Humantities Connection Spring 2005 Page 6

Spoon River Anthology
on Stage At Richland

Drunkards, dreamers, cheaters, murderers, church folks, idealists–Edgar Lee Masters eulogized them all in his unflinching poetic portrait of early Illinois life, Spoon River Anthology.

This spring, the Richland Players at Richland Community College in Decatur will bring Masters’ classic work to the stage in Charles Aidman’s Broadway arrangement of Spoon River Anthology. Performances will run April 8, 9, 15, 16 at 7:30 p.m. in Richland’s Shilling Auditorium.

Edgar Lee Masters (1869-1950) had been a quiet and successful lawyer for 24 years in Chicago before his Anthology first appeared in 1915. It immediately became a controversial and provocative piece of literature causing a sensation throughout America. Easterners, who tended to romanticize the West and its people, were shocked to discover the same problems and scandalous behavior prevalent in the New Frontier.

Masters’ boyhood homes of Petersburg and Lewistown, Illinois, on the Spoon River were even more shocked by this exposé of Midwestern mores and behavior. His 200 miniature, unsentimentalized epigrammatic autobiographies of the thwarted souls of his childhood looked squarely at the hypocrisy, struggles, and joys of pioneer life in Illinois. He created a garland of beautiful and haunting epitaphs commemorating the lives of these souls.

The Richland Players will combine a cast of high school, college, and community performers to present the words and songs of Aidman’s adaptation. For more information, contact Lonn Pressnall at 217-875-7211 ext. 341 or Karen Becker at ext. 363.

Richland Professor Presents
"Lincoln: A Touch of the Poet"

The poetry of Abraham Lincoln–-poems written by him and familiar to him —will be highlighted February 11 and 12 in "Lincoln: A Touch of the Poet," on stage at Richland Community College in Decatur.

Created and presented by Lonn Pressnall, RCC Theater Professor, this fifty minute program features American and British poetry known to have been familiar to Abraham Lincoln as well as poems Lincoln wrote, including his recently discovered "Suicide Soliloquy."

The material ranges from the humorous to the tragic. Pressnall, a veteran Lincoln performer with a remarkable resemblance to Abe, will punctuate the poetry selections with Lincoln stories and anecdotes that Lincoln often used.

Presentations begin at 7:30 p.m. in Richland’s Shilling Auditorium and are free to the public. For more information contact

Lonn Pressnall at 875-7211 ext. 341.

Lincoln Symposium and Banquet

A distinguished slate of historians will speak at the Abraham Lincoln Symposium and Annual Abraham Lincoln Association Banquet in Springfield on February 12, at the Old State Capitol. Presentations will be given on the general topic of "Abraham Lincoln and the Constitution, " including:

"Redressing Wrongs Already Long Enough Endured: Lincoln and the Executive Power" by Herman Belz, Professor of History, University of Maryland. Belz received the Albert J. Beveridge Award for his first book, Reconstruction and the Union: Theory and Policy during the Civil War (1969). He has written two other books, A New Birth of Freedom: The Republican Party and Freedman’s Rights, 1861-1866 (1976), and Emancipation and Equal Rights: Politics and Constitutionalism in the Civil War Era (1978). He joined Alfred H. Kelly and Winfred A. Harbison as co-author of the sixth edition of The American Constitution: Its Origins and Development (1983).

"Lincoln’s Constitutional Legacy" by Daniel A. Farber, Professor of Law at the University of California at Berkeley. He earned his J.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and clerked for Judge Philip W. Tone of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7^th Circuit and for Justice John Paul Stevens of the U.S. Supreme Court. He practiced law with Sidley & Austin before joining the faculty of the University of Illinois Law School. He served on the faculty of the University of Minnesota Law School and has been a visiting professor at the University of Chicago, Stanford, and Harvard Law Schools. His publications include Lincoln’s Constitution (2003), Desperately Seeking Certainty (2002), Eco-Pragmatism: Making Sensible Environmental Decisions in an Uncertain World (1999) and The First Amendment (1998).

Comments by: Sandra F. VanBurkleo, Associate Professor of History at Wayne State University. Her publications include ‘Belonging to the World’: Women’s Rights and American Constitutional Culture (2001), and as editor with Kermit Hall and Robert Kaczorowski Constitutionalism and American Culture: Writing the New Constitutional History (2002). Author of numerous articles, biographical and encyclopedic entries as well as book chapters, VanBurkleo won the best article award from the Society of Historians of the Early American Republic in 1989 for "‘The Paws of Banks’: The Origins and Significance of Kentucky’s Decision to Tax Federal Bankers, 1818-1820."

"Redressing Wrongs Already Long Enough Endured: Lincoln and the Executive Power" by Phillip Shaw Paludan, the Naomi Lynn Lincoln Chair at the University of Illinois at Springfield. Paludan taught at Occidental College, the University College, Dublin, and the University of Kansas before joining the faculty at the University of Illinois at Springfield. His scholarly publications include A Covenant with Death: The Constitution, Law, and Equality in the Civil War Era (1975), Victims: A True Story of the Civil War (1981), "A People’s Contest": The Union and Civil War, 1861-1865, and The Presidency of Abraham Lincoln (1994). Paludan has been an American Council of Learned Societies fellow, a Guggenheim fellow, a Harvard University of Law School fellow, and winner of the Lincoln Prize.

Banquet Speaker: "Governor Oglesby and Lincoln’s Death and Burial" by Mark A. Plummer, Professor of History Emeritus at Illinois State University. Plummer is the author of Frontier Governor: Samuel J. Crawford of Kansas and Robert G. Ingersoll: Peoria’s Pagan Politican. His Lincoln’s Rail-Splitter: Governor Richard J. Oglesby received the "Book of the Year" award from the Illinois State Historical Society in 2002. He has written portions of five other books as well as scores of articles on nineteenth century politicians.

The Symposium and Banquet are sponsored by The Abraham Lincoln Association, the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, and the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency. For more information, see www.alincolnassoc.com.