Newsletter Volume 12 Issue 3 - October 1, 2025 | | PLEASE NOTE -- NEWSLETTER CHANGES | | |
Beginning this month (October) we will publish the Emeritus College newsletter once a month instead of twice monthly. When necessary, we will use email reminders throughout the month for event information and registration.
The reason for this change is to reduce the amount of time involved in creation/preparation of the newsletter, which will allow more time to work on existing programs, and planning/implementation of additional programming and events.
Please let us know if you have any questions or concerns.
| | Lunch Colloquium with Vernon Robbins -- October 6, 2025 | | |
Vernon Robbins
Professor Emeritus of Religion
Winship Distinguished Research Professor in the Humanities
MONDAY, October 6, 2025
The Luce Center
825 Houston Mill Road -- Room 130
11:30am-1:00pm
“Bible People in the Qur’an”
The storylines of Adam, Noah, Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, John the Baptist, and Jesus in the Bible reverberate throughout the Qur’an. These storylines, retold by Muslims five hundred years after the advent of Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism, give Islamic belief and practice a deep, rich relationship to both Jewish and Christian belief and practice. This presentation will explain the overall presence of biblical people in the Qur’an and give major glimpses of special aspects of the Qur’anic presentation of people like Noah, Abraham, Jacob and his son Joseph, and Jesus and Mary. It is Vernon Robbins’ pleasure to present this with support of a Heilbrunn Fellowship sponsored by Emory Emeritus College and Emory College of the Liberal Arts.
About Vernon Robbins:
Vernon K. Robbins is Emeritus Professor of Religion and Winship Distinguished Research Professor in the Humanities, Emory University. He earned a BA with Honors at Westmar College, LeMars, Iowa; a Master of Divinity with honors at United Theological Seminary, Dayton, Ohio; and an MA and PhD at the University of Chicago Divinity School. He taught Greek and Biblical Studies in the Classics Department at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign and started its Department of Religion in 1968. After teaching fifteen years there, he was a Fulbright Professor at the University of Trondheim in Norway 1983-84, during which he accepted an appointment in the Department and Graduate Division of Religion at Emory University in 1984, from which he retired in 2019. During this time he also served as Professor Extraordinary at the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa between 1996 and 2002.
In 1984, his book Jesus the Teacher launched Sociorhetorical Interpretation (SRI) in New Testament studies. Then his The Tapestry of Early Christian Discourse and Exploring the Texture of Texts presented programmatic strategies for the approach in 1996. In 2015 he was featured in the book Genealogies of New Testament Rhetorical Criticism as one of “five pioneers” of New Testament rhetorical criticism on the cusp of the 20th and 21st century.
He has published sixteen scholarly books, more than one hundred scholarly articles, and edited more than thirty books in the Emory Studies in Early Christianity and Rhetoric of Religious Antiquity monograph series he launched in the 1990s. An international Festschrift titled Fabrics of Discourse was published in his honor with a special program of lectures in his honor at the annual Society of Biblical Literature meeting in 2004.
The most recent exciting development is the use of his Sociorhetorical Interpretation approach in Australia, New Zealand, Samoa, and Fiji, which led to his presentation of a special guest lecture over Zoom at the Second Oceania Biblical Studies Conference in Apia, Samoa in 2023.
| | Lunch Colloquium with Carla Freeman -- October 20, 2025 | | |
Carla Freeman
Director of the Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry and
Goodrich C. White Professor of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
MONDAY, October 20, 2025
The Luce Center
825 Houston Mill Road -- Room 130
11:30am-1:00pm
“Fox Center -- New Directions”
With higher education facing potentially transformational change, there has never been a better time to intensify recognition of the humanities and their important role in scholarly and public life. For the last two years Emory’s Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry, which celebrates its 25th anniversary this fall, has been engaged in not only “amplifying the crucial importance of humanistic inquiry and scholarship” but also giving Emory students, faculty, and community members new opportunities to coalesce around common themes and together explore imaginative questions, such as, “What does it mean to study democracy?”
In 2025-2026, Fox Center students and faculty are engaging in a yearlong exploration of “Life/Story,” following last year’s examination of Democracy: Past, Present, and Future, to ask questions such as, “How do biography, oral history, and ethnography unearth particular renderings of a life? How does a single life story shed light upon central themes of the human condition?” The focus of Fox Center Fellows research (from undergraduate honors students through tenured professors across diverse humanistic fields) includes individual subjects both “renowned and obscure.” What will tie these studies together is a collective examination of how a single life can provide an illuminating “entry point for understanding broad political, socio-cultural, and historical phenomena.”
The Fox Center’s annual thematic approach is part of a new direction inspired by Dr. Carla Freeman who has been Fox Center Director since 2023. Building upon the Fox Center’s solid foundations, “we are expanding the scope of our mission: providing occasions for lively intellectual community, bold interdisciplinary and collaborative inquiry, broad public engagement and programming, as well as the time and space for quiet, immersive scholarship and writing.” For her upcoming talk to the Emeritus College, Dr. Freeman will describe the genesis of the Center’s new directions and how the Fox Center promises to further recognize the humanities at Emory and beyond.
