Earth Day anthropology lectures

In honor of Earth Day, anthropologist Mary Catherine Bateson will give lectures on April 22 and 23 at Wichita State University. The two talks are free and open to the public.

Bateson will present “Earth Our Kin: Climate Change and the Ecological Threat” at 7:30 p.m. Monday, April 22, in 100 Lindquist Hall. She will address society’s inability to address ecological dangers. She hopes to develop a new pattern of interaction with the natural world through examining human societal systems of kinship that establish cooperative relationships.

The second lecture, "An Anthropologist looks at the Abrahamic faiths: Judaism, Christianity and Islam," will be held at 2 p.m. Tuesday, April 23, in 100 Lindquist Hall.

Bateson in a professor emerita in anthropology and English at George Mason University. Since fall 2006, she has been a visiting scholar at the Sloan Center on Aging and Work at Boston College. Bateson also serves on multiple advisory boards including the National Center on Atmospheric Research and National Science Center. She is the daughter of social anthropology pioneer Margaret Mead and semiotician and cyberneticist Gregory Bateson.

The talks are sponsored by the Sally and David Jackman Lecture Series in WSU’s anthropology department.