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January - 2026

Jan 5 - 23	January Term Learn more
Jan 20 - 22	Martin Luther King Jr. Week of Commemoration VWU Commemorates Martin Luther King Jr. with these events: January 20: I Have a Dream Wall \| 11 a.m. - 1 p.m. \| Boyd Dining Hall Frames of Freedom \| 11 a.m. - 12 p.m. \| Brock Commons Selma Film Screening and Discussion \| 11 a.m. - 1 p.m. \|The Forum January 21: King in the Wilderness Film Screening and Discussion \| 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. \| The Forum Rest is Resistance \| 6 - 7 p.m. \| The Forum January 22: Coffee and Conversation with Humanities Behing Bars \| 11 a.m. - 1 p.m. \| Kramer Lounge The week is sponsored by the President's Council on Inclusive Communities (PCIC) Learn more
Jan 20	Frames of Freedom: Norman Rockwell, Gordon Parks, and the Visual Language of Justice Brock Commons 11:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. On Tuesday, January 20, 2026, from 11:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. in Brock Commons, the Virginia Wesleyan community is invited to "Frames of Freedom: Norman Rockwell, Gordon Parks, and the Visual Language of Justice," a Martin Luther King Jr. Day program hosted by the Robert Nusbaum Center that explores how visual art has influenced public understanding of justice, dignity, and freedom. Art Professors Derek Eley and John Rudel will lead an engaging, interactive discussion of iconic works by Gordon Parks and Norman Rockwell, examining how images have challenged stereotypes, sparked moral reflection, and advanced social change—and why their impact continues to resonate today. As part of the program, the University will present the Mavis McKenley ’11 Award, recognizing a Virginia Wesleyan student whose commitment to justice, education, and community service reflects the enduring ideals of Dr. King.
Jan 21	Career & Vocational Summit Brock Commons 11:30 a.m. - 1:30 p.m. Are you curious about the paths that lead to a fulfilling career? We invite you to an inspiring afternoon at the Career & Vocational Summit on Wednesday, January 21. Join Us for Networking & Stories: Learn the "real" stories behind the resumes of your favorite professors and staff members. This is a unique opportunity to "pull up a chair" and hear firsthand stories from Virginia Wesleyan University faculty and staff about how they navigated their own professional journeys. Whether you are just starting to think about your future or are looking for mentorship, this event offers a warm, informal space to gain valuable insights and advice. Event Highlights: Special Guest Speaker: We are honored to welcome Dr. Justin Klassen from Bellarmine University, who will share his expertise and perspectives on vocation and career development. Space is limited! Please make sure to save your seat by clicking the link below. We can't wait to see you there! Learn more
Jan 21	Rest is Resistance Workshop Athenaeum in Hofheimer Library 6:00 p.m. - 7:00 p.m. Join the conversation on how rest can be a radical act of self-care and social justice. Hosted by Counseling and Wesleyan Engaged.
Jan 26	First Day of Classes for Spring Term

