Spring 2011 Season Poster (PDF,~1.4MB)
Spring 2011 Season Poster with blue background (PDF,~1.4MB)

The Heart of the Matter Lecture Series continues at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, April 21, 2011 at:
The Central Mission
1632 Charles Avenue
(2 blocks north of University and 1 block west of Snelling)

Keith Jones, at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, April 21, 2011 at The Central Mission,1632 Charles Avenue
The Words and Worlds of Shakespeare

Shakespeare's plays have been performed in China since 1867, in India since 1775, and in North America since 1750. They were even performed on a ship anchored off Sierra Leone in 1607. Join us as Professor Keith Jones examines the implications of translating and adapting Shakespeare, explores the postmodern tendency toward a radically-destabilized Shakespearean text, and discusses recent cross-cultural productions of Shakespeare.

Keith Jones is Professor in the Department of English and Literature at Northwestern College in Roseville, Minnesota. He received his M.A. in English Literature and Ph.D. in Renaissance English Literature from Saint Louis University. His professional interests include Shakespeare, Renaissance Literature, Classics, and Non-Western Literatures.

Our last lecture of the Spring season will be

Jennifer Alexander, at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, May 12, 2011 at The Central Mission,1632 Charles Avenue
Theology and Technology: Does What We Build Matter as Much as What We Believe?

The orthodoxy of technology expects conformity not at the level of knowledge or understanding, but at the level of what people do in everyday life. They must build, buy, and use more and more things and, to make that possible, they must behave in an industrial way, keeping themselves under constant scrutiny, watching the time, assessing their talents, always planning for their role in the workforce and workplace of the future. History gives a way to analyze and critique this orthodoxy of efficiency, a central component of modern industrial society.

Jennifer Alexander is associate professor at the University of Minnesota, and a cultural historian with a special interest in modern industrial Europe. She is the author of  The Mantra of Efficiency: From Waterwheel to Social Control (Johns Hopkins, 2008), which was awarded the 2010 Edelstein Prize of the Society for the History of Technology.
She received her M.S. in History from the University of Wyoming and her Ph.D. in History from the University of Washington.