Learn about Rosalie Edge, the feisty New York socialite and suffragist who filed suit against the National Association of Audubon Societies to get them to do more to protect birds and wildlife. She later founded Hawk Mountain Sanctuary, the world’s first refuge for birds of prey.
Dyana Furmansky will speak about Edge’s life at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, Sept. 21, in Kopecek Hall at Northampton Community College. Furmansky is an award-winning author who writes about environmental topics and the American west. Her book, Rosalie Edge, Hawk of Mercy: The Activist Who Saved Nature from the Conservationists,” garnered the 2009 Wormsloe Foundation Nature Award and the 2010 Colorado Book Award.
Furmansky’s talk will kick off the College’s annual humanities series. This year’s theme is “Flying Free: Birds and the Human Spirit.”
Through books, films and discussions, students and interested members of the community will probe questions such as “Why do we equate particular birds with human traits such as wisdom, pacifism, or vanity or with human experiences such as freedom and adventure or captivity or mourning?” and “What does the human connection to birds tell us about links between the sciences and the humanities?”
The faculty coordinator for “Flying Free: Birds and the Human Spirit” is John K. Leiser, professor of biology and environmental science at Northampton and a past Pennsylvania Professor of the Year. Leiser proposed the topic because “birds are the subjects not only of our natural curiosity but also of scientific inquiry and artistic expression.”
Community partners for NCC’s humanities series include the Bethlehem Area Public Library, Eastern Monroe Public Library, Bethlehem Area School District, Stroudsburg Area School District, Historic Bethlehem Museums & Sites, and Monroe County Historical Association.
The series is endowed through generous donors and a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Furmansky’s talk will be open to the public free of charge. Read more at facebook.com/ncchumanities
