Nassau Notes

Doran to explain al-Qaeda’s ‘grand strategy’

Princeton Middle East scholar Michael Doran will discuss “Al-Qaeda’s Grand Strategy (and Ours Too)” at 4:30 p.m. Monday, March 28, in 16 Robertson Hall.

Doran, an assistant professor of Near Eastern studies, is a leading academic authority on U.S. foreign policy; modern Middle East issues; Arab-Israeli conflict and peace process; terrorism; diplomatic history; nationalism; and ethnic conflict. He also is an adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Doran, who earned his Ph.D. from Princeton in 1997, was among the contributors to the book “Sept. 11, Terrorist Attacks and U.S. Foreign Policy” (2002), providing his commentary in a chapter titled “The Pragmatic Fanaticism of al-Qaeda: An Anatomy of Extremism in Middle Eastern Politics.”

The lecture is sponsored by the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.

Bush and the environment is topic

Frances Beinecke, executive director of the Natural Resources Defense Council, will present a lecture titled “Opposing the Bush Onslaught: The Next Four Years of Environmental Advocacy” at 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, March 29, in 16 Robertson Hall.

The council, founded in 1970, is an environmental action organization that uses law, science and the support of more than 1 million members and online activists to protect the planet’s wildlife and wild places and to ensure a safe and healthy environment for living things. Beinecke, who joined the council in 1973, has been selected to become its next president in January.

In the council’s 2004 annual report, published this past January, Beinecke and current president John Adams wrote: “The Bush administration has signaled that the attacks on the environment of the past four years are but the leading edge of a much broader assault that will come in the second term.”

The lecture is sponsored by the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, the Program in Science, Technology and Environmental Policy and the Princeton Environmental Institute.

Painter and installation artist will talk about her work

Painter and installation artist Denyse Thomasos will talk about her work during a slide lecture at noon Wednesday, March 30, in Room 219, 185 Nassau St. A faculty member at Rutgers University-Newark, Thomasos currently is a lecturer in the Council of the Humanities and the Program in Visual Arts, which is sponsoring the talk.

She recently spent two years traveling the world collecting references for her work, which she documented in her 2004 installation exhibitions, “Tracking: 30 Years in Canada, 30 Years in Trinidad” (pictured) at the Gallery of Bishop’s University in Quebec and “Tracking: A Journey Through the East” at the St. Vincent University Gallery in Halifax.

Born in Trinidad and raised in Canada, Thomasos creates enormous site-specific paintings that cover the walls and ceiling of the galleries in which they are installed.

Laqueur looks at history of Jerusalem

Historian Walter Laqueur will deliver the 27th Carolyn L. Drucker Memorial Lecture on “Jerusalem 1938 and After” at 8 p.m. Wednesday, March 30, in Dodds Auditorium, Robertson Hall.

Laqueur is co-chair of the International Research Council at the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. He directed the Institute of Contemporary History at the Wiener Library in London from 1964 to 1980 and has since served as its co-director.

The founding editor of the Journal of Contemporary History, he is the author of many books, including “A History of Zionism: From the French Revolution to the Establishment of the State of Israel.”

The lecture is sponsored by the Department of Near Eastern Studies and the Program in Judaic Studies.

Panel to discuss medically uninsured

The Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs will host a panel discussion titled “Uninsured Americans: The Medically Uninsured” at 4:30 p.m. Thursday, March 31, in Dodds Auditorium, Robertson Hall.

The discussion will be moderated by Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, president and chief executive officer of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Panelists will include these members of the University community: Dr. David Grande, a physician and MPA student; Uwe Reinhardt, the James Madison Professor of Political Economy and professor of economics and public affairs; and Paul Starr, professor of sociology.

In conjunction with the lecture, there is an art exhibition, “Uninsured Americans,” on display in the Bern-stein Gallery on the lower level of Robertson Hall.

Event re-examines Locke’s work

Noted scholars of John Locke’s political and religious philosophy will gather for a public conference, “Reason, Faith and Politics: John Locke Re-examined,” on Friday, April 1, in 16 Robertson Hall.

The conference consists of three sessions that roughly correspond to the stages of Locke’s intellectual development. From 10:30 a.m. to noon, scholars will discuss Locke’s theory of natural law, with particular reference to the extent to which it departs from earlier classical and Christian theories. A 1:45 p.m. to 3:15 p.m. session will cover the religious foundations of Locke’s theory of equality. From 3:30 p.m. to 5 p.m., the focus will be on the relation of Locke’s religious thinking to his political thought.

A reception in the Frist Campus Center Multipurpose Room will follow the lectures. The conference is organized by Paul Sigmund, professor of politics at Princeton and editor of the forthcoming “Selected Political Writings of John Locke” (Norton Critical Edition).

