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C A R O L I N E MARSHALL DR AU GHON CENTER FOR THE ARTS & HUMANITIES Winter 2009 LEWIS NORDAN AND THE HeARTBREAKING LAUGHTER OF TRANScenDence AND HOPE: A SYMPOSIUM We are pleased to present the second of ten books, including, most recently, annual Caroline Marshall Draughon Requiem, Mass. Center for the Arts & Humanities Symposium, this year on renowned International scholars Manuel Broncano author Lewis “Buddy” Nordan, an and Marcel Arbeit will travel from Auburn graduate and nationally ac- Spain and the Czech Republic to join claimed author of eight books, in- Alabamians Bert Hitchcock, Don cluding Music of the Swamp and The Noble, and Constance Relihan to pay Sharpshooter Blues. The day-long tribute to Nordan’s heartbreakingly symposium, referred to by some as the playful prose. Auburn University art “Buddyfest,” will be held on January students will display drawings rendered 23 at the Hotel at Auburn University from the stories and theater students will and Dixon Conference Center. It will enact a dramatic reading of “How Bob be a cross-disciplinary celebration of Steele Broke My Father’s Heart.” Nordan’s achievements, bringing to- gether a host of well-known writers, Other participants include Lee Martin, international scholars, seasoned experts director of Creative Writing at The Ohio in Alabama and Southern literature, as State University; Robert Rudnicki, asso- well as Auburn University’s own art ciate professor and director of Graduate and theater students. Studies, Louisiana Tech University; Barbara A. Baker, Caroline Marshall Nordan will deliver the keynote address Draughon Center; Roberta Maguire, at 7 pm, and he will be introduced by associate professor, University of his good friend North Carolina writer Wisconsin Oshkosh; Terrell Tebbetts, Clyde Edgerton, who has described his Cox Chair in American Literature, Lyon passion for Nordan’s writing by say- College; and Mary Carney, Gainesville ing that he would rather read a story State College. by Lewis Nordan “than win money.” Edgerton will sing his rendition of Following the successful first annual Nordan’s “Sugar Among the Chickens” symposium, “Albert Murray and the and offer an appreciation of the much Aesthetic Imagination of a Nation,” the beloved author. Nordan Symposium will be digitally Clyde Edgerton recorded and electronically posted to Celebrated author Hal Crowther will iTunes for classroom review, and papers offer his appreciation of Nordan, ti- from the symposium will be edited into tled “Critical Barbs: Archer or Arrow a forthcoming volume to be published Catcher” at 1:15 pm and will be in- by Pebble Hill Books. The program troduced by Southern literary scholar will be of interest to both a general and Noel Polk. Crowther’s remarks will scholarly audience as well as to all afi- be followed with talks by Edward cionados of great Southern storytelling. Dupuy, dean of Savannah College of For more information please see www. Art and Design, and John Dufresne, auburn.edu/cah. former student of Nordan’s and author DIRECTOR’S NOTE Happy New Year! The Caroline Marshall Draughon Center for the Arts & Humanities begins 2009 with a full calendar. We are very proud to host the Lewis Nordan symposium in January and are looking forward to welcoming Buddy back to Auburn, where he earned a Ph.D. in Shakespearean studies. Later in January, we’ll partner with Landmarks of Montgomery and the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts to host Cultural Crossroads, a symposium on Alabama in the 1830s. The Alabama Book Festival will be the highlight of April, and we will wind up the spring with a symposium on the War of 1812. Undertaken in partnership with Horseshoe Bend National Military Park and funded in part by the National Park Service, the gathering will bring together an international slate of scholars. e thank our many partners Other winter/spring programs include the Center’s participation in a university- and funders for their support wide look at Charles Darwin, occasioned by the anniversaries of his birth and of the Caroline Marshall the publication of Origin of Species, and the 2009 New Perspectives: Art and the W Academy, Views from Alabama Historically Black Colleges and Universities. As Draughon Center for the usual, this series of lectures will be held both on campus and out in the state. Arts & Humanities. We I could go on about the programs and initiatives of the Center, but the short version could not accomplish our work of this increasingly long story is that the arts and humanities are thriving at Auburn without them. and around the state. Thanks to the leadership of the College of Liberal Arts, the partnership of so many of individuals and entities both near and far, and support from the Alabama State Council on the Arts, the Alabama Humanities Foundation, FUNDERS AND and other generous funders, we embark on a great new year. PARTneRS InclUDE Jay Lamar Alabama Historical Association, Alabama Humanities Foundation, Alabama Power Foundation, Alabama A VISIT WITH DR. DAVID SCOBEY Public Library Service, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Alabama State Council on the Arts, Alabama This past November, the Center Writers’ Forum, Alabama Water hosted a campus visit from Dr. Watch, Arts Car Tag Fund, Auburn David Scobey, founding director University College of Agriculture, of Arts of Citizenship at the Auburn University Libraries, Auburn University of Michigan, inaugural University Vice President for director of the Harward Center Outreach, David Mathews Center for for Community Partnerships at Civic Life, Jule Collins Smith Museum, Bates College, and past chairman Kettering Foundation, Landmarks of of Imagining America: Artists Montgomery, Montgomery Museum and Scholars in Public Life, a national consortium of institutions that supports the of Fine Arts, National Endowment for civic work of university artists, humanists, and designers. Nationally recognized the Arts, Old Alabama Town, Osher as a leader in the theory and practice of community-based learning, Scobey is the Lifelong Learning Institute, Rosa author of several well-respected publications, including “Putting the Academy Parks Museum, Southern Poverty Law in Its Place” and Empire Study: The Making and Meaning of the New York City Center, University of Alabama Press. Landscape. Scobey discussed Imagining America’s recent report, “Scholarship in Public: Knowledge Creation and Tenure Policy in the Engaged University,” with the Pebble Hill Faculty Committee. 2 ART AND THE AcADEMY: VIEWS FROM AlABAMA’S HISTORICAllY BlACK COlleGES AND UnIveRSITIES New Perspectives, the Center’s annual role of scholastic philosophy in his life, lecture series focusing on Alabama’s the underlying spirituality in his art and rich visual arts heritage, continues for teaching relative to the concept of the a third year with Art and the Academy: universal, and his work and African Views from Alabama’s Historically Black American art in general in the context of Colleges and Universities. The programs his years in Alabama. David Driskell will will look at art made in and for institu- join McGee for a discussion of his art and tions of higher learning, artists who were teaching, in particular his formative years academically trained, and artists who as an educator at Talladega College. taught in and shaped the development of those institutions’ art departments. The Ellen B. Weiss will consider the work P. H. Polk, George Washington Carver historically black academy is the particu- and career of architect Robert R. Taylor, in the Laboratory, 1930, Gelatin print. an M.I.T. graduate who spent his career Paul R. Jones Collection, University of lar focus of the series. Alabama. at Tuskegee designing buildings, devel- The project aims to bring visibility to the oping campus infrastructure, supervis- long-overlooked significance of these art- ing construction, and heading the boys’ ists, institutions, and traditions to the his- industrial department with its twenty tory of American art. Much of the con- some trades divisions. Weiss will seek sidered work was created during a period to deepen understanding of Booker T. when access and resources for African Washington’s educational vision by ex- American artists and institutions were amining the design and construction severely limited by laws and culture, yet history of the campus. Weiss is Favrot the resulting murals, paintings, structures, Professor of the History of Architecture and photographs play a defining role in at Tulane University. the evolution of American visual culture. Art and the Academy lectures will be Amalia Amaki, professor of Art held as a series in Auburn and individu- History and curator of the Paul R. Jones ally in Montgomery, Normal, Talladega, Collection at the University of Alabama and Tuskegee. Funding for the series in Tuscaloosa, will present two programs comes from the Alabama Humanities David Driskell, Night Vision (for Jacob for Art and the Academy. The first looks Foundation, a state program of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Lawrence), 2005. Collage and gouache at Tuskegee photographer P.H. Polk, on paper, 22 x 16.5 in. Private Collec- Auburn University co-sponsors are the who captured campus and community tion. Courtesy of DC Moore Gallery, NY. life from the late 1920s through the ear- Jule Collins Smith Museum, Office Photograph by Kevin Ryan. David C. ly 1980s. The topic of Amaki’s second of Diversity and Multicultural Affairs, Driskell © lecture is the life and work of artist and Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, and educator Hale Aspacio Woodruff, who Department of Art. State partners include played a significant role in educating and Alabama Agricultural & Mechanical advancing the work of generations of University, Alabama Department of African American artists. Archives and History, Talladega College, and Tuskegee University. Julie L. McGee is curator of African American Art at the University Museums Visit www.auburn.edu/cah for a full at the University of Delaware and author schedule of speakers and dates.

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