Search For Lectures


Past Events

Tuesday, 31 Jan 2023

Messages: Artist Lecture by Joyce J. Scott
4:00 PM – Virtual on Zoom - Joyce J. Scott is a dynamic artist, educator, and performer whose beautifully intricate beadwork sculptures tell the stories of her world. Join University Museums to learn how her art on view in the Brunnier Art Museum special exhibition, Messages: Joyce J. Scott, challenges stereotypes and confronts many difficult subjects through the use of glass beads. Zoom meeting information: Please click this URL to start or join. https://iastate.zoom.us/j/91971098973 Or, go to https://iastate.zoom.us/join and enter meeting ID: 919 7109 8973

Monday, 30 Jan 2023

Tearing Hatred From the Sky
6:00 PM – Great Hall, Memorial Union - Martin Luther King, Jr. 2023 Keynote Bree Newsome rallies your spirit with her impassioned message about racial equality and illustrates how, with courage, zeal and the support of others, ordinary people can make an extraordinary difference. This contemporary civil rights icon first garnered national attention for her daring act of peaceful disobedience in June 2015. Following the brutal murder of nine black parishioners at Mother Emmanuel Church in Charleston, S.C., Bree climbed the flagpole at the South Carolina statehouse and pulled down the Confederate Battle flag as a protest against racist symbolism. Her arrest galvanized public opinion and led to the permanent removal of the flag. As a recognized and celebrated voice on the topics of injustice and racial discrimination, Bree brings to light the importance of leadership development in building and sustaining social movements. Also an accomplished filmmaker and musician, Bree skillfully outlines the relationship between activism and art, and captivates audiences as she describes in cinematic detail the heroic gestures of ordinary people on the front lines of activism.

Thursday, 26 Jan 2023

DECKS: A Framework to Understand and Evaluate Game Mechanics
6:00 PM – Sun Room, Memorial Union - Dr. Sercan Sengun is a researcher, teacher, and game designer, exploring phenomena at the intersections of video game studies, gamer communities, cultural informatics, virtual identities, and interactive narratives. He is currently the Harold Boyd Endowed Assistant Professor of Creative Technologies (Game Design) at Illinois State University and a research affiliate for MIT Center for Advanced Virtuality and MIT IDSS (Institute for Data, Systems, and Society) within the Antiracism, Games, and Immersive Media ICSR Project Team. This lecture will introduce a game design framework called DECKS (Short for Decisions versus Chance and Knowledge versus Skills) that builds upon the findings of previous research (see Adams, 2014; Schell, 2008; Rouse III, 2004). DECKS Framework presents theoretical and creative approaches to placing traditional game mechanics on two separate conceptual axes through questioning the actions taken by the players during gameplay. The framework helps game designers to understand game mechanics, foresee their effects on players, and come up with new and innovative ones on their own.

Wednesday, 25 Jan 2023

Material Alchemy
5:30 PM – 2019 Morrill Hall - Join Minnesota-based artist Harriet Bart for the opening of her solo exhibition Harriet Bart: Material Alchemy in the Christian Petersen Art Museum. The event will begin with an artist talk discussing the evolution of the artist’s practice over the last 50 years, to be followed by an opening reception of the exhibition. Artist Talk: 5:30pm (in the auditorium, 2019 Morrill Hall) Reception: 6:30-7:30pm

Thursday, 1 Dec 2022

Physical Activity Is an Underused Resource for COVID-19 Pandemic
6:30 PM – Great Hall, Memorial Union - James F. Sallis, Ph.D is Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health at University of California San Diego and Professorial Fellow at Australian Catholic University, Melbourne. He was trained in psychology and behavioral epidemiology. His health improvement programs have been studied and used in health care settings, schools, universities, and companies. His current research interests are promoting physical activity and understanding policy and environmental influences on physical activity, nutrition, and obesity. He has authored over 800 scientific publications that have been cited more than 200,000 times (GoogleScholar). He is currently focusing on getting research used to create healthier cities. During the pandemic he has been actively advocating for greater attention to, and application of, physical activity’s benefits. Dr. Sallis is Past-President of Society of Behavioral Medicine, member of the US National Academy of Medicine, and has won numerous national and international awards.

Wednesday, 30 Nov 2022

Science and Engineering Research on Clean Energy: For the Sake of Our Grandchildren
7:30 PM – South Ballroom, Memorial Union - To attack and, hopefully, to reverse greenhouse gas (GHG) growth, the critical but formidable goal of net zero GHG emissions by 2050 must be reached. This will require major efforts from across our society, especially a “leap of faith” by all the world’s economies. From the latest IPCC report, it is becoming increasingly apparent that we must do this for the health and well-being of our own children and grandchildren, if we want to help them avoid predictable climate disasters. Therefore, we professionals in the science and engineering community must make our best efforts to work on important GHG emission challenges to make the economic leap to green technologies more pragmatic and palatable. Recent analysis shows that there are huge market opportunities that can arrive with clean energy transitions, particularly if several key science, engineering, and overall technology barriers are overcome. Iver Anderson earned his BS in Metallurgical Engineering in 1975 from Michigan Tech. Anderson went on to earn his MS and PhD in Metallurgical Engineering from University of Wisconsin-Madison. After completing his studies in 1982, he joined the Metallurgy Branch of the US Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, DC. His career path has led him to a position as senior metallurgist at Ames Laboratory (USDOE) and adjunct professor in the Materials Science and Engineering department at Iowa State University. He is a fellow of the American Powder Metallurgy Institute, ASM International, TMS, and the National Academy of Inventors, as well as a member of the National Inventors Hall of Fame. Anderson is highly regarded for his research accomplishments in the area of powder metallurgy and rapid solidification, and its implementation into new and innovative magnetic materials, structural components, lightweight, and porous materials. Another research focus has been in metallurgical joining in electronic assembly, in brazing, and in welding, as well as in ceramic joining. These contributions and innovations have led to over 265 publications and 45 patents.

Russia, Ukraine, and the U.S.: Monsters and Myths
6:00 PM – Sun Room, Memorial Union - Fall 2022 LAS Dean's Lecture Why is Russia fighting a war in Ukraine? And how is the war shaping the world? Scott Feinstein, an expert in Russian politics and violence in Eurasia, shines light onto the erected monsters and myths that helped drive Europe into its largest conventional military conflict since World War II and discusses how the war and emerging myths will continue to shape our world, from international relations to civil society here in the Midwest. Scott Feinstein is an assistant professor of political science whose research emphasizes that at the center of civil war and violence are the ethnic groups and their cultural bonds. Feinstein’s book manuscript, “The Power of Nations: Secession and Civil War in Post-Soviet States, shows that following state collapse countries will engage in civil war when a highly coherent ethnic group senses a security threat from the state. His work has been published in leading political science and interdisciplinary journals and been supported by several prestigious funding agencies, including the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the National Science Foundation. To conduct research for these projects he spent over 3 years taking interviews and digging through archives in Russia, Moldova, and Ukraine, where he was a Fulbright Scholar. He has also applied his work on ethnic groups to examine identity politics here in the United States, including projects focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion. Recently with a team of ISU scholars he was awarded a Civic Innovation award from the NSF to study and assist Ukrainians displaced by war. He received his MA in politics from New York University and PhD in political science from the University of Florida.

Thursday, 10 Nov 2022

Meatpacking America: How Migration, Work, and Faith Unite and Divide the Heartland
5:00 PM – Sun Room, Memorial Union - Whether valorized as the Heartland or derided as flyover country, the Midwest became instantly notorious when COVID-19 infections skyrocketed among workers in meatpacking plants. Native Midwesterner Kristy Nabhan-Warren spent years interviewing Iowans who work in the meatpacking industry, both native-born residents and recent migrants from Latin America, Africa, and Asia. In Meatpacking America, she digs deep below the stereotype and reveals the grit and grace of a heartland that is a major global hub of migration and food production—and also, it turns out, of religion. Across the flatlands, Protestants, Catholics, and Muslims share space every day as worshippers, employees, and employers. These new and old Midwesterners say that a mutual language of faith and morals brings them together more than any of them would have ever expected. Kristy Nabhan-Warren is the V. O. and Elizabeth Kahl Figge Chair of Catholic Studies and a professor in the Departments of Religious Studies and Gender, Women's, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Iowa. Nabhan-Warren is the author of three books and the founding editor of the Where Religion Lives book series from the University of North Carolina Press.

Wednesday, 9 Nov 2022

Critical Race Theory Is Race Marxism
6:00 PM – South Ballroom, Memorial Union - An American-born author, mathematician, and political commentator, Dr. James Lindsay has written six books spanning a range of subjects, including religion, the philosophy of science, and postmodern theory. Dr. Lindsay is the Founder of New Discourses, an organization dedicated to shining the light of objective truth in subjective darkness. Dr. Lindsay is the co-author of Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity―and Why This Harms Everybody and is the author of his new book, Race Marxism. Dr. Lindsay has been a featured guest on Fox News, Glenn Beck, Joe Rogan, and NPR. Dr. Lindsay will be doing a book-signing. The University Book Store will be onsite. This event will be recorded and available for two weeks on the Lectures website at https://www.lectures.iastate.edu/recordings/available-recordings

Tuesday, 8 Nov 2022

Corpus Linguistics and the Law: The Debate Over Empirically Based Legal Interpretation
7:00 PM – Sun Room, Memorial Union - Quentin Johnson Lecture in Linguistics This talk will include an overview of the ‘law and corpus linguistics’ movement, using examples from empirical studies related to the original meaning of the now nearly obsolete word 'emolument', as well as several of the linguistic canons of construction, concluding by proposing a set of key principles that should guide linguists as they apply their expertise to legal questions.