Saturday U
Spend a Saturday with
University of Wyoming’s
Best & Brightest Thinkers
PDEV 1510: Goldminds: Western Ideals versus Alternate Philosophies
Half credit available ($44.50) For more details, check with the staff at the CWC Jackson Office.
February 20, 2010 • 9 a.m.-4 p.m. with a working lunch
National Museum of Wildlife Art
This second Saturday U will discuss Western Ideals versus alternate philosophies.
Presented by
• University of Wyoming • University of Wyoming Foundation • Wyoming Humanities Council
• Teton County Library • Teton County Library Foundation
• National Museum of Wildlife Art • Central Wyoming College
Philip Holt from University of Wyoming Classics Department will present “How to Become a Greek Hero”. In this presentation Professor Holt will examine what sorts of people the Greeks honored with hero cult. Studying hero cult reveals a lot about human fascination with great power and great suffering – among the Greeks as well as among us.
Marianne Kamp from University of Wyoming History Department will present “Exporting Democracy: US Efforts to Change the Political Culture of Iraq, Afghanistan and Other States”. She asks the question ‘can democracy be exported? Should it be exported?’ Those who observed the transformation of some former East Bloc countries into democracies, and the lack of such a transformation in other countries, opened new questions about what democracy is, whether it can be encouraged to grow in new contexts, and why democracy succeeds in some places and fails in others.
Steve Easton from University of Wyoming Law School will hold an interesting discussion entitled “What is Justice? Theories of Punishment” about the core of our justice system. Why do we punish those who commit crimes? What is the purpose of criminal punishment? Do we punish because those who committed crimes “deserve” punishment for violating society’s rules, so punishment is a matter of making sure those who break our rules and cause harm receive their “just dessert, or do we punish to bring about some other benefit via punishment?