Publish Date: Jan 22, 2015
SALINAS, Calif. – Hartnell Community College District welcomes the first Educator in Residence, Dr. Anne Benvenuti on Thursday, January 29, 2015 at 6:00 p.m. at 411 Central Avenue Salinas, CA in Building K, room 125 for a free public lecture.
As Hartnell College's Educator in Residence, Dr. Benvenuti will be with us several times this spring (January, March, April, and May) to present public talks, staff roundtables, and student seminars. Some of the topics will include nature and human nature, global perspectives on depression and mental health, resilience, and a public lecture and reading from Spirit Unleashed.
Dr. Benvenuti will draw on her experience from 24 years as a psychology and philosophy professor at Cerro Coso Community College; she has also been a co-convener of the Gender Perspectives and Mental Health Working Group of the United Nations NGO Committee on Mental Health, a trustee and UN representative for the Council for a Parliament of the World's Religions, a poet, and author of Spirit Unleashed: Re-imagining Human-Animal Relations. She was nominated in 2014 for a Pulitzer for nonfiction.
The topic for this first lecture will be New science, old philosophy, and your happiness. She will draw from Jaak Panksepp’s affective neuroscience research about the seven affective systems shared by all mammals, focusing on the largest of these systems, the seeking system and its role in motivating behavior. Dr. Benvenuti will connect this new science with the classical maxims, “Know Thyself,” attributed to Socrates but actually spoken by the Oracle at Delphi, and “The unexamined life is not worth living,” actually spoken by Socrates. Stories, interactive analysis, and exercises will help participants identify genuine desires and our capacity to “desire” things we don’t really want. And will conclude with introduction of the concept that thinking in symbolic representation is both one of our greatest human capacities, but also creates the conditions in which we can literally lost in thought.
Her visit in January will include two morning sessions (9:00 a.m. and 10:40 a.m.) for faculty and staff on Friday, January 30, 2015 in the Staff Lounge (Student Center) and a student seminar at 3:00 p.m. in the Office of Student Life.
Her next visits will be in March 11-13, 2015 with the topic Global perspectives on depression, including gender and cultural perspectives; on April 16-17, 2015 with the topic Spirit unleashed: reimagining human-animal relations; and May 29, 2015 with Educator in residence closing activity.
This new venture is a program brought forth by the Professional Development Committee. For more on Dr. Benvenuti’s work, visit the following page: http://newarchaic.net/?page_id=21
Hartnell Community College District
The Hartnell CCD serves over 15,000 students annually through its main campus in Salinas, the Alisal Campus in East Salinas, the King City Education Center, and various outreach learning centers throughout the Salinas Valley. Hartnell College, a Hispanic Serving Institution, provides workforce training, basic skills courses, and prepares students for transfer to four-year colleges and universities. Hartnell College is recognized for its innovative public and private partnerships that support world class STEM education, career technical education, fine and performing arts, humanities, and athletics. We are growing leaders through opportunity, engagement, and achievement. For more about Hartnell CCD, visit www.hartnell.edu.
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