Laurie Lisle

Photo credit: Edward Spiro, 1980.

May 12, 2021.

The author and biographer Laurie Lisle returns to the program to talk about her new memoir, Word for Word: A Writer's Life, newly published by Artemis Editions.

"With Word for Word, Laurie Lisle enters the pantheon of great memoirists . . . Bolstered by exquisite, evocative observations of the physical world that inform her prose, past and present, she threads a fine line between revelation and reticence, generously exposing her most intimate feelings about the conflicts and sacrifices inherent in the need for both love and freedom, as a woman and a writer. If ever there is a book that will trigger a desire to pen one's own memoir, this is it." --Marnie Mueller, author of My Mother's Island

 

"Word for Word is a perfect title for a memoir about the hard-earned creation of a writer's life that is wrested out of the honest self-examination of a woman who faces the personal, family, class, and social forces that shaped—but did not determine—the person and writer she would become. A richly rewarding read."--Lois Rudnick, author of Mabel Dodge Luhan: New Woman, New Worlds

 

"Word for Word is a beautifully told story about the growth of a woman writer of the second-wave generation, whose intellectual and spiritual debts are to women writers, feminism, and, more generally, strong women." -- Carol Ascher, author of Afterimages: A Family Memoir

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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

Joan M. Ferrante and Robert W. Hanning

February 13, 2019.

Joan M. Ferrante and Robert W. Hanning, distinguished scholars who have long collaborated in translations and scholarship in comparative literature at Columbia University, discuss their new translation of the medieval roman d’antiquité, The Romance of Thebes (The French of England Translation Series: 11; Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2018).

"The romans d’antiquité, medieval re-makings in French of the stories of Troy, Thebes, Greece, and Rome, first appeared in the reign of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine in the twelfth century and continued to be read in England throughout the Middle Ages. Among them, the Romance of Thebes medievalizes the stories of Oedipus and Jocasta; Polynices and Etiocles; Antigone, Creon, and Theseus; and the Siege of Thebes. The medieval French re-working also complicates Trojan-based accounts of European identity by adding African and Muslim allies for Thebes to the narrative’s classical source in Statius’ Thebaid, thus suggesting that Europe is not forged simply in opposition to Islam.

"This new translation and introduction by two distinguished scholars of comparative literature is the first in English for thirty years. It is based on the late fourteenth-century manuscript text owned by ‘battling’ Bishop Henry Despenser, notorious for his harsh suppression of the 1381 rebels in Norwich and for his failed continental crusade. The translation can be read both for itself and to facilitate study of the original poem by scholars and students of the literary culture of England and North West Europe."




British Library record for the Manuscript: London, BL Additional 34114.

Joan M. Ferrante's Epistolae: Medeval Women's Letters (discussed in the interview).

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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Ronald D. Patkus

The Twelve Apostles, Stamperia del Santuccio, 1965 (Image courtesy of Bridwell Library Special Collections, Perkins School of Theology, S.M.U.)

April 25, 2018.

Historian Ronald D. Patkus, Associate Director of the Library for Special Collections at Vassar College, talks about his recent book The Privately Printed Bible: Private and Fine Press Editions of Biblical Texts in the British Isles and North America 1892-2000 (Oak Knoll 2017).

The Privately Printed Bible is the first book to offer a broad survey of the history of private and fine press printings of biblical texts. Author Ronald Patkus focuses on English-language examples from the United Kingdom, Ireland, and North America, and includes more than 500 works in his study. He begins with the late nineteenth century revival of printing which took place in England under the influence of William Morris, and continues on through the twentieth century. Along the way he describes key texts, such as the Doves Bible, the Oxford Lectern Bible, the Golden Cockerel Four Gospels, the Spiral Press Ecclesiastes, the Pennyroyal Caxton Bible, and the Arion Press Bible. He also discusses lesser-known works that are part of the story.

Robert O. McClintock

Morningside Park Stairway with Seligman Fountain, New York City

May 3, 2017.  

