Tag: Chappell Great Lives Lectures

Since 2004, the Chappell Great Lives lecture series has brought noted biographers and professors to lecture in George Washington Hall’s Dodd Auditorium. Now, the same lectures are available anywhere, through the iTunes U appfor iPad, iPhone or iPod touch, as well as on a Mac or PC using iTunes.

The free app is home to courses and classroom materials from colleges and universities around the world, as well as lectures and presentations like Great Lives.

Tim Owens, instructional technology specialist at UMW, said the move to iTunes U will help expand the reach of the lecture series beyond Mary Washington.

On Friday, Feb. 24, Charles J. Shields’ lecture on Kurt Vonnegut became the first Great Lives lecture available for download. Each Friday, another of the 2012 lectures will be released. Lectures from previous years also will be released.

Users can subscribe directly in iTunes to receive the video downloads each week, as well as watch them on UMW’s website at http://www.umw.edu/greatlives/category/archived-videos/.

In an episode of the television program “Jeopardy”  that aired on Friday, Feb. 24, the final question referenced Charles J. Shields’ biography “And So It Goes: Kurt Vonnegut, A Life.” Shields is associate director of the Chappell Great Lives Lecture Series.

The question, in the category of literary biographies, was:

“Quoting a famous line of his, a 2011 biography of this man was titled ‘And So It Goes’.”

Starting Friday, Feb. 24, high-definition presentations of all 2012 lectures in the Chappell Great Lives Lecture series will be available online.

Every Friday, another presentation will be released in chronological order, starting with Charles J. Shields’ talk on the life of American novelist Kurt Vonnegut, which was the first lecture on Jan. 24. The release dates will run into the end of June, the last being James “Bud” Robertson’s lecture on the Civil War soldier. After that, several years’ worth of lectures will be available.

Each presentation will begin with a short introduction summarizing the life of person written about, followed by background about the lecturer. Subscribers to updates about the series will automatically receive a reminder e-mail that a new presentation is available. Each presentation is full-length, about an hour, which includes questions from the audience at the end. The series is being filmed and edited by UMW’s Division of Teaching and Learning Technologies.

The videos will be accessible for viewing online under “Archived Lectures” on the homepage of the Chappell Great Lives Lecture Series. A link to the schedule of releases will be there, too. The series will also be posted on YouTube and a number of other social media outlets.

The schedule of the lectures, and the release dates of the videos is here: http://www.umw.edu/greatlives/2012/02/20/great-lives-videos-to-be-released-weekly-beginning-march-24/.

Charles J. Shields, associate director of the Chappell Great Lives Lecture Series, will speak at the Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference in Grapevine, Texas. The conference will take place from July 20 to 22.

On Saturday, Feb. 25, Shields will speak to the Baltimore Science Fiction Society about Kurt Vonnegut, American author of a number of fantasy novels.

Charles J. Shields,  associate director of the Chappell Great Lives Lecture Series, has an article appearing in the March/April issue of Writer’s Digest magazine. The article, “Research like a Pro,” is a step-by-step guide to finding and organizing information for a fiction or nonfiction writing project.

On Tuesday, Feb. 21, Shields will speak to the President’s Community Advisory Committee about the Chappell Great Lives Lecture Series. The committee serves as a resource to the University of Mary Washington President and administration on issues relative to the university and the minority community.  The committee is comprised of a diverse group of minority citizens of the greater Fredericksburg region, including professionals in the fields of higher education, secondary education and administration, the ministry, business, real estate, government and law.

On Saturday, March 31, Shields will appear at the Maine Festival of the Book with Chip Bishop, author of “The Lion and the Journalist,” about the friendship Theodore Roosevelt and Joseph Bucklin Bishop. The author is Bishop’s great-grandnephew. The topic of the panel is ” The Quick and Dead: Writing about Someone You Knew or Admired.”