Neuroscience Researcher and Blogger to Share Research on Brain Function, Memory and Thought

CHESTERTOWN, MD— An educator and researcher in neuroscience from Texas A & M University will visit Washington College on Tuesday, October 2, to talk about the biology of thought and consciousness. 

William Klemm will deliver a power-point lecture titled “The Ghost Materializes: How the Brain’s Three Minds Think,” based on his book by the same title.

The talk will take place at 5 p.m. in Hotchkiss Recital Hall, Daniel Z. Gibson Center for the Arts on the Washington College campus, 300 Washington Avenue.  A reception with the author will follow in the Underwood Lobby.

Klemm’s lecture, like his latest book, crystallizes his ideas about brain function, especially how the brain creates thought as either latent messages stored as memory or “on-line” through patterns of nerve impulses distributed in circuits and networks. He will challenge a common view that free will is illusory with his theory for consciousness: that the brain is capable of generating both automatic intentions and freely chosen ones. A long-time sleep researcher, he also will present his latest theory for why people dream.

Klemm, who calls himself “the Memory Medic,” has authored more than 17 books, 50 book chapters and 200-peer-reviewed papers. His most recent books include Better Grades, Less Effort, 2011 (Benecton), Atoms of Mind: The Ghost Materializes, 2011 (Springer) and Memory Power 101, 2012 (Skyhorse/Norton). 

He writes a monthly research-based newspaper column for baby boomers that covers topics of memory, attentiveness and perception, and maintains the blog site “Improve Your Learning and Memory.” He also blogs for Psychology Today, whose editors have tagged many of his posts as “essential reads.” His blog posts have drawn over a quarter million reader views.

The October 2 event at Washington College is sponsored by Sigma Xi, Phi Beta Kappa, and the William James Forum. For more on the speaker: http://vetmed.tamu.edu/faculty/wklemm.

Separating the Girls from the Boys—Author Explores How Consumer Culture Defines Identities

CHESTERTOWN, MD—Just who decided girls should wear pink, boys blue? In a talk at Washington College, author and scholar Jo Paoletti will share answers to that question and more. Based on research from her recently published book, Pink and Blue: Telling the Boys from the Girls in America, Paoletti’s presentation will examine how consumer culture—from cartoons to fashion—shapes and defines the sexes in the United States, and how changing concepts of sexual identity, in turn, shape the culture.

The talk, which is free and open to the public, will take place Wednesday, September 26, at 5 p.m. in Hynson Lounge of Hodson Hall on the Washington College campus, 300 Washington Avenue.  A reception with the author will follow. The event is sponsored by the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, the Department of History, the Gender Studies Program, and Phi Beta Kappa.  

Paoletti, an Associate Professor in the American Studies Department at the University of Maryland, holds degrees in apparel design and textiles and has tracked the changes in children’s clothing—and the meaning behind those changes—for three decades.  “It’s really a story of what happened to neutral clothing,” she explained in an article in Smithsonian in 2011, noting that both girls and boys once wore dainty white dresses up to age 6. “What was once a matter of practicality—you dress your baby in white dresses and diapers; white cotton can be bleached—became a matter of ‘Oh my God, if I dress my baby in the wrong thing, they’ll grow up perverted.’ ”

For more on the speaker: http://terpconnect.umd.edu/~jpaol/.

Sophomores Receive PBK Blumenthal Awards To Fund Scholarly Pursuits in Drama and History

Andrea Clarke '14

CHESTERTOWN, MD—Gerda Blumenthal awards from the Washington College chapter of Phi Beta Kappa will fund a drama camp for girls in Cameroon and fuel a research paper on the role of barbarism in South American history.

In most years, one award valued between $800 and $1,200 is granted. However, because no Blumenthal Award was given last year, the Phi Beta Kappa chapter was able to bestow $1,200 awards on two sophomores: Andrea Clarke and Nicolas Campisi.

Clarke, a Baltimore native, will use her award to help fund an all-girls drama camp she plans to run in Mora, Cameroon this summer. She will be teaching the basic principles of drama to local middle and high school students. Through the program, she hopes to encourage creative thought and promote a sense of empowerment in the students.   

