Six faculty get Lilly teaching fellowships

New or revised courses in speech, religious studies and physical science will be options for UW–Madison students in the coming academic year through the Lilly Teaching Fellows program.

Six distinguished scholars and teachers have received grants through the program funded by the UW–Madison College of Letters and Science. Lilly Fellows receive one-year grants to develop a new undergraduate course or redesign an existing one. Each fellow will work with a mentor. The new Lilly Fellows are:

David Fleming, assistant professor of English, has taken decisive steps toward distinguishing himself on the subject of rhetoric and its role in human communities. He plans to use his Lilly Fellowship to develop a new course in public writing. Contents will focus on the connection between written argument and political deliberation.

Fleming says the class should provide students with opportunities to practice writing in the realm of public debate and decision-making. Through the course, students will learn social applications for practical reason, and the use of language to recognize and manage conflict. During his first year at UW–Madison, Fleming has taught composition courses on both the undergraduate and graduate levels, and the history of rhetoric.

Philip S. Gorski, assistant professor of sociology, will help students explore the terrain of the state of religion in America today, ethics of world religions, and secularization of religion in his new course on the sociology of religion. Gorski says the class will consider the world views which have produced Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Confucianism, Buddhism, Hinduism and more; and traditional Protestant and Catholic churches, evangelical and fundamentalist congregations, and the emergence of such spirituality movements as Scientology and New Age.

The sociology of religion is one of Gorski’s top scholarly interests. On the faculty here since 1996, Gorski has taught courses in sociological theory and political sociology.

Lisa Naughton, assistant professor of geography, will develop a new course on people, wildlife and landscapes to offer students fresh perspectives on how human use and transform wild animals, as well as ways in which other cultures view other species. Her course outline will pay special attention to hunting, the process of animal domestication, property rights and the “use” of wildlife in film documentaries as a means of shaping and reflecting our concepts of nature.

Naughton, who earned her BA and MA from UW–Madison, has taught environmental conservation and an advanced course on conservation in the tropics. She has been on the UW–Madison geography faculty since 1997.

Lee Palmer Wandel, assistant professor of history, is a historian of the Reformation who proposes to revise a course in the history of Western Christianity, expanding the chronological boundaries from Augustine to Darwin, and integrating more fully the various cultural forms Christianity adopted.

Topics to be considered will include the role Christianity had and continues to have in shaping aesthetics, concepts of time and space, and material culture. Wandel also will explore how European Christianity translated to indigenous cultures in Latin America, Africa and Asia.

Wandel joined the UW–Madison history faculty last fall after teaching for 10 years at Yale University. Her Lilly course will revise a class she taught there on Western Christianity from Augustine to the Age of Reason. The updated version will build on her research interests and integrate instructional technologies such as Powerpoint to represent the architecture and visual worship environments in three dimensions.

Eric M. Wilcots, assistant professor of astronomy, will offer a new course “The History of a Rock” that follows the geophysical evolution of the material out of which rocks, minerals, plants, animals and even humans are made.

Integrating the disciplines of astronomy, chemistry and geology, the class will begin with the creation of the first elements — hydrogen and helium — in the Big Bang and continue with the formation of stars and the creation of other elements, and the origins of the solar system, the earth, igneous rocks and possibly life itself.

This year Wilcots taught a course on exploring the solar system, and another on galaxies and the origin and structure of the universe. However, he does not limit his educational efforts to UW–Madison classrooms. Wilcots has helped develop computer-based basic astronomy laboratories and has directed the popular “Universe in the Park” outreach series done in conjunction with the state park system.

Susan Zaeske, assistant professor of communication arts, will revive a course, Comm Arts 270 — Great Speakers and Speeches, that for the last five years has been absent from the UW–Madison timetable due to faculty shortages. Zaeske will bring a revitalized 270 back in fall, using a four-point plan to update the course.

Her strategy calls for broadening the scope of the class to include a wider diversity of perspectives, teaching basic rhetorical theory and criticism, converting visual and audio material for use on the World Wide Web and choosing a new name for the course to reflect the changes.

A specialist in women’s political discourse, Zaeske plans to include more women and minority speakers on the course agenda. This semester she taught Rhetoric of American Women, 1636-1850 and Classical Rhetorical Theory.