Anthropology Event

IUN Darwin Day features several excellent speakers on science, humanities, evolution, and Darwin, with cake and songs, and just plain fun.  The featured speakers will each talk for 15 to 20 minutes, with a few minutes for questions between talks.  So come whenever you can, and stay as long as you want.

Schedule of talks, titles, abstracts, bios:
 
12:00     Spencer Cortwright, Biology:  "Inducible Prey Defenses Against Predators:  Darwin Would Be Flabbergasted"
12:25     Adrienne Kochman, Fine Arts:  “Historical Reference in Postmodernist Art” 
12:45-1:00       Cutting & Serving of Cake in Honor of Darwin's 198th Birthday
1:00        Larry Ciupik, Astronomy:  "Our Present Understanding of The Birth of the Universe"
1:30        Guest Speaker Rev. Roger Brewin:  "Reverence for the Natural World"    


Abstracts in order of presentations

    Spencer Cortwright, Biology:  "Inducible Prey Defenses Against Predators:  Darwin Would Be Flabbergasted"   I think that evolution of phenotypic plasticity in relation to predation threat would be something Darwin hadn't considered and something he would find very interesting.  Darwin knew that prey evolved fixed defenses against predators, but likely didn't know that some prey can put on a defense when needed and discard it when not needed.  This presentation considers the existence of predator-prey systems in which defenses are inducible when needed, not only describing them, but considering why such defenses evolved in the first place.        

    Adrienne Kochman, Fine Arts:  “Historical Reference in Postmodernist Art”  The reappraisal of artistic modernism in the late 1960s – early 1970s developed as a challenge to the exclusivity of the official art world which had, in several ways, become ahistoric. New York art critic Clement Greenberg’s prevailing theory that art would become increasingly about itself -- its color, texture, size, for example – separated from narrative content and any external reference lost credibility in the wake of the Civil and Women’s Rights movements of the 1960s. Social consciousness, racial, gender and class inclusiveness into Western culture’s official mainstream became the issues with which modernism lost its power structure. In Post-modernism, these issues were the tools with which to reintroduce history, episodes from the recent to ancient past, whose legacy was identifiable in what contemporary art had become. Post-modernism maintained a connection with modernism’s interest in progress, modern life and the promotion of the ‘new’ in art through innovations in artistic media, just as reinterpretations of existing ones, such as painting and photography, revealed the cyclical relationship of art in the present and its past.

    Larry Ciupik, Astronomy:  "Our Present Understanding of The Birth of the Universe"  What do we know about the birth of the Universe?  When you look at the starry night sky, you are looking back in time!  Prior to the 1920s, our limited understanding fit the entire Universe inside our own Milky Way Galaxy.  Since then, new technologies provided ever expanding views of distant galaxies and showed us far larger vistas that led to a better estimate of the age and formation of the Universe.  Using compelling visuals, IUN Adjunct Professor of Astronomy Larry Ciupik will discuss current theories of the birth of the Universe and the suite of experiments to examine its earliest years.

    Rev. Roger Brewin shares his reflections on Reverence for the Natural World, (accompanied by eight gorgeous poster sized photos from the Hubble telescope) and on the development of non-supernatural ethics, both of which in his opinion have developed steadily ever since Darwin first announced natural selection. 


Biographical profiles:

    Spencer Cortwright, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Biology at Indiana University Northwest, where he teaches ecology and conservation biology.  He has performed long-term research on amphibian population dynamics, which identifies the importance of preservation of an aggregate of populations.  More recently, he has expanded his work to include habitat restoration of a prairie, wetland, and woodland mosaic near IUN.

    Adrienne Kochman, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of Art History at Indiana University Northwest, where she has been teaching since 1998. Her courses include, Contemporary Art, Women in Art, East Asian Art, 19th and 20th century art as well as the Ancient through Modern surveys. Her research examines the relationship between national identity and modernism in art in early 20th century Germany, the Russian Empire and most recently in Ukraine as an emerging independent nation. She recently published “Ambiguities of Place: Identity and Reminiscence in Marianne Werefkin’s Return Home c. 1909” in the online journal Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide, and is co-editing with Anna Brzyski a guest edition ‘Parallel Narratives’ for the journal Centropa on the writing of national art histories in Central Europe.   

    Larry Ciupik, M.S., is IUN Adjunct Professor of Astronomy and Senior Astronomer at the Adler Planetarium and Astronomy Museum,  Chicago.

    Rev. Dr. Roger Brewin is a Unitarian Universalist minister.  He has served at First Unitarian Church of Hobart, IN for the past eight years, and has appeared during that time as an historic reenactor throughout the country, portraying Clarence Darrow, Charles Dickens and Charles Darwin in over 200 performances.
Brewin is also editor of the semi-annual Journal of Religious Humanism, and Publications Director of the Society for Community Ministry (UU).   At a previous IUN Darwin Day he portrayed Clarence Darrow, the legendary attorney who represented Scopes after he was brought up on charges in the mid-1920s for teaching evolution.


Oh, and we will be selling the Darwin fish emblems and Anthro Club and Darwin T-shirts.

Learn more about Darwin Day, an international celebration, at: http://www.darwinday.org/

The video of the 2006 IUN Darwin Day debate on intelligent design is now up and running on the web as a streaming Quicktime video; go to http://www.iun.edu/~anthronc/darwin2006.shtml

At right is Charles Darwin's tomb in Westminster Abbey

A wonderful site on Darwin's life can be found at:  http://www.csuchico.edu/~curban/Darwin/DarwinSem-S95.html
A site called "Things Creationists Hate" http://www.skepticreport.com/creationism/thingscreationistshate.htm
And a decidedly anti-evolution site:  http://www.pathlights.com/ce_encyclopedia/20hist10.htm
 
 

 

For more events, visit the IUN Anthropology Home Page