SEP. 27   Gerald Haslam Fiction reading, Writer’s Voice

7:30pm, Trinity 100, 898-5151. Sponsored in part by the James Irving Foundation.*

Haslam, born in 1937 in Oildale near Bakersfield, has particularly celebrated California’s rural and small town areas, its poor and working class people of all colors, to explore the human condition (That Constant Coyote, Condor Dreams, Straight White Male). He has been labeled "the quintessential California writer." Haslam was a professor at Sonoma State for 30 years.

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OCT. 3 Naomi Schneider Book Theme Lecture “The University Press Grows Up: How to Get Published in the Changing World of Books”
7:30 pm, PAC 134 (Reception to follow, Humanities Center Gallery, Trinity 100)*

Naomi Schneider is executive editor at the University of California Press, one of the six largest university presses in the country and the only one in the group on the West Coast and associated with a public university. She acquires books in sociology, anthropology, women’s studies, Latin American studies, and contemporary politics. A significant portion of her list is focused on issues of social justice and human rights. She has edited award-winning authors such as Nancy Scheper-Hughes, Cynthia Enloe, and Alejandro Portes. Some of her recent and forthcoming books include Falling Behind: How Rising Inequality Harms the Middle Class by Robert Frank; Flavor of the Month: Why Smart People Fall for Fads by Joel Best; Opting Out? Why Women Really Quit Careers and Head Home by Pamela Stone; Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life by Annette Lareau; Tearing Down the Gates: Confronting the Class Divide in America by Peter Sacks; and Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor by Paul Farmer.

Schneider was an undergraduate history major at Smith College and the University of Pennsylvania and a graduate student in history at Brown University. She worked at HarperCollins, Random House, and Oxford University Press before coming to UC Press. In a previous life, she worked in a roofing factory, as a waitress, and on the railroad.

Oct. 10 Michael Les Benedict Joanna Dunlap Cowden Memorial Lecture: “What Makes a Citizen?”
7:30pm, PAC 134 (Reception to follow, Humanities Center Gallery, Trinity 100)

Professor Michael Les Benedict, emeritus, Ohio State, is a leading authority on the U.S. Constitution and the Civil War era. He makes the provocative argument that the Civil War actually narrowed the legal definition of citizenship.

OCT. 18 Carole Oles Poetry reading, Writer’s Voice

7:30pm, Trinity 100, 898-5151.*

Carole Oles, emerita, English, is a nationally recognized poet and the former head of Chico State’s MFA program in creative writing. She will be reading from her new work. Her books include Waking Stone: Inventions on the Life of Harriet Hosmer, Sympathetic Systems, The Deed, and Stunts.

Oct. 23 Steve Wasserman Book Theme Lecture “The Future of the Book in the Digital Age”
7:30pm, Ayres 106 (Reception to follow, Humanities Center Gallery, Trinity 100)*

Steve Wasserman was the literary editor of the Los Angeles Times responsible for the weekly Sunday Book Review. He is currently managing director of the New York office of the literary agency Kneerim & Williams. Prior to that, he was with Farrar, Straus & Giroux where he was publisher and editorial director of two imprints, Hill & Wang and The Noonday Press. He has been on the nominating jury for the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction and was the chairman of the nominating jury for the Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction. He has taught at the University of Southern California and UC Berkeley.

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NOV. 1 Joan Frank Fiction Reading, Writer’s Voice

7:30 pm, Trinity 100, 898-5151*

Fiction writer Joan Frank is the author of a story collection, Boys Keep Being Born (Missouri, 2001), and two novels, Miss Kansas City (Michigan, 2006; winner of the Michigan Literary Fiction Award) and The Great Far Away (Permanent Press, 2007). She lives in Santa Rosa with her husband, the playwright Robert Duxbury.

NOV. 15 James Scully Poetry Reading

7:30 pm, Trinity 100. Hosted by Peter Jodaitis (artist, Drawn on Thirty-Three, currently at the Humanities Center Gallery) and Ellen Walker, emerita, English*

James Scully was born in 1937 in New Haven, CT. He lives in San Francisco.

