Boston Athenaeum

Boston Athenaeum

By Boston AthenaeumSociety & Culture
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Boston Athenaeum episodes

  • Geoff Wisner, “Thoreau’s Wildflowers and Animals”
    August 2, 2017 at the Boston Athenæum.
    Many of the most vivid writings in Henry David Thoreau’s journals were inspired by the plants and animals that inhabit the sprawling fields, forests, and wetlands of Concord and nearby communities. An inveterate year-round rambler and keen and thoughtful observer, Thoreau wrote frequently about these creatures, faithfully recording each sighting or encounter with the accuracy of a scientist and the deep spirituality of a transcendentalist and mystic.
    In this lecture, Geoff Wisner will present Thoreau’s profound spirituality and belief in the earth-human connection as revealed through his explorations of Thoreau’s best nature writings.
    51 min
  • Susan L. Mizruchi, “Opioids: The Literary, Experiential Point of View”
    June 13, 2017 at the Boston Athenæum.
    Addiction is perhaps the most significant, prevalent, and intractable social problem of the decade, and it has hit especially hard in Massachusetts. While experts from many fields have approached the issue, we see a unique role for the humanities to play in addressing addictive behaviors. Historians have chronicled the wide-reaching histories of the U.S. opioid crisis. Philosophers have explored the ethical status of addictive states and the moral obligations of societies to addicts. Nevertheless, no field has been more directly engaged with the subject of addiction than literary studies—though this may be less than obvious to policy makers and medical practitioners. Some of the greatest Anglo-American literature, with authors ranging from Ernest Hemingway to David Foster Wallace, is fundamentally concerned with addiction and alcoholism. Humanities fields have great potential to provide major insights, both into the social stigma associated with addictive behaviors, and the subjective experience of addiction.
    Video: https://vimeo.com/221754272
    46 min
  • Henry J. Duffy, “Robert Gould Shaw and the Shaw Memorial”
    June 7, 2017 at the Boston Athenæum.
    The story of Robert Gould Shaw is one of heroism and loss. A young man's coming of age was cut short by his early death. His life, beginning in gentle ease, was entwined with the rise of the Massachusetts 54th Regiment, the first black regiment in the Union Army. Spurred on by Frederick Douglass, the Regiment proved itself at Fort Wagner. The monument to Colonel Shaw and his men is the work of Augustus Saint-Gaudens, who, like Shaw, discovered something about himself through the creation of an American masterpiece.
    Video: https://vimeo.com/220851445
    42 min
  • Christopher Hamilton, "Nietzsche: Philosopher of Lightness and Dynamite"
    June 6, 2017 at the Boston Athenæum.
    Few, if any, other contemporary philosophers have achieved a level of influence to rival that of Nietzsche. Largely ignored during his lifetime, he was, as he predicted, born posthumously. In this lecture, Christopher Hamilton will trace the outlines of Nietzsche’s thought, exploring his most famous theories—eternal recurrence, the Übermensch, slave revolt in morality, and the death of God—as well as some lesser-known elements of his work, revealing a thinker of immense generosity and subtlety, full of lightness and mischief. Hamilton offers an introduction to Nietzsche’s life and work and a profound reflection on his body of thought, perfect for beginning learners as well as those already familiar with this “prophet of modernity.”
    Link to video: https://vimeo.com/220654650
    50 min
  • Mimi Baird, “He Wanted the Moon: The Madness and Medical Genius of Dr. Perry Baird...”
    May 17, 2017 at the Boston Athenæum.
    Texas-born and Harvard-educated, Dr. Perry Baird was a rising medical star in the late 1920s and 1930s. Early in his career, ahead of his time, he grew fascinated with identifying the biochemical root of manic depression, just as he began to suffer from it himself. By the time the results of his groundbreaking experiments were published, Dr. Baird had been institutionalized many times, his medical license revoked, and his wife and daughters estranged.
    Mimi Baird grew up never fully knowing this story, as her family went silent about the father who had been absent for most of her childhood. Decades later, a string of extraordinary coincidences led to the recovery of a manuscript which Dr. Baird had written during his brutal institutionalization, confinement, and escape. Baird set off on a quest to piece together the memoir and the man. The result of his extraordinary record and her journey to bring his name to light is He Wanted the Moon, an unforgettable testament to the reaches of the mind and the redeeming power of a determined heart.
    Video: https://vimeo.com/218523858
    45 min
  • Sally Bedell Smith, “Prince Charles: The Passions and Paradoxes of an Improbable Life”
    April 26, 2017 at the Boston Athenæum, presented in conjunction with the Royal Oak Foundation.
    Drawing on her exclusive access to the Royal Family’s inner circle, New York Times bestselling author Sally Bedell Smith has published the first major biography of Prince Charles in more than two decades. In this illustrated lecture, Smith lays bare the contradictions of a man who is more complicated, tragic, and compelling than we knew, until now. Smith captures the essence of a man who has been described as an eighteenth-century gentleman with a twenty-first-century mission—a life filled with contradictions and convictions. This is a lecture not just about a man who would be king, but also about the duties that come with privilege.
    Video: https://vimeo.com/215072213
    57 min
  • Andrea Cohen, “Unfathoming”
    April 12, 2017 at the Boston Athenæum.
    Andrea Cohen’s poems search the shadow regions of yearning and loss, but they take surprising, sometimes meteoric leaps, landing in a place where brightness reigns. The voice in ‘Unfathoming’ strives to upend the title: to both acknowledge mystery, and with wile and grace, comprehend it.
    32 min
  • Stephen Kinzer, “The True Flag: Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain, and the Birth of American Empire”
    March 23, 2017 at the Boston Athenæum.
    Acclaimed journalist Stephen Kinzer will discuss the domestic clamor over America’s imperial ventures at the dawn of the 20th century. After a century of continental expansion, the United States came upon an opportunity to expand overseas by capturing Spanish colonial possessions and other territories within its reach. The nation plunged into polemic debate, with political and intellectual giants contesting “the imperial idea.” Expansionists declared benevolent intent, touting the economic benefits of conquest, while anti-imperialists invoked America’s anti-colonial origins, condemning imperialist brutality. The former largely triumphed, as the United States soon controlled Cuba and annexed Puerto Rico, Guam, Hawaii, and the Philippines in a swift series of conquests. Kinzer will argue that the imperial/anti-imperial dichotomy remains a dominant feature of the American psyche.
    42 min
  • Manny Paraschos, “Boston’s Journalism Trail”
    March 13, 2017 at the Boston Athenæum.
    American journalism was born in Boston on September 25, 1690 with the publication of the first colonial newspaper, Publick Occurrences Both Forreign and Domestick. Eventually, the first three (and five of the first seven) North American newspapers were published in Boston. Boston was home to America’s first foreign language newspaper, Courier de Boston, first published in 1789, as well as the first Roman Catholic, Methodist Episcopal, and Jewish English-language newspapers in America.
    This lecture will trace the history of significant Boston journalism “firsts.” From the Boston Gazette’s coining of the term “gerrymandering” in the early 1800s to the Boston Post’s exposure of Carlo Ponzi’s financial scheme, Boston print journalism has inspired a legacy of hard-hitting American reporting and free press.
    43 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.…