Garst-Santos to receive Hendrickson award

Cheever lecture is Sept. 25

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BROOKINGS – South Dakota State University associate professor Christine Garst-Santos will receive the sixth-annual J.P. Hendrick-son Liberal Arts Faculty Scholar Award and deliver the Herbert Cheever Jr. Liberal Arts Lecture. 

The award presentation and lecture, sponsored by SDSU’s College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, are scheduled for 7 p.m. Sept. 25 in the Volstorff Ballroom of the University Student Union on the SDSU campus.

The event moves to the fall semester this year after having been held in the spring semester.

“In this lecture,” Garst-Santos said, “I compare selected representations of rape in Cervantes’s masterpiece, ‘Don Quijote de la Mancha,’ to the tweets, statements and newspaper articles that came out of the Brock Turner case, as well as the ongoing cases of powerful men like Harvey Weinstein. My goal is not to compare what happens – that is, the actual sexual assaults – but rather how we talk about what happens; in other words, how we talk about and represent rape in our everyday lives. My goal is to use these texts to enhance our current understanding of rape and thereby to contribute to the urgent task of dismantling rape culture and diminishing the occurrence of sexual violence in all its forms.”

Garst-Santos, the interim department head of SDSU’s Department of Modern Languages and Global Studies, delivered a version of this presentation in Chicago in April 2017. She received the Faculty Award for Global Engagement: Internationalizing the Student Experience at the university’s 2017 Celebration of Faculty Excellence.

“My teaching, research and service are grounded in my belief that an interdisciplinary understanding of the world – its people, cultural histories, developments and problems – is necessary to tackle the challenges facing our democracy. In every course that I teach, I provide students with the linguistic and interpretive tools necessary to access an alternative worldview (that provided by the Spanish-speaking world), and then guide them as they explore and examine these diverse perspectives on what it means to be human,” Garst-Santos said.

“This lecture is a demonstration of how the liberal arts connect academic learning to contemporary social problems and issues and, in the case of literary studies in particular, how they teach us to engage in cultural commentary,” she continued. “If the liberal arts are the collective subjects necessary for free men and women in a democratic society, then we cannot overstate the importance of reading. Reading, as we define it and teach it in literary studies, requires analytical interpretation. It is a practice that engages with and questions the narratives and institutions that shape our cultures, our societies and our lives.” 

Garst-Santos received a Bachelor of Arts in Spanish and a Master of Arts in foreign languages, literatures and cultures from Colorado State University and a doctorate in Spanish literature from the University of Iowa.

The award and lecture are named for two former College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences professors and administrators. Professor John Phillip Hendrickson was a longtime faculty member and head of the Department of Political Science from 1957 to 1988.

Previous recipients are: Paul Baggett (2014), Timothy Meyer (2015), Greg Peterson (2016), Michael Dianovsky (2017) and James Murphy (2018).

Herbert Cheever Jr. served as a professor in political science from 1968 until his retirement in 2000. He served as department head for nine years and as dean of the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences for nine years.

Upon Hendrickson’s retirement in 1988, Cheever said, “J.P. Hendrickson exemplifies the qualities of the best of professors. His scholarship, teaching and advisement, character and citizenship have consistently, year in and year out, been ranked high by those who work with him or study under him. A professor’s professor.”

“John Hendrickson and Herbert Cheever were each champions of the liberal arts, and they serve today as role models for what it means to live an examined life. We’re proud to honor their legacy at South Dakota State University and to continue their devotion to civic engagement and intellectual inquiry,” said Jason Zimmerman, interim dean for the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences.

The J. P. Hendrickson Faculty Scholar award celebrates a life devoted to teaching and learning, strengthens the pride and cohesion within the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences around its core mission, and stimulates collective thinking about the importance and value of providing all students with the strongest possible liberal arts experience and education in and out of the classroom.

The Herbert Cheever Jr. Liberal Arts Lecture is the signature celebration of the value of a liberal education within the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at South Dakota State University. The Cheever Lecture emphasizes the role and importance of a liberal arts education in today’s increasingly specialized and vocationally oriented political and higher education climate.

SDSU photo: Christine Garst-Santos