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Campus lecture titles, advertised online and on tacked-up flyers, reflect a scholarly smorgasbord. A few invoke popular culture, others are matter-of-fact, but all testify to the wide-ranging research and thought at the University. Some recent and upcoming offerings:

* Legalized Abortion, Unwantedness, and the Decline in Crime, by Chicago economist Steven Levitt
* Working in the Shadow of the Step Pyramid: Insights into Burial Practices in Middle Kingdom Saqqara, by University of Pennsylvania Museum Egyptologist David P. Silverman, PhD’75
* Studies of Human Islet-Derived Endocrine Pancreas Precursor Cells, by National Institutes of Health scientist Marvin Gershengorn
* The Homintern: Critical Anxieties about Homosexual Influence on the Arts in Cold War America, by Northwestern University historian Michael Sherry
* Uncovering Deep Throat: Media in the Political Realm, by Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Bill Gaines
* Watching the Photocycle of Photoactive Yellow Protein—One at a Time, by chemistry graduate student Jason Ming Zhao
* The Dynamics of Authority in Islam: Imams, Ikhtilaf, and Isnad, by visiting assistant professor Scott C. Lucas, AM’98, PhD’02
* Molecular Decision-making Networks: Deoxyribozyme-based Circuits and Automata, by Columbia University professor Milan Stojanovic
* The Baseball Culture of Superstition, by Whittier College religion professor Joseph Price, AM’79, PhD’82

And our favorite…

* Queering Brad Pitt: The Struggle Between Gay Fans and the Hollywood Machine to Control Star Discourse and Image on the Web (date has been changed to May 14), by Committee on Cinema & Media Studies lecturer Ronald Gregg

A.M.B.

April 14, 2004