Conversations online archive

Periodically Home Pages, the newspaper for IU faculty and staff, brings you audio interviews with notable commentators from around the world.

Contemporary drummer Max Weinberg on his life work

November 2004
A member of Bruce Springsteen’s legendary E Street Band since 1973 and music director and band leader of the Max Weinberg Seven for NBC’s Late Night with Conan O’Brien since 1993, Max Weinberg is one of the most renowned drummers in contemporary music. At the invitation of the Union Board, he visited the IU Bloomington campus shortly before the 2004 presidential election, having just returned from the road with Springsteen and other artists in the Vote for Change concert tour. In a conversation with IU rock ’n’ roll historian Glenn Gass, Weinberg discussed his early musical influences, his years with Springsteen and his work as a political activist. Gass, who is a composer, wrote the textbook, A History of Rock Music, and originated the nation’s first for-credit history of rock ’n’ roll class at the IU School of Music. .

 

Inspiring Civic Engagement

October 2004
Join SPEA professor Les Lenkowsky, former CEO of the federal Corporation for National and Community Service, as he discusses strategies for recruiting youthful voters with Philadelphia Inquirer syndicated columnist Jane Eisner. Eisner is the author of the new book, Taking Back the Vote: Getting American Youth Involved in our Democracy (Beacon Press).

 

Developing a sense of place

September 2004
During a 40-year career, Henry Glassie, College Professor of folklore at IU Bloomington, has studied the culture of traditional communities around the world. Drawn equally to stories, music, architecture and art, Glassie has documented his wide-ranging fieldwork in award-winning books on life in rural Virginia, Northern Ireland, Turkey and Bangladesh. While his work has influenced scholars of numerous fields, Glassie sees himself as a student—eager to learn from the people whose lives and work he has been privileged to share. In this segment of “Conversations online,” Glassie discusses his highly personal approach to culture, landscape and history with Eric Sandweiss, associate professor of history at IUB and the editor of the Indiana Magazine of History.

 

Transitioning to a residential college

July 2004
For members of the Class of 2008, the great divide between the high school and the college experiences can be large, foreboding and full of pitfalls. It can also be a jumping off point to a rich and fulfilling academic future. Good news: IU has support staff on all campuses to help make the transition.

 

E-mail privacy at IU

June 2004
Fred Cate, Distinguished Professor of law at the School of Law-Bloomington, joins his wife, Beth Cate, associate university counsel, in a conversation that outlines the parameters of Indiana’s Access to Public Records Act. Specifically, the couple offers their insights concerning assertions that IU E-mail could potentially be classified as public record.

 

Peter Davis, Patric O'Meara discuss social and political issues of South Africa

May 2004
Producer, director and documentarian Peter Davis became deeply involved in the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa 20 years ago. Davis has produced more than 30 full-length documentary films on social and political issues, including South Africa: the White Laager, a history of Afrikaner nationalism; Generations of Resistance, an historic account of African rebellion against white rule up to the student uprising of 1976; Winnie Mandela and Remember Mandela, which was shown on the first day of the Democratic National Convention in Atlanta in 1988. When Davis visited the Bloomington campus in April, Patrick O’Meara, dean of international programs at IU and a native South African, talked with him about South Africa’s history and re-birth.

 

Lewis Hyde and the wonder of story-telling

April 2004
When Lewis Hyde’s Trickster Makes This World: Mischief, Myth and Art was published, Margaret Atwood referred to the book as a “masterpiece of wondering; of pertinent story-telling; of pondering.” Join Hyde and author Scott Russell Sanders, IU Distinguished Professor of English, for an engaging exchange on the art, craft and wonder of story-telling. Hyde was a visitor to the IU Bloomington campus in February as part of the annual celebration of Arts Week.

ET, are you there?

March 2004
UFO sightings, moon walks, Mars roving, perhaps even, alien-inspired prehistoric art, fascinate, inspire and fuel our sense of wonder about the possibilities of intelligent civilation on other worlds. Jill Tarter, research director of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute (SETI) was the Konopinski Memorial Lecturer in Physics this month at IU Bloomington. Listen to her conversation with colleague Caty Pilachowski, the inaugural Kirkwood Chair of atronomy at IU.

