Samara Lectures Speakers
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Rebekka Armstrong
Exposed: An HIV+ Playboy Playmate Tells Her Story
At the age of 18, Rebekka became a Playboy Playmate after being chosen to be Miss September 1986, a culmination of her childhood dream. For the next four years, she led an exciting life as a Playmate, traveling, modeling, and attending star-studded parties. However, she was often tired and bruised easily. At the age of 22, she was diagnosed with HIV.
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Ellen Bremen
Say This, Not That (To Your College Professor)
Two people have control over your success in any college class: you and your college professor. In classrooms around the country, as professors teach quantum physics, Russian literature, and Western civilization, they rarely teach students the most important lesson of all:
“The way you behave and communicate with me can affect your success in this course and in college.” -
Gabriel Bol Deng
The Power of Hope
A Lost Boy Helps Rebuild Sudan
At the age of 10, Gabriel Bol Deng was separated from his family and became a refugee; after twenty years of separation he returned to his home village in Sudan and founded 'H.O.P.E. for Sudan', a non-profit supporting education in his home village. An inspiring story about the power of hope.
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Warren Etheredge
Conversationalist, Interviewer, Film Analyst
The Art of Conversation
Warren Etheredge didn't speak until he was 6 years old; he's been going strong ever since, making a lively livelihood and the most out of every conversation, elevating small talk to high art, discourse to an ideal. He talks. He teaches. He interviews.
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Gary Groth
From Comix to Comics to Graphic Novels:
A First Person History of Independent Comics Over the Last Half Century
Gary Groth became an activist-publisher when he co-founded The Comics Journal and Fantagraphics Books in 1976. Groth narrates the coming-of-age story of the comics form from the underground comix revolution of the late 1960s to the rise of alternative comics in the ‘80s to today’s graphic novel renaissance from his unique perspective as a keen observer and active participant.
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Eliaichi Kimaro
A Lot Like You:
The Culture We Inherit and the Legacies We Choose
A first-generation American goes in search of her identity and discovers that the cycle of gender violence she’s been working hard to break in the US is part of her history and culture on another continent. A Lot Like You raises questions about the cultures we inherit and what we choose to pass down, and reveals how bearing witness can break silences that have lasted lifetimes...
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Amanda Koster
Can I Come WIth You?
Citizen Journalism and SalaamGarage
Amanda Koster is an internationally acclaimed photographer whose commercial and personal work has shown a consistent commitment to telling stories of real people, human rights, cultural diversity and global equality. She combines her anthropology background with multi-media skills to create content as a means for powerful communication and storytelling.
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Jen Marlowe
Art as Activism: Impacting Our World
Does art merely reflect a deeply damaged world, or can it inspire change? Jen Marlowe, director, author, and human rights activist, explores this question.
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David Montgomery
Geomorphologist, Environmental Author
Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations
Prof. David Montgomery has discovered that the roughly 3 foot-deep skin of our planet is being slowly eroded away, and we are in danger of suffering the same fate as the fallen empires of Mesopotamia, Ancient Greece, and Rome. Montgomery is the author of 'Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations,' which makes the case that we are using up Earth's soil.
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Quinn Norton
Body Hacking
A multimedia lecture about medical frontiers
As medical technology becomes more advanced, it's falling into the hands of body hackers, people who enhance and change their bodies instead of just curing disease. Meanwhile, in traditional medicine, patients are encouraged to be active and informed, educating themselves about the latest medical research and taking control of their treatment. Where should we draw the line?
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Dr. Phil Plait
Bad Astronomy
Astronomer Phil Plait talks about Bad Astronomy with a humorous look at popular science myths and misconceptions.
2012: We’re All (not) Gonna Die
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Rebuilding Hope
A lecture/film program about South Sudan
Rebuilding Hope chronicles the homecoming to South Sudan of Gabriel Bol Deng, Garang Mayuol and Koor Garang, and their efforts to develop healthcare, clean water and education in their villages. All three were forced to flee their homes twenty years ago as young children, when militiamen led violent attacks on their villages. They crossed South Sudan on foot, surviving disease and paralyzing hunger to reach safety in a refugee camp in Ethiopia and then Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya, before coming to the US in 2001. In 2007, accompanied by filmmaker Jen Marlowe and journalist David Morse, Gabriel Bol, Koor and Garang returned to Sudan to seek their families and help their communities.
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Socheata Poeuv
Speaker, Filmmaker and Activist
Socheata Poeuv is the founder of Khmer Legacies, which has the goal of recording 10,000 testimonies of survivors of the Cambodian genocide by encouraging children to interview their parents. Her award-winning documentary New Year Baby documents her family's story of survival and healing.
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Dr. Terrence Roberts
Lessons from Little Rock
All the seats at the hamburger joint were reserved for white patrons, so 13 year old Terrence Roberts ordered food to go. While waiting, he impulsively sat down at the counter and then realized a hush had fallen over the place. Suddenly everyone seemed to be looking at him threateningly. He canceled his order and left. As he walked home, Roberts remembers wondering "what it would take for (him) to be treated like a real human being."
Two years later, in 1957, he volunteered to be one of the 'Little Rock Nine' who desegregated Central High School, in Little Rock, Arkansas.
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Loung Ung
Author, Cambodian Landmine Activist
Loung is a survivor of the killing fields of Cambodia, one of the bloodiest episodes of the twentieth century. She was five years old when the Khmer Rouge invaded Phnom Penh. Over the next three years, Loung lost half of her family, including both parents, and spent time in a camp for child soldiers. After the war was over, she and her older brother relocated to Vermont, where she grew to adulthood. Today she is an internationally best-selling author and a well-known human rights activist.
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Jennifer Worick
Everything You [Really] Need to Know about Dating, Sex & College
The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook Lecture/Slide Program
Jennifer Worick has interviewed therapists, CIA and FBI agents, stuntwomen, dating coaches, doctors,and university administrators to bring you the funniest stories and advice about dating, sex and college. Better yet, she offers solutions for the challenges that can derail even the luckiest, smartest college student. Whether you're trolling for dates at the campus watering hole or dating the same person since the 7th grade, this lecture offers a little something for everyone, touching on dating disasters, bedroom bungles, academic survival, and even stadium riots.
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Chaplain James Yee
Islamophobia: Fighting Ignorance and Promoting Peace
The September 11th attacks, the controversy over a proposed community center in Lower Manhattan (AKA The Ground Zero Mosque), threatened Quran burnings, ongoing military conflicts in Afghanistan, and the “War on Terror,” have all elevated the prejudices leading to discrimination, profiling, hate crimes, and violation of constitutional rights in our society.
