Everything Starts in England!

Professor Allan Chapman visits the Bemidji State University (BSU) campus each fall to promote the Eurospring Program, the oldest international study program at BSU. This visit includes a public lecture given by Chapman, but also several BSU professors request his presence in their classes as a visiting lecturer. 

Until September 19^th, 2011 I had only heard rumors of Professor Chapman from other students who had either gone to Europsring or attended his lectures. I had been told that he had been really hard to understand, but eventually you caught on and he could lecture on any subject with very little to no preparation with the exception of a cup of tea.   

I was a junior at BSU, taking a literary journalism class where my own professor Louise Mengelkoch had earlier in the day asked Chapman to stop by the class and discuss the concept of literary journalism. Chapman, dressed in as professional as you can get wearing a faded black suit, a crooked bowtie, and a British flag pin on lapel, walked  into the basement of the A.C. Clark Library and quickly decided he would prefer a room with a white board. We relocated and after a brief introduction, Chapman quickly goes over exactly what a semester at Oxford entails during the Europsring program. 

Before he began speaking about literary journalism he took out his hankie from his pocket, blew his nose and said "My mother used to say when your nose is running you need to run after it."  Chapman lead into the history of literary journalism with the fact that this tradition started in England, everything important does. He started by writing “John Milton, Paradise Lost” on the board and discussesd that this man was a great poet who was also a professional news writer and news commenter. Chapman continued to inform us of the history including Oliver Cromwell, Salmasius, Joseph Addison, Alexander Pope, Sylvan Urban, and Charles Dickens.

As Chapman contiuned to speak, I started to notice odd things about this man. He was wearing a wedding ring on his right hand. Also he had large scar starting near the bottom of his left ear leading to the bottom of his chin. It was easy to get distarcted because his apperace was so regal along with his balding with sliver blonde hair. While noticing this different things, it was so easy to tune his and his heavy accent out.

Chapman’s BSU guide motioned that it was time for him to leave in order to have time to prepare for his campus wide lecture. Chapman asked if we have any questions, the whole class sat in silence stunned at how much information was given off the top of his head in less than thirty minutes.  Champan grabed his tea, said “good bye” and headed out the door.

Here is a video that one my classmates, Joe Moubry filmed during his presentation to our class.