PLEASE NOTE THAT SEVERAL EVENTS HAVE BEEN CANCELED OR POSTPONED DUE TO CONCERNS REGARDING COVID-19. UPDATES WILL BE MADE AS CHANGES TO EVENTS ARE ANNOUNCED. PLEASE CHECK WOFFORD'S ONLINE CALENDAR AT HTTPS://CALENDAR.WOFFORD.EDU FOR FREQUENT UPDATES.
SPARTANBURG, S.C. – Guest lectures and art exhibitions highlight events at Wofford College in March.
All events listed are open to the public and are free of charge unless otherwise noted. Please check the online calendar at the calendar.wofford.edu for frequent updates. For athletics events, please go to athletics.wofford.edu.
For more information, contact Laura Corbin at woffordnews@wofford.edu.
Monday, March 2
Reflections of the State of Foreign Affairs
Guest Speaker: Alfred Moses, former U.S. ambassador to Romania
7 p.m., Harley Room, Richardson Physical Activities Building
Alfred H. Moses will speak on “Reflections of the State of Foreign Affairs.” He was appointed in 1994 by President Bill Clinton as U.S. ambassador to Romania, where he served for three years. His appointment followed his efforts over two decades to free Jews and others from Communist Romania. In 2002, Moses was awarded Romania’s Marc Cruce medal by the president of that country, its highest category awarded; at the time, he was the only American to have received the award. Following his ambassadorial service, Clinton appointed Moses as special presidential envoy for the Cyprus Conflict. Moses previously had served President Jimmy Carter as special adviser and special counsel. Moses has practiced law since 1956 when he joined the Washington, D.C., law firm of Covington & Burling LLP, becoming a partner in 1965; he now is senior counsel to the firm. He is the author of “Bucharest Diary, Romania’s Journey from Darkness to Light,” published in 2018 by Brookings Institution. Moses was elected four times as national president of the American Jewish Committee, the longest serving president in more than four decades. Presented by the Office of the President and the Department of Government and International Affairs.
Tuesday, March 3
Hollywood and the Holocaust, 1933-1945
Guest Speaker: Lawrence Baron, San Diego State University
11 a.m., McMillan Theater, Campus Life Building
Lawrence Baron, professor emeritus and Nasatir Chair of Modern Jewish History at San Diego State University, will speak on “Hollywood and the Holocaust, 1933-1945.” Co-sponsored by Film and Digital Media Studies and the Department of History.
Tuesday, March 3
Wofford Writers Series
Guest Speaker: Tom McConnell, novelist
7:30 p.m., Olin Teaching Theater, Franklin W. Olin Building
Novelist Tom McConnell will read from and talk about his recent book, “The Wooden King,” which explores denial, desire and family drama against the backdrop of Czechoslovakia during World War II. McConnell’s work has appeared in the Connecticut Review, the Cortland Review and Shenandoah, among other publications. He has received the South Carolina Academy of Authors Fiction Fellowship, the Hackney National Literary Award for the Short Story and his story collection, “A Picture Book of Hell and Other Landscapes,” was published by Texas Tech University Press. He teaches English at the University of South Carolina Upstate.
Thursday, March 5
Tournées Film Festival 2020: “La Douleur” (Memoir of War)
7 p.m., McMillan Theater, Campus Life Building
Tournées Film Festival is a program of the FACE Foundation in partnership with the Cultural Services of the French Embassy, which aims to bring French cinema to American colleges and university campuses. Founded in 1995, this year in its 25th season, Tournées Film Festival has partnered with over 600 universities, reaching an audience of over half a million students and community members across the United States. Tournées Film Festival reflects the diversity and richness of French cinema through various genres – fiction, documentary, animation and repertory films – giving participants the opportunity to expand their programming and for audiences to experience French cinema through a wider lens. This event is co-sponsored by Wofford College’s French Film Studies, MENA Program and Department of History. Funded by the FACE Foundation and the French Consulate of Atlanta French Ministry of Culture. Tournées Film Festival is made possible with the support of the Cultural Service of the French Embassy in the United States, the Centre National du Cinéma et du I’Imagine Animée (CNC), the French American Cultural Fund, the Florence Gould Foundation and Highbrow Entertainment. Screening schedule: March 5, “La Douleur” (Memoir of War) (Director Emmanuel Finkiel, 2018. French, 127 minutes); March 12, “Une Vie Violente” (Director Thierry de Peretti, 2017. French, 107 minutes); March 19, “Le Semeur: (The Sower) (Director Marine Francen, 2017. French, 98 minutes); March 26, “La Caméra de Claire” (Claire's Camera) (Director Hong Sangsoo, 2018. French, English, Korean, 69 minutes).
Thursday, March 5
Transatlantic Degas: Cotton, Paper, Textiles and Art Between New World and Old: An Art History Lecture Presentation
Guest Speaker: Dr. Michelle Foa, Tulane University
7 p.m., Leonard Auditorium, Main Building
Dr. Michelle Foa will lecture on “Transatlantic Degas: Cotton, Paper, Textiles and Art Between New World and Old,” an examination of Edgar Degas’ works inspired by his travels in the American South. Degas’ four-month stay in New Orleans in 1872-73, which marked his first experience crossing the Atlantic, resulted in two remarkable paintings of a cotton office. Foa’s lecture will analyze the important connections between Southern cotton, the textiles that fill the artist’s pictures of dancers, laundresses and bathers, and the paper he used for many of his drawings. Degas’s Cotton Office paintings as well as drawings and letters he produced during his time abroad reflect his newfound understanding of the ties between the Old and New Worlds and the transport technologies that facilitated the global circulation of people, goods and information. Presented by the Department of Art and Art History.
Thursday, March 12
Trustworthiness and Risk in Medicine
Guest Speaker: Dr. Laura Speaker Sullivan, College of Charleston and Medical University of South Carolina
4 p.m., McMillan Theater, Campus Life Building
Dr. Laura Specker Sullivan, assistant professor of philosophy at College of Charleston and director of ethics at the Medical University of South Carolina, will discuss her recent research.
Thursday, March 12
Tournées Film Festival 2020: “Une Vie Violente”
7 p.m., McMillan Theater, Campus Life Building
Tournées Film Festival is a program of the FACE Foundation in partnership with the Cultural Services of the French Embassy, which aims to bring French cinema to American colleges and university campuses. Founded in 1995, this year in its 25th season, Tournées Film Festival has partnered with over 600 universities, reaching an audience of over half a million students and community members across the United States. Tournées Film Festival reflects the diversity and richness of French cinema through various genres – fiction, documentary, animation and repertory films – giving participants the opportunity to expand their programming and for audiences to experience French cinema through a wider lens. This event is co-sponsored by Wofford College’s French Film Studies, MENA Program and Department of History. Funded by the FACE Foundation and the French Consulate of Atlanta French Ministry of Culture. Tournées Film Festival is made possible with the support of the Cultural Service of the French Embassy in the United States, the Centre National du Cinéma et du I’Imagine Animée (CNC), the French American Cultural Fund, the Florence Gould Foundation and Highbrow Entertainment. Screening schedule: March 12, “Une Vie Violente” (Director Thierry de Peretti, 2017. French, 107 minutes); March 19, “Le Semeur: (The Sower) (Director Marine Francen, 2017. French, 98 minutes); March 26, “La Caméra de Claire” (Claire's Camera) (Director Hong Sangsoo, 2018. French, English, Korean, 69 minutes).
Friday, March 13
Tree Falls Concert: Johnny Gandelsman
7 p.m., Richardson Family Art Museum, lower level, Rosalind Sallenger Richardson Center for the Arts.
Johnny Gandelsman, a Grammy Award-winning violinist, will perform Bach's Cello Suite No. 1 (transcribed for violin) and contemporary music selections in a concert presented in conjunction with the exhibition Peter L. Schmunk Photographs 2010-2020. This retrospective exhibition, on the occasion of Dr. Peter L. Schmunk’s retirement as Mr. and Mrs. T.R. Garrison Professor of the Humanities (art history) at Wofford College, surveys the various interests and projects he has pursued in a decade of creative work in digital photography. It includes images of natural and cultural subjects ranging from wilderness sites to urban ephemera, abstract imagery, connections with literature and music, and the combination of photography with other visual media. An artist’s talk and reception will be held at 7 p.m. Thursday, April 16, during Spartanburg’s monthly ArtWalk. The exhibition will run through Friday, July 31. The concert and exhibition are free and open to the public. To reserve your free ticket, register at treefallsmusic.org.
Thursday, March 19
Tournées Film Festival 2020: “Le Semeur: (The Sower)
7 p.m., McMillan Theater, Campus Life Building
Tournées Film Festival is a program of the FACE Foundation in partnership with the Cultural Services of the French Embassy, which aims to bring French cinema to American colleges and university campuses. Founded in 1995, this year in its 25th season, Tournées Film Festival has partnered with over 600 universities, reaching an audience of over half a million students and community members across the United States. Tournées Film Festival reflects the diversity and richness of French cinema through various genres – fiction, documentary, animation and repertory films – giving participants the opportunity to expand their programming and for audiences to experience French cinema through a wider lens. This event is co-sponsored by Wofford College’s French Film Studies, MENA Program and Department of History. Funded by the FACE Foundation and the French Consulate of Atlanta French Ministry of Culture. Tournées Film Festival is made possible with the support of the Cultural Service of the French Embassy in the United States, the Centre National du Cinéma et du I’Imagine Animée (CNC), the French American Cultural Fund, the Florence Gould Foundation and Highbrow Entertainment. Screening schedule: March 19, “Le Semeur: (The Sower) (Director Marine Francen, 2017. French, 98 minutes); March 26, “La Caméra de Claire” (Claire's Camera) (Director Hong Sangsoo, 2018. French, English, Korean, 69 minutes).
EVENT CANCELED:
Wednesday, March 25
From Botticelli to Tintoretto: Italian Renaissance Art from the Tobey Collection and the Bob Jones University Collection
Gallery Talk: Dr. Nelda Damiano
7 p.m., Richardson Family Art Museum, Rosalind Sallenger Richardson Center for the Arts.
This exhibition charts the dizzying speed with which Italian Renaissance art developed between the late 15th and late 16th centuries. Mixtures of Christian subjects and humanist imagery drawn from antiquity are what one would expect from Renaissance art during this period. However, the style shifts rapidly, and artistic daring encouraged by artists, their patrons and audiences manifest spatial and figural complexities well-represented in these works as well as varieities in their format and media. The exhibition includes works on loan from David and Julie Tobey in New York and the Bob Jones University Museum and Gallery in Greenville. Art history students in Dr. Karen Goodchild’s Renaissance Art class have undertaken research on Renaissance works and their semester-long projects will be presented in late April and early May. The exhibit will be on display through Sunday, May 17.
EVENT CANCELED:
Thursday, March 26
Tyson Family Lecture on the Preservation and Restoration of Southern Ecosystems
Panel Discussion: Environmental Studies, Liberal Arts and the Future
2:30-5 p.m., Gray-Jones Room, Burwell Building
A panel discussion with Dr. Ellen Goldey, vice president for academic affairs and dean of Centre College; Dr. J. Drew Lanham, Alumni Distinguished Professor of Wildlife Ecology at Clemson University; and Dr. Jim Warren, professor of English emeritus at Washington and Lee University will center on Environmental Studies, Liberal Arts and the Future.
Thursday, March 26
Tournées Film Festival 2020: “La Caméra de Claire” (Claire's Camera)
7 p.m., McMillan Theater, Campus Life Building
Tournées Film Festival is a program of the FACE Foundation in partnership with the Cultural Services of the French Embassy, which aims to bring French cinema to American colleges and university campuses. Founded in 1995, this year in its 25th season, Tournées Film Festival has partnered with over 600 universities, reaching an audience of over half a million students and community members across the United States. Tournées Film Festival reflects the diversity and richness of French cinema through various genres – fiction, documentary, animation and repertory films – giving participants the opportunity to expand their programming and for audiences to experience French cinema through a wider lens. This event is co-sponsored by Wofford College’s French Film Studies, MENA Program and Department of History. Funded by the FACE Foundation and the French Consulate of Atlanta French Ministry of Culture. Tournées Film Festival is made possible with the support of the Cultural Service of the French Embassy in the United States, the Centre National du Cinéma et du I’Imagine Animée (CNC), the French American Cultural Fund, the Florence Gould Foundation and Highbrow Entertainment. Screening schedule: March 26, “La Caméra de Claire” (Claire's Camera) (Director Hong Sangsoo, 2018. French, English, Korean, 69 minutes).
