Minnesota Public Radio will broadcast an April 29 lecture given at St. Thomas by National Public Radio psychology and mental-health reporter Alix Spiegel.

The program can be heard at noon Wednesday, May 15, on the “Minnesota Public Radio News Presents” program at 91.1 FM. The program also can be heard via the Internet. Information is available here.

Later in the day, Slate magazine editor David Plotz will speak at 7 p.m. Wednesday, May 15, in the auditorium of O’Shaughnessy Educational Center on the university’s St. Paul campus.

The lecture is free, but reservations are required.  Make them by going to this Minnesota Public Radio website.

The programs are part Minnesota Public Radio’s 2012-2013 Broadcast Journalist Series, which is co-sponsored by St. Thomas’ College of Arts and Sciences and its Communication and Journalism Department.

Killowen continues the story of Hart’s crime-solving pair, American pathologist Nora Gavin and Irish archaeologist Cormac Maguire. Set again in Ireland, Hart’s novel has Gavin and Maguire investigating the puzzling connection between two men, born centuries apart, whose murdered bodies are discovered together in the trunk of a sunken car in a bog.

Hart earned an M.A. in creative writing from the University of Minnesota, a degree she earned attending one evening class every other quarter for eight years. She worked as a freelance arts journalist and theater critic – contributing to the Star Tribune, Minnesota Monthly and Minnesota Public Radio, among others – when she enrolled in graduate school strictly “to keep my brain from shrinking,” she said. Never intending to pursue a career as a novelist, she studied and wrote mainly essays, articles and memoirs.

Literary agents began knocking on her door soon after she won Glimmer Train journal’s Short Story Award for New Writers in 1996 (for the first and only short story she has ever written, “Waterborne”). But she had already decided she would pursue a novel idea that had been percolating since graduate school.

“The day Glimmer Train called me I was in bed with pneumonia, reading mysteries. And when I hung up the phone, I said, ‘I need to write this novel.’ And I did,” Hart remembered. The book became Haunted Ground, published in 2003, based on the real news story she read of a girl’s severed head found perfectly preserved in an Irish bog. It remains her bestselling novel to date.

Her other novels include Lake of Sorrows (which was copy-edited by New York Times bestselling author Tana French, still a freelancer in the publishing world at the time) and False Mermaid.

Hart spent some time away from promoting Killowen to answer questions via email and phone with the Newsroom.

Your career in crime fiction began relatively late in life, in your early 40s. Was it difficult to write your first novel, Haunted Ground, while working full-time? 

I’m not sure I’d describe the process as difficult, but it did take quite a long time! I started thinking about Haunted Ground in 1986, and didn’t begin writing it until 1996. I did spend eight years of those intervening years getting a master’s degree in creative writing, going to school in the evening and working during the day. From the time I started writing, it took about four years until the manuscript was ready to send out to publishers, and another two years before the book was finally launched. The great thing was that I wasn’t under any deadline, so I could really take the time to write the book I wanted to write; the difficulty was squeezing in writing time on evenings and weekends. My husband cooked a lot of dinners while I was out wandering imaginary bogs! Two things kept me going: I didn’t know how the story ended (and wanted to find out), and I figured that the market was good. In other words, if I could manage to write a really absorbing, entertaining, suspenseful mystery, someone would buy it.

Had I known the depth of my own ignorance I may never have started! I was teaching myself how to write  a mystery while I was writing Haunted Ground. I’m a big fan of P.D. James. To me, she’s the master mistress of the genre. I used her work as my textbook for how to write compassionate characters, interesting settings and good psychological motivation. I used A Taste for Death in particular and studied her structure, how she painted characters, etc.

Describe the moment you realized you could make a career of writing fiction for a living. Was it a leap of faith?

In early 1999, I was more than halfway through the manuscript. I had an agent waiting for it, and I guess I experienced a moment of clarity. I remember thinking, “I don’t want to be 85 years old and kicking myself for never finishing this novel.” So I asked for a six-month leave of absence from my job, and at the end of the six months, we were surviving on my freelance income at the time, along with my husband’s income as a professional touring musician. And we still had cable. My husband was a big inspiration, actually. He’d made a living for 20 years playing Irish traditional music on the accordion, and with his support I made the great leap to living as a creative artist before my book was even sold. I won’t lie – it is a challenge to make a living as self-employed artists, but we’ve managed to keep body and soul together thus far, and hope to continue.

How much archaeology, forensics and Irish history research did you do before you began writing Haunted Ground? And do you find you still have to do a lot of research for each successive novel?

Each novel is connected to a different period in history, and the field of archaeology keeps changing with new technology, so I do have to delve pretty deep into research for each new book. I read plenty of history, and I approach archaeology and forensics by reading books and journals, but also by using my journalistic skills (I was a freelance theater critic and feature writer for years), interviewing people who actually work in those specialized fields: archaeologists and antiquities experts, pathologists, police officers, DNA experts and other forensic scientists, whatever the story demands. Some of the same people have helped me for each story in the series. I’ve been so fortunate to have good contacts, and people have been very generous with their time and knowledge. It helps that Ireland is a small island, and everyone I know there is apparently connected to someone I’d like to interview.

Do you feel like an expert on those subjects now?

I don’t feel that I’m a real expert on any of the subjects I write about. But I don’t think that’s really necessary, given the level of detail required in a gripping crime novel. I do take care to read a lot about a subject before interviewing a real expert. One of my biggest fears is that one of the scientists I’ve interviewed will read one of my novels and fling it across the room, so I do try to get the scientific detail down cold. But I have learned so much. It turns out that’s my real reason for writing novels – it’s an excuse to keep learning. I get to dig into so many interesting subjects.

How do you begin a novel (i.e., do you outline; do you just plow right into the writing, chapter by chapter; do you jump between chapters, etc.)?

I tend to write a novel straight through, start to finish, rather than jumping around too much. It helps me to follow a thread, and as I mentioned earlier, I don’t know how the story ends. And I do get stuck. Sometimes it takes a few days (or even weeks) of pacing and plotting before the story takes the correct turn. But writing a novel to me is almost like doing an archaeological excavation. With each chapter I’m digging further down into my characters and into the complex situations in which they find themselves. I don’t know what’s at the bottom of the pit until I get there! Once I’ve worked out how the story ends (usually pretty far into the writing process), I do go back through and make sure that all of the hints and clues and suspenseful bits dovetail neatly.

Has the dwindling influence and sales reach of book publishing changed book promotion since Haunted Ground was published in 2003?

Hart traverses a stile at Dysert O’Dea chapel in County Clare, Ireland, 2012. (Photo by Carey Sidla)

Yes and no. There are a few really bestselling authors who always tour, and the people who get the most support for touring are the people who need it least. All the midlisters like me, we don’t get that. Publishers can’t justify sinking a lot of money into touring because there’s no visible return. I’ve done some national tours in the past at my own expense. Recently I’ve toured some libraries around Minnesota, but I’m waiting to see if I can get some support from my publisher (Scribner) to do more. The whole book universe is shifting, and no one really knows where the ground is any more. The transition between real books and ebooks is a revolution. Everybody’s waiting to see how the dust settles.

Publishers will do the traditional publicity they’ve always done – sending out copies for review, but even that’s tough. The New York Times is now the only paper to print a separate section for book reviews. High-exposure, respected outlets have really dwindled. Publishing houses are just starting to get into online marketing, and a lot of the promotion now is up to the writers. I’m in charge of keeping up my own website, and social media is expected of authors now. I enjoy Facebook and I have a Pinterest account, but I’m still getting the hang of Twitter. I thought at first I’d have nothing to say, but I enjoy posting about writing, Sisters in Crime, publishing, archaeology, cool places in Ireland … .

