The Global Georgia Initiative brings world class thinkers to Georgia. It presents global problems in local context by addressing pressing contemporary questions, including the economy, society, and the environment, with a focus on how the arts and humanities can intervene. Global Georgia combines the best in contemporary thinking and practice in the arts and humanities with related advances in the sciences and other areas.
The participants for spring of 2013 include:
James C. Cobb
B. Phinizy Spalding Distinguished Professor in the History of the American South
University of Georgia
Title: “De-Mystifying Dixie: Southern History and Culture in Global Perspective”
Date: January 29, 4 p.m.
Location: The Chapel
James C. Cobb is widely recognized as one of the foremost scholars of Southern history and culture—and among the first to write broadly about the South in a global context. Cobb has written more than 40 articles and 12 books, mostly about the impact of changing economic conditions on the South. Two of these, Away Down South: A History of Southern Identity and The Most Southern Place on Earth, his book about the Mississippi Delta, are considered classics in the field. The latter quickly became a model for studying other regional cultures and subcultures, such as those of Appalachia and New England.
Committed to reaching beyond the scholarly community, Cobb has written pieces for The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, the New Republic, The Times Literary Supplement, and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. His latest book, The New America: The South and the Nation Since World War II, was published in 2010 by Oxford University Press. Cobb’s work has won him a string of awards and prizes, named lectureships, offices in professional associations, most notably the presidency of the Southern Historical Association—and a dedicated audience of both academics and lay history buffs who eagerly follow his work.
The lecture is co-sponsored by Flagpole magazine.
Introduction by Pete McCommons, Editor/Publisher, Flagpole.
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Barry C. Smith
Director, Institute of Philosophy
School of Advanced Study
University of London
Title: “Coming to Our Senses, Anew”
Date: February 5, 2013
Location: The Chapel
Barry C. Smith is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Institute of Philosophy in the School of Advanced Study, University of London, where he co-directs the Centre for the Study of the Senses. He has written mostly on the philosophy of mind and language, on the topics of self-knowledge and our knowledge of language. He co-edited The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Language (2006) with Ernest Lepore. Following his 2007 collection, Questions of Taste – The Philosophy of Wine (Oxford University Press), he began working with psychologists, neurologists and neuroscientists on flavor perception and is now the co-organizer of an international research project on the Nature of Taste, jointly run by the University of London and NYU. He has been a Visiting Professor at the University of California at Berkeley and at the Ecole Normale Supèriere, and was the writer and presenter of the BBC World Service radio series, The Mysteries of the Brain.
Introduction by David Lee, UGA Vice President for Research.
John Lowe
Barbara Lester Methvin Distinguished Professor of English
University of Georgia
Title: “The Tropical Sublime in the 19th Century CircumCaribbean”
Date: February 12, 5:30 p.m.
Location: Ciné, 234 W. Hancock, Athens
John Lowe, recipient of the MELUS Lifetime Achievement Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Field of Ethnic American Literatures, was Robert Penn Warren Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature and Founding Director of the Program in Louisiana and Caribbean Studies at Louisiana State University. He has authored and edited numerous books in Ethnic American and Southern literature, published dozens of essays, and presented over 80 papers in North America, Europe, and Asia, including invited lectures at the Sorbonne, the University of Paris VI, Venice, Kiel, Munich, Dresden, Budapest, and Hyderabad.
Introduction by Richard Gordon, Director, Latin American and Caribbean Studies Institute, UGA.
Bertis Downs
Entertainment lawyer and adjunct professor, actively retired
R.E.M. advisor since earliest times
Title: ”Bertis Downs in Conversation: Don’t Get Me Started – on Athens, music lessons, and of course, good schools for all kids…”
Date: February 18, 2013, 4 pm
Location: The Chapel
Since graduating from Davidson College in 1978, Bertis Downs has lived in Athens, Georgia, where he received his law degree in 1981 from the University of Georgia’s School of Law. He represented the band R.E.M. throughout the band’s illustrious thirty-year career and remains an advisor to the group’s various business endeavors even after its disbandment in 2011.