Nicolas Campisi '14

Campisi, a native of Argentina, plans to write a journal article about South American history. As part of his research, he will be traveling to the University of Massachusetts at Amherst Library to read personal letters written by German painter Johann Moritz Rugendas, who traveled and worked throughout South America in the early to mid 19th century. 

    

Clarke and Campisi will present their completed projects to the members of Phi Beta Kappa next fall.

The awards, which support specific intellectual pursuits related to the Humanities, honor Dr. Gerda Blumenthal, a well-respected scholar who taught French and World Literature at Washington College from 1955 to 1968. To be eligible, a student must be a rising sophomore or junior with a GPA of at least 3.5 and submit a detailed project proposal to Phi Beta Kappa.

For more information about Washington College Phi Beta Kappa and the Gerda Blumenthal Award, visit http://academics.washcoll.edu/phibetakappa.php.

Dr. Gerda Blumenthal chaired the Modern Languages department at WC. 

CBS Correspondent Chip Reid to Discuss Interplay of Politics, Religion and Culture April 13

CHESTERTOWN, MD—During a 24-year career in network television news, journalist Chip Reid, now National Correspondent for CBS News, has covered everything from wars and wildfires to political campaigns and the White House. On Friday evening, April 13, he will visit Washington College to share what his reporting has taught him about how politics, religion and culture mix in American life.

Hosted by the College’s Institute for Religion, Politics and Culture, Reid will speak at 4:30 p.m. in Hynson Lounge, Hodson Hall, on the College campus, 300 Washington Avenue. The event, titled “The Intersection of Politics, Religion and Culture: A Contemporary View,” is free and open to the public.

Reid has worked for three major networks (ABC, NBC and CBS) and two local news stations in Washington, D.C. (WJLA and WTTG) since switching careers from law to TV news in 1988. While with NBC, he covered 9/11, the war in Iraq and the war on terror. He reported from Ground Zero and spent seven weeks embedded with a unit of U.S. Marines entering Baghdad. He also covered Congress, including the Clinton impeachment, and the Gore-Bush presidential contest.

Since joining CBS in 2007, he has reported on John McCain’s campaign and served as Chief White House Correspondent covering the Obama Administration. He was named National Correspondent in June 2011.

A native of Wilmington, Reid graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a degree in psychology from Vassar College in 1977. He earned a master’s in Public Affairs from Princeton and a law degree from Columbia before moving to Washington, D.C. to practice law. He started his broadcast career as a field producer for ABC News.

Professor Striner's Maverick Fix for Nation's Economic Malaise is Cover of PBK Quarterly

CHESTERTOWN, MD—Washington College history professor Richard Striner’s proposal for fixing the U.S. economy is the cover story of the Winter 2012 issue of American Scholar, the quarterly magazine published by the Phi Beta Kappa Society. His historically rooted pitch: Congress could create money, as it did during the Civil War, funding public projects that shock the economy back to life.

Striner, a Lincoln scholar whose 2010 book Lincoln's Way explored the use of broad presidential powers under six Administrations, says his research for that book piqued his interest in monetary policy, especially how the United States financed its wars and used major public works projects to boost employment. The son of an economist, he delved into U.S. monetary history from the Civil War forward. His proposal may be heresy to some, he notes, but a number of well-respected economists were saying much the same thing back in the 1930s and ’40s.

Striner’s proposal is different from any previous “Greenback” proposal because he envisions a dynamic partnership between Congress and the Federal Reserve—a partnership that would use all of the existing powers of “the Fed” to prevent or counteract inflation.

“I’m hoping this proposal will stimulate a major reconceptualization of what money is,” Striner says. “Most Americans have no idea of how our money supply is created or how money enters circulation, because the subject is hardly ever explained in vivid language that the general public can understand. This article, among its other aims, seeks to rectify that situation.”

To read the article online, visit http://theamericanscholar.org/how-to-pay-for-what-we-need/.

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November 30, 2011