Graves Lecture Series

The Graves Lecture Series is a forum for speakers of many interests and disciplines. Since 2006, the series has hosted speakers who present on historical, cultural, artistic, and scientific areas. Presentations take place at the Mari Sandoz High Plains Heritage Center Atrium. Attendance is free, and community members are welcome. For more information about the Graves Lecture Series, please contact College Relations at collegerelations@csc.edu.

Graves Lecture Series Schedule

6 p.m., Feb. 24, 2026: Justin Haag presents “Nebraskaland Magazine: 100 Years of Inspiring Outdoor Adventure” | Read News Coverage |

6 p.m., March 19, 2026: Conor Casey presents “Who Decides What’s Reasonable?” | Read News Coverage |

6 p.m., April 23, 2026: Mary Donahue presents “Art?! Get Out! Twenty Plus Years of Learning and Exploring Outside the Classroom with Students”

Previous Graves Lecture Series Presentations

Many presentation recordings are available on the CSC YouTube channel in the .

The Graves Lecture Series is named in honor of Dr. Dorset Graves, who was a member of the CSC faculty for 32 years. He retired in 1990, and served as an an adjunct faculty member until 2005. Graves was chair of the CSC Division of Language and Literature for 29 years. Graves died in 2012.

The Graves Lecture Series began in 2006, led by Milton Wolf, director of the library, with much assistance from Shawn Hartman, outreach services librarian. Wolf said the series will be a “forum for speakers who represent the renaissance of ideas under the sun, the synthesis of analysis, the quest for the holy grail of understanding.” He named the series to honor Graves “as an inspiration to scholarship, civility, and the ideal of wisdom.”

After Wolf‘s death in 2012, Hartman continued to manage the series until her retirement in 2025. Starting with the Fall 2025 semester, the Graves Lecture Series was managed by the College Relations team, with an aim to continue the academic focus that had been established nearly 20 years earlier.

Date Presenter Presentation
2006-08-29 Dr. Dorset Graves The Pleasures of Finding Out
2006-09-12 Dr. Kathy Bahr The Persistence of Gothic Romance in Contemporary Culture
2006-09-26 Dr. Lois Veath  
2006-10-10 Dr. George Griffith  
2006-10-24 Dr. Mike Cartwright  
2006-11-07 Ann Krejci  
2007-01-16 Dr. Brad Wilburn Virtues of Improvement
2007-01-30 Dr. Chuck Butterfield Wildfire Ecology and Nature’s Fecundity
2007-02-13 Dr. Mike Leite The Fossils Speak of an Incredible Journey
2007-02-27 Dr. Ron Weedon Medicinal Plants of the Midwest
2007-03-20 Sarah Polak Crazy Horse
2007-03-27 Dr. Robert McEwen Poetry Reading
2007-04-03 Sarah Polak Stolen Art
2007-09-25 Con Marshall From Sparks to Park
2007-10-09 Derek Goodwin Buffalo Soldiers
2007-10-23 Mary Donahue Following Cairns: An Artist’s Journey with Rocks and Time
2007-11-06 Don Holst Aesthetics and Sports
2008-01-22 Dr. Joyce Hardy Three Pine Ridge Drainages — Same or Different?
2008-02-05 Loree MacNeill Why the Arts?
2008-02-19 Group Discussion (Discussion of Loren Eiseley’s “Star Thrower”)
2008-03-11 Dr. Joel Hyer (Lewis and Clark and the Indian Country)
2008-03-18 Mike Her Many Horses (Lewis and Clark and the Indian Country)
2008-03-25 Dr. Gary Moulton (Lewis and Clark and the Indian Country)
2008-04-01 Dr. Jim Hansen (Lewis and Clark and the Indian Country)
2008-04-06 Kira Gale (Lewis and Clark and the Indian Country)
2008-04-08 Dr. Catherine Lockwood (Lewis and Clark and the Indian Country)
2008-04-15 Gerard Baker (Lewis and Clark and the Indian Country)
2008-09-16 Twyla Hansen On the Plains: A Poet’s Perspective
2008-09-30 Daniel Schweitzer An Approach to Surrealist Epistemology
2008-10-14 Dr. Laura Gaudet Psychosocial Consequences of Brain Injury
2008-10-28 Tom Buecker Army Posts of Nebraska
2008-11-11 Larry Teahon Crow Butte Resource in Situ: Recovery Mining Operations
2009-01-27 George Ledbetter Babaji: Life with the Ascetics of India
2009-02-10 Brad Smith ºÚÁÏ´óÊÂ¼Ç and Athletics Go Hand in Hand
2009-02-24 Jamie Wada Hey, Is This a Real Ticket? Student Perceptions of Campus Police
2009-03-17 Jennifer Balmat Between a Rock and a Hard Spot: A Geologist’s Journey Through the Hazards in Northwest Nebraska
2009-03-31 Lee Miller Chatting with Mikhail Bakhtin about Rhetoric’s History
2009-04-07 Stew Magnuson The American Indian Movement and its Legacy in the Nebraska Border Towns
2009-09-22 Dr. Georgia Younglove Character = Six Little Words
2009-11-10 Jovan Mays Slam Poetry: America’s True Pastime?
2010-02-16 Dr. Joyce Hardy (Charles Darwin)
2010-03-02 Russ Harford Criminal Justice from Different Perspectives
2010-03-16 Logan Veath (Military in Iraq and Afghanistan)
2010-03-30 Dr. Jim Margetts Echoes of Venice
2010-04-13 Pat Colgate A View of the Future of American Higher Education as Perceived by ºÚÁÏ´óÊÂ¼Ç State College in 1985: How Close Did We Come?
2010-09-14 Dr. Gary White Cultural Experiences Building International Programs
2010-09-28 Dustin Luper The Three P’s: Purpose, Passion and People
2010-10-12 Mike Kennedy Educating Fatima
2010-10-26 Dr. Teresa Zimmerman History of Bighorn Sheep in the Northern Great Plains
2010-11-16 Don Podobnik Close Encounters of the Third Kind — Adventures in New Guinea

This list may be incomplete.

