In Week Five, Chautauqua examined “The American West.” Interfaith lectures explored the West’s religious innovations and evolution, and performances like the “Go West!” and “The Ballad of Baby Doe” brought the characters of the American West to Chautauqua. Here’s what people were up to in Week Five:
Prose writer-in-residence Richard Terrill will lead a workshop called “Writing about Music,” and poet-in-residence Robert Ostrom will lead a workshop called “Personal Landscapes for Poets.” Terrill and Ostrom will also give readings at 3:30 p.m. Sunday on the porch of the Literary Arts Center at Alumni Hall.
All is not quiet on the Western front. For poet Frank X Walker, there are voices that still need to be heard, and he wants to bring them to life.
At 10:45 a.m. today in the Amphitheater, Patrick Griffin, chair of the history department at Notre Dame University, will kick-start Week Five’s theme of “The American West” with a lecture titled “America as Frontier: A View Of Our Past.”
What does the frontier mean for America? We have been told for generations that understanding it is fundamental for coming to terms with white American identity. It helped foster certain sensibilities that can explain individualism, relations to the state, and understandings of other groups.
The Chautauqua Writers’ Center workshops for Week Five will center on heightening emotions, the basics of poetry and playwriting.
Chautauqua Institution lecture platforms, artistic programs explore American expansionism in Week Five
Playwright Molly Smith Metzler thinks that every person has a great idea deep down inside — one that might be a secret.
Let’s be candid. How Chautauqua Institution will lasso “The American West,” the theme for 2014’s Week Five, is, from the vantage of this season’s fifth week, a work in progress. But this sprawling theme — which will pursue the nation’s artistic, cultural, political and economic gains from Westward expansion — presents many possibilities.
Anthony M. Kennedy, associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, will offer remarks on the Week Five theme, “The Pursuit of Happiness,” in a special lecture at 3:30 p.m. today in the Hall of Philosophy.
Nominated to the Supreme Court by President Ronald Reagan, Kennedy took his seat Feb. 18, 1988. In his 25 years on the bench, he has written the court’s majority opinion on many landmark cases, including United States v. Windsor in 2013, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission in 2010, Kennedy v. Louisiana and Boumediene v. Bush in 2008 and Lawrence v. Texas in 2003.