We continue our series on the value of the liberal arts in contemporary society with a conversation with Robert O. McClintock, John L. and Sue Ann Weinberg Professor Emeritus in the Historical and Philosophical Foundations of Education at Teacher's College, Columbia University in the City of New York, about his monograph, Formative Justice: To Make of Oneself What One Can and Should Become.

Text of Formative Justice (pdf).

44:28 minutes.

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Danielle Allen

April 5, 2017.

Danielle Allen, James Bryant Conant University Professor and Director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University and a MacArthur Fellowship recipient, will contribute to our series on the role of liberal arts education in contemporary society by discussing her recent work on language and politics: Education and Equality (Chicago University Press, 2016) and Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality (Norton, 2014).

"Featured on the front page of the New York Times, Our Declaration is already regarded as a seminal work that reinterprets the promise of American democracy through our founding text. Combining a personal account of teaching the Declaration with a vivid evocation of the colonial world between 1774 and 1777, Allen, a political philosopher renowned for her work on justice and citizenship reveals our nation's founding text to be an animating force that not only changed the world more than two-hundred years ago, but also still can. Challenging conventional wisdom, she boldly makes the case that the Declaration is a document as much about political equality as about individual liberty. Beautifully illustrated throughout, Our Declaration is an “uncommonly elegant, incisive, and often poetic primer on America's cardinal text”  -- David M. Kennedy.

 “Education and Equality mounts a powerful philosophical argument for putting ‘participatory readiness’ for civic and political life at the center of American education. Developing a rich, pragmatic account of the purposes of schooling, Allen shows the poverty of reductionist notions of education as preparation for work and global economic competition alone. To achieve the political equality that is indispensable for democratic governance, a humanist education for all is required. A must read for all concerned about the future of American education and American democracy.”  -- Leo Casey, executive director, Albert Shanker Institute 

40:41 minutes.

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Michael Witmore

December 14, 2016.

Michael Witmore (VC '89), Shakespeare scholar and Director of the Folger Shakespeare Library, talks about the Folger's mission, history, and public programs, and about Shakespeare as an educational force in American life on the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death. 

38:53 minutes

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Gloria Kury

November 9, 2016.

Art historian, editor, and publisher Gloria Kury (VC '65) talks about art history, literature, education, and the fabrication of the Renaissance in the 19th century and her book When Giorgione Died: A Rebuildungsroman in Two Volumes (Periscope, 2016).

"A memory book with a fierce verve for piercing the false enchantments of memory, its dangerous nostalgias, its zombies and composite monsters, its necrophilia and kitsch. Exuberantly in love with art, Gloria Kury works to disentangle the blind-paths of connoisseurship and historical scholarship, what so often gets forgotten there - and what hides in plain sight. A brilliant story teller herself, she trusts other storytellers - Shakespeare, Henry James, Edith Wharton, William Gaddis, Cindy Sherman among others - to lay bear the strangeness of things, even as she invites the wild-eyed prophets, the crystal gazers, the code breakers, the hypnotists, the psychics, the psychologists, the parapsychologists, the time travelers, the explorers of the fourth dimension to say their part. Seeded within this complex slide show is a sharp, cohesive, often comic and sometimes chilling meditation on how any life is lived and remembered, how smoke gets in your eyes." --  Kenneth Gross, author of The Dream of the Moving Statue and Puppet: An Essay on Uncanny Life

59:30 minutes.

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Sally V. Keil

September 21, 2016 (SEASON OPENER).

Writer and Jungian psychological counselor Sally V. Keil (VC '68) talks about her book on Carl Jung's personality typology To Live in the World as Ourselves: Self-Discovery and Better Relationships Through Jung's Typology (Four Directions, 2014, rev. 2017).

"What Quiet has done for introversion, To Live in the World as Ourselves does for the entire scheme of Jung's typology. Extraversion, introversion, thinking, feeling, intuition, and sensation, and the ongoing dynamics of psychological experience they represent, are all made clear in an accessible style that goes to the heart of Jung's pioneering concepts." - Jung Journal: Culture & Psyche 

55:21 minutes.

