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Free online lectures: Explore a world of ideas

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Boston Athenaeum

The Boston Athenaeum, one of the oldest and most distinguished independent libraries in the United States, was founded in 1807 by members of the Anthology Society, a group of fourteen Boston gentlemen who had joined together in 1805 to edit The Monthly Anthology and Boston Review. Their purpose was to form "an establishment similar to that of the Athenaeum and Lyceum of Liverpool in Great Britain; combining the advantages of a public library [and] containing the great works of learning and science in all languages." The library and Art Gallery, established in 1827, were soon flourishing, and grew rapidly, both by purchase of books and art and by frequent gifts. For nearly half a century the Athenaeum was the unchallenged center of intellectual life in Boston, and by 1851 had become one of the five largest libraries in the United States. Today its collections comprise over half a million volumes, with particular strengths in Boston history, New England state and local history, biography, English and American literature, and the fine and decorative arts. The Athenaeum supports a dynamic art gallery, and sponsors a lively variety of events such as lectures and concerts. It also serves as a stimulating center for discussions among scholars, bibliophiles, and a variety of community interest groups.break

http://www.bostonathenaeum.org

  • Maps and History: Constructing Images of the Past

    Sat, Apr 26, 2003
    Jeremy Black, professor of history at the University of Exeter, argues that historical atlases offer an understanding of the past that is invaluable, not only because they convey a previous age's sense of space and distance, but also because they reveal what historians and educators of those periods thought important to include or omit. Black explores the role, development, and nature of these important reference tools, from ancient to modern times.
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  • Ann Patchett: Run

    Tue, Sep 25, 2007
    Ann Patchett reads from her fifth novel *Run*, which explores what "family" means and how we forge our allegiances while still asserting our identities. Set within a 24-hour period, the novel, like much of Patchett's work, examines what happens when disparate lives intersect, as well as the obligations we bear to strangers. *Run* is both the story of one loving family's insular bonds and an examination of community, for which we are all accountable.
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  • Lewis Lapham: Theatre of War

    Thu, Feb 27, 2003
    Lewis Lapham discusses his collection of essays, Theater of War. Taking the war on terror as the most recent example, Lapham considers America's long tradition of gratuitous conflict, and its quixotic attempts at arbitrating 'good' and 'freedom,' culminating in the endowment of nation status upon the hijackers that began the present war. Lapham shows that the recent behavior of the United States' government is consistent with the practices of past administrations. Mr. Lapham questions the motives and feasibility of our country's ongoing crusades against the world's evildoers.
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  • Banjo-Wielding Women in Art

    Tue, Sep 19, 2006
    Anglo-female banjoists appear in myriad American paintings, photographs, illustrations, and advertisements from the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era. Their presence is equally apparent, and yet more charged, in twentieth-century visual culture. The earlier artists often aligned the banjo with female achievement and enlightenment, yet the instrument was at best an ambiguous emblem of early twentieth-century New Womanhood, with any hint of feminist reform tempered by the literary, visual, and commercial contexts in which a bevy of increasingly coquettish banjo-wielding women appear. This talk traces that evolution, from Thomas Eakins, Childe Hassam, and Frances Benjamin Johnston to the contemporary muralist Margaret Kilgallen and the singing group Dixie Chicks where the instrument challenges male hegemonies in art and music. Leo G. Mazow is curator of American art at the Palmer Museum of Art at the Pennsylvania State University, where he is also affiliate associate professor of art history. He received his Ph.D. in art history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His essays and reviews have appeared in *American Art*, *Southern Cultures*, and *Railroad Heritage*. He has also written and edited several exhibition catalogues, including *Picturing the Banjo*, *Arneson and the Object*, and *George Inness: The 1880s and 1890s*.
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  • Nancy Lancaster: English Country House Style

