| 14 Mar 2010 |
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Film and Media Expert Latest Speaker in NU-Q lecture Series
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Speakers enrich students' academic experience, help unlock human potential
NU-Q and Qatar FoundationQatar Foundation
seek to cultivate a film and media community in Qatar
Student Film Society screens free educational films open to the public
Chair Professor Mette Hjort, Head of Visual Studies at Lingnan University in Hong Kong, will talk to NU-Q students, faculty, and staff, alongside members of the wider Doha public.
Dr. Hjort's lecture will cover the cinema of small nations such as Scotland, Denmark, Tanzania, South Africa and Uganda and some of the successful initiatives used by them to overcome the challenges of building robust and sustainable film industries.
It is a topic that pairs well with NU-Q's Middle Eastern and North African Cinema class, as well as being relevant to the State of Qatar whose nascent film industry was thrown into the spotlight during the Doha Tribeca Film Festival last year.
Dr. Hjorte - who has authored numerous books on film and cinema - is the second in a line-up of distinguished speakers that are scheduled for the current semester. Speaker visits are designed to coincide with a relevant point in the NU-Q curriculum, so that there is a direct connection with what students are learning. By seamlessly integrating guest lectures with courses such as Espionage and Media, or Communication, Science & Technology, NU-Q hopes to enhance the course content and the academic experience of its students.
The primary goal of the lecture series is to bring about academic enrichment in the student body through exposure to a diverse set of scholars, filmmakers, and media professionals.
Senior Associate Dean of Communication Mimi White said, "We are working to give the students a tangible sense that what we do as faculty and what they're learning is studied and discussed by other people and in other places around the world. We need to expose them to different specialties; the series adds real value".
Beyond the campus, the series also has a public focus as NU-Q seeks to cultivate a film and media culture within the wider Qatar community. With this goal in mind, NU-Q works to raise awareness about its programs by bringing in people who represent the different areas in which they work.
"This is part of what we do as a university, it is a part of our role as a member of the community," Dr. White said.
The next speaker in the series is Ahmed Yousri, an Egyptian filmmaker who has made three feature films that were distributed in the Middle East and North Africa. He will visit a class of NU-Q students as he begins working on a new project with Al Jazeera in Doha. Students will benefit from being able to see him at work at Al Jazeera Children's Channel.
The final confirmed speaker to date for the spring semester is Professor Patrick McCray from the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB). His teaching and research focus is on the interplay between popular culture and politics with science and technology, a topic designed to complement NU-Q's Communication, Science and Technology class.
A number of other speakers are yet to be confirmed. They will be announced over the coming weeks.
-Ends-
About Northwestern University in Qatar
Northwestern University in Qatar (NU-Q) is an international offspring of one of America's top-ranked educational institutions. NU-Q offers curricula modeled on the innovative undergraduate programs of Northwestern University's School of Communication and Medill School of Journalism in the U.S. The communication program offers courses of study in the areas of communication theory, history and media technologies; the fully accredited journalism program offerings include concentrations in print, broadcast and multimedia. Courses in Qatar are taught by scholars and practitioners who hold faculty appointments in and have had first-hand experience on the home campus in Evanston, Ill., a north-shore suburb of Chicago.
For further information, contact:
Robert W. Ferrin
Director of Marketing
Northwestern University in Qatar
Tel: +974 454 5141
Mobile: +974 670 8991
Email: r-ferrin@northwestern.edu
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