My teaching centers students, and aims to create spaces for students to explore francophone literature, film, and culture. My courses are designed as spaces for students to explore the stakes of literature in identity, nationalism, and history from the medieval period to the present. I have created classes ranging from “Joan of Arc: From Heretic to Trans Saint” to “Medieval Fanfictions: Telling Stories Across Borders.”

“Joan of Arc” looked at how Joan of Arc can act a site for exploring the intersections of history, narrative, fiction, fanfiction, propaganda, and poetics in her legacy. The goal of this course was to think about who makes history, and how, and in what contexts. From Joan’s contemporaries—the anonymous Bourgeois de Paris and the first French woman writer to make a living off of her writing, Christine de Pizan—to French historian Jules Michelet and mendicant nun Thérèse de Lisieux, and later to twentieth-century films, novels, and plays, what is Joan’s role in the making of identity, history, gender norms, and popular culture? How has Joan become a symbol for trans activists as well as xenophobic politicians? Can we ever fully understand who she was and why we continue to be enamored with and fascinated by her?

“Medieval Fanfictions” invited students to explore vernacular chronicle, romance, lays (short narratives), saints’ lives, and theoretical texts from the High Middle Ages, focusing on the role of texts written in French. Students analyzed the production of medieval identities in England through legendary tales and explored how human, animal, and allegorical figures were used to imagine worlds, frame nation, and imagine community. Students traced the transmission of narratives from French to English, focusing on how translation, adaptation, and revision operate in Francophone and Anglophone contexts, resulting in a range of final projects from analytical essays to creative writing projects.

My research focus is on the Francophone literary world at the turn of the 13th century, when French was used as a literary, mercantile, and colonial language from England to the Crusader kingdoms in the Levant. My current project insists upon romance being a political genre in late-twelfth and early-to-mid-thirteenth-century romances. This draws from queer theory and biopolitics, or the ways in which politics and government control, deploy, racialize, and understand bodies to analyze the very root of sovereignty and the fictions of the sovereign’s relation to governance in medieval literature and culture. I argue that medieval literature helps us understand that longer history of sovereignty’s relation to populations, bodies, and fictions of nation and nationhood, dismantling our current notions of biopolitical trajectories and francophone literary history. This trajectory of the Grail quest, as it is renewed with each new version of the Grail quest, allows us to trace how copies, adaptations, and continuations are acts of reading as much as they are acts of writing and composition. This project upsets trajectories of Grail romance as it has been understood, and rewrites the history of romance as a politically-engaged genre. This intervention aims to reposition romance as a genre that re-imagines political pasts and proposes alternate futures.

Interested in studying French? Please email me!

See “Disrupting the binary in medieval lit,” written by a student, about a recent class taught in translation.

See this article about my teaching: “Rewriting medieval French literature.”

And see what sort of collaborative work is going on with the Wright Museum: “Recent Acquisitions from the West African Calligraphy Institute, Dakar, Senegal.”

See my CV here.

I have been on the faculty of Beloit College since 2002 teaching all levels of drawing and printmaking. I teach foundations, drawing, and printmaking, which includes media like etching, relief printing, and screen printing. I am also a practicing artist, and I exhibit my work regularly in national and international venues. I earned an MFA in printmaking from the University of Wisconsin-Madison where I worked with storied print artists such as Frances Myers and Warrington Colescott.

My work has since evolved to focus mainly on drawing, usually with commonplace media such as graphite pencils and ballpoint pen. I make drawings and works on paper that evoke the eeriness of everyday experiences and have been described as “clairvoyant,” often depicting familiar spaces charged with a sense of dark presence, or other instances where planes of existence clash: the future sending messages to the past, memory intruding upon the present, or the subconscious bleeding into consciousness.

I have exhibited nationally, including solo exhibitions at the James Watrous Gallery of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters, at the Alcove Gallery in New York, and in numerous national and international group shows.

www.scottespeseth.com

My research focuses on the the intersection of history and popular culture in Japan. My first book The Afterlife of Toyotomi Hideyoshi was published in 2022 and looks at how and why the biography of the 16th-century samurai, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, was reinterpreted during and immediately after World War II. My current project looks at the ways women writers of historical fiction use the genre to dismantle patriarchal narratives of Japan’s past. 

I teach in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, but my courses are often cross-listed with Critical Identity Studies, Media Studies, and Environmental Studies. In my classes, we look at how the narratives people create are subject to cultural, historical, and sociopolitical influences and examine the ways in which language and stories are often used to curate our understanding of the environment and the world.

