Liza Donnelly

Photograph by Elena Rossini

September 30, 2020.

Cartoonist, activist, author, and frequent visiting Vassar professor Liza Donnelly visits to talk about cartooning and the retrospective exhibition of her work, Liza Donnelly: Comic Relief,  on view at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts.  Liza is a New Yorker staff cartoonist, a resident cartoonist for CBS News, and has published in a host of news and cultural outlets, including the New York Times, The Nation, CNN, Cosmopolitan, Cobblestone, Habitat, the Daily Beast, Open Salon, Forbes, and the Huffington Post.   She is also a columnist on politics and global women's rights for the online journal Medium Magazine. Among her 17 published books are Funny Ladies: The New Yorker's Greatest Women Cartoonists and Their Cartoons, and a series of illustrated children's books.

Other links to Donnelly's work:

BBC

Medium "Noteworthy" video

@lizadonnelly

TED Talk 

CBSNews
New Yorker 
lizadonnelly.com

InstagramTV for my daily live drawing at 5pm

HappsTV

Leah Price

Edward Laning, The Story of the Recorded Word, WPA Mural Panel, McGraw Rotunda, NYPL 1938-42.

October 30, 2019.

Leah Price, Distinguished Professor of English  at Rutgers University and Founder and Director of the Rutgers Initiative for the Book, returns to the program to talk about her book, What We Talk About When We Talk About Books (New York: Basic Books, 2019).

"Price's book-unlike other examples of what she calls 'autobibliography'-is funny and hopeful, rather than dour and pious...What We Talk About When We Talk About Books is an enjoyable tour, full of surprising byways into historical arcana."―Jennifer Szalai, New York Times

Thomas Edward Hill

Tina Barney (American, (b.1945) The Librarian, 2010, Chromogenic color print © Tina Barney Courtesy of the artist and Janet Borden, Inc.

October 10, 2018.

In this installment of our series on the value of the liberal arts in contemporary society, Milly Budny (VC'71), Founding Director of the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence, turns the table to interview Library Cafe host and Vassar College Art Librarian Thomas Hill about the Library Cafe, his career as a librarian at Yale University and Vassar College, and his background and views on subjects that include the connection between education and friendship, and how library education and practice might be better integrated into academic research and culture.

Part 1:
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Katherine Mangiardi (b. 1982). Kerchief, 2018. Acrylic on board, 12.7 x 12.7 cm.

October 17, 2018.

Part 2:     
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Barbara Beisinghoff

October 5, 2016.

Internationally acclaimed graphic artist Barbara Beisinghoff will talk about her artist's books and etchings, installations and public commissions, her residency at Vassar College during September and October of this year, and her exhibition, "When Light Touches Paper," on view in the Vassar College Art Library and the  Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center September 19 - October 14, 2016.

46:15 minutes.

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Andrew Piper

February 13, 2013.

Andrew Piper, Associate Professor in the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures and associate member of the Department of Art History and Communication Studies at McGill University, discusses his book Book Was There: Reading in Electronic Times, published in 2011 by the University of Chicago Press.

“Contending that our lived experience of reading belies naive generalizations about the future of books, Book Was There is an elegantly argued and thoroughly up-to-date tribute to the endurance of books in our evolving digital world."

Professor Piper's first book, which won the Modern Language Association Prize for a first book is entitled Dreaming in Books: The Making of the Bibliographic Imagination in the Romantic Age (Chicago UP, 2009).  He is co-founder of the research group, Interacting with Print: Cultural Practices of Intermediality, 1700-1900.

55:07 mins.

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Lawrence Webster

November 7, 2012.

Author Lawrence Webster discusses her book: Under the North Light: The Life and Work of Maud and Miska Petersham, published by WoodstockArts, on the influential Woodstock-based husband-wife team of children's book illustrators. 

“Maud, a 1912 Vassar graduate, had deep Yankee roots; Miska immigrated from Hungary in 1912 after rigorous study at the Royal National School for Applied Arts in Budapest. They met while working at a commercial design studio in New York City and married in 1917. They moved to Woodstock, New York, in 1920.

“Pioneers in a golden age of children's book publishing in America, the Petershams were among a handful of people who set the direction for illustrated children's books as we know them today. They worked closely with such legendary editors as Louise Seaman Bechtel and May Massee, and with such inventive printers as Charles Stringer and William Glaser, greatly advancing the art of the illustrated children's book. Under their studio's north light they produced more than a hundred books, as illustrators or author/illustrators, during a career that spanned five decades."

40:46 min.

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