Events

Teaching and Learning workshop - Chat GPT3 and other AI innovations, and their impact on our students- January 23, 3:00pm

Cornerstone is hosting an important Teaching and Learning workshop.  Cornerstone faculty, Lindsay Hamm, along with Rhodes Pinto, James Mollison, and software engineer, Jason Dufair, will be speaking on Chat GPT3 and other AI innovations, and their impact on our students. 

Please see: https://www.purdue.edu/innovativelearning/supporting-instruction/tlcop/

Recording of Jan. 23 session

 Cornerstone screening of Pride + Prejudice + Zombies (2016)

Reimagining General Education: A Cornerstone Institute

Thursday, November 10, and Friday, November 11, 2022

Purdue Memorial Union and Stewart Center

This conference, “Reimagining General Education: A Cornerstone Institute,” is centered around Purdue’s highly successful Cornerstone Integrated Liberal Arts as a model for other institutions of higher education.  Purdue’s Cornerstone program has become an integral part of how the University delivers general education requirements.  The program, now beginning its sixth year of existence, has attracted considerable national attention, and 37 other universities and colleges are currently replicating its design.  But what will the next five years mean for Cornerstone and the College of Liberal Arts? As Cornerstone continues to innovate teaching and learning at Purdue, this conference will pursue two goals: firstly, to showcase, celebrate and look forward to the next five years of general education innovation at Purdue; and secondly, to reinforce the message and mechanics of building a successful, sustainable, STEM-leaning Liberal Arts program.

How I Teach This Text” - Cornerstone Teaching Workshop

Fall 2022

 Tuesday, September 6^th at 12:00pm

Location: BRNG 1284

• Charles Campbell (SLC) presents on the Dante’s Inferno

Monday, October 3^rd at 9:00am

Location: BRNG 1284

Melissa Will (POLSCI) presents on Vonnegut’s Slaughter House Five

Cornerstone screening of Pride and Prejudice (2005)

September 27, 2022- Loeb Theatre, 7:00 to 9:30 pm

For all Students in SCLA 101 or 102 and Cornerstone faculty

In 2005 Working Title film produced the first feature film adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (1813) since the American 1940 version, starring Greer Garson and Sir Laurence Olivier.  With Kiera Knightly as Elizabeth Bennett (already made famous by Pirates of the Caribbean), this film combines elements of Romanticism and realism and adapts Austen’s novel about love, marriage, misconceptions, and self-awareness for a modern audience. For more information see flier here. 

Fall 2022 Cornerstone Student Contest

This fall Cornerstone is seeking writings, artworks, videos, and poetry inspired by our discussions and readings in Transformative Texts, SCLA 101 and 102.

Our theme is Adaptations. Maybe your favorite book has been made into a feature film.  Or your favorite film is also a famous book. Perhaps a video game you play is based on a book or a film.  Or a song you sing was inspired by a poem.  There are many kinds of adaptations and we can create our own as well. 

In your own creative way, please share with us your favorite adaptation, depicting or describing what you liked about it or even where it fell short. You can also create your own adaptation, imagining how a book you love could be adapted to a film or game. For contest details see flier here.

Spring 2022 Cornerstone Contest

This spring the Cornerstone contest is seeking writings and artworks as well as other forms of creativity including videos and poetry inspired by our readings in Transformative Texts (SCLA 101 or 102).

Our theme is Reading Voyages. Transformative texts can propel us through time and space while always returning us home and to ourselves once again, often with a new sense of self.  We learn about other people and other times; we learn that they have loved and laughed, suffered and cried as we do; we learn of our common humanity, but mostly we learn about ourselves. What reading voyages have you taken?

This contest asks students to reflect back on all the books they have loved since childhood to the books they have read in SCLA 101 and 102, and speak to how one (or more) inspires them.  For contest details see the flier here.

 The Teagle Foundation Workshop Series on Teaching with Transformative Texts

 A series of free workshops on what can be done to strengthen general education—as students move into STEM, business, health, and other pre-professional fields—to ensure that college students, whatever their major or background, encounter inspiring works of literature and philosophy and grasp the power of the humanities and its relevance to their professional aspirations

Teaching with Transformative Texts (Session 4): Andrew Delbanco on "Bartleby, the Scrivener" -  February 10, 2022 - REGISTER HERE

Teaching with Transformative Texts (Session 5): Deborah Nord and Melinda Zook on "Frankenstein" - March 31, 2022 - REGISTER HERE

Teaching with Transformative Texts (Session 6): Rachel Hadas and Major Jackson on Teaching Poetry - April 21, 2022 - REGISTER HERE

Conference, New York University | Steinhardt: A Student’s Search for Meaning: A Conversation Between College Chaplains, Humanities Scholars, and Representatives of the Broader University World

Wednesday, December 15, 2021 from 10:00am to 4:00pm

Melinda Zook, panelist, "The Humanities and the Search for Meaning," 10:15-11:45am.

