Yii Kah Hoe is a Malaysian composer and Chinese dizi player. Bold and avant-garde, his music and composition use sounds and rhythms of many traditional instruments from various ethnic cultures. He is also active in music education and the organization of a contemporary music collective, concerts, and a festival in Kuala Lumpur.

Besides working artistically as a musician and composer, Yii has a strong commitment to environmental activism in Malaysia. In this Athenaeum appearance, Yii will address the question of whether music, and his music in particular, can be engaged with environmental protests while at the same time detached from them and stand alone as a “pure art.” He will show videos of activist performances that involve traditional Chinese music as well as contemporary takes on Chinese music and explore the impact of these performances on the movements.

A leader in his field, he served as the festival director of Kuala Lumpur Contemporary Music Festival 2009, the festival director of SoundBridge festival 2013, and the vice-president of Society of Malaysian Contemporary Composers. Yii has been a senior lecturer at SEGi College Subang Jaya, Malaysia, since 2000.

Yii is also the recipient of many international music and arts awards. His works have been performed widely in the U.S., London, Trinidad, Germany, Mexico, Paris, Italy, Russia, Australia, Bangkok, Vietnam, Myanmar, the Philippines, Korea, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia.

Mr. Yii’s Athenaeum appearance is co-sponsored by EnviroLab Asia and the Mellon Global Liberal Arts funds.

Shyam Selvadurai is a Sri Lankan-Canadian writer, editor, and winner of many literary awards. Born in Colombo, Sri Lanka, to a Sinhalese mother and a Tamil father, two conflicting ethnic groups whose troubles are a major theme in his work, he immigrated to Canada at the age nineteen. 

Selvadurai’s works reflect his cross-cultural, hyphenated life. Selvadurai will read from his new novel The Hungry Ghosts, his anthology Story-Wallah, and various other works, and he will speak about the advantages of writing from the hyphen between Sri Lankan and Canadian.

In this second of the two-part series sponsored by CMC’s Gould Center for Humanistic Studies and the Public Art Committee, the panel will challenge the idea of the "public" in public art. It will examine the transformative and educational potential that lies in any encounter with art outside the white cube. 

Internationally recognized artists, curators, and scholars will join curator Philipp Kaiser and Professor Robert Faggen to continue the conversation about Claremont McKenna’s exciting public art initiative. 

Panelists include Thomas Hirschhorn, Paris-based artist; Jeremy Strick, director of the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas; and Emi Fontana, Italian-born founder of West of Rome – Public Art, Los Angeles.

NOTE: This program will start at 5 pm with a reception. Dinner will be served at 5:30 pm. The formal program will begin at 6 pm.

The presentation by panelists will be followed by a moderated discussion and a Q & A.

Off-year elections, those that are held in-between federal elections in odd-numbered years, often give us a good picture of the mood of the electorate before a presidential election. 

In 2015 three governorships and four state legislatures will be voted upon, and the results will in part reflect the current political mood of the nation. 

During a moderated panel discussion, with participation from the audience and real-time returns, these and other results will be examined to discern what importance they hold for 2016 and the Republican and Democratic contenders for president.

Moderator Zach Courser will be joined by Professor Ken Miller and Christina Bellantoni, the assistant managing politics editor at the LA Times and former editor-in-chief of Roll Call. In addition to her outstanding national resume, she’s covered Virginia politics in the past, which gives her an edge on discussing VA election returns.

David Quammen is a journalist and award-winning author of several books including Spillover (2012), which explores the science, history, and human impacts of emerging diseases, especially viral diseases. More recently, he has released two short books drawn from Spillover: Ebola (2014) and The Chimp and the River (2015). 

Educated at Yale College, Quammen was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University. He is a three-time recipient of the National Magazine Award. Other honors include an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Lannan Literary Award for nonfiction and the John Burroughs Medal for nature writing.

A contributing science writer for National Geographic, Quamman travels extensively, often to wild and remote places where human encroachment clashes with centuries of virgin wilderness. 

Read more about David Quammen...