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Maxine McClintock

Eleanor Roosevelt Memorial, Riverside Park, New York by Penelope Jencks

April 27, 2016.

For our last discussion of the season in our series on the value of liberal arts education in contemporary society, historian Maxine McClintock, emeritus teacher at Trinity School in New York, talks about her book Letters of Recommendation (Collaboratory for Liberal Learning, 2014) and the role of the liberal arts in secondary education.

"This is a remarkable and rewarding book. In the best tradition of John Dewey's vision of education as a journey that makes for more fully formed, flourishing human beings as well as a more informed citizenry, Maxine McClintock has constructed an intricate and compelling account not just of the fictional student Emilia's winding "senior year odyssey" toward college (and beyond) but also of the mentor-mentee educative process by which both share insights, learn, and develop through intellectual exchanges. The erudition here is striking and subtle. William James, Randolph Bourne, Dewey, Thomas Jefferson, and scores of other major thinkers appear and serve to propel the narrative as well as the analysis, provoking much bigger questions and concerns than simply: where should Emilia go to school? This is a book that interrogates the proper and best role of intellectuals and educators in society. It ponders the city "as educator." It critiques and embraces the drawbacks as well as the opportunities provided by Emilia's elite private school. It investigates the history of ideas and the "purposes of a liberal arts education" in a democracy. And it challenges readers to consider how self-awareness is and might be enabled via education as the book probes how and why this is not happening more in the U.S. At the core of this book, then, lies the so-called "education crisis" and the "crisis of the humanities" as integral to the "dysfunctional meritocracy" endemic to the contemporary educational landscape." -- Christopher M. Nichols.

54:57 minutes.

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Grace G. Roosevelt

October 7, 2015. 

In the first of a series of episodes to be aired this season devoted to the value and uses of the liberal arts and liberal arts education in contemporary society, Grace G. Roosevelt, intellectual historian and Associate Professor of History and Education at Metropolitan College of New York, returns to the show to talk about pragmatism, service learning, and the liberal arts and her book Creating a College That Works: Audrey Cohen and Metropolitan College of New York (SUNY, 2015).

 “In 1964 educational activist Audrey Cohen and her colleagues developed a unique curricular structure that enables urban college students to integrate their academic studies with meaningful work in community settings.  Creating a College That Works  chronicles Cohen’s efforts to create an innovative educational model that began with the Women’s Talent Corps, evolved into the College for Human Services, and finally became, in 2002, what is now Metropolitan College of New York (MCNY), a fully accredited institution of higher education that offers bachelor’s and master’s degrees."

48:46 minutes.

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Karen Lucic

May 6, 2015 (SEASON FINALE).

Karen Lucic, Professor of Art at Vassar College, talks about her exhibition on view in the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center May 3  - July 28, 2015, entitled "Embodying Compassion in Buddhist Art: Image, Pilgrimage, Practice." 

Embodying Compassion in Buddhist Art: Image, Pilgrimage and Practice is the first transcultural exhibition in America solely devoted to the bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara, who emerged in India two thousand years ago to become a venerated deity throughout Asia. Like all bodhisattvas, this figure selflessly leads others to enlightenment, but Avalokiteshvara’s special role is to exemplify limitless compassion, a fundamental ideal in Mahayana Buddhism. 

59:04 minutes.

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Exhibition website

Nepal Earthquake Relief (Rubin Museum Site)

Lydia Murdoch

October 8, 2014.

 Lydia Murdoch (VC'92), Associate Professor of History at Vassar College, talks about her book Daily Life of Victorian Women (Greenwood, 2014).

