Sunrise Session in Salt Lake City features USU's Michael Sweeney

Utah State University faculty member Michael Sweeney wants to make it clear that journalism includes a healthy dose of research and while he is the first journalist to be included in the Sunrise Sessions, it is not a fluke.

Sunrise Sessions include a breakfast lecture that highlights timely and cutting-edge research at Utah State University. Sweeney, a professor and the department head of Journalism and Communication at USU, is the featured speaker Friday, Oct. 5, at the Little America Hotel, 500 S. Main, Salt Lake City. The Sunrise Session is from 7:30-9 a.m.

 

Sweeney’s presentation, “God Grew Tired of Us: An Author’s Journey of Discovery With a Lost Boy of Sudan,” is based on the memoir God Grew Tired of Us, a book he wrote in collaboration with John Bul Dau, a Lost Boy of Sudan.

 

In the summer of 2006, National Geographic commissioned Sweeney to work with Dau on his memoir. They explored the experience of being a refugee from an African civil war. The book allows Americans to see their country with the fresh eyes of an immigrant who arrived with nothing and became the embodiment of the American dream. Sweeney will discuss how he and Dau, two people from vastly different backgrounds, discovered the ways their two countries could learn from each other.