WORD FOR WORD: THE UT SPEAKER SERIES

LECTURER BIOGRAPHIES

February 20

REEL POLITICS

Paul Stekler is Professor of Radio-Television-Film and George Christian Centennial Professor in Communication at The University of Texas at Austin. He received his doctorate in Government from Harvard University. He has written about Southern politics, was a political consultant in New Orleans, Louisiana and has taught in UT Austin's nationally recognized RTF film program since 1997. He hosts a weekly statewide Texas PBS series, Special Session, on state politics and the legislature. Stekler is also the Director of Research of the LBJ School of Public Affairs' Center for Politics and Governance. His documentary work about American politics and society, films that have won multiple Emmys, duPont-Columbia Journalism Awards, and George Foster Peabody Awards, include Last Man Standing (broadcast on PBS's P.O.V. series); George Wallace: Settin' the Woods on Fire (winner of an Emmy and the Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival); Vote for Me: Politics in America, a four-hour documentary series about grassroots electoral politics (winner of an Emmy, a George Foster Peabody Award and a duPont-Columbia Journalism Award); and two segments of the Eyes on the Prize II series on the history of civil rights.

February 27

PAUL T. FRANKL AND MODERN AMERICAN DESIGN

Christopher Long is Associate Professor of architectural history and theory at The University of Texas at Austin. He is a renowned authority on the architecture of Central and Eastern Europe and the author of a number of studies on the subject. His most recent work is Josef Frank: Life and Work, published by the University of Chicago Press in 2002. He is also a frequent contributor to leading architecture and design journals, including Studies in the Decorative Arts, Harvard Design Magazine, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, and Burlington Magazine.

March 5

AUTHENTIC, COMPASSIONATE, AND EMPOWERING (ACE) LEADERSHIP

David Springer is the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, Graduate Adviser, and a University Distinguished Teaching Professor in the School of Social Work at The University of Texas at Austin, where he holds a joint appointment with the Department of Psychology. Dr. Springer has been selected into Who's Who in Social Sciences Higher Education and into Who's Who in America. In addition to his research and authoring and editing a number of scholarly books and periodicals, Dr. Springer teaches a First-Year Seminar/Signature Course, entitled The Art of Being Human: Constructing Meaning Out of Life, where students explore how individuals create a meaningful and happy existence. For some time now, Dr. Springer has been developing and refining his own philosophy of leadership—the Authentic, Compassionate, and Empowering model, or ACE.

March 19

THE LANGUAGE OF CLOTHING IN 18TH-CENTURY ANGLO-AMERICAN PORTRAITS

Susan Rather is Associate Professor of Art History and Assistant Chair for the Art History division within the Department of Art and Art History at The University of Texas. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Delaware. Her research on early twentieth-century sculpture culminated in the publication of Archaism, Modernism, and the Art of Paul Manship (1993). More recently, she has engaged in research on eighteenth-century British and American portraiture, specifically, the representation of the artist. This work has been supported by grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Winterthur Museum, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Yale Center for British Art, the Massachusetts Historical Society, and The University of Texas. Dr. Rather's articles, book reviews, and essays have been published in a variety of art and museum journals and exhibition catalogues.

March 26

GIFTS, SALES, AND TRADES IN ANCIENT ROME

Andrew M. Riggsby is Associate Professor of Classics and Art and Art History at The University of Texas. Educated at Harvard and the University of California, Berkeley, he is the author of Crime and Community in Ciceronian Rome (1999) and Caesar in Gaul and Rome: War in Words, the Association of American Publishers scholarly book of the year in Classics and Ancient History (2006). His research interests are the cultural history of Roman political institutions and cognitive history.

November 14

WOMEN AND THE 18TH-CENTURY GARDEN

Lisa Moore is Associate Professor of English and Women’s and Gender Studies at The University of Texas at Austin. She received her Ph.D. from Cornell University and has been a member of the English department at UT since 1991. Professor Moore’s research and teaching interests include transatlantic eighteenth-century and Romantic literatures, Anglo-American women’s literature, feminist and queer theory, and the history of sexuality. She is the author of Dangerous Intimacies: Toward a Sapphic History of the British Novel, published by Duke University Press, and more than thirty articles, essays, and reviews. She has given lectures on her research all over the world including at Cambridge University, the Clark Institute for Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Studies, Miami University, the University of Colorado, the City University of New York, the State University of New York at Stony Brook, and Yukon College. In 2002 she was a Visiting Professor at Université de Paris X (Nanterre). As a member of The Austin Project, a collaboration of activists, artists and academics, she writes and performs poetry.