After J.K. Rowling “killed” Dumbledore, she said she needed a private moment to cry and mourn his death. Now that you have written four books with the crime-solving duo Nora Gavin and Cormac Maguire, have you become similarly attached to and familiar with them?

Cormac and Nora have become like old friends – although I haven’t finished with them yet, not by a long shot. I know that there are things about each of them I’ve yet to discover. And I’m probably just as attached to some of the supporting players as well. I remember my agent suggesting that I get rid of Garrett Devaney, the Garda detective in Haunted Ground, and I thought, “I can’t get rid of him – I have to know how he’s going to get on with the wife, and teaching his daughter to play the fiddle.” So Devaney actually returns in False Mermaid, the third book in the series. And fortunately, things keep turning up in Irish bogs, so I’ll never run out of material. One of the advantages to having an archaeologist as a main character is that I can dip into any period in history.

If your books were made into films, which actors would you choose to play Nora and Cormac?

Hard question! I have my own mental pictures of Cormac and Nora, and they’re not quite like any of the actors who might be chosen to play their parts. So I usually leave it up to readers. But if forced to choose… It’s been so long since I started writing the series that some of the actors I first imagined – Gabriel Byrne, Aidan Quinn – are now a little old for Cormac. So maybe Colin Farrell or Michael Fassbender, or even Jeremy Northam? And I’ve always seen someone with particularly Irish features for Nora – like Maura Tierney, or perhaps Anna Friel. Whoever the actors are, they’ve got to have a bit of chemistry!

How did your life change once you devoted your career fully to writing novels?

Hart (right) with her agent, Sally Wofford-Girand, at the book launch for Haunted Ground, November 2003. (Photo by Susan Van Baerle)

I’d say there’s a much greater flexibility in my life that I really enjoy. And a greater solitude as well, working alone so much of the time. But I really enjoy that. And the writing part of being a writer is not actually full time. About half the time, I’m doing a lot of what I used to do at my old communications job, i.e., publicity, marketing and promotion, things that are required of all writers nowadays. One of the lovely perks has been taking a tour group to Ireland – I’ve led a tour for the past three years, visiting many of the locations in my books – museums, castles, bogs, pubs. We’re taking a break this year, but I hope to do another tour in 2014.

Are you a night owl or morning person as far as writing style?

Definitely a morning person. I can’t work much at night, or even in the late afternoon! I like to work in the quiet mornings, with pen and paper, staring out the window and pretending that I’m in Ireland.

How often do you write? (Are you structured and write at a certain time for a certain length of time a certain number of days a week, or not?) And why does this work for you?

I’m afraid I’m completely undisciplined. I’d love to have a set ritual, but I don’t. But when I’m working on a book, I try to write at least three pages a day. For a long time it feels as if you’re not making any progress, but eventually those pages add up to a few chapters, and before you know it, half the book is written.

How do you celebrate the completion of a novel?

Paddy (my husband) and I usually treat ourselves to a lovely dinner out to celebrate any big project being finished at last. In addition to his music CDs, my husband has undertaken a huge documentary project, The Paddy O’Brien Tune Collection (so far containing 1,000 tunes from his repertoire of traditional music), and he has also written a book, a memoir called The Road From Castlebarnagh, about growing up playing traditional music in rural Ireland in the 1950s and 60s. It’s great – and yes, I am totally biased, but others agree!

Dr. Soraya Castro, professor and senior researcher at the Institute for the Study of International Relations in Havana, will discuss “David and Gulliver: Competing Metaphors in the Cuban-U.S. Relationship” at 4 p.m. Wednesday, May 15, in the Luann Dummer Center for Women, Room 103, O’Shaughnessy Educational Center, on the university’s St. Paul campus.

Dr. Soraya Castro

The talk is free and open to the public.

Castro observes that Cuba and the United States have constructed different national narratives about their relationship to one another since 1959. Cuban leaders often characterize the relationship with the metaphor of David and Goliath, with Cuba being a small, valiant defender facing an enormous aggressor. American leaders, on the other hand, invoke images of Gulliver and the Lilliputians, in which the giant is benign, honorable and willing to suffer pin pricks the little people occasionally inflict on him rather than destroy the attackers.

In addition to Cuba-U.S. relations, Castro also specializes in U.S. domestic politics, including elections and Congress. She has visited St. Thomas twice before, in 2002 and 2008.

Castro holds a Ph.D. in law from the University of Havana, a degree in international law from the Institute of Foreign Relations in Moscow, and did post-doctoral studies at the University of Bologna in Italy.

Before her appointment at the Institute for the Study of International Relations in Havana, she was a professor and researcher at Havana University. Over the past 20 years she has taught or held fellowships at Johns Hopkins University, University of California – San Diego, Georgetown University, University of Iowa, American University, Uppsala University in Sweden, Smithsonian Institution, the University of Alabama and the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University.

She is the author of many articles and book chapters, and co-author of the 2012 Fifty Years of Revolution: Perspectives on Cuba, the United States, and the World.

In addition to her native Spanish, Castro is fluent in English and Russian.

The program is the next in Minnesota Public Radio’s 2012-13 Broadcast Journalist Series, which is co-sponsored by St. Thomas’ College of Arts and Sciences and its Communication and Journalism Department.

David Plotz

The event is free, but reservations are required. Make them by going to the Minnesota Public Radio website.

Plotz will be interviewed that evening by Eric Ringham, digital Web editor for “The Daily Circuit” on Minnesota Public Radio News. Prior to coming to MPR, Ringham was a commentary editor at the Star Tribune newspaper in Minneapolis.

Plotz joined Slate as a writer when the online magazine was launched in 1996 and has been editor since 2008. Before joining Slate, he was a senior editor and staff writer for the Washington City Paper; he also has written for The New York Times Magazine, Harper’s, Rolling Stone, GQ, New Republic and The Washington Post.

A 1992 graduate of Harvard University, Plotz won the National Press Club’s Hume Award for Political Reporting in 2000, was a National Magazine Award finalist (for a Harper’s article about South Carolina’s gambling industry) and won an Online Journalism Award for a Slate piece on Enron. He also appears on the weekly Slate Political Gabfest podcast with John Dickerson and Emily Bazelon.

Eric Ringham

Based in the United States, Slate is a current affairs and culture magazine created by former New Republic editor Michael Kinsley. Since June 2008, Slate has been managed by The Slate Group, an online publishing entity created by The Washington Post Co. to develop and manage Web-only magazines.

Plotz is the author of two books: The Genius Factory: The Curious History of the Nobel Prize Sperm Bank (2005) and Good Book: The Bizarre, Hilarious, Disturbing, Marvelous, and Inspiring Things I Learned When I Read Every Single Word of the Bible (2009).

Minnesota Public Radio’s Broadcast Journalist Series, now in its 17th year, commissions renowned journalists for a 24-hour residency four times a year. They share insights on their craft and issues that affect our world.

Derreck Kayongo.

Derreck Kayongo, whose family fled Uganda during the Idi Amin era and is now a U.S. citizen, will talk on “Tapping Your Power to Create Social Change” at 7:30 p.m. Monday, May 13, in Woulfe Alumni Hall North of Anderson Student Center, located on the university’s St. Paul campus.

His talk, free and open to the public, is sponsored by the University Lectures Committee at St. Thomas.

Kayongo came up with the idea for his Atlanta-based Global Soap Program in the early 1990s when he first arrived in the United States and stayed in a Philadelphia hotel. Puzzled by the new bar of soap left in his bathroom each day, he tried to return it to the concierge because he thought he was being charged for it. “When I was told it was just hotel policy to provide new soap every day, I couldn’t believe it.”