Date Presenter Presentation
2011-10-25 Dr. Matt Evertson
2012-02-28 Dr. Sandy Schaefer Arts, Advocacy and Careers
2012-03-13 Dr. Katy Woods
2012-03-27 Dr. William Roweton
2012-04-10 Bruce Hoem
2012-09-11 (Multiple Presenters)
2012-09-18 Dr. Sandy Schaefer
2012-09-25 Dr. Mary Jo Carnot
2012-10-02 Dr. Norma Nealeigh
2013-02-12 Dr. Barb Limbach, Dr. Wendy Waugh
2013-02-26 Dr. Tom Smith
2013-03-12 Dr. George Griffith
2013-03-26 Dr. Jo Forstrom
2013-09-10 Dr. David Nesheim
2013-10-08 Dr. Matt Bokovoy
2013-10-22 Dr. Brad Wilburn
2013-11-12 Dr. Bob Knight
2014-02-18 Rich Kenney
2014-03-04 Dr. Kurt Kinbacher
2014-03-18 Dr. Linda Hunt Brown, Dr. Jesse Sealey
2014-04-01 Dr. Susan Hines
2014-09-23 Dr. Ron Bolze
2014-10-07 Dr. Kurt Kinbacher
2014-10-21 Tim Slessor
2014-11-04 Charles Carey (Music)
2015-02-17 Steve Rolfsmeier
2015-03-03 Dr. Anthony Perlinski
2015-03-24 Dr. William Roweton
2015-03-31 Dr. Pat Beu
2015-09-22 Dr. Josh Ellis
2015-10-13 Dr. Steve Coughlin
2015-10-27 Dr. Shaunda French
2015-11-10 Peggy Hinman

This list may be incomplete.

Date Presenter Presentation
2016-02-16 McKay Tebbs The Making of “Strawberry Fields Forever”
2016-03-01 Dr. John Buttiglieri
2016-03-22 Dr. Terrie Wood
2016-04-05 Dr. Janice Haynes Romance & Marriage Plots: Restoration of Family in Narratives of Single Mothers
2016-09-28 Christopher McCarthy
2016-10-11 Dr. Sidney Shuler
2016-10-25 Mary Gould-Traphagan
2016-11-08 Alex Helmbrecht
2017-02-21 Charith Kapukotuwa
2017-03-14 Daniel Binkard Multi-Exposure Photography
2017-03-28 Dr. Tara Wilson
2017-10-10 Dr. Yvonne Moody, Dr. Kim Madsen, Erin Norman, Dr. Josh Ellis
2017-11-14 Dr. Michael Stephens
2018-03-13 Dr. Mary Clai Jones Corelli’s Designing Fictions: Fashioning the Woman of Genius
2018-04-10 Mary Donahue On the Trail… with the Oscar-Winning Filmmakers, the Coen Brothers
2018-04-17 Dr. Tom Smith, Dr. Deane Tucker Cuba: Change and Continuity
2018-11-06 Dr. Nathaniel Doherty Equanimity Among the Ruins: The Doubtful Value of Humanity in Colson Whitehead’s “Zone One”
2018-11-13 Dr. Mathew Brust
2018-11-27 Markus Jones The Shaping of Story
2019-03-19 Todd Jamison
2019-04-23 Aaron Field
2019-10-22 Dr. Ann Buchmann Rhinos, Elephants, and Vultures (And a Few Lions)

This list may be incomplete.

Date Presenter Presentation
2021-10-12 Dr. Brittany Helmbrecht
2021-10-26 Tena Cook, Dr. Kim Madsen, Dr. Dave Nesheim
2021-11-09 Mary Traphagan
2022-03-15 Dr. Tawny Tibbits
2022-03-29 Joanne Hayes
2022-04-12 Dr. Margaret Crouse
2022-10-18 Daniel Binkard
2022-11-01 Dr. Rachelle Rider
2022-11-15 Dr. Kurt Kinbacher, Dr. Mary Clai Jones, Markus Jones, Jace Demeranville
2023-03-14 Katelyn Lambert
2023-03-28 Dr. Elizabeth Kraatz
2023-04-12 DeMoine Adams
2023-09-19 Kat Shiffler Trail Town USA
2023-10-03 Dr. Haesong Kwon Poems that Can Drive a Fully Grown Human to Sob Uncontrollably
2023-10-24 Danielle Covolo, Duane Two Bulls, Virgil X | News Coverage
2024-03-19 Susan Rolfsmeier | News Coverage
2024-04-02 Emmanuella Tchona | News Coverage
2024-10-03 Dr. Jo Anne Owens-Nauslar
2024-10-03 Dr. Jo Anne Owens-Nauslar
2025-01-23 Carla Dowdy, Lyndsi Slusarski
2025-02-13 Jamie Weingart
2025-10-21 Kevin Coy | News Coverage
2025-10-28 Dave Collins | News Coverage
2025-11-18 Dr. Clint Evrard, Sutton Pohlman | News Coverage

This list may be incomplete.

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