The Hot Springs Romanian Project Lecture by Bianca Martin Sept. 17

The Pryor Center Research Fellowship Program will host "The Hot Springs Romanian Project" by fellow Bianca Martin, on Thursday, Sept. 17, at 6 p.m. Doors open at 5 p.m. for a display of traditional Romanian clothing and samples of sarmale, a Romanian food.

Hot Springs has the largest Romanian population in Arkansas. In an effort to recognize and document this vibrant community, Martin has collected oral histories, photographs and other artifacts from Romanian Americans in the area. The event will include a cultural display and food starting at 5 p.m. followed by Martin's lecture starting at 6 p.m., with a Q&A segment afterward.

The collected interviews will be housed in the Pryor Center archives as part of the Pryor Center Research Fellowship Program. This newly launched program provides student and faculty researchers with opportunities designed to support innovative research and documentation of Arkansas history, politics and culture through the discipline of oral history.  

Martin is a recent graduate of the University of Central Arkansas with a Bachelor of Arts in modern languages (French concentration) and minors in film and Africana studies. She is currently a Pryor Center Fellow at the David and Barbara Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History at the U of A. As the director for the Hot Springs Romanian Project, Martin's research examines the Romanian American population of Hot Springs through an oral history repository focused on community, immigration and language preservation. Additionally, Martin serves as an English language teaching assistant for the French Ministry of Education. She has also presented original research at national and regional conferences on themes ranging from cinema studies to 20th-century French literature and art history. 

The Pryor Center is located at 1 E. Center St., Suite 120. The event is free and open to the public, and parking is available in the Town Center parking deck on East Avenue.

About the David and Barbara Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History: The David and Barbara Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History is an oral history program with the mission to document the history of Arkansas through the collection of spoken memories and visual records, preserve the collection in perpetuity, and connect Arkansans and the world to the collection through the Internet, TV broadcasts, educational programs, and other means. The Pryor Center records audio and video interviews about Arkansas history and culture, collects other organizations' recordings, organizes these recordings into an archive, and provides public access to the archive, primarily through the website at pryorcenter.uark.edu. The Pryor Center is the state's only oral and visual history program with a statewide, seventy-five county mission to collect, preserve, and share audio and moving image recordings of Arkansas history.

About the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences: The Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences is the largest and most academically diverse unit on campus with three schools, 16 departments and 43 academic programs and research centers. The college provides the majority of the core curriculum for all University of Arkansas students.

About the University of Arkansas: As Arkansas' flagship institution, the U of A provides an internationally competitive education in more than 200 academic programs. Founded in 1871, the U of A contributes more than $2.2 billion to Arkansas' economy through the teaching of new knowledge and skills, entrepreneurship and job development, discovery through research and creative activity while also providing training for professional disciplines. The Carnegie Foundation classifies the U of A among the few U.S. colleges and universities with the highest level of research activity. U.S. News & World Report ranks the U of A among the top public universities in the nation. See how the U of A works to build a better world at Arkansas Research News.