View Video: YouTube with David Quamman

James Sonne is a Stanford Law School professor and founding director of the school's Religious Liberty Clinic, the nation's only program where law students learn through full-time representation of real clients in live disputes in that field. An accomplished teacher, scholar, and practitioner with expertise in law and religion, Sonne received his B.A. with honors from Duke University and his J.D. with honors from Harvard Law School. He is a former law clerk to Judge Edith Brown Clement of ­­the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

According to a cover story in California Lawyer published shortly after the clinic first opened, “As the only law school in the country with a clinic devoted exclusively to religious liberty disputes, Stanford is exposing its students to a practice area that has a rich and colorful history.” And, the story quotes Sonne as saying, "part of what [the clinic is doing] is to make clear the difference between the freedom to practice one's religion and the practice itself."

In his Athenaeum presentation, Professor Sonne will address the important task of teaching the practice of religious freedom and the abiding significance of that central constitutional principle in the American legal system.

Read more about James A. Sonne...

Barbara Weinstein is Silver Professor of History and chair of the history department at New York University, where she teaches Brazilian and modern Latin American history. Her research has focused on Amazonian political economy, relations between industrialists and workers, intersections of race, gender, and class, and the problem of spatial inequalities. Her recent book, The Color of Modernity: São Paulo and the Making of Race and Nation in Brazil (2015) studies the formation and impact of racialized regional identities. Weinstein was the 2007 president of the American Historical Association.

In her talk, Weinstein will focus specifically on how, in the case of Brazil, which is a nation with a long history of severe spatial inequalities, regional differences have become increasingly racialized and more deeply entrenched.

Professor Weinstein's Athenaeum presentation is sponsored by funds from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
 

View Video: YouTube with Barbara Weinstein

Susan Sered is a professor of sociology at Suffolk University in Boston and a senior researcher at Suffolk University's Center for Women’s Health and Human Rights. Previously she also directed a research program in Religion, Health, and Healing at Harvard University's Center for the Study of World Religions. 

A prolific writer, her books include Can’t Catch a Break: Gender, Jail, Drugs, and the Limits of Personal Responsibility, Uninsured in America: Life and Death in the Land of Opportunity, and Priestess, Mother, Sacred Sister: Religions Dominated by Women, among others. 

Drawing on a decade of fieldwork with criminalized women in Massachusetts, Sered argues that medicalization, criminalization, and the omnipresent 12-step movement create a double-edged sword that blames individuals for societal failings. 

Professor Sered's Athenaeum talk is co-sponsored by the Berger Institute for Work, Family, and Children.

Read more about Susan Sered...

View Video: YouTube with Susan Sered
 

Mac Taylor has served since 2008 as the nonpartisan fiscal advisor to both houses of the California Legislature and oversees the preparation of annual fiscal and policy analysis of the state’s budget and programs. With more than 30 years of experience in the Legislative Analyst Office, Taylor brings a wealth of experience to analysis of California’s public policy.

With numerous proposals being debated in California to change the way people are taxed—from measures to extend the temporary taxes adopted in 2012 to major changes in the sales and property taxes—Taylor will explore the state’s tax system and analyze its major strengths and weaknesses. He will also address the issues that likely will be discussed—and voted on—in the coming year.

Mr. Taylor’s Athenaeum talk is sponsored by the Rose Institute of State and Local Government at Claremont McKenna College.

Anne Fausto-Sterling is the Nancy Duke Lewis Professor Emerita of Biology and Gender Studies in the department of molecular biology, cell biology, and biochemistry and former director of the Science & Technology Studies Program at Brown University. She participates actively in the field of sexology and has written extensively about the biology of gender, sexual identity, gender identity, and gender roles. Fausto-Sterling is the author of several acclaimed books, including Sex/Gender: Biology in a Social World and Sexing the Body, that are referenced widely in feminist and scientific inquiry, as well as scientific publications in developmental genetics and developmental biology.

Dr. Fausto-Sterling's current research is currently focused on applying dynamic systems theory to the study of gender differentiation in early childhood. Using her empirical work on mother-infant interactions to develop a dynamic account of gender formation, she will talk about her view that gender is a dynamic process, not a singular trait, and contrast dynamic systems theory with standard gene-environment accounts of development.

Professor Fausto-Sterling's Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the Center for Public Writing and Discourse and by the Berger Institute for Work, Family, and Children.

Read more about Anne Fausto-Sterling...

View Video: YouTube with Anne Fausto-Sterling