Grawemeyer Award winners to give free public talks

UPDATE: The date for the talk by the education award winners, Paul Attewell and David Lavin, has been changed to March 4 at 4 p.m.

The Grawemeyer prizes, five awards of $200,000 each, are given each year for outstanding ideas or works in music composition, world order, psychology, education and religion. UofL and the seminary jointly administer the religion award.

Here’s the schedule for the free public talks:

  • Paul Attewell and David Lavin of City University of New York will speak March 4 at 4 p.m. in UofL’s University Club Ballroom. They won the education award for showing that disadvantaged students who attend college usually do well and their success carries forward to the next generation.
  • Anne Treisman of Princeton University will speak March 4 at noon in 101 Strickler Hall. She won the psychology award for her theory of feature integration, which helps explain how people process visual images from the world around them.
  • Donald Shriver, former president of Union Seminary in New York City, will speak March 4 at 7 p.m. in Caldwell Chapel, Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. He won the religion award for outlining ways governments and societies can overcome past misdeeds.

    Shriver also will appear twice on UofL’s Belknap Campus March 4. He will take part in a discussion at the Interfaith Center at 10 a.m. and will speak at 1 p.m. in Ekstrom Library’s Chao Auditorium. Both appearances are free and open to the public.

  • Michael Johnston of Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y. will speak March 5 at 11 a.m. in Chao Auditorium, Ekstrom Library. He won the world order award for his analysis of how corruption develops and how to stop it.
  • Brett Dean, a composer from Melbourne, Australia, will speak March 12 at 3 p.m. in Margaret Comstock Hall, School of Music. He won the music composition award for “The Lost Art of Letter Writing,” a four-movement concerto for violin and orchestra.

No reservations or tickets are required for the talks. For more information, call Allan Dittmer at 502-852-5198.