Alejandro Nava Virtual Event

What role has hip hop played among Black Christians and Latinx Americans?

 

How has religion influenced hip hop?

 

Alejandro Nava, author of Street Scriptures: Between God and Hip Hop, joins Erika Gault, author of Networking the Black Church: Digital Black Christians and Hip Hop, for a conversation about hip hop, religion, and race. An audience Q & A will follow.

 

Alejandro Nava is professor of religious studies at the University of Arizona. He is the author of The Mystical and Prophetic Thought of Simone Weil and Gustavo Gutiérrez, Wonder and Exile in the New World, and In Search of Soul. He has discussed hip-hop and religion on NPR, Fox News, HuffPost Live, and MSNBC, among other outlets.

Cristoph Irmscher at Morgenstern Books in Bloomington, Indiana

A conversation and book signing with Christoph Irmscher, author of Audubon at Sea and director of the Wells Scholars Program at IU, and Ellen Ketterson, Distinguished Professor of Biology at IU and Founding Director, Environmental Resilience Institute.

 

About Audubon at Sea:

 

This one-of-a-kind, lavishly illustrated anthology celebrates Audubon’s connection to the sea through both his words and art.

 

We all know and love John James Audubon’s images, but as Audubon at Sea makes clear, he was also an incredible writer. Culled from his published and unpublished writings, this book explores Audubon’s diverse observations of the ocean, the coast, and their human and animal inhabitants. By tightly focusing on his thoughts about the sea, it reveals Audubon the evolving author, even pointing—in his writings about waterbirds and their habitats—to the beginnings of something we might now call environmental awareness. The editors of the collection are both true authorities—Christoph Irmscher, an expert on Audubon, and Richard J. King, a scholar of the sea—and in their extraordinary introduction, notes, and coda, they separate myth from fact, facing the questions of Audubon’s complicated legacy head-on. Though we are in the middle of a public reassessment of Audubon due to his complicity in slavery, Audubon at Sea shows his body of work remains a major and meaningful part of the conservation movement.

 

“A must-read for lovers of the sea and of avian species plying its waters and gracing its shores—this timely, eloquent collaboration between an Audubon scholar and a noted writer on the sea is a plea to save not only birds and their habitats but also wildlife and planet Earth.”
—Roberta J. M. Olson, author of Audubon’s Aviary

Steven Nadler at 92nd Street Y

Frans Hals is one of the greatest painters of the Dutch Golden Age, and arguably its most original and innovative portraitist. And yet, the irony is that this artist, who has given us so many stunning and lively paintings of the citizens of Haarlem, Amsterdam, and elsewhere, has left us so little of himself. Unlike Rembrandt, who seems to have been unable to resist painting himself in various moods and guises, Hals has left only one, possibly two self-portraits. Moreover, there are very few records detailing Hals' long life, his daily habits, his religion, his friends, or his business. Even the number of paintings he produced is uncertain.   

 

In this lecture, Steven Nadler will reveal glimpses of Hals as a person and artist as he fought with patrons, creditors, and other artists. Highlighting research from his most recent work, The Portraitist: Frans Hals and His World, Nadler will look at the knowns and the unknowns of this extraordinary painter and consider some of the myths that have grown around an artist whose unique style forever transformed the art of portraiture.

 

This course takes place live online on October 3rd with an opportunity to interact with the expert and recordings are available for participants for later viewing. Register here for $35.

Julia Voss at 92nd Street Y (Virtual Event)

The rediscovery of Hilma af Klint (1862-1944) is considered one of the greatest sensations in modern art history. The contrast to the circumstances in which the artist lived and worked could not be greater. From 1906 onwards, af Klint was working in a non-representational mode, well before Kandinsky, Mondrian, and Malevich declared themselves the inventors of abstraction. The Swedish artist was 44 years old when she broke with the academic tradition in which she had been trained. While her naturalistic landscapes and botanicals were shown during her lifetime, her body of radical, abstract works were rarely exhibited. It took more than a hundred years until she received international appreciation as a pioneer of abstraction for works including monumental works, The Ten Largest.

 

Despite her enormous popularity, there has not yet been a biography of af Klint—until now. Inspired by her first encounter with the artist’s work in 2008, historian and art critic Julia Voss set out to learn Swedish and research af Klint’s life—not only who the artist was but what drove and inspired her, which she recounts in her new book: Hilma af Klint, A Biography. This lecture will explore the life and work of a fascinating woman who was an artist, avowed clairvoyant, mystic, revolutionary, and passionate lover.

 

This course takes place live online with an opportunity to interact with the expert and recordings are available for participants for later viewing. For more information, or to register for the event, click here.

Emily Ogden at New Dominion Bookshop

An in-person conversation about On Not Knowing between its author Emily Ogden and the poet Brian Teare.

Stuart Dischell at Blacksmith House Poetry Series

Stuart Dischell reads from his new collection, The Lookout Man, with David Rivard, whose latest book is Some of You Will Know

Founded in 1973, the award-winning Blacksmith House Poetry Series brings established and emerging writers of poetry and fiction to Harvard Square. In person readings will take place at 56 Brattle on Mondays at 8pm. Admission is $3. Please register in advance.

Guiliana Bruno at Princeton University's Program in Media and Modernity

Details to come. Click here for event website.

Blair Kamin and Lee Bey at the Chicago Architecture Center

Join Blair Kamin and Lee Bey for the launch of their new book, Who Is The City For?. A vividly illustrated collection of Kamin’s clear-headed, forceful Chicago Tribune columns, the book paints a revealing portrait of Chicago in all its complexities and contradictions.

