Photographing Women with AIDS, Irish History, Disabilities, Universities' Role in Economic Growth To Be Topics of Yale Talks

The following talks at Yale University the week of Dec. 1-8 are free and open to the public. No talks are scheduled at Yale this week.

Photographing women with AIDS

New York City artist and photographer Ann Meredith will present a slide lecture on Monday, Dec. 1, in which she will show and talk about one of her most recent projects, a series of photographs depicting women with AIDS. Her slide lecture, titled “The Global of Face of AIDS: Photographs of Women,” will begin at 4 p.m. in Rm. 309 of William L. Harkness Hall, 100 Wall St. The event is sponsored by the women’s studies program and the Fund for Lesbian and Gay Studies as part of the latter’s “Writers and Artists” series.

Ms. Meredith began photographing women with AIDS in 1987. Her series “The Global Face of AIDS: Photographs of Women” has been exhibited in the New Museum of Contemporary Art and the Brooklyn Museum in New York, the Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe College and Harvard University. She also has exhibited photograph series depicting elderly women; lesbians and their pet canines; waitresses; women in prison; Native American women on reservations; cowgirls and ranch women; the homeless; and incest and abuse survivors, among other subjects.

Also a film director, producer and cinematographer, Ms. Meredith has traveled around the world in conjunction with her work. She has been a photographer for Outward Bound, the Girl Scout Council, the National Urban League, Ms. Magazine, USA Today, Life Magazine and New York Newsday.

Leading sociologist to speak on African socialism

The Council on African Studies of the Yale Center for International and Area Studies will host a lecture by sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein on Tuesday, Dec. 2, at 4 p.m. in Rm. 203 of Luce Hall, 34 Hillhouse Ave. He will address the questions “What Happened to African Socialism? What Happened to Socialism?” Mr. Wallerstein is director of the Fernand

Braudel Center for the Study of Economics, Historical Systems and Civilizations at the State University of New York at Binghamton. Known for his work in world-systems analysis, he has published three volumes of “The Modern World-System,” as well as “The Capitalist World-Economy,” “Unthinking Social Science,” “After Liberalism” and “Historical Capitalism, with Capitalist Civilization.” He also has written extensively on Africa; his books on this subject include “Africa: The Politics of Independence,” “Africa: The Politics of Unity” and “Africa and the Modern World.”

Talk will explore universities’ role in economic growth

Susan U. Raymond, public policy programs director at the New York Academy of Sciences, will be the next speaker in the Yale-New Haven Biotechnology Enterprise Forum series. Her talk, titled “The Role of Universities in Economic Growth,” will be presented on Tuesday, Dec. 2, 4:30-6:30 p.m. in Bass Hall at the Bass Center for Molecular and Structural Biology, 266 Whitney Ave. A panel discussion will follow. Refreshments will be served in the foyer outside Bass Hall 4-4:30 p.m.

Ms. Raymond is an expert in science-based economic growth in the greater New York Metropolitan region and also specializes in international scientific collaboration, national health care reform policy, telecommunications, transportation and innovation management. Prior to joining the New York Academy of Sciences in 1993, she served as an independent consultant to the U.S. government on numerous foreign affairs programs concerned with economic assistance throughout Eastern Europe and in the former Soviet Union. She also advised on health care markets, privatization and finance projects in North Africa, the Middle East and Central America.

A former vice president of program operations at the New York Center for Public Resources, Ms. Raymond also worked for several years in the department of population, health and nutrition at the World Bank, where she designed and managed leading activities in Africa and the Middle East. She has authored numerous articles on health care reform and international economic development. Ms. Raymond’s talk is sponsored by The Biotech Committee of Greater New Haven and the Office of Cooperative Research.

Oxford historian to lecture on the Irish revolution

Roy Foster, the Carroll Professor of Irish History at the University of Oxford, will present a lecture titled “Reclaiming Ireland: The Yeats Generation and the Irish Revolution” on Wednesday, Dec. 3, at 5 p.m. at the Yale Center for British Art, 1080 Chapel St.

Mr. Foster, who is also an internationally renowned critic, reviewer and broadcaster, holds the only endowed chair of Irish history in Britain. Born in Ireland, Mr. Foster taught at Birkbeck College at the University of London and held visiting fellowships at St. Anthony’s College, Oxford, Princeton University and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. His books include “Charles Stewart Parnell: The Man and His Family,” “Lord Randolph Churchill: A Political Life,” “Modern Ireland 1600-1972,” “The Oxford Illustrated History of Ireland,” “The Sub Prefect Should Have Held His Tongue: Selected Essays of Hubert Butler,” “Paddy and Mr. Punch: Connections in Irish and English History” and “W.B. Yeats, A Life I: The Apprentice Mage 1865-1914.” He is a fellow of the British Academy and the Royal Society of Literature.

