Decades in the making, our series, Let's Talk About It, Oklahoma!, remains one of our most popular events. Every semester, a new theme is selected for this Oklahoma Humanities-sponsored book club series. Books are free to borrow from the program and anyone may participate. Join us for illuminating presentations and community-building through group discussions. Delve into topics from civil rights, to history, to mystery — and beyond!
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Current Season of Let’s Talk About It! at OCU
Free loaner copies of books are available at Dulaney-Browne Library circulation desk!
This season's theme:
“Where We Come Together: A United We Stand Theme”
Even in the midst of divisions within our culture, we often come together with others unlike ourselves. In the workplace. The classroom. The neighborhood. The grocery store. The polling site or the courtroom. In moments of celebration or crisis. In times of needing assistance or in attitudes of political resistance. Even within the abstract places that are history or the media landscape, we inhabit a common space. Often the circumstances bringing us together are random, but the choices we make while together are ours, and they matter very much. In shared spaces we have interactions—some tense, some pleasant, some neutral—that help us learn more about one another. We may come away with new insight about another’s perspective for the first time or a new sense of our shared goals and values as residents of these very diverse, but united, states.
This series, curated by our own center director Dr. Tracy Floreani, explores some of the American spaces where we come together, assessing through history, imaginative writing, and images how our interactions inform our sense of who we are, individually and collectively. Each of the texts in this theme explores how interactions among people from different walks of life cause us to reassess our values and ideals within our private spaces, affecting our choices about who we are, where we want to live, and how we might adjust our future interactions.
To learn more about the books and theme, click here for a copy of the full series essay.
All sessions will take place at 6:30 p.m. Tuesdays, at Oklahoma City University
Petree College of Arts & Sciences Walker Center Room 151, NW 26th & N. Florida
Each session features a short lecture, followed by small-group discussion of the book.
| DATE | BOOK TITLE | PRESENTER |
|---|---|---|
| JAN. 30 | A Different Mirror: A Multicultural History of America by Ronald Takaki (1993) with a new Foreword by Clint Smith | Dr. Sunu Kodumthara, Professor of History at SWOSU |
| FEB. 13 | Work, A Story of Experience (1873)by Louisa May Alcott | Dr. Harbour Winn, Center Director Emeritus |
| FEB. 27 | Darkroom: A Memoir in Black and White (2012) by Lila Quintero Weaver | Dr. Tracy Floreani, Center Director |
MAR 12 | The Other Americans (2019)by Laila Lalami | Dr. Nathan Shank, Professor of English at Oklahoma Christian U. |
MAR 26 | Interior Chinatown (2020) by Charles Yu | Marc DiPaolo, Professor of English at SWOSU |
Free parking is available in the lots surrounding the building.
Thanks to our partnership with Oklahoma Humanities, we've been given the ability to go back in time! Take a trip down memory lane and scroll through an extensive list of every Let's Talk About It theme from the past.
| YEAR | THEME |
|---|---|
| SPRING 2023 | Immigration Stories in Contemporary Fiction: Suspended Between Borders |
| FALL 2022 | Speculative Women, Future Bodies |
| SPRING 2022 | Memories, Memorials, & Painful Pasts: A More Perfect Union Theme |
| FALL 2021 | Travel, New Ways of Seeing |
| SPRING 2020 | Working to Survive, Surviving to Work |
| FALL 2019 | Coming and Going in Oklahoma Indian Country |
| SPRING 2019 | Wade in the Water |
| FALL 2018 | Living with Limits |
| SPRING 2018 | War, Not War, and Peace: A Pulitzer Prize Centennial Series |
| FALL 2017 | The American Frontier: A Pulitzer Prize Centennial Series |
| SPRING 2017 | Young Adult Crossover Fiction: Crumbling Borders between Adolescents and Adults |
| FALL 2016 | Civil Rights and Equality: A Pulitzer Prize Centennial Series |
| SPRING 2016 | Play Ball |
| FALL 2015 | Hope Amidst Hardships |
| SPRING 2015 | The Dynamics of Dysfunction: To Laugh or Cry or Both |
| FALL 2014 | Oklahoma Private Investigations |
| SPRING 2014 | Muslim Journeys: American Stories |
| FALL 2013 | Making Sense of the American Civil War |
| SPRING 2013 | Myth and Literature |
| FALL 2012 | Native American Writers of the Plains |
| SPRING 2012 | The Oklahoman Experience: From Wilderness to Metropolis |
| FALL 2011 | Much Depends on Dinner: What We Eat and What It Says About Us |
| SPRING 2011 | What America Reads: Myth Making in Popular Fiction |
| FALL 2010 | Rebirth of a Nation: Nationalism and the Civil War |
| SPRING 2010 | Journey Stories |
| FALL 2009 | The Worst Hard Time Revisited: Oklahoma in the Dust Bowl Years |
| SPRING 2009 | Do You See What I See: Growing Up in the Wide World? Contemporary World Literature |
| FALL 2008 | American Icons: The American President |
| SPRING 2008 | Mysterious Fears and Ghastly Longings |
| FALL 2007 | Crime and Comedy: The Lighter Side of Crime and Misdemeanor |
| SPRING 2007 | The Oklahoma Experience: The Thirties |
| FALL 2006 | Invisibility and Identity: The Search for Self in African American Fiction |
| SPRING 2006 | The Journey Inward: Women's Autobiography |
| FALL 2005 | Piercing the Quilt, Stirring the Stew: Ethnic American Women's Voices |
| SPRING 2005 | The Oklahoma Experience: Re-Vision - Reading and Discussing |
| FALL 2004 | Vietnam |
| SPRING 2004 | Crime and Punishment |
| FALL 2003 | The American Renaissance |
| SPRING 2003 | Friendship in Literature: Reading and Discussing |
| FALL 2002 | The Gilded Age: The Emergence of Modern America |
| SPRING 2002 | Private Investigations: Hard-Boiled and Soft-Hearted Heroes |
| FALL 2001 | Liberty and Violence: The Heritage of the French Revolution |
| SPRING 2001 | Many Trails, Many Tribes: Images of American Indians in Contemporary Fiction |
| FALL 2000 | Individual Rights and Community in America |
| SPRING 2000 | Making a Living, Making a Life: Work and its Rewards in a Changing America |
| FALL 1999 | The Unknown Americans: Contemporary Latin American Literature |
| SPRING 1999 | Generation to Generation: Contemporary Young Adult Fiction |
| FALL 1998 | Being Ethnic, Becoming American: Struggles, Successes, Symbols |
| SPRING 1998 | Writing Worlds: The Art of Seeing in Anthropology, Fiction, and Autobiography |
For more information, check out the Oklahoma Humanities Website
