Events for Fall 2009

Katherine McNamara, Independent Scholar: Cold Fortune: Three Lives in Retrospect

Tuesday September 15, 2009
12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
Virginia Foundation for the Humanities
145 Ednam Drive map it
Charlottesville, VA 22903

Katherine McNamara is the author of Narrow Road to the Deep North, A Journey into the Interior of Alaska (2001), and the founding editor and publisher of Archipelago (www.archipelago.org), an international journal of literature, the arts, opinion, and politics. Her talk will grow out of her book project, a memoir about Martha Demientieff, a noted Native Alaskan educator; Peter Kalifornsky, the Dena'ina Athabaskan author, on the art of writing his oral language; and the author’s late husband Lee Goerner, a New York literary publisher. A complimentary lunch will be provided.

Theodore C. DeLaney: Public School Desegregation in Western Virginia

Tuesday October 6, 2009
12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
Virginia Foundation for the Humanities
145 Ednam Drive map it
Charlottesville, VA 22903

DeLaney is Associate Professor and Head of the History Department at Washington and Lee University. His talk will grow out of his book project on school desegregation in four Virginia counties: Augusta, Rockbridge, Botetourt, and Roanoke. In these counties, low population density and small numbers of African Americans forced consolidation of white and black schools. DeLaney argues that desegregation, while a necessary first step toward equal opportunity, left a troubling legacy for all involved. This event is cosponsored by the Carter G. Woodson Institute for African-American and African Studies at the University of Virginia. A complimentary lunch will be provided.

Mitchell S. Green, University of Virginia: The Evolution of Language

Tuesday October 27, 2009
12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
Virginia Foundation for the Humanities
145 Ednam Drive map it
Charlottesville, VA 22903

Green is the the NEH/Horace Goldsmith Distinguished Teaching Professor of Philosophy at the University of Virginia. His research is primarily in the philosophy of language and communication. His talk will focus on the evolution of language. It is widely acknowledged that in spite of the impressive power of many animal communication systems, none approaches human natural language in combinatorial complexity and expressive power. This fact raises the question how human natural languages could have evolved. The last decade has seen enormous interest in this topic among evolutionary biologists, linguists, neuroscientists, computer scientists, and some philosophers. Green will provide an overview of some of the leading theories attempting to explain the evolution of human natural language. A complimentary lunch will be provided.

Lecture by Prof. Trudier Harris: "The Scary Mason-Dixon Line"

Friday November 6, 2009
12:30 PM - 2:00 PM
Virginia Foundation for the Humanities
145 Ednam Drive map it
Charlottesville, VA 22903

This event is part of The Big Read.

Trudier Harris, the J. Carlyle Sitterson Professor of English Emerita at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, will discuss her new book, The Scary Mason-Dixon Line: African American Writers and the South. A reception at 12:30 precedes her 1 p.m. lecture.

Prof. Harris is the author or editor of more than 20 volumes of criticism on African American literature and folklore. Regarding Dr. Trudier Harris' new book and the subject of her talk at VFH, LSU Press states: "New Yorker James Baldwin once declared that a black man can look at a map of the United States, contemplate the area south of the Mason-Dixon Line, and thus scare himself to death. In The Scary Mason-Dixon Line, renowned literary scholar Trudier Harris explores why black writers, whether born in Mississippi, New York, or elsewhere, have consistently both loved and hated the South." For more info, call 434-243-5176.

Eric Gary Anderson, George Mason University: On Native Southern Ground

Tuesday November 17, 2009
12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
Virginia Foundation for the Humanities
145 Ednam Drive map it
Charlottesville, VA 22903

Anderson is Associate Professor of English at George Mason University, where he also directs a new program in Native American and Indigenous Studies. His presentation will be drawn from his book project, On Native Southern Ground, an interdisciplinary analysis of literary texts ranging from pre-1700 southeastern captivity narratives to contemporary Native artistic and intellectual works. In bringing Native and Southern Studies together, he will discuss how Native writers and writings challenge received notions of what the South is, what it means, and even where it is. A complimentary lunch will be provided.

Corinne T. Field: Women’s Rights and the Struggle for Equal Adulthood in America, 1792-1939

Tuesday December 1, 2009
12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
Virginia Foundation for the Humanities
145 Ednam Drive map it
Charlottesville, VA 22903

Field recently earned her Ph.D. in history from Columbia University. She has taught in the University of Virginia’s Studies in Women and Gender program and is completing a book on the political significance of adulthood. In her presentation, she will explore how ideas about female aging structured not only the women’s rights movement but American democracy itself. She will examine how activists such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Frederick Douglass, Frances Harper, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman fought to win women respect for mature achievement rather than youthful beauty. In the process, they redefined what it means for men and women to grow up and grow old. This event is cosponsored by UVA Studies in Women and Gender. A complimentary lunch will be provided.

Virginia Indian Heritage Program