Jan. 17, 2014
They may seem like strange bedfellows—a savvy political scientist, an authority on 18th century British literature, and an award-winning editorial cartoonist—but they actually comprise a kindred triad poised on a succession of Thursdays to unravel the history, heritage and hyperbole of “Political Cartoons: Then & Now.”
That’s the title of this year’s Creative Mind Humanities Lecture Series at Amarillo College, the entirety of which is free and open to the public. The series is made possible, in part, by a grant from Humanities Texas, the state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
The lectures, six in all, will be delivered two per day on Jan. 30, Feb. 6 and Feb. 13. The midday lectures are scheduled for the Oak Room at the College Union Building on the Washington Street Campus, while the evening lectures will be given at AC’s Downtown Campus on Polk Street.
Organizers are especially pleased that the last two lectures will feature AC alumnus and Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Ben Sargent, who in 1993 became the inaugural recipient of the College’s Distinguished Alumnus Award.
The series will be enhanced this year by a concurrent exhibit to be featured at the Amarillo Public Library’s Downtown Branch called “Cartooning Texas: 100 Years of Cartooning Art in the Lone Star State.” The exhibit was developed with support from Humanities Texas for the Center for Texas Studies at the University of North Texas.
The lectures kick off with a pair of presentations Jan. 30 by Dr. David Rausch, the Teel Bivins Professor of Political Science at West Texas A&M University. Rausch will speak at 12:30 p.m. on “Art, Politics, and American History.” His 7 p.m. lecture is titled “Congress and Political Cartoons: But I Repeat Myself.”
Taking center stage on Feb. 6 will be Dr. Bradford Mudge, Professor of 18th Century British Literature at the University of Colorado—Denver. Mudge’s 12:30 p.m. lecture will be “The Hidden Life of Caricature.” His lecture at 7 p.m. is titled “On Portraits and Money.”
Anchoring the program on Feb. 13 will be Sargent, a 1966 product of Amarillo High School who spent the ensuing two years at AC and served as co-editor of the student newspaper, The Ranger. Sargent, who went on to attend the University of Texas, won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning in 1982 while working at the Austin American-Statesman. He retired from the newspaper in 2009.
His lecture at 12:30 p.m. is titled “This is Not a Pipe: Symbolism in Cartoons.” At 7 p.m. he will deliver “Beyond the Tipping Point: Cartooning in the Digital Age.”
For more information about the 2014 Creative Mind Humanities Lecture Series at Amarillo College, contact Kristin Edford, instructor of humanities, at 806-371-5205, or visit actx.edu/humanities.