Lecture series begins Sept. 29

Interdisciplinary discussion is a foundational value of the liberal arts.

Grand Illuminations, an upcoming lecture series organized by Professor Tony Cunningham with funding and support from Bill Pelfrey ’88 and Steve Halverson ‘76, seeks to engage students with accessible lectures about the humanities.

The first lecture will be on Sept. 29 in the Sacred Heart Chapel Gathering Space, with later lectures in October, November and spring semester. Speakers include philosophers, classicists, an English professor and a historian from universities across the state.

“I’m imagining an ‘unlecture’ series,” Pelfrey said.

Instead of solely focusing on a niche area, speakers will seek to make the humanities interesting and engaging to everyone.

Pelfrey first became interested in the idea of a lecture series while reflecting on his own time at CSB/SJU and considering what courses he valued most. Pelfrey and Cunningham had discussed the idea for months, and progress began rolling after Cunningham decided against leading a study abroad program during the Fall ’21 semester.

Pelfrey looks forward to seeing what students can take away from the series.

“We don’t know the things that will make a difference, but all the things people my age say… are things that got in their heads and shaped how they think,” Pelfrey said. “What it really means to live a life, to make a difference.”

At the beginning of his time at CSB/SJU, Cunningham served as director of the Honors Program and organized a lecture series. This project is an attempt to revamp the in-depth discussions that came from those lectures.

Meetings will include live music and desserts. Reaching students who aren’t majoring in the humanities, and making the pursuit less elitist and more accessible, is a major goal.

“For folks in certain majors, they may think ‘that’s not my territory,’ and this series is aimed at making a case for it,” Cunningham said. “It’s everybody’s territory.”

Cunningham, who plans to lead the first lecture, will be referencing Cold Mountain, a book about the Civil War, in his talk, but students need not be familiar with it.

Speakers are encouraged to use great works as foundations, but to ensure that the humanities are accessible.

“If you really want to get to the meat and bone of what it means to be a human, you need to draw on lots of different perspectives,” Cunningham said. “No one discipline has this monopoly on being able to understand what it means to put together a decent human life.”

Cunningham, a philosophy professor, has a constant theme in many of his classes.

That theme, based on a quote from Henry James, inspires his search for “hidden gem” speakers from across the state.

“I love this Henry James quote that we must become people on whom nothing is lost,” Cunningham said. “We all miss things. In fact, we miss things even if we all put our heads together. But when we bring people together to put their heads together, it’s less likely that we’ll miss as much of it.”