New Virtual TAMIU Speaker Series Launches Thursday, Feb. 25 with “Life as Crossing Borders”
Texas A&M International University (TAMIU) will launch a new, interactive, four-part virtual lecture series featuring topics related to Borders.
The virtual series, titled, “Bringing the University to You,” is designed to share with the TAMIU community and the public four sets of issues connected to Borders, explained Dr. Adam Kozaczka, TAMIU assistant professor of Humanities.
Sponsored by Humanities Texas and hosted by TAMIU, Series lectures are free and open to the public. Participants may register here.
“Understanding borders is key to public policy and mainstream American culture in the 21st Century,” Dr. Kozaczka said, “Whether they be borders between countries, communities, languages, or ways of life, we must learn to negotiate them.”
Issues discussed in the Series include the experiences of Mexican-American writers and their communities, the role of community and life experience in ethnic women’s writing, the problem of political borders for indigenous Americans whose cultures predate the modern sense of the “border,” and the experience of living on the Texas-México border and devoting a career to studying it, Kozaczka explaned.
The first lecture in the new Series, bows Thursday, Feb. 25 at 7 p.m. with “Life as Crossing Borders.” Acclaimed Texas writer and president of the Texas Institute of Letters Sergio Troncoso will delve into his experience telling the stories of Mexican-American communities.
Troncoso is author of “A Peculiar Kind of Immigrant’s Son,” a collection of linked short stories on immigration and “From This Wicked Patch of Dust,” which Kirkus Reviews named one of the best books of the year in a starred review. He also wrote “Crossing Borders: Personal Essays,” winner of the Bronze Award for Essays from Foreword Reviews. Troncoso is also the author of “The Nature of Truth,” hailed by the Chicago Tribune as “impressively lucid.”
A Fulbright scholar, he has served as a judge for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and the New Letters Prize for Essays. His work has recently appeared in the Houston Chronicle, CNN Opinion, Yale Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, and Texas Monthly.
Additional Series offerings include:
Thursday, March 11 at 7 p.m. – “Her Stories, Her Heritage: Suzanne Strempek Shea on Mining Her Life and Community for Fiction and Nonfiction,” by Suzanne Strempek Shea, University of Southern Maine Stonecoast MFA Program in Creative Writing faculty member.
Wednesday, March 24, at 7 p.m. – “Native America and the Other Border,” by Dr. Scott Manning Stevens, associate professor of English, Syracuse University.
Thursday, April 8, at 7 p.m. – “Fifty Years on the Texas-México Border,” by Dr. Jerry Thompson, TAMIU Regents Professor.
Dr. Kozaczka concluded, “Our virtual events give you the opportunity to tune in from wherever you may be and to join us in exploring how borders define our lives and how, perhaps, we can learn to understand and move beyond them.”
For additional information on the Series, please contact Dr. Kozaczka at adam.kozaczka@tamiu.edu or at 956.326.3300.
University office hours are 8 a.m. – 5 p.m. Monday-Friday.
