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Our noses incur damage on a daily basis, and the olfactory epithelium is able to regenerate and maintain function. However, if chronic inflammation is initiated, it can lead to olfactory dysfunction. To begin to understand chronic inflammation, modulation of acute inflammation in the mouse olfactory epithelium is being studied at the Hegg Laboratory at the University of Michigan.

Tania Iqbal spearheads the project, which focuses on elucidating mechanisms of neuroregeneration using the mouse olfactory epithelium as a model. Iqbal's central hypothesis is that environmental irritants activate inflammation by acting on trigeminal nerve receptors to release inflammatory neuropeptides. Neuropeptides then activate the release of cytokines from macrophages and initiate an inflammatory cascade. She anticipates her work will direct studies toward developing therapies for olfactory dysfunction and chronic inflammation. 

Tania R. Iqbal is a postdoctoral candidate at Michigan State University. Her research focuses on mechanisms of regeneration, neuromodulation, and inflammation in the olfactory system.

Anne Collins Goodyear, co-director of the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, will offer a tour and overview of the exhibition Collaborations and Collusions: Artists' Networks from the Nineteenth Century to the Present. She will consider how pioneering groups of modern and contemporary artists supported and encouraged one another in pioneering artistic breakthroughs from impressionism and post-impressionism to cubism, dada, pop, and conceptual art and she will focus in particular on the important contributions of Marcel Duchamp, whose work is featured in this exhibition.

Free and open to the public.

Is it ever acceptable to lie? This question plays a surprisingly important role in the story of Europe's transition from medieval to modern society. According to many historians, Europe became modern when Europeans began to lie, that is, when they began to argue that it is sometimes acceptable to lie. In this lecture, Dallas Denery examines the trajectory of historical progression from a medieval world of faith, in which every lie is sinful, to a more worldly early modern society in which lying becomes a permissible strategy for self-defense and self-advancement.

Denery uncovers the complicated history of lying from the early days of the Catholic Church to the Enlightenment, revealing the diversity of attitudes about lying by considering the question from the perspectives of five representative voices, the Devil, God, theologians, courtiers, and women. Examining works by Augustine, Bonaventure, Martin Luther, Madeleine de Scudry, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and a host of others, he shows how the lie, long thought to be the source of worldly corruption, eventually became the very basis of social cohesion and peace.

Dallas G. Denery II is an associate professor specializing in medieval and early modern European history. He is the author of Seeing and Being Seen in the Later Medieval World: Optics, Theology, and Religious Life and the coeditor of Uncertain Knowledge: Scepticism, Relativism, and Doubt in the Middle Ages. His most recent book, The Devil Wins: A History of Lying from the Garden of Eden to the Enlightenment, is now available from Princeton University Press.

Note: This talk will also be live streamed on Bowdoin's Live Webcasts page.

In the aftermath of the attacks in Paris at the beginning of this month, the Bowdoin French Club, the Famille Francophone, will be holding a public screening of Daniel Leconte's 2008 documentary, C'est Dur D'être Aimé Par Des Cons (“It’s tough being loved by jerks”). The film follows the 2006 court case that was brought against the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in the wake of their decision to publish cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad. It will be shown in French with English subtitles, with discussion to follow in English.  

The movie offers fascinating and unprecedented insight behind the scenes at this controversial publication. It also raises important questions about free speech and satire in France, a country with very different laws concerning freedom of expression. The discussion will provide an opportunity to reflect on these questions as well as the social and political consequences of recent events.

The Bowdoin Famille Francophone (aka “Bowdoin French Club”) is a student-run organization operating under the auspices of the Bowdoin Student Government. It seeks to promote Francophone values, culture and interests to the wider Bowdoin College community.

Jill Abramson is a journalist who spent the last 17 years inthe most senior editorial positions at The New York Times, where she was thefirst woman to serve as Washington Bureau Chief, Managing Editor, and ExecutiveEditor. Before joining the Times, she was Deputy Washington Bureau Chief and aninvestigative reporter covering money and politics at The Wall Street Journalfor nine years. She is the author of three books including Strange Justice,which she wrote with Jane Mayer. Before joining Harvard's English Department asa lecturer teaching non-fiction narrative writing, she taught undergraduatewriting seminars at Yale for five years and at Princeton.

