Reed Multimedia

In February 1956, during a hitch-hiking trip from Berkeley to the Pacific Northwest with fellow-poet Gary Snyder ’51, Allen Ginsberg gave a poetry reading at Reed College at which he read “Howl” and seven other poems. (Read the story by writer John Suiter[link] in Reed magazine.) Ginsberg and Synder were on campus for two nights, February 13 and 14; the recording unearthed recently in the Reed archives includes Ginsberg's “Howl Part I,” the longest section of the poem published six months later by Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s City Lights Books with the initial title “Howl for Carl Solomon.” The reel-to-reel tape held by Special Collections at Reed's Eric V. Hauser Memorial Library is the earliest-known recording of Ginsberg reading “Howl.” The recording is of high quality, and does not include the entire poem, as Ginsberg stopped reading soon after concluding Part I of “Howl.”

Listen to “Howl Part I” (edited version).

Listen to “Howl” and seven other poems (unedited version).

Listen to “Epithalamion.”

Listen to “Wild Orphan.”

Listen to “Over Kansas.”

Listen to “Dream Record: June 8, 1955.”

Listen to “Blessed be the Muses.”

Listen to “A Supermarket in California.”

Listen to “The Trembling of the Veil.”

February 7 

Reed professor of political science Darius Rejali's latest book Torture and Democracy is an unrelenting examination of the use of torture by democracies in the 20th century. As democracy, human rights, and the free press blossomed after World War II, so did the market for “clean” torture techniques that leave no evidentiary scars, such as the use of drugs, stress positions, and waterboarding. Rejali takes a comprehensive look at the historical use of torture to force false confessions, extract information, and keep prisoners compliant. He also questions its efficacy in gaining reliable intelligence and examines the residual effects that torture creates for those societies that use it.

Listen to the lecture.

February 5

Designer and artist Lucy Orta invented “Refuge Wear,” “Body Architecture,” and “Nexus Architecture” (1992–2002). She was a founding member of the “Man and Humanity” Master in Industrial Design for the Design Academy Eindhoven (2002), and was invested as the first Rootstein Hopkins Chair at London College of Fashion, University of the Arts, London (2002–07).In 1993, Lucy Orta and her partner, Jorge Orta, founded their studio in central Paris. Lucy + Jorge Orta have exhibited their results of their collaborations in major contemporary art museums, including the Barbican Art Gallery, London; Modern Art Museum, Paris; Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; Boijmans Museum Van Beuningen, Rotterdam; as well as at the Venice, Havana, and Johannesburg Biennales. The lecture was sponsored by the Cafferio Family Trust, the Reed College art department, and the Pacific Northwest College of Art.

Listen to the lecture.

Harold Ford Jr.
February 2

Harold Ford Jr. served Tennessee in the United States Congress for 10 years. He is chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council, visiting professor of public policy at Vanderbilt University, and vice chairman of Merrill Lynch and Co.

Listen to the lecture.

Mary Francis Berry
February 10

Professor Mary Frances Berry has been a pioneering intellectual, civil servant, and social critic for more than four decades. In the 1970s and 1980s, Berry served as assistant secretary for education in the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare; she served on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights from 1980 to 2004, and was chair for 11 years. A co-founder of the Free South Africa Movement, Berry is the author of seven books, including Long Memory: The Black Experience in America (with co-author John W. Blassingame). She is currently Geraldine R. Segal Professor of American Social Thought and professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania.

Listen to the lecture.

Fall 2007

Yiyun Li
November 15

Yiyun Li grew up in Beijing, China, and came to the United States in 1996. She began writing in her late twenties, and has published stories and essays inthe New Yorker, Best American Short Stories, and elsewhere. Her debut collection, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, won the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, PEN/Hemingway Award, and Guardian First Book Prize, among many other awards. She received a Whiting Writers' Award and a residency fellowship from Lannan Foundation, and was recently chosen by Granta magazine as one of the best young American novelists. She lives in Oakland, California, with her husband and two sons, and teaches in the M.F.A. program at Mills College.

Listen to the lecture.

Ross Gay
November 15

Ross Gay's book, Against Which, was a finalist for ForeWord magazine's poetry book of the year. His poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Harvard Review, and Margie: The American Journal of Poetry, among other journals. He is also co-author of a number of artists’ books, made in collaboration with painter Kimberly Thomas. Ross is a Cave Canem fellow and editor with the chapbook press, Q Avenue. He is assistant professor of poetry at Indiana University in Bloomington.

Listen to the lecture.

Spring 2008

Shamus Roller
April 3

Shamus Roller is the executive director of the Sacramento Housing Alliance, and director of the Coalition on Regional Equality. Roller’s lecture details the use of regional planning to combat the spread of racial and socioeconomic inequality. A Reed graduate from 2000, he also received a Jurist Doctorate from Hastings Law.

