Willa Cather expert Steven Shively presents Willa Cather: A Celebration of Immigrants and the Great Plains at 7 p.m. Thursday, March 8, in the Carnegie Library Museum, 1123 Willis Avenue, Perry.
Shively, who teaches English at Northwest Missouri State University, will focus on immigration in Cather’s novels My Ántonia, O Pioneers!, and in her short story “Neighbour Rosicky,” as well as her articles for The Nation magazine in which she discussed what she thought was being lost in the generation after the early immigrants. Shively also will share Cather photographs and artifacts.
Shively is one of the editors of Teaching Cather, and serves on the Board of Governors for the Cather Foundation. His presentation is free and open to the public.
The purpose of Hometown Perry, Iowa is to study, understand, communicate, and celebrate the vital contribution small towns have made to American life as seen through the prism of the immigrant experience in Perry, Iowa, and other small towns across the Midwest.
