Colorado College Notable Lectures & Performances

At Colorado College Commencement, this year's speaker is Marian Wright Edelman. In addition to being the recipient of a Colorado College honorary degree in 1999, Edelman completed her undergraduate degree at Spelman College and went on to graduate from Yale Law School in 1963. Originally from Bennettsville, S.C., Edelman began practicing law in 1964 when she became the first African-American woman to be admitted to the Mississippi Bar. Before moving to Washington, D.C., in 1968 to serve as counsel for the Poor People's Campaign that Martin Luther King, Jr. began organizing before his death, Edelman directed the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund office in Jackson, Miss. This year's senior class speaker is John Samuel Brody, of Columbus, Ohio. Brody is graduating with a bachelor of arts in economics. In his time at Colorado College, he participated in various on-campus groups, including the student government, captain of the club baseball team, and designing line of clothing for the annual fashion show. Brody is recognized around CC for the apparel business he began during his sophomore year. More information about commencement activities can be found at: www.coloradocollege.edu/commencement.  Share your commencement tweets and photos with the community using #ColoradoCollege2013.     Recorded May 20, 2013

Colorado College honors dozens of outstanding students, as well as some faculty and staff, at its annual academic honors convocation in Shove Memorial Chapel. The annual program includes departmental awards, all-college awards, and awards from the CC Student Government Association. Recorded May 7, 2013

Live-streamed from the Celeste Theater: 1:15 p.m.  Sylvie Scowcroft:  “The importance of being Steve: An econometric analysis of the contribution of patents by Steve Jobs to changes in Apple’s market valuation” 1:35.  Ellen Scully.  “What makes a company great to work for and who leads those companies?” 1:55. Anthony Hyatt.  “Do movies age like a fine wine or get lost on dusty shelves?  A study of Netflix user ratings.” 2:20 p.m. Hadley Bergh: “A question of reputation:  influence of Groupon deals on Yelp ratings.” 2:40 p.m. Bryce Daniels.  “Drilling for innovation:  examining induced innovation in the oil and gas industry.” 3 p.m.  Rafael A. Arenas.  “The value of social networks on innovation.” 3:20 p.m. Dan Johnson.  “Bidding for Classes: Course Allocation using the Colorado College Auction System” For the complete schedule of presentations, download the program. Recorded April 25, 2013

The First Mondays Events Series presents Susan Napier of Tufts University, who began her academic career in Japanese literature, but has expanded her field of research to include the medium of Japanese animation. Two of her books include "Anime from Akira to Howl’s Moving Castle: Experiencing Japanese Animations" (2001) and "From Impressionism to Anime: Japan as Fantasy and Fan Cult in the Western Imagination" (2007). She is currently writing a book on the films and manga of Hayao Miyzaki, Japan’s greatest living animator and arguably the greatest animator in the world today. Also interested in many other areas besides Japan, Napier currently teaches The Cinema of Apocalypse and Fantasy in World Culture and hopes to develop a course on science fiction soon. She has just finished an article on the Harry Potter series and plans to work more on English fantasy in the future. Recorded March 25, 2013

Soprano soloist Victoria Hansen will join The Bowed Piano Ensemble, Colorado College’s internationally renowned experimental music group, in a preview concert of their ninth European tour. The program will feature director Stephen Scott’s newest work, “Afternoon of a Fire,” a commemoration of the Waldo Canyon Fire of 2012. Recorded March 7, 2013

Born in Saudi Arabia to Syrian parents and raised in the Washington, D.C., area, hip-hop artist Omar Offendum uses his lyrical talents to bridge his Middle Eastern roots to his Western upbringing. Offendum began his rap career as one-half of the N.O.M.A.D.S., an Arab/African-American hip-hop duo. In 2010, he released his first solo album, "SyrianamericanA." His songs, which are often political, resonate with Arab youths, many of whom have embraced one of America's most popular forms of protest music: hip-hop. Offendum has been featured on several major news outlets and toured globally, helped raise thousands of dollars for various humanitarian relief organizations, and lectured at a number of academic institutions, including Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Columbia, American University of Beirut, and NYU-Abu Dhabi. Recorded January 21, 2013

Vincent Stanley, the current VP of marketing at the clothing company Patagonia, and co-author with Yvon Chouinard of "The Responsible Company: What We've Learned From Patagonia's First 40 Years" will speak on his recently published book and his experiences with Patagonia since the company's founding in 1973. Patagonia, named by Fortune in 2007 as the coolest company on the planet, has earned a reputation as much for its ground-breaking environmental and social practices as for the quality of its clothes. In "The Responsible Company," Chouinard and Stanley recount how the company and its culture gained the confidence, by step and misstep, to make its work progressively more responsible, and to ultimately share its discoveries with companies as large as Wal-Mart or as small as the corner bakery. Recorded February 18, 2013

It's not Journalism 101 Anymore: Vanity Fair's West Coast Editor Krista Smith, a Colorado College graduate, tells us how to stay ahead of the curve in this changing landscape of journalism. She is introduced by Natalie Rahhal, editor of The Leviathan.       Recorded December 3, 2012

