The Burian Lecture: Funded by the Jarka and Grayce Burian Endowment
Colman Domingo, actor, director, and playwright
February 4 (Monday)
Seminar — 4:15 p.m., Assembly Hall, Campus Center
The Burian Lecture — 8:00 p.m., Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center

Colman Domingo, rising star of the American stage, “a blazingly charismatic performer [with] a voice of remarkable range and dexterity” (The New York Times), received a 2011 Tony Award nomination for Best Performance in a Broadway Musical for “The Scottsboro Boys.” He wrote and starred in the play, “Wild With Happy,” a comedy about a man coping with his mother’s recent death, which was presented at New York’s Public Theater in fall 2012. Domingo also wrote and starred in the autobiographical off-Broadway play about 1970s West Philadelphia, “A Boy and His Soul,” winner of the GLAAD and Lucille Lortel awards. His film credits include Spielberg’s Lincoln and Spike Lee’s Red Hook Summer.

Cosponsored by UAlbany’s Theatre Department

Jorgen Randers, author and environmental scientist
February 6 (Wednesday)
Reading — 7:30 p.m., Lecture Center 7, Academic Podium, Uptown campus

Leading futurist, bestselling author and founding figure in the new field of “sustainability studies,” Norwegian environmental scientist Jorgen Randers coauthored the enormously influential 1972 book, The Limits to Growth, which predicts that world population growth will ultimately lead to the collapse of the earth’s resources, despite advancing technologies. Still widely discussed today in scientific journals and policy circles, the controversial work reappeared in updated editions in 1992 and 2004. Randers’ new book is 2052: A Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years (2012), a fresh perspective on humanity’s immediate future— or possible futures— with particular emphasis on the impact of global warming and the collapse of the fossil fuel economy. UN Special Envoy on Climate Change Gro Harlem Brundtland called it, “thoughtful and thought provoking… inspiring and challenging, for all who really care about our common future.” Professor of Climate Strategy at the BI Norwegian Business School, Randers formerly served as Deputy Director-General of the World Wildlife Fund.

Cosponsored by UAlbany's School of Business, Office of Environmental Sustainability, Rockefeller College, and the College of Computing and Information, as well as the University Auxiliary Services and System Dynamics Society

Photo: Caitlin Saunders

Photo: Lynn Finley

Photo: Joyce Ravid

Eugene Mirabelli, Professor Emeritus at the University at Albany, is the author of eight highly praised novels. His most recent, Renato, the Painter (2012), is the story of an elderly artist who lives his messy life with gusto, and who applies himself to art with great energy, defying the neglect of the public and the critics. Publishers Weekly said, “In prose as lusty and vigorous as Renato himself, Mirabelli captures the feeling of coming to terms— ready or not— with old age.” Author Andrei Codrescu said in advance praise, “This generous, sprawling, fleshy novel of a life lived among lovers, friends, olives, wine, bread, and prosciutto, is a fresco of Sicilian-American-New England life…. an American story that shows just how a first generation of immigrants branch from village craftsmen to engineers and artists.”

Ann Hood is the author of the bestselling novel, The Knitting Circle (2007), about a woman who takes up knitting in order to cope with the death of her young daughter. The book is currently being adapted as an HBO television movie. Hood was inspired to write The Knitting Circle by her own experience with grief after the death of her five-year-old daughter, Grace, an experience she chronicles in the memoir, Comfort: A Journey Through Grief (2008), a New York Times Editor’s Choice. Her newest book is The Obituary Writer (2013), about two women coping with heartbreak and loss during two different periods in American history. Novelist Tom Perrotta said, “In this poignant and incisive novel, Ann Hood brings history back to life in the most intimate way.”

Photo: Nina Subin

Christa Parravani, photographer and memoirist
March 7 (Thursday)
Seminar — 4:15 p.m., Standish Room, Science Library
Reading — 8:00 p.m., Huxley Theatre, NYS Museum, Cultural Education Center, Albany

Christa Parravani, acclaimed photographer, who grew up in Schenectady, NY, is the author of the new memoir, Her (2013), about the life and early death of her identical twin, Cara, and her struggle to carry on after the tragedy. Parravani takes note of the fact that when an identical twin dies, regardless of the cause, fifty percent of the time, the surviving twin dies within two years: “Flip a coin,” Christa writes of life after Cara, “those were my chances of survival.” Novelist Jayne Anne Phillips said, “Christa Parravani’s lyrical, no-nonsense Her ranks with the best American memoirs of the decade… an uncompromising love poem to the joys and dangers of shared identity, and an unforgettable treatise on addiction, trauma, survival, and triumph.” Parravani’s photography has been exhibited throughout the U.S. and Europe.

Photo: JackSwenson/
Expedition Gallery

Gretel Ehrlich, poet and essayist
March 12 (Tuesday)
Seminar — 4:15 p.m., Assembly Hall, Campus Center
Reading — 8:00 p.m., Assembly Hall, Campus Center

Gretel Ehrlich, notable poet, nature writer, and fiction writer, is the author most recently of Facing the Wave (2013), an account of her travels in Japan in the aftermath of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, and the subsequent meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. A passionate student of Japanese poetry for much of her life, Gretel Ehrlich felt compelled to return to Japan to bear witness and record the stories of survivors. Winner of the 2010 Thoreau Prize for excellence in nature writing, Ehrlich is the author of numerous works about her explorations of diverse environments, including western China, Wyoming and—in particular—the “high Arctic.” Her many books include In the Empire of Ice (2010), This Cold Heaven (2001), and The Solace of Open Spaces (1985).

