2018-2019 Professorial Lectures
Crimmigration in Gangland: Race, Crime, and Removal During the Prohibition Era
Geoffrey Heeren, LL.M.
(School of Law)
Criminal and immigration law have increasingly merged in a development labeled “crimmigration” by many scholars. This development is constituted by several elements, including a popular preoccupation with “criminal aliens” and attribution of crime problems to them. In addition, immigrants in deportation proceedings are detained in jails that look and feel like prisons, immigration agents collaborate with police, and immigration offenses are often prosecuted as crimes. Scholars have argued that this convergence occurred in the 1980s as part of the War on Drugs, where crime served as a proxy for race for policy makers unable to openly argue for racial exclusion of Latino immigrants in the post-civil rights era. Drawing on original archival research, I will trace those roots back much further, to the Prohibition Era of Gangland Chicago when federal and local authorities colluded to pursue a series of deportation raids on Italian Americans. I contend that the nascent system of crimmigration that developed during the 1920s was driven by the eugenics movement, and that this influence of eugenics on crimmigration paved the way for its growth in the 1980s.
What’s in the Water? A Glimpse into the Challenges of Our Most Precious Resource
Julie Peller, Ph.D.
(Department of Chemistry)
Clean fresh water is a requirement for all forms of life. Yet water scarcity and water quality are under some level of threat in most places worldwide. Around the Great Lakes, fresh water is abundant, but what about the quality of our water? Are enough protections in place to prevent contamination or excessive use? Improvident use of chemicals–pharmaceuticals, pesticides, personal care products– as well as other disposable materials has led to serious challenges for the environment and particularly for our surface water. This presentation will highlight studies on the fresh water issues of Great Lakes Cladophora overgrowth, advanced wastewater treatment, inadequate surface water monitoring and the emerging threat of microplastic pollution.
From Vinaigrettes to Virtual Cookbooks: Culinary Discourses in Early Modern France
Timothy Tomasik, Ph.D.
(Department of Foreign Languages & Literatures)
Why study cookbooks? Early modern French cookbooks have gotten a bad rap. They have been plagued by misconceptions, stereotypes and outright errors that have held on with uncommon tenacity. One of the most pervasive myths is that all cookbooks printed in France in the sixteenth century were mere reprints of medieval texts or slavish continuations of medieval style and taste. Contrary to what many culinary historians asserted in the past, the French Renaissance actually did have a thriving trade in homegrown, contemporary cookbooks. By analyzing title pages, woodcuts, and prefatory remarks in these various texts, I will demonstrate that cookbooks in early modern France were being marketed to a wide spectrum of social stations and potential readerships.
The Ups and Downs of Building the Chinese and Japanese Studies Program at Valparaiso University
Zhimin Lin, Ph.D.
(Department of Political Science)
The Chinese and Japanese Studies Program was founded in 1986 by Professor Keith Schoppa. The Program’s success is a tribute to all the students, faculty, staff, and administrators involved, as well as to external supporters. This lecture will review the ups and downs of the effort to build and expand the program over the last thirty years. The talk will also examine the five key factors that have either propelled or held back the growth of the Program: organic growth, support, student enrollment, money, and personnel.
Studying the Human Body: The Little Stuff and the Big Stuff
Beth Scaglione Sewell, Ph.D.
(Department of Biology)
The human body can be studied both at the smallest level of ions and molecules and at the largest level of systems that affect the physiology of the whole organism. I will talk about both levels in this lecture. Diseases are often mediated by changes to cells at the level of DNA. One group of proteins in particular has been shown to be more active in colon cancer tissue than in surrounding non-involved tissue. My laboratory has used DNA techniques to investigate the role of these protein changes in colon tumor formation. I will also share experiments using DNA for forensic applications. Finally, I will demonstrate the study of the human body at the level of the body system.
Boredom, Contemplation, and Liberation: Education in an Age of Distraction
Kevin Gary, Ph.D.
(Department of Education)
Boredom is an inevitable part of the human condition–but teachers and students alike get the message that boredom should be avoided at all costs, especially in the classroom. In this talk I make a case for how and why we should suffer boredom well rather than evade it. Boredom offers educative possibilities, and a person’s ability to cope with and constructively manage boredom is an essential part of being educated. Those incapable of enduring boredom live at the mercy of interests and external stimuli, blind to the fickle nature of interests that motivate learning. The aim of a liberal education is freedom through the development of autonomy and critical thinking. When schools graduate students who seek to avoid boredom and are unable to endure it–and do not see why they should bother being bored at all–they fail to cultivate liberal learners. To be truly free, one must be able to stand being bored.