February - 2026

Feb 5	Ethics Bowl Demonstration: Ethics in Business The Truist Lighthouse, Clarke Hall 7:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m. Virginia Wesleyan’s 2026 Ethics Bowl Team presents a public demonstration in advance of the statewide collegiate Applied Ethics Bowl sponsored by the Virginia Foundation for Independent Colleges. Students from seventeen independent colleges and universities in Virginia debate real-world dilemmas related to this year’s theme, Ethics in Business, examining tensions between corporate responsibility, community impact, and ethical leadership. Join us in supporting the team as they prepare for competition. For more information, contact the Robert Nusbaum Center at 757.455.3129 or NusbaumCenter@vwu.edu.
Feb 9	Nusbaum Center at Night: America’s Quirkiest Civic Liturgy: The Very Odd Pledge of Allegiance ZOOM 7:00 p.m. - 7:40 p.m. Craig Wansink, Ph.D., shares "America’s Quirkiest Civic Liturgy: The Very Odd Pledge of Allegiance," on ZOOM. Registration Required by noon the day of. Register with kjackson@vwu.edu or 757.455.3129 Written as a marketing campaign, revised repeatedly, and once paired with a hand gesture that looked like a Nazi salute, the Pledge of Allegiance has a stranger history than most Americans realize. In this virtual talk, Robert Nusbaum Center Director Craig Wansink explores how a curious text became a sacred national ritual—and what its evolution reveals about freedom, loyalty, and American identity.
Feb 12	Justine L. Nusbaum Lecture: High for a Higher Power? God, Drugs, and Religious Freedom Brock Commons 12:00 p.m. - 12:50 a.m. America guarantees freedom of religion—but what happens when belief pushes legal and cultural boundaries? Drawing on real cases involving psychedelic sacraments and religious-freedom claims, Brad Stoddard, author of The Production of Entheogenic Communities in the United States, examines how law, belief, and power collide in contemporary America, raising difficult questions about sincerity, authority, and who gets to define “real religion.” For more information, contact the Robert Nusbaum Center at 757.455.3129 or NusbaumCenter@vwu.edu.
Feb 19	A Dream Deferred: Black Excellence, Voice, and Resistance Susan S. Goode Fine and Performing Arts Center 7:00 p.m. - 8:30 p.m. Through spoken word, music, a Frederick Douglas historical reenactment, visual art, and student scholarship, this evening explores Black excellence as sustained moral pressure on a nation slow to fulfill its promises. Inspired by Langston Hughes’s question—What happens to a dream deferred? — the program examines freedom promised, postponed, and pursued across generations. For more information, contact the Robert Nusbaum Center at 757.455.3129 or NusbaumCenter@vwu.edu.
Feb 21	Marlins Day Open House VWU Campus 8:00 a.m. - 1:30 p.m. Virginia Wesleyan University invites prospective students and their families to experience life as a Marlin at during Marlins Day Open House. This signature event is one of the best ways to explore all that VWU has to offer—academically, socially, and beyond. Learn more
Feb 24	What You Learned About Sex and What That Tells Us About Religion and Race in the United States Brock Commons 12:00 p.m. - 12:50 p.m. Evangelical purity culture has shaped American attitudes toward sexuality, education, and race in ways that reach far beyond religious communities. Sara Moslener, author of After Purity: Race, Sex, and Religion in White Christian America, traces how evangelical Christians entered debates over sex education and formed powerful political alliances that continue to shape educational policy today. Examining purity culture helps us understand the roots of White Christian nationalism today and how it mobilized fears about sexuality and racial difference to gain political and cultural power. For more information, contact the Robert Nusbaum Center at 757.455.3129 or NusbaumCenter@vwu.edu.

March - 2026

Mar 5	Carrying Freedom: The Hidden History of the Purse in America Brock Commons 12:00 p.m. - 12:50 p.m. In this talk, historian Kathleen Casey discusses how purses functioned as portable private spaces—carrying tools of resistance, survival, and autonomy throughout the civil rights and gay liberation movements. Through vivid stories from her new book, The Things She Carried: A Cultural History of the Purse in America, Casey reveals how something as ordinary as a purse became an extraordinary vessel of freedom in the enduring struggle for equality. For more information, contact the Robert Nusbaum Center at 757.455.3129 or NusbaumCenter@vwu.edu.
Mar 9	Nusbaum Center at Night: Liberty, Lies, and Lazarus: The Statue We Think We Know Zoom 7:00 p.m. - 7:40 p.m. Beloved and iconic, the Statue of Liberty has long carried contested meanings. From abolitionist critique to immigrant hope, Robert Nusbaum Center Director Craig Wansink explores how this familiar monument became a canvas for competing visions of freedom—and why those debates still matter. Please register to join us for this virtual discussion. Registration Required by noon the day of. Register with kjackson@vwu.edu or 757.455.3129
Mar 12	Liberators or Occupiers?: Rethinking America’s First ‘Good War’ Brock Commons 12:00 p.m. - 12:50 p.m. In his new book, Splendid Liberators: Heroism, Betrayal, Resistance, and the Birth of American Empire, Joe Jackson examines the Spanish-American War as a formative moment when America’s identity shifted from republic to empire. Focusing on the Philippines, Cuba, and Puerto Rico, Jackson traces how the language of liberation was used to justify U.S. expansion, blurring the line between freedom and authority, independence and occupation. This talk invites us to reconsider a war long framed as righteous and to ask what freedom meant then, and for whom. For more information, contact the Robert Nusbaum Center at 757.455.3129 or NusbaumCenter@vwu.edu.
Mar 16 - 20	Spring Break
Mar 26	Panel Discussion: Unchained Waters: Freedom and Control in a Thirsty World Brock Commons 12:00 p.m. - 12:50 p.m. Access to clean water is more than a human necessity, it is a question of freedom, power, and justice. This interdisciplinary panel examines water as both a force for liberation and a tool of control. From communities transformed by the digging of a single well, to regions destabilized when water becomes weaponized, to racial and social inequities exposed by crises like Flint, Michigan, this conversation asks: How can water be a pathway to freedom rather than a barrier to it? Panelists include VWU Professors Elizabeth Malcolm, Ph.D., (Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences); James Moskowitz (Political Science); Levi Tenen, Ph.D., (Philosophy), and Andrew Reese of the Thirst Project with VWU Student Laila Jones ’26 serving as moderator. For more information, contact the Robert Nusbaum Center at 757.455.3129 or NusbaumCenter@vwu.edu.

