Events
Events
Events
Attend ethics related events on topics including climate change, moral development in youth, race, food, health, religion, and philosophy.
Should we mandate vaccination for your doctor, you and your children?
Nice is Not Enough: Providing the Foundation for Lifelong Moral Development
Presented by Dr. Larry Nucci, Professor, Graduate School of Education, University of California, Berkeley
A Game-based Experiential Approach to Teaching Professional Ethics
Does this increase student engagement? Join us when Dr. Thomas P Seager visits Penn State and explains his innovative experimental approach to teaching professional ethics.
Masking the Meaningful
Why do citizens of the societies we count as democracies fail to react to catastrophic threats? Because those societies aren’t genuine democracies. Electoral choices fail to correspond to the voters’ interests, and citizens cannot identify what is of most concern to them. Climate change is a striking example of this phenomenon. Professor Philip Kitcher, a leading voice in science and ethics issues, will discuss the relationships between the practices of science and of democracy that develop at these conflicting intersections. Kitcher’s talk, part of the Research Ethics Lecture Series, will engage the campus community in a broad discussion about the roles and responsibilities of those of us who are both scientists and citizens.
Africa and Slavery in Context
The legacies of slavery do remain. The lecture focuses on this legacy, and on the globalization generated by slavery and its aftermath, dwelling on three ideas: how slavery has impacted African history; the continued existence of slavery in the modern world; and the current discussions on new categories of exploitation.
Africans in the Americas and African Americans in Africa: the Shifting Boundaries of Citizenship in the 21st Century
The Department of African and African American Studies, the Africana Research Center, the Smeal College of Business, and the Paul Robeson Cultural Center will be hosting the 37th Annual Conference of the New York African Studies Association (NYASA). The NYASA, founded in 1967 as the SUNY African Studies Faculty Association, is a non-profit membership association, incorporated as NYASA in 1975, dedicated to advancing the discipline of Africana Studies.
Alain Locke's "New Negro" and the New Negroes: Of False Manifestoes and Canon Formation
Institutionalized Children - The Medical Community's Guinea Pigs of Choice during the 20th Century
Though often cited as our most precious resource and dearest commodity, children – particularly those institutionalized in orphanages, mental asylums, and warehouses for the “feebleminded” – were often sought out by physicians and medical researchers as test subjects for experimentation.
Altarities: Contemporary Chicana Art, Politics, and Spirituality
When Laura Pérez began researching what she thought would be a book surveying contemporary Chicana art, she found a common thread that both surprised and challenged her: an exploration of spirituality in the work of each artist.
"Always" Low Wages! The High Cost of Wal-Mart
Workers at Wal-Mart, smiling TV faces notwithstanding, are getting a raw deal. The average wage of a Wal-Mart hourly worker is less than $9 an hour, and many must depend on public assistance to make ends meet, or for health care.
An Afternoon with Peter Matthiessen (a reading)
Peter Matthiessen has written eight novels, including At Play in the Fields of the Lord (nominated for the National Book Award) and Far Tortuga, and also a book of short stories, On the River Styx.
An Anti-Citizenship Polemic: Immigration, Identity, and Resistance
2014/2015 Alain Locke fellow Natalie Cisneros will give a lecture on race, immigration, and identity during the 2015 Spring Semester.
Apocalyptic Narratives
Basic to apocalyptic literature is the linkage between a moral vision of the universe and the fate of the earthly order, a cosmic vision usually expressed in terms of judgment. Though commonly presented in threatening images of Doomsday, it can also stress themes of pervasive divine justice, which places all human transactions into a universal context.
Beautiful Souls: Seminar 2
In Chapter 1 of Beautiful Souls (“Disobeying the Law”) we are faced with a key distinction between morality and legality. Paul Gruninger makes a decision to dismiss his obligation to the law and instead uphold or affirm his moral obligation to persons in crisis (drawing on empathy and compassion and a sense of justice, perhaps).
Beautiful Souls: Seminar 3
Eyal Press’ Beautiful Souls gives us access to a wide range of complicated ethical issues. Key among them is the divergence of our moral obligations.
Beautiful Souls: Seminar 1
In the first chapter, one of the central questions the author raises is: how can we explain Paul Grüninger's heroic behavior?
Beautiful Souls: Seminar 4
One of the most interesting stories in Beautiful Souls is the story of Leyla Widler. Unlike the other stories in the book, Leyla's acts of moral conviction did not take place in an extreme situation, but rather involved confronting something fishy in her day-to-day life.
