Wednesday, November 12, 2003 at  4:15 p.m. in the Alumni Lounge.  Lauren Berlant, Professor of English at the University of Chicago, will be giving the first talk of the 2003-04 Queer Studies Lecture Series.  Professor Berlant is one of the leading scholars in queer studies.  She is the author of The Anatomy of National Fantasy:  Hawthorne, Utopia, and Everyday Life and The Queen of America Goes to Washington City.  She has won numerous awards for her scholarly contributions to American studies and queer studies, among them the 1999 Society of American Publishers award for Best Special Issue of a magazine or journal for "Intimacy," a special issue of Critical Inquiry.  Professor Berlant will be speaking on "Remembering Love, Forgetting Everything Else:  Now, Voyager."

Thursday, November 13, 2003 at 7:00 p.m. The Connecticut Historical Society hosts Judging a Book By Its Color:  Minorities in the Comics with renowned comics historian William H. Foster III, comics historian and comic book artist/writer Trina Robbins (creator/author of the popular Go Girl! Series), and Stan Sakai, award-winning creator of Usagi Yojimbo and Space Usagi.  This distinguished panel will discuss the many compelling images of minorities (including women) in the comic world:  how they are portrayed (positively and negatively); the impact and influence of character development and depiction; their opportunity to be victors versus villains, and the changes in role model status throughout the historical timeline.