Boston Athenaeum

Boston Athenaeum

By Boston AthenaeumSociety & Culture
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Boston Athenaeum episodes

  • Katherine Paterson, “My Brigadista Year”
    October 21, 2017 at the Boston Athenæum.
    In her new historical novel, Katherine Paterson tells a moving coming-of-age story, shedding light on a little-known moment in history. Inspired by true accounts, the narrative follows a Cuban teenager as she volunteers for Fidel Castro’s national literacy campaign and travels into the impoverished countryside to teach others to read, sharing in the danger posed by counterrevolutionaries hiding in the hills nearby. The novel includes an author’s note and a timeline of Cuban history.
    40 min
  • Kate Harding and Samhita Mukhopadhyay; Moderated by Jaclyn Friedman, “Nasty Women”
    October 18, 2017 at the Boston Athenæum.
    The 2016 election of Donald Trump to the presidency was a devastating blow to the country’s marginalized populations—immigrants, Muslims, the LGBTQ community, and Black Americans, to name a few. Intersecting with each of these groups were women, who despaired as their rights as equal citizens were called into question. Women of all walks of life bore witness as one of the most qualified candidates in history, Hillary Clinton, lost to an inexperienced reality star and real estate mogul who boasted about his predatory behavior.
    Has the country become more misogynistic, or simply shown its true face? If 53% of white women voted for Trump and 94% of black women voted for Hillary, can women unite in America? Can we conceive of “women” as a cohesive group? In the face of overwhelming challenge, how can we work together to persist, resist, and enact lasting change?
    These are some of the questions addressed in Nasty Women, an anthology of original essays from leading feminist writers on protest and solidarity. Editors Kate Harding and Samhita Mukhopadhyay will address what it means to be a woman in the Trump era.
    41 min
  • Tunney Lee, Shauna Lo, and Lisong Liu, “Boston and the Chinese Exclusion Act”
    October 17, 2017 at the Boston Athenæum.
    This panel, led by Tunney Lee with Shauna Lo and Lisong Liu, will cover the changing nature of Chinese immigration to Boston from the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 (CEA) through its repeal in 1943 to today.
    Although the main driver for the CEA was West Coast conflicts between European settlers—recently arrived via transcontinental railroad—and Chinese immigrants, Boston and Massachusetts played key roles in the passage and enforcement of the law. Panelists will address Massachusetts political reactions to the CEA, Chinatown raids, East Boston’s immigration station, and more, continuing the conversation with the growth of the Chinese community in Boston and beyond following WWII.
    This panel considers nationals laws through a local political and cultural lens to shed light on an aspect of immigration history that continues to this day.
    1 hr 11 min
  • Donald Louria, “Systems Thinking, Extraordinary Longevity, and Pot”
    October 11, 2017 at the Boston Athenæum.
    In his book reThink, preventive medicine and public health expert Donald Louria argues that “societally connected systems thinking” can allow us to solve problems where conventional methods have failed. By analyzing an entire issue through systems diagrams rather than its component parts, problem solvers are able to examine causes and consequences, understand patterns and themes, and identify leverage points. Societally connected systems thinking offers the perspective necessary to address the big issues of our time, such as healthcare, addiction, overpopulation, and epidemic disease. rethink examines critical public issues, offering specific, provocative recommendations for solving or mitigating issues based entirely on systems diagrams.
    56 min
  • Henry William Brands, “The General vs. the President”
    October 10, 2017 at the Boston Athenæum.
    Harry S. Truman was one of the most unpopular presidents in American history. Heir to a struggling economy, a ruined Europe, and ever-increasing tension with the Soviet Union, on no issue was the path ahead clear and easy. General Douglas MacArthur, by contrast, was incredibly popular, as untouchable as any officer has ever been in America. The lessons he drew from World War II were absolute: appeasement leads to disaster and a showdown with the communists was inevitable. In his new book, Henry William Brands presents their contest of wills against a turbulent backdrop of terrors, both overseas and at home, to evoke the making of a new American era.
    40 min
  • “Recording Lives at Lightning Speed”
    October 5, 2017 at the Boston Athenæum.
    In conjunction with the Boston University Center for the Humanities Fall Forum, Recording Lives: Libraries and Archives in the Digital Age, we are pleased to host a conversation on local cultural organizations’ use of digital technologies to expand access to their collections. In this program, representatives from six cultural organizations charged with the material past will give a “lightning round” of presentations on how they are embracing the digital present to plan for the future. Audience members will be invited to join the discussion.
    42 min
  • Neil Swidey, “The Boston Roots of the Trump Anti-Immigrant Playbook”
    September 26, 2017 at the Boston Athenæum.
    President Trump’s immigration rhetoric has elicited outrage in Massachusetts, and especially in the vicinity of Harvard Yard (where Trump won just 4% of the vote). So, in Greater Boston, it may turn more than a few faces crimson to learn that—like basketball, the microwave oven, and public education—the intellectual playbook for anti-immigration policy was drafted right here in Massachusetts, by a small group of Harvard-educated Brahmin intellectuals led by Prescott Farnsworth Hall. Their work, which began in 1894, culminated exactly 100 years ago with the passage of the federal Immigration Act of 1917, opening a new epoch of national immigration policy.
    In this lecture, author Neil Swidey will discuss the roots of Trump’s anti-immigration fervor and the surprisingly influential local characters behind it. He explored these connections, and their implications, in his Globe Magazine cover story earlier this year.
    51 min
  • William Dalrymple, “Koh-i-Noor: The History of the World’s Most Famous Diamond”
    September 20, 2017 at the Boston Athenæum.
    On March 29, 1849, the ten-year-old Maharajah of the Punjab handed over to the British East India Company in a formal Act of Submission to Queen Victoria not only swathes of the richest land in India, but also arguably the single most valuable object in the subcontinent: the celebrated Koh-i-Noor diamond.
    Using original eyewitness accounts and chronicles never before translated into English to craft the first comprehensive and authoritative history of the object, William Dalrymple and Anita Anand trace the true history of the diamond, dispelling the myths that have long surrounded this awe-inspiring jewel.
    51 min
  • William Kuhn, “Prince Harry Boy to Man”
    September 14, 2017 at the Boston Athenæum.
    Author and historian William Kuhn discusses his recently published satirical war novel, a lighthearted work of fiction that recounts Prince Harry’s wartime experiences in Afghanistan. A former historian in the Royal Archives at Windsor Castle, Kuhn will share personal anecdotes, including his impressions of a Christmas party at Buckingham Palace.
    45 min
  • Adam Begley, “The Great Nadar: The Man Behind the Camera”
    September 6, 2017 at the Boston Athenæum.
    The first great portrait photographer, a pioneering balloonist, the first person to take an aerial photograph, and the prime mover behind the first airmail service, Nadar was one of the original celebrity artist-entrepreneurs. A kind of 19th-century Andy Warhol, he knew everyone worth knowing and photographed them all, conferring on posterity psychologically compelling portraits of Manet, Sarah Bernhardt, Delacroix, Daumier and countless others—a priceless panorama of Parisian celebrity. The Great Nadar is a brilliant, lavishly illustrated biography of a larger-than-life figure, a visionary whose outsized talent and canny self-promotion put him way ahead of his time.
    48 min

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The Boston Athenaeum, a membership library, first opened its doors in 1807, and its rich history as a library and cultural institution has been well documented in the annals of Boston’s cultural life.…