On Campus - Stories
March 21, 2003 Vol. 55, No. 35

• Speaker to explore 'Islam Beyond Violence'
• Seven Tibetan Buddhist monks to visit Drake
• Drake to honor two educators at alumni dinner April 4
• Anderson Gallery to present video work by French artist
• Drake to celebrate National Library Week, April 6-12
• 'Carbon' exhibit to open April 2
• Let’s DU Lunch set for April 2
• Students offer diabetes screening

Scott Kugle, assistant professor of religion at Swarthmore College, will discuss "Islam Beyond Violence" when he gives the Stringfellow Lecture on Religion at 7:30 p.m. Monday, March 31, at St. Catherine of Siena Catholic Student Center. The lecture is free and open to the public.

At a time in which so many recently minted "experts" on Islam profess an ability to explain Islam to an American audience, professor Kugle is an American-born Muslim and a scholar of ancient Islam who can speak to the heart of many matters of interest, said David Wellman, visiting professor of religion at Drake.

"His talk of an Islamic approach to non-violence should provide a much needed corrective to what has often become a very one-dimensional view of Islam among westerners. Americans are in need of authentic interpreters of Islam who have experience in speaking with audiences who are not familiar with this faith tradition. For this reason and many others, professor Kugle's visit to Drake should prove to be both timely and compelling, both for students and faculty, as well as the wider community of Des Moines."

Professor Kugle specializes in the study of comparative religion and Islam, ethics and Islamic cultures and Islamic mysticism. A practicing Sufi Muslim, Kugle received his Ph.D. from Duke University and has focused much of his most recent work on the different expressions of Islam in Pakistan and Morocco. He has studied a wide array of topics, including Islamic sainthood, the struggles involved in following the Sufi path of Islam, law and ethics in Islamic societies, colonial politics, social violence and the translation of Islamic poetry.
Throughout his work, Kugle has grappled with the need for solidarity among different religious traditions. "That's the very real work we now face," Wellman said. "With the war with Iraq and the increasing discrimination Muslims are facing in the United States, those who have a vision of non-violence become all the more important," he added. "Professor Kugle's lecture will ground his audience in the foundation of the future we must build, as we seek a deeper level of understanding and cooperation between Muslims and non-Muslims."

The Stringfellow Lectureship is a memorial to Ervin E. Stringfellow, professor of New Testament language and literature at Drake for 41 years. This year's lecture is co-sponsored by Drake's Department of Philosophy and Religion and Humanities Center.

A monk performs the "Black Hat Dance."

Seven Tibetan Buddhist monks will visit Drake University from March 26-29. They will visit three classes, give a lecture on the politics and culture of contemporary Tibet and perform a Cham ritualisitc dance ceremony.

The lecture, titled "Contemporary Political and Cultural Conditions in Tibet," will start at 7 p.m. Thursday, March 27, in Bulldog Theater in Olmsted Center. T.K. Lin, professor of history at Drake, will moderate the presentation. At 7 p.m. Friday, March 28, the monks will perform a Buddhist Cham dance in the Performing Arts Hall in the Harmon Fine Arts Center.

Both events, which are free and open to the public, are part of "Exploring Tibetan Culture," a program sponsored by the Center for Global Citizenship, the Department for Study of Culture and Society, the Student Activities Board and Humanities Iowa.

"This program will introduce students to the fascinating culture, politics and religion of a proud people who live under conditions of considerable stress, including threats to the survival of their traditional culture," said David Skidmore, director of the Center for Global Citizenship.

The monks are associated with the Tashi Lhunpo Monastery in India. Originally based in Tibet, the monastery was destroyed during the Chinese invasion of Tibet in 1959 and was relocated in the Southern Indian state of Karnataka in 1972.

Two Iowa educators will be honored at the 12th annual Drake University School of Education Alumni Dinner on Friday, April 4.

Sharon Hart, a teacher in the West Des Moines Community Schools, and Mick Starcevich, superintendent of the College Community School
District in Cedar Rapids, will each receive the Distinguished Alumni Award. They were selected for this honor because of their extraordinary service to students and their tireless efforts as educational advocates.

Hart, who teaches second grade at Clive Elementary School, received her bachelor's degree from Drake in 1975 and her master's degree in education from Drake in 1991. Starcevich, who earned his doctorate in education from Drake in 1990, will start a new position as executive vice president of instruction at Kirkwood Community College on July 1.

The School of Education Alumni Dinner will feature a keynote address titled "The Community Teacher: Improving Teacher Quality" by Peter C. Murrell, associate professor and director of the Center for Innovation in Urban Education at Northeastern University.

The event will start with a reception at 5:30 p.m. followed by dinner at 6:30 p.m. in Levitt Hall. The cost is $20 per person. For reservations, call x2183.

Brice Dellsperger's "Body Double 15" (still), 2001.