She is the author of three books including Strange Justice, which she wrote withJane Mayer. Before joining Harvard's English Department as a lecturer teachingnon-fiction narrative writing, she taught undergraduate writing seminars atYale for five years and at Princeton.

Ticket info: Free and open to the public. Tickets are required and areavailable at the David Saul Smith Union Information desk, 207-725-3375.

Sponsored by: Gender & Women's Studies and the CharlesWeston Pickard Lecture Fund.

Join Susan Kaplan, director of the Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum and Arctic Studies Center, and Genevieve LeMoine, curator of the Arctic Museum and Arctic Studies Center, as they discuss some of the challenges and opportunities of the contemporary Arctic.

Community Lectures include time for questions from the audience. Arrive at noon with a bag lunch. Beverages and cookies provided. 

The lectures are free and open to the public. Questions? Call 207-725-3253.

In her presentation, Iris Levin '05 examines questions and themes from molecular ecology, behavioral ecology, evolutionary biology, and disease ecology. Her research explores biological interactions at multiple scales, from social transactions between individuals to patterns of population structure between hosts and parasites. 

Using subjects within the avian world, she studies the interface between social behavior, physiology and parasite/microbe transmission by testing hypotheses that integrate themes from evolutionary biology, behavioral ecology and wildlife epidemiology, within the mathematical framework of social network theory. 

Iris Levin is a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow in the department of ecology and evolutionary biology at University of Colorado, Boulder.  She graduated from Bowdoin in 2005 and earned her PhD in Ecology, Evolution and Systematics from the University of Missouri, St. Louis in 2011.

At the turn of the twentieth century, artists from urban centers such as Boston and New York City made Maine one of their favorite summer destinations. Aided by improved roads and new rail lines into northern New England, they gravitated to the rugged coast, where crashing waves, exposed rocks, and dramatic skies captured their artistic interest. The paintings that emerged from those inspirations ushered in a new chapter in the history of art-making here in Maine. 

Join Frank Goodyear, co-director, Bowdoin College Museum of Art for a tour of Rocks, Waves, and Skies: Maine Landscapes, 1900-1950, a new exhibition on display through June highlighting the work of artists such as Rockwell Kent, George Bellows, John Sloan, and Marsden Hartley. 

Free and open to the public.

Sherryl Vint is professor of Science Fiction Media Studies at the University of California, Riverside, where she co-directs the Science Fiction and Technoculture Studies program. She is the author and/or editor of several books, including Bodies of Tomorrow (2007), Animal Alterity (2010), The Wire (2013), Science Fiction: A Guide to the Perplexed (2014), and The Routledge Concise History of Science Fiction (2011, with Mark Bould). She co-edits the journals Science Fiction Film and Television and Science Fiction Studies.

Her talk will present an overview of science fiction in a global context, exploring the ways common science fiction icons appear differently when embedded in multiple local contexts, and will discuss the significance of the recent explosion of science fiction across the globe. 

This event is free and open to the public.  For more information contact Arielle Saiber at asaiber@bowdoin.edu.  

Sponsored by the Departments of Romance Languages and English and the Cinema Studies and Gender and Women's Studies Programs.

This one-hour, award winning documentary reveals the true-life story of an extraordinary Alaskan woman who becomes an unlikely hero in the fight for civil rights. Like Native Americans in the lower forty-eight states, Alaska Natives struggled to keep their basic human rights, as well as protect their ancient ties to the land. The Bill of Rights did not apply to them.

Elizabeth Peratrovich, a young Tlingit woman and mother of three, testified before the Alaska Territorial Senate in 1945 and swayed their vote with her compelling testimony in favor of the Anti-Discrimination Act, the first civil rights bill passed in the U.S. since the Civil War.&

Free and open to the public.

