‘Waging War, Waging Peace’ is Common Theme at UW-Green Bay

GREEN BAY — The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay’s Common Theme for the 2008-09 school year focuses on “Waging War, Waging Peace.”

UW-Green Bay’s Common Theme is a yearlong program designed to engage the campus and community in the ideals of a liberal arts education and the UW-Green Bay interdisciplinary mission. It encourages faculty, staff, students and community members to focus on a general theme from multiple perspectives and have a shared experience with open discussion and critical thinking.

The “Waging War, Waging Peace” Common Theme this academic year is designed to engage individuals in conversations about the responsibilities they have as citizens and as a nation in an increasingly complex global world. (http://www.uwgb.edu/commontheme/)

The public and the campus community are invited to participate in a common reading, where each semester planning committee members select a new book that relates to the Common Theme. The books are available at The Phoenix Bookstore on the UW-Green Bay campus, 2420 Nicolet Drive.

The first semester book is In the Hot Zone: One Man, One Year, Twenty Wars, by Kevin Sites. Sites, an independent solo journalist who is working with Yahoo!’s news covering every major war zone around the globe, will be on campus this October for discussions and presentations about his travels.

The second semester book is The Things They Carried, by author and Vietnam War veteran Tim O’Brien. The book was described by ReadingGroupGuides.com as, “an unparalleled Vietnam testament, a classic work of American literature and a profound study of men at war that illuminates the capacity, and the limits, of the human heart and soul.”

Students enrolled in the First Year Seminars will use the books and participate in interdisciplinary exercises that focus around the Common Theme.

The public is also invited to add to an online blog discussion moderated and updated regularly by UW-Green Bay faculty. (http://blog.uwgb.edu/commontheme/)

Other on-campus events this year will incorporate elements of the Common Theme.

Two plays —The Balkan Women, directed by Guest Director Carmen Roman, and a student-directed production of Copenhagen — will be performed on campus, and soldiers from the Wisconsin National Guard will lead a discussion about their recent deployments to war zones.

Other events will include seminars, conferences and discussions.

Common Theme Events Calendar:

Title: “Hot Zone” Photography Exhibit
Date: Sept. 28 – Oct. 3, 2008
Location: Concourse, University Union, UW-Green Bay
Admission: Free
Summary: Photographs from Yahoo!’s Hot Zone news coverage of global conflicts.

Title: A World of Conflict
Date: Oct. 1, 2008
Time: 8 p.m. – 9:30 p.m.
Location: Phoenix Rooms, University Union, UW-Green Bay
Admission: Free
Summary: Screening of documentary and discussion with journalist Kevin Sites.

Title: One Man. One year. A World of Conflict
Date: Oct. 2, 2008
Time: 8 p.m. – 9:30 p.m.
Location: Phoenix Rooms, University Union, UW-Green Bay
Admission: Free
Summary: Lecture and presentation by journalist Kevin Sites.

Title: Henry David Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience
Date: Oct. 14, 2008
Time: 6:30 p.m. – 8 p.m.
Location: Brown County Public Library, 515 Pine St., Green Bay
Admission: Free
Summary: Great Books group discussion of Thoreau’s book, Civil Disobedience.

Title: The Balkan Women
Date: Oct. 16-18 and Oct. 22-25, 2008
Time: 7:30 p.m.
Location: Jean Weidner Theatre, Weidner Center, UW-Green Bay
Admission: $12
Summary: A tragic, two-act play by Jules Tasca that tells a story of how the horrors of war are a daily reality for women caught in an endless cycle of violence.

Title: Finding and Applying for a Federal Job
Date: Oct. 22, 2008
Time: 12:45 p.m. – 1:40 p.m. and 5:30 p.m. – 6:30 p.m.
Location: Vista Conference Room, Mary Ann Cofrin Hall, UW-Green Bay
Admission: Free

Title: Peace Corps Informational Session
Date: Nov. 5, 2008
Time: 6 p.m. – 7 p.m.
Location: Vista Conference Room, Mary Ann Cofrin Hall, UW-Green Bay
Admission: Free

Title: Peace Corps Informational Table
Date: Nov. 6, 2008
Time: 8 a.m. – noon
Location: Garden Café, Booth B, UW-Green Bay
Admission: Free

Title: Global Summit
Date: Nov. 7, 2008
Location: University Union, Phoenix Rooms
Admission: Free
Summary: UW-Green Bay students simulate a United Nations summit by representing 30 countries and trying to negotiate a joint resolution on global sustainable development.

Title: Private Soldiers: A Year in Iraq with a Wisconsin National Guard Unit
Date: Nov. 11, 2008
Time: 7 p.m.
Location: Phoenix Rooms, University Union, UW-Green Bay
Admission: Free
Summary: Three national guardsmen from the Wisconsin 2-127th Infantry will talk about how the deployment affected themselves, their comrades and their families. They will also give their perceptions of the culture and people they encountered while in Iraq.

Title: War, Bereavement, and Resilience workshop
Date: Nov. 14, 2008
Time: 9 a.m. – 3:30 p.m.
Location: University Union, UW-Green Bay
Admission: $99
Summary: A workshop for continuing education opportunity for human services professionals that will explore the grief-related consequences of war and the strategies people need to make peace.

Title: The Other Side of War: Women’s Stories of Hope and Survival
Date: Dec. 4, 2008
Location: 1965 Room, University Union, UW-Green Bay
Summary: Discussion of the aforementioned book described as a “bold and heart-rending commentary, (where author) Zainab Salbi takes readers into the heart of Afghanistan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Colombia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, and Sudan to hear the stories of women who daily reclaim the lives of their families and communities from the ashes of conflict.”

Title: Copenhagen
Date: Feb. 11-13, 2009
Location: University Theatre, Theatre Hall, UW-Green Bay
Summary: UW-Green Bay student Matt Fayer directs a play by Michael Frayn based around an event that occurred in Copenhagen in 1941—during the early part of World War II—that speculates about what happened in a meeting between German nuclear physicists Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg.

(NOTE: This calendar will be periodically updated at: http://www.uwgb.edu/commontheme/)

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