(February 28, 2013) This talk by 2012 - 2013 William H. Helfand Visual Culture Fellow Allison Lange discussed how images became powerful political tools for suffragists and their opponents, and the ways in which reformers used pictures to transform conceptions of gender and reimagine womanhood during the nineteenth century. Audio Download (MP3)

(April 12, 2012) Visual Culture Program Fellow Catherine Walsh discussed the ways in which children learned to construct visual narratives by thinking about a variety of sources, including textbooks, primers and readers, illustrated magazines, toys, and games.  The goal is to begin to understand how visual education informed one's experience of genre paintings and illustrations, both as a child and later in life. Audio (MP3) Slides (PDF)

"African American Women in the Era of Emancipation" 

The Program in African American History at the Library Company of Philadelphia hosted its annual Juneteenth Freedom seminar on Friday, June 21, 2013. The theme, "African American Women in the Era of Emancipation," explores the Civil War experiences of free and enslaved black women as they challenged slavery and defined freedom on the front lines.

Click Here for Brochure (PDF)

7, 2013 

This lecture by Michael Froio looks at W. H.

Rau's 1890s photographs of the Pennsylvania Railroad and explores their

importance to his project to photographically document the former PRR Main

Line. Froio  also investigates the importance of dialog between historic and

contemporary photographs.  

Audio Download (MP3) - Lecture

Adobe PDF Document - Slides

Guest Curator Aaron Wunsch points out the highlights of our current exhibition “Building a City of the Dead: The Creation and Expansion of Philadelphia’s Laurel Hill Cemetery” in the following video courtesy of Jon Snyder of the Philadelphia Daily News. Click Here for the online exhibition: Building a City of the Dead: The Creation and Expansion of Philadelphia’s Laurel Hill Cemetery” For more information about these and other Library Company programs, please contact: Lauren Propst, Publicity, Events, & Program Coordinator [email protected]

(May 11, 2010)  Audio Download (MP3) Alexis de Tocqueville is more quoted than read; commentators across the political spectrum invoke him as an oracle who defined America and its democracy for all times. But in fact his masterpiece, Democracy in America, was the product of a young man’s open-minded experience of America at a time of rapid change. In Tocqueville’s Discovery of America, Damrosch shows that Tocqueville found much to admire in the dynamism of American society and in its egalitarian ideals. But he was offended by the ethos of grasping materialism and was convinced that the institution of slavery was bound to give rise to a tragic civil war. Drawing on documents and letters that have never before appeared in English, as well as on a wide range of scholarship, Tocqueville’s Discovery of America brings the man, his ideas, and his world to startling life.

(October 17, 2011) 

Audio Download (MP3) - ProgramAdobe PDF Document - Slides

Carol Soltis, Library Company Trustee and Curator at the Philadelphia Museum of Art's Center for American Art, will discuss the work of the artist James Peale, focusing on our recently-acquired portraits of Zachariah and Susannah Knorr Poulson. Co-sponsored by the Center for American Art.

Laurel Hill Cemetery is among the most celebrated – and most densely populated – swaths of Greater Philadelphia. Beneath seventy-eight acres of lawn, trees, and monuments lie some 70,000 bodies – a sprawling and silent subdivision that took shape over nearly two centuries. Today's expanses of stone and sod testify to the success of the original vision while making it hard to decipher.

Listen to Curator Aaron Wunsch's audio tour of the gallery exhibition:

http://www.librarycompany.org/digitalmedia/Aaron_TourLHC.mp3

View the corresponding PowerPoint here:

http://www.librarycompany.org/digitalmedia/LHCTourWithAaronWunsch.pdf

... or follow along while browsing the online exhibition:

http://www.librarycompany.org/laurelhill/index.htm

(June 21, 2010) 

Audio Download (MP3) - Main Program

Audio Download (MP3) - Audience Discussion

The Library Company commemorated Juneteenth on June 21, 2010 with a panel discussion on the past eight years of controversy surrounding the discovery of the slave quarters and the nine slaves who served President George Washington at his Philadelphia home at 6th and Market Streets. Introductory remarks by Library Company Director John Van Horne and Curator of African American History Phil Lapsansky; moderated by Linn Washington, journalist with the Philadelphia Tribune; panelists were Edward Lawler, independent scholar; Michael Coard, attorney and founder of ATAC (Avenging the Ancestors Coalition); and Randall M. Miller, professor of history at Saint Joseph’s University. For more information on the President’s House, please visit: http://www.ushistory.org/presidentshouse/index.htm

(June 19, 2009)

Audio Download (MP3)

This Juneteenth Freedom Forum event featured three area scholars discussing the African American struggle for freedom in the era of the Civil War and beyond.

Dr. Robert Francis Engs, Professor of History (retired) University of Pennsylvania, “Who Freed the Slaves? The black Revolutionary Struggle for Freedom.”

Dr. Elizabeth Varon, Professor of History and Associate Director, Center for the Humanities, Temple University, “From Appomattox to Juneteenth: Lee’s Defeat and the End of Slavery.”

Dr. Randall M. Miller, Professor of History, St. Joseph’s University, “Juneteenth, Before and After: African American Freedom Celebrations, Historical Memory, and Contemporary Activism.”