LITERATURE + LECTURES

Discovery Green presents Talk of the Town- a new series of free lectures in the park. This installment is entitled The Changing Face of Houston, and takes place Tuesday, October 4, 6:30 – 9 pm. Leah White peforms Houston Our Roots Are Still Strong. Rice University's Stephen Klineberg (pictured) delivers his fascinating report on 30 years of the Kinder Houston Area Survey.

Leah White is a popular Houston singer/songwriter.  These days you will see her at the shows with her family in front, a wireless mic in one hand and running around in the audience dancing and singing with the crowd with extreme high energy and enthusiasm.

A graduate of Haverford College near Philadelphia, Dr. Stephen L Klineberg received an M.A. in Psychopathology from the University of Paris and a Ph.D. in Social Psychology from Harvard. After teaching at Princeton, he joined Rice University's Sociology Department in 1972.

In March 1982, he and his students initiated the annual Houston Area Survey, tracking the region’s economic and demographic transformations and recording the way area residents are reacting to the ongoing societal changes. No other city in America has been the focus of a long-term longitudinal research program of this scope. None more clearly exemplifies the remarkable changes that are radically refashioning the social and political landscape of urban America. Supported by Houston area foundations, corporations, and individuals, the annual surveys have measured the changing demographic patterns, experiences, attitudes, and beliefs among 26 successive representative samples of Harris County residents. The overall purpose of this continuing project is to track systematically population characteristics and public perceptions in the Houston region, and to make the survey findings readily available to civic and business leaders, to the general public, and to research scholars everywhere.

Presented by ExxonMobil and co-sponsored by The American Leadership Forum.