BYU-Hawaii’s Dean of College of Language, Culture and Arts and Department of International Cultural Studies Professor Dr. Phillip McArthur will be the speaker at the 2013 David O. McKay Lecture on Feb. 7 at 11 a.m. in the Cannon Activities Center. The upcoming lecture is entitled “Shadows, Curtains, and a Shiny Canoe . . . to Consider (earnestly) the Uncertainty of Meaning.”The David O. McKay Lecture is an annual lecture series that began in 1962 and was named in honor of David O. Mckay, the ninth president of the LDS Church who founded the Church College of Hawaii, now BYUH, in 1955. The school’s Faculty Advisory Council (FAC) sponsors the event.McArthur has earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology and anthropology from BYU and master’s and Ph.D. in folkloristics and cultural/linguistic anthropology from Indiana University with doctoral minors in semiotics and performance studies. His teaching and research focus on narrative, oral traditions, language, comparative philosophy, semiotics, cosmology, political and economic anthropology, and the cultures of Oceania with a special attention to the Marshall Islands.In an interview, McArthur shared what he will be talking about in the upcoming event. “This is a reflexive and philosophical exploration of how meaning is created, how all our communications of meaning are never fixed or certain, and how we as people of faith may address this uncertainty,” he said.The lecture series was created to discuss various “subject matter[s] with intellectual courage and vigor.” The selected faculty member would extend “a degree of success to the inspired leadership of David O. McKay.”Full video and text of the lecture will be available at http://davidomckay.byuh.edu/. A panel of discussion will also be held on the same day at 3:30 – 5 p.m. in the Aloha Center rooms 155/165.
Writer: Ma Vis Taguba~Multimedia Journalist