 

From his high-profile battles with Donald Trump to his insightful celebrations of Frank Lloyd Wright and front-page takedowns of Chicago mega-projects like Lincoln Yards, Pulitzer Prize–winning architecture critic Blair Kamin has long informed and delighted readers with his illuminating commentary. Kamin’s newest collection, Who Is the City For?, gathers 55 of his most notable Chicago Tribune columns from the past decade, paired with striking new images by photographer and Chicago Sun-Times architecture critic Lee Bey.

 

At the book’s heart is its expansive approach to equity. Kamin argues for a broad understanding of the term, one that prioritizes both the shared spaces of the public realm and the urgent need to rebuild Black and brown neighborhoods devastated by decades of discrimination and disinvestment. These writings tackle fundamental questions about our city, including: Is Chicago becoming more livable? Can buildings be the architectural equivalent of good citizens? What buildings should be saved and why? Which urban policy approaches can make the city work for all?

 

IIT Dean of Architecture Reed Kroloff will moderate the conversation. Stick around afterward for a book signing and reception with drinks and light hors d’oeuvres. The book will also be available to purchase.

AIA/CES Credits: 1 LUs

 

Lee Bey is an editorial writer and architecture critic for the Chicago Sun-Times and the author of Southern Exposure: The Overlooked Architecture of Chicago’s South Side. Previously former Chicago mayor Richard M. Daley’s deputy chief of staff for architecture and urban planning, Bey has had photographs published in the New York Times and Architectural Digest.

 

Blair Kamin is the author or editor of several books, including Why Architecture Matters: Lessons from Chicago and Terror and Wonder: Architecture in a Tumultuous Age. The Chicago Tribune’s architecture critic for 28 years, Kamin was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 1999.

 

For tickets or more information, click here.

Colleen Taylor Sen Virtual Smithsonian Associates Event

At its peak in 250 B.C. the Maurya Empire was the wealthiest and largest in the world, extending across Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, and most of the Indian subcontinent. Founded by Chandragupta Maurya, who defeated other kingdoms in northern India and the Greek provinces left by Alexander the Great, the empire reached its apogee under his grandson Ashoka—who was more than a conqueror.

 

After a bloody battle, Ashoka renounced warfare and adopted a philosophy of nonviolence, religious tolerance, charity, and compassion for all beings. He disseminated his ethical code, called Dhamma, in hundreds of inscriptions on pillars and rocks throughout his empire. Discovered only starting in the mid-18th century, these inscriptions became important sources for our understanding of ancient Indian political and religious history.

 

Join Colleen Taylor Sen, an independent scholar who specializes in Indian cultural and culinary history, as she traces the rise of the Maurya Empire from its roots in the Indus Valley to an examination of what its legacy means for the region today.

 

Her book Ashoka and the Maurya Dynasty: The History and Legacy of Ancient India’s Greatest Empire (Reaktion Books) is available for purchase.

Clara Mattei at Bristol Festival of Economics Panel

Against a backdrop of war in Europe and increased concerns for Taiwan’s sovereignty, experts discuss the impacts of global politics on energy supplies, food security and the pound in our pockets.

 

Our panel is chaired is journalist and broadcaster Anu Anand. She is joined by author, foreign-affairs commentator and Executive Director at Chatham House, John Kampfner, whose most recent book is Why the Germans Do it Better. George Magnus, economist and author of Red Flags, returns to the festival to offer his expert opinion on China. Political economist Clara Mattei’s new book is The Capital Order: How Economists Invented Austerity and Paved the Way for Fascism, and she joins us to cast a historical eye on today’s news. Adnan Vatansever, Acting Director of the King’s Russia Institute and author of Oil in Putin’s Russia, offers a wealth of industry knowledge and experience on energy markets.

 

Together they discuss what is happening around the world today.

Jeremy A. Greene at the Seminary Co-op

Jeremy A. Greene will discuss his book The Doctor Who Wasn't There. Hannah Zeavin will also discuss her book The Distance Cure (MIT Press). They will both be joined in conversation by Michael Rossi. 

 

This event will be held in-person at Seminary Co-op. At this time, masks are required while in the store and strongly encouraged at outdoor events.

 

 The Doctor Who Wasn’t There traces the long arc of enthusiasm for—and skepticism of—electronic media in health and medicine. Over the past century, a series of new technologies promised to democratize access to healthcare. From the humble telephone to the connected smartphone, from FM radio to wireless wearables, from cable television to the “electronic brains” of networked mainframe computers: each new platform has promised a radical reformation of the healthcare landscape. With equal attention to history and the politics and economies of American healthcare, physician and historian Jeremy A. Greene explores the role that electronic media play, for better and for worse, in the past, present, and future of our health. Today’s telehealth devices are far more sophisticated than the hook-and-ringer telephones of the 1920s, the radios that broadcasted health data in the 1940s, the closed-circuit televisions that enabled telemedicine in the 1950s, or the online systems that created electronic medical records in the 1960s. But the ethical, economic, and logistical concerns today’s devices raise are prefigured in the past, as are the gaps between what was promised and what was delivered. Each of these platforms also produced subtle transformations in health and healthcare that we have learned to forget, displaced by promises of ever newer forms of communication that took their place. Illuminating the social and technical contexts in which electronic medicine has been conceived and put into practice, Greene’s history shows the urgent stakes, then and now, for those who would seek in new media the means to build a more equitable future for American healthcare.

 

Jeremy A. Greene is the William H. Welch Professor of Medicine and the History of Medicine, director of the Department of the History of Medicine, and director of the Center for Medical Humanities and Social Medicine at Johns Hopkins University. 

 

Michael Rossi is assistant professor of the history of science and medicine at the University of Chicago, and the author of The Republic of Color.