The Scripps College Humanities Institute has announced its spring 2004 program planned to explore “Life Stories” under the leadership of Institute Director Julia E. Liss. Renowned authors and memoirists Robert Rosenstone, Tobias Wolff, Sheila Ganz, Liza Dalby, Mai Elliott, Azar Nafisi, Gabor Kalman, and Lawrence Weschler will come to the Scripps College campus this spring. For more information and a complete schedule of events, please call the Humanities Institute at (909) 621-8326.
“Life Stories” lectures and events will explore the nature and creation of memoirs and delve into the life histories and stories of some of the lecturers. The January and February “Life Stories” schedule includes the following lectures and events:
The program opens with a lecture, “In Praise of the Biopic: The Case of Frida,” on Thursday, January 29 at 4:15 p.m. given by author, Robert A. Rosenstone. The lecture will take place in Humanities Building #204 on the Scripps College campus. Rosenstone has published numerous works of history, biography, and criticism, and a family memoir, The Man Who Swan Into History. He is currently a professor of history at California Institute of Technology.
“Life Stories” continues with renowned memoirists Tobias Wolff, Sheila Ganz and Liza Dalby in February. First, Tobias Wolff, master of the memoir and short story, will present “Saving Your Life,” on Thursday February 12, at 7:00 p.m. in the Hampton Room of the Malott Commons on the Scripps College campus. Wolff just released his first novel, Old School, the story of a working-class boy who seeks to “blend in” at a posh New England prep school. Wolff is best known for his 1989 memoir of childhood, This Boy’s Life, which received the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for biography and the Ambassador Book Award of the English-speaking Union. He currently is a professor at Stanford University.
Sheila Ganz will present a documentary film screening and discussion of Unlocking the Heart of Adoption, on Wednesday, February 18, at 7:00 p.m. in the Boone Recital Hall in the Scripps College Performing Arts Center. Ganz is the film’s producer, writer and director. The educational documentary chronicles Ganz’s journey as a birthmother and offers compelling first-person stories of adoptees, birthparents and adoptive parents.
Liza Dalby, author of Geisha, will lecture on “Reconstructing Murasaki: A Writer’s Journey,” on Thursday, February 26 at 4:15 p.m. in the Hampton Room of the Malott Commons on the Scripps College campus. Dalby is an anthropologist specializing in Japanese culture and the only Westerner to have become a Geisha. She consulted on the Steven Spielberg film adaptation of Arthur Golden’s Memoirs of a Geisha. Research for the movie led her to become interested in the clothing worn by court ladies of the Heian period and the world of the Shining Prince Genji, a fictional character of Muraski Shikibu’s The Tale of Genji. Thus began a struggle to break away from expository writing to create a convincing fiction. The Tale of Murasaki, Dalby’s most recent book, is the result.
According to Humanities Institute Director Julia Liss, “Many people are interested in reading and in writing memoirs and biographies. Why is this so? What do these works tell us about individuals and about time and place, narrative and identity? Throughout the semester, we will examine different examples of life writing, including biographies and autobiographies in written form and on film. These works address the construction of the self and the self in relation to family, culture and history. They also explore the relationship between memory and truth. We are looking forward to a fascinating and compelling program, one that draws, in the tradition of Scripps College Humanities Institute, on a range of disciplinary and experiential perspectives—on the expertise of historians and filmmakers, critics and activists, immigrants and exiles, anthropologists and artists.”
The “Life Stories” program continues throughout March and April. For a full schedule of events, please contact the Humanities Institute at (909) 621-8326.