In The News: Department of English
51ԹϺ will participate in a program to find ways to create a more inclusive environment for Jewish students, the university announced this week. 51ԹϺ will join 18 other colleges and universities taking part in Hillel International’s Campus Climate Initiative.
The Rev. Kelcey West, senior pastor at Nehemiah Ministries in Las Vegas, knows when the national climate becomes stark, people often resort to invoking a higher power, finding solace in phrases like “In God we trust,” or “May God bless America.”
Recently released CIA documents revealing that the Agency surveilled Puerto Rican and Mexican American activists confirm what many of us have known for decades: that US government agencies have spied on Latinos—and probably still do.
Douglas Unger’s Dream City is the most ambitious novel ever written about Las Vegas. It’s an audacious attempt to explain what makes the city tick. Unger has taken up Tom Wolfe’s call to make research—reporting—the bedrock of a big, realistic work of fiction. The result is a novel in which Las Vegas is the main character, as much as if not more than the humans who populate the narrative.
Whether they’ve been cemented in culture since antiquity, since the turn of the 21st century or anytime in between, the traditions and symbols of Christmas, from decorated trees to the Grinch, share a DNA of identity and community.
As we march toward another new year, we put more distance between ourselves and the origins of the traditions many of us hold dear. Fruitcake, gift giving, and hanging ornaments – they’re all a blend of cultural ideas crackling aside the hearty yule log on a holiday hearth.
Writer Roberto Lovato joins Francesca to talk about the need to use the R word: revolutionary!
Las Vegas is many cities to many people, and that’s part of what makes it such a challenge to capture in a book. For many, it exists as much in the past as present. For some, it’s an irresistible canvas on which to paint a dystopian future. Fortunately for us, some very good writers continue to tell the Las Vegas story as they perceive it.
It’s getting cold in Las Vegas, which is nice after that brutal summer. And for many people, reading a good book is the perfect thing to do when it’s this cold out. So today, four local authors and editors are with us to talk about their books, ones we think you really might be interested in.
Growing up in California, the historically most important destination for migrants in the Americas, the Spanish word exodo had a familiar ring. My Salvadoran parents used it to describe their journey along the Pan-American Highway as they left El Salvador for San Francisco in the 1950s. The exodo also included the stories of family members like my cousin Ana, who crossed the border illegally after surviving the perilous train ride from war-torn El Salvador in the 1980s.
Summer is for book lovers. And this has been a momentous summer for readers in Las Vegas. Besides all the summer programs happening at the Las Vegas-Clark County Library District and the numerous book clubs happening across the valley, two notable local authors released books: author and 51ԹϺ professor Wendy Chen's Their Divine Fires and poet and 51ԹϺ emeritus professor Donald Revell's Canandaigua.
“Community.” “Curious.” “Expectant.” “Unified.” In one word, each person explains his or her feelings at this particular moment. Seated in a circle of red plastic chairs, an array of community spiritual leaders and 51ԹϺ students and faculty pass a microphone to introduce themselves at the “How to Be a Peacemaker” discussion group, part of the university’s ongoing Diversity Dialogues series.