Immigration Film Series Concludes with "Harvest of Shame"

Harvest of Shame, a film narrated and produced by Edward Murrow, will be the eighth and final installment of the film series on immigration Tuesday, April 24, at 7 p.m. at the Auburn Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, located at 540 E. Thach Ave. Victor Villanueva, professor and head of Auburn's English department, will lead discussion. 

Harvest of Shame is among the most famous television documentaries of all time. This 1960 expose on the plight of migrant workers resonated deeply for a nation unfamiliar with such brutally honest depictions of living conditions that as Murrow remarks, “wrong the dignity of man.”

The event is sponsored by the Auburn University Latin American Studies Center for Community Connections, the College of Liberal Arts Global Citizenship Project, the departments of Foreign Languages and Literatures, English and Political Science, as well as AUUF and the Caroline Marshall Draughon Center for the Arts and Humanities in the College of Liberal Arts.

Lewis "Buddy" Nordan, 1939-2012

Lewis “Buddy” Nordan passed away on Friday, April 13, 2012, in Hudson, OH. He was 72.

Born on August 23, 1939, Nordan grew up in Itta Bena, MS. He earned a Ph.D. in English from Auburn University in 1973 and served as an instructor in English at Auburn University from 1966 to 1971. Before retiring in 2005, Lewis Nordan lived in Pittsburgh, PA, where he taught Creative Writing at the University of Pittsburgh.

Nordan wrote four novels, three collections of short stories and a memoir entitled Boy with Loaded Gun. His second novel, Wolf Whistle, won the Southern Book Award, and his subsequent novel, The Sharpshooter Blues, won the Notable Book Award from the American Library Association and the Fiction Award from the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters. Nordan was renowned for his distinctive comic writing style, even while addressing more serious personal and cultural issues such as heartbreak, loss, violence and racism. He transformed tragic characters and events into moments of artistic transcendence, illuminating what he called the “history of all human beings.”

Nordan was the subject of a major conference at Auburn in 2009, which resulted in a groundbreaking book of critical essays entitled Lewis Nordan: Humor, Heartbreak, and Hope (Pebble Hill Books, University of Alabama Press, 2011). Sessions from the conference may be found on iTunes. Nordan’s Sharpshooter Blues was Auburn’s first common reading program selection.

“Buddy had the rare combination of having unusual talent and being a consummate practitioner of his craft,” notes Dr. Barbara Baker, editor of Lewis Nordan: Humor, Heartbreak, and Hope. “He claimed that he became a writer during his years at Auburn, and over a long career he created fiction that was often outrageously humorous at the same time it could break your heart.  He was also a wonderful person who was genuinely appreciated by some of the best writers and critics of our time.  He will be missed.”

Free Writing Workshop Offered to Local Non-Profits

On Tuesday, April 24, 10 am–12 pm, The Community Writing Center will host “Writing to Reach,” a workshop for local non-profit agencies. The workshop will be hosted at the Good Will Career Center and is free and open to the public.

The workshop will cover issues related to writing for non-profit agencies including newsletters, grants, and writing for the web. Additionally, the workshop will encourage attendees to network and make connections with other local non-profit agencies. Lunch will be provided.

The Community Writing Center, part of the Caroline Marshall Draughon Center for the Arts & Humanities in the College of Liberal Arts at Auburn University, will offer several more workshops for the public focused on different types of writing throughout the year.

For more information, go to http://communitywritingauburn.org, or contact Beth Savoy at beth.savoy@auburn.edu.

Join us for a lecture by Dr. Suzanne Blier

On Tuesday, April 17, Dr. Suzanne Blier, Allen Whitehill Clowes Professor of Fine Arts and of African and African American Studies, Harvard University, will give a talk entitled “Art Matters: Sculpture, Peace, and Diplomacy in Ancient Yoruba" at 5 p.m. in Biggin Hall Auditorium. The lecture will explore the amazing terracottas and bronzes of ancient Ife and a king who brought peace to warring factions of a devastating civil war through the commissioning of art works and a new city plan. The public is invited.

Blier, an historian of African art and architecture in both the History of Art and Architecture and African and African American Studies Departments at Harvard, is the author of The Anatomy of Architecture: Ontology and Metaphor in Batammaliba Architectural Expression (Cambridge University Press) and  African Vodun: Art, Psychology, and Power, among others. Her forthcoming book is Art and Risk in Ancient Yoruba: Ife History, Power and Identity c.1300. (Cambridge University Press, 2012) and African's Worlds: A History (with Joseph C. Miller, Oxford University Press, 2012).

On Wednesday, April 18, Blier will give a free lecture/demonstration on the electronic geo-spatial database AfricaMap, a site of the WorldMap project. She serves as co-chair for Africamap. The lecture will be held at noon the Special Collections and Archives Department of the Ralph Brown Draughon Library. A reception will follow.

Blier’s lectures are the concluding programs for Art at the Threshold, a program of Auburn Connects! common reading program. Sponsored by Auburn University College of Liberal Arts’ Department of Art and the Caroline Marshall Draughon Center for the Arts & Humanities.

Auburn Speaks: Making Auburn Research Available

The inaugural edition of Auburn Speaks, an annual publication showcasing Auburn University research and creative scholarship, is now available for purchase. 

