Now Showing:

Sabbatical Speaker Series

• "Communication Across the Pond: Forces that Help and Challenge US and UK Engineers"
  Marjorie Rush Hovde
  Associate Professor of Technical Communications and English

Engineers from the US and UK working on a common project discover that understanding each other's English is the least of their problems in cross-cultural communication. This presentation looks at the forces that help them understand each other -- and those that make such understandings more challenging. Hear how they handle these communication surprises on a daily basis in order to achieve excellence in engineering. [ Watch Video ]

• “Images of War in Yusef Komunyakaa's Dien Cai Dau ”
  Thomas Marvin
  Associate Professor of English

Yusef Komunyakaa's collection of poems about the Vietnam War, Dien Cai Dau , is unified by repeated images that gather symbolic power as a reader moves through the volume. We will consider several poems in a lecture/discussion format that welcomes insights from the audience, for, as Komunyakaa has pointed out, "Images invite the reader in as a participant in the making of meaning." [ Watch Video ]

• "The Changing Atlantic Alliance"
  John McCormick
  Professor and Chair of Political Science

Since the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, the Atlantic Alliance has changed out of all recognition. This presentation will argue that US global leadership is on the decline, challenged in part by a resurgent Europe, which offers both a different interpretation of global problems and a different approach to addressing those problems. [ Watch Video ]

• "Ten Weeks in the Tidewater"
  Elizabeth Monroe
  Associate Professor of History and Director of the Graduate Program in Public History

This talk will discuss how to develop a legal biography when major courthouse collections have burned or have become inaccessible, AKA the thrill of the unexpected or how to use a lawyer's caseload to assess changes in the roles of lawyers and their professional attitudes in the early national period. [ Watch Video ]

• "Two Languages, One City: Spanish/Arabic Bilinguals in Ceuta, Spain"
  Marta Anton
  Assistant Professor of Spanish

Ceuta is a Spanish territory located on the North African coast bordering Morocco. Because of its location and its demographic fabric, Spanish, the official language of the city, is in contact with dialectal Arabic, spoken by a large segment of the population of Moroccan origin.

Professor Anton will describe the use of Spanish, dialectal Arabic (dariya), Classical Arabic and Berber by bilingual and multilingual high school students in Ceuta. She will also discuss the level of competence that bilingual speakers have in their languages, their motivation to use a particular language of their linguistic repertoire, and their use of code-switching. The study shows the consequences of the prolonged and intense language contact situation in this North African city. [ Coming Soon ]

• “Are We Having Fun Yet, General?: The Tragicomedy of George Custer’s Kansas Years”
  Robert Rebein
  Associate Professor of Creative Writing Associate Chair for Faculty

The spring of 1867 found George Armstrong Custer chasing the pesky Cheyennes and unruly Sioux across the plains of Western Kansas. For Custer, Civil War hero and avid sportsman, this work promised to be brief but invigorating–a safari of sorts, a romp across the Great Plains of the West during which he expected to bag multitudinous amounts of trophy game. That he was wrong in this assumption was but the first lesson in a long and trying summer for the so-called Boy General. [ Watch Video ]