Poynter Center Roundtables

Lisa Sideris from the Department of Religious Studies presented the inaugural Poynter Center Roundtable on "Fact and Fiction, Fear and Wonder: The Legacy of Rachel Carson" on Firday, October 10, 2008.

In her presentation, Sideris traced Rachel Carson's use of the words mystery, enchantment, wonder, and reality from her early works about the sea to her most famous work, Silent Spring. Sideris noted how the interweaving of fact and fiction in Carson's writing express (and elicit) fear and wonder, two important "registers" in our experience of the natural world. Sideris then connected Carson's ideas with recent accounts of the moral and psychological aspects of the emotions and their motivational connections to morality, especially in relation to our engagement with the wider environment.

Lisa Sideris recently co-edited with Kathleen Dean Moore a book, Rachel Carson: Legacy and Challenge.

Friday, October 17, 2008. Jeffrey Wolin, the Ruth N. Halls Professor of Photography at the School of Fine Arts, presented the second Poynter Center Roundtable. His topic was "Inconvenient Stories: Veterans of the Vietnam War/Veterans of the American War." Professor Wolin showed photos and told personal stories and reflections from three sets of overlapping combatants: American soldiers, South Vietnamese (ARVN) soldiers, and the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) soldiers. The presentation points to the long-term cultural and psychic effects of the war on combatants on all sides.

Jeff Wolin (third from the left) and Roundtable participants look at one of Wolin's photos of a Vietnam veteran.

Department of Telecommunications Professor Ron Osgood screened segments from his recently completed documentary “My Vietnam Your Iraq” on November 14, 2008. The documentary features nine families which have a parent who served in Vietnam and a child in Iraq. Osgood, a Vietnam veteran himself, found that many of the parents he interviewed had never talked with their families very much about the Vietnam War, and the interviews allowed family members to discuss issues they would not have raised otherwise.