From Soup-Gone-Bad to Hickory Woods – UB Lecture Series to Highlight the Humanities’ Broad Disciplinary Base

BUFFALO, N.Y. - The University at Buffalo College of Arts and Sciences (CAS) will present quite a feast over the next eight months. It is a series of free public lectures by CAS faculty members that will explore a variety of subjects from an affection for the rotting smell of "high" meat (Sept. 18) to advances in the treatment of auto-immune diseases (Jan. 22).

The series, which will run Sept. 18 through April 23, also will feature tales from inside "Dr. Castro's Island" (Nov. 13) and an examination of several of Western New York's toxic waste sites now in the news (Oct. 16). Spring events will include a visit to the 1901 Pan American Exposition (March 19), a look at sports as a feminist issue (April 23) and a discussion of the "fate of stories" (Feb. 26).

Lecturers will include senior CAS faculty members from the departments of Philosophy, English, Chemistry, Modern Languages and Literatures, Microbiology and Sociology. All talks will be held at 7:30 p.m. in the Screening Room, Room 112, of the Center for the Arts on the UB North (Amherst) Campus. For additional more information, call 645-2711

Schedule of Events

SEPT. 18

"Delightful, Delicious, Disgusting: Eating Sublime and Terrible"

Carolyn Korsmeyer, Ph.D., professor of philosophy

How did something like a snail, a slimy clot of fish eggs or an animal's brain ever end up on a dinner plate? What persuades someone to overcome the rotting smell of decay and cultivate a taste for "high" meat? Korsmeyer, author of "Making Sense Of Taste: Food And Philosophy" (Cornell Univ. Press, 1999) knows the answers.

Those who attempt to understand sophisticated eating and the "art" of cuisine usually approach the subject by considering the pleasures of taste. Some of the most profound pleasures of the table, however, are actually disgusting on first exposure. They're repulsive, rather than tempting. The desire to eat certain kinds of particularly difficult foods lies not in the search for pleasure but in the thrill of extreme and difficult emotions, a phenomenon that ties eating with the sublime. This lecture explores some examples of terrible eating and traverses the borderline between the revolting and the tasty, the disgusting and the delicious, revealing that it is slim indeed.

OCT. 16

"Not Love Canal: Environmental Problems in WNY"

Joseph A. Gardella, Jr., Ph.D., professor of chemistry; CAS associate dean for external affairs

In the 20 years since the Love Canal disaster, environmental problems have arisen in other Western New York communities. Erie County counts 150 known toxic dump sites that include the large Pfohl Brothers dump site on Aero Drive off Transit Road, former industrial areas on Buffalo's south side and, most recently, a quarry in Cheektowaga used for years as a toxic dump.

This lecture will review the current situation in two South Buffalo communities: the Seneca-Babcock and Hickory Woods neighborhoods, both of which border the Buffalo River and are very close to chemical plants and former steel-mill and coke-mill sites.

Gardella will look at the lessons learned about community activism, the way the media reports these stories, the purpose of chemical analysis and the role of government agencies in the designation of brownfield and Superfund clean-up sites

Nov. 13

"Inside Cuba Today: The Last of the Caudillos: A View from the Inside of Dr. Castro's Island"

José F. Buscaglia-Salgado, Ph.D., professor of Spanish and comparative literature; director of Cuban and Caribbean programs

Fidel Castro is the last and perhaps the most accomplished in a long succession of Caribbean strongmen or "caudillos" who have ruled their countries through terror while posing as the great benefactors of the fatherland.

Over the past five years Buscaglia has spent considerable time in Cuba, where he has found an economy of complicity far more complex than the simple manichaean visions that friends and detractors of the regime alike would have us believe.

Buscaglia will present a candid view of a country that for most of its recent history has been poorly understood by those on the outside. In the process, he will point to the ramifications of an economy of complicity that extends well beyond the shores of this Caribbean island.

PREVIEW OF SPRING 2001 CAS LECTURES:

JAN. 22

"Advances in the Treatment of Auto-immune Diseases"

Bernice Noble, Ph.D., professor of biology and microbiology

FEB. 26

"The Fate of Stories"

Bruce Jackson, SUNY Distinguished Professor and Samuel P. Capen Professor of Humanities in the Department of English

MARCH 19

"The Pan-American Exposition of 1901"

Kerry S. Grant, Ph.D., professor and dean of the College of Arts and Sciences

APRIL 23

"Sports As Feminist Issue"

Susan Cahn, Ph.D., associate professor of history