Holding Hands with Ilse: A film by Abraham Ravett
Sun, Sep 24 2017 - 3:00pm to 5:00pm
Liebling Center: Room 131
Holding Hands With Ilse ( 2017) 93 min., is Abraham Ravett's documentary film about the search for the German teenage girl who took care of the filmmaker between 1948-1950 in Walbrzych, Poland where he was born. Knowing only her first name and circulating a small photograph taken in 1950 of the two, the director explores the urban landscapes of western Poland and the journey involved in their unexpected reunion that recently took place in Ibbenbüren, Germany. Filmed in the USA, Poland and Germany.
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Abraham Ravett
Trump: Point/Counterpoint series - Illiberalism in the Age of Trump
Thu, Sep 28 2017 - 7:00pm to 8:00pm
Stirn Auditorium, Mead Art Museum
The "Trump: Point/Counterpoint" conversation series features Amherst College Professor, and host of NEPR's "In Contrast", Ilan Stavans and a guest engaging in thoughtful discussion and attempting to bridge the ideological divide growing in our nation.
For part two of the series, join Ilan and his guest, Bret Stephens as they discuss "Illiberalism in the Age of Trump". Illiberalism describes a system, while ostensibly a democracy, in which citizens experience reduced civil liberties and are cut off from knowledge of who holds real power in their society.
Bret L. Stephens joined The New York Times as an Op-Ed columnist in April 2017. His column appears Thursday and Saturday.
Mr. Stephens came to The Times after a long career with The Wall Street Journal, where he was most recently deputy editorial-page editor and, for 11 years, foreign affairs columnist. Before that, he was editor in chief of The Jerusalem Post. At The Post he oversaw the paper's news, editorial and digital operations and its international editions, and also wrote a weekly column. He has reported from around the world and interviewed scores of world leaders.
Mr. Stephens is the author of "America in Retreat: The New Isolationism and the Coming Global Disorder," released in November 2014. He is the recipient of numerous awards and distinctions, including two honorary doctorates and the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for commentary. He is also a political analyst for MSNBC.
Mr. Stephens was raised in Mexico City and holds a B.A. from the University of Chicago and an MSc. from the London School of Economics. He and his wife, Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim, a music critic for The
Times, live with their three children in New York and Hamburg, Germany.
The Event is free and open to the public.
Presented by the Amherst College Class of 1970
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Davis J. Bannister
"Quantum magnets and time crystals: Having fun with trapped ions" - Talk by Paul Hess
Tue, Sep 26 2017 - 4:45pm to 6:00pm
Merrill Science Center, Lecture Room 3
Professor Paul Hess of Middlebury College will discuss how understanding magnetic particles interactions can help unravel the physics of exotic materials like high temperature superconductors. It is known that such systems are governed by the laws of quantum mechanics, but when many quantum particles start interacting, the physics gets messy and hard to predict. To better understand these complicated systems, Hess and his colleagues built a quantum magnet from the ground up using trapped and levitated atomic ions.
Hess will discuss how they used this experimental platform to realize a new phase of matter called a discrete time crystal. These time crystals are a kind of self-stabilizing clock, a behavior which could be turned on and off by changing the interactions between the magnetic spins in the trapped ion crystal.
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Alice M. Simmoneau
"Between the Body Cam and the Black Body: The Post-Panoptic Racial Interface"
Alumni House
On Thursday, Sept. 21, at 4:30 p.m. in the Alumni House at Amherst College, Eden Osucha, associate professor of English at Bates College, will present a paper titled "Between the Body Cam and the Black Body: The Post-Panoptic Racial Interface." This is the first presentation in a series of seminars that will take place this year on the theme "Law and the Visible."
Professor Osucha's research and teaching focus on U.S. literature and culture and critical approaches to the intersecting histories of U.S. citizenship, sexuality and racial formation. She is currently working on her forthcoming book, titled The Post-Racial Past: Race, Privacy and Identity Before the Obama Era, which examines historical productions of post-racial discourse in U.S. law, literature and media.
To receive a copy of the paper, which will consider the rise of body-worn cameras in the practice of American policing in relation to racial alienation, please email the LJST department coordinator at mlestes@amherst.edu.
