OFSTAD VISITING SCHOLAR PROGRAM

The Clayton B. Ofstad Reading Series

Spring 2025

Thursday, January 30, 2025 | 1 p.m. | Baldwin Little Theatre
Keith Scales
Reading: “Passages from Overlook City”

Keith ScalesAs part of the Ofstad Visiting Scholar Program, award-winning actor, director, playwright, novelist and adventurer Keith Scales will read selections from his work, “Passages from Overlook City,” at 1 p.m. Jan. 30 in Baldwin Hall Little Theatre. A light lunch will be served. This event is free and open to the public.

Scales was continuously active in the Pacific Northwest theater community from 1970-2009, working as a freelance professional actor, director, teacher, designer, organizer and grant writer. A familiar face to Portland and Seattle theatergoers, Scales acted in more than 200 plays and directed nearly 100.

In 2009 Scales relocated from Oregon to the Ozarks to concentrate on the creation of original works for page, stage and screen. He still teaches, consults and directs on occasion, but is now committed to a daily writing regime.

2024

  • February 15, 2024
    Nina Furstenau
    Reading and Q&A
  • March 6, 2024
    Julie L. Moore
    Reading and Q&A
  • April 11, 2024
    Kelly Wright
    Lecture: “Linguistic High Crimes”
  • September 12, 2024
    Dr. Doug Reside
    Lecture: “Forbidden Knowledge: The History and Uses of Theatrical Bootlegs”
  • October 17, 2024
    Dr. Janet Sylvester
    Reading: Prize-Winning Work Both Old and New
  • November 15, 2024
    Christine Knapp
    Lecture: “Linguistics and Jobs in Tech”

2023

  • October 19, 2023
    Taylor Jones
    Lecture: The Linguistic Skills of Leaders
  • October 7, 2023
    Alexandra Rowland
    Seminar and Reading: “The Squamish Language Policy and Language Commission”
  • March 2, 2023
    Kyle Eveleth
    Ofstad Scholar Lecture: “The Semiotics of Play, or ‘Teaching History through Cannibalism’”
  • January 26, 2023
    Anand Prahlad
    A Reading with Ofstad Visiting Writer

2022

  • Oct. 20, 2022
    Nzingha Kendall
    Lecture from Visiting Ofstad Scholar Dr. Nzingha Kendall
  • Sept. 16, 2022
    Dr. Caitlin Coons
    “Toward Inclusive Linguistic Typology: What Understudied Sign Languages Contribute”
  • April 1, 2022
    Mark Wisniewski
    A Fiction Reading with Author Mark Wish and Truman Students
  • March 15, 2022
    Dr. Rachel Weissler
    “Approaching Linguistic Discrimination and Social Justice through Sociolinguistic and Psycholinguistic Approaches”
  • Feb. 4, 2022
    Dr. Tabitha Lowery
    “Thank God for Little Children’: Frances Harper’s Children’s Poetry, Social Justice, and the Archives in the Twenty First Century”

2021

  • Oct. 5, 2021
    Angela Shaw-Thornburg
    Lecture, “‘What Shall I Tell My Children Who Are Black?’ Stories We Tell About Black Childhood”
  • Sept. 16, 2021
    Maria Miranda Maloney
    Reading from Cracked Spaces
  • Sept. 8, 2021
    Megan Figueroa
    “Decolonizing (Psycho) Linguistics Means Dropping the Language ‘Gap’ Rhetoric”

2020

  • October 29, 2020:
    Tricia Levenseller
    “Turning Rejection into Success”
  • October 14, 2020:
    Darcy Browning
    “Hesitation in Asynchronous Media: Twitter Hashtags and Spoken Discourse Markers in Survivor Stories”
  • September 17, 2020:
    Anne Morey
    “‘That’s Marriage’: Gone Girl and the Genealogy of the Paranoid Woman’s Film”
  • April 2, 2020:
    Amanda Nadelberg
    “Life Forms: Poems from Daily Habits”
  • February 19, 2020:
    Nicole Ziegler
    “Technology-Mediated Task-Based Language Teaching and Research”
  • February 11, 2020:
    Amy Levin
    “Dutch Museums as Models for Gender Diversity and Community Engagement”
  • February 4, 2020:
    Neil Hilborn
    A Poetry Reading

2019

  • November 6, 2019:
    Zoe Estelle Hitzel
    A Poetry Reading
  • November 4, 2019:
    Miyabi “Abbie” Yamamoto
    “Reimagining the Ivory Tower”
  • September 18, 2019:
    Sheena Shah
    “SiPhûthî, an Endangered Language of Southern Africa”
  • February 27, 2019:
    Elizabeth  Kissling
    “Accent in the Foreign Language Classroom: Misconceptions, Methodologies, and The Making of a Good Speaker”
  • February 9, 2019:
    Angela Carter
    “Classrooms in Crisis: Disability Pedagogy, Feminism, and The Trigger Warning Debate”
  • February 7, 2019:
    Meg Elison
    A Speculative Fiction Reading

2018

  • October 8, 2018:
    Alexandria Lockett
    “Overflow: The Leaky Politics of Living in The Data Deluge”
  • October 4, 2018:
    Prajwal Parajuly
    Selections from The Gurkha’s Daughter and Land Where I Flee
  • September 19, 2018:
    Marissa Fond
    “Sociolinguistics in the Field(s)”
  • April 4, 2018:
    Dawn Sardella-Ayres
    “Girls’ Literature as Genre and The Importance of Girlhood”
  • March 1, 2018:
    David Elliott
    Reading from Bull, Voices: The Final Hours of Joan of Arc, and other works
  • February 22, 2018:
    Doug Reside
    “Editing Musical Theatre in the Digital Age”
  • February 12, 2018:
    Scott Johnson
    “Egos and Epigraphy: Decoding Maya Hieroglyphs”
  • February 8, 2018:
    Laura McHugh
    Reading from Arrowood and “Endgame”

2017

  • November 9, 2017:
    Arisa White
    A Poetry Reading
  • September 7, 2017:
    Katherine Riestenberg
    “Task-Based Teaching of Endangered Languages: Challenges and Successes of Zapotec Revitalization in Oaxaca, Mexico”
  • February 15, 2017:
    Faith Adiele
    Selections from her Nonfiction Writing

2016

  • September 21, 2016:
    Maggie Messitt
    Reading from The Rainy Season and work-in-progress
  • February 10, 2016:
    Allison Joseph
    A Poetry Reading

2015

  • October 6, 2015:
    Prajwal Parajuly
    Reading from Land Where I Flee
  • March 18, 2015:
    Bennett Sims
    Multimedia Reading of White Dialogues

2014

  • November 19, 2014:
    David Chan
    Reading from City of Ghosts
  • September 30, 2014:
    Saïd Sayrafiezadeh
    A Prose Reading
  • March 18. 2014:
    Cornelius Eady
    A Poetry Performance and Reading
  • April 17, 2014:
    David Chan
    Reading from Utopian Fairytales

2013

  • October 24, 2013:
    Paul Legault
    Reading from The Emily Dickinson Reader and selected poems