100 years of Education-From the Ogontz School to Penn State Abington
On the centennial of the educational experience at 1600 Woodland Road, Penn State Abington faculty member and commications specialist Frank D. Quattrone will show how Penn State Abington has evolved from an elite finishing school for young ladies into one of the most diverse baccalaureate colleges in the commonwealth. Along the way, he will introduce the audience to several outstanding faculty members, administrators, students, and related historical figures, including financier Jay Cooke, principal Abby Sutherland, aviators Amelia Earhart and Cornelia Fort, meteorologist Joel Myers, Pulitzer Price-winning journalist Rod Nordland, longtime faculty member Dr, Leonard Mustazza, and chancellor Dr. Karen Wiley Sandler, and their contributions to the college and the larger community beyond.
Frank D. Quattrone

African Americans in History: The 20th Century
This presentation is a chronological review of the socio-political struggles and accomplishments of African Americans during the twentieth century. Particular focus is placed on the modern Civil Rights Movement (1955-1970), and special attention is devoted to the lives of a wide spectrum of individual Blacks whose political activism and achievements exerted a decisive impact on future historical developments. Materials can be modified to accommodate various age groups and venues, including libraries and community centers.
Dr. Valeria G. Harvell

African American Women
The sociopolitical activism of African American women from slavery to the Civil Rights Movement has been frequently overlooked in the study of our nation’s history. This program will help fill the void by presenting highlights of the lives and accomplishments of both major and lesser-known female figures. Special attention will be focused on the ways in which racism and sexism impacted their lives and shaped their individual and collective struggles. Materials can be modified to accommodate various age groups and venues, including libraries and community centers.
Dr. Valeria G. Harvell

Home Away From Home: Immigrants and Their Institutions
Immigrants to the United States have generally created vast networks of self-help organizations to aid them in their adaptation to their new home. Conversely, these relationships also served as ways to maintain ties to the “old country.” The immigration associations were innovative grassroots responses that played important roles in helping newcomers to adjust to life in America. The experiences of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, who created many groups based upon shared hometown roots, provide insights into an immigrant community’s responses to the challenges of acculturation in pluralistic society.
Dr. Hannah Kliger

Neolithic Stone Circles in Wiltshire and Somerset, England
Between 4,700 and 4,500 years ago, ancient Britons went to extraordinary efforts to construct a wide variety of stone circles. Stonehenge is the most famous of these, but there are also the circles at Avebury, Wiltshire, and Stanton Drew and Priddy (both Somerset). In addition, these circles are only part of interconnected sites in the complexes. While we still do not know who built these monuments or why, we can speculate as to their purpose and uses. The complex at Avebury, with the three stone circles, the mound and ditch surrounding them, Silbury Hill, the West Kennet Long Barrow, and two avenues is the primary focus of this talk.
Bryan Polk

Science, Sympathy, and the Impact of Civil War Medicine
In 1861, the U.S. Army had nothing in place to train doctors, build army hospitals, deploy field ambulances, or keep things clean for an army in the field. In five short years, the situation changed forever. The Civil War itself, not some abstract impulse to progress, changed American medicine. A deep revolution in culture ̶ the emergence of national empathy with wounded veterans ̶ stimulated medical science to change. The idea that an individual wounded soldier was valuable enough to try to save his life would never have occurred to Napoleon, Bismarck, Nelson, or even George Washington. But the 19th century U.S. was more careful with young lives than Europe was. Most Civil War soldiers came from hard-working families and communities hungry for labor. Their bright prospects pushed military medicine away from accepting that soldiers were expendable, their deaths abstract and inevitable. Instead, research and practice reflected a new belief at injured soldiers were worthy men deserving of rescue, assistance, and, if possible, healing. But part of the enduring fascination with the Civil War is also a sense of something lost in the change. We forgot the irreducible fact of human suffering and dying, and the indispensable role played in comforting the suffering not by medical intervention but by human acceptance, not by cures, but by love, not in hospitals, but in communities. This forgetfulness still challenges us today.
Dr. Sharon Ann Holt

The Uneasy Relationship Between Religion and Violence
Virtually every religion in the world claims to be a religion of peace, but the relationship between religion and violence is a long one and continues to this day. Focusing primarily on the Western religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, "The Uneasy Relationship between Religion and Violence" investigates the history of violence endorsed or perpetrated by these religions and efforts made even today to justify this relationship between religion and violence.
Bryan Polk