Environmentalist, Opera Star, Yeats Curator, African Activist and Others to Speak at Yale this Week

The following talks at Yale University Oct. 13-19 are free and open to the public, unless noted otherwise.

Environmental contamination is topic of two talks

Konstantin Krivoruchko, assistant professor and head of the Geographic Information System – GIS – Laboratory at the International Sakharov Institute of Radioecology in Minsk, Belarus, will discuss environmental contamination using data from the Chernobyl nuclear accident. His first talk, “Environmental Contamination and Disease Incidence in the Aftermath of Chernobyl: A GIS Approach,” will take place on Monday, Oct. 13, at 4 p.m. in Bowers Hall of the School of Forestry, 205 Prospect St. On Wednesday, Oct. 15, he will discuss “Using GIS as a Tool in Epidemiology: Chernobyl Case Study” at 4 p.m. in Winslow Auditorium in the Laboratory of Epidemiology and Public Health, 60 College St.

Mr. Krivoruchko will present his newly developed GIS, called MapStudio, a spatial analysis software. MapStudio is a 32-bit PC format that runs under Windows 95 or Windows NT.

Noted opera singer featured in gala recital

Mezzo-soprano Frederica von Stade will present a gala recital with pianist Martin Katz on Wednesday, Oct. 15, at 8 p.m. in the Morse Recital Hall in Sprague Memorial Hall, 470 College St. Tickets are $50 or $100 for patron tickets. Holders of patron tickets are invited to a post-concert reception in honor of the artists. To order tickets, call 432-4158.

Since debuting with the Metropolitan Opera in 1970, Ms. von Stade has performed in opera houses and concert halls throughout the world. She also has been invited to perform with leading orchestras around the world, including the Boston, Chicago, San Francisco and London Symphony Orchestras, the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Orchestra of La Scala, among others. In 1995, at a celebration of her 25th anniversary with the Metropolitan Opera, the company mounted a new production of “Pelleas et Melisande” specifically for her; one critic described her as “the Melisande of one’s dreams.” More recently, she performed the role of Madame de Merteuil in the world premiere of Conrad Susa’s “Dangerous Liaisons,” which was broadcast on PBS.

Ms. von Stade’s performance on campus will benefit the Friends of Music at Yale and the Yale Summer School of Music/Norfolk Chamber Music Festival.

Former Cargill CEO to speak as Gordon Grand Fellow

Whitney MacMillan, chair emeritus of Cargill, Inc., America’s largest privately owned corporation, will speak as a Gordon Grand Fellow on the topic “Building the Global Food System” on Wednesday, Oct. 15. His talk will begin at noon in Steinbach Lounge, 52 Hillhouse Ave.

Mr. MacMillan became chair and chief executive officer of Cargill – a diversified services company with a revenue of nearly $50 billion – in 1976. The company, founded by his great-grandfather, has 49 businesses in 60 countries and employs about 73,600 people. Known primarily as a grain trader, the company also deals in industrial products, commercial services and transportation.

Mr. MacMillan began working for the company as general trainee after graduating from Yale and held various jobs in the Vegetable Oil Division in San Francisco and Manila and the Grain Division in Minneapolis. In 1968 he was elected group vice president, managing the Seed Division, the Salt Division and Cargo Carriers. He was elected president of the company in 1975. Since his retirement in 1995, he has been teaching corporate strategy to graduate students at the University of St. Thomas Business School.

Yeats curator to lecture at Yale Center for British Art

Hilary Pyle, the Yeats Curator at the National Gallery of Ireland, will present a lecture titled “ ‘But a Vision of Reality’: A Comparison of the Work of the Brothers Yeats” on Wednesday, Oct. 15, at 5 p.m. at the Yale Center for British Art, 1080 Chapel St. Her talk is being held in conjunction with the center’s current exhibition “Irish Paintings from the Collection of Brian P. Burns.”

Ms. Pyle is a noted biographer, scholar and critic of artist Jack B. Yeats, brother of the poet William B. Yeats. She is currently supervising the assemblage of the proposed Yeats Gallery, which will display the work of the two brothers and other members of the Yeats family. She also has been responsible for the recent acquisition of the Jack B. Yeats archive – which includes the library of the artist, his collection of sketch books and all memorabilia – as well as for the acquisition of several key paintings by Yeats, including “A Morning.” She has lectured extensively in the United States on Yeats and organized the “Yeats in Dublin” exhibition at the Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery in 1988, as well as the “Images of Yeats” exhibition in Monaco in 1990. For further information, call 432-2800 or visit the Yale Center for British Art web site at http://www.yale.edu/ycba.

Cultural myths about children will be explored in lunchtime talk

Cultural critic Lucia Hodgson will speak on the topic “The Child Advocacy Dilemma: Conflicts Between Social Science Research Findings and Cultural Myths About Children” on Friday, Oct. 17, at noon in Rose Alumni House, 232 York St. The event is part of the weekly lecture series on social policy issues sponsored by the Bush Center in Child Development and Social Policy.

Ms. Hodgson is the author of “Raised in Captivity: Why Does America Fail Its Children?,” which was published last month by Graywolf Press. In 1991, while an undergraduate at Yale, she began writing a bi-monthly column for the Los Angeles Village View on issues related to children. She wrote her Yale senior essay on the rhetoric of the children’s rights movement of the 1970s, and continued her investigation of children in American culture at the Claremont Graduate School, where she earned a master’s degree in American literature in 1995. Currently the director of the Gaylord Donnelley Children and Youth Studies Center at Crossroads School for Arts & Sciences in Santa Monica, California, she formerly served for two years as executive administrator of the Los Angeles Roundtable for Children, a children’s policy think tank. For further information, call 432-9935.

African activist to deliver the Schweitzer Lecture

Ruth Bamela Engo-Tjega, president and founder of African Action on AIDS and United Nations Special Coordinator for Africa and Least-Developed Countries, will deliver the 1997 Albert Schweitzer Lecture on Friday, Oct. 17. Her talk, titled “African Development: Efforts from Within the Continent,” will begin at 4 p.m. in Rm. 208 of the Whitney Humanities Center – WHC, 53 Wall St. A reception will follow in Rm. 108. The talk and reception that follows are sponsored by the Albert Schweitzer Institute for the Humanities and the WHC.

Ms. Engo-Tjega has worked since 1992 as a senior expert in the U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Office of the Special Coordinator for Africa and the Least Developed Countries – OSCAL. Previously, she was officer-in-charge for the Secretariat of the United Nations Programme of Action for African Economic Recovery and Development, and she has been secretary of a number of U.N. working groups concerned with African economic and social development.

A native of Cameroon, Ms. Engo-Tjega began her career in civil service as head of that country’s Trade Union Office. She later became a consultant on women’s issues, particularly as they related to Africa, food security and AIDS. She founded African Action on AIDS in 1990 and cofounded Advocates for African Food Security in 1986. She has been a participant in a number of world conferences, including the Fourth World Conference on Women and the NGO Forum in Beijing in 1995, and has served on the boards of many international organizations, including OXFAM, the Forum of African Voluntary Development Organizations and the World Sustainable Agriculture Association.