He told the story to his dad, a former soap maker in Uganda.

“My dad said people in America can afford to throw it away. But I just started to think, ‘What if we took some of this soap and recycled it, made brand new soap from it and then sent it home to people who couldn’t afford soap?’” he told CNN, which two years ago named him one of its Top 10 CNN Heroes.

Kayongo started the Global Soap Program in 2009 with his wife, friends and Atlanta-based hotels.  Now 1,100 hotel properties around the country are collecting up to 7,500 pounds of used soap bars weekly that are shipped to an Atlanta warehouse where volunteers clean, reprocess and package the bars.

“We do not mix the soaps because they come with different pH systems, different characters, smells and colors,” he told CNN. “We sanitize them first, then heat them at very high temperatures, chill them and cut them into final bars. It’s a very simple process, but a lot of work.”

The program is producing up to 30,000 new bars of soap per week.  They are distributed for free, along with hygiene education, to refugees, disaster victims, homeless families and people living in extreme poverty in the United States and nearly 30 countries around the world.

While Kayongo has become a U.S. citizen and college graduate, he knows from experience that many refugees, in Africa and elsewhere, lack access to basic sanitation.

Washing hands, he says, is the most effective and inexpensive way to prevent diarrheal and respiratory infections that take the lives of more than 2.4 million children each year.

“Our innovative model means our hotel partners can save money on disposal costs and receive a tax deduction, all while helping people in need around the world,” said Sam Stephens, executive director of the Global Soap Project. “It’s a win-win for the environment, global health and business.”

In addition to his work with soap, Yayongo has worked as a program director for Amnesty International, American Friends Service Committee and CARE International.

More information is available at the Global Soap Project website.

Her lecture is the next in Minnesota Public Radio’s 2012-13 Broadcast Journalist Series, which is co-sponsored by St. Thomas’ College of Arts and Sciences and its Communication and Journalism Department.

Alix Spiegel

The talk is free, but reservations are required. Make them by going to this Minnesota Public Radio website.

Spiegel arrived at National Public Radio in 2003 and much of her reporting has been on mental health. She has covered everything from the psychological impact of killing another person, to the emotional devastation of Katrina, to psycho-therapeutic approaches to transgender children.

Over the course of her career in public radio, Spiegel has won the George Foster Peabody Award, Livingston Award and Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award. Her 2007 documentary on mental-health issues and crime plaguing a southern Mississippi FEMA trailer park housing Katrina victims was recognized with the Scripps Howard National Journalism Award and Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award. Her radio documentary “81 Words,” about the removal of homosexuality from psychiatry’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, is being turned into a film by HBO.

Originally from Baltimore, Md., Spiegel graduated from Oberlin College. She began her career in radio in 1995 as one of the founding producers of the public radio show “This American Life.” She left the show in 1999 to become a full-time reporter and also has written for The New Yorker and The New York Times.

Minnesota Public Radio’s Broadcast Journalist Series, now in its 17th year, commissions renowned journalists for a 24-hour residency four times a year. They share insights on their craft and issues that affect our world.

Her talk, sponsored by the University Lectures Committee, is free and open to the public.  She will sign autographs following the lecture.

The title of Ali’s talk is “Be the Champion for Your Health.” Motivated by boxing to lead a healthy and active lifestyle, Ali encourages others to achieve their career dreams while fitting exercise into their daily routines. She offers advice on preventing diabetes, obesity and heart disease and encourages success in the areas of diet, fitness, family and relationships.

The daughter of Muhammad Ali and Veronica Porsche Anderson, Ali is a fitness and wellness expert whose boxing record included 24 wins (21 of them knockouts) and zero losses. She retired from the ring in 2007 as the super middleweight boxing champion of the world.

She has been a cast member on NBC’s reality program “Stars Earn Stripes,” host of ABC’s “Everyday Health,” a correspondent for CBS’s “The Early Show,” co-host of “American Gladiators,” and in 2007 made it to a final round of “Dancing With the Stars.”

Laila Ali

She is the author of Reach, a motivational book for young women, and has promoted healthy eating and active living through appearances on Food Network’s “Emeril” and “Rachael Ray.”

The wife of former NFL wide receiver Curtis Conway and the mother of a 5-year-old son and 2-year-old daughter, Ali was the 2012 “mombassador” for the Aquaphor New York City Triathlon, an event she has finished in 3 hours and 6 minutes.

Ali is a native of Miami and graduated from Santa Monica College with a degree in business management. The former owner of a salon in in southern California, she recently has launched lines of personal care as well as food products.

In 2008 Father Dennis Dease, president of St. Thomas, along with college and university presidents from across the country, signed the American College and University Presidents’ Climate Commitment. That year the university adopted a Climate Action Plan to achieve carbon neutrality by the year 2035 and to pursue green, sustainable and energy-efficient strategies for all new building projects.

The Environmental Protection Agency yesterday recognized St. Thomas as the 2012-2013 conference champion for using more green power than any other college or university in the Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference.

St. Thomas won the EPA’s College and University Green Power Challenge by using nearly 33 million kilowatt hours of green power in 2012. Collectively, schools in the MIAC purchased nearly 50 million kilowatt hours of green energy.

Windsource, the green-energy program of Xcel Energy, the nation’s top wind-power utility, announced that St. Thomas is the largest purchaser of renewable energy in the company’s history. In the fourth quarter of 2012, 82 percent of the electric power used on the university’s St. Paul and Minneapolis campuses was purchased from the Windsource program.

The Gabriel Kney organ.

The nearly 33 million kilowatt hours of wind-generated power used by St. Thomas last year is equivalent to reducing nearly 57 million pounds of carbon dioxide annually. It also is equivalent to the annual output of five large wind turbines or taking 5,380 passenger vehicles off the road.

And after studying the electric motors that power the 2,786-pipe Gabriel Kney organ in the university’s Chapel of St. Thomas Aquinas, Windsource engineers calculated that the amount of wind energy the university purchases each year would be enough to perform Bach’s 15-minute Toccata and Fugue in D minor a total of 1,323,364 times.

Laura McCarten, Xcel Energy regional vice president, will congratulate St. Thomas and present the university with a six-foot model of a wind turbine during an Earth Week celebration at noon Thursday, April 25, on the John P. Monahan Plaza just outside the Anderson Student Center.

All are welcome to the event. Refreshments will include ice cream and, in keeping with the theme of wind-generated power, there will be kites to fly and Lil’ Dutch Maid Almond Windmill Cookies to eat.

If you are reading this at St. Thomas, 82 percent of the energy to run your computer comes from wind farms like this one near Worthington in southwestern Minnesota. Xcel’s Nobles Wind Farm is powered by one of the best wind resources in the country.

A two-minute video about St. Thomas’ use of wind-generated energy, prepared by Windsource, will be shown on the screen in the main atrium of the Anderson Student Center. You also can see the video here.

A Sustainable Saint Paul Award was presented to St. Thomas Wednesday for its work on the Anderson Student Center.

Mayor Chris Coleman and the St. Paul City Council honored the university and Opus Design Build and Opus AE, the contractor and architect, with the Institutional Green Building Design Award at the beginning of the council’s weekly meeting.

“The Anderson Student Center is a testament to the environmentally conscious steps the University of St. Thomas took in building the new student center, and is a great model for institutional green building design,” the city said in honoring the project.

The $66 million, 225,000-square-foot center, located at the corner of Summit and Cretin avenues, opened in January 2012 and last summer was awarded Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) gold certification by the U.S. Green Building Council.

In designing the Anderson Student Center, Opus and St. Thomas participated in Xcel’s Energy Design Assistance Program that helps owners and design teams evaluate energy-conservation strategies. While conservation measures initially were more expensive, it is expected they will provide a projected annual savings of $62,000, with an estimated payback of about four years.

