2017-2018 Professorial Lectures

Do You Mate Randomly? The Biology of Mate Choice

Rob Swanson, Ph.D. 

(Department of Biology)

Do you mate randomly?  How do you choose a mate? How do other animals choose mates? What about plants? Mate choice mechanisms are varied in nature, and have striking evolutionary significance in organisms across kingdoms.  But in flowering plants, these mechanisms are less well understood. Indeed, because of their lack of mobility, flowering plants are sometimes thought to be passive and indiscriminate mates. Turns out, this isn’t the case. In this talk, I’ll explain why. 

Title IX Rhetoric: The Fight for Equity in College Sports

Kelly Belanger, Ph.D.

(Department of English)

Rhetoric  is the strategic use of language to influence actions and perceptions.  In this talk, I share images and interview excerpts from my study of how advocates for college women’s sports used rhetorical strategies in the struggle to implement the 1972 Title IX law that forbids sex discrimination.

The Protestant Encounter with Modern Architecture

Gretchen Buggeln, Ph.D.

(Department of Christ College)

Twentieth-century architectural modernism revolutionized the way designers, builders, and clients thought about buildings. Modernism’s rationalism, preference for industrial materials, lack of ornament, and negation of tradition presented both material and spiritual challenges for church builders. I will be looking at how Protestants used and adapted modern architecture to reinvigorate their congregations and reposition Christianity in their communities.

Using Things You Can’t See to Study Things You Can’t See

Andrew Richter, Ph.D.

(Department of Physics and Astronomy)

How do we see things that are too tiny to actually see? One way is to use beams of x-rays or neutrons, which are also invisible to human eyes, but which allow us to visualize the nanoscale in indirect ways. I will talk about (and demonstrate) how this happens, and I will relate some things I have “seen” recently, including proteins binding to surfaces and nanocapsules with the thinnest polymer shells ever created.