2014-2015 Professorial Lectures

I’m a Country Boy: Country Music, Identity, and the Changing Relationship between Country and City

Michael Longan, Ph.D.

(Department of Geography and Meteorology)

Have you noticed that everyone on country radio is singing about being a country boy or country girl lately?  Professor Longan confirms that you aren’t imagining things, explains why artists started singing about their rural identity at the beginning of the 21st century, and explores what country-identity songs say about what it means to be country in the age of Wal-Mart, the Internet, and exurbanization.  As it turns out, being country is about much more than drinking beer and driving a jacked-up truck.

Young Adult Dystopian Literature and Social Critique: Postmodernism, Historicity, and Memory in M.T. Anderson’s Feed”

Carter Hanson, Ph.D.

(Department of English)

Ever since Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games became a phenomenal bestseller five years ago, Young Adult dystopian fiction has been the hottest thing going.  But even as it dominates the YA market, the teen-flavored “dystopian romance” has largely given up the dystopian genre’s most vital function: its capacity for social critique.  To recuperate the potential for engaged social critique in YA dystopian fiction, Professor Hanson examines M. T. Anderson’s novel Feed (2002), one of the most critically acclaimed and conceptually brilliant YA novels ever published.

John Donne Goes to the Movies: How the HBO Film Wit Helps Us Reflect on the Practice of the Humanities as a Healing Art

John Ruff, Ph.D.

(Department of English)

Most of us who teach in the humanities often feel backed into a corner by an increasingly materialistic, anti-intellectual culture that keeps asking what’s the cash value of a degree in the humanities.  I want to shift the conversation to something more important than jobs and careers.  To do this, we’ll need to view and discuss some scenes from the HBO movie Wit, which suggest to me that it is a matter of life and death not just how we study or profess but also how we practice the humanities, which I propose we begin to think about as a set of healing arts.  

Active Analysis: Heresy in Rehearsal

R. Andrew White, MFA

(Department of Theatre)

Konstantin Stanislavsky is an icon in the world of acting practice and one of the most misunderstood figures in world theatre. During the last four years of his life, he formulated a rehearsal process known as Active Analysis. Practiced widely in Russia and virtually unknown in western Europe and America, this method of exploring and staging a play was developed by his student Maria Knebel. Considered heresy during Stalin’s reign of terror and revived during the Soviet thaw, Knebel’s interpretation of Stanislavsky’s teachings brings fruitful possibilities for theatre companies (both professional and academic) worldwide.

Scientific Visualization for Undergraduate Education

Jeffrey Will, Ph.D.

(Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering)

One of the great benefits for undergraduate students at a comprehensive university is being exposed to a broad range of disciplines.  In this talk, Professor Will details how students can use scientific visualization in a number of different fields of study through special topic projects.   Student projects range from using motion capture for music, arts, and theater to developing new ways of teaching STEM disciplines through virtual reality to creating remotely controlled drones for aerial photography.

Is Indiana About to Fall into the Ocean? Some Thoughts on Seismicity in the Central and Eastern United States

Carmine Polito, Ph.D.

(Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering)

Most people lump earthquakes in the continental United States into a group that includes surfing, the Twinkie Defense, the Kardashians, and the OJ trial: that is, things that can only happen in California.  However, as the 2008 Mt. Carmel, Illinois earthquake and the 2011 Mineral, Virginia earthquake have demonstrated, earthquakes in America are not limited to the west coast. Professor Polito will discuss the cause and history of earthquakes in the Central and Eastern United States, as well as the likelihood of future events and what that may mean for those of us living in the Midwest. He serves as professor of civil engineering at Valpo, where he researches how soils behave during earthquakes.  Raised in Southern California, he moved east to escape earthquakes.  He really should have known better.

Liturgical Renewal for Such a Time as This

Lorraine Brugh, Ph.D.

(Department of Music)

North American Lutherans find themselves uniquely poised to become the liturgical churches’ leaders for the upcoming decades. Following the reforms of the Second Vatican Council in the 1960’s, American Roman Catholics, Lutherans, Episcopalians, and other Protestants have worked together to craft English liturgical texts, most currently through the English Language Liturgical Consultation.   Lutherans, with our understanding of music as a gift of God, and a part of that good creation, come to the task with a deep understanding of music’s power in the liturgy.  Unafraid to claim any form, instrument, style as available for God’s praise, Lutherans present an openness to renewing liturgy through new forms and music.

In the Shadow of the Anvil: Two Decades of Convective Field Studies at Valparaiso University

Bart Wolf, Ph.D.

(Department of Geography and Meteorology)

I have been conducting spring convective storm field study courses annually since 1994 and have logged 56 weeks and nearly 200,000 miles on the road with nearly 600 students.  A multimedia overview of these trips, including their place in the meteorology curriculum, educational goals, logistics, and student responsibilities and learning outcomes will be presented.  Factors such as time and infrastructure commitment, safety concerns, lessons learned, and potential course model adaptability to other programs will be discussed.