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Megan L. Estes
Russian Film Screening: Night Watch
Keefe Campus Center, Theater (Room 008)
Please join us as we screen the first film in the Amherst College Department of Russian Fall Film Series "Russian Horror Story." The 2004 film "Night Watch" (Ночной дозор) was directed by Timur Bekmambetov. In this blockbuster urban fantasy supernatural thriller, armies of Good and Evil, Light and Darkness, gear up to do battle in turn-of-the-twenty-first-century Moscow.
This movie is 115 minutes long and will be screened at both 4:30 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.
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Triin Vallaste
Trump: Point/Counterpoint Series: "Why 'Black Lives Matter' Matters"
The "Trump: Point/Counterpoint" conversation series features Amherst College professor, and host of NEPR's In Contrast, Ilan Stavans and a guest engaging in thoughtful discussion and attempting to bridge the ideological divide growing in our nation.
For the premier conversation, join Stavans and his guest, Wesley Lowery, as they discuss "Why 'Black Lives Matter' Matters."
Wesley Lowery is a Pulitzer Prize-winning national correspondent covering law enforcement, race and justice for The Washington Post and an on-air contributor for CNN. He has been the paper's lead reporter covering police shootings and the Black Lives Matter protest movement. His work has also appeared in The Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal and Sports Illustrated. His first book, the New York Times bestseller They Can't Kill Us All, was awarded the 2017 Christopher Isherwood prize for autobiographical prose by the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes.
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Poetry in the Planetarium
Fri, Sep 15 2017 - 8:00pm to 9:30pm
Bassett Planetarium, Morgan Hall
Amherst College's Bassett Planetarium will host the first reading from poet Dara Wier's newest bookIn the Still of the Night from Wave Books. She will be joined by poet and artist Bianca Stone. As Wier and Stone read, the planetarium's analogue Spitz A3p optical projector, one of the last of its kind still in use, will display the starscapes on the nights of Emily Dickinson's birth and death. This event is free, but seating is limited.
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German Film Series: "Bandits"
Thu, Sep 14 2017 - 4:00pm to 10:00pm
Two screenings, at 4:00 pm and 7:30 pm
"Bandits" (Katja von Garnier, 1997; 109 min.)
Fast-paced feel-good movie featuring some of Germany's best known actresses, including Katja Riemann and Jasmin Tabatabai: four female prison inmates form a rock band. At an outside gig, at a policemen's ball, they seize the opportunity to escape, leading to a dramatic, crazy chase all over Germany, to an upbeat musical score. This film will be shown in German with English subtitles. Please contact mhowes@amherst.edu for more information.
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Megan L. Howes
"Ultrasonic 3-D Cell Culture: A New Method Useful in Immunotherapy Research": Talk by Martin Viklund
Visiting Professor Martin Viklund of Sweden's KTH Royal Institute of Technology will discuss a novel method for tissue and tumor micro-engineering that was developed in his lab in Stockholm. Based on ultrasound-supported three-dimensional (3-D) cell culture in a multi-well microplate, the method is gentle and can be used for producing various tissue-mimicking 3-D structures in parallel. It is based on ultrasonic-standing-wave particle manipulation inside hundreds of micro-wells in the microplate. The method consists of analysis and optimization of the driving parameters of the ultrasound transducer attached to the microplate, and demonstration of the production of various micro-engineered models of solid tumors. Vilund and his colleagues have primarily used cells from HepG2 hepatocellular carcinoma and A498 renal carcinoma cell lines as building blocks in the tumor models, but have also tested the method with fibroblasts, thyroid cells and melanoma cells.
The solid tumor models are characterized on-chip by detailed 3-D confocal and light-sheet microscopy, and off-chip with fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS). Furthermore, the team has developed an image analysis-based method for cell counting and characterization in 3-D, and have studied protein expression in tumor models by FACS, comparing 2-D and 3-D cultures. The selected proteins for the analysis are relevant ligands for natural killer (NK) cell recognition. The results show differences in protein expression levels between 2-D and 3-D cultures. This is of interest when optimizing future treatment protocols in NK cell-based cancer immunotherapy.
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"Gorbachev: His Life and Times": Conversation with Professors William Taubman and Pavel Machala
Join the political science department as William Taubman, the Bertrand Snell Professor of Political Science, Emeritus, and Pulitzer Prize Winner, discusses his newly released book, Gorbachev: His Life and Times, with Pavel Machala, the Charles E. Merrill 1908 Professor of Political Science.
The conversation will be followed by a reception and book signing. Staff from Amherst Books will be onsite for book sales.
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