During the Cold War, ideological competition between the capitalist West and the state socialist East fueled scientific and technological progress as the superpowers endeavored to outdo each other in the space race and the development of superior weapons of mass destruction. But superpower rivalries also impacted social progress as each Bloc vied for the hearts and minds of the citizens of the newly independent countries in the Global South. In this talk, Kristen R. Ghodsee explores the impacts of Cold War rhetoric on the progress of women's rights.

Moderated by Eileen Doherty-Sil, Adjunct Associate Professor and Associate Director of the Undergraduate Program, Political Science, this Political Science faculty roundtable will examine a range of domestic and foreign policy issues facing the Trump administration as it enters its second year. Where do things stand now – and what might we expect in the months to come?

This talk will explore the history of the PennSound archive, the world's largest online archive of recordings of poets reading their own work. With recordings reaching back to Apollinaire's 1913 performance at the Sorbonne through recently recorded audio of contemporary poets, PennSound is dedicated to being free and open to all. In addition to a look at the archive itself, including historical recordings of poets like Robert Frost and Gertrude Stein, we will detail ways in which PennSound is being used for cutting-edge digital research into the performed poem.

Reto Giere, Professor and Chair of Earth and Environmental Science, presents key examples of glacial retreat and permafrost melting in the Swiss Alps and discusses associated impacts on landscape and infrastructure, and strategies used to protect the local population from predicted catastrophic events. Over the past 30 years, the temperature increase observed in Switzerland has been considerably higher than the warming in the northern hemisphere.