Beauty Below the Surface: Artistic Intentions
But do gender differences on the part of the artist play a role in the way women and men are portrayed in visual art?
Suspecting Child Abuse: Challenges and Guidance
This presentation will (i) describe the problem of child abuse, particularly as it relates to reporting suspected abuse; (ii) share research findings from the Center for the Protection of Children; and (iii) discuss some of the ethical and practical challenges that arise in our efforts to protect children from abuse.
Biodiversity at 25: An Argument for a Critical Understanding of the Normative Role of Biodiversity
Scientific concepts have often played the role of proxies for ethical values. This is especially true for values assigned to nature, such as conservation value. Since its origin in 1986, the concept of biodiversity has emerged as one of the most influential in this tradition of proxy concepts. Contrary to all expectations, recent research in microbial biology in the Amazon shows that in cases of ecosystem conversions, diversity goes up.
Biomedicine in the Atomic Age: The U.S. AEC's Radioisotope Distribution Program
The widespread adoption of radioisotopes as tools in biomedical research was one of the major consequences of the "physicists' war" for postwar life science.
Biosocial Relations of Production: The Bio-Graphies of Body Parts
The product of a long process of evolution spanning at least two hundred thousand years, humanity now reinvents itself in a new sense and on a fundamentally new scale, deliberately altering its bodily constitution and development partly by exchanging genes, tissues, and organs with both conspecifics and other animals.
Black Nuns in Europe: From Slavery to the Convent (and Sanctity)
The main purpose of this lecture is to look at the biographies of three African slave women: Chikaba–Ghana/Spain; Bakhita–Sudan/Italy; and Ourika–Senegal/France; who ended up in Catholic convents in Europe, to see to what extent these life stories conform to or subvert traditional hagiographies, slave narratives and sentimental novels, respectively.
Driving Speedway Boulevard: A Case Study of the Made World
Constructing Competence: Autism, Voice and the "Disordered" Body
Emerging Moral Minds: The Development of Moral Judgments In Early Childhood
In this talk, Dr. Smetana will discuss psychological research from constructivist perspective that examines young children’s developing understanding of morality as distinct from other types of social rules.
Engaging Latina/o America Reception
This series of public lectures explores critical issues shaping the field of Latina/o Studies today.
Establishing a Native American Genetic Research Program: The Role of the International Biological Program
Margot Iverson is a doctoral candidate in the Program in the History of Science and Technology at the University of Minnesota. Her lecture will feature a discussion on The International Biological Program.
Ethical Responsibility and Globalization
Robert Bernasconi holds the Lillian and Morrie Moss Chair of Excellence in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Memphis. He is author of The Question of Language in Heidegger's History of Being and Heidegger in Question: The Art of Existing.
Ethics and Taboos of War
Christopher Bryne, Timothy Lenoir, and Steven A. Walton.
Evacuating Wounded Heroes: The Technical Logic of Industrialized War
Professor Lindee is a native Texan who received her undergraduate degree in journalism from the University of Texas at Austin. Her paper explores the technological, scientific and medical systems through which wounded soldiers in the two world wars moved from the battlefield, to a field hospital, and eventually, if their injuries reached a certain, fungible threshold, back to the United States.
Feminist Philosophy in South America
Ofelia Schutte is the author of Beyond Nihilism: Nietzsche without Masks and Cultural Identity and Social Liberation in Latin American Thoughtas well as many other publications on feminism, Latin American philosophy, Nietzsche, and European continental philosophy.
"Fixing" the Weather and Climate for Civilian and Military Purposes
Jim Fleming is a historian of science and technology at Colby College. His teaching bridges the sciences and the humanities and his research interests involve military history and the history of the geophysical sciences, especially meteorology, climatology, and oceanography.
Food Ethics Lecture Series
What do we mean when we talk about “food ethics”? What role have industry, government, the academy, and other actors played in shaping what we know about food, and our understanding of the various issues identified as questions of “food ethics”? Jonathan H. Marks, Associate Professor of Bioethics, Humanities, and Law; explores.
Building an Ethical Learning Community in Swedish Schools: Bridging School Practice and Educational Research
This presentation explores school practice and educational research within a reform process, Full of Value, in a school area in Northern Sweden (pre-schools and grades 1-9).
Brown Bag Lunch
This presentation explores investigating whether lasting school reform can occur without the voice of the consequential stakeholders, the students. At Condell Park High School, a high school in a low socioeconomic area in south-west Sydney, Australia, a representative group of Year 9 students have expressed their disaffection with school through authorised deficit discourses, authorised resistance and authorised surveillance.
CANCELLED - Forever Small: Disabled Minds and Altered Bodies
The talk will explore the ethics of altering the body of a child with severe cognitive disabilities in such a way that keeps the child “forever small.”
Citizens' Healthcare Working Group: Big Ten Conference
Citizens' Healthcare Working Group: Big Ten Conference
"Climate Change, Climate Justice: Lessons from Copenhagen" a panel discussion
"Climate Change, Climate Justice: Lessons from Copenhagen" a panel discussion
Climate, Resources, and Slavery in the Americas since 1400
Stanley Engerman is the John Munro Professor of Economics and Professor of History, University of Rochester. He is the co-author of Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery, and the co-editor of A Historical Guide to World Slavery, among other works in economic history and the history of slavery.
Cognitive Liberty: What is the Future of Freedom of Thought in the Age of Neurocops, Brain Fingerprinting, Memory Management Drugs, and Hypersonic Sound?
Five years after the “Decade of the Brain,” new drugs and other technologies are making it possible to monitor and modulate thought processes in ways that hearken the best dreams and worst fears of science fiction and cyberpunk. These accelerating technological developments will change the parameters of freedom of thought as much as the printing press and the internet changed the parameters of freedom of speech.
Cognitive Science, Disability, and Selfhood: A Conversation with Novelist Richard Powers
Richard Powers, professor of English and Swanlund Chair at the University of Illinois at Urbana—Champaign, is the author of nine novels and the winner of the 2006 National Book Award for The Echo Maker. He has been a MacArthur Fellow and the recipient of numerous awards, including the Lannan Literary Award, the Corrington Award for Literary Excellence and the Dos Passos Prize For Literature.
From Invisibility to Regulation: Southern Workers, Western Eyes
This lecture is part of the Social Justice and the Economy: National and International Perspectives Lecture Series presented by S. Charusheela, Associate Professor of Women’s Studies, University of Hawai`i at Manoa.
From Racism to Race and Back: The Strange Career of a Historical Crime
This Breaking the Silence Lecture is co-sponsored by the Department of History presented by Barbara J. Fields, Professor of History, Columbia University.
Colonialism, Capitalism, Gender and Informal Sector Work
Genes, Food and Cultural Diversity: Why Some Like It Hot
This lecture is hosted by Science, Medicine and Technology in Culture, and is co-sponsored by Penn State Institutes of the Environment presented by Gary Nabhan, Director, Center for Sustainable Environments, Northern Arizona University.
GMO Panel: What broader ethical issues relate to and conflict with issues of Food Safety and Security?
Ethics of Genetically Modified Organisms (G.M.O.’s): Food Security vs. Environmental Impact
Conference–Implanting Change: The Ethics of Neural Prosthetics
Getting Lost: Feminism Efforts Toward a Double(d) Science
This lecture is part of the Women's Studies Feminist Scholar Series presented by Patti Lather, Professor, Cultural Studies in Education Program, School of Educational Policy and Leadership, Ohio State University.
Conference–Islam and Bioethics: concerns, challenges and responses
An international, multidisciplinary conference to explore the emerging field of Islamic bioethics and to highlight the diversity of methodologies and practices that the field encompasses.
Global Warming: Equine Emissions, Ethics, and Opportunities
Richard B. Alley, Evan Pugh Professor of Geosciences, Penn State
Conference–Untangling Selfhood: The History and Experience of Alzheimer's Disease
Untangling Selfhood: The History and Experience of Alzheimer's Disease
Gut Feelings: Neurology, Psychoanalysis and the Stomach
This lecture is part of the Science, Medicine and Technology in Culture Lecture Series presented by Elizabeth A. Wilson, Member, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, and Research Fellow, Research Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Sydney.
Conference—Articulating Africana Philosophy
Health and Human Rights No Longer a Question: Moving from Concepts to Action
This lecture is part of the Health as a Human Right Lecture Series presented by Sofia Gruskin, JD, MIA, Director of the Program on International Health and Human Rights, Francois-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights and Associate Professor on Health and Human Rights, Department of Population and International Health, Harvard School of Public Health.
Health Care Reform: A Medical Emergency
This lecture is part of the Health as a Human Right Lecture Series presented by David U. Himmelstein, M.D., Associate Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School and Chief, Division of Social and Community Medicine, Cambridge Hospital.
Health Disparities, Bioethics, and Justice
This lecture is part of the Health as a Human Right Lecture Series presented by Vanessa Northington Gamble, M.D., Ph.D., Director, Tuskegee University National Center for Bioethics in Research and Health Care.