I teach a range of courses in the Economics and Business Department, including Principles of Economics, Comparative Economic Systems, Austrian School Economics, Business Management, and the senior seminar capstone. I enjoy introducing students to the economic way of thinking, as well as helping them (later on in their coursework) think about various career paths. 

In addition to teaching, I serve as the Neese Chair and organize the Upton Forum each fall (which is then the focus of the senior seminar course, redesigned each fall). I also lead the annual Business Networking Summit (aka “Econ Day”) and together with Brian Morello, CELEB Director, I co-advise Belmark Associates, a student-run market research group. I’m the faculty representative on the Beloit College Alumni Board Association (class of 2008). 

I’m interested in community development, culture and economics, and Austrian School Economics. After graduating from Beloit College, I worked with the Free Market Foundation of Southern Africa (Johannesburg, South Africa) as a Fulbright Student. Additionally, I was a business analyst at Deloitte Consulting and senior business analyst at Perficient, Inc.

Outside of work, I enjoy spending time with my two young children, Jack and Adele, being active outdoors, and cooking.

Laura_Grube_CV_SP23

On Teaching…

As a teacher, I guide students through the challenging yet liberating practices of constantly and persistently pressing into the edges of our understanding with empathy. We do this to harness the power of connecting our humanity to others’ experiences. I believe that becoming an effective professional begins in the classroom, so I organize each class to coach students on how to prioritize respectful interactions to practice being an effective communicator and professionally agile. I encourage students to use curiosity as a tool for lifelong learning so that every day serves as a lab of ideas in which to refine our individual and collective practices to build mutually supportive, brave spaces.

I set up each classroom as a workroom for students to process ideas that call into question how knowledge is constructed and by whom, and importantly, to see themselves as active agents in that process. I find it humbling and enlivening to witness students’ unflinching courage in confronting issues and experiences of social inequities, engaging with the pain of living, and seeking to thrive within global racialized systems that marginalize and dehumanize a large variety of communities.

On Advising & Mentoring…

As an advisor, I ensure that students have access to information and resources that enable them to advance successfully through their training for a particular career stage. Mentoring I see as supporting individuals in the process of translating the significance of their training—how it might impact their life circumstances and how it relates to their overall vocational life journey. As a mentor, I frame students’ time at Beloit College as that of young professionals developing the skills of critical listening, written, and verbal communication, effective collaboration, and fluid navigation of ideas in multiple settings. This approach interlocks seamlessly with the college’s integrated learning outcomes. From the beginning of their time on campus, I mentor students to be confident and ready to meet personal and professional challenges with care, focus, and courage. My objective is to provide a safe space for individuals to experiment with ideas and practices to nurture different aspects of their humanity in service to their chosen vocation. My overarching goal is to help others see and center their holistic wellness in their enduring learning process.

On Research…

My current research reflects on how the religious tradition of Palo Monte/Mayombe, a fusion of AmerIndian Taíno and Kongolese ideas and rituals, within eastern Cuba offers conceptual insight into how the traumatic historical reality of enslavement provides directives on living ethically within diasporal communities. I offer alternative framings for utilizing enslavement and other social maligning practices as part of a diasporal community’s origin story for social transformation through healing. This work comes from how I’ve been teaching about the powerful ways marginal communities reclaim aspects of their social exclusion to transform their circumstances of diaspora. I explore what these epistemic shifts might offer us regarding viewing humanity beyond a binary and racialized framing.

Mentions

• Cultivating classrooms where respect, discomfort, and shared risk-taking are the norm — Beloit College
• Faculty recognized for teaching excellence and innovation — Beloit College

I teach courses in writing and literature, and I direct Beloit College’s Writing Program. Most of my published scholarship focuses on the American novel from the late 19th century to the contemporary period. My teaching interests also include interdisciplinary approaches to literature, creative writing, and other modes of communication such as photography.

I enjoy the discoveries of reading and writing with my students–what we find there, how and what we learn about each other, and the skills and habits of mind that we develop together. I value the opportunity to work with students from their first semester on campus to their senior capstone writing–in class, on individual projects, and even taking our writing practice off campus, from bicycling the backroads beyond Beloit to travel writing in places like Cuzco, Peru and Florence, Italy.

I teach courses including Principles of Economics, Intermediate Microeconomics, and Business Analytics. In the Business Analytics course, I use my background in Computer Science and Engineering and work experience in the software industry and business intelligence.

My research interests are in Public Health Economics and International Development. Specifically, I’m interested in looking at the health issues of different communities with a focus on disadvantaged social groups (including castes in India) and gender. I am also interested in studying the changing dynamics of health plans in health insurance markets in the United States.

