OKLAHOMA CITY — After proving their mettle at their respective schools, students from area middle and high schools will see if they have what it historically takes during the National History Day district competitions at Oklahoma City University April 9.
Students from metro area schools will give presentations in an event that resembles a science fair. They have their choice to showcase their project through an exhibit board, live performance, written paper, documentary or self-made Web site.
This year’s theme is “Innovation in History: Impact and Change,” which competition coordinator and OCU professor Jim Buss said, “will challenge students to come up with imaginative topics, as they explore the broad definition of innovation. I certainly expect to see some creative interpretations of that theme.”
Some schools hold their own local National History Day competitions, with winners advancing to the district event. Winners of the district competition at OCU will proceed to the state finals at the Oklahoma History Center in May. More than 5,000 students are expected to participate at the state competition.
Buss said the judging team for the regional competition at OCU is made up of faculty, staff, history majors and history buffs from the community.
“We get judges from all over the Oklahoma City community,” he said. “Each judge gets the opportunity to interview students and ask them about their projects. The competition allows the students to turn the tables for one day and teach the judges, and the public, about their topics.”
The two student classifications are the junior division for students in grades six to eight and the senior division for grades nine to 12.
The projects will be on display in the Henry J. Freede Wellness and Activity Center from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. April 9. For more information call Buss at (405) 208-5273 or e-mail jbuss@okcu.edu.
OKLAHOMA CITY —Oklahoma City University will host the annual Hunger Banquet dinner experience at 7 p.m. March 24, 2010 to benefit the World Neighbors organization.
Sometimes it’s more important to nourish the mind than the body while sitting at the dinner table. Many who participate in the Hunger Banquet will leave with an empty stomach, but that’s part of the learning experience.
“Nobody’s there for the food. They’re there for the experience,” said Marie Hooper, OCU history professor and faculty sponsor of the event. “Some will leave hungry, but that’s how we demonstrate the issues of world hunger and societal interaction.”
The student-led event portrays a variety of conditions throughout the world including the plight of the hungry and the way nations treat each other, Hooper added. Large-scale issues like natural disasters, war, political instability and more play roles in the Hunger Banquet.
The event is akin to dinner theater, when food is served while a script is played out. However, that’s where the similarity ends, as the participants themselves are the ones acting out the “script.”
As ticket holders file through the doors they are assigned to a specific table through luck of the draw. Each table is designated as a particular region in several respects including the proportionate number of people as compared to the rest of the world, the type of cuisine served and even the amount of food available. For example, the food available for the “Africa” table might not feed everyone present, Hooper said. On the other hand, those seated in “North America” and “Europe” will have plenty to eat and some fancy utensils to eat it with.
There is also an added element of chance — tables roll a die to determine their fates, like whether their village is wiped out by a tsunami or whether they get ideal conditions to grow crops.
Phi Alpha Theta, the history honors society, sponsors the Hunger Banquet. Brandon Tullos, OCU student and event organizer, said he hopes participants will leave with a desire to improve the world.
“Most Americans’ understanding of the struggles of poverty in other countries is limited to commercials asking for donations,” Tullos said. “They are unable to see the effects of extreme poverty. Because they cannot experience these situations people usually do not correlate the differences between America and third-world countries. If there is one thing I would like to accomplish from Hunger Banquet, it is that guests will leave with an adequate understanding of the disparity between Western civilization and the rest of the world.”
The planning process takes a couple of months. It includes figuring out the menus for each country, how to set the tables, where to set the tables and inviting cultural entertainment.
Other items are purposely left unplanned, Hooper noted. For instance, those who sit at a table for one of the Asian countries might have to go out and find their food in another part of the building. And those in poorer countries could decide to “raid” or risk “illegal immigration” to a richer country to feed themselves.
World Neighbors, an organization seeking to end world hunger through educational means, is the beneficiary of money raised from Hunger Banquet. The locally headquartered organization was established in 1951 by John L. Peters, who once taught at OCU.
Although the event serves as a fundraiser, Hooper said the money is secondary. “We’re more concerned about people experiencing what it’s like outside our borders. Obviously we can’t recreate what it’s like to die of starvation in a central African area, but at least we can demonstrate what’s going on in other parts of the world in a way that they’ll remember. This event is held to raise awareness.”
Tickets are $3 in advance and $5 at the door. For more information or to get tickets send an e-mail to Tullos at btullos.stu@my.okcu.edu or visit the Hunger Banquet Facebook page.
February 24, 2009 - Sometimes it’s more important to nourish the mind than the body while sitting at the dinner table. When Oklahoma City University hosts dinner guests for its World Neighbors Hunger Banquet March 25 many will leave with an empty stomach, but that’s sort of the point.
“Nobody’s there for the food. They’re there for the experience,” said Marie Hooper, OCU history professor and faculty sponsor of the annual event. “Some will leave hungry, but it’s part of how we’re demonstrating the issues of world hunger and societal interaction.”
The student-led annual event is held to demonstrate a variety of conditions throughout the world, not just the plight of the hungry, but also the way nations treat each other, Hooper added. Large-scale issues like natural disasters, war, political instability and more play a role in the Hunger Banquet.
The event is akin to dinner theater, when food is served while a script is played out. However, that’s where the similarity ends, as the participants themselves are the ones acting out the “script.”
As ticket holders file through the doors they are assigned to a specific table through luck of the draw. Each table is designated as a particular region in several respects including the proportionate number of people as compared to the rest of the world, the type of cuisine served and even the amount of food available. As Hooper pointed out as examples, the food available for the “Africa” table might not feed everyone present. On the other hand, those seated in the “North America” and “Europe” will have plenty to eat, and some fancy utensils to eat it with.