The Recyclemania Tournament, a friendly national and state competition meant to promote recycling and reduce waste at colleges and universities, announced winners on Friday.

In state competition, St. Thomas placed second overall behind the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and was first in four of seven categories. St. Thomas was first in overall pounds of recycled material (116,602 pounds), and first in the per-capita categories for paper, cardboard and bottles and cans.

The Princeton Review on Tuesday announced that St. Thomas is included in its fourth annual “Guide to 322 Green Colleges: 2013 Edition.”  The free guide, according to Princeton Review, “profiles 320 schools in the United States and two in Canada that demonstrate notable commitments to sustainability in their academic offerings, campus infrastructure, activities and career preparation.”

All Earth Week activities at St. Thomas are free and open to the public. They are:

• All week, April 22-26: Tours of the greenhouse, located on the south side of Owens Science Hall on the south campus, will be held from noon to 1 p.m. Monday through Friday of Earth Week. The tours will feature projects of St. Thomas students, staff and faculty. You can see videos about the projects here, here and here. Free garden-soil analyses are available for the first 20 visitors.
• Monday, April 22: Read about Earth Day here.
• Tuesday, April 23: A Green Research Symposium will be held at noon in Room 126 (first-floor auditorium) of the John R. Roach Center for the Liberal Arts.
• Tuesday, April 23: The St. Thomas Green Team will hold a B.Y.O.B (bring your own bottle) event during the noon convo hour in Anderson Student Center. Participants can play water pong; winners receive reusable water bottles.
• Tuesday, April 23: An interdisciplinary panel discussion of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring will be held at 3:30 p.m. in Room 108 (the leather room) of O’Shaughnessy-Frey Library Center. Refreshments will be provided.
• Tuesday, April 23: BEAST (Bicycle Enthusiasts at St. Thomas) will host its annual neighborhood bike ride during Earth Week over the noon convo hour. The ride starts at John P. Monahan Plaza on the university’s lower quadrangle and is open to anyone with a bike and helmet.
• Wednesday, April 24: BEAST (Bicycle Enthusiasts at St. Thomas) will offer free bike tune-ups and repairs for the St. Thomas community. Tune-ups start at 3 p.m. in the BEAST “lair,” located in the basement of Loras Hall on the university’s south campus.
• Thursday, April 25: Green research posters will be on display all day Thursday in Anderson Student Center. The posters will depict environmental research conducted by St. Thomas students.
• Thursday, April 25: A Windsource celebration will be held over the noon convo hour on John P. Monahan Plaza. St. Thomas will receive a six-foot-tall wind-turbine model and will be recognized for being the biggest user of green energy generated by Xcel’s Windsource program. The university also will receive a plaque from the Environmental Protection Agency for winning the College and University Green Power Challenge in the MIAC. There will be displays, kites, ice cream and Lil’ Dutch Maid Almond Windmill Cookies. All are welcome.
• Saturday, April 27: The 21st annual spring cleanup of the east bank of the Mississippi River will be held from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Volunteers should meet at the monument area at the intersection of Mississippi River Boulevard and Summit Avenue. The annual rite of spring is co-sponsored by the UST Green Team, Recycling Team and the Department of Natural Resources Adopt-a-River program.

A list of St. Thomas Earth Week events can be found here.

Wind turbines at work near Lake Benton in southwestern Minnesota. The town calls itself “the original wind power capital of the Midwest.” The blades are 122 feet long and the turbines are 262 feet tall, nearly as tall as a football field is long.

The program can be heard at noon Tuesday, April 16, on the “Minnesota Public Radio News Presents” program at 91.1 FM. The program also can be heard via the Internet. Information is available here.

Alexander spoke in St. Thomas’ Woulfe Alumni Hall on Monday, April 8. Her lecture  was sponsored by Student Diversity and Inclusion Services, University Lectures Committee, College of Arts & Sciences, Dean of Students Office, St. Thomas Activities & Recreation (STAR), Luann Dummer Center for Women, Justice & Peace Studies, American Culture & Difference, and Sociology & Criminal Justice.

Patricia O’Hara will discuss “The Catholic University in the 21st Century” from 4 to 5 p.m. Thursday, April 18, in the Frey Moot Court Room, located in the School of Law building on St. Thomas’ downtown Minneapolis campus.

Patricia O’Hara.

The program, free and open to the public, is co-sponsored by a coalition of eight St. Thomas centers and institutes. For more information and to register, visit this website or call (651) 962-4842.

O’Hara joined the Notre Dame Law School in 1981. When named vice president for student affairs for the university in 1990 she became the first woman to serve as an officer at Notre Dame. In 1999 she began a 10-year appointment as law dean and now teaches on the law faculty in the areas of corporations, securities regulation and higher education.

“While all institutions of higher learning are confronting economic and demographic challenges, Catholic colleges and universities face added pressures,” explained Elizabeth Schiltz, a professor at St. Thomas’ School of Law and co-director of one of the series’ sponsors, the Terrence J. Murphy Institute for Catholic Thought, Law, and Public Policy.

“We have additional challenges, but also opportunities,” she said. “Catholic universities like St. Thomas welcome a diverse student body. Some students are Catholic, some are from other religions and some are not from any religion. We strive to respect all students and to nurture this diversity, and at the same time we strive to protect our religious identity.

“This is a delicate and sometimes tricky balance to achieve. At St. Thomas, we found that many faculty and staff have been discussing as well as dealing with this challenge. It led us to create this series and bring to campus noted leaders in Catholic higher education from around the country.”

The series opened in March 2012 and has featured lectures by Father Robert Spitzer, former president of Gonzaga University; Lee Shulman, former president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching;  John Garvey, president of Catholic University of America; and Father James Burns, interim dean of Boston College’s Woods College of Advancing Studies of Boston College.

In addition to the Murphy Institute, the St. Thomas series is sponsored by the Center for Catholic Studies, John A. Ryan Institute for Catholic Social Thought, School of Law, Holloran Center for Ethical Leadership in the Professions, Koch Chair in Business Ethics, Center for Ethical Business Cultures and Veritas Institute.

Light refreshments will be served following the program.

Over the past 30 years, Giovanni’s outspokenness, in her writing and in lectures, has brought the eyes of the world upon her. She prides herself on being “a Black American, a daughter, a mother, a professor of English.” Giovanni remains as determined and committed as ever to the fight for civil rights and equality. Her focus is on the individual, specifically, on the power one has to make a difference in oneself, and thus, in the lives of others.

Born in Knoxville, Tenn., Giovanni grew up in Lincoln Heights, an all-black suburb of Cincinnati, Ohio. She and her sister spent their summers with their grandparents in Knoxville, and she graduated with honors from Fisk University, her grandfather’s alma mater, in 1968; after graduating from Fisk, she attended the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University. She published her first book of poetry, Black Feeling Black Talk, in 1968, and within the next year published a second book, thus launching her career as a writer.

The author of some 30 books for both adults and children, Nikki Giovanni is a University Distinguished Professor at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia.

Q&A with Nikki Giovanni

You are known for being outspoken and you like to push for the edge. Can you explain why that is important to you?

Because it’s fun to see where the edge is. If you’re not pushing yourself, you are holding yourself back, don’t you think? Life is a really good idea and since we are here, why not live it?

Are there some topics you keep coming back to in your poetry, writings and spoken-word performances? Why?

Mostly I come back to people and their motivations, as I understand them. I’m a big fan of courage and daring. I am always looking for that.

Many people fear mistakes and failure, but you don’t. Why?

Mistakes and failures are a fact of life. How else would we, can we progress? We need to learn from what works and what does not work. And we can never be afraid of being laughed at or put down. We just need to keep finding people who believe in us and our dreams.

