1780 – The Official Blog of Transylvania University

1780 | The Official Blog of Transylvania University

Filmmaker discusses documentary, "The Negro Baseball League: An American Legacy," Tuesday, Feb. 26; free and open to the public

LEXINGTON, Ky.—Wear your favorite baseball jersey and join the Transylvania University community for a night of concession refreshments and baseball history as filmmaker Byron Motley discusses his documentary, “The Negro Baseball League: An American Legacy,” which is scheduled to air on PBS in February 2014. The presentation, Tuesday, Feb. 26, at 7 p.m., in the William T. Young Campus Center is free and open to the public. It offers an insightful, educational and entertaining look at the histories and memories of the Negro Leagues. Motley is a singer, songwriter, filmmaker, lecturer, author and photographer. In 2007, he co-authored his father’s memoir, “Ruling Over Monarchs, Giants, and Stars: Umpiring in the Negro Leagues and Beyond.” His father, Bob Motley, is the only living umpire from the Negro Leagues. The talk is sponsored by the Transylvania University Athletics Department, the Creative Intelligence Lecture Series, and the offices of diversity and inclusion and student life. For more information, contact the public relations office at (859) 233-8120.

Morlan Gallery’s “Divine” exhibition opens Monday, Feb. 25, welcomes guest curator

LEXINGTON, Ky.—Opening Monday, Feb. 25, and running through Friday, March 22, at Transylvania University’s Morlan Gallery is “Divine Hybrids: Syncretic Visions of Sexuality and the Sacred.” The four-week exhibition features contemporary mixed-media art that contemplates life within a sexualized realm of the sacred, where figuration emerges in mixed imagery, taking after syncretic religions and mythologies born from historically decisive multicultural encounters. From emblematic figures of mestizaje, the idea of mixing races in Latin American cultures, to deities that embody combinations of Haitian voodoo with Hindu, Mayan, Catholic and other traditions, “Divine Hybrids” features the works of Mexican artist Claudia Dominguez, now based in North Carolina; Columbian artist Gabriela Jiménez; Jamaican-born artist Ebony G. Patterson and Lexington artists Diane Kahlo and Robert Morgan. Fernanda Negrete is the guest curator. Born in Mexico City, Negrete works on aesthetics and contemporary literature and art. She curated a series of exhibitions with artists from Colombia, Haiti, Mexico and the United States as the 2010-11 Art Fellow at the Big Red Barn Graduate and Professional Student Center at Cornell University, where she received her Ph.D. in romance studies in January 2012. Currently, she is a visiting assistant professor of French at Miami University of Ohio. Special events, all free and open to the public: Opening reception Thursday, Feb. 28 5-8 p.m. Morlan Gallery Art Talk: The Curator’s Perspective Monday, March 4 4:30-5:30 p.m. Morlan Gallery Fernanda Negrete will discuss the themes of “Divine Hybirds” and

Transylvania speech and debate team excels at Kentucky Forensics Association State Championship

LEXINGTON, Ky.— The Transylvania speech and debate team excelled at the 2013 Kentucky Forensic Association State Tournament on Saturday, winning small school debate sweepstakes, and small school individual events sweepstakes as well as being named second overall grand champion. Coach Gary Deaton was also recognized, winning the co-coach of the year award. Transylvania University hosted the tournament, which brought schools all across the state to compete in speech and debate events. In addition to several other awards, Bryan Dickman, of Williamsburg, Ky., also received the Harlan Hamm Award for Speech and Debate Excellence, which honors a student who displays service to the activity, service to the university and community, and competitive excellence. Transylvania debate teams accounted for four out of the eight debate quarter-finalists, three out of the four semi-finalists, and won both first (Taylor Deaton, of Richmond, Ky., and Rachel Smith, of Mayfield, Ky.) and second (Dickman and Ian Smith, of Lawrenceburg, Ky.) place debate team. Many other team members went on to win individual awards as well, including four first place individual awards; four second place individual awards; and five third place individual awards. Ian Smith, Taylor Deaton and Angelica Miller, of Bristol, Va., also received quadrathon awards, which measures personal success in four or more events. Transylvania University’s debate team coaching staff includes Gary Deaton and alums Leigh Ann Jordan, associate director of forensics; Clint Jones, assistant director of forensics; Raven Mineo, director of debate; and Brian

President of American Philosophical Association to give Transylvania’s 2013 Rick O’Neil Philosophy Lecture

LEXINGTON, Ky.—Linda Martín Alcoff, president of the American Philosophical Association, professor and author, will deliver the 2013 Rick O’Neil lecture, “Social Identities and the Question of Realism: Against Post-Ethnic Utopias,” at Transylvania University Tuesday, Feb. 19, at 7 p.m. in Carrick Theater in the Mitchell Fine Arts Center. The talk is free and open to the public. Martín Alcoff is professor of philosophy at Hunter College and the CUNY Graduate Center. She has degrees from Georgia State University and Brown University and has held positions at Syracuse University, SUNY Stony Brook and Kalamazoo College and visiting appointments at Cornell, Brown and the University of Aarhus. Her writings have focused on social identity and race, epistemology and politics, sexual violence, Foucault, and Latino issues in philosophy. She has written two books, “Visible Identities: Race, Gender and the Self,” and “Real Knowing: New Versions of the Coherence Theory.” She is currently at work on two new books: a book on sexual violence and an account of future of white identity. Also forthcoming is an anthology co-edited with Jack Caputo on the politics of love. She is a co-editor of Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy. The lecture is sponsored by Transylvania’s philosophy program and Sophia, the university’s philosophy society, in honor of the late Transylvania philosophy professor Rick O’Neil. For more information, contact the public relations office at (859) 233-8120.

Paul Finkelman, national expert in American legal history and constitutional history, to give John Marshall Harlan lecture March 5, at 7:30 p.m.; free and open to the public

LEXINGTON, Ky.—American legal history and constitutional law expert Paul Finkelman will give the winter 2013 John Marshall Harlan Lecture at Transylvania University on March 5, at 7:30 p.m. in the William T. Young Campus Center. The lecture, “‘But I need Kentucky’: Lincoln, Emancipation, and the Importance of the Bluegrass State,” is free and open to the public. The campus center is located on the corner of Broadway and Fourth Street. Finkelman is the President William McKinley Distinguished Professor of Law and Public Policy and Senior Fellow at the Government Center at Albany Law School in New York. He is the author of more than 150 scholarly articles and more than 30 books. His op-eds and shorter pieces have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today and on the Huffington Post. He was recently named the ninth most cited legal historian in Brian Leieter’s Law School Rankings. Finkelman is an expert in constitutional history and constitutional law, freedom of religion, the law of slavery, civil liberties, the American Civil War and legal issues surrounding baseball. He has written extensively on Thomas Jefferson and on Abraham Lincoln. He was the chief expert witness in the Alabama Ten Commandments monument case, and his scholarship on religious monuments in public spaces was cited by the U.S. Supreme Court in Van Orden v. Perry (2005). His scholarship on the Second Amendment has also been cited by the Supreme Court. In 2002