Meditation Expert, Multi-media Artist, Mycologist, Dancer, Novelist, Pediatrician, Others to Speak at Yale

The following talks at Yale University March 29-April 6 are free and open to the public, unless noted otherwise.

Advocate to promote meditation and social action

Joseph Goldstein, cofounder and guiding teacher of the Insight Meditation Society, will give a talk titled “Service and Silence: On the Application of Mindfulness Meditation to the World of Social Action” on Tuesday, March 30. His talk will begin at 4:30 p.m. in the faculty lounge of the Law School, 127 Wall St.

Goldstein is the author of “Insight Meditation: The Practice of Freedom” and “Transforming the Mind, Healing the World.” He was the guiding teacher during a Yale Law School meditation retreat that was held last October.

Artist will talk about designs using interactive media

Krzysztof Wodiczko, director of the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will present a talk titled “Critical Vehicles” on Tuesday, March 30, as part of the lecture series ” … With Technological Means: Artists, Theorists and Curators Working in New Media.” The series is sponsored by the Digital Media Center for the Arts. Wodiczko’s lecture will take place at 6:30 p.m. in Hastings Hall of the Art and Architecture building, 180 York St.

Wodiczko employs a variety of interactive sculptural, design, photographic and video elements in his work, which addresses militarism, xenophobia, urban violence, domestic abuse and homelessness. His ongoing research focuses on how design, performance and media interact to encourage dialog for social change. His projects have included visual projections on public monuments and buildings. His most recent video projection, “Let Freedom Ring,” designed for ICA Boston in 1998, was projected upon the Bunker Hill monument.

Scientist will discuss role of fungi in ecological restoration

Mike Amaranthus, a mycologist at Oregon State University, will discuss the beneficial role of mycorrhizal fungi in ecological restoration on Wednesday, March 31, as part of the lecture series “The Restoration Agenda: Plants!” at the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.

His talk will take place 11:30 a.m.-2:20 p.m. in Bowers Auditorium of Sage Hall, 205 Prospect St. There is a registration fee. To register, contact Aimlee Laderman at 432-3335 or e-mail aimlee.laderman@yale.edu.

Amaranthus is an associate professor at Oregon State University in Portland and is president of Mycorrhizal Applications, Inc. He holds a doctorate in forest ecology and was the lead scientist for the Soil Productivity Program in the Pacific Northwest Station. He has published numerous papers on mycorrhizal interactions in the Pacific Northwest.

Master’s tea to feature noted dancer/choreographer

Dancer and choreographer Lila York will speak informally at a tea on Wednesday, March 31, at 4:30 p.m. in the Calhoun College master’s house, 189 Elm St.

York danced with the Paul Taylor Dance Company for 12 years, appearing in over 60 works. Since 1989 she has choreographed works for the Boston, San Francisco, Houston and Atlanta ballets, the Birmingham Royal Ballet, the Pacific Northwest Ballet, the American Repertory Ballet and the Connecticut Ballet Theatre. She also has choreographed works for the Sante Fe Chamber Music Festival, the Juilliard Dance Ensemble and the Eisenhower Dance Ensemble. Her 1994 work, “Rapture,” is currently in the repertories of eight ballet companies, and she is creating new works for several companies.

Physician to speak about alternative medicine

Dr. Joseph J. Jacobs, former director of the Office of Alternative Medicine at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, will present a lecture titled “Meeting the Challenge of Alternative Medicine” at 5 p.m. on Thursday, April 1. His talk, sponsored by the Program for Humanities in Medicine, will take place in the Beaumont Room of the School of Medicine, 333 Cedar.

Jacobs will discuss alternative and complementary medicine as they relate to the doctor-patient dialog. He also will speak about the challenges facing the contemporary clinician in trying to communicate between two worlds: the world of belief in the role of ancient healing and the modern world of science. Finally, Jacobs will reflect on the notion of consumer empowerment.

‘Multiculturalism v. Feminism’ is subject of Law School lecture

Leti Volpp, an assistant professor at the Washington College of Law, American University, will deliver this year’s James A. Thomas Lecture on Monday, April 5, at 4 p.m. in Rm. 127 of the Law School, 127 Wall St. The topic of her talk is “Multiculturalism v. Feminism.”