Winona LaDuke

January 2004
Winona LaDuke, program director for Honor the Earth, is perhaps best known for her run on the Green Party ticket as the vice presidential choice of Ralph Nader in the hotly contested 2000 election. LaDuke was a visitor to the IPFW campus as a speaker for Fort Wayne’s prestigious Omnibus Lecture Series. She discusses politics, the environment and her activism in the Native American community with IU radio producer Dave Fleming

Giovanni, poetry, Mars and man

December 2003
IU Kokomo English instructor Carla Farmer Stouse converses with her friend, the poet Nikki Giovanni, who talks about her "zoo project"-- a personal study undertaken while undergoing cancer treatment--of man’s role in the ecosystem called Earth and in the universe. Giovanni’s project has included tours of zoos and preserves and a scholarly assessment of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species. Her questions: Are humans not the "dinosaurs of today?" How do humans conduct their lives, get along with other life forms and share living space? What role does "luck" play in species survival? Giovanni also discusses her current book projects, her passionate belief that man must travel to Mars before 2020 and her plans to travel the world by ship in 2006.

A marriage of two civilizations

October 2003
How can Western norms and Muslim values be balanced? That’s the question addressed by IU Professor Nazif Shahrani, director of the Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies Program at IU Bloomington, and Professor Ali Mazrui, director of the Institute of Global Cultural Studies at the State University of New York, Binghamton. The two held a topical conversation during a recent meeting of the Association of Muslim Social Scientists, held on the IU Bloomington campus. You will hear first the voice of Professor Shahrani.

 

Lee Hamilton speaks on America's foreign policy

March, 2003
Lee Hamilton, a congressional expert on foreign affairs, discussed the burdens and opportunities that come to this country as a result of its “superpower” status. He currently directs the IU Center on Congress at IU Bloomington and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, D.C.

 

Sex and the Feminist Revolution

February, 2003
Gloria Steinem was a visitor on the IU East, the IU South Bend and the IU Bloomington campuses this semester. If you weren’t able to hear her speak, tune in to this audiostream, recorded Feb. 6 on the Bloomington campus. Steinem gave the keynote address “Sex and the Feminist Revolution” in conjunction with the 50th anniversary of the publication of Alfred Kinsey’s research on female sexuality. Answers to questions from the audience may be heard at the end of her address.

'Eco-warrior' Robert F Kennedy Jr.

October 2002
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has become known as an “eco-warrior” in some circles for the work he has done in successfully prosecuting governments and companies for pollution of the Hudson River and the Long Island Sound. Prosecuting attorney for the watchdog environmental group Hudson Riverkeeper Inc., Kennedy recently visited the IPFW campus as part of its Omnibus Lecture Series. While in Fort Wayne, he spoke with Jennifer Bosk, director of alumni relations at IPFW.

Oscar Arias on moral leadership and the prospects for global peace

September 2002
As part of the Patten Foundation Lectures, Nobel laureate Oscar Arias talks to Scott Sanders, distinguished professor of English about moral and ethical leadership. Arias, the former president of Costa Rica who in 1987 negotiated a peace plan for an unstable Central America, says the motto of his political career goes like this: “Tell people what they need to know, not what they want to hear.”

Wells meets Shostakovich

Historical conversation
In conjunction with the Herman B Wells 100th birthday celebration, to be held June 7 at the Wells Plaza in Bloomington, IU Home Pages presents a 12-minute audiostreamed interview with Wells that was recorded in 1990 and recalls his trip to Moscow 40 years earlier when he met composer Dmitri Shostakovich.

Nature vs. nurture: the talk in birdtown

April 2002

For most people, the chirping of birds is the language of springtime. For us, bird song hints of unfolding leaves, blooming gardens, whispering breezes. But what are these chatty birds really gossiping about? Well, it’s not necessarily that poetic.IU’s Meredith West is professor of psychology and biology, and along with her post-doctoral student, Dave White, she tells us all about what those birds are really saying. West studies bird language and behavior at her aviaries just north of Bloomington. Much of her work has focused on starlings and their mimicry abilities, and the behavior of cowbirds, whose parents employ a sort of nanny system. That is, they lay their eggs in the nests of other birds species to be hatched and raised. So the question here is, how do they know they’re cowbirds?

A pow wow in Bloomington

March 2002

Charlie Nelms, vice president for student development and diversity at Indiana University, and Wesley Thomas, an IU Bloomington anthropologist and organizer of the campus’ inaugural pow wow, scheduled March 28-30, discuss the event and its importance to highlighting the history, culture and arts of American Indian tribes across the country.

