The DePaul University Centennial Laureate speakers’ series continues in February with topics that probe new-age humanities and questions of cultural crises.

Catharine R. Stimpson, dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Science at New York University (NYU), will address "Passports and Passages: The Arts and Humanities In the Age of Swoosh" Feb. 3 at 7 p.m., in the Schmitt Academic Center, 2320 N. Kenmore Ave., Room 154.

On Feb. 24, performance artist Guillermo Gómez-Peña will discuss "The Millennial Culture of Crisis" at 7 p.m. in the same location.

Both lectures are free and open to the public.

Prior to her post at NYU, Stimpson served as director of the fellows program at the MacArthur Foundation in Chicago. She has held professorships at Rutgers University and the State University of New Jersey-New Brunswick, where she was dean of the Graduate School and vice provost for Graduate Education. Stimpson has also taught at Bernard College and served as the first director of its Women’s Center.

Stimpson has a long relationship with the University of Chicago Press, where she has edited a series of books, and where her book on Gertrude Stein is under contract. She has authored a novel, "Class Notes," and published more than 150 monographs, essays, short stories and reviews.

Stimpson is the chair of the National Advisory Committee of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation and a member of the board of the Public Broadcasting System. A Fulbright and Rockefeller Humanities fellow, she earned bachelor and master’s degrees in English from Cambridge University and a doctorate in English from Columbia University.

In her speech, which makes reference to the Nike symbol, Stimpson said she would examine "speed, advertisement, and celebrity in an age that prefers surface to depth." She will help her audience understand the age of swoosh as it relates to the arts, the humanities, history and "the lost art of contemplation – thinking about things in a deep way."

Gómez-Peña is one of the most versatile of experimental performance artists on today’s scene. His work includes video, audio, installations, poetry, journalism, critical writings and cultural theory. He explores cross-cultural issues and North-South relations through themes such as identity and nationality.

Gómez-Peña’s performance and installation work has been presented at more than 200 venues across the United States, Canada, Mexico, Europe, Australia, the Soviet Union, South America, Puerto Rico and Cuba.

He was a recipient of the Prix de la Parole at the 1989 International Film Festival of the Americas in Montreal and the 1989 New York Bessie Award. In 1991, Gómez-Peña became the first Chicano artist to receive a MacArthur Fellowship. That same year, the film version of his solo performance, "Border Brujo," made in collaboration with Isaac Artenstein, won first prize in the National Latino Film and Video Festival, and in the category of "Performance Film" at Cine Festival in San Antonio. In 1996, at the same festival, he received first prize in the "Performance Film" category for his video "El Naftazteca: Cyber Aztec TV for 2000 AD." He received the Los Angeles Music Center’s 1993 Viva Los Aristas Award,

Gómez-Peña has written three books that expound on his artistic activities: "Mexican Beasts and Living Santos" (PowerHouse, 1997), "The New World Border" (City Lights, 1996) and "Warrior for Gringostroika" (Graywolf, 1994). In addition to his artistic activities, he is a regular contributor to National Public Radio’s "All Things Considered."

The Centennial Laureate lectures by Stimpson and Gómez-Peña are part of the DePaul College of Liberal Arts and Sciences humanities theme programming entitled "Culture at the Edge: Tension and Promise." For more information about lectures and other humanities-themed programs offered during the university’s winter quarter, call 773/325-7245.