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Each academic year the Office of the Provost and Dean of the Faculty offers a variety of lectures, luncheons and faculty development workshops that feature Smith faculty and visiting professors.

Liberal Arts Luncheons

Liberal Arts Luncheons are sponsored by the Provost and Dean of the Faculty. LALs will be held on Thursdays in the Neilson Browsing Room, unless otherwise noted. Talks begin at approximately 12:10 p.m., and a complimentary lunch is offered for the first 40 attendees (first come, first served). 

Date

Talk

Presenter

February 6

Design a Team-taught Learning Community in an Hour

Ileana Vasu, Senior Lecturer in Mathematical Sciences

February 13

Transforming the Strange, Infusing the Modern: Wang Zengqi’s (1920-1997) rewriting of Strange Tales from Liaozhai (ca. 1670-1714)

Jessica Moyer, Associate Professor of Chinese Language & Literature

February 27

What Our Pronouns Tell Us: A Sanskrit Philosopher on the Meaning of "I"

Malcolm Keating, Associate Professor of Philosophy

March 6

Oversight of Trump 2.0

Claire Leavitt, Assistant Professor of Government

March 13

Global Learning and the Liberal Arts at Smith

Kevin Morrison, Director, Lewis Global Studies Center

March 27

Black Entertainment and the Periodical Press in Nineteenth-Century New York

Magdalena Zapędowska, Writing Instructor & Writing Studies Specialist; Lecturer in English Language & Literature

April 3

Critical Consciousness: An Antidote to Oppression?

Esther Burson, Assistant Professor of Psychology

April 10

Elevating and Amplifying Women's Voices: The Meridians Project at Smith

Ginetta E.B. Candelario '90, Professor of Sociology and of Latin American & Latino/a Studies

April 17

It’s Alive! Designing for collaborative and experiential learning

Cristina Valencia Mazzanti, Assistant Professor of Education & Child Study and colleagues

April 24

The brGDGT Paleotemperature Proxy - can we make it to the Plateau of Productivity?

Greg de Wet, Assistant Professor of Geosciences

May 1

When does life begin? Is that even the right question? – Developmental Biology and Abortion Policy


Michael Barresi, Professor of Biological Sciences

Sigma Xi Luncheons

Sigma Xi, the Scientific Research Society, meets regularly for talks and a complimentary lunch throughout the year. Talks are open to all faculty, staff and students.

Talks begin at approximately 12:10 p.m. in McConnell Auditorium. A complimentary lunch is offered in McConnell Foyer. Please visit the Sigma Xi website for the schedule.


Faculty Development Events

The Office of the Provost offers a variety of faculty development workshops and events throughout the year. Please visit the office’s Faculty Development webpage for the schedule.

Lectures

Eszter Hargittai ’96

Neilson Professorship

The Neilson Professorship was established in honor of the college’s third president to enable the college to have a distinguished scholar visit the community and share their current research with faculty and students.

Eszter Hargittai

Eszter Hargittai ’96 is a Professor and holds the Chair in Internet Use & Society in the Department of Communication and Media Research at the University of Zurich. She is Fellow of the International Communication Association and an External Member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. She is past Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society, and Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy. Before moving to Zurich, she was the Delaney Family Professor at Northwestern University.

Hargittai’s research focuses on the social and policy implications of digital media with a particular interest in how differences in people's Internet skills influence what they do online, and how these may translate into changes in life chances. Hargittai is author of Connected in Isolation: Digital Privilege in Unsettled Times (The MIT Press, 2022), Wired Wisdom: How to Age Better Online co-authored with John Palfrey (forthcoming with the University of Chicago Press in 2025), and three books on the behind-the-scenes realities of doing empirical social science research.

Her work has been featured in many popular media outlets in the United States and internationally. Her research has been supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Microsoft Research, Nokia, Google, Facebook, and Merck, among others.

The Role of Social Media in Learning About Science & Religion

Monday, September 16 at 5 p.m.

Klingenstein Browsing Room, Neilson Library
Reception afterward in the Skyline Reading Room hosted by the provost, 6:15-7:45 p.m.
Social media have become an important information source for people on a myriad of topics including the sometimes-contentious domains of science and religion. Which social media platforms are popular for seeing and discussing these topics? Do people tend to have negative or positive experiences with them? Why might people avoid related conversations? This talk draws on interviews with 45 American adults and a survey administered to a nationally representative sample of 2,505 US adults to explore what contexts encourage learning about science and religion versus turn people away from it.

Workshop: Optimizing Your Digital Presence

What will someone see when they google your name? How do you ensure that the first impression people get of you online is optimal for your career and personal goals? How do you avoid your name being associated with harmful material? And why should you care? This workshop will offer tips on how to think about and what to do to achieve a digital presence aligned with your objectives.

For Students
  • Wednesday, October 23 from 6–8 p.m., Campus Center 205
  • Co-sponsored by the Lazarus Center for Career Development
  • Please register in advance. Free pizza offered to workshop participants.
For Faculty & Staff
  • Tuesday & Wednesday, October 29 & 30 from 5–8 p.m., Kahn Liberal Arts Institute (21 Henshaw Ave). Dinner included.
  • Express interest by Tuesday, October 1.

Reading Group on Methods to Study Digital Society

The internet, digital media, and new computational tools offer novel opportunities while also raising unique challenges when it comes to methods for studying our social world. Readings offer unusual first-hand accounts—with warts and all—of doing empirical social science research using both traditional and cutting-edge methods when studying digital society.

