The Community Library will be closed Monday, September 1, 2014 for the Labor Day holiday. Have a safe and happy Labor Day!
Professor Glenn Willumson presents “Iron Muse: Photographing the Transcontinental Railroad”
The construction of the transcontinental railroad (1865–1869) marked a milestone in United States history, symbolizing both the joining of the country’s two coasts and the taming of its frontier wilderness by modern technology. But it was through the power of images—and especially the photograph—that the railroad attained its iconic status. Iron Muse provides a unique look at the production, distribution, and publication of images of the transcontinental railroad: from their use as an official record by the railroad corporations, to their reproduction in the illustrated press and travel guides, and finally to their adaptation to direct sales and albums in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Tracing the complex relationships and occasional conflicts between photographer, publisher, and curator as they crafted the photographs’ different meanings over time, Willumson provides a comprehensive portrayal of the creation and evolution of an important slice of American visual culture.
Glenn Willumson is a professor of art history and the director of the graduate program in museum studies at the University of Florida. Professor Willumson is the recipient of fellowship support from the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the National Endowment for the Humanities, Yale University, Stanford University, and the Samuel Kress Foundation. In 2013, he was named Florida Foundation Research Professor of Art History by the University of Florida. He has published numerous articles and his first book, W. Eugene Smith and the Photographic Essay, was awarded a J. Paul Getty Publication Grant.
Anthony Doerr | “All the Light We Cannot See”
We are thrilled to welcome Anthony Doerr, highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning author, as he reads from All the Light We Cannot See, his beautiful, stunningly ambitious, instant New York Times bestselling novel about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II.
Doerr’s “stunning sense of physical detail and gorgeous metaphors” (San Francisco Chronicle) are dazzling. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, he illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another. Ten years in the writing, All the Light We Cannot See is a magnificent, deeply moving novel from a writer “whose sentences never fail to thrill” (Los Angeles Times).
Don’t miss this one!
In partnership with Iconoclast Books: Christian Winn presents “Naked Me”
In his debut collection, Christian Winn throws his readers unabashedly into a world of characters on the brink. Sometimes overtly, sometimes obliquely, we see what it means to live in a flawed world and, like anything profound, come away from the experience provoked, asking new questions. Naked Me, though despondent in places, is steeped in hope with characters willing to believe they might find peace, or at least a semblance of understanding within the earnest clutter of love, addiction, friendship, and dreams.
Voyeurs at a gambling party spy on the exhibitionist across the alley. A young boy tries to conceal his love for his best friend. Murdered dentists mysteriously begin to appear floating in the shipping canal of a city. Naked Me is that collection that pulls wisdom from the mundane, making us cringe and laugh in the same sentence. From the first line, Naked Me quickly reveals we are in the capable hands of a master.
Christian Winn was born in Eugene, Oregon, and grew up in Palo Alto, California and the Seattle area. He now lives in Boise, Idaho where he writes and teaches in the Creative Writing Department at Boise State University. He is the founder of the Writers Write fiction workshop series, which has been in operation since the summer of 2003. He is a graduate of Seattle Pacific University, and the Boise State University MFA program.
Sun Valley Summer Symphony Movie: A Late Quartet (2012)
In partnership with the Sun Valley Summer Symphony, the Community Library Presents A Late Quartet, a 2012 American drama film co-written (with Seth Grossman), produced, and directed by Yaron Zilberman. The film uses chamber music played by the Brentano String Quartet and especially, Beethoven’s Op. 131.
As the Fugue String quartet approaches its 25th anniversary, the onset of a debilitating illness to cellist, Peter Mitchell (Christopher Walken), forces its members to reevaluate their relationships. After being diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, Peter announces his decision to play one final concert before he retires. Meanwhile the second violinist, Robert (Philip Seymour Hoffman), voices his desire to alternate the first violinist role, long held by Daniel (Mark Ivanir). Robert is married to Juliette (Catherine Keener), the viola player of the group. Upon discovering Juliette does not support him in this matter, Robert has a one-night stand. Further complicating matters, their daughter, Alexandra (Imogen Poots), begins an affair with Daniel, whom her mother once pined for. Yet bound together by their years of collaboration, the quartet will search for a fitting farewell to their shared passion of music and perhaps even a new beginning.
View the official trailer here.
BSU Professor Nick Miller on European Nationalism
Nick Miller studied history at Indiana University, where he received his Ph.D. in 1991. He teaches courses on modern European history.
Professor Miller’s research focus is the lands of the former Yugoslavia. His publications include articles on Serbian and Croatian history before the First World War and Serbian politics and culture since 1945. His book on the Serbian community of Croatia, entitled Between Nation and State: Serbian Politics in Croatia before the First World War, appeared courtesy of the University of Pittsburgh Press in the fall of 1997. His second book, The Nonconformists: Culture, Politics, and Nationalism in a Serbian Cultural Circle, 1944-1991 was published in 2007 by Central European University Press. His articles have appeared in The Slavic Review, East European Politics and Societies,Nationalities Papers, Orbis, Problems of Post-Communism, and in edited volumes.
Miller has been a recipient of fellowships from the International Research and Exchanges Board, the Andrew Mellon foundation, American Council of Learned Societies, and Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. His research has taken him to former Yugoslavia on many occasions, and he has traveled extensively in Eastern Europe in general. His current research focuses on the population of a region called Žumberak, in northern Croatia: its settlement patterns, immigration and emigration, religious and national identity.
Currently, Miller serves as director of the Arts and Humanities Institute at Boise State University.
