‘Your Voice Carries: Sound, Silence & Self” Set for October 21

Clarke University and the Mackin-Mailander Lecture Series invite the community to campus on Wednesday, October 21 for “Your Voice Carries: Sound, Silence & Self,” a talk from Assistant Professor and Chair of the Liberal Studies and General Education department Dr. Aimee Taylor McClure. The event is free to attend and will begin at 7 p.m. in Jansen Music Hall.  

In her talk, Taylor McClure will explore the many voices we carry within us and how easily they can be silenced by forces outside our control. This can mean the physical voice, shaped by language and the judgments others place on how we sound, to the inner voice, the narrator that can be distorted by adversity and slowly restored through healing, and other voices we may or may not recognize in ourselves. 

“It is my hope that this time invites the audience to listen for their deepest voice, rooted in their values and convictions,” Taylor McClure said. “It’s often the quietest as it competes with the noise around us. If we can listen for the voices we carry within ourselves and recognize which ones have gone quiet or which we may have stopped listening to, it can open a path to growth and healing.”  

Taylor McClure grew up in the Appalachian region of Southern Ohio and Northern Kentucky and began writing and performing at a young age. She holds degrees in English from Shawnee State University and Marshall University, with a Ph.D. in Rhetoric and Writing Studies from Bowling Green State University. She has been a college educator for over fifteen years and has worked in writing centers for twenty. In addition to teaching, Taylor McClure serves as managing editor for the Practices & Possibilities book series at the WAC Clearinghouse, an open access publisher in the field of Writing Across the Curriculum. She has been at Clarke since 2018 and was the 2025 recipient of the BVM Core Values award.  

The Clarke University Mackin-Mailander Lecture Series was established in 1997 after Clarke received gifts from two alumnae, Mary Mackin ’34 and Verna Slattery-Mailander ’20, to establish an endowed lecture series. The annual series consists of three lectures, including a prominent outside speaker, a faculty lecture, and an alumni lecture.