WAUKESHA – Each semester several members of the faculty and staff at the University of Wisconsin-Waukesha present 50 Minute Lectures on their research or topic of interest. Four such presentations have been scheduled for spring 2006, all offered at noon in Conference Room 101, located in the Commons on campus at 1500 N. University Dr., Waukesha. Admission is free, and the public is welcome.
Speaking Thursday, March 9, assistant professor of political science Joe Foy has taken a cue from Dr. Seuss and titled his presentation, “One State, Two State, Red State, Blue State: Measuring Quality of Life in a Divided America.” Although political pundits since the 2000 national elections have colored states by their partisan voting records and concluded America is divided along cultural lines, Foy digs deeper into these differences to see whether such a culture-divide exists or if voters are being persuaded by traditional issues of well-being. He analyzes key indicators that involve economics, education, and security and places them against issues used to define the “culture war” (abortion, homosexual rights, and Christian identity) to discern what motivates voters in national elections. For background, he makes use of the research he did for his dissertation on relating gubernatorial power to levels of welfare reform.
On Thursday, March 16, assistant professor of philosophy Tim Dunn poses the problem of “Moral Dilemmas.” He will define what he means and address the question of whether such double-tugging issues can be resolved without bias and whether there are some that cannot be resolved at all. He also will touch on the nature of moral responsibility implied in the questions and outline the general framework for understanding and resolving the dilemmas. Research for his doctoral dissertation, Moral Dilemmas and Moral Luck, forms the basis for the presentation.
In tune with the theme of war set by the 2005-06 campus read project, assistant professor of English John Allen will present “American War Poetry” on Tuesday, April 11. Expanding on an interdisciplinary course he’s teaching this semester, Responses to War in American Literature and Culture, Allen homes in on poetry that has been written in response to various American wars by authors such as Philip Freneau, Stephen Crane, Herman Melville, and Bruce Weigl.
Taking his audience back to a forgotten period in American war history, Bob Birmingham, a lecturer in anthropology and former chief archeologist for the state historical society, will present “Trail of the Warrior: Black Hawk and the Black Hawk War” on Monday, April 10. Focusing on one of the pivotal battles in the settlement of the upper Midwest, he will describe how the defiant Sauk warrior Black Hawk led 1000 Sauk and Fox men, women, and children across the Mississippi River in the spring of 1832 to reclaim ancestral lands in Illinois. An ensuing military chase for many months ended in a clash at the aptly named Bad Axe River not far from LaCrosse. The fall of the revered hero, Black Hawk, opened the region for white settlers and, eventually, statehood.
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