Events

LEXINGTON, Ky.—Richard Norton Smith, presidential historian and scholar in residence at George Mason University, where he teaches on the American presidency, will deliver Transylvania’s winter Kenan Lecture Monday, Feb. 16, at 7:30 p.m. in Haggin Auditorium. The lecture, “Our Lincoln,” is free and open to the public. A graduate of Harvard University with a degree in government, Smith is a prolific writer. His book, Thomas E. Dewey and His Times was a finalist for the 1983 Pulitzer Prize. His 1997 book The Colonel: The Life and Legend of Robert R. McCormick received the Goldsmith Prize from Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School and was described by Hilton Kramer as “the best book every written about the press.” Smith currently is working on a biography of Nelson A. Rockefeller. Smith is ABC News’ presidential historian and a political analyst for PBS. In 2003, he was named founding director of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Ill., and executive director of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library Foundation. Previously, he served as director of the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum, the Dwight D. Eisenhower Center, the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, the Reagan Center for Public Affairs, the Gerald R. Ford Museum and Library and the Robert J. Dole Institute of Politics. The Kenan Lecture Series is made possible by a grant from the William R. Kenan Jr. Charitable Trust. For more information, contact the public relations office at (859) 233-8120.

LEXINGTON, Ky.—Transylvania University’s vocal ensembles will present “An Evening at the Cabaret: When I Was a Kid,” on Friday and Saturday, Jan. 30 and 31, at 7:30 p.m. in Carrick Theater.  Tickets are $10. “An Evening at the Cabaret,” featuring the Transylvania Choir, the Transylvania Singers, the Pioneer Voices, Transy Boys A Capella and several soloists, will include a variety of children’s songs spanning multiple decades and styles. Some of the show’s numbers are a “Schoolhouse Rock” medley, “A Whole New World,” from the Disney movie “Aladdin” and television show theme songs from the ‘90s, including “Where in the World is Carmen San Diego?” and “Gullah Gullah Island.” For more information, contact the public relations office at (859) 233-8120 or the fine arts office at (859) 233-8141.

LEXINGTON, Ky.—Todd Gitlin, well-known political writer, novelist, cultural commentator and professor at Columbia University, will speak at Transylvania Thursday, Feb. 12, at 7:30 p.m. in the William T. Young Campus Center. Gitlin’s lecture, “The Future of Enlightenment,” is sponsored by the Center for Liberal Education at Transylvania University and is free and open to the public. Gitlin, one of the nation’s leading thinkers about the media, has degrees in three different subjects: mathematics (B.A., Harvard), political science (M.A., Michigan) and sociology (Ph.D., Berkeley). He has written widely on the mass media and cultural politics in America. In the 1960s, he was president of Students for a Democratic Society, organizing the first national demonstration against the Vietnam War and the first civil disobedience directed against American corporate support for the apartheid regime in South Africa.   A prolific writer, Gitlin is the author of 12 books including The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage; The Twilight of Common Dreams: Why America is Wracked by Culture Wars; Letters to a Young Activist; and The Intellectuals and the Flag. He has contributed to numerous scholarly journals and general interest periodicals such as the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, The Nation and Harper’s Magazine. He is on the editorial board of Dissent, a contributing writer to Mother Jones, a member of the board of trustees of opendemocracy.net and is frequently on-line at tpmcafe.com and cjr.org. Gitlin is often on National

Read “Writer, activist and prominent cultural critic Todd Gitlin will give a public lecture at Transylvania Thursday, Feb. 12, at 7:30 p.m.”

LEXINGTON, Ky.—On Monday, January 19, Transylvania students, faculty and staff will celebrate the 2009 Martin Luther King Jr. holiday as a Day of Service by joining members of the Lexington community to perform service projects. Activities at Transylvania include preparing snacks for the Hope Mobile Outreach program and writing letters of thanks for the troops. Transylvania student groups will also be participating in various service activities around Lexington. Other projects in Lexington include assisting seniors at Christ Church Apartments, participating in a community art project, painting the tutoring room at the East Seventh Street Center and volunteering at Shriners Hospital for Children. More than two dozen service projects are planned for Lexington and the surrounding counties. On Thursday, January 22, Transy will honor King’s legacy during a special program in the William T. Young Campus Center from 7-8 p.m. Linda Harvey, program director for the Restorative Justice Council on Social Misconduct in Faith Communities, is the keynote speaker. Local poets and musicians will perform as well as steppers from Bryan Station Middle School. The event is free and open to the public. For more information contact the public relations office at (859) 233-8120.

LEXINGTON, Ky.—Young artists Ebony G. Patterson and Oneika Russell bring fresh insight to their Jamaican culture by examining notions of identity in Mi Did Deh Deh. Morlan Gallery’s first exhibition of 2009 opened Friday, January 9, and runs through February 27. The exhibit is free and open to the public. “Both Patterson and Russell work in a vivid and confrontational style that imparts the feeling of receiving a first-hand account of the social and political currents in Jamaica,” said Morlan Gallery Director Andrea Fisher. “Therefore, the exhibition is called Mi Did Deh Deh, meaning I Was There in the Jamaican dialect.” Russell is an artist working in Kingston in digital and traditional media. Her work is generally made up of drawings, objects, digital animations and video. Her Morlan Gallery work includes two video pieces and a series of photographs exploring Manet’s painting, Olympia. In this well-known painting, a young nude woman reclines on her day bed, yet the figure behind Olympia has been virtually ignored in art history. Russell takes a long look at the black servant woman in the background, drawing attention to the role of the black woman, giving her a voice and an identity. Patterson, a University of Kentucky assistant professor of painting, also draws attention to identity in her Disciplez Series, a collection of mixed media pieces that examine the culture of dancehall, a type of Jamaican popular music that is less political and less religious

Read “Morlan Gallery’s Mi Did Deh Deh, an exhibit examining Jamaican identity, runs through February 27; gallery talk is Wednesday, Jan. 21”