Photo: Juliana Sohn

Nathan Englander, short story writer and novelist
March 14 (Thursday)
Seminar — 4:15 p.m., Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center
Reading — 8:00 p.m., Lecture Center 7, Academic Podium, Uptown Campus

Nathan Englander, major contemporary short story writer who mines his Jewish heritage and Orthodox boyhood for pathos and humor of universal significance, was named one of “20 Writers for the 21st Century” in the New Yorker. His newest story collection is What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank (2012), which received the Frank O’Connor Award (the world’s largest monetary short story prize), and was featured on numerous “best of the year” lists, including in the New York Times. Novelist Michael Chabon praised the new stories as “certifiable masterpieces of contemporary short-story art.” His earlier works include the story collection, For the Relief of Unbearable Urges (1999), and the novel, The Ministry of Special Cases (2007). Englander also served as Hebrew-English translator for the bestselling New American Haggadah (2012), edited by Jonathan Safran Foer.

Photo: Lana Rys

James Salter, novelist
April 4 (Thursday)
Seminar — 4:15 p.m., Campus Center Room 375
Reading — 8:00 p.m., Campus Center Room 375

James Salter, prize-winning fiction writer and former New York State Author (1998–2000), has been called “one of the best writers in this country” (Bloomsbury Review), and “the author of some of the most esteemed fiction of the past three decades” (Publishers Weekly). A graduate of West Point and former fighter pilot, Salter is acclaimed for fiction about military life, and for stories about human desire in its many manifestations. At the age of 85, he is the author of a major new novel, All That Is (2013), about a naval officer who returns from the battles of World War II to make a life as a book editor in bohemian New York. Salter’s early novels include Solo Faces (1979), A Sport and a Pastime (1967), and The Hunters (1957). Winner of the 2012 PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story, Salter also received the PEN/Faulkner Award for his 1988 collection, Dusk. His other works include the story collection Last Night (2005), and the memoir, Burning the Days (1997).

Marguerite Holloway, science journalist, is the author of a new biography of the forgotten 19th century genius who developed Manhattan’s street-grid, The Measure of Manhattan: The Tumultuous Career and Surprising Legacy of John Randel, Jr., Cartographer, Surveyor, Inventor (2013). Born and raised in Albany, the eccentric and bombastic engineer also created surveying devices, designed an early elevated subway, and laid out a controversial alternative route for the Erie Canal— winning both admirers and enemies. Bestselling author Simon Winchester called the book, “intelligent and entirely riveting…. a quite marvelous tale, and [Holloway] has told it just magnificently.”  Director of the Science and Environmental Journalism Program at Columbia University, Holloway is a long-time contributor to Scientific American, covering environmental issues, public health, neuroscience and women in science.

Photo: Jamie Clifford
AROHO 2011

Marilynne Robinson, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist
April 17 (Wednesday)
8:00 p.m. Reading and McKinney Award Ceremony |  Biotech Auditorium, Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies Building, Rensselaer (RPI), Troy

Marilynne Robinson, celebrated writer of novels set in small-town America, is the author most recently of the essay collection, When I Was a Child I Read Books (2012),  reflections on disquieting political, social and cultural trends. Booklist said, in a starred review, “Intellectually sophisticated, beautifully reasoned with gravitas and grace, Robinson’s call to reclaim humaneness beams like the sun breaking through smothering clouds.” Robinson’s first novel, Housekeeping (1980) received the PEN/Hemingway Award, and was named one of the 100 best novels of all time by The Guardian, and the 100 best novels (1923-2005) by Time magazine. She received the Pulitzer Prize for the novel, Gilead (2004), and the Orange Prize for Fiction (UK) for her most recent novel, Home (2008).

Cosponsored in conjunction with Rensselaer’s 72nd  Annual McKinney Writing Contest and Reading and the Vollmer Fries Lecture

For map and directions see:  http://rpi.edu/tour/directions.html

Photo: Nina Subin

Manil Suri, fiction writer and mathematician
April 19 (Friday)
Seminar — 4:15 p.m., Standish Room, Science Library
Reading — 8:00 p.m., Assembly Hall, Campus Center

Manil Suri, Indian-American mathematician and major contemporary novelist, is the author most recently of The City of Devi (2013), an epic novel set in the author’s native city of Mumbai after it has been abandoned under threat of nuclear attack. Writer Kiran Desai said the novel “combines, in a magician’s feat, the thrill of Bollywood with the pull of a thriller.” Suri’s debut novel, The Death of Vishnu (2001), about life and death in a Mumbai apartment building, received the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award and became an international bestseller. Suri’s second novel was The Age of Shiva (2008), about a woman’s struggles in post-independence India. His work has been translated into 22 languages. A mathematics professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Suri specializes in partial differential equations.

Cosponsored by South Asian Studies Association

Photo: Victoria Blewer

Photo: Jennifer May

Cosponsored by NYSWI, UAlbany’s History Department, the New Netherland Institute, and the Friends of the New York State Library

K. Eric Drexler, author and nanoscientist
May 6 (Monday)
Reading — 8:00 p.m., Assembly Hall, Campus Center

K. Eric Drexler is often hailed as nanotechnology’s “founding father.” He received the first Ph.D. (MIT), taught the first course, and chaired the first two conferences on the subject. His 1981 paper, “Molecular engineering,” published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, established fundamental principles of molecular design, protein engineering, and productive nanosystems. In 1986, Drexler published the extremely influential book, written for a popular audience, Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology, with a foreword by artificial intelligence pioneer Marvin Minsky. Drexler’s second book, Nanosystems: Molecular Machinery, Manufacturing, and Computation (1992), a physics-based analysis, received the AAP award for Most Outstanding Computer Science Book. His new book, the first in twenty years, is Radical Abundance (2013). Written for a general audience, it explores the ways in which nanotechnology is likely to transform material civilization— in “radical” fashion— in the near future. Drexler is currently a visiting researcher at Oxford University in the UK.

Cosponsored by the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering