Academics
Serving & Shaping Her World Speakers Series
Values, vision, and voice go hand in hand at Emma Willard School. As we prepare young women for lives of accomplishment, everything we do is guided by our five core values: meaningful choice; academic excellence; community and relationships; ethical decision-making; and women’s perspective. To complement our curriculum, we offer students regular opportunities to come together as a community and learn directly from speakers whose interests and accomplishments bring those core values to life. Speakers in The Serving and Shaping Her World Speakers Series explicitly address the global, women’s, artistic, ethical, health, and scientific perspectives. Classroom and advisee group pre- and post-assembly discussions help students assess and integrate the topics and consider what broadening their perspectives will bring to their lives as students and citizens of the world.
Below are the speakers scheduled for the 2009–2010 academic year.
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Kip Fulbeck— November 4, 2009Kip Fulbeck is an American artist, slam poet, and filmmaker. He is the author of Permanence: Tattoo Portraits; Part Asian, 100% Hapa; Paper Bullets: A Fictional Autobiography; and the upcoming Mixed: Portraits of Multiracial Kids, as well as the director of a dozen short films including Banana Split and Lilo & Me. Kip has been featured on CNN, MTV, and PBS, and has performed and exhibited in over 20 countries. He speaks nationwide on identity, multi-raciality and pop culture — mixing together spoken word, stand-up comedy, political activism and personal stories. A challenging and inspirational teacher, Kip is a professor of art at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he is the recipient of the university's Distinguished Teaching Award. He is also an avid surfer, guitar player, motorcycle rider, ocean lifeguard, and pug enthusiast. He is also a world-ranked Masters swimmer. |
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Margaret Wertheim—February 11, 2009Margaret Wertheim is an internationally noted science writer, commentator, and curator whose work focuses on the relations between science and the wider cultural landscape. She is the author of Pythagoras’ Trousers, a history of the relationship between physics and religion, and The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace: A History of Space from Dante to the Internet. In 2003, Wertheim and her sister founded the Institute For Figuring, an innovative Los Angeles-based organization devoted to enhancing public engagement with the aesthetic and poetic dimensions of science and mathematics. The IFF hosts lectures, curates exhibitions, and publishes books. Lecture topics have included hyperbolic space, the mathematics of knots, logic crystallography, the physics of snowflakes, the science of insect flight, and the history of computer memory devices. Through the IFF, the Wertheims have designed and curated exhibitions for galleries and museums around the country, including Santa Monica Museum of Art, Apexart (New York), Machine Project (Los Angeles), Art Center College of Design (Pasadena), and the Museum of Jurassic Technology (Los Angeles). |
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Nicholas Donabet Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn—February 23, 2010The New York Times bestseller Half the Sky documents the global need to educate girls and women to ensure a healthier world community. Together, Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn won a Pulitzer Prize for their coverage of China and have written two previous books about Asia: Thunder from the East: Portrait of a Rising Asia and China Wakes: The Struggle for the Soul of a Rising Power. Nicholas Kristof is an American journalist, author, op-ed columnist, and a winner of two Pulitzer Prizes. He has written an op-ed column for The New York Times since November 2001 and is widely known for bringing to light human rights abuses in Asia and Africa, such as human trafficking and the Darfur conflict. He has lived on four continents, reported on six, and traveled to 140 countries and all 50 states. According to his blog, during his travels he has had “unpleasant experiences with malaria, wars, an Indonesian mob carrying heads on pikes, and an African airplane crash.” Jeffrey Toobin of CNN and The New Yorker, a Harvard classmate, has said, “I’m not surprised to see him emerge as the moral conscience of our generation of journalists. I am surprised to see him as the Indiana Jones of our generation of journalists.” Sheryl WuDunn is a Chinese American author, lecturer, and businesswoman who was the first Asian-American to win a Pulitzer Prize. A specialist in energy and alternative energy issues, she has also been a private wealth advisor with Goldman Sachs and was previously a journalist and editor for The New York Times. At the Times, she ran the Times's coverage of global energy, alternative energy, foreign technology, and foreign industry; previously, she was anchor of The New York Times Page One, a nightly program of the next day's stories in the Times. She also has worked in The New York Times Beijing and Tokyo bureaus, and speaks Chinese and Japanese. She won the Pulitzer Prize with husband Nicholas D. Kristof for her reporting from Beijing about the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. WuDunn and Kristof were the first married couple ever to receive a Pulitzer for journalism. |