In celebration of Colorado College Earth Week, Joel Salatin, a self-described environmentalist capitalist farmer, will come to lecture. Salatin owns Polyface Farm, where he describes his innovative farming techniques as "in the redemption business: healing the land, healing the food, healing the economy, and healing the culture." He was profiled in Michael Pollan's book, "The Omnivore's Dilemma" and has authored several books including "Folks, This Ain't Normal," "Holy Cows and Hog Heaven," and "The Sheer Ecstasy of Being a Lunatic Farmer." Recorded April 27, 2012

Tourist to a Warm World: A glimpse in to the last great global greenhouse. A lecture by Kirk Johnson, PhD, vice president of research and collections and chief curator with the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. Dr Johnson studies fossil leaves to reconstruct ancient landscapes, using geological records  to understand rapid contemporary trends of climate change. Earth’s climate has fluctuated between Icehouse and Greenhouse conditions, alternating between periods that sustained huge ice caps and times when there was almost no ice at all.  During Greenhouse conditions, in the not-so-distance past, both Greenland and Antarctica were covered by forests!  The state of Colorado preserves particularly rich records of the periods of lush vegetation and abundant water, providing a glimpse in an entirely different Planet Earth, with an environment that may help us to better understand temperature changes that are occurring in our own time.  Sponsored by the Academic Events Committee.  There will be overflow seating in Armstrong Theater.      Recorded March 26, 2012

Joyce Poole, one of the world’s leading elephant researchers, delivers the 2012 Sabine Distinguished Lecture in Psychology.  Poole is co-founder of ElephantVoices (elephantvoices.org), an organization devoted to elephant welfare and conservation. She received her Ph.D. from Cambridge University, and has studied elephant behavior and communication for more than 30 years. She has written two books, numerous scientific papers, and popular articles on elephant behavior and conservation, and has participated in scores of media projects. Funding for this talk is provided by the Colorado College Cultural Attractions Fund, Sabine Fund for Psychology, and the dean of students. Recorded March 28, 2012

Pete Earley is an award-winning journalist and nationally known advocate for mental health reform. He is best known as the author of "CRAZY: A Father's Search Through America's Mental Health Madness," which was one of two finalists for the 2007 Pulitzer Prize. His book tells two stories. The first is his struggle to get his son help after he develops a severe mental illness. The second story is based on nine months that Earley spent inside the Miami Dade County jail where he followed persons with mental disorders through the criminal justice system and out into the streets to see what happened to them. His book has won awards from the American Psychiatric Association, National Alliance on Mental Illness, and Mental Health America. Since the release of his book, he has spoken in 47 states and toured more than 100 mental health treatment programs. Recorded March 28, 2012

Kaui Hart Hemmings grew up in Hawaii and graduated from Colorado College in 1998.  In addition to The Descendants, her first novel, she has published a set of stories called House of Thieves.  The Descendants earned high praise from reviewers around the globe, became a best-seller, and was adapted into an Oscar-winning movie starring George Clooney.  Professor Steven Hayward will conduct a special interview and lead the conversation.  Space is very limited, so seating is first come, first served and the door will open at 6:30pm.  Recorded March 28, 2012

First Mondays in Block 6 will present the Bowed Piano Ensemble, Colorado College’s internationally renowned experimental music group, directed by CC Music Professor Stephen Scott. The troupe of CC students, faculty and staff perform using fish line, horsehair, rubber and plastic tape, guitar picks and more on the interior components of a grand piano to create haunting, beautiful music that is as fascinating to watch as it is to hear. The Ensemble will preview three of Professor Scott's compositions Rainbows (1981), Azul/En su Isla (2002) with soprano Victoria Hansen, and Aurora Ficta, from the Ensemble's Spring Tour to Spoleto Festival USA in Charleston, SC and Bermuda. Due to the physical nature of the performance and to achieve optimum acoustics, the First Monday event will take place in the Celeste Theater (South Theater) in the Cornerstone Arts building. Therefore seating will be limited for this performance, and the overflow seating with live-feed projection of the event will be in the Cornerstone Main Space. The all-campus reception will be in the Cornerstone Main Space, afterwards: please join the gathering! Acquaint yourself with the BPE and their recent performances at: http://www.bowedpianoensemble.com/audiovideo.html. Recorded February 20, 2012

Jaron Lanier—scientist, author, musician, and artist—visits campus to ruminate on "media technology as a grand exploration of unimagined human potential." Combining elements of cognition, Microsoft's XBOX, chemistry, and musical improvisation, among other things, Lanier takes us on a journey into the possibilities, pitfalls, and potential of New Media. Lanier has been labeled the pioneer of virtual reality (a term he coined), and his 2010 bestseller "You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto," has been described by the New York Times as "necessary reading for anyone interested in how the web and the software we use every day are reshaping culture and the marketplace." Jaron Lanier writes and edits numerous journals, appears regularly on "The News Hour," "Nightline," and "Charlie Rose," and has been profiled in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and the New Yorker, respectively. Recorded February 8, 2012