Dr. James Deutsch, curator and editor at the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, will speak on “Magic on the Mall: The Smithsonian Folklife Festival and Cultural Diversity” on Thursday, Oct. 24, at 7:30 p.m. in Cole Hall at Bridgewater College.
Founded in 1967, the Smithsonian Folklife Festival on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., has presented the cultures of approximately 100 different countries, every state in the U.S. and a wide variety of occupational and religious groups.
In his lecture, Deutsch, one of the program’s curators, will highlight some of the ways in which the festival brings together diverse people from around the world in order to better understand each other’s customs, values and expressions of culture.
As curator and editor at the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, Deutsch has helped plan and develop programs and exhibitions on the Peace Corps, Hungary, the Apollo Theater, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the Mekong River, the U.S. Forest Service, World War II, the Silk Road and the White House employees.
In addition, Deutsch is an adjunct professor in the American studies department at The George Washington University, where he teaches courses on American film history and folklore. He also has taught American studies classes at universities in Armenia, Belarus, Bulgaria, Germany, Kyrgzstan, Norway, Poland and Turkey.
The program is free and open to the public.
Bridgewater College is a private, four-year liberal arts college located in the Central Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. Founded in 1880, it was the state’s first private, coeducational college. Today, Bridgewater College is home to approximately 1,850 undergraduate students.
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