Briefly Noted

Issue Date: 
March 15, 2010

Pitt Law School Plans March 18 Lecture, Discussion on Sexual Orientation in Workplace

The University of Pittsburgh School of Law will hold a lecture and panel discussion titled “Out and Equal in the Workplace: Sexual Orientation Discrimination” from 6 to 7:30 p.m. March 18 in the Barco Law Building Alcoa Room.
The event is free and open to the public, but preregistration is requested since seating is limited. To register, or for more information, visit www.law.pitt.edu/outandequal or call 412-648-1490.

M.V. Lee Badgett, who studies family policy issues and labor market discrimination based upon sexual orientation, race, and gender, will deliver the keynote address. Badgett is director of the Center for Public Policy and Administration and professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She also is the research director in the Williams Institute on Sexual Orientation Law and Public Policy at the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Law.

Anthony C. Infanti, Pitt professor of law, will moderate a panel discussion following Badgett’s lecture. Panelists will discuss current legal developments, proposed legislation, and human resources initiatives. They are Susan Frietsche, senior staff attorney for the Women’s Law Project; Dan Frankel, legislator from the 23rd Legislative District in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania House of Representatives; and Gerald T. Hathaway, (LAW ’79), shareholder at Littler Mendelson PC.
—Patricia Lomando White

Photo Exhibition of Seoul Red-Light District Runs March 18-23

A free public exhibition of photographs of one of the oldest red-light districts in South Korea will run March 18-23 in the University of Pittsburgh’s Frick Fine Arts Building Gallery.

Titled Our Lives, Our Space: Views of Women in a Red-Light District, Korea, the exhibition opens at 3 p.m. March 18 and includes 40 photographs taken by women who worked in the sex trade in the Yongsan red-light district of Seoul, South Korea, some for as long as 40 years.

At 4 p.m. March 18, Sealing Cheng, assistant professor of women’s and gender studies at Wellesley College and one of the project’s organizers, will deliver a free lecture. Cheng, an anthropologist, researches issues pertaining to sexuality, prostitution, migration, trafficking, and human rights.

The exhibition’s cosponsors include Pitt’s School of Arts and Sciences, Asian Studies Center, Women’s Studies Program, and the Departments of Anthropology, Studio Arts, and the History of Art and Architecture.
—Sharon S. Blake

Future of Poetry to Be Discussed March 25

Literary theorist and critically acclaimed poet Nathaniel Mackey will offer his perspective of what tomorrow holds for poetry during an interview titled “The Future of Poetry II,” at 8:30 p.m. March 25 in the Frick Fine Arts Auditorium.
The free public event is a continuation of the Pittsburgh Contemporary Writers Series’ 2009-10 season.

The interview will be conducted by Pitt assistant professor of English Ben Lerner, poetry editor for Critical Quarterly and the author of the poetry collections Angle of Yaw (Copper Canyon Press, 2006) and The Lichtenberg Figures (Copper Canyon Press, 2004).

For the past two decades, Mackey’s major prose project has been From a Broken Bottle Traces of Perfume Still Emanate—an experiment in serial fiction that has produced four books. He is the author of Splay Anthem (New Directions, 2006), which won the 2006 National Book Award for Poetry.

The 2009-10 Pittsburgh Contemporary Writers Series season is cosponsored by Pitt’s Writing Program, Book Center, University Library System, and University of Pittsburgh Press. This season’s series will conclude April 1 with a rescheduled discussion between essayist Sven Birkets and blogger Maud Newton titled “Future of the Book.”

All events in the Writers Series are free and open to the public. For more information, contact Jeff Oaks at oaks@pitt.edu or visit www.english.pitt.edu.
—Anthony M. Moore