Meet new people and socialize with friends, neighbors, or co-workers. Wednesday Club participants will enjoy an interesting array of presenters and topics based on the Library's amazing collections. The Wednesday Club is hosted by the Newberry Guild, the Library's young civic leaders.
The Winter/Spring 2008 programming of the Wednesday Club is generously underwritten by John H. Noonan, Newberry Trustee.
The committee includes Dawn Edwards (Chair), James Dodson, Susan Redding, and Susan Thornton.
Admission is $9 ($6 for Newberry Library Associates who are at the Author level or above, having donated $100 or more to the Annual Fund) and includes wine, beer, and soft drinks. Doors open at 5:30 pm and programs begin at 6:15 pm.
For information, please call (312) 255-3556. If you would like to make a gift to become an Associate, click here.
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Reception, 5:30 pm, Presentation, 6:15 pm
Speaker: Robin P. Williams, Author; Lecturer; Instructor; Associate Member of the Shakespearean Authorship Trust (London)
The legitimate question of whether William Shakespeare penned his own works lies not in his lack of education, but in the lack of documented evidence that he was a writer (we know he was an actor). Robin P. Williams explores the possibility that a woman wrote the sonnets -- most of which are love poems to a younger man -- and the plays; a woman who developed the movement to establish English as a flexible and worthy language, who added many words to our language, who published the first play in English that was written by a woman. In eight years of research, Robin has discovered documented connections that make it look mighty suspicious that Mary Sidney (Herbert), the Countess of Pembroke, wrote the works attributed to the man named William Shakespeare. Is it possible?
Sweet Swan of Avon will be available for sale at the Newberry Library's A. C. McClurg Bookstore. A book signing will follow the talk..
Wednesday, March 26, 2008 (Please note the date)
Reception, 5:30 pm, Presentation, 6:15 pm
Speaker: Michael L. Mezey, Author, Lecturer, Professor of Political Science at DePaul University
The United States and the United Kingdom both consider themselves democracies. However, the process and theory of elections, and the practical business of electioneering, are remarkably different in the two countries. The role of advertising, the media, electoral law, the personal appeal of candidates, and the outcome of electoral strategies, is marked by the individual cultures of the USA and UK. In this American election year, and with a new British administration in place, this lecture will illuminate the differences between, and throw a light on, the continuing relationship of two of the hubs of the English-speaking world, and perhaps indicate what Britain and America can learn from each other.
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
Reception; 5:30 pm; Presentation, 6:15 pm
Performers: Shapeshifters Theater
Come celebrate the magic of the Irish in a night of theatrical and musical performances! The Shapeshifters Theater of the Irish American Heritage Center will present a variety of readings from Celtic mythology and fairy tales: Irish Fairy and Folktales, edited by William Butler Yeats; excerpts from their Spring production, Knocknashee (the hill of the Irish fairies and the magic it weaves); storytelling by its resident Seannachai; and songs centered on the magic of May Eve and the power of the Spirits.
Wednesday, January 9, 2008 (Please note the date)
Reception, 5:30 pm; Presentation, 6:15 pm
Speaker: Michael Wilmington, Film Critic, Author, Instructor
Orson Welles was a phenomenon, incredible—a genius of American film and theater whose achievements still stagger us. He was only 25 when he directed, co-wrote and starred in “Citizen Kane.” 1941’s “Citizen Kane” is still widely regarded as the greatest movie ever made. Other masterpieces followed his bittersweet memory film of Booth Tarkington’s “The Magnificent Ambersons,” his electrifying film noirs “The Lady From Shanghai” and “Touch of Evil,” and his great Shakespearean adaptations “Macbeth,” “Othello,” and “Chimes at Midnight.” Tragically though, Welles himself almost vanished as a director from American studio sound stages after “Kane;” he had only four more studio directorial assignments for the rest of his career. What was the true measure of the man and of his movies? We’ll explore those questions while viewing clips from “Kane,” “Ambersons” and other Welles classics.
Wednesday, December 5
Reception, 5:30 pm; Presentation, 6:15 pm
Panel: Penelope Bingham, Author and Illinois Humanities Council Road Scholar; Connie Fairbanks, Author
After watching all those TV food shows, does anyone really cook? Penelope Bingham and Connie Fairbanks will explore how cookbooks have changed over the last 75 years. What have we learned? What trends in American society have been mirrored in cookbooks? Is anything really new? Is good food tastier and easier to make in 2007? What's comfort food, and does it still exist? Prepare yourself for a lively discussion and interesting insights into cookbooks and our society.
Book signings will follow the presentation.
Wednesday, November 7
Reception, 5:30 pm; Presentation, 6:15 pm
Speaker: Rocky Kolb, University of Chicago and Fermilab
Ninety-five percent of the universe is a mystery. Astronomical observations suggest that most of the universe is "dark." The stuff out of which we are made, the visible world we see around us, seems to comprise only 5% of the mass-energy of the universe. An unknown dark matter holds our galaxy together and a mysterious dark energy pushes the galaxies apart. Follow Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics Rocky Kolb to the dark side of the universe - the frontier of twenty-first century cosmology.
