Clarksville, TN – The Tobacco Talk series hosted by the Clarksville Arts and Heritage Council and the Austin Peay State University (APSU) College of Arts and Letters will take an in-depth look at how the region’s tobacco-dominated agriculture influenced the tales local writers have penned on Tuesday, April 25th at 4:00pm in the Trahern Building.
During the series’ fourth program, Dr. Linda Crenshaw, Austin Peay State University professor of English, will discuss “Tobacco Tales: Local Writers and Tobacco Culture.” Dr. Crenshaw will investigate how tobacco and the culture of tobacco farming appear in some of the literature produced by local writers, most notably Robert Penn Warren and Thomas Mabry.
Warren’s 1939 debut novel, “Night Rider,” tells the story of a young lawyer caught up in the violence and lawlessness of an association fighting the monopoly of a big tobacco company. It was inspired by the Black Patch Wars, which began in 1905 – the same year Warren was born. His hometown of Guthrie, Kentucky was caught in the fierce struggle between the two forces.
Dr. Crenshaw earned her Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University in 1989 and joined the Austin Peay State University faculty in 1991. Her dissertation was on Flannery O’Connor, and her scholarship has been mostly in the field of Southern writers, including studies of Eudora Welty, Walker Percy, Bobbie Ann Mason, and Kaye Gibbons.
The Tobacco Talk series is sponsored in part by the Tennessee Arts Commission and by federal award number SLFRP5534 awarded to the State of Tennessee by the U.S. Department of the Treasury. Parking for the event is available in the staff lot fronting Eighth Street.
For more information on this event or future Tobacco Talks, contact Kara Zahn, director of communications for the APSU College of Arts and Letters, at zahnk@apsu.edu or 931.221.6446, or Dr. Ellen Kanervo, executive director of the Clarksville Arts and Heritage Council, at kanervoe@apsu.edu
