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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Sept. 27, 2002
Contact: Donna Nicholson or Doug Stone
651-696-6203
nicholson@macalester.edu
MACALESTER COLLEGE’S ANNUAL INTERNATIONAL ROUNDTABLE CASTS A CRITICAL EYE ON TECHNOLOGY OCT. 10-12
St. Paul, Minn. - Macalester College presents its ninth annual International
Roundtable entitled, “Prometheus’s Bequest: Technology and Change,”
Thursday-Saturday, Oct. 10-12.
This year’s program will present an in-depth investigation of the role of technology in altering institutions, art and culture, and the media. The roundtable begins at 4 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 10, with a keynote address on “The Fetish of Technology: Causes and Consequences” by David Harvey, a geographer from City University of New York. Harvey will speak in the college’s Weyerhaeuser Memorial Chapel.
The roundtable continues from 9:30 a.m. - 4 p.m. Friday, Oct. 11, and concludes Saturday, Oct. 12. These sessions will be held in the John B. Davis Lecture Hall of the college’s Ruth Stricker Dayton Campus Center. The roundtable is free and open to the public. Call 651-696-6332 for information.
“Since the Industrial Revolution, technology has assumed center stage in the transformation of the environment, livelihoods, social organization, politics and culture. But it is in this epoch of globalization where its impact seems most phenomenal,” said Ahmed Samatar, Macalester’s dean of international studies and programming and roundtable organizer. “Technology’s mediative presence is fundamentally altering our conception of time, space and even identity.”
In addition to Harvey, the roundtable will bring together six scholars from Ireland and the U.S. who will examine various aspects of technology. Harvey is a distinguished professor of anthropology/geography in The Graduate Center of City University. His research interests include geography and social theory, urban political economy, cultural geography and cultural change, and architecture and urban planning. He is the author of numerous books such as Spaces of Capital: Towards a Critical Geography, Spaces of Hope, and Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference.
Other featured speakers include:
Ruthann Godollei, Stan Sears and Andrea Myklebust will discuss “Reflections
on Art and Technology.” Godollei is a Macalester art professor and former
dean of fine arts. She works primarily in prints and drawings, incorporating
political and social commentary in pieces with ironic humor. She teaches printmaking,
design and art theory. Sears is a sculptor and Macalester art professor. Myklebust
is also a sculptor who has done grassroots work in community development initiatives.
Working collaboratively with Sears, the artists have created the Twin Cities
Vietnam Veterans Memorial, designed public art floors at the Minneapolis/St.
Paul International Airport, a monumental gateway sculpture in Ohio and many
other works of art.
(Presentation: 9:30 a.m. - noon, Friday, Oct. 11)
Joel Mokyr will discuss "Thinking About Technology and Institutions.”
Mokyr is the Robert H. Strotz Professor of Arts and Sciences and an economics
and history professor at Northwestern University. He is president of the Economic
History Association and is a former editor of the Journal of Economic History.
A recipient of grants from the National Science Foundation and the John Simon
Guggenheim Foundation, he has written numerous publications including, The Gifts
of Athena: Historical Origins of the Knowledge Economy, The Lever of Riches:
Technological Creativity and Economic Progress and Twenty-Five Centuries of
Technological Change: An Historical Survey. He was recently elected a foreign
member of the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences.
(Presentation: 1:30 - 4 p.m., Friday, Oct. 11)
Nazli Choucri will discuss “Technology and Development: Implications for the Middle East.” Choucri is a political science professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she also directs the Middle East Program. In addition, she is director of the Global System for Sustainable Development, associate director of the Technology and Development Program, and a senior faculty member in the Center for International Studies at MIT. Choucri has also conducted projects for the United Nations, National Academy of Science and other international organizations. She holds a patent on a networked database system for geographically dispersed global sustainability and is the author of publications and articles such as Global System for Sustainable Development: Theory, Approach, Design and Policy and “The Politicization of Technology Choices.” (Presentation: 9:30 a.m. - noon, Saturday, Oct. 12)
Aphra Kerr will discuss “Súil Eile: An Irish Perspective on the
Mass Media and Globalization.” Kerr is currently working on a research
project entitled “From Traditional Visual Media to Contemporary Digital
Media The Emergence of Computer Games” at the Centre for Society, Technology
and Media at Dublin City University in Ireland. As a postdoctoral fellow, she
examined “Digital Games: Production and Consumption Processes in Ireland.”
Her newest publication is “The Business of Culture: New Media Industries
in Ireland” in Ireland Unbound. Others include “A Digital Media, the
Nation State and Local Cultures: The Development of Multimedia ‘Content’
Products in Ireland.” Her new book, A Turn of the Century Chronicle, will
soon be published.
(Presentation: 1:30 - 4 p.m., Saturday, Oct. 12)
Each session of the Roundtable will also feature responses by Macalester College faculty, students and alumni.
The Macalester International Roundtable is held every October on campus. A community-wide intellectual forum, the roundtable explores crucial global issues with prominent international scholars who are also commissioned to write major papers that are presented at Macalester and published in the Macalester International journal. Previous roundtables have featured:
• 1994 "The International Community and the Emerging World (Dis)Order"
• 1995 "Literature, the Creative Imagination, and Globalization"
• 1996 "The Divided Self: Ethnicity, Identity, and Globalization"
• 1997 "Nature, People, and Globalization"
• 1998 "Globalization and Economic Space"
• 1999 "Contending Gods: Religion and the Global Moment"
• 2000 "International Feminisms: Divergent Perspectives"
• 2001 “The Body: Meditations on Global Health”
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