About Carla Freeman:
Carla Freeman is Director of the Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry and Goodrich C. White Professor of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Emory. She served from 2014-2023 as Interim Dean of Emory College of Arts and Sciences, Executive Associate Dean, and Dean of Faculty. Freeman earned her AB in Anthropology from Bryn Mawr College in 1983 and Ph.D. in Anthropology from Temple University in 1993.
Freeman's research examines the culture, gender, and political economy of labor and globalization, the changing nature of work/life in the 20th and 21st centuries, and the growing role of emotional labor across market and non-market economies. A cultural anthropologist with over thirty years of fieldwork experience in the Caribbean, her publications include three books: High Tech and High Heels in the Global Economy (Duke University Press, 2000), Entrepreneurial Selves (Duke University Press, 2014) and Global Middle Classes (with Rachel Heiman and Mark Liechty, SAR Press). She has published in such journals as American Ethnologist, Cultural Anthropology, Feminist Anthropology, Signs: Journal of Women, Culture and Society, Feminist Studies, and Critique of Anthropology. Freeman’s research has been supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, the Wenner Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, Fulbright, and the OAS. She is the past President of the Association for Feminist Anthropology and the editor (with Li Zhang, UC-Davis) of Oxford University Press’ series of contemporary ethnography, "Issues of Globalization."
| | Preview of November Lunch Colloquiums | | |
November 3, 2025
Mel Konner
Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor Emeritus
“Believers: Faith in Human Nature”
In the widening spectrum of psychological and behavioral phenomena that have been deemed to have biological underpinnings, religion and faith seem among the least likely. But anthropology suggests that they are universal, if not to all individual people, but to all cultures, and that in turn suggests that a search for such underpinnings might be rewarding. We'll consider the evidence that religion and faith are products of evolution and instantiated in the human brain. They also develop predictably in a large minority if not a majority of people, although for many of us these inclinations don't last. Religion-bashing is a pastime for many scientists and philosophers and a career for some, yet it seems to have substantial staying power.
November 17, 2025
Lois Overbeck
Director, The Letters of Samuel Beckett Project, Department of English, Emory
Curator: Chercher, an open-access website
“The End is in the Beginning. And yet you go on."
Lois will present a brief overview of the Editorial Project, begun in 1985 by Samuel Beckett, that became affiliated with the Laney Graduate School at Emory in 1990. With the assistance of Emory graduate and undergraduate students from many disciplines, as well as the support of many faculty colleagues at Emory, the four volumes of Beckett's selected letters were published by Cambridge University Press (2009-2016).
| | Athens Pizza Meet / Greet / Eat! | | |
Please join us for this month's Athens Pizza Meet/Greet/Eat!
Saturday, October 18, 2025
Noon
Athens Pizza
1341 Clairmont Road
Decatur, GA 30033
As always, we will relax and enjoy talking and eating with old and new friends. This is an opportunity to get out of the house, buy yourself a nice lunch, meet other Emeritus members, and have a little fun. Significant others are welcome.
Please let us know if you are planning to attend by clicking this link.
If you want to plan ahead, here are the scheduled dates for the rest of 2025:
Saturday, November 22
No meeting scheduled for December -- we will resume in January 2026
| | University Senate and Faculty Council News | | |
Faculty Council Meeting
August 19, 2025
Quick recap:
The main business of the meeting focused on proposed changes to the Faculty Life Course Committee's name and mission, as well as the establishment of budget priorities committees at each school and college to advise deans on financial decisions. The conversation ended with updates on the university's leadership transition and the passage of resolutions regarding academic freedom and tenure.
Summary:
Faculty Council Committee on Executive Orders:
The meeting heard from Professor Reema Dbouk about updates from the Faculty Council Committee on Executive Orders, which had prepared a resolution recommending that deans consult with faculty representatives before making major policy or financial decisions.
Faculty Well-Being Committee Mission Update:
Professor Dbouk proposed changing the name of the Faculty Life Course Committee to the Faculty Well-being Committee and presented a new mission focused on fostering a supportive, inclusive and thriving environment for faculty at Emory University. The proposed mission emphasizes promoting work-life balance, cultivating community, and supporting professional fulfillment. The committee aims to improve faculty satisfaction, engagement, and retention while strengthening the academic community. The motion to change the committee's name and mission was approved by the Faculty Council, and Professor Dbouk will work on implementing a needs assessment survey for faculty well-being.
School Budget Priorities Committees:
Professor Ilya Nemenman presented a resolution to establish budget priorities committees at each school and college to advise deans on responding to budget challenges. The committees would mirror the University Senate's Budget Priorities. The group agreed to be vigilant in monitoring the resolution's implementation in the coming weeks and months.
