Appalachian Cultural Center announces fall lineup of events

^{Jimbo Whaley and the bluegrass band Greenbriar will perform Sept. 24 as part of the Appalachian Cultural Center fall offerings.}

(Sept. 11, 2018) –Carson-Newman University’s Appalachian Cultural Center has announced its lineup of events for fall 2018.

• ‘Mr. Coffindaffer’s Crosses: A Study of Public Art’ will be on exhibition Sept. 17 through Nov. 13 with a gallery talk by photographer David J. Pittenger on Tuesday, Nov. 13 at 7 p.m.
  
  The exhibit, hosted in the Appalachian Cultural Center, will feature the landscapes of West Virginia and specifically the Coffindaffer Crosses – three large crucifixes built from utility poles. Pittenger is an experimental psychologist by training and an academic administrator at Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia, who studies and creates fine art photography.

• ‘An Evening with Jimbo Whaley and Greenbriar’ is slated for Monday, Sept. 24 at 7 p.m. in Thomas Recital Hall located in the Tarr Music Center. Whaley grew up in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains and performed in 2002 and 2003 at the International Bluegrass Music Associations Songwriter Showcase.
  
  Appalachian Cultural Center Director Dr. Jennifer Hall said, “Whaley and his bandmates of Greenbriar deliver a high energy performance each time they take the stage. Their ability to perform traditional standard bluegrass, mixed with incredible original works and then covering pop songs from any era makes them a band that can please every listener.”

• Friday, Oct. 12 at 4 p.m. will feature Bobby C. Rogers for the 10th Annual Henrietta Jenkins Homecoming Poetry Reading. The event will be held in the Appalachian Cultural Center.
  
  Rogers’ first book, ‘Paper Anniversary’, was awarded the Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize, the Lilly Fellows Program in Humanities, and the Arts’ Arlin G. Meyer Prize in Imaginative Writing and was nominated for the Poets’ Prize. In 2016, his second book, ‘Social History’ was published by LSU Press in their Southern Messenger Poets Series. He has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Pew Charitable Trusts and was named a Witter Bynner Fellow at the Library of Congress by Poet Laureate Charles Wright.

• ‘A Sense of Place in Appalachia: Readings by Carson-Newman International Students’ will be presented Wednesday, Nov. 14 at 4 p.m. The readings will be hosted in the Appalachian Cultural Center.
  
  “What can join the cultures of Appalachia, Spain, Portugal, South Korea, Taiwan, Saudi Arabia, China, Germany, Venezuela, Japan, Russia, among so many others? The power of the well-written, well-spoken word. We look forward to this event as Carson-Newman’s international students share poetry and readings in their native languages and discuss their “sense of place” as current residents in Appalachia.” Hall said.