There is also an added element of chance — tables roll a die to determine their fates, like whether their village is wiped out by a tsunami or whether they get ideal conditions to grow crops.
Phi Alpha Theta, the History Honors Society, sponsors the Hunger Banquet. Andrew Knifechief, an OCU graduate who organized previous Hunger Banquets after seeing it from the audience perspective as a freshman, talked about some of the things he enjoyed about putting it all together the past couple years.
“What I like most about it is putting history in action while serving the greater community through an eye-opening experience,” Knifechief said. “It’s one of the things that makes OCU unique. I know people in other schools who go four years for their degree but never get to experience something like this.”
The planning process takes a couple of months. It includes figuring out the menus for each country, how to set the tables, where to set the tables and inviting cultural entertainment.
Other items are purposely left unplanned, Hooper noted. For instance, those who sit at one of the Asian countries might have to go out and find their food in another part of the building. And those in poorer countries could decide to “raid” or risk “illegal immigration” to a richer country to feed themselves.
World Neighbors, an organization seeking to end world hunger through educational means, is the beneficiary of money raised from Hunger Banquet. The locally headquartered organization was established in 1951 by John L. Peters, who once taught at OCU.
Although the event serves as a fund-raiser for World Neighbors, Hooper said the money “is secondary. We’re more concerned about people experiencing what it’s like outside our borders. Obviously we can’t recreate what it’s like to die of starvation in a central African area, but at least we can demonstrate what’s going on in other parts of the world in a way that they’ll remember. Too frequently, Oklahomans don’t look beyond their front door when it comes to these major issues. This event is held to raise awareness, not money.”
For more information about the Hunger Banquet or to get tickets call Hooper at (405) 208-5453 or send an e-mail to mhooper@okcu.edu.
Dr. Marie Hooper, history professor, wrote an article that was published in Teaching History: A Journal of Methods (v34, no.1 Spring 2009). The article is titled “From Content to Process: A World Civilizations Teaching Experiment.” It examines and assesses the experiences of Hooper’s first Priddy classes. She is currently working on a follow-up article that brings the experiment to date and includes the semesters in which student creativity is tapped as the university fully integrates art into the classes.
In April of 2007, Dr. Marie Hooper, Professor of History, participated in an Oxford Roundtable, where she presented a paper on U.S. counterinsurgency policies. Prior to this she conducted research on the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs through Diplomatic Archives. Professor Hooper also has had a paper accepted at the Organization of American History Conference, the paper is based on historiography/methods class. This past September, Professor Hooper chaired a panel at the Mid-America Conference for History.
The “Let’s Talk About It, Oklahoma” Series at Oklahoma City University will focus on the history of the Dust Bowl this fall. Two professors with connections to the Department of History at OCU will particpate in the series. Retired Professor of History Llyod Musselman will lead the discussion for the September 15th session, while Assistant Professor of History Jim Buss will lead the discussion on September 29th.
Those who lived through the tumultuous decade of the 1930’s—the “Dirty Thirties”— experienced one of the greatest ecological and economic disasters ever to strike Oklahoma and most of the Southern Plains of the United States, and the legacy of that decade remains with us today. Beginning in the summer of 1931, eight years of extreme weather conditions ruined farm communities across the plains. Ill-suited farming techniques coupled with the lack of rain and high winds resulted in a relentless series of choking dust storms. The term “Dust Bowl” was coined to describe the parched, barren landscape, and the Oklahoma Panhandle in particular became No Man’s Land of despair—ground zero in this great American tragedy—as a way of life seemed to come to an end. From these hardships, paradoxically, courage and determination to survive emerge. Through history, novels, letters, and poetry, what can we grasp about how ordinary people coped with extraordinary circumstances? The books in this series give voice to the sorrows, struggles, and great endurances of these people. As we confront another time of ecological and economic challenges now, can we learn from the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression? If you want to explore how the readings can move us, provoke us, inform us, and urge us onward today, please join us for this "Let's Talk About It, Oklahoma" reading and discussion series to explore and discover.
Oklahoma City University invites participants to make these books come alive in the readings of this five-part series. At each session, a Humanities scholar will make a 30-40 minute presentation on the book in the context of the theme. Small group discussion will follow with experienced discussion leaders. At the end, everyone will come together for a brief wrap-up. Anyone interested in participating is encouraged to pre-register and borrow the reading selections and theme brochure by calling Harbour Winn at 208-5472, emailing him at hwinn@okcu.edu, or dropping by the Dulaney-Browne Library, Room 211. (Note the office is located in the five-story building southwest of Walker Center.) Information can also be found on the web site of Center for Interpersonal Studies through Film & Literature: www.okcu.edu/film-lit/
The series will be held in Walker Center, Room 151, on the Oklahoma City University campus from 7:00 to 9:00 PM on Tuesdays, beginning September 15 and continuing on alternate Tuesdays through November 10. Books, services, and other materials for this series of programs are provided by "Let's Talk About It, Oklahoma," a project of the Oklahoma Humanities Council with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Funding for this series was provided by a grant from the Inasmuch Foundation.
Oklahoma City University history professor Blue Clark recently published a book called “Indian Tribes of Oklahoma: A Guide.”
Clark, a member of the Muscogee Nation, describes each of the nearly 40 Oklahoma tribes in their contemporary context. He includes statistical and narrative summaries that consist of everything from origin tales and archeological research to contemporary ceremonies and tribal businesses.
Visit http://www.oupress.com to purchase or to read more about the book.
Click the following link for a podcast interview with Dr. Clark.
