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| Donald Smith |
Saturday, March 15, 11 am
Speaker: Donald B. Smith, University of Calgary (Alberta)
Honoré Jaxon: Prairie Visionary (2007) is the final volume in a biographical trilogy of three men who re-invented themselves as North American Indians in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Jaxon book follows Smith's biographies of Long Lance (1982) and of Grey Owl (1990). Grey Owl was Archie Belaney (1888-1938), an immigrant from England to Canada at age seventeen, who later became a well-known "Indian" writer and lecturer. Chief Buffalo Child Long Lance presented himself as a Blackfoot from the Northwestern Plains, but was actually Sylvester Long (1890-1932) from the African-American community of Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Honoré Jaxon, or William Henry Jackson (1861-1952), an English Canadian who served as Louis Riel's secretary in the Northwest Resistance of 1884-85, later re-created himself in the United States as a Métis.
Don Smith will make the case that, by reinventing themselves, these three "pretenders" on the fringes of the main stream contributed to society by their championing of Aboriginal peoples in North America when few in the mainstream society did so.
Honoré Jaxon is available for purchase from the Newberry Library's A.C. McClurg Bookstore. A book signing follows the talk.
Admission is free. No reservation is required.
As a complement to the Recent Acquistions exhibit at the Newberry Library:
Saturday, March 15, 1:30 pm
Speaker: Paul Saenger, The Newberry Library
Why was the Union Army's 7th Iowa called the "Grey Beard Regiment"? How can you recreate a dance from the Court of Louis XIV? Why would the Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies partner with the Newberry Library to acquire a book written by a Franciscan friar in the middle ages? How did a collection of colorful Pennsylvania baptismal records end up in Germany? The George A. Poole III Curator of Rare Books and Collection Development Librarian answers these and other questions in an illustrated overview of the Newberry Library's acquisitions since 2001.
At 2 pm on the following Saturdays, tours of the Newberry Recent Acquisitions exhibit will be presented by the curators, librarians, and archivists who build the collections:
March 22: John Brady, Director of Reader Services - Bibliographer of Americana
March 29: Martha Briggs, Lloyd Lewis Curator of Midwest Manuscripts
April 19: Paul F. Gehl, Custodian, John M. Wing Foundation on the History of Printing
April 26: Jack Simpson, Curator of Local and Family History
Admission is free. No reservation is required.
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| Louise Knight |
Saturday, March 22, 11 am
Speaker: Louise W. Knight, independent scholar
Hull House was Chicago’s first settlement house, and its founder, Jane Addams (1860–1935), remains one of this city’s best-known and most-respected national leaders. What led a small town, upper-middle-class young woman to take up residence in one of Chicago’s poorest industrial neighborhoods? What changed her from an apolitical philanthropist dedicated to the cultural and moral uplift of her immigrant neighbors to world prominence as an unflagging political activist and Nobel-prizewinning social reformer? Louise Knight’s exploration of the first forty years of Addams’s life in Citizen focuses on her reaction to the political and economic turmoil of the 1890s, and identifies the women and men who influenced her political development.
Citizen: Jane Addams and the Struggle for Democracy is available for purchase from the Newberry Library's A.C. McClurg Bookstore. A book signing follows the talk.
Admission to the lecture is free. No reservation is required.
Following Louise Knight's lecture will be the Mending the Metropolis Bus Tour led by Rachel Bohlmann, the Director of Public Programs at the Newberry, from 1:00-5:00pm. Tickets are $45/$40 for Associates of the Newberry Library (lunch is not included). To register, send a check payable to the Newberry Library to Newberry Library Public Programs, 60 W Walton St, Chicago IL 60610, Attention: Settlement Bus Tour, or telephone (312) 255-3700. For more information, visit the website.
Tuesday, April 8, 6:00 pm
Speaker: Martha Nussbaum, University of Chicago
In Liberty of Conscience, philosopher Martha Nussbaum argues that America's tradition of religious freedom is predicated on equal respect for all citizens and their beliefs. This ideal, however, is seriously threatened by groups who seek, on the one hand, to emphasize one religious understanding at the cost of other belief systems, or, on the other, to retail religious influence altogether. Nussbaum contents that these partisan efforts undermine religious freedom and directly violate the Constitution.
Liberty of Conscience is available for sale at the University of Chicago's A. C. McClurg Bookstore. A book signing will follow the talk. Admission is free. No reservation is required.