    Tue, Oct 10, 2006
    Martin Wood explores Nancy Lancaster's substantial contribution to the arts of interior decoration and garden design. Nancy Lancaster (1897-1994) was one of the premier tastemakers of the 20th century and essentially created what is known as the English Country House Style, which emphasized a mixture of chintzes and antique furniture. The owner of Colefax and Fowler, an influential British decorating firm that codified this quintessentially English look, Lancaster had an assured sense of scale, boldness, a sharp wit, and an instinctive understanding of how to make a house mellow, elegant, and unpretentious. She carried the same clean elegance into the garden, where she worked in a formal yet romantic neo-Georgian style. Wood discusses Lancaster's houses and gardens including Mirador in Virginia; Kelmarsh Hall in Northamptonshire, England; Ditchley Park, in Oxfordshire; and Haseley Court. He discusses Lancaster's remarkable personal life, her dynamic design partnership with John Fowler, and her interactions with friends, including her aunt Nancy Astor, Duff and Lady Diana Cooper, David Niven, and Winston Churchill. This illustrated lecture includes images of Lancaster, her houses, her gardens, and her friends by celebrated artists and photographers, including John Singer Sargent, Cecil Beaton, and Horst P. Horst. This lecture was cosponsored by the Royal Oak Foundation.
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  • Satyr Square: A Year, A Life in Rome

    Thu, Oct 12, 2006
    Leonard Barkan discusses *Satyr Square*, which is part memoir, part literary criticism, part culinary and aesthetic travelogue, and overall a poignant and hilarious narrative about an American professor spending a magical year in Rome. A scarred veteran of academic culture wars, Leonard Barkan is at first hungry, lonely, and uncertain of his intellectual mission. But soon he is appointed unofficial mascot of an eccentric community of gastronomes, becomes virtually bilingual, and falls in love. As the year progresses, he finds his voice as a writer, loses his lover, and returns definitively to America. His book is the celebration of a life lived in the uncanny spaces where art and real people intersect.
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  • Fragments of Grace: My Search for Meaning in South Asia

    Fri, Jun 18, 2004
    Pamela Constable reads from and discusses her book, Fragments of Grace. For four and a half years, Constable, a veteran foreign correspondent and award-winning author, traveled through South Asia on assignment for the Washington Post. Following religious conflicts, political crises, and natural disasters, she also searched for signs of humanity and dignity in societies rife with violence, poverty, prejudice, and greed. Between extended sojourns in Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka, Constable returned to the West to reflect on the risks and rewards of her profession, revisit her roots, and compare her experiences with Islam, Hinduism, and Christianity. Her book, Fragments of Grace, is a uniquely personal exploration of the rich but solitary life of a foreign correspondent, set against a regional backdrop of extraordinary political and religious tumult. **Pamela Constable** has been covering South Asia for the Washington Postsince April 1999, spending four years as the region's bureau chief. She is the author with Arturo Valenzuela of A Nation of Enemies: Chile Under Pinochet. She has been awarded an Alicia Patterson Fellowship and the Maria Moors Cabot Prize, and was a Pew International Journalism Program's journalist-in-residence.
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  • Esmeralda Santiago: The Turkish Lover

    Thu, Oct 21, 2004
    Esmeralda Santiago discusses her new book, *The Turkish Lover*, in which she describes finally breaking out of a monumental struggle with her powerful mother, only to come under the thrall of "the Turk" and discover that romantic passion, too, can become a prison. Esmeralda's journey of self-liberation and self-discovery is a daring one, candidly and zestfully recounted, and that leads, most improbably, to her triumphant graduation from Harvard University.
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  • French Negotiating Behavior: Dealing with La Grande Nation

    Tue, Dec 7, 2004
    Lecturing from his book French Negotiating Behavior, Charles Cogan explores the cultural and historical factors that have shaped the French approach and then dissects their key elements. He postulates that French negotiators often seem more interested in asserting their country's "universal" mission than in reaching an agreement, and he uses three recent case studies to illustrate this uniquely French mélange. Cogan also offers practical suggestions for making negotiations more cooperative and productive.
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  • Sea of Glory: The US Exploring Expedition (1838-1842)

    Thu, Jan 13, 2005
    Nathaniel Philbrick explains for the first time why the US Exploring Expedition vanished from the national memory. Using new sources, including a secret journal, Philbrick reconstructs the darker saga that official reports, which focused on the "Ex Ex"' accomplishments, never told. The US Exploring Expedition of 1838-1842 was one of the most ambitious undertakings of the 19th century and one of the largest voyages of discovery the Western world had ever seen: six magnificent sailing vessels and a crew of hundreds that included botanists, geologists, mapmakers, and biologists, all under the command of the young, brash lieutenant Charles Wilkes. Their goal was to cover the Pacific Ocean, top to bottom, and to plant the American flag around the world. They discovered a new southern continent, which Wilkes would name Antarctica. This was an enterprise that should have been as celebrated and revered as the expeditions of Lewis and Clark.
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