Marva A. Barnett at the Victor Hugo in Guernsey Society

Marva A. Barnett, author of To Love is To Act: Les Misérables and Victor Hugo's Vision for Leading Lives of Conscience (Swan Isle), will give a talk entitled "Victor Hugo Declares War on the Vandals: Notre-Dame de Paris and Beyond" as part of the Victor Hugo and Notre-Dame Weekend.

 

Tickers for in person attendance may be booked here. Register for free streaming here.

Emily Ogden Live Virtual Recording at High Theory Podcast

Moments of clarity are rare and fleeting; how can we become comfortable outside of them, in the more general condition of uncertainty within which we make our lives? Written by English professor Emily Ogden while her children were small, On Not Knowing forays into this rich, ambivalent space. Each of her sharply observed essays invites the reader to think with her about questions she can’t set aside: not knowing how to give birth, to listen, to hold it together, to love.

 

Unapologetically capacious in her range of reference and idiosyncratic in the canon she draws on, Ogden moves nimbly among the registers of experience, from the operation of a breast pump to the art of herding cattle; from one-night stands to the stories of Edgar Allan Poe; from kayaking near a whale to a psychoanalytic meditation on drowning. Committed to the accumulation of knowledge, Ogden nonetheless finds that knowingness for her can be a way of getting stuck, a way of not really living. Rather than the defensiveness of willful ignorance, On Not Knowing celebrates the defenselessness of not knowing yet—possibly of not knowing ever. Ultimately, this book shows how resisting the temptation of knowingness and embracing the position of not knowing becomes a form of love.

 

Emily Ogden is associate professor of English at the University of Virginia and the author of Credulity: A Cultural History of US Mesmerism, also published by the University of Chicago Press. You can find her on Twitter at @ENOgden. She lives in Charlottesville, VA.

 

Register here for this free event.

Gregory Nobles at Morven Museum & Garden in Princeton, NJ

Meet author/historian Gregory Nobles as he discusses and launches his latest book The Education of Betsey Stockton, in conversation with Morven's Curator of Exhibitions & Collections and Deputy Director Elizabeth Allan. As an added bonus, visit inside historic landmark Morven museum prior to the lecture. Books will be available for purchase and signing following the program.

 

The museum will be open from 5:00 to 6:15 p.m. where you may tour the galleries. Docents will be on hand to answer questions.

 

Doors open for in-person event featuring author Gregory Nobles at 6:00 p.m. with light refreshments in the Stockton Education Center at Morven. Q&A for both live and virtual attendees follows the lecture.

 

Virtual program waiting room opens at 6:00 p.m. and live and virtual program begins at 6:30 p.m. - This part of the evening will be hybrid - both live and online. Zoom link shared day of program for virtual ticket holders.

 

Register here for virtual and in-person tickets.

Virtual Book Talk with Mary Louise Roberts at National Museum of the US Army

Sheer Misery trains a humane and unsparing eye on the corporeal experiences of the Soldiers who fought in Belgium, France, and Italy during the last two years of World War II. In the horrendously unhygienic and often lethal conditions of the front lines, their bodies broke down, stubbornly declaring their needs for warmth, rest, and good nutrition. Feet became too swollen to march, fingers too frozen to pull triggers; stomachs cramped, and underwear and pants soiled. Turning away from the accounts of high-level military strategy that dominate many WWII chronicles, historian Mary Louise Roberts instead relies on diaries and letters to bring to life visceral sense memories like the moans of the “screaming meemies,” the acrid smell of cordite, and the shockingly mundane sight of rotting corpses. As Dr. Roberts writes, “For soldiers who fought, the war was above all about their bodies.”

Mary Louise Roberts is the WARF Distinguished Lucie Aubrac Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She was also the Charles Boal Ewing Chair in Military History at the United States Military Academy at West Point for the 2020-21 academic year. Her most recent books are "What Soldiers Do: Sex and the American GI in World War II France" and "D-Day through French Eyes: Normandy 1944," both published by the University of Chicago Press.

This activity is free. Register here to reserve tickets.

Jonathan B. Jarvis at Elliot Bay

Former director of the National Parks Service (under the Obama administration) Jonathan Jarvis, along with his brother T. Destry Jarvis, have written a pointed book on the politically-charged directions the National Park Service has struggled to navigate - especially when the forces of pillage, plunder and exploitation are in office. That book is National Parks Forever: Fifty Years of Fighting and a Case for Independence (University of Chicago Press).

 

“In careers spanning half a century, both Jon and Destry Jarvis personally witnessed how the National Park Service became a partisan battleground for competing political ideologies, with policies ricocheting back and forth every time a new administration came to power. Filled with detailed firsthand accounts and insightful analysis, National Parks Forever not only chronicles the sorrowful result, but also points to a way to rescue ‘America’s best idea’—and make it even better.” - Dayton Duncan.

 

The Jarvis brothers have over 90 years of combined experience fighting to protect the national parks. Jonathan B. Jarvis was the 18th Director of the NPS and the former Superintendent of Mt. Rainier.

 

For more information, click here.

Emily Ogden at Prairie Lights

Please join us for a reading and conversation with Emily Ogden to celebrate the release of her new book On Not Knowing: How to Love and Other Essays.

 

Emily Ogden is associate professor of English at the University of Virginia and the author of Credulity: A Cultural History of US Mesmerism. You can find her on Twitter at @ENOgden. She lives in Charlottesville, VA. 

Aaron Cohen at the Hideout

Aaron Cohen, author of Move On Up, will discuss the history of Chicago soul and DJ as the opening act for Renaldo Domino and the Heavy Sounds at the Hideout in Chicago on July 29 at 9:30 PM. The event marks the relaunch of their special Secret History of Chicago Music concert series.

 

For more information and to purchase advance tickets, click here.

Kermit Roosevelt at the Nantucket Atheneum

Details to come.

Paul Steinbeck at City Lights (Virtual Event)

Paul Steinbeck in conversation with Richard Scheinin celebrates the publication of Sound Experiments: The Music of the AACM, a groundbreaking study of the trailblazing music of Chicago’s AACM, a leader in the world of jazz and experimental music.

 

Founded on Chicago’s South Side in 1965 and still thriving today, the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) is the most influential collective organization in jazz and experimental music. In Sound Experiments, Paul Steinbeck offers an in-depth historical and musical investigation of the collective, analyzing individual performances and formal innovations in captivating detail. He pays particular attention to compositions by Muhal Richard Abrams and Roscoe Mitchell, the Association’s leading figures, as well as Anthony Braxton, George Lewis (and his famous computer-music experiment, Voyager), Wadada Leo Smith, and Henry Threadgill, along with younger AACM members such as Mike Reed, Tomeka Reid, and Nicole Mitchell.

 

Sound Experiments represents a sonic history, spanning six decades, that affords insight not only into the individuals who created this music but also into an astonishing collective aesthetic. This aesthetic was uniquely grounded in nurturing communal ties across generations, as well as a commitment to experimentalism. The AACM’s compositions broke down the barriers between jazz and experimental music and made essential contributions to African American expression more broadly. Steinbeck shows how the creators of these extraordinary pieces pioneered novel approaches to instrumentation, notation, conducting, musical form, and technology, creating new soundscapes in contemporary music.

 

Register here for this free event.

Jessa Crisipin at Kansas City Book Festival

Details to come.

Emily Ogden at New Dominion Bookshop

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