CNU to kick off year-long Jamestown 2007 commemoration this fall
News Release - June 29, 2006
Public's contact for publication:
Dr. Phillip Hamilton
CNU Department of History
(757) 594-7251
phamilt@cnu.edu
Media contact:
Karen L. Gill
Office of Communications and Public Relations
(757) 594-8428
(NEWPORT NEWS, Va.) —Christopher Newport University will begin its year-long commemoration of Jamestown 2007 on Oct. 4, 2006, with a discussion of Virginia Indians of the Chesapeake Region by leading historians and an exhibit of Virginia Indian artwork.
The historians’ panel discussion is 7 p.m. on Oct. 4 at CNU’s Ferguson Center for the Arts Music and Theatre Hall. The exhibit of contemporary, as well as antique, Indian arts will be in the Ferguson Center’s Falk Gallery. Both are free and open to the public.
The panel discussion is the first event in CNU’s Quadricentennial Series, “Points of Contact and Culture: Jamestown, 1607-2007,” which commemorates the establishment of the first successful English settlement in the New World.
The series is an opportunity for scholars, students and interested residents to gain a fuller understanding of the important events and legacies of the Jamestown colony, according to Dr. Phillip Hamilton, associate professor of history at CNU and chair of CNU’s organizing committee for the series.
“The goal is for those who attend to see how Jamestown and Christopher Newport fit into the bigger picture of the age of exploration,” Hamilton said. “What were the expectations of the men who came to the New World and how were those expectations met or not met?”
The University also will sponsor a film series highlighting European-Indian relations during the age of colonization. Films will underscore the diversity of Native American cultures throughout the Americas as well as note how European incursions forever altered Indian lifestyles and traditions. Post-movie discussions led by CNU faculty members will highlight contemporary attitudes, stereotypes and misunderstandings about Indian culture in the period before the American Revolution.
In addition, CNU will host two major conferences on its campus that will focus on the Jamestown colony and its important legacies.
Events planned for CNU’s commemoration of Jamestown 2007 include:
Historians Panel Discussion on Virginia Indians of the Chesapeake Region. Ferguson Center for the Arts Music and Theatre Hall, 7 p.m., Oct. 4, 2006, Free to the public
For the first event in the commemoration, three historians of 16th- and 17th-century America – Karen Ordahl Kupperman of New York University, Helen Rountree of Old Dominion University and James Horn of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation – will explore the contributions of the Virginia Indian tribes to the colonization efforts of English settlers in the early 1600s. They will debate the cultural interactions and misunderstandings between the races and offer the key question for audience participants to consider: Was racial co-existence possible or were conflicts and violence inevitable?
The three panelists also will discuss some of the most prominent figures of Jamestown’s history, including Powhatan, Pocahontas, and Captain John Smith, as real people – products of their age and societies – and not simply one-dimensional and stereotypical figures.
Peninsula Heritage and Founders Tour, Nov. 1, 2006, and April 2007
An all-day Peninsula-area bus tour takes participants to key 17th-century historical sites. John Quarstein, historian and director of the Virginia War Museum, leads the tour that includes the original Jamestown settlement and other 17th-century sites such as Mulberry Island Point, where John Rolfe (the husband of Pocahontas) lived for a time, and Queen’s Hith, the location of Virginia leader Thomas Harwood’s 1629 home.
Clay Jenkinson as Thomas Jefferson, 7:30 p.m., Jan. 25, 2007, Ferguson Center for the Arts Concert Hall. Tickets, $20-$30, through the Ferguson Center for the Arts ticket office.
Humanities scholar and author Clay Jenkinson will present a Chautauqua-style evening in the persona of the United States’ third president, Thomas Jefferson. Jenkinson will explore the great Virginian’s views about the establishment of the Jamestown colony and its importance to the development of self-government in America, as well as some of his own views. Stressing Jefferson’s idealism and his commitment to reason and wisdom, Jenkinson will explain to audience members the need to live up to the principles and ideals of America’s 17th- and 18th-century founders.
Jenkinson is an internationally respected humanities scholar who is a humanities scholar in residence at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Ore. He has authored six books, the most recent of which is “Becoming Jefferson’s People: Re-inventing the American Republic in the Twenty-first Century.” Jenkinson is especially well known to National Public Radio listeners as the voice of Thomas Jefferson in the syndicated radio program “The Thomas Jefferson Hour.”
An Evening with the King’s Singers, 7 p.m., Feb. 11, 2007, Ferguson Center for the Arts Concert Hall. Tickets $22, $32, through the Ferguson Center for the Arts ticket office.
World famous for its ability to present music from the 1200s to the 21st century, the six-member choral group has played in many countries and with many renowned orchestras, including the London Symphony Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony and the Cincinnati Pops, since its formation in 1968 at King’s College, Cambridge.
