Sewanee Event Highlights

University of the South students will perform a reading of Elyzabeth Wilder’s acclaimed play Gee’s Bend, commissioned by the Alabama Shakespeare Company and winner of the 2008 Osborn Award from the American Theater Critics Association.

Richard Cellini, founder of the Georgetown Memory Project, will visit campus deliver a lecture examining the complicity of American universities in the antebellum slave economy, and its implications for members of these university communities today.

The University of the South will celebrate Foundation Day on Friday, Sept. 20. Dr. Sylvia Earle, arguably the world’s best-known oceanographer, will be the speaker at Foundation Day Convocation and will receive an honorary degree. The convocation coincides with Family Weekend and will include the conferral of two additional honorary degrees and the induction of new members into the Order of the Gown.

Bass founded UT’s Anthropological Research Facility, popularly known as the Body Farm, thereby revolutionizing forensic science—particularly for determining the time since a person’s death. Today, the Body Farm trains scholars and law enforcement professionals from around the world, and has inspired several television dramas and been featured in numerous novels.

Gee’s Bend quilter Louisiana P. Bendolph, Tennessee Williams Playwright-in-Residence Elyzabeth Wilder, and Associate Professor Jessica Wohl will lead a conversation about quilting, community, and the remarkable creative achievement of the women of Gee’s Bend, Alabama.

Join students, faculty, staff, and community members to watch and discuss the next 2020 Democratic Presidential Primary Debate. Following the debate, Sean O'Rourke, professor of rhetoric and American studies, will moderate a discussion. All are welcome, regardless of political affiliation. Sweets + coffee provided.

The first student takeover of the dining hall for the semester will be Korean Night. The Student Cooking Club, international students, and the McClurg culinary team have developed an excellent menu: student-prepared bibimbap, Korean cucumber salad, bean sprout salad, hotteok (sweet pancakes), scallion pancakes, braised cod with daikon radish, student-made kimchi, and more!

Beverly Daniel Tatum is president emerita of Spelman College in Atlanta, and is widely known for her expertise on race relations and higher education. A public conversation and Q&A session will be held during her visit to campus. The entire campus and community are invited.

Orientation for all new students in the College begins on move-in day, August 24. The four days will be full! They include a picnic supper for families, the vice-chancellor’s welcome address, meetings with academic advisers, discussions of the common reading selection, advice about Sewanee’s pre-professional curriculum, an evening of storytelling (campus traditions, legends, and ghosts!), even time for fun. Most significant is the signing of the Honor Code.

PRE-Orientation—better known as “PRE”—offers about 200 incoming first-year students the opportunity to get to know Sewanee in a unique and exciting atmosphere. While familiarizing themselves with the 13,000-acre Domain, students get acquainted with each other in an environment that creates trust and launches new friendships.

Finding Your Place, or just “FYP,” is a first-year program that introduces students to campus, course work, professors, and classmates. Its place-based approach fuses knowledge and experiences across many disciplines and prepares students for an engaged life in and beyond Sewanee. The immersion portion of FYP begins August 14, and the course sections continue through the first half of the fall semester.

Readings by faculty, fellows, and guest writers are scheduled throughout the Conference.

The performance of Penelope and the Geese, an "opera in progress" that gives a different perspective on the Odyssey, will include a concert reading and a first showing of the full score. Composer Milica Paranosic and librettist Cheri Magid (former Tennessee Williams Playwright in Residence) tell a different kind of love story, one that levels the Odyssey's playing field. The performance is a co-production with the Sewanee Summer Music Festival.

The Sewanee Summer Music Festival offers enriching musical performances by the inspiring SSMF artist-faculty, internationally acclaimed guest conductors, and gifted young artists.

The School of Letters reading and lecture series will include public events at 4:30 p.m. each Wednesday during the session, as well as a special Friday evening workshop with the American Shakespeare Center. All events are held in Gailor Auditorium.

The University of the South's 2018-19 academic year comes to a close May 10, 11, and 12 with three ceremonies marking graduation weekend on the Mountain. The University Baccalaureate will be held on Saturday, and Commencement for the College and the School of Letters on Sunday, May 12. More than 400 students will graduate from the College.

On Reading Day, McClurg Dining Hall will serve a late-night breakfast of pancakes, bacon, and sausage to students. As students fuel up after a long day of studying, they will be greeted and served by faculty and staff.

This popular visit weekend gives you a chance to tour main campus with a current student, meet faculty in your intended major, and see what it's really like to be a Sewanee student.

Scholarship Sewanee is the university’s annual celebration of student scholarship, research, and creativity. Almost a quarter of students here were involved in mentored research projects last year, in the sciences (of course)—but also in the arts, English, politics, and more. Scholarship Sewanee gives them the chance to wow their peers by giving talks and presenting posters.

This is an overnight visit program, open to all admitted students, that will allow you to meet other prospective students and enjoy two days of programming, stay with a current student, and meet professors in departments that align with your interests.

Perpetual Motion (known as "PMo" on campus) is a student-run performing dance company whose goal is to include all levels of dance experience. This year’s performances will feature 20+ pieces of original student choreography, in styles from Afro-Caribbean and Irish to swing and ballet, and will include almost 100 dancers.

The eldest daughter of country music icon Johnny Cash, Rosanne Cash carries on the famous Cash family legacy in the best way possible: with her own unique voice and approach, and a timeless and supremely poetic mixture of country, folk, gospel, pop, blues, Americana and jazz.

This Ain't No Cakewalk, created by visual artist Thom Heyer and musicologist César Leal, considers the similarities between the cakewalk tradition of the late 19th and early 20th centuries and New York's “Vogue Balls” of the 1980s and early 1990s. Both are based upon competitive performances of dance and movement, and charged with questions about race, identity, and power.

Sociologist Karida Brown will give a public lecture on the history and lives of African Americans who moved with the Great Migration of the 20th century to the coal mining towns of Southern Appalachia. Brown’s book, Gone Home: Race and Roots through Appalachia, focuses on Harlan County, Kentucky, and in it Brown challenges and corrects today’s assumptions that Southern Appalachia—where Sewanee is located—is and always has been a region populated exclusively by poor whites.

Enjoy dramatically different exhibitions in four galleries on campus. Each gallery will offer a reception, and student dance and musical performances inspired by the exhibitions will take place in multiple locations.