MVP Fridays
Join us Friday afternoons on select home football weekends for lectures by national leaders, journalists, and writers on questions of meaning, values, and purpose. Each lecture will take place at 4:00 p.m. in the Geddes Hall Andrews Auditorium.
The 2025 Lineup
Viet Thanh Nguyen: “POV: Writing as Other”
September 19 (Purdue), 4:00 p.m.
Geddes Hall, Andrews Auditorium
(Add to Google Calendar)
Introduction by Azareen Van Der Vliet Oloomi, Dorothy G. Griffin College Professor of English.
Co-sponsored by the Creative Writing Program, the Department of American Studies, the Initiative on Race and Resilience, and the Liu Institute for Asia and Asian Studies.
Viet Thanh Nguyen’s novel The Sympathizer is a New York Times bestseller and won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Other honors include the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, the Edgar Award for Best First Novel from the Mystery Writers of America, the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction from the American Library Association, the First Novel Prize from the Center for Fiction, a Gold Medal in First Fiction from the California Book Awards, and the Asian/Pacific American Literature Award from the Asian/Pacific American Librarian Association. His other books are Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War (a finalist for the National Book Award in nonfiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award in General Nonfiction) and Race and Resistance: Literature and Politics in Asian America. He is a University Professor, the Aerol Arnold Chair of English, and a Professor of English, American Studies and Ethnicity, and Comparative Literature at the University of Southern California. Most recently he has been the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim and MacArthur Foundations, and le Prix du meilleur livre étranger (Best Foreign Book in France), for The Sympathizer.
Timothy Egan: “Historical Echoes and the Klan in Indiana”
October 3 (Boise State), 4:00 p.m.
Geddes Hall, Andrews Auditorium
(Add to Google Calendar)
Introduction by Darren Dochuk, Andrew V. Tackes College Professor of History; William W. and Anna Jean Cushwa Co-director, Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism
Co-sponsored by the Department of American Studies, the Department of History, the Department of Sociology, and the Initiative on Race and Resilience.
Timothy Egan is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and award-winning author. His most recent book, A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan’s Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them, is a historical thriller that was an immediate New York Times bestseller. Publishers Weekly, in a starred review, called it “a harrowing look at forgotten chapter in American history.”
The Immortal Irishman was a New York Times bestseller. His book on Edward Curtis, Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher, was awarded the Carnegie Award for best nonfiction. His account of the Dust Bowl,The Worst Hard Time, won the 2006 National Book Award and he was featured prominently in the 2012 Ken Burns film on the Dust Bowl.
A lifelong journalist, Mr. Egan worked as a national correspondent and opinion columnist for the New York Times, roaming the West. As a Times correspondent, he shared a Pulitzer Prize in 2001 with a team of reporters for its series, “How Race is Lived in America.” He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Elizabeth Oldfield: “Tending the Soul in Turbulent Times”
October 10 (NC State), 4:00 p.m.
Geddes Hall, Andrews Auditorium
(Add to Google Calendar)
Introduction by Paul Blaschko, Director, Sheedy Family Program in Economy, Enterprise, and Society; assistant teaching professor of philosophy.
Co-sponsored by the Department of Theology and the Nanovic Institute for European Studies.
.
Elizabeth Oldfield is the author of Fully Alive: Tending to the Soul in Turbulent Times, exploring how we can build spiritual core strength for an unstable age. She is also the host of The Sacred podcast, interviewing those who shape our common life about their deepest values.
She is an experienced broadcaster, writer and lecturer on themes related to public ethics, spirituality, wisdom and our common life, including on the BBC and in The Times, FT, The Economist, Prospect, and UnHerd, among others. For ten years she was Director of Theos, the UK’s leading religion and society think tank, building a healthy and human team culture alongside a commitment to excellence. She is the Chair of the Board of Directors of Larger Us, an organization working to help change-makers bridge divides rather than deepening them.