Your first book of poetry, Black Feeling Black Talk, was published in 1968 during the Civil Rights Movement. As a civil rights activist, what advice do you have for young people who seek social justice?

I shy away from advice because each generation has its own set of particulars with which to live. I do know that Occupy [movement] would have been better served with less leadership rather than more. The greatest movement in America was never a movement: the Great Migration of African-Americans bleeding out of the South to the factories and freedoms of the North. Millions participated and it could not be stopped because there was no head to cut off, no body to shoot down.

When you were interviewed for the University of Virginia’s Public Institute of History, you said that you’re “always hesitant when people talk about role models because most of life is not about what you see, but what you dream.” Could you please elaborate?

I really hate the idea of a role model. All the good things in life, as far as I can see, come from someone creating something, not someone following something. Life is not about the practicalities, but the possibilities. Many of us will not see our dreams come to fruition but we are the better for dreaming. I think it is so unfair and stupid for other people to tell you what you can’t do because they don’t have either courage or vision. You must create and then re-create yourself.

You come from a long line of storytellers. Who were those storytellers and what kinds of stories still intrigue you?

The storytellers of my life were, first and foremost, my grandfather. Grandpapa was a Latin scholar with a great love of Greek and Roman myth. He would tell us, the other grands (grandchildren) and me, stories of the stars. I will always remember him pointing out Orion’s belt and the north star, and all the stories. I disagreed with him about “The Grasshopper and the Ant” and finally wrote a book with my version. I also think Sisyphus was not being punished but challenged.

My mother was a dreamer. She would play the “what I am eating and where I am going” game with my sister and me. I saw the whole world sitting at the dining room table with mommy. We only played that when our father was not at dinner. He tended to focus on “eat your food” kinds of things. I still would prefer conversation to food in good company around a warm table.

What values did you learn from the other people in your life – your father and grandmother?

The only thing I really learned from my father was to gently take care of the folks you love. He was fierce in his emotions, and I still fear strong emotions. I am also way more patient than my father. (Though he had pretty legs and a beautifully shaped skull, which, when my sister was being treated for a brain tumor – which eventually cost her her life – I shaved my hair down to in order to help my sister not feel bad about her hair falling out from her treatments. The three of us had great heads! So he had a purpose.) Plus, mommy liked him. I think he and I never got on the same track.

Grandmother was a fighter. She would go toe-to-toe with anyone who she thought needed to either be corrected or stood up for. I like to think I am a stand-up person. I don’t laugh at stupid jokes; I don’t join in when someone’s feelings are being hurt. I have said and I believe I live the creed that I’d always rather be with the person running than the mob chasing. That can be scary but whatever makes us brave is also what makes us human.

You have a good sense of humor, so what kinds of things make you laugh?

If life is not funny, then, to quote Little Willie John, “grits ain’t groceries.” If we can’t laugh at ourselves then what on earth are we doing? The whole human experiment makes me laugh.

What are you working on now? What’s next for you?

My forthcoming book is titled Chasing Utopia, which is actually a hybrid – poetry and prose. Utopia is [the name of a] beer and my mother was a beer drinker, so that’s how it started.  … It was fun to write, and I am enjoying reading it. The publication date is fall 2013.

Friday’s event was sponsored by the Black Empowerment Student Alliance, STAR, University Lectures Committee, the Office of Institutional Diversity, Student Diversity and Inclusion Services, the Luann Dummer Center for Women, the UST English Department, the American Culture and Difference program, and the UST Justice and Peace Studies Department.

Leonitia Flynn

Flynn will read from her work at 7:30 p.m. Friday, April 26, in the auditorium of the O’Shaughnessy Educational Center on St. Thomas’ St. Paul campus. The reading, free and open to the public, will cap a week of events, classroom visits and public appearances by the poet.

Flynn will take part in a public conversation with local poet Dobby Gibson, titled “Wireless Connections: How Poetry Communicates.” The event begins at 7 p.m. Thursday, April 25, at the University Club, 420 Summit Ave., St. Paul.

Gibson is the author of three books of poetry: Polar (2004), which won the Beatrice Hawley Award; Skirmish ( 2009); and It Becomes You (2013), all of which were published by Graywolf Press of Minneapolis. He has received fellowships from the McKnight and Jerome Foundations and has twice been a finalist for the Minnesota Book Awards.

Both events are co-sponsored by the Friends of the St. Paul Public Library, a nonprofit group that advocates for the library.

The $5,000 O’Shaughnessy Award for Poetry, established in 1997, honors Irish poets.  The award is named for Lawrence O’Shaughnessy, who taught English at St. Thomas from 1948 to 1950, formerly served on the university’s Board of Trustees and has recently retired as head of the I.A. O’Shaughnessy Foundation.

Leontia Flynn was born in County Down in Northern Ireland in 1974. She won an Eric Gregory award for younger poets in 2001 and her first book of poems, These Days (Jonathan Cape, 2004), won the Forward prize for best first collection, and was shortlisted for the Whitbread Poetry Prize. On the basis of her first book, she also was named one of 20 “Next Generation” poets by the Poetry Book Society in Britain.

Her second collection, Drives (Jonathan Cape), was published in 2008, when she won the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature and a major award from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. Her third collection, Profit and Loss, was published in 2011.

Since 2005, Flynn has been a research fellow at the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry, Queen’s University Belfast, where she completed her Ph.D. in English. She has written numerous reviews, articles and critical essays.

The critic Fran Brearton, a co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish Poetry, has said of Flynn that her “humor, her ability to entertain, and her astute powers of observation are wonderful gifts. She is one of the most original and accomplished poets of her generation; her voice is distinctive, and her technique as lightly and deftly carried as her learning.”

Previous winners of the O’Shaughnessy Award are Eavan Boland, John F. Deane, Peter Sirr, Louis de Paor, Moya Cannon, Frank Orsmby, Thomas McCarthy, Michael Coady, Kerry Hardie, Dennis O’Driscoll,  Seán Lysaght, Pat Boran, Mary O’Malley, Theo Dorgan,  Leanne O’Sullivan  and Gerard Smyth.

For more information, contact Jim Rogers, director of the Center for Irish Studies, (651) 962-5662.

Free and open to the public, the Education for Everyone series aims to share information and raise awareness of students with different challenges so that everyone can better support these individuals in schools and communities. This event may satisfy the Early Warning Signs of Mental Health Continuing Education Credits required for re-licensure (check with your district licensure committee).

Dr. Shelley Neilsen Gatti, assistant professor in the Department of Special Education and Gifted Education in the College of Applied Professional Studies, and Dr. Tim Balke, director of MA and certificate programs, College of Education, Leadership and Counseling, will present on “Early Warning Signs of Mental Illness.”

The event also will include a mental health musical performed by Fidgety Fairy Tales, the retelling of popular fairy tales with a twist. Each story contains positive messages and portrayals of children with mental health disorders as well as some of the common symptoms of each disorder.

Featured this year: Fidgety Fairy Tales’ Greatest Hits:

• “Little Red Riding Hood” (AD/HD) – Little Hood gets distracted on her way to granny’s house, but her ability to pay attention to multiple things at once helps her defeat the wolf.
• “The Prince and The Pea” (autism) – Prince Frank doesn’t act like other princes. When the queen decides to test him, his hypersensitivity helps him feel a teeny, tiny pea under 20 mattresses.
• “Boyd, Who Cried Wolf” (Tourette syndrome) – Shepherd Boyd can’t help shouting “Wolf!” The townspeople want to fire him because he keeps disturbing their sleep, but then they come up with a creative solution that makes everyone happy (except the wolf).