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet to read from her work

Poet Jorie Graham, who won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1996, will read from her work on Wednesday, Dec. 3, at 8:30 p.m. in the Byers Hall Common Room of Silliman College, 505 College St. The event is sponsored by The Yale Review.

Ms. Graham, who is on the faculty of the Writer’s Workshop at Iowa University, is the author of seven volumes of poetry, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning “The Dream of the Unified Field: Selected Poems 1974-1994.” Her newest book of poems, “The Errancy,” appeared this year. In a recent review of the new work in the Library Journal, Ms. Graham was described as “One of the most important living poets,” and the Times Literary Supplement described her as “One of the best, and most intelligent poets in the language… She is like no one else, neither in her rhythms nor in her insistence on opening up, scrutinizing, and even reversing our experience of time and space.”

‘Expert Games’ regarding breast implants is topic of talk

Sheila Jasanoff, professor of science policy and law at Cornell University, will give the first talk in a series of interdisciplinary seminars on social, political and ethics issues in the biological sciences on Thursday, Dec. 4, at 4 p.m. in Rm. 226 of Osborn Memorial Laboratories, 165 Prospect St. “Expert Games: Science, Evidence and Breast Implants” is the title of her talk, which is sponsored by the Cellular and Molecular Biology Graduate Training Grant.

Ms. Jasanoff is the founding chair of the department of science and technology studies at Cornell. Her primary research interests are in the areas of law, science and technology, environmental regulation and risk management, and comparative public policy. She has published more than 50 articles and book chapters on these topics and has authored or edited several books, including “Controlling Chemicals: The Politics of Regulation in Europe and the United States,” “Risk Management and Political Culture” and “Learning from Disaster: Risk Management After Bhopal.”

Advocate for the disabled to be guest at master’s tea

Ted Kennedy Jr. will discuss the topic “Disabilities and the Law” on Thursday, Dec. 4, at 4:30 p.m. at a tea in the Calhoun College master’s house, 189 Elm St. Mr. Kennedy earned his master’s degree at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies in 1991 and served 1992-97 on the research faculty at the School of Medicine. During those years he also was director of the New Haven Lead Safe Home and Community Health Project, a comprehensive, community-based initiative addressing pediatric lead poisoning, one of the leading known causes of mental retardation.

A recent graduate of the University of Connecticut School of Law, he currently practices at the New Haven law firm of Wiggin & Dana, with an interest in health law and disability law. Over the past several years, Mr. Kennedy has been an advocate for the civil rights of people with disabilities. He served as executive director of Facing the Challenge, a nonprofit advocacy and public policy office on disability-related issues, and was a teaching fellow on disability policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. On the national level, he served for four years on the executive committee of the President’s Committee on Employment of People with Disabilities. He was recently appointed by Connecticut Governor John Rowland to serve as a member of the board of the state’s Office of Protection and Advocacy for Persons with Disabilities.

Bush Center talk features expert on adoption

Psychologist Betty Jean Lifton of New York City will give a talk titled “Adoption Today – Opening a Closed System” on Friday, Dec. 5, at noon in the lecture hall of Sterling Memorial Library, 120 High St. The event is sponsored by the Bush Center in Child Development and Social Policy.

Ms. Lifton is an adoption counselor who has written extensively on adoption issues, both for adults and for children. She is the author of “Journey of the Adopted Self: A Quest for Wholeness,” “Lost and Found: The Adoption Experience” and “Twice Born: Memoirs of an Adopted Daughter.” Her books for young adults include the novel “I’m Still Me” as well as “Children of Vietnam” and “Return to Hiroshima.” Ms. Lifton, who teaches at the New School for Social Research in New York City, has also written articles for the New York Times Magazine, Seventeen and Saturday Review.

Historian to speak about Benjamin Franklin’s enemies

Robert L. Middlekauff, the Preston Hotchkiss Professor of History at the University of California at Berkeley, will speak on the subject “More Thoughts on Benjamin Franklin’s Enemies” on Thursday, Dec. 11, at 4 p.m. in the lecture hall of the Sterling Memorial Library, 120 High St. The talk is sponsored by the history department and the Friends of the Franklin Papers, is free and open to the public.

Mr. Middlekauff, who earned his Ph.D. in history at Yale in 1961, is the author of “The Mathers: Three Generations of Puritan Intellectuals,” for which he received the Bancroft Prize in 1972. His other books include “Ancients and Axioms: Secondary Education in Eighteenth-Century New England,” “The Glorious Cause: the American Revolution, 1763-1789” and most recently, “Benjamin Franklin and His Enemies.” He has taught at Berkeley for most of his career. He also served as director of the Henry E. Huntington Library, Art Gallery and Botanical Gardens 1983-88 and in 1996-97 was the Vyvyan Harmsworth Professor of American History at Oxford University.