2007 Joseph S. Calvaruso Keynote Address Featuring

Steven Pinker

"The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature"

7:00 pm, Thursday, April 26, 2007
Goodrich Chapel

This year, the Elkin Isaac Research Symposium
Joseph S. Calvaruso Keynote Address will be presented by noted scholar and author Steven Pinker.

In choosing him as one of the world’s 100 Most Influential People, in 2004, TIME magazine postulated that “every half-century . . . an eminent Harvard psychologist crystallizes an intellectual era. . . . [Steven Pinker] seems poised to keep its tradition alive.” One of the world’s leading experts on language and the mind, and a founding scholar in the field of evolutionary psychology, Steven Pinker asks audacious questions about the true nature of our humanity, and then boldly sets out to answer them. Pinker simultaneously enlightens and confounds academia and the public alike with his revolutionary understanding of the interconnectedness of language, instinct, consciousness, emotions, and neurology.

Pinker is the author of the New York Times bestseller and Pulitzer Prize finalist The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. His earlier bestsellers include the Pulitzer finalist How the Mind Works; his classic, The Language Instinct; and the book popularizing his own research, Words and Rules: The Ingredients of Language. Pinker’s next book, The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature, is already enjoying brisk sales on Amazon.com, five months before its release in September. Pinker has written countless academic articles and frequently contributes to a variety of mainstream publications including the New York Times, Nature, Atlantic Monthly, Slate, and TIME.

Appointed Harvard University’s Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology in 2003, Pinker previously served on the faculties of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University. He is also a fellow of several scholarly societies, including the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Pinker has received numerous awards, including the Troland Research Prize from the National Academy of Sciences and five prizes from the American Psychological Association. In addition to this recognition for his research, he has won a number of teaching prizes, is included in the Esquire Register of Outstanding Men and Women, and was named among the Newsweek 100 Americans for the 21st Century.

A native of Montreal, Pinker is a graduate of McGill University and holds a doctorate in psychology from Harvard.

ABOUT THE JOSEPH S. CALVARUSO KEYNOTE ADDRESS ENDOWMENT

An Albion native, he entered the banking profession shortly after graduating from Albion College in 1978, and he currently serves as senior vice president and director of risk management for Mercantile Bank in Grand Rapids. He has also held numerous leadership roles in professional organizations, including the Risk Management Association.

Active in the Republican Party on the state and national levels, Calvaruso is a member of the Gerald R. Ford Institute for Public Policy and Service Visiting Committee at the College.

In keeping with Calvaruso’s personal goal to “try different things in life,” the keynote endowment ensures the symposium will continue to provide an exceptional variety of presenters from the arts, sciences, social sciences, and humanities.