Walking the Talk: Listening in our Disciplines
Winter/Spring 2024
In this semester-long series, Bethel College faculty from a range of disciplines consider the ways that listening informs their pedagogy and their research. Faculty will discuss how listening – whether manifested as the development of aural skills, interpersonal connections or attunement with our surroundings – opens up opportunities for learning as well as pathways for building, renewing and repairing relationships.
All presentations will be held on Fridays from 11 a.m.-noon at Kidron-Bethel Village Hall. Kidron residents, Bethel College students and employees and members of the broader community are invited to attend these free events.
This speaker series is coordinated as an extension of Rachel Epp Buller’s spring undergraduate course at Bethel, Slow Art for Fast Times. The faculty series will lead up to “Walking the Talk: Listening Relationships in a Changing Climate,” an interdisciplinary symposium of invited presenters to be held on the Bethel campus in Krehbiel Auditorium on Saturday, April 27, 2024.
Faculty speaker lineup and schedule
Jan. 26, 2024: Rachel Epp Buller, professor of visual arts and design and series coordinator, “Walking and Listening in / as Artistic Practice”
Feb. 9, 2024: Joel Boettger, assistant professor of music, “Be the First Listener: How improvisational thinking, meditation, and daily walks helped me get quiet and hear my creative voice”
Feb. 23, 2024: Brad Born, professor of English, “Walking Ways and Ways of Seeing”
March 8, 2024: Peter Goerzen and Christine Crouse-Dick, Bethel faculty and founding members of the Bethel College Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation (TRHT) Campus Center, “Transforming through Sharing Our Stories: Working toward Racial Healing through Empathy, Listening, and Change”
March 22, 2024: Jennifer Chappell Deckert, associate professor of social work, “Begin with the Body: Somatic Listening for Trauma Healing”
April 12, 2024: Jean Woods, assistant professor of biology, “Walking in Nature: Can you hear what the birds are saying?”
April 19, 2024: Siobhán Scarry, professor of English and creative writing, “To Wander or to Dwell: Contending with Gendered Constructions of the Citizen/Self in Poems about Nature”
April 27, 2024: Symposium – “Walking the Talk: Listening Relationships in a Changing Climate”