FOR IMMEDIATE
RELEASE
October 12, 2009
Contact:
Elizabeth Blevins, Director, Office of Communications
Office: (740) 351-3810; FAX: (740) 351-3179; Cell: (740) 464-4854
940 Second Street – Portsmouth, Ohio 45662
E-mail: eblevins@shawnee.edu
Web site: www.shawnee.edu
Shawnee State University Professor Presents Lecture on
Folklorist from Federal Writer’s Project
On Thursday, Sept. 24, Dr. Barbara Kunkle presented a
program on Zora Neal Hurston, an African–American writer on
the Federal Writer’s Project, a program under President
Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s to put people to work
during the Great Depression. Every state at the time had a
state guide and Hurston contributed to the WPA Guide to
Florida. Hurston wrote “Their Eyes Were Watching God,” among
other works. The guides documented local histories, oral
histories, ethnographies, children's books and other works.
Kunkle’s lecture is part of a series of public programs
being produced with the financial support of a “Soul of a
People” grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities
and the American Library Association. Connie Stoner,
director of Clark Memorial Library, is directing the grant
and Dr. Andrew Feight is the lead scholar for the program.
SSU’s library was one of only 30 libraries across the
country to receive the grant.
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