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| John Hamilton |
Wednesday, April 16, 6 pm
Speakers: John Maxwell Hamilton, Louisiana State University, and Richard C. Longworth, The Chicago Council on Global Affairs
Edward Price Bell (1869–1943) invented the job of foreign correspondent when he opened the London bureau of the Chicago Daily News in 1900. The autobiography of this once widely-known and highly respected foreign correspondent lay unpublished in the Newberry Library until John Maxwell Hamilton and Jaci Cole edited and published it as part of a series of memoirs and books by pioneering foreign correspondents. Following remarks on Bell, Hamilton will join Richard C. Longworth, prize-winning Chicago Tribune foreign correspondent for 20 years, for a conversation about how the roles and responsibilities of the foreign correspondent have changed from Bell’s time to ours and what, if anything, has remained the same.
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| Richard Longworth |
Journalism of the Highest Realm: The Memoir of Edward Price Bell, Pioneering Foreign Correspondent for the Chicago Daily News by John Maxwell Hamilton and Jaci Cole, and Richard C. Longworth's new book Caught in the Middle: America's Heartland in the Age of Globalism will be available for purchase at the Newberry Library's A.C. McClurg Bookstore. Book signings will follow the program.
This program is co-sponsored by The Chicago Council on Global Affairs.
Admission is free. No reservation is required.
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| Geraldine Brooks |
Wednesday, January 23, 6 pm
Speaker: Geraldine Brooks
If you enjoyed Robert Hellenga's The Sixteen Pleasures and its sequel, The Italian Lover, and Audrey Niffenegger's best-selling novel The Time Traveler's Wife, you will love People of the Book. An actual book, the Sarajevo Haggadah, is the central figure in Pulitizer-prize winning novelist Geraldine Brooks' People of the Book. Her fictional account builds imaginatively upon known facts about this precious illuminated, fourteenth-century Passover codex's journey from medieval Spain to Bosnia's National Museum. The Sarajevo Haggadah is a treasured symbol of Jewish presence and survival in the Balkans.
People of the Book: A Novel will be available for purchase at the Newberry Library's A.C. McClurg Bookstore. A book signing follows the talk.
Admission is free. No reservation is required.
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| Frances Paden |
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| William Paden |
Saturday, February 9, 1:30 pm
Speaker: William D. Paden and Frances Freeman Paden, Northwestern University.
Note location: Alliance Française de Chicago, 54 W. Chicago Ave.
Troubadour poetry conjures up romantic images of medieval knights and ladies, but the English verse translations by William and Frances Paden will surprise and delight you. For one thing, quite a few troubadour poems were written by women. As you might expect, the Padens will recite love songs, but the tenth-, eleventh-, and early fourteenth-century verses also include satires, invectives, debates, laments, and religious songs. What's the difference between a troubadour and a trouvère?
Troubadour Poems from the South of France and tickets for Consort performances of The Play of Robin and Marion will be for sale following the talk.
Admission is free. No reservations are required.
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| Scott Simon |
Tuesday, March 18, 6 pm
Speaker: Scott Simon, National Public Radio
In his second novel (researched and written in part at the Newberry Library), the host of "Weekend Edition with Scott Simon" returns to his roots with an uproarious tale of his native city's rough-and-tumble politics. Sonny Roopini, a Chicago alderman and South Asian American from Devon Avenue, is thrust into the spotlight when the mayor dies at his desk one evening of an apparent heart attack. The spotlight turns into the hot seat, as Roopini begins to suspect that the mayor's death was not due to natural causes.
Windy City: A Novel of Politics will be available for purchase at the Newberry Library's A.C. McClurg Bookstore. A book signing follows the talk.
Admission is free. No reservation is required.
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| Kathleen Welton |
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| Joseph Parisi |
Thursday, April 10, 6 pm
Speaker: Joseph Parisi and Kathleen Welton, editors
Joseph Parisi (editor of 100 Essential Modern Poems) and Kathleen Welton selected poems by women writing over the past 150 years in the English language. You will find Emily Dickinson, Audre Lorde, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Marge Piercy, and Sylvia Path, to be sure. But 100 Essential Modern Poems by Women also includes fine women poets who have been forgotten and some contemporary poets whom readers may meet here for the first time. Biographical sketches and insightful comments make this volume both engaging and accessible.
100 Essential Modern Poems by Women will be available for purchase at the Newberry Library's A.C. McClurg Bookstore. A book signing follows the talk.
Admission is free. No reservation is required.
The Newberry Library
Center for Public Programs
60 West Walton Street
Chicago, IL 60610-7324
telephone: (312) 255-3700
fax: (312) 255-3680
e-mail: programs@newberry.org