Campus and community news briefs
Student Association offers musical night
The Indian Student Association invites anyone interested to a benefit concert titled “Indian musical night: The famous poet saints of India.”
The concert is Friday at 6 p.m. in the Chase Fine Arts Center, Room 150 and will feature musician Krishna Kant Shukla.
Shukla began his career in science, earning a doctorate in particle physics from the State University of New York at Buffalo, and began a teaching career in the United States. In 1994 he returned to India to pursue music.
“Dr. Krishna Kant Shukla is a classical singer trained by Ali Akbar Khan, Lakshmi Shankar, and others, and especially devoted to the musical art of Kumar Gandharva, one of the greatest singers of the 20th century,” said Linda Hess of the department of religious studies at Stanford University. “Having lived and taught in the U.S. for a number of years, Dr. Shukla is skilled at translating his songs on the spot and explaining things in effective ways for audiences abroad.”
Prof presents medieval culinary comedy lit
Sarah Gordon, assistant professor of French in Utah State University’s department of languages, philosophy and speech communication, is the guest speaker at the next Friends of Utah State University Libraries lecture. She will present “Culinary Comedy in Medieval Literature.”
Gordon speaks Friday, Feb. 20, at 7 p.m. in the lobby of the Merrill Library. The lecture is free and all are invited.
Gordon said she will talk about her theory of “culinary comedy,” or literary humor involving food, within the cultural context of the Middle Ages. The evening includes fun storytelling of the little-known comic tales.
Not all medieval romance praises knights who save damsels in distress or seek the Holy Grail, Gordon said.
“In 13th century France, we instead find heroes on a quest for a hearty meal and a long nap,” Gordon said.
Swordplay is replaced by food fights in this comic and satirical body of literature, she said.
“Culinary comedy transgresses social and literary expectations using two universals of human experience – food and humor,” Gordon said. “In a time of hunger and poverty, the excesses of courtly feasts are contrasted with famine in a comic way. Respected knights are forced to become kitchen help; wedding guests suffer from indigestion; gluttonous priests are punished and hungry urban housewives hide the best morsels for themselves.”
Gordon said her lecture will explore the critical humor in such narratives within their literary and social context.
Female artist/writer is topic of lecture
The writings of Mary Hallock Foote, a well-educated, well-connected and widely published artist in the American West, are the topic of a presentation by Melody Graulich, professor of English, Friday, Feb. 20, at Utah State University. The presentation is sponsored by the Mountain West Center for Regional Studies.
The illustrated lecture, part of the Mountain West Center’s Faculty Fellowship program that provides research funding to faculty members, begins at 7:30 p.m. in Rooms 201, 202 and 203 of the Eccles Conference Center. Admission is free. Visitors may park in the Parking Terrace on 700 North. For more information, call the Mountain West Center at 797-3630.
Beginning in 1876, Foote traveled the West for 60 years, following her engineer husband from project to project, including a long residency in Boise, Idaho. She supported her family by writing novels, short stories and numerous nonfiction pieces, and illustrating her own and others’ work. In her stories, published in respected magazines, Americans first read of the arid mountain West from a woman’s point of view.
Graulich will discuss Foote’s contributions to the literature of the West as a female writer and illustrator.
“Foote’s fiction is interesting, her illustrations exceptional, providing a sharp counterpoint to the work of her better-known contemporary, Frederick Remington,” Graulich said. “And, her life was fascinating.”
Foote struggled throughout her life to feel at home in the West, which she saw as largely male territory.