Scholar to Examine Intersections of Religion and Higher Education

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Elizabeth Vander Lei

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Elizabeth Vander Lei, noted scholar on the relationship between religious faith and higher education, will present the lecture “How Do We Imagine Religious Students in Composition Studies and What Effect Does That Have on Our Teaching?” at 4 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 15, in room 149 of the J.B. Hunt Transportation Building.

Vander Lei’s talk will examine religion-and-education issues in writing courses and will be pertinent to anyone with an interest in understanding and addressing the role that students’ religious beliefs play in the classroom.

“I will describe a small set of metaphors that characterize the college writing classroom and the place of religious students and their instructors in that classroom,” she said. “I would welcome the opportunity to talk about whether these metaphors fit the experience of instructions and what effect the metaphors might have on our teaching.”

Vander Lei is professor of English and co-chair of the department at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Mich. She is an editor of Converted to Other Uses: Renovating Rhetoric in Christian Tradition, forthcoming from Utah State University Press and of Negotiating Religious Faith in the Writing Classroom, published by Heinemann-Boynton/Cook in 2005. Her research also examines the rhetoric of Martin Luther King Jr. and the teaching of writing in academic disciplines.

Vander Lei’s visit to the University of Arkansas is sponsored by the Brown Chair in English Literacy in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences.