University of Central Arkansas Honors College faculty Dr. Donna Bowman and Noel Murray will host a High Table featuring a review of pop culture in 2004 at 3 p.m. on Wednesday, Jan. 19 in the Honors College Forum in McAlister Hall, Room 302.The New Year always sees a flood of “best of” lists, recollecting and celebrating the mass-media artistry of the previous year. These lists are usually a mixture of the familiar – big budget movies – and the unfamiliar – items that haven?t yet registered on the public consciousness. We?ll examine the year in movies and pop culture at large, highlighting trends both promising and disturbing. Video and DVD clips – some from works yet to be given wide release – will illustrate our personal choices for the best of 2004.
Dr. Donna Bowman is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies in the Honors College at the University of Central Arkansas. She earned a B.A. from Wake Forest University, an M.A. from the University of Georgia, and a Ph.D. from the University of Virginia. She has hosted radio programs on film in Athens, Georgia and Charlottesville, Va., and currently writes for the Nashville Scene and The Onion AV Club.
Noel Murray is a freelance journalist specializing in music and film criticism. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Georgia School of Journalism. For the last several years he has written extensively on rock music and film for the Nashville Scene, an alternative weekly with a circulation of over 100,000, and The Onion AV Club, a popular online newspaper. His work has also appeared in No Depression, Performing Songwriter, College Music Journal, and Variety. Currently he is teaching a class for the Honors College on comics.