Conference—Educating for Sustainability
Conference—Integrating Development and Climate Change Ethics
Conference—Stewardship or Sacrifice? Religion and the Ethics of Climate Change
From Biopower to Infopower: Toward a Genealogy of Contemporary Political Conduct
A wide number of contemporary political assemblages from mass surveillance to finance capitalism to big data suggest that we may be in the midst of new political conditions.
From Ethics to Action
This panel discussion will focus on specific ways that religious and non-religious people justify their responses to climate change, and how we can also identify specific ways to work together on this challenge.
From Imperial to Dialogical Cosmopolitanism: Humility, Solidarity, Patience
This lecture attempts to extract what is normative and ideal in the concept of cosmopolitanism by foregrounding the epistemic and moral dimensions of this attitude towards the world and other cultures.
What Makes Food Good? The Terrain of Food Ethics and the Agrarian Tradition
The potential scope for food ethics extends from questions about diet, health and the safety of foods to broader issues that connect cultural identity to farming methods and native soils.
Health Informatics
This panel presentation is part of the Science, Medicine and Technology in Culture Coffee Hour Series. Michael Green, Associate Professor of Humanities, Penn State University College of Medicine Lynette Kvasny, Assistant Professor of Information Sciences and Technology, Penn State University Roxanne Parrott, Professor of Communication Arts and Sciences, Penn State University Anthony Robinson, Graduate Student, Geography, Penn State University
Homo sapiens 2007: Primate Senses, Technology, and the Meaning of Humanness
This lecture is part of the Who Owns Our Species? Past, Present, Future Lecture Series presented by Nina Jablonski, Professor and Head, Department of Anthropology, Penn State.
How Are We To Live Our Lives? An Evening with Alexander McCall Smith
Alexander McCall Smith, Emeritus Professor of Medical Law, University of Edinburgh, and Best-Selling Author
Human Molecular Genetics and the Subject of Race: Contrasting the Rhetoric with the Practices in Law and Medicine
This Breaking the Silence Lecture is co-sponsored by the Center for Human Development and Family Research in Diverse Contexts presented by Troy Duster, Professor, Institute for the History of Production of Knowledge and Department of Sociology, New York University.
HYBRID VIGOR: Mixing Science and Fiction, Splicing Politics with Poetics, and Crossbreeding Points of View
This lecture is part of the Science, Medicine and Technology in Culture Lecture Series presented by Ruth Ozeki, Novelist and Filmmaker.
Identities as Embodied Horizons
Co-sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and presented by Linda Martín Alcoff, Professor of Philosophy, Syracuse University.
Institutional Corruption
Lawrence Lessig, Roy L. Furman Professor of Law and Leadership, Harvard Law School, and Director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, Harvard University
International Research Ethics: Experiences of researchers and participants in the field, and moving forward with ethics training
Presented by Nancy Kass, Phoebe R. Berman Professor of Bioethics and Public Health, in the Department of Health Policy and Management, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Deputy Director for Public Health in the Berman Institute of Bioethics
International Symposium: The Self as Scientific and Political Project in the Twentieth Century: The Human Sciences Between Utopia and Reform
Co-sponsored by the National Science Foundation, the College of the Liberal Arts, Science, Medicine and Technology in Culture program, the Rock Ethics Institute, the Social Thought Program, the Modern History Workshop, and the Department of History.
Invisible Identities, Social Blindness, and Irresponsible Ignorance
José Medina, Associate Professor of Philosophy and Women's and Gender Studies, Vanderbilt University
After Lipman: A Developmental K-6 Ethics Curriculum
Part of the Lippin Lecture Series and the 2015 Moral Literacy Colloquium.
2015 Moral Literacy Colloquium
The 2015 Moral Literacy Colloquium will tap into the collective experience of participants to explore how they understand and practice ethics education in diverse contexts. This will include discussions of best practices, theory development, social and professional issues in moral literacy education, international and cross-cultural approaches to moral literacy education, and proposals for future initiatives relating to ethics education, research, and practice.
Freedom Panel
Frantz Fanon Symposium, "The Wretched of the Earth: 50 Years Later"
Forty Acres in the 21st Century: Reparations for Black America
Forget Memory: Imagining the Self after Memory Loss
Conflict and Health: Protecting Civilians and the New Wars
Configuring User Identity
A House for the Senses
"Freedom is a good thing but it means a dearth of slaves": Twentieth Century Solutions to the Abolition of Slavery
The Right to Information Access
The Jeremiah Kaplan Institute on Libraries, the Information Society, and Social Policy