Volpp will address the position that multiculturalism and feminism are incompatible. “Scholars who have advanced this position represent multiculturalism through invoking cases where nonwhite immigrants are accused of behavior subordinating women and children, including forced arranged marriages of adolescent girls, parent-child suicide, wife killing, veiling of schoolgirls, female genital mutilation and marriage by capture,” says Volpp. “This talk will excavate the premises on which this position relies – which include limited understandings of feminism, multiculturalism and the relationship of culture to the law.”

Volpp’s work has focused on issues of culture and the law, particularly the rights of immigrant workers, women workers in the global economy, Asian Americans and the law, and gender, race and hate violence.

Award-winning novelist/critic to deliver Finzi-Contini Lecture

Novelist and critic A. S. Byatt will deliver the Finzi-Contini Lecture on Monday, April 5, at 4:30 p.m. in the auditorium of the Whitney Humanities Center, 53 Wall St. Her topic will be “Old Tales and New Forms: Storytelling in Modern European Fiction.”

Byatt’s novel “Possession” won the Booker Prize. Her other works of fiction include “The Shadow of the Sun,” “The Game,” “The Virgin in the Garden,” “Still Life,” “Angels and Insects,” “The Matisse Stories,” “Babel Tower” and “The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye.” Her new book, “Elementals: Stories of Fire and Ice,” will be published in April. She has taught at University College, London.

The Finzi-Contini Lectureship was endowed in 1990 by the Honorable Guido Calabresi, a judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and former dean of the Yale Law School, and Dr. Paul Calabresi of Brown University, in memory of their mother, Bianca Maria Finzi-Contini Calabresi. Finzi-Contini was a scholar of European literature an a native of Ferrara, Italy, who, along with her husband, Dr. Massimo Calabresi, fled fascism in that country and settled in New Haven.

Six-part lecture series will focus on cosmology

The Yale astronomy department and the Astronomical Society of New Haven are sponsoring a six-part series of lectures by John Dobson, who has been called “the high priest of astronomy.” The series, titled “Cosmology by John Dobson,” will begin on Monday, April 5, and will be held each Monday, Wednesday and Friday through April 16. The lectures will take place 7-9:30 p.m. in Rm. 263 of the J.W. Gibb Research Laboratory, 260 Whitney Ave. The fee for the series is $45, and preregistration is required. To register, call Bob Carruthers at 265-6014.

Dobson will also speak at a meeting of the Astronomical Society of New Haven on Tuesday, April 6, at 7 p.m. in Rm. 202 of Osborn Memorial Laboratory, corner of Prospect and Sachem streets.

Dobson, who is now in his 80s, left the Roman Catholic priesthood to pursue his passion for astronomy. He made his first telescope out of discarded materials and later invented the dobsonian telescope mount, which is today a standard item for visual observations of the sky.

Award-winning Irish poet to read from her work

Irish poet Moya Cannon will read from her work on Monday, April 5, at 8 p.m. at the Pierson College master’s house, 231 Park St.

Cannon was born in Dunfanaghy, County Donegal, and lives in Galway, where she is an educator of children in the Traveler community, Ireland’s nomadic people. She holds degrees in history and politics from University College, Dublin, and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. Her first collection of poems, “Oar,” won the 1991 Brendan Behan Memorial Prize. Her second collection, “The Parchment Boat,” was published by Gallery Press in 1997. Cannon is a former editor of Poetry Ireland Review.

Pediatrician to discuss care of chronically ill children

Dr. Ruth Stein, professor and vice chair of the department of pediatrics at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, will discuss the care of chronically ill children in two talks on Wednesday, April 7.

At noon, she will deliver the seventh annual Warren Weiswasser Lecture on the topic “Can the Needs of Children with Chronic Conditions Be Met in Managed Care?” in Fitkin Amphitheater in the Laboratory for Medicine and Pediatrics, 15 York St. At 2:15 p.m., she will take part in a seminar titled “Mental Health Issues in the Care of Children with Chronic Conditions” in the Milton Senn Conference Room at the Child Study Center, 333 Cedar St.

Stein, a specialist on the care of chronically ill children, is also an attending pediatrician at Montefiore Hospital and Medical Center in New York City. She has spent much of her career in New York, where she has also been associated with the Jacobi Medical Center (previously the Bronx Municipal Hospital Center). She is on the adjunct faculty at Yeshiva University in New York City and has previously been a visiting professor and visiting scholar at the Yale School of Medicine.