Wednesday, October 3
Reception, 5:30 pm; Presentation, 6:15 pm
Speaker: Tom Joyce, Rare Book Dealer and Lecturer
Do you like dogs - or do they scare you to death? How well do you know Sherlock Holmes' legendary adventure, The Hound of the Baskervilles, the mystery by Arthur Conan Doyle that has spooked and challenged readers for over a century? Find out from a longtime member of the Baker Street Irregulars and the Hounds of the Baskervilles what "Sherlockians" know about it that you don't. Reread the case (or don't) but come to explore the mysteries within the mystery of the Baskervilles and their curse.
Wednesday, September 5
Reception, 5:30 pm; Presentation, 6:15 pm
Speaker: June Skinner Sawyers, Author
Performers: Bucky Halker, Don Stiernberg
The Beatles' music is so timeless that whatever it is that you wish to find, it will probably be there. In a music-filled talk, the author of Read the Beatles: Classic and New Writings on the Beatles, Their Legacy, and Why They Still Matter takes us on a whirlwind tour through their career as a band and as solo artists, illustrated with images from the past and the present. Singer-songwriter Bucky Halker and mandolin player Don Stiernberg will offer their own unique interpretations of classic Beatles songs. So, come together one and all.
Beatles reader and Bucky Halker CDs will be available for sale. Signings will follow the program.
Wednesday, May 2
Reception, 5:30 pm; Presentation, 6:15 pm
Speaker: Martin Meenagh, Former Oxford Tutor and Member of Middle Temple, The Inns of Court (London)
During the Blair years, profound reforms to Britain's unwritten and monarchial constitution have included the human rights act, devolution, the reform of the House of Lords, and the virtual elimination of the mysterious Crown power known as the "Royal prerogative." Martin Meenagh asks, has the United Kingdom indeed become, as Walter Bagehot described it in 1873, "a disguised republic"? Do these changes simply ratify and bring into the open Britain's hidden republican settlement? What should foreign observers expect after Blair steps down as Prime Minister?
Wednesday, April 4
Reception, 5:30 pm; Presentation, 6:15 pm
Speaker: Edmund B. Thornton
During the summers of 1949 and 1950, Edmund Thornton served as a crew member on the Schooner Bowdoin out of Boothbay Harbor, Maine on two expeditions to the Arctic. He reached a latitude of eleven degrees from the North Pole, and had contacts with the Native Inuit in North Greenland. Please join us for a visually stunning program that will include highlights of Thornton's Arctic experience together with comments on the history and exploration of the Arctic Regions.
Wednesday, March 7
Reception, 5:30 pm; Presentation, 6:15 pm
Speaker: Prof. David Bevington, University of Chicago
David Bevington is professor emeritus in the humanities and a leading Shakespearean scholar. He will explore Shakespeare's fascination with family relationships in his late plays, especially in Othello, King Lear, The Winter's Tale, and the Tempest. Was Shakespeare working out his own thoughts about the end of his London theatrical career, and his return to Stratford-upon-Avon to live once again with his wife, Anne? This problem of interpretation is especially acute because Shakespeare was so unwilling to talk about himself.
Wednesday, February 7
Reception, 5:30 pm; Presentation, 6:15 pm
Speaker: Robert Rhodes, Ohio University
Musician: Nicole Mitchell
Jazz critic Robert Rhodes, professor emeritus of African American Studies, will explore the theme of political activism that is expressed by such jazz musicians as Louis Armstrong, Sonny Rollins, and Max Roach. He will be joined by Nicole Mitchell, Chicago flautist and "3rd Generation" member of Chicago's Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM). "[Mitchell] values innovation, reveres the majesty of black musical history and celebrates the breakthrough out of the 20th-Century jazz," wrote Tribune music critic Howard Reich. Mitchell will perform works from her Harambee Project (Coming Together) commissioned and performed for the "MADE IN CHICAGO" Jazz Festival in Poland, November 2006.
Wednesday, January 10
Reception, 5:30 pm; Presentation, 6:15 pm
Speaker: Michael Wilmington, Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times film critic
Michael Wilmington discusses the career of writer Ben Hecht (1893-1964), one of the great Chicago journalists in the early decades of the twentieth century. His classic newspaper play, The Front Page, has been presented many times on stage and in film versions, including the classic screwball comedy, His Girl Friday. After leaving Chicago, Hecht became one of Hollywood's top screenwriters of the Golden Age of the studio system, producing scripts for Scarface, 20th Century, Notorious, and Wuthering Heights, among other notable films. It was Chicago, however, that remained Hecht's first love, and upon his death, his papers came to the Newberry Library.