John Updike

February 2002

Author John Updike has created some of American literature's most memorable antiheroes, so wouldn't you love to know who his heroes are today? Find out in this interview between Updike and IPFW's Lidan Lin, assistant professor of literature.

A visit with Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee

January 2002

What roles would they have loved to play? How do young African American actors get started in the business today? Is the notion of a Black National Theatre practical or even feasible? These are just a few of the questions John McCluskey Jr., professor of Afro-American Studies and English at IU Bloomington, asked award-winning actors and civil rights activists Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee.

War and remembrance

December 2001

At one time, public memorials were built in a grand classical style well after the event or person intended to be commemorated had passed into history. In the wake of 9/11, discussion of public memorial has developed a new immediacy. New York Times chief art critic Michael Kimmelman talks about recent memorial art: Rachel Whitebread's Holocaust monument in Vienna, Maya Lin's design for the National Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., and the Oklahoma City National Memorial in a conversation with Betsy Stiratt, director of the IU School of Fine Arts Gallery in Bloomington. Kimmelman was IU's inaugural Dorit and Gerald Paul lecturer in Jewish culture and arts.

When bad things happen to good people

October 2001

Rabbi Harold S. Kushner discusses the content of his books, When Bad Things Happen to Good People, and Living a Life That Matters, in a conversation with Kathleen Gilbert, a faculty member in the IU Bloomington Department of Applied Health Science and a researcher on the subject of bereavement. Kushner was a speaker at the Polis Center-sponsored Spirit & Place Festival in Indianapolis in November 2001.

The sound of silence...

April 2001
Marcel Marceau, the world-famous French mime, discusses his unique art form in an interview with IUB anthropology professor Anya Royce. Marceau, a legend in his field, was on the IUB campus in April for two public lectures and class visits arranged through the Department of Theatre and Drama as part of the Ralph L. Collins Memorial Lecture series.

Wendy Wasserstein

March 2001

IPFW's Susan Domer in conversation with playwright Wendy Wasserstein as she reminisces about her life in the theater. Wasserstein first gained fame in 1978 with her off-Broadway "Uncommon Women and Others," a saga of her years at Mount Holyoke College in the late '60s. The play would propel the early careers of Swoozie Kurtz, Meryl Streep, Glenn Close and Jill Eikenberry. Wasserstein discusses her Seven Sisters' years, her "voice" as a writer and her new book of essays to be published this spring. She appeared recently at an IPFW Omnibus Lecture.

If music be the food of love...  

February 2001

The Beatles have been a staple of the young and young at heart for more than 40 years, and a new album, The Beatles 1, with an associated interactive Web site, indicate that all things old are new again. Rock fan Jonathan Plucker, who teaches learning, cognition and instruction at the IU School of Education and is a recent recipient of a Mensa Education and Research Foundation prize for research related to human intelligence, chats with rock historian Glenn Gass. Gass, who is a composer, wrote the textbook A History of Rock Music and originated the nation's first for-credit history of rock 'n roll class at the IU School of Music. How does pop music have the power to convey emotion, express the inexplicable and defy time? Listen to this conversational duet and find out.

Anxiety is your friend! Oh, really? 

December 2000

Bernardo Carducci, director of the Shyness Institute at IU Southeast, and Kathleen Gilbert, associate professor of applied health science at IU Bloomington, talk about shyness, the art of "small talk" and coping skills for that demanding social circuit called "the holidays."

A conversation with musician Ray Charles 

November 2000

Remember Ray Charles at the piano as the opening credits ran for the TV sit-com Designing Women? It's a musical moment on Charles' mind, too. He can't go anywhere in the world without playing his rendition of IU alumnus Hoagy Carmichael's Georgia On My Mind. IU broadcast producer Byron Smith interviews Charles, who appeared in concert on the IU Bloomington campus Oct. 27.

Deciding how to vote

October 2000

Why do Americans vote the way they do? Some reasons may surprise you. Join IU historian James Madison as he interviews political scientist Bob Huckfeldt, IU Endowed Professor of human studies. Huckfeldt has been involved in a number of national and cross-national studies evaluating the ways in which citizens process political information in a democracy.

A conversation with South African dramatist Athol Fugard  

September 2000

Bruce Burgun of the IUB Department of Theatre and Drama discusses the art and practice of theater in the 21st century with distinguished South African playwright, director and actor Athol Fugard who served as the IU Class of 1963 Wells Scholar Professor. The Fugard papers are housed at IU's Lilly Library.