The End is in Sight…

“I’ll take Research Skills for 2oo, Alex!” Jeopary aired for the first time on March 30th, 1964. While we can’t guarantee you’ll win thousands, you’ll definitely come out ahead by attending the Academic Skills Series this semester.jeopardy Check out this week’s topic – The Ames Advantage: Research Skills for SuccessThe Divisions of Academic and Student Affairs collaborate each semester to present the Academic Skills Series, a series of 10 programs to assist students in the development of and/or strengthening of academic skills needed to be successful at IWU. Students can pick a specific topic to join us, or attend all sessions. (Free Papa John’s pizza provided for lunch!) These sessions are in CNS E101 (no reservation necessary) at noon. We hope to see you there!

Monday, 7:00pm, Beckman Auditorium –  “People’s Republic of China,1949-1989-2029-?: The Place of the 1989 Tiananmen Protests in Modern Chinese History” – This is the first of two lectures to be presented during a campus visit by Li Minqi, an economist from the University of Utah. In 1989, Li was a student at Peking University who participated in the Tiananmen protests; he was later arrested for his activism and spent two years in prison.

Tuesday, 4:00pm, Beckman Auditorium – “China, Peak Oil, Climate Change, and the 21st Century Crisis” – The second of two lectures to be delivered by Li Mingi, an economist from the University of Utah.

Thursday, 4-5:30pm, Welcome Center Auditorium – Kevin Smith, director of the Office of Scholarly Communications at Duke University, will share his expertise on how copyright is practiced internationally, provide some tools to help faculty assist our students — especially those from other countries — to avoid plagiarism, and consider a couple of assignments that help underscore the concepts of copyright. Refreshment will be available. An accomplished copyright attorney and librarian, Smith is well-versed in many aspects of copyright, including international copyright law and copyright in the digital age. His visit is supported by the Mellon grant on Writing in the Disciplines and Information Literacy.

Instruction Lab, Room 129

  • Tuesday, 12:00pm – Moodle Gradebook Overview
  • Tuesday, 1:10pm – English 258
  • Wednesday, 12:00pm – JWP Student Orientation

Meeting Room, Room 214

  • Monday, 9:30am – Network Meeting
  • Monday, 10:30am – Disaster Recovery Meeting
  • Tuesday, 1:00pm – Assessment Committee
  • Tuesday, 4:30pm – Star Literacy
  • Wednesday, 9:00am – Star Literacy
  • Wednesday, 11:30am – Theatre Recruitment
  • Wednesday, 2:00pm – CUPP
  • Thursday, 1:00pm – CUPP
  • Thursday, 4:30pm – Star Literacy
  • Friday, 2:00pm – Portal Meeting

Beckman Auditorium, Lower Level

  • Monday, 7:00pm – Lecture
  • Tuesday, 10:50am – Sociology 305
  • Tuesday, 4:00pm – Environmental Studies Speaker
  • Tuesday, 6:00pm – Phi Beta Delta Induction Ceremony
  • Wednesday, 12:00pm – JWP Student Orientation
  • Thursday, 9:25am – International Politics
  • Thursday, 10:50am – International Politics
  • Thursday, 1:10pm – International Politics
  • Thursday, 2:30pm – Theatre 372
  • Thursday, 7:00pm – International Film Series – “Shall We Dance?” (1996, Japan), presented by Visiting Assistant Professor of Japanese Ikuko Yuasa.
  • Saturday, 1:00pm – National Society of Leadership and Success Leadership Training Day

Next week –

lincoln in limboA play that imagines the dream-world of Abraham Lincoln’s mind from the time he was shot until he died the next morning will be staged April 6 at Illinois Wesleyan University.

Written by IWU Professor Emeritus and Lincoln scholar Robert W. Bray, Lincoln in Limbo will premiere April 4 at 10 a.m. at the Newberry Library in Chicago, followed by a performance April 6 at 7:30 p.m. at the Hansen Student Center at Illinois Wesleyan. Both are staged by the Shakespeare Project of Chicago, an equity company, and are free of charge and open to the public.

In what Bray calls “a remarkable coincidence,” the premiere of Lincoln in Limbo will occur 150 ‘Easters’ after Lincoln’s assassination on Easter weekend 1865.

Prior to the IWU staging, a conversation with Director Peter Garino, members of the cast, leading Lincoln scholar and author Michael Burlingame, author Guy Fraker, and Bray will be held April 6 at 2 p.m. at The Ames Library’s Beckman Auditorium.

Bray said Lincoln in Limbo is a “fantasy of imagination and emotion,” as if taking place in Lincoln’s shadow-mind between the time he was shot on Good Friday, April 14, 1865, and the time he was pronounced dead the next morning.

“Within the scenes, Lincoln is sometimes impersonating himself, sometimes having events control him, sometimes both at once,” said Bray. In the play, Lincoln is attempting to take care of “unfinished business” in his life. Although a work of fiction, Lincoln in Limbo features individuals who played prominent roles in Lincoln’s life, including Ann Rutledge, whom some historians believe to be Lincoln’s first love; Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley, a former slave who was Mary Todd Lincoln’s dressmaker and confidante; and Francis Bicknell Carpenter, painter-in-residence at the White House while working on his painting The First Reading of the Emancipation Proclamation.

Even though he is a professor of literature and not a historian, Bray’s Lincoln works has been widely praised. Bray is the author of Reading with Lincoln (Southern Illinois University Press, 2010), the winner of the 2010-11 Illinois State Historical Society’s Russell P. Strange Memorial Book Award and runner-up for the Lincoln Prize. Another Bray book, Peter Cartwright: Legendary Frontier Preacher (University of Illinois Press, 2005), examines the dynamic relationship between Cartwright, a Methodist revivalist, and Lincoln as political rivals in a Congressional race in 1846. Bray also co-wrote the play Lincoln’s In Town! with Bloomington playwright and journalist Nancy Steele Brokaw ’71. Bray retired in 2014 after teaching at IWU for 44 years.

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