Category Archives: Speakers

Theatre Students Exchange Feedback With Lyricist

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – It was a chance theater students do not have when they perform Shakespeare – to hear what the playwright thinks of their performance, and to offer suggestions of their own.

On Saturday, April 25, successful composer, lyricist and librettist Lawrence Rush attended the Illinois Wesleyan University performance of Winter in the Fall, his musical drama. The next day, Rush spoke with students of the Music Theatre 483 class, who performed in the show under the direction of their instructor, Assistant Professor of the Theatre Arts Scott Susong.

“You did an incredible job. It was thrilling to sit in the audience and watch how you interpreted the show,” said Rush, speaking to students in the E. Melba Johnson Kirkpatrick Laboratory Theatre. “You are helping to bring the show to a whole new place.”

More

Historian Describes “the American Contradiction”

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – As we celebrate the iconic Abraham Lincoln during the month of his 200th birthday, it can be difficult to imagine the monumental task he faced eliminating slavery in America.

“It was not easy to be Abraham Lincoln, especially not easy to be Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States in the mid-1800s,” said James O. Horton. The Pulitzer Prize-nominated historian delivered an address titled, “Abraham Lincoln: Slavery and the Civil War” for Illinois Wesleyan University’s annual Founders’ Day Convocation in Westbrook Auditorium. Hear his address (mp3)

“Slavery is an old institution, around more than 150 years before there was a ‘United States,'” said Horton, an historian emeritus with the National Museum of American History at the Smithsonian Institution. “Slavery and race have been part of America from its beginning.”

More

Comedian, Activist Dick Gregory to Speak at Soul Food Dinner

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – Join Illinois Wesleyan University in welcoming the multi-talented Dick Gregory to the annual Soul Food Dinner on Sunday, Feb. 15.

The dinner will be held at center court in the Hansen Student Center (300 E. Beecher St., Bloomington) at 5:30 p.m. At 6:30 p.m., Gregory will deliver his speech, “The World According to Dick Gregory: An Evening of Humor and Humanity.”

Press availability with Gregory is scheduled at 4:30 p.m. in the Student Senate meeting room on the second floor of the Hansen Student Center.

Tickets for the dinner are $10, and IWU students can use their meal exchange privileges. Sponsored by the IWU Student Senate, the keynote speech is free and open to the public.

Throughout his life, Gregory has taken on many titles: comedian, civil rights activist, author, philosopher, actor, nutritionist, recording artist, anti-drug advocate and cancer survivor. However, he is best known for his social satire and comedy, which he first performed while serving in the army in the 1950s. Upon moving to Chicago to pursue a professional career in comedy, Gregory and contemporaries such as Bill Cosby, Godfrey Cambridge and Nipsey Russell avoided performing minstrel comedy, which pokes fun at stereotypes of African Americans. Their redirection of the comedy scene left white audiences with a new perception of African-American comedians.

More

Famed Historian to Speak at Founders’ Day Convocation

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – James Horton has lent his expertise to museums across the nation, but has spent his career bringing history directly to people as an advisor, Pulitzer Prize-nominated writer and consultant for The History Channel.

An historian emeritus with the National Museum of American History at the Smithsonian Institution, Horton will deliver an address titled “Abraham Lincoln: Slavery and the Civil War” for Illinois Wesleyan University’s annual Founders’ Day Convocation at 11 a.m. Wednesday, Feb. 18 in Westbrook Auditorium in Presser Hall (1210 Park St., Bloomington). Horton’s visit is supported in part by the David and Ann Lawrence Speaker’s Series. The event, which is free and open to the public, honors the 30 founders who signed the charter for the University in 1850.

The Benjamin Banneker Professor Emeritus of American Studies and History at George Washington University, Horton has been on the national and international stage for decades, working toward the preservation and understanding of history. He was the senior Fulbright Professor of American Studies at the University of Munich, Germany, from 1988 to 1989, and has also lectured throughout Europe, and in Thailand and Japan. In 1991, he assisted the German government in developing American Studies programs in the former East Germany. Two years later, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt appointed Horton to the National Park System Advisory Board, and in 1996 he was elected board chair. His work for the board included serving as senior advisor on historical interpretation and public education for the director of the National Park Service.

More

Speaker to Honor Native American Heritage Month

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. –The Office of Multicultural Students Affairs will host Bobby Gonzalez in celebration of Native American Heritage Month at 7 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 6 in the Beckman Auditorium of The Ames Library (1211 Park St., Bloomington). The event is free and open to the public.

Gonzalez will present the program, “Somos Indios,” which examines history, art, leaders and important events of the indigenous people of Latin America. He will discuss how the Aztec, the Maya, the Inca, the Taino and other Native nations made important contribution to the fields of science, math, agriculture, linguistics and cuisine. He also considers contemporary issues like illegal aliens and the war on drugs.

Gonzalez, a multicultural motivational speaker, grew up in a bicultural environment in the South Bronx of New York City. He is part Native American (Taino) and part Latino (Puerto Rican) and uses his diverse background in his poetry and his storytelling. Gonzalez has given lectures at Yale University, the University of Alaska, Fairbanks and the University of Alabama, Huntsville. He has told his stories at Carnegie Hall, the Museum of Television and Radio and the Detroit Institute of Arts, Gonzalez has also performed his poetry at the National Museum of the American Indian, the University of North Dakota and the Nuyorican Poets Café in New York City.

More

Author Tim O’Brien Describes Fiction Inspired by Life

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – Novelist Tim O’Brien made a confession.

When it comes to writing his many celebrated books, the author said has no set process in mind. “I’m more of a trial and error guy,” O’Brien said, adding that stories usually find him. “My novels are always born in what might be just a scrap of language – a bit of word spoken in the real world.” According to O’Brien, his Pulitzer Prize-nominated novel The Things They Carried was inspired by the phrase “This is true.”

“Out of those three words The Things They Carried was born,” he said. “I thought of how much is not true that we think of as true, how illusive truth is, and does it matter if a thing is true? What is truth?”

O’Brien spoke at Illinois Wesleyan University as part of the Seventh Annual Ames/Milner Visiting Author Program. A joint venture between Illinois Wesleyan’s The Ames Library and the Milner Library of Illinois State University (ISU), O’Brien presided over a question and answer period in Illinois Wesleyan’s Hansen Student Center in the afternoon, and spoke at ISU in the evening.

The afternoon session was filled with anecdotes and stories from O’Brien. “Sorry, I tend to answer questions with stories.” O’Brien said with a laugh. “I trust stories. When I hear or give exact, theoretical answers, they don’t really convince me. It is almost a distraction. But a story flows through that type of generalization.” In answer to one question, the author recounted receiving a letter from a woman who had broken off her engagement to a man who falsely claimed to be the author Tim O’Brien. “Everyone knows what it is to lie to someone, to be lied to,” said O’Brien, adjusting one of the ballcaps he traditionally wears everywhere. “That letter inspired [the 2001 New Yorker short story] ‘Too Skinny.’”

O’Brien also shared the story of his first novel, written when he was 10 years old, which he calls a “straight-forward plagerization” of a story called Larry and the Little League. “I read it after a particularly dismal little league practice. It was a bad day, I was really down,” said O’Brien, who played shortstop in his hometown of Wortington, Minn. “Larry could do all the things I couldn’t do – hit, field, run and throw.” O’Brien asked the librarian for a pencil and a pad of a paper, and proceeded to write a story called Timmy and the Little League. “When I felt my hand on that pencil writing this story, I was seeing another Timmy. I was seeing a Timmy who could have been a great shortstop, should have been. I was learning through doing what fiction wall about. That there are occasions when we do not have to write about what happened, but what almost happened, what could have happened.”

