The Celebrity Lecture Series

Publisher, professor, novelist, and playwright Edgar Lawrence Doctorow is introduced by John Eadie, dean of the College of Arts and Letters and Alan Suits, architect and founding president of the Dean’s Community Council. Doctorow commences his lecture by addressing “how writers write,” including the importance of sentence structure within a story,...

Introductions for Mexican author Carlos Fuentes are made by Dean John Eadie of the College of Arts and Letters at Michigan State University and Professor George Mansour, chair person of the Department of Romance and Classical Languages. Mansour describes how Fuentes' diverse background led him to become a writer of great perspective and vision. A...

Novelist William Kennedy is introduced by Dean John Eadie and Professor William Penn. Kennedy begins with an amusing anecdote about writing a short story for ...

Historian David McCullough is introduced by Dean Wendy Wilkins and Professor of History David Bailey. Bailey praises McCullough for the extraordinary amount of passion he puts into his writing. McCullough commences his lecture by talking about a trip he took to England to see its historical gardens that were created in the eighteenth century, and c...

In this clip, dean of the College of Arts and Letters at Michigan State University, John Eadie and professor of English, Robert Martin, introduce playwright Arthur Miller. Martin recounts the numerous challenges Miller encountered as an aspiring author and playwright. Arthur Miller commences his lecture by announcing his intent to read from his v...

John Eadie and William Hixson introduce political historian Garry Wills. Hixson praises the breadth of topics covered, as well as the erudition, in Wills's writing. The topic Wills discusses in his lecture is leadership and the scarcity of leaders in our society today. He enumerates four reasons why we perceive leaders as being in the past but not ...