About this Collection
"A Moveable Feast" lecture series was established by the College of Liberal Arts at Armstrong Atlantic State University in February 2013. The lectures are held at historic sites in Savannah, GA.
The records in this collection represent the lectures held before the Armstrong State University and Georgia Southern University merger. To view records for lectures held after the University merger, please visit https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/moveable-feast/.
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From Peril to Promise: The Social Responsiveness of American Theater in the 1930s and 40s
Pam Spears
4-6-2017Out of the instability of the 1930s and ‘40s, playwrights, theater artists and composers created inspirational, socially responsive work with innovative theatrical practices. Doing so, they offered theatergoers an experience that encouraged new perspectives and lightened the burden of the day-to-day realities of economic depression and world war. By reacting to the perilous atmosphere of those decades with dramatic reflections on their situations, many playwrights hoped they might inspire individuals to conceive a propitious future. Join a company of Armstrong’s outstanding musical and theatrical performers and directors as they explore scenes from popular dramatic works of the period by Tennessee Williams, Rodgers and Hammerstein and Kaufman and Hart, demonstrating how these players promoted stability and hope during this extraordinary period in American theater.
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Women in Conflict: Constructing Identity in the Twentieth Century During Dictatorship and War
Hapsatou Wane and Allison Scardino Belzer
1-26-2017Drawing from distinct historical moments and settings, Comparative Literature Assistant Professor Hapsatou Wane and History Associate Professor Allison Scardino Belzer will explore how women writers respond to political and military conflict. Wane will evaluate how Afro-Brazilian women use stories of insurrection to represent the muddy entanglements of their identities. In particular, she will examine the role memories of slavery, colonialism and military dictatorship play in the construction of black selfhood. Belzer will analyze how women living at the Italian front responded to the violence they experienced during the First World War. She will emphasize how, as civilians and volunteer medical personnel, these women resisted military occupation and promoted Italian patriotism, all the while redefining what femininity could mean in the early 20th century. Wane holds a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Belzer has a Ph.D. from Emory University.
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Landscapes of Unrest: Visual Narratives of Environmentalism and Civil Rights in Photographic Stills
Regina Bradley and Angela Horne
12-8-2016Examining how landscape photography can function as a visual narrative, Angela Horne, an associate professor of Visual Arts, and Dr. Regina Bradley, assistant professor of African-American Culture, will discuss how seemingly "still" images of a landscape are translated into stories that inform the way we engage with modern American culture and society. Focusing on images from the exhibition Watershed: Contemporary Landscape Photography (currently on display at the Jepson Center), Horne will analyze the relationships between people and the environment that these prints encompass. Drawing upon another manifestation of “still landscape” photography, Bradley will explore how visual images of the Civil Rights Movement shape our understanding of a Southern culture-scape today. She will direct our gaze beyond these images to observe connections between the visual narratives and the protests taking place in the post-Civil Rights South. Together, Horne, who earned a M.F.A. from Georgia Southern University, and Bradley, who holds a Ph.D. from Florida State University, will expose the unsettling social significance of stillness in these exposures.
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Grappling with Nuances: Political Contexts and Economic Platforms in the 2016 General Election
Lara Wessel and Nicholas Mangee
10-27-2016Poilitical Science Professor Lara Wessel and Economics Professor Nicholas Mangee grapple with the nuances of Hillary Clinton’s and Donald Trump’s political and economic policies. Wessel will present an overview of both candidates’ policies, focusing on the embedded politics in their respective party’s platforms. She will emphasize the inter-party and intra-party rhetoric that has defined this election cycle, teasing out the potential short-term and long-term consequences for the political parties themselves, the electorate and the presidential election process. Mangee will survey the candidates’ most significant economic policy proposals. He will discuss how, throughout the campaigns, both Clinton and Trump have cultivated positions on immigration, wages, infrastructure, taxes, education and national defense. By highlighting their positions on these issues, he will compare their positions based on their implications for economic growth. Wessel holds a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and Mangee earned a Ph.D. from the University of New Hampshire.
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Refitting Old Ships: How Jazz Builds on Its Own Past
Randall Reese and Steve Primatic
4-14-2016The lecture will serve as the grand finale of this season’s Moveable Feast and will include a jazz quartet performance to show how jazz musicians expand on music of the past during the creation of new work. They will demonstrate jazz’s process of creating rhythmic, harmonic, melodic and stylistic variations for existing pieces in order to reimagine musical staples. Reese specializes in the saxophone and directs the Jazz Ensemble. Primatic specializes in percussion instruments and directs the Percussion Ensemble. Both professors hold a D.M.A.
