David Fenimore
Director of Undergraduate Studies
Department of English Mail Stop 0098
University of Nevada, Reno NV 89557-0098 USA
1.775.682.6374 FAX: 1.775.784.6266

Teaching | Bicycling Across America | Woody Guthrie | John Sutter | Zane Grey | Horace Greeley | Lewis Keseberg
 Teilhard | E.O. Wilson | University Distinguished Professor of the Humanities | John Muir Trail 2000 | Contact Me

These pages describe my teaching and research, including "Chautauqua" portrayals of historical characters, and some of my teaching and recent publications. Contact me for a complete curriculum vitae or further details.

LATEST NEWS!

• Woody's got some newly booked gigs coming up:
  • November 20th, 2009: Lunchtime program for the City of Las Vegas Downtown Cultural Series
  • April 9th, 2010: Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, Reno NV
  • April 16th: Estes Park CO Public Library
  • late July or August: Sugar Bowl, Donner Summit, California (details TBD)
• With his old road buddy Pete, Woody Guthrie played a couple of benefits in Truckee this summer for causes close to their hearts: one for Sierra Senior Services's Meals-on-Wheels program, and another for the Mountain Area Preservation Foundation. Down at Sorensen's Resort in July, they also played on behalf of the Food Bank of Northern Nevada. These boys are doing what they can to separate the money from the rich people and redistribute it to the neediest among us, just like a feller in Galilee once said to do. See photos here.
• September 19th Zane Grey appeared at Desi Arnaz Jr's historic Boulder Theatre for a day of Chautauqua presentations with Tyler Stewart as Annie Oakley (below left) and Anita Watson as Mary McNair Mathews.

  Not-so-recent items:

  • 27 March 2009: Horace Greeley continued stumping for the 1872 US presidency with a visit to the Fort Collins Regional Library along Colorado's Front Range.
  • 6 May 2009: Lewis Keseberg stood before the tribunal at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute in Reno, Nevada, and invited the members to judge whether he was guilty of the horrible and inhuman crimes of which he has been accused in connection with the unfortunate history of the Donner Party.
  • 25 June 2009: Zane Grey explained to the audience at the Great Basin Chautauqua at Bartley Ranch, Reno, Nevada how he invented the western novel while setting numerous deep-sea fishing records.
  • 5-10 July 2009: Woody Guthrie joined fellow twentieth-century reformers Eleanor Roosevelt and Jackie Robinson on a barnstorming tour of Maryland sponsored by the Maryland Humanities Council.

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LOOKING BACK: I spent the first half of 2008 as a visiting professor at the University of the Basque Country in Donostia-San Sebastian, Spain. Read all about it here

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The flysch, along the Basque coast of northern Spain

Horace Greeley
Learn about Horace Greeley (that's me at left, as him). Horace returned this summer at the High Plains Chautauqua in -- of all places -- Greeley, Colorado!

•     You can see photos here.

Contact me if you'd like me to bring Uncle Horace to your neck of the woods. He's quite a character, as a perusal of his mid-nineteenth century editorials in the New York Daily Tribune will reveal, with something to say about almost anything. It's been over 10 years since I portrayed Horace, who was the second character I developed, and so I'm looking forward to reconstructing him using the techniques I've honed with my later characters.

Hear a radio interview with Horace Greeley recorded for Public Radio's Radio Curious by Mendocino County producer/host Barry Vogel.

• In the summer of 1997, Greeley joined Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Carnegie, Frederick Douglass, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Louisa May Alcott at the Democracy Challenged Chautauqua in Portsmouth NH, sponsored by the New Hampshire Humanities Council. Over 400 citizens thronged the tent each night, with overflow crowds at most of the daytime workshops. Every summer since then, the NHHC has produced a tent Chautauqua and associated workshops, including a Young Chautauqua program, at Portsmouth and other sites around the Granite State.

• Woody Guthrie! My portrayal of America's Dust Bowl balladeer debuted in June 2004 at Sand Harbor on Tahoe's East Shore. The ol' Restless Rambler has occasionally been part of a traveling exhibit on California labor history, and done benefits for Arts for the Schools and the Truckee Library in cooperation with our old friends Shiloh. Here's a complete list of past and future appearances:

   

  • with Tim Gorelangton (formerly of Shiloh) as "Pete," in a pair of benefits: at Northstar, for Sierra Senior Services's Meals-on-Wheels program (26 July 2009); and at the Cedar House for the Mountain Area Preservation Foundation (14 August 2009).
  • with Eleanor Roosevelt and Jackie Robinson on tour for the Maryland Humanities Council (5-10 July 2009)
  • Sorensen's Resort, Hope Valley CA. (July 2008) A benefit for the Food Bank of Northern Nevada. (We raised over $800!) Thanks to Tim Gorelangton ("Pete") and his trusty banjo. Not to mention his PA system. See photos here.
  • Arkansas Chautauqua, Smackover AR (June 2008)
  • at the Community Memorial Museum in Yuba City, California (29 September 2006)
  • at the Big Bear Valley Library in Big Bear Lake, California (29 July 2006)
  • at the Eco-Farm Conference, Asilomar, California (26 January 2006)
  • with Shiloh, Truckee Library Benefit, West End Pavilion, Donner Lake CA (29 July 2005)
  • with Utah Phillips and Gerald Gough as John L. Lewis, at Nevada County Library, Nevada City CA (22 July 2005)
  • Los Angeles Maritime Museum (29 March 2005)
  • Arts for the Schools Benefit w/Shiloh (19 March 2005)
  • San Diego Public Library (12 March 2005)
  • Oxnard Library
  • Boulder City Chautauqua
  • High Plains Chautauqua
  • Great Basin Chautauqua
    • Reno Gazette-Journal article about this event
  • Lake Tahoe Chautauqua [where my Woody had his debut, at right]

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  Woody's Columbia River episode: a paper I gave to the Western Literature Association in Tacoma, Washington (October 2007)

  • "Folk Songs for Sale: Woody Guthrie's Columbia River Compromise"

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  Captain John A. Sutter [at left] appeared at the 2006 Great Basin Chautauqua in Reno with Donner Party survivor Margaret Breen as portrayed by Doris Dwyer. He showed up again on 7 October 2006 at the 14th annual Donner Party Hike in Truckee, California. Captain Sutter also appeared on Sunday 23 September 2007 at The Emigrant Experience, a fundraiser for the Nevada County Library in Truckee, California, again accompanied by Dr. Dwyer as Margaret Breen.

  John Sutter (1803-1880)
  I developed Sutter (that's the real him, at right) with support from the California Council for the Humanities, which from 1998 to 2001 sponsored History Alive! The Gold Rush Sesquicentennial Chautauqua, featuring Sutter and a dozen other diverse early California characters on tour up and down the state.

   

What is "Chautauqua," anyway? To take Woody Guthrie as an example, I follow the traditional model by presenting a 30-40 minute monologue woven from Woody's own words and snippets of his songs. Woody then takes questions in character. Lastly, I resume my own identity to lead a discussion of Woody and his times from a current perspective. My other characters take a similar approach, all based on primary texts and the latest historical scholarship.

• Historical background of "Chautauqua"
• The Modern or "Humanities" Chautauqua Movement
• Woody Guthrie Foundation & Archives home page.
• Some John Sutter materials.

Zane Grey, DDS, or "Doc," another character of mine, periodically flickers to life as he did in in summer 2009 for the Nevada Humanities Chautauqua and in 2005 for appearances at the Arkansas Museum of Natural Resources and at the University of the Basque Country in  Vitoria-Gastez, Spain. A version of my 1993 play on Doc's life, A Bad Boy Grown Up, was produced in October 2005 by the Readers Theatre at the annual Western Literature Association conference in Los Angeles, and forms the basis for my one-person show.

• Fall 2009
  • Core Humanities 202: The Modern World
• Spring 2009
  • English 298: Writing About Literature
  • English 492B: Language, Literature and Culture (The American Storytelling Revival)
• Fall 2008: Core Humanities 202: The Modern World
• Reading List
• Spring 2008: University of the Basque Country in San Sebastian-Donostia
  • English 492B: Language, Literature and Culture (Traditional Storytelling)
    • Reading List
    • Course Home Page
  • English 480B: Topics in Comparative Literature (International Detective Fiction)
    • Reading List

• Fall 2007: Core Humanities 202: The Modern World
  • Reading List
• Other recent courses:
  • English 298: Writing About Literature
  • English 304: American Literature & Culture (The Blues as Lyric Poetry)
    • Reading List
  • Core Humanities 203: American Experiences
    • Reading List
  • English 282: Language and Literary Expression
  • English 491: Language, Science & Society
  • CH 202 Honors
    • Final Web Papers written by students in that course
  • English 102 Honors: Composition II (Imaginary California)
  • Summer London 2003

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  Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955)

  Read my review of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin: Writings.
  Ed. Ursula King. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1999. Published in ISLE:
  Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and the Environment (2001)

       E.O. Wilson (1929- )   

  • "A Globe, Clothing Itself with a Brain" -- a 1995 article from Wired by Jennifer Cobb Kreisberg on Teilhard, a (not so obscure) Jesuit paleontologist and ecophilosopher, who in 1938 foresaw global interconnectivity, but who, a little in the manner of Galileo, was supressed and exiled by the Vatican.
  • E. O. Wilson presentation, centering on Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge (1998)

Teaching | Bicycling Across America | Woody Guthrie | John Sutter | Zane Grey | Horace Greeley | Lewis Keseberg
 Teilhard | E.O. Wilson | University Distinguished Professor of the Humanities | John Muir Trail 2000 | Contact Me

Last Updated: 7 October 2009