Carol Rifelj Lecture Series
Join faculty, staff, and community members at the Carol Rifelj Lecture Series to hear faculty members discuss their research.
This lecture series is named for the late Carol de Dobay Rifelj, who came to Middlebury in 1972 as an Assistant Professor, serving also at that time as Director of the Château, and of the French House. Carol received tenure in 1979, was promoted to the rank of Full Professor in 1985, and was named Jean Thomson Fulton Professor of French in 1993. She retired from Middlebury in spring 2010 after 38 years on the faculty. An energetic scholar, Carol was the author of several books and numerous articles and essays. She was also active and innovative in electronic publication, producing a significant website, Le Lexique, that won a prize in 1996 from the American Association of Teachers of French and has continued to be an influential resource for French teachers worldwide.
During her time on the faculty, Carol served on all the College’s major committees, and she held numerous administrative posts, serving as Dean of the French School from 1985 to 1987, as Dean of the Faculty from 1991 to 1993, and as the Dean for Faculty Development and Research from 2004 to 2007. Carol was an unstinting supporter and advocate for the faculty and their professional development. It is thus richly appropriate that this lecture series, which features Middlebury’s own faculty, bears her name.
2024/25 Schedule
POSTPONED
"The Chief Ideologue" of the Islamic Revolution? Moretza Motahhari and the Formation of Islamist Thought in Pre-Revolutionary Iran
Ata Anzali, Religion
As a prominent student of Khomeini, Morteza Motahhari has long been portrayed as the “chief ideologue” of the Islamic Revolution in Iran. A critical examination of his works and life, however, reveals an erudite figure who, at his core, was an innovative theologian rather than a revolutionary ideologue. In this talk, I will focus on a few themes that highlight the centrality of a dialogical model to Motahhari’s theological thinking.
Franklin Environmental Center at Hillcrest, Room 103
Stefano Mula, Italian
Mimmo Lucano, the mayor of Riace, in Southern Italy, has encouraged a welcoming, inclusive approach to the many people reaching the shores of his small village since the 1990s. For this, he has been celebrated, criticized, investigated, sentenced to 13 years in jail, and then most recently acquitted end elected to the European Parliament. In this presentation, I will start from Lucano’s and Riace’s case to present the current public and political discourse on migration in Italy.
Franklin Environmental Center at Hillcrest, Room 103
Matt Dickinson, Political Science
The 2024 presidential election is likely to be one of the closest and most significant in modern history. This talk examines the factors that will shape the outcome of that race, and the implications of that outcome for the American political system more generally.
Franklin Environmental Center at Hillcrest, Room 103
Pete Schumer, Mathematics & Statistics
The game of go is the oldest and most challenging of all board games. Its myriad aspects reflect the arts, religions, and traditions of the cultures where it was nurtured and developed. We will introduce the game and develop several of these key connections.
Franklin Environmental Center at Hillcrest, Room 103
Susan Burch, American Studies; Andrea Vaccari, Computer Science; Lindsay Repka, Chemistry & Biochemistry; Tara Affolter, Education Studies
Using examples from our own teaching and course development, colleagues across disciplines will unpack ways to think about and apply three key inclusive design frameworks: clarity; choice and equity; and flexibility. We recognize that access is a practice. Sustainable inclusive design work requires beginning wherever we are and developing our knowledge and skills incrementally. Reflective on this ongoing and innovative process, we will identify ways that our own inclusive design work began and has evolved.
Franklin Environmental Center at Hillcrest, Room 103
Marybeth Nevins, Anthropology/Linguistics
In this talk I make the case for a Native American origin for the word ‘hobo.’ Specifically, I find it in the Maidu language term for mobile dwelling, which attained broader circulation in the accelerated language contact zone of the California Gold Rush of 1849. I also make a case for the value of colonial era ethnolinguistic text collections as sources of historical evidence and indigenous political voice. The case of ‘hobo’ shows how colonial text collections exceed the disciplinary and modernist boundaries of their creation. What were documented as languages and cultures were, in their local contexts, instances of indigenous speech across difference, with looming subtexts of radical change and political struggle. So, if I make my case successfully, would this change what ‘hobo’, across its long political trajectory, means? In our era, where housing, labor and migration “disruptions” loom large in public discourse; we can perceive a trace of depicted hobo scenarios from Maidu language text collections. If we read Maidu texts against the colonial grain, we discern an alternate center of value, a voice projected into the future promising renewal and a wellspring of corrective action in the face of political incorporation via adverse possession.
January 15, 2025
Crossing the Invisible Language Boundary: The Effect of Language Immersion on Lexical Access in Bilinguals
Franklin Environmental Center at Hillcrest, Room 103
Olga Parshina, Psychology
In a multilingual world, understanding how bilinguals navigate between languages offers key insights into language use and memory. In this talk, we will discuss eye-tracking reading studies (including one conducted with Middlebury language schools) that examine how changes in the language environment impact the speed at which bilinguals retrieve words from another language. The findings reveal the adaptability of bilingual language control, with implications for cognitive psychology theories and practical applications in education.
Franklin Environmental Center at Hillcrest, Room 103
Daniel Fram, Political Science
In democracies, we the people make many decisions through arguments and attempts at persuasion. Leaders, those ambitious to become leaders„ leaders of opinion, and even ordinary citizens try to make arguments to influence everything from elections to laws to convictions and acquittals. Rhetoric is this activity of persuasion, and understanding what rhetoric is (and how it works) might be an important topic of political science - but is it? The question has been debated since the days of Socrates. I will be discussing the history of politics and rhetoric from the perspective of political science majors who have studied this “art” and how it affects and is affected by the democratic system.
