Hilary Putnam, philosopher emeritus at Harvard Univerity, visits ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College to address the topic The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy at 7:30 p.m. Monday, April 3, in Chase Hall Lounge, 56 Campus Ave.

Sponsored by the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ English department, Putnam’s talk is open to the public at no charge.

The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy is also the title of a book of essays by Putnam (Harvard University Press, 2002) that argues against the notion that facts and values are somehow categorically exclusive of or opposed to one another. Putnam, instead, asserts that facts and values are categorically “entangled,” and even that, as one reviewer wrote, “knowledge of facts presupposes knowledge of values.”

Putnam has written extensively on the philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of natural science, philosophy of language and the philosophy of mind. His other books include Ethics Without Ontology (Harvard University Press, 2005), Words and Life (with James Conant; Harvard University Press, 1994) and Realism With a Human Face (Harvard University Press, 1990).

Putnam has developed a position on the nature of truth and justification that he calls “pragmatic realism.” It has become a widely discussed alternative to both traditional metaphysical kinds of realism and post-modernist scepticism. In recent years, he has focused on the relations between scientific and non-scientific knowledge.

He received his A.B. from the University of Pennsylvania and his Ph.D. in 1951 from the University of California, Los Angeles, where he worked with Hans Reichenbach, noted philosopher of science. Before Harvard, Putnam taught at Northwestern, Princeton and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He joined the Harvard faculty in 1976, retired in 2000 and is now the Cogan University Professor in the Department of Philosophy, Emeritus.

Putnam is an intermittent learning associate in the Mellon Learning Associates Program in the Humanities and Social Sciences at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½. In a program supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, these learning associates visit the college to share their knowledge and enthusiasm with seniors working on theses in suitable areas of study and with sophomores and juniors preparing intellectually for thesis.

Saida Cooper, a ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College senior from St. Albans, Maine, will perform the Jane Wagner-Lily Tomlin play The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe at 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, April 1-3, and at 2 p.m. Sunday, April 4, in Gannett Theater, Pettigrew Hall, 305 College St.

Admission is $6 for the general public and $3 for non-ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students (free for ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students and faculty). Please call 207-786-6161 for additional information.

Cooper, a theater major, has adapted and analyzed the one-woman play and is performing it as her honors-thesis project. Director Michael Rafkin, founder of Portland’s Mad Horse Theater, has helped Cooper hone her performance in a ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ residency supported by the Mellon Learning Associates Program in the Humanities.

Wagner, comedian Tomlin’s longtime collaborator, wrote this popular play about a bag lady who tries to explain American society to space aliens — an explanation that carries the sole performer through a wild gallery of characters. The piece debuted in 1985, netted Tomlin a Tony for best actress the next year and appeared on film in 1991.

“I really wanted to do a one-woman show,” says Cooper. “It is a huge challenge to be on stage all by yourself — you don’t have anyone to save you, you don’t have anyone to fall back on if you mess up. I wanted to see if I could rise to that challenge.”

“I also really like doing character work,” she says. It offers “a chance to break out of the everyday, try something new, be someone different — try to imagine what it would be like as this separate person. And I think that is what theater is all about.”‘

At ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, Cooper has appeared in a number of productions of both the theater department and the Robinson Players, one of the oldest student theater groups in the country. For the theater department, among other roles, she played Guildenstern in last fall’s Hamlet and Ma in 2002’s The Sea Wall — a role for which she spoke for and manipulated the life-size, bunraku-style puppet representing the lead character.

Cooper calls Michael Rafkin “amazing.” She says, “He is very organic in the way he directs. Most directors will say, ‘We’ll tell you exactly where to go on stage.’ But he encouraged me to develop my own insights into the characters and their motivations, and to try different things with their movements, to just experiment with the set.”

Rafkin comes to ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ through a program funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation that brings expert practitioners in myriad disciplines to campus to work with students. In addition to founding Mad Horse and directing some 30 of that company’s shows, he has been stage director for the Portland Stage Company, the Portland Players and The Center for the Arts and Social Transformation at the University of New England, of which he was a founding member.

