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Photo Credit: Courtesy Pomona College |
April Speakers
Kathleen Fitzpatrick, 5:30pm, April 7, 2011,
Taylor 203
Kathleen Fitzpatrick (pictured), a Professor of Media Studies at Pomona College, will give a lecture. Fitzpatrick, who holds a PhD in English from New York University (NYU), has taught at Pomona in both the English and Media Studies departments since 1998. She is currently a visiting scholar in NYU’s Department of Media, Culture and Communication, and recently published Planned Obsolescence: Publishing, Technology, and the Future of the Academy. Other publications include The Anxiety of Obsolescence: the American Novel in the Age of Television, released in 2006, and a number of articles focusing on the intersection of media, the internet and literature, including “Infinite Summer: Reading in the Social Network,” which will appear in a forthcoming collection of critical assessments of David Foster Wallace.
Read Fitzpatrick’s blog.
Dave Tompkins, 6:00pm, April 12, 2011, Taylor 203
In conjunction with the Urban Studies Department’s Musical Urbanism series, music critic Dave Tompkins comes to Vassar. Tompkins focuses largely on hip-hop and popular music, and has published work in the Wire, Believer, Village Voice and Vibe, among other publications. He recently published his first book, How To Wreck A Nice Beach, which tells the story of the vocoder, a device that has gone from a speech-scrambling tool used by the Pentagon in the early 20th century, to a mainstay of today’s pop and hip-hop music. The device becomes a vehicle for a look at postwar culture, from Kissinger to Kubrick to Kanye. The book received widespread praise, described as “one of the best music books ever written” by the Los Angeles Times.
Watch a video from Fader TV about Tompkins and the vocoder.
Anne MacKay ’49, 5:30pm, April 13, 2011, Main Building (Villard Room)
Sponsored by the Women’s Studies Program, Anne MacKay ’48-’49 will give a talk titled “Coming Home.” MacKay is the author of Wolf Girls at Vassar: Lesbian and Gay Experiences, 1930-1990, as well as several books of poetry, including Field Notes of a Lesbian Naturalist. As part of a series in honor of the Sesquicentennial, she will speak about the experiences of LGBTQ students during less accepting times at Vassar, and will discuss the school’s rich LGBTQ history.
Read MacKay’s Vassar Retrospective recently published in the Miscellany News.
Peter Eleey, 5:00pm, April 21, 2011, Taylor 203
Curator Peter Eleey will give a lecture hosted by the Art Department. Eleey was recently appointed chief curator at MoMA’s PS1 Contemporary Art Center, a position he assumed this past July. He previously served as visual arts curator at Minneapolis’s Walker Arts Center, where he worked to expand the museum’s collection of conceptual contemporary art. He also spent five years as curator of the New York-based nonprofit Creative Time, during which he carried out projects including bringing Cai Guo-Qiang’s “Light Cycle” fireworks to Central Park and Doug Aitken’s “Sleepwalkers” videos to MoMA’s outside walls.
Read Eleey’s thoughts on an exhibition he curated at the Walker.
– Cynthea Ballard ’13