American Civilization Research and Writing Lecture Series

Tuesday, March 2, 2021, 12:30pm-1:30pm

Conversation with Mark Horowitz of the Music Division of the Library of Congress about his interviews and archival collections of American composers. Prof Cindy Ott will discuss his collection and interview process. Questions from the students and other audience members are warmly welcomed. This lecture is the first of two lectures about research and writing sponsored by the American Civilization program this spring 2021 semester.

Mark Horowitz Library of CongressThe author, Mark Eden Horowitz, is a senior music specialist in the Music Division at the Library of Congress, where he has been the archivist for the collections of the papers of composers Leonard Bernstein, Jerome Kern, Frederick Loewe, Cole Porter and Richard Rodgers. He co-produced the Library’s 70th Birthday Concert for Stephen Sondheim in 2000, and in 2002 presented the lecture series “Six by Sondheim,” a joint presentation of the Library and the Smithsonian Resident Associates Program. He wrote Sondheim on Music: Minor Details and Major Decisions, on the work of composer Stephen Sondheim, that is based on transcripts of interviews that Horowitz over a three-day period in 1997 at Sondheim’s New York City home.

Horowitz has taught “The American Musical on Stage and Screen” at Georgetown University and presented the lecture series “Masters of the Musical” for the Smithsonian.

Zoom Registration Required

Once you register, Zoom will email you the link and passcode.

 

Tuesday, April 13, 2021, 12:30pm-1:30pm

Conversation with Jenny Price, public writer and artist, and a Research Fellow at the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University-St. Louis. Prof Cindy Ott will discuss with Price writing for a broad audience, writing partnerships, and art activism. This lecture is the second of two lectures about research and writing that are sponsored by the American Civilization program this spring 2021 semester.

Jenny Price Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University-St. Louis.Jenny Price is a public writer and artist, and a Research Fellow at the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University-St. Louis. Author of Stop Saving the Planet!: An Environmentalist Manifesto and Flight Maps: Adventures with Nature in Modern America, she is co-founder of the public art collective LA Urban Rangers and a co-creator of the Our Malibu Beaches mobile-phone app. She has been a resident artist at MOCA and the Orange County Museum of Art, and has held visiting professorships in American Studies, the arts, and environmental humanities at Princeton University. She is currently working on “St. Louis Division,” a hometown collection of projects about environmental justice.

 

Zoom Registration Required

Once you register, Zoom will email you the link and passcode.

 


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Dr. Cindy Ott is Associate Professor of History, with a concentration on American food and culture, environmental history, and race and ethnicity. She is the author of Pumpkin: The Curious History of an American Icon (University of Washington Press, 2012). Her current book project, “Biscuits and Buffaloes: Squashing Myths about Food in Indian Country” looks at the ways northern Plains Indians have created food traditions all the way to the present that support a strong sense of American Indian heritage and tradition. Professor Ott teaches courses on foodways and environmental history, and is an active museum curator and public historian.  She will also teach courses in the Museum Studies Program.