Spring lectures explore hot topics

Artist Janine Antoni paints with her hair.

The cocurricular smorgasbord at Skidmore—from musical theater to science demonstrations to a visiting Andean condor—has always included a wide range of lectures by faculty and guest speakers. This spring many of these talks seemed especially intriguing and provocative.

Try these on for size:

Visual and performing art by Janine Antoni, whose work touches on issues from physical toil to seductiveness, self-image, and the generation gap (Susan Rabinowitz Malloy ’45 Visiting Artist Lecture)

“Christ, the Dark Star: Astrology in Early Christianity,” by Nicola Denzey, religion

“Rising Colour: The Legibility of Whiteness,” by Angela Rosenthal, professor of art history at Dartmouth College

“Money and Happiness in an Era of Excess,” by Robert Frank, Goldwin Smith Professor of Economics, Ethics, and Public Policy at Cornell University (William Weiss Lecture in Economics)

Research on the strontium in teeth from New York City’s African Burial Ground to determine the birthplaces and migrations of the Colonial-era slaves and freedmen buried there, by John Reid, professor of geology at Hampshire College (Lester Strock Lecture in Geology)

“Anti-Capitalist Tuesdays,” including lectures on “Indigenous Responses to Oil Drillings in the Amazon,” by Michael Ennis-McMillan, anthropology; “Of Donkeys, Automobiles, and Helicopters: the Multiple Faces of Globalization,” by Aldo Vacs, Palamountain Professor of Government; and “Bringing Good Things to an End: A Social Ecological Response to General Electric,” by Brian Schroeder, philosophy

“The Locker Room: The Last Closet,” by journalist and activist Dan Woog, author of Jocks: True Stories of America’s Gay Male Athletes

“Roman Oratory, the Forum, and the Construction of Masculinity,” by Amy Richlin, professor of classics at the University of Southern California

“The Politics of Licentiousness: Gender, Liberty, and Caricature in 1784,” by Amelia Rauser, art history

“Russia at the Millennium: Chechnya and Beyond,” by Mark Beissinger, professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin–Madison