row1
OLLI Brown Bag Series
What Can You Do with an Auburn Engineering Degree?
Walt Woltosz
September 10 | 11:30 a.m.
Pebble Hill, 101 S Debardeleben St, Auburn
Free and open to the public
Walt Woltosz graduated with a AS in Aero Engineering in 1969, MS (AE) in 1977, and was granted an Honorary D.Sc. In 2021. He also holds a MS in Administrative Science from UAH. He had careers in aerospace engineering, augmentative communication, and pharmaceutical science, and with his son Daniel, he wrote, directed, and produced a full-length feature film that won a number of awards at various film festivals.
This presentation will describe how the skills he developed from an Auburn Engineering education enabled Walt to achieve success in several widely different fields, supported by his previous life experiences prior to coming to Auburn in 1967.
OLLI Brown Bag Series
Branching Out: The Public History of Trees
Carolyne Barske Crawford & Brian Dempsey
September 17 | 11:30 a.m.
Pebble Hill, 101 S Debardeleben St, Auburn
Free and open to the public
Trees are often viewed primarily as natural resources, yet they also hold powerful places in our cultural landscapes and collective memory. Branching Out: The Public History of Trees, a 2025 essay collection from the University of Massachusetts Press, explores trees through this cultural lens and examines their important role in public history practice. University of North Alabama historians Dr. Brian Dempsey and Dr. Carolyn Barske Crawford each contributed essays to the volume. In “An Island of Trees Called Old Hickory: History and Place in the Mississippi Delta,” Dempsey examines a small stand of trees on the edge of Cleveland, Mississippi. Though ordinary in appearance, the site embodies deep cultural associations that illuminate how people connect with and interpret their local landscapes. In “‘The Most Useful Tree:’ The American Chestnut, Stories, and Species Restoration,” Crawford explores how the American Chestnut Foundation leverages memories of the tree’s once-vital economic, social, and cultural role in Appalachia to support ongoing restoration efforts. Her work highlights the potential for powerful partnerships between scientists and public historians. Together, Dempsey and Crawford will share insights from their research and invite the audience to reflect on why trees matter—not only ecologically, but as anchors of meaning in public history and cultural life.
Carolyn Barske Crawford joined the faculty of the University of North Alabama’s Department of History in 2012. From 2017 to 2024, she served as director of the Muscle Shoals National Heritage Area, a National Park Service–funded program housed at UNA that explores the history and culture of northwest Alabama. Trained as a historian of U.S. women, she earned her B.A. from Sewanee: The University of the South (2002), her M.A. from Northeastern University (2004), and her Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts (2011). Her work also encompasses public history, Alabama history, and environmental history, with a special focus on the Tennessee River. She is currently leading the interpretive planning effort for the Tennessee RiverLine, a regional initiative housed at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Her ongoing research examines reforestation efforts in Alabama during the Great Depression, with particular attention to the work of the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Alabama Forestry Commission. is assistant professor of History at the University of North Alabama. She is the former executive director of the Muscle Shoals National Heritage Area and teaches courses in historical administration and exhibit design.
Brian Dempsey is an Associate Professor of History at the University of North Alabama and the Director of the UNA Public History Center. He holds a PhD in Public History from Middle Tennessee State University and an MA in History from James Madison University. His research explores intersections between landscape, memory, and identity, the integration of the arts in historical interpretation, and the process of empowering communities to tell comprehensive histories. He recently served as the visual curator for the book, Johnny Cash: The Life in Lyrics, and he is currently engaged in projects examining the public history of Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson and developing music archives in North Alabama.
OLLI Brown Bag Series
Inspired by William Bartram: Southern Landscapes
Philip Juras
September 24 | 11:30 a.m.
Pebble Hill, 101 S Debardeleben St, Auburn
Free and open to the public
Growing up in Georgia, artist Philip Juras could only dream of the bountiful southern nature that William Bartram documented two and a half centuries ago. Inspired by Bartram’s writing, Philip has created a body of paintings depicting both contemporary and historic natural landscapes from across the South. He will present work from his exhibit and award-winning book The Southern Frontier, Landscapes Inspired by Bartram’s “Travels”, along with new drawings and paintings that explore some of the forgotten landscapes Bartram so eloquently painted in words. By celebrating the beauty and richness of the nature we still have today while also conveying what we have lost, Philip’s work helps us imagine what can be restored for future generations.
Philip Juras is an award-winning artist in Athens, Georgia with Bachelor of Fine Arts and Master of Landscape Architecture Degrees from the University of Georgia. His MLS thesis examined grasslands that flourished in the southeast before European settlement, a subject that continues to inspire his artwork. He is the author of three books and his work has been profiled by The Magazine Antiques, The Bitter Southerner, Garden and Gun, Minding Nature, Georgia Alumni Magazine, and Athens Magazine, and he is featured in the documentary Cultivating the Wild: The Enduring Legacy of William Bartram.
OLLI Brown Bag Series
The Defining Shared Years of Truman Capote & Harper Lee: 1959-1967
Paul Dewey
October 1 | 11:30 a.m.
Pebble Hill, 101 S Debardeleben St, Auburn
Free and open to the public
Truman Capote and Harper Lee had unique shared experiences in the years 1959-1967. They included not only working together doing research on a story that would evolve into In Cold Blood, but also sharing together the fulfillment of childhood fantasies of being writers, writing defining works of American literature (To Kill A Mockingbird and In Cold Blood), and expressing mutual respect about and support for each other. There have been substantial reviews about how Capote in later years self-destructed and how Capote and Harper Lee became estranged, but there was far more to their life-time relationship than that. In contrast to the later years, Capote and Harper Lee from 1959 to 1967 were close friends. It was also a notable time as they would never again work and be so much together. Paul Dewey is writing a memoir, “Truman, Nelle and In Cold Blood,” that explores the relationships of Capote, Harper Lee and the Dewey family from 1959 to 1967.
Paul Dewey is the youngest son of Alvin Dewey, the lead detective on the murder case underlying In Cold Blood. He was 9 when “Truman” and “Nelle” first came to his home for dinner on December 30, 1959. A graduate of the University of Virginia School of Law and a retired attorney after 40 years of practice in Oregon (primarily Indian and environmental law), Paul has researched for five years over 200 letters and cards from Truman (mostly published) and around 30 letters and cards from Nelle (unpublished) to his family, the murder case records of the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, and archives at the New York Public Library and the Kansas Historical Society.
OLLI Brown Bag Series
Zora Neale Hurston: Reclaiming a Literary and Folklore Legend for Alabama
Dr. Sharony Green
October 8 | 11:30 a.m.
Pebble Hill, 101 S Debardeleben St, Auburn
Free and open to the public
Alabamians should know about Zora Neale Hurston, an African American anthropologist and folklorist whose literary and creative achievements occurred alongside those of better-known Tallulah Bankhead. Born in Notasulga, Alabama, and raised in Florida, Hurston, a two-time Guggenheim winner, collected the everyday songs, tales and stories of black people and workers in the South and Caribbean during and following her heyday in Harlem in the 1920s and 1930s. This complicated woman did so while fiercely being herself politically and otherwise as her exploits, among them asking Winston Churchill to write the preface to her novel on Herod the Great, make clear.
Sharony Green is a Professor of History at University of Alabama. She was born and raised in Miami with roots in the Deep South and the Bahamas. Her recent published work includes a book on Alabama-native Zora Neale Hurston's trip to Honduras in the 1940s and a memoir on using her own life and Tuscaloosa as a "lab" to teach public history.
OLLI Brown Bag Series
A Marriage in Startled Air: A Reading & Reflection
Patricia Foster
October 15 | 11:30 a.m.
Pebble Hill, 101 S Debardeleben St, Auburn
Free and open to the public
Patricia Foster is professor emerita at the University of Iowa’s MFA Program in Nonfiction, where she taught for twenty-five years. She is the author of All the Lost Girls (PEN Award), Just beneath My Skin, Girl from Soldier Creek (SFA Novel Award), Written in the Sky: Lessons of a Southern Daughter (Hall-Waters Prize for Distinguished Southern Writing), and a forthcoming memoir, The New World. She is the editor of four anthologies, including Minding the Body: Women Writers on Body and Soul. She has received a Pushcart Prize, a Clarence Cason Award, a Theodore Hoepfner Award, a Dean’s Scholar Award, a Florida Arts Council Award, a Yaddo Fellowship, a Carl Klaus Teaching Award, and was a juror for the Windham-Campbell Literature Prize in Nonfiction (Yale University). A native of Fairhope, Alabama, Foster is the 2025 recipient of the Hall-Waters Prize from Troy University. The award is presented regularly to a person who has made significant contributions to Southern heritage and culture in history, literature or the arts.
OLLI Brown Bag Series
Operation Grow: Supporting Military Veterans in Agriculture
Jesse Teel
October 22 | 11:30 a.m.
Pebble Hill, 101 S Debardeleben St, Auburn
Free and open to the public
Jesse Teel is the coordinator for Operation Grow, an Alabama Extension resource for veterans interested in agricultural industries. In conjunction with the Alabama Department of Agriculture and Industries, Operation Grow supports grassroots educational and networking efforts to include all veterans and their families. Teel earned a master’s degree in public horticulture from Auburn University and was an Americorps intern for garden education and management.
OLLI Brown Bag Series
Scopes “Monkey” Trial: A Centennial Revisit
Bill Deutsch
October 29 | 11:30 a.m.
Pebble Hill, 101 S Debardeleben St, Auburn
Free and open to the public
The Scopes Trial of 1925 has been called “The Trial of the Century” because of it’s critical implications for academic freedom, parental rights, and science. This presentation will review the circumstances, main players, outcomes, and relevance for today. The same issues are still red hot!
Bill Deutsch is a Research Fellow, Emeritus in the Auburn University School of Fisheries, Aquaculture and Aquatic Sciences who holds degrees in Zoology, Biology, Anthropology, and Aquatic Ecology. He is the author of Alabama Rivers: A Celebration & Challenge and Ancient Life in Alabama: The Fossils, the Finders & Why It Matters. For more than 20 years, Deutsch served as director of Alabama Water Watch (AWW), a community-based water monitoring program he cofounded in 1992. He also founded Global Water Watch – a program modeled after AWW – that has conducted watershed stewardship projects in the Philippines, Ecuador, Brazil, Thailand, Mexico, Peru, Argentina, and Kenya.
