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Robot Caregivers and Robo-therapy in Japan: Treating the “Trauma” of Aging

After their own children, elderly Japanese apparently prefer robot caregivers and companions to foreign ones (in the increasingly likely event of a severe shortage of ethnic Japanese nurses and social workers). Robots are perceived by seniors, and by politicians too, of eliminating the socio-cultural anxieties provoked by foreign laborers and caregivers. (And for some right-wing […]

Big Humanities Data

Patrik Svensson is a professor in the Humanities and information technologyand director of HUMlab, Umeå University. His current research spans information technology and learning, research infrastructure, screen cultures and the digital humanities as an emerging field. Apart from having main responsibility for HUMlab, he is currently heavily involved in Umeå University's new Arts Campus and […]

El Capitan: The Story of the Capitan Grande Indians

Professor Thorne’s new book, El Capitan tells the story of the seizure of El Capitan from theCapitan Grande Indians. Defining terms of their capitulation, the Capitan Grande people insisted on being relocated as communities. Out of the geopolitical maelstrom of the Depression era came the birth of two new reservations in San Diego County: Barona […]

Darwin on the Cutting Room Floor: Evolutionary Biology and Film Censorship, 1930-1968

Talk Description: Before 1968, censor boards in the US and UK dictated which aspects of science they considered appropriate for movies and which scientific subjects they considered indecent or immoral. This talk will explore how filmmakers between 1930 and 1968 crafted stories involving evolutionary biology and how religious groups attempted to control these evolutionary narratives […]

Start of Winter 2014 Instruction

Classes start Monday, January 6. Monday, January 20: Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday. Monday, February 17: Presidents’ Day holiday. hm 10/3/13

Caring Democracy: The Paradigm Changes

HULL LECTURE ON WOMEN AND SOCIAL JUSTICE The feminist ethic of care grew out of a challenge to the traditional public/private split with its exclusion of women from the public sphere. In the past generation, though, neoliberal economic and political policies have reduced the prospects for collective life in a “public” sphere. This talk will […]

Junípero Serra’s Dream and the Founding of California

On Monday January 13 at 5:00 pm author Greg Orfalea will be speaking abouthis new book Journey to the Sun: Junípero Serra's Dream and the Founding of California. Afterward he will be signing copies of his book which will be available for purchase at the event. The event is free and will be held in […]

Kinet Höyük (Turkey) and the Archaeology of Eastern Mediterranean Seaports

The twenty-year project (1992-2011) at Kinet Höyük, an ancient seaport near Iskenderun in Turkey, offers a long perspective on maritime life in the northeasternmost corner of the Mediterranean. Kinet can be identified with classical Issos, overlooking the plain where Alexander the Great defeated the Persians in 333 BCE; and earlier, with a Hittite harbor named […]