On Monday, February 14, in the “open” period of 11:30-1, distinguished legal historian Professor Richard Bernstein will deliver a lecture on the politics of constitutional interpretation in the first inaugural Honors College-LTC colloquium.  Professor Bernstein’s talk is entitled: “The Constitution, or an Exploding Cigar?”   This topic is guaranteed to be both provocative and amusing.  Students, graduate and undergraduate alike–particularly those interested in politics or law, are urged to attend.

R.B. Bernstein was born in New York City.  An alumnus of  Amherst College and the Harvard Law School, he completed his graduate study at New York University.  The author, co-author, and co-editor of over twenty books on American legal and constitutional history, focusing on the founding era, he is now Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Law at New York Law School, where he has taught since 1991.  His books include The Founding Fathers Reconsidered (Oxford, 2009), Thomas Jefferson (Oxford, 2003), Amending America (Times Books, 1993), and Are we to be a Nation: The Making of The Constitution (with Kym S. Rice; Harvard, 1987).  He is now completing The Education of John Adams (Oxford, forthcoming).

The LTC program, Director Gautham Rao, based in the History Department, is NJIT’s pre-law major.

For a generation now, originalism — which means interpreting and applying the U.S. Constitution to modern issues and problems by reference to the Constitution’s original intent, understanding, or meaning as of its framing and adoption in 1787-1788 – has become a constitutional orthodoxy.  The problem with this orthodoxy, however, is that it is vulnerable to a wide array of challenges on historical grounds.  Building constitutional law on bad history is not sound legal engineering.  In his address Professor R. B. Bernstein will explore several of these “historian’s heresies,” showing how they undermine the usefulness and credibility of originalism.  Synthesizing the work of scores of historians over the past forty years, Professor Bernstein brushes away the caricatures of the founding fathers that have become prevalent today in popular culture, bringing us closer to an understanding of the variety of opinions they espoused, and shining a light on how we may create a better future by understanding our complex and ambiguous past.

The lecture series was co-founded in 1981 by Dr. Clement Price, Board of Governors Distinguished Service Professor of History at Rutgers University, and the late Giles R. Wright, from the New Jersey Historical Commission. Over the past 30 years, the conference has drawn thousands of people to the Rutgers-Newark campus, and has attracted some of the nation’s foremost scholars and humanists who are experts in the field of African and African American history and culture. It has become one of the nation’s leading scholarly programs specifically devoted to enhancing the historical literacy of an intercultural community.

This year’s program entitled Beauty and the Black Body: History, Aesthetics, and Politics will examine how the presence and persistence of African Americans in the United States have challenged and reshaped notions of beauty, especially in the realms of art, popular culture, and photography. Deborah Willis, professor of photography at New York University, will give The Marion Thompson Wright Lecture Saturday morning, in conjunction with her current exhibition at the Newark Museum Posing Beauty: African American Images from the 1890s to the Present. Richard Powell from Duke University, whose research examines race and representation in the African diaspora, will comment on Professor Willis’ lecture.

The MTW afternoon session features three distinguished speakers who will further examine the theme of “Beauty and the Black Body” from their perspectives: Professor Maxine Craig from the University of California at Davis who will draw on her scholarship in the field of gender and race studies; Professor Tiffany Gill, from the University of Texas, Austin, whose scholarship looks at the emergence and importance of the black beauty industry in modern African American life and politics; and Dr. Okwui Enwezor, an internationally preeminent scholar, art critic and curator of African art.

During a special presentation, Dr. Marc Mappen, historian and former executive director of the New Jersey Historical Commission, will receive the Marion Thompson Wright Award in recognition of his steadfast support, and the Commission’s co-sponsorship, of the Series since its inception.

Dr. Nocks was also awarded a 2010 National Endowment for the Humanities Teaching Development Fellowship to enhance her Robots in History and Culture seminar and to extend the course materials beyond the classroom via a publicly accessible website and open courseware materials.

She is currently working on a number of projects including a new book tentatively titled, Reading Our Way to Mars: Space Exploration in Popular Science Publishing 1870-1970. Perhaps a seminar on the history of space exploration is in the future.

Dr Maher also presented The Outstanding Undergraduate Student Award  to Mr. Christopher Broschart of Forked River, NJ.  Chris is a history major at NJIT and he currently represents the History Department in the NJIT undergraduate Student Senate.  Last spring Chris was inducted into Phi Alpha Theta, the national history honor society, and now serves as Vice President of Alpha-Nu-Alpha, NJIT’s Phi Alpha Theta chapter.

