The Chappell Great Lives Lecture Series, which begins its 10th season in January, has evolved into the University’s highest-profile community outreach program, bringing hundreds of people to campus weekly during the spring semester for lectures by some of today’s most prominent biographers. Great Lives was modestly inaugurated in 2004 – created more out of necessity than by grand design. The impetus was the need for another course to serve an increasing number of history students without putting an additional burden on departmental faculty. The solution was to create a multidisciplinary, team-taught course that could draw upon the expertise of not only the history department but of other departments as well. The resulting course, “Great Lives: Biographical Approaches to History,” included lectures by faculty from 10 disciplines across the University. Students were immediately attracted to it, as enrollment approached 100. Considering the success of the history department’s … [Read more...]