On Sunday, April 26, at 2 p.m. at the Plaza Branch, 4801 Main St., Monique Laney, the 2008 recipient of the Richard and Jeannette Sias Graduate Fellowship in the Humanities, presents a talk titled How German Rocket Engineers Became Americans in Huntsville, Alabama.

Laney, a doctoral student in American studies at the University of Kansas, delves into the phenomenon that took place in Huntsville, Alabama.

Up until 1950, Huntsville was a small cotton mill town. Then, thanks to the United States government, it became a hub of the space race when more than 110 German engineers and their families descended on the town and transformed it into Rocket City, USA. In the talk, Laney explains how the Germans adjusted to the people in the small Southern town, and how they all negotiated the group's past in Nazi Germany.