November
These Shining Lives: Radium Girls in Life and Theatre
Emily Ganfield, Assistant Professor of Theatre Arts
November 12
This forum will explore the story of Catherine Donohue, Grace Fryer and other women who would go down in history as “Radium Girls.” In the 1910s and 1920s, women workers painted watch faces with a paint containing radium to make them glow in the dark. The workers developed serious health issues and died due to their exposure to radium, which prompted them to activism that resulted in improvements in workplace health and safety. Recent books, movies and plays have popularized the experiences of the Radium Girls. The play These Shining Lives by Melanie Marnich is one such example. In this one-week forum, Assistant Professor of Theatre Arts Emily Ganfield will use the play as a way into both the history and the recent artistic representations of the Radium Girls. In the first part of the session, we will learn about the actual people and events that inspired the play. Then, we will turn to the play itself, experiencing a live reading of portions of it. Throughout, the presentation will use the Radium Girls to show how theatre is a shining example of the ways art can inform and educate audiences about real people and events that deserve to be more widely known.
Is that Fair?: Using Mathematics to Address Social Questions and Decisions
Cal Van Niewaal, Professor Emeritus of Computer Science and John F. Yothers Professor Emeritus of Mathematics
November 19
Fairness is a central tenet of social choice and group decision making. Arriving at decisions that every member of a group perceives as fair can be difficult, if not impossible. So how can individuals and societies arrive at fair decisions when the desires of one party conflict with those of another? This one-week forum presented by Professor Emeritus of Computer Science and John F. Yothers Professor Emeritus of Mathematics Cal Van Niewaal will explore how mathematics can help societies solve such questions and arrive at equitable conclusions that seek fairness for all. While sophisticated mathematical techniques are used to address questions of social choice, the basic ideas of such analyses are accessible to all. Using simple arithmetic, basic geometry and a little middle-school algebra, this forum will explain how math can be used to solve common social questions surrounding things like voting and asset division. The session will begin by using mathematics to examine the rational flaws present in commonly used voting systems. This will lead us to Kenneth Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem, part of the work that earned him a Nobel Prize in Economics. We will then consider how mathematics can help with designing procedures that ensure fair and equitable solutions to other everyday questions and conflicts, such as those involved with asset division, divorce and labor/management negotiations.