Associate Professor of French Jean-Vincent Blanchard examines one of the arguably most important figures of modern France. For his talk, Blanchard draws on his research for Éminence: Cardinal Richelieu and the Rise of France (Walker & Company, 2011). He is introduced by Professor of German Hansjakob Werlen.

The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., and other civil rights activists were imprisoned countless times as part of a deliberate strategy to harass and intimidate them. In 1954, 98,000 African-Americans were incarcerated in jails and prisons across this country. Since then, the black prison population has grown to nearly one million; 864,000 are black men.

Here, Associate Professor of Political Science Keith Reeves '88 examines this development and argues that the policy of “locking up” black men to combat crime has not been without profound consequences for the social fabric of urban families and neighborhoods. Indeed, he states the magnitude of this crisis is undermining King's "last wish."

As a Swarthmore undergraduate, Reeves majored in political science with a concentration in Black Studies and public policy. A former Henry Luce Scholar, he now teaches courses across the arenas of American government, electoral politics, and public opinion; racial politics and voting rights policy; the urban underclass, poverty, and public policy; and behavioral research methods. Reeves is the author of Voting Hopes or Fears?: White Voters, Black Candidates, and Racial Politics in America (1997) and is also the director of the College's Center for Social and Policy Studies.

Associate Professor of Classics and Philosophy Grace Ledbetter discusses (4:15) her current work, an examination of how George Ballenchine's ballet Apollo, with a score by Igor Stravinsky, provided a new foundation for ballet in the 20th century by transforming the Greek myth of Apollo and merging ballet with Greco-Roman classicism. This discussion is drawn from her larger study of the role classical antiquity has played in the development of classical ballet.

Ledbetter specializes in ancient philosophy and Greek poetry and regularly teaches courses at all levels on Greek and Latin languages, Plato, Homer, Greek tragedy, and Greek religion. In an earlier lecture, Muses of the 20th Century: Greek Myth in Opera, Ballet, and Modern Dance, Ledbetter spoke about Greek mythology and why it figures so centrally into some of the most pivotally modern works in the performing arts.

Here, she is introduced by Professor of Classics Rosaria Munson.

"I think every book of poems tells a story," says Professor of English Literature Nathalie Anderson. Here, she reads (5:10) from Quiver, her latest collection. "I think of this one as balanced between loss and consolation," she says, "between the devastations that shake us, the stabilities that ground us, and the unanticipated moments of transcendence that lift us beyond ourselves."

Anderson teaches courses in Victorian, modern, and contemporary poetry and directs the College's creative writing program. The author of two previous volumes of poetry – Following Fred Astaire, which won the 1998 Washington Prize from The Word Works, and Crawlers, which received the 2005 McGovern Prize from Ashland Poetry Press. She has also collaborated on three operas with composer and Professor of Music Thomas Whitman '82 — The Black Swan; Sukey in the Dark; and an operatic version of Arthur Conan Doyle's A Scandal in Bohemia. A 1993 Pew Fellow, she currently serves as Poet in Residence at the Rosenbach Museum and Library.

Anderson is introduced by Professor of English Literature Elizabeth Bolton. Read more about Quiver in The Phoenix.

Barry Schwartz, Dorwin P. Cartwright Professor of Social Theory and Social Action, explores the connections between our own lives and the world in which we live.

Robert DuPlessis, Isaac H. Clothier Professor of History and International Relations, delivered the Baccalaureate Address at the 2011 Commencement. Baccalaureate is intended to touch upon the moral and spiritual roots of the educational process and encourage commitment to a more just world.

Howard A. Schneiderman Professor of Biology Scott Gilbert delivered the Last Collection at the 2011 Commencement. The senior class chooses a faculty or staff member for this event each April.

In this talk, Assistant Professor of Religion Tariq al-Jamil explores the bodily practices and social behaviors associated with religious dissimulation - known as "taqiyya,” a practice in which a Shi’ite can lie about their faith in order to save a life - in 13th- and 14th-century Iraq.

Professor al-Jamil is an expert on medieval Islamic social history and law, with a particular focus on Shi'ism. He has conducted research on Sunni-Shi'i relations and can address issues related to the academic study of Islam and the social history of Iraq, Iran, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. His published works and research interests include Islam and inter-communal violence, pre-modern religious identity, religious dissimulation, the transmission of knowledge in Islam, and women in Islamic jurisprudence.

Assistant Professor of Psychology Dan Grodner joined Swarthmore's faculty in 2007 and teaches courses and seminars in the psychology of language, psycholinguistics, and cognitive science. His research interests include human language understanding, pragmatics and conversational inferencing, sources of linguistic complexity, and structural ambiguity resolution. In this talk, he discusses an experiment conducted with a student as part of her senior comprehensive project.

Professor of Linguistics Theodore Fernald is a longtime board member of the Navajo Language Academy, which is devoted to the scientific study and promotion of the Navajo language, part of the Athabaskan language family. His current research, supported by the National Science Foundation, involves linguistic research on Navajo that will lead to the creation of a referenced grammar that covers the structure, meaning, and use of all known Navajo sentence types.

Here, he discusses the process of doing research that involves multiple languages and cross-cultural interactions. In the related video, he explores his interest in the language and expresses his hope for its future survival.