Lecture Series: How the Humanities Change Our Lives
California State University, Fresno
Lecture Series: A professor of classics and coordinator of the Classics Program at
California State University, Fresno, Dr. Hanson received the 1991 American
Philological Association Excellence in Teaching Award. He also received a
National Endowment for the Humanities research fellowship at Stanford's
Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences. A noted scholar of
classical studies and military history, Dr. Hanson has written
prolifically on these subjects. He is the author of some 40 articles and
books, including Warfare and Agriculture in Classical Greece, The Ancient
Greek Battle Experience, The Other Greeks, and Fields Without Dreams. His
recent work, coauthored with John Heath, Who Killed Homer: The Demise of
Classical Learning and Recovery of Greek Wisdom (The Free Press 1998), has
been widely featured in the media.
A professor of history, classics, and Western civilization at Yale
University, Dr. Kagan currently serves as chair of the Classics Department
at Yale, and for many years was dean of Yale College. He has authored
numerous articles and 12 books on topics as diverse as ancient Greece,
Rome, Western civilization, and military history. He is coauthor of
Western Heritage, the most widely used text in Western civilization
courses on university campuses today. He is perhaps best known for his
four-volume monumental work, A New History of the Peloponnesian War, and
his most recent book, On the Origins of War and the Preservation of Peace.
Dr. Amaral's areas of specialization are in the classics, mathematical
logic, medieval philosophy and the history of the philosophy of science.
He has served on several university committees and task forces at Fresno
State, including the General Education Task Force and the G.E.
Subcommittee, which he chairs. His current research includes cognitive
science and the history of the concept of "consciousness." Recently he
completed a study of late renaissance scholasticism and early modernism
titled Descartes' Sixth Meditation: Origins in the Renaissance
(Forthcoming, 1999.)
Malik Simba has published more than 40 essays on race relations law and
African-American history and biography. His essays have appeared in the
Chicago Tribune, Focus on Law Studies, Journal of Southwest Georgia
History, Historical Encyclopedia of World Slavery, Encyclopedia of
African-American Civil Rights and numerous other scholarly periodicals.
His essay on the 1927 case of Gong Lum v. Rice is recognized as breaking
new ground in the area of critical legal theory. Dr. Simba has presented
numerous papers at professional conferences on a wide variety of legal and
historical topics.
Robert Levine has received awards for both his teaching and research,
including being named the university's "Outstanding Professor." He has
been published widely in Psychology Today, Discover, American
Demographics, The New York Times, and American Science, as well as dozens
of articles and chapters in professional journals and books. His recent
book, A Geography of Time (Basic Book/HarperCollins), received the 1998
Klineberg Intercultural and International Relations Award. The book has
been the subject of feature stories around the world, including those
shown in Newsweek, in The New York Times, on ABC's Prime Time, and on CNN.
Dr. Levine has lectured about his book for different audiences, including
an audience at the Smithsonian Museum last summer.
A professor of English, Dr. Faderman is among the most prolific
researchers in the School of Arts and Humanities. Her latest book, I Begin
My Life All Over: The Hmong and the American Immigrant Experience (Beacon
Press, 1998), was born out of her exchanges in the classroom with her
students from Laos. Among her other books are Surpassing the Love of Men
(Morrow, 1981); Scotch Verdict (W. Morrow, 1983; Columbia, 1993); Odd
Girls and Twilight Lovers (Columbia University Press, 1991); and Chloe
plus Olivia: An Anthology of Lesbian Literature from the Seventeenth
Century to the Present (Viking Press, 1994). Her books have won major
awards and have been translated into several languages.
Dr. Strumwasser's specialty is renaissance and baroque art. She has
published articles and presented papers on Leonardo Da Vinci, Jan van
Eyck, Rembrandt, and others. Her contributions to the study of women as
subjects in art is significant. Of particular importance was the exhibit,
"Mortals, Maidens and Mothers: Re-presenting Women in Renaissance Print,"
a collection of prints and drawings from the 15th and 16th centuries which
Dr. Strumwasser and her graduate students curated for the Conley Art
Gallery in 1996. Her most recent publications are two essays, "Justice"
and "Betrayal," in Encyclopedia of Comparative Iconography, Helen Roberts
(ed.), U.S. and England: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 1998, 2 vols.
Lisa Weston is currently an associate professor of English at Fresno State
specializing in early medieval literature. Dr. Weston has delivered papers
at numerous regional, national and international conferences and has
published in a variety of North American and European journals. Her most
recent article, "Gender Without Sexuality: Hrotsvitha's Imagining of a
Chaste Female Community," appeared this summer in International Medieval
Research. Dr. Weston also serves on the Advisory Board of the Society for
Medieval Feminist Research and is currently investigating textual culture
in early English women's monastic communities.
Jim Tucker has been a professor in the California State University, Fresno
Department of Mass Communication and Journalism since 1968. His teaching
specialties are mass media and society, media writing, and editing of
publications. He was named the Outstanding Journalism Professor of the
Year in 1996 by the California Newspaper Publishers Association, and he
received the Provost's Award for Excellence in Teaching in 1997. He is a
former newspaper reporter and broadcast newsman; he is also the producer
and moderator of Valley Press, a weekly news-interview program on KVPT
(Channel 18) in Fresno.