Category Archives: Lecture

CALS Legacy & Lunch explores New Madrid Earthquake at noon today

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Learn about “The New Madrid Earthquakes and Their Aftermath in Quapaw Country, 1811-1833” today (11/6) at 12 noon at the CALS Butler Center’s Legacies and Lunch program.  It will take place in the CALS Main Library.

The New Madrid Earthquakes of 1811–1812 were the strongest earthquakes in the North American interior in the last six centuries. Across the vast expanse of land the seismic events affected, people struggled to address the earthquakes’ religious meaning and material impact. This talk focuses on the earthquakes in Quapaw country, where the events featured in recorded Quapaw oral histories and became a factor in Quapaw territorial dispossession through the New Madrid Relief Act of 1815.

Jonathan Hancock is an associate professor of history and environmental studies at Hendrix College in Conway. He has published work in the Journal of the Early Republic, The Princeton Companion to Atlantic History, and Warring for America: Cultural Contests in the Era of 1812 (University of North Carolina Press, 2017) and has held research fellowships from the Bright Institute at Knox College, the Huntington Library, the Newberry Library, and the University of North Carolina Royster Society of Fellows. He is currently completing a book, Convulsed States: Earthquakes, Prophecy, and the Remaking of Nations in Early America, and beginning research for a new book project, “The Indigenous Lowcountry: A 4,000-Year History of Native Communities near Charleston.”

Legacies & Lunch is a free monthly program of CALS Butler Center for Arkansas Studies about Arkansas related topics.  Program are held from noon to 1 pm on the first Wednesday of the month.  Attendees are invited to bring a sack lunch; drinks and dessert are provided.  A library parking discount is available upon request

Arkansas composers Florence Price and William Grant Still topic of noon Clinton School program today

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In advance of the Beethoven & Blue Jeans concert, join conductor Andrew Grams and Linda Holzer, professor of music at University of Arkansas at Little Rock, on a discussion about the music of Arkansas composers William Grant Still and Florence Price.

It will take place at 12 noon at the Clinton School of Public Service.

American conductor Andrew Grams has steadily built a reputation for his dynamic concerts, ability to connect with audiences, and long-term orchestra building. He’s the winner of 2015 Conductor of the Year from the Illinois Council of Orchestras and has led orchestras throughout the United States. Now in his 7th ESO season, Andrew Grams became music director of the Elgin Symphony Orchestra after an international search.

Florence Price was the first African-American female composer to have a symphonic composition performed by a major American symphony orchestra. Born in Little Rock in 1887, she was valedictorian of her class at Little Rock’s Capitol Hill School.  After college, she returned to Little Rock, was married, and established a music studio, taught piano lessons, and wrote short pieces for piano.

The Prices moved to Chicago, Illinois, in 1927. There, Price seemed to have more professional opportunity for growth despite the breakdown and eventual dissolution of her marriage.  In 1928, G. Schirmer, a major publishing firm, accepted for publication Price’s “At the Cotton Gin.” After winning several composition awards, she had a piece premiere with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on June 15, 1933.

Price’s art songs and spiritual arrangements were frequently performed by well-known artists of the day. For example, contralto Marian Anderson featured Price’s spiritual arrangement “My Soul’s Been Anchored in the Lord” in her famous performance on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC on Easter Sunday, April 9, 1939. European orchestras later played Price’s works.

William Grant Still was long known as the Dean of African American composers. Though not born in Little Rock, he spent much of his youth in the city.

Dr. Still, who wrote more than 150 compositions ranging from operas to arrangements of folk themes, is best known as a pioneer. He was the first African-American in the United States to have a symphonic composition performed by a major orchestra.

He was the first African American to conduct a major symphony orchestra in the US; the first to conduct a major symphony in the south; first to conduct a white radio orchestra in New York City; first to have an opera produced by a major company. Dr. Still was also the first African-American to have an opera televised over a national network

 

 

Hear Fred Burton discussing his new book BEIRUT RULES today at noon at the Clinton School

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Image result for beirut rulesIn another timely Clinton School program, Fred Burton will be discussing the book Beirut Rules, which he co-wrote with Samuel M. Katz.  The program will take place today (October 30) at 12 noon.  A book signing will follow.

From The New York Times bestselling co-authors of “Under Fire” comes the riveting story of the kidnapping and murder of CIA Station Chief William Buckley.

After a deadly terrorist bombing at the American embassy in Lebanon in 1983, only one man inside the CIA possessed the courage and skills to rebuild the networks destroyed in the blast: William Buckley. But the new Beirut station chief quickly became the target of a young terrorist named Imad Mughniyeh.

“Beirut Rules” is the pulse-by-pulse account of Buckley’s abduction, torture, and murder at the hands of Hezbollah terrorists. Drawing on never-before-seen government documents as well as interviews with Buckley’s co-workers, friends and family, Burton and Katz reveal how the relentless search for Buckley in the wake of his kidnapping ignited a war against terror that continues to shape the Middle East to this day.

All Clinton School Speaker Series events are free and open to the public. Reserve your seats by emailing publicprograms@clintonschool.uasys.edu or by calling (501) 683-5239.