"Contrary to popular misconception, many Victorian women performed manual labor for wages directly alongside men, had political voice before women's suffrage, and otherwise contributed significantly to society outside of the domestic sphere. Daily Life of Victorian Women documents the varied realities of the lives of Victorian women; provides in-depth comparative analysis of the experiences of women from all classes, especially the working class; and addresses changes in their lives and society over time. The book covers key social, intellectual, and geographical aspects of women's lives, with main chapters on gender and ideals of womanhood, the state, religion, home and family, the body, childhood and youth, paid labor and professional work, urban life, and imperialism."

58:55 minutes

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Matthew Israel

May 21, 2014.

Matthew Israel (VC'00), Director of the Art Genome Project, talks about the Project, Artsy, and taxonomies of the history of art.

"The Art Genome Project's search technology is the product of an ongoing art-historical study—undertaken by a team of contributors with art-historical backgrounds—seeking to define the characteristics which distinguish and connect works of art, architecture, ancient artifacts and design."

30:30 minutes.

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Dan Cohen

May 7, 2014.

Dan Cohen, Executive Director of the Digital Public Library of America, discusses the DPLA, its organization, programs, and aspirations on the occasion of its first anniversary. 

"[T]he DPLA will go beyond its basic mission of making the cultural heritage of America available to all Americans. It will provide opportunities for them to interact with the material and to develop materials of their own. It will empower librarians and reinforce public libraries everywhere . . . ."  -- Robert Darnton, NYRB May 22, 2014

39:39 minutes.

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R. David Lankes

September 18, 2013.

R. David Lankes, Syracuse University Professor, Dean's Scholar, and Director of the Information Institute of Syracuse, will talk about his vision for a new conception of librarians as

"radical agents of positive change" in their role as facilitators of community learning and knowledge-building, and his books Expect More: Demanding Better Libraries for Today's Complex World (2012), and The Atlas of New Librarianship (MIT, 2011), winner of the ABC-CLIO Award for the Best Book in Library Literature.

"The Atlas is not a book; it is a manifesto, a set of principles and convictions aimed at shaking new life and belief into a field that too often fears for its own future. Read it and be prepared to act." -- Andrew Dillon, University of Texas at Austin.

59:44 minutes.

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Joanne Martin Lukacher

March 6, 2013.

Joanne Martin Lukacher talks about her book, Imitation and Improvement: The Norfolk Sampler Tradition, published by In The Company of Friends Press, 2013.

“This new volume identifies and interprets a distinctive body of samplers executed by the girls of Norfolk during a dramatic time of social and cultural change in late 18th-century Britian."

 Joanne Martin Lukacher is an independent scholar, curator, and historic preservationist,  and an authority on historic samplers and their makers.  She curated the exhibition in 2004 at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center entitled: "Thanks Be to My Friends: Selected Samplers from the Collections of the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College."

55:17 minutes.

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Michael H. McCarthy

February 27, 2013.

Michael H. McCarthy, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Vassar College, discusses one of the Twentieth Century's most important political philosophers, Hannah Arendt, and his book: The Political Humanism of Hannah Arendt, published in 2012 by Lexington Books.

“In this penetrating analysis, McCarthy reveals how anti-political biases within the Western philosophical tradition spawned 'anthropologies' that Arendt regarded as profoundly at odds with human dignity, plurality, and freedom. Rejecting both the reductionism that conflates people with beasts and the romanticism that conflates them with gods, Arendt emerges as a civic republican whose highest political virtue is devotion to a common world that, by uniting and separating us, allows us to actualize the full range of human possibilities."   -- Sandra K. Hinchman.

79:49 minutes 

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Beth Luey

February 20, 2013.

Beth Luey, Founder of the Scholarly Publishing Program at Arizona State University, talks about her book: Expanding the American Mind: Books and the Popularization of Knowledge, Published by the University of Massachusetts Press.

Ms. Luey is the author of Handbook for Academic Authors, first published by Cambridge University Press in 1987.  After working as an editor for university presses and textbook companies, Ms. Luey founded the Scholarly Publishing Program at Arizona State University and directed the program for more than twenty-five years.

She has also served as president of the Association for Documentary Editing, the International Association for Publishing Education, and the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing.

40:03 minutes.

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