PERSPECTIVES 2004 Explores America and the New World Order

Dr. Paul B. Courtright, professor of religion at Emory University and author of the controversial book Ganesa: Lord of Obstacles, Lord of Beginnings will be the kickoff speaker for PERSPECTIVES 2004, The Raymond B. Witt Lecture Series. The theme of PERSPECTIVES 2004 will be America and the New World Order.

Courtright will discuss “Notes from New Delhi: America through Indian Eyes,” on Tuesday, January 20 at 9:15 a.m. Lectures Tuesday-Thursday will be held in the Tennessee Room of the UTC University Center and the faculty-student panel on Friday will be held in the Racoon Mountain Room of the University Center. Parking is available at Engel Stadium, where campus visitors can ride the free Carta shuttle to the University Center.

Ganesa: Lord of Obstacles, Lord of Beginnings was originally released in 1985, and recently released again with a new cover in 2001. The sexual themes explored in the book and the cover, which depicts a nude Lord Ganesa, prompted a petition by a member of the Hindu Students’ Council at the University of Louisiana in Lafayette. It demanded the “author and publisher to give an unequivocal apology to the Hindus” and asked that the publisher immediately withdraw the book from circulation. Motilal Banarsidass Publishers withdrew the book from the market in India.

Courtright received his B.A. from Grinnell College, M.Div. from Yale, and Ph.D. from Princeton. He had taught previously at Williams College and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. His teaching interests focus on religions of South Asia, particularly Hinduism; religious change in nineteenth century India, and the history of the study of religion.

On Wednesday, January 21, 10 a.m., G. Evans Witt, principal, CEO of Princeton Survey Research Associates will discuss “America’s Place in the World.”

Princeton Survey Research offers innovative research design, data collection, and data analysis. Surveys are conducted by telephone, mail, personal interview and online. Associates have extensive experience interviewing corporate executives, government officials and influential journalists. Their research capabilities include in-depth analyses of news media coverage of ongoing policy issues in the print and broadcast media.

“Why Middle Easterners Do Not Like Us” will be the topic of Dr. Arthur Knoll, professor of history at The University of the South. Knoll will speak at 10:50 a.m. on Thursday, January 22.

Knoll joined the faculty of The University of the South in Sewanee, TN, in 1970, and served as chairman of the Department of History from 1971-1976. Knoll teaches African and Middle Eastern history at the University. He is a graduate of Bates College (B.A.), New York University (M.A.) and Yale University where he received the Ph.D. in 1964. Knoll has also done postgraduate work at the University of Heidelberg, Germany, where he was a three-time Alexander von Humboldt Fellow. His teaching specialty is European imperialism in Africa, a topic on which he has written a book entitled Togo Under Imperial Germany: A Case History in Colonial Rule (1978). His most recent work, of which he is general editor, is Germans in the Tropics: Essays in Colonial Rule (1987). He has written extensively for the op-ed page of the Chattanooga Times. In the summer of 2003 he submitted “Utilizing Terrorism.”

In January 1993, Knoll became the first recipient of the David E. Underdown Chair in Modern European History. He was also a James Still Fellow at the University of Kentucky in the summer of 1993. His last National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute was at the Mansfield Center, University of Montana, June and July 1995; it was entitled "America’s Wars in Asia: A Cultural Approach."

In June 2000 Knoll was chosen by the Associated Colleges of the South as one of three representatives for a study tour in Turkey to help initiate a Global Partners' Program there.

A UTC faculty and student panel discussion titled The New American World Order will be held at 11 a.m. on Friday, January 23.. Dr. Bob Swansbrough, Associate Dean of Arts and Sciences will moderate a discussion of foreign students’ and faculty observations of American life.