Southern Miss Lecture Series Features Noted Speakers for Spring Semester

The University of Southern Mississippi's popular University Forum Lecture Series will continue throughout the Spring 2015 semester with an acclaimed array of speakers scheduled to offer insightful presentations.

The lecture series is sponsored by the University's Honors College which has brought well-known authors, scholars, performers and intellectual provocateurs to the Hattiesburg campus.

“We are deliberately diverse in our choice of Forum speakers, ensuring that we represent a wide range of topics and points of view,” said Dr. Ellen Weinauer, dean of the Honors College at Southern Miss.

In the past year along, the Forum has featured a Libertarian presidential candidate; a nationally known progressive journalist; the director of the public health lab for the state of New York; and a scholar who is engaged in pioneering research on the cognitive roots of religious belief.

Upcoming Forum lectures include the following:

• March 3 – “Endangered Equity Through Perceived Equality: Women's History and its Crucial Role in Contemporary Fights for Justice.” Dr. Jennifer Stollman, academic director at the William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation, University of Mississippi. 6:30 p.m., Thad Cochran Center, Ballroom II.

• March 24 – “If Only She Were a Man…”: Women Composers from the 18^th to the 21^st Centuries. Ulrike Anton, flutist; Russell Ryan, pianist. 6:30 p.m., Bennett Auditorium.

• March 31 – “Why Religion is Natural and Science is Not.” Dr. Robert McCauley, Center for Mind, Brain and Culture, Emory University. 6:30 p.m., Bennett Auditorium.

• April 21 – Ben Burkett, Mississippi farmer and activist, James Beard Award winner, President of the National Family Farm Coalition, 6:30 p.m., Thad Cochran Center, Ballroom I.

For more information about the University Forum Lecture Series, contact the Southern Miss Honors College at 601.266.4533 or visit: www.usm.edu/honors