2023-2024 Professorial Lecture
Taking a Stand: Preparing Students to Lead and Serve with Values
Michael Chikeleze, PhD.
(Department of Leadership Studies)
The mission and vision of Valparaiso University include preparing students to lead and serve and for them to be highly sought for their values of knowledge, character, integrity, and wisdom. As the global challenges become more complex, universities seek to provide their graduates with the leadership skills they need to address these issues best. This talk will focus on the benefits of Valpo’s values-based leadership and how we can be more effective in preparing thoughtful, compassionate, and ethical global leaders.
In Their Own Words: Child Writers and the 19th-Century Press
Sara Danger, Ph.D.
(Department of English)
Nineteenth-century children became published authors in record numbers, offering innovative contributions to the new media of their day. As my study shows, with the rise of celebrity authorship, children’s literacy, and the information age, the trend toward publishing nineteenth-century children’s writing was far more commonplace and widespread than has been previously recognized. When we read children—in their own words—we find vital and often surprising documentation of children’s views on death and mortality, work and literary labor, and literacy and storytelling.
No One is Going to Hear That’: The Art of Meaningful Expression at
the Piano
Joseph Bognar, D.M.A.
(Department of Music)
Live music-making is a form of communication between the performer and the listeners. What might performers be trying to convey to an audience, and in what ways might a listener attune to the content of the message? Do all those nuances we painstakingly rehearse in the practice room ever get noticed? In this lecture-recital, I will describe the approaches I take in preparing a solo musical performance and demonstrate some of the ideas I attempt to share with my audience through music.
Straight Outta Camelot: What King Arthur’s Court Teaches Us about
Black Masculinity and Friendship
Richard Sévère, Ph.D.
(Department of English)
In the Middle Ages, male friendship bonds played an integral role in constructing one’s social and political identity. The Arthurian court, best known as Camelot, is one of the largest and oldest literary representations of a medieval male network. I argue that using both historical context and Sir Thomas Malory’s opus, Le Morte D’Arthur, allows a post-medieval reader to better understand and critically interrogate friendship and masculinity among Black men—a group that has not garnered enough positive, critical and intellectual attention within friendship studies.
“The Nature of Nature: Bridging the Social and Natural Sciences Through Geography”
Bharath Ganesh Babu, Ph.D.
(Department of Geography & Meteorology)
In 1909, Estonian naturalist Jakob von Uexküll proposed that living beings perceive their surroundings in subjective reference frames that he called “Umwelt.” We pattern-seeking and problem-solving humans, however, have pushed the boundaries of our umwelten by developing extra-human sensors and flight, and even by putting satellites in space to gain a vantage beyond our proximate environment. I want to share with you my affinity for aerial and satellite imagery, which tells us interesting stories about both our natural environment and the telltale signs that people leave behind as we interact with each other and our surroundings.