Academic Freedom Resolution Passage:
The Faculty Council passed two resolutions regarding academic freedom and tenure. Professor McAfee agreed to send the resolution language to all faculty. The Council agreed that after passing the resolution, the Faculty Council leadership would need to make the case to different unit leaders and communicate with the interim President.
University Leadership Transition Update:
Professor McAfee shared updates on the university's leadership transition, noting that Justice Sears will serve as interim president for up to two years, with a focus on improving communication and addressing structural changes in campus life. She expressed optimism about the future.
--Jeffrey Lichtman, Emeritus College representative to the Emory Senate and Faculty Council
| | MedShare Volunteer Opportunity | | |
If you’d like to join this group, we are volunteering the second Thursday afternoon of each month. Upcoming sessions: October 9 and November 13 . Registration on the MedShare web site is required.
To register:
Visit the MedShare event registration page at: https://www.cervistech.com/acts/console.php?console_id=0319&console_type=event&ht=1&res_code=EmoryEmeritus
Click the "Sign Up" button for your event and enter your email and first name. If you don't have a MedShare volunteer account, you'll be prompted to create one.
Select the listed event and click “Register."
For registration issues, questions or information about carpooling, please contact Marianne Skeen, marskeen@comcast.net.
| | Some Upcoming Events at Emory in October 2025 | |
An Evening of Carnatic Instrumental Music
Ackerman Hall - Carlos Museum
Monday, October 6, 2025, 6 – 7:30pm EDT
The Carlos Museum and the Asian Arts at Emory series present a concert of Carnatic Music with renowned musicians Sruti Sarathy (violin) and N.C. Bharadwaj (mridangam, a two-headed south Indian drum). The concert will feature traditional improvisation and pieces of the Carnatic repertoire, and will round out Sarathy's two-week residency at Emory, during which she invites us to consider the value of attention and its impact on experience, both in Carnatic Music and in daily life.
This program is free and open to the public, and registration is required.
Organized by Asian Arts at Emory and Telugu Studies at Emory, and co-sponsored by the Michael C. Carlos Museum, the Arts and Humanities Inquiry Initiative of Emory's Office of the Provost, the Department of Middle Eastern and South Asian Studies, the Department of Music, and Department of Religion.
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Miscellaneous Monthly: Rose Library's Open House Series - Monsters & Mayhem
Rose Library
Tuesday, October 21, 2025, 1 – 3pm EDT
Have you ever wanted to see items from Rose Library's collections but not known how? Or maybe you don't even know what you'd like to see, just that you would like to see something cool and old!
If this describes you, you're in luck! This Fall, Rose Library is continuing "Miscellaneous Monthly", our monthly open house series. Every third Tuesday of the month, you can stop by the 10th floor of Woodruff Library between 1pm and 3pm to view a selection of archival items. No appointment needed! Each month will have a different theme, so be sure to come by every month to see it all! Join us on October 21st to view archival materials related to monsters, cults, and other horrors.
This open house is free and open to the public. For our non-Emory visitors, the closest paid parking is in the Fishburne Parking Deck with access from Fishburne Drive (not North Decatur Rd).
For more information about parking, please visit the Emory Transportation website: transportation.emory.edu…
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Details and other information, as well as additional campus events, can be found on the Emory Events Calendar.
If you'd like to share an event/program of interest before the next newsletter
please contact Dianne Becht Dianne.becht@emory.edu
| | Exploring the Campus with Dianne | |
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Samuel Candler Dobbs Hall is the quaint building viewed on our previous exploration. The building is actually a dormitory and can be found on the main campus at 586 Asbury Circle. It is centrally located in the heart of campus, adjacent to the academic quad, Emory Student Center and Cox Hall. Dobbs Hall is a coed residence hall, and features both single gender floors as well as coed grouped gender floors. The hall's smaller resident rooms make for a close-knit community that the students enjoy. Each room is air-conditioned and furnished with moveable furniture.
The hall was originally built in 1916 for professional school students, and named in honor of Samuel Candler Dobbs, who was a former president of the Coca-Cola Company.
If you would like to get a look inside Dobbs Hall, please click here.
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For our next walk/exploration, let's look upward. Many of our (older) buildings have beautiful details in their exterior architecture. This particular building has gorgeous eaves.
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Where will you find this on the Emory Campus?
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Emory University Emeritus College
The Luce Center
825 Houston Mill Road NE Room 206
Atlanta, GA 30329
http://www.emory.edu/emeritus
Emory is an equal opportunity employer, and qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability, protected veteran status or other characteristics protected by state or federal law. Inquiries should be directed to the Department of Equity and Civil Rights Compliance, 201 Dowman Drive, Administration Bldg, Atlanta, GA 30322.
Telephone: 404-727-9867 (V) | 404-712-2049 (TDD).
Should you need this document in an alternate format, or require a reasonable accommodation, please contact the Department of Accessibility Services at 404-727-9877 (V) | 404-712-2049 (TDD).
Please note that one week's advance notice is preferred.
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