Author Howard Mansfield to Speak at New England College

Author Howard Mansfield will speak at New England College on Monday, January 31 at 7:00 p.m. The event will be held in the Simon Center at 98 Bridge Street and is free and open to the public.

Mr. Mansfield will discuss his latest book Turn and Jump: How Time and Place Fell Apart, published by Down East Publishers in 2010. In reference to the Vaudeville practice of a turn on the stage and a jump to the next stop on the tour, Mansfield explores the disconnect between time and place that was once thought to be inseparable. He locates the source of the issue to the last 150 years where he believes a number of significant cultural and business practices have disengaged time and place. His examples include the creation of the endless variety show known as Continuous Vaudeville, the evolution of a local dry goods store into the anonymous mall with its own sense of time, and a tragedy that took place over 300 years before and still casts a dark shadow over the town where it happened.

Copies of Turn and Jump: How Time and Place Fell Apart will be available for purchase and signing by the author on January 31.

Howard Mansfield’s writing focuses on preservation, architecture, and history, and he has published numerous books, articles, and essays. He is the author of The Bones of the Earth, The Same Ax, Twice, and In the Memory House. His work has been honored with the Gold Medal for Commentary for the City and Regional Magazine competition. A frequent speaker on preservation and history, he is the chair of his town’s Village Planning Committee and serves on the advisory board of the Monadnock Institute of Nature, Place, and Culture at Franklin Pierce University.

The event is sponsored by the New England College General Education Program, the Arts, Literature, and Theatre Collegium, and the Project Pericles Program. For more information, contact Inez McDermott, Associate Professor of Art History, at imcdermott@nec.edu.