Associated Students of the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology: April 16: Arch & Vine

IN THIS ISSUE

Important Announcements
Upcoming Events/Deadlines

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENTS

Arch & Vine Question of the Week
Answer the Question of the Week here! Your answers will help DSPT serve you better! This week’s topic: the community at DSPT. Don’t forget to submit your name to be included in the raffle! Each week that you answer the Question of the Week, you will be entered in a raffle for some great prizes! Raffles will be held once or twice a month (more frequently the more people respond). Thank you to everyone who responded to last week’s Question of the Week! Your responses will be incorporated into future Summer Session planning.
Early Registration for Fall 2009 Has Begun!
Early Registration for Fall 2009 is Monday, April 13 through Friday, April 24. You should begin your registration process by making an appointment to meet with your academic advisor and reviewing your student WebAdvisor record to “Check for Registration Blocks.” You will be unable to participate in Early Registration if there are any blocks on your record. After April 24, the next opportunity to register for courses is during General Registration (August 31 – September 4). Warning: failure to register during Early Registration could delay the processing of your financial aid!
Next Application Deadline: Wednesday, April 29

UPCOMING EVENTS/DEADLINES

Thursday, April 16

Human Rights Film Festival: Fantasies of the Pacifist Other
Time: 7:30 p.m.
Location: DSPT Classroom 1
Speaker/moderatior: Steve Jenkins (Humboldt State University)
The Abrahamic ethics of violence have often been perceived against the false negative space of naive Euro-American conceptions of Asian religious pacifism. The power and attraction of these conceptions have been strong enough to undermine the ability of the peoples on which they are projected to authentically engage their own history and evaluate the relationship between their traditional values and their contemporary political predicament. The purpose of this presentation is to identify these misconceptions and some of their mechanisms in both popular film and academic culture and to contrast them with what Hindu and Buddhist traditions have traditionally meant by “ahimsa.”
Friday, April 17

Early registration deadline for requests to faculty for admittance in restricted courses.

Institute of Buddhist Studies: “Compassionate Violence, Torture and Warfare in the Bodhisattva Ideal”
Time: 5:00 p.m.
Location: Jodo Shinshu Center (2140 Durant Ave., Berkeley)
Buddhist allowances for compassionate violence are dissonant with the established perception of Buddhist pacifism. Although academic studies of Buddhism have accepted that Mahāyāna and Tantric thought allow for such actions, it has been argued that these allowances are rare or merely allegorical, not general ethical guidelines. Prof. Stephen Jenkins (Religious Studies, Humboldt State University) argues that Buddhist allowances for compassionate violence are found throughout authoritative Yogācāra and Madhyamaka treatises. Building on previous work, a survey of tantric sādhanas for killing, and references to Buddhist art and folklore, this lecture also argues that the exaggeration of Mahāyāna pacifism has created a false negative space for the evaluation of tantrism.

Philosophy Movie Night: Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… and Spring
Time: 7:30 p.m.
Location: DSPT Classroom 1
Saturday, April 18

St. Mary’s College Episcopal Lecture Featuring Bishop John Cummins
Time: 2:00 p.m.
Location: St. Mary’s College (Claeys Lounge, Soda Center)
The John F. Henning Institute invites alumni, students, faculty and friends to campus for the second annual Episcopal Lecture featuring Bishop John Cummins. His lecture will be titled “Enlightened Dialogue: Vatican II Perspectives on Science and Technology and More.” The event is free, but preregistration is encouraged. For more information, or to preregister, visit the event’s website.
Sunday, April 19

"Land and Spirit are One" Art Exhibit Lecture & Placing of the Aboriginal Message Stick
Time: 4:00 p.m.
Location: DSPT
Aboriginal art has been called the most important art movement since abstract expressionism. Many of the artists in this exhibit are internationally recognized, with work in American, European and Australian collections. “The uniqueness of this art is that it is produced by people who until recently lived in the Stone Age.” (Cecilia Alfonso, Warlukurlangu Aboriginal Artist Association) The placing of the Aboriginal Message stick will take place at 5:00 p.m., and will be followed by a lecture with curator Virginia May. Curator Virginia May received an MA in Visual Art in 2005 from the Queensland Institute of Technology in Australia. She is currently writing a PhD dissertation at California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco on the transformative power of the arts. Virginia has lectured on the topic of Aboriginal Art at CIIS, Gaia Arts Center in Berkeley, Claudia Chapline Gallery in Stinson Beach, The Santa Rosa Junior College, and at the Northern California Women’s Caucus for Art.
Tuesday, April 21

DSPT Mass & Lunch
Time: 11:10 a.m.

The U.S. and the Muslim World: Rethinking the Discourse (The 18th Annual Surjit Singh Lecture in Comparative Religious Thought and Culture)
Time: Reception at 6:00 p.m., Lecture at 7:00 p.m.
Location: PSR Bade Museum, PSR Chapel
Free and open to the public. Speaker Dr. Shibley Telhami is the Anwar Sadat Professor for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland, Colelge Park, and non-resident Senior Fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy and the Brookings Institution, in addition to being a GTU alumnus and one of the foremost experts on religion in the Middle East. Among his many public policy activities, Dr. Telhami has served as advisor to the US Mission to the UN and as a member of the Iraq Study Group and the US Advisory Group on Public Diplomacy for the Arab and Muslim World. He is currently a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and serves on the boards of Human Rights Watch (and as Chair of Human Rights Watch/Middle East), the Education for Employment Foundation, Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, and several academic advisory boards. He has contributed to many publications, like the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times, and he regularly appears on national and international radio and television. His bestselling book, The Stakes: America and the Middle East, was selected by Foreign Affairs as one of the top five books on the Middle East in 2003.

Critical Challenges for Women in Ministry: Finding Fair Compensation & Avoiding Burnout
Time: 6:30 p.m.
Location: FST
A panel discussion by current and local women in ministry with Darleen Pryds.

East Bay Theology on Tap: The Centrality of Sexuality in God’s Plan
Time: Happy Hour at 7:00 p.m., Speaker at 7:30 p.m.
Location: Kerry House (4092 Piedmont Avenue, Oakland)
Speaker: Anthony Wieck, S.J.
John Paul II left a legacy of teachings proclaiming that human dignity includes our sexual nature! Explore the framework of the Holy Father’s fascinating speculations & what this means for us today in our own relationships.
Wednesday, April 22

John Efron in Conversation with Deena Aranoff about His New Book, The Jews: A History
Time: 5:30 p.m.
Location: GTU Library Dinner Boardroom
Free and open to the public. Written by four leading scholars, The Jews: A History is a cultural and social history of the Jewish people from antiquity to today. John Efron is the author of the section dealing with the modern Jewish experience and the general editor of the volume. Efron holds the Koret Chair in Jewish History at the University of California, Berkeley, where he is a specialist in the cultural and social history of German Jewry. His books include Medicine and the German Jews: A History and Defenders of the Race: Jewish Doctors and Race Science in Fin-de-Siècle Europe. He also co-edited the volume, Jewish History and Jewish Memory: Essays in Honor of Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi.
Thursday, April 23

Faith in Human Rights Workshop: Dialogue and Discussion about the Convention Against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT)
Time: 7:30 p.m.
Location: PSR Bade Museum
Moderator: Munir Jiwa (Center for Islamic Studies, GTU)
Panel: Rabbi Margaret Holub (Mendocino Jewish Community), Hatem Bazian (UCB), Rebecca Gordon (GTU), Rita Maran (UCB)
Opening Narrative and Respondent: Survivors International (Survivors International is a non-profit organization dedicated to providing essential psychological and medical services to survivors of torture who have fled from around the world to the San Francisco Bay Area. SI aims to help survivors put the pieces back together by providing the support they need to re-establish healthy and productive lives after their experiences of torture.)
Friday, April 24

End of early registration for Fall 2009.

Owl of Minerva: The Chemical Prosthetic: Drug Culture
Time: 7:30 p.m.
Location: DSPT Galleria
Speaker: Mauricio Najarro
What do we hold against the drug user? What do we hold against the addict? We cannot afford to ignore the urgency of coming to a better understanding of the toxic drive in culture. This presentation seeks to explore new means of tracing how and why drugs offend us. Does philosophy have anything to say about drugs and their relationship to an ethical life? How can we, in the age of the War on Drugs, continue to feel comfortable with simple categories (good, bad, socially acceptable)? From cocaine to coffee, sugar to beer, patriotism to religious fervor, culture has always been strangely linked to the drug.
Saturday, April 25

The Songs of the Book of Revelation
Time: 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
Location: First Presbyterian Church of Berkeley
Speaker: Earl Palmer (M.Div.)
The book of Revelation contains a series of grand chorales (celebrated by Handel in the “Hallelujah” chorus). Revelation has many themes but its central message is that although there is great evil, the Lamb of God is the Lord of history, and we should not be afraid. The last book of the Bibl is not an escapist book but a book against fear. For additional program information and to register, visit the New College Berkeley website.

New Muslim Cool
Time: 2:00 p.m.
Location: Pacific Film Archive (Berkeley)
Tickets are now on sale for the much-anticipated official World Premiere screenings of New Muslim Cool at the world-renowned San Francisco International Film Festival. Tickets may be purchased online. In addition to the April 25 screening, there will be two screenings at the Sundance Kabuki Cinemas (1881 Post St. at Fillmore, San Francisco) on Sunday, April 26 at 3:00 p.m. and Monday, May 4 at 6:30 p.m. The April 26 screening will be followed by a panel called “Truth, Youth, and the New Muslim Cool” with several leading scholars and filmmakers including director Jennifer Maytoena Taylor and artist and community activist Hamza Perez. Moderated by Professor Munir Jiwa, this will be an exciting and open forum to discuss mass media and independent film images of Muslims. All are welcome!