Lectures For Lifelong Learners!

Dive into the vibrant, complex, and often overlooked story of Latinos in Hollywood with this engaging overview of cinematic history. We’ll see villainous banditos, fiery Latin Lovers, sultry spitfires, and crossover sensations as we move from the silent era to the Golden Age of Musicals to contemporary cinematic portrayals. Whether you’re a film buff, a history nerd, or just love a good underdog story, this talk offers an unflinching and surprising journey through “reel” representations with iconic images and untold stories.

From vampires and zombies to aliens and slashers, this spine-tingling lecture shows how movie monsters reflect more than our fears—they are projections of our collective cultural psyche. We’ll explore how monster movies reveal something about our politics, our prejudices, and the social anxieties of their time. From Cold War paranoia to pandemic anxiety, immigration fears to technological threats, monsters aren’t just here to scare us—they’re here to tell us something about ourselves and our others.

Take a stroll through our nation’s vibrant immigrant history as represented in fiction and poetry by immigrant writers. You’ll gain insights into the experiences of different immigrant groups in the US and their impact on literature, learn about the shared history of immigrants past and present, and discover something about your own ancestors’ pursuit of the American Dream.

Most of us have never served in the military, and even fewer have fought in a war. This literary journey explores the experience of war and homecoming through the eyes of veterans of the Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan Wars. We’ll share their memories, learn from their hard-earned insights, and get a view of war beyond yellow ribbons, military parades, and news headlines.

Take a literary journey through some of the greatest war stories and poetry written in English by soldiers themselves. This thought-provoking lecture explores the rich tradition of literature by combat veterans, suggesting some of the ways that they use storytelling to process trauma, inform collective memory, and preserve truths that history books and news media often miss. We’ll trace themes by veterans of both World Wars and consider distinct features that define “Postmodern War” and its literature. This talk reminds us that sometimes the bravest thing a soldier can do is pick up a pen.

This compelling lecture explores Grit Lit—a raw, unflinching literary subgenre that has attracted a wide readership and become the new face of the literary South. We’ll explore some of its key themes and how Southern women writers are expanding the boundaries of the subgenre with fearless storytelling. This is not the world of Southern Belles and sweet Magnolias, but of survival and resilience. With stories that are bold and undeniably brave—these Southern women are rewriting the South one hard-won sentence at a time.