The event is sponsored by the University Center for Human Values and co-sponsored by the Department of Politics, the Center for the Study of Religion, the James Madison Program for American Ideals and Institutions and the Department of Philosophy. For more information, visit <www.princeton.edu/values>.

‘Lost ballet’ exhibition opens at Firestone Library on April 1

Anew exhibition, “‘Le Pas d’Acier’ (‘The Steel Step’): Re-Creating a Lost Ballet,” will open Friday, April 1, at the Milberg Gallery for the Graphic Arts in Firestone Library.

Planned in connection with the campus performance April 7-9 of Sergei Prokofiev’s “Le Pas d’Acier,” the exhibition will include a model reconstruction of the ballet’s set created by theater historian Lesley-Anne Sayers and photographs and drawings of the original 1927 production. The gallery also will showcase photographs, children’s books, costume designs and program covers from the period drawn from the holdings of the library’s special collections.

The Princeton production will be represented by photographs documenting the re-creation process, costume designs, choreographic drawings by ballet reconstructionist Millicent Hodson (shown here), and a costume and props that will be used in the April performances.

“Le Pas D’Acier” was written as a celebration of Soviet industrialization that Prokofiev hoped would endear him to Russian authorities. But budget constraints and a change in choreographers led to a scaled-down version of the ballet being performed in Paris in 1927 by the Ballets Russes. That production mocked industrial development instead of lauding it, causing a political scandal. The work has not been performed since 1931.

For the last three years, assistant professor of music Simon Morrison has been leading a team to re-create the ballet as it was originally conceived. They will bring the ballet to life exactly the way Prokofiev intended it in three performances at the University’s Berlind Theatre on April 7, 8 and 9 (see the Feb. 21, 2005, issue of the Princeton Weekly Bulletin for more information).

Morrison will give an opening lecture titled “Finding a Lost Ballet” at 5 p.m. April 1 in 101 McCormick Hall. A reception in the gallery will follow from 6 to 8 p.m.

Sponsored by the Friends of the Library, the exhibition will run through Sept. 25. Hours are: 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday-Friday; 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Wednesday; and noon to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.

Didion to give keynote address at conference

Author Joan Didion will deliver the keynote address at a conference on “Women, Art and Politics in the 20th Century” Friday and Saturday, April 1-2, in the Stewart Film Theater, 185 Nassau St.

The conference, organized by the Program in the Study of Women and Gender, will explore the responses of women novelists, playwrights, poets, political theorists, sculptors and photojournalists to the cataclysmic events the last century. It will run from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Friday and from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday.

Didion, who has produced several novels and books of nonfiction, will speak at 5 p.m. Friday on “Writing Politics.” The conference will close on Saturday with a 5 p.m. poetry reading by Eavan Boland.

Topics to be discussed during the sessions include responses to the two world wars; totalitarianism in Europe; the Depression, McCarthyism and race in the United States; and the role of women and gender in the representation of political life. Papers will address the work of Virginia Woolf, Gertrude Stein, Hannah Arendt, Simone de Beauvoir, Barbara Hepworth, Lee Miller, Elizabeth Bowen and H.D., among others.

Co-sponsors of the conference are the Fund for Irish Studies and the Department of English. For more information, visit < www.princeton.edu/~prowom/>.

Toni Morrison to speak at library anniversary event

Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison will deliver a lecture titled “Overdue: A Writer’s Debt; A Reader’s Interest” at 4 p.m. Sunday, April 3, in Richardson Auditorium, Alexander Hall. The lecture is the inaugural event of the yearlong 75th anniversary celebration of the Friends of the Princeton University Library.

Priority seating is given to Friends of the Library members, but a limited number of free tickets are available to the public. For information about tickets, call 258-3155.

Morrison, the Robert F. Goheen Professor in the Humanities at Princeton, was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 1993. She was the first African-American winner and the first woman to win since 1938.

Food is on the menu for alumni studies course

Let’s Eat: Food in Contemporary American Culture,” a six-week home study course that begins April 4, is being offered to members of the University community by the Alumni Association.

Jenna Weissman Joselit, a lecturer with the rank of professor in American studies, will lead the course, which is based on a freshman seminar. She will examine themes such as: the relationship between food and national identity; food and faith; health and body image; and the history of ethnic cuisine in the United States.

The course will consist of readings and online discussions. To wrap up the class, participants are invited to an optional discussion and wine tasting at the Princeton Club of New York on Thursday, May 19.

For more information, contact Kaitlin Lutz at <klutz@princeton.edu> or 258-0014.

 
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