Tag Archives: KUAR

UALR Evenings with History: How an Arkansan taught Chinese Nationalism

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The UALR Evenings with History program resumes for 2012 tomorrow night (February 7) with Jeffrey Kyong-McClain’s “The Heavenly History of the Han, or How a Liberal Baptist from Green Forest, Arkansas Taught Racial and Ethnic Nationalism to the Chinese.”

In the early years of the twentieth century, Chinese (or “Han”) nationalists were searching for ways to convert a tradition-bound and multi-cultural empire into a modern nation-state. Although, in the minds of these nationalists, foreign missionaries were a big part of China’s problem, many such missionaries in fact aided the Chinese against the non-Chinese in questions over who had the historical right to rule the borderlands, thereby helping Chinese nationalists assert their purported rights over vast amounts of territory.

This talk looks at the case of one missionary particularly active in this regard, Arkansan D.C. Graham, who blended liberal theology with a Social Darwinian belief in the superiority of the Chinese over the other people groups in the region (southwest China). Graham propagated this belief as the pioneer of modern archaeology and ethnography in Sichuan province in the 1920s and 1930s, and his ideas remain influential in the region to this day.

A member of the UALR History faculty, Dr. Kyong-McClain was born and raised in Minneapolis. He received a BA in History from the University of Minnesota and an MA in Theology from Bethel Seminary, St. Paul, before beginning graduate work in Chinese History at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He lived for three years in the city of Chengdu, in southwestern China, the last year on a Fulbright-Hays dissertation grant. His research centers on the place of archaeology in modern Chinese nation-building; teaching interests include modern China and modern Korea, and anything pertaining to Sino-Western interaction.

The Evenings with History take place in the Ottenheimer Auditorium in the Historic Arkansas Museum at 200 E. Third Street. Refreshments are served at 7:00 p.m., and the talk begins at 7:30 p.m.

Corporate sponsors for the 2011-2012 season are Delta Trust, Union Pacific Railroad, the Little Rock School District—Teaching American History Program; the law firms of Friday, Eldredge, & Clark and Wright, Lindsey & Jennings. Also thanks for support and gifts in kind from the Ottenheimer Library; Historic Arkansas Museum, a museum of the Department of Arkansas Heritage; UALR Public Radio–KLRE-KUAR; and Grapevine Spirits

Shakespeare’s South

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In partnership with the Arkansas Shakespeare Theater, acclaimed writers Graham Gordy, Trenton Lee Stewart, and Warwick Sabin will bring Shakespeare to the South for a very special Tales from the South on Tuesday evening, January 17, 2012, with stories centered around finding themselves, others, and even the South in the Bard. The live taping of the radio series will be at Starving Artist Café in the Argenta Arts District, Downtown North Little Rock. Live music by The Salty Dogs.

Doors open at 5pm, dinner is served 5pm-6:30pm and the show starts at 7pm. Tickets are $5 for the show, plus the cost of dinner. Seating is very limited. Tickets can be purchased online at www.talesfromthesouth.com.

“Tales from the South” is recorded on Tuesdays during “Dinner and a Show” at Starving Artist Café. The show airs locally on KUAR Thursdays at 7pm and is syndicated by World Radio Network, a satellite radio distribution service, available to more than 130 million listeners worldwide. Shows are also distributed nationwide to multiple public radio stations by PRX (Public Radio Exchange). Podcasts are available on ITunes, the NPR website, the KUAR website, the PRX website, and the “Tales from the South” website.

“Tales from the South” is presented by the Argenta Arts Foundation, with AY Magazine as the official media sponsor, publishing a story each month in the magazine. Additional support provided by William F. Laman Public Library, the North Little Rock Visitor’s Bureau and The Oxford American Magazine.

Two Jewish Guys Chanukah Special on KUAR

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Chanukah begins at sundown tonight.  To get everyone in the spirit of it, KUAR – UALR Public Radio – is presenting the 11th annual Jewish Guys Chanukah Special tonight at 7pm on KUAR – FM 89.1.  Little Rock attorney Phil Kaplan and adman Leslie Singer recorded the broadcast before a live audience earlier in the month.

The Jewish Guys Chanukah Special celebrates cultural Judaism and features skits, music and general shtick. Musical guests included the Meshugga Klezmer Band and the Bauman Brothers.

“This year’s special guest is Susan McDougal who special prosecutor Ken Starr sent to prison for no cooperating with his investigation of President Clinton,” Leslie Singer says. “I’m going to ask her if she celebrated Chanukah with the Jewish inmates she has said took her in.”

Kaplan and Singer started identifying themselves as the Two Jewish Guys during KUAR’s semi-annual on-air fund drives several years ago. In 2001, the Two Jewish Guys and UALR Public Radio began producing an annual recorded Chanukah Special. After first featuring a live audience at the Central Arkansas Library System main campus, it outgrew that space and moved in 2007 to the Clinton Presidential Center.

“Interesting enough, at least two-thirds of our audience are not Jewish. That really inspires me that they are interested in the religious and cultural part of Judaism,” Singer noted to KUAR. “They enjoy a peek into another culture. And they like it.”

The program will also be broadcast on Christmas Day at 1pm. That is also the 5th of 8 days of Chanukah.