Anyone who has not been hiding under a rock for the past year and a half knows that the financial crisis has hit hard. Even inside the “Whitman bubble," major changes have had to be made to offset the damage. For members of the English department and fellow literary enthusiasts, one of the worst casualties is the absence of the Walt Whitman Lecture from this year's Visiting Writers Series.
“Are you writing a sequel?" first-year Owen Lowry asked Thomas Mullen about his novel "The Last Town On Earth," during a lecture on Monday, Sept. 21 at 7:30pm in Cordiner Hall.
When first-year Michaela Gianotti opened up a package from Whitman College at the end of the summer, she was surprised to find that it contained a comic book.
“I opened it up and I was like, ‘Whoa!' I was really excited," said Gianotti.
The decision to assign Marjane Satrapi's “Persepolis," a compilation of a four-part comic book that was originally published in France, as summer reading to first-year students came after what Assistant Professor of French Nicole Simek called “a joint inspiration" between her and her husband, Assistant Professor of French language and Literature Zahi Zalloua.
“We had been involved in the Global Studies Initiative with faculty members who want to increase the awareness of global relations on campus," said Simek. Professors Zallou and Simek had both taught “Persepolis" in their respective classes and found the issues raised in the book of particular interest.
“Persepolis" tells the story of Satrapi's upbringing in Teheran during the Iranian Revolution and her subsequent stay in Vienna during the Iran-Iraq War, which took place during her teenage years.
“We thought that this book was timely in its subject matter in dealing with Iran and Islamic fundamentalism and the relationship between art and politics," said Simek.
Whitman alumnus Bill Murray '92 returned to campus this last week to present a lecture on his experiences as an embedded journalist in Iraq for the Hosokawa Endowed Lecture series. As part of his stay...
Whitman Alumnus and freelance journalist, William Murray, will present the college's annual Hosokawa Lecture in Journalism on Monday, March 9.
Murray, who spent the summer of 2008 imbedded in Iraq, will present on, “The Problem with Today's Media (Or Why News Coverage of Iraq Was so Poor) and What We Can Do about It." The Lecture will be held in the Young Ballroom at 7 p.m.
The lecture is part of the Hosokawa endowment, a generous gift in honor of Robert R. Hosokawa, intended to finance annual journalism awards and bring accomplished journalists to the college for lectures and workshops.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a woman's rights activist and outspoken critic of Islam, spoke at Whitman on Wed., March 4 at 7 p.m. Her lecture was part of ASWC's Public Speakers series.
Hirsi Ali's lecture sparked controversy on campus, as evidenced by a slip of paper handed out with every program, entitled “What Ayaan Hirsi Ali Will NOT Tell You Tonight." Distributed by a group of concerned faculty and students, it listed statistics arguing that Americans Muslims are “overwhelmingly mainstream and moderate."
On March 4, Whitman students will have the chance to listen to Ayaan Hirsi Ali speak on Islam and women's rights.
Hirsi Ali was born in Mogadishu, Somalia in 1969 to a devout Muslim family. In her...
In light of current local and international politics, the Global Studies Initiative seeks to complicate and unsettle the contemporary ideas on torture at "Torture and the Human Body", a Global Studies...
