Humanities Matters

March/April 2008

Spring is here! Well, that depends on where you are in Tennessee (mountains, delta, plateau, or valley) but hopefully you're beginning to see some signs of spring in your community.

Where is Humanities Tennessee this spring?
Humanities Tennessee will be in LaFollete with the New Harmonies: A Celebration of Roots Music exhibit through April 27; we were in Memphis with 1,300 school children; we were in Cool Springs with authors George Singleton and Lynne Berry; and we awarded TAM scholarships to cultural organizations in Selmer, Dyersburg, Bolivar, Denmark, Livingston, Greeneville, LaGrange and Spring City.

Letters About Literature Contest Winners Announced

The 2008 Letters about Literature contest invited students across the state to write a letter to an author expressing how their book affected them personally. More than 1,100 4th through 12th graders rose to the challenge and ultimately three winners each at the three writing levels were selected. Humanities Tennessee congratulates these nine outstanding winners. You can read Tennessee's winning letters on our website.
… Find out more about this and other humanities programs for school age children

Humanities Tennessee Launches a Smithsonian Exhibition Tour

On March 15 we welcomed our fifth Smithsonian exhibit tour of Tennessee. The exhibition, New Harmonies: Celebrating American Roots Music, opened in LaFollette, Tennessee. Hosted locally by the Campbell County Historical Society & Museum and the Campbell Cultural Coalition, LaFollette is the first of six sites statewide that will host New Harmonies.
… Read about the exhibit and get a full itinerary of New Harmonies events in LaFollette

HT Awards Scholarships for Statewide Museum Conference

Humanities Tennessee is proud to award fourteen individuals from nine cultural and historical non-profit organizations from across the state a scholarship to attend the 2008 Tennessee Association of Museums (TAM) conference in Jackson.
… Read more about Humanities Tennessee's TAM scholarships

Humanities Tennessee Announcements

Thank you to those who participated in the bookfair at Barnes & Noble bookstores by making a purchase to benefit the Southern Festival of Books and to those who came to Cool Springs to hear George Singleton on March 20 and Lynne Berry on March 22.
… Read more about events that support the SFB

We need YOU to help us continue bringing outstanding humanities programming to the public throughout Tennessee. Please consider making a donation to Humanities Tennessee now. Your tax-deductible gift to Humanities Tennessee will make a real difference in 2008 — please make a safe and secure online donation now.

Humanities Matters Reading Picks

The staff and board constantly read a wide variety of books and articles, and as part of each Humanities Matters newsletter we'll offer up some reading suggestions if you're looking for a good book. If you would like to suggest a good read to be included in Humanities Matters, email lacey@humanitiestennessee.org with the title along with a short review or why you suggest it.

  • Jack Murrah, Humanities Tennessee board member and President of Lyndhurst Foundation in Chattanooga is reading Driving With the Devil, by Neal Thompson (Three Rivers Press, 2007)
    Little did I know, and little did I wish to know, about NASCAR until Neal Thompson's Driving with the Devil fell into my hands. Car racing seemed but one step above dog fighting, and its growth in popularity a source of personal dismay.

    The book has not increased my appetite for an afternoon at the racetrack, but it has subverted my snobbery by telling a lively story of one of the great 20th century sideshows. The main stage production of the evolution of the automobile and its impact on American culture is well known, but who knew that stock car racing emerged from the historical convergence of moonshine and Model Ts?

    Here we learn the delicious irony that prudish Henry Ford, an ardent advocate of Prohibition, was creating the vehicle of choice for transporting hillbilly liquor. His Model T enabled bootlegging to grow beyond a local market as daring young drivers learned to move their wares unobtrusively from the mountains of north Georgia into the booming city of Atlanta. In the 30s the game shifted from hiding from the coppers to outrunning the taxmen, and nothing could run faster than a new V-8 Ford. (Those who want some tips on get-away maneuvers will find them between these covers.)

    With the creation of NASCAR in 1947 began promoters' efforts to dissociate the sport from its origins, and we get another insight in mid-century America. As with the wildly successful emergence of rock and roll from its hidden roots in African-American music, racing had to be severed from its roots in the marginal and devalued culture of Appalachia.

    As you sit in the stands of the Atlanta Speedway, sharing in a sport with more fans than any other in America, carry a copy of Driving with the Devil with you. It will give you another angle from which to view the once gritty, now gaudy affair.

  • Robert's pick: Republic.com 2.0, by Cass R. Sustein (Princeton University Press, 2007)

  • Melissa's pick: The Zookeeper's Wife: A War Story, by Diane Ackerman (W.W. Norton, 2007)
    The Zookeeper's Wife is a nonfiction account of a Warsaw zoo which hid Jews during the German occupation.

  • Lacey's pick: The World Without Us, by Alan Weisman (St. Martin's, 2007)
    The World Without Us is an amusing, but not entirely ineffective, exercise illustrating how humans have and may continue to affect the natural world from the most obvious environmental dangers to the forgotten to the seemingly trivial use of everyday products. Weisman goes through the scope of human history discussing how we have evolved alongside or to the detriment of other species and their (and our) natural habitats.

    Calling on scholars and professionals from nearly every sector, Weisman does not present the world without us as an unhopeful one, but repeatedly gives pertinent examples of Earth's continued ability to adapt and heal itself. He takes you to a town in Cyprus to demonstrate exactly how flora and fauna have already begun the restoration process by taking over abandoned buildings and asphalt streets, to the North Pacific where human garbage is being swirled around in ocean currents as if an enormous global marine landfill. Must a new microbe or species have to evolve to break down all of this waste? How will nature respond to this calamity if we do not?

    Weisman's narrative non-fiction is informative and entertaining and will inspire you to reconsider your impact on the earth and how you will continue to impact it.

  • Serenity's pick: About Alice, by Calvin Trillin (Random House, 2006)

  • Paul's pick: Fallen Into the Pit, by Ellis Peters (Mysterious Press, 1996)

  • Tim's pick: The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America, by David Hajdu (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008)

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