A year in the making, Auburn Speaks: The Oil Spill of 2010 focuses on research across campus that related to the catastrophic explosion of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico in spring 2010. The explosion set off a chain of events that led to the largest environmental and economic disaster in the history of the region.  The impacts of that disaster are still felt and are not yet fully understood.

Auburn Speaks captures the work of faculty across campus who address issues ranging from the environment to health to economics. The stories in Auburn Speaks make their research accessible and interesting for all readers.

Beautifully illustrated, Auburn Speaks is full of compelling, fascinating stories of what goes on behind the scenes in labs, at computers, on boats and between the pages as university faculty and students seek understanding and answers. For instance, the impact of the Deepwater Horizon explosion on communities that dot the Alabama Gulf Coast, including Orange Beach and Bayou La Batre, was environmental, as well as social, economic and physical. Judith Sheppard, faculty member in Journalism, interviews the people who experienced the disaster first hand, while Ken Halanych, Chris Anderson, Prabhakar Clement and Joel Hayworth are among the many contributors who give us the science behind oil drilling, the spill and clean-up.

Produced by the Office of the Vice President for Research with assistance from the Office of University Writing, the Caroline Marshall Draughon Center for the Arts & Humanities in the College of Liberal Arts and the Office of Communications and Marketing, Auburn Speaks, according for VP for Research Dr. John Mason, intends to “make Auburn Research more accessible to a broad audience.

Auburn Speaks is available through its website, http://auburn.edu/auburnspeaks, and at the Auburn University bookstore.

Public programs, including lectures and presentations, on Auburn Speaks: The Oil Spill of 2010, will be available to libraries, schools and communities. For more information on the publication or opportunities to bring speakers to your town, go to http://auburn.edu/auburnspeaks or call 334-844-4946. 

Eric Schlosser Speaks on "To Be an American"

Acclaimed author and journalist Eric Schlosser will give a free talk on Thursday, March 22 at 4 p.m. in the Auburn University Hotel and Conference Center auditorium. His talk, “To Be an American,” addresses the historical, cultural and social implications of our nation’s immigrant identity.

As a melting-pot nation, the United States has experienced both the vigor and the tension that comes from making one of many. Schlosser’s wide-ranging perspective addresses the roots of American identity and the impulse that helped make the nation a destination for those in search of economic, cultural and religious freedom. 

Schlosser’s first book, Fast Food Nation, published in 2001, helped start a revolution in how Americans think about what they eat. In 2011 it was named one of Time magazine’s 100 all-time best nonfiction books and remained on the New York Times bestseller list for two years. His second book, Reefer Madness (2003), looked at America’s thriving underground economy and was also a New York Times bestseller.

Schlosser served as an executive producer and co-wrote the feature film Fast Food Nation (2006), directed by Richard Linklater. He was a co-producer of the award-winning documentary, Food, Inc., directed by Robert Kenner, and served as executive producer of There Will Be Blood (2008), directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. Two of Schlosser’s plays have been produced in London: Americans (2003) at the Arcola Theatre and We the People (2007) at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre.

As an investigative journalist, Schlosser has made a career of going outside the mainstream media to give a voice to people not always widely heard. He’s followed the harvest with migrant farm workers in California, spent time with meatpacking workers in Texas and Colorado and gone on duty with the New York Police Department Bomb Squad. 

Schlosser’s talk is sponsored by the College of Liberal Arts’ Caroline Marshall Draughon Center for the Arts & Humanities, Department of Communication & Journalism and Community and Civic Engagement Initiative, as well as the Auburn University College of Agriculture. 

Film Series on Immigration Continues with "Abandoned"

Abandoned (2000, 55 minutes), a film by directors David Belle and Nicholas Wrathall, is the second installment of a film series on immigration. Abandoned will screen at on Tuesday, March 6 at 7 p.m. at the Auburn Unitarian Universalist Fellowship (540 East Thach Avenue). Dr. Stacey Hunt, professor in the Auburn University College of Liberal Arts, will lead discussion.

Abandoned, takes a close look at the personal impact of immigration laws and depicts the severity of current detention and deportation policies. Through intimate interviews and shocking footage of detainees' treatment behind bars the film provides an eye-opening experience for those unfamiliar with the detention system.

Hunt, who will moderate Abandoned, is currently an assistant professor of Political Science. She specializes in comparative politics with an emphasis on contemporary state construction in Latin America.  Abandoned, has been shown at over a dozen film festivals and focuses on the effects of the 1996 law that allows for the Immigration and Naturalization Service to imprison legal permanent residents and asylum applicants.

The series, which is free and open to all, will include screenings of seven other films, including Harvest of Shame, Pueblos Hermanos and Morristown. Each screening will take place at AUUF at 7 p.m. Designed to spark discussion of both film and issues of immigration, the series was created by Dr. Kerri Muñoz and is sponsored by the Auburn University Latin American Studies Center for Community Connections, the College of Liberal Arts Global Citizenship Project, the departments of Foreign Languages and Literatures, English, and Political Science, as well as AUUF and the Caroline Marshall Draughon Center for the Arts & Humanities in the Collegeof Liberal Arts.