Biologist and Award-Winning Graphic Novelist Jay Hosler to Speak April 18
Science and art meet in the works of Jay Hosler, a biologist and award-winning cartoonist who will be the final presenter in the 2005-06 Speaker Series at Penn State Erie, The Behrend College.
Hosler, an assistant professor of biology at Juniata College in Huntington, will speak at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, April 18, in the Reed Union Building’s McGarvey Commons. His address, “From Stars to Brains: Giving Thought to the Evolution of Life,” is free and open to the public.
Hosler won a Xeric Award for Clan Apis, his first graphic series. A biography of a honey bee named Nyuki, Clan Apis weaves the wonder of honey bees’ natural history and biology with a touching story of self-discovery. Called “entertaining and slyly educational” by Comics Journal, the series was voted one of the Top 25 Graphic Novels of 1999-2000 by the Young Adult Library Services Association.
In an Associated Press feature on Hosler, John Wenzel, an associate professor of entomology at Ohio State University, said that he sometimes makes Clan Apis required reading in his classes. “One of the great advantages of these comic books is that they’re scientifically accurate. The students would actually do the reading and learn, in fact learn more, from Jay’s comic books than from reading scientific textbooks,” Wenzel is quoted as saying.
The Sandwalk Adventures, Hosler’s second series to explore science using graphic images and sly humor, follows a continuing debate on evolution between Charles Darwin and Mara, a follicle mite who lives in Darwin’s left eyebrow. “This one has it all,” Hosler says on his Web site, www.jayhosler.com, “including killer zits, extinct monsters, interplanetary beetles and 25 pages of historical and scientific annotations.”
Hosler’s work has been featured in both academic and art publications, including Science, The New York Times, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Booklist, The London Times Higher Education Supplement, Discover Magazine, New Scientist, Skeptical Inquirer, The Association for Women in Science Magazine and Comics Journal.
Rebroadcast of Hosler’s lecture will be at 8 p.m. Wednesday, April 19, on WP$E AM 1450, Your Money Station.
Penn State Behrend’s Speaker Series is sponsored by the Student Activity Fee, the School of Science, the Janet Neff Sample Center for Manners and Civility, and the Harriet Behrend Ninow Memorial Lecture Series Fund. It has twice won the National Association for Campus Activities’ Best Lecture Series Award. Adaptive listening devices are available upon request to the Office of Student Activities, 814-898-6171. This service is made possible through funding from Penn State’s Equal Opportunity Planning Committee.