Sept. 12: Colloquium series focuses on components that define home, shape identities
Friday, September 12, 2014
The many components that define a sense of place and home and, in turn shape individual and cultural identities is the focus of the 2014 colloquium series at Hood College.
The series opens with a panel discussion, Identity in a Forgotten Homeland, Sept. 30 from 7 to 9 p.m. in the Whitaker Campus Center Commons. Moderated by Donald Wright, Ph.D., associate professor of French and Arabic, panelists will discuss the tension that can exist when the geographic definition of home is in conflict with political borders, as is the case in some areas in the Middle East that have been subject to numerous colonial, national and political divisions in the 20th century.
Panelists will include Jamil Khader, Ph.D., dean of scientific research at Bethlehem University, and Ibtisam Ibrahim, Ph.D., instructor of Arabic at George Mason University.
The event is co-sponsored by the Hood’s Middle Eastern studies program and the Charlotte Moran Visiting Scholars Fund.
Future fall colloquium events will also focus on the complex notion of home, including a discussion Oct. 29 of the social and cultural history that has shaped the homes and environments in which Americans choose to live, led by Sarah A. Leavitt, Ph.D., curator of the House & Home exhibit at the National building Museum in Washington, D.C.; and a reading Nov. 6 by award-winning poet Jericho Brown, Ph.D., assistant professor of English at the University of San Diego.
The event is part the College’s annual Center for the Humanities colloquium series, which is funded in part by a National Endowment for the Humanities Challenge Grant.
The Hood College Center for the Humanities was founded in 1990 by a group of faculty members from Hood’s humanities departments—art, English, foreign languages, history and political science, music, philosophy and religion. During its nearly 25-year existence, the Center for the Humanities has presented a distinguished roster of events and hosted internationally renowned speakers. In 1999, Hood was the recipient of a major challenge grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, which helps provide for an annual lecture series and an NEH visiting scholar.
For more information about the colloquium series, contact Katy Fulfer, NEH Libman Professor of the Humanities, at fulfer@hood.edu.