Admission is $6 for the public and $3 for ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ faculty and staff, senior citizens and non-ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students. The performance is free to ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students and WWII veterans. Performances will be held in Schaeffer Theatre, 305 College Avenue.

Written by Linda Thorsen Bond, William Repicci and Charles Busch, Swingtime Canteen is inspired by the films and personalities of the 1940s that reflected the state of mind behind the U.S. war effort against the Axis Powers in World War II. It premiered in 1995 and tallied more than 300 performances off Broadway, earning The New York Times’ description “a pleasure.” It has been performed all over the United States, in Canada and in London.

This upbeat, interactive play follows movie legend Marian Ames and her friends from the Hollywood Canteen while they put together a musical act to entertain the troops in London in 1943. Music abounds as these archetypal film characters of the 1940s sing more than 30 vintage classics from those heady years, including: “Don’t Fence Me In,” “I’ll Be Seeing You,” “Sing, Sing Sing,” “How High The Moon,” “I Don’t Want To Walk Without You,” and a 12-song Andrews Sisters medley.

Audience members become the troops at a canteen show, and at least one viewer can expect to find himself on stage dancing along with the actors.

Director Kuritz chose the play for both its musical content and emphasis on female roles, which provided a nice contrast with the male-dominated production of Hamlet last fall.

Although the play has the potential to make war look rosy, Kuritz insists his production makes no such statement. “The challenge, the great temptation, is to make a comment about the current war,” he says. Kuritz has tried to resist this temptation, choosing to let the audience decide for themselves by creating a performance that makes available “every possible point of view.”

The entertainment community’s response to World War II was markedly different from the current situation, he says, “and the question people can think about is, why?”

Victoria Stubbs, of Poland, Maine, is guest musical director for the production, working here through the Mellon Learning Associates Program in the Humanities at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½. Stubbs has worked with Mad Horse Theater and teaches at the Portland Art and Technology High School. She has been vital in helping students master the close harmonies of the Andrews Sisters medley, Kuritz says.

For reservations or more information about the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College production of Swingtime Canteen, call 207-786-6161.

In fields ranging from architecture to theater, experts in the Mellon Learning Associates Program in the Humanities enhance the learning experience of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students, especially those engaged in the college’s rigorous thesis program.

“Imagine being a drama student and having the founder of Mad Horse Theater direct your play, or majoring in English and having Carolyn Chute comment on your creative writing thesis,” says Judith Robbins, director of the Mellon humanities program at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½. “It sounds like an undergraduate’s dream, but those things are actually happening at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ this semester.”

Ten Mellon learning associates, eight of them from Maine, were recently approved for the program. New at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ are intermittent learning associates Vickie Stubbs, a musician from the town of Poland; stage director Michael Rafkin and percussionist Shamou, both of Portland; and Cheryl Townsend Gilkes, the John D. MacArthur Professor of Sociology and African-American Studies at Colby College. All four will visit ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ during the winter 2004 semester.

Also new to the program is Spanish poet and scholar Esther Ramón, who will be a resident learning associate for the academic year 2004-05. Trained in journalism and now a doctoral candidate at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Ramón has published literary criticism and two volumes of poetry.

South Paris resident Ted Coulombe, a member of the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ class of 1991, has returned to work as a resident learning associate through April. He will coach students on technical production of the student e-zine “E-clectic.”

The learning associates returning under this round of Mellon funding are:

Carolyn Chute, the Maine novelist, who will work with students in storytelling and prose writing;

Tomás Crowder, a faculty member at the University of San Francisco and director of the Spanish Writing Center there. He will work with students of Spanish;

Susan Dewsnap, a ceramist at the Maine College of Art in Portland who will work with students in pottery and other ceramic forms;

and Denise Froehlich, a photographer and professor of art at York County Technical College, Wells. She will work with two seniors on their photography theses.

