End of Season Wrap Up and Forthcoming Events

The Marcus Orr Center, its staff and generous contributors would like to thank everyone who participated in our last run of events for the Fall term. Highlights from the end of the season included a series of provocative French films (including the Academy Award winning Un prophète), local favorite Preston Lauterbach’s talk on the Chittlin Circuit, American roots music, and the ‘road to rock ‘n roll’ and the riveting informance “Prophets of Funk”, a celebration of the oeuvre and broader cultural legacy of Sly and the Family Stone.

Our final event, eminent UC Berkley Hebraist and literary critic Robert Alter’s discussion of the King James Version and its impact on American literature, drew a standing room only crowd.  Alter, author of over a dozen books on topics ranging from the Pentateuch to the writings of Franz Kafka and Walter Benjamin, was both keynote lecturer for and participant in a larger three day, community-wide series of events commemorating the 400^th anniversary of the first pressing of the KJV.

When we reconvene after the holidays, you can anticipate another fantastic string of MOCH events. On the 26^th, the History Department presents its Sesquicentennial Lecture wherein Timothy Snyder will be discussing his universally acclaimed Bloodlands, an in depth look at impact of Soviet-Nazi competition over the territories of East-Central Europe, modern day Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, Western Russia, and the Baltic states.  

Other upcoming events include the 2012 Italian language film festival, presented in cooperation with Indie Memphis, the Freedom of Information Congress, an informance on Arabian Nights, and a talk from Pulitzer Prize winning historian Eric Foner on the 150^th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, all part of our continued effort to bring intellectually stimulating speakers both to the campus and larger Memphis community.