Calendar highlights

Former forest service chief to speak on conservation
Michael Dombeck, chief of the U.S. Forest Service during the second term of the Clinton administration, will speak Thursday, Nov. 8, on “The Ten Big Conservation Challenges: Where Do We Go from Here?” at 4 p.m. in Union South.

Earlier this year, Dombeck returned to his undergraduate alma mater, UW-Stevens Point, as a professor to teach and help develop a new Global Environmental Management Education Center. Dombeck spent 12 years with the Forest Service, primarily in the Midwest and West, before moving to Washington, D.C. His campus appearance is sponsored by the Institute for Environmental Studies.

More information: 263-5599.

Noted art historian talks on Chinese calligraphy
Historian of Asian art Wen Fong will give a free public lecture, “Chinese Calligraphy: The Embodied Image,” at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 15, in L160 Elvehjem Museum of Art, 800 University Ave.

Fong’s talk will focus on the formation of Chinese calligraphic practice and theory; the relationship between Chinese calligraphy and painting; and Chinese art and its modern expression.

Fong is Douglas Dillon Curator Emeritus of Asian Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and former Edwards S. Sanford Professor of Art and Archaeology at Princeton University. Fong is credited with building the largest and most comprehensive collection of Asian art in the West during his 30-year affiliation with the Met. He expanded and renovated its Asian art galleries, modernizing the department’s conservation program and organizing dozens of acclaimed special exhibitions.

More information: 263-3409.

Women’s history pioneer to speak Nov. 14
Gerda Lerner, a pioneer in the study of women’s history, caps the Women and Learning series at 4:30 p.m., Wednesday, Nov. 14, 976 Memorial Library.

The lectures, sponsored by the Friends of the UW–Madison Libraries, sample women’s scholarship in literature, science and history.

Lerner, the Robinson Edwards Professor of History Emerita, will present “Biography and Autobiography: Challenges and Contradictions.”

Lerner developed a new discipline of academic study when she established the country’s first graduate program in women’s history at Sarah Lawrence College. She later founded the doctoral program at the UW–Madison.

More information: 265-2505, friends@library.wisc.edu.