ShelfLife@Texas

Activist, fisherwoman, mother….Diane Wilson has been called by many names, but the one she was always reluctant to give herself was author. In fact, her 93-year old mother once told her that if she ever actually got a book published, she would stand on her head in the middle of traffic.

Two highly acclaimed books later, the self-taught writer can add another moniker to her list…Paisano Fellow. The Dobie Paisano Fellowship, sponsored by The University of Texas at Austin and the Texas Institute of Letters supports writers while they live and work at the Paisano Ranch - J. Frank Dobie’s 254-acre retreat just…
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For the 2009 Amon Carter Lecture, Hayden Herrera, art historian and biographer of Frida Kahlo, presents “Frida Kahlo: Her Art and Life” at 7 p.m., Thursday, June 18  at the Harry Ransom Center.

Herrera’s talk interweaves Frida Kahlo’s art and life, focusing on her childhood, the accident that turned her to painting, her tumultuous marriage to the muralist Diego Rivera, Rivera’s influence and other sources of inspiration for Kahlo’s art, Kahlo’s childlessness, her frequent surgeries and her passionate love for her native Mexico.

Seating is free, but limited. This program will be webcast live.

Herrera is a New York-based art historian and critic…
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Authors have created a literature around summer: at the pool, by the river, in the sweltering heat or in the shade. Whether it’s swimming, camping, hiking or just relaxing on the porch with a good book, summer is the season for enjoying Texas’ natural splendor.

Professor Emeritus Miguel Gonzalez-Gerth celebrates the season with poems highlighting the Lone Star State’s vast deserts, mountains, canyons and rivers.

He has been published extensively in anthologies and magazines, including “Looking for Horse Latitudes,” (Host Publications; 2008). 

Photo credit: NPS/Eric Leonard

Desert Sequence 
(Summer in the Big Bend National Park)
by Miguel Gonzalez-Gerth 
I.
The sun descends
in layers of luminous air.…
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Early eighteenth century graveside scene at Mitchell Ridge by artist Frank Weir.

The new Texas Beyond History exhibit “Native and Early Historic Peoples of the Texas Coastal Prairies and Marshes,” the fourth Texas region covered in the Web site’s “Prehistoric Texas” series, offers amazing  artifacts, interactive graphics, historic photos, and maps, many of which have not been seen by the public, but are now available through interactive galleries such as the Fort St. Louis collection “Traces of French, Spanish and Native Lives.” 

Many of the artifacts featured are from the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory (TARL) collection. Other new online exhibits feature prehistoric coastal cemeteries with unusual grave offerings, shipwrecks and native fishing camps.

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In “The Mexican Wars for Independence,” (Hill & Wang, 2009) Timothy Henderson (B.A., History, ’80) tells the complex story of Mexico’s revolution years of rebellion and civic unrest from 1810 to 1821, chronicling the progression of a nation struggling to liberate itself as an independent state.

Written for the general reader, Henderson guides readers through Mexico’s complicated and volatile political struggles, including the deepening divisions of race, class, culture and objectives forged during centuries of Spanish colonial rule.

Set against a sharply detailed background, Henderson describes how the wars deepened the social rifts between the white Creole aristocrats who led the rebellion and the…
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In the wake of the Great Migration, anthropologist Arthur Huff Fauset set out to learn more about the African American “sects and cults” springing up in northern cities. More than fifty years later, “The New Black Gods” reassess Fauset’s work, the organizations he studied and the state of African American religious studies today.

“The New Black Gods: Arthur Huff Fauset and the Study of African American Religions” (Indiana University Press, 2009) was edited by Harry Ransom Center Curator of Academic Affairs Danielle Brune Sigler and Edward E. Curtis IV.

Taking the influential work of Fauset as a starting point to break down the…
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In 1909, American architect Frank Lloyd Wright produced Ausgeführte Bauten Entwürfe von Frank Lloyd Wright, a folio of 100 plates published by German architectural publisher Ernst Wasmuth.

The Special Collections at the Architecture and Planning Library hold several versions of the work– from an original 1911 edition to multiple copies of the 1963 American edition, Buildings: Plans and Designs, published by Horizon Press. The work includes detailed drawings of Wright’s commissions up to 1910, illustrating his early architectural style.

The Wasmuth portfolio, as it is now commonly known, contains plans, sections, perspective views and interior details of seventy-three of Wright’s buildings, including Frank…
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Liberal Arts Career Services Director Kate Brooks will read and sign “You Majored in What: Mapping Your Path from Chaos to Career” (Viking, 2009) at 7 p.m. on Thursday, May 7 at Barnes & Noble, located in the Arboretum shopping center on Research Boulevard.

Brooks, who has been guiding students to successful careers for more than 20 years, points out that many college students feel a sense of comfort in thinking that their major will lead them directly to an ideal career path. While these reasoning methods are logical, they could find themselves lost when they venture into the working world.

Steering away…
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Award-winning poet, essayist and novelist Ana Castillo will receive the first Américo Paredes Literature and Letters Award from the Center for Mexican American Studies at 5 p.m. on Tuesday, May 5 at the AT&T Executive Education and Conference Center Auditorium.

Born and raised in Chicago, Castillo is best known for her lyrical stories exploring, love, gender conflict and resistance. In a career spanning more than three decades, Castillo has published more than 20 novels, plays, collections of essays, poetry and short stories. Her works examine such far-ranging topics as gender in the farm workers movement, motherhood, love and friendship, life and culture.

Considered one…
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Lucas A. (Scot) Powe Jr., a professor of law and government at The University of Texas at Austin, will be at BookPeople this Monday, May 4, at 7:30 p.m. to discuss and sign his lastest book, “The Supreme Court and the American Elite, 1789-2008″ (Harvard University Press, 2009).

Powe, who clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas in 1970-71, is a leading historian of the Supreme Court and a First Amendment scholar.

In his new book released this month, Powe provides a revealing look at the history of the Court and the close ties between its decisions and the nation’s politics at…
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