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Cultural Cannibals or Twentieth Century Heroes?: The Case of Christodora Settlement House.
June Hopkins
3-10-2016Armstrong State University will host a free lecture by Dr. June Hopkins, a professor in the History Department. The lecture will explore how middle-class, educated women entered into the public sphere using the settlement house as a gateway institution. Although the emphasis was on Americanizing their immigrant neighbors, Hopkins will discuss how these women found a political voice and influenced social policies. Hopkins’ research interests include welfare history, the Great Depression and World War II. Hopkins has a Ph.D. in History from Georgetown University.
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Crossroads of Oppression: An Analysis of the Intersection of Race and Gender in the History of Slavery in Savannah
Jennifer Padilla Wyse and Alison Hatch
2-4-2016This joint lecture will trace the complicated links and intersections between gender and the history of slavery and the slave trade in Savannah. Hatch and Wyse’s research interests include social inequality, gender and relationships. Both professors hold a Ph.D. in Sociology.
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Suiting up the Hero: Armor and Identity from The Black Prince to The Dark Knight
Grant Gearheart
11-19-2015Blending history and popular culture, this lecture will analyze the roles armor played for knights during the early Renaissance period and will discuss the similar, modern purposes of the “batsuit” in Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy. Dr. Grant Gearhart’s research interests include chivalry, medieval warfare and fifteenth-century chronicles. Gearhart has a Ph.D. in Medieval and Early Modern Spanish Literature from the University of North Carolina.
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Donald Duck’s Allies: José Carioca, the Brazilian Expeditionary Force and U.S. Armed Forces in World War II
Michael Hall
9-24-2015Disney meets South America in this lecture, which will examine how the animated film Saludos Amigos helped launch Brazil’s position as a U.S. ally during WWII and will review the positive benefits for both the Allied Forces and Brazil in this agreement. Dr. Michael Hall’s research interests include Latin American studies and U.S. foreign relations. Hall has a Ph.D. in History from Ohio University.
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The Emergence of Modernism: Art between the Wars
Deborah Jamieson, Steve Primatic, Benjamin Warsaw, and Emily Grundstad-Hall
4-2-2015This collaborative performance will integrate the visual and performing arts of the early twentieth century to explore the emergence of modernism as it is bracketed within the cultural context of the first and second world wars. Examining key paintings of the era and paralleling their motifs with those in musical composition, this final course of our Moveable Feast will bring together professors of art and music to trace a historical arc from Debussy to Stravinsky, to Weil and Gershwin, finishing with a tribute to Cole Porter and American jazz.
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Do Numbers Speak for Themselves? The Liberal Arts Requirement and Savannah’s Metro Economy
Michael Toma
3-5-2015We are awash in data. Analytical research, however, is not merely the acquisition of data. Rather, if we hope to use it to address the complexities of important questions, we must employ finely honed critical thinking skills to scrutinize numerical patterns. Data can provide resources for analytical investigations of business phenomena, but privileging numbers alone can also hinder our quest for insight into human interactions in everyday economic transactions. This talk will explore how data both augments and clouds our vision of the workings on Savannah's metro area economy. Callaway Professor of Economics, Dr. Michael Toma, will argue that a liberal arts education serves as a crucial foundation from which to examine data-based analytical superstructures. Engaging both data collection and critical thinking, he will offer us a fuller picture of our economy's performance today and where it is likely headed tomorrow.
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Re-enfranchising the Disenfranchised: Voting Rights in America
Becky da Cruz, Ned Rinalducci, Maxine Bryant, and George Brown
2-5-2015This panel of scholars will examine the multifaceted history of voting rights of African Americans, focusing on the political, sociological, and legal implications of efforts to restrict and deny access to the vote—the fundamental instrument of democracy. Of particular interest will be an exploration of the effects of incarceration on the black community and the relationship between criminal records and voting rights. Yet by devoting equal time to the achievements of African Americans, this discussion will also emphasize and celebrate the civil rights initiatives that led to the expansion of voting rights, which in turn led (at least partially) to the election of the first African- American president of the United States. The panelists will conclude by offering perspectives on the possibilities for the continuation of re-enfranchisement movements.
