UNIVERSITY GETS GRANT FOR SERIES; BICENTENNIAL TALKS CONTINUE FRIDAY

The Missouri Humanities Council has awarded a $2,500 grant to Southeast Missouri State University to help fund the Cape Girardeau Bicentennial Lecture Series, which was initiated last fall.

"The grant supports a monthly lecture series on important themes relating to the history of the community and the region," said Frank Nickell, director of Southeast's Center for Regional History.

The lecture series supports the work of the Cape Girardeau Bicentennial Committee, which is spearheading the celebration and interpretation of Cape Girardeau's 200-year history.

The lecture series, which began in December, will continue through November. The free lectures will be held at 7:30 p.m. on Fridays in the Dempster Auditorium in the Crisp Hall of Nursing. Community residents are invited to attend the series and share their own research, history and interpretation at the end of the series.

Also at the conclusion of the series, the lectures will be edited and published in a book titled, "Cape Girardeau: A Bicentennial Perspective."

Since its establishment in 1971, the Missouri Humanities Council has awarded nearly $4 million in competitive grants to support conferences, workshops, lectures, films, videotapes, radio programs and book discussion programs.

The Missouri Humanities Council is the state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities, a federal agency created by Congress in 1965 to promote research and teaching in the humanities. The Missouri Humanities Council is the only statewide organization in Missouri devoted exclusively to promoting public understanding of the humanities, the branches of learning that explore what it means to be human. The humanities include archaeology, jurisprudence, ethics, religion and the history, theory and criticism of the arts.

On Friday, Al Robertson of Southeast Missouri State University will lecture on "When Cape Girardeau was Spanish, 1763-1803."

On Feb. 5, the university's Michael Roark will discuss "French and Germans in Cape Girardeau."