Culture Day: Diversity!

The University of Dundee Culture and Arts Forum is holding its sixth annual Culture Day on 10th November in the Baxter Conference Room, University Tower Building, Perth Road. This event is now firmly established in the University's calendar and is an opportunity for staff, students and members of the public to hear staff from the University talking about a range of subjects relating to a particular theme. This year's theme is Diversity, to mark the International Year of Biodiversity. You'll see from the programme below that we have a good number of really interesting talks.

Admission is free and people are welcome to come to as much or as little as they like.

Further information is on the CAF website http://www.dundee.ac.uk/museum/caf.htm

2.00 Welcome

2.15 Rachel Jones (Philosophy)
Identity and Diversity - Race, Gender and Philosophy
This talk will examine the ways in which attention to race and gender has changed the ways we read key philosophers of the past, and will also show how debates about gender and race are changing the ways we do philosophy in the present

2.30 Murdo Macdonald (Fine Art)
The Diversity of Responses to the Gaidhealtachd in Visual Art
This presentation explores the variety of responses to Gaelic culture by artists, with a particular emphasis on recent work explored in the AHRC funded project Window to the West

2.45 Cathy Caudwell (D'Arcy Thompson Zoology Museum)
Biodiversity and Museums
Museums have become the repositories of extinct creatures - Dodo, Tasmanian Wolf, Passenger Pigeon and many others. What can museums tell us about biodiversity? Are the collections simply a reminder that the world is a less diverse place than it used to be?

3.00 Keith Skene (Continuing Education)
In Search of the Driver of Diversity
There are millions of species of all shapes and sizes on our planet. What has led to this diversity? Answers may be found in the darkest hours of Earth's history, the Mass Extinctions.

3.15 Refreshments

3.30 Charles McKean (History)
Why unity and diversity need each other: the experience of Edinburgh
Enlightenment philosophers warmed to the idea of a unity which permitted diversity. Since the New Town of Edinburgh was the largest built example of Enlightenment thinking, that concept should have been evident upon the streets. Was it?

3.45 Neil Paterson (Botanic Garden)
Design and Diversity in Nature: William Paley, Charles Darwin and the Blind Watchmaker
Charles Darwin was much impressed as a young man by William Paley's "Natural Theology", with its many examples of apparent design in nature. In a great irony of history, Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection was destined to subvert Paley's argument by providing design without a designer.

4.00 Vanessa Charles (Book & Paper Conservation Studio)
The Paper Trail: from Diamond Sutra to Damien Hirst
We take paper for granted; it sits in our pockets, covers our walls and piles on our desks. Sometimes precious, yet often intended to be ephemeral, this diverse material has a long history. The talk will explore our relationship with paper and show what measures conservators take to preserve it.

4.15 Graeme Stevenson (Music)
Live to Compose, Compose to Live
JS Bach was arguably the greatest composer of the Baroque, but this presentation will explore the diverse music produced by his sons at the start of the Classical period.

4.30 Refreshments

4.45 Chris Murray (English)
Is it a bird? Is it a Plane? No, it's a talk about Formal Diversity in Comics!
This talk will discuss how comics appropriate lots of different styles, forms and techniques from other media, and look at how diverse comic traditions (Japanese, French, etc) have informed the visual and narrative style of Anglo-American comics, and vice versa.

5.00 Caroline Brown (Archive Services)
Being different: "insanity" in the 19th century
The University of Dundee Archive Services holds the archives of Sunnyside and Liff Asylums. Who were the people who were admitted to the asylums, why were they considered insane, how were they treated and what happened to them?

5.15 Brian Hoyle (English)
Who Know Where They're Going? Diversity in the films of Powell and Pressbuger
Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger were responsible for some of the finest films ever made in Britain, but they were slow to gain this recognition, partly because of their commitment to diversity in all things. They rarely covered the same ground twice and gathered around them a diverse technical crew to achieve their dream of "total cinema".

5.30 Rob Duck (Geography)
Geodiversity of Scotland: a personal perspective
Diversity in nature is usually taken to mean the diversity of living nature. Geodiversity, however, recognises the parallel importance of the range of abiotic nature and in this regard Scotland has no equal, as this personal perspective explores.

5.45 End