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X Marks the Spot: Treasure Maps and National Identity in the Far, Far Away
Jane Rago
11-13-2014The popularity of adventure novels exploded at the end of the nineteenth century, as a seemingly insatiable Western audience clamored for fantastic tales of the “far, far away.” These tales both quelled and reflected late imperial anxieties about national identity. Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island (1883) supplied images of the modern pirate, but perhaps more importantly the novel also bequeathed the perdurable romance of the treasure map. As the Age of Exploration gave way to the Age of Adventure, treasure maps replaced blank maps of colonial conquest— cartographies to be deciphered and decoded rather than charted and written. Cultural theorist Jane V. Rago will analyze late-imperial adventure tales, arguing that these narratives served as sites of cultural domination that inscribed national identity in ways that parallel current discourses of globalization.
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Gardens, Manners, and William Jay: Savannah's Romantic Spirit
Christopher E. Hendricks
9-4-2014In conjunction with the Telfair Academy’s exhibit, Romantic Spirits: Nineteenth- Century Paintings from the Johnson Collection, Early American historian Christopher E. Hendricks will examine how this exciting age reshaped Savannah’s landscape, society, and architecture. With the dawn of the nineteenth century, the city of Savannah found itself on the cusp of great change as it developed from a provincial colonial capital to a thriving and nationally important port city. Accompanying this shift was an equally exciting revolution in culture as Americans joined their European cousins in revolting against the rationality of the eighteenthcentury in favor of emotional responses to experiences as they expressed themselves through literature, music, and the visual arts.
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Letters from Composers: Musicians Speak
Emily Grundstad-Hall
4-24-2014After so many hearty servings of thought-provoking lectures, A Moveable Feast will culminate in a celebration of the joy in living that a liberal arts education also promises. The series will close at Armstrong’s Fine Arts Auditorium where Professor Grundstad-Hall, soprano, and Benjamin Warsaw, piano, will perform works by Schubert, Schumann, Bach, Debussy, Puccini, and Mozart. Also featured on the program will be Dominick Argento’s, “Letters from Composers,” with Brian Luckett on guitar.
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Homeless: Poverty and Place in Urban America
Ella Howard
3-27-2014During the twentieth century, many homeless Americans lived on skid rows, the best known of which was New York City’s Bowery. Such spaces became more than urban poverty zones. Over time, they came to define the people who lived there. Howard will lend insight into the meaning of homelessness and poverty in twentieth-century America and offer us a new perspective on the modern welfare system.
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A ghost in his supposedly safe old house’: Uncanny Homes in American Fiction
Laura Barrett
1-30-2014When Henry James returned to his native land after a nearly thirty-year absence, he remarked that he felt dispossessed and alienated, as if there were “a ghost in his supposedly safe old house.” What James describes is a sense of the uncanny, defined by Freud as the familiar made strange. Building intersections between theory and art, Barrett will discuss how turn-of-the-century American literature—rife with haunted houses and eerie doubles—reveals an uncanny moment in American history, one in which concepts of home and self were in flux.
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To Be Beautiful in Light: The Role of Photography in Shaping the Modern Black Identity
Laura Mason
11-14-2013This lecture explores the ways in which the photograph has been used to create and shape perceptions of African-American identity in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. From W.E.B. Du Bois to Alain Locke to Langston Hughes, the notion of what it means to be an African-American has been shaped by photographic and literary representations of black scholars, artists, and politicians. Mason will examine how visual images establish and continually reinforce collective and individual African-American identities.
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Presidential Authority and National Threats: Thinking Critically about Power
Lara Wessel
10-24-2013The ways in which American presidents respond to crises offer important insights into their politics, their leadership styles, and their interpretations of the Constitution. In this lecture, Wessell will draw upon the powers of critical analysis inculcated through a liberal arts education to assess presidential power as she examines the ways in which recent presidents have responded to war, natural disaster, civil unrest, and the ever-changing landscape of current events.
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On the Relevance of a Liberal Arts-Based Economics Education for Society
Nicholas Mangee
9-12-2013As the recent global financial crisis and ensuing great recession have shown, we live in an ever-evolving economic world confronted by numerous impending challenges. Mangee will explore how a liberal-arts based education in economics provides society with the critical thinking and analytical tools necessary to confront such obstacles with purpose and (perhaps even) a renewed sense of optimism.
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What is College For? The Future of American Education
Andrew Delbanco
2-25-2013In this centerpiece lecture for A Moveable Feast, Delbanco will argue that as the commercialization of American higher education accelerates, more and more students are coming to college with the narrow aim of obtaining a pre-professional credential. Delbanco will illustrate how a traditional four-year college experience— an exploratory time for students to discover their passions and test ideas and values with the help of teachers and peers—is in danger of becoming a thing of the past. This talk will encourage us to remember why making a strong liberal arts education available to as many young people as possible remains central to America’s democratic promise.