Chris always seeks to be of assistance to his fellow students, and he regularly attends CSLA functions for students to help newcomers get their footing here at the university.  Among his current projects is the creation of an NJIT History Club through the Student Senate.  Chris has been on the Dean’s list 3 semesters, and has a history major GPA of 3.7, all of which he has accomplished while working as an employee at the NJIT Campus Center for the last two years, where he was just promoted to manager.

Katherine Keirns, one of the Federated History Department’s MA students, has won  first place in the Middle States Division of the American Association of Geographers regional conference’s graduate student paper competition. Her paper was entitled,”Yes, the Brush is Mightier than the Sword: How Surveyors, Explorers and Soldier Artists Saved West Point.” The conference was held at the Thayer Hotel on the campus of the United States Military Academy at West Point.

For a copy of the conference program, visit http://departments.bloomu.edu/geo/msd/MSDAAG_Program_2010.pdf.

Program @ NJIT  &

The NJIT Pre-Law Society

are pleased to present: 

“How to Get Into Law  School” 

featuring a visit by

Kaplan Testing Inc.

and

Professor Gautham Rao,

Director of LTC 

Monday, November 29

11:30 am – 12:30 pm

Kupfrian 105 

Please rsvp to: gautham.rao@njit.edu

The members of the panel are:

• Antoine Lilti, History, École normale supérieure
• Dinah Ribard, Literature, École des hautes études en sciences sociales
• Carol Rovane, Philosophy, Columbia University
• Richard B. Sher, History, New Jersey Institute of Technology & Rutgers University, Newark
• Dorothea Von Mücke, German Studies, Columbia University

The roundtables have been organized by the Department of French and Romance Philology, the Department of History at Columbia University and the Columbia Maison Française, with the Ecole Normale Supérieure and the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris. Columbia University will launch a new MA in History and Literature with the cooperation of Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales and Ecole Normale Supérieure at its Reid Hall campus in Paris in Fall 2011.  For additional information on October’s program of discussions please contact Carly DeFilippo, Program Coordinator at the Maison Française, Columbia University, Buell Hall, New York, NY 10027

Telephone: 212-854-4482

E-mail: cad2158@columbia.edu

Dr. Pemberton’s remarks focused upon post-World War II efforts to understand and manage hemophilia, a devastating condition that is both a hereditary disorder and a blood disorder.  Experimental hematologists sought to combine the genetic understanding of hemophilia with biochemical understanding of blood coagulation.   For additional information on Dr. Pemberton’s work and the Human Heredity in the Twentieth Century Workshop, please see: http://centres.exeter.ac.uk/medhist/conferences/human_heredity/index.shtml

New Members at NJIT

• Christopher M. Broschart
• Jonathan M. Da Silva
• Andrew N. Kirk
• Eric Lin
• Swathi Manchikanti

New Members at Rutgers-Newark

• Leslie Baez
• William L. Blevins
• David B. Bussel
• Maria Daoud
• William G. Gallagher
• Pat Bonner Green
• Kelly Kroeper
• Kaitlin Moleen
• Larry N. Montoya
• Christopher R. O’Hearn
• Gustavo Armando Rodriguez
• Megan E. Schulze
• Cristina Sieira
• Michael Snyder
• Christina Timothy

Dr. Les Koepplin

The United States today is the world leader in science and technology.  How did this happen?  How long can we retain this lead in the face of increased challenges, particularly from other nations such as China and India?  How can we best meet these challenges?  These questions are the focus of this seminar.

We begin in a different era from our own.  It was an era that featured the conquest of polio, the landing of man on the moon, the computer led digital revolution in information technology, and the monumental developments in the life sciences.   It was in this era that the United States became the global leader in science and technology.  How?  The universities, businesses, the non-profit sector, and the state and federal governments, created and functioned as a partnership to reach these heights.

Since this course is a seminar, students write a paper on any one of the challenges to the current U.S. strength in science and technology.  The paper will also include recommendations on meeting this challenge.  Some examples of what students might write about include the disarray in K-12 grade instruction in this area, the lack of collegiate interest in these subjects and the resulting lack of highly skilled employees in such fields as engineering, and the increasing competition from nations like China and India.

Students in this history seminar will have a chance to review their papers with outside speakers who are charged with solving these problems.  Past speakers have included the Vice President of Bell Labs for North America, the Director of the New Jersey Commission on Science and Technology, and the Provost of NJIT.