Transcript
Index
00:00:01 - Introduction
00:00:24 - Family background--influence of German Revolution of 1848--to Buffalo, New York--grandfather in Civil War in spite of mother's opposition, cigar maker after War--move to Chicago
00:06:10 - Maternal grandparents in Chicago pre-Civil War--maternal grandfather as a teacher--the cigar business on the Irrmann side
00:09:36 - Family religious background--Irrmanns not particularly religious--mother Missouri Synod Lutheran
00:11:30 - R.I.'s decision to become a teacher--Spalding School for Handicapped Children--no taste for education courses at Beloit College, advised by Professor McGranahan to skip them and concentrate on college teaching
00:15:46 - R.I.'s experience with polio, epidemic of 1930--unfulfilled desire to dance--began to read more, gifts from aunt--importance of Spalding School
00:19:53 - Choice of college influenced by handicap--family tour of Beloit in 1934, met President Mowrer
00:22:58 - Extent of handicap not as serious then
00:26:38 - Further comments on ancestors fleeing Germany to avoid conscription
00:28:35 - Funny political background--grandfather Irrmann as Democratic Cook County commissioner
00:31:10 - Comments on Beloit College student during the 1930s, Chicago influence--President Brannan's vocational bent
00:34:49 - Irving Mowrer's presidency, conservative influence--Brannan as founder of local Chamber of Commerce
00:36:19 - Further comments on student body
00:37:48 - Influential professors for R.I.--Robert K. Richardson--Floyd McGranahan--Frederick Sweet
00:42:24 - The college and the community during the 1930s--influence or the First Congregationnl Church--intellectual aristocracy--importance of the basketball team
00:48:00 - Beloit College expelled from the basketball conference
00:48:55 - Recollection of black students on campus during the 1930's--Judge Edith Sampson in Chicago--George Hilliard--Eddie May--only discrimination from tuition costs--non-discriminatory tradition
00:57:05 - R.I. as a graduate student at Harvard for an M.A., one year for $1300, influential professors
01:00:16 - Further comments on Harvard years--lecture series, John Mason Brown
01:03:24 - Going to Indiana University from Harvard, financial reasons--good years at Indiana
01:07:39 - Influential professors at Indiana--Warmoth in political theory--F. Lee Benz in modern European history--lecture techniques
01:12:18 - Getting a teaching job--first at Denison University--then, back to Beloit as a professor
01:18:32 - The Beloit history department in the mid-1940s--interdepartmental relationships--Great Books course--Wisconsin Conference on Christianity and Scholarship, interdisciplinary course--interdisciplinary activities as after World War II
01:26:22 - Central ideas behind Beloit College--liberal humanism--liberal Christian faith, religious emphasis declined after World War II--influence of the art department
01:30:26 - Mrs. Neese as an artist, sales of watercolors donated to the College--story about the finding of “Tomb of the Poet”
01:34:58 - Building up the geology and onthropology departments under President Kroneis--decline of the anthropology fund--flush times for Beloit College
01:37:46 - Financial difficulties for Beloit College--first in the early 1950s--flush years of the sixties--problems again by the end of the 1960s--Beloit not first choice for many students
01:43:05 - The relationship between Beloit College and Fairbanks-Morse--Morse-Ingersoll Hall
01:46:58 - Beloit Iron Works and Beloit College--anonymous gifts from Beloit Corporation--money-raising ability of President Martha Peterson
