This Sunday's Conversations at BSC features the Dust Bowl years | Bismarck State College

to the top of the page
Home Page

This Sunday's Conversations at BSC features the Dust Bowl years

Published: Apr 26 2016
This Sunday's Conversations at BSC features the Dust Bowl years - Photo
The Conversations at BSC series at Bismarck State College continues Sunday, May 1, with a program on "The Dust Bowl Years: North Dakota, Steinbeck, and the New Deal."
 
Discussion between BSC President Larry C. Skogen and BSC humanities scholar Clay Jenkinson begins at 3 p.m. in the fourth floor Bavendick Stateroom of BSC’s National Energy Center of Excellence.
 
Thirty-thousand North Dakotans left during the Dust Bowl years. In many respects, John Steinbeck's great novel, "The Grapes of Wrath," could have been written about North Dakota. At one point, more than 175,000 North Dakotans were on direct federal assistance. All historians agree the Dust Bowl was a human-created tragedy. The period produced extraordinary photography, art, and literature. FDR's Great Plains New Deal gave North Dakota the CCC and the WPA, which left an indelible footprint.
 
Skogen and Jenkinson will work from Timothy Egan's "The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl," Donald Worster's "Dust Bowl: The Southern Great Plains," and North Dakota historian D. Jerome Tweton's work on the depression and the Dust Bowl. 
 
Programs are unrehearsed and emphasize the 360-degree perspective of the humanities lens. Live video/audio streaming is available at bismarckstate.edu/community/live/LiveStreaming/. Audio alone is available on The Myx at bscmysticmedia.com/.
 
The series wraps up on June 12. Funding is provided by Bismarck State College and the BSC Foundation.