Thursday, October 30, 2008

David Blackbourn: "Landscape and Identity in Modern Germany"





What: David Blackbourn, Professor of History at Harvard University: "Landscape and Identity in Modern Germany"
When: Wednesday, November 5th 3:30 p.m.
Where: Regency A, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Union (2nd floor auditorium)

Professor Blackbourn is one of the most prominent German and European historians in the United States. He is the author of The Conquest of Nature, Water, Landscape, and the Making of Modern Germany (Norton, 2006). This lecture will be of interest to anyone interested in regional history, environmental history, comparative history, 19th century studies, European studies, or anyone who wishes to explore issues involving a sense of place, space, landscape, region, and identity.


The lecture is sponsored by the Plains Humanities Alliance and the Center for Great Plains Studies. Copies of The Conquest of Nature will be available for purchase, and this event is free and open to to the public.







Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Reading by Tayari Jones

When: Thursday, October 23rd at 7:30 p.m.
Where: Great Plains Art Museum, Hewit Place (12th and Q)

Award-winning African American novelist and author of Leaving Atlanta and The Untelling, will be reading from her work in the Great Plains Art Museum on October 23rd at 7:30 p.m. Her books will be available for purchase at the event, and a booksigning will follow the reading. This event is sponsored by the UNL department of English-Creative Writing and Ethnic Studies.

Jones's novel Leaving Atlanta received the Hurston/Wright Award for Debut Fiction, was named "Novel of the Year" by Atlanta Magazine, "Best Southern Novel of the Year" by Creative Loafing Atlanta. Her second novel, The Untelling, was awarded the Lillian C. Smith Award for New Voices by The Southern Regional Council and the University of Georgia Libraries. She has been awarded a slew of fellowships from organizations across the country.

This event is free and open to the public!


Information gathered from UNL Press Release and www.TayariJones.com.
Photo copyright Richard Powers, from www.TayariJones.com.

Sunday, October 12, 2008

Featured Poet: Red Shuttleworth


For your reading pleasure once again, a poem (by a dear friend of Plains Song Review), Red Shuttleworth.

____

The Holy Grail

Decades after his widow caught a ride
to a rest home, the village photographer's
negatives were found...so there is something
to be said for the patience of the unjust.

Fire on snow.
Cattle on corn stubble.
The turbulent eyes of a farm boy
in a mud-splattered Sunday suit.
A mother cradling her dead child's shoes.
A trio of old men, bald domes,
shrunken faces, in Rough Rider uniforms,
precarious on saddled plow horses.

Someone phones someone at Minot State.
A scholar comes a week later, on the dot,
carries the widow's stuff,
except for the negatives,
from her 30 x 20 paint-blistered house,
and leaves green plastic garbage sacks
beside the gravel road.

It thunders and hails that night...
and mice scratch horribly
inside the woman's house...
shake a wedding portrait
off a tattered floral-papered wall.

____

Red Shuttleworth and his wife and children lived in Fairbury and Winside in the eighties. Red’s Western Settings received the first Spur Award for Poetry in 2001 from Western Writers of America. He was named “Best Living Western Poet” in 2007 by True West magazine. Red will shortly be seen in Minnetonka Review and has poems set to appear in RATTLE's special Western/Cowboy poetry issue and Weber: The Contemporary West. Red currently lives in Moses Lake, Washington.

Thursday, October 9, 2008

Plain Speaking & Straight Shooting: Documentary Art in Flyover Country

The second in the Paul Olson Seminar series for fall 2008 is Michael Farrell, Photographer and TV Production Manager for NET, and Adjunct Faculty member at the College of Journalism and Mass Communication at UNL.

Plain Speaking & Straight Shooting: Documentary Art in Flyover Country
Speaker: Michael Farrell
Where: Great Plains Art Gallery, Hewit Center (12th and Q, Lincoln)
When: October 15, 3:30 p.m.

This event is free and open to the public! If you can't make it to the seminar, Michael Farrell's photography exhibit Hinterlands NE WY CO will be on display at the Great Plains Art Gallery until October 31--stop in and check out his photography!