February 21, 2:30 PM, Paley Library Lecture Hall, 1210 Polett Walk (Temple University Main Campus)

What is an American Main Street? Is it a memory or image that has been perpetuated through American writing and art? A real space within new urbanist town planning? Or is it a place where some are welcome and others are shunned? Perhaps it is all of the above. Join us to examine these real and imagined notions of American main streets with Miles Orvell and Sandy Sorlien. Orvell is the author of The Death and Life of Main Street: Small Towns in American Memory, Space, and Community (University of North Carolina Press 2012) and professor of English and American studies at Temple. In 2009, he received the Bode-Pearson Prize for lifetime achievement, awarded by the American Studies Association. Sorlien is the author of Fifty Houses: Images from the American Road (Johns Hopkins 2002), and is finishing a book about Main Streets in America with the working title The Heart of Town. She has worked since 2004 on new urbanist plans and codes for walkable streets.

**FREE AND OPEN TO ALL. REFRESHMENTS PROVIDED.**

**Paley Library is located at 1210 Polett Walk, between 12 and 13 Street on Temple Main Campus. The Lecture Hall is on the ground floor, one level below where you enter.**