Books (poetry): The Marches (1967); Communications (with Grandin Conover, 1970); Avenue of the Americas (1971); Santiago Poems (1975); Scrap Book (1977); May Day (1980); Apollo Helmet (1983); Raging Beauty: Selected Poems (1994); Words Without Music (2004); Boxcars (2006); Donatello's Version (2007).

Books (critical): Modern Poetics, a.k.a. Modern Poets on Modern Poetry (1965, 1966); Line Break: poetry as social practice (1988, 2005). Co-translations: Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound (with C. John Herington, 1975, 1989); Quechua Peoples Poetry (with Maria A. Proser, 1977); Teresa de Jesus, De Repente / All Of A Sudden (with Maria A. Proser and Arlene Scully, 1979 .

Founding editor of ART ON THE LINE series (1981-1986): Roque Dalton; Cesar Vallejo [2x]; Vladimir Mayakovsky; George Grosz, Weiland Herzfelde, John Heartfield.

Awards: National Defense Fellowship 1959-1962; Ingram Merrill Foundation Fellowship (Rome, Italy 1962-63); Lamont Poetry Award 1967 (for The Marches); Jenny Taine Memorial Award 1971 (for translation); Guggenheim Fellowship (Santiago, Chile 1973-74); NEA Fellowship 1976-77; Islands & Continents Translation Award 1980; Bookbuilders of Boston Award 1983 (for book cover design); NEA Fellowship 1990

James Scully’s fierce moral intelligence, poetic craft and grim humor are all alive and well in this long-awaited collection.—Adrienne Rich about Donatello's Version

NOV. 30 Sarah M. Pike, Religious Studies and Humanities Center Board “’Liberation’s Crusade Has Begun’: Hare Krishna Hardcore Youth and Animal Rights Activism”

Religious Studies Lecture Series

3-5 pm, Trinity 100, 898-4739

Sarah Pike’s presentation explores the ways in which Krishna Consciousness has shaped hardcore youth culture and radical animal rights activism. Drawing on interviews with activists and Krishna hardcore musicians, music lyrics, fanzines, and MySpace band sites, she argues that the point of convergence of hardcore music, Krishna Consciousness, and radical activism represents an important subculture within which young adults negotiate and construct religious and activist identities.

DEC. 13 Watershed Writer’s Voice

7:30 pm, Trinity 100, 898-5151

Watershed, CSU Chico’s literary magazine, hosts a reading by the contributors to its fall 2007 issue. Copies of the magazine will be on sale.

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JAN. 20 John Milbauer, former Music faculty and Humanities Center Board member, and Paulina Zamora Piano Concert
2 pm, PAC 134, tickets at the University Box Office 898-6333

John Milbauer returns to Chico with Chilean pianist Paulina Zamora for an afternoon of Russian duo-piano masterpieces. The concert, which will benefit CSU Chico’s keyboard scholarships, will include Arensky’s delightful works for two pianos, Rachmaninoff’s Second Suite, and a kaleidoscopic arrangement of Stravinsky’s Petrouchka. Milbauer is currently an assistant professor at the School of Music of the University of Arizona, and Zamora is a professor of piano at the Escuela Moderna de Musica in Santiago.

Zamora and Milbauer presented an evening of the highest professional level…works of the greatest difficulty that showcased their versatility and heat.—El Mercurio, Santiago de Chile, May 2007

JAN. 31 Thomas Kren Book Theme Lecture “Treasures of Medieval Manuscript Illumination at the J. Paul Getty Museum”

7:30 pm, PAC 135 (Reception to follow, Humanities Center Gallery, Trinity 100)*

Thomas Kren has a B. A. (1972) from Oberlin College and an M.A. and Ph.D. (1978) from Yale University in the History of Art. He has been curator of the Department of Manuscripts at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles since the founding of the department in 1984. The Getty has one of the finest holdings of European manuscript illumination in the United States.

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FEB. 29 Bruce Grelle, Religious Studies “Moses Who? Literacy, Citizenship, and the Study of Religion in the Public Schools” Religious Studies Lecture Series

3-4:30 pm, Trinity 100, 898-4739

Bruce Grelle earned his PhD in Ethics and Society at the University of Chicago Divinity School in 1993. In addition to being a professor in the Department of Religious Studies at CSU Chico, he is director of the Religion and Public Education Resource Center (RPERC) and a staff member for the Center for Applied and Professional Ethics (CAPE). He is a prolific writer, reviewer, and editor of journal articles and books.