Register online. For more information visit the Education for Everyone Web page or view the event flyer.

Bishop Arthur Kennedy
(Photo credit: Archdiocese of Boston)

Free and open to the public, the Archbishop Ireland Memorial Library Lecture is co-sponsored by the library and the St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity.

Kennedy was appointed auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Boston in 2010 and last year was named Boston’s episcopal vicar for the new evangelization.

He previously served 30 years on the St. Thomas theology faculty, was executive director of the Office of Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, and was rector of St. John Seminary in Boston.

For information visit the seminary’s website or call (651) 962-5050.

Dr. Philip Rolnick, a St. Thomas professor of theology, said that over the last 40 years “Barbour has been perhaps the most well-known figure in the field of science and religion. In fact, Ian Barbour did much to found this interdisciplinary study in the contemporary academy.”

Ian Barbour lecturing at Carleton College on the relationship between religion and science. (Photo by Kate Trenerry, courtesy of Carleton College.)

Dr. Alan Padgett of Luther Seminary will open the program with an overview of Barbour’s accomplishments. Next, Dr. Nathan Hallanger of Augsburg College will present the paper “A Brief History of Ian Barbour’s Work.”

Following a short video, Barbour will take questions from the audience.

The program is free and open to the public and will be followed by a reception and refreshments. It is co-sponsored by St. Thomas’ Theology and Philosophy departments and the Science and Theology Network.

Barbour, who will turn 90 later this year, earned his doctorate in 1949 at the University of Chicago, where he studied with Italian physicist Enrico Fermi. He went on to teach at the University of Kalamazoo, where he chaired the Physics Department, and later enrolled at the Yale Divinity School to study theology and ethics.

Barbour joined the Religion and Physics departments at Carleton College in 1955 and became Carleton’s first professor of science, technology and society. He has written many books and articles on science and religion and in 1999 received the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion.

For more information contact Dr. Philip Rolnick, chair of the Science and Theology Network, at parolnick@stthomas.edu or visit this website.

Co-sponsored by the University of St. Thomas Law Journal and the Terrence J. Murphy Institute for Catholic Thought, Law and Public Policy, the 2013 UST Law Journal Symposium will take place Friday, April 5, in the Schulze Hall Grand Atrium, Minneapolis campus. The event will feature 11 scholars from around the country and the world who will share their research and opinions on a subject that event organizers hope will serve as a catalyst for a new approach to the study and practice of intellectual property law.

For more information and to register for this free event click here.

“As intellectual property right law tries to keep up with technology in order to continue to drive technological innovation and economic development, and as the economy globalizes, we are forced to question the fundamental assumptions about intellectual property,” said Phil Steger, Law Journal Symposium editor. “IP and technology present fundamental questions concerning the ownership of life and the origins of creativity. IP and economic development confronts us with questions concerning how to balance the rights of IP owners with the needs of the poor.

“Globalization means that traditional IP regimes, which developed in Christian societies, are entering societies shaped by equally ancient and sophisticated religious traditions that have different ways of understanding and ordering the world. Finally, the ubiquity of the Internet and its domination by social media and open source sharing suggest that traditional IP, with its emphasis on individual ownership rights, are being challenged by new emphases on social relationships and duties. We are bringing in some of the brightest minds in IP law, bioethics, and religious scholarship to help answer the question of ‘How can religious thought constructively inform the meaning and direction of intellectual property law?’”

The symposium will feature paper presenters and panel participants from several different religious backgrounds, including Hinduism, Judaism, Islam, as well as Protestant and Catholic Christianity. The goal of bringing in this religiously diverse group of scholars and advocates, Steger said, is to shed some light on how various religious traditions can contribute perspectives and answers to the latest intellectual property law questions and ethical dilemmas.

The lineup of speakers includes University of Virginia law professor and intellectual property law scholar Margo Bagley, who will present “The Wheat and the (GMO) Tares: Lessons from Plant Patent Litigation and the Parables of Christ,” which will feature discussion on the ongoing U.S. Supreme Court case Bowman v. Monsanto.

The symposium also will include DePaul University law professor Roberta Kwall, whose presentation, titled “Remember the Sabbath Day and Enhance Your Creativity,” will draw from themes found in her recent research that explores the intersection between intellectual property, cultural property and Jewish law.

Prominent theologian Paul Griffiths of Duke University also will present on some of the fundamental tensions between Christian scripture and theology and IP law concerning the ownership of creativity and ideas.

Steger said the Law Journal staff credits the idea for and development of the theme for the upcoming symposium to UST law professor Tom Berg who, in addition to his work as a religious liberties scholar, has a professional background in intellectual property law.

“Professor Berg is a first-rate IP scholar and a nationally recognized scholar on the First Amendment and religious liberty,” Steger said. “The idea for the symposium and the excellent responses by scholars to our invitations are the direct result of his expertise and reputation.”

Papers from the symposium will be published in a forthcoming issue of the University of St. Thomas Law Journal.

The festival, which began at St. Thomas in 1980, traditionally presents a broad range of artistic forms. All of this year’s events are free and open to the public and will be held on the university’s St. Paul campus. They are:

Robin Hemley

Robin Hemley will give a lecture on his book Nola: A Memoir of Faith, Art, and Madness at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, April 11, in the auditorium of O’Shaughnessy Educational Center.

Nola recounts the life of the author’s sister, who died at age 25 after several years of treatment for schizophrenia.

Winner of a Guggenheim Fellowship, Hemley has published seven books; his stories and essays have appeared in the New York Times, Chicago Tribune and many literary magazines and anthologies. He is the editor of Defunct magazine.

Quvenzhane Wallis

Beasts of the Southern Wild, nominated for four Academy Awards and winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival, will be shown from 8 to 11 p.m. Tuesday, April 16, in Scooter’s, located on the first floor of Anderson Student Center.

The film, a drama with fantasy elements, is set in the Louisiana bayou and stars 6-year-old Quvenzhane Wallis. The film will be introduced by Dr. David Penchansky of the St. Thomas Theology Department. More information about the film can be found here.

St. Thomas Alumni Choir, a mixed vocal ensemble of young and old alumni, will present a concert from 3 to 4:30 p.m. Sunday, April 21, in the Chapel of St. Thomas Aquinas.

The choir is directed by alumni Sean Barker, Josh Bauder and Casey Johnson.

The choir will perform sacred and secular music by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, Elizabeth Alexander, Josh Bauder, Jonathan Tschiggfrie, Stephen Paulus, Felix Mendelssohn, Alice Parker, Z. Randall Stroope and Keith Hampton.

The Gabriel Kney organ.

An Organ and Choir Concert, part of a series marking the 25^th anniversary of the dedication of the university’s Gabriel Kney organ, will be held at 3 p.m. Sunday, April 28, in the Chapel of St. Thomas Aquinas. Host will be Merritt Nequette, retired professor and former chair on the St. Thomas Music Department.

The program will feature the university’s Liturgical Choir and guest alumni singers directed by Aaron Brown and retired Liturgical Choir founder Robert Strusinski; Orchestra directed by Matthew George; and organists James Callahan, David Jenkins, Kevin Seal and Robert Vickery.

They will perform Noel Goemanne’s “Song of Praise” for choir and organ, which was commissioned for the Gabriel Kney organ dedication in 1987; the Franz Schubert Mass in G; the Concerto for Organ, Strings and Timpani by Francis Poulenc; and the new Concerto for Organ, Strings and Percussion, featuring its composer, organist and professor emeritus of music James Callahan.

Joyce Lyon

The art exhibit “Passaggio/Passage,” featuring works by Joyce Lyon, is on permanent display on the Campus Way, located on the second floor of the Anderson Student Center.

