“Copenhagen” At Carolina - January & February, 2004
Sunday January 23-Tuesday February 8
Sponsored by the James M. Johnston Center for Undergraduate Excellence
The College of Arts and Sciences
University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
In January and February of 2005, PlayMakers Repertory Company will stage the 2000 Tony Award winner for Best New Play-- Michael Frayn’s “Copenhagen.” Frayn’s play dramatizes the 1941 meeting between two giants of atomic physics, Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg, and explores the impact their conversation may have had in determining the outcome of World War II. The play takes as its ostensible subject the atomic bomb, but really uses the 1941 meeting between Bohr and Heisenberg to explore issues of motive, morality and the betrayal of memory.
The James M. Johnston Center for Undergraduate Excellence, in collaboration with PlayMakers, and the Departments of History, Philosophy, Physics and Astronomy, English, Dramatic Arts, and The Parr Ethics Center, will celebrate “Copenhagen” with a thought-provoking series of programs. While designed especially for undergraduates in the College of Arts and Sciences, all events are free, open to the public, and take place in the Kresge Foundation Common Room (039) of the James M. Johnston Center for Undergraduate Excellence in Graham Memorial, unless otherwise noted.
Please join us for the following:
Sunday January 23, 2pm: Paul Green Theater. “'Copenhagen' at Playmakers: Performance and Talk-Back For Students.”
Watch the play and join the actors at the closing curtain for lively conversation about the play. Students who plan to see the play on another day are welcome to join the discussion; contact the Box Office for exact start time of the Talk-Back session. Box Office: 962-PLAY.
Tuesday, January 25, 2005, 6 pm: Greg Flaxman, Assistant Professor, Department of English. “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.”
Dr. Flaxman discusses and screens “Dr. Strangelove (1964)” Pizza and beverages at show-time.
Wednesday, January 26, 2005, 7 pm: “'Copenhagen' From Philosophy to Physics”
Featuring:
Dmitri Khveshchenko, Associate Professor, Physics and Astronomy: "Quantum Mechanics: 70+ Years in the Making."
This talk, aimed at a general audience, reviews the basic principles and notions of quantum mechanics. Professor Khveshchenko describes some of the earlier paradoxes that, in his words, “not only have been resolved but have greatly advanced our understanding of a number of fundamental concepts and facilitated further experimental discoveries.”
Marc Lange, Professor, Philosophy: "'Copenhagen' and Quantum Metaphysics."
The quantum- mechanical picture of the world contains several famously weird features, such as the indeterminacy of particles' states. The play mentions these often and uses them as metaphors for the limits to our understanding of Heisenberg's purposes in visiting Bohr in 1941. Professor Lange will examine the metaphysical implications of quantum mechanics and try to draw out the parallel that the play suggests between Heisenberg's scientific work and this episode in his life.
Thursday February 3, 4 pm: Alan Beyerchen, 2004-2005 Hillard Gold ’39 Lecturer. “Heisenberg and the German Physics Community Under the Third Reich.”
Alan D. Beyerchen, Associate Professor of History at Ohio State University, teaches and researches in nineteenth and twentieth century German history. His graduate students have completed dissertations on a variety of topics in cultural, socio-economic and political history. He is personally interested in cultural history. His research focuses on the relationships among science, technology, and modern values as reflected in the economic and political developments of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Germany. Presently writing a study of social responsibility in science, he also is doing research on the implications of nonlinear dynamical systems for the liberal arts. His most recent publications include articles on Nazism and science, the unpredictability of warfare, and the technology of racism.
The Hillard Gold ’39 Lecture series was established by Carolina alumni James and Jonathan Gold as a memorial to their father and his commitment to liberal arts education. Hillard Gold lecturers interact with students both inside and outside the classroom. Alan Beyerchen is the fifth Hillard Gold ’39 Lecturer.
Tuesday, February 8, 7pm: Hanes Art Center Auditorium: “'Copenhagen' and the Certainty of Uncertainty”
Michael Frayn's enormously successful play "Copenhagen" raises some hotly debated questions about historical events in Europe during World War II, about moral choices, and about the limits of personal knowledge. The discussion both in the play and by this panel deals with the atomic bomb, the weirdness of quantum physics, and the ambiguities of human behavior. Join faculty members from History, Physics and Astronomy, Dramatic Arts, and Philosophy for a thought provoking interdisciplinary discussion about the certainty of uncertainty.
Featuring:
Christopher Browning, Frank Porter Graham Professor, Department of History
Karen Blansfield, Assistant Professor, Dramatic Arts
Eugen Merzbacher, Kenan Professeor Emeritus, Physics and Astronomy
Douglas McLean, Professor, Philosophy, and Director, Parr Ethics Center
For More Information, please visit the Johnston Center web site: www.johnstoncenter.unc.edu or call 966-511
Participants’ Biographies:
Karen Blansfield, Assistant Professor, Dramatic Arts
Dr. Blansfield’s scholarly interests and research has primarily been on contemporary British dramatists, with a particular focus on Michael Frayn. She wrote her dissertation on his plays and has published articles examining his work in South Atlantic Review and other journals based in part on interviews conducted with Frayn himself. She is currently finishing up a Research and Production Sourcebook on Frayn. Her other publications include articles, essays, and reviews in many books, journals, magazines, and newspapers.
