Fall Lecture Series kicks off on August 28

Our annual Fall Lecture Series begins on August 28 and will run every other Wednesday until November 6, 2013. The first lecture will begin at 5:30 p.m. in Call Alumni Auditorium in Kennedy Hall and will be followed by a garden party in the botanical gardens of Cornell Plantations.  All remaining lectures will take place in Statler Hall Auditorium at 7:30 p.m.
 
The lecture series will feature talks about Pagan trees, trendy new plants, weedless gardening, conserving species, nature wars, and plant medicines by Cornell English professor Thomas D. Hill; Klyn Nurseries President Bill Hendricks; President Emeritus of the Missouri Botanical Garden Peter Raven; renowned gardener and author Lee Reich; acclaimed journalist for The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal and author of Nature Wars: the Incredible Story of How Wildlife Comebacks Turned Backyards into Battlegrounds, Jim Sterba, and senior research associate at Cornell University Manuel Aregullin.  The Fall Lecture Series is free and open to the public.
 
Cornell University English Professor, Thomas Hill kicks off the series with a lecture entitled Pagan and Christian Trees: From Ambrose to “Juniper Tree.”  Professor Hills’ lecture will focus on the importance of trees in Christian thought and will be a literary history of some spiritual, cosmological and real trees in the literature of medieval and early modern Europe.
 
“Every year we work to try and bring interesting and dynamic speakers to share with our community,” stated Sonja Skelly, director of education at Cornell Plantations.  “This years line-up is no exception! We have some of the world’s leading authorities coming to Ithaca.  We hope the Cornell and Ithaca communities will join us for these exciting lectures.”

Click here for the 2013 Fall Lecture Series Line-up.