Announcements

Nick Bostrom will speak as this year's Ricardo P. Quinones Lecturer on "Superintelligence: The Machine Intelligence Revolution."  The lecture will take place on Tuesday, February 14, in the Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum.  For more details click on the relevant link at left.

Also upcoming: Ray Kurzweil will speak Wednesday, March 7 in the Athenaeum as part of Gould's Technology and Humanity Series.  Further details to come.

Gould Goes to the Theater will return for the 2012 Spring Semester.  The performance this time around will be Green Day’s American Idiot at the Ahmanson Theater on Tuesday, April 3.  Tickets will again be $5.  Stay tuned for more details.

Call for Dunbar Fellows

The Gould Center for Humanistic Research will offer up to five Dunbar Fellowships in Spring 2012 to enable students to serve as Research Assistants to CMC faculty members working on projects in the humanities.   Awards will typically be in the amount of $2000.

These student-faculty collaborations may be initiated either by the student or the faculty member, but the application should be for research assistance related to a specific project or projects.   Moreover, the work must be undertaken during the spring semester.

Applications are due by 12 noon on Friday, January 27.  Students wishing to apply should submit their materials to Professor Amy Kind, Interim Director, Gould Center, either by campus mail or by email (akind@cmc.edu).  Decisions on awards will be announced promptly after the application deadline.

Applications consist of the following three items:

• A one-page narrative explaining the research project, your qualifications for assisting in the faculty member’s research, and the kind of research assistance you will be providing the faculty member.  Students serving as Dunbar Fellows should be involved in the faculty member’s research in a meaningful way.
   
• A brief statement of support from the faculty member whose research you will be assisting.  Faculty members should submit this statement directly to Professor Kind, either by campus mail or by email (akind@cmc.edu).
   
• A copy of your CMC transcript.
   

Meet Interim Director Amy Kind

The Gould Center is pleased to announce the appointment of Interim Director Amy Kind, Associate Professor in Philosophy.

Dr. Kind will take the helm in academic year 2011-2011 for Dr. Robert Faggen, Barton Evans and H. Andrea Neves Professor of Literature.  Professor Faggen has been awarded a Guggenheim grant to pursue his work on Ken Kesey and Robert Frost and will be on sabbatical this year.

Below are some brief biographical details about Professor Kind, but please feel free to introduce yourself as we make welcome for her new endeavor in the coming year.  She will maintain her office in Kravis 282, and all Gould related inquires should be directed to her extension there (see more under Contact Us).

Having received her AB from Amherst College and her PhD in Philosophy from UCLA, Amy Kind joined the CMC faculty in 1997. She is currently Associate Professor of Philosophy and serves as Chair of the Philosophy Department. From 2005-2008, she served as Associate Dean of the Faculty. This year, in addition to serving as Interim Director of the Gould Center, she is also the Program Committee Chair for the APA Pacific Division.

Her research focuses mainly on issues in the philosophy of mind relating to the imagination and to consciousness, and her work has appeared in such leading philosophical journals as Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Philosophical Studies, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, and The Philosophical Quarterly. She is currently at work on a textbook entitled Persons and Personal Identity, due to be published by Polity Press in 2013.