FEB. 29 Troy Jollimore, Philosophy, English, and Director of the Humanities Center Poetry Reading at the 1078

7:30 pm, 820 Broadway, Chico, 898-4642 

Troy Jollimore earned his Ph.D. at Princeton in 1999. He spent the 2006-2007 academic year as an External Faculty Fellow at the Stanford Humanities Center working on a philosophical book about love, tentatively titled Love’s Vision. His first book of poetry, Tom Thomson in Purgatory, was selected by former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins for the 2005 Robert E. Lee & Ruth I. Wilson Poetry Book Award and is the winner of the 2006 National Book Critics Circle Award in poetry. He has poems forthcoming in publications including Poetry, The Believer, and MARGIE. He also writes frequently for the San Francisco Chronicle Book Review and is an occasional contributor to the Weblog PEA SOUP.

MAR. 13 Steven Church Prose Reading, Writer’s Voice

7:30 pm, Trinity 100, 898-6457*

Steven Church was born and raised in Lawrence, Kansas. He earned his BA in philosophy at the University of Kansas and his MFA in Creative Writing from Colorado State University. He has worked as a fry cook, tour guide, Bobcat operator, maintenance man, housepainter, barista, conflict mediator, academic adviser, and teacher. His essays and stories have been published or are forthcoming in the Colorado Review, North American Review, Interim, Fourth Genre, River Teeth, Post Road, Quarterly West, and others. His work has been thrice nominated for a Pushcart Prize. His first book, The Guinness Book of Me: a Memoir of Record, was released in 2005 by Simon & Schuster.

MAR. 26 Molly Tenenbaum Poetry reading

Writer’s Voice 7:30 pm, Trinity 100, 898-6457*

Winner of the 2007 Dorothy Brunsman Poetry Prize from Bear Star Press for Now, Tenenbaum lives in Seattle, where she teaches creative writing at North Seattle Community College and plays traditional string band music. She is the author of By a Thread (Van West & Co., 2000) and of the chapbooks Blue Willow (Floating Bridge Press, 1998), Old Voile (New Michigan Press, 2004), and Story (Cash Machine, 2005).

MAR. 26 Anthony Grafton Presidential Scholar and Book Theme Lecture “Explosions in the Scholars’ Garden: The Forgotten Tradition of Libraries in the Western Tradition”

7:30 pm, PAC 135*

Anthony Grafton, the Henry Putnam University Professor of History at Princeton University, is one of the most respected historians of early modern Europe in the world. He has published widely on the history of libraries, books, and scholarship. Among his recent books: (with Megan Williams) Christianity and the Transformation of the Book: Origen, Eusebius, and the Library of Caesarea (Harvard: Belknap, 2006); (with April Shelford and Nancy Siraisi) New Worlds, Ancient Texts: The Power of Tradition and the Shock of Discovery (Harvard: Belknap, 2005); The Footnote: A Curious History (Harvard, 1999); and Bring Out Your Dead: The Past as Revelation (Harvard, 2005).

MAR. 27 Anthony Grafton Presidential Scholar and Book Theme Guest On-stage interview with Lawrence Bryant, Department of History: “Scholars, Students, and Books: From the Middle Ages to Today”
3:30 pm, Trinity 100*

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April 17, 2008 Val Gray Ward One Woman Show—Val Gray Ward will be performing a pot pourri of excerpts culled from her three touring shows, including reading poetry by Langston Hughes and personifying slavery abolitionist Harriet Tubman. After the performance, she will be available for questions and answers.
7:30pm, Humanitites Center Gallery (Trinity Hall 100, CSU Chico Campus)

Sponsored by the Committee on Arts and Lectures (CAL), Office of Diversity, Multicultural and Gender Studies, Humanities Center/Gallery, and the College of Humanities and Fine Arts. For information, call Tracy Butts, Department of English at 898-5151.
FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

Val Gray Ward, actress, producer, cultural activist and internationally known theater personality, was born on August 21, 1932, in Mound Bayou, Mississippi, America's oldest all-black town. As the daughter of a successful minister, Ward showed an early interest in performance. She eagerly read poems and did readings for her father's congregation and won various oratorical competitions in school. Above all, she was keenly interested in African American literature. 

