Each semester, dozens of events bring students, researchers, and patrons to UT’s libraries. Some, like Game Night, are just for fun and to introduce students to the library. From graduation cap decorating to data management, events represent one of the ways UT Libraries transforms lives through discovery, creativity, learning, and engagement.
Some events are carried out in conjunction with campus and community partners. Two such collaborative events held in summer 2025—one for local youngsters and the other for emerging leaders from African nations—were both designed to nurture leadership skills.
Pendergrass Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine Library was a campus partner in the Vol Youth Leadership Academy. An initiative of UT’s Office of Community Engagement and Outreach, the academy engages rising eighth and ninth graders in learning the principles of becoming positive leaders. Participants take part in classes, field trips, and experiential learning opportunities, all aimed at helping them take the lead in shaping their futures. At Pendergrass, 50 visiting students learned about library collections—the manga and graphic novels in the Leisure Reading Collection were especially popular—and about conducting research in a university library. Staff introduced the students to 3D modeling using TinkerCAD and offered hands-on activities such as planting seeds from the Seed Library, making bracelets with 3D-printed beads and letters, and button making.
The Mandela Washington Fellowship for Young African Leaders is the flagship program of the US Department of State’s Young African Leaders Initiative. The University of Tennessee hosted 24 Mandela Washington Fellows from 19 sub-Saharan countries. The fellows, between the ages of 25 and 35, are early-career professionals chosen by US embassies across Africa. Most are leaders of nongovernmental organizations that address a wide range of civic challenges across the continent and are viewed as individuals who will shape the future of Africa. At UT they worked with faculty mentors to engage in applied research aimed at improving their community initiatives. As part of their orientation to campus, fellows visited John C. Hodges Library to use library collections and receive research assistance.
Two signature UT Libraries events, Boundless: Artists in the Archives and the Wilma Dykeman Stokely Memorial Lecture, highlight the literature, art, and music of the Appalachian South.
Internationally renowned jazz pianist and composer Donald Brown was the guest artist for the 2025 chapter of Boundless: Artists in the Archives. A set of original jazz compositions inspired by the Beauford Delaney papers debuted at the Knoxville Museum of Art in the spring. Brown’s performance, held in collaboration with the world-renowned Big Ears Festival, drew a standing-room-only crowd.
Boundless invites musicians and other artists to visit the UT Libraries’ archives and create original works inspired by the unique primary sources preserved there. Brown explored the papers of Beauford Delaney (1901–1979) held at UT’s Betsey B. Creekmore Special Collections and University Archives. Acquired in 2022, the Beauford Delaney Papers collection consists of family, personal, and professional correspondence; photographs; sketchbooks and notebooks; artwork; exhibition material; and biographical records created or collected by Delaney, an African American painter born and raised in Knoxville.
At the Boundless event, Brown premiered three original compositions inspired by the collection: an ode to Delaney’s mother, Delia; a piece inspired by the friendship between Delaney and author James Baldwin; and “$5 Blues for Beauford Delaney.”
“You know, if he lived in Knoxville back then, he had to have the blues!” Brown said. “So I tried to capture the feeling of Dixieland blues, juke joint blues, and modern blues.” Hear excerpts from the debut performance at volumes.lib.utk.edu/boundless/donald-brown.
An exhibit of materials from the Beauford Delaney Papers will be on display in Hodges Library through May 2026.
The Wilma Dykeman Stokely Memorial Lecture is jointly sponsored by the Friends of the Knox County Public Library and the John C. Hodges Society of UT Libraries. The annual event honors the late writer, speaker, teacher, historian, and environmentalist Wilma Dykeman Stokely (1920–2006) and features speakers who have a deep connection to one or more of Stokely’s passions: Appalachia, environmental integrity, and social justice. The 2025 lecture, held in the spring at the East Tennessee History Center, featured Appalachian writers Halle Hill and Terry Roberts.
Hill’s collection of short stories, Good Women, was published in 2023. In Good Women, Hill follows the interior lives of 12 Black women, each nearing a breaking point. Born and raised in East Tennessee, Hill currently lives, works, and teaches in North Carolina.
Roberts is a lifelong teacher and educational reformer and the author of seven novels. He is a native of the mountains of western North Carolina, and his ancestors include six generations of mountain farmers as well as the bootleggers and preachers who appear in his novels.
The lecture took the form of a conversation between the authors on faith, struggle, resilience, and redemption. The discussion was moderated by Natalie Graham, professor and head of UT’s Department of Africana Studies.
Both writers confessed that they had once aspired to be preachers. That discovery led to a question about the role of faith in the creative process. “When I think about faith,” Graham prompted, “what I’m thinking about here is the energy that allows you to explore things beyond your knowing.”
“I think what helps me know if the story is worth pursuing is if it feels like it’s going in a direction beyond myself,” Hill said.
Roberts added, “There’s a way in which you come, over time, to trust your instincts as a writer. There’s a sense that the story is coming from somewhere and that story is important. . . . How do you know? You know, I think, when it begins to take on a life of its own.”