Professorial Lectures: 2018-2019
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…
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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….
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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