The Symposium begins at 1:30 on Thursday, March 27, in Museum 157 with a panel discussion, “Defining the Arkansas Blues.”  “Graceland,” a one-act play by Ellen Byron, will be staged at the Blackbox Experimental Theatre in the Fowler Center at 4 p.m. Presented by the Department of Theatre, the play is directed by Molly Simpson.

In a performance co-sponsored by the Lecture-Concert Series, blues musician Big Jack Johnson of Clarksdale, Miss, will bring his music to the Drama Theatre of the Fowler Center at 7:30. The Nashville-based blues duo of Rob Nasatir and Dean Masullo will open the concert.

Museum Rooms 157 and 182 will be the location for a series of Symposium events on Friday, March 28. Beginning at 8 a.m., concurrent sessions featuring scholars from throughout the United States will treat “Delta Literature and Blues Literature” and “The Blues.”

At 10:30 a panel discussion, “What Is the Delta? A Heritage Studies Perspective,” will consider how literature, history, music, and the arts have helped to shape a regional identity. Concurrent sessions at 1:30 will address “Delta Institutions and Organizations” and “Collaborating to Document a Blues Community.” At 3:15 Gordon Osing, a member of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Memphis, will read from his poetry. Concurrently, the film “The Black Experience in the Arkansas Delta” by Mary Jackson Pitts and Nicole Smith, both of ASU, will be shown.

At 4:30, William R. Ferris, former director of the National Endowment for the Humanities and currently professor of history at the University of North Carolina, will speak on “Memory and Sense of Place in the Delta.” Ferris’s featured lecture is sponsored by the Heritage Studies Ph.D. Program and the Office of the President.

The Symposium returns to the Fowler Center at 8 on Friday evening for a reading by Beverly Lowry, Delta novelist and creative writing professor at George Mason University.

Saturday’s events, held in Museum Rooms 157 and 182, begin at 8 a.m. with concurrent paper sessions dealing with “People in the Delta” and “Approaches for Integrating the African American Experiences in the Delta into Larger Contexts.” The Department of Afro-American and African Diaspora Studies at Indiana University has organized the latter session.

At 10:30, a panel will consider the question “What Is the Delta?” from the perspectives of environmental sciences. Concurrent sessions at 1:30 address “Delta and Other Musics” and “Delta Blues and Delta Poetry.” At 3:15, Minnijean Brown Trickey, one of the Little Rock Nine, will present and discuss the film “Journey to Little Rock: The Untold Story of Minnijean Brown Trickey.”

The Symposium concludes at 8 p.m. in Riceland Hall of the Fowler Center when the Department of Music presents a concert of original works by Delta composers.

All Symposium events are free and open to the public. For additional information, contact Delta Symposium Committee, P.O. Box 1890, State University, AR 72467.  Phone 870-972-3043, or e-mail delta@astate.edu.  Symposium information is also available at www.clt.astate.edu/blues.

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