Members of our College of Letters and Science faculty are excited to present our Faculty Forum for the 2024-2025 academic year. The faculty lecture series is open to the public and free of charge. Light refreshments served.
For more information, contact: Robert Sirabian, Department of English, email robert.sirabian@uwsp.edu
October 9, 2024
Luke Whitmore – Religious Studies: Analyzing Himalayan Futures in 2024: A Jungle of Decisions
CCC 227 at 4:00 pm
What does it mean to be living in the central Indian Himalaya during a time when both climate-driven problems and tourism are on the rise? Based on a five-week exploratory trip to the area of Garhwal (found in the North Indian state of Uttarakhand) in 2023 (and years of previous research in the area), Dr. Whitmore proposes to explore the possibility that focusing on the ways that local religious rituals are becoming less collective and less agriculturally-based may help to answer this question. Part of the goal of this talk is to invite conversation about possible future directions for the research.
November 14, 2024
Joshua Horn – Philosophy: Cheating and Integrity in Games?
CCC 321 at 4:00 pm
We typically have intuitions that cheating is morally impermissible. But what we’re less clear about is what it means to cheat in the first place. This talk will discuss the way in which philosophers and game theorists have tried to understand cheating as a phenomenon. We’ll work through several attempts to define cheating, and I’ll defend the view that it is impossible to cheat in a single-player game because cheating should be understood as…you’ll have to come to find out.
December 5, 2024
Cory Haala – History and International Studies: “Tim Walz and the Midwestern Liberal Tradition”
CCC 321 at 4:00 pm
The selection of Tim Walz as Kamala Harris’s running mate in 2024 became a social media sensation, whether for Walz’s status as a “Midwestern dad” or his policy achievements as governor of Minnesota. Walz’s rise, though, ought to be understood as a rare modern victory for “Midwestern liberals” and an opportunity to understand the history and potential of progressive populist politics. This presentation situates Walz’s career within a longer arc of distinctly Midwestern politics, embodied in Wisconsin not only by Robert (“Fightin’ Bob”) La Follette, but congressmen like Dave Obey as well as senators like Russ Feingold of Wisconsin and Paul Wellstone of Minnesota. Those progressive traditions reemerged during the 1980s’ twin crises of deindustrialization and the collapse of the family farm, leading a new generation of grassroots progressives to build the electoral, policy, and organizing infrastructure that quite literally taught Walz how to be a politician. It will also briefly discuss the results of the 2024 presidential election and its potential meaning for those political traditions.
February 13, 2025
Amy Zlimen Ticho & Kate Kipp – Social Work: Instructor Self-Disclosure in the Classroom: Benefits, Risks and Best Practices
TBA in CCC
Based on a survey of social work instructors (n=380) affiliated with bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral programs, this talk will focus on the perceived benefits, risks, and strategies associated with instructor self-disclosure in the college classroom. Results suggest social work instructors have vast personal and family experiences that they utilize as valuable teaching tools and overwhelmingly, instructors generally believe there is a time and place to share anything. Yet, results also suggest that some experiences, identities, and beliefs are more likely to be shared than others. Qualitative analysis of the data illuminated a myriad of themes regarding risks, including negative implications to careers and students, breaching boundaries, and physical safety concerns. During this talk, a decision-making model will be shared to assist instructors as they consider the use of self-disclosure. While this research is specific to social work education, those teaching in other disciplines may find value in the results.
March 11, 2025
Wade Mahon – English: Ellen Phillips, Stevens Point’s First Poet Laureate: Under the Pines, 1875
TBA in CCC
Ellen E. Phillips, who wrote under the pseudonym Ada J. Moore, was the unacclaimed poet laureate of Stevens Point in the 1860s and 1870s. Her husband Dr. John Phillips was an early Stevens Point pioneer and civic leader, and her father Rev. Samuel Read Hall of Vermont was a pioneering educator who had opened the first “Normal School” in the United States. When it first appeared in 1875, Under the Pines was “the only book of poems ever published in the northern part of Wisconsin” according to the Stevens Point Journal (9 Dec 1876). Fellow Wisconsin poet Ella Wheeler Wilcox praised it as “a credit to its author and to Wisconsin—the state which contributes more to Eastern literature than all other Western states combined.” Roughly 150 years after its first publication, Cornerstone Press will reissue the book 2026 as part of the Midwest Heritage Series. The presentation will focus on Ellen Phillips’s story, her poetry, and her family’s role in the founding of UWSP (i.e., the Stevens Point Normal School).
April 10, 2025
Alek Toumi – World Languages/ French: The Death of Albert Camus: Accident or Assassination?
TBA in CCC
After winning the Nobel Prize of literature in 1957, at the age of 43, Albert Camus died in a car crash on January 4, 1960. The sports car driven by his friend and editor Michel Gallimard, hit a tree, killing Camus instantly. But recently, it has been reported by scholars and journalists, that Camus may have been killed by the KGB. Camus found himself caught in the middle of several battles: the raging cold war between the CIA and KGB and the tragedy of many dissidents neutralized by totalitarian regimes; the 1954 France-Algeria war, between De Gaull’s army and extreme right OAS army; and French settlers’ pro-colonization and Algerian independentists. Indeed, more than 60 years after his death, Albert Camus remains more actual and more provocative than ever.
May 1, 2025
Heather Molenda-Figueira – Psychology: Female Brain, Male Brain: Functional Differences or Fiction?
TBA in CCC