The University of Central Arkansas Honors College’s Fall 2011 Challenge Week will feature nature and environment writers David Abram, Mark Spitzer and Ann Fisher-Wirth in a series of talks and events on UCA’s campus and in Little Rock.
Challenge Week runs from Oct. 31- Nov. 4. This year’s theme, “Connect/Disconnect: Knowing Our Place,” will address the divide between “the digital world” and “the real world.” The theme for the fall event springs from writer Barbara Kingsolver’s notion of knowing one’s natural surroundings, habitat, human and nonhuman community, but also addresses the idea of tuning in to and being attuned with a “nature” that is in no way separate from us.
The keynote speaker for this year’s Challenge Week is David Abram, author of The Spell of the Sensuous, which interweaves phenomenology, anthropology, and linguistics, and about which author James Hillman wrote “I know of no work more valuable for shifting our thinking and feeling about the place of humans in the world.” Abram’s newest book, Becoming Animal, was just released this year, and the Los Angeles Times calls it “revolutionary,” while Science hails it as “daring” and “truly original.” His lecture is scheduled for Wednesday, Nov. 2 at 7 p.m. in the College of Business auditorim. Abram, founding director of the nonprofit organization Alliance for Wild Ethics (www.wildethics.org), will also read from his work at 2:00 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 3 at the Cox Creative Center in Little Rock’s Rivermarket District. Both of David Abram’s readings will be followed by a book signing.
Bookending Abram’s presentation will be two additional readings and signings. At 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 1 in the McAlister Hall Mirror Room, poet, novelist, environmental writer and UCA faculty member Mark Spitzer, author of Season of the Gar, will read from his work, and, at 7 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 3 in the Baum Gallery lecture hall, award-winning poet Ann Fisher-Wirth, on faculty at Ole Miss, will conclude the public portion of Challenge Week with a poetry reading. Fisher-Wirth’s recent collections include Carta Marina (2009), Slide Shows (2009), and Five Terraces (2005). All events are free and open to the public.
Through these powerful and eloquent writers’ unique voices, Challenge Week will indeed challenge audience members to examine their own understandings of “knowing place.” For further information about Challenge Week, contact Adam Frank at 450-3486 or at afrank@uca.edu.
