Welty Special Topics Class

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Welty Special Topics Class English 350 Major Authors: Eudora Welty Dr. Julia Eichelberger Spring 2010, MW 2‐3:15 Eudora Welty, Stories, Essays, and Memoir and Complete Novels (Library oF America) Suzanne Marrs, Eudora Welty: A Biography (Harcourt) Students in this course will explore all Eudora Welty’s short stories, three oF her novels, and her memoir. We will also spend some time with her photography, her essays, and some oF her unpublished letters (the subject oF my current research). During the First halF oF the semester we’ll read these works in chronological order. In the second halF oF the course, we will revisit these works, exploring how they’ve been interpreted by literary critics. Throughout the course we will consider biographical, historical, social, and cultural inFluences on Welty’s texts and on the lives oF the characters she writes about. We will also seek new and creative ways to interpret and do justice to her rich, multilayered literary art. Course requirements: 25% Reading journal and quizzes 10% Class participation 15% Short essay 8% Research report 22% Longer essay 15% Final exam Assignments: 25% Reading journal and quizzes You’ll keep a reading journal throughout the semester and are required to bring it to class every day. You may reFer to the journal For all quizzes and For part oF your exam. I’ll collect each person’s journal once beFore and once aFter midterm, to give you Feedback on the quality oF your entries. Sometimes I will also give you a prompt For an entry you’ll write in your journal during class. Quizzes in the First halF oF the semester will test whether you read the assigned texts and whether you are reading with the creative, receptive attention that Welty’s art deserves. There will be Fewer quizzes in the second halF oF the semester, but the ones I give will test your understanding of interpretations oF Welty that we’ll be studying in the second halF oF the semester. 10% Class participation Attendance and participation are required: this means being in class on time, having your journal and your copy oF the text with you, and being willing to participate in class discussions. More than 3 absences will harm your attendance grade. I’ll also assign everyone Five class days to present discussion questions to the class based on the reading we do For that week. 15% Short essay: 4­5 page analysis oF a motiF, recurring image, or some other pattern you discern in the language or events oF one chapter or story. Using this pattern as a way oF highlighting the richness oF the text, your analysis should try to explore some interpretive problem that the text presents. You’ll submit a draFt and receive Feedback beFore submitting the Final paper. 8% Research report on a historical or cultural context that will add to our understanding oF particular texts by Welty. Due on speciFic dates throughout the semester. You will submit these beFore the Final version is due to get my Feedback, then you’ll complete a short essay and present your Findings to the class, either in a short live presentation or in a multimedia report that you share with the class via WebCT. 22% Longer essay (10‐12 pages) on a topic oF your choice, using scholarly interpretations and any other biographical, cultural, or historical contexts that may be relevant. Topic due by Spring Break. You’ll also give a presentation drawing on the longer paper. You’ll share 2‐3 written pages From the paper, and will also present an interpretation oF Welty’s art using images and/or sound, as well as text iF you wish. 15% Final exam, which will test your knowledge oF Welty’s texts, their historical contexts, and scholars’ response to these texts. You’ll also write a take‐home essay on some aspect oF Welty’s work that you think deserves more attention. Projected Class Schedule (subject to modiFication) Week 1‐ M 1/11 Introduction to course and to Eudora Welty’s art W: A Curtain of Green stories, photographs From 1930s Week 2 M 1/18 Holiday W A Curtain of Green , The Robber Bridegroom (novella) Week 3 M The Wide Net stories W The Wide Net Week 4 M 2/1 Delta Wedding (novel) W Delta Wedding Week 5 M 2/8 The Golden Apples (interrelated story cycle) W The Golden Apples Week 6 M 2/15 The Bride of the Innisfallen (stories) W The Bride of the Innisfallen, essays From the 50s Week 7 M 2/22 Stories and essays From the 60s, The Optimist’s Daughter (novel) W The Optimist’s Daughter Week 8 M 3/1 One Writer’s Beginnings (memoir) W One Writer’s Beginnings and Welty’s biographies Spring Break Week 9 M 3/15 Critics’ readings oF A Curtain of Green W 3/17 Readings oF A Curtain of Green, Robber Bridegroom Week 10 M 3/22 Readings oF The Wide Net ` W 3/24 Readings oF The Wide Net/Delta Wedding Week 11 M 3/29 Readings oF Delta Wedding W 3/31 Readings oF The Golden Apples Week 12 M 4/5 Readings oF The Golden Apples W 4/7 Readings oF The Golden Apples Week 13 M 4/12 Readings oF Bride of the Innisfallen W 4/14 Readings oF Welty’s nonFiction Week 14 M 4/19 Readings oF The Optimist’s Daughter, Fiction From the 1960s W 4/21 Readings oF One Writer’s Beginnings and biographies Week 15 M 4/26 Discuss exam .