The group will gather for three lunch discussions: Tuesday, October 22; Wednesday, November 13; and Tuesday, December 10.

Express your interest by October 1.

Bruce R. Smith

Ruth and Clarence Kennedy Professor in Renaissance Studies

Fall 2022

Bruce R. Smith’s interests include Shakespeare, sound studies, Queer studies, and media studies, often in combination. His books include Homosexual Desire in Shakespeare’s England (Chicago, 1991), The Acoustic World of Early Modern England: Attending to the O-Factor (Chicago, 1999), Shakespeare and Masculinity (Oxford, 2000), The Key of Green: Passion and Perception in Renaissance Culture (Chicago, 2009), Phenomenal Shakespeare (Wiley Blackwell, 2010), and Shakespeare | Cut: Rethinking Cutwork in an Age of Distraction (Oxford, 2016). Smith’s full CV is available.

Fall 2022 Lecture Dates and Information

Renaissance Poetry Across Media

In our own media-savvy time, we realize that what gets communicated is very much a function of how it gets communicated. These three lectures investigate manuscript, print, sculpture, architecture and music as media for communicating 16th and 17th century poems in Shakespeare's England.

All lectures will take place in the Neilson Browsing Room and begin at 5 p.m.

This series is hosted by the Department of English and made possible by the Ruth and Clarence Kennedy Endowment for Renaissance Studies.

Lecture Date

Lecture Title

Monday, September 26

Poetry, Media and Across

Monday, October 31

Poetry, Sculpture and Architecture

Tuesday, November 29

Poetry and Music

The Engel Lectureship is granted annually to a Smith faculty member who has made a significant contribution to his or her field. The lecture was established in 1958 by the National Council of Jewish women in honor of Engel, its onetime president and a 1920 Smith graduate. The 2025 Engel Lecturer will be Mary Harrington.

66th Katharine Asher Engel Lecture

Spring 2025

Mary Harrington

Chair of Neuroscience Program, Tippit Professor in the Life Sciences (Neuroscience)

April 15, 2025 at 5 p.m., Klingenstein Browsing Room, Neilson Library

Body Clocks Impact Brain Health in Aging

Every cell in our body possesses the ability to keep time. What is the purpose of all these body clocks? I will explain how daily or circadian rhythms play an important role in our health. As we develop and then age, our clocks continue to function, but can falter. In healthy aging we have shown that regular exercise can sustain clock function. We are currently studying Alzheimer’s disease, a brain disorder that accounts for most cases of dementia. I will share some of our recent discoveries that highlight the intersections between circadian rhythms, heart health and brain health.

About Mary Harrington

Mary Harrington is the Tippit Professor in the Life Sciences and the Director of the Neuroscience Program. Mary’s graduate training was in Canada. Her master’s degree is from University of Toronto and her Ph.D. is from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She has been teaching at Smith College since 1987. Her research has been externally funded since 1988, largely from the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. Her research has demonstrated plasticity of the circadian rhythm system, showing that brain pathways can either enhance or block the effects of light on our rhythms, and that exercise can restore circadian function lost with age. Her studies demonstrate that the effects of light on our body clocks can be modified by lifestyle factors, certain drugs, and age. Her lab has shown that disruptive light cycles impact sensitivity of the central brain clock and circadian disruption has varied effects on different body clocks. These studies have been important to help us better understand that circadian disruption is not a single state, and this is important to help us better predict the negative health effects linked with circadian disruption. Her newest research is focused on the independence of the circadian clock in the liver and the interaction of vascular and circadian health in Alzheimer’s disease.

A lecture by Ambreen Hai

September 12, 2024

5 p.m. in the Neilson Library Klingenstein Browsing Room
Andrew W. Mellon Professorship in the Humanities and Professor of English Language and Literature
Intimate Strangers: Domestic Workers and Postcolonial Servitude in Contemporary South Asian English Literature

Ambreen Hai

A lecture by Julianna Tymoczko

December 5, 2024

5 p.m. in the Neilson Library Klingenstein Browsing Room
Louise Wolff Kahn 1931 Professor of Mathematical Sciences
What Is the Color of Symmetry?

Julianna Tymoczko

A lecture by Jeffrey Ahlman

January 30, 2025

5 p.m. in the Neilson Library Klingenstein Browsing Room
Gwendolen Carter Chair in African Studies and Professor of History
African Studies and African History: Histories between the Disciplinary and Interdisciplinary

Jeffery Ahlman

A lecture by Lucie Schmidt

February 13, 2025

5 p.m. in the Neilson Library Klingenstein Browsing Room
Robert A. Woods Professor of Economics
Understanding the U.S. Social Safety Net: Programs, Trends, and Effects on Well-Being

A lecture by Sara Pruss

March 11, 2025

5 p.m. in the Neilson Library Klingenstein Browsing Room
Esther Cloudman Dunn Professor of Geosciences
TBA

Sara Pruss

A lecture by Daniel Kramer

April 1, 2025

5 p.m. in the Neilson Library Klingenstein Browsing Room
Grace Jarcho Ross 1933 Professor of Humanities and Professor of Theatre
TBA

Spring Showcases

Smithies are always up to something good! Each year, the spring semester offers a variety of chances for students to share their research, business ventures, art, or other projects from the academic year and previous summer.

Celebrating Collaborations, one such event, showcases research conducted by students and professors.

Check out how students are pushing the world forward in countless ways.

Explore Spring Showcases More About Collaborations