April 8, 2004

Upcoming speakers

UPS chairman and chief executive officer Michael Eskew will discuss the challenges of international distribution in an era of globalization when he delivers the 23rd William A. Patterson Transportation Lecture at 8 p.m. Wednesday, April 14.

The lecture, which is free and open to the public, will take place in the Owen L. Coon Forum of Leverone Hall.

In “Synchronizing the Global Economy,” Eskew will describe the role of the transportation industry in helping to ease barriers standing in the way of a seamless exchange of goods, information and funds among trading partners around the world. He also will discuss the economic, social and environmental implications of synchronized global commerce.

Samuel R. Delany

Critic, scholar and novelist Samuel R. Delany will deliver the 2004 Leon Forrest Lecture Thursday, April 15.

One of few gay, African American writers working in the genre of science fiction, Delany is among the most important and prolific voices in African American literature in the last 30 years.

Delany’s free, public lecture will take place at 4:30 p.m. in the Abbott Laboratories Auditorium of the Pancoe-Evanston Northwestern Healthcare Life Sciences Pavilion. A reception will follow.

Delany published “The Jewels of Aptor,” his first book, in 1962 at the age of 20. By age 26, he had received four Nebula Awards from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America for novels “Babel-17” and “The Einstein Intersection” and two short stories.

Richard Holbrooke, chief negotiator of the Dayton Peace Accords, and Romeo Dallaire, commander of the United Nations peacekeeping force in Rwanda during the 1994 Rwandan massacres, will be among the speakers at a free, public conference on human rights taking place on the Evanston campus April 15 through April 18.

Dallaire’s presentation will take place at 8 p.m. Thursday, April 15; Holbrooke’s will take place at 8 p.m. Friday, April 16. Representatives of Human Rights Watch, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, and the director of Northwestern’s world-renowned Program of African Studies will be among scholars, human rights activists and others making presentations on human rights issues.

The Northwestern University Student Conference on Human Rights, which will be attended by selected student delegates from more than 20 universities and colleges across the country, will include an exercise in which the student delegates will be asked to develop solutions to a mock human rights crisis.

For further information and a detailed schedule of speakers and presentations, call the American Studies Program office at (847) 491-3525.

Four years ago, author Sheree R. Thomas put an end to the myth that African Americans don’t write science fiction when her 427-page anthology titled “Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora” was published.

Thomas will be among the panelists Friday, April 16, at “The Politics of the Paraliterary: A Symposium of Afro Diasporic Speculative Fiction and Theory” at Northwestern.

The symposium, which is free and open to the public, will explore the contributions of black writers from around the world to the genres of science fiction, horror, fantasy, futurism and magical realism.

It will be held from 2 to 6 p.m. in Room 107 of Harris Hall.