April - 2026

Apr 2	Are You Free to Trade? Brock Commons 12:00 p.m. - 12:50 p.m. Are you free to trade? Can you sell your kidney? Choose any investment? Buy the house you want? Often, the answer is no. Economist Garrett Wood explores how markets, laws, and ethics shape the limits of economic freedom—and asks what those limits reveal about justice, power, and collective responsibility. For more information, contact the Robert Nusbaum Center at 757.455.3129 or NusbaumCenter@vwu.edu.
Apr 9	Freedom to Laugh: Comedy, Taboo, and the Line Between Humor and Harm in the Theatre Blocker Hall Auditorium 12:00 p.m. - 12:50 p.m. Comedy can challenge power, expose truth, and sometimes cause harm. This panel examines humor at the edge—asking who gets to joke about what (and why that keeps shifting), when does humor liberate and when does it harm, and why does comedy feel safer behind a puppet, a character, or a fictional mask. If democracy depends on free expression, where does satire fit, and what freedoms does humor test, challenge, or stretch? Join Virginia Wesleyan Theatre Professors Travis Malone, Ph.D., and Sally Shedd, Ph.D., along with Judaic Studies Professor Eric M. Mazur, Ph.D., for a serious discussion about humor. And come to see Avenue Q (April 9-12), this spring’s mainstage theatre production in the Goode Fine and Performing Arts Center. Avenue Q is a wildly irreverent, puppet-filled musical that follows a group of twenty-somethings trying to figure out adulthood. For tickets, go to The Arts at VWU online. For more information, contact the Robert Nusbaum Center at 757.455.3129 or NusbaumCenter@vwu.edu.
Apr 10 - 11	Spring Alumni Weekend
Apr 11	Marlins Day Open House VWU Campus 8:00 a.m. - 1:30 p.m. Virginia Wesleyan University invites prospective students and their families to experience life as a Marlin at during Marlins Day Open House. This signature event is one of the best ways to explore all that VWU has to offer—academically, socially, and beyond. Learn more
Apr 13	Nusbaum Center at Night: Glory, Glory, Ambiguity: The Strange Journey of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” ZOOM 7:00 p.m. - 7:40 p.m. From abolitionist anthem to civil rights rallying cry, Robert Nusbaum Center Director Craig Wansink traces how a single song became sacred scripture, political propaganda, and a prayer for justice—revealing freedom as an evolving and contested American ideal. Please register to join this virtual conversation and explore how American freedom is not a fixed idea but an ongoing argument that every generation reclaims. Registration Required by noon the day of. Register with kjackson@vwu.edu or 757.455.3129
Apr 14	Queer Virginia: New Stories in the Old Dominion Blocker Auditorium 12:00 p.m. - 12:50 p.m. Drawing from Queer Virginia: New Stories in the Old Dominion, Charles Ford brings to light LGBTQ+ stories long omitted from Virginia history—revealing how queer Virginians carved out spaces of belonging under hostile laws and social norms, demonstrating resilience, creativity, and courage in the pursuit of freedom, visibility, and equality. For more information, contact the Robert Nusbaum Center at 757.455.3129 or NusbaumCenter@vwu.edu.

May - 2026

May 1	Academic Symposium / Spring Honors Convocation
May 16	Commencement Ceremony