Upcoming talks on campus

Some of our budding classicists and, well, other nerd-types might be wise to take note of a few talks on campus next week sponsored by our History department. For the 2008 Fordyce Mitchel Lecture Series, they're bringing in Dr. Christopher Pelling from Oxford (faculty page here and a slightly more substantive Wikipedia entry here). The general theme is "How Greek Historians Explained History" and information on each is as follows:

• "Cleopatra" (7 PM, Monday, October 6, Stewart Hall 100)
  
• "Herodotus: Gods and Men - and Women Too" (4 PM, Tuesday, October 7, Agriculture Building 2-16)
• "Thucydides: The Limits of 'Realistic' Thinking" (4 PM, Wednesday, October 8, Tate Hall 104)
• "Polybius: What Made Roman History Different" (7 PM, Thursday, October 9, Agriculture Building 2-16)
  

And the following week from MU Peace Studies, a talk on nonviolence delivered by Dr. Barry Gan, director of the Center for Nonviolence and Professor of Philosophy at St. Bonaventure University in New York. Here's the info:

People who abhor war and domestic violence struggle with the question of how harm to the innocent can be prevented and social justice promoted by non-violent means. You are invited to hear Dr. Barry Gan present a lecture "Out of the Ashes of Violence: Violent Myths and Nonviolent Realities," that addresses these issues at 7:30 p.m., Monday, October 13, in 114 Strickland Hall on the MU Campus. The talk will be free and open to the public. It will deal with misconceptions that lead people to resort to violence when problems can be resolved nonviolently.