Saturday U brings the lecture room to Pinedale

By Lance Nixon
Posted 9/22/17

For the first time, Pinedale had been included in what’s called Saturday U – an effort by Wyoming Humanities and partners such as the University of Wyoming to bring lectures on thought-provoking topics to curious people all across Wyoming.

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Saturday U brings the lecture room to Pinedale

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PINEDALE – He’ll be one of English literature’s great writers one day, but in 1879, he’s just a traveler taking the train across North America – and Wyoming makes him sick.

“He’s actually very ill passing through Wyoming,” said Caroline McCracken-Flesher, an English professor in a talk in Pinedale that focused largely on Robert Louis Stevenson.

For example, she argued, Stevenson’s illness may be reflected in what he doesn’t see in Wyoming. Though he’s no foe of women’s rights, he seems unaware that Wyoming Territory had already given women voting rights in 1869, fully 10 years earlier; and Stevenson’s later travel writings also seemed to ignore one of the transcontinental railroad’s engineering marvels, the 650-foot Dale Creek Crossing near Sherman.

Yet ill as he was, McCracken-Flesher said, Stevenson still may have been influenced by Wyoming in subtle ways. The fact that there were 66 Wyoming stops in some 365-plus miles across the state may have contributed to Stevenson’s fascination for maps, obvious in such works as “Treasure Island,” from 1883. And it’s possible that Stevenson’s sense of being “lost” – apparent in such works as “Kidnapped,” from 1886 – may also come from his journey across the vastness of Wyoming.

Those are the kinds of insights McCracken-Flesher ordinarily unpacks for lecture rooms full of English majors.

It’s where McCracken-Flesher was speaking this time that made her lecture especially noteworthy – not in a lecture hall at the University of Wyoming, where she teaches, but in the library in the Lovatt Room in the Sublette County Library in Pinedale on Saturday, Sept. 16.

It was the first time Pinedale had been included in what’s called Saturday U – an effort by Wyoming Humanities and partners such as the University of Wyoming to bring lectures on thought-provoking topics to curious people all across Wyoming. The lectures are offered twice a year in Jackson, Sheridan and Gillette, yearly in Rock Springs, and occasionally elsewhere, according to Wyoming Humanities.

McCracken-Flesher’s lecture, “Writing the Way West: Authors in America,” was preceded by a talk on how synthetic biology will change medicine by Mark Gomelsky, a molecular biology professor. And it was followed by anthropology professor Robert Kelly’s talk on the four major “beginnings” of human history – origins of technology, culture, agriculture and the state – and how a fifth beginning may be underway, an era of “global self-governance.”

At least 50 people attended the lectures, though there was some coming and going as the series filled much of the forenoon.

Paul Flesher, the director of Saturday University for the University of Wyoming, hinted it may not be the last time university professors show up to talk about their research topics in Pinedale.

“We’re very happy to come to Pinedale and maybe open a long-term relationship with this community and its partners,” he said.

Flesher told the Pinedale Roundup the idea actually began with the Wyoming Humanities Council, and that the philosophy behind it is simply to bring interesting talks on interesting topics by interesting people out of the university.

Emy DiGrappa, western regional director for the Wyoming Humanities Council, said the council also works with Sheridan College, Western Wyoming Community College and other local educational organizations. She said the group worked both with the Sublette County Library and the Sublette Board of Cooperative Educational Services, or BOCES, to bring Saturday U to Pinedale.

“The purpose is to bring great topics and exceptional professors to the rest of the state, because Laramie is in one corner,” DiGrappa said. “We want people to engage in conversations and promote lifelong learning. That is our goal.”

For the future, DiGrappa noted, those who might be more comfortable in a brew pub than a library can very likely expect the Wyoming Humanities Council to meet them there, too. She said Oregon’s counterpart of the Wyoming Humanities Council has trademarked an idea called “Think and Drink” that uses brew pubs as venues for thought-provoking discussions.

“The idea was that you take the humanities to the people,” DiGrappa said. “We’re hoping to try some of that here in Pinedale. We think the library’s a great partner here. But we also want to try different models for getting people engaged.”

The Wyoming variety of that Oregon-inspired event is called a “ThinkWY Gathering.”

If all goes well, anticipate the possibility of one such gathering coming to a Pinedale venue near you.