EVENTS
Page down for TWAIN2010 Event Listings
Facing Hard Times: The Thirties in America
This was a terrific event. Watch for a link to a University of Hartford student television taping of the second session, coming soon.
University of Hartford Library Symposium, jointly sponsored by Connecticut Explored
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Peter Conn, “American Literature in the 1930s”
Peter Conn is Vartan Gregorian Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of several major books in literary studies, including The American 1930s: A Literary History (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2009). He has also served as Harry Jack Gray Distinguished Visiting Humanist at the University of Hartford. He holds a Ph.D. from Yale University.
Connecticut Confronts the Thirties
When the Depression hit Connecticut, the economy of the state was already beginning to shift away from traditional manufacturing and from small farming toward the service industries already well established in such cities as Hartford. So the smaller industrial cities were hit with two problems at once, at the same time as the agricultural community was in steady decline. Our panel will address the question of how the people of these communities and their leaders coped with these changes.
Gregg Pugliese, history teacher at Kennedy High School, Waterbury, and contributor to Connecticut Explored, will look at industry in the Naugatuck valley.
David Corrigan, Curator, Museum of Connecticut History, and member of the Connecticut Explored editorial team, will examine the little-studied topic of electrical appliance manufacturing in Connecticut.
Briann G. Greenfield, Associate Professor of History, Central Connecticut State University, and member of the Connecticut Explored editorial team, will discuss photographs from the collections of the Farm Securities Agency documenting the lives of Jewish farmers in Connecticut.
The session will be chaired by Elizabeth Normen, publisher of Connecticut Explored.
Repressing Depression
If the Depression hit Connecticut hard, the arts, at least in the Hartford area, responded with a flourish. The Hartt School of Music, founded in the 1920s, advanced vigorously under the leadership of Moshe Paranov. In 1934 Chick Austin invited Virgil Thomson to the Wadsworth Atheneum for the epoch-making first performance of his (and Gertrude Stein’s) Four Saints in Three Acts; Wallace Stevens, over at the Hartford Insurance Company, embarked in that same year on what Harold Bloom has described as his most productive poetic period, the time of The Idea of Order at Key West; also in 1934, support from the Federal Emergency Relief Corporation led to the founding of the Hartford Symphony Orchestra. Three panelists will examine this period of artistic creativity – a time of limited resources, but also one of the greatest periods of the arts in Hartford.
Eugene Gaddis is Delana Archivist and Curator of the Austin House, Wadsworth Atheneum
Steve Metcalf is Director of Instrumental Studies of the Hartt School, the performing arts school of the University of Hartford
Colin McEnroe is a writer, journalist, and talk show host.
TWAIN2010
This year marks the 175th anniversary of Mark Twain’s birth, the 125th anniversary of the publication of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and the 100th anniversary of the author’s death. Events across the state will mark the triple convergence. Here are events we know about, please double check information with the hosting organization.
Mark Twain House, Hartford
Mark Twain Library, Redding
Please also check www.twainproject.blogspot.com for Redding town historian Brent Colley’s activities.
Hartford Public Library, The Big Read
Through April 2010
Exhibition, Mark Twain House, Hartford. The House that Mark Built exhibit on the architecture of the Mark Twain House.
Through January 10, 2011
Exhibition, Mark Twain House, Hartford. Legacy will examine the enduring and evolving legacy of Mark Twain and his work. It will explore how Twain’s persona, and the public’s perception of him and his works, has both changed and remained constant over the years.
February
Anniversary Event featuring The Ebony Hillbillies, Mark Twain House, Thursday, February 18
March
Film, Mark Twain House, Tuesday, March 2, The Death of My News is Greatly Exaggerated. A screening of a new documentary on the future of newspapers, followed by a panel discussion by some of those vitally involved in the trade. In conjunction with Connecticut Public Broadcasting.
Writing Course with Lary Bloom and Suzanne Levine, Mark Twain House, Wednesdays, begins March 3, 5:30-7:30 p.m. Eight week memoir writing course with Lary Bloom and Suzanne Levine, through April 28; no class April 21.
Lecture with Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi, Mark Twain House, Saturday, March 13. A Pen Warmed Up in Hell lecture with Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi, political commentator and author of the print “Road Rage” column, along with the online “Low Post.”
Exhibition, Mark Twain House, Wednesday, March 31. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer exhibition will display popular culture artifacts related to Tom Sawyer, and will include “family friendly” activities.
April
April is the big celebration month with events at the Mark Twain Library in Redding, the Hartford Public Library’s Big Read, a world premier at Hartford Stage, and more at the Mark Twain House. We’ll keep this post updated, check back for more great Twain events in 2010 as well as a listing in our spring issue which will be in subscribers’ mailboxes and on newsstands March 1st.