O’Brien said this idea of being inspired by life runs through his fiction. Most of his books, like The Things They Carried, are based around events and people from his time serving in the Vietnam War, but are not exact recitations of what happened. “That is what fiction is for. In a way I am inventing my own Vietnam, my own childhood, my own loves, but they are based on a reality beneath it – a dead father, a lost girlfriend, or a Vietnam that is now 40 years in my past – that I hope opens a door to you the reader that makes you feel something of what I felt,” said O’Brien, who lost his own father two years ago. “In those last hours and days, I could have and should have taken him in my arms. And I could have and should have told him I loved him, but I didn’t. Why? I don’t know. But you see, in a story, miracles can happen. My dad can sit up from the dead, and in the story my father can say, ‘That’s okay, I know you love me.’”

More

Award-Winning War Novelist to Speak on Campus

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – The Seventh Annual Ames/Milner Visiting Author Program will welcome novelist Tim O’Brien on Thursday, Oct. 23.

Hailed as “the best American writer of his generation” by the San Francisco Chronicle, O’Brien is the author of eight books, most notably The Things They Carried, a collection of related stories about a platoon of American soldiers in the Vietnam War. He received much acclaim following the novel’s 1990 publication and subsequent nomination for the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award. The book won the Chicago Tribune Heartland Award in fiction, the New York Times named it one of the 20 best books of the last quarter century and noted author John Updike selected the title story for inclusion in The Best American Short Stories of the Century.

Following is the schedule for the Visiting Author program on Oct. 23:

• 2 p.m.-3 p.m.: Presentation followed by a question and answer session at the Center Court of the Hansen Student Center (300 Beecher St., Bloomington), Illinois Wesleyan University

• 7 p.m. to 8 p.m.: Presentation followed by a question and answer session at Braden Auditorium of the Bone Student Center (100 University St., Normal), Illinois State University. A book signing will follow in the Barnes and Noble College Bookstore, also in the Bone Student Center

More

MUSE Undergraduate Conference is Sept. 27

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – The fourth annual MUSE Undergraduate Literature Conference, to take place on Saturday, Sept. 27, will feature keynote speaker Lisa Ruddick, professor of English at the University of Chicago. Ruddick will give her address, titled “Literature and the Feeling of Aliveness,” at 12:30 p.m. in the Center of Natural Science Learning and Research (201 E. Beecher St., Bloomington), room C101.

MUSE is presented by Illinois Wesleyan University’s Alpha Eta Pi chapter of Sigma Tau Delta (STD), the international English honor society, in conjunction with Illinois State University’s Lambda Delta chapter.

The conference, which is free and open to the public, will be held in the Center of Natural Science Learning and Research. Registration begins at 8 a.m. in the commons area and conference activities begin at 9 a.m. with student research presentations. The conference will also feature informational panels on post-graduate options for literature majors, Feminist literature, and British literature.

Ruddick’s current scholarship focuses on the ways in which “training in the humanities, conducted with the best of intentions, can thwart the feeling of aliveness by partially dissociating practitioners from their intuitions and their deep affective resources.” She is the author of Reading Gertrude Stein: Body, Text, Gnosis (Cornell University Press, 1990), “The Near Enemy of the Humanities is Professionalism” (Chronicle of Higher Education, November 23, 2000) and “Stein and Cultural Criticism in the Nineties” (Modern Fiction Studies 42, 1996).

More

Temple Grandin to Share Experience With Autism

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – Professor and prolific author Temple Grandin, said to be one of the most accomplished and well-known adults with autism in the world, will be the keynote speaker for the President’s Convocation at Illinois Wesleyan on Wednesday, Sept. 10.

