Rock Island, IL - In October sessions of the 16th Annual Frieze Lecture Series at Rock Island Library, Augustana College professors considered the generational impacts on how people perceive their ethnic identity and shown how Western artists perceive African art, and how African cultures use ceremonial objects and textiles to reinforce social lessons, spiritual connections and status.
The two remaining lectures in November will explore global connections in literature. Lectures begin at 2:00 pm in the Rock Island Main Library Community Room, 401 19th Street, and are free and open to the public. This year's theme, "It IS a Small World After All: Globalism's Impact on Literature, Art and Culture" was chosen to illustrate the global connections between the humanities.
On Tuesday, Nov. 5, visiting professor Dr. Benjamin Mier-Cruz, of the Augustana College department of German and Scandinavian, will speak on the exploding popularity of the Swedish Crime Novel. From works such as "Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" by the late Steig Larsson to the Wallander novels by Henning Mankell, what is behind the huge popularity of violent crime fiction in a relatively tranquil national culture? Novels by Camilla Läckberg, the Swedish author of "The Hidden Child" and "The Lost Boy" have been translated into 33 languages.
In the final Frieze Lecture on Tuesday, Nov. 12, Prof. Katie Hanson, from Augustana's Education Department, will speak on one of Britain's foremost authors, Japanese-born Kazuo Ishiguro. Hanson will consider how the author's background as somewhat of a cultural outsider have informed or influenced his perceptions of the Western world. Ishiguro has become one of the most celebrated contemporary fiction authors in the English-speaking world, receiving four Mann Booker writing prize nominations, and winning the 1989 award for his novel, The Remains of the Day. His 2005 novel, Never Let Me Go, also nominated for the Mann Booker prize, was chosen by Augustana's faculty as the common summer reader for this year's entering class.
The annual adult program partnership between Rock Island Library and Augustana College is dedicated to the memory of late library board member Ruth Evelyn Katz, who created the Frieze Lectures in 1998 to recognize the Rock Island Public Library's 125th anniversary. The series takes its name from an architectural feature of Main Library building.
For more details about events at the Rock Island Library, call 309 732 -7323 or check the online calendar at www.rockislandlibrary.org.
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