In 1988 Downs originated the Entertainment Law course at the University School of Law and for a short while was even referred to as the Adjunct Dean Emeritus on the university website (until he pointed out the “mistake” and the honorific distinction was summarily removed). Downs has always maintained his interest in teaching by speaking at various state and national continuing legal education and music industry conferences and groups such as the Practicing Law Institute, the Future of Music Coalition, South By Southwest, and the American Bar Association Forum Committee on the Entertainment Industries. Throughout his career, he has lectured widely at universities and law schools including William and Mary, the University of Chicago, Harvard, Duke, Emory, Vanderbilt, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Emory, the University of Milan, the University of British Columbia and University College Dublin. His civic and sociopolitical interests include advocating for a vital public resource: our nation’s public education system. His main academic and professional focus is, like most everyone else in the creative industries these days, the changing legal and business landscape relating to the digital age of ubiquity.
Downs is active in various organizations and has served on the boards of People for the American Way, Athens-Clarke Heritage Foundation, Georgia Conservation Voters, Georgia Appleseed, First Presbyterian Church of Athens, Georgia and the Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation.
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Ntone Edjabe
Writer, journalist and DJ
Founding editor of Chimurenga magazine
Title: “Diagnosing the Chimurenga Chronic”
Date: February 26, 2013, 4pm
Location: The Chapel
Ntone Edjabe is a DJ, critic, and the founder and editor of Chimurenga magazine, a pan-African publication of writing, art and politics based in Cape Town, South Africa.
Edjabe’s Feb. 26 lecture will be followed by a DJ session that evening at the 40 Watt, 285 W, Washington St. in downtown Athens.
Edjabe was profiled in a June segment of CNN’s “African Voices” – article and video clips available here.
Introduction by Akinloye Ojo, Director, African Studies Institute, UGA.
Valerie Babb
Professor of English and of African American Studies
Director, Institute for African American Studies
University of Georgia
Title: “In the Footfalls of Diaspora: Reflections on the Wanderer“
Date: March 5, 5:30 p.m.
Location: Ciné, 234 W. Hancock, Athens
Valerie Babb is Professor of English and of African American Studies, as well as Director of the Institute for African American Studies, at the University of Georgia. She received her Ph.D. and M.A. from the University at Buffalo, The State University of New York, her B.A. at Queens College, The City University of New York. She has been a professor at Georgetown University and is a faculty member of the Bread Loaf School of English, Middlebury College.
Her fields of expertise include African American literature and culture and American literature and culture, with particular interests in constructions of race and gender. Among her publications are Whiteness Visible: The Meaning of Whiteness in American Literature and Culture. Other works include Black Georgetown Remembered, described as “the history behind the Oprah Book Club selection River, Cross My Heart,” and Ernest Gaines.
Professor Babb’s talk will be preceded by a cocktail reception at 5 pm.
Introduction by Barbara McCaskill, Co-Director, Civil Rights Digital Library Initiative.
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Ambassador James A. Joseph
Title: “Leadership as a Way of Being: Reflections on Nelson Mandela, Servant Leadership and Personal Renewal”
Date: May 16, 4 p.m.
Location: The Chapel
James A. Joseph has served in the administrations of four U.S. Presidents. He was U.S. Ambassador to South Africa from 1995–1999, the only holder of that office to present his credentials to President Nelson Mandela. In 1999, President Thabo Mbeki awarded Joseph the Order of Good Hope, the highest honor the Republic of South Africa bestows on a citizen of another country. He is currently Professor of the Practice of Public Policy Studies at Duke University and executive director of the United States – Southern Africa Center for Leadership and Public Values at Duke and the University of Cape Town.
Ambassador Joseph’s talk is presented in partnership with the J.W. Fanning Institute for Leadership Development, which organized his visit to UGA.