Innovative scientists, a daring journalist, heralded writers and influential leaders in business and law will visit the University of Georgia this fall as part of the Signature Lecture series.
 
Signature Lectures are designated at the beginning of each semester by the Office of the Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost to highlight campus talks of broad, multidisciplinary interest. Many of the lectures are supported by endowments, while others honor notable figures and milestones in the university’s history.
 
“The fall 2017 Signature Lectures reaffirm the University of Georgia’s role in bringing people together to share ideas and advance knowledge,” said Provost Pamela Whitten. “Students, faculty and staff from across the campus community and beyond are invited to attend these thought-provoking talks from visiting speakers and scholars.”
 
The fall 2017 Signature Lectures are listed below. All are free and open to the public.
 
Stephanie Stuckey, chief resilience officer, city of Atlanta
Vincent Eleanor Ferguson Lecture
Sept. 13, 5-6 p.m., Room 123, Jackson Street Building
 
Stephanie Stuckey served as a state representative from the Decatur area for 14 years, during which time she was a member of the Judiciary and Natural Resources committees. She then went on to serve as executive director of GreenLaw, an Atlanta-based public interest law firm focused on environmental issues. In 2015, she was appointed director of sustainability for the city of Atlanta by Mayor Kasim Reed. In 2016, she was named chief resilience officer for Atlanta, working in conjunction with the Rockefeller Foundation’s “100 Resilient Cities.”
 
Sponsored by the College of Environment and Design
 
Michael J. Klarman, Kirkland & Ellis Professor at Harvard Law School
“The Constitution as a Coup Against Public Opinion”
Constitution Day Lecture
Sept. 15, 2-3 p.m., Chapel
 
Michael J. Klarman is the Kirkland & Ellis Professor at Harvard Law School. He is one of the nation’s leading scholars of constitutional law and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His lecture addresses how the framers at the Philadelphia convention managed to write a Constitution that was vastly more nationalist and democracy-constraining than most Americans wanted or expected and how they were able to convince ordinary Americans to approve such a document.
 
Sponsored by The American Founding Group and the School of Public and International Affairs
 
Dan Cathy, president and CEO of Chick-fil-A
“Celebration of the Impact of S. Truett Cathy”
Terry Leadership Speaker Series
Sept. 29, 10:10-11 a.m., Chapel
 
As CEO of one of the nation’s largest family owned businesses, Chick-fil-A’s Dan Cathy represents the next generation of leadership for the Atlanta-based fast-food chicken restaurant chain founded by his father, S. Truett Cathy. Eager to incorporate his own skills and talents into the business, Cathy has taken an unconventional yet personally and professionally rewarding approach to Chick-fil-A leadership.
 
Sponsored by the Institute for Leadership Advancement and the Terry College of Business
 
Georgia Writer’s Hall of Fame Authors Talk and 2017 Awards Ceremony
James C. Cobb, historian; Alfred Corn, poet; Kevin Young, poet; Eugenia Price, novelist
Author Discussion: Nov. 5, 5-6 p.m., Richard B. Russell Building Special Collections Libraries Auditorium
Awards Ceremony: Nov. 6, 10-11:30 a.m., Richard B. Russell Building Special Collections Libraries Auditorium
 
James C. Cobb is the B. Phinizy Spalding Professor of History Emeritus at UGA. A former president of the Southern Historical Association, Cobb has written widely on the interaction among economy, society and culture in the American South. His most recent book is “The South and America Since World War II.”
 
Alfred Corn has distinguished himself as one of the most original poets writing in the U.S. He is a member of the Academy of American Poets and has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and Guggenheim Foundation, as well as a prize from the National Institute of Arts and Letters.
 
Young began serving as director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in September 2016 and will be poetry editor of The New Yorker starting in November 2017. He previously served as the Atticus Haygood Professor of Creative Writing and English at Emory University. He has written six poetry collections, edited five more, and is widely regarded as one of the leading poets of his generation.
 
Best known as a writer of historical fiction, the late Eugenia Price was awarded a Governor’s Award in the Humanities in 1988 for her novels, which helped preserve the history of coastal Georgia. Her novel “Lighthouse” is on the Georgia Center for the Book’s list of 25 books every Georgian should read.
 
Sponsored by the University of Georgia Libraries
 
Nina Fedoroff, Evan Pugh Professor Emerita at Penn State University
“The GMO Wars: What do we do when scientists and citizens deeply disagree?”
D.W. Brooks Lecture
Nov. 7, 3:30-4:45 p.m., Mahler Hall, Georgia Center for Continuing Education Conference Center and Hotel
 
A former science and technology adviser to the U.S. secretary of state and the U.S. Agency for International Development, molecular biologist Nina Fedoroff has spent her career working to ensure that people around the world have enough to eat. She’s a proponent of using technology as a means to achieve that goal.
 
Sponsored by the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences
 
Souad Mekhennet, national security correspondent at The Washington Post
“Being a Female Reporter Behind the Lines of Jihad”
McGill Lecture
Nov. 15, 4 p.m., journalism building, Studio 100
 
Journalist Soaud Mekhennet has gained rare access to the inner circles of the Taliban, Al-Qaeda and ISIS. Her latest book, “I Was Told to Come Alone: My Journey Behind the Lines of Jihad,” recounts some of her most dangerous assignments. She is a fellow with the New America Foundation and the co-author of three previous books.
 
Sponsored by the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication
 
David Hurst Thomas, curator of anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History
“Unearthing Georgia’s Deep Hispanic Heritage: Still Digging on St. Catherines Island”
Nov. 17, 3:30-4:30 p.m., Richard B. Russell Building Special Collections Libraries Auditorium
 
David Hurst Thomas has served as curator of anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York since 1972, and, for seven years, served as the chairman of the department of anthropology. Thomas has conducted archaeological research on St. Catherines Island since 1974.
 
Sponsored by the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences and the department of anthropology.