Sponsored by the Twohy-Benezet Memorial Lecture Fund.

Listen to the lecture.

Nancy Folbre
March 4

Nancy Folbre is a professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Folbre’s lecture explores the peculiar economic characteristics of the “care sector”—in which women provide a disproportionate share of the care for our children, sick, disabled, and elderly. How might we reorganize to improve quality of care and equality of opportunity? Folbre has worked as a consultant to the United Nations Human Development Office and the World Bank. Her forthcoming book is titled Valuing Children: Rethinking the Economics of the Family.

Sponsored by the Elizabeth C. Ducey Political Science Lecture Fund.

Listen to the lecture.

Fall 2007

Kevin Bales
November 12, 2007

Kevin Bales is professor emeritus of sociology at Roehampton University as well as president of Free the Slaves, a nongovernmental organization working to eradicate slavery. He is author of Disposable People and the forthcoming Ending Slavery.
Sponsored by the David Robinson Memorial Fund for Human Rights.

Listen to the lecture.

Frances Fox Piven
November 3, 2007

Frances Fox Piven is Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Sociology at the City University of New York, as well as president of the American Sociological Association. She studies the development of the welfare state, political movements, and urban politics; her books include Challenging Authority and Why Americans Still Don’t Vote: And Why Politicians Want it That Way. Sponsored by the Elizabeth C. Ducey Political Science Lecture Fund.

Listen to the lecture.

Peter Edelman
October 25, 2007

Peter Edelman served as an assistant secretary in the Health and Human Services Department during the Clinton Administration, and served as an adviser to senators Robert Kennedy and Edward Kennedy. He is on the faculty of the Georgetown Law Center.
Sponsored by the Elizabeth C. Ducey Political Science Lecture Fund.

Listen to the lecture.

Philip J. Deloria
September 12, 2007

The distinguished historian Philip J. Deloria, son of Native American scholar and activist Vine Deloria Jr. (1933–2005), delivers the inaugural lecture. Philip Deloria (Ph.D., American Studies, Yale University), has chaired the program in American Culture at the University of Michigan, and is president-elect of the American Studies Association. He is author of Indians in Unexpected Places (University Press of Kansas, 2004) and Playing Indian (Yale University Press, 1998).

Listen to the lecture.

Pancho Savery, Professor of English & Humanities
August 2, 2007

Pancho Savery, professor of English and humanities, delivered the annual Odyssey lecture, which kicked off the Humanities 110 curriculum for freshmen. His topic was: “‘Who’s that Lady?’: Looking for Penelope.”

Listen to the lecture.

Julian Bond - Civil Rights: In the Day, Today, & Tomorrow
February 2, 2007

A major leader of the American civil rights movement, Julian Bond has been at the forefront of social change for five decades. While a student at Morehouse College during the early 1960s, Bond helped found the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and was co-chair of a successful challenge delegation to the 1968 Democratic Convention. He served in the Georgia legislature as both a representative and as a senator. He has served, since 1998, as chairman of the board of the NAACP, the oldest and largest civil rights organization in the United States. In 2002, he received the prestigious National Freedom Award. The holder of 23 honorary degrees, he is a distinguished adjunct professor at American University in Washington, D.C., and a professor of history at the University of Virginia.

Listen to the lecture.
President Colin Diver introduces Julian Bond.

Spring 2007

Nick Flynn - February 22, 2007

Nick Flynn’s Another Bullshit Night In Suck City won the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for the Art of the Memoir, and has been translated into ten languages. He is also the author of two books of poetry, Some Ether, which won the PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award, and Blind Huber. He has been awarded fellowships from The Guggenheim Foundation, The Library of Congress, The Amy Lowell Trust, and The Fine Arts Work Center. He worked as a ”field poet” and as an artistic collaborator on the film Darwin’s Nightmare which was nominated for an Academy Award for best feature documentary in 2006. One semester a year he teaches at the University of Houston, and spends the rest of the year elsewhere.

Listen to the lecture.

Mary Szybist - March 22

Mary Szybist grew up in Pennsylvania and is a graduate the University of Virginia and of The University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her book of poetry, Granted, won the 2002 Beatrice Hawley Award was a finalist for the 2003 National Book Critics Circle Award. She is the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writing Award and the 2004 winner of the Great Lakes Colleges Association’s New Writers Award in Poetry. Mary currently teaches at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon.

Listen to the lecture.