After graduating from Mound Bayou High School in 1950, Ward dreamed of going to college. Instead, she moved to Chicago in 1951, got married and became a mother to five children. When the marriage failed, Ward went back to school and became active in Chicago's African American cultural activities. She was a regular at the South Side Community Arts Center and the DuSable Museum of African American History as she developed friendships with Margaret Burroughs, Gwendolyn Brooks, Haki R. Madhubuti and Abena Joan Brown. 

In 1965, Gray met and married journalist Francis Ward as she continued to make a name for herself as an actress, television host and cultural consultant. Ward was recognized as part of Chicago's activist Black Arts Movement. In this context, she founded the nonprofit Kuumba Theatre in 1968 and was dedicated to the revitalization of the black community through the arts. 

With Kuumba, Ward has produced and directed such plays as The Amen Corner by James Baldwin, Welcome To Black River by Samm Art Williams, and Five On The Black Hand Side by Charles Fuller. Touring has also been important. Ward took the cast and crew of Useni Eugene Perkins' play, The Image Makers to Lagos, Nigeria, as part of the FESTAC '77, an international African arts festival. Ward brought Kuumba's musical production, The Little Dreamer: The Life of Bessie Smith to Japan in 1981 and produced Buddy Butler's In The House of The Blues in Montreal. Ward and the company received Emmy Awards for the PBS television production of Precious Memories: Strolling 47th Street in 1988. 

When she is not producing, Ward performs one-woman shows in the United States and abroad. Performances include Harriet Tubman by Francis Ward, Sister Sonji by Sonia Sanchez and I Am A Black Woman, which includes the poetry of Mari Evans. 

Over the years, Ward has provided opportunities in the arts for hundreds of inner-city youth and adults. All five of her children have been active in theater. Ward currently lives in Syracuse, New York.

APR. 18 Jed Wyrick, Chair, Department of Religious Studies “How Men Become Gods in Hellenistic and Jewish Theories of Religion”

Religious Studies Lecture Series, 3-4:30 pm, Trinity 100, 898-4739

Jed Wyrick studied ancient Greek, Latin, and biblical Hebrew language and literatures as an undergraduate in classics (BA, Brandeis) and focused on ancient Greek literature, Hebrew Bible, midrash (a traditional form of interpretation of Bible found in Jewish and early Christian sources), Hellenistic culture and scholarship (the library at Alexandria among others), and Yiddish language and literature as a graduate student in comparative literature (PhD, Harvard). He wroteThe Ascension of Authorship: Attribution, Textualization, and Canon Formation in Jewish, Hellenistic, and Christian Tradition (Harvard University Press, 2004).

MAY 14 Rob Davidson, English and Humanities Center Board   Warehouse: Songs & Stories

Original Music and Fiction at the 1078 7:30 pm, 820 Broadway, Chico, 898-4642

This is "a one-man, one-hour performance, singular in nature, resplendent in divergence, with a smashing time guaranteed for all." Rob Davidson’s first book, Field Observations: Stories (Missouri, 2001), won the 2002 Maria Thomas Fiction Award. His second book is The Master and the Dean: The Literary Criticism of Henry James and William Dean Howells (Missouri, 2005). His honors include an AWP Intro Journals Project Award, a Pushcart Prize nomination, and ranking as a finalist for both the 2008 Glimmer Train Family Matters contest and the 2006 Arts & Letters Fiction Prize (judged by Chitra Divakaruni). Davidson’s fiction, essays and interviews have appeared in Another Chicago Magazine, the AWP Writer’s Chronicle, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Indiana Review, Sycamore Review, ZYZZYVA and elsewhere. As a musician, he has zero credentials—but that is no matter.

MAY 15 Watershed Literary Readings

7:30 pm, Trinity 100, 898-5983

Watershed, CSU, Chico’s student-edited literary magazine since 1977, celebrates its spring 2008 issue with a public reading. The issue of the magazine includes work from local and regional writers, photographers, and visual artists.

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* The Humanities Center’s theme for this year—“The Book”—is being underwritten by a generous grant from New Urban Builders, which enables the Center to bring a wide range of outside speakers to campus as well as to host a number of community events.