Stubbs, Rafkin and Shamou are all working with students in the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Department of Theater and Rhetoric, which incorporates the dance program.

Stubbs will serve as musical director for the upcoming college production of the musical “Swingtime Canteen” (March 11-14).

Rafkin, founder of Portland’s renowned Mad Horse Theater, will direct the senior honors thesis of Saida Cooper, of St. Albans. Cooper will perform the one-woman play “The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe.” Rafkin, who earned his MFA in directing and theater at Carnegie Mellon University, will also oversee student costume and lighting designers, the running crew and stage manager.

Familiar to ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ as a teacher of music for dance at the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Dance Festival, Shamou will visit dance classes in the winter semester. He will provide music; discuss rhythmic, melodic and communicative components of that music; and instruct in playing music for dance.

Gilkes, who is a practicing Baptist minister and gospel disc jockey in addition to her teaching and scholarship at Colby, will make a presentation to students from courses in storytelling and in African-American literature and the Bible.

Mellon learning associates at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ under previous funding proposals include: Lowell Harris, a resident learning associate in theater and rhetoric; Marta Ayala, a muralist from San Francisco who will be here for three weeks during Short Term, in May; and Joko Susilo, an expert in Indonesian gamelan music and the associated tradition of shadow puppetry. He is in residence at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ throughout 2004 thanks to both Mellon support and the Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence Program.

Choreographer Tito (Alberto del Saz) of New York City was in a Mellon-supported residence Jan. 12-18 while he worked with ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ dancers on the piece “Tensile Involvement.”

In a program appropriate for the Easter season, the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College Choir performs the sections of Handel’s oratorio “Messiah” dealing with Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection at 8 p.m. Saturday, March 16, and 3 p.m. Sunday, March 17, in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell Street.

Directed by John Corrie, the choir numbers 71 students and will be accompanied by an orchestra using the orchestration Handel originally wrote in 1741, for a full complement of strings, two oboes, two trumpets and timpani. “Several other composers have orchestrated ‘Messiah,’ including Mozart,” adding winds and other instruments, explains Corrie. But, he says, “it is our intention to perform it the way Handel envisioned it.”

Although most casual listeners associate “Messiah” with Christmas, its second and third parts are appropriate to this season, Corrie explains. “Part II is a selection of Biblical texts leading up to the Crucifixion, and Part III deals with texts of the Resurrection,” he explains.

The choir performed the first section, dealing with the Nativity, last December. “My decision to perform the work at separate concert dates is entirely determined by its size,” Corrie says. “It would be far too exhausting to sing all of it at one concert.”

Meanwhile, an avant-garde ensemble exploring the merging of poetry and pure sound offers two public events during its residency at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College this month. Lake Affect holds a lecture-demonstration at 4 p.m. Sunday, March 17, in Room 104 of the Olin Arts Center; and a concert at 8 p.m. Monday, March 18, in the college chapel, on College Street.

Founded in 1999 and based in Buffalo, N.Y., Lake Affect consists of four musicians interested in taking performances involving sound into new realms. The goal, a Lake Affect publicity piece says, is “the creation of a unique new sound art evolving from a blend of word, timbre, rhythm and texture. Our aim is to create a new vocabulary that draws on both literary and musical elements, and to invent an artistic vehicle that embraces both music and poetry.”

Toward this end, Lake Affect has collaborated with such poets as Jorge Guitart and Robert Creeley, seeking to reflect and amplify their literary themes with sounds both sung and instrumental. The members of the ensemble are Lorena Guillen, voice; Thomas McCluskey, percussion; Tiffany Nicely, percussion; and Alejandro Rutty, keyboard and percussion.

In addition to the public events, the group’s residency at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ (its second) involves a student workshop exploring collaboration among the musical, visual and literary arts. The residency is sponsored by the art and music departments and is a project of the Mellon Learning Associates Program in the Humanities at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½.

For more information about “Messiah,” call 207-786-6135. For more information about Lake Affect, call 207-786-8212.