Growing Local is a short series by Maine Farmland Trust about small farms and the uncertain fate of the local food movement. The series weaves together three separate but connected stories to create a coherent narrative about local food and local farms. The goal of the project is to help fellow Mainers, and hopefully others around the country, better understand the agrarian landscape surrounding us and the important role it plays in growing community as well as food. The film makers hope to inspire viewers to actively seek out local foods for their own health, the health of their communities and that of the planet. 

See the trailer and join us for dinner (get dinner 'through the line' and eat in Daggett Lounge), watch the film (starting at 6:30) and participate in conversation with table mates and local farmers. 

This event is being hosted at Bowdoin by the Environmental Studies Program, Sustainable Bowdoin, and Bowdoin Dining.

Can animal songs be considered music? Join composer Emily Doolittle as she explores this philosophical question within the context of zoomusicology, the study of the musical aspects of sound or communication produced and received by animals. Doolittle investigates how humans across cultures and time periods have used animal songs in their music, and analyzes bird and other animal songs from both a musical and a scientific perspective. 

This past year, she was part of a study showing that hermit thrushes base their songs on the overtone series. She was also recently composer-in-residence at the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology (Seewiesen, Germany), where she and ornithologist Henrik Brumm discovered that the musician wren shows a preference for singing perfect consonant intervals. 

Doolittle has written for such ensembles as Orchestre Métropolitain (Montreal), Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra (Toronto), Symphony Nova Scotia, the Vancouver Island Symphony, Ensemble Contemporain de Montréal, the Motion Ensemble and Paragon, and such soloists as sopranos Suzie LeBlanc, Janice Jackson, Patricia Green and Helen Pridmore, pianist Rachel Iwaasa, violinist Annette-Barbara Vogel, viola d’amorist Thomas Georgi and viola da gambist Karin Preslmayr. 

She was born in Nova Scotia in 1972 and educated at Dalhousie University, the Koninklijk Conservatorium in the Hague, Indiana University and Princeton University. In 2008 she moved to Seattle, where she is currently an Associate Professor of Composition and Theory at Cornish College of the Arts. In addition to her academic pursuits, she plays fiddle in the Seattle-area French Canadian traditional music and stepdance band Podorythmie.

Robert Bazell, former Chief Science and Health Correspondent for NBC News, will discuss advancements in cancer treatment and the commercial concerns surrounding them. 

In his 37 years at NBC, Bazell reported over 4,500 news items and won dozens of awards for his journalism including an Edward R. Murrow Award, a Peabody, and five Emmys. He currently teaches molecular, cellular and developmental biology at Yale University.

Note: This talk will also be live streamed on Bowdoin’s Live Webcasts page.

Studies on genotype by environment interactions illustrate that the rapidly escalating amount of genomic data and tools applied to model systems in controlled conditions must be tried in more biologically relevant conditions and in a broader array of wild organisms.

Christina Richards examines how incorporating genomics and systems biology into robust experimental design and statistical analysis on model and non-model organisms will be a critical component of fleshing out the relationship between genotype and phenotype. Her research integrates several disciplines to explore how plants respond to natural selection in stressful or novel environments.

Christina Richards is assistant professor of integrative biology at the University of South Florida. Her research interests include natural selection, local adaptation, evolutionary ecology, and ecological genomics, among others. 

This award-winning documentary tells the incredible forgotten story of the passenger pigeon, its unlikely extinction, and its striking relevance to conservation challenges today. Almost 100 years ago on September 1, 1914, Martha, the last known passenger pigeon in existence (named after Martha Washington) died in the Cincinnati Zoo. A superabundant species of billions that darkened the entire sky disappeared in a matter of decades. 

What happened to the passenger pigeon? You could say we happened. Discover how and why this bird went extinct, and how this anthropogenic extinction foreshadows more recent, rapid, ongoing destruction of species in the wake of the deforestation, rising ocean temperatures, acidification of bodies of water, and melting of polar ice shelves that are of vital concern to the current generation of students.