While the MSU Libraries has no direct involvement in this upcoming online conversation, part of the mission of the MSU Libraries is to support research, scholarship, publications, and literacy. The author Margaret Sulllivan has roots in Springfield and the Ozarks, and Professors Madden and Schmalzbauer are faculty members at Missouri State University.

Join us Wednesday, February 2nd at 7 PM CST for a Virtual Author Event with Margaret Sullivan in conversation with Dr. Etta Madden and Dr. John Schmalzbauer, exploring topics such as cultural literacy, diplomacy abroad, identity as related to gender, place, and profession, and Ozarks history. We will be celebrating her book FRAGMENTS FROM A MOBILE LIFE (2019 Red Mountain Press). This event is sponsored by the Department of English at Missouri State University and Pagination Bookstore. 

Link to the Zoom webinar: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84817934870

About Margaret Sullivan:

Margaret Sullivan, the author of Fragments from a Mobile Life,  is a writer, artist, and public educator. She was born in China and has lived and worked in Asia and Africa as well as the United States. During World War II, she lived in Springfield, which makes her, as she puts it, “not only a rolling stone, but a child of the Ozarks.” Her mother, Louise Parks Winfield was born and grew up here.  While the author’s father continued to work in China during the war, she, her sisters, and their mother moved to Springfield to be close to her grandparents, Charlie and Love (Ellis) Parks. She went to Phelps School for part of the first grade and from third through the middle of the sixth grade. 

In addition to Fragments from a Mobile Life, published in January 2019 by Red Mountain Press, her publications include the award-winning book, “Can Survive, La” Cottage Industries in High-rise Singapore (1985; 1992) and a children’s book, The Philippines: Crossroads of the Pacific (1998). She edited Change and the Muslim World (1981). Her column, A Grandmother on…, appeared in the Huffington Post. Over the past forty years, her articles have appeared in the Foreign Service Journal, the Far Eastern Economic Review, The Singapore Straits Times, the op-ed section of the Washington Post and the Singapore Airlines magazine Silver Kris among others. She was active in addressing issues of change for roles for wives of US Foreign Service officers and was Associate Director of the Asia Society’s Washington Center. Her paintings and photographs have been exhibited in Indonesia, the Philippines, Sierra Leone and Washington DC. She attended the College of Wooster, Wooster, Ohio, and graduated from American University, Washington, DC, with a degree in English and has been a participant in the Iowa University Summer Writer’s Program.

Dr. Etta Madden:

Dr. Etta Madden is the Clif & Gail Smart Professor of English & Assistant Department Head at Missouri State University and the author of books and articles on American literature, women writers, and intentional  communities. Her book Engaging Italy: American Women’s Utopian Visions and Transnational Networks is forthcoming from SUNY Press (April 2022). The recipient of a Fulbright award, Etta has been a research fellow at the New York Public Library, an NEH Seminar participant at the American Academy in Rome, and a two-time recipient of a Mellon Fellowship from the Library Company of Philadelphia. Etta’s teaching, writing and speaking on American literature, women writers, and utopian visions emerge from a longstanding interest in what it means to be an individual within communities—religious and spiritual communities, in particular; what it means to be a woman in a world where gender roles are in flux; and the roles of writing and reading for intellectual and emotional health.

Dr. John Schmalzbauer:

Sociologist John Schmalzbauer teaches in the Department of Religious Studies at Missouri State University, where he holds the Blanche Gorman Strong Chair in Protestant Studies. His research and teaching focus on American religion. For the past fifteen years, his courses have explored the varieties of Ozarks religion, local congregations, religion and media, and the sociology of religion. Between 2008 and 2011 he was a contributor to the Christian Science Monitor and the PBS News Hour’s Patchwork Nation Project, chronicling the intersection of religion and politics in the Ozarks. He is the author of People of Faith: Religious Conviction in American Journalism and Higher Education (Cornell University Press, 2003) and the co-author of The Resilience of Religion in American Higher Education (Baylor University Press 2018).