Saturday, September 12, 10:00 am
Panelists: James R. Grossman, The Newberry Library; Scott Nelson, William and Mary College; Bill Savage, Northwestern University
On the 75th anniversary of the New Deal a new documentary, Soul of a People, focuses on one of the most controversial public assistance programs in our country’s history: the Federal Writers’ Project under the Works Progress Administration. In Chicago, the Illinois branch of the Project attracted young writers Nelson Algren, Richard Wright, Jack Conroy, Saul Bellow, Margaret Walker, and Louis “Studs” Terkel. This 92-minute film features interviews with a group of authors, poets, and historians, including Studs Terkel. Associate Producer Oliver Lukacs will introduce the film. After the screening two historians and a literary scholar will engage in a discussion with the audience about the historical and literary significance of the Writers’ Project.
Soul of a People: Writing America's Story is a major documentary television program produced by Spark Media, Washington, D.C. and broadcast on the Smithsonian Channel HD.
This program is co-sponsored by Chicago State University.
Soul of a People programs are sponsored by the American Library Association Public Programs office through the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Admission is free. No reservation is required.
Saturday, September 26, Noon - 3:00 pm
Walton Street (in front of the Library) and Washington Square Park
More information about the Banned Books Week Read-Out
Tuesday, September 29, 6:00 pm
Speaker: Audrey Niffenegger
Audrey Niffenegger celebrates the launch of her new book, Her Fearful Symmetry. Hear the author of The Time Traveler's Wife talk about her second novel, set in and around Highgate Cemetery in London. Twin sisters from Chicago move to a flat in London and come to know the apartment building’s other residents. It is a story about love and identity, secrets and sisterhood, and the tenacity of life.
This event is co-sponsored by the Newberry Library's A.C. McClurg Bookstore.
A book signing will follow the talk.
Admission is free. No reservation is required.
Saturday, October 10, 11:00 am
Speaker: Douglas L. Wilson, Knox College
The George A. Lawrence Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus and Co-director of the Lincoln Studies Center at Knox College will open the Newberry's Lincoln exhibitions, With Malice Toward None: The Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Exhibition (a Library of Congress exhibition) and Honest Abe of the West, an exhibition of Newberry Library materials. Dr. Wilson will lecture on how Lincoln used words—in his public speeches, private correspondence, jokes, and stories—to persuade, disarm, criticize, comfort, inspire, and lead a nation. How did the folksy, self-educated "rail-splitter" become one of America's most eloquent and powerful writers? A question and answer period with the audience will follow the program.
Admission is free. No reservation is required.
Tuesday, October 13, 6:00 pm
Speaker: Sara Paretsky
Sara Paretsky unrolls another chapter in the work and life of Chicago’s best and toughest PI, V. I. Warshawski. Chicago’s unique brand of ball is sixteen-inch slow pitch, played in leagues all over the city for more than a century. But in politics, in business, and in law enforcement, the game is hardball. When V. I. is asked to find a man who has been missing for four decades, a search that she figured would be futile becomes lethal. Old skeletons from the city’s racially charged past rise up to brush her back from the plate with a vengeance.
This event is co-sponsored by the Newberry Library's A.C. McClurg Bookstore.
A book signing will follow the talk.
Admission is free. No reservation is required.
Saturday, October 17, 9:30 am - 5:00 pm
Speaker and tour leader: Glennette Tilley Turner
$65; $55 (Associates of the Newberry Library at the Author level and above; seniors)
Register Online
At 9:30am, join Glennette Tilley Turner, author of The Underground Railroad in Illinois, for an illustrated talk followed by a bus tour of centers of anti-slavery activity in Chicago's western suburbs. The tour will include the Graue Mill in Oak Brook, the Sheldon Peck House in Lombard, Wheaton College, and sites as far west as Aurora. Come and learn of little-known local links in the underground railroad.
Board the bus at 10:15am from the front steps of the Library. The ticket price includes a box lunch.
The tour will not run with fewer than 25 registrants, and full refunds will be given if the tour is canceled. If a participant cancels, 50% of the registration fee will be refunded up to two weeks in advance of the tour, after which no refund can be given.
To register, go online or send a check payable to the Newberry Library to Newberry Library Public Programs, 60 West Walton Street, Chicago, IL 60610, Attn: Underground Railroad Bus Tour.
This program is part of a series in conjunction with two exhibitions commemorating the 200th anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln: With Malice Toward None: The Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Exhibition, a Library of Congress exhibition, and Honest Abe of the West, an exhibition of the Newberry Library's collections. Both exhibitions are free and open to the public. For more information, visit newberry.org.
SHAKESPEARE PROJECT OF CHICAGO
Saturday, October 31, 10:00 am
"I would not be a queen for all the world…"
The line between politics and love is blurred in Shakespeare's late history play. Join The Shakespeare Project of Chicago as they celebrate their 15th season of presenting all-Equity theatrical readings. Dramatizing Henry's historic divorce from Katherine of Aragon, marriage to Anne Boleyn and birth of the future Queen Elizabeth I, the show features Associate Artistic Director Peter Garino.
