Majors: Theatre and Russian Language and Literature

Class of 2000

Joselyn Ludtke’00 teaches and directs theatre in the Rockford Public Schools in Illinois. With a strong background in Art Integrated Education, her teaching shows how we build worlds both on the stage and in “the real world.” In the watercolor painting on the right side of this webage, she provides her vision of how arts integrate with other disciplines. Different kinds of knowledge need each other to become a full painting.

It was at Beloit that Joselyn learned the connections between these disciplines. In one class taught by the film professor Art Robson, for instance, she remembers bringing together her interests in Russian history and visual analysis. She had already learned visual analysis through theatre classes and had learned about the Russian Revolution in classes with professors including current professors of Russian, Olga Ogurtsova and Donna Oliver. In those classes, she says, professors “taught me the language and literature, the people, of Russian culture—they helped me to understand myself and others by encouraging an understanding of a whole people, not just the puzzle of the language.” In Prof. Robson’s film class, she was pushed to develop a synthesis of these ideas, culminating in a paper she still remembers writing that analyzed the visual imagery of Sergey M. Eisenstein’s class 1925 film The Battleship Potemkin and its use of Soviet propaganda to rewrite the narrative of the Russian Revolution. History, art, media, visual analysis all came together and mixed into something more.

Prof. Robson taught Greek, Latin, and film studies courses for more than 40 years at Beloit, from 1966 to 2009. In 2020, Prof. Robson’s students and colleagues honored him by establishing the Art Robson Prize in Greek, offered at commencement to recognize a graduating senior who has excelled in Greek studies.

Reflecting on her time at Beloit, Joselyn says, “Beloit taught me to think, to face challenges, and to strive to be myself in everything that I do.” She says she has never looked at film the same away again—“though,” she admits, “I still enjoy B horror movies!”