In this week’s lecture and seminar, we had Prof. Chris Gavaler from Washington and Lee University to talk about the origins of superheroes. Previously we have read two chapters of his book On the Origin of Superheroes: from the Big Bang to Action Comics No. 1 which talk about the evolution and eugenics implications of the birth of superheroes. Then in his evening lecture, Prof. Gavaler introduced this object by tracing back to the origins of the word “superhero,” the origins of the concept of the superhero, and the political and cultural implications of superhero.
Author: Anna Yu (Page 2 of 3)
Last Tuesday, professor Stefano Colangelo from the University of Bologna opened his talk on the origins of contemporary poetry with a statement that “poetry reject boundaries.” Throughout his talk, Prof. Colangelo focused on this “boundary-less” by analyzing poetry quotes from a variety of poets and writers that were well-known and crucial to the development of this form of literature.
During the homecoming weekend, Colby’s biology professor Josh Martin gave a fascinating talk on the origins of brains. Starting with his own research object, praying mantises, Prof. Martin explored the neural systems of a diverse group of insects and drew connections and comparisons between insects’ brains and humans’ brains.
Last Tuesday in class, we discussed the scientific revolution from the 16th century to the 18th century. Later in the evening, we had Professor Aaron Hanlon talked about the origins of royal society and origins of the novels which also took place in the same period. Prof. Hanlon began his lecture with the discussion on the liberal arts education at Colby. If we look at the distribution of the academic buildings, the sciences buildings are almost on the same side of the school, while the humanities ones are on the other side. This lecture was not the first time when I heard about this history of the distributions of campus buildings. As someone introduced about how women and men used to live on each side of the schools, this distribution seemed to fit with the contemporary anticipations on gender in the mid to late 19th century.
The tour in Colby Art Museum this afternoon showed me how artists carried out the idea of origins in different disciplines and expressed them in the form of arts. I was particularly interested in Gary Green’s photograph Prairie Fire #2 near Liberal, Missouri. Recently in my ecological history class, we have been discussing the pre-agriculture societies and early environmental management actions by humans. Slash-and-burn was a widely influential agricultural method that contributed significantly to early ecological history, especially on the American continent. Whether or not the Native Americans intended to burn the forests and plains to manage the environment has long been a controversial question to many scientists and historians. Continue reading