I teach a range of ethics classes at Beloit, and I regularly teach Logic as well. As a professor, I see my role as helping students to think more clearly and carefully about the world around them and their place in it. We all walk different paths and give our time and energy to different pursuits, but at the end of the day, most of us want to be able to say that we were good people–that we aimed our efforts in the right directions, and that we made the world a better place. But–as with most things–none of these goals are as simple as they might seem.

Because my teaching reaches across a wide variety of issues and student interests, I am an affiliated faculty member in several of our interdisciplinary programs: Environmental Studies, Health & Society, and Law & Justice. Whether I am teaching or advising students in Philosophy or in any of these interdisciplinary programs, I love the conversations I get to have, and the connections I get to both make and help students make. It’s a privilege to have a job where I can help Beloit students find and pursue the futures they want for themselves.

I teach all levels of Spanish, and my main teaching and research passions lie in contemporary fiction and film from the Spanish-speaking world. I especially gravitate to texts and films that use the family as a microcosm to tackle large questions regarding power, gender, space, and constructed ideas around masculinity and femininity.

I regularly teach a class on environmental literature from the Spanish-speaking world, focusing on themes such as agriculture, medicine and healing practices, and consumerism and its ties to waste production. Another teaching area I am exploring is how nonfiction narratives, such as documentaries, digital stories, and podcasts, create space and empathy for other persons’ experiences and realities.

When I am not teaching, I enjoy gardening, cooking, and exploring the midwest.

I involve students in my three interests of activism, sustainability, and teaching.

Going into the field with students is one of my favorite activities. I take students to the Boundary Waters each year, where they canoe, camp, and work with local nonprofit organizations, tribes, for-profit businesses, and government agencies to find creative solutions to sustainability challenges.

I love Sociology.  When we consider the ways that social institutions like the education system, the criminal justice system, and the family both enable and constrain us, the power of social structure changes the way we look at the world and influences the decisions we make.  This realization has made me hungry for understanding how social structure works and drives my passion for Sociology.

The courses I teach are: Criminal Justice, The Sociology of Deviance and Social Control, The Sociology of Sports, Social Stratification, Introduction to Sociology, and Classical Sociological Theory.

My path started by majoring in Government and Sociology as a student at Beloit College in the 1990s.  I then went to graduate school, where I received my MA and PHD in Sociology from the University of Missouri-Columbia.  Before starting my teaching career at Beloit I served as a Researcher in the medical school at University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Over my 23 years working at Beloit College, I have been involved in a wide range of roles.  In addition to teaching and my research on the criminal justice system and models of undergraduate education, I served as the Associate Dean for 10 years where, among other things, I oversaw our career development and community engagement initiatives.

I have published one book and have contributed scholarly work for book chapters, journal articles, and encyclopedias. 

But, by far my favorite thing is working with students.  I have worked with students on independent research projects during the academic year and over the summer.  I regularly serve as a McNair Scholars mentor and take great pride in the accomplishments of my students. 

I completed a BA in psychology at the University of Kansas, a MA in social psychology & program evaluation at Claremont Graduate University, and my PhD in social psychology at the University of Arizona. I started as an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Beloit College in 2023, though I’d taught at Beloit since 2020.

My primary interests revolve around distress and identity, and how those phenomena are situated in particular cultural and historical contexts.

As the Principal Investigator of the SWIM lab, I enjoy doing research with a team of undergraduate students. Our aim is to explore the ways that characteristics of modernity and modernization relate to experiences of stress, wellbeing, and identity. See our Research Website for details about the lab.

In my spare time, I enjoy hiking, watching movies, spending time with my dog Deckard, and listening to music and playing bass guitar.

The courses that I teach at Beloit are directly related to my research interests, which means students in my classes get to take lots of field trips. These courses include include Earth’s Climate: Past and Future, Evolution of the Earth, and Paleontology. I incorporate multi-week projects into my courses to provide hands-on, critical-thinking activities that reinforce lecture material. I also strive for an inclusive classroom and I view our differences as strengths and believe that we can all learn from each other.

My research interests include paleoclimatology, paleontology, and environmental science. These interests lead me to study a variety of questions like: How did climate change cause extinctions in Earth’s past? and, What are the potential environmental impacts related to mining? Since these research interests are multi-disciplinary, I spent time in the field collecting fossils and rock samples as well as the lab studying those fossils and conducting geochemical analysis; you can find more info on my lab group at the Beloit Paleo Lab website.

I spend my free time gardening, cooking, and with family. I make pizza from scratch almost every weekend, and have recently started bottling hot sauce with the different peppers that I grow in my garden.