The 17th-annual Frieze Lecture Series, a partnership between the Rock Island Public Library and Augustana College, continues this fall with four lectures by members of Augustana's scholarly community considering themes related to the library's Smithsonian Institution's "Hometown Teams" collaborative.
The lectures consider the different types of "hometowns" with links to Augustana College, from a long-standing connection to a Swedish university to writers whose lives are entwined with local hometowns.
The Frieze Lectures are free to the public, and begin at 2 p.m. on the last two Tuesdays in October and the first two Tuesdays in November, all in the Rock Island Main Library, with its elegant frieze engraved with the names of some of the world's great poets.Those poets were celebrated in the first lectures held in 1998, with the following series considering women "frozen out of the Frieze."
For 2014, presentations include :
Tuesday, October 21: Dr. Dag Blanck is director of the Swenson Swedish Immigration Research Center at Augustana College and lecturer at the Swedish Institute for North American Studies at Uppsala University.The medieval university in Uppsala, Sweden's oldest educational institution, educated many of the people who founded and built up Augustana in the mid-19th century.Dr. Blanck will discuss how our national "hometown" is viewed abroad, and consider various images of the United States in Sweden over the past two centuries.
Tuesday, October 28: Dr. Thomas Tredway, president emeritus of Augustana College, will discuss his book, Conrad Bergendoff's Faith and Work: A Swedish-American Lutheran, 1895-1997. The book considers the work of one of our hometown's greatest intellects, Conrad Bergendoff, an internationally renowned theologian, ecumenist and church historian. Bergendoff served as Augustana's fifth president from 1935 to 1962, and remained part of this community until his death at the age of 102.Dr. Tredway was president of Augustana from 1975 to 2003. His first book isComing of Age:A History of Augustana College, 1935-1975.Both works were published by the Augustana Historical Society.
Tuesday, November 4: Dr. Meg Gillette, associate professor of English at Augustana, will speak on writers whose lives are entwined with our hometown. Gillette is editor of The Stories We Tell:Modernism in the Tri-Cities, a new collection of works by area writers from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, published this year by Augustana's East Hall Press. The anthology includes writings by Susan Glaspell, Arthur Davison Ficke, Floyd Dell, Alice French and others, along with essays by Augustana students.
Tuesday, November 11: Dave Wrath, associate athletic director and sports information director, will speak on "Augustana's Hometown Heroes." Though Ken Anderson, the NFL's 1982 Most Valuable Player, is perhaps the best-known sports legend from the Rock Island college, dozens of other athletes have catapulted Augustana to the national stage. Wrath, an inductee of the College Sports Information Directors of America's Hall of Fame, will share stories of those whose exploits landed our community on sports pages around the country.
Presentations are free and open to the public. For more details about events at the Rock Island Library, call (309) 732-7303 or check the online calendar at www.rockislandlibrary.org.
