An accomplished and award-winning writer and director, John Patrick Shanley has written extensively for film and the stage. His play Doubt, which opened off-Broadway in 2004, became the first of his plays to transfer to Broadway and then to the screen. The screen adaptation of Doubt, written and directed by Shanley, earned him 2009 Academy Award and Writers Guild Award nominations for best adapted screenplay. While on Broadway, Doubt won numerous awards, including the Tony, New York Drama Critics Circle Award, The Drama League Award, the Drama Desk Award and the Pulitzer.

Shanley's original screenplays include: Five Corners, Moonstruck (for which he won an Oscar and a Writers Guild Award), The January Man and Joe Versus The Volcano, which he also directed. Five Corners was awarded the Special Jury Prize for screenplay at the Barcelona Film Festival. Shanley also wrote the adapted screenplay for Alive.

His long list of acclaimed plays, many of which he directed in their original productions, includes: Defiance, Savage In Limbo, The Dreamer Examines His Pillow, Beggars In the House of Plenty, Where's My Money?, Italian American Reconciliation, Four Dogs And A Bone, Danny and the Deep Blue Sea and Dirty Story, which earned Shanley a Drama Desk nomination.

The Beall-Russell Lectures in the Humanities were established in 1982 with a financial gift from Virginia B. Ball of Muncie, Ind. She named the lecture series in honor of her mother, Mrs. John A. Beall, and Lily Russell, former dean of women at Baylor, both Baylor alumnae of the Class of 1910.

Mrs. Ball subsequently funded the establishment of the Beall Poetry Festival in 1993, encouraging contemporary poetry. The purpose of the lectures is to provide an opportunity for Baylor students and faculty to meet and hear lecturers renowned in the humanities.

Past lecturers have included poet Maya Angelou, journalist Bill Moyers, and Nobel Prize winner for Literature Czeslaw Milosz. The full list of past lecturers is available at the Past Lecturers page.

Mrs. Ball died in 2005, but her legacy continues through the ongoing generosity of the Ball family, whose gifts benefit both the University and the greater Waco community.

From I-35 North:

• Take the University Parks exit - turn right
• Turn right on Bagby (second light)
• Turn right on Speight (first light)
• Proceed to the 3-way stop at Speight & 4th Street. The Cashion Building is on your right.
• You may turn right for visitors' parking or left to park in the Speight Plaza Parking Garage
• When you enter the Cashion Building, take the elevator to the 5th floor
• Room 510 is to the left as you exit the elevator

From I-35 South:

• Take the University Parks exit - turn left
• Turn right on Bagby (2nd light)
• Turn right on Speight (1st light)
• Proceed to the 3-way stop at Speight & 4th Street. The Cashion Building is on your right
• You may turn right for visitors' parking or left to park in the Speight Plaza parking garage
• When you enter the Cashion building, take the elevator to the 5th floor
• Room 510 is to the left as you exit the elevator