Berger Lecture topic is the Obama era and competing visions of America

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Dr. Carolyn Calloway-Thomas, professor and director of the Preparing Future Faculty Program at Indiana University, will present the 2011 College of Liberal Arts Berger Lecture, “A Clash of Cultures? The Era of President Obama and Competing Visions of America,” at 6 p.m. Wednesday, October 26, in Kleymeyer Hall in the Liberal Arts Center.

Calloway-Thomas, who is a member of the IU Department of Communication and Culture, will talk about “combative political comments that strike at the heart of discourses on contested issues such as immigration, culture, race, and ideology and whether such disturbing events are civic aberrations or if they are emblematic of a deeper fissure between two competing visions of America – cosmopolitanism and provincialism,”according to Dr. Gael L. Cooper, professor of public relations.

Calloway-Thomas is president of the Bloomington Faculty Council and was recently elected president of the World Communication Association. She is the author of Empathy in the Global World: An Intercultural Perspective (Sage Publications, 2010) and coauthor of Intercultural Communication: a Text with Readings (Allyn & Bacon, 2007) and Intercultural Communication: Roots and Routes (Allyn & Bacon, 1999), as well as co-editor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Sermonic Power of Public Discourse (University Alabama Press, 1993).

Her teaching and research areas are intercultural communication, public dialogue, civic engagement, pedagogy, and communication in Black America. In 2007, she was invited to participate in the Oxford Round Table conference on diversity and public policy at Oxford University in England. Her national awards include a Ford Postdoctoral Fellowship a Fulbright scholarship to Nigeria, West Africa a Carnegie scholarship the National Communication Association’s Robert J. Kibler Award and the Distinguished Alumni Award from Grambling State University. She holds a bachelor’s degree from Grambling College, master’s degree from the University of Wisconsin, and Ph.D. from Indiana University.

The Berger Lecture Series remembers and honors Sydney Berger, who was one of Evansville most respected attorneys. He worked with local labor and civil rights organizations and taught at USI for nearly two decades. The College of Liberal Arts celebrates the values he cherished by having a speaker each year speak on the theme of civil rights or civil liberties. The lecture is generously underwritten by Charles L. and Leslie A. Berger.

Source: USI.edu

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5 COMMENTS

  2. “will talk about “combative political comments that strike at the heart of discourses on contested issues such as immigration, culture, race, and ideology and whether such disturbing events are civic aberrations or if they are emblematic of a deeper fissure between two competing visions of America – ”

    I like that “combative political comments” I would guess it would only be combative if you disagree on which ditch we are in, the one that the right put us in or the one the left put us in. Will there be a grief councilor there also to help people cope with the trauma of having the wrong vision? ….they don’t call it liberal arts for nothing!

    I need another pitcher of Kool-Aid. 😉

    JMHO

    • I get the feeling that this lady would like to send Herman Cain to a “reeducation camp” if she had the chance.

  3. Another reason why, although I am a graduate of Indiana University, I would not recommend that any children of friends go there.
    If you go to college study engineering, science, math or chemistry.
    It was during the 80s that such areas as Women’s (Womyn’s?), Gay and African-American studies became accredited subject areas and were shoved over to Woodburn Hall..
    a liberal arts education should not consist of these intellectual ghettoes….

    • David, to avoid politically graded classes and liberal hippie pony tailed professors, there is the right wing outpost at Purdue. Engineers build roads like I69 which Bloomington is still fighting, they build nuclear reactors to make energy for the US and our fighting Navy in particular, and their agriculture feeds our country and servicemen. IU is a fine school, but it will take years to reverse or neutralize the liberalism that crept in over years with tenure and weak leadership.

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