James and Deborah Fallows, Taína Caragol

CHQ&A

On today's episode we feature two conversations with presenters from Week Two of the Chautauqua season, themed "American Identity." First is a discussion with James and Deborah Fallows, who took the Amphitheater stage on the Fourth of July to present on their new book, Our Towns: A 100,000-Mile Journey Into the Heart of America. Then, Taína Caragol, who opened the week of lectures on July 2, joins us at the 47:00 mark to expand upon her work as a curator at the National Portrait Gallery.

For the last five years, Jim and Deb have been traveling across America in a single-engine prop airplane and reporting on the people, organizations and ideas re-shaping the country. As part of their “City Makers: American Futures” project in partnership with The Atlantic and APM’s “Marketplace,” the Fallowses visited smaller and medium-sized cities, meeting civic leaders, factory workers, recent immigrants, and young entrepreneurs to take the pulse and understand the prospects of places that usually draw notice only after a disaster or during a political campaign. Our Towns is the story of their journey — and an account of a country busy remaking itself, despite the challenges and paralysis of national politics. Jim is a national correspondent for The Atlantic and was editor of the US News & World Report. He has also authored several books himself, including China Airborne and National Defense, which won the American Book Award for nonfiction. Jim also worked as the chief White House speechwriter for Jimmy Carter for two years. Deb is a linguist who speaks six languages, and the author of A Mother’s Work and Dreaming in Chinese: Mandarin Lessons in Life, Love, and Languages. Before her travels abroad she was an assistant dean at Georgetown University and wrote about education, travel, work and women in publications such as The Atlantic, National Geographic and Newsweek. Follow them on Twitter at @JamesFallows and @FallowsDeb, and read The Chautauquan Daily's recap of their Amphitheater lecture here: http://chqdaily.com….

Taína Caragol is the curator of painting and sculpture, and of Latino art and history, at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, where she and her colleagues tell the story of America through portraits of people who have shaped it. Regarding her role specific to Latino art and history, Taína has said, “When people are missing from a history museum, the visitor gets the sense that it’s because they haven’t made an impact on our history. My priority is to make sure that the Latinos who have had a significant role are well represented throughout our collections and in our exhibitions.” Among the many exhibitions Taína has curated are “Portraiture Now: Staging the Self,” and “One Life: Dolores Huerta,” which has been expanded and redesigned as a traveling exhibition this year. Taína previously worked as the curator of education at the Museo de Arte de Ponce in Puerto Rico, as consultant of art and archival collections for Lord Cultural Resources, and Latin American Bibliographer for the The Museum of Modern Art. She also co-curated an exhibition about the Young lords, Puerto Rican activists from the 1960s, for the Bronx Museum of the Arts. Follow her on Twitter at @Playacreciente, and read The Chautauquan Daily's recap of her Amphitheater lecture here: http://chqdaily.com….