EVENT CANCELED:
Thursday, March 26
Tyson Family Lecture on the Preservation and Restoration of Southern Ecosystems: The Greening of Wofford
Speaker: John Lane, professor of environmental studies
Respondent: Dr. Jim Warren, Washington and Lee University
7 p.m., Olin Teaching Theater, Franklin W. Olin Building
The Tyson Family Lecture on the Preservation and Restoration of Southern Ecosystems, established in 2012 by Dr. George Tyson, ’72, Duke ’77, within the purview of the Department of Environmental Studies, is an annual lectureship devoted to issues related to the preservation, restoration and sustainability of Southern ecosystems. The speakers reflect the entire range of the multi-disciplinary approach of environmental studies and may include individuals from academia, business, industry, government, the arts or the non-profit sector. John Lane, a professor of environmental studies at Wofford, was a finalist for the prestigious John Burroughs Medal in 2017. His “Abandoned Quarry: New & Selected Poems” includes much of his published poetry from over the past 30 years, plus a selection of new poems. Another book of poetry, “Anthropocene Blues,” was published in 2017. Lane’s first novel, “Fate Moreland’s Widow,” was published by the late Pat Conroy’s Story River books in early 2015. Lane has won numerous awards, including the 2001 Phillip D. Reed Memorial Award for Outstanding Writing on the Southern Environment given by the Southern Environmental Law Center. In 2011 he won the Glenna Luschei Prairie Schooner Award, and in 2012 “Abandoned Quarry” won the Southeastern Independent Booksellers Alliance Poetry Book of the Year prize. As an environmentalist, Lane was named the 2013 Water Conservationist of the Year by the South Carolina Wildlife Federation and the Clean Water Champion by Upstate Forever. In 2014, he was inducted into the South Carolina Academy of Authors. Lane and his wife, Betsy Teter, co-foundered Spartanburg’s Hub City Writers Project. Dr. Jim Warren, professor of English emeritus at Washington and Lee University, is a graduate of Auburn University and received his Ph.D. from Yale University. His research topics have included 19th-century literature and culture, literature of the environment and Walt Whitman. Among his publications are “Placing John Haines,” “Other Country: Barry Lopez and the Community of Artists,” “The Road to the Spring: The Collected Poems of Mary Austin,” “John Burroughs and the Place of Nature,” “The Culture of Eloquence” and “Walt Whitman’s Language Experiment.”
NOTE EXTENSION OF SPRING HOLIDAYS:
Monday, March 23, through Friday, April 3
Spring holidays
Gallery and Museum Exhibitions:
Through Friday, March 6
Gummy Labyrinth by Micah Tiffin, class of 2020
Richardson Family Art Gallery, Rosalind Sallenger Richardson Center for the Arts
Wofford senior Micah Tiffin, a humanities and studio art major with a minor in sociology and anthropology from Greenville, South Carolina, is Wofford’s latest Whetsell Fellow, which supports his exhibition. Tiffin says his paintings and sculptures in the Gummy Labyrinth “exemplify the struggle of re-entering the ‘real world’” after temporary daydreaming. He describes the exhibition: “I remember writing the same sentence hundreds of times over and over on paper. Ironically, I don’t remember what the sentence said. It was probably three lines long, about something I did or said that I shouldn’t have said or done. I was implanted on a park bench, facing away from where the others dug holes to China and chased one another up the slide. Luckily, by now I had learned how to escape into my own space. I daydreamed about playing games and my stuffed animal penguins that waited for me at home. I became an artist early, creating spaces that served as distractions. My installation is an ode to this temporary refuge.” The Whetsell Fellowship was established by Dr. William Whetsell in memory of his brother Dan Whetsell in order to annually facilitate a student’s study and creation of art. Each fellowship winner receives funding to work on and create his or her own pieces throughout the summer under the guidance of a professional mentor from the community.