Cornerstone and the Purdue Departement of Theatre Reception

Thursday, October 28 at 3:30pm

Cornerstone faculty join the Department of Theatre to learn about their exciting Spring performances designed to enrich our students.

"How I Teach This Text" Cornerstone Workshops

Wednesday, September 29 at 9:00am

Location: BRNG 1284

• Lynn Hooker (DAP) presents on the Mahābhārata

Tuesday, November 9 at 9:30am

Location: BRNG 1284

• Bill White (HIST) presents on the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

Cornerstone Reading Room Grand Opening

Dedication and grand opening of the Chris and Michelle White Cornerstone Reading Room, HSSE Library, September 3, 2021. 

Fall 2021 Cornerstone Contest

This fall the Cornerstone contest is seeking writings and artworks as well as other forms of creativity including videos and poetry inspired by our readings in Transformative Texts (SCLA 101 or 102).

Our theme is chance encounter. Reading is a form of encountering; to read is to fill our minds with voices that are not our own and to fill our hearts with emotions that we might never experience otherwise. Your SCLA classes encourage you to read outside of your comfort zones, to explore a new topic, listen to a new voice, and appreciate a new perspective. We are forever changed by the story and by the author.

Encountering a good book is only one example of such a transformative encounter. In your own creative way, please share with us your experience with one chance encounter—with a person, a place, a text, a hobby, a form of art, an alternative perspective, etc.—that enchanted and changed you. You can also portray an imaginary chance encounter that challenges and transforms your fictional characters. For contest details see the flier here.

“An Introduction to the Cornerstone Program,” a Virtual Address for the Annual Liberal Arts Deans Meeting at Texas A & M, Melinda Zook, February 12, 2021.  

“Big Ideas: The Humanities and the Profession,” a Virtual Address to the faculty and administration of Indiana University in Pennsylvania, Melinda Zook, March 27, 2021.  

A Conversation with Andrew Delanco (Columbia University) and Melinda Zook, “Revitalizing the Humanities: The Power of Transformative Texts,” The Association of Core Texts and Courses, April 14, 2021

 “For the Resurgent Liberal Arts: Revitalizing the Humanities across Campus,” The Pinanski Lecture, Wellesley College, Melinda Zook, April 9, 2021.

Spring 2021 Cornerstone Contest 

This Spring Semester, Purdue’s Cornerstone program is celebrating “the book” with a contest for our students.

Books take us on journeys; they open our eyes to new vistas and ideas; they can change our lives, become our companions, even our mentors and spiritual guides. Books challenge us, inform us, infuriate us, and transform us.  We can write in them, display them, use them for doorstops; and hide love letters and press fall leaves in them. They can hold our secrets.  What do books mean to you?  

 Our Spring 2021 contest seeks artwork as well as other forms of creativity including videos and poetry based on our readings in Transformative Texts (SCLA 101 or 102).  Winning artwork entries will be considered for exhibition in the new Cornerstone Reading Room in HSSE Library (grand opening Fall 2021) and all entries will be considered for publication in the Cornerstone Review.  For contest details see the flier here

The Institute for Humane Studies (George Mason University) offers a day-long seminar devoted to the political thought of Frederick Douglass for Cornerstone students, Sunday, October 25

Organized by Zachary Goldsmith

Discussion of Douglas moderated by Douglas Casson, Professor of Political Science at St. Olaf College in Minnesota

Teagle Foundation: Faculty Institute for Cornerstone: Learning for Living, Thursday, October 15

Welcome by Andrew Delbanco, President, The Teagle Foundation

“How I Teach This Text”: Dan-El Padilla Peralta, Associate Professor of Classics, Princeton University, Cicero’s Speech in Defense of the Poet Achias

“Transformative Texts for an Emancipatory Education,” Roosevelt Montas, Senior Lecturer in American Studies, Columbia University 

Teagle Foundation: Faculty Institute for Cornerstone: Learning for Living, Thursday, October 8

 Welcome by Andrew Delbanco, President, The Teagle Foundation

“How I Teach This Text:” Roosevelt Montás, Senior Lecturer in American Studies, Columbia University

on “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?" is the title now given to a speech by Frederick Douglass delivered on July 5, 1852.

“Giant Leaps for the Liberal Arts at Purdue”, Melinda Zook, Professor of History and Director of Cornerstone Integrated Liberal Arts, Purdue University