Welcome to our inaugural group of USIH-IUPUI Community Scholars! In partnership with the Institute for American Thought at IUPUI, we are proud to host such a fantastic array of scholars studying diverse aspects of the field. Please join us in welcoming our USIH-IUPUI Community Scholars: Cari S. Babitzke, Matthew Guariglia, Zachary Jacobson, Drew Maciag, L. Benjamin Rolsky, Lauren Lassabe Shepherd, and Rick Townsend.And that’s a wrap on introductions! Please stay tuned right here for our Community Scholars’ research finds and updates.
Rick Townsend is retired from the United States Air Force fighter as a fighter pilot and instructor, and also from a career with a major commercial airline as a Captain. He has flown more than 25 aircraft types during his aviation career. He graduated from the United States Air Force Academy with a Bachelor of Science in General Studies, and from Troy State University with a Master of Science in International Relations. His Master’s Degree capstone project researched the future of Communism in the age of Glasnost and Perestroika of the late 1980s. Rick was often called on to write understandable texts synthesizing technically rigorous engineering topics during his aviation career. He gained an interest in making complex topics understandable to pilots and this developed into an interest in researching broad societal topics, and the influence of those ideas on culture. This interest, in turn, led him to the University of Texas at Dallas and the History of Ideas program. His doctoral dissertation centered on William Jennings Bryan’s advocacy of causes using rights-based arguments focuses on the critical subject of human rights as it was used to defend causes in the early twentieth century. As an author and entrepreneur, he has written and published seven aircraft study manuals and two computer software guides, of which six titles are currently in print and available online through Amazon and other retailers. During this phase of his life, Rick is an active researcher concerning big ideas in culture and how these ideas influence the culture and vice versa. His focal historic time span is the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century period. Rick and his wife, Gail, live in Grapevine, Texas. They have three grown sons and three incredible daughters in law, as well as three grandchildren. Read on to learn more about Rick’s scholarship and his plans as a USIH-IUPUI Community Scholar:
“My proposed research focuses on the intellectual history surrounding the theory of evolution. The research plan includes surveying nineteenth- and early twentieth-century primary source documents to understand the foundations of public and scientific community awareness of Darwin’s theory when it was revealed in 1859. It will then assess the reactions of professional academics, research scientists and the general public as the new ideas Darwin proposed were vetted. The primary period to be investigated is from 1850-1925. This allows research into the decade before Darwin released his magnum opus, The Origin of Species, and the decades following that release. The period ends with the Scopes trial in 1925. Research may dictate expanding the timeline to include more recent controversies of the mid- to late-twentieth-century, including the 2005 Kitzmiller trial.”
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