John O. Waller Lectureship on the Arts

Featuring Gregory Laski

On Thursday evening, March 7, from 7–8:15 p.m., the Andrews University Department of English will be hosting their 10th annual John O. Waller Lectureship on the Arts program in Newbold Auditorium, Buller Hall. It will feature speaker Gregory Laski, associate professor in the Department of English and Fine Arts at the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado. He will be presenting on “Frederick Douglass’s Peace Theory: Race, Revenge, and Justice after the Civil War.”

Started in 2008, the Waller Lectureship explores a variety of topics related to the arts. John O. Waller was a distinguished Seventh-day Adventist scholar and professor of English at Andrews University from the early 1960s to the late 1980s. He wrote a book titled “Circle of Friends: The Tennysons and the Lushingtons of Park House” published by Ohio University Press in 1986. Additionally, he was involved in research regarding Seventh-day Adventist and Ellen G. White attitudes toward fiction. The Waller Lectureship is largely funded by a contribution from Waller’s estate.

Past programs have included “An Evening with Charles Dickens” by Roger Jerome in 2009, “The Mass and the Theater: Othello and Sacrifice” by Regina Schwartz in 2013, “Neo-Slave Narratives: #SlaveLivesMatter” by Valerie Lee in 2016 and “Freud’s Last Session” starring Kenneth Wright and Brady Greer Huffman in 2017.

This year’s lectureship, “Frederick Douglass’s Peace Theory: Race, Revenge, and Justice after the Civil War,” will utilize critical race theory, historical studies and literary studies to explore the discourse surrounding the Reconstruction period. Laski also addresses this in his recent book, “Untimely Democracy: The Politics of Progress After Slavery,” published by Oxford University Press in 2018. In this book, Laski applies close reading literary techniques to historical documents and texts in order to address the challenges that have faced democracy and the ongoing recreation of democracy as it moves from generation to generation. His emphasis on the discourse surrounding democracy is noticeable throughout the book as he places key historical figures such as Thomas Jefferson and W.E.B. Du Bois in dialogue with each other.

Admission to this event is free. For more information, contact the Department of English at english@andrews.edu or 269-471-3298.