The group's performance at the Ferguson Center will include a wide variety of English and British tunes, including music of the Elizabethan age, written at the time when English colonization efforts in the New World were beginning.
James McPherson and David Hackett Fischer – “Jamestown as a Pivotal Moment (and at a Pivotal Location) in American History,” 7 p.m., March 29, 2007, Ferguson Center for the Arts Music and Theatre Hall. Tickets $5 through the Ferguson Center for the Arts ticket office.
Two Pulitzer-Prize winning historians – David Hackett Fisher of Brandeis University and James McPherson of Princeton University (emeritus), who co-edited the monograph series “Pivotal Moments in American History” for Oxford University Press – will explore not only how Jamestown represented a pivotal moment in America’s past, but also how it fundamentally changed the course of global history. The year 1607 was an open-ended time when English colonization of North America could have gone down in failure. Emphasizing the role of contingency to the colony’s success and the crucial part played by the Powhatan Indians, these scholars will explain the multiple reasons why the colony eventually survived and prospered.
In addition, Fischer and McPherson will examine the role of place as well as time. Because the Virginia Peninsula has been the focal point of numerous historical events, they will also discuss the American victory at Yorktown in 1781 and the 1862 Peninsula Campaign of the Civil War.
World premiere of “Actus Fideí” (Acts of Faith) A New Play with Music in Two Acts by Steven Breese, March 30, April 1, 5, 6 & 7, 2007, Ferguson Center for the Arts Music and Theatre Hall
The world premiere of a new play of historical fiction, “Actus Fideí,” inspired by the life and times of the University’s namesake, Captain Christopher Newport, will fire the imagination. Filled with colorful historical figures including Queen Elizabeth I, Sir Walter Raleigh, Powhatan, Sir Francis Drake and even Shakespeare, “Actus Fideí” travels backward through time and confronts the heroes and anti-heroes who shaped our world 400 years ago.
The drama by TheaterCNU Professor Steven Breese explores the era’s triumphs and tragedies through the eyes and experiences of Newport – a very unlikely maritime hero. More than just an historical re-enactment, “Actus Fideí” addresses the maritime world of the 17th century, while resonating with contemporary ideas and dilemmas that face us in the 21st century.
William Shakespeare’s “The Tempest,” October 2007, Ferguson Center for the Arts Concert Hall
William Shakespeare’s final play, “The Tempest,” also will be the final event scheduled for the Jamestown 2007 Series. It is widely believed that “The Tempest” is historically based upon the 1609 shipwreck of the Sea Venture, a vessel commanded by Captain Christopher Newport and heading toward Virginia with supplies as well as a new Deputy Governor, Sir Thomas Gates. The ship ran aground in a storm upon the yet-undiscovered island of Bermuda. For 10 months, the passengers and crew survived and built two new boats that finally carried the stranded Englishmen to the New World. After their arrival, one of the passengers named William Strachey wrote an extended account of their near year-long adventure. Scholars have long noted significant similarities between Strachey’s letter and “The Tempest.”
Film Series, dates, times and venues to be announced
The film series will include these films in fall 2006 and spring 2007:
- “Aguirre, The Wrath of God” (1972): Set in South America in the mid-16th century, this film explores how Spanish conquistadors destroyed Native American cultures and civilizations (and oftentimes themselves) in their search for gold and riches.
- “Black Robe” (1991): This film examines the journey of French missionaries as they travel with Algonquian Indians down the St Lawrence River in Canada. The movie highlights the profoundly different world-views possessed by Indians and Europeans in the 1600s.
- “Pocahontas” (1995): This now famous (or infamous) Disney movie illustrates mainstream American assumptions about Indian ways and lifestyles as they specifically relate to the 1607 founding of Jamestown. The film also highlights perceptions and misperceptions about the part Pocahontas herself played in the establishment of the English settlement and in supposedly saving the life of John Smith.
- “Last of the Mohicans” (1992): This high-budget film based on the James Fenimore Cooper novel is set in upstate New York during the French and Indian War. It film reveals the complex struggle for power and control of the continent among the European empires and how the various Iroquois and Algonquian tribes of the Northeast fought to preserve themselves and their ways.
These events, dates and times are subject to change. Please visit http://jamestown2007.cnu.edu for updated information closer to event date or contact Dr. Phillip Hamilton, CNU Department of History, (757) 594-7251. To order tickets through the Ferguson Center for the Arts ticket office, go to http://fergusoncenter.org or call (757) 594-8752.
Christopher Newport University is a four-year public university in Newport News, Virginia. CNU enrolls 4,800 students in programs through its College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the Luter School of Business and offers great teaching, small classes and an emphasis on leadership, civic engagement and honor. Visit us at www.cnu.edu.