Jenkins' illustrated lecture is titled “God and Murder in the Arctic Barren Lands,” based on his book, Bloody Falls of the Coppermine: Madness, Murder and the Collision of Cultures in the Artic. The book is the true story of two French Catholic priests who were murdered while trying to convert Eskimos, and the astonishing investigation and trials that followed.
The Annual Faculty Lecture and reception are open to the public. Interested persons may request a printed invitation by calling the Office of the Director at (302) 831-2231 or sending e-mail to [libraryrsvp@winsor.lib.udel.edu].
Jenkins is a journalist and scholar of American literature, specializing in environmental studies, nonfiction writing and the history and literature of race relations and teaches journalism and 20th-century American literature at UD.
He is the author of The Last Ridge: The Epic Story of the U.S. Army's 10th Mountain Division and the Assault on Hitler's Europe; The White Death: Tragedy and Heroism in an Avalanche Zone; and The South in Black and White: Race, Sex and Literature in the 1940s. He also participated in Operation Homecoming: Iraq, Afghanistan and the Home Front, in the Words of U.S. Troops and Their Families, published by Random House in September in conjunction with the National Endowment for the Arts.
Jenkins' books are available at the University Bookstore and also will be available at the lecture for signing.
“The Last Ridge,” a new documentary about the U.S. Army's elite 10th Mountain Division, was shown on May 28, on WYBE 35, a public television station in Philadelphia. Based on the book with the same title by Jenkins, the documentary tells the story of the division during Word War II, with an update on its more recent deployments in Afghanistan and Iraq.
