The Humanities and Fine Arts Division of Chattanooga State Community College will host its​ 5th annual Chautauqua Lecture Series beginning Thursday, September 20.  

In 1874, people gathered on the shores of Chautauqua Lake in New York State to enjoy speakers, teachers, musicians, and specialists who entertained and educated members of the community, thus catalyzing an adult education movement that subsequently spread throughout rural America. Since 2014, Chattanooga State has hosted its own monthly Chautauqua to unite faculty, students, staff, and the larger Chattanooga community in exploring a wide array of topics within the Humanities. The Humanities and Fine Arts Division invite you to join in this tradition with the announcement of its slate of presentations for the 2018-2019 academic year.

Chattanooga State’s Chautauqua Series will feature the informative and unique research of seven Humanities & Fine Arts faculty as well as the series finale with Writers@Work 2018-2019 visiting authors Beth Ann Fennelly and Tom Franklin. Assistant Professor Juan Antonio Alonso will kick off the series on September 20 at 2:00 p.m. with a talk entitled “One Mind, Seven Thousand Tongues: Unity and Diversity in World Languages,” which explores the paradoxical diversity and unity of world languages, advocating for an equal status for all human languages.

The fall semester will offer two additional presentations. On October 18, Assistant Professor Mindy Griffin and Director of the Andrews Writing Center Mollee Shannon will present “Double, Double, Toil and Trouble: The History of Witchcraft and Demonic Women in Literature, Media, and Culture,” an exploration of historical and contemporary notions of witches and witchcraft, with a specific emphasis on the 1600s and the infamous Salem Witch Trials. Assistant Professor Julie Barcroft and Associate Professor Evans Jarnefeldt will close out the fall semester’s installments on November 15 with “Mobilizing Empathy: The Encounter of ‘Otherness’ Through Art,” which examines how art can be usefully disorienting, helping to unpack power dynamics, cultural encounters, and personal identity.

The series will resume in the spring semester on February 21, 2019, with Professor Katheryn Thompson’s talk entitled “Borderlands: The Land Between and the Finding and Creation of Self,” which connects Gloria Anzaldúa’s concept of the threshold between two worlds with broader literary and educational contexts. This is followed on March 21 by Assistant Professor Eric Niemi’s presentation “Playing with Rituals: How Board Games Impact Culture,” which covers a brief history of board games, presents how ritual and rhetoric is embedded in this form of play, and also discusses how these games impact culture.

The final installment in the 2018-2019 Chautauqua Lecture Series will be held on April 11 in partnership with the Humanities Department’s Writers@Work program. This special event features the 2018-19 Writers@Work visiting authors, Beth Ann Fennelly and Tom Franklin, and focuses on their collaborative novel The Tilted World, as well as the art and craft of writing.

WHEN: 2-3 p.m., September 20, October 18, November 15, February 21, March 21, and April 11.

WHERE: Kolwyck Library and Information Commons, Chattanooga State Main Campus, 4501 Amnicola Highway.

COST: Free to all members of the public.

FOR MORE INFORMATION: Facebook: “Chattanooga State’s Chautauqua Series”; Instagram: “chautauqua_series”; Twitter: “@ChautauquaSeries”; Email: keri.lamb@chattanoogastate.edu.

Story by Keri Lamb, Chattanooga State