Recommended publications
  • The Optimist's Daughter
    BOOKS BY EUDORA WELTY A Curtain of Green The Robber Bridegroom The Wide Net Delta Wedding The Golden Apples The Ponder Heart The Bride of the Innisfallen Losing Battles One Time, One Place The Eye of the Story One Writer’s Beginnings VINTAGE INTERNATIONAL EDITION, AUGUST 1990 Copyright © 1969, 1972 by Eudora Welty All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc, New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto Originally published by Random House, Inc, in May 1972 The Optimists Daughter appeared originally in The New Yorker in a shorter and different form Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Welty, Eudora, 1909 The optimists daughter I Title PZ3 W6960p 1978 [PS3545 E6] 813’ 5’2 89-40630 eISBN: 978-0-307-78731-6 v3.1 For C.A.W. Contents Cover Other Books by This Author Title Page Copyright Dedication Part One Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Part Two Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Part Three Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Part Four About the Author One 1 A NURSE held the door open for them. Judge McKelva going first, then his daughter Laurel, then his wife Fay, they walked into the windowless room where the doctor would make his examination. Judge McKelva was a tall, heavy man of seventy-one who customarily wore his glasses on a ribbon. Holding them in his hand now, he sat on the raised, thronelike chair above the doctor’s stool, flanked by Laurel on one side and Fay on the other.
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  • Eudora Welty the Little Store
    Untitled Document Mr. Claro -- Modern Nonfiction Reading Selection by Eudora Welty The Little Store EUDORA WELTY (b. 1909) published her Collected Stories in 1980, bringing together 576 pages of the short fiction for which she is celebrated. Her short stories first appeared in magazines, often the literary quarterlies, and became regular features of annual collections of the best fiction from periodicals. Two of her most enduring stories are "Why I Live at the P0.," which shows her comic genius, and "The Worn Path," which recounts the courage and perseverance of an old black woman. Among her novels are Delta Wedding (1946), Losing Battles (1970), and The Optimist's Daughter (1972), which won the Pulitzer Prize. "The Little Store" comes from The Eye of the Story (1978), which is a collection of her essays, most on the art of fiction. In 1983 she delivered the William E. Massey Lectures at Harvard and a year later brought them out as a volume of recollections, One Writer's Beginnings. She has won the Gold Medal of the National Institute of Arts and Letters, the National Medal for Literature, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 1989 she departed from the word long enough to issue a collection of her photographs, called Photographs. Born in Jackson, Mississippi, she still resides in Jackson, Mississippi. In this small town, her observation and imagination have found all the material they require. When she writes an essay out of memonj, as she does in "The Little Store," she brings to reminiscence the storyteller's skills of narration and use of significant detail.
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  • Taking Eudora Welty's Text out of the Closet: Delta Wedding's George Fairchild and the Queering of Saint George
    Georgia State University ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University English Theses Department of English 7-17-2009 Taking Eudora Welty's Text Out of the Closet: Delta Wedding's George Fairchild and the Queering of Saint George James R. Wallace Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/english_theses Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Wallace, James R., "Taking Eudora Welty's Text Out of the Closet: Delta Wedding's George Fairchild and the Queering of Saint George." Thesis, Georgia State University, 2009. https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/english_theses/67 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of English at ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. It has been accepted for inclusion in English Theses by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. TAKING EUDORA WELTY’S TEXT OUT OF THE CLOSET: DELTA WEDDING’S GEORGE FAIRCHILD AND THE QUEERING OF SAINT GEORGE by JAMES R. WALLACE Under the Direction of Pearl A. McHaney ABSTRACT Eudora Welty’s characterization of George Fairchild (Delta Wedding) queers the heroic masculine ideal, St George, whose legendary exploits have been popularized in narrative literature, Catholic iconography, and children’s fairy tale. Lauded by the Fairchild women for his “difference,” George’s sexuality offers him an identity apart from the suffocating Fairchild family myth. George Fairchild’s queer sexuality and homoeroticism augments our critical understanding of Delta Wedding, the character, as well as other characters. The author’s subtly politicized construction of the novel’s ostensible hero subverts literary tradition, the gender binary, and patriarchal myth.
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  • Preface to the Optimist's Daughter
    Preface to The Optimist’s Daughter. Jacques Cabau, Emmeline Gros To cite this version: Jacques Cabau, Emmeline Gros. Preface to The Optimist’s Daughter.. Eudora Welty Review, De- partment of English, Georgia State University, 2017, 9 (1), pp.21 - 28. 10.1353/ewr.2017.0002. hal-01816138 HAL Id: hal-01816138 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01816138 Submitted on 14 Jun 2018 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Preface The Optimist’s Daughter1 Jacques Cabau Emmeline GROS The Optimist’s Daughter, for which Eudora Welty received the Pulitzer Prize—the highest American literary distinction— in 1973, reads like a short story. It is, however, a great novel which features a unique combination of conciseness, subtility, and implicitness/ concise, subtle, and implicit writing. If critics praised the author’s qualities in the writing, the psychology, and the composition of the plot, they also admired the fine density of the story’s meditation on life and death, its focus on intergenerational conflict, on the crisis of civilization, and, more broadly, its exploration of the mystery of fate and of human relations. Conveyed with a profound subtlety and reading like a poem, symbols and mythological references weave through this work, which is as complex and subtle (unassuming) as its author.
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  • The Role of the Home in Eudora Welty's Delta Wedding and the Optimist's Daughter Claire Elizabeth Crews
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University Georgia State University ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University English Dissertations Department of English Spring 5-5-2012 The Role of the Home in Eudora Welty's Delta Wedding and the Optimist's Daughter Claire Elizabeth Crews Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/english_diss Recommended Citation Crews, Claire Elizabeth, "The Role of the Home in Eudora Welty's Delta Wedding and the Optimist's Daughter." Dissertation, Georgia State University, 2012. https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/english_diss/80 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of English at ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. It has been accepted for inclusion in English Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE ROLE OF THE HOME IN EUDORA WELTY’S DELTA WEDDING AND THE OPTIMIST’S DAUGHTER by CLAIRE ELIZABETH CREWS Under the Direction of Pearl A. McHaney ABSTRACT Eudora Welty’s sense of place is often discussed by scholars, but they have limited their discussions of place in Welty’s texts to place as region or, more specifically, the South. In so doing, Welty is often pigeonholed as a regionalist writer. Looking at the home when considering place makes Welty’s texts more universal and appealing to readers of all regions and countries. Every individual either has a home or longs for one; all understand the pull toward a home of some kind. Using the theoretical lens of social and psychological theories of space, place, and the home, this study presents a close reading of the homes in Eudora Welty’s Delta Wedding and The Optimist’s Daughter .
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  • The Achievement of Euboea Welty
    The achievement of Eudora Welty Item Type text; Thesis-Reproduction (electronic) Authors Davis, Patricia Deane Jubb, 1936- Publisher The University of Arizona. Rights Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author. Download date 03/10/2021 19:35:08 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/319558 THE ACHIEVEMENT OF EUBOEA WELTY . "by Patricia JubU Davis A. Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of the DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of ' MASTER OF ARTS In the Graduate College ' THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA 1 9 6 4 S M E M E Z E BY iJEDHQB $ M s thesis has been submitted in partial fulfill­ ment of requirements for an advanced degree at The University of Arizona and is deposited in the University library to be made available to borrowers under rules of the Libraryo - Brief quotations from this thesis are allowable without special permission, provided that accurate acknowledgment of source is made» Bequests for permission for extended quotation from or reproduction of this manuscript in whole or in part may be granted by the head of the major department or the Dean of the Graduate College when in his judgment the proposed use of the material is in the interests of scholarshipc In all other instances, however, permission must be obtained from the author. APPROVAL BY THESIS DIRECTOR This thesis has been approved on the date shown below: '-Assistant Professor of English ACKNOWLEDGMENT I am greatly indebted to Charles Davis and Dr„ John Carr for their many fine suggestions and criticisms and for their encouragement in the preparation of this thesis o TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT »®ooeoo© o o ooooee©o oooe *V CMPTEE I* INTEODWCTION <i • 1 The Eeputation and Importance of Eudora.
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  • Welty, Eudora, House Other
    NATIONAL HISTORIC LANDMARK NOMINATION NPS Form 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018 WELTY, EUDORA, HOUSE Page 1 United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service__________________________________________National Register of Historic Places Registration Form 1. NAME OF PROPERTY Historic Name: Welty, Eudora, House Other Name/Site Number: 2. LOCATION Street & Number: 1119 Pinehurst Street Not for publication: City/Town: Jackson Vicinity:, State: Mississippi County: Hinds 3. CLASSIFICATION Ownership of Property Category of Property Private: _ Building(s): X_ Public-Local: _ District: _ Public-State: X_ Site: _ Public-Federal: Structure: _ Object:_ Number of Resources within Property Contributing Noncontributing 2 _ buildings 1 _ sites _ structures _ objects Total Number of Contributing Resources Previously Listed in the National Register: 3 Name of Related Multiple Property Listing: NFS Form 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018 WELTY, EUDORA, HOUSE Page 2 United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form 4. STATE/FEDERAL AGENCY CERTIFICATION As the designated authority under the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, as amended, I hereby certify that this X nomination __ request for determination of eligibility meets the documentation standards for registering properties in the National Register of Historic Places and meets the procedural and professional requirements set forth in 36 CFR Part 60. In my opinion, the property X meets __ does not meet the National Register Criteria. Signature of Certifying Official Date State or Federal Agency and Bureau In my opinion, the property __ meets __ does not meet the National Register criteria.
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  • THE WORLD of EUDORA WELTY a Thesis Presented
    TECHNIQUE AS REALITY: THE WORLD OF EUDORA WELTY ,~ A Thesis Presented to the Faculty of the Department of English Kansas State Teachers College, Emporia In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts by Philip Miller ?-' August 1967 L 880S£Z /. i t,~ . d~..l ; PREFACE Eudora Welty's novels and stories have been said to possess their own "special'" worlds. The word, "special," has been used with good reason. Not only does each work possess its own world which belongs exclusively to that work but, also each world is removed from any relation to a "real" world or to any notion Welty may have about one. She, like many modern writers, permits her stories to emerge from the minds of her characters without authorial omniscience or intervention•. In fact, in most of her works, her world is actually comprised of several private visions of her charac­ ters complexly intertwined. And this is what is particularly special about her work: that in each example, the situation and very dramatic conflict is rooted in a clash of private visions and the collision of ordinarily separate worlds. There is never any attempt on Welty's part to compare one vision over another, moralistically but, rather, each vision resolves itself existentially through the protagonist's acceptance or betrayal of his own way of seeing the world. Resolution comes not when a character finally sees the real world, objectively, but when he sees some common pattern in the great kalidioscope of visions that surround him--when he sees that pattern, really.
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  • Eudora Welty: a Selective Bibliography
    EUDORA WELTY: A SELECTIVE BIBLIOGRAPHY 1941 A Curtain of Green (short stories). Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday Doran. 1942 The Robber Bridegroom (short novel). Doubleday Doran. 1943 The Wide Net and Other Stories (short stories). New York: Harcourt Brace. 1946 Delta Wedding (novel). Harcourt Brace. 1948 Music from Spain (short story published in separate binding; limited edition). Greenville, MS: Levee Press. (This story became a major section of The Golden Apples, published the following year.) 1949 The Golden Apples (cycle of related stories). Harcourt Brace. 1954 The Ponder Heart (short novel). Harcourt Brace. 1955 The Bride of the Innisfallen and Other Stories . Harcourt Brace. 1964 The Shoe Bird (children's story). Harcourt Brace & World. 1970 Losing Battles (novel). New York: Random House. 1971 One Time, One Place: Mississippi in the Depression, A Snapshot Album (photographsby Welty with a fine introduction by her). Random House. 1972 The Optimist's Daughter (novel). Random House. 1978 The Eye of the Story (essays). Random House. 1980 Collected Stories. Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich. 1984 One Writer's Beginnings (autobiography). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 1984 Conversationswith Eudora Welty , ed. Peggy Prenshaw (collected interviews). Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi. 1989 Photographs , with a foreword by Reynolds Price. University Press of Mississippi. 1991 Norton Book of Friendship , ed. Ronald A. Sharp and Eudora Welty. Norton. 1994 A Writer's Eye: Collected Book Reviews , ed. Pearl Amelia McHaney. University Press of Mississippi. 1995 More Conversations with Eudora Welty , ed. Peggy Prenshaw. University Press of Mississippi. 1998 Welty: Collected Novels . Library of Congress. 1998 Welty: Collected Essays and Memoirs.
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  • How Welty Doesn't Crusade
    How Welty Doesn’t Crusade Maria Teresa Castilho Faculty of Letters, University of Oporto ISSN: 0873-0628 ANGLO SAXONICA SER. III N. 5 2013 How Welty Doesn’t Crusade y controlling her public persona and by firmly insisting both in interviews and in her essay, “Must a Novelist Crusade?”, that her Bfiction is apolitical, Eudora Welty made many critics feel what Warren French defended in 1983 and which I think is still true today: “I think that the reason why critics have scarcely known what to make of Eudora Welty’s work is that most of them, like the writers with whom they identify, can flourish only on denunciations of the very civilization that makes their trade possible” (Thirteen Essays 125). It also seems to me that critics have had some difficulties to accept both the writer’s own point of view on what she herself wrote and on her own criticism. In 1955, in “Writing and Analyzing a Story” Welty wrote: “The story and its analysis are not mirror-opposites of each other. They are not reflections, either one. Criticism indeed is an art, as a story is, but only the story is to some degree a vision; there is no explanation outside fiction for what its writer is learning to do” (Eye of the Story 110). Furthermore, in 1980, she also wrote: I have been told, both in approval and in accusation, that I seem to love all my characters. What I do in writing of any character is to try to enter into the mind, heart and skin of a human being who is not myself.
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  • Revising Women's Agency in a Curtain of Green
    Mississippi State University Scholars Junction Theses and Dissertations Theses and Dissertations 1-1-2019 Revising Women's Agency in a Curtain of Green Caroline Rebecca Brandon Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarsjunction.msstate.edu/td Recommended Citation Brandon, Caroline Rebecca, "Revising Women's Agency in a Curtain of Green" (2019). Theses and Dissertations. 3816. https://scholarsjunction.msstate.edu/td/3816 This Graduate Thesis - Open Access is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses and Dissertations at Scholars Junction. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Scholars Junction. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Template A v4.0 (beta): Created by L. Threet 01/2019 Revising women’s agency in A Curtain of Green By TITLE PAGE Caroline Rebecca Brandon A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Mississippi State University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in English in the Department of English Mississippi State, Mississippi May 2019 Copyright by COPYRIGHT PAGE Caroline Rebecca Brandon 2019 Revising women’s agency in A Curtain of Green By APPROVAL PAGE Caroline Rebecca Brandon Approved: ____________________________________ Theodore B. Atkinson (Major Professor) ____________________________________ Kelly Marsh (Committee Member) ____________________________________ Robert M. West (Committee Member) ____________________________________ Lara A. Dodds (Graduate Coordinator) ____________________________________ Rick Travis Dean College of Arts & Sciences Name: Caroline Rebecca Brandon ABSTRACT Date of Degree: May 3, 2019 Institution: Mississippi State University Major Field: English Major Professor: Theodore B. Atkinson Title of Study: Revising women’s agency in A Curtain of Green Pages in Study: 79 Candidate for Degree of Master of Arts In the mid-twentieth century many critics considered Eudora Welty’s work regionalist, which limited the interpretation of its social and political implications.
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  • Welty, Eudora, House Other
    NATIONAL HISTORIC LANDMARK NOMINATION NPS Form 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018 WELTY, EUDORA, HOUSE Page 1 United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form 1. NAME OF PROPERTY Historic Name: Welty, Eudora, House Other Name/Site Number: 2. LOCATION Street & Number: 1119 Pinehurst Street Not for publication: City/Town: Jackson Vicinity:, State: Mississippi County: Hinds 3. CLASSIFICATION Ownership of Property Category of Property Private: _ Building(s): X_ Public-Local: _ District: _ Public-State: X_ Site: _ Public-Federal: Structure: _ Object:_ Number of Resources within Properly Contributing Noncontributing 2 _ buildings 1 _ sites _ structures _ objects Total Number of Contributing Resources Previously Listed in the National Register: 3 Name of Related Multiple Property Listing: NFS Form 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018 WELTY, EUDORA, HOUSE Page 2 United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form 4. STATE/FEDERAL AGENCY CERTIFICATION As the designated authority under the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, as amended, I hereby certify that this X nomination __ request for determination of eligibility meets the documentation standards for registering properties in the National Register of Historic Places and meets the procedural and professional requirements set forth in 36 CFR Part 60. In my opinion, the property X meets __ does not meet the National Register Criteria. Signature of Certifying Official Date State or Federal Agency and Bureau In my opinion, the property __ meets __ does not meet the National Register criteria.
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