S.A. Yoder Memorial Lecture Series

The S.A. Yoder Lecture Series honors Dr. Samuel A. Yoder, a professor at Goshen College from 1930 to 1935 and again from 1946 until his death in 1970. During his career, he was a Fulbright lecturer at Anatolia College in Greece, Smith-Mundt lecturer at the University of Hue in Vietnam, visiting professor at Taiwan University in Formosa, welfare officer under the United Nations in Egypt and GC Study-Service Term leader in Jamaica. Gifts to the series by his students, friends, and family have made the endowed lecture possible.

Past guest lecturers

2023 — Urayoán Noel, poet, translator, and scholar, New York City

2022 — Casey Plett, fiction writer, Windsor, Ontario

2022 — Julia Spicher Kasdorf and Steven Rubin, poet (Pittsburgh) and photographer (University Park, PA)

2021 — Philip Metres, poet, essayist, and featured artist  (Click for a recording of Metres’s GC webinar, hosted by English Department professor and chair, Jessica Baldanzi.)

2019 — Tiana Clark, poet and featured artist

2018 — Bill Campbell, publisher and science fiction author, Washington DC

2016 — Ellah Wakatama Allfrey, author and publisher, London, U.K.

2014 — Jeff Gundy, poet and author, Bluffton, Ohio

2014 — Cahal Dallat and Anne-Marie Fyfe, poets, London, U.K.

2012 — Luis Urrea, author, Naperville, Illinois

2011— Julia Spicher Kasdorf, poet and author, BelleFonte, Pennsylvania

2010 — Haven Kimmel, poet and author, Chapel Hill, North Carolina

2010 — Sandra M. Gilbert, poet and author, Berkeley, California

2008 — Maurice Kilwein Guevara, poet, Milwaukee, Wisconsin

2008 — Brenda Cardenas, poet, Milwaukee, Wisconsin

2008 — Marilyn Nelson, poet, Connecticut

2007 — Cornelius Eady, poet, Notre Dame, Indiana

2006 — B. H. Fairchild, poet, Claremont, California

2004 — Jean Janzen, poet, California

2003 — Li-Young Lee, Chinese-American poet, Chicago, Ill.

2002 — Sandra Birdsell, fiction, Saskatchewan, Canada
     Patrick Friesen, poet, British Columbia, Canada

2001 — Edwidge Danticat, fiction writer, Haiti/New York City, N.Y.

2000 — Nick Lindsay, poet, Edisto Island, S.C.

1999 — David Dabydeen, novelist & poet, England & Guyana

1998 — Donald Hall, poet, New Hampshire

1997 — Denise Levertov, poet, Seattle, Wash.

1996 — Jane Tompkins, critic, Duke University

1995 — Scott Russell Sanders, essayist, Bloomington, Ind.

1994 — Rudy Wiebe, novelist, Alberta, Canada

1993 — Yevgeny Yevtushenko, poet, Moscow

1993 — Gwendolyn Brooks, poet, Chicago, Ill.

1992 — Seamus Heaney, poet, Dublin, Ireland

1990 — Joyce Campion, actress, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

1989 — William Stafford, poet, Oregon

1988 — Niyi Osundare, poet, Nigeria

1987 — Robert Detweiler, scholar, Emory University

1986 — Colleen J. McElroy, poet, University of Washington

1985 — Garrison Keillor, humorist, Minnesota

1984 — Madeleine L’Engle, fiction writer, New York City, N.Y.

1983 — Peter Fallon, poet, County Meath, Ireland

1982 — Jan Harold Brunvand, folklorist, University of Utah

1981 — Quince Duncan, novelist, Costa Rica

1980 — Eliot Wigginton, Foxfire editor, Appalachia

1979 — Nuruddin Farah, novelist, Somalia

1978 — Charles Forker, Shakespeare scholar, Indiana University

1977 — Lucille Beachy, associate editor of Newsweek, N.J.

1976 — Yorifumi Yaguchi, poet, Japan

1975 — Rudy Wiebe, novelist, University of Alberta, Canada

1974 — Tom Driver, critic, Union Theological Seminary

1973 — Eugene Nida, linguist, American Bible Society

1972 — Chad Walsh, poet, Beloit College