The highlight for me was the Patton Foundation Lecture with Wendell Berry. It was electric. He just read his stuff. People were just blown away and he had such a great voice. It really is the highlight of my 34 years at IU actually.
– Jim Capshew, University Historian & Professor of History and Philosophy of Science and Medicine, Themester 2010 Advisory Committee Member
My favorite event (1): a discussion with Tim O’Brien, the author of “The Things They Carried” as part of a faculty seminar focusing on memory and war. The seminar was hosted by the Poynter Center. What I appreciated the most about the event and shaped my subsequent development as a scholar and teacher were the frank comments that the acclaimed author provided about living with PTSD. He brought a level of kindness and humanity to this topic I was yearning for in order to understand the condition from the perspective of someone living with it every day. His words have impacted the way I have gone about researching trauma and disability among war veterans in a book I published in 2022.
Why have just one?
Favorite event (2): Garry Trudeau, the author of the comic strip “Doonesbury,” gave a talk about his work with veterans and how that shaped the comic strip. As someone who loved the way Trudeau approached the presidency of George W. Bush in regard to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, I was delighted to get to hear him and to interact with him. Unrelated to that topic was a conversation with him around his depiction of IU fandom around the departure of Bobby Knight. I attached a picture of my favorite cartoon about that with his autograph. It is the only memento of that Themester I’ve kept.
– Maria Bucur, John W. Hill Chair of East European History and Professor of History and Gender Studies, Themester 2011 Advisory Committee member
My favorite program exemplified both good and bad behavior. “The Legacy of HeLa” was a student-lead discussion with Sonny Lacks, the son of Henrietta Lacks. His mother’s fatal cancer gave us HeLa cells, a line of cells that even now helps lead to life-saving medical breakthroughs. But, her legacy is layered with racism, family tragedy, shoddy medical ethics, and corporate profiteering. I recommend Rebecca Skloot’s book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks as a place to learn more.
– Tracy Bee, Director of Academic Initiatives and Themester Coordinator (2010-2023)
I remember very distinctly that I always enjoyed organizing the Dessert and Discussion events we held at the Tudor Room in the Indiana Memorial Union. I remember loving to get all of the desserts. I had so much lemon meringue pie. Those events were always unlike anything else because it would be just you and a few other people sitting down with a professor and really diving in on a specific topic.
– Ryan Myers, Themester intern (2012-2013)
My favorite event was conducting Mark Bittman’s interview at the IU Auditorium. It gave me tremendous confidence to speak in front of an audience and I got to meet one of my favorite cookbook authors!
– Laura Seifers, Themester intern (2014)
Hands down, my favorite event was Dessert and Discussion where students would sit down with faculty and discuss the overlap of their research and coursework with the discipline of Food Studies. I particularly loved the event held with Vivian Halloran as she opened my eyes to a variety of books and periodicals about discussing the culture of food. It was such a special opportunity to be able to sit down at the same level with professors over a cup of coffee and a sweet treat.
– Stone Irr, Themester intern (2014)
I still cherish the moment we had two great warriors for social justice share a Themester stage: the late Richard Trumka, then the head of the AFL-CIO and the ever-present Rev. William Barber, civil rights leader and co-chair of the Poor People's Campaign. Together they carried on the twinned struggle for labor rights and civil rights. As Dr. King always said, 'All labor has dignity."
– Alex Lichtenstein, Chair of the Department of American Studies, Professor of American Studies and History, Themester 2015 Advisory Committee co-chair
My favorite part of Themester was actually the Themester podcast. I was privileged to be the host during the Beauty Themester and the chance to interview all kinds of different faculty from around campus totally helped me see how my unique passions fit in among many other disciplines. It ended up being a huge part of how I found my career senior year. I wouldn’t trade it for the world!
– Claire Repsholdt, Themester intern (2016)
We brought George Takei from Star Trek. What he mostly did during the 2017 visit was talk about what it was like to be a child in the Japanese internment camps and that was impactful. There were subsequent conversations on campus having to do with internment that wouldn't have happened if this cool, old guy hadn't come to campus.
– Vivian Nun Halloran, Associate Dean for Diversity and Inclusion, and Arts and Humanities, Professor of English, Themester 2017 Advisory Committee member
My favorite event of the Animal/Human Themester was having Professor Peter Singer of Princeton on campus, delivering a keynote talk. Singer is the author of the 1975 classic Animal Liberation and is still one of the leading intellectuals of the animal liberation movement. Even after so many decades, many people, including undergraduates at IU, still don’t necessarily consider that there are ethical questions involved in the poor treatment, killing, and consumption of non-human animals. So, it was refreshing to see a packed audience hear him speak about “speciesism” and against factory farming, on moral grounds. Some of the audience members were surely introduced to these ideas perhaps for the first time.
– Steven Wagschal, Professor of Spanish and Portuguese, Themester 2018 Advisory Committee co-chair
I really loved First Thursdays. I thought that was such a fun event to attend as a student. I was also actually just telling someone about the lecture given by Sarah Bloomfield, the Director of the Holocaust Memorial Museum in D.C. She came to talk about the creation of a Holocaust memorial and museum in the context of the United States. I still think about some of the things that she said.
– Syd Tomlinson, Themester intern (2019-2020)
My favorite event was the conversation on the film Election directed by Alexander Payne. The film was a little raunchy and it was one of those events where you're like, “Huh... are we allowed to show this?” It's a very funny movie and I remember having to do a write-up on the event. I had a lot of fun with that assignment.
– Zach Fischer, Themester intern (2019-2020)
It's hard to pick a favorite event from Resilience, but I loved the invasive species pull and tree planting with Sustain IU and IU Landscape Services. It was great to learn about native and invasive plants in Indiana and to have a hand in improving our campus landscape. As a team, my friend and I planted 9 trees!
– Joelle Jackson, Themester 2023 Advisory Committee member, Themester intern (2021 and 2023)
My favorite event was the Black Is…Black Ain’t screening and discussion because the film always makes me so emotional and vulnerable. I wrote the cinema post for the movie, so I feel like I have a strong connection to it, but the rich discussion afterwards made me feel seen and loved by the IU community.
– Imari Walker, Themester intern (2022-2023)
My favorite event of this year's Themester was the screening of "The Truman Show." It is such a great movie, so I was thankful for the opportunity to see it in a theatre and I thought the discussion after the film was very interesting!
– Anastasia Kersh, Themester intern (2022-2023)
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