The program, free and open to the public, will begin at 11 a.m. in the Westbrook Auditorium of Presser Hall (1210 Park St., Bloomington). Titled “Decoding the World Through the Unique Perspective of Autism,” Grandin’s address will offer personal insights to further understanding of the autistic community. Grandin will also be available for a faculty-moderated public session at 4 p.m. in the Hansen Student Center (300 E. Beecher St., Bloomington). The session will focus on “Facilitating Employment for People with Autism Spectrum Disorder,” a central topic for the autism community both locally and nationally.

Illinois Wesleyan first-year students encountered issues related to autism through the 2008 Summer Reading Program selection The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. Written by Mark Haddon, the novel’s protagonist is Christopher Boone, a young boy with Asperger’s Syndrome, a high-functioning form of autism. Each fall, Illinois Wesleyan’s Summer Reading Program gives incoming students, faculty and staff an opportunity to participate in a shared intellectual experience.

“People who encounter autism—whether in the pages of a novel, scientific study or real life—usually find those encounters intriguing and challenging, both intellectually and personally,” said Linda Kunce, Illinois Wesleyan professor of psychology and autism awareness advocate. “Further, given current U.S. Centers for Disease Control prevalence estimates of one in 150 for autism spectrum disorders, autism challenges society to continue to improve ways in which diverse people can work together successfully.”

In Unwritten Rules of Social Relationships: Decoding Social Mysteries Through the Unique Perspectives of Autism, winner of the prestigious Foreword Book of the Year Award in 2006, Grandin addresses the social challenges faced by those with autism and Asperger’s Syndrome. Born in 1947, according to bibliographical information she did not speak until she was three and a half years old. That year, doctors labeled Grandin autistic and encouraged her parents to place her in an institution.

The perception, in the past, had been that once an individual was diagnosed as autistic, there was no hope for that person to have a successful life. However, Grandin is said to have redefined that perception. She published her groundbreaking first book, Emergence: Labeled Autistic in 1986, describing her personal struggle with autism as “groping her way from the far side of darkness.” Since then, Grandin has been featured on major television programs, such as ABC’s Primetime Live, the Today Show, Larry King Live, 48 Hours and 20/20, as well as in national publications, such as Time magazine, People magazine, Forbes, U.S. News and World Report, and the New York Times. She has also traveled on speaking tours around the world.

Grandin is the author of over 300 articles published in scientific journals and livestock periodicals on animal handling, welfare and facility design. Half of the operating livestock handling facilities in North America are of her design.

More

New Students Told to Let Themselves Be Led Astray

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. — Illinois Wesleyan University first-year and transfer students packed, standing-room only, into Westbrook Auditorium to be welcomed to the University on Tuesday during the annual “Turning Titan: New Student Orientation.”

The 595-student class of 2012 is one of the largest in University history, said President Richard F. Wilson. “This is a very talented group, and you come to us from all over the nation and the world,” he said. “You and your fellow students hail from 22 states – from Massachusetts and California to Texas and Michigan – and from 13 different countries around the world, including Romania, India, China and Nigeria to name a few.”

Keynote speaker Brian Hatcher, the McFee Professor of Religion, challenged students to make their college journey one that will do more than help them gather facts and figures they might need for their careers. “It’s not just about gaining knowledge. You’ve got to be led astray from yourself,” said Hatcher, whose speech was titled “You’re Here to Change.” Listen to Hatcher’s remarks.

Encouraging students to step outside their comfort zone, Hatcher pressed them to follow the advice of American Transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson. “He said we must always do the thing we fear the most,” said Hatcher, “and that means looking hard at yourself in an honest fashion – being honest about areas of belief or conviction or anxiety to which you hold so tightly you cannot imagine putting it to the test.” Far from asking students to abandon all beliefs, Hatcher challenged them to explore new ideas, whether it was through taking a class outside their major, or taking a study abroad to Cameroon. “Unless you test those beliefs and values, they do not really hold any meaning for you. It takes courage to put those truisms to the test. That is how your life becomes your life, and not merely one that you accepted on loan from somebody else,” he said.

More