions of medieval and modern India and Nepal, including its linguistic history; Brahmins; rituals; kingship; Old Iran; the Avesta; and present day culture. His most recent work explores links between old Indian, Eurasian and other mythologies and has resulted in a new framework of historical comparative mythology that covers most of Eurasia and the Americas. This research also led to a new book on historical comparative mythology, The Origins of the World’s Mythologies, to be published in 2010 by Oxford University Press.
The founding chair of the Committee on South Asian Studies at Harvard University, Professor Witzel is also the founder and Editor-in-Chief of the Electronic Journal for Vedic Studies (EJVS). He currently serves as Editor of the Harvard Oriental Series, as Managing Editor of the International Journal of Tantric Studies (IJTS), as President of the Association for the Study of Language in Prehistory in Boston, and as President of the new International Association for Comparative Mythology. He also organizes the yearly interdisciplinary and international Harvard Round Tables, incorporating the study of archaeology, texts, linguistics, genetics, palaeontology, and mythology. From 2004 to 2005, Witzel was Visiting Professor at the Institute for the Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa (ILCAA) at Tokyo University of Foreign Studies (TUFS) in Japan. In 2003 he was elected as a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Most recently, in 2009, Professor Witzel was elected as an Honorary Member of the German Oriental Society.
Professor Witzel’s lecture was sponsored by the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study (NDIAS).
Maxim Kantor
Acclaimed Russian painter, sculptor, novelist, and essayist Maxim Kantor delivered three lectures at the University of Notre Dame.
A Discussion of the Artist’s Printmaking Techniques
Tuesday, January 26
Ashbaugh Education Center at the Snite Museum of Art
“Russian Intelligentsia As a Motor and Victim of Changes in the Country”
Wednesday, January 27
Andrews Auditorium of Geddes Hall
“Development of the Meaning of Democracy in Modern Russia”
Friday, January 29
Andrews Auditorium of Geddes Hall
Maxim Kantor’s visit was sponsored by the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study, the Nanovic Institute for European Studies, the Snite Museum of Art, and the Department of German and Russian Languages and Literatures.
About Maxim Kantor
A graduate of the Moscow Art Polygraph Institute, in 1983 Kantor organized the independent group of painters known as Krasny Dom , a group that sponsored exhibitions of the Moscow underground without official permission. An artist of international acclaim, Kantor’s work has been featured in galleries and museums worldwide including the Studio Marconi in Milan, the Eva Poll Gallery in Berlin, the State Pushkin Museum in Russia, the Staedel Museum in Frankfurt, the Bass Museum of Art in Miami Beach, the Musee d’Histoire de la Ville de Luxembourg, the State Primorsky Museum of Art in Vladivostok, the Togliatti Museum of Fine Art, the Samara Art Museum in Russia, and the University of Notre Dame’s Snite Museum of Art.
A talented novelist and essayist, Kantor is the author of House in No-Man’s Land (1993), the two-volume novel, Drawing Textbook, for which he won the Russian National Literature Award in 2006. His writing includes a collection of satirical plays entitled Party with Baboon (2007), and the essay collection, Democracy Slow Jaws (2008), which focuses on the evolution and historical ideals of democracy, imperialism, human rights, totalitarianism, “democratic war,” and the development of democratic society. In 2009, Kantor published the novel A Contre-Pied in which he confronted the discrediting of liberal doctrine. His last novel V tou storonou examines the current financial crisis. Presently, Kantor is a Member of Senior Room at Pembroke College, an Oxford Artist in Residence and Visiting Fellow at St. Antony College, and a Member of the Common Room at Wolfson College, Oxford.
The Institute is interested in sponsoring guest speakers who would enrich the intellectual community at the Institute and be of interest to Notre Dame faculty and students. Please send your suggestions for guest speakers to ndias@nd.edu.
