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Two Sept. 26 events at Monmouth College

Award-winning Native American scholar to speak: concert series opens with Alliance Brass

by Barry McNamara

Monmouth, Ill. (09/18/2024) — Award-winning Native American history scholar to speak at Monmouth on Sept. 26

An award-winning history professor from Rutgers University will help Monmouth College kick off a series of events funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Earlier this year, Monmouth College received a $149,965 grant from the NEH to fund a three-year history project about west central Illinois, titled "Resituating the Humanities in Place-Based Learning."

Camilla Townsend is the Board of Governors Distinguished Professor of History at Rutgers, specializing in the early history of Native Americans in the United States. She will speak at 7 p.m. Sept. 26 in the Pattee Auditorium in the Center for Science and Business. Titled "Water Snakes, Bears and Wild Pecans: How the Delaware Indians Packed Their Stories and Took Them With Them Every Time They Moved," her talk is free and open to the public.

Townsend will talk about the Delaware Indians "being moved and moved and moved, not because they wanted to but because they were forced to" and "how among the things they took with them were their stories," said Monmouth professor of philosophy and religious studies Anne Mamary. "Still, centuries later, those stories are being told and retold."

Townsend's 2019 book, Fifth Sun, won the 2020 Cundill History Prize. She is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and the Kluge Center of the Library of Congress.

The grant to Monmouth is part of a larger $33.8 million in grants the NEH announced earlier this year for 260 humanities projects across the country. The goal of Human Initiatives Grants is to strengthen the teaching and study of the humanities in higher education through the development or enhancement of humanities programs, courses and resources.

"This place-based curricula project will be unique by moving beyond the study of a particular place to examine the ways in which both displacement and replacement are affected by and in turn shape a sense of place," said English professor David Wright, the project's director.

Maple Leaf Community Concert Series opens Sept. 26 with Alliance Brass

The 2024-25 season of the Maple Leaf Community Concert Series will kick off Sept. 26 when the group Alliance Brass performs at Monmouth College's Dahl Chapel and Auditorium.

"For over three decades, the Maple Leaf Community Concert Series has fostered connection in our community," said MLCC co-president Stan Jenks. "With a variety of great music across many genres, there's something for everyone to enjoy. We're inspiring connections, one note at a time, and we're dedicated to enriching the cultural fabric of our community."

Alliance Brass will kick off the season at 7 p.m. in the Auditorium's Kasch Performance Hall. Individual and membership tickets for the concert series can be purchased at the Buchanan Center for the Arts in downtown Monmouth or at the door.

Hailed as "the perfect blend of virtuosity and vitality," Alliance Brass has emerged as one of the country's most exciting ensembles, bringing audiences to their feet across the United States with a wide repertoire. The group's new program, which it will be bringing to Monmouth, celebrates stage and screen.

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