Faculty Lecture Series
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2000-2001
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2002-2003
2003-2004
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2006-2007

The Appalachian Trail unfolds 2,169 miles from Springer Mountain in Georgia to Mount Katahdin in Maine.   Each year about five thru-hikers hike the Appalachian Trail "pure."   These hikers follow all of the white blazes marking the Trail.  This talk begins with an introduction to the Appalachian Trail and its culture, discusses numerous backpacking strategies, relates several true stories of encounters along the Appalachian Trail, describes prerequisites for a successful thru-hike, and relates one pure thru-hiker's experiences.

Armstrong Atlantic State University is celebrating its 65th year of serving the educational needs of citizens from Savannah, Coastal Georgia and beyond.  Today Armstrong State is viewed as a mature, seasoned institution of higher learning.  As the region it serves continues to enjoy economic prosperity, the challenges placed on AASU will continue to expand.  As the university enters the first decade of the 21st Century, how must it respond to challenges ahead?  First and foremost, a shared vision for the university must be established, a vision which is grounded in the history of the university, a vision which is focused on the core values of the university, a vision which will allow the university to establish a distinctiveness for the university, and a vision which will guide the strategic and tactical actions of the university.

Formerly known as British Honduras, the relatively new Central American country of Belize is a nation of great diversity in its people, its geography, and its history. This presentation describes a March 2001 trip to Belize the lecturers made for the particular purpose of visiting its students and schools. Belize is emerging from a colonial past into an independent present, and its future rests heavily on the educational opportunities provided for its youth. Come and see – there will be added a taste of Belize as well!

In the 1920s, American industrialists were desperate to find a rubber crop that could be grown in the United States. Thomas Edison took this on as his last project and devoted four years of his life to the search. After years of trials on thousands of specimens, Edison died with the project unfinished. Yet the project did not end, and soon was transferred to two nearby locations, the USDA Bamboo Farm and the Ford Plantation. This illustrated talk will survey the search for rubber in America, with emphasis on its impact on the local area.

Necessity is the mother of invention and, in this case, a new perspective on the study of the human body and movement.  How does one teach sports medicine students about the science of movement, when the only laboratory available is the city of Florence, Italy, and its great art?  Students of sport, human movement, rehabilitation, and athletic performance must develop the same visual and perceptual skills in human movement analysis as the young art student who is beginning to learn to portray the human body as it moves. This presentation explores the legacy of the Quattrocento by tracing the study of human anatomy, the development of the portrayal of movement and visual perspective, the views of medicine, and the language of gestures in art during the Florentine Renaissance.

China is the world’s most rapidly developing country. In just 20 years, extensive changes in its economy, society, and military power have made it a force to be reckoned with. Since the return of Hong Kong and Macao, it is more self-confident– some would say arrogant.  Can a country with a market-based economy but an authoritarian government reach its full potential as a world power and dominate the 21^st Century? The answer lies in an objective examination of China’s past and its continuing influence on the present and future.

In its traditional spirit of inclusion and sensitivity, the Dangerfield talk on Irish literature apologizes to those whose sensibilities it has offended  over the years and who are justifiably grieved, including: the British
nobility; Howard Stern; the Archbishop of Canterbury; Bubba Cooksey; the Yale debate club; the manufactures of Viagra; Tammy Faye Baker; the nation of  Scotland; John Gotti; the citizens of Bryan County; Rodney Dangerfield; the  Notre Dame marching band; Jerry Springer; the Armstrong History Department;  and the 8,416 others listed on Dangerfield.com. An Irish coffee reception sponsored by Kevin Barry's Pub follows.

Earnest palaver about some contemporary academic novels and the satiric truths they might reveal about our petty professional jealousies, bitter personal rivalries, sadomasochistic committee meetings, bare-knuckled encounters with incompetent administrators – and other joys of university life.  Among the novels under consideration will be David Lodge’s Small World, Michael Macone’s Foolscap, Jane Smiley’s Moo, Richard Russo’s Straight Man, Jonathan Lethem’s As She Climbed Across the Table, Erik Tarloff’s The Man Who Wrote the Book, James Hynes’ The Lecturer’s Tale, and Malcolm Bradbury’s Eating People is Wrong.

Even English teachers can fear poetry when how it works – something we call prosody – is at issue. Much about poetry we have learned already, although it exists as tacit knowledge or has different names.  With the help of two faculty groups, The Deaf Tones and The Hard Raps, this presentation will demonstrate prosody (the organizing principle that governs a poem – rhythm, meter, &c.), as well as some basic issues of aesthetics (when poets choose or fail to choose the right marriage of language and prosody).  The Deaf Tones will sing (and the audience may indeed sing along) an Emily Dickinson poem to the tune of "The Yellow Rose of Texas."   The Hard Raps will rap a Robert Frost poem, steps and all.

Faculty Lecture Series 2002-2003

Faculty Lecture Series 2003-2004

Faculty Lecture Series
2004-2005

27 August 2004
Friedl Dicker-Brandeis and the Child Artists
of Theresiestadt Concentration Camp 
Robert Harris

10 September 2004
Editing a Literary Journal:
Southern Poetry Review at Armstrong
James Smith

22 October 2004
Is There a Mathematician in the House?
The Apportionment Problem in the U.S.
House of Representatives
James Brawner

12 Nov. 2004
A Virtual Tour of the Human Body: The Use of VR in
Medical Diagnosis and Cancer Treatment
El Tilson

3 December 2004
One Year with E.R.
June Hopkins

14 January 2005
Literacy and Health:
Photovoice, a Qualitative Study in the Community
Meg Walworth & Jacquie Fraser

11 Feb. 2005
It's a Small World After All:
Nanotechnology, the Next Big Thing
Delana Nivens and Will Lynch

25 March 2005
Risking One Who Is: Feminism and Public Spaces
Teresa Winterhalter

1 April 2005 (Fine Arts 132)
The Legacy of Duke Ellington
Randall Reese

Faculty Lecture Series: 2005-2006

September 2005
"Jump-Starting a Dead Shark: Mangled Metaphors and
Mixed Models of Faculty Renewal"
Dick Nordquist

October 2005
"How Technology is Changing Literacy and the Human Mind"
David Taylor

November 2005
"Light Induced Nano Transformations: The Good and the Bad of Biological and Environmental Nanophotochemistry"
Will Lynch and Delana Nivens

January 2006
"Kazakhstan: Land in the Middle"
Patrick Thomas

February 2006
"The Jews of Estonia: Reflections on 20th Century History"
Olavi Arens

March 2006
"Edinburgh, David Hume, and Where I Live"
Barbara Fertig

April 2006
"Prince Edward Island: More than Anne of Green Gables"
Catherine Gilbert

Descriptions of past lectures appear in the
Lecture Series Archive.