An associate professor of art at the University of Minnesota, Lyon’s works are in public and private collections nationally, including Georgetown University Law Library, the Florida Holocaust Museum, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Walker Art Center and the Weisman Art Museum.

Her work focuses on the intersections of place and memory. “I work from observation with an acute sense of the layering of time,” she said. “In ‘Passagio/Passage,’ I consider pilgrimage as it relates to a physical and spiritual journey and as a meditation on here and there and the passages in between.”

“Passaggio/Passage” by Joyce Lyon

A schedule of this year’s Sacred Arts Festival events can be found here.

Isabel Wilkerson

The program can be heard at noon Wednesday, March 27, on the “Minnesota Public Radio News Presents” program at 91.1 FM.

Wilkerson was interviewed by MPR’s Stephen Smith as part of the Broadcast Journalism Series sponsored by the station and St. Thomas’ College of Arts and Sciences and its Communication and Journalism Department.

Wilkerson is the first African American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize in journalism and is the author of the multiple-award winning The Warmth of Other Suns, in which she chronicles the decades-long movement of blacks out of the Jim Crow South into the North, Midwest and West in search of opportunity and freedom.

The program also can be heard via the Internet. Information is available here.

Avivah Zornberg

The presentation is sponsored by the Literary Arts Institute of the College of St. Benedict in collaboration with the Jay Phillips Center for Interfaith Learning, a joint enterprise of the University of St. Thomas and St. John’s University, and with Adath Jeshurun Congregation. It is free and open to the public.

Drawing on rabbinic and hasidic sources, as well as on philosophical and psychoanalytical thinking, Zornberg will explore the nature of Moses’ speech inhibition and explain why she considers this to be a pivotal issue in the Exodus narrative.

Zornberg earned a Ph.D. in English literature from Cambridge University and holds a visiting lectureship in the London School of Jewish Studies. After teaching English literature at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, she turned to teaching Torah in a number of venues in Jerusalem, where she has drawn thousands of students to her lectures.

Known for her highly original and provocative insights into biblical texts, Zornberg is the author of three books that have been widely acclaimed as masterpieces of biblical interpretation: The Beginning of Desire: Reflections on Genesis, which won of the National Jewish Book Award; The Particulars of Rapture: Reflections on Exodus; and The Murmuring Deep: Reflections on the Biblical Unconscious.

Among other topics that will be considered, the discussion will seek to answer this question: “Spiritual reading and theological reading: How can they inform each other?”

Theology Night Live, which will be held from 5:30 to 6:45 p.m. in Koch Commons, is an opportunity for students to have an open dialogue with professors in their areas of expertise. All are welcome; pizza and beverages will be served.

Future Theology Night Live events

• Monday, April 8: Dr. Michael Hollerich, “Catholicism in Hitler’s Germany”
• Wednesday, April 24: Dr. Ted Ulrich, “Christianity and Islam”

For more information email Laurie Dimond.

John Kaltner

Kaltner, the Virginia Ballou McGehee Professor of Muslim-Christian Relations at Rhodes, will discuss “Moses, Jesus and Mary in the Quran” from 7:30 to 9 p.m. Tuesday, March 19, in the auditorium of O’Shaughnessy Educational Center on the St. Paul campus of the University of St. Thomas.

Free and open to the public, the lecture is co-sponsored by St. Thomas’ Muslim Christian Dialogue Center and the Jay Phillips Center for Interfaith Learning. The Jay Phillips Center is a joint enterprise of St. Thomas and St. John’s University, Collegeville.

Kaltner teaches courses on the Bible, Islam and the Arabic language. Among his books are Introducing the Qur’an for Today’s Reader (Fortress Press, 2011); What Do Our Neighbors Believe? Questions and Answers on Judaism, Christianity and Islam [with Howard Greenstein and Kendra Hotz] (Westminster John Knox Press, 2007); Inquiring of Joseph: Getting to Know a Biblical Character through the Qur’an (Liturgical Press, 2003); Islam: What Non-Muslims Should Know (Fortress Press, 2003); and Ishmael Instructs Isaac: An Introduction to the Qur’an for Bible Readers (Liturgical Press, 1999).

Information about the lecture also is available online here.

Nordtorp-Madson and Kachian have been performing full-length concerts together for 10 years, and the O’Shaughnessy-Frey Library is thrilled to announce this new series. The campus community is invited to enjoy their unique style and humor, along with beautiful, satisfying, yet “unstuffy” presentations of their art.

All of the presentations are from noon to 1 p.m. in the O’Shaughnessy-Frey Library.

Schedule for noonartsound

Tuesday, March 5 –  O’Shaughnessy Room (108)
“parlor 1590-1890”
Features the design, art and music – in what we call the living room, or the parlor.

Tuesday, April 2  –  Great Hall, north end, second floor
“queens prefer”
Highlights the sights and sounds of England in the late 16th century.

Tuesday, May 7 –  Great Hall, north end, second floor; or Room 108 (TBD)
“invierno”
Spotlights the look, feel and touch of the Latin American world.

Tuesday, Oct. 1 –  Great Hall, north end, second floor
“don’t mean a thing”
Brings you the art and music of the Jazz Era.

About the artists

Dr. Chris Kachian

A guitarist and professor of music at the University of St. Thomas, Kachian has performed throughout Europe, the Americas, South and Central America and the Far East as a recitalist, chamber musician and concerto soloist.

His American performances have included a significant number of works written in the past 25 years, many of them commissions. These include more than 30 works for guitar, including 20 concerti.

Your hosts for noonartsound: Shelly Nordtorp-Madson and Chris Kachian.

He has written Composer’s Desk Reference for the Classic Guitar in consultation with more than 25 composers, published by Mel Bay Publications. He has been heard on Minnesota Public Radio, National Public Radio and American Public Media, including several appearances on “A Prairie Home Companion.”

Since 1984 Kachian has directed one of the largest guitar programs in the United States at the University of St Thomas. He has lectured in music of Europe, the Americas, the 20th century, the world, the United States, film, protest, mathematics, and guitar pedagogy and guitar literature.

He is the founder of St. Thomas’ music business, recording arts and popular music degrees. From 2001 to 2005 he served as director of guitar studies for the Minnesota Music Teachers Association, for whom he led, wrote and edited the nation’s first comprehensive, multigenre guitar pedagogy syllabus.

In 2011 he wrote the film score for “Per Bianca,” which won Best Film at the Minnesota 48-Hour Film Festival and won a screening at the Cannes Film Festival.

Recent notable American premiere performances are Astor Piazzolla’s “Double Concerto” and Franz Schubert’s “Arpeggione Sonata.” An ongoing series of baroque concerts, with keyboardist David Jenkins, with the Society for the Doctrinal Affectation of Baroque Music, an early music ensemble, and the Arpeggione Duo, a Stockholm-based cello and guitar duo specializing in new folk music, round out his concert career.

In 2012 he received national recognition from the Sigma Alpha Iota International Music Fraternity as a national arts associate and distinguished member.

Dr. Shelly Nordtorp-Madson

Nordtorp-Madson is the chief curator and a member of the clinical faculty in the Department of Art History. She holds an M.A. in medieval art history, a Ph.D. in design histor, and a technical diploma in dress design and draping. At St. Thomas she designs and mounts exhibits in O’Shaughnessy Educational Center and teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in medieval art and dress history.

After spending four years on a nine-month language immersion program in Denmark, she moved to Minnesota, where she wandered around accumulating degrees and returning to Scandinavia whenever possible. Having worked at St. Thomas in a possibly record-setting number of positions, she now (in addition to curatorial work and teaching) presents papers annually on medieval dress and her most recent obsession: shape-shifting in the medieval period, particularly relating to otters.

Paretsky will speak on “Women, Speech and Silence” as part of the Luann Dummer Lecture Series, which features a distinguished woman speaker each March, Women’s History Month.

The lecture is free and open to the public. It is sponsored by the Luann Dummer Center for Women.

A brief reception and book signing will be held in the lobby outside of the auditorium after the lecture. A selection of Paretsky’s books will be available for purchase, but guests are welcome to bring their favorite Paretsky book for her to sign.

About Paretsky

Actress Kathleen Turner in a movie poster for “V.I Warshawski” (1991)

Paretsky hit the New York Times bestseller list in 1982 with her first novel, Indemnity Only. The book’s central sleuth, V.I Warshawski – a tough-minded and intelligent Chicago P.I. − became one of publishing’s first hard-boiled female detectives. The character was adapted into a film, 1991’s “V.I Warshawski,” starring Kathleen Turner.

The 15th and latest book in the V.I Warshawski series, Breakdown, was published in 2011. The same year she was named “Grand Master” by Mystery Writers of America, which presents annually the prestigious Edgar Awards. She also has written essays, short story collections and two stand-alone novels: Ghost Country and Bleeding Kansas.

In her novels, Paretsky say she “is driven by her personal deep-rooted concern for social justice, and by the current public climate and events happening throughout the world.” As a mystery writer, she breaks down barriers for women crime-writers and their heroines, and she is the founder of Sisters in Crime, the first organization established to support women who write mysteries.

She earned a Ph.D. in history from the University of Chicago.

Paretsky took some time this week to answer a few questions via email for the Newsroom.

How does writing in the mystery genre help you explore issues of social justice?

The mystery is the place where law, justice and society come together naturally. Flannery O’Conner wrote: “Fiction is about everything human, and we are made out of dust: if you scorn getting yourself dusty, you shouldn’t try to write fiction. It’s not a grand enough job for you.” I would say that applies very specifically to crime fiction. If you’re too grand to write crime fiction, you’re never going to tackle social justice issues well.

You took a five-year break from V.I. Warshawski between 1994 and 1999 to write Ghost Country, a novel that, like your Warshawski novels, provides subtle commentary on social problems. In what ways did writing a non-Warshawski novel open doors for you to explore social justice?

Ghost Country is closer to magic realism than any of my other books. I was trying to imagine a world in which the Sumerian goddess Inanna appeared to “make justice pour down like waters.” That sensibility would be impossible with V.I., who is firmly grounded in the world of observation and fact.

Book cover for Indemnity Only, Paretsky’s first novel.

How much of yourself is in Warshawski?

V.I. and I have completely different biographies, but her attitude and outlook mirror my own. For me, it would be difficult to create a first person narrator in a long-running series whose outlook was different from mine. V.I. is physically much tougher and braver than I am. Also, she speaks Italian, which I don’t.

In your opinion, how has the social landscape changed for women writing in mystery since your first novel, Indemnity Only, was published in 1982?

(As far as female characters), women in jeopardy − women enduring graphically described violations − continue to be a major plot device. The difference now is that these graphic descriptions are included under the disguise of women seeking revenge.

For women writers, it is easier to get published but harder to get mainstream publication. We had a few heady years in the early 1980s when it looked as though we were going to get recognition and legal status in many arenas, not just publishing, but the backlash has been intense and, sadly, effective.

This statue, “Gaul and Wife,” is in Rome’s National Museum of the Terme.

The lecture, free and open to the public, is the second of four “Generations and the Tradition of Art” series events sponsored by the St. Thomas Art History Department, part of the College of Arts and Sciences.

A reception will follow in the lobby gallery of O’Shaughnessy Educational Center.

Following is an abstract that offers context for the Feb. 21 lecture:

Style, Continuity, and the Hellenistic Period

The sculpture of the Hellenistic period,­ specifically “Hellenistic baroque” sculpture, often is characterized as a rather revolutionary break with previous sculptural traditions in the ancient Greek world.

In this lecture, Dr. Peter Schultz re-examines this position. Dr. Schultz’s argument is not that the conventional characterization of the Hellenistic baroque as “revolutionary” is incorrect. Rather, his argument is that the familiar characterizations of the Hellenistic baroque as “new” or “innovative” or “revolutionary” have obscured another important art historical reality. Namely, several underlying aspects of the Hellenistic baroque are firmly rooted in a stylistic tradition that extends directly back to the sculpture of the fifth century B.C.E., specifically to the sculpture of fifth and fourth century Athens.

This “Classical” pedigree of the quintessential “Hellenistic” style has some ramifications regarding how the “baroque mode” was used by Hellenistic sculptors. Perhaps more importantly, examination of this “baroque tradition” allows for some rather interesting speculation as to what the sculpture crafted in the Baroque style might have meant to the artists, patrons, and communities that made, purchased, and consumed it.

A website with information about the lecture can be seen here.

The year 2012 is now in the record books as the warmest ever for the lower 48 states; the Twin Cities, meanwhile, saw a virtual tie for its warmest year on record.

“Minnesota and Wisconsin are the third- and fourth-fastest warming states in the country, partly because of lack of snow cover during the winter,” said Paul Thompson, director and co-founder of Edina-based Cool Planet, one of the sponsors of McKibben’s visit to the Twin Cities. “We cannot continue to think of climate change as a problem down the road. Future generations are depending on us to take the actions necessary now to move in the direction of a sustainable, renewable and clean-energy future.”

McKibben, of Ripton, Vt., is author of a dozen books about the environment, including Earth, Deep Economy and The End of Nature. He is the founder of 350.org, a grassroots organization that has coordinated 15,000 rallies in 189 countries since 2009. He was called “the planet’s best green journalist” by Time magazine and “probably the country’s most important environmentalist” by the Boston Globe.  He holds a dozen honorary degrees and in 2011 was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

He also is a seasoned cross-country skier and will join 10,000 skiers from throughout the world in the 40th annual, 54-kilometer American Birkebeiner from Cable, Wis., to Hayward, Wis., on Saturday, Feb. 23.

• McKibben’s first talk, followed by a panel discussion, will run from 7 to 9 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 20, in Woulfe Alumni Hall, located on the third floor of Anderson Student Center at St. Thomas.
• McKibben’s second talk will run from noon to 1 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 21, in the Weyerhaeuser Memorial Chapel at Macalester. It will be followed by an audience discussion from 1 to 2:30 p.m.

Both talks are free and open to the public.

Also at St. Thomas on Wednesday, Feb. 20, a poster session on sustainability research conducted by St. Thomas students will be displayed all day in Campus Way on the second floor of Anderson Student Center. A resource and information fair will run from 5 to 7 p.m. in the third-floor atrium of Woulfe Alumni Hall.

Also at Macalester, at 2:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 21, cross-country skiers will ski across the Macalester campus, starting from the Weyerhaeuser Memorial Chapel, as a send-off for McKibben as he departs for the Birkebeiner.

Students at St. Thomas and Macalester are invited to enter a “What I Love About Winter” video contest in connection with McKibben’s visit.  Students also can fill out a “What I Love About Winter” card that can be picked up at the Tommie Central information desk in the main lobby of Anderson Student Center.

McKibben’s books will be available for purchase and signing at both lectures.

In addition to Cool Plant, McKibben’s visit is sponsored by MN350.org and Minnesota Interfaith Power and Light.

Sponsors at St. Thomas are the Environmental Science Program, Environmental Studies Program, University Lectures Committee, Green Team, Geology Club, Engineers for a Sustainable World and Undergraduate Student Government Committee on Sustainability.

Sponsors at Macalester are the Environmental Studies Department, Sustainability Office, Student Sustainability Network and MacCARES.