Dec 20, 2011 - The Savannah College of Art and Design School of Liberal Arts is offering its popular "The Art of the Mind" lecture series again this year, with two January 2012 speakers. Both talks are free and open to the public.

On Tuesday, Jan. 10 at 5 p.m. at the Arnold Hall auditorium, 1810 Bull St., George Akerlof will present "Phishing for Phools." Akerlof's work on identity and behavioral economics has helped shape, if not revolutionize, the discipline of economics. His talk will address why we buy things and how we market them.

Akerlof is the Koshland Professor of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley and guest scholar at the International Monetary Fund. In 2011, he was the co-recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economics. He has served as senior economist on the President's Council of Economic Advisers and is past president of the American Economics Association. He is also the co-author of the books "Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism" with Robert Shiller and "Identity Economics: How Our Identities Shape Our Work, Wages, and Well-Being" with Rachel Kranton.

And on Tuesday, Jan. 31 at 5 p.m. at the SCAD Museum of Art theater, 601 Turner Blvd., James Pennebaker will deliver a talk "The Secret Life of Pronouns," based on his new book of the same name. "The Secret Life of Pronouns" addresses how speakers connect with their audiences and themselves. Pennebaker is an academic leader whose work transcends any one discipline or major. Architects, fashion majors, writers, filmmakers and photographers will find his work compelling.

Pennebaker is the Regents Centennial Professor of Liberal Arts and the chair of the psychology department at the University of Texas at Austin. He previously has been on the faculty at the University of Virginia, Southern Methodist University and, since 1997, the University of Texas. He and his students are exploring the links between traumatic experiences, expressive writing, natural language use, and physical and mental health. His most recent research focuses on how the words people use serve as powerful reflections of their personality and social worlds.

"Akerlof and Pennebaker are two outstanding scholars whose cutting edge research will be of great interest to the SCAD and Savannah community," said Robert Eisinger, dean of the SCAD School of Liberal Arts.