The Hall Center for the Humanities at Kansas University has announced the speakers for its 2003-04 lecture series.

The series will feature Peter Gay, on being in exile; Sherman Alexie Jr. on Native American realities and stereotypes; Linda Stone-Ferrier on determining Rembrandt’s authentic paintings; E.O. Wilson on conservation, and Hall Center Director Victor Bailey on Winston Churchill.

The series is free and open to the public.

The following is the schedule and more detail:

• Sept. 4, 7:30 p.m. at the Kansas Union Ballroom — Peter Gay, a prominent historian and author, will lecture on “Modernism in Exile. ” Gay will draw on his own experiences as an exile from Nazi Germany, memories that also served as the basis for his 1998 book, “My German Question: Growing up in Nazi Berlin.” The book details the contradictions of everyday life under the Nazi dictatorship and discusses Gay’s conflicting emotions for the country of his birth.
• Oct. 2, 7:30 p.m., Spencer Museum of Art auditorium. Victor Bailey, Hall Center director and KU professor of history, will present a lecture on “Winston Churchill: The Greatest Adventurer of Modern Political History.” Bailey, a scholar of British history, will explain how Churchill became the trusted and beloved political figure remembered today when, as late as 1939, he was reviled by the British as a fanatical, fickle egotist and distrusted by Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt as an alcoholic imperialist.
• Oct. 29, 7:30 p.m. at the Lied Center. Sherman Alexie Jr., author and producer of the Sundance Film Festival hit “Smoke Signals,” will lecture on “Killing Indians: Myths, Lies and Exaggerations.” Alexie, a Spokane/Coeur d’Alene Indian, draws from his own life experiences to create a realistic portrayal of Native Americans, free from stereotypes such as brave warriors, mystical shamans and victims of poverty. Alexie will explore the realities and stereotypes of Native American life in his lecture and will discuss those ideas further in two colloquia at KU and Haskell Indian Nations University.
• Feb. 26, 7:30 p.m., Spencer Museum of Art Auditorium. Linda Stone-Ferrier, KU art history professor, will speak on “The Rembrandt Research Project: Issues and Controversies.” Stone-Ferrier, a scholar of 17th-century Dutch art, will address a long-standing project funded by the Dutch government that aims to determine, once and for all, which paintings were painted by Rembrandt and which were not. The project has spawned controversies among art historians about what determines authenticity and how authenticity is defined.
• April 15, 7 p.m., Lied Center. Pulitzer Prize-winning author and biologist E.O. Wilson will speak on “The Future of Life.” Spanning the disciplines of biology, ecology and sociology, Wilson’s writings form a conservationist philosophy that aims to create a sustainable future for both human and animal life. Wilson’s lecture and colloquium will draw on his latest book, also called “The Future of Life,” in which Wilson says that people must make drastic changes to the way they live and how they use the earth if humanity is going to survive.