2020 Schedule

Welcome

How Movie Scores Guide Our Emotions

Sarah Kozloff
Professor of Film at Vassar College

Film theorists, psychologists, and musicologists all agree that a movie’s score is the key element that determines our emotional response, although film viewers rarely pay attention to soundtracks. Professor Kozloff likes to compare the music track to the voice of the novel’s narrator as it guides viewers on how to interpret on-screen action.

Through showing clips from Gallipoli (Weir, 1981) and Platoon (Stone, 1986), where the music functions as “hymns for the fallen,” in conjunction with clips of pop standards from romantic comedies such as The Lady Eve (Sturges, 1941) and One Fine Day (Hoffman, 1996), which function as cues to romantic nostalgia, Professor Kozloff will discuss how the music track varies by genre and mood.

If time permits, she will close with a look at a scene from North by Northwest (Hitchcock, 1959), which Bernard Herrmann scored for views who are paying close attention.

Sustainable Architecture

Naomi Darling
Assistant Professor of Sustainable Architecture at Mt. Holyoke College

Professor Darling will speak about the role of the built environment on climate change and the responsibility of the design professions preparing for a sustainable future at the intersection of culture, climate, and materiality. She will discuss the role of beauty, sustainability metrics such as the Living Building Challenge, and the specificity of place in design.

In her role as an academic in practice, Professor Darling has engaged students in projects at multiple scales including a greeter desk for the new Fimbel Maker and Innovation Lab with a strong focus on material reuse and an ongoing collaboration with JOKO, a non-profit in Nan, Thailand that works with farmers to promote small scale integrated farming techniques, to develop a seed library, cafe, and farmer’s market.

Finally, Professor Darling will share several ongoing projects from her professional practice including a new bandshell for the Amherst, MA town green that was part of Olmsted’s original conception of the space, a park on Main Street in Old Saybrook, CT, and a Memorial Hall for the Nitobe Friend’s Night School in Sapporo, Japan.

Box Luncheon Served

Why We Need to Stop Talking About Baby Boomers and Millennials

Andrew M. Lindner
Associate Professor of Sociology at Skidmore College

Magazines are rife with headlines like ‘Are Millennials Killing the Car Industry?, and ‘How Baby Boomers Ruined America.’ Such articles reflect a “romantic-historical” conception of generations which holds that people born at about the same time share collective experiences, cultural values, socio-political attitudes, and psychological characteristics. However, many social researchers are critical of these popular generational labels (Boomers, Gen Xers, and Millennials) as they tend to conflate cohort traits with the effects of age and time period.

In this talk, Professor Lindner will examine the rise of our current generational lingo and consider how the use of these labels can be very misleading. In an era with a pressing need for greater mutual understanding, this discussion explores ways of making sense of the barriers, including generation gaps, which divide us.