Alumni College 2009
July 31 - August 2
Ohio University, Athens Campus
For photos from the weekend, click here.
Sessions and professors for the weekend included:
Dr. Sam Crowl
Shakespeare and Branagh
The release of Kenneth Branagh's film of HENRY V in 1989 spurred the renaissance of the Shakespeare film genre dormant since the late 1960s. Branagh has now directed six Shakespeare films making him the most prolific director in the genre surpassing the work of Laurence Olivier, Orson, Welles, and Franco Zeffirelli. We will explore the key ingredients in Branagh's film style and examine that style in action in films including HENRY V, HAMLET, and MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.
Dr. Mark Halliday
Unreliable Speakers in Poetry
Discussions of ways in which poets sometimes make us realize that a poem's speaker is not to be trusted. This strategy allows poets to explore attitudes and emotions that are perhaps somewhere within the poet's personality, but of which the poet can't fully approve.
Dr. Peter Mather
From Service to Happiness: The Connection Between Doing Good Work and Having the Good Life
This interactive presentation draws from recent research in the field of Positive Psychology, and gives concrete examples for boosting one's sense of well-being through acts of service.
Dr. Zanemvula Mda
Write What You Don't Know
An informal talk on how Dr. Mda used the setting and the history of Athens county (in fact, of southeast Ohio and West Virginia) to create his fiction, and then a reading from his novel Cion.
Dr. Damian Nance
Reconstructing Supercontinents from Grains of Sand
Tiny crystals of zircon are nature’s timepieces and can be used both to date rocks and reconstruct past continental geographies. Such reconstructions confirm the hypothesis, first formulated at Ohio University, that over the course of geologic time, the Earth’s continents have repeatedly come together to form supercontinents only to break apart again – a cycle that has profoundly influenced the evolution of our planet’s crust, atmosphere, climate, and life.
Dr. Jay Shubrook ’96
Diabetes Research at Ohio University’s College of Osteopathic Medicine (OU-COM)
An introduction to DM in the United States and Appalachia, focusing on the wide range of new and ongoing studies at OU-COM.
Dr. Richard Vedder & David Wilhelm ’77
Debate: The Economy and the Obama Economic Plan -- Recovery/Reform or Counterproductive Meddling?