Continuing the dialogue:
'Great Conversations' returns for third year

Gail Sheehy

From M, winter 2004

The College of Continuing Education's Great Conversations series returns for a third season in 2004 with an exciting range of guest thinkers and topics.

January 20 University President Bob Bruininks will speak with Richard Florida, Carnegie Mellon economist and author of The Rise of the Creative Class, on how to generate creative places and spaces.

February 25 U professor Pauline Boss, author of Ambiguous Loss, will host journalist Gail Sheehy, author of Passages, to discuss the psychology of loss and ways to cope in an insecure world.

March 23 Jeffrey Kahn, director of the U's Center for Bio-medical Ethics, will speak with Harold Shapiro, professor and president emeritus of Princeton University, on ethics, policy, and society.

April 13 David Tilman, U Distinguished McKnight and Regents Professor and director of the Cedar Creek Natural History Area, will host Jared Diamond, UCLA professor and author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, to discuss ecology, conservation, and human history.

May 11 Catherine Liu, U professor of cultural studies and comparative literature and Thomas Frank, author and editor-in-chief of The Baffler magazine, will take an irreverent look at the commodification of culture.

Season tickets ($110) are on sale, and single event tickets ($28) will go on sale January 5. Alumni association members; University staff, faculty, and students; and President's Club members receive series ($85) and single event ($23) discounts. For more details, call 612-625-5760 or see www.cce.umn.edu/conversations