Kenyon Unique Archive

Kenyon Unique is a lecture series featuring distinguished faculty members, whose talks are streamed live on the Internet and recorded as part of a digital library.

February 24, 2013: "The World According to Kluge: Thoughts on Gambier and Other Islands"

Writer-in-Residence P.F. Kluge '64 draws on his career as a novelist and journalist to share his unique perspective on a literary life.
Watch on YouTube.

About the Speaker: Kluge is the author of ten novels, including Eddie and the Cruisers, which was made into the 1983 film of the same name; Gone Tomorrow (2008); and the recently published The Master Blaster. He also wrote the acclaimed 1995 non-fiction book Alma Mater, which was published last year in China and is an account of an academic year at Kenyon. Kluge is a veteran journalist whose reporting on a misbegotten Brooklyn bank robbery for Life magazine was the basis for the 1975 film Dog Day Afternoon. He is also a travel writer who contributes frequently to National Geographic Traveler.

October 25, 2012: Gullah Culture on the Sea Islands

Professor of American Studies Peter Rutkoff and Professor of History Will Scott deliver the first "Kenyon Unique" lecture: "To Know Der, You Gotta Go Der: Gullah Culture on the Sea Islands." Watch on YouTube.

About the Speakers: Rutkoff and Scott, building on their expertise on the Great Migration—the 20th century exodus of African Americans from the South to the Northeast, Midwest, and West—discuss their work documenting the vanishing Gullah culture and language in South Carolina, preserved for generations by descendants of West African slaves. The men, who have worked together since the 1970s, developed the "North By South" course at Kenyon that is the senior seminar in American Studies. Their most recent book, published in 2010, is Fly Away, which examines African-American migrations.