Creative Mind Series Includes Lecture and Films focused on Bob Dylan
With a renewed interest in Bob Dylan this year’s Amarillo College Creative Mind Lecture Series will be three days and include music, a lecture, and rare film footage April 9-11 at AC’s Washington Street campus.
The event will kick off with live musical tributes to Bob Dylan and food trucks at noon Wednesday, April 9 at the Oeschger Family Mall. AC’s FM-90 will host the two-hour event.
“Last year we worked with WTAMU to bring Amarillo-born and internationally known author George Saunders to town,” said Chris Hudson, professor of English and director of AC’s Creative Mind Lecture Series. “This year we wanted the events to be more AC-centric and attract more AC students and faculty.”
Dr. Tom Palaima, University of Texas MacArthur Fellow and Armstrong Centennial Professor Emeritus, will headline the event at 7 p.m. Thursday, April 10 in AC’s Concert Hall Theatre.
Palaima serves on the editorial board of The Dylan Review. He was a prime mover in the decision of TDR to publish Dylan-inspired poetry and to emphasize inspiring the upcoming generation to explore and feel Dylan’s music and express themselves about how his songs and performances affect them. His UT course “Bob Dylan: History and Imagination” received the Undergraduate Studies Holleran Steiker Award for Creative Student Engagement in Spring 2022.
“AC and the Amarillo environs are fortunate to have Prof. Thomas G. Palaima come to town to share his seemingly infinite reservoir of wisdom on Bob Dylan,” said Robert Fulton, AC associate professor of humanities. “I have known Tom for 30 years, and he is the epitome of a humanist as he combines the integrity of a world-class academic with a common-sense vision of life that he shares in numerous ways to the community, breaking down any distinctions between town and gown. Tom walks amongst the intellectual geniuses as well as the man on the streets with humility and humanity.”
Palaima earned numerous academic accolades including a Fulbright and later MacArthur for his research on Aegean scripts. His broad training in classical languages and history ran through his undergraduate days at Boston College to graduate school at the University of Wisconsin Madison and his two years as a fellow of the American School of Classical Studies in Athens.
The 3-day event will conclude with Steve Jenkins, director of the Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa, Okla., presenting “Stepping Into the Unknown from the Bob Dylan Archive” at 7 p.m. Friday, April 11 in AC’s Concert Hall Theatre.
Spanning decades and musical styles, this program of short films and videos from the Bob Dylan Archive features rare and previously unreleased clips of Dylan on stage and in the studio.
Film selections include Dylan’s first film soundtrack for 1961’s “Autopsy on Operation Abolition;” a devastating solo rendition of “Ballad of Hollis Brown” from the 1963 TV special “Folk Songs and More Folk Songs;” a rollicking 1976 take on “I Pity the Poor Immigrant” with Joan Baez; a gospel-infused “Blowin’ in the Wind;” an apocalyptically rocking “When the Night Comes Falling from the Sky” with Dylan backed by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers; loving tributes to Johnny Cash and Tony Bennett; a glimpse into the Archive’s film restoration project with never-before-seen footage of “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” from 1966; and many more treasures from the archive.
Jenkins and Palaima will engage in a post-screening discussion with the Friday audience.
Ten Dylan-song inspired prints designed by Morten Ehrhorn, a Danish artist, will be displayed in the Common Lobby outside of AC’s Concert Hall Theatre before the Thursday and Friday events. The signed and numbered prints will be sold to support the Creative Mind Lecture Series.
All events, sponsored by the AC Foundation, are free and open to the public.