The Anderson Gallery will present "Brice Dellsperger: Body Double 15," featuring a single-channel DVD projection by Paris-based emerging artist Brice Dellsperger. The exhibition will open to the public on Wednesday, April 2, and will run through April 20. An opening reception will be held from 5 to 7 p.m. Friday, April 4.

Since 1995, Dellsperger has undertaken a postmodern rereading of cinema by adapting over fifteen celebrated movie sequences under the generic title "Body Double," referring to Brian de Palma's 1984 film. His works have reconstituted segments of canonical cinema history in their dissections of such films as John Badham's "Saturday Night Fever," Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho," David Lynch's "Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me" and Gus Van Sant's "My Own Private Idaho."

The Anderson Gallery will present "Body Double 15" (2001), a single-channel DVD projection that takes as its scaffold the famous museum pick-up sequence from Brian de Palma's "Dressed to Kill" (1980). In this 10-minute piece, the artist, dressed as a woman, played both halves of the trysting couple in "sync" with de Palma and composer Pino Donaggio's original audio track. The two separate performances were then layered together.

"Brice Dellsperger: Body Double 15" will be the French artist's first solo museum exhibition in the United States. Dellsperger's works have been shown at the Museum of Modern Art's Mediascope, New York; the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; the Villa Arson, Nice; Art Basel Miami Beach, Miami; Art 33 Basel's Art Unlimited, Basel; the Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol; and the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris. His work has gained critical acclaim in recent years in publications such as the New York Times, Flash Art, Time Out New York and Cahiers du Cinéma.

The Anderson Gallery in the Harmon Fine Arts Center is open from noon to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday.

Drake will celebrate the opportunities for education, information and entertainment available at its libraries during National Library Week, April 6-12.

Activities include a celebration of the Law Library's 10th anniversary in Opperman Hall. It will be held from 2 to 4 p.m. Wednesday, April 9. in the Law Library. Faculty and staff are invited to stop by for food, tours and a look at the history of the library.
"We're very excited to celebrate 10 years in Opperman Hall," said John Edwards, director of the Law Library. "Our celebration will feature displays illustrating the changes in the library throughout the last decade, especially the contrast between the old card catalogues and our new electronic resources."

The Law Library also will hold "The Opperman Open: Putting for Prizes," during the week of April 6-12. Each person who "tees up" at the library's putting green will receive a raffle ticket for a variety of prizes. The putting green will be available at select times.

At Cowles Library, Drake students will share the joy of reading with students from King Elementary School on Friday, April 11. Approximately 60 Drake students are expected to read books aloud to the King students between 9:30 and 11 a.m. and 1 to 2 p.m.

As an additional part of National Library Week, the Drake libraries are encouraging students, faculty and staff to read a selection of Michael Beschloss' most recent book - The Conquerors: Roosevelt, Truman and the Destruction of Hitler's Germany, 1941-1945. The excerpt is available by selecting "All Drake Reads" at http://ereserves.lib.drake.edu. Copies of the entire book are also available at Cowles Library and the Law Library. Beschloss, a renowned presidential historian, will give the Martin Bucksbaum Distinguished Lecture at 7:30 p.m. on April 15 in the Drake Knapp Center.

Opening on Wednesday, April 2, at the Anderson Gallery, the second annual "Carbon" exhibition will present cross-disciplinary works by 28 student visual artists and students from a diversity of disciplines across the University. The opening reception will be held from 5 to 7 p.m. Friday, April 4. The exhibition will continue through April 20.

Works in a variety of media and styles will be on view. Visual artists and creative thinkers from other disciplines have been paired up in a collaborative exchange of ideas and aesthetics. Each of the 14 artists in painting, sculpture, printmaking and drawing was paired with another student from other disciplines. These disciplines include but are not limited to environmental science and policy, biology, biochemistry, pharmacy, poetry, English literature, international relations and women's studies.

The artists chose an original work representative of their partner's research and interests to which to respond in a visual way. The students from other disciplines chose an original work of art representative of their partners' study to which to respond in their own disciplinary way. The originally chosen works and the newly created response works will make up the exhibition.

Mo Dana, executive director of the Des Moines Arts Festival, will be the featured speaker at the final Let's DU Lunch event of the spring semester on Wednesday, April 2. With Dana's guidance and vision, the Des Moines Arts Festival has grown to attract more than 200,000 people each year and is ranked as the nation's sixth-best fine art show.

The cost of the luncheon, which starts at 11:30 a.m. in the Younkers Tea Room in downtown Des Moines, is $15 per person. For reservations, call x3848.

Drake University pharmacy students will offer free diabetes screenings from 3 to 7 p.m. Friday, April 4, at Walgreens, 3030 University Ave. Community members are invited to participate in the screenings and learn more about diabetes and its risk factors.

All participants must fast for four hours prior to the screening, including no food and no colored or carbonated drinks.

This event is sponsored by Drake University pharmacy students, the American Pharmaceutical Association and the Academy of Students of Pharmacy. For more information, call 279-3074.