North Carolina in a Global Context
October 15th, 2003
Students from six classes in four disciplines will join for an evening that includes dinner with distinguished speakers, a panel presentation, and a question and answer period. Speakers include: Dr. Nolo Martinez, North Carolina Director of Hispanic/Latino Affairs, Dr. Akram Khatar, Associate Professor of History, North Carolina State University, Bill Bamberger, artist, documentarian, and author of Closing: The Life and Death of An American Factory, and Melanie Sills, editor, News and Observer.
Students enrolled in courses in English, History, Economics, and Public
Policy will attend the dinner and the lectures; the lectures and question
and answer periods are open to the Carolina community and beyond.
Panel Presentations:
Akram Khatar: "Arabs in the South"
Nolo Martinez: "North Carolina's Latinos: Problems of Language and
Culture"
Bill Bamberger: "Postindustrial Culture and the Closing of the White Furniture Factory in Mebane, NC"
Melanie Sill: "Free Trade, Children, War, Newspapers, and North
Carolina."
Biographies of Speakers:
Bill Bamberger
For two decades Bill Bamberger has been photographing Americans and the details and rhythms of their daily lives His photographs have appeared in Aperture, Doubletake, and the New York Times Magazine. His most recent book, Closing: The Life and Death of an American Factory (1998; text by Cathy Davidson), won the Mayflower Prize in Nonfiction and was a semifinalist for the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award. Bamberger recently has been selected as one of fifty-six artists to participate in "Artists and Communities: America Creates for the Millennium," a National Endowment for the Arts project. Bamberger lives in Mebane, North Carolina.
Nolo Martinez
Dr. H. Nolo Martínez was born in Mayagüez, Puerto Rico and reared Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico. He graduated from the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez where he earned a bachelor's degree in agronomy in 1982. Upon graduation, he was awarded a scholarship from the President of the University of Puerto Rico to enroll in graduate school at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. In 1984, he received a master's degree in agricultural economics from Rutgers. In 1991, Dr. Martínez earned a doctorate degree in adult education from North Carolina State University. North Carolina's Governor James B. Hunt Jr. appointed Nolo Martinez, PhD as the first Director of Hispanic/Latino Affairs in 1998. Dr. Martinez works to assist in the coordination and development of state and local programs that will meet the needs of the fastest growing Latino state in the United States. He is currently responsible for staffing the work Governor's Advisory Council on Hispanic/Latino Affairs. Governor Michael F. Easley reappointed Dr. Martinez for a second term as Director of Hispanic Affairs in January 2001. Dr.Martinez is a faculty member at North Carolina State University. He was the founder of the NC Farmers and Farmworkers AgrAbility Project, a statewide project to assist farmers, farmworkers and their families when affected by disabilities. AgrAbility enhances the independent functioning of disabled and physically injured farmers and farmworkers in rural North Carolina. Dr. Martinez is the Vice-President of El Pueblo Inc., a North Carolina non-profit statewide advocacy and policy organization dedicated to strengthening the Latino community. He is also founder and Vice President of the NC Legal Immigration Coalition, a non-profit organization that aims at educating industry, business and local governments about the needed for immigration reform that protects essential workers in NC. Essential workers include individuals that often work in jobs that many Americans do not choose, but which are essential to keep NC's economy growing.
Akram Khater
Dr. Akram Khater is Associate Professor of History at North Carolina
State University. A native of Lebanon, he earned a B.S. degree in
Electronics Engineering from California Polytechnic State University,
and holds M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in History from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and University of California, Berkeley, respectively. His books include Inventing Home: Emigration, Gender and the Making of a Lebanese Middle Class, 1861-1921, and Glimpses of the Past: A Reader of Primary Sources for the History of the Middle East and North Africa. Professor Khater has also contributed the Middle East and North Africa section to The World and Its People, a high school textbook. He has published a substantial number of articles and reviews, and has made conference presentations throughout the United States. He has been particularly active in bringing his expertise to audiences at North Carolina colleges, high schools, and churches. Professor Khater has been awarded a number of teaching accolades and grants during his tenure at N.C. State, and has also obtained fellowships from the American Philosophical Society, National Endowment for the Humanities, Fulbright Foundation, and ITT. His professional affiliations include the Lebanese Studies Association (President Emeritus), Middle East Studies Association, Association for Middle East Women's Studies, Triangle Islamic Studies Group, and Mediterranean Studies Group. He is also the Associate Editor of the World Migrations series.
Melanie Sill
Melanie Sill is executive editor and senior vice president of The News & Observer. Melanie, who grew up in Hawaii, earned a bachelor's degree in Journalism from UNC Chapel Hill in 1981. She Joined The News & Observer in 1982 as a feature writer. Sill became an assistant metro editor in 1988, was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University in 1993-94, and later worked as N&O projects editor, guiding the investigation of the hog industry that won a Pulitzer Prize in 1996. She became managing editor in 1998.
Faculty and Courses:
Patrick Conway, (Economics, "The Economics of North Carolina")
Connie Eble, (English, "English: The International Language")
Todd Taylor, (English, "Multimedia North Carolina")
Jeanne Moskal, (English, "Travel Literature")
Richard "Pete" Andrews, (Public Policy, "Environment and Labor in the Global Economy").
|