Christopher Browning, Frank Porter Graham Professor, Department of History
Dr. Browning is one of world’s leading authorities on the history of the Holocaust. His publications include: Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (1992); The Path to Genocide (1992); Fateful Months: Essays on the Emergence of the Final Solution (1985); and The Final Solution and the German Foreign Office (1978). In the Spring of 1999, he gave the George Macaulay Trevelyan Lectures at Cambridge University, which recently have been published under the title Nazi Policy, Jewish Labor, German Killers (2000). In the spring of 2001 he delivered the first George Mosse Lectures at the University of Wisconsin, which have been published as Collected Memories: Holocaust History and Postwar Testimony (2003). He just completed The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939-March 1972 (2004). Dr. Browning’s current project is a case study of the Jewish factory slave labor camps in Starachowice in central Poland, based on nearly 235 survivor testimonies.
Greg Flaxman, Assistant Professor, Department of English
Gregory Flaxman is assistant professor of English at the University of North Carolina, where he teaches film and critical theory. The editor of The Brain is the Screen: Deleuze and the Philosophy of Cinema, he has published articles on a wide variety of subjects ranging from the philosophy of Kant to the films of Stanley Kubrick. Currently, he is working on a book about the relaitonship between aesthetics and lying.
Dmitri Khveshchenko, Associate Professor, Physics and Astronomy
Dr. Khveschenko was previously an Assistant Professor at the Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics in Copenhagen. He is now Associate Professor of Condensed Matter Theory. His research interests include electronic properties of novel superconducting, magnetic and carbon-based materials; interaction and localization effects in nanoscale and mesoscopic systems; common problems in condensed matter and field theory; and solid-state quantum computing. He has published numerous papers in several academic journals, such as "Ghost Excitonic Insulator Transition in a Layered Graphite", Phys.Rev.Lett., v.87, p.246802 (2001) and "Magnetic Field-Induced Semimetal-Insulator Transition in Highly Oriented Pyrolitic Graphite,” Phys.Rev.Lett., v.87, p.206401 (2001).
Marc Lange, Professor, Philosophy
Dr. Lange specializes in the philosophy of science and related areas of metaphysics and epistemology. He is author of two books: Natural Laws in Scientific Practice (2000) and An Introduction to the Philosophy of Physics: Locality, Fields, Energy, and Mass (2002). Professor Lange has also published numerous articles in a range of journals, including “Would Direct Realism Resolve the Classical Problem of Induction,” Nous (2004); “Bayesianism and Unification,” Philosophy of Science (2004); “A Note of Scientific Essentialism, Laws of Nature, and Counterfactual Conditionals,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy (2004).
Douglas MacLean, Professor, Philosophy, and Director, Parr Ethics Center
Dr. MacLean has research interests in moral theory, public policy, and risk evaluation. He is editor of Values at Risk and co-editor of, The Security Gamble: Deterrence Dilemmas in the Nuclear Age, Liberalism Reconsidered, Energy and the Future, Human Rights and U.S. Foreign Policy: Principles and Applications. Other publications include “The Ethics of Cost-Benefit Analysis: Incommensurable, Incompatible, and Incomparable Values,” in Democracy, Social Values, and Public Policy (1998) and “Accentuate the Negative: Moral Theory, Avoiding Harms, and Pursuing Ideals,” in Rationality, Rules, and Ideals (2002).
Laurie McNeil, Professor and Chair, Astronomy and Physics
Dr. McNeil is Professor of Experimental Condensed Matter Physics. Her research interests include optical spectroscopy of semiconductors and insulators; Raman and Brillouin scattering; photoluminescence; high-pressure physics; and physics and music. She has published numerous papers in several scholarly journals, including L.E. McNeil and R.H. French, “Light Scattering from Red Pigment Particles: Multiple Scattering in a Strongly-Absorbing System” J. Appl. Phys. 89, 283 (2001) and M.J. Peters, L.E. McNeil, Jian Ping Lu and Daniel Kahn, “Structural Phase Transition in Carbon Nanotube Bundles Under Pressure,” Phys. Rev. B 61, 5939 (2000).
Eugen Merzbacher, Kenan Professor Emeritus, Physics and Astronomy
Dr. Merzbacher joined the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1952, eventually becoming a Kenan Professor. His research has concentrated on collision theory in nuclear and atomic physics. For several years he served as chair of the Department of Physics (and Astronomy), and he retired in 1991. Merzbacher received the Thomas Jefferson Award at UNC-CH in 1972, a Senior Scientist Humboldt Award in 1977, and the Oersted Medal from the American Association of Physics Teachers in 1992. In 1990 he served as president of the American Physical Society. In 1959-60 he was a visiting member of the Niels Bohr Institute for Theoretical Physics in Copenhagen. At Chapel Hill, he was instrumental in the creation of the Triangle Universities Nuclear Laboratory (TUNL). He is the author of a textbook on Quantum Mechanics (third edition 1998).
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