Graphic courtesy of District Staff
Written by Scarlett Ruggiero
On May 4, the Arnold Hall auditorium hosted “Liberal Arts at Lightspeed,” a lecture that consisted of SCAD professors looking at Star Wars through the lens of their respective Liberal Arts subjects: Mathematics, Anatomy, Physiology, English and even Psychology.
“We have traveled to earth beckon by disturbances in The Force, a force probably caused by massive creativity at this location,” said Communications Professor Kelly Lancaster, dressed in Jedi attire. Lancaster then introduced the audience to the ‘Jedi Consular,’ made up of five professors. Two other professors dressed as stormtroopers stood on the right of the stage, next to a reproduction of Han Solo frozen in carbonite.
English Professor, Mary Doll began the presentations, explaining the origin of Star Wars. “George Lucas was influenced by Joseph Campbell’s model of a hero’s journey and incorporated this basic pattern into his Star Wars series,” said Doll. Doll then shared an analysis on the journey the protagonist and hero, Luke Skywalker, went through in Star Wars.
“Yoda actually possessed a rich vocabulary” said Psychology Professor, Irini Kokkinou. Kokkinou shared her reasoning behind Yoda’s sentence structure. She concluded that young Yoda was probably never exposed to another language except his native one and “his Broca’s area became specialized to process the syntax of only his native tongue,” and as a result, he learned basic English but cannot process syntax.
“One of the things that makes the Star Wars movies successful and entertaining from a biological perspective is that they created a galaxy far, far away populated with believable organism …. this is in part because they got the anatomy right, ” said Biology Professor, Steven J. Wagner. Wagner shared examples of Star Wars’ creatures and pointed out the animal that inspired their creation, based on information found on Wookieepedia. For example, in Episode V, Luke was riding an animal called a ‘Tauntaun’ which was inspired by a Tyrannosaurus.
English Professor, John Carey Murphy, started his presentation by revisiting “Wretched Hives of Scum and Villainy,” a book written by Paul Danner. “There is good and bad, the rebellion, the empire, always distinct and always sudden,” said Murphy, explaining the different aspects of Luke’s life and how he and the people of Star Wars distinguished between good and bad.
“Will somebody get this big walking carpet out of my way?” is how Communications Professor, David Steinweg began his presentation on costumes and cosplay. The quote is one of Princess Leia’s lines and it refers to Chewbacca’s costume. Steinweg considered Chewbacca’s costume to be the most famous costume in the Star Wars series. “Actors and actresses become characters through costumes,” said Steinweg, who was dressed as a stormtrooper. He also explained the importance of cosplay and how it allows people to embody their favorite heroes.
Mathematics Professor, Samuel Gross, explained the math behind the Millenium Falcon travelling at the speed of light. In his presentation titled, “Punch it Chewie,” Gross explained that the Millenium Falcon (Han Solo’s ship) “needed a force of 20 billions pounds equivalent to 10 million airbags but also 7700 special rocket boosters,” to reach the speed of light in a second.
The lecture concluded with a brief Q&A session and then students were given the opportunity to come up to the stage and take pictures with the speakers and/or stormtroopers.
Scarlett is a writing major, wine lover and cheese enthusiast from Paris, France. When she isn’t busy writing, she likes to wander around District’s quarter in search of new articles to write.
