Mary Louise Pratt will deliver the 6th annual Charles A. Hale Lecture, "Linked In, Left Out, Uplifted, Downloaded: The ecology of language in a globalizing world," this Thursday, Oct. 29, from 3:30 - 5:00 p.m. in 1117 UCC.

2015 marks the 400th anniversary of the publication of "Don Quixote," volume two. In a prelude to a special Obermann-International Programs Humanities Symposium, Joan Kjaer and her WorldCanvass guests explored the topic of "Don Quixote's Four Century Saga" on September 15, 2015 at FilmScene in Iowa City.

The four century saga of knight-errant Don Quixote and his squire Sancho Panza will kick off the 2015-2016 season of the television, radio, and internet program WorldCanvass. Host Joan Kjaer and WorldCanvass guests will discuss the novel, the title character’s mark on artistic and public imagination, and fundamental questions raised by the work such as the relationship of fiction to reality, life to art, and the ‘ownership’ of an original creation. The public is invited to attend the WorldCanvass discussion at 5 p.m. on Tuesday, September 15, at FilmScene in downtown Iowa City.

The Caribbean, Diaspora, and Atlantic Studies Program will continue their spring 2015 lecture series with a performance talk by UI International Writer's Program alumna Fabienne Kanor entitled, "Another Sea to Cross: A Performance Talk." The performance talk will take place on Wednesday, April 29, from 5:00-7:00 p.m. in 2520D University Capitol Centre, and is free and open to the public.

In a Global Health Studies Program sponsored lecture, Marcos Cueto will speak about the World Health Organization and international global health efforts with a special emphasis on the Africa Regional Office in a talk titled, "Between Tropical Medicine and International Health."

As part of a special symposium by the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies, Joan Kjaer and her WorldCanvass guests explored the topic of "Energy Cultures and the Age of the Anthropocene" on March 3, 2015 at FilmScene in Iowa City. The program was followed by a free screening of the documentary, “The Great Invisible,” about the social and environmental effects of the Deepwater/Horizon/Macondo disaster and oil spill in 2010.

We are now living in the “Anthropocene” (pronounced AN-thruh-puh-seen), the literal definition of which is the “New Age (cene) of Humans (anthropos).” For many people, the notion that we are living in the age of humans might be unremarkably self-evident. But the concept of the Anthropocene challenges us to consider how humans have become the dominant agent of change on Earth. The upcoming Obermann Humanities Symposium at the University of Iowa, March 5-7, “Energy Cultures in the Age of the Anthropocene,” will showcase innovative thinking about how to conceptualize and deal with the large-scale human alterations of environments and ecosystems that have given a new name to the age in which we live.

The March 3 WorldCanvass program will be part of a three-day interdisciplinary Obermann Center symposium on the Anthropocene which will examine how humans have shaped our present energy culture and what other energy cultures are possible. Four keynote speakers will tackle this question from very different angles.