Centre announces upcoming convocation speakers

RELEASED: April 10, 2008

DANVILLE, KY— Internationally renowned criminologist Jack Levin to speak about serial killers. Dr. Jack Levin, professor of sociology and criminology at Northeastern University, will be presenting a program on Tuesday, April 22 at 7:30 p.m. in Weisiger Theatre on campus. The talk is free and open to the public.
 
Levin has authored or co-authored 26 books and appears frequently on national television programs such as 20/20, Dateline NBC, Oprah, Good Morning America and Today. He frequently consults with defense attorneys and prosecutors, testifies in court and provides expert commentary on incidents of violent crime.  

"Over the past 25 years, I've specialized in the study of murder, especially of the most irrational and despicable sorts," Levin says. "I've had interviews with killers, their family members, their lovers and their neighbors."
 
Levin continues: "The net result of my research has taught me a number of important lessons that I wish to share. My personal experiences are interesting in themselves, but they are also useful for making some crucial points about the conditions under which serial murder occurs."

Acclaimed Poet Paul Muldoon to visit campus
Paul Muldoon has been described by the "Times Literary Supplement" as "the most significant English-language poet born since the Second World War," and "one of the most exhilarating of living poets." Muldoon will be reading on Wednesday, April 23 at 7 p.m. in Young Hall Room 101 on campus. The event is free and open to the public.
 
Born in County Armagh, Ireland, Muldoon moved to the United States in 1987. Formerly a professor of poetry at Oxford, he is now poetry editor of "The New Yorker" magazine, professor of poetry at Princeton University and Chair of the Peter B. Lewis Center for the Arts.
 
"No poet is as wicked, as stylish or as fun," says Richard Sanger of "The Toronto Star."  Muldoon has been described by critics as "a force of nature" with "a penchant for weird rhymes, startling juxtapositions and occasional mystification."  
 
Muldoon's tenth and latest work, "Horse Latitudes" (2006), has been said to "set the standards for poetry." Muldoon's work includes references to both popular and classical culture, with his final poem, "Sillyhow Stride," written in memory of ballad rocker Warren Zevon, and is said to be "freighted with grief for the world which goes beyond its ostensible subject."

Comic Timothy Mooney to "breathe life" into 17th-century comic Molière
Timothy Mooney's production of "Molière Than Thou" has been called "a one-man SNL 17th-century scoundrels convention." Mooney's performance at Centre will take place on Thursday, April 24 at 7 p.m. in Combs Warehouse. The event is free and open to the public.
 
In his one-man production, Mooney has adapted (and translated) 15 of Molière’s plays into what one critic calls "a revue of favorite speeches from the oeuvre, linked by their satirical thrusts at hypocrisy, pretension, excess and folly."  
 
Mooney says, "I realized that the best way to introduce this work to the world would be to create a vision of a play in which some of Molière’s funniest speeches could be explored." By portraying Molière, Mooney has "the perfect opportunity to explain Molière's process of working on these plays, while managing to take a few deft stabs at some of his enemies: the doctors, the lawyers and the sanctimonious hypocrites who would attack him throughout the years."
 
Centre professor of modern languages Ken Keffer says that Mooney's virtuoso rendering in English fully resuscitates the 17th-century genius.  
 
Says Keffer, "Molière, France's equivalent to Shakespeare, loves to make fun of schools and philosophers, and in particular of Aristotle. But it turns out that Aristotle's marvelous theory of what it means to be fully alive and active (he calls it entelechy) best fits what Molière does with human voice, language and movement in his 23 plays. We find in Molière that the comedic and disastrous opportunities offered up by conversation are nearly endless."
 
Keffer adds, "We discover that talking is a death-defying feat. Thus, Molière's theatre resounds with characters who breathe life into us because they themselves breathe. They live and love to talk."

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Founded in 1819, Centre College is ranked among the U.S. News top 50 national liberal arts colleges. Consumers Digest ranks Centre No. 1 in educational value among all U.S. liberal arts colleges. Centre alumni, known for their nation-leading loyalty in annual financial support, include two U.S. vice presidents and two Supreme Court justices. For more, visit http://www.centre.edu/web/elevatorspeech/

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