This February we are proud to partner with our friends at the Lawrence Public Library to celebrate Read Across Lawrence.
Read Across Lawrence 2018 highlights “Wonder,” by R.J. Palacio. Haven’t finished the book yet? No worries! Our presentations will explore topics and themes pertinent to “Wonder” but won’t spoil the book for you. The doors at Maceli’s will be open at 7 and your bosses will be there to take your dollar cover charge. We’ll start at 8. It’s going to be Wonderful!
WEDNESDAY FEBRUARY 7 at Maceli’s 1031 New Hampshire
Doors open at 7, Presentations start at 8
Cost is one US dollar or coin.
READ ACROSS LAWRENCE
Learn about the Lawrence Public Library Read Across Lawrence events here
The Nerd Nite Presentations:
“The Future is Now: Clinical Genetics as the Forerunner of Precision Medicine,”
by Eric Rush
Discoveries in genetics that impact the health of humans are in the news daily. While these advances are exciting, did you ever wonder who actually uses them to improve patient care? Enter Clinical Geneticists. We are clinicians who use our eyes, our brains, and ever-expanding cytogenetic and molecular testing to diagnose patients with genetic conditions. We use this knowledge to treat our patients either symptomatically or with targeted molecular therapies. The paradigm of giving a patient the correct treatment, at the correct dose, and at the correct time is the essence of what has come to be called Precision Medicine. We in Genetics have been approaching our patients in this fashion for the past fifty years. We will discuss the history of Clinical Genetics and how this relates to our current medical practice.
“The Creative Outsider, or Why Marginalized People Make the Best Innovators,”
by Barbara Kerr
Kerr will talk about her research on creative, eminent women for her book “Smart Girls” and eminent men for her book “Smart Boys” — and show how long periods of aloneness, rejection by popular peers, and distance from privilege can stir the imagination. The importance of one good friend and a family that provides both challenge and refuge also helps in the development of the creative person.
“‘The Wonderful[?] World of Disney’: Film Adaptations of Popular Children’s Narratives,”
by Giselle Anatol
Anatol will explore several popular Disney films from the 1930s to the present and juxtapose them with the stories on which they are based. She will consider changes to the original tales and how those provide clues to the historical and cultural contexts in which both versions were created. She will also consider the messages both versions send to viewers about a variety of ideas, such as gender roles, romantic love, and beauty ideals.
About the Presenters
Dr. Eric Rush is a Clinical Geneticist at Children’s Mercy Hospital and the University of Kansas Hospital and is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. As a high school student, he became interested in genetics when learning of the cause of his own color-blindness. He graduated from the University of Kansas with degrees in biochemistry and genetics in 2001, and graduated from the University of Kansas School of Medicine in 2005. Between 2005 and 2017, Eric took his show on the road, completing his training in Internal Medicine, Pediatrics, and Clinical Genetics at the University of Nebraska Medical Center and staying on the faculty for five years after training. His research interests include treatment of rare genetic bone conditions and discovery of new syndromes.
Barbara Kerr is Distinguished Professor of Counseling Psychology and Co-Director of the new Center for Creativity and Entrepreneurship in Education at KU. She is also co-founder of the Lawrence Creates Makerspace. Her life’s mission is to make the world safe for creative people, but she worries it is becoming less, rather than more so. She studies how creative talent develops and the conditions that encourage it in the family, school, work, and cultures. She is author of the “Smart Girls in the Twenty-first Century: The Development of Talent in Women;” “Smart Boys: Talent, Manhood, the Search for Meaning,” seven other books and over a hundred articles. Her most recent is “Creativity and Innovation in Iceland: Individual and Cultural Variables.”
Giselle Anatol is a Professor of English at KU. Anatol’s primary fields of interest are Caribbean and Caribbean Diaspora Literature, especially 20th- and 21st-century women’s writing, African American Literature, and Children’s and Young Adult Literature, particularly representations of race, ethnicity, and gender in narratives for young people.