Admission is free. No reservation is required, but seating is limited.
Enhance your enjoyment and understanding of operas performed in the 2009-2010 season at the Lyric Opera House by attending preview lectures at the Newberry Library by the Lyric Opera Lecture Corps. Admission is free. No reservations are required.
Puccini's Tosca
Tuesday, September 22, 6:00 pm
Verdi's Ernani
Tuesday, October 20, 6:00 pm
Donizetti's The Elixir of Love
Tuesday, January 19, 2010, 6:00 pm
Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro
Tuesday, February 23, 2010, 6:00 pm
Admission is free. No reservation is required.
Tuesday, November 17, 6:00 pm
Speaker: Mark B. Pohlad, DePaul University
Lincoln’s friends noted that photographs often did not capture Lincoln’s likeness. In an illustrated talk, art historian Mark Pohlad will discuss this problem by examining Lincoln images that appear in two exhibitions on display at the Newberry: With Malice Toward None, a traveling show from the Library of Congress, and Honest Abe of the West. He will also consider how artists, from Mathew Brady to Salvador Dalí, have engaged Lincoln’s images since the nineteenth century.
This program is supported in part by the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission and by a grant from the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services.
Admission is free. No reservation is required.
Saturday, December 5, 1:00 pm
Speaker: Jennifer Fleischner, Adelphi University
Jennifer Fleischner, a literary scholar and advisor to the Library of Congress’s Lincoln bicentennial exhibition, With Malice Toward None, tells the fascinating story of the relationship between First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln and Elizabeth Keckly, a seamstress and former slave. Professor Fleischner’s book on Lincoln and Keckly, which was nominated for the Lincoln Prize, places the women in historical context of slavery and emancipation and draws a sensitive portrait of race relations during the mid-nineteenth century.
Visit two exhibitions on display at the Newberry: With Malice Toward None: The Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Exhibition, a Library of Congress exhibition, and Honest Abe of the West, an exhibition of the Newberry Library's collections.
This program is supported in part by the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission and by a grant from the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services.
Admission is free. No reservation is required.
Saturday, December 12, 1:00 pm
Speaker: Allen C. Guelzo, Gettysburg College
The Henry R. Luce III Professor of the Civil War Era at Gettysburg College, author of Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, and multiple winner of the Lincoln Prize, will give a talk about why Lincoln wrote the Emancipation Proclamation. Critics then, and now, faulted Lincoln for not acting more boldly; after all, the Proclamation only applied to territory under Confederate control and left slaves in loyal border states in bondage. Professor Guelzo will explain Lincoln's decisions, how he came to write and defend the Proclamation, and what his actions meant for what has become one of the nation's transformative documents.
Visit two exhibitions on display at the Newberry: With Malice Toward None: The Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Exhibition, a Library of Congress exhibition, and Honest Abe of the West, an exhibition of the Newberry Library's collections.
This program is supported in part by the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission and by a grant from the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services.
Admission is free. No reservations are required.
Saturday, December 19, 10:30 am - 12:30 pm
Panelists: Scott Stevens, The Newberry Library (chair); Gary C. Anderson, University of Oklahoma; Jennifer Denetdale, Northern Arizona University, John W. Hall, University of Wisconsin-Madison
A few days before Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, the United States government executed 38 Dakota prisoners of war in Mankato, Minnesota after Lincoln himself had reviewed their cases. Just over a year later, in 1864, Lincoln’s administration supported the forced removal of the Navajo from their homeland to a reservation in New Mexico. As a young man Lincoln served in the Black Hawk War, a conflict that he used later to great political effect, but which had immediate, grave consequences for the Sac and Fox peoples in Illinois. How does an understanding of Lincoln’s treatment of and policy toward Native peoples help us reconsider Lincoln’s legacy? The panelists will engage in a discussion with the audience after their presentations.
Admission is free. No reservations are required.
Visit two exhibitions on display at the Newberry: With Malice Toward None: The Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Exhibition, a Library of Congress exhibition, and Honest Abe of the West, an exhibition of the Newberry Library's collections.
This program is supported in part by the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission and by a grant from the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services.
The Newberry Library
Public Programs
60 West Walton Street
Chicago, IL 60610-7324
telephone: (312) 255-3700
fax: (312) 255-3680
e-mail: programs@newberry.org
The Newberry Library gratefully acknowledges the National Endowment for the Humanities and Mr. and Mrs. Charles C. Haffner for their generous support of public programming. Major funding is also provided by Richard and Barbara Franke, the MacLean-Fogg Family, Mr. and Mrs. Andrew W. McGhee, Mr. and Mrs. Andrew McNally, and the McCormick Tribune Foundation.