Franklin Environmental Center at Hillcrest, Room 103
Molly Anderson, Food Studies
The global food system is widely criticized for failing to meet goals of sustainability, justice and equity. A plethora of solutions have been proposed and are expressed through different narratives or discourses. In this presentation, I describe leading narratives of transformation and suggest that food democracy, agroecology and food sovereignty are the most promising among them, if enacted within a framework of respect for human rights and the rights of nature.
Franklin Environmental Center at Hillcrest, Room 103
Kari Borni, Dance
Over the past two decades, contemporary dance in North Africa has emerged out of a thriving street dance scene into a fusion of B-boy athleticism, Sufi ritual, Orientalist trope, and controversial social messaging. This talk will focus on works by choreographers Kader Attou and Rayddine Bouhadja to show how artists contribute to imagining a politics of movement, even as they navigate ongoing restrictions of mobilization and representation in both Algeria and France. Under the persistence of the postcolonial metropole, Algerian dancers perform harraga, an act of both “burning borders” and re-choreographing their stories and futures.
Franklin Environmental Center at Hillcrest, Room 103
Amit Prakash, International and Global Studies
When we think of the police, we usually think of a local institution. However, this talk is about the global circulation of police power, tactics, and ideology. I will focus on the life of a mostly forgotten French civil servant who spent his career abroad in the French empire before bringing his expertise back home to the suburbs of Paris.
Franklin Environmental Center at Hillcrest, Room 103
Sarah Stroup, Political Science
Conflict transformation is an approach that grew out of international relations (IR), and that intellectual history informed the work of IR scholar Sarah Stroup as she took the helm of the Conflict Transformation Collaborative at Middlebury. Yet the core ethics of conflict transformation are deeply interdisciplinary and applicable at all levels of conflict, from the interpersonal to the organizational to the global. At the end of her three-year term as director of the CT Collaborative, Sarah Stroup shares some lessons learned about fostering constructive conflict. Bridging the role of scholar and nascent practitioner has been a humbling process of learning and growth, and revealed the central role of deep relationships and collaboration.
Franklin Environmental Center at Hillcrest, Room 103
Roger White, Studio Art
Since 2019, Visiting Assistant Professor Roger White (Studio Art) has been making a series of “Calendar Paintings” that explore variations of conventional time-keeping formats. In this lecture, White will present this body of work in the context of its art-historical precursors—from medieval books of hours to the “Date Paintings” of conceptual artist On Kawara—and his broader interest in art and the everyday. He will also discuss his research into different world calendar systems and the changing aesthetics of futurity in an age of climate crisis.
April 9, 2025
'Woe to Those Who Fail to Reckon with History': The Brothers Karbelashvili and the Fate of Empire in the South Causasus, 1860-2024
Franklin Environmental Center at Hillcrest, Room 103
Rebecca Mitchell, History
In 1924, Fr. Vasili Karbelashvili penned a passionate letter to his former student, Joseph Stalin. His desperate bid to stave off Bolshevik violence failed: his family fell victim to Stalinist repression. Yet by 2011, Vasili and his four brothers were canonized by the Georgian Orthodox Church. This talk explores the Karbelashvili legacy, tracing how national and religious identities fused in Georgian self-consciousness, and reflects on how historical memory informs contemporary responses to Russian imperial hubris.
Franklin Environmental Center at Hillcrest, Room 103
Josephine (Jodi) Rodgers, Museum of Art
‘The Dance of Life: Figure and Imagination in American Art, 1876–1917’ exhibition explores the American Renaissance, a pivotal yet neglected period in American history, that inspired an ambitious generation of artists to develop a movement in mural painting that captivated a divided nation. My lecture will address the creative and cultural context for Edwin Austin Abbey’s mural practice, from the laboring body in an age of expanding industrialization to the relationship between the natural environment, art, and technology.
Franklin Environmental Center at Hillcrest, Room 103
Dan Suarez, Environmental Studies
This lecture will explore questions of politicization and planetary environmental crisis by looking at how these dynamics are playing out in three contexts: (1) among global change scientists, (2) among climate activists trying to formulate movement strategies, and (3) among environmental educators and their students. Although often marked by feelings of disorientation, anxiety, and disillusionment, I found each of these contexts also functioning as key spaces of politicization with important openings for transformative learning.
Franklin Environmental Center at Hillcrest, Room 103
Guntram Herb, Geography; Sujata Moorti, Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies; Kemi Fuentes-George, Political Science
More than five years ago, three Middlebury College faculty embarked on an ambitious project: to create an atlas textbook for courses in global studies, international relations, and geography that offer a road map to the omnipresent strands of globalization. Our talk will cover the story behind the creation of the atlas and its companion website. We will discuss the writing process, challenges of covering novel topics, and collaborating with 18 student researchers.
Franklin Environmental Center at Hillcrest, Room 103
Dana Yeaton, Theatre
In his final act as founding director of Oratory Now, playwright Dana Yeaton will crack open a playbook of games and counterintuitive insights from the Oratory Lab. He’ll argue that rhetoric is the art of connection — a survival skill that is both ancient and urgently needed. Finally, he’ll take a rhetorical swing for the fences by proposing a change that could reshape the Middlebury curriculum — and help galvanize the academic community as it fights for liberal education.