symposiumcfi

Symposium Series

Begun in March of 1998, the Symposium Series is at the core of the Center for Free Inquiry's activities. Held twice a year on the campus of Hanover College, the Symposium brings together several individuals from diverse academic and professional backgrounds to examine a specific issue of contemporary and enduring concern through the lens of the liberal arts.

The symposia, like all of CFI's activities, address themselves to a broad audience, seeking to engage all members of a thoughtful citizenry-those who embrace the role of citizen in a democratic republic, and who strive to function well in it. Each symposium consists of a combination of public lectures, roundtable discussions, and informal gatherings. All presentations and discussions are attended by Hanover College students and faculty and members of the greater Hanover College community, and all are free and open to the public.

Additionally, symposium participants join in campus and community life by attending Hanover College classes, appearing on local radio and television shows, and dining with members of the campus and community.

Program Director:
Daniel P. Murphy
Director
Founding Director
Professor of History
(812) 866-6848, cfi@hanover.edu

Next Symposia

November 2, 3 & 4, 2008
Peter Aicher is Professor of Classics at the University of Southern Maine in Portland, where he frequently teaches courses on Homer and Virgil, in translation and in Greek and Latin. He combines these literary interests with a fascination with the city of Rome, which has resulted in several books and numerous articles and talks. He recently designed a course entitled "The City of Rome: From Romulus to Mussolini," which explores how an architectural language of power has evolved and persisted over the millennia. He is author of the 1995 book Guide to the Aqueducts of Ancient Rome. He assisted NOVA in the making of the documentary, "Secrets of Lost Empires: Roman Bath" and has contributed a chapter on Roman aqueducts to a forthcoming UNESCO publication on water-supply around the globe and throughout history. Here and in other publications he emphasizes that the Roman technology of water-supply should be evaluated not simply by its engineering achievements, impressive as these may have been, but in its social and political context, in relation to Roman bathing culture, living patterns, and patronage.

Arthur Demarest is an anthropologist and archaeologist, known for his studies of the Maya civilization. He studied Mesoamerican anthropology and archaeology in Tulane University, from which he graduated. In 1981 Demarest was granted his Ph. D in Harvard University and he was admitted to the prestigious Society of Fellows -club. From 1984 on he has taught at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, USA, where he holds the endowed chair of Ingram Professor of Anthropology and heads up the Department of Mesoamerican archaeology. Demarest has been awarded various prizes, including the Orden Nacional from the Guatemalan president, for his archaeological and educational work in Guatemala and for his work for the contemporary Maya people. Demarest has worked in Mesoamerica for 25 years, leading archaeological excavations and expeditions. He is considered one of the world's leading experts on the Olmec and Maya cultures, but is also interested in Incas, Aztecs and anthropological theory. In 2005 he published Ancient Maya: The Rise and Fall of a Rainforest Civilization.

Anne Feldhaus is Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Arizona State University. Professor Feldhaus works on the religious traditions of the Marathi-language region of western India and specializes in folk Hinduism, medieval Hinduism and religious geography. She has been a Guggenheim Fellow, an Alexander von Humboldt fellow, a Fulbright Scholar, and aSenior Research Fellow for the American Institute of Indian Studies. She is author of Images of Women in Maharashtrian Literature and Religion. Following recent scholarship by arguing that the earthly pursuits are equally vital to an understanding of popular Hinduism, Feldhaus examines the role of these ideals in the religious meanings of rivers in Maharashtra, a large region of western India. Drawing both on written religious texts and on a wide range of oral, iconographic, and ritual materials gathered in the course of field work in India, she shows that these values, which are usually associated with women or represented by goddesses, are an important motif in popular religious practices and oral traditions associated with the rivers of Maharashtra, and she presents the many different ways in which rivers are imagined, enshrined, worshipped, and feared.

Marc Van de Mieroop is Professor of Ancient Near Eastern Studies in the Departments of History and Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia University. He is author of A History of the Ancient Near East ca. 3000 - 323 BC. In addition to his articles and translations, his book publications include: Crafts in the Early Isin Period (1987), Sumerian Administrative Documents from the Reigns of Ishbi-Erra and Shu-ilishu (1987) Society and Enterprise in Old Babylonian Ur (1992), The Ancient Mesopotamian City (1997 and 1999), and Cuneiform Texts and the Writing of History (1999)

March 15, 16 & 17, 2009
Marq de Villiers is a veteran journalist, magazine editor and writer, who has worked as a foreign correspondent in Moscow, South Africa, and other places. He has travelled extensively, especially in Africa, and has written twelve books on travel, history and natural history, some of them co-authored with Sheila Hirtle. He has also "ghosted" several others for subjects as varied as a convicted (but later freed) murderer and a deputy Secretary General of the United Nations. He won a Governor General's Award in 1999 for his Water: The Fate of Our Most Precious Resource, and the Evelyn Richardson Prize for Non Fiction for A Dune Adrift, a book on Sable Island, written with Sheila Hirtle. His most recent book, a re-telling of the Bluenose story called Witch in the Wind was published by Thomas Allen and Co. in 2007. Works in progress include Timbuktu: The Sahara's Fabled City of Gold, to be published in the fall of 2007 by McClelland and Stewart in Canada and Walker and Co. in the U.S.; and A Short History of Natural Calamities, to be published by Penguin in 2008.

Becky Norton Dunlop is a senior fellow of the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution and oversees its programs on environmental regulation. She is the author of Clearing the Air, a widely praised account of her service as Secretary of Natural Resources for the Commonwealth of Virginia published by AdTI. From 1994 - 1998 she served in the Cabinet of Virginia Governor George Allen as the Secretary of Natural Resources. Dunlop is a Board member for several organizations including: the National Wilderness Institute, Defenders of Property Rights, The Family Foundation and the Virginia Institute for Public Policy. She also serves on the Board of Century Communications, Inc., a management consulting and venture development firm that specializes in strategic planning, organizational management, government relations, and joint venture development. In the 1980's, Mrs. Dunlop was a senior official in the Administration of President Ronald Reagan, including service in the White House as Deputy Assistant to the President for Presidential Personnel and also Director of the President's Cabinet office. She served in the Department of Justice in 1985 and 1986 as Senior Special Assistant to the Attorney General. During 1987-1989, she was Deputy Under Secretary of the Department of Interior and Assistant Secretary for Fish, Wildlife, and Parks.

Recent Symposia