Through Saturday, March 21
Quilted Stories
Rosalind Sallenger Richardson Center for the Arts
- Opening reception, 6-8 p.m., Thursday, March 19, featuring gallery walk with Humanities Scholar Laurel Horton at 7 p.m.
This exhibition features quilts of Wofford faculty and staff, displaying storytelling and shared cultural connections. Quilts are curated by Laurel Horton, an internationally acclaimed quilt researcher, author, editor and lecturer. A catalog of the quilts also will feature each quilt and its story. This interdisciplinary humanities project celebrates the many uses and meanings of quilts – as works of art, individual expressions, keepers of history, healing comforters, instruments of means, generational teaching tools, common experiences, accomplishments, gifts, keepsakes, hobbies and true crafts. Quilts can represent memories, life and death, grief and joy, and all that lies between. They span centuries and cultures, weaving humanity at every level of social class and race in America. This exhibition is sponsored by the Wofford Cultural Affairs Committee and South Carolina Humanities, a not-for-profit organization that funds, promotes, counsels and coordinates community-building activities in the humanities.
Through Sunday, May 17
100 years of ROTC at Wofford
Sandor Teszler Library Gallery
The U.S. Army issued an order on Dec. 29, 1919, creating a Reserve Officers’ Training Corps unit at Wofford, one of the first denominational colleges to host an ROTC unit. During World War I, before an ROTC unit was formed at Wofford, students organized the Student Army Training Corps for military training, which continued until the end of the war. The nation’s ROTC investment paid off when World War II broke out, with thousands of trained officers ready and available to serve. Hundreds of Wofford alumni of all ranks served throughout the world during World War II, and that service continued through subsequent conflicts. Today, ROTC maintains a h4 presence on campus, and this month, the Sandor Teszler Library opened an exhibit focused on the centennial of ROTC at Wofford. The exhibit features photos as well as artifacts that show how ROTC has evolved and influenced life on the campus.
Through Sunday, May 17
From Botticelli to Tintoretto: Italian Renaissance Art from the Tobey Collection and the Bob Jones University Collection
Richardson Family Art Museum (upper level), Rosalind Sallenger Richardson Center for the Arts
- EVENT CANCELED: Gallery Talk, 7 p.m. Wednesday, March 25, by Dr. Nelda Damiano, Georgia Museum of Art
This exhibition charts the dizzying speed with which Italian Renaissance art developed between the late 15th and late 16th centuries. Mixtures of Christian subjects and humanist imagery drawn from antiquity are what one would expect from Renaissance art during this period. However, the style shifts rapidly, and artistic daring encouraged by artists, their patrons and audiences manifest spatial and figural complexities well-represented in these works as well as varieities in their format and media. The exhibition includes works on loan from David and Julie Tobey in New York and the Bob Jones University Museum and Gallery in Greenville. Art history students in Dr. Karen Goodchild’s Renaissance Art class have undertaken research on Renaissance works and their semester-long projects will be presented in late April and early May.
Through Friday, July 31
Peter L. Schmunk Photographs 2010-2020
Richardson Family Art Museum (lower level), Rosalind Sallenger Richardson Center for the Arts
- Friday, March 13, 7 p.m. – Tree Falls Concert with Johnny Gandelsman, a Grammy Award-winning violinist, performing Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1 (transcribed for violin) and contemporary music selections. Contact treefallsmusic.org for tickets.
- Thursday, April 16, 7 p.m. – Artist’s talk and reception during Spartanburg’s monthly ArtWalk.
This retrospective exhibition, on the occasion of Dr. Peter L. Schmunk’s retirement as Mr. and Mrs. T.R. Garrison Professor of the Humanities (art history) at Wofford College, surveys the various interests and projects he has pursued in a decade of creative work in digital photography. It includes images of natural and cultural subjects ranging from wilderness sites to urban ephemera, abstract imagery, connections with literature and music, and the combination of photography with other visual media.