Hubert McNeill Poteat Lecture
Named in honor of Hubert McNeill Poteat, who taught at Wake Forest University from 1911 to 1956 and was widely known and respected as a Latin scholar, this lecture series is designed to recognize and celebrate the many achievements of our faculty in research, scholarly, and creative work. The annual lectures are held each spring and are alternately sponsored by the Office of the Dean of the College and the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences.
The 2019 Poteat Lecture was given on April 9, 2019, by Dr. Ellen Miller, (Ph.D. Washington University), a biological anthropologist specializing in paleoanthropology. She works on the fossil evidence for primate and human evolution, and teaches courses on human evolution, skeletal biology, and modern human variation. She currently conducts fieldwork in Miocene deposits in the Turkana Basin region of northern Kenya, where she is involved in a number of projects concerned with: 1) understanding the initial divergence and early evolution of apes v. Old World monkeys; 2) better documentation of the transition from archaic to modern African faunas; and 3) an enhanced understanding of the primate context within which the human lineage evolved.
| Academic Year | Date | Speaker | Department | Title |
| 2018-2019 | April 9, 2019 | Ellen Miller | Anthropology | Decoding Messages from the Past |
| 2017-2018 | April 11, 2018 | Stan Meiburg | Sustainability | Sustainability and Leadership |
| 2016-2017 | April 12, 2017 | Claudia Kairoff | English | Raising Her Voice: A Critical Edition of The Works of Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea |
| 2015-2016 | April 25, 2016 | Miles Silman | Biology | Real-World Sustainability and the Future of Andean and Amazonian Biodiversity |
| 2014-2015 | April 21, 2015 | Mary Foskett | Study of Religions | Biblical Studies and the Humanities: Reflections on Past Practices and New Directions |
| 2013-2014 | April 28, 2014 | Sam Gladding | Counseling | Beyond Active Listening: Creativity, the Arts and Positive Mental Health |
| 2012-2013 | April 9, 2013 | Mary Deshazer | English/Womens & Gender Studies | Representing Breast Cancer in the Twenty-first Century |
| 2011-2012 | April 12, 2012 | Dan Locklair | Music | Following My Muse: The Music of Dan Locklair |
| 2010-2011 | April 4, 2011 | Katy Harriger | Politics & International Affairs | What Does Brown Mean?: The Supreme Court, School Desegregation, and Legal Change |
| 2009-2010 | April 5, 2010 | Eric G. Wilson | English | Forgiveness, the Gates of Paradise, and William Blake’s Nervous Fears |
| 2008-2009 | March 26, 2009 | Paul D. Escott | History | The Lincoln Icon: Thinking About Myth and Reality in our History |
| 2007-2008 | April 16, 2008 | Susan Fahrbach | Biology | Plastic Bee Brains |
| 2004-2005 | March 17, 2005 | David Coates | Political Science | Campaigning in Poetry, Governing in Prose: Tony Blair and New Labour Britain |
| 2003-2004 | March 18, 2004 | Earl Smith | Sociology | The Modern World System: Academics and Athletics in the New Millennium |
| 2002-2003 | November 4, 2002 | Dilip K. Kondepudi | Chemistry | The Enigma of Asymmetry |
| 2001-2002 | October 24, 2001 | Paul M. Ribisl | Health and Exercise Science | The Next Y2K Problem – Obesity: Genes, Gluttony or Sloth? |
| 2000-2001 | March 29, 2001 | Margaret Supplee Smith | Art | The Magic Mountain: Imagination and Image in the Making of American Ski Resorts from Sun Valley to Sunday River |
| 1999-2000 | April 5, 2000 | Candelas Gala | Romance Languages | From Parody to Pathos: Lorca, Dalί, Bunuel, in the artistic and cultural landscape of the 20th century Spain |
| 1998-1999 | February 18, 1999 | Deborah Best | Psychology | Gender and Culture |
| 1997-1998 | November 19, 1997 | Raymond Kuhn | Biology | Health: The United States and the Third World |