Tess Gallagher - April 5

Tess Gallagher is a poet, fiction writer, essayist, screenplay writer, and translator. Her poetry collections include Dear Ghosts, Moon Crossing Bridge, and Amplitude: New and Selected Poems. In 1979 she began living with the short-story writer Raymond Carver, whom she married shortly before his death in 1988. In Ireland, she bought lambs to save them from the butcher and has begun weaving wall hangings from their fleece. She lives in Port Angeles, Washington.

Listen to the lecture.

Bernard Cooper - April 12

With his razor-sharp wit and unsparing honesty, Bernard Cooper peels back layers of the familiar, exposing the surprising truths that shape our lives. Bernard Cooper has written two collections of memoirs, Maps to Anywhere and Truth Serum, as well as a novel, A Year of Rhymes, and a collection of short stories, Guess Again. He has won numerous awards and prizes, among them the PEN/Ernest Hemingway Award, an O. Henry Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a fellowship from the NEA. He has taught at Antioch/Los Angeles and at the UCLA Writer’s Program and is currently the art critic for Los Angeles Magazine.

Listen to the lecture.

Fall 2006

William Beeman - The ‘Great Satan’ vs. the ‘Mad Mullahs’:
How the United States and Iran Demonize Each Other
October 27, 2006

William Beeman is professor of linguistic anthropology and director of Middle East studies at Brown University. In his latest book, The “Great Satan” vs. the “Mad Mullahs,” Beeman argues that an unprecedented mutual process of demonization has characterized relations between the U.S. and Iran. He claims that the accusations of each nation consist largely of public invective and symbolic rhetoric conforming to their own mythologies of evil.

Listen to the lecture.

Gary Sick - The United States and Iran:
Is a Military Clash Inevitable?
November 4, 2006

Gary Sick served on the National Security Council under presidents Ford, Carter, and Reagan. He was the principal White House aide for Iran during the Iranian Revolution and the hostage crisis, and is the author of two books on U.S.–Iranian relations. Sick is a retired captain in the U.S. Navy, having served in the Persian Gulf, North Africa, and the Mediterranean. He has a Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University, where he is senior research scholar, adjunct professor of international affairs, and former director of the Middle East Institute.

Listen to the lecture.

Minoo Moallem - Between Warrior Brother and Veiled Sister:
Transnational Formations of Islamic Nationalism and Fundamentalism in Iran
November 6, 2006

Minoo Moallem is professor of gender and women’s studies at UC Berkeley. Trained as a sociologist, she writes on transnational feminist cultural studies, religious nationalism and fundamentalism, immigration and diaspora studies, and Iranian cultural politics and diasporas. She recently published Between Warrior Brother and Veiled Sister: Islamic Fundamentalism and the Politics of Patriarchy in Iran (University of California Press, 2005).

Listen to the lecture.

Scott Sagan - How to Keep the Bomb from Iran
November 13, 2006

Scott Sagan is a professor of political science and director of Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation. He has also served as special assistant to the director of the Organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon, and as a consultant to the office of the Secretary of Defense and at Los Alamos National Laboratory. He is the author of numerous books on national security and nuclear strategy. In his article, How to Keep the Bomb From Iran (Foreign Affairs, September/October 2006), he argues that the United States should work to prevent Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons by addressing the security concerns that are likely motivators for Iran's nuclear ambitions.

Listen to the lecture.

Darius Rejali - Sickness, War, and Remembrance:
A Visit to Iran
November 20, 2006

Darius Rejali is a Carnegie Scholar (2003) and professor of political science at Reed College. He is the author of Torture and Modernity: Self, State, and Society in Modern Iran (Westview, 1994) and the forthcoming books Torture and Democracy (Princeton, 2007) and Approaches to Violence (Princeton, 2008). Iranian-born, Rejali has spent his scholarly career reflecting on violence and, specifically, reflecting on the causes, consequences, and meaning of modern torture in the contemporary world.

Listen to the lecture.

Colin Diver - President's Welcome
May 14, 2007

The president of Reed College welcomes and congratulates the class of '07 and introduces speaker William Hohengarten.

Listen to the lecture.

William Hohengarten '84 - Another Bend in the Road
May 14, 2007

Bill Hohengarten '84 is a partner at the Washington, D.C., office of the law firm Jenner & Block, concentrating in Supreme Court and appellate litigation. At the request of the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, he was one of the leaders of the legal team that successfully challenged state sodomy laws in the landmark 2003 U.S. Supreme Court case Lawrence v. Texas. Hohengarten majored in history at Reed, studied in Germany on a Fulbright, obtained a Ph.D. in philosophy at Northwestern University, then attended Yale Law School. He was a notes editor on the Yale Law Journal and clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter before entering private law practice. He is an avid wilderness camper and has run seven marathons.

Listen to the lecture.

Watch streaming video of the commencement ceremony