A Huge Tuesday and a Huge Week

Today and this week are going to be huge, and I mean that in the most generic, non-specific way possible.

1. The University of North Dakota's Graduate School Scholarly Forum is today and tomorrow. At noon today Richard Kahn (who has blogged for us at Teaching Thursday!) will present in the Dean's Lecture Series a talk entitled "Education as the Avatar of Sustainability". He teaches in our department of Educational Foundations and Research and has just released a book called Critical Pedagogy, Ecoliteracy, and Planetary Crisis: The Ecopedagogy Movement (Peter Lang, 2010).

Here are some more interesting sessions and papers:

Session 12: Department of History
Memorial Room, Tuesday 9 March, 2:20pm
"Words of Death: A Theology of Death in the Alexandrian Sayings of the Desert Fathers," Paul A. Ferderer (Faculty Sponsor, Dr. William Caraher) Department of History
"Women’s Associations and Employment: Succor and Impediment of Married Women, 1920-1933," Thomas Harlow (Faculty Sponsor, Dr. Kimberley Porter) Department of History
"Independence in Cape Palmas: The Contentious Path For Autonomy in Maryland in Liberia," Matthew Helm (Faculty Sponsor, Dr. Eric Burin) Department of History
"What Are You Afraid Of? How Governments Have Reacted to Real (or unreal) Threats," Mark Herrmann (Faculty Sponsor, Dr. Kimberley Porter) Department of History

Session 21: Social Sciences Writing Panel Memorial Room, Wednesday 10 March, 1:00pm
Scholarly Writing Planning and Finding Success in Writing for Publications, Dr. J. Sagini Keengwe, Dr. Travis Heggie and Dr. Cynthia Prescott.

and at the same time:

Session 20: Tutorial Badlands Room, Wednesday 10 March, 1:00pm
Python and Scientific Computing in Open-Source, Gökhan Sever, Department of Atmospheric Sciences

Python has become the programing language of choice across the Digital Humanities. Check out William J. Turkel, Adam Crymble and Alan MacEachern, The Programing Historian for more on Python.

2. Be sure to check out a fantastic guest blogger over at Teaching Thursday. Deena Larsen, on the premier English Language E-Lit writers, has offered the second in a series of posts on using Electronic Literature in the classroom called Teaching the Writers Conference. As the title suggests, these posts appear in conjunction with the 41st Annual University of North Dakota's Writers Conference, which this year will focus on digital and new media.  

3. If you still haven't had enough excitement you should be sure to check out Dan Reetz talk on Thursday in the Arts and Sciences Interdisciplinary Speaker Series:

Reetz hit it big last year when his DIY book scanner went viral in the blogosphere. He was featured in a substantial article in the December 2009 Wired Magazine. He's a new kind of hometown, digital folk hero. Be sure to check out his talk.