Lyceum Lectures

Leslie Starobin, Lyceum Lecture Speaker

Monday, November 1, 2021, 5:30-7PM

Framing Narratives of the Past  

Structured as a visual travelogue tracing the routes of memory, this Lyceum Lecture will feature my recent sabbatical project—a photo essay that preserves, in living color, landscapes of ancestral memory and Nazi genocide as they appear today in Poland, seventy-five years after liberation. These topographies are framed by quotes from relatives recalling the events they witnessed and experienced, including arriving at the gates of Auschwitz. At a time when"two-thirds of American millennials don’t know what Auschwitz was"(The Boston Globe) and in an age when "Holocaust appropriation, fueled by this global pandemic, is going viral"(CNN),this lecture will address how art contributes to the preservation of historical memory and how, in challenging times, art can serve as an educational catalyst.

To view the Lyceum Lecture recording, please click HERE.

Lyceum Lecture Proposals

In an effort to highlight sabbatical activities, faculty research, and teaching interests, CELTSS is proud to sponsor the Lyceum Lecture series. The FSU Lyceum continues a distinguished tradition:

  • In 1862 Josiah Holbrook, an educational reformer, established the first American Lyceum in Millbury, MA, named after the Lyceum of Aristotle in ancient Greece. Holbrook invited local people to organize a society to prepare papers on “useful” subjects such as science, history and literature, and lecture to friends and neighbors on a weekly basis during the winter months.
  • The basic goals of the Lyceum remain intact: to impart scientific and humanistic knowledge deemed vital to the moral and intellectual improvement of the individual and the community.

In AY 2021-2022, one speaker will be chosen for this event and will be presented with a stipend of $250.

Lyceum speakers provide dynamic, engaging presentations of their work and research interests at a level suitable for a general audience that may include Board of Trustee and Foundation Board members. Lyceum events inform our trustees about the value of sabbaticals and funding for research and teaching innovation.  

We invite applications from faculty members who have completed sabbatical activities, received CELTSS funding, and/or participated in ongoing CELTSS workshops that have promoted their professional development. Preference will be given to speakers with recent sabbaticals and/or major scholarly developments.

If you are interested in applying for consideration, we will ask you to submit your Lyceum Application no later than Friday, April 23, 2021. Items included in Lyceum application:

1. A brief autobiographical sketch and c.v.
2. A 500 word abstract of your work and proposed lecture, which includes:
  a. Description of your project
  b. Description of how the sabbatical experience enabled you to complete this work, if applicable
  c. Description of the benefit of this experience to your academic career and/or institution

The committee will notify all applicants after the selection process is completed.

  • Lyceum Lecture Series

    Fall 2009
    Tell Me What You Eat and I’ll Tell You What You Are
    Janet Schwartz

    Spring 2010
    Leslie Starobin
    What Can I Tell a Five Year Old

    Fall 2010
    Ira Silver
    How Much Good am I Doing? Bittersweet Charity and America’s Poor

    Spring 2011
    Robert Alter
    Round the World Ticket: A Photographers’ Journey

    Fall 2011
    Vandana Singh
    Beyond the Ordinary: Science Through the Lens of Story

    Spring 2012
    Lisa Eck
    “I am the Other’s Other”, Cross Cultural Literacy in India and China

    Spring 2013
    The Quakes of Christchurch, Natural and Social
    Elaine Hartwick

    Fall 2013
    Can’t You Put on a Little Lipstick
    Laura Osterweis

    Spring 2014
    Minorities in China
    Mary-Ann Stadtler-Chester

    Fall 2014
    Raising Spirits: Victorian Ghost Stories
    Lynn Parker

    Spring 2015
    Food Agriculture and Water Rights: Report from the West Bank, Palestine
    Susan Massad

    Fall 2015
    Families As They Really Are
    Virginia Rutter

    Spring 2016
    A Poetry Reading from Johnny & Maggie
    Evelyn Perry

    Fall 2016
    How Radio Made Brian Friel a Playwright
    Kelly Matthews

    Spring 2017
    In Search of Vincent Van Gogh: An Art Historian’s Pilgrimage to the Netherlands and France
    Erika Schneider

    Fall 2017
    “A Vassal to his Majesty”: Loyalty, Betrayal, and Slaves’ Pursuit of Freedom in Mid-Eighteenth-Century Jamaica
    Lissa Bollettino

    Spring 2018
    Are all the deer on Nantucket really descended from just three deer?
    Richard Beckwitt

    Fall 2018
    Hidden Stories Behind Social Problems
    Ira Silver

    Spring 2019
    Is Your Piggy Bank Too Big? International Reserve Accumulation in Latin America
    Luis Rosero

    Fall 2019
    Be Like Water (就像水一样): Inside Stories from Fulbright Scholars in China
    Shin Freedman

    Fall 2020
    Rethinking the Global Citizen at FSU
    Alexander (Sandy) Hartwiger

    Spring 2021